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"Cat Power",
"Personal life",
"What is important for the reader to know about her personal life?",
"In 2001, Marshall was romantically involved with a runway model, Daniel Currie.",
"Did she have any highlights in her personal life?",
"Around 2003 she bought a house in South Beach, Miami,",
"What did she do next?",
"In 2009 Marshall moved to Los Angeles to share a house in Silver Lake, California with her then-boyfriend."
] | C_599990da4ed54ab290c7cc659fa78d27_1 | How did that go? | 4 | How did moving to Los Angeles go for Cat Power? | Cat Power | Around 2003 she bought a house in South Beach, Miami, from a high school friend. In 2009 Marshall moved to Los Angeles to share a house in Silver Lake, California with her then-boyfriend. They also had a rental house in Malibu where she had a studio. When Marshall was working as a waitress in Atlanta prior to becoming famous, her boyfriend died. She says this, coupled with the prevalence of heroin use amongst her friends and the loss of her best friend to AIDS, was the impetus for her moving to New York. A new boyfriend in New York helped her get a job in a restaurant, but she realised he was having an affair with the restaurant owner, a married woman with two children. In 2001, Marshall was romantically involved with a runway model, Daniel Currie. He separated her in 2003 at a time when she was drinking heavily and abusing other drugs. Marshall referred to him as "the ex-love of my life." According to an interview in January 2011, Marshall was in a relationship with actor Giovanni Ribisi beginning in 2006, and lived with Ribisi and his 14-year-old daughter in Los Angeles. In June 2012, it was reported that Marshall was no longer in a relationship with Ribisi. The completion of Marshall's album Sun coincided with their breakup: "I cut my hair off three days [after the breakup], got on a plane to France, and finished the shit." In April 2015, Marshall announced that she recently had a baby, but did not name the child's father. CANNOTANSWER | When Marshall was working as a waitress in Atlanta prior to becoming famous, her boyfriend died. | Charlyn Marie "Chan" Marshall ( ; born January 21, 1972), better known by her stage name Cat Power, is an American singer-songwriter, musician, occasional actress, and model. Cat Power was originally the name of Marshall's first band, but has become her stage name as a solo artist.
Born in Atlanta, Marshall was raised throughout the southern United States, and began performing in local bands in Atlanta in the early 1990s. After opening for Liz Phair in 1993, she worked with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth and Tim Foljahn of Two Dollar Guitar, with whom she recorded her first two albums, Dear Sir (1995) and Myra Lee (1996), on the same day in 1994. In 1996, she signed with Matador Records, and released a third album of new material with Shelley and Foljahn, What Would the Community Think. Following this, she released the critically acclaimed Moon Pix (1998), recorded with members of Dirty Three, and The Covers Record (2000), a collection of sparsely arranged cover songs.
After a brief hiatus she released You Are Free (2003), featuring guest musicians Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder, followed by the soul-influenced The Greatest (2006), recorded with numerous Memphis studio musicians. A second album of cover tracks, Jukebox, was released in 2008. In 2012 she released the self-produced Sun, which debuted at number 10 on the Billboard 200, the highest-charting album of her career to date.
Critics have noted the constant evolution of Cat Power's sound, with a mix of punk, folk and blues on her earliest albums, and elements of soul and other genres more prevalent in her later material.
Early life
Charlyn Marie Marshall was born January 21, 1972, in Atlanta, Georgia, the second child of Charlie Marshall, a blues musician and pianist, and Myra Lee Marshall ( Russell). She has one older sister, Miranda ("Mandy"). Her parents divorced in 1979 and remarried shortly thereafter. Her mother remarried and had a son, Lenny, and the family traveled around often because of her stepfather's profession.
Marshall attended ten different schools throughout the Southern U.S. in Greensboro; Bartlett and Memphis and throughout Georgia and South Carolina. At times she was left in the care of her grandmother. She was not allowed to buy records when she was growing up, but she listened to her stepfather's record collection, which included artists Otis Redding, Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Rolling Stones, as well as her parents' records, which included Black Flag, Sister Sledge, and Barry White. In sixth grade, she adopted the nickname Chan (pronounced "Shawn"), which she would later use professionally. When she was 13, she listened to the Smiths, the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees. She had to save up to buy cassettes and the first one she got was a record by the Misfits. At age 16, she became estranged from her mother, and had no further contact with her until she was 24.
Religion was a large part of Marshall's upbringing; her father was a Jehovah's Witness, though she attended Southern Baptist churches with her grandmother, where she began singing while learning hymns.
Career
1992–1995: Beginnings
Marshall's first instrument was a 1950s Silvertone guitar, which she taught herself to play. While working in a pizzeria, she began playing music in Atlanta in the late-1980s with Glen Thrasher, Marc Moore, Damon Moore and Fletcher Liegerot, who would get together for jam sessions in a basement. The group were booked for a show and had to come up with a name quickly; after seeing a man wearing a Caterpillar trucker cap that read: "Cat Diesel Power", Marshall chose Cat Power as the name of the band.
While in Atlanta, Marshall played her first live shows as support to her friends' bands, including Magic Bone and Opal Foxx Quartet. In a 2007 interview, she explained that the music itself was more experimental and that playing shows was often an opportunity for her and her friends "to get drunk and take drugs". A number of her local peers became entrenched in heroin use. After the death of her boyfriend, and the subsequent loss of her best friend to AIDS, Marshall relocated to New York City in 1992 with Glen Thrasher. A new boyfriend helped her get a job in a restaurant.
Thrasher introduced her to New York's free jazz and experimental music scene. After attending a concert by Anthony Braxton, she gave her first New York show of improvisational music at a warehouse in Brooklyn. One of her shows during this period was as the support act to Man or Astro-man? and consisted of her playing a two-string guitar and singing the word "no" for 15 minutes. Around this time, she met the band God Is My Co-Pilot, who assisted with the release of her first single, "Headlights", in a limited run of 500 copies on their Making of Americans label.
Marshall recorded simultaneously her first two albums Dear Sir and Myra Lee in December 1994 in a small basement studio near Mott Street in New York City, with guitarist Tim Foljahn and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley; Marshall and Shelley had initially met after she played a show opening for Liz Phair in 1993. A total of 20 songs were recorded in a single day by the trio, all of which were split into two records, making up Dear Sir and Myra Lee, released respectively in October 1995 and March 1996. Although Dear Sir is considered Marshall's debut album, it is more the length of an EP.
1996–2003: Early Matador releases
In 1996, Marshall signed to Matador Records and in September released her third album, What Would the Community Think, which she recorded in Memphis, Tennessee, in February 1996. The album was produced by Shelley and again featured Shelley and Foljahn as backing musicians, and spawned a single and music video, "Nude as the News" about the abortion she had at the age of 20. Critics cited the album as evidence of her maturation as a singer and songwriter from the "dense and cathartic" material of her first two releases.
After the release of What Would the Community Think, Marshall took a trip to South Africa, after which she left New York City and moved to Portland, Oregon, where she found temporary employment as a babysitter. In the spring of 1997, Marshall relocated with her then-boyfriend, musician Bill Callahan, to a rural farmhouse in Prosperity, South Carolina. After experiencing a hypnogogic nightmare while alone in the farmhouse, Marshall wrote six new songs that would go on to make up the bulk of her following album, Moon Pix (1998), which she recorded at Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne, Australia, with backing musicians Mick Turner and Jim White of the Australian band Dirty Three. Moon Pix was well received by critics, and along with an accompanying music video for the song "Cross Bones Style", helped her gain further recognition. Rolling Stone would later describe it as her 'breakthrough' record.
In 1999 where Marshall performed in a series of shows where she provided musical accompaniment to the silent movie The Passion of Joan of Arc. The shows combined original material and covers, some of which would be released on Marshall's fifth album, The Covers Record in 2000. The songs were recorded during two sessions in the summer of 1998 and fall of 1999. Additionally, she performed eleven covers during a Peel session broadcast on June 18, 2000 that included own interpretations of Bob Dylan's "Hard Times in New York Town" and Oasis's "Wonderwall". Her contract with Matador for 2000's The Covers Album reportedly consisted of a Post-it note signed by herself and the company's founder.
During the early-2000s, Marshall was embraced by the fashion industry for her "neo grunge" look, and seen as a muse by designers Marc Jacobs and Nicolas Ghesquière. In 2001 she modeled in New York magazines fall fashion issue and was photographed by her friends Mark Borthwick and Katja Rahlwes, who featured her in Purple magazine alongside Catherine Deneuve.
In February 2003, Marshall released You Are Free, her first album of original material in five years. The album, which featured guest musicians such as Eddie Vedder, Dave Grohl, and Warren Ellis, became the first charting Cat Power album, reaching 105 on the Billboard 200. A music video directed by Brett Vapnek was released for the song "He War". Marshall toured extensively through 2003 and 2004, playing shows in Europe, Brazil, the U.S. and Australia. During this period, Marshall's live performances had become erratic and unpredictable, and a 2003 The New Yorker article suggested: "It is foolhardy to describe a Cat Power event as a concert," citing "rambling confessions" and "[talking] to a friend's baby from the stage." Marshall later attributed this period to a drinking problem. Around the time of the release of You Are Free, Marshall purchased a house in South Beach, Miami.
2004–2011: Mainstream success
In October 2004, Matador released the DVD film Speaking for Trees, which featured a continuous, nearly two-hour static shot of Marshall performing with her guitar in a woodland. The set was accompanied by an audio CD containing the 18-minute song "Willie Deadwilder", featuring M. Ward also on guitar.
On January 22, 2006, Marshall released her seventh album, The Greatest, a Southern soul-influenced album of new material featuring veteran Memphis studio musicians, including Mabon "Teenie" Hodges, Leroy Hodges, David Smith, and Steve Potts. The album debuted at 34 on the Billboard 200 and critics noted its relatively "polished and accessible" sound, predicting it was "going to gain her a lot of new fans." The Greatest met with critical acclaim, and won the 2006 Shortlist Music Prize, making Marshall the first woman to win the honor. It was also named the number 6 best album of 2006 by Rolling Stone Magazine.
Simultaneously, Marshall collaborated with several other musicians on different projects, including Mick Collins on a recording of Ludwig Rellstab's poem "Auf Dem Strom" for the film Wayne County Ramblin; a duet with singer-model Karen Elson on an English cover of Serge Gainsbourg's "Je t'aime... moi non plus" for the tribute album Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited (2007); lead vocals on the Ensemble track "Disown, Delete"; and a reworked version of "Revelations" with Yoko Ono for Ono's 2007 album Yes, I'm a Witch.
In the fall of 2006, Marshall became a celebrity spokesperson for a line of jewelry from Chanel, after being seen by Karl Lagerfeld smoking a cigarette outside the Mercer Hotel in New York. Lagerfeld chose Cat Power for the soundtrack to his spring 2007 fashion show. He also photographed Marshall for a Purple feature.
In 2007, Marshall contributed songs to the soundtrack of Ethan Hawke's film The Hottest State, recording with Jesse Harris and Terry Manning, and the Academy Award-winning film Juno. The same year, she made her feature film debut acting in My Blueberry Nights opposite Jude Law, appearing in a small role. She also appeared in the role of a postal worker in Doug Aitken's MoMA installation Sleepwalkers, which followed the nocturnal lives of five city dwellers. Also in 2007, she featured on Faithless' album track A Kind of Peace.
In January 2008, Marshall released her second covers album, Jukebox. Recorded with her recently assembled "Dirty Delta Blues Band", which consisted of Judah Bauer from the Blues Explosion, Gregg Foreman of The Delta 72, Erik Paparazzi of Lizard Music and Jim White of Dirty Three, the album featured the original song "Song to Bobby", Marshall's tribute to Bob Dylan, and a reworking of the Moon Pix song "Metal Heart". She also collaborated with Beck and producer Danger Mouse on the album Modern Guilt (2008): She contributed backing vocals to two tracks, "Orphans" and "Walls". The album was released in July of that year.
In September 2008, Marshall and members of the Dirty Delta Blues (Erik Paparazzi and Gregg Foreman) recorded their version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" for a Lincoln car commercial. In 2013, Cat Power's version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" was used in Apple's Christmas commercial "Misunderstood". In December 2008, she released Dark End of the Street, an EP consisting of songs left over from the Jukebox sessions. In 2009, she provided backing vocals on Marianne Faithfull's cover of "Hold On, Hold On" by Neko Case on the 2009 album Easy Come Easy Go. In 2011, she also featured as guest vocalist on "Tonight You Belong to Me" on Eddie Vedder's Ukulele Songs.
2012–2018: Sun and Wanderer
In February 2012, Marshall cancelled a scheduled appearance in Tel Aviv, Israel, citing "much confusion" and that she felt "sick in her spirit." She had faced calls to boycott the country over its conflict with Palestine. Two months later, she cancelled her appearance at the Coachella Music Festival, claiming that she "didn't think it was fair to play Coachella while my new album is not yet finished," also hinting that her forthcoming record is "almost done" and will see release later in 2012. Marshall's ninth studio album, Sun, was released in September 2012, after releasing the lead single "Ruin" as a free download the previous June. The album features prominent electronica elements and arrangements, which Marshall incorporated into the "really slow guitar-based songs" she had originally written. In a review published on September 4, 2012, on Consequence of Sound, Sun was praised as a unique album and received a four-star rating. In summation, reviewer Sarah Grant wrote that Marshall's 2012 release is "a passionate pop album of electronic music filtered through a singer-songwriter's soul." The album debuted at a career chart-high of No. 10 on the Billboard 200 chart, selling over 23,000 copies on its opening week.
In July 2015, it was announced that Marshall would be providing narration for the documentary Janis: Little Girl Blue directed by Amy J. Berg, which revolves around the life of Janis Joplin and premiered at the 2015 Venice Film Festival. On television, Marshall starred on China, IL, in the hourlong musical special "Magical Pet". Marshall performs three original songs written by creator Brad Neely.
On July 28, 2017, Marshall announced on Instagram that her tenth studio album was "ready to go", although she did not disclose its title or expected release date.
On March 20, 2018, it was announced that Marshall would perform a Moon Pix 20th anniversary concert at Sydney Opera House, which occurred from May 25 to June 16 and featured album collaborators Jim White and Mick Turner.
On July 18, 2018, Marshall announced her 10th studio album, Wanderer, and shared the title track as an introduction to the album. She released two more singles, "Woman" featuring Lana Del Rey on August 15 and a cover of Rihanna's "Stay" on September 18, before the album was released on October 5, 2018, through Domino Recording Company. It was her first to not be released on Matador Records since 1996. According to Marshall, Matador were not happy with the recordings for Wanader, they wanted her to rerecord it and make it sound more commercial. She embarked on a world tour in promotion of the album in September.
Power embarked on a US arena tour in August 2021 supporting Alanis Morissette and Garbage. She was a last-minute addition to the lineup, after original opening act Liz Phair canceled her appearances. Power contributed four new songs to the soundtrack of the 2021 film Flag Day. Her eleventh studio album, Covers, was released on January 14, 2022, and will be supported by a US tour.
Personal life
In 2005, Marshall entered a relationship with actor Giovanni Ribisi, and resided with Ribisi and his daughter in Los Angeles. They also had a rental house in Malibu where she had a studio. Following the release of The Greatest, Marshall canceled her impending spring 2006 tour, and used the hiatus to recover from mental health issues. As part of her recovery, she was admitted to the psychiatric ward at Mount Sinai Medical Center & Miami Heart Institute, leaving after a week. Marshall gave a first person account of her breakdown in an interview for the November 2006 issue of Spin.
In June 2012, it was reported that Marshall had ended her relationship with Ribisi, and the completion of her upcoming record had coincided with their breakup: "I cut my hair off three days [after the breakup], got on a plane to France, and finished the shit." Shortly after the release of Sun, Marshall began having trouble breathing and was hospitalized multiple times, though doctors were unable to diagnose her. "I thought I was dying," she recounted. "They told me they were going to put me in a coma to save my lungs. My friend came to visit and told me I'd made the Billboard Top 10 and all I could think was: 'I don't want to die.'" Marshall was subsequently diagnosed with hereditary angioedema, an immune disorder that causes sporadic swelling of the face and throat due to C1 esterase inhibitor deficiency. In September 2012, she stated she had been hospitalized due to the condition over eight times, which led her to cancel her European tour.
In April 2015, Marshall announced that she had recently given birth to a son, but did not name the child's father.
Artistry
Musical style
Marshall's releases as Cat Power have frequently been noted by critics for their somber, blues-influenced instrumentation and melancholy lyrics, leading LA Weekly to dub her the "queen of sadcore". Marshall, however, claims her music is often misinterpreted, and that many of her songs are "not sad, [but] triumphant." She has recounted blues, old soul music, British rock 'n' roll, as well as hymns and gospel music as being integral influences on her.
Cat Power's early releases have been described as blending elements of punk, folk, and blues, while her later releases (post-2000) began to incorporate more sophisticated arrangements and production. The Greatest (2006), Marshall's seventh release, was heavily soul-influenced and incorporated R&B elements; the Memphis Rhythm Band provided backing instrumentation on the album. Unlike her previous releases, which featured sparse guitar and piano arrangements, The Greatest was described by Marshall biographer Sarah Goodman as her first "full-blown studio record with sophisticated production and senior players backing [Marshall] up."
Performances
Marshall's live shows have been known for their unpolished and often erratic nature, with songs beginning and ending abruptly or blending into one another without clear transitions. She has also cut short performances without explanation. On some occasions this has been attributed to stage fright and the influence of alcohol. Marshall spoke openly about suffering from severe bouts of stage fright, specifically in her early career, and admitted that her stage fright stemmed from issues regarding depression, alcoholism, and substance abuse.
By 2006, she had found new collaborators and had stopped drinking. Marshall's performance style became more enthusiastic and professional; a review in Salon noted that she was "delivering onstage", and called The Greatest "polished and sweetly upbeat".
Philanthropy
A live version of the gospel song "Amazing Grace"—culled from a performance with the Dirty Delta Blues band—was released on the charity compilation Dark Was the Night. Released by independent British label 4AD on February 17, 2009, the set benefited the Red Hot Organization, an international charity dedicated to raising funds and awareness for HIV and AIDS. She also appeared in a PETA ad, encouraging people to spay and neuter their pets.
On December 25, 2011, Marshall released a reworking of the What Would the Community Think track "King Rides By" for download from her official website, with all proceeds from sales of the track being donated to The Festival of Children Foundation and The Ali Forney Center. A music video directed by Giovanni Ribisi and featuring Filipino boxer and politician Manny Pacquiao was released to promote the song.
Discography
Studio albums
Dear Sir (1995)
Myra Lee (1996)
What Would the Community Think (1996)
Moon Pix (1998)
The Covers Record (2000)
You Are Free (2003)
The Greatest (2006)
Jukebox (2008)
Sun (2012)
Wanderer (2018)
Covers (2022)
Filmography
Awards and nominations
Won: Shortlist Music Prize for The Greatest
Nominated: Best International Female Solo Artist, 2007 BRIT Awards
Nominated: Best Art Vinyl for Jukebox
Nominated: Best International Female Solo Artist, 2013 BRIT Awards
Nominated: Best Cinematography for "Where Is My Love?", 2007 Antville Music Video Awards
Nominated: Comeback of the Year, 2018 Rober Awards Music Prize
Nominated: Best Foreign Solo Act, Wanderer Best Foreign Album, 2019 Sweden GAFFA Awards
Nominated: Best Pop Video - International for "Go Up", 2017 UK Music Video Awards
References
Sources
External links
1972 births
American alternative rock musicians
American women singer-songwriters
American women rock singers
Living people
Alternative rock singers
Alternative rock guitarists
Alternative rock pianists
Guitarists from Georgia (U.S. state)
Winners of the Shortlist Music Prize
Musicians from Atlanta
People from Prosperity, South Carolina
21st-century American women guitarists
21st-century American guitarists
20th-century American women guitarists
20th-century American guitarists
21st-century American women pianists
21st-century American pianists
20th-century American women singers
21st-century American women singers
20th-century American pianists
20th-century American singers
21st-century American singers
Singer-songwriters from South Carolina
Singer-songwriters from Georgia (U.S. state) | false | [
"Mind how you go may refer to:\nMind How You Go (The Advisory Circle album), 2005\nMind How You Go (Skye Edwards album), 2006\n\"Mind How You Go\", a 1965 single by Barry St. John (Elizabeth Thompson)\n\"Mind How You Go\", a 1967 single by Allan Smethurst\n\"Mind How You Go\", a 1966 single by Mr. Lee Grant (Bogdan Kominowski)\n\"Mind how you go\", a phrase for good-bye",
"Where Did They Go is a 1971 album by Peggy Lee. It was arranged and conducted by Don Sebesky and Al Capps.\n\nTrack listing\n\"Where Did They Go\" (Harry Lloyd, Gloria Sklerov) - 3:53\n\"My Rock and Foundation\" (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) - 2:37\n\"Help Me Make It Through the Night\" (Kris Kristofferson) - 2:45\n\"All I Want\" (Steve Clayton [aka P. Tedesco], Gladys Shelley) - 2:40\n\"I Don't Know How to Love Him\" (Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber) - 3:24\n\"Goodbye Again\" (Donald J. Addrissi, Richard P. Addrissi) - 2:33\n\"Sing\" (Joe Raposo) - 2:25\n\"I Was Born in Love with You\" (Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman, Michel Legrand) - 4:01\n\"Losing My Mind\" (Stephen Sondheim) - 2:43\n\"My Sweet Lord\" (George Harrison) - 2:55\n\nNotes\nThe recording sessions for this album took place at the Capitol Tower in Hollywood, California.\n\nWhere Did They Go was Peggy Lee's first album not to make the Billboard 200 chart since her Grammy-winning hit \"Is That All There Is?\" in 1969.\n\nBurt Bacharach and Hal David wrote the song \"My Rock And Foundation\" specifically for Lee.\n\nCapitol Records released \"Where Did They Go\" (backed by \"All I Want\") as a 45\" single in 1971. The single did not make the charts.\n\nLee performed songs from this album, including \"Where Did They Go\" and \"My Sweet Lord,\" during her June 1971 engagement at The Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.\n\nAfter completing work on Where Did They Go, Peggy Lee did not return to the recording studio again until nearly a year later, when she began recording Norma Deloris Egstrom from Jamestown, North Dakota in April 1972.\n\nThis album was released on 8-track, along with LP.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Peggy Lee Discography\n\n1971 albums\nCapitol Records albums\nPeggy Lee albums\nAlbums arranged by Don Sebesky\nAlbums produced by Snuff Garrett"
] |
[
"Cat Power",
"Personal life",
"What is important for the reader to know about her personal life?",
"In 2001, Marshall was romantically involved with a runway model, Daniel Currie.",
"Did she have any highlights in her personal life?",
"Around 2003 she bought a house in South Beach, Miami,",
"What did she do next?",
"In 2009 Marshall moved to Los Angeles to share a house in Silver Lake, California with her then-boyfriend.",
"How did that go?",
"When Marshall was working as a waitress in Atlanta prior to becoming famous, her boyfriend died."
] | C_599990da4ed54ab290c7cc659fa78d27_1 | Where did she go from there? | 5 | Where did Cat Power go from Atlanta? | Cat Power | Around 2003 she bought a house in South Beach, Miami, from a high school friend. In 2009 Marshall moved to Los Angeles to share a house in Silver Lake, California with her then-boyfriend. They also had a rental house in Malibu where she had a studio. When Marshall was working as a waitress in Atlanta prior to becoming famous, her boyfriend died. She says this, coupled with the prevalence of heroin use amongst her friends and the loss of her best friend to AIDS, was the impetus for her moving to New York. A new boyfriend in New York helped her get a job in a restaurant, but she realised he was having an affair with the restaurant owner, a married woman with two children. In 2001, Marshall was romantically involved with a runway model, Daniel Currie. He separated her in 2003 at a time when she was drinking heavily and abusing other drugs. Marshall referred to him as "the ex-love of my life." According to an interview in January 2011, Marshall was in a relationship with actor Giovanni Ribisi beginning in 2006, and lived with Ribisi and his 14-year-old daughter in Los Angeles. In June 2012, it was reported that Marshall was no longer in a relationship with Ribisi. The completion of Marshall's album Sun coincided with their breakup: "I cut my hair off three days [after the breakup], got on a plane to France, and finished the shit." In April 2015, Marshall announced that she recently had a baby, but did not name the child's father. CANNOTANSWER | the prevalence of heroin use amongst her friends and the loss of her best friend to AIDS, was the impetus for her moving to New York. | Charlyn Marie "Chan" Marshall ( ; born January 21, 1972), better known by her stage name Cat Power, is an American singer-songwriter, musician, occasional actress, and model. Cat Power was originally the name of Marshall's first band, but has become her stage name as a solo artist.
Born in Atlanta, Marshall was raised throughout the southern United States, and began performing in local bands in Atlanta in the early 1990s. After opening for Liz Phair in 1993, she worked with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth and Tim Foljahn of Two Dollar Guitar, with whom she recorded her first two albums, Dear Sir (1995) and Myra Lee (1996), on the same day in 1994. In 1996, she signed with Matador Records, and released a third album of new material with Shelley and Foljahn, What Would the Community Think. Following this, she released the critically acclaimed Moon Pix (1998), recorded with members of Dirty Three, and The Covers Record (2000), a collection of sparsely arranged cover songs.
After a brief hiatus she released You Are Free (2003), featuring guest musicians Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder, followed by the soul-influenced The Greatest (2006), recorded with numerous Memphis studio musicians. A second album of cover tracks, Jukebox, was released in 2008. In 2012 she released the self-produced Sun, which debuted at number 10 on the Billboard 200, the highest-charting album of her career to date.
Critics have noted the constant evolution of Cat Power's sound, with a mix of punk, folk and blues on her earliest albums, and elements of soul and other genres more prevalent in her later material.
Early life
Charlyn Marie Marshall was born January 21, 1972, in Atlanta, Georgia, the second child of Charlie Marshall, a blues musician and pianist, and Myra Lee Marshall ( Russell). She has one older sister, Miranda ("Mandy"). Her parents divorced in 1979 and remarried shortly thereafter. Her mother remarried and had a son, Lenny, and the family traveled around often because of her stepfather's profession.
Marshall attended ten different schools throughout the Southern U.S. in Greensboro; Bartlett and Memphis and throughout Georgia and South Carolina. At times she was left in the care of her grandmother. She was not allowed to buy records when she was growing up, but she listened to her stepfather's record collection, which included artists Otis Redding, Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Rolling Stones, as well as her parents' records, which included Black Flag, Sister Sledge, and Barry White. In sixth grade, she adopted the nickname Chan (pronounced "Shawn"), which she would later use professionally. When she was 13, she listened to the Smiths, the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees. She had to save up to buy cassettes and the first one she got was a record by the Misfits. At age 16, she became estranged from her mother, and had no further contact with her until she was 24.
Religion was a large part of Marshall's upbringing; her father was a Jehovah's Witness, though she attended Southern Baptist churches with her grandmother, where she began singing while learning hymns.
Career
1992–1995: Beginnings
Marshall's first instrument was a 1950s Silvertone guitar, which she taught herself to play. While working in a pizzeria, she began playing music in Atlanta in the late-1980s with Glen Thrasher, Marc Moore, Damon Moore and Fletcher Liegerot, who would get together for jam sessions in a basement. The group were booked for a show and had to come up with a name quickly; after seeing a man wearing a Caterpillar trucker cap that read: "Cat Diesel Power", Marshall chose Cat Power as the name of the band.
While in Atlanta, Marshall played her first live shows as support to her friends' bands, including Magic Bone and Opal Foxx Quartet. In a 2007 interview, she explained that the music itself was more experimental and that playing shows was often an opportunity for her and her friends "to get drunk and take drugs". A number of her local peers became entrenched in heroin use. After the death of her boyfriend, and the subsequent loss of her best friend to AIDS, Marshall relocated to New York City in 1992 with Glen Thrasher. A new boyfriend helped her get a job in a restaurant.
Thrasher introduced her to New York's free jazz and experimental music scene. After attending a concert by Anthony Braxton, she gave her first New York show of improvisational music at a warehouse in Brooklyn. One of her shows during this period was as the support act to Man or Astro-man? and consisted of her playing a two-string guitar and singing the word "no" for 15 minutes. Around this time, she met the band God Is My Co-Pilot, who assisted with the release of her first single, "Headlights", in a limited run of 500 copies on their Making of Americans label.
Marshall recorded simultaneously her first two albums Dear Sir and Myra Lee in December 1994 in a small basement studio near Mott Street in New York City, with guitarist Tim Foljahn and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley; Marshall and Shelley had initially met after she played a show opening for Liz Phair in 1993. A total of 20 songs were recorded in a single day by the trio, all of which were split into two records, making up Dear Sir and Myra Lee, released respectively in October 1995 and March 1996. Although Dear Sir is considered Marshall's debut album, it is more the length of an EP.
1996–2003: Early Matador releases
In 1996, Marshall signed to Matador Records and in September released her third album, What Would the Community Think, which she recorded in Memphis, Tennessee, in February 1996. The album was produced by Shelley and again featured Shelley and Foljahn as backing musicians, and spawned a single and music video, "Nude as the News" about the abortion she had at the age of 20. Critics cited the album as evidence of her maturation as a singer and songwriter from the "dense and cathartic" material of her first two releases.
After the release of What Would the Community Think, Marshall took a trip to South Africa, after which she left New York City and moved to Portland, Oregon, where she found temporary employment as a babysitter. In the spring of 1997, Marshall relocated with her then-boyfriend, musician Bill Callahan, to a rural farmhouse in Prosperity, South Carolina. After experiencing a hypnogogic nightmare while alone in the farmhouse, Marshall wrote six new songs that would go on to make up the bulk of her following album, Moon Pix (1998), which she recorded at Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne, Australia, with backing musicians Mick Turner and Jim White of the Australian band Dirty Three. Moon Pix was well received by critics, and along with an accompanying music video for the song "Cross Bones Style", helped her gain further recognition. Rolling Stone would later describe it as her 'breakthrough' record.
In 1999 where Marshall performed in a series of shows where she provided musical accompaniment to the silent movie The Passion of Joan of Arc. The shows combined original material and covers, some of which would be released on Marshall's fifth album, The Covers Record in 2000. The songs were recorded during two sessions in the summer of 1998 and fall of 1999. Additionally, she performed eleven covers during a Peel session broadcast on June 18, 2000 that included own interpretations of Bob Dylan's "Hard Times in New York Town" and Oasis's "Wonderwall". Her contract with Matador for 2000's The Covers Album reportedly consisted of a Post-it note signed by herself and the company's founder.
During the early-2000s, Marshall was embraced by the fashion industry for her "neo grunge" look, and seen as a muse by designers Marc Jacobs and Nicolas Ghesquière. In 2001 she modeled in New York magazines fall fashion issue and was photographed by her friends Mark Borthwick and Katja Rahlwes, who featured her in Purple magazine alongside Catherine Deneuve.
In February 2003, Marshall released You Are Free, her first album of original material in five years. The album, which featured guest musicians such as Eddie Vedder, Dave Grohl, and Warren Ellis, became the first charting Cat Power album, reaching 105 on the Billboard 200. A music video directed by Brett Vapnek was released for the song "He War". Marshall toured extensively through 2003 and 2004, playing shows in Europe, Brazil, the U.S. and Australia. During this period, Marshall's live performances had become erratic and unpredictable, and a 2003 The New Yorker article suggested: "It is foolhardy to describe a Cat Power event as a concert," citing "rambling confessions" and "[talking] to a friend's baby from the stage." Marshall later attributed this period to a drinking problem. Around the time of the release of You Are Free, Marshall purchased a house in South Beach, Miami.
2004–2011: Mainstream success
In October 2004, Matador released the DVD film Speaking for Trees, which featured a continuous, nearly two-hour static shot of Marshall performing with her guitar in a woodland. The set was accompanied by an audio CD containing the 18-minute song "Willie Deadwilder", featuring M. Ward also on guitar.
On January 22, 2006, Marshall released her seventh album, The Greatest, a Southern soul-influenced album of new material featuring veteran Memphis studio musicians, including Mabon "Teenie" Hodges, Leroy Hodges, David Smith, and Steve Potts. The album debuted at 34 on the Billboard 200 and critics noted its relatively "polished and accessible" sound, predicting it was "going to gain her a lot of new fans." The Greatest met with critical acclaim, and won the 2006 Shortlist Music Prize, making Marshall the first woman to win the honor. It was also named the number 6 best album of 2006 by Rolling Stone Magazine.
Simultaneously, Marshall collaborated with several other musicians on different projects, including Mick Collins on a recording of Ludwig Rellstab's poem "Auf Dem Strom" for the film Wayne County Ramblin; a duet with singer-model Karen Elson on an English cover of Serge Gainsbourg's "Je t'aime... moi non plus" for the tribute album Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited (2007); lead vocals on the Ensemble track "Disown, Delete"; and a reworked version of "Revelations" with Yoko Ono for Ono's 2007 album Yes, I'm a Witch.
In the fall of 2006, Marshall became a celebrity spokesperson for a line of jewelry from Chanel, after being seen by Karl Lagerfeld smoking a cigarette outside the Mercer Hotel in New York. Lagerfeld chose Cat Power for the soundtrack to his spring 2007 fashion show. He also photographed Marshall for a Purple feature.
In 2007, Marshall contributed songs to the soundtrack of Ethan Hawke's film The Hottest State, recording with Jesse Harris and Terry Manning, and the Academy Award-winning film Juno. The same year, she made her feature film debut acting in My Blueberry Nights opposite Jude Law, appearing in a small role. She also appeared in the role of a postal worker in Doug Aitken's MoMA installation Sleepwalkers, which followed the nocturnal lives of five city dwellers. Also in 2007, she featured on Faithless' album track A Kind of Peace.
In January 2008, Marshall released her second covers album, Jukebox. Recorded with her recently assembled "Dirty Delta Blues Band", which consisted of Judah Bauer from the Blues Explosion, Gregg Foreman of The Delta 72, Erik Paparazzi of Lizard Music and Jim White of Dirty Three, the album featured the original song "Song to Bobby", Marshall's tribute to Bob Dylan, and a reworking of the Moon Pix song "Metal Heart". She also collaborated with Beck and producer Danger Mouse on the album Modern Guilt (2008): She contributed backing vocals to two tracks, "Orphans" and "Walls". The album was released in July of that year.
In September 2008, Marshall and members of the Dirty Delta Blues (Erik Paparazzi and Gregg Foreman) recorded their version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" for a Lincoln car commercial. In 2013, Cat Power's version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" was used in Apple's Christmas commercial "Misunderstood". In December 2008, she released Dark End of the Street, an EP consisting of songs left over from the Jukebox sessions. In 2009, she provided backing vocals on Marianne Faithfull's cover of "Hold On, Hold On" by Neko Case on the 2009 album Easy Come Easy Go. In 2011, she also featured as guest vocalist on "Tonight You Belong to Me" on Eddie Vedder's Ukulele Songs.
2012–2018: Sun and Wanderer
In February 2012, Marshall cancelled a scheduled appearance in Tel Aviv, Israel, citing "much confusion" and that she felt "sick in her spirit." She had faced calls to boycott the country over its conflict with Palestine. Two months later, she cancelled her appearance at the Coachella Music Festival, claiming that she "didn't think it was fair to play Coachella while my new album is not yet finished," also hinting that her forthcoming record is "almost done" and will see release later in 2012. Marshall's ninth studio album, Sun, was released in September 2012, after releasing the lead single "Ruin" as a free download the previous June. The album features prominent electronica elements and arrangements, which Marshall incorporated into the "really slow guitar-based songs" she had originally written. In a review published on September 4, 2012, on Consequence of Sound, Sun was praised as a unique album and received a four-star rating. In summation, reviewer Sarah Grant wrote that Marshall's 2012 release is "a passionate pop album of electronic music filtered through a singer-songwriter's soul." The album debuted at a career chart-high of No. 10 on the Billboard 200 chart, selling over 23,000 copies on its opening week.
In July 2015, it was announced that Marshall would be providing narration for the documentary Janis: Little Girl Blue directed by Amy J. Berg, which revolves around the life of Janis Joplin and premiered at the 2015 Venice Film Festival. On television, Marshall starred on China, IL, in the hourlong musical special "Magical Pet". Marshall performs three original songs written by creator Brad Neely.
On July 28, 2017, Marshall announced on Instagram that her tenth studio album was "ready to go", although she did not disclose its title or expected release date.
On March 20, 2018, it was announced that Marshall would perform a Moon Pix 20th anniversary concert at Sydney Opera House, which occurred from May 25 to June 16 and featured album collaborators Jim White and Mick Turner.
On July 18, 2018, Marshall announced her 10th studio album, Wanderer, and shared the title track as an introduction to the album. She released two more singles, "Woman" featuring Lana Del Rey on August 15 and a cover of Rihanna's "Stay" on September 18, before the album was released on October 5, 2018, through Domino Recording Company. It was her first to not be released on Matador Records since 1996. According to Marshall, Matador were not happy with the recordings for Wanader, they wanted her to rerecord it and make it sound more commercial. She embarked on a world tour in promotion of the album in September.
Power embarked on a US arena tour in August 2021 supporting Alanis Morissette and Garbage. She was a last-minute addition to the lineup, after original opening act Liz Phair canceled her appearances. Power contributed four new songs to the soundtrack of the 2021 film Flag Day. Her eleventh studio album, Covers, was released on January 14, 2022, and will be supported by a US tour.
Personal life
In 2005, Marshall entered a relationship with actor Giovanni Ribisi, and resided with Ribisi and his daughter in Los Angeles. They also had a rental house in Malibu where she had a studio. Following the release of The Greatest, Marshall canceled her impending spring 2006 tour, and used the hiatus to recover from mental health issues. As part of her recovery, she was admitted to the psychiatric ward at Mount Sinai Medical Center & Miami Heart Institute, leaving after a week. Marshall gave a first person account of her breakdown in an interview for the November 2006 issue of Spin.
In June 2012, it was reported that Marshall had ended her relationship with Ribisi, and the completion of her upcoming record had coincided with their breakup: "I cut my hair off three days [after the breakup], got on a plane to France, and finished the shit." Shortly after the release of Sun, Marshall began having trouble breathing and was hospitalized multiple times, though doctors were unable to diagnose her. "I thought I was dying," she recounted. "They told me they were going to put me in a coma to save my lungs. My friend came to visit and told me I'd made the Billboard Top 10 and all I could think was: 'I don't want to die.'" Marshall was subsequently diagnosed with hereditary angioedema, an immune disorder that causes sporadic swelling of the face and throat due to C1 esterase inhibitor deficiency. In September 2012, she stated she had been hospitalized due to the condition over eight times, which led her to cancel her European tour.
In April 2015, Marshall announced that she had recently given birth to a son, but did not name the child's father.
Artistry
Musical style
Marshall's releases as Cat Power have frequently been noted by critics for their somber, blues-influenced instrumentation and melancholy lyrics, leading LA Weekly to dub her the "queen of sadcore". Marshall, however, claims her music is often misinterpreted, and that many of her songs are "not sad, [but] triumphant." She has recounted blues, old soul music, British rock 'n' roll, as well as hymns and gospel music as being integral influences on her.
Cat Power's early releases have been described as blending elements of punk, folk, and blues, while her later releases (post-2000) began to incorporate more sophisticated arrangements and production. The Greatest (2006), Marshall's seventh release, was heavily soul-influenced and incorporated R&B elements; the Memphis Rhythm Band provided backing instrumentation on the album. Unlike her previous releases, which featured sparse guitar and piano arrangements, The Greatest was described by Marshall biographer Sarah Goodman as her first "full-blown studio record with sophisticated production and senior players backing [Marshall] up."
Performances
Marshall's live shows have been known for their unpolished and often erratic nature, with songs beginning and ending abruptly or blending into one another without clear transitions. She has also cut short performances without explanation. On some occasions this has been attributed to stage fright and the influence of alcohol. Marshall spoke openly about suffering from severe bouts of stage fright, specifically in her early career, and admitted that her stage fright stemmed from issues regarding depression, alcoholism, and substance abuse.
By 2006, she had found new collaborators and had stopped drinking. Marshall's performance style became more enthusiastic and professional; a review in Salon noted that she was "delivering onstage", and called The Greatest "polished and sweetly upbeat".
Philanthropy
A live version of the gospel song "Amazing Grace"—culled from a performance with the Dirty Delta Blues band—was released on the charity compilation Dark Was the Night. Released by independent British label 4AD on February 17, 2009, the set benefited the Red Hot Organization, an international charity dedicated to raising funds and awareness for HIV and AIDS. She also appeared in a PETA ad, encouraging people to spay and neuter their pets.
On December 25, 2011, Marshall released a reworking of the What Would the Community Think track "King Rides By" for download from her official website, with all proceeds from sales of the track being donated to The Festival of Children Foundation and The Ali Forney Center. A music video directed by Giovanni Ribisi and featuring Filipino boxer and politician Manny Pacquiao was released to promote the song.
Discography
Studio albums
Dear Sir (1995)
Myra Lee (1996)
What Would the Community Think (1996)
Moon Pix (1998)
The Covers Record (2000)
You Are Free (2003)
The Greatest (2006)
Jukebox (2008)
Sun (2012)
Wanderer (2018)
Covers (2022)
Filmography
Awards and nominations
Won: Shortlist Music Prize for The Greatest
Nominated: Best International Female Solo Artist, 2007 BRIT Awards
Nominated: Best Art Vinyl for Jukebox
Nominated: Best International Female Solo Artist, 2013 BRIT Awards
Nominated: Best Cinematography for "Where Is My Love?", 2007 Antville Music Video Awards
Nominated: Comeback of the Year, 2018 Rober Awards Music Prize
Nominated: Best Foreign Solo Act, Wanderer Best Foreign Album, 2019 Sweden GAFFA Awards
Nominated: Best Pop Video - International for "Go Up", 2017 UK Music Video Awards
References
Sources
External links
1972 births
American alternative rock musicians
American women singer-songwriters
American women rock singers
Living people
Alternative rock singers
Alternative rock guitarists
Alternative rock pianists
Guitarists from Georgia (U.S. state)
Winners of the Shortlist Music Prize
Musicians from Atlanta
People from Prosperity, South Carolina
21st-century American women guitarists
21st-century American guitarists
20th-century American women guitarists
20th-century American guitarists
21st-century American women pianists
21st-century American pianists
20th-century American women singers
21st-century American women singers
20th-century American pianists
20th-century American singers
21st-century American singers
Singer-songwriters from South Carolina
Singer-songwriters from Georgia (U.S. state) | false | [
"Where Did We Go Wrong may refer to:\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\" (Dondria song), 2010\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\" (Toni Braxton and Babyface song), 2013\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\", a song by Petula Clark from the album My Love\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\", a song by Diana Ross from the album Ross\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\", a 1980 song by Frankie Valli",
"Where Did They Go is a 1971 album by Peggy Lee. It was arranged and conducted by Don Sebesky and Al Capps.\n\nTrack listing\n\"Where Did They Go\" (Harry Lloyd, Gloria Sklerov) - 3:53\n\"My Rock and Foundation\" (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) - 2:37\n\"Help Me Make It Through the Night\" (Kris Kristofferson) - 2:45\n\"All I Want\" (Steve Clayton [aka P. Tedesco], Gladys Shelley) - 2:40\n\"I Don't Know How to Love Him\" (Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber) - 3:24\n\"Goodbye Again\" (Donald J. Addrissi, Richard P. Addrissi) - 2:33\n\"Sing\" (Joe Raposo) - 2:25\n\"I Was Born in Love with You\" (Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman, Michel Legrand) - 4:01\n\"Losing My Mind\" (Stephen Sondheim) - 2:43\n\"My Sweet Lord\" (George Harrison) - 2:55\n\nNotes\nThe recording sessions for this album took place at the Capitol Tower in Hollywood, California.\n\nWhere Did They Go was Peggy Lee's first album not to make the Billboard 200 chart since her Grammy-winning hit \"Is That All There Is?\" in 1969.\n\nBurt Bacharach and Hal David wrote the song \"My Rock And Foundation\" specifically for Lee.\n\nCapitol Records released \"Where Did They Go\" (backed by \"All I Want\") as a 45\" single in 1971. The single did not make the charts.\n\nLee performed songs from this album, including \"Where Did They Go\" and \"My Sweet Lord,\" during her June 1971 engagement at The Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.\n\nAfter completing work on Where Did They Go, Peggy Lee did not return to the recording studio again until nearly a year later, when she began recording Norma Deloris Egstrom from Jamestown, North Dakota in April 1972.\n\nThis album was released on 8-track, along with LP.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Peggy Lee Discography\n\n1971 albums\nCapitol Records albums\nPeggy Lee albums\nAlbums arranged by Don Sebesky\nAlbums produced by Snuff Garrett"
] |
[
"Cat Power",
"Personal life",
"What is important for the reader to know about her personal life?",
"In 2001, Marshall was romantically involved with a runway model, Daniel Currie.",
"Did she have any highlights in her personal life?",
"Around 2003 she bought a house in South Beach, Miami,",
"What did she do next?",
"In 2009 Marshall moved to Los Angeles to share a house in Silver Lake, California with her then-boyfriend.",
"How did that go?",
"When Marshall was working as a waitress in Atlanta prior to becoming famous, her boyfriend died.",
"Where did she go from there?",
"the prevalence of heroin use amongst her friends and the loss of her best friend to AIDS, was the impetus for her moving to New York."
] | C_599990da4ed54ab290c7cc659fa78d27_1 | What did she do in New York? | 6 | What did Cat Power do in New York? | Cat Power | Around 2003 she bought a house in South Beach, Miami, from a high school friend. In 2009 Marshall moved to Los Angeles to share a house in Silver Lake, California with her then-boyfriend. They also had a rental house in Malibu where she had a studio. When Marshall was working as a waitress in Atlanta prior to becoming famous, her boyfriend died. She says this, coupled with the prevalence of heroin use amongst her friends and the loss of her best friend to AIDS, was the impetus for her moving to New York. A new boyfriend in New York helped her get a job in a restaurant, but she realised he was having an affair with the restaurant owner, a married woman with two children. In 2001, Marshall was romantically involved with a runway model, Daniel Currie. He separated her in 2003 at a time when she was drinking heavily and abusing other drugs. Marshall referred to him as "the ex-love of my life." According to an interview in January 2011, Marshall was in a relationship with actor Giovanni Ribisi beginning in 2006, and lived with Ribisi and his 14-year-old daughter in Los Angeles. In June 2012, it was reported that Marshall was no longer in a relationship with Ribisi. The completion of Marshall's album Sun coincided with their breakup: "I cut my hair off three days [after the breakup], got on a plane to France, and finished the shit." In April 2015, Marshall announced that she recently had a baby, but did not name the child's father. CANNOTANSWER | A new boyfriend in New York helped her get a job in a restaurant, | Charlyn Marie "Chan" Marshall ( ; born January 21, 1972), better known by her stage name Cat Power, is an American singer-songwriter, musician, occasional actress, and model. Cat Power was originally the name of Marshall's first band, but has become her stage name as a solo artist.
Born in Atlanta, Marshall was raised throughout the southern United States, and began performing in local bands in Atlanta in the early 1990s. After opening for Liz Phair in 1993, she worked with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth and Tim Foljahn of Two Dollar Guitar, with whom she recorded her first two albums, Dear Sir (1995) and Myra Lee (1996), on the same day in 1994. In 1996, she signed with Matador Records, and released a third album of new material with Shelley and Foljahn, What Would the Community Think. Following this, she released the critically acclaimed Moon Pix (1998), recorded with members of Dirty Three, and The Covers Record (2000), a collection of sparsely arranged cover songs.
After a brief hiatus she released You Are Free (2003), featuring guest musicians Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder, followed by the soul-influenced The Greatest (2006), recorded with numerous Memphis studio musicians. A second album of cover tracks, Jukebox, was released in 2008. In 2012 she released the self-produced Sun, which debuted at number 10 on the Billboard 200, the highest-charting album of her career to date.
Critics have noted the constant evolution of Cat Power's sound, with a mix of punk, folk and blues on her earliest albums, and elements of soul and other genres more prevalent in her later material.
Early life
Charlyn Marie Marshall was born January 21, 1972, in Atlanta, Georgia, the second child of Charlie Marshall, a blues musician and pianist, and Myra Lee Marshall ( Russell). She has one older sister, Miranda ("Mandy"). Her parents divorced in 1979 and remarried shortly thereafter. Her mother remarried and had a son, Lenny, and the family traveled around often because of her stepfather's profession.
Marshall attended ten different schools throughout the Southern U.S. in Greensboro; Bartlett and Memphis and throughout Georgia and South Carolina. At times she was left in the care of her grandmother. She was not allowed to buy records when she was growing up, but she listened to her stepfather's record collection, which included artists Otis Redding, Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Rolling Stones, as well as her parents' records, which included Black Flag, Sister Sledge, and Barry White. In sixth grade, she adopted the nickname Chan (pronounced "Shawn"), which she would later use professionally. When she was 13, she listened to the Smiths, the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees. She had to save up to buy cassettes and the first one she got was a record by the Misfits. At age 16, she became estranged from her mother, and had no further contact with her until she was 24.
Religion was a large part of Marshall's upbringing; her father was a Jehovah's Witness, though she attended Southern Baptist churches with her grandmother, where she began singing while learning hymns.
Career
1992–1995: Beginnings
Marshall's first instrument was a 1950s Silvertone guitar, which she taught herself to play. While working in a pizzeria, she began playing music in Atlanta in the late-1980s with Glen Thrasher, Marc Moore, Damon Moore and Fletcher Liegerot, who would get together for jam sessions in a basement. The group were booked for a show and had to come up with a name quickly; after seeing a man wearing a Caterpillar trucker cap that read: "Cat Diesel Power", Marshall chose Cat Power as the name of the band.
While in Atlanta, Marshall played her first live shows as support to her friends' bands, including Magic Bone and Opal Foxx Quartet. In a 2007 interview, she explained that the music itself was more experimental and that playing shows was often an opportunity for her and her friends "to get drunk and take drugs". A number of her local peers became entrenched in heroin use. After the death of her boyfriend, and the subsequent loss of her best friend to AIDS, Marshall relocated to New York City in 1992 with Glen Thrasher. A new boyfriend helped her get a job in a restaurant.
Thrasher introduced her to New York's free jazz and experimental music scene. After attending a concert by Anthony Braxton, she gave her first New York show of improvisational music at a warehouse in Brooklyn. One of her shows during this period was as the support act to Man or Astro-man? and consisted of her playing a two-string guitar and singing the word "no" for 15 minutes. Around this time, she met the band God Is My Co-Pilot, who assisted with the release of her first single, "Headlights", in a limited run of 500 copies on their Making of Americans label.
Marshall recorded simultaneously her first two albums Dear Sir and Myra Lee in December 1994 in a small basement studio near Mott Street in New York City, with guitarist Tim Foljahn and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley; Marshall and Shelley had initially met after she played a show opening for Liz Phair in 1993. A total of 20 songs were recorded in a single day by the trio, all of which were split into two records, making up Dear Sir and Myra Lee, released respectively in October 1995 and March 1996. Although Dear Sir is considered Marshall's debut album, it is more the length of an EP.
1996–2003: Early Matador releases
In 1996, Marshall signed to Matador Records and in September released her third album, What Would the Community Think, which she recorded in Memphis, Tennessee, in February 1996. The album was produced by Shelley and again featured Shelley and Foljahn as backing musicians, and spawned a single and music video, "Nude as the News" about the abortion she had at the age of 20. Critics cited the album as evidence of her maturation as a singer and songwriter from the "dense and cathartic" material of her first two releases.
After the release of What Would the Community Think, Marshall took a trip to South Africa, after which she left New York City and moved to Portland, Oregon, where she found temporary employment as a babysitter. In the spring of 1997, Marshall relocated with her then-boyfriend, musician Bill Callahan, to a rural farmhouse in Prosperity, South Carolina. After experiencing a hypnogogic nightmare while alone in the farmhouse, Marshall wrote six new songs that would go on to make up the bulk of her following album, Moon Pix (1998), which she recorded at Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne, Australia, with backing musicians Mick Turner and Jim White of the Australian band Dirty Three. Moon Pix was well received by critics, and along with an accompanying music video for the song "Cross Bones Style", helped her gain further recognition. Rolling Stone would later describe it as her 'breakthrough' record.
In 1999 where Marshall performed in a series of shows where she provided musical accompaniment to the silent movie The Passion of Joan of Arc. The shows combined original material and covers, some of which would be released on Marshall's fifth album, The Covers Record in 2000. The songs were recorded during two sessions in the summer of 1998 and fall of 1999. Additionally, she performed eleven covers during a Peel session broadcast on June 18, 2000 that included own interpretations of Bob Dylan's "Hard Times in New York Town" and Oasis's "Wonderwall". Her contract with Matador for 2000's The Covers Album reportedly consisted of a Post-it note signed by herself and the company's founder.
During the early-2000s, Marshall was embraced by the fashion industry for her "neo grunge" look, and seen as a muse by designers Marc Jacobs and Nicolas Ghesquière. In 2001 she modeled in New York magazines fall fashion issue and was photographed by her friends Mark Borthwick and Katja Rahlwes, who featured her in Purple magazine alongside Catherine Deneuve.
In February 2003, Marshall released You Are Free, her first album of original material in five years. The album, which featured guest musicians such as Eddie Vedder, Dave Grohl, and Warren Ellis, became the first charting Cat Power album, reaching 105 on the Billboard 200. A music video directed by Brett Vapnek was released for the song "He War". Marshall toured extensively through 2003 and 2004, playing shows in Europe, Brazil, the U.S. and Australia. During this period, Marshall's live performances had become erratic and unpredictable, and a 2003 The New Yorker article suggested: "It is foolhardy to describe a Cat Power event as a concert," citing "rambling confessions" and "[talking] to a friend's baby from the stage." Marshall later attributed this period to a drinking problem. Around the time of the release of You Are Free, Marshall purchased a house in South Beach, Miami.
2004–2011: Mainstream success
In October 2004, Matador released the DVD film Speaking for Trees, which featured a continuous, nearly two-hour static shot of Marshall performing with her guitar in a woodland. The set was accompanied by an audio CD containing the 18-minute song "Willie Deadwilder", featuring M. Ward also on guitar.
On January 22, 2006, Marshall released her seventh album, The Greatest, a Southern soul-influenced album of new material featuring veteran Memphis studio musicians, including Mabon "Teenie" Hodges, Leroy Hodges, David Smith, and Steve Potts. The album debuted at 34 on the Billboard 200 and critics noted its relatively "polished and accessible" sound, predicting it was "going to gain her a lot of new fans." The Greatest met with critical acclaim, and won the 2006 Shortlist Music Prize, making Marshall the first woman to win the honor. It was also named the number 6 best album of 2006 by Rolling Stone Magazine.
Simultaneously, Marshall collaborated with several other musicians on different projects, including Mick Collins on a recording of Ludwig Rellstab's poem "Auf Dem Strom" for the film Wayne County Ramblin; a duet with singer-model Karen Elson on an English cover of Serge Gainsbourg's "Je t'aime... moi non plus" for the tribute album Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited (2007); lead vocals on the Ensemble track "Disown, Delete"; and a reworked version of "Revelations" with Yoko Ono for Ono's 2007 album Yes, I'm a Witch.
In the fall of 2006, Marshall became a celebrity spokesperson for a line of jewelry from Chanel, after being seen by Karl Lagerfeld smoking a cigarette outside the Mercer Hotel in New York. Lagerfeld chose Cat Power for the soundtrack to his spring 2007 fashion show. He also photographed Marshall for a Purple feature.
In 2007, Marshall contributed songs to the soundtrack of Ethan Hawke's film The Hottest State, recording with Jesse Harris and Terry Manning, and the Academy Award-winning film Juno. The same year, she made her feature film debut acting in My Blueberry Nights opposite Jude Law, appearing in a small role. She also appeared in the role of a postal worker in Doug Aitken's MoMA installation Sleepwalkers, which followed the nocturnal lives of five city dwellers. Also in 2007, she featured on Faithless' album track A Kind of Peace.
In January 2008, Marshall released her second covers album, Jukebox. Recorded with her recently assembled "Dirty Delta Blues Band", which consisted of Judah Bauer from the Blues Explosion, Gregg Foreman of The Delta 72, Erik Paparazzi of Lizard Music and Jim White of Dirty Three, the album featured the original song "Song to Bobby", Marshall's tribute to Bob Dylan, and a reworking of the Moon Pix song "Metal Heart". She also collaborated with Beck and producer Danger Mouse on the album Modern Guilt (2008): She contributed backing vocals to two tracks, "Orphans" and "Walls". The album was released in July of that year.
In September 2008, Marshall and members of the Dirty Delta Blues (Erik Paparazzi and Gregg Foreman) recorded their version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" for a Lincoln car commercial. In 2013, Cat Power's version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" was used in Apple's Christmas commercial "Misunderstood". In December 2008, she released Dark End of the Street, an EP consisting of songs left over from the Jukebox sessions. In 2009, she provided backing vocals on Marianne Faithfull's cover of "Hold On, Hold On" by Neko Case on the 2009 album Easy Come Easy Go. In 2011, she also featured as guest vocalist on "Tonight You Belong to Me" on Eddie Vedder's Ukulele Songs.
2012–2018: Sun and Wanderer
In February 2012, Marshall cancelled a scheduled appearance in Tel Aviv, Israel, citing "much confusion" and that she felt "sick in her spirit." She had faced calls to boycott the country over its conflict with Palestine. Two months later, she cancelled her appearance at the Coachella Music Festival, claiming that she "didn't think it was fair to play Coachella while my new album is not yet finished," also hinting that her forthcoming record is "almost done" and will see release later in 2012. Marshall's ninth studio album, Sun, was released in September 2012, after releasing the lead single "Ruin" as a free download the previous June. The album features prominent electronica elements and arrangements, which Marshall incorporated into the "really slow guitar-based songs" she had originally written. In a review published on September 4, 2012, on Consequence of Sound, Sun was praised as a unique album and received a four-star rating. In summation, reviewer Sarah Grant wrote that Marshall's 2012 release is "a passionate pop album of electronic music filtered through a singer-songwriter's soul." The album debuted at a career chart-high of No. 10 on the Billboard 200 chart, selling over 23,000 copies on its opening week.
In July 2015, it was announced that Marshall would be providing narration for the documentary Janis: Little Girl Blue directed by Amy J. Berg, which revolves around the life of Janis Joplin and premiered at the 2015 Venice Film Festival. On television, Marshall starred on China, IL, in the hourlong musical special "Magical Pet". Marshall performs three original songs written by creator Brad Neely.
On July 28, 2017, Marshall announced on Instagram that her tenth studio album was "ready to go", although she did not disclose its title or expected release date.
On March 20, 2018, it was announced that Marshall would perform a Moon Pix 20th anniversary concert at Sydney Opera House, which occurred from May 25 to June 16 and featured album collaborators Jim White and Mick Turner.
On July 18, 2018, Marshall announced her 10th studio album, Wanderer, and shared the title track as an introduction to the album. She released two more singles, "Woman" featuring Lana Del Rey on August 15 and a cover of Rihanna's "Stay" on September 18, before the album was released on October 5, 2018, through Domino Recording Company. It was her first to not be released on Matador Records since 1996. According to Marshall, Matador were not happy with the recordings for Wanader, they wanted her to rerecord it and make it sound more commercial. She embarked on a world tour in promotion of the album in September.
Power embarked on a US arena tour in August 2021 supporting Alanis Morissette and Garbage. She was a last-minute addition to the lineup, after original opening act Liz Phair canceled her appearances. Power contributed four new songs to the soundtrack of the 2021 film Flag Day. Her eleventh studio album, Covers, was released on January 14, 2022, and will be supported by a US tour.
Personal life
In 2005, Marshall entered a relationship with actor Giovanni Ribisi, and resided with Ribisi and his daughter in Los Angeles. They also had a rental house in Malibu where she had a studio. Following the release of The Greatest, Marshall canceled her impending spring 2006 tour, and used the hiatus to recover from mental health issues. As part of her recovery, she was admitted to the psychiatric ward at Mount Sinai Medical Center & Miami Heart Institute, leaving after a week. Marshall gave a first person account of her breakdown in an interview for the November 2006 issue of Spin.
In June 2012, it was reported that Marshall had ended her relationship with Ribisi, and the completion of her upcoming record had coincided with their breakup: "I cut my hair off three days [after the breakup], got on a plane to France, and finished the shit." Shortly after the release of Sun, Marshall began having trouble breathing and was hospitalized multiple times, though doctors were unable to diagnose her. "I thought I was dying," she recounted. "They told me they were going to put me in a coma to save my lungs. My friend came to visit and told me I'd made the Billboard Top 10 and all I could think was: 'I don't want to die.'" Marshall was subsequently diagnosed with hereditary angioedema, an immune disorder that causes sporadic swelling of the face and throat due to C1 esterase inhibitor deficiency. In September 2012, she stated she had been hospitalized due to the condition over eight times, which led her to cancel her European tour.
In April 2015, Marshall announced that she had recently given birth to a son, but did not name the child's father.
Artistry
Musical style
Marshall's releases as Cat Power have frequently been noted by critics for their somber, blues-influenced instrumentation and melancholy lyrics, leading LA Weekly to dub her the "queen of sadcore". Marshall, however, claims her music is often misinterpreted, and that many of her songs are "not sad, [but] triumphant." She has recounted blues, old soul music, British rock 'n' roll, as well as hymns and gospel music as being integral influences on her.
Cat Power's early releases have been described as blending elements of punk, folk, and blues, while her later releases (post-2000) began to incorporate more sophisticated arrangements and production. The Greatest (2006), Marshall's seventh release, was heavily soul-influenced and incorporated R&B elements; the Memphis Rhythm Band provided backing instrumentation on the album. Unlike her previous releases, which featured sparse guitar and piano arrangements, The Greatest was described by Marshall biographer Sarah Goodman as her first "full-blown studio record with sophisticated production and senior players backing [Marshall] up."
Performances
Marshall's live shows have been known for their unpolished and often erratic nature, with songs beginning and ending abruptly or blending into one another without clear transitions. She has also cut short performances without explanation. On some occasions this has been attributed to stage fright and the influence of alcohol. Marshall spoke openly about suffering from severe bouts of stage fright, specifically in her early career, and admitted that her stage fright stemmed from issues regarding depression, alcoholism, and substance abuse.
By 2006, she had found new collaborators and had stopped drinking. Marshall's performance style became more enthusiastic and professional; a review in Salon noted that she was "delivering onstage", and called The Greatest "polished and sweetly upbeat".
Philanthropy
A live version of the gospel song "Amazing Grace"—culled from a performance with the Dirty Delta Blues band—was released on the charity compilation Dark Was the Night. Released by independent British label 4AD on February 17, 2009, the set benefited the Red Hot Organization, an international charity dedicated to raising funds and awareness for HIV and AIDS. She also appeared in a PETA ad, encouraging people to spay and neuter their pets.
On December 25, 2011, Marshall released a reworking of the What Would the Community Think track "King Rides By" for download from her official website, with all proceeds from sales of the track being donated to The Festival of Children Foundation and The Ali Forney Center. A music video directed by Giovanni Ribisi and featuring Filipino boxer and politician Manny Pacquiao was released to promote the song.
Discography
Studio albums
Dear Sir (1995)
Myra Lee (1996)
What Would the Community Think (1996)
Moon Pix (1998)
The Covers Record (2000)
You Are Free (2003)
The Greatest (2006)
Jukebox (2008)
Sun (2012)
Wanderer (2018)
Covers (2022)
Filmography
Awards and nominations
Won: Shortlist Music Prize for The Greatest
Nominated: Best International Female Solo Artist, 2007 BRIT Awards
Nominated: Best Art Vinyl for Jukebox
Nominated: Best International Female Solo Artist, 2013 BRIT Awards
Nominated: Best Cinematography for "Where Is My Love?", 2007 Antville Music Video Awards
Nominated: Comeback of the Year, 2018 Rober Awards Music Prize
Nominated: Best Foreign Solo Act, Wanderer Best Foreign Album, 2019 Sweden GAFFA Awards
Nominated: Best Pop Video - International for "Go Up", 2017 UK Music Video Awards
References
Sources
External links
1972 births
American alternative rock musicians
American women singer-songwriters
American women rock singers
Living people
Alternative rock singers
Alternative rock guitarists
Alternative rock pianists
Guitarists from Georgia (U.S. state)
Winners of the Shortlist Music Prize
Musicians from Atlanta
People from Prosperity, South Carolina
21st-century American women guitarists
21st-century American guitarists
20th-century American women guitarists
20th-century American guitarists
21st-century American women pianists
21st-century American pianists
20th-century American women singers
21st-century American women singers
20th-century American pianists
20th-century American singers
21st-century American singers
Singer-songwriters from South Carolina
Singer-songwriters from Georgia (U.S. state) | false | [
"Betty Morrissey (September 14, 1907 – April 20, 1944) was an American film actress. She appeared in 12 films between 1923 and 1931. She was born and died in New York City.\n\nShe plays the feminine lead in The Leather Pusher series which stars Reginald Denny. She also appeared with Denny in 1925's Skinner's Dress Suit in which she did a Charleston style dance. She has roles in The Gold Rush starring Charlie Chaplin as well as Woman of Paris.\n\nShe left the motion picture industry in 1928 when she married James A. Murray. Murray became a first lieutenant and trial judge advocate at the army air base in Santa Ana, California. Morrissey died at St. Clare's Hospital in New York City under the name Mrs. Elizabeth Murray.\n\nSelected filmography\n A Woman of Paris (1923)\n The Fast Worker (1924)\n What Shall I Do? (1924)\n Virtue's Revolt (1924)\n Turned Up (1924)\n Traffic in Hearts (1924)\n Lady of the Night (1925)\n Honor Among Lovers (1931)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1907 births\n1944 deaths\nAmerican film actresses\nAmerican silent film actresses\nActresses from New York City\n20th-century American actresses",
"Sparkle Hayter (born 1958) is a Canadian journalist and author. In 1995 she received the Arthur Ellis Award (Best First Crime Novel) of the Crime Writers of Canada for her novel What's A Girl Gotta Do? (1995). In 1998, she became the first winner of the UK's Sherlock award for \"Best Comic Detective.\" Hayter has also performed as a stand-up comedian.\n\nEarly life and education\nHayter was born in Pouce Coupe, British Columbia, Canada and grew up in Edmonton, Alberta. Her father was Ron Hayter, the longest-serving city councillor of Edmonton, Alberta. In 1982, she graduated in film and television production from New York University.\n\nCareer\nAmong other things, she worked for CNN in Atlanta, New York, and Washington, for WABC in New York City and CIII-TV in Toronto. At the time of the Afghan civil war, she moved to Pakistan and then went along with the Mujahedin to Afghanistan, reporting for the Toronto Star. After this, she decided to give up journalism as a career. After her return to the U.S. she married and began a career as a comic and a writer. She moved briefly to Tokyo, then on her return to New York divorced and went to live in the famous Chelsea Hotel.\n\nIn 1993, she published her first novel, What's a Girl Gotta Do?, the first in the Robin Hudson series, which proved her breakthrough. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called it \"flat-out funny, audacious, and a little bit weird, Hayter stakes out territory all her own.\" She wrote pieces for the New York Times Op-Ed Page, The Nation and The Globe and Mail, was a regular participant on CNN's talk show \"CNN & Company\" and 'also appeared on Good Day New York, NPR, CBC, BBC and Paris Premiere. In late 2001 she moved to Paris, where she joined the Kilometer Zero arts cooperative and lived in the In Fact art squat. In 2007-2008, she began working in Bollywood, where she bought Indian films for a Canadian movie network and produced video promos and interviews to support the programming for \"Bollywood Saturday Night.\"\n\nIn 1995, she received the Arthur Ellis Award (Best First Crime Novel) of the Crime Writers of Canada for her novel What's A Girl Gotta Do?. In 1998, she became the first winner of the UK's Sherlock Award for \"Best Comic Detective.\" She went on publish two more novels and numerous stories and essays.\n\nHayter has also performed as a stand-up.\n\nWorks\n\nRobin Hudson series\n\n 1994: What's A Girl Gotta Do?\n 1996: Nice Girls Finish Last\n 1997: Revenge of the Cootie Girls \n 1998: The Last Manly Man\n 2000: Th Chelsea Girl Murders \n 2005: Last Girl Standing\n\nOther novels\n\n 2002: Naked Brunch\n 2004: Bandit Queen Boogie\n\nSee also\n Tart Noir\n Katy Munger\n\nReferences \n\n1958 births\nLiving people\nCanadian crime writers\nCanadian newspaper journalists\nCanadian women non-fiction writers\nTisch School of the Arts alumni\nCanadian expatriates in Pakistan\nWomen mystery writers\nCanadian women journalists"
] |
[
"Cat Power",
"Personal life",
"What is important for the reader to know about her personal life?",
"In 2001, Marshall was romantically involved with a runway model, Daniel Currie.",
"Did she have any highlights in her personal life?",
"Around 2003 she bought a house in South Beach, Miami,",
"What did she do next?",
"In 2009 Marshall moved to Los Angeles to share a house in Silver Lake, California with her then-boyfriend.",
"How did that go?",
"When Marshall was working as a waitress in Atlanta prior to becoming famous, her boyfriend died.",
"Where did she go from there?",
"the prevalence of heroin use amongst her friends and the loss of her best friend to AIDS, was the impetus for her moving to New York.",
"What did she do in New York?",
"A new boyfriend in New York helped her get a job in a restaurant,"
] | C_599990da4ed54ab290c7cc659fa78d27_1 | What else did she do there? | 7 | What else did Cat Power do in New York besides working in a restaurant? | Cat Power | Around 2003 she bought a house in South Beach, Miami, from a high school friend. In 2009 Marshall moved to Los Angeles to share a house in Silver Lake, California with her then-boyfriend. They also had a rental house in Malibu where she had a studio. When Marshall was working as a waitress in Atlanta prior to becoming famous, her boyfriend died. She says this, coupled with the prevalence of heroin use amongst her friends and the loss of her best friend to AIDS, was the impetus for her moving to New York. A new boyfriend in New York helped her get a job in a restaurant, but she realised he was having an affair with the restaurant owner, a married woman with two children. In 2001, Marshall was romantically involved with a runway model, Daniel Currie. He separated her in 2003 at a time when she was drinking heavily and abusing other drugs. Marshall referred to him as "the ex-love of my life." According to an interview in January 2011, Marshall was in a relationship with actor Giovanni Ribisi beginning in 2006, and lived with Ribisi and his 14-year-old daughter in Los Angeles. In June 2012, it was reported that Marshall was no longer in a relationship with Ribisi. The completion of Marshall's album Sun coincided with their breakup: "I cut my hair off three days [after the breakup], got on a plane to France, and finished the shit." In April 2015, Marshall announced that she recently had a baby, but did not name the child's father. CANNOTANSWER | she realised he was having an affair with the restaurant owner, a married woman with two children. | Charlyn Marie "Chan" Marshall ( ; born January 21, 1972), better known by her stage name Cat Power, is an American singer-songwriter, musician, occasional actress, and model. Cat Power was originally the name of Marshall's first band, but has become her stage name as a solo artist.
Born in Atlanta, Marshall was raised throughout the southern United States, and began performing in local bands in Atlanta in the early 1990s. After opening for Liz Phair in 1993, she worked with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth and Tim Foljahn of Two Dollar Guitar, with whom she recorded her first two albums, Dear Sir (1995) and Myra Lee (1996), on the same day in 1994. In 1996, she signed with Matador Records, and released a third album of new material with Shelley and Foljahn, What Would the Community Think. Following this, she released the critically acclaimed Moon Pix (1998), recorded with members of Dirty Three, and The Covers Record (2000), a collection of sparsely arranged cover songs.
After a brief hiatus she released You Are Free (2003), featuring guest musicians Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder, followed by the soul-influenced The Greatest (2006), recorded with numerous Memphis studio musicians. A second album of cover tracks, Jukebox, was released in 2008. In 2012 she released the self-produced Sun, which debuted at number 10 on the Billboard 200, the highest-charting album of her career to date.
Critics have noted the constant evolution of Cat Power's sound, with a mix of punk, folk and blues on her earliest albums, and elements of soul and other genres more prevalent in her later material.
Early life
Charlyn Marie Marshall was born January 21, 1972, in Atlanta, Georgia, the second child of Charlie Marshall, a blues musician and pianist, and Myra Lee Marshall ( Russell). She has one older sister, Miranda ("Mandy"). Her parents divorced in 1979 and remarried shortly thereafter. Her mother remarried and had a son, Lenny, and the family traveled around often because of her stepfather's profession.
Marshall attended ten different schools throughout the Southern U.S. in Greensboro; Bartlett and Memphis and throughout Georgia and South Carolina. At times she was left in the care of her grandmother. She was not allowed to buy records when she was growing up, but she listened to her stepfather's record collection, which included artists Otis Redding, Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Rolling Stones, as well as her parents' records, which included Black Flag, Sister Sledge, and Barry White. In sixth grade, she adopted the nickname Chan (pronounced "Shawn"), which she would later use professionally. When she was 13, she listened to the Smiths, the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees. She had to save up to buy cassettes and the first one she got was a record by the Misfits. At age 16, she became estranged from her mother, and had no further contact with her until she was 24.
Religion was a large part of Marshall's upbringing; her father was a Jehovah's Witness, though she attended Southern Baptist churches with her grandmother, where she began singing while learning hymns.
Career
1992–1995: Beginnings
Marshall's first instrument was a 1950s Silvertone guitar, which she taught herself to play. While working in a pizzeria, she began playing music in Atlanta in the late-1980s with Glen Thrasher, Marc Moore, Damon Moore and Fletcher Liegerot, who would get together for jam sessions in a basement. The group were booked for a show and had to come up with a name quickly; after seeing a man wearing a Caterpillar trucker cap that read: "Cat Diesel Power", Marshall chose Cat Power as the name of the band.
While in Atlanta, Marshall played her first live shows as support to her friends' bands, including Magic Bone and Opal Foxx Quartet. In a 2007 interview, she explained that the music itself was more experimental and that playing shows was often an opportunity for her and her friends "to get drunk and take drugs". A number of her local peers became entrenched in heroin use. After the death of her boyfriend, and the subsequent loss of her best friend to AIDS, Marshall relocated to New York City in 1992 with Glen Thrasher. A new boyfriend helped her get a job in a restaurant.
Thrasher introduced her to New York's free jazz and experimental music scene. After attending a concert by Anthony Braxton, she gave her first New York show of improvisational music at a warehouse in Brooklyn. One of her shows during this period was as the support act to Man or Astro-man? and consisted of her playing a two-string guitar and singing the word "no" for 15 minutes. Around this time, she met the band God Is My Co-Pilot, who assisted with the release of her first single, "Headlights", in a limited run of 500 copies on their Making of Americans label.
Marshall recorded simultaneously her first two albums Dear Sir and Myra Lee in December 1994 in a small basement studio near Mott Street in New York City, with guitarist Tim Foljahn and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley; Marshall and Shelley had initially met after she played a show opening for Liz Phair in 1993. A total of 20 songs were recorded in a single day by the trio, all of which were split into two records, making up Dear Sir and Myra Lee, released respectively in October 1995 and March 1996. Although Dear Sir is considered Marshall's debut album, it is more the length of an EP.
1996–2003: Early Matador releases
In 1996, Marshall signed to Matador Records and in September released her third album, What Would the Community Think, which she recorded in Memphis, Tennessee, in February 1996. The album was produced by Shelley and again featured Shelley and Foljahn as backing musicians, and spawned a single and music video, "Nude as the News" about the abortion she had at the age of 20. Critics cited the album as evidence of her maturation as a singer and songwriter from the "dense and cathartic" material of her first two releases.
After the release of What Would the Community Think, Marshall took a trip to South Africa, after which she left New York City and moved to Portland, Oregon, where she found temporary employment as a babysitter. In the spring of 1997, Marshall relocated with her then-boyfriend, musician Bill Callahan, to a rural farmhouse in Prosperity, South Carolina. After experiencing a hypnogogic nightmare while alone in the farmhouse, Marshall wrote six new songs that would go on to make up the bulk of her following album, Moon Pix (1998), which she recorded at Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne, Australia, with backing musicians Mick Turner and Jim White of the Australian band Dirty Three. Moon Pix was well received by critics, and along with an accompanying music video for the song "Cross Bones Style", helped her gain further recognition. Rolling Stone would later describe it as her 'breakthrough' record.
In 1999 where Marshall performed in a series of shows where she provided musical accompaniment to the silent movie The Passion of Joan of Arc. The shows combined original material and covers, some of which would be released on Marshall's fifth album, The Covers Record in 2000. The songs were recorded during two sessions in the summer of 1998 and fall of 1999. Additionally, she performed eleven covers during a Peel session broadcast on June 18, 2000 that included own interpretations of Bob Dylan's "Hard Times in New York Town" and Oasis's "Wonderwall". Her contract with Matador for 2000's The Covers Album reportedly consisted of a Post-it note signed by herself and the company's founder.
During the early-2000s, Marshall was embraced by the fashion industry for her "neo grunge" look, and seen as a muse by designers Marc Jacobs and Nicolas Ghesquière. In 2001 she modeled in New York magazines fall fashion issue and was photographed by her friends Mark Borthwick and Katja Rahlwes, who featured her in Purple magazine alongside Catherine Deneuve.
In February 2003, Marshall released You Are Free, her first album of original material in five years. The album, which featured guest musicians such as Eddie Vedder, Dave Grohl, and Warren Ellis, became the first charting Cat Power album, reaching 105 on the Billboard 200. A music video directed by Brett Vapnek was released for the song "He War". Marshall toured extensively through 2003 and 2004, playing shows in Europe, Brazil, the U.S. and Australia. During this period, Marshall's live performances had become erratic and unpredictable, and a 2003 The New Yorker article suggested: "It is foolhardy to describe a Cat Power event as a concert," citing "rambling confessions" and "[talking] to a friend's baby from the stage." Marshall later attributed this period to a drinking problem. Around the time of the release of You Are Free, Marshall purchased a house in South Beach, Miami.
2004–2011: Mainstream success
In October 2004, Matador released the DVD film Speaking for Trees, which featured a continuous, nearly two-hour static shot of Marshall performing with her guitar in a woodland. The set was accompanied by an audio CD containing the 18-minute song "Willie Deadwilder", featuring M. Ward also on guitar.
On January 22, 2006, Marshall released her seventh album, The Greatest, a Southern soul-influenced album of new material featuring veteran Memphis studio musicians, including Mabon "Teenie" Hodges, Leroy Hodges, David Smith, and Steve Potts. The album debuted at 34 on the Billboard 200 and critics noted its relatively "polished and accessible" sound, predicting it was "going to gain her a lot of new fans." The Greatest met with critical acclaim, and won the 2006 Shortlist Music Prize, making Marshall the first woman to win the honor. It was also named the number 6 best album of 2006 by Rolling Stone Magazine.
Simultaneously, Marshall collaborated with several other musicians on different projects, including Mick Collins on a recording of Ludwig Rellstab's poem "Auf Dem Strom" for the film Wayne County Ramblin; a duet with singer-model Karen Elson on an English cover of Serge Gainsbourg's "Je t'aime... moi non plus" for the tribute album Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited (2007); lead vocals on the Ensemble track "Disown, Delete"; and a reworked version of "Revelations" with Yoko Ono for Ono's 2007 album Yes, I'm a Witch.
In the fall of 2006, Marshall became a celebrity spokesperson for a line of jewelry from Chanel, after being seen by Karl Lagerfeld smoking a cigarette outside the Mercer Hotel in New York. Lagerfeld chose Cat Power for the soundtrack to his spring 2007 fashion show. He also photographed Marshall for a Purple feature.
In 2007, Marshall contributed songs to the soundtrack of Ethan Hawke's film The Hottest State, recording with Jesse Harris and Terry Manning, and the Academy Award-winning film Juno. The same year, she made her feature film debut acting in My Blueberry Nights opposite Jude Law, appearing in a small role. She also appeared in the role of a postal worker in Doug Aitken's MoMA installation Sleepwalkers, which followed the nocturnal lives of five city dwellers. Also in 2007, she featured on Faithless' album track A Kind of Peace.
In January 2008, Marshall released her second covers album, Jukebox. Recorded with her recently assembled "Dirty Delta Blues Band", which consisted of Judah Bauer from the Blues Explosion, Gregg Foreman of The Delta 72, Erik Paparazzi of Lizard Music and Jim White of Dirty Three, the album featured the original song "Song to Bobby", Marshall's tribute to Bob Dylan, and a reworking of the Moon Pix song "Metal Heart". She also collaborated with Beck and producer Danger Mouse on the album Modern Guilt (2008): She contributed backing vocals to two tracks, "Orphans" and "Walls". The album was released in July of that year.
In September 2008, Marshall and members of the Dirty Delta Blues (Erik Paparazzi and Gregg Foreman) recorded their version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" for a Lincoln car commercial. In 2013, Cat Power's version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" was used in Apple's Christmas commercial "Misunderstood". In December 2008, she released Dark End of the Street, an EP consisting of songs left over from the Jukebox sessions. In 2009, she provided backing vocals on Marianne Faithfull's cover of "Hold On, Hold On" by Neko Case on the 2009 album Easy Come Easy Go. In 2011, she also featured as guest vocalist on "Tonight You Belong to Me" on Eddie Vedder's Ukulele Songs.
2012–2018: Sun and Wanderer
In February 2012, Marshall cancelled a scheduled appearance in Tel Aviv, Israel, citing "much confusion" and that she felt "sick in her spirit." She had faced calls to boycott the country over its conflict with Palestine. Two months later, she cancelled her appearance at the Coachella Music Festival, claiming that she "didn't think it was fair to play Coachella while my new album is not yet finished," also hinting that her forthcoming record is "almost done" and will see release later in 2012. Marshall's ninth studio album, Sun, was released in September 2012, after releasing the lead single "Ruin" as a free download the previous June. The album features prominent electronica elements and arrangements, which Marshall incorporated into the "really slow guitar-based songs" she had originally written. In a review published on September 4, 2012, on Consequence of Sound, Sun was praised as a unique album and received a four-star rating. In summation, reviewer Sarah Grant wrote that Marshall's 2012 release is "a passionate pop album of electronic music filtered through a singer-songwriter's soul." The album debuted at a career chart-high of No. 10 on the Billboard 200 chart, selling over 23,000 copies on its opening week.
In July 2015, it was announced that Marshall would be providing narration for the documentary Janis: Little Girl Blue directed by Amy J. Berg, which revolves around the life of Janis Joplin and premiered at the 2015 Venice Film Festival. On television, Marshall starred on China, IL, in the hourlong musical special "Magical Pet". Marshall performs three original songs written by creator Brad Neely.
On July 28, 2017, Marshall announced on Instagram that her tenth studio album was "ready to go", although she did not disclose its title or expected release date.
On March 20, 2018, it was announced that Marshall would perform a Moon Pix 20th anniversary concert at Sydney Opera House, which occurred from May 25 to June 16 and featured album collaborators Jim White and Mick Turner.
On July 18, 2018, Marshall announced her 10th studio album, Wanderer, and shared the title track as an introduction to the album. She released two more singles, "Woman" featuring Lana Del Rey on August 15 and a cover of Rihanna's "Stay" on September 18, before the album was released on October 5, 2018, through Domino Recording Company. It was her first to not be released on Matador Records since 1996. According to Marshall, Matador were not happy with the recordings for Wanader, they wanted her to rerecord it and make it sound more commercial. She embarked on a world tour in promotion of the album in September.
Power embarked on a US arena tour in August 2021 supporting Alanis Morissette and Garbage. She was a last-minute addition to the lineup, after original opening act Liz Phair canceled her appearances. Power contributed four new songs to the soundtrack of the 2021 film Flag Day. Her eleventh studio album, Covers, was released on January 14, 2022, and will be supported by a US tour.
Personal life
In 2005, Marshall entered a relationship with actor Giovanni Ribisi, and resided with Ribisi and his daughter in Los Angeles. They also had a rental house in Malibu where she had a studio. Following the release of The Greatest, Marshall canceled her impending spring 2006 tour, and used the hiatus to recover from mental health issues. As part of her recovery, she was admitted to the psychiatric ward at Mount Sinai Medical Center & Miami Heart Institute, leaving after a week. Marshall gave a first person account of her breakdown in an interview for the November 2006 issue of Spin.
In June 2012, it was reported that Marshall had ended her relationship with Ribisi, and the completion of her upcoming record had coincided with their breakup: "I cut my hair off three days [after the breakup], got on a plane to France, and finished the shit." Shortly after the release of Sun, Marshall began having trouble breathing and was hospitalized multiple times, though doctors were unable to diagnose her. "I thought I was dying," she recounted. "They told me they were going to put me in a coma to save my lungs. My friend came to visit and told me I'd made the Billboard Top 10 and all I could think was: 'I don't want to die.'" Marshall was subsequently diagnosed with hereditary angioedema, an immune disorder that causes sporadic swelling of the face and throat due to C1 esterase inhibitor deficiency. In September 2012, she stated she had been hospitalized due to the condition over eight times, which led her to cancel her European tour.
In April 2015, Marshall announced that she had recently given birth to a son, but did not name the child's father.
Artistry
Musical style
Marshall's releases as Cat Power have frequently been noted by critics for their somber, blues-influenced instrumentation and melancholy lyrics, leading LA Weekly to dub her the "queen of sadcore". Marshall, however, claims her music is often misinterpreted, and that many of her songs are "not sad, [but] triumphant." She has recounted blues, old soul music, British rock 'n' roll, as well as hymns and gospel music as being integral influences on her.
Cat Power's early releases have been described as blending elements of punk, folk, and blues, while her later releases (post-2000) began to incorporate more sophisticated arrangements and production. The Greatest (2006), Marshall's seventh release, was heavily soul-influenced and incorporated R&B elements; the Memphis Rhythm Band provided backing instrumentation on the album. Unlike her previous releases, which featured sparse guitar and piano arrangements, The Greatest was described by Marshall biographer Sarah Goodman as her first "full-blown studio record with sophisticated production and senior players backing [Marshall] up."
Performances
Marshall's live shows have been known for their unpolished and often erratic nature, with songs beginning and ending abruptly or blending into one another without clear transitions. She has also cut short performances without explanation. On some occasions this has been attributed to stage fright and the influence of alcohol. Marshall spoke openly about suffering from severe bouts of stage fright, specifically in her early career, and admitted that her stage fright stemmed from issues regarding depression, alcoholism, and substance abuse.
By 2006, she had found new collaborators and had stopped drinking. Marshall's performance style became more enthusiastic and professional; a review in Salon noted that she was "delivering onstage", and called The Greatest "polished and sweetly upbeat".
Philanthropy
A live version of the gospel song "Amazing Grace"—culled from a performance with the Dirty Delta Blues band—was released on the charity compilation Dark Was the Night. Released by independent British label 4AD on February 17, 2009, the set benefited the Red Hot Organization, an international charity dedicated to raising funds and awareness for HIV and AIDS. She also appeared in a PETA ad, encouraging people to spay and neuter their pets.
On December 25, 2011, Marshall released a reworking of the What Would the Community Think track "King Rides By" for download from her official website, with all proceeds from sales of the track being donated to The Festival of Children Foundation and The Ali Forney Center. A music video directed by Giovanni Ribisi and featuring Filipino boxer and politician Manny Pacquiao was released to promote the song.
Discography
Studio albums
Dear Sir (1995)
Myra Lee (1996)
What Would the Community Think (1996)
Moon Pix (1998)
The Covers Record (2000)
You Are Free (2003)
The Greatest (2006)
Jukebox (2008)
Sun (2012)
Wanderer (2018)
Covers (2022)
Filmography
Awards and nominations
Won: Shortlist Music Prize for The Greatest
Nominated: Best International Female Solo Artist, 2007 BRIT Awards
Nominated: Best Art Vinyl for Jukebox
Nominated: Best International Female Solo Artist, 2013 BRIT Awards
Nominated: Best Cinematography for "Where Is My Love?", 2007 Antville Music Video Awards
Nominated: Comeback of the Year, 2018 Rober Awards Music Prize
Nominated: Best Foreign Solo Act, Wanderer Best Foreign Album, 2019 Sweden GAFFA Awards
Nominated: Best Pop Video - International for "Go Up", 2017 UK Music Video Awards
References
Sources
External links
1972 births
American alternative rock musicians
American women singer-songwriters
American women rock singers
Living people
Alternative rock singers
Alternative rock guitarists
Alternative rock pianists
Guitarists from Georgia (U.S. state)
Winners of the Shortlist Music Prize
Musicians from Atlanta
People from Prosperity, South Carolina
21st-century American women guitarists
21st-century American guitarists
20th-century American women guitarists
20th-century American guitarists
21st-century American women pianists
21st-century American pianists
20th-century American women singers
21st-century American women singers
20th-century American pianists
20th-century American singers
21st-century American singers
Singer-songwriters from South Carolina
Singer-songwriters from Georgia (U.S. state) | false | [
"What Else Do You Do? (A Compilation of Quiet Music) is a various artists compilation album, released in 1990 by Shimmy Disc.\n\nTrack listing\n\nPersonnel \nAdapted from the What Else Do You Do? (A Compilation of Quiet Music) liner notes.\n Kramer – production, engineering\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n\n1990 compilation albums\nAlbums produced by Kramer (musician)\nShimmy Disc compilation albums",
"Johnny Frigo's DNA Exposed! is an album by jazz violinist Johnny Frigo that was released by Arbors.\n\nTrack listing \nI Concentrate on You (4:53) \nPoor Butterfly (4:51) \nCheek to Cheek (4:37) \nWhat Is There to Say? (3:33) \nNobody Else But Me (6:01) \nTry a Little Tenderness/Sweet Lovely (5:48) \nHair on the G-String (4:32) \nI Love You (2:52) \nToo Late Now/Street of Dreams (6:22) \nShe Loves Me (2:44) \nCrystal Silence (6:51) \nTanga (4:48) \nWhat'll I Do? (2:28)\n\nPersonnel\n Johnny Frigo – violin\n Bill Charlap – piano\n Bucky Pizzarelli – guitar\n Frank Vignola – guitar\n Nicki Parrott – double bass\n Joe Ascione – drums\n\nReferences\n\n2002 albums\nJohnny Frigo albums\nArbors Records albums\nSwing albums"
] |
[
"Ryuichi Sakamoto",
"Awards and nominations"
] | C_f31584c976864aaab040f1423f64eb66_0 | What are some awards and nominations that Sakamoto got? | 1 | What are some awards and nominations that Ryuichi Sakamoto got? | Ryuichi Sakamoto | Sakamoto has won a number of awards for his work as a film composer, beginning with his score for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) winning him the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music. His greatest award success was for scoring The Last Emperor (1987), which won him the Academy Award for Best Original Score, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media, as well as a BAFTA nomination. His score for The Sheltering Sky (1990) later won him his second Golden Globe Award, and his score for Little Buddha (1993) received another Grammy Award nomination. In 1997, his collaboration with Toshio Iwai, Music Plays Images X Images Play Music, was awarded the Golden Nica, the grand prize of the Prix Ars Electronica competition. He also contributed to the Academy Award winning soundtrack for Babel (2006) with several pieces of music, including the "Bibo no Aozora" closing theme. In 2009, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France's Ministry of Culture for his musical contributions. His score for The Revenant (2015) has been nominated for the Golden Globe and BAFTA, and won Best Musical Score from the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association. The music video for "Risky", written and directed by Meiert Avis, also won the first ever MTV "Breakthrough Video Award". The ground breaking video explores transhumanist philosopher FM-2030's (Persian: frydwn sfndyry) ideas of "Nostalgia for the Future", in the form of an imagined love affair between a robot and one of Man Ray's models in Paris in the late 1930s. Additional inspiration was drawn from Jean Baudrillard, Edvard Munch's 1894 painting "Puberty", and Roland Barthes "Death of the Author". The surrealist black and white video uses stop motion, light painting, and other retro in-camera effects techniques. Meiert Avis shot Sakamoto while at work on the score for "The Last Emperor" in London. Sakamoto also appears in the video painting words and messages to an open shutter camera. Iggy Pop, who performs the vocals on "Risky", chose not to appear in the video, allowing his performance space to be occupied by the surrealist era robot. Sakamoto won the Golden Pine Award (Lifetime Achievement) at the 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival, along with Clint Eastwood and Gerald Fried. CANNOTANSWER | Academy Award for Best Original Score, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, | is a Japanese composer, pianist, singer, record producer and actor who has pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto influenced and pioneered a number of electronic music genres.
Sakamoto began his career while at university in the 1970s as a session musician, producer, and arranger. His first major success came in 1978 as co-founder of YMO. He concurrently pursued a solo career, releasing the experimental electronic fusion album Thousand Knives in 1978. Two years later, he released the album B-2 Unit. It included the track "Riot in Lagos", which was significant in the development of electro and hip hop music. He went on to produce more solo records, and collaborate with many international artists, David Sylvian, Carsten Nicolai, Youssou N'Dour, and Fennesz among them. Sakamoto composed music for the opening ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and his composition "Energy Flow" (1999) was the first instrumental number-one single in Japan's Oricon charts history.
As a film-score composer, Sakamoto has won an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Grammy, and 2 Golden Globe Awards. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) marked his debut as both an actor and a film-score composer; its main theme was adapted into the single "Forbidden Colours" which became an international hit. His most successful work as a film composer was The Last Emperor (1987), after which he continued earning accolades composing for films such as The Sheltering Sky (1990), Little Buddha (1993), and The Revenant (2015). On occasion, Sakamoto has also worked as a composer and a scenario writer on anime and video games. In 2009, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the Ministry of Culture of France for his contributions to music.
Career
1970s
Sakamoto entered the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1970, earning a B.A. in music composition and an M.A. with special emphasis on both electronic and ethnic music. He studied ethnomusicology there with the intention of becoming a researcher in the field, due to his interest in various world music traditions, particularly the Japanese (especially Okinawan), Indian and African musical traditions. He was also trained in classical music and began experimenting with the electronic music equipment available at the university, including synthesizers such as the Buchla, Moog, and ARP. One of Sakamoto's classical influences was Claude Debussy, who he described as his "hero" and stated that "Asian music heavily influenced Debussy, and Debussy heavily influenced me. So, the music goes around the world and comes full circle."
In 1975, Sakamoto collaborated with percussionist Tsuchitori Toshiyuki to release Disappointment-Hateruma. After working as a session musician with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi in 1977, the trio formed the internationally successful electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) in 1978. Known for their seminal influence on electronic music, the group helped pioneer electronic genres such as electropop/technopop, synthpop, cyberpunk music, ambient house, and electronica. The group's work has had a lasting influence across genres, ranging from hip hop and techno to acid house and general melodic music. Sakamoto was the songwriter and composer for a number of the band's hit songs—including "Yellow Magic (Tong Poo)" (1978), "Technopolis" (1979), "Nice Age" (1980), "Ongaku" (1983) and "You've Got to Help Yourself" (1983)—while playing keyboards for many of their other songs, including international hits such as "Computer Game/Firecracker" (1978) and "Rydeen" (1979). He also sang on several songs, such as "Kimi ni Mune Kyun" (1983). Sakamoto's composition "Technopolis" (1979) was credited as a contribution to the development of techno music, while the internationally successful "Behind the Mask" (1978)—a synthpop song in which he sang vocals through a vocoder—was later covered by a number of international artists, including Michael Jackson and Eric Clapton.
Sakamoto released his first solo album Thousand Knives of Ryūichi Sakamoto in mid-1978 with the help of Hideki Matsutake—Hosono also contributed to the song "Thousand Knives". The album experimented with different styles, such as "Thousand Knives" and "The End of Asia"—in which electronic music was fused with traditional Japanese music—while "Grasshoppers" is a more minimalistic piano song. The album was recorded from April to July 1978 with a variety of electronic musical instruments, including various synthesizers, such as the KORG PS-3100, a polyphonic synthesizer; the Oberheim Eight-Voice; the Moog III-C; the Polymoog, the Minimoog; the Micromoog; the Korg VC-10, which is a vocoder; the KORG SQ-10, which is an analog sequencer; the Syn-Drums, an electronic drum kit; and the microprocessor-based Roland MC-8 Microcomposer, which is a music sequencer that was programmed by Matsutake and played by Sakamoto. A version of the song "Thousand Knives" was released on the Yellow Magic Orchestra's 1981 album BGM. This version was one of the earliest uses of the Roland TR-808 drum machine, for YMO's live performance of "1000 Knives" in 1980 and their BGM album release in 1981.
1980s
In 1980, Sakamoto released the solo album B-2 Unit, which has been referred to as his "edgiest" record and is known for the electronic song "Riot in Lagos", which is considered an early example of electro music (electro-funk), as Sakamoto anticipated the beats and sounds of electro. Early electro and hip hop artists, such as Afrika Bambaata and Kurtis Mantronik, were influenced by the album—especially "Riot in Lagos"—with Mantronik citing the work as a major influence on his electro hip hop group Mantronix. "Riot in Lagos" was later included in Playgroup's compilation album Kings of Electro (2007), alongside other significant electro compositions, such as Hashim's "Al-Naafyish" (1983).
According to Dusted Magazine, Sakamoto's use of squelching bounce sounds and mechanical beats was later incorporated in early electro and hip hop music productions, such as “Message II (Survival)” (1982), by Melle Mel and Duke Bootee; “Magic's Wand” (1982), by Whodini and Thomas Dolby; Twilight 22's “Electric Kingdom” (1983); and Kurt Mantronik's Mantronix: The Album (1985). The 1980 release of "Riot in Lagos" was listed by The Guardian in 2011 as one of the 50 key events in the history of dance music.
Among other tracks on B-2 Unit, "Differencia" has, according to Fact, "relentless tumbling beats and a stabbing bass synth that foreshadows jungle by nearly a decade". Some tracks on the album also foreshadow genres such as IDM, broken beat, and industrial techno, and the work of producers such as Actress and Oneohtrix Point Never. For several tracks on the album, Sakamoto worked with UK reggae producer Dennis Bovell, incorporating elements of afrobeat and dub music.
Also in 1980, Sakamoto released the single "War Head/Lexington Queen", an experimental synthpop and electro record, and began a long-standing collaboration with David Sylvian, when he co-wrote and performed on the Japan track "Taking Islands In Africa". In the following year, Sakamoto collaborated with Talking Heads and King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew and Robin Scott for an album titled Left-Handed Dream. Following Japan's dissolution, Sakamoto worked on another collaboration with Sylvian, a single entitled "Bamboo Houses/Bamboo Music" in 1982. Sakamoto's 1980 collaboration with Kiyoshiro Imawano, "Ikenai Rouge Magic", topped the Oricon singles chart.
In 1983, Sakamoto starred alongside David Bowie in director Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence. In addition to acting in the film, Sakamoto also composed the film's musical score and again collaborated with Sylvian on the film's main theme ("Forbidden Colours") – which became a minor hit. In a 2016 interview, Sakamoto reflected on his time acting in the film, claiming that he "hung out" with Bowie every evening for a month while filming on location. He remembered Bowie as "straightforward" and "nice", while also lamenting the fact that he never mustered the courage to ask for Bowie's help while scoring the film's soundtrack as he believed Bowie was too "concentrated on acting".
Sakamoto released a number of solo albums during the 1980s. While primarily focused on the piano and synthesizer, this series of albums included collaborations with artists such as Sylvian, David Byrne, Thomas Dolby, Nam June Paik, and Iggy Pop. Sakamoto would alternated between exploring a variety of musical styles and focusing on a specific subject or theme, such as the Italian Futurism movement.
As his solo career began to extend outside Japan in the late 1980s, Sakamoto's explorations, influences and collaborators also developed further. Beauty (1989) features a track list that combines pop with traditional Japanese and Okinawan songs, as well as guest appearances by Jill Jones, Robert Wyatt, Brian Wilson and Robbie Robertson. Heartbeat (1991) and Sweet Revenge (1994) features Sakamoto's collaborations with a global range of artists such as Roddy Frame, Dee Dee Brave, Marco Prince, Arto Lindsay, Youssou N'Dour, David Sylvian and Ingrid Chavez.
1990s
In 1995 Sakamoto released Smoochy, described by the Sound On Sound website as Sakamoto's "excursion into the land of easy-listening and Latin", followed by the 1996 album, which featured a number of previously released pieces arranged for solo piano, violin and cello. During December 1996 Sakamoto, composed the entirety of an hour-long orchestral work entitled "Untitled 01" and released as the album Discord (1998). The Sony Classical release of Discord was sold in a jewel case that was covered by a blue-colored slipcase made of foil, while the CD also contained a data video track. In 1998 the Ninja Tune record label released the Prayer/Salvation Remixes, for which prominent electronica artists such as Ashley Beedle and Andrea Parker remixed sections from the "Prayer" and "Salvation" parts of Discord. Sakamoto collaborated primarily with guitarist David Torn and DJ Spooky—artist Laurie Anderson provides spoken word on the composition—and the recording was condensed from nine live performances of the work, recorded during a Japanese tour. Discord was divided into four parts: "Grief", "Anger", "Prayer" and "Salvation"; Sakamoto explained in 1998 that he was "not religious, but maybe spiritual" and "The Prayer is to anybody or anything you want to name." Sakamoto further explained:
In 1998, Italian ethnomusicologist Massimo Milano published Ryuichi Sakamoto. Conversazioni through the Padova, Arcana imprint. All three editions of the book were published in the Italian language. Sakamoto's next album, BTTB (1998)—an acronym for "Back to the Basics"—was a fairly opaque reaction to the prior year's multilayered, lushly orchestrated Discord. The album comprised a series of original pieces on solo piano, including "Energy Flow" (a major hit in Japan) and a frenetic, four-hand arrangement of the Yellow Magic Orchestra classic "Tong Poo". On the BTTB U.S. tour, he opened the show performing a brief avant-garde DJ set under the stage name DJ Lovegroove.
Sakamoto's long-awaited "opera" LIFE was released in 1999, with visual direction by Shiro Takatani, artistic director of Dumb Type. It premiered with seven sold-out performances in Tokyo and Osaka. This ambitious multi-genre multi-media project featured contributions by over 100 performers, including Pina Bausch, Bernardo Bertolucci, Josep Carreras, the Dalai Lama and Salman Rushdie.
2000s
Sakamoto teamed with cellist Jaques Morelenbaum (a member of his 1996 trio), and Morelenbaum's wife, Paula, on a pair of albums celebrating the work of bossa nova pioneer Antonio Carlos Jobim. They recorded their first album, Casa (2001), mostly in Jobim's home studio in Rio de Janeiro, with Sakamoto performing on the late Jobim's grand piano. The album was well received, having been included in the list of The New York Timess top albums of 2002. A live album, Live in Tokyo, and a second album, A Day in New York, soon followed. Sakamoto and the Morelenbaums would also collaborate on N.M.L. No More Landmine, an international effort to raise awareness for the removal of landmines. The trio would release the single "Zero Landmine", which also featured David Sylvian, Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Cyndi Lauper, and Haruomi Hosono & Yukihiro Takahashi, the other two founding members of Yellow Magic Orchestra, amongst nearly one hundred other performers.
Sakamoto collaborated with Alva Noto (an alias of Carsten Nicolai) to release Vrioon, an album of Sakamoto's piano clusters treated by Nicolai's unique style of digital manipulation, involving the creation of "micro-loops" and minimal percussion. The two produced this work by passing the pieces back and forth until both were satisfied with the result. This debut, released on German label Raster-Noton, was voted record of the year 2004 in the electronica category by British magazine The Wire. They then released Insen (2005)—while produced in a similar manner to Vrioon, this album is somewhat more restrained and minimalist. They keep on collaborating and have released two more albums: utp_ (2008) and Summvs (2011).
In 2005, Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia hired Sakamoto to compose ring and alert tones for their high-end phone, the Nokia 8800. In 2006, Nokia offered the ringtones for free on their website. Around this time, a reunion with YMO cofounders Hosono and Takahashi caused a stir in the Japanese press. They released a single "Rescue" in 2007 and a DVD "HAS/YMO" in 2008. In July 2009, Sakamoto was honored as Officier of Ordre des Arts et des Lettres at the French embassy in Tokyo.
2010s–present
Throughout the latter part of the 2000s, Sakamoto collaborated on several projects with visual artist Shiro Takatani, including the installations LIFE - fluid, invisible, inaudible... (2007–2013), commissioned by YCAM, Yamaguchi, collapsed and silence spins at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo in 2012 and 2013 Sharjah Biennial (U.A.E.), LIFE-WELL in 2013 and a special version for Park Hyatt Tokyo's 20th anniversary in 2014, and he did music for the joint performance LIFE-WELL featuring the actor Noh/Kyogen Mansai Nomura, and for Shiro Takatani's performance ST/LL in 2015.
In 2013, Sakamoto was a jury member at the 70th Venice International Film Festival. The jury viewed 20 films and was chaired by filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci.
In 2014, Sakamoto became the first Guest Artistic Director of The Sapporo International Art Festival 2014 (SIAF2014).
On July 10, Sakamoto released a statement indicating that he had been diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer in late June of the same year. He announced a break from his work while he sought treatment and recovery. On August 3, 2015, Sakamoto posted on his website that he was "in great shape ... I am thinking about returning to work" and announced that he would be providing music for Yoji Yamada's Haha to Kuraseba (Living with My Mother). In 2015, Sakamoto also composed the score for the Alejandro González Iñárritu's film, The Revenant, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination.
In January 2017 it was announced that Sakamoto would release a solo album in April 2017 through Milan Records; the new album, titled async, was released on March 29, 2017 to critical acclaim. In February 2018, he was selected to be on the jury for the main competition section of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival.
On June 14, 2018, a documentary about the life and work of Sakamoto, entitled Coda, was released. The film follows Sakamoto as he recovers from cancer and resumes creating music, protests nuclear power plants following the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster, and creates field recordings in a variety of locales. Directed by Stephen Nomura Schible, the documentary was met with critical praise.
Production work
Sakamoto's production credits represent a prolific career in this role. In 1983, he produced Mari Iijima's debut album Rosé, the same year that the Yellow Magic Orchestra was disbanded. Sakamoto subsequently worked with artists such as Thomas Dolby; Aztec Camera, on the Dreamland (1993) album; and Imai Miki, co-producing her 1994 album A Place In The Sun. In 1996, Sakamoto produced "Mind Circus", the first single from actress Miki Nakatani, leading to a collaboration period spanning 9 singles and 7 albums though 2001.
Roddy Frame, who worked with Sakamoto as a member of Aztec Camera, explained in a 1993 interview preceding the release of Dreamland that he had had to wait a lengthy period of time before he was able to work with Sakamoto, who wrote two soundtracks, a solo album and the music for the opening ceremony at the Barcelona Olympics, prior to working with Frame over four weeks in a New York studio. Frame said that he was impressed by the work of YMO and the Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence soundtrack, explaining: "That's where you realise that the atmosphere around his compositions is actually in the writing - it's got nothing to do with synthesisers." Frame's decision to ask Sakamoto was finalized after he saw his performance at the Japan Festival that was held in London, United Kingdom. Of his experience recording with Sakamoto, Frame said:
Film work
Sakamoto began working in films, as a composer and actor, in Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), for which he composed the score, title theme, and the duet "Forbidden Colours" with David Sylvian. Sakamoto later composed Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987), which earned him the Academy Award with fellow composers David Byrne and Cong Su. In that same year, he composed the score to the cult-classic anime film Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise. Sakamoto also went on to compose the score of the opening ceremony for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, telecast live to an audience of over a billion viewers.
Other films scored by Sakamoto include Pedro Almodóvar's Tacones lejanos (High Heels) (1991); Bertolucci's The Little Buddha (1993); Oliver Stone's Wild Palms (1993); John Maybury's Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998); Brian De Palma's Snake Eyes (1998) and Femme Fatale (2002); Oshima's Gohatto (1999); and Jun Ichikawa's (director of the Mitsui ReHouse commercial from 1997 to 1999 starring Chizuru Ikewaki and Mao Inoue) Tony Takitani (2005).
Several tracks from Sakamoto's earlier solo albums have also appeared in film soundtracks. In particular, variations of "Chinsagu No Hana" (from Beauty) and "Bibo No Aozora" (from 1996) provide the poignant closing pieces for Sue Brooks's Japanese Story (2003) and Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel (2006), respectively. In 2015, Sakamoto teamed up with Iñárritu to score his film, The Revenant starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy.
Sakamoto has also acted in several films: perhaps his most notable performance was as the conflicted Captain Yonoi in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, alongside Takeshi Kitano and British rock singer David Bowie. He also played roles in The Last Emperor (as Masahiko Amakasu) and Madonna's "Rain" music video.
Personal life
Sakamoto's first of three marriages occurred in 1972, but ended in divorce two years later—Sakamoto has a daughter from this relationship. Sakamoto then married popular Japanese pianist and singer Akiko Yano in 1982, following several musical collaborations with her, including touring work with the Yellow Magic Orchestra. Sakamoto's second marriage ended in August 2006, 14 years after a mutual decision to live separately—Yano and Sakamoto raised one daughter, J-pop singer Miu Sakamoto. He has lived with his manager and wife Norika Sora since around 1990 and has two children with her.
Beginning in June 2014, Sakamoto took a year-long hiatus after he was diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer. In 2015, he returned, stating: "Right now I'm good. I feel better. Much, much better. I feel energy inside, but you never know. The cancer might come back in three years, five years, maybe 10 years. Also the radiation makes your immune system really low. It means I'm very susceptible to another cancer in my body."
On January 21, 2021, Sakamoto shared a link on his official pages, which contained a letter announcing that though his throat cancer went into remission, he was now diagnosed with rectal cancer, and that he's currently undergoing treatment after a successful surgery. He wrote: "From now on, I will be living alongside cancer. But, I am hoping to make music for a little while longer."
Activism
Sakamoto is a member of the anti-nuclear organization Stop Rokkasho and has demanded the closing of the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant. In 2012, he organized the No Nukes 2012 concert, which featured performances by 18 groups, including Yellow Magic Orchestra and Kraftwerk. Sakamoto is also known as a critic of copyright law, arguing in 2009 that it is antiquated in the information age. He argued that in "the last 100 years, only a few organizations have dominated the music world and ripped off both fans and creators" and that "with the internet we are going back to having tribal attitudes towards music."
In 2015 Sakamoto also supported opposition to the relocation of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in the Oura bay in Henoko, with a new and Okinawan version of his 2004 single "Undercooled" whose sales partially contributed to the "Henoko Fund", aimed to stop the relocation of the base on Okinawa.
Commmons
In 2006 Sakamoto, in collaboration with Japanese music company Avex Group, founded , a record label seeking to change the manner in which music is produced. Sakamoto has explained that Commmons is not his label, but is a platform for all aspiring artists to join as equal collaborators to share the benefits of the music industry. On the initiative's "About" page, the label is described as a project that "aims to find new possibilities for music, while making meaningful contribution to culture and society". The name "Commmons" is spelt with three "m"s because the third "m" stands for music.
Awards and nominations
Sakamoto has won a number of awards for his work as a film composer, beginning winning the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music with his score for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983). His greatest award success was for scoring The Last Emperor (1987), which won him the Academy Award for Best Original Score, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media, as well as a BAFTA nomination.
His score for The Sheltering Sky (1990) won him his second Golden Globe Award, and his score for Little Buddha (1993) received another Grammy Award nomination. In 1997, his collaboration with Toshio Iwai, Music Plays Images X Images Play Music, was awarded the Golden Nica, the grand prize of the Prix Ars Electronica competition. He also contributed to the Academy Award winning soundtrack for Babel (2006) with several pieces of music, including the closing theme "Bibo no Aozora". In 2009, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France's Ministry of Culture for his musical contributions. His score for The Revenant (2015) was nominated for the Golden Globe and BAFTA, and won Best Musical Score from the Dallas–Fort Worth Film Critics Association.
The music video for "Risky", written and directed by Meiert Avis, also won the first ever MTV "Breakthrough Video Award". The ground breaking video explores transhumanist philosopher FM-2030's (Persian: فریدون اسفندیاری) ideas of "Nostalgia for the Future", in the form of an imagined love affair between a robot and one of Man Ray's models in Paris in the late 1930s. Additional inspiration was drawn from Jean Baudrillard, Edvard Munch's 1894 painting "Puberty", and Roland Barthes "Death of the Author". The surrealist black and white video uses stop motion, light painting, and other retro in-camera effects techniques. Meiert Avis shot Sakamoto while at work on the score for "The Last Emperor" in London. Sakamoto also appears in the video painting words and messages to an open shutter camera. Iggy Pop, who performs the vocals on "Risky", chose not to appear in the video, allowing his performance space to be occupied by the surrealist era robot.
Sakamoto won the Golden Pine Award (Lifetime Achievement) at the 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival, along with Clint Eastwood and Gerald Fried.
Honorary awards
2009 – Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, from France's Ministry of Culture
2013 – Golden Pine Award (Lifetime Achievement), at 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival
Soundtrack awards
Academy Award for Best Original Score
1987 – The Last Emperor (won)
BAFTA Award for Best Film Music
1983 – Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (won)
1987 – The Last Emperor (nominated)
2015 – The Revenant (nominated)
Grand Bell Awards for Best Music
2018 – The Fortress (won)
Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score
1987 – The Last Emperor (won)
1990 – The Sheltering Sky (won)
1993 – Little Buddha (nominated)
2015 – The Revenant (nominated)
Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media
1987 – The Last Emperor (won)
2015 – The Revenant (nominated)
Other awards
1997 – Golden Nica, grand prize of Prix Ars Electronica, for Music Plays Images X Images Play Music
MTV Breakthrough Video Award, for music video of "Risky"
Discography
Solo studio albums
Thousand Knives (1978)
B-2 Unit (1980)
Left-Handed Dream (1981)
Ongaku Zukan (1984)
Esperanto (1985)
Futurista (1986)
Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia (1986)
Neo Geo (1987)
Beauty (1989)
Heartbeat (1991)
Sweet Revenge (1994)
Smoochy (1995)
1996 (1996)
Discord (1997)
BTTB (1999)
Comica (2002)
Elephantism (2002)
Chasm (2004)
Out of Noise (2009)
Playing the Piano (2009)
Three (2013)
async (2017)
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Commmons – Sakamoto's record label
Raster-Noton
1952 births
20th-century classical composers
20th-century classical pianists
20th-century Japanese composers
20th-century Japanese male musicians
21st-century classical composers
21st-century classical pianists
21st-century Japanese composers
21st-century Japanese male musicians
Anime composers
Avex Group artists
Avex Group people
Best Original Music BAFTA Award winners
Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners
Composers for piano
Golden Globe Award-winning musicians
Grammy Award winners
Intellectual property activism
Island Records artists
Japanese anti–nuclear power activists
Japanese classical composers
Japanese classical pianists
Japanese contemporary artists
Japanese contemporary classical composers
Japanese dance musicians
Japanese electro musicians
Japanese electronic musicians
Japanese film score composers
Japanese house musicians
Japanese keyboardists
Japanese male actors
Japanese male classical composers
Japanese male classical pianists
Japanese male film score composers
Japanese opera composers
Japanese record producers
Japanese techno musicians
Japanese trance musicians
Living people
Male opera composers
Musicians from Tokyo
New-age composers
New-age musicians
Progressivism in Japan
Samadhi Sound artists
Tokyo University of the Arts alumni
Video game composers
Virgin Records artists
Yellow Magic Orchestra members | true | [
"is a 1994 Japanese film directed by Junji Sakamoto.\n\nAwards and nominations\n16th Yokohama Film Festival \nWon: Best Film\nWon: Best Director - Junji Sakamoto\nWon: Best Supporting Actor - Kōichi Satō\n\nReferences\n\n1994 films\nFilms directed by Junji Sakamoto\nJapanese films\nJapanese-language films",
"is a 2000 Japanese film directed by Junji Sakamoto. At the 24th Japan Academy Prize, it won one award, and received four other nominations.\n\nPlot\nSullen and withdrawn \"ugly\" elder sister Masako toils endlessly with mending chores in her widowed mother's dry cleaning shop, seething with hatred for her flashy younger sister Yukari, who visits only for free laundry service. When mother dies, and Yukari persists in her abuse, Masako cracks and strangles her. She flees, and takes a number of identities and odd jobs, meeting people as she goes. To her surprise, Masako finds people in general to be kind and helpful (although she's sexually abused more than once), and she blossoms as a personality, even to the extent of becoming a popularly liked bar hostess like her murdered sister.\n\nCast \n Naomi Fujiyama\n Michiyo Okusu\n Riho Makise\n Kenji Sakaguchi\n\nAwards and nominations \n24th Japan Academy Prize. \nWon: Best Director - Junji Sakamoto\nNominated: Best Picture\nNominated: Best Screenplay - Junji Sakamoto and Isamu Uno\nNominated: Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Michiyo Okusu\nNominated: Best Music - Yasuhiro Kobayashi\n25th Hochi Film Award \nWon: Best Film\nWon: Best Actress - Naomi Fujiyama\n22nd Yokohama Film Festival \nWon: Best Film\nWon: Best Director - Junji Sakamoto\nWon: Best Screenplay - Junji Sakamoto and Isamu Uno\nWon: Best Actress - Naomi Fujiyama\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n\n2000 films\nFilms directed by Junji Sakamoto\nJapanese films\nJapanese-language films\nBest Film Kinema Junpo Award winners"
] |
[
"Ryuichi Sakamoto",
"Awards and nominations",
"What are some awards and nominations that Sakamoto got?",
"Academy Award for Best Original Score, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture,"
] | C_f31584c976864aaab040f1423f64eb66_0 | Is that mostly all of the rewards and nominations that he received? | 2 | Is the Academy Award for Best Original Score, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture mostly all of the rewards and nominations that Ryuichi Sakamoto received? | Ryuichi Sakamoto | Sakamoto has won a number of awards for his work as a film composer, beginning with his score for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) winning him the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music. His greatest award success was for scoring The Last Emperor (1987), which won him the Academy Award for Best Original Score, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media, as well as a BAFTA nomination. His score for The Sheltering Sky (1990) later won him his second Golden Globe Award, and his score for Little Buddha (1993) received another Grammy Award nomination. In 1997, his collaboration with Toshio Iwai, Music Plays Images X Images Play Music, was awarded the Golden Nica, the grand prize of the Prix Ars Electronica competition. He also contributed to the Academy Award winning soundtrack for Babel (2006) with several pieces of music, including the "Bibo no Aozora" closing theme. In 2009, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France's Ministry of Culture for his musical contributions. His score for The Revenant (2015) has been nominated for the Golden Globe and BAFTA, and won Best Musical Score from the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association. The music video for "Risky", written and directed by Meiert Avis, also won the first ever MTV "Breakthrough Video Award". The ground breaking video explores transhumanist philosopher FM-2030's (Persian: frydwn sfndyry) ideas of "Nostalgia for the Future", in the form of an imagined love affair between a robot and one of Man Ray's models in Paris in the late 1930s. Additional inspiration was drawn from Jean Baudrillard, Edvard Munch's 1894 painting "Puberty", and Roland Barthes "Death of the Author". The surrealist black and white video uses stop motion, light painting, and other retro in-camera effects techniques. Meiert Avis shot Sakamoto while at work on the score for "The Last Emperor" in London. Sakamoto also appears in the video painting words and messages to an open shutter camera. Iggy Pop, who performs the vocals on "Risky", chose not to appear in the video, allowing his performance space to be occupied by the surrealist era robot. Sakamoto won the Golden Pine Award (Lifetime Achievement) at the 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival, along with Clint Eastwood and Gerald Fried. CANNOTANSWER | His score for The Sheltering Sky (1990) later won him his second Golden Globe Award, and his score for Little Buddha (1993) received another Grammy Award nomination. In 1997, | is a Japanese composer, pianist, singer, record producer and actor who has pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto influenced and pioneered a number of electronic music genres.
Sakamoto began his career while at university in the 1970s as a session musician, producer, and arranger. His first major success came in 1978 as co-founder of YMO. He concurrently pursued a solo career, releasing the experimental electronic fusion album Thousand Knives in 1978. Two years later, he released the album B-2 Unit. It included the track "Riot in Lagos", which was significant in the development of electro and hip hop music. He went on to produce more solo records, and collaborate with many international artists, David Sylvian, Carsten Nicolai, Youssou N'Dour, and Fennesz among them. Sakamoto composed music for the opening ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and his composition "Energy Flow" (1999) was the first instrumental number-one single in Japan's Oricon charts history.
As a film-score composer, Sakamoto has won an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Grammy, and 2 Golden Globe Awards. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) marked his debut as both an actor and a film-score composer; its main theme was adapted into the single "Forbidden Colours" which became an international hit. His most successful work as a film composer was The Last Emperor (1987), after which he continued earning accolades composing for films such as The Sheltering Sky (1990), Little Buddha (1993), and The Revenant (2015). On occasion, Sakamoto has also worked as a composer and a scenario writer on anime and video games. In 2009, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the Ministry of Culture of France for his contributions to music.
Career
1970s
Sakamoto entered the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1970, earning a B.A. in music composition and an M.A. with special emphasis on both electronic and ethnic music. He studied ethnomusicology there with the intention of becoming a researcher in the field, due to his interest in various world music traditions, particularly the Japanese (especially Okinawan), Indian and African musical traditions. He was also trained in classical music and began experimenting with the electronic music equipment available at the university, including synthesizers such as the Buchla, Moog, and ARP. One of Sakamoto's classical influences was Claude Debussy, who he described as his "hero" and stated that "Asian music heavily influenced Debussy, and Debussy heavily influenced me. So, the music goes around the world and comes full circle."
In 1975, Sakamoto collaborated with percussionist Tsuchitori Toshiyuki to release Disappointment-Hateruma. After working as a session musician with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi in 1977, the trio formed the internationally successful electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) in 1978. Known for their seminal influence on electronic music, the group helped pioneer electronic genres such as electropop/technopop, synthpop, cyberpunk music, ambient house, and electronica. The group's work has had a lasting influence across genres, ranging from hip hop and techno to acid house and general melodic music. Sakamoto was the songwriter and composer for a number of the band's hit songs—including "Yellow Magic (Tong Poo)" (1978), "Technopolis" (1979), "Nice Age" (1980), "Ongaku" (1983) and "You've Got to Help Yourself" (1983)—while playing keyboards for many of their other songs, including international hits such as "Computer Game/Firecracker" (1978) and "Rydeen" (1979). He also sang on several songs, such as "Kimi ni Mune Kyun" (1983). Sakamoto's composition "Technopolis" (1979) was credited as a contribution to the development of techno music, while the internationally successful "Behind the Mask" (1978)—a synthpop song in which he sang vocals through a vocoder—was later covered by a number of international artists, including Michael Jackson and Eric Clapton.
Sakamoto released his first solo album Thousand Knives of Ryūichi Sakamoto in mid-1978 with the help of Hideki Matsutake—Hosono also contributed to the song "Thousand Knives". The album experimented with different styles, such as "Thousand Knives" and "The End of Asia"—in which electronic music was fused with traditional Japanese music—while "Grasshoppers" is a more minimalistic piano song. The album was recorded from April to July 1978 with a variety of electronic musical instruments, including various synthesizers, such as the KORG PS-3100, a polyphonic synthesizer; the Oberheim Eight-Voice; the Moog III-C; the Polymoog, the Minimoog; the Micromoog; the Korg VC-10, which is a vocoder; the KORG SQ-10, which is an analog sequencer; the Syn-Drums, an electronic drum kit; and the microprocessor-based Roland MC-8 Microcomposer, which is a music sequencer that was programmed by Matsutake and played by Sakamoto. A version of the song "Thousand Knives" was released on the Yellow Magic Orchestra's 1981 album BGM. This version was one of the earliest uses of the Roland TR-808 drum machine, for YMO's live performance of "1000 Knives" in 1980 and their BGM album release in 1981.
1980s
In 1980, Sakamoto released the solo album B-2 Unit, which has been referred to as his "edgiest" record and is known for the electronic song "Riot in Lagos", which is considered an early example of electro music (electro-funk), as Sakamoto anticipated the beats and sounds of electro. Early electro and hip hop artists, such as Afrika Bambaata and Kurtis Mantronik, were influenced by the album—especially "Riot in Lagos"—with Mantronik citing the work as a major influence on his electro hip hop group Mantronix. "Riot in Lagos" was later included in Playgroup's compilation album Kings of Electro (2007), alongside other significant electro compositions, such as Hashim's "Al-Naafyish" (1983).
According to Dusted Magazine, Sakamoto's use of squelching bounce sounds and mechanical beats was later incorporated in early electro and hip hop music productions, such as “Message II (Survival)” (1982), by Melle Mel and Duke Bootee; “Magic's Wand” (1982), by Whodini and Thomas Dolby; Twilight 22's “Electric Kingdom” (1983); and Kurt Mantronik's Mantronix: The Album (1985). The 1980 release of "Riot in Lagos" was listed by The Guardian in 2011 as one of the 50 key events in the history of dance music.
Among other tracks on B-2 Unit, "Differencia" has, according to Fact, "relentless tumbling beats and a stabbing bass synth that foreshadows jungle by nearly a decade". Some tracks on the album also foreshadow genres such as IDM, broken beat, and industrial techno, and the work of producers such as Actress and Oneohtrix Point Never. For several tracks on the album, Sakamoto worked with UK reggae producer Dennis Bovell, incorporating elements of afrobeat and dub music.
Also in 1980, Sakamoto released the single "War Head/Lexington Queen", an experimental synthpop and electro record, and began a long-standing collaboration with David Sylvian, when he co-wrote and performed on the Japan track "Taking Islands In Africa". In the following year, Sakamoto collaborated with Talking Heads and King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew and Robin Scott for an album titled Left-Handed Dream. Following Japan's dissolution, Sakamoto worked on another collaboration with Sylvian, a single entitled "Bamboo Houses/Bamboo Music" in 1982. Sakamoto's 1980 collaboration with Kiyoshiro Imawano, "Ikenai Rouge Magic", topped the Oricon singles chart.
In 1983, Sakamoto starred alongside David Bowie in director Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence. In addition to acting in the film, Sakamoto also composed the film's musical score and again collaborated with Sylvian on the film's main theme ("Forbidden Colours") – which became a minor hit. In a 2016 interview, Sakamoto reflected on his time acting in the film, claiming that he "hung out" with Bowie every evening for a month while filming on location. He remembered Bowie as "straightforward" and "nice", while also lamenting the fact that he never mustered the courage to ask for Bowie's help while scoring the film's soundtrack as he believed Bowie was too "concentrated on acting".
Sakamoto released a number of solo albums during the 1980s. While primarily focused on the piano and synthesizer, this series of albums included collaborations with artists such as Sylvian, David Byrne, Thomas Dolby, Nam June Paik, and Iggy Pop. Sakamoto would alternated between exploring a variety of musical styles and focusing on a specific subject or theme, such as the Italian Futurism movement.
As his solo career began to extend outside Japan in the late 1980s, Sakamoto's explorations, influences and collaborators also developed further. Beauty (1989) features a track list that combines pop with traditional Japanese and Okinawan songs, as well as guest appearances by Jill Jones, Robert Wyatt, Brian Wilson and Robbie Robertson. Heartbeat (1991) and Sweet Revenge (1994) features Sakamoto's collaborations with a global range of artists such as Roddy Frame, Dee Dee Brave, Marco Prince, Arto Lindsay, Youssou N'Dour, David Sylvian and Ingrid Chavez.
1990s
In 1995 Sakamoto released Smoochy, described by the Sound On Sound website as Sakamoto's "excursion into the land of easy-listening and Latin", followed by the 1996 album, which featured a number of previously released pieces arranged for solo piano, violin and cello. During December 1996 Sakamoto, composed the entirety of an hour-long orchestral work entitled "Untitled 01" and released as the album Discord (1998). The Sony Classical release of Discord was sold in a jewel case that was covered by a blue-colored slipcase made of foil, while the CD also contained a data video track. In 1998 the Ninja Tune record label released the Prayer/Salvation Remixes, for which prominent electronica artists such as Ashley Beedle and Andrea Parker remixed sections from the "Prayer" and "Salvation" parts of Discord. Sakamoto collaborated primarily with guitarist David Torn and DJ Spooky—artist Laurie Anderson provides spoken word on the composition—and the recording was condensed from nine live performances of the work, recorded during a Japanese tour. Discord was divided into four parts: "Grief", "Anger", "Prayer" and "Salvation"; Sakamoto explained in 1998 that he was "not religious, but maybe spiritual" and "The Prayer is to anybody or anything you want to name." Sakamoto further explained:
In 1998, Italian ethnomusicologist Massimo Milano published Ryuichi Sakamoto. Conversazioni through the Padova, Arcana imprint. All three editions of the book were published in the Italian language. Sakamoto's next album, BTTB (1998)—an acronym for "Back to the Basics"—was a fairly opaque reaction to the prior year's multilayered, lushly orchestrated Discord. The album comprised a series of original pieces on solo piano, including "Energy Flow" (a major hit in Japan) and a frenetic, four-hand arrangement of the Yellow Magic Orchestra classic "Tong Poo". On the BTTB U.S. tour, he opened the show performing a brief avant-garde DJ set under the stage name DJ Lovegroove.
Sakamoto's long-awaited "opera" LIFE was released in 1999, with visual direction by Shiro Takatani, artistic director of Dumb Type. It premiered with seven sold-out performances in Tokyo and Osaka. This ambitious multi-genre multi-media project featured contributions by over 100 performers, including Pina Bausch, Bernardo Bertolucci, Josep Carreras, the Dalai Lama and Salman Rushdie.
2000s
Sakamoto teamed with cellist Jaques Morelenbaum (a member of his 1996 trio), and Morelenbaum's wife, Paula, on a pair of albums celebrating the work of bossa nova pioneer Antonio Carlos Jobim. They recorded their first album, Casa (2001), mostly in Jobim's home studio in Rio de Janeiro, with Sakamoto performing on the late Jobim's grand piano. The album was well received, having been included in the list of The New York Timess top albums of 2002. A live album, Live in Tokyo, and a second album, A Day in New York, soon followed. Sakamoto and the Morelenbaums would also collaborate on N.M.L. No More Landmine, an international effort to raise awareness for the removal of landmines. The trio would release the single "Zero Landmine", which also featured David Sylvian, Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Cyndi Lauper, and Haruomi Hosono & Yukihiro Takahashi, the other two founding members of Yellow Magic Orchestra, amongst nearly one hundred other performers.
Sakamoto collaborated with Alva Noto (an alias of Carsten Nicolai) to release Vrioon, an album of Sakamoto's piano clusters treated by Nicolai's unique style of digital manipulation, involving the creation of "micro-loops" and minimal percussion. The two produced this work by passing the pieces back and forth until both were satisfied with the result. This debut, released on German label Raster-Noton, was voted record of the year 2004 in the electronica category by British magazine The Wire. They then released Insen (2005)—while produced in a similar manner to Vrioon, this album is somewhat more restrained and minimalist. They keep on collaborating and have released two more albums: utp_ (2008) and Summvs (2011).
In 2005, Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia hired Sakamoto to compose ring and alert tones for their high-end phone, the Nokia 8800. In 2006, Nokia offered the ringtones for free on their website. Around this time, a reunion with YMO cofounders Hosono and Takahashi caused a stir in the Japanese press. They released a single "Rescue" in 2007 and a DVD "HAS/YMO" in 2008. In July 2009, Sakamoto was honored as Officier of Ordre des Arts et des Lettres at the French embassy in Tokyo.
2010s–present
Throughout the latter part of the 2000s, Sakamoto collaborated on several projects with visual artist Shiro Takatani, including the installations LIFE - fluid, invisible, inaudible... (2007–2013), commissioned by YCAM, Yamaguchi, collapsed and silence spins at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo in 2012 and 2013 Sharjah Biennial (U.A.E.), LIFE-WELL in 2013 and a special version for Park Hyatt Tokyo's 20th anniversary in 2014, and he did music for the joint performance LIFE-WELL featuring the actor Noh/Kyogen Mansai Nomura, and for Shiro Takatani's performance ST/LL in 2015.
In 2013, Sakamoto was a jury member at the 70th Venice International Film Festival. The jury viewed 20 films and was chaired by filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci.
In 2014, Sakamoto became the first Guest Artistic Director of The Sapporo International Art Festival 2014 (SIAF2014).
On July 10, Sakamoto released a statement indicating that he had been diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer in late June of the same year. He announced a break from his work while he sought treatment and recovery. On August 3, 2015, Sakamoto posted on his website that he was "in great shape ... I am thinking about returning to work" and announced that he would be providing music for Yoji Yamada's Haha to Kuraseba (Living with My Mother). In 2015, Sakamoto also composed the score for the Alejandro González Iñárritu's film, The Revenant, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination.
In January 2017 it was announced that Sakamoto would release a solo album in April 2017 through Milan Records; the new album, titled async, was released on March 29, 2017 to critical acclaim. In February 2018, he was selected to be on the jury for the main competition section of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival.
On June 14, 2018, a documentary about the life and work of Sakamoto, entitled Coda, was released. The film follows Sakamoto as he recovers from cancer and resumes creating music, protests nuclear power plants following the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster, and creates field recordings in a variety of locales. Directed by Stephen Nomura Schible, the documentary was met with critical praise.
Production work
Sakamoto's production credits represent a prolific career in this role. In 1983, he produced Mari Iijima's debut album Rosé, the same year that the Yellow Magic Orchestra was disbanded. Sakamoto subsequently worked with artists such as Thomas Dolby; Aztec Camera, on the Dreamland (1993) album; and Imai Miki, co-producing her 1994 album A Place In The Sun. In 1996, Sakamoto produced "Mind Circus", the first single from actress Miki Nakatani, leading to a collaboration period spanning 9 singles and 7 albums though 2001.
Roddy Frame, who worked with Sakamoto as a member of Aztec Camera, explained in a 1993 interview preceding the release of Dreamland that he had had to wait a lengthy period of time before he was able to work with Sakamoto, who wrote two soundtracks, a solo album and the music for the opening ceremony at the Barcelona Olympics, prior to working with Frame over four weeks in a New York studio. Frame said that he was impressed by the work of YMO and the Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence soundtrack, explaining: "That's where you realise that the atmosphere around his compositions is actually in the writing - it's got nothing to do with synthesisers." Frame's decision to ask Sakamoto was finalized after he saw his performance at the Japan Festival that was held in London, United Kingdom. Of his experience recording with Sakamoto, Frame said:
Film work
Sakamoto began working in films, as a composer and actor, in Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), for which he composed the score, title theme, and the duet "Forbidden Colours" with David Sylvian. Sakamoto later composed Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987), which earned him the Academy Award with fellow composers David Byrne and Cong Su. In that same year, he composed the score to the cult-classic anime film Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise. Sakamoto also went on to compose the score of the opening ceremony for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, telecast live to an audience of over a billion viewers.
Other films scored by Sakamoto include Pedro Almodóvar's Tacones lejanos (High Heels) (1991); Bertolucci's The Little Buddha (1993); Oliver Stone's Wild Palms (1993); John Maybury's Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998); Brian De Palma's Snake Eyes (1998) and Femme Fatale (2002); Oshima's Gohatto (1999); and Jun Ichikawa's (director of the Mitsui ReHouse commercial from 1997 to 1999 starring Chizuru Ikewaki and Mao Inoue) Tony Takitani (2005).
Several tracks from Sakamoto's earlier solo albums have also appeared in film soundtracks. In particular, variations of "Chinsagu No Hana" (from Beauty) and "Bibo No Aozora" (from 1996) provide the poignant closing pieces for Sue Brooks's Japanese Story (2003) and Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel (2006), respectively. In 2015, Sakamoto teamed up with Iñárritu to score his film, The Revenant starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy.
Sakamoto has also acted in several films: perhaps his most notable performance was as the conflicted Captain Yonoi in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, alongside Takeshi Kitano and British rock singer David Bowie. He also played roles in The Last Emperor (as Masahiko Amakasu) and Madonna's "Rain" music video.
Personal life
Sakamoto's first of three marriages occurred in 1972, but ended in divorce two years later—Sakamoto has a daughter from this relationship. Sakamoto then married popular Japanese pianist and singer Akiko Yano in 1982, following several musical collaborations with her, including touring work with the Yellow Magic Orchestra. Sakamoto's second marriage ended in August 2006, 14 years after a mutual decision to live separately—Yano and Sakamoto raised one daughter, J-pop singer Miu Sakamoto. He has lived with his manager and wife Norika Sora since around 1990 and has two children with her.
Beginning in June 2014, Sakamoto took a year-long hiatus after he was diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer. In 2015, he returned, stating: "Right now I'm good. I feel better. Much, much better. I feel energy inside, but you never know. The cancer might come back in three years, five years, maybe 10 years. Also the radiation makes your immune system really low. It means I'm very susceptible to another cancer in my body."
On January 21, 2021, Sakamoto shared a link on his official pages, which contained a letter announcing that though his throat cancer went into remission, he was now diagnosed with rectal cancer, and that he's currently undergoing treatment after a successful surgery. He wrote: "From now on, I will be living alongside cancer. But, I am hoping to make music for a little while longer."
Activism
Sakamoto is a member of the anti-nuclear organization Stop Rokkasho and has demanded the closing of the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant. In 2012, he organized the No Nukes 2012 concert, which featured performances by 18 groups, including Yellow Magic Orchestra and Kraftwerk. Sakamoto is also known as a critic of copyright law, arguing in 2009 that it is antiquated in the information age. He argued that in "the last 100 years, only a few organizations have dominated the music world and ripped off both fans and creators" and that "with the internet we are going back to having tribal attitudes towards music."
In 2015 Sakamoto also supported opposition to the relocation of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in the Oura bay in Henoko, with a new and Okinawan version of his 2004 single "Undercooled" whose sales partially contributed to the "Henoko Fund", aimed to stop the relocation of the base on Okinawa.
Commmons
In 2006 Sakamoto, in collaboration with Japanese music company Avex Group, founded , a record label seeking to change the manner in which music is produced. Sakamoto has explained that Commmons is not his label, but is a platform for all aspiring artists to join as equal collaborators to share the benefits of the music industry. On the initiative's "About" page, the label is described as a project that "aims to find new possibilities for music, while making meaningful contribution to culture and society". The name "Commmons" is spelt with three "m"s because the third "m" stands for music.
Awards and nominations
Sakamoto has won a number of awards for his work as a film composer, beginning winning the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music with his score for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983). His greatest award success was for scoring The Last Emperor (1987), which won him the Academy Award for Best Original Score, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media, as well as a BAFTA nomination.
His score for The Sheltering Sky (1990) won him his second Golden Globe Award, and his score for Little Buddha (1993) received another Grammy Award nomination. In 1997, his collaboration with Toshio Iwai, Music Plays Images X Images Play Music, was awarded the Golden Nica, the grand prize of the Prix Ars Electronica competition. He also contributed to the Academy Award winning soundtrack for Babel (2006) with several pieces of music, including the closing theme "Bibo no Aozora". In 2009, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France's Ministry of Culture for his musical contributions. His score for The Revenant (2015) was nominated for the Golden Globe and BAFTA, and won Best Musical Score from the Dallas–Fort Worth Film Critics Association.
The music video for "Risky", written and directed by Meiert Avis, also won the first ever MTV "Breakthrough Video Award". The ground breaking video explores transhumanist philosopher FM-2030's (Persian: فریدون اسفندیاری) ideas of "Nostalgia for the Future", in the form of an imagined love affair between a robot and one of Man Ray's models in Paris in the late 1930s. Additional inspiration was drawn from Jean Baudrillard, Edvard Munch's 1894 painting "Puberty", and Roland Barthes "Death of the Author". The surrealist black and white video uses stop motion, light painting, and other retro in-camera effects techniques. Meiert Avis shot Sakamoto while at work on the score for "The Last Emperor" in London. Sakamoto also appears in the video painting words and messages to an open shutter camera. Iggy Pop, who performs the vocals on "Risky", chose not to appear in the video, allowing his performance space to be occupied by the surrealist era robot.
Sakamoto won the Golden Pine Award (Lifetime Achievement) at the 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival, along with Clint Eastwood and Gerald Fried.
Honorary awards
2009 – Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, from France's Ministry of Culture
2013 – Golden Pine Award (Lifetime Achievement), at 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival
Soundtrack awards
Academy Award for Best Original Score
1987 – The Last Emperor (won)
BAFTA Award for Best Film Music
1983 – Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (won)
1987 – The Last Emperor (nominated)
2015 – The Revenant (nominated)
Grand Bell Awards for Best Music
2018 – The Fortress (won)
Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score
1987 – The Last Emperor (won)
1990 – The Sheltering Sky (won)
1993 – Little Buddha (nominated)
2015 – The Revenant (nominated)
Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media
1987 – The Last Emperor (won)
2015 – The Revenant (nominated)
Other awards
1997 – Golden Nica, grand prize of Prix Ars Electronica, for Music Plays Images X Images Play Music
MTV Breakthrough Video Award, for music video of "Risky"
Discography
Solo studio albums
Thousand Knives (1978)
B-2 Unit (1980)
Left-Handed Dream (1981)
Ongaku Zukan (1984)
Esperanto (1985)
Futurista (1986)
Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia (1986)
Neo Geo (1987)
Beauty (1989)
Heartbeat (1991)
Sweet Revenge (1994)
Smoochy (1995)
1996 (1996)
Discord (1997)
BTTB (1999)
Comica (2002)
Elephantism (2002)
Chasm (2004)
Out of Noise (2009)
Playing the Piano (2009)
Three (2013)
async (2017)
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Commmons – Sakamoto's record label
Raster-Noton
1952 births
20th-century classical composers
20th-century classical pianists
20th-century Japanese composers
20th-century Japanese male musicians
21st-century classical composers
21st-century classical pianists
21st-century Japanese composers
21st-century Japanese male musicians
Anime composers
Avex Group artists
Avex Group people
Best Original Music BAFTA Award winners
Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners
Composers for piano
Golden Globe Award-winning musicians
Grammy Award winners
Intellectual property activism
Island Records artists
Japanese anti–nuclear power activists
Japanese classical composers
Japanese classical pianists
Japanese contemporary artists
Japanese contemporary classical composers
Japanese dance musicians
Japanese electro musicians
Japanese electronic musicians
Japanese film score composers
Japanese house musicians
Japanese keyboardists
Japanese male actors
Japanese male classical composers
Japanese male classical pianists
Japanese male film score composers
Japanese opera composers
Japanese record producers
Japanese techno musicians
Japanese trance musicians
Living people
Male opera composers
Musicians from Tokyo
New-age composers
New-age musicians
Progressivism in Japan
Samadhi Sound artists
Tokyo University of the Arts alumni
Video game composers
Virgin Records artists
Yellow Magic Orchestra members | false | [
"This is a comprehensive list of major music awards and nominations received by Foo Fighters, an American alternative rock band. Foo Fighters were formed in 1994 by lead singer Dave Grohl. Foo Fighters has received twenty eight awards from one hundred and three nominations.\n\nTheir most successful performance at any one ceremony over time, is that of the Grammys with 12 wins, while the Kerrang Awards in the United Kingdom is their most successful in terms of winning every time they have been nominated, with 6 wins from 6 nominations.\n\nAltRock Awards\n\n|-\n|align=\"center\" rowspan=\"2\" | 2018 || Foo Fighters || Artist of the Year|| \n|-\n| Dave Grohl || Best Male Singer || \n|-\n\nAmerican Music Awards\nThe American Music Awards is an annual award created by Dick Clark. The awards show is similar to the Grammy Awards and the MTV Video Music Awards.\n\nBBC Music Awards\n\nBillboard Music Awards\n\nBrit Awards\nThe Brit Awards are awarded annually in the United Kingdom. As of 2018, Foo Fighters has received five awards from eight nominations.\n\nGAFFA Awards\n\nDenmark GAFFA Awards\nDelivered since 1991, the GAFFA Awards are a Danish award that rewards popular music by the magazine of the same name.\n\n!\n|-\n| 2002\n| Foo Fighters\n| Best Foreign Band\n| \n| style=\"text-align:center;\" rowspan=\"2\"|\n|-\n| 2006\n| In Your Honor\n| Best Foreign Album\n| \n|-\n| 2007\n| rowspan=\"2\"| Foo Fighters\n| rowspan=\"2\"| Best Foreign Band\n| \n| style=\"text-align:center;\" |\n|-\n| 2018\n| \n| style=\"text-align:center;\" |\n|-\n|}\n\nSweden GAFFA Awards\nDelivered since 2010, the GAFFA Awards (Swedish: GAFFA Priset) are a Swedish award that rewards popular music awarded by the magazine of the same name.\n\n!\n|-\n| 2011\n| Wasting Light\n| Best Foreign Album\n| \n| style=\"text-align:center;\" |\n|-\n| rowspan=\"2\"| 2018\n| \"Run\"\n| Best Foreign Song\n| \n| style=\"text-align:center;\" rowspan=\"2\"|\n|-\n| Concrete and Gold\n| Best Foreign Album\n| \n|-\n|}\n\nGlobal Awards\n\nGrammy Awards\nThe Grammy Awards are awarded annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in the United States. Foo Fighters has received twelve awards from twenty-five nominations. They have won Best Rock Album four times, more than any other band.\n\nKerrang! Awards\nThe Kerrang! Awards is an award show from Kerrang! Magazine. Foo Fighters received six awards.\n\nMTV Awards\n\nMTV Australia Music Awards\nThe MTV Australia Music Awards is the Australian version of the MTV Video Music Awards. Foo Fighters received five nominations.\n\nMTV Europe Music Awards\nThe MTV Europe Music Awards is an annuel award show from MTV Europe. Foo Fighters received eleven nominations.\n\nMTV Video Music Awards\nThe MTV Video Music Awards were established in 1984 by MTV to celebrate the top music videos of the year. Foo Fighters has received three awards from twenty three nominations.\n\nMTV Video Music Awards Japan\nThe MTV Video Music Awards Japan is the Japanese version of the MTV Video Music Awards. Foo Fighters were nominated three times.\n\nNME Awards\nThe NME Awards is an annual award show from NME Magazine in the UK. Foo Fighters received five awards.\n\nPeople's Choice Awards\nThe People's Choice Awards is an annual award show from CBS television. People vote for their favorite movies, TV shows, and music. Foo Fighters are nominated for one award.\n\nRadio Music Awards\nThe Radio Music Awards is an annuel award show for the best radio music. Foo Fighters received three nominations.\n\nQ Awards\nThe Q Awards is an annuel awards show from Q Magazine. Foo Fighters received two nominations.\n\nTeen Choice Awards\nThe Teen Choice Awards is an annual award show which first aired in 1999 by Fox Broadcasting Company. Foo Fighters received five nominations.\n\nUK Music Video Awards\n\nThe UK Music Video Awards is an annual award ceremony founded in 2008 to recognise creativity, technical excellence and innovation in music videos and moving images for music.\n\n|-\n| 2009\n| Live at Wembley Stadium\n| Best Live Music Coverage\n|\n\nReferences\n\nAwards\nFoo Fighters",
"A Quinta: O Desafio (English: The Farm: The Challenge) is the first season of the all-stars format and the fourth overall of the Portuguese version of the reality show The Farm, which was broadcast by TVI. The season was announced at the finale of the last season, and it's a reality all-stars since it'll have a mix of A Quinta and Secret Story contestants, making \"A Voz\" a comeback for this season since the last time which was on Luta Pelo Poder. The season premiered on January 3, and the host is Teresa Guilherme once again. Like last season, the 24-hour channel TVI Reality will be an exclusive of NOS, where is broadcast the nominations show at Tuesdays.\n\nContestants \nThe contestants of A Quinta: O Desafio will be a mix of A Quinta and Secret Story contestants, who will battle to see who's the best of the bests.\n\nNominations table\n\nNotes\n : Érica and Joana are immune for this nominations.\n : The first nominations of the show, were done face-to-face. For the first round, everyone nominated females. Cristiana received the most nominations and is the first nominee. For the second round, males nominated females. Liliana A. received the most nominations and is the second nominee. For the third round, females nominated females. Angélica and Elisabete received the most nominations and are the last nominees. As a leader, António could save one of the nominees. He saved Elisabete. The public vote is to evict.\n : Tiago is immune and exempt for this nominations, as a new contestant.\n : Nominations were done face-to-face this week. For the first round, the members of Team Teresa nominated the members of Team Voz. There was a tie between Pedro C. and Bernardina. Bernardina received the most nominations in a tiebreaker and is the first nominee. For the second round, the members of Team Voz nominated members of Team Teresa. Larama received the most nominations and is the second nominee. For the third round, everyone nominated males. Bruno received the most nominations and is the third nominee. For the fourth round, everyone nominated females. There was a tie between Angélica, Liliana A. and Joana. In the tiebreaker Liliana A. and Joana received the most nominations and was done another tiebreaker. Joana received the most nominations and is the fourth nominee. The public vote is to save.\n : Diogo and Juliana are immune and exempt for this nominations, as a new contestants.\n : The nominations were done face-to-face, and in all the rounds the contestants nominated the members of Team Voz. For the first round, Team Teresa nominated. There was a tie between Bernardina, Bruno, Daniel, Jéssica and Pedro C. As a leader, António broke the tie and Daniel is the first nominee. For the second round, Team Voz nominated. There was a tie between Liliana A. and Elisabete. As a leader, António broke the tie and Liliana A. is the second nominee. For the third round, everyone nominated. Pedro C. received the most nominations and is the third nominee. The public vote is to save.\n : Bruno, Larama and Pedro B. were nominated by \"A Voz\" on day 19 because them disregard the rules of the farm. Daniel and Liliana A. still nominated after Pedro C.'s ejection. Afterwards Bruno was also ejected after attacking his housemates and his girlfriend Elisabete decided to go with him, leaving Daniel, Larama, Liliana A. and Pedro B. as this week's nominees.\n : Rúben, Tatiana and Luís are immune and exempt for this nominations, as a new contestants.\n : Érica was nominated by \"A Voz\", after aggression to Diogo.\n : The nominations were done face-to-face. For the first round, the members of Team Voz nominated members of Team Teresa. Tiago received the most nominations and is the first nominee. For the second round, members of Team Teresa nominated members of Team Voz. Juliana received the most nominations and is the second nominee. For the third round, everyone nominated everyone. Carlos received the most nominations and is the third nominee. The public vote is to save.\n : António was immune and exempt to nominate as he became a contestant on Day 29.\n : The nominations were done face-to-face, and in each round there was three nominees. For the first round, everyone nominated everyone. Diogo, Luís and Tiago received the most nominations and are the first nominees. For the second round, everyone nominated everyone again. Tatiana received the most nominations and there was a tie between Bernardina, Carlos and Rúben. After the tiebreaker, Carlos and Rúben joined Tatiana and are the last nominees. There were also a voting to save two of the nominees (Carlos, Diogo, Luís, Rúben, Tiago and Tatiana). Diogo and Carlos were saved and the Week 5's nominees are Luís, Rúben, Tiago and Tatiana. The public vote is to save.\n : The nominations were done face-to-face. For the first round, the members of Team Teresa nominated the members of Team Voz. Tatiana received the most nominations and is the first nominee. For the second round, the members of Team Voz nominated the members of Team Teresa. António received the most nominations and is the second nominee. For the third round, everyone nominated the members of Team Voz. Juliana received the most nominations and is the third nominee. For the fourth round, everyone nominated the members of Team Teresa. There was a tie between Carlos, Luís Tiago. In a tiebreaker, Tiago received the most nominations and is the fourth nominee.\n : The first round of this nominations was done in the Diary Room and everyone nominated one male and one female (names in bold). António and Bernardina received the most nominations and are the first nominees. The second round of this nominations was done face-to-face and everyone nominated one male and one female. Tiago and Liliana A. received the most nominations and are the last nominees.\n : The first round of this nominations was done in the Diary Room and everyone nominated one male and one female (names in bold). Tatiana received the most nominations and Carlos was nominated in a tiebreaker (between Luís), and they are the first nominees. The second round of this nominations was done face-to-face and everyone nominated one male. Daniel received the most nominations and is the last nominee.\n : Agnes was immune and exempt to nominate as she became a contestant on Day 59.\n : The first round of this nominations was done in the Diary Room and everyone nominated one male. Luís received the most nominations and is the first nominee. The second round of this nominations was done face-to-face and everyone nominated one male. Tiago received the most nominations and is the second nominee. The third round of this nominations was also done face-to-face and everyone saved one male non-nominated: Daniel or Carlos (names in bold). Carlos received the fewest votes and is the third nominee.\n : On Day 64, \"A Voz\" gave a dilemma to Bernardina: to win immunity she had to eject the guest Angélica. She decided to eject Angélica and be immune.\n : On Day 64, \"A Voz\" gave a dilemma to Daniel and Liliana A.: they had to decide which of them will be automatically nominated. Daniel decided to be nominated.\n : This nominations were done in the Diary Room and everyone nominated two contestants. Agnes, Luís and Tiago received the most nominations and are the nominees with Daniel.\n : On Day 71, Daniel received a pass to the final as he won a game.\n : Everyone is automatically nominated exempt Daniel, who won a pass to the finale.\n : The public voted for who they wanted to win.\n\nNominations total received\n\nNominations: Results\n\nTeam of the farm\n\nTwists\n\nLeaders \nLike last season, some guests entered the farm to take the place of leader and boss, instructing the contestants on their daily works.\n\nFinal Prize \nThe final prize for the winner is €20,000, the same value of the A Quinta. However, if contestants disregard the rules, a certain amount will be removed from the final prize, or else, go up if the teams win challenges and show work hard. On Day 57, it was announced that the runner-up and the third place will received €5,000 divided in different values.\n\nHouseguests\n\nWeekly Tasks\n\nWeekly the contestants did tasks and in the final of each week, the contestants voted in the best and worst workers. In week 7, the best worker did not do a task and the worst did two tasks. The tasks are divided in four categories: , , and .\nColor Key\n Clean and wash the dishes\n Cut wood\n Prepare the three meals\n Clean the WC, bedroom and kitchen\n Pedaling for bathing\n Wash the clothes of everyone\n Clean coops and rabbit hutches\n Drop and save the animals\n Take eggs and change the straw nests\n Brushing animals\n Clean the barn and stable\n Clean the pigsty\n Milk the cow\n\nRatings and Reception\n\nLive Eviction Shows \nA Quinta: O Desafio: Viewers per episode\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website \n Fan website, Blue Blog \n\nTelevision series by Endemol\nThe Farm (franchise)\n2016 Portuguese television seasons"
] |
[
"Ryuichi Sakamoto",
"Awards and nominations",
"What are some awards and nominations that Sakamoto got?",
"Academy Award for Best Original Score, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture,",
"Is that mostly all of the rewards and nominations that he received?",
"His score for The Sheltering Sky (1990) later won him his second Golden Globe Award, and his score for Little Buddha (1993) received another Grammy Award nomination. In 1997,"
] | C_f31584c976864aaab040f1423f64eb66_0 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 3 | Besides winning a Grammy for Little Buddha, are there any other interesting aspects about Ryuichi Sakamoto? | Ryuichi Sakamoto | Sakamoto has won a number of awards for his work as a film composer, beginning with his score for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) winning him the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music. His greatest award success was for scoring The Last Emperor (1987), which won him the Academy Award for Best Original Score, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media, as well as a BAFTA nomination. His score for The Sheltering Sky (1990) later won him his second Golden Globe Award, and his score for Little Buddha (1993) received another Grammy Award nomination. In 1997, his collaboration with Toshio Iwai, Music Plays Images X Images Play Music, was awarded the Golden Nica, the grand prize of the Prix Ars Electronica competition. He also contributed to the Academy Award winning soundtrack for Babel (2006) with several pieces of music, including the "Bibo no Aozora" closing theme. In 2009, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France's Ministry of Culture for his musical contributions. His score for The Revenant (2015) has been nominated for the Golden Globe and BAFTA, and won Best Musical Score from the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association. The music video for "Risky", written and directed by Meiert Avis, also won the first ever MTV "Breakthrough Video Award". The ground breaking video explores transhumanist philosopher FM-2030's (Persian: frydwn sfndyry) ideas of "Nostalgia for the Future", in the form of an imagined love affair between a robot and one of Man Ray's models in Paris in the late 1930s. Additional inspiration was drawn from Jean Baudrillard, Edvard Munch's 1894 painting "Puberty", and Roland Barthes "Death of the Author". The surrealist black and white video uses stop motion, light painting, and other retro in-camera effects techniques. Meiert Avis shot Sakamoto while at work on the score for "The Last Emperor" in London. Sakamoto also appears in the video painting words and messages to an open shutter camera. Iggy Pop, who performs the vocals on "Risky", chose not to appear in the video, allowing his performance space to be occupied by the surrealist era robot. Sakamoto won the Golden Pine Award (Lifetime Achievement) at the 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival, along with Clint Eastwood and Gerald Fried. CANNOTANSWER | Sakamoto won the Golden Pine Award (Lifetime Achievement) at the 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival, along with Clint Eastwood and Gerald Fried. | is a Japanese composer, pianist, singer, record producer and actor who has pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto influenced and pioneered a number of electronic music genres.
Sakamoto began his career while at university in the 1970s as a session musician, producer, and arranger. His first major success came in 1978 as co-founder of YMO. He concurrently pursued a solo career, releasing the experimental electronic fusion album Thousand Knives in 1978. Two years later, he released the album B-2 Unit. It included the track "Riot in Lagos", which was significant in the development of electro and hip hop music. He went on to produce more solo records, and collaborate with many international artists, David Sylvian, Carsten Nicolai, Youssou N'Dour, and Fennesz among them. Sakamoto composed music for the opening ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and his composition "Energy Flow" (1999) was the first instrumental number-one single in Japan's Oricon charts history.
As a film-score composer, Sakamoto has won an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Grammy, and 2 Golden Globe Awards. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) marked his debut as both an actor and a film-score composer; its main theme was adapted into the single "Forbidden Colours" which became an international hit. His most successful work as a film composer was The Last Emperor (1987), after which he continued earning accolades composing for films such as The Sheltering Sky (1990), Little Buddha (1993), and The Revenant (2015). On occasion, Sakamoto has also worked as a composer and a scenario writer on anime and video games. In 2009, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the Ministry of Culture of France for his contributions to music.
Career
1970s
Sakamoto entered the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1970, earning a B.A. in music composition and an M.A. with special emphasis on both electronic and ethnic music. He studied ethnomusicology there with the intention of becoming a researcher in the field, due to his interest in various world music traditions, particularly the Japanese (especially Okinawan), Indian and African musical traditions. He was also trained in classical music and began experimenting with the electronic music equipment available at the university, including synthesizers such as the Buchla, Moog, and ARP. One of Sakamoto's classical influences was Claude Debussy, who he described as his "hero" and stated that "Asian music heavily influenced Debussy, and Debussy heavily influenced me. So, the music goes around the world and comes full circle."
In 1975, Sakamoto collaborated with percussionist Tsuchitori Toshiyuki to release Disappointment-Hateruma. After working as a session musician with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi in 1977, the trio formed the internationally successful electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) in 1978. Known for their seminal influence on electronic music, the group helped pioneer electronic genres such as electropop/technopop, synthpop, cyberpunk music, ambient house, and electronica. The group's work has had a lasting influence across genres, ranging from hip hop and techno to acid house and general melodic music. Sakamoto was the songwriter and composer for a number of the band's hit songs—including "Yellow Magic (Tong Poo)" (1978), "Technopolis" (1979), "Nice Age" (1980), "Ongaku" (1983) and "You've Got to Help Yourself" (1983)—while playing keyboards for many of their other songs, including international hits such as "Computer Game/Firecracker" (1978) and "Rydeen" (1979). He also sang on several songs, such as "Kimi ni Mune Kyun" (1983). Sakamoto's composition "Technopolis" (1979) was credited as a contribution to the development of techno music, while the internationally successful "Behind the Mask" (1978)—a synthpop song in which he sang vocals through a vocoder—was later covered by a number of international artists, including Michael Jackson and Eric Clapton.
Sakamoto released his first solo album Thousand Knives of Ryūichi Sakamoto in mid-1978 with the help of Hideki Matsutake—Hosono also contributed to the song "Thousand Knives". The album experimented with different styles, such as "Thousand Knives" and "The End of Asia"—in which electronic music was fused with traditional Japanese music—while "Grasshoppers" is a more minimalistic piano song. The album was recorded from April to July 1978 with a variety of electronic musical instruments, including various synthesizers, such as the KORG PS-3100, a polyphonic synthesizer; the Oberheim Eight-Voice; the Moog III-C; the Polymoog, the Minimoog; the Micromoog; the Korg VC-10, which is a vocoder; the KORG SQ-10, which is an analog sequencer; the Syn-Drums, an electronic drum kit; and the microprocessor-based Roland MC-8 Microcomposer, which is a music sequencer that was programmed by Matsutake and played by Sakamoto. A version of the song "Thousand Knives" was released on the Yellow Magic Orchestra's 1981 album BGM. This version was one of the earliest uses of the Roland TR-808 drum machine, for YMO's live performance of "1000 Knives" in 1980 and their BGM album release in 1981.
1980s
In 1980, Sakamoto released the solo album B-2 Unit, which has been referred to as his "edgiest" record and is known for the electronic song "Riot in Lagos", which is considered an early example of electro music (electro-funk), as Sakamoto anticipated the beats and sounds of electro. Early electro and hip hop artists, such as Afrika Bambaata and Kurtis Mantronik, were influenced by the album—especially "Riot in Lagos"—with Mantronik citing the work as a major influence on his electro hip hop group Mantronix. "Riot in Lagos" was later included in Playgroup's compilation album Kings of Electro (2007), alongside other significant electro compositions, such as Hashim's "Al-Naafyish" (1983).
According to Dusted Magazine, Sakamoto's use of squelching bounce sounds and mechanical beats was later incorporated in early electro and hip hop music productions, such as “Message II (Survival)” (1982), by Melle Mel and Duke Bootee; “Magic's Wand” (1982), by Whodini and Thomas Dolby; Twilight 22's “Electric Kingdom” (1983); and Kurt Mantronik's Mantronix: The Album (1985). The 1980 release of "Riot in Lagos" was listed by The Guardian in 2011 as one of the 50 key events in the history of dance music.
Among other tracks on B-2 Unit, "Differencia" has, according to Fact, "relentless tumbling beats and a stabbing bass synth that foreshadows jungle by nearly a decade". Some tracks on the album also foreshadow genres such as IDM, broken beat, and industrial techno, and the work of producers such as Actress and Oneohtrix Point Never. For several tracks on the album, Sakamoto worked with UK reggae producer Dennis Bovell, incorporating elements of afrobeat and dub music.
Also in 1980, Sakamoto released the single "War Head/Lexington Queen", an experimental synthpop and electro record, and began a long-standing collaboration with David Sylvian, when he co-wrote and performed on the Japan track "Taking Islands In Africa". In the following year, Sakamoto collaborated with Talking Heads and King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew and Robin Scott for an album titled Left-Handed Dream. Following Japan's dissolution, Sakamoto worked on another collaboration with Sylvian, a single entitled "Bamboo Houses/Bamboo Music" in 1982. Sakamoto's 1980 collaboration with Kiyoshiro Imawano, "Ikenai Rouge Magic", topped the Oricon singles chart.
In 1983, Sakamoto starred alongside David Bowie in director Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence. In addition to acting in the film, Sakamoto also composed the film's musical score and again collaborated with Sylvian on the film's main theme ("Forbidden Colours") – which became a minor hit. In a 2016 interview, Sakamoto reflected on his time acting in the film, claiming that he "hung out" with Bowie every evening for a month while filming on location. He remembered Bowie as "straightforward" and "nice", while also lamenting the fact that he never mustered the courage to ask for Bowie's help while scoring the film's soundtrack as he believed Bowie was too "concentrated on acting".
Sakamoto released a number of solo albums during the 1980s. While primarily focused on the piano and synthesizer, this series of albums included collaborations with artists such as Sylvian, David Byrne, Thomas Dolby, Nam June Paik, and Iggy Pop. Sakamoto would alternated between exploring a variety of musical styles and focusing on a specific subject or theme, such as the Italian Futurism movement.
As his solo career began to extend outside Japan in the late 1980s, Sakamoto's explorations, influences and collaborators also developed further. Beauty (1989) features a track list that combines pop with traditional Japanese and Okinawan songs, as well as guest appearances by Jill Jones, Robert Wyatt, Brian Wilson and Robbie Robertson. Heartbeat (1991) and Sweet Revenge (1994) features Sakamoto's collaborations with a global range of artists such as Roddy Frame, Dee Dee Brave, Marco Prince, Arto Lindsay, Youssou N'Dour, David Sylvian and Ingrid Chavez.
1990s
In 1995 Sakamoto released Smoochy, described by the Sound On Sound website as Sakamoto's "excursion into the land of easy-listening and Latin", followed by the 1996 album, which featured a number of previously released pieces arranged for solo piano, violin and cello. During December 1996 Sakamoto, composed the entirety of an hour-long orchestral work entitled "Untitled 01" and released as the album Discord (1998). The Sony Classical release of Discord was sold in a jewel case that was covered by a blue-colored slipcase made of foil, while the CD also contained a data video track. In 1998 the Ninja Tune record label released the Prayer/Salvation Remixes, for which prominent electronica artists such as Ashley Beedle and Andrea Parker remixed sections from the "Prayer" and "Salvation" parts of Discord. Sakamoto collaborated primarily with guitarist David Torn and DJ Spooky—artist Laurie Anderson provides spoken word on the composition—and the recording was condensed from nine live performances of the work, recorded during a Japanese tour. Discord was divided into four parts: "Grief", "Anger", "Prayer" and "Salvation"; Sakamoto explained in 1998 that he was "not religious, but maybe spiritual" and "The Prayer is to anybody or anything you want to name." Sakamoto further explained:
In 1998, Italian ethnomusicologist Massimo Milano published Ryuichi Sakamoto. Conversazioni through the Padova, Arcana imprint. All three editions of the book were published in the Italian language. Sakamoto's next album, BTTB (1998)—an acronym for "Back to the Basics"—was a fairly opaque reaction to the prior year's multilayered, lushly orchestrated Discord. The album comprised a series of original pieces on solo piano, including "Energy Flow" (a major hit in Japan) and a frenetic, four-hand arrangement of the Yellow Magic Orchestra classic "Tong Poo". On the BTTB U.S. tour, he opened the show performing a brief avant-garde DJ set under the stage name DJ Lovegroove.
Sakamoto's long-awaited "opera" LIFE was released in 1999, with visual direction by Shiro Takatani, artistic director of Dumb Type. It premiered with seven sold-out performances in Tokyo and Osaka. This ambitious multi-genre multi-media project featured contributions by over 100 performers, including Pina Bausch, Bernardo Bertolucci, Josep Carreras, the Dalai Lama and Salman Rushdie.
2000s
Sakamoto teamed with cellist Jaques Morelenbaum (a member of his 1996 trio), and Morelenbaum's wife, Paula, on a pair of albums celebrating the work of bossa nova pioneer Antonio Carlos Jobim. They recorded their first album, Casa (2001), mostly in Jobim's home studio in Rio de Janeiro, with Sakamoto performing on the late Jobim's grand piano. The album was well received, having been included in the list of The New York Timess top albums of 2002. A live album, Live in Tokyo, and a second album, A Day in New York, soon followed. Sakamoto and the Morelenbaums would also collaborate on N.M.L. No More Landmine, an international effort to raise awareness for the removal of landmines. The trio would release the single "Zero Landmine", which also featured David Sylvian, Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Cyndi Lauper, and Haruomi Hosono & Yukihiro Takahashi, the other two founding members of Yellow Magic Orchestra, amongst nearly one hundred other performers.
Sakamoto collaborated with Alva Noto (an alias of Carsten Nicolai) to release Vrioon, an album of Sakamoto's piano clusters treated by Nicolai's unique style of digital manipulation, involving the creation of "micro-loops" and minimal percussion. The two produced this work by passing the pieces back and forth until both were satisfied with the result. This debut, released on German label Raster-Noton, was voted record of the year 2004 in the electronica category by British magazine The Wire. They then released Insen (2005)—while produced in a similar manner to Vrioon, this album is somewhat more restrained and minimalist. They keep on collaborating and have released two more albums: utp_ (2008) and Summvs (2011).
In 2005, Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia hired Sakamoto to compose ring and alert tones for their high-end phone, the Nokia 8800. In 2006, Nokia offered the ringtones for free on their website. Around this time, a reunion with YMO cofounders Hosono and Takahashi caused a stir in the Japanese press. They released a single "Rescue" in 2007 and a DVD "HAS/YMO" in 2008. In July 2009, Sakamoto was honored as Officier of Ordre des Arts et des Lettres at the French embassy in Tokyo.
2010s–present
Throughout the latter part of the 2000s, Sakamoto collaborated on several projects with visual artist Shiro Takatani, including the installations LIFE - fluid, invisible, inaudible... (2007–2013), commissioned by YCAM, Yamaguchi, collapsed and silence spins at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo in 2012 and 2013 Sharjah Biennial (U.A.E.), LIFE-WELL in 2013 and a special version for Park Hyatt Tokyo's 20th anniversary in 2014, and he did music for the joint performance LIFE-WELL featuring the actor Noh/Kyogen Mansai Nomura, and for Shiro Takatani's performance ST/LL in 2015.
In 2013, Sakamoto was a jury member at the 70th Venice International Film Festival. The jury viewed 20 films and was chaired by filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci.
In 2014, Sakamoto became the first Guest Artistic Director of The Sapporo International Art Festival 2014 (SIAF2014).
On July 10, Sakamoto released a statement indicating that he had been diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer in late June of the same year. He announced a break from his work while he sought treatment and recovery. On August 3, 2015, Sakamoto posted on his website that he was "in great shape ... I am thinking about returning to work" and announced that he would be providing music for Yoji Yamada's Haha to Kuraseba (Living with My Mother). In 2015, Sakamoto also composed the score for the Alejandro González Iñárritu's film, The Revenant, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination.
In January 2017 it was announced that Sakamoto would release a solo album in April 2017 through Milan Records; the new album, titled async, was released on March 29, 2017 to critical acclaim. In February 2018, he was selected to be on the jury for the main competition section of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival.
On June 14, 2018, a documentary about the life and work of Sakamoto, entitled Coda, was released. The film follows Sakamoto as he recovers from cancer and resumes creating music, protests nuclear power plants following the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster, and creates field recordings in a variety of locales. Directed by Stephen Nomura Schible, the documentary was met with critical praise.
Production work
Sakamoto's production credits represent a prolific career in this role. In 1983, he produced Mari Iijima's debut album Rosé, the same year that the Yellow Magic Orchestra was disbanded. Sakamoto subsequently worked with artists such as Thomas Dolby; Aztec Camera, on the Dreamland (1993) album; and Imai Miki, co-producing her 1994 album A Place In The Sun. In 1996, Sakamoto produced "Mind Circus", the first single from actress Miki Nakatani, leading to a collaboration period spanning 9 singles and 7 albums though 2001.
Roddy Frame, who worked with Sakamoto as a member of Aztec Camera, explained in a 1993 interview preceding the release of Dreamland that he had had to wait a lengthy period of time before he was able to work with Sakamoto, who wrote two soundtracks, a solo album and the music for the opening ceremony at the Barcelona Olympics, prior to working with Frame over four weeks in a New York studio. Frame said that he was impressed by the work of YMO and the Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence soundtrack, explaining: "That's where you realise that the atmosphere around his compositions is actually in the writing - it's got nothing to do with synthesisers." Frame's decision to ask Sakamoto was finalized after he saw his performance at the Japan Festival that was held in London, United Kingdom. Of his experience recording with Sakamoto, Frame said:
Film work
Sakamoto began working in films, as a composer and actor, in Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), for which he composed the score, title theme, and the duet "Forbidden Colours" with David Sylvian. Sakamoto later composed Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987), which earned him the Academy Award with fellow composers David Byrne and Cong Su. In that same year, he composed the score to the cult-classic anime film Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise. Sakamoto also went on to compose the score of the opening ceremony for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, telecast live to an audience of over a billion viewers.
Other films scored by Sakamoto include Pedro Almodóvar's Tacones lejanos (High Heels) (1991); Bertolucci's The Little Buddha (1993); Oliver Stone's Wild Palms (1993); John Maybury's Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998); Brian De Palma's Snake Eyes (1998) and Femme Fatale (2002); Oshima's Gohatto (1999); and Jun Ichikawa's (director of the Mitsui ReHouse commercial from 1997 to 1999 starring Chizuru Ikewaki and Mao Inoue) Tony Takitani (2005).
Several tracks from Sakamoto's earlier solo albums have also appeared in film soundtracks. In particular, variations of "Chinsagu No Hana" (from Beauty) and "Bibo No Aozora" (from 1996) provide the poignant closing pieces for Sue Brooks's Japanese Story (2003) and Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel (2006), respectively. In 2015, Sakamoto teamed up with Iñárritu to score his film, The Revenant starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy.
Sakamoto has also acted in several films: perhaps his most notable performance was as the conflicted Captain Yonoi in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, alongside Takeshi Kitano and British rock singer David Bowie. He also played roles in The Last Emperor (as Masahiko Amakasu) and Madonna's "Rain" music video.
Personal life
Sakamoto's first of three marriages occurred in 1972, but ended in divorce two years later—Sakamoto has a daughter from this relationship. Sakamoto then married popular Japanese pianist and singer Akiko Yano in 1982, following several musical collaborations with her, including touring work with the Yellow Magic Orchestra. Sakamoto's second marriage ended in August 2006, 14 years after a mutual decision to live separately—Yano and Sakamoto raised one daughter, J-pop singer Miu Sakamoto. He has lived with his manager and wife Norika Sora since around 1990 and has two children with her.
Beginning in June 2014, Sakamoto took a year-long hiatus after he was diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer. In 2015, he returned, stating: "Right now I'm good. I feel better. Much, much better. I feel energy inside, but you never know. The cancer might come back in three years, five years, maybe 10 years. Also the radiation makes your immune system really low. It means I'm very susceptible to another cancer in my body."
On January 21, 2021, Sakamoto shared a link on his official pages, which contained a letter announcing that though his throat cancer went into remission, he was now diagnosed with rectal cancer, and that he's currently undergoing treatment after a successful surgery. He wrote: "From now on, I will be living alongside cancer. But, I am hoping to make music for a little while longer."
Activism
Sakamoto is a member of the anti-nuclear organization Stop Rokkasho and has demanded the closing of the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant. In 2012, he organized the No Nukes 2012 concert, which featured performances by 18 groups, including Yellow Magic Orchestra and Kraftwerk. Sakamoto is also known as a critic of copyright law, arguing in 2009 that it is antiquated in the information age. He argued that in "the last 100 years, only a few organizations have dominated the music world and ripped off both fans and creators" and that "with the internet we are going back to having tribal attitudes towards music."
In 2015 Sakamoto also supported opposition to the relocation of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in the Oura bay in Henoko, with a new and Okinawan version of his 2004 single "Undercooled" whose sales partially contributed to the "Henoko Fund", aimed to stop the relocation of the base on Okinawa.
Commmons
In 2006 Sakamoto, in collaboration with Japanese music company Avex Group, founded , a record label seeking to change the manner in which music is produced. Sakamoto has explained that Commmons is not his label, but is a platform for all aspiring artists to join as equal collaborators to share the benefits of the music industry. On the initiative's "About" page, the label is described as a project that "aims to find new possibilities for music, while making meaningful contribution to culture and society". The name "Commmons" is spelt with three "m"s because the third "m" stands for music.
Awards and nominations
Sakamoto has won a number of awards for his work as a film composer, beginning winning the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music with his score for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983). His greatest award success was for scoring The Last Emperor (1987), which won him the Academy Award for Best Original Score, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media, as well as a BAFTA nomination.
His score for The Sheltering Sky (1990) won him his second Golden Globe Award, and his score for Little Buddha (1993) received another Grammy Award nomination. In 1997, his collaboration with Toshio Iwai, Music Plays Images X Images Play Music, was awarded the Golden Nica, the grand prize of the Prix Ars Electronica competition. He also contributed to the Academy Award winning soundtrack for Babel (2006) with several pieces of music, including the closing theme "Bibo no Aozora". In 2009, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France's Ministry of Culture for his musical contributions. His score for The Revenant (2015) was nominated for the Golden Globe and BAFTA, and won Best Musical Score from the Dallas–Fort Worth Film Critics Association.
The music video for "Risky", written and directed by Meiert Avis, also won the first ever MTV "Breakthrough Video Award". The ground breaking video explores transhumanist philosopher FM-2030's (Persian: فریدون اسفندیاری) ideas of "Nostalgia for the Future", in the form of an imagined love affair between a robot and one of Man Ray's models in Paris in the late 1930s. Additional inspiration was drawn from Jean Baudrillard, Edvard Munch's 1894 painting "Puberty", and Roland Barthes "Death of the Author". The surrealist black and white video uses stop motion, light painting, and other retro in-camera effects techniques. Meiert Avis shot Sakamoto while at work on the score for "The Last Emperor" in London. Sakamoto also appears in the video painting words and messages to an open shutter camera. Iggy Pop, who performs the vocals on "Risky", chose not to appear in the video, allowing his performance space to be occupied by the surrealist era robot.
Sakamoto won the Golden Pine Award (Lifetime Achievement) at the 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival, along with Clint Eastwood and Gerald Fried.
Honorary awards
2009 – Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, from France's Ministry of Culture
2013 – Golden Pine Award (Lifetime Achievement), at 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival
Soundtrack awards
Academy Award for Best Original Score
1987 – The Last Emperor (won)
BAFTA Award for Best Film Music
1983 – Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (won)
1987 – The Last Emperor (nominated)
2015 – The Revenant (nominated)
Grand Bell Awards for Best Music
2018 – The Fortress (won)
Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score
1987 – The Last Emperor (won)
1990 – The Sheltering Sky (won)
1993 – Little Buddha (nominated)
2015 – The Revenant (nominated)
Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media
1987 – The Last Emperor (won)
2015 – The Revenant (nominated)
Other awards
1997 – Golden Nica, grand prize of Prix Ars Electronica, for Music Plays Images X Images Play Music
MTV Breakthrough Video Award, for music video of "Risky"
Discography
Solo studio albums
Thousand Knives (1978)
B-2 Unit (1980)
Left-Handed Dream (1981)
Ongaku Zukan (1984)
Esperanto (1985)
Futurista (1986)
Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia (1986)
Neo Geo (1987)
Beauty (1989)
Heartbeat (1991)
Sweet Revenge (1994)
Smoochy (1995)
1996 (1996)
Discord (1997)
BTTB (1999)
Comica (2002)
Elephantism (2002)
Chasm (2004)
Out of Noise (2009)
Playing the Piano (2009)
Three (2013)
async (2017)
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Commmons – Sakamoto's record label
Raster-Noton
1952 births
20th-century classical composers
20th-century classical pianists
20th-century Japanese composers
20th-century Japanese male musicians
21st-century classical composers
21st-century classical pianists
21st-century Japanese composers
21st-century Japanese male musicians
Anime composers
Avex Group artists
Avex Group people
Best Original Music BAFTA Award winners
Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners
Composers for piano
Golden Globe Award-winning musicians
Grammy Award winners
Intellectual property activism
Island Records artists
Japanese anti–nuclear power activists
Japanese classical composers
Japanese classical pianists
Japanese contemporary artists
Japanese contemporary classical composers
Japanese dance musicians
Japanese electro musicians
Japanese electronic musicians
Japanese film score composers
Japanese house musicians
Japanese keyboardists
Japanese male actors
Japanese male classical composers
Japanese male classical pianists
Japanese male film score composers
Japanese opera composers
Japanese record producers
Japanese techno musicians
Japanese trance musicians
Living people
Male opera composers
Musicians from Tokyo
New-age composers
New-age musicians
Progressivism in Japan
Samadhi Sound artists
Tokyo University of the Arts alumni
Video game composers
Virgin Records artists
Yellow Magic Orchestra members | true | [
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region",
"Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts"
] |
[
"Ryuichi Sakamoto",
"Awards and nominations",
"What are some awards and nominations that Sakamoto got?",
"Academy Award for Best Original Score, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture,",
"Is that mostly all of the rewards and nominations that he received?",
"His score for The Sheltering Sky (1990) later won him his second Golden Globe Award, and his score for Little Buddha (1993) received another Grammy Award nomination. In 1997,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Sakamoto won the Golden Pine Award (Lifetime Achievement) at the 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival, along with Clint Eastwood and Gerald Fried."
] | C_f31584c976864aaab040f1423f64eb66_0 | Was he well liked by many people? | 4 | Was Ryuichi Sakamoto well liked by many people? | Ryuichi Sakamoto | Sakamoto has won a number of awards for his work as a film composer, beginning with his score for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) winning him the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music. His greatest award success was for scoring The Last Emperor (1987), which won him the Academy Award for Best Original Score, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media, as well as a BAFTA nomination. His score for The Sheltering Sky (1990) later won him his second Golden Globe Award, and his score for Little Buddha (1993) received another Grammy Award nomination. In 1997, his collaboration with Toshio Iwai, Music Plays Images X Images Play Music, was awarded the Golden Nica, the grand prize of the Prix Ars Electronica competition. He also contributed to the Academy Award winning soundtrack for Babel (2006) with several pieces of music, including the "Bibo no Aozora" closing theme. In 2009, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France's Ministry of Culture for his musical contributions. His score for The Revenant (2015) has been nominated for the Golden Globe and BAFTA, and won Best Musical Score from the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association. The music video for "Risky", written and directed by Meiert Avis, also won the first ever MTV "Breakthrough Video Award". The ground breaking video explores transhumanist philosopher FM-2030's (Persian: frydwn sfndyry) ideas of "Nostalgia for the Future", in the form of an imagined love affair between a robot and one of Man Ray's models in Paris in the late 1930s. Additional inspiration was drawn from Jean Baudrillard, Edvard Munch's 1894 painting "Puberty", and Roland Barthes "Death of the Author". The surrealist black and white video uses stop motion, light painting, and other retro in-camera effects techniques. Meiert Avis shot Sakamoto while at work on the score for "The Last Emperor" in London. Sakamoto also appears in the video painting words and messages to an open shutter camera. Iggy Pop, who performs the vocals on "Risky", chose not to appear in the video, allowing his performance space to be occupied by the surrealist era robot. Sakamoto won the Golden Pine Award (Lifetime Achievement) at the 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival, along with Clint Eastwood and Gerald Fried. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | is a Japanese composer, pianist, singer, record producer and actor who has pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto influenced and pioneered a number of electronic music genres.
Sakamoto began his career while at university in the 1970s as a session musician, producer, and arranger. His first major success came in 1978 as co-founder of YMO. He concurrently pursued a solo career, releasing the experimental electronic fusion album Thousand Knives in 1978. Two years later, he released the album B-2 Unit. It included the track "Riot in Lagos", which was significant in the development of electro and hip hop music. He went on to produce more solo records, and collaborate with many international artists, David Sylvian, Carsten Nicolai, Youssou N'Dour, and Fennesz among them. Sakamoto composed music for the opening ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and his composition "Energy Flow" (1999) was the first instrumental number-one single in Japan's Oricon charts history.
As a film-score composer, Sakamoto has won an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Grammy, and 2 Golden Globe Awards. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) marked his debut as both an actor and a film-score composer; its main theme was adapted into the single "Forbidden Colours" which became an international hit. His most successful work as a film composer was The Last Emperor (1987), after which he continued earning accolades composing for films such as The Sheltering Sky (1990), Little Buddha (1993), and The Revenant (2015). On occasion, Sakamoto has also worked as a composer and a scenario writer on anime and video games. In 2009, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the Ministry of Culture of France for his contributions to music.
Career
1970s
Sakamoto entered the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1970, earning a B.A. in music composition and an M.A. with special emphasis on both electronic and ethnic music. He studied ethnomusicology there with the intention of becoming a researcher in the field, due to his interest in various world music traditions, particularly the Japanese (especially Okinawan), Indian and African musical traditions. He was also trained in classical music and began experimenting with the electronic music equipment available at the university, including synthesizers such as the Buchla, Moog, and ARP. One of Sakamoto's classical influences was Claude Debussy, who he described as his "hero" and stated that "Asian music heavily influenced Debussy, and Debussy heavily influenced me. So, the music goes around the world and comes full circle."
In 1975, Sakamoto collaborated with percussionist Tsuchitori Toshiyuki to release Disappointment-Hateruma. After working as a session musician with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi in 1977, the trio formed the internationally successful electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) in 1978. Known for their seminal influence on electronic music, the group helped pioneer electronic genres such as electropop/technopop, synthpop, cyberpunk music, ambient house, and electronica. The group's work has had a lasting influence across genres, ranging from hip hop and techno to acid house and general melodic music. Sakamoto was the songwriter and composer for a number of the band's hit songs—including "Yellow Magic (Tong Poo)" (1978), "Technopolis" (1979), "Nice Age" (1980), "Ongaku" (1983) and "You've Got to Help Yourself" (1983)—while playing keyboards for many of their other songs, including international hits such as "Computer Game/Firecracker" (1978) and "Rydeen" (1979). He also sang on several songs, such as "Kimi ni Mune Kyun" (1983). Sakamoto's composition "Technopolis" (1979) was credited as a contribution to the development of techno music, while the internationally successful "Behind the Mask" (1978)—a synthpop song in which he sang vocals through a vocoder—was later covered by a number of international artists, including Michael Jackson and Eric Clapton.
Sakamoto released his first solo album Thousand Knives of Ryūichi Sakamoto in mid-1978 with the help of Hideki Matsutake—Hosono also contributed to the song "Thousand Knives". The album experimented with different styles, such as "Thousand Knives" and "The End of Asia"—in which electronic music was fused with traditional Japanese music—while "Grasshoppers" is a more minimalistic piano song. The album was recorded from April to July 1978 with a variety of electronic musical instruments, including various synthesizers, such as the KORG PS-3100, a polyphonic synthesizer; the Oberheim Eight-Voice; the Moog III-C; the Polymoog, the Minimoog; the Micromoog; the Korg VC-10, which is a vocoder; the KORG SQ-10, which is an analog sequencer; the Syn-Drums, an electronic drum kit; and the microprocessor-based Roland MC-8 Microcomposer, which is a music sequencer that was programmed by Matsutake and played by Sakamoto. A version of the song "Thousand Knives" was released on the Yellow Magic Orchestra's 1981 album BGM. This version was one of the earliest uses of the Roland TR-808 drum machine, for YMO's live performance of "1000 Knives" in 1980 and their BGM album release in 1981.
1980s
In 1980, Sakamoto released the solo album B-2 Unit, which has been referred to as his "edgiest" record and is known for the electronic song "Riot in Lagos", which is considered an early example of electro music (electro-funk), as Sakamoto anticipated the beats and sounds of electro. Early electro and hip hop artists, such as Afrika Bambaata and Kurtis Mantronik, were influenced by the album—especially "Riot in Lagos"—with Mantronik citing the work as a major influence on his electro hip hop group Mantronix. "Riot in Lagos" was later included in Playgroup's compilation album Kings of Electro (2007), alongside other significant electro compositions, such as Hashim's "Al-Naafyish" (1983).
According to Dusted Magazine, Sakamoto's use of squelching bounce sounds and mechanical beats was later incorporated in early electro and hip hop music productions, such as “Message II (Survival)” (1982), by Melle Mel and Duke Bootee; “Magic's Wand” (1982), by Whodini and Thomas Dolby; Twilight 22's “Electric Kingdom” (1983); and Kurt Mantronik's Mantronix: The Album (1985). The 1980 release of "Riot in Lagos" was listed by The Guardian in 2011 as one of the 50 key events in the history of dance music.
Among other tracks on B-2 Unit, "Differencia" has, according to Fact, "relentless tumbling beats and a stabbing bass synth that foreshadows jungle by nearly a decade". Some tracks on the album also foreshadow genres such as IDM, broken beat, and industrial techno, and the work of producers such as Actress and Oneohtrix Point Never. For several tracks on the album, Sakamoto worked with UK reggae producer Dennis Bovell, incorporating elements of afrobeat and dub music.
Also in 1980, Sakamoto released the single "War Head/Lexington Queen", an experimental synthpop and electro record, and began a long-standing collaboration with David Sylvian, when he co-wrote and performed on the Japan track "Taking Islands In Africa". In the following year, Sakamoto collaborated with Talking Heads and King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew and Robin Scott for an album titled Left-Handed Dream. Following Japan's dissolution, Sakamoto worked on another collaboration with Sylvian, a single entitled "Bamboo Houses/Bamboo Music" in 1982. Sakamoto's 1980 collaboration with Kiyoshiro Imawano, "Ikenai Rouge Magic", topped the Oricon singles chart.
In 1983, Sakamoto starred alongside David Bowie in director Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence. In addition to acting in the film, Sakamoto also composed the film's musical score and again collaborated with Sylvian on the film's main theme ("Forbidden Colours") – which became a minor hit. In a 2016 interview, Sakamoto reflected on his time acting in the film, claiming that he "hung out" with Bowie every evening for a month while filming on location. He remembered Bowie as "straightforward" and "nice", while also lamenting the fact that he never mustered the courage to ask for Bowie's help while scoring the film's soundtrack as he believed Bowie was too "concentrated on acting".
Sakamoto released a number of solo albums during the 1980s. While primarily focused on the piano and synthesizer, this series of albums included collaborations with artists such as Sylvian, David Byrne, Thomas Dolby, Nam June Paik, and Iggy Pop. Sakamoto would alternated between exploring a variety of musical styles and focusing on a specific subject or theme, such as the Italian Futurism movement.
As his solo career began to extend outside Japan in the late 1980s, Sakamoto's explorations, influences and collaborators also developed further. Beauty (1989) features a track list that combines pop with traditional Japanese and Okinawan songs, as well as guest appearances by Jill Jones, Robert Wyatt, Brian Wilson and Robbie Robertson. Heartbeat (1991) and Sweet Revenge (1994) features Sakamoto's collaborations with a global range of artists such as Roddy Frame, Dee Dee Brave, Marco Prince, Arto Lindsay, Youssou N'Dour, David Sylvian and Ingrid Chavez.
1990s
In 1995 Sakamoto released Smoochy, described by the Sound On Sound website as Sakamoto's "excursion into the land of easy-listening and Latin", followed by the 1996 album, which featured a number of previously released pieces arranged for solo piano, violin and cello. During December 1996 Sakamoto, composed the entirety of an hour-long orchestral work entitled "Untitled 01" and released as the album Discord (1998). The Sony Classical release of Discord was sold in a jewel case that was covered by a blue-colored slipcase made of foil, while the CD also contained a data video track. In 1998 the Ninja Tune record label released the Prayer/Salvation Remixes, for which prominent electronica artists such as Ashley Beedle and Andrea Parker remixed sections from the "Prayer" and "Salvation" parts of Discord. Sakamoto collaborated primarily with guitarist David Torn and DJ Spooky—artist Laurie Anderson provides spoken word on the composition—and the recording was condensed from nine live performances of the work, recorded during a Japanese tour. Discord was divided into four parts: "Grief", "Anger", "Prayer" and "Salvation"; Sakamoto explained in 1998 that he was "not religious, but maybe spiritual" and "The Prayer is to anybody or anything you want to name." Sakamoto further explained:
In 1998, Italian ethnomusicologist Massimo Milano published Ryuichi Sakamoto. Conversazioni through the Padova, Arcana imprint. All three editions of the book were published in the Italian language. Sakamoto's next album, BTTB (1998)—an acronym for "Back to the Basics"—was a fairly opaque reaction to the prior year's multilayered, lushly orchestrated Discord. The album comprised a series of original pieces on solo piano, including "Energy Flow" (a major hit in Japan) and a frenetic, four-hand arrangement of the Yellow Magic Orchestra classic "Tong Poo". On the BTTB U.S. tour, he opened the show performing a brief avant-garde DJ set under the stage name DJ Lovegroove.
Sakamoto's long-awaited "opera" LIFE was released in 1999, with visual direction by Shiro Takatani, artistic director of Dumb Type. It premiered with seven sold-out performances in Tokyo and Osaka. This ambitious multi-genre multi-media project featured contributions by over 100 performers, including Pina Bausch, Bernardo Bertolucci, Josep Carreras, the Dalai Lama and Salman Rushdie.
2000s
Sakamoto teamed with cellist Jaques Morelenbaum (a member of his 1996 trio), and Morelenbaum's wife, Paula, on a pair of albums celebrating the work of bossa nova pioneer Antonio Carlos Jobim. They recorded their first album, Casa (2001), mostly in Jobim's home studio in Rio de Janeiro, with Sakamoto performing on the late Jobim's grand piano. The album was well received, having been included in the list of The New York Timess top albums of 2002. A live album, Live in Tokyo, and a second album, A Day in New York, soon followed. Sakamoto and the Morelenbaums would also collaborate on N.M.L. No More Landmine, an international effort to raise awareness for the removal of landmines. The trio would release the single "Zero Landmine", which also featured David Sylvian, Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Cyndi Lauper, and Haruomi Hosono & Yukihiro Takahashi, the other two founding members of Yellow Magic Orchestra, amongst nearly one hundred other performers.
Sakamoto collaborated with Alva Noto (an alias of Carsten Nicolai) to release Vrioon, an album of Sakamoto's piano clusters treated by Nicolai's unique style of digital manipulation, involving the creation of "micro-loops" and minimal percussion. The two produced this work by passing the pieces back and forth until both were satisfied with the result. This debut, released on German label Raster-Noton, was voted record of the year 2004 in the electronica category by British magazine The Wire. They then released Insen (2005)—while produced in a similar manner to Vrioon, this album is somewhat more restrained and minimalist. They keep on collaborating and have released two more albums: utp_ (2008) and Summvs (2011).
In 2005, Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia hired Sakamoto to compose ring and alert tones for their high-end phone, the Nokia 8800. In 2006, Nokia offered the ringtones for free on their website. Around this time, a reunion with YMO cofounders Hosono and Takahashi caused a stir in the Japanese press. They released a single "Rescue" in 2007 and a DVD "HAS/YMO" in 2008. In July 2009, Sakamoto was honored as Officier of Ordre des Arts et des Lettres at the French embassy in Tokyo.
2010s–present
Throughout the latter part of the 2000s, Sakamoto collaborated on several projects with visual artist Shiro Takatani, including the installations LIFE - fluid, invisible, inaudible... (2007–2013), commissioned by YCAM, Yamaguchi, collapsed and silence spins at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo in 2012 and 2013 Sharjah Biennial (U.A.E.), LIFE-WELL in 2013 and a special version for Park Hyatt Tokyo's 20th anniversary in 2014, and he did music for the joint performance LIFE-WELL featuring the actor Noh/Kyogen Mansai Nomura, and for Shiro Takatani's performance ST/LL in 2015.
In 2013, Sakamoto was a jury member at the 70th Venice International Film Festival. The jury viewed 20 films and was chaired by filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci.
In 2014, Sakamoto became the first Guest Artistic Director of The Sapporo International Art Festival 2014 (SIAF2014).
On July 10, Sakamoto released a statement indicating that he had been diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer in late June of the same year. He announced a break from his work while he sought treatment and recovery. On August 3, 2015, Sakamoto posted on his website that he was "in great shape ... I am thinking about returning to work" and announced that he would be providing music for Yoji Yamada's Haha to Kuraseba (Living with My Mother). In 2015, Sakamoto also composed the score for the Alejandro González Iñárritu's film, The Revenant, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination.
In January 2017 it was announced that Sakamoto would release a solo album in April 2017 through Milan Records; the new album, titled async, was released on March 29, 2017 to critical acclaim. In February 2018, he was selected to be on the jury for the main competition section of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival.
On June 14, 2018, a documentary about the life and work of Sakamoto, entitled Coda, was released. The film follows Sakamoto as he recovers from cancer and resumes creating music, protests nuclear power plants following the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster, and creates field recordings in a variety of locales. Directed by Stephen Nomura Schible, the documentary was met with critical praise.
Production work
Sakamoto's production credits represent a prolific career in this role. In 1983, he produced Mari Iijima's debut album Rosé, the same year that the Yellow Magic Orchestra was disbanded. Sakamoto subsequently worked with artists such as Thomas Dolby; Aztec Camera, on the Dreamland (1993) album; and Imai Miki, co-producing her 1994 album A Place In The Sun. In 1996, Sakamoto produced "Mind Circus", the first single from actress Miki Nakatani, leading to a collaboration period spanning 9 singles and 7 albums though 2001.
Roddy Frame, who worked with Sakamoto as a member of Aztec Camera, explained in a 1993 interview preceding the release of Dreamland that he had had to wait a lengthy period of time before he was able to work with Sakamoto, who wrote two soundtracks, a solo album and the music for the opening ceremony at the Barcelona Olympics, prior to working with Frame over four weeks in a New York studio. Frame said that he was impressed by the work of YMO and the Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence soundtrack, explaining: "That's where you realise that the atmosphere around his compositions is actually in the writing - it's got nothing to do with synthesisers." Frame's decision to ask Sakamoto was finalized after he saw his performance at the Japan Festival that was held in London, United Kingdom. Of his experience recording with Sakamoto, Frame said:
Film work
Sakamoto began working in films, as a composer and actor, in Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), for which he composed the score, title theme, and the duet "Forbidden Colours" with David Sylvian. Sakamoto later composed Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987), which earned him the Academy Award with fellow composers David Byrne and Cong Su. In that same year, he composed the score to the cult-classic anime film Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise. Sakamoto also went on to compose the score of the opening ceremony for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, telecast live to an audience of over a billion viewers.
Other films scored by Sakamoto include Pedro Almodóvar's Tacones lejanos (High Heels) (1991); Bertolucci's The Little Buddha (1993); Oliver Stone's Wild Palms (1993); John Maybury's Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998); Brian De Palma's Snake Eyes (1998) and Femme Fatale (2002); Oshima's Gohatto (1999); and Jun Ichikawa's (director of the Mitsui ReHouse commercial from 1997 to 1999 starring Chizuru Ikewaki and Mao Inoue) Tony Takitani (2005).
Several tracks from Sakamoto's earlier solo albums have also appeared in film soundtracks. In particular, variations of "Chinsagu No Hana" (from Beauty) and "Bibo No Aozora" (from 1996) provide the poignant closing pieces for Sue Brooks's Japanese Story (2003) and Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel (2006), respectively. In 2015, Sakamoto teamed up with Iñárritu to score his film, The Revenant starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy.
Sakamoto has also acted in several films: perhaps his most notable performance was as the conflicted Captain Yonoi in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, alongside Takeshi Kitano and British rock singer David Bowie. He also played roles in The Last Emperor (as Masahiko Amakasu) and Madonna's "Rain" music video.
Personal life
Sakamoto's first of three marriages occurred in 1972, but ended in divorce two years later—Sakamoto has a daughter from this relationship. Sakamoto then married popular Japanese pianist and singer Akiko Yano in 1982, following several musical collaborations with her, including touring work with the Yellow Magic Orchestra. Sakamoto's second marriage ended in August 2006, 14 years after a mutual decision to live separately—Yano and Sakamoto raised one daughter, J-pop singer Miu Sakamoto. He has lived with his manager and wife Norika Sora since around 1990 and has two children with her.
Beginning in June 2014, Sakamoto took a year-long hiatus after he was diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer. In 2015, he returned, stating: "Right now I'm good. I feel better. Much, much better. I feel energy inside, but you never know. The cancer might come back in three years, five years, maybe 10 years. Also the radiation makes your immune system really low. It means I'm very susceptible to another cancer in my body."
On January 21, 2021, Sakamoto shared a link on his official pages, which contained a letter announcing that though his throat cancer went into remission, he was now diagnosed with rectal cancer, and that he's currently undergoing treatment after a successful surgery. He wrote: "From now on, I will be living alongside cancer. But, I am hoping to make music for a little while longer."
Activism
Sakamoto is a member of the anti-nuclear organization Stop Rokkasho and has demanded the closing of the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant. In 2012, he organized the No Nukes 2012 concert, which featured performances by 18 groups, including Yellow Magic Orchestra and Kraftwerk. Sakamoto is also known as a critic of copyright law, arguing in 2009 that it is antiquated in the information age. He argued that in "the last 100 years, only a few organizations have dominated the music world and ripped off both fans and creators" and that "with the internet we are going back to having tribal attitudes towards music."
In 2015 Sakamoto also supported opposition to the relocation of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in the Oura bay in Henoko, with a new and Okinawan version of his 2004 single "Undercooled" whose sales partially contributed to the "Henoko Fund", aimed to stop the relocation of the base on Okinawa.
Commmons
In 2006 Sakamoto, in collaboration with Japanese music company Avex Group, founded , a record label seeking to change the manner in which music is produced. Sakamoto has explained that Commmons is not his label, but is a platform for all aspiring artists to join as equal collaborators to share the benefits of the music industry. On the initiative's "About" page, the label is described as a project that "aims to find new possibilities for music, while making meaningful contribution to culture and society". The name "Commmons" is spelt with three "m"s because the third "m" stands for music.
Awards and nominations
Sakamoto has won a number of awards for his work as a film composer, beginning winning the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music with his score for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983). His greatest award success was for scoring The Last Emperor (1987), which won him the Academy Award for Best Original Score, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media, as well as a BAFTA nomination.
His score for The Sheltering Sky (1990) won him his second Golden Globe Award, and his score for Little Buddha (1993) received another Grammy Award nomination. In 1997, his collaboration with Toshio Iwai, Music Plays Images X Images Play Music, was awarded the Golden Nica, the grand prize of the Prix Ars Electronica competition. He also contributed to the Academy Award winning soundtrack for Babel (2006) with several pieces of music, including the closing theme "Bibo no Aozora". In 2009, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France's Ministry of Culture for his musical contributions. His score for The Revenant (2015) was nominated for the Golden Globe and BAFTA, and won Best Musical Score from the Dallas–Fort Worth Film Critics Association.
The music video for "Risky", written and directed by Meiert Avis, also won the first ever MTV "Breakthrough Video Award". The ground breaking video explores transhumanist philosopher FM-2030's (Persian: فریدون اسفندیاری) ideas of "Nostalgia for the Future", in the form of an imagined love affair between a robot and one of Man Ray's models in Paris in the late 1930s. Additional inspiration was drawn from Jean Baudrillard, Edvard Munch's 1894 painting "Puberty", and Roland Barthes "Death of the Author". The surrealist black and white video uses stop motion, light painting, and other retro in-camera effects techniques. Meiert Avis shot Sakamoto while at work on the score for "The Last Emperor" in London. Sakamoto also appears in the video painting words and messages to an open shutter camera. Iggy Pop, who performs the vocals on "Risky", chose not to appear in the video, allowing his performance space to be occupied by the surrealist era robot.
Sakamoto won the Golden Pine Award (Lifetime Achievement) at the 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival, along with Clint Eastwood and Gerald Fried.
Honorary awards
2009 – Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, from France's Ministry of Culture
2013 – Golden Pine Award (Lifetime Achievement), at 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival
Soundtrack awards
Academy Award for Best Original Score
1987 – The Last Emperor (won)
BAFTA Award for Best Film Music
1983 – Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (won)
1987 – The Last Emperor (nominated)
2015 – The Revenant (nominated)
Grand Bell Awards for Best Music
2018 – The Fortress (won)
Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score
1987 – The Last Emperor (won)
1990 – The Sheltering Sky (won)
1993 – Little Buddha (nominated)
2015 – The Revenant (nominated)
Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media
1987 – The Last Emperor (won)
2015 – The Revenant (nominated)
Other awards
1997 – Golden Nica, grand prize of Prix Ars Electronica, for Music Plays Images X Images Play Music
MTV Breakthrough Video Award, for music video of "Risky"
Discography
Solo studio albums
Thousand Knives (1978)
B-2 Unit (1980)
Left-Handed Dream (1981)
Ongaku Zukan (1984)
Esperanto (1985)
Futurista (1986)
Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia (1986)
Neo Geo (1987)
Beauty (1989)
Heartbeat (1991)
Sweet Revenge (1994)
Smoochy (1995)
1996 (1996)
Discord (1997)
BTTB (1999)
Comica (2002)
Elephantism (2002)
Chasm (2004)
Out of Noise (2009)
Playing the Piano (2009)
Three (2013)
async (2017)
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Commmons – Sakamoto's record label
Raster-Noton
1952 births
20th-century classical composers
20th-century classical pianists
20th-century Japanese composers
20th-century Japanese male musicians
21st-century classical composers
21st-century classical pianists
21st-century Japanese composers
21st-century Japanese male musicians
Anime composers
Avex Group artists
Avex Group people
Best Original Music BAFTA Award winners
Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners
Composers for piano
Golden Globe Award-winning musicians
Grammy Award winners
Intellectual property activism
Island Records artists
Japanese anti–nuclear power activists
Japanese classical composers
Japanese classical pianists
Japanese contemporary artists
Japanese contemporary classical composers
Japanese dance musicians
Japanese electro musicians
Japanese electronic musicians
Japanese film score composers
Japanese house musicians
Japanese keyboardists
Japanese male actors
Japanese male classical composers
Japanese male classical pianists
Japanese male film score composers
Japanese opera composers
Japanese record producers
Japanese techno musicians
Japanese trance musicians
Living people
Male opera composers
Musicians from Tokyo
New-age composers
New-age musicians
Progressivism in Japan
Samadhi Sound artists
Tokyo University of the Arts alumni
Video game composers
Virgin Records artists
Yellow Magic Orchestra members | false | [
"Rameshwor Karki () is a cinematographer in a Nepali Film Industry. Nepali Film Industry is based in a Nepali language. Nepali movies are totally based in the country of Nepal. He started his career in Nepal by shooting television serial 'Syno kasto kasto',\"Sante ko sapnana\". Afnai Manlai Sodhi Hera was one of his first movies which was well liked by the spectators. Whereas his debut movie was 'Dulahee'. After this he got quite popularity in Nepal based Film Industry and shot many movies, music videos and television commercials.\n\nCarrier\n\nRameshwor Karki's first movie was \"Dulahee\" which was released in 2011. Before this movie he has already worked in many television serials and music videos. At first it was hard for him to struggle through the hardship and building public relation with in the Film Industry. But after release of his first movie his work was liked my many directors and producers in the industry.\n\nLater on he started to work in many big screen movies including \"Saurya\", \"Dulahee\"(Which was the blockbuster in box office.), \"Birashat\", \"A for America\" and his recent movies are \"Kaifiyat\", \"Sushree\", \"Alvida\" and \"Tin Ghumti\".\n\nKarki hasn't only worked in big screen movies but he worked in many Documentaries like \"Diyo\", \"Sapana\"- Nepal Police ( Women Sensitizition in Nepal Police ), \" Liberation\". He worked as cinematographer in many reputetd companies like Hyundai motors, IGT gas, Syenergy, AECC Global, etc.\n\nFilmography\n\nAwards\n\nReferences\n\n1980 births\nLiving people\nNepalese cinematographers",
"Hurley Burley (born 1895) was an American Thoroughbred race horse. Her breeder and owner was Edward Corrigan who raced out of the old Washington Park Race Track in Chicago, Illinois. In Corrigan's time, he was the most powerful man in Midwestern racing. Known as the \"stormy petrel\" of the American Turf, Corrigan was the subject of many articles about him (the Kansas City Times, the Courier-Journal, The Louisville Times, to name only a few), all attesting to his murderous temper as well as his loyalty to those he liked. Corrigan campaigned the great filly Modesty, winner of the 1884 Kentucky Oaks, as well as building Hawthorne Race Course near Chicago.\n\nHurley Burley was by Riley who had won the 1890 Kentucky Derby for Corrigan and was a son of the great stallion Longfellow. (Riley was originally called \"Shortfellow.\") Her dam was Helter Skelter, a good racing mare also running under the Corrigan colors.\n\nCorrigan raced Hurley Burley as a selling plater, meaning she competed only in claiming races. As a claimer, she could be bought by a trainer right out of the race. In about 1898, Corrigan claimed a horse the eventual Hall of Fame trainer Sam Hildreth was running. Miffed at the loss of a horse he liked, Lucky Dog, Hildreth retaliated by claiming Corrigan's Hurley Burley for $1,500. His claim wasn't merely to get back at Corrigan though; he'd seen something in the chestnut plater.\n\nUnder Hildreth's colors, Hurley Burley stepped up in class in the racing world. She won nine of her thirteen starts for him, set a Washington Park track record for six furlongs and also one for one mile and twenty yards.\n\nLew Fields and his theatrical partner Joe Weber liked the increasingly popular filly's name, so asked Hildreth if they could use it for a new musical. They liked the name of her dam, Helter Skelter, as well, so they used that too.\n\nWhen she retired from the track, Hildreth sold her for $10,000 to William Collins Whitney. As a broodmare, Hurley Burley was as good as she was a racehorse. Her best foal was the 1906 Belmont Stakes winner Burgomaster, by the Whitney-owned stallion Hamburg. He was also the American Horse of the Year in 1906.\n\nExternal links\nHurley Burley's pedigree\n\nReferences\n\n1895 racehorse births\nRacehorses bred in the United States\nRacehorses trained in the United States\nThoroughbred family 2-h"
] |
[
"Toots Thielemans",
"1960s-1970s"
] | C_e34099f5ebef414597c4e7b5a400b5ea_1 | What happened in the 1960's? | 1 | What happened in the 1960's? | Toots Thielemans | A jazz standard by Toots Thielemans is his own composition, "Bluesette," which he performed on harmonica or while playing the guitar and whistling in unison. He said, "If there's a piece of music that describes me, it's that song." First recorded by him in 1962, with lyrics added by Norman Gimbel, the song became a major worldwide hit. It has since been covered by over one hundred artists., Toots also wrote the beautiful ballad Lady Fingers which appeared on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass best selling album Whipped Cream And Other Delights. He worked both as a bandleader and as a sideman, including many projects with composer/arranger Quincy Jones. In the 1960s he performed on television with Peggy Lee. In 1969 he recorded "Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil" with singer Elis Regina and performed with her on Swedish television special. During his career he performed on many film soundtracks, such as The Pawnbroker (1964), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Turkish Delight (1973), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974), The Yakuza (1974), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), The Wiz (1978), Jean de Florette (1986), and French Kiss (1995). His theme to the popular Sesame Street television show was heard for 40 years. His music was heard on the Belgian television series Witse, and in the Netherlands, for the Baantjer program. He composed the music for the 1974 Swedish film Dunderklumpen!, in which he also provided the voice of the animated character Pellegnillot. His whistling and harmonica playing was heard on Old Spice commercials in the 1960s. He played harmonica on "Night Game" on Paul Simon's 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years. CANNOTANSWER | In the 1960s he performed on television with Peggy Lee. In 1969 he recorded "Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil" with singer Elis Regina | Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans (29 April 1922 – 22 August 2016), known professionally as Toots Thielemans, was a Belgian jazz musician. He was mostly known for his chromatic harmonica playing, as well as his guitar, whistling skills, and composing. According to jazz historian Ted Gioia, his most important contribution was in "championing the humble harmonica", which Thielemans made into a "legitimate voice in jazz". He eventually became the "preeminent" jazz harmonica player.
His first professional performances were with Benny Goodman's band when they toured Europe in 1949 and 1950. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1951, becoming a citizen in 1957. From 1953 to 1959 he played with George Shearing, and then led his own groups on tours in the U.S. and Europe. In 1961 he recorded and performed live one of his own compositions, "Bluesette", which featured him playing guitar and whistling. In the 1970s and 1980s, he continued touring and recording, appearing with musicians such as Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Bill Evans, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Werner, Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Mina Mazzini, Elis Regina, Quincy Jones, George Shearing, Natalie Cole, Billy Joel, Paul Simon and Paquito D'Rivera.
Among the film soundtracks that Thielemans recorded are The Pawnbroker (1964), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974) and Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). His harmonica theme song for the popular Sesame Street TV show was heard for 40 years. He often performed and recorded with Quincy Jones, who once called him "one of the greatest musicians of our time." In 2009 he was designated a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honor for a jazz musician in the United States.
Early years
Thielemans was born in Brussels on 29 April 1922. His parents owned a café. He began playing music at an early age, using a homemade accordion at age three. During the German occupation of Belgium beginning in 1940, he became attracted to jazz, but was then playing on full-size accordion or a harmonica, which he taught himself to play in his teens.
After being introduced to the music of Belgian-born jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt, he became inspired to teach himself guitar, which he did by listening to Reinhardt's recordings. At the time he was a college student majoring in math. By the war's end in 1945, he considered himself a full-time musician. He said in 1950, "Django is still one of my main influences, I think, for lyricism. He can make me cry when I hear him." During an interview in 1988, he recalled, "I guess I was born at the right time to live and adapt and be touched by the evolution in the jazz language."
He played in two Silverio Pisu's stories: Giacomino passerotto vagabondo and Manolo gattino sognatore.
Career
1940s–1950s
In 1949 he joined a jam session in Paris with Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach and others. He first heard the faster bebop style of jazz from records by Parker and Dizzy Gillespie after they had reached Belgium after the war. They became his musical "prophets." As his small collection of jazz records grew, the music of Benny Goodman and Lester Young began to impress him the most.
During a visit to the U.S. in 1948, an agent of Benny Goodman heard him play at a small New York music club. Not long after he returned to his home in Belgium, he received a letter inviting him to join Goodman's band while they toured in Europe. He readily accepted the invitation and joined their tours in 1949 and 1950. During the tour, Goodman was "shocked" when he learned that these tours were the first time Thielemans had earned money from his playing. Although Thielemans was hired on as a guitarist, when Goodman's group debuted at the London Palladium, he played the harmonica due to union restrictions.
During those years, he also made his first record with fellow band member, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims. In 1951 he toured with singer-songwriter and compatriot Bobbejaan Schoepen, performing strictly as a guitarist.
Thielemans moved to the United States in 1952 where he was a member of Charlie Parker's All-Stars and worked with Miles Davis and Dinah Washington. In 1957 he became a U.S. citizen. From 1953 to 1959 he played guitar and harmonica with the George Shearing Quintet. With Shearing, he added whistling to his repertoire. While playing in Hamburg in 1960 on tour with Shearing, a young musician and observer —John Lennon— noticed that Thielemans played a Rickenbacker guitar. Lennon was impressed, and felt he had to have an American guitar, on the principle that "if was good enough for Thielemans it was good enough for me." Lennon and the Beatles helped make Rickenbacker world-famous.
In 1955, Thielmans he recorded his first album as a band leader, "The Sound." During the 1950s, Thielemans had dominated the "miscellaneous instrument" category in Down Beat magazine's poll. Jerry Murad, of Jerry Murad's Harmonicats recalls Thielemans's mastery:
From 1959 on he toured internationally with his small group along with intermittently recording in the studio. He recorded with singers and musicians including Ella Fitzgerald, Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Stephane Grappelli, J.J. Johnson, Oscar Peterson, Shirley Horn, Joe Pass, and jazz pianist Bill Evans, among others. Thielemans says that his recording with Evans's trio, Affinity, (1979) was one of his favorites.
1960s–1970s
Toots Thielemans wrote "Bluesette," a jazz standard, which he performed on harmonica or while playing the guitar and whistling in unison. He said, "If there's a piece of music that describes me, it's that song." First recorded by him in 1962, with lyrics added by Norman Gimbel, the song became a major worldwide hit. It has since been covered by over one hundred artists. Toots also wrote the ballad "Lady Fingers," which appeared on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass's album "Whipped Cream and Other Delights."
He worked both as a bandleader and as a sideman, including many projects with composer/arranger Quincy Jones. In the 1960s he performed on television with Peggy Lee. In 1969 he recorded "Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil" with singer Elis Regina and performed with her on Swedish television special.
During his career he performed on many film soundtracks, such as The Pawnbroker (1964), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Turkish Delight (1973), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974), The Yakuza (1974), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), The Wiz (1978), Jean de Florette (1986), and French Kiss (1995). His theme to the popular Sesame Street television show was heard for 40 years.
His music was heard on the Belgian television series Witse, and in the Netherlands, for the Baantjer program. He composed the music for the 1974 Swedish film Dunderklumpen!, in which he also provided the voice of the animated character Pellegnillot. His whistling and harmonica playing was heard on Old Spice commercials in the 1960s. He played harmonica on "Night Game" on Paul Simon's 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years.
1980s and later
During the early 1980s Thielemans was a guest a number of times on Late Night with David Letterman. He has performed with the bassist Jaco Pastorius, and in 1983 he contributed to Billy Joel's album An Innocent Man, in the song, "Leave A Tender Moment Alone." (The two later collaborated on this selection in concert, and this was recorded on video.) A year later, he appeared on the Julian Lennon song "Too Late for Goodbyes" from the album Valotte.
In 1984, he recorded with Billy Eckstine on the singer's final album (I Am a Singer), featuring ballads and standards arranged and conducted by Angelo DiPippo. In the 1990s, Thielemans embarked on theme projects that included world music. In 1998 he released a French-flavoured album titled Chez Toots featuring guest singer Johnny Mathis.
During those years, he often recorded songs as personal tributes to those who were influential during his career. On Chez Toots, for example, he included "Dance For Victor," which he dedicated to his sometimes keyboard accompanist, Victor Feldman. Similarly, he recorded "Waltz for Sonny" as a tribute to saxophonist Sonny Rollins. In June 1998, at Germany's Jazzbaltica, he paid tribute to Frank Sinatra who died a month earlier. And during the first Caspian Jazz and Blues Festival in Azerbaijan in 2002, he performed his recorded version of "Imagine," his tribute to its writer, John Lennon.
Thielemans was well liked for his modesty and kind demeanor in his native Belgium, and was known for describing himself as a Brussels "ket," which means "street kid" in old Brussels slang.
Honours and awards
Thielemans received a joint honorary doctorate from the Université libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. In 2001, he was raised into the Belgian nobility by King Albert II and created Baron Thielemans for life, this in recognition of his contribution to music. Herewith, he chose the motto Be yourself, no more no less.
In 2006, Thielemans was honoured by an all-star tribute concert for him at Carnegie Hall. Pianist Herbie Hancock and clarinetist Paquito D'Rivera were among the performers. In 2009, he was awarded the highest U.S. honour that can be accorded to a jazz musician, the distinction of "Jazz Master," by The National Endowment for the Arts.
Honours
Created "Baron Thielemans" by Royal Order.
Commander of the Order of Leopold
Knight of the Order of Leopold II
Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters
A Brussels metro station under the Avenue de Stalingrad/Stalingradlaan is to be named after the musician.
Later life
He was nominated for the title of the Greatest Belgian in 2005. In the Flemish version, he finished in 20th place, and in the Walloon version he came 44th. On 23 January 2009, he joined guitarist Philip Catherine on stage at the Liberchies church (Belgium) in memory of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Django Reinhardt. In 2012, the Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts in New York celebrated Thielman's 90th birthday with, among others, Herbie Hancock, Eliane Elias, and Kenny Werner. He performed for the occasion and left the stage standing among his friends.
Because of health issues that led to show cancellations, Thielemans announced his retirement on 12 March 2014, cancelling all scheduled concerts. He was also hospitalized for a broken arm. His manager stated that Thielemans "wants to enjoy the rest he deserves." However, he did make one more stage appearance, unannounced, in August 2014, at the Jazz Middelheim Festival in Antwerp.
Death
Thielemans died in Braine-l'Alleud, Belgium, at the age of 94.
After the announcement, the Netherlands-based jazz and pop orchestra Metropole Orkest, along with American musician Quincy Jones, performed at London's Royal Albert Hall in Thielemans' honor. Another concert was performed at the Grand Place, Brussels.
Thielemans was buried on 27 August 2016 in La Hulpe, just outside Brussels. Pianist Kenny Werner read a personal message from U.S. President Barack Obama for his widow, Huguette. It read: "Dear Huguette. I was deeply saddened when I heard about your husband's passing. I hope that shared memories will soften your suffering. Lift faith from the support of friends and family. Know that you will be in my thoughts for the next days. May Toots' music lead you and offer you consolation. I'm sure it will do this for all of us."
Toots Thielemans Collection
In December 2016, the Music Division of the Royal Library of Belgium acquired the Toots Thielemans Collection. The collection consists of hundreds of sound recordings (78 rpm, vinyl records and CDs) and thousands of documents, such as photographs, press articles, scores, letters and concert programmes.
Discography
As leader
The Sound (Columbia, 1955)
Man Bites Harmonica (Riverside, 1958)
Time Out for Toots (Decca, 1958)
The Soul of Toots Thielemans with Ray Bryant (Signature, 1960)
The Romantic Sounds of Toots Thielemans (MGM, 1962)
The Whistler and His Guitar (ABC-Paramount, 1964)
Too Much! Toots! (Philips, 1965)
Contrasts (Command, 1966)
Toots (Command, 1968)
Yesterday and Today with Svend Asmussen (A&M, 1973)
Toots Thielemans/Philip Catherine & Friends (Keytone, 1974) [reissued with 2 bonus tracks as Two Generations (Limetree, 1996)]
Captured Alive (Choice, 1974)
Affinity with Bill Evans (Warner Bros., 1979)
The Guitar Session with Gene Bertoncini (Inner City, 1981)
Slow Motion (Jazz Man, 1981)
Live (Inner City, 1982)
Live 2 (Inner City, 1982)
Live 3 (Inner City, 1982)
Live in the Netherlands (Pablo, 1982)
Bringing It Together with Stephane Grappelli (1984)
Only Trust Your Heart (Concord Jazz, 1988)
Apple Dimple (Denon, 1990)
For My Lady with Shirley Horn (EmArcy, 1991)
Footprints (EmArcy, 1992)
The Brazil Project (Private Music, 1992)
The Brazil Project Volume 2 (Private Music, 1993)
Do Not Leave Me (Milan, 1994)
East Coast West Coast (Private Music, 1994)
Chez Toots (Private Music, 1998)
The Live Takes Volume 1 (Narada, 2000)
Toots Thielemans and Kenny Werner (Verve, 2001)
One More for the Road (Verve, 2006)
As sideman
With John Denver
Aerie (RCA Records, 1971)
Farewell Andromeda (RCA Records, 1973)
With Eliane Elias
Illusions (Denon, 1986)
Bossa Nova Stories (Blue Note Records, 2008)
With Bill Evans
Affinity (Warner Bros. Records, 1979)
With Michael Franks
Passionfruit (Warner Bros. Records, 1983)
With Dizzy Gillespie
Digital at Montreux, 1980 (Pablo, 1980)
With Peggy Lee
Blues Cross Country (Capitol Records, 1962)
Somethin' Groovy! (Capitol Records, 1967)
With Urbie Green
The Fox (CTI, 1976)
With Shirley Horn
I Remember Miles (Verve, 1998)
With Billy Joel
An Innocent Man (Columbia Records, 1983)
With James Taylor
James Taylor at Christmas (Columbia Records, 2006)
With Melanie
Gather Me (Neighborhood Records, 1971)
As I See It Now (Neighborhood Records, 1975)
With Brook Benton
Brook Benton Today (Atlantic Records, 1970)
With Sheena Easton
No Sound But a Heart (EMI, 1987)
With Diane Schuur
Love Songs (GPR, 1993)
With Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones Explores the Music of Henry Mancini (Mercury Records, 1964)
Walk, Don't Run (Mainstream Records, 1966)
You've Got It Bad Girl (A&M Records, 1973)
Mellow Madness (A&M Records, 1975)
The Dude (A&M Records, 1981)
With Sarah Vaughan
Songs of The Beatles (Atlantic Records, 1981)
With Fumio Karashima
Rencontre (Polydor Records, 1999)
With Natalie Cole
Stardust (Elektra Records, 1996)
With James Last
Theme from Der Landarzt (Polydor Records, 1987)
With Joe Lovano
Flights of Fancy: Trio Fascination Edition Two (Blue Note Records, 2001)
With Jaco Pastorius
Word of Mouth (Warner Bros. Records, 1981)
With Oscar Peterson
The Oscar Peterson Big 6 at Montreux (Pablo, 1975)
Live at the North Sea Jazz Festival, 1980 (Pablo, 1980)
With George Shearing and Dakota Staton
In the Night (Capitol Records, 1958)
With Elis Regina
Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil (Phillips, 1969)
With Julian Lennon
Valotte (Atlantic Records, 1984)
With Pat Metheny
Secret Story (Geffen, 1992)
With George Shearing
Latin Affair (Capitol Records, 1958)
With Paul Simon
Still Crazy After All These Years (Columbia Records, 1975)
With Jay Anderson
Local Color (DMP, 1994)
References
Further reading
Leonard, Vince. "Math Dropout Thielemans Scores With Jazz Harmonica". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 28 October 1978.
Herdies, Rita. "Profile: Toots Thielemans". The Rotarian. June 1993.
Hall, Fred. "Seventy and Still Swinging: A Love for Performing Keeps These Jazz Greats as Ageless as Their Music". The Rotarian. March 1995. pp. 14 - 17.
External links
Official MySpace page
NEA Jazz Masters
Toots Thielemans Interview NAMM Oral History Library (2005)
1922 births
2016 deaths
20th-century guitarists
20th-century Belgian musicians
21st-century guitarists
21st-century Belgian musicians
Barons of Belgium
Bebop harmonica players
Belgian emigrants to the United States
Belgian expatriates in the United States
Belgian jazz guitarists
Belgian jazz harmonica players
Brazilian jazz (genre) harmonica players
Jazz harmonica players
Latin jazz harmonica players
Mainstream jazz harmonica players
Musicians from Brussels
People from Uccle
Private Music artists
Riverside Records artists
Whistlers
EmArcy Records artists | true | [
"Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor, in Spanish Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de Patronio (Book of the Examples of Count Lucanor and of Patronio), also commonly known as El Conde Lucanor, Libro de Patronio, or Libro de los ejemplos (original Old Castilian: Libro de los enxiemplos del Conde Lucanor et de Patronio), is one of the earliest works of prose in Castilian Spanish. It was first written in 1335.\n\nThe book is divided into four parts. The first and most well-known part is a series of 51 short stories (some no more than a page or two) drawn from various sources, such as Aesop and other classical writers, and Arabic folktales.\n\nTales of Count Lucanor was first printed in 1575 when it was published at Seville under the auspices of Argote de Molina. It was again printed at Madrid in 1642, after which it lay forgotten for nearly two centuries.\n\nPurpose and structure\n\nA didactic, moralistic purpose, which would color so much of the Spanish literature to follow (see Novela picaresca), is the mark of this book. Count Lucanor engages in conversation with his advisor Patronio, putting to him a problem (\"Some man has made me a proposition...\" or \"I fear that such and such person intends to...\") and asking for advice. Patronio responds always with the greatest humility, claiming not to wish to offer advice to so illustrious a person as the Count, but offering to tell him a story of which the Count's problem reminds him. (Thus, the stories are \"examples\" [ejemplos] of wise action.) At the end he advises the Count to do as the protagonist of his story did.\n\nEach chapter ends in more or less the same way, with slight variations on: \"And this pleased the Count greatly and he did just so, and found it well. And Don Johán (Juan) saw that this example was very good, and had it written in this book, and composed the following verses.\" A rhymed couplet closes, giving the moral of the story.\n\nOrigin of stories and influence on later literature\nMany of the stories written in the book are the first examples written in a modern European language of various stories, which many other writers would use in the proceeding centuries. Many of the stories he included were themselves derived from other stories, coming from western and Arab sources.\n\nShakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew has the basic elements of Tale 35, \"What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\".\n\nTale 32, \"What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth\" tells the story that Hans Christian Andersen made popular as The Emperor's New Clothes.\n\nStory 7, \"What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana\", a version of Aesop's The Milkmaid and Her Pail, was claimed by Max Müller to originate in the Hindu cycle Panchatantra.\n\nTale 2, \"What happened to a good Man and his Son, leading a beast to market,\" is the familiar fable The miller, his son and the donkey.\n\nIn 2016, Baroque Decay released a game under the name \"The Count Lucanor\". As well as some protagonists' names, certain events from the books inspired past events in the game.\n\nThe stories\n\nThe book opens with a prologue which introduces the characters of the Count and Patronio. The titles in the following list are those given in Keller and Keating's 1977 translation into English. James York's 1868 translation into English gives a significantly different ordering of the stories and omits the fifty-first.\n\n What Happened to a King and His Favorite \n What Happened to a Good Man and His Son \n How King Richard of England Leapt into the Sea against the Moors\n What a Genoese Said to His Soul When He Was about to Die \n What Happened to a Fox and a Crow Who Had a Piece of Cheese in His Beak\n How the Swallow Warned the Other Birds When She Saw Flax Being Sown \n What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana \n What Happened to a Man Whose Liver Had to Be Washed \n What Happened to Two Horses Which Were Thrown to the Lion \n What Happened to a Man Who on Account of Poverty and Lack of Other Food Was Eating Bitter Lentils \n What Happened to a Dean of Santiago de Compostela and Don Yllán, the Grand Master of Toledo\n What Happened to the Fox and the Rooster \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Hunting Partridges \n The Miracle of Saint Dominick When He Preached against the Usurer \n What Happened to Lorenzo Suárez at the Siege of Seville \n The Reply that count Fernán González Gave to His Relative Núño Laynes \n What Happened to a Very Hungry Man Who Was Half-heartedly Invited to Dinner \n What Happened to Pero Meléndez de Valdés When He Broke His Leg \n What Happened to the Crows and the Owls \n What Happened to a King for Whom a Man Promised to Perform Alchemy \n What Happened to a Young King and a Philosopher to Whom his Father Commended Him \n What Happened to the Lion and the Bull \n How the Ants Provide for Themselves \n What Happened to the King Who Wanted to Test His Three Sons \n What Happened to the Count of Provence and How He Was Freed from Prison by the Advice of Saladin\n What Happened to the Tree of Lies \n What Happened to an Emperor and to Don Alvarfáñez Minaya and Their Wives \n What Happened in Granada to Don Lorenzo Suárez Gallinato When He Beheaded the Renegade Chaplain \n What Happened to a Fox Who Lay down in the Street to Play Dead \n What Happened to King Abenabet of Seville and Ramayquía His Wife \n How a Cardinal Judged between the Canons of Paris and the Friars Minor \n What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth \n What Happened to Don Juan Manuel's Saker Falcon and an Eagle and a Heron \n What Happened to a Blind Man Who Was Leading Another \n What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\n What Happened to a Merchant When He Found His Son and His Wife Sleeping Together \n What Happened to Count Fernán González with His Men after He Had Won the Battle of Hacinas \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Loaded down with Precious Stones and Drowned in the River \n What Happened to a Man and a Swallow and a Sparrow \n Why the Seneschal of Carcassonne Lost His Soul \n What Happened to a King of Córdova Named Al-Haquem \n What Happened to a Woman of Sham Piety \n What Happened to Good and Evil and the Wise Man and the Madman \n What Happened to Don Pero Núñez the Loyal, to Don Ruy González de Zavallos, and to Don Gutier Roiz de Blaguiello with Don Rodrigo the Generous \n What Happened to a Man Who Became the Devil's Friend and Vassal \n What Happened to a Philosopher who by Accident Went down a Street Where Prostitutes Lived \n What Befell a Moor and His Sister Who Pretended That She Was Timid \n What Happened to a Man Who Tested His Friends \n What Happened to the Man Whom They Cast out Naked on an Island When They Took away from Him the Kingdom He Ruled \n What Happened to Saladin and a Lady, the Wife of a Knight Who Was His Vassal \n What Happened to a Christian King Who Was Very Powerful and Haughty\n\nReferences\n\nNotes\n\nBibliography\n\n Sturm, Harlan\n\n Wacks, David\n\nExternal links\n\nThe Internet Archive provides free access to the 1868 translation by James York.\nJSTOR has the to the 1977 translation by Keller and Keating.\nSelections in English and Spanish (pedagogical edition) with introduction, notes, and bibliography in Open Iberia/América (open access teaching anthology)\n\n14th-century books\nSpanish literature\n1335 books",
"\"What Happened to Us\" is a song by Australian recording artist Jessica Mauboy, featuring English recording artist Jay Sean. It was written by Sean, Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim and Israel Cruz. \"What Happened to Us\" was leaked online in October 2010, and was released on 10 March 2011, as the third single from Mauboy's second studio album, Get 'Em Girls (2010). The song received positive reviews from critics.\n\nA remix of \"What Happened to Us\" made by production team OFM, was released on 11 April 2011. A different version of the song which features Stan Walker, was released on 29 May 2011. \"What Happened to Us\" charted on the ARIA Singles Chart at number 14 and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). An accompanying music video was directed by Mark Alston, and reminisces on a former relationship between Mauboy and Sean.\n\nProduction and release\n\n\"What Happened to Us\" was written by Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz and Jay Sean. It was produced by Skaller, Cruz, Rohaim and Bobby Bass. The song uses C, D, and B minor chords in the chorus. \"What Happened to Us\" was sent to contemporary hit radio in Australia on 14 February 2011. The cover art for the song was revealed on 22 February on Mauboy's official Facebook page. A CD release was available for purchase via her official website on 10 March, for one week only. It was released digitally the following day.\n\nReception\nMajhid Heath from ABC Online Indigenous called the song a \"Jordin Sparks-esque duet\", and wrote that it \"has a nice innocence to it that rings true to the experience of losing a first love.\" Chris Urankar from Nine to Five wrote that it as a \"mid-tempo duet ballad\" which signifies Mauboy's strength as a global player. On 21 March 2011, \"What Happened to Us\" debuted at number 30 on the ARIA Singles Chart, and peaked at number 14 the following week. The song was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), for selling 70,000 copies. \"What Happened to Us\" spent a total of ten weeks in the ARIA top fifty.\n\nMusic video\n\nBackground\nThe music video for the song was shot in the Elizabeth Bay House in Sydney on 26 November 2010. The video was shot during Sean's visit to Australia for the Summerbeatz tour. During an interview with The Daily Telegraph while on the set of the video, Sean said \"the song is sick! ... Jessica's voice is amazing and we're shooting [the video] in this ridiculously beautiful mansion overlooking the harbour.\" The video was directed by Mark Alston, who had previously directed the video for Mauboy's single \"Let Me Be Me\" (2009). It premiered on YouTube on 10 February 2011.\n\nSynopsis and reception\nThe video begins showing Mauboy who appears to be sitting on a yellow antique couch in a mansion, wearing a purple dress. As the video progresses, scenes of memories are displayed of Mauboy and her love interest, played by Sean, spending time there previously. It then cuts to the scenes where Sean appears in the main entrance room of the mansion. The final scene shows Mauboy outdoors in a gold dress, surrounded by green grass and trees. She is later joined by Sean who appears in a black suit and a white shirt, and together they sing the chorus of the song to each other. David Lim of Feed Limmy wrote that the video is \"easily the best thing our R&B princess has committed to film – ever\" and praised the \"mansion and wondrous interior décor\". He also commended Mauboy for choosing Australian talent to direct the video instead of American directors, which she had used for her previous two music videos. Since its release, the video has received over two million views on Vevo.\n\nLive performances\nMauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" live for the first time during her YouTube Live Sessions program on 4 December 2010. She also appeared on Adam Hills in Gordon Street Tonight on 23 February 2011 for an interview and later performed the song. On 15 March 2011, Mauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Sunrise. She also performed the song with Stan Walker during the Australian leg of Chris Brown's F.A.M.E. Tour in April 2011. Mauboy and Walker later performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Dancing with the Stars Australia on 29 May 2011. From November 2013 to February 2014, \"What Happened to Us\" was part of the set list of the To the End of the Earth Tour, Mauboy's second headlining tour of Australia, with Nathaniel Willemse singing Sean's part.\n\nTrack listing\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Just Witness Remix) – 3:45\n\nCD single\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Album Version) – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:39\n\nDigital download – Remix\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:38\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Stan Walker – 3:20\n\nPersonnel\nSongwriting – Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz, Jay Sean\nProduction – Jeremy Skaller, Bobby Bass\nAdditional production – Israel Cruz, Khaled Rohaim\nLead vocals – Jessica Mauboy, Jay Sean\nMixing – Phil Tan\nAdditional mixing – Damien Lewis\nMastering – Tom Coyne \nSource:\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly chart\n\nYear-end chart\n\nCertification\n\nRadio dates and release history\n\nReferences\n\n2010 songs\n2011 singles\nJessica Mauboy songs\nJay Sean songs\nSongs written by Billy Steinberg\nSongs written by Jay Sean\nSongs written by Josh Alexander\nSongs written by Israel Cruz\nVocal duets\nSony Music Australia singles\nSongs written by Khaled Rohaim"
] |
[
"Toots Thielemans",
"1960s-1970s",
"What happened in the 1960's?",
"In the 1960s he performed on television with Peggy Lee. In 1969 he recorded \"Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil\" with singer Elis Regina"
] | C_e34099f5ebef414597c4e7b5a400b5ea_1 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 2 | Besides Toots Thielemans performance on television, are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | Toots Thielemans | A jazz standard by Toots Thielemans is his own composition, "Bluesette," which he performed on harmonica or while playing the guitar and whistling in unison. He said, "If there's a piece of music that describes me, it's that song." First recorded by him in 1962, with lyrics added by Norman Gimbel, the song became a major worldwide hit. It has since been covered by over one hundred artists., Toots also wrote the beautiful ballad Lady Fingers which appeared on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass best selling album Whipped Cream And Other Delights. He worked both as a bandleader and as a sideman, including many projects with composer/arranger Quincy Jones. In the 1960s he performed on television with Peggy Lee. In 1969 he recorded "Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil" with singer Elis Regina and performed with her on Swedish television special. During his career he performed on many film soundtracks, such as The Pawnbroker (1964), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Turkish Delight (1973), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974), The Yakuza (1974), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), The Wiz (1978), Jean de Florette (1986), and French Kiss (1995). His theme to the popular Sesame Street television show was heard for 40 years. His music was heard on the Belgian television series Witse, and in the Netherlands, for the Baantjer program. He composed the music for the 1974 Swedish film Dunderklumpen!, in which he also provided the voice of the animated character Pellegnillot. His whistling and harmonica playing was heard on Old Spice commercials in the 1960s. He played harmonica on "Night Game" on Paul Simon's 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years. CANNOTANSWER | During his career he performed on many film soundtracks, such as The Pawnbroker (1964), | Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans (29 April 1922 – 22 August 2016), known professionally as Toots Thielemans, was a Belgian jazz musician. He was mostly known for his chromatic harmonica playing, as well as his guitar, whistling skills, and composing. According to jazz historian Ted Gioia, his most important contribution was in "championing the humble harmonica", which Thielemans made into a "legitimate voice in jazz". He eventually became the "preeminent" jazz harmonica player.
His first professional performances were with Benny Goodman's band when they toured Europe in 1949 and 1950. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1951, becoming a citizen in 1957. From 1953 to 1959 he played with George Shearing, and then led his own groups on tours in the U.S. and Europe. In 1961 he recorded and performed live one of his own compositions, "Bluesette", which featured him playing guitar and whistling. In the 1970s and 1980s, he continued touring and recording, appearing with musicians such as Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Bill Evans, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Werner, Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Mina Mazzini, Elis Regina, Quincy Jones, George Shearing, Natalie Cole, Billy Joel, Paul Simon and Paquito D'Rivera.
Among the film soundtracks that Thielemans recorded are The Pawnbroker (1964), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974) and Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). His harmonica theme song for the popular Sesame Street TV show was heard for 40 years. He often performed and recorded with Quincy Jones, who once called him "one of the greatest musicians of our time." In 2009 he was designated a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honor for a jazz musician in the United States.
Early years
Thielemans was born in Brussels on 29 April 1922. His parents owned a café. He began playing music at an early age, using a homemade accordion at age three. During the German occupation of Belgium beginning in 1940, he became attracted to jazz, but was then playing on full-size accordion or a harmonica, which he taught himself to play in his teens.
After being introduced to the music of Belgian-born jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt, he became inspired to teach himself guitar, which he did by listening to Reinhardt's recordings. At the time he was a college student majoring in math. By the war's end in 1945, he considered himself a full-time musician. He said in 1950, "Django is still one of my main influences, I think, for lyricism. He can make me cry when I hear him." During an interview in 1988, he recalled, "I guess I was born at the right time to live and adapt and be touched by the evolution in the jazz language."
He played in two Silverio Pisu's stories: Giacomino passerotto vagabondo and Manolo gattino sognatore.
Career
1940s–1950s
In 1949 he joined a jam session in Paris with Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach and others. He first heard the faster bebop style of jazz from records by Parker and Dizzy Gillespie after they had reached Belgium after the war. They became his musical "prophets." As his small collection of jazz records grew, the music of Benny Goodman and Lester Young began to impress him the most.
During a visit to the U.S. in 1948, an agent of Benny Goodman heard him play at a small New York music club. Not long after he returned to his home in Belgium, he received a letter inviting him to join Goodman's band while they toured in Europe. He readily accepted the invitation and joined their tours in 1949 and 1950. During the tour, Goodman was "shocked" when he learned that these tours were the first time Thielemans had earned money from his playing. Although Thielemans was hired on as a guitarist, when Goodman's group debuted at the London Palladium, he played the harmonica due to union restrictions.
During those years, he also made his first record with fellow band member, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims. In 1951 he toured with singer-songwriter and compatriot Bobbejaan Schoepen, performing strictly as a guitarist.
Thielemans moved to the United States in 1952 where he was a member of Charlie Parker's All-Stars and worked with Miles Davis and Dinah Washington. In 1957 he became a U.S. citizen. From 1953 to 1959 he played guitar and harmonica with the George Shearing Quintet. With Shearing, he added whistling to his repertoire. While playing in Hamburg in 1960 on tour with Shearing, a young musician and observer —John Lennon— noticed that Thielemans played a Rickenbacker guitar. Lennon was impressed, and felt he had to have an American guitar, on the principle that "if was good enough for Thielemans it was good enough for me." Lennon and the Beatles helped make Rickenbacker world-famous.
In 1955, Thielmans he recorded his first album as a band leader, "The Sound." During the 1950s, Thielemans had dominated the "miscellaneous instrument" category in Down Beat magazine's poll. Jerry Murad, of Jerry Murad's Harmonicats recalls Thielemans's mastery:
From 1959 on he toured internationally with his small group along with intermittently recording in the studio. He recorded with singers and musicians including Ella Fitzgerald, Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Stephane Grappelli, J.J. Johnson, Oscar Peterson, Shirley Horn, Joe Pass, and jazz pianist Bill Evans, among others. Thielemans says that his recording with Evans's trio, Affinity, (1979) was one of his favorites.
1960s–1970s
Toots Thielemans wrote "Bluesette," a jazz standard, which he performed on harmonica or while playing the guitar and whistling in unison. He said, "If there's a piece of music that describes me, it's that song." First recorded by him in 1962, with lyrics added by Norman Gimbel, the song became a major worldwide hit. It has since been covered by over one hundred artists. Toots also wrote the ballad "Lady Fingers," which appeared on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass's album "Whipped Cream and Other Delights."
He worked both as a bandleader and as a sideman, including many projects with composer/arranger Quincy Jones. In the 1960s he performed on television with Peggy Lee. In 1969 he recorded "Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil" with singer Elis Regina and performed with her on Swedish television special.
During his career he performed on many film soundtracks, such as The Pawnbroker (1964), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Turkish Delight (1973), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974), The Yakuza (1974), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), The Wiz (1978), Jean de Florette (1986), and French Kiss (1995). His theme to the popular Sesame Street television show was heard for 40 years.
His music was heard on the Belgian television series Witse, and in the Netherlands, for the Baantjer program. He composed the music for the 1974 Swedish film Dunderklumpen!, in which he also provided the voice of the animated character Pellegnillot. His whistling and harmonica playing was heard on Old Spice commercials in the 1960s. He played harmonica on "Night Game" on Paul Simon's 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years.
1980s and later
During the early 1980s Thielemans was a guest a number of times on Late Night with David Letterman. He has performed with the bassist Jaco Pastorius, and in 1983 he contributed to Billy Joel's album An Innocent Man, in the song, "Leave A Tender Moment Alone." (The two later collaborated on this selection in concert, and this was recorded on video.) A year later, he appeared on the Julian Lennon song "Too Late for Goodbyes" from the album Valotte.
In 1984, he recorded with Billy Eckstine on the singer's final album (I Am a Singer), featuring ballads and standards arranged and conducted by Angelo DiPippo. In the 1990s, Thielemans embarked on theme projects that included world music. In 1998 he released a French-flavoured album titled Chez Toots featuring guest singer Johnny Mathis.
During those years, he often recorded songs as personal tributes to those who were influential during his career. On Chez Toots, for example, he included "Dance For Victor," which he dedicated to his sometimes keyboard accompanist, Victor Feldman. Similarly, he recorded "Waltz for Sonny" as a tribute to saxophonist Sonny Rollins. In June 1998, at Germany's Jazzbaltica, he paid tribute to Frank Sinatra who died a month earlier. And during the first Caspian Jazz and Blues Festival in Azerbaijan in 2002, he performed his recorded version of "Imagine," his tribute to its writer, John Lennon.
Thielemans was well liked for his modesty and kind demeanor in his native Belgium, and was known for describing himself as a Brussels "ket," which means "street kid" in old Brussels slang.
Honours and awards
Thielemans received a joint honorary doctorate from the Université libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. In 2001, he was raised into the Belgian nobility by King Albert II and created Baron Thielemans for life, this in recognition of his contribution to music. Herewith, he chose the motto Be yourself, no more no less.
In 2006, Thielemans was honoured by an all-star tribute concert for him at Carnegie Hall. Pianist Herbie Hancock and clarinetist Paquito D'Rivera were among the performers. In 2009, he was awarded the highest U.S. honour that can be accorded to a jazz musician, the distinction of "Jazz Master," by The National Endowment for the Arts.
Honours
Created "Baron Thielemans" by Royal Order.
Commander of the Order of Leopold
Knight of the Order of Leopold II
Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters
A Brussels metro station under the Avenue de Stalingrad/Stalingradlaan is to be named after the musician.
Later life
He was nominated for the title of the Greatest Belgian in 2005. In the Flemish version, he finished in 20th place, and in the Walloon version he came 44th. On 23 January 2009, he joined guitarist Philip Catherine on stage at the Liberchies church (Belgium) in memory of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Django Reinhardt. In 2012, the Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts in New York celebrated Thielman's 90th birthday with, among others, Herbie Hancock, Eliane Elias, and Kenny Werner. He performed for the occasion and left the stage standing among his friends.
Because of health issues that led to show cancellations, Thielemans announced his retirement on 12 March 2014, cancelling all scheduled concerts. He was also hospitalized for a broken arm. His manager stated that Thielemans "wants to enjoy the rest he deserves." However, he did make one more stage appearance, unannounced, in August 2014, at the Jazz Middelheim Festival in Antwerp.
Death
Thielemans died in Braine-l'Alleud, Belgium, at the age of 94.
After the announcement, the Netherlands-based jazz and pop orchestra Metropole Orkest, along with American musician Quincy Jones, performed at London's Royal Albert Hall in Thielemans' honor. Another concert was performed at the Grand Place, Brussels.
Thielemans was buried on 27 August 2016 in La Hulpe, just outside Brussels. Pianist Kenny Werner read a personal message from U.S. President Barack Obama for his widow, Huguette. It read: "Dear Huguette. I was deeply saddened when I heard about your husband's passing. I hope that shared memories will soften your suffering. Lift faith from the support of friends and family. Know that you will be in my thoughts for the next days. May Toots' music lead you and offer you consolation. I'm sure it will do this for all of us."
Toots Thielemans Collection
In December 2016, the Music Division of the Royal Library of Belgium acquired the Toots Thielemans Collection. The collection consists of hundreds of sound recordings (78 rpm, vinyl records and CDs) and thousands of documents, such as photographs, press articles, scores, letters and concert programmes.
Discography
As leader
The Sound (Columbia, 1955)
Man Bites Harmonica (Riverside, 1958)
Time Out for Toots (Decca, 1958)
The Soul of Toots Thielemans with Ray Bryant (Signature, 1960)
The Romantic Sounds of Toots Thielemans (MGM, 1962)
The Whistler and His Guitar (ABC-Paramount, 1964)
Too Much! Toots! (Philips, 1965)
Contrasts (Command, 1966)
Toots (Command, 1968)
Yesterday and Today with Svend Asmussen (A&M, 1973)
Toots Thielemans/Philip Catherine & Friends (Keytone, 1974) [reissued with 2 bonus tracks as Two Generations (Limetree, 1996)]
Captured Alive (Choice, 1974)
Affinity with Bill Evans (Warner Bros., 1979)
The Guitar Session with Gene Bertoncini (Inner City, 1981)
Slow Motion (Jazz Man, 1981)
Live (Inner City, 1982)
Live 2 (Inner City, 1982)
Live 3 (Inner City, 1982)
Live in the Netherlands (Pablo, 1982)
Bringing It Together with Stephane Grappelli (1984)
Only Trust Your Heart (Concord Jazz, 1988)
Apple Dimple (Denon, 1990)
For My Lady with Shirley Horn (EmArcy, 1991)
Footprints (EmArcy, 1992)
The Brazil Project (Private Music, 1992)
The Brazil Project Volume 2 (Private Music, 1993)
Do Not Leave Me (Milan, 1994)
East Coast West Coast (Private Music, 1994)
Chez Toots (Private Music, 1998)
The Live Takes Volume 1 (Narada, 2000)
Toots Thielemans and Kenny Werner (Verve, 2001)
One More for the Road (Verve, 2006)
As sideman
With John Denver
Aerie (RCA Records, 1971)
Farewell Andromeda (RCA Records, 1973)
With Eliane Elias
Illusions (Denon, 1986)
Bossa Nova Stories (Blue Note Records, 2008)
With Bill Evans
Affinity (Warner Bros. Records, 1979)
With Michael Franks
Passionfruit (Warner Bros. Records, 1983)
With Dizzy Gillespie
Digital at Montreux, 1980 (Pablo, 1980)
With Peggy Lee
Blues Cross Country (Capitol Records, 1962)
Somethin' Groovy! (Capitol Records, 1967)
With Urbie Green
The Fox (CTI, 1976)
With Shirley Horn
I Remember Miles (Verve, 1998)
With Billy Joel
An Innocent Man (Columbia Records, 1983)
With James Taylor
James Taylor at Christmas (Columbia Records, 2006)
With Melanie
Gather Me (Neighborhood Records, 1971)
As I See It Now (Neighborhood Records, 1975)
With Brook Benton
Brook Benton Today (Atlantic Records, 1970)
With Sheena Easton
No Sound But a Heart (EMI, 1987)
With Diane Schuur
Love Songs (GPR, 1993)
With Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones Explores the Music of Henry Mancini (Mercury Records, 1964)
Walk, Don't Run (Mainstream Records, 1966)
You've Got It Bad Girl (A&M Records, 1973)
Mellow Madness (A&M Records, 1975)
The Dude (A&M Records, 1981)
With Sarah Vaughan
Songs of The Beatles (Atlantic Records, 1981)
With Fumio Karashima
Rencontre (Polydor Records, 1999)
With Natalie Cole
Stardust (Elektra Records, 1996)
With James Last
Theme from Der Landarzt (Polydor Records, 1987)
With Joe Lovano
Flights of Fancy: Trio Fascination Edition Two (Blue Note Records, 2001)
With Jaco Pastorius
Word of Mouth (Warner Bros. Records, 1981)
With Oscar Peterson
The Oscar Peterson Big 6 at Montreux (Pablo, 1975)
Live at the North Sea Jazz Festival, 1980 (Pablo, 1980)
With George Shearing and Dakota Staton
In the Night (Capitol Records, 1958)
With Elis Regina
Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil (Phillips, 1969)
With Julian Lennon
Valotte (Atlantic Records, 1984)
With Pat Metheny
Secret Story (Geffen, 1992)
With George Shearing
Latin Affair (Capitol Records, 1958)
With Paul Simon
Still Crazy After All These Years (Columbia Records, 1975)
With Jay Anderson
Local Color (DMP, 1994)
References
Further reading
Leonard, Vince. "Math Dropout Thielemans Scores With Jazz Harmonica". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 28 October 1978.
Herdies, Rita. "Profile: Toots Thielemans". The Rotarian. June 1993.
Hall, Fred. "Seventy and Still Swinging: A Love for Performing Keeps These Jazz Greats as Ageless as Their Music". The Rotarian. March 1995. pp. 14 - 17.
External links
Official MySpace page
NEA Jazz Masters
Toots Thielemans Interview NAMM Oral History Library (2005)
1922 births
2016 deaths
20th-century guitarists
20th-century Belgian musicians
21st-century guitarists
21st-century Belgian musicians
Barons of Belgium
Bebop harmonica players
Belgian emigrants to the United States
Belgian expatriates in the United States
Belgian jazz guitarists
Belgian jazz harmonica players
Brazilian jazz (genre) harmonica players
Jazz harmonica players
Latin jazz harmonica players
Mainstream jazz harmonica players
Musicians from Brussels
People from Uccle
Private Music artists
Riverside Records artists
Whistlers
EmArcy Records artists | true | [
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region",
"Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts"
] |
[
"Toots Thielemans",
"1960s-1970s",
"What happened in the 1960's?",
"In the 1960s he performed on television with Peggy Lee. In 1969 he recorded \"Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil\" with singer Elis Regina",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"During his career he performed on many film soundtracks, such as The Pawnbroker (1964),"
] | C_e34099f5ebef414597c4e7b5a400b5ea_1 | what other soundtracks did he record on? | 3 | Aside from The Pawnbroker, what other soundtracks did Toots Thielemans record on? | Toots Thielemans | A jazz standard by Toots Thielemans is his own composition, "Bluesette," which he performed on harmonica or while playing the guitar and whistling in unison. He said, "If there's a piece of music that describes me, it's that song." First recorded by him in 1962, with lyrics added by Norman Gimbel, the song became a major worldwide hit. It has since been covered by over one hundred artists., Toots also wrote the beautiful ballad Lady Fingers which appeared on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass best selling album Whipped Cream And Other Delights. He worked both as a bandleader and as a sideman, including many projects with composer/arranger Quincy Jones. In the 1960s he performed on television with Peggy Lee. In 1969 he recorded "Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil" with singer Elis Regina and performed with her on Swedish television special. During his career he performed on many film soundtracks, such as The Pawnbroker (1964), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Turkish Delight (1973), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974), The Yakuza (1974), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), The Wiz (1978), Jean de Florette (1986), and French Kiss (1995). His theme to the popular Sesame Street television show was heard for 40 years. His music was heard on the Belgian television series Witse, and in the Netherlands, for the Baantjer program. He composed the music for the 1974 Swedish film Dunderklumpen!, in which he also provided the voice of the animated character Pellegnillot. His whistling and harmonica playing was heard on Old Spice commercials in the 1960s. He played harmonica on "Night Game" on Paul Simon's 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years. CANNOTANSWER | ), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Turkish Delight (1973), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974 | Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans (29 April 1922 – 22 August 2016), known professionally as Toots Thielemans, was a Belgian jazz musician. He was mostly known for his chromatic harmonica playing, as well as his guitar, whistling skills, and composing. According to jazz historian Ted Gioia, his most important contribution was in "championing the humble harmonica", which Thielemans made into a "legitimate voice in jazz". He eventually became the "preeminent" jazz harmonica player.
His first professional performances were with Benny Goodman's band when they toured Europe in 1949 and 1950. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1951, becoming a citizen in 1957. From 1953 to 1959 he played with George Shearing, and then led his own groups on tours in the U.S. and Europe. In 1961 he recorded and performed live one of his own compositions, "Bluesette", which featured him playing guitar and whistling. In the 1970s and 1980s, he continued touring and recording, appearing with musicians such as Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Bill Evans, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Werner, Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Mina Mazzini, Elis Regina, Quincy Jones, George Shearing, Natalie Cole, Billy Joel, Paul Simon and Paquito D'Rivera.
Among the film soundtracks that Thielemans recorded are The Pawnbroker (1964), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974) and Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). His harmonica theme song for the popular Sesame Street TV show was heard for 40 years. He often performed and recorded with Quincy Jones, who once called him "one of the greatest musicians of our time." In 2009 he was designated a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honor for a jazz musician in the United States.
Early years
Thielemans was born in Brussels on 29 April 1922. His parents owned a café. He began playing music at an early age, using a homemade accordion at age three. During the German occupation of Belgium beginning in 1940, he became attracted to jazz, but was then playing on full-size accordion or a harmonica, which he taught himself to play in his teens.
After being introduced to the music of Belgian-born jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt, he became inspired to teach himself guitar, which he did by listening to Reinhardt's recordings. At the time he was a college student majoring in math. By the war's end in 1945, he considered himself a full-time musician. He said in 1950, "Django is still one of my main influences, I think, for lyricism. He can make me cry when I hear him." During an interview in 1988, he recalled, "I guess I was born at the right time to live and adapt and be touched by the evolution in the jazz language."
He played in two Silverio Pisu's stories: Giacomino passerotto vagabondo and Manolo gattino sognatore.
Career
1940s–1950s
In 1949 he joined a jam session in Paris with Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach and others. He first heard the faster bebop style of jazz from records by Parker and Dizzy Gillespie after they had reached Belgium after the war. They became his musical "prophets." As his small collection of jazz records grew, the music of Benny Goodman and Lester Young began to impress him the most.
During a visit to the U.S. in 1948, an agent of Benny Goodman heard him play at a small New York music club. Not long after he returned to his home in Belgium, he received a letter inviting him to join Goodman's band while they toured in Europe. He readily accepted the invitation and joined their tours in 1949 and 1950. During the tour, Goodman was "shocked" when he learned that these tours were the first time Thielemans had earned money from his playing. Although Thielemans was hired on as a guitarist, when Goodman's group debuted at the London Palladium, he played the harmonica due to union restrictions.
During those years, he also made his first record with fellow band member, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims. In 1951 he toured with singer-songwriter and compatriot Bobbejaan Schoepen, performing strictly as a guitarist.
Thielemans moved to the United States in 1952 where he was a member of Charlie Parker's All-Stars and worked with Miles Davis and Dinah Washington. In 1957 he became a U.S. citizen. From 1953 to 1959 he played guitar and harmonica with the George Shearing Quintet. With Shearing, he added whistling to his repertoire. While playing in Hamburg in 1960 on tour with Shearing, a young musician and observer —John Lennon— noticed that Thielemans played a Rickenbacker guitar. Lennon was impressed, and felt he had to have an American guitar, on the principle that "if was good enough for Thielemans it was good enough for me." Lennon and the Beatles helped make Rickenbacker world-famous.
In 1955, Thielmans he recorded his first album as a band leader, "The Sound." During the 1950s, Thielemans had dominated the "miscellaneous instrument" category in Down Beat magazine's poll. Jerry Murad, of Jerry Murad's Harmonicats recalls Thielemans's mastery:
From 1959 on he toured internationally with his small group along with intermittently recording in the studio. He recorded with singers and musicians including Ella Fitzgerald, Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Stephane Grappelli, J.J. Johnson, Oscar Peterson, Shirley Horn, Joe Pass, and jazz pianist Bill Evans, among others. Thielemans says that his recording with Evans's trio, Affinity, (1979) was one of his favorites.
1960s–1970s
Toots Thielemans wrote "Bluesette," a jazz standard, which he performed on harmonica or while playing the guitar and whistling in unison. He said, "If there's a piece of music that describes me, it's that song." First recorded by him in 1962, with lyrics added by Norman Gimbel, the song became a major worldwide hit. It has since been covered by over one hundred artists. Toots also wrote the ballad "Lady Fingers," which appeared on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass's album "Whipped Cream and Other Delights."
He worked both as a bandleader and as a sideman, including many projects with composer/arranger Quincy Jones. In the 1960s he performed on television with Peggy Lee. In 1969 he recorded "Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil" with singer Elis Regina and performed with her on Swedish television special.
During his career he performed on many film soundtracks, such as The Pawnbroker (1964), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Turkish Delight (1973), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974), The Yakuza (1974), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), The Wiz (1978), Jean de Florette (1986), and French Kiss (1995). His theme to the popular Sesame Street television show was heard for 40 years.
His music was heard on the Belgian television series Witse, and in the Netherlands, for the Baantjer program. He composed the music for the 1974 Swedish film Dunderklumpen!, in which he also provided the voice of the animated character Pellegnillot. His whistling and harmonica playing was heard on Old Spice commercials in the 1960s. He played harmonica on "Night Game" on Paul Simon's 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years.
1980s and later
During the early 1980s Thielemans was a guest a number of times on Late Night with David Letterman. He has performed with the bassist Jaco Pastorius, and in 1983 he contributed to Billy Joel's album An Innocent Man, in the song, "Leave A Tender Moment Alone." (The two later collaborated on this selection in concert, and this was recorded on video.) A year later, he appeared on the Julian Lennon song "Too Late for Goodbyes" from the album Valotte.
In 1984, he recorded with Billy Eckstine on the singer's final album (I Am a Singer), featuring ballads and standards arranged and conducted by Angelo DiPippo. In the 1990s, Thielemans embarked on theme projects that included world music. In 1998 he released a French-flavoured album titled Chez Toots featuring guest singer Johnny Mathis.
During those years, he often recorded songs as personal tributes to those who were influential during his career. On Chez Toots, for example, he included "Dance For Victor," which he dedicated to his sometimes keyboard accompanist, Victor Feldman. Similarly, he recorded "Waltz for Sonny" as a tribute to saxophonist Sonny Rollins. In June 1998, at Germany's Jazzbaltica, he paid tribute to Frank Sinatra who died a month earlier. And during the first Caspian Jazz and Blues Festival in Azerbaijan in 2002, he performed his recorded version of "Imagine," his tribute to its writer, John Lennon.
Thielemans was well liked for his modesty and kind demeanor in his native Belgium, and was known for describing himself as a Brussels "ket," which means "street kid" in old Brussels slang.
Honours and awards
Thielemans received a joint honorary doctorate from the Université libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. In 2001, he was raised into the Belgian nobility by King Albert II and created Baron Thielemans for life, this in recognition of his contribution to music. Herewith, he chose the motto Be yourself, no more no less.
In 2006, Thielemans was honoured by an all-star tribute concert for him at Carnegie Hall. Pianist Herbie Hancock and clarinetist Paquito D'Rivera were among the performers. In 2009, he was awarded the highest U.S. honour that can be accorded to a jazz musician, the distinction of "Jazz Master," by The National Endowment for the Arts.
Honours
Created "Baron Thielemans" by Royal Order.
Commander of the Order of Leopold
Knight of the Order of Leopold II
Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters
A Brussels metro station under the Avenue de Stalingrad/Stalingradlaan is to be named after the musician.
Later life
He was nominated for the title of the Greatest Belgian in 2005. In the Flemish version, he finished in 20th place, and in the Walloon version he came 44th. On 23 January 2009, he joined guitarist Philip Catherine on stage at the Liberchies church (Belgium) in memory of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Django Reinhardt. In 2012, the Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts in New York celebrated Thielman's 90th birthday with, among others, Herbie Hancock, Eliane Elias, and Kenny Werner. He performed for the occasion and left the stage standing among his friends.
Because of health issues that led to show cancellations, Thielemans announced his retirement on 12 March 2014, cancelling all scheduled concerts. He was also hospitalized for a broken arm. His manager stated that Thielemans "wants to enjoy the rest he deserves." However, he did make one more stage appearance, unannounced, in August 2014, at the Jazz Middelheim Festival in Antwerp.
Death
Thielemans died in Braine-l'Alleud, Belgium, at the age of 94.
After the announcement, the Netherlands-based jazz and pop orchestra Metropole Orkest, along with American musician Quincy Jones, performed at London's Royal Albert Hall in Thielemans' honor. Another concert was performed at the Grand Place, Brussels.
Thielemans was buried on 27 August 2016 in La Hulpe, just outside Brussels. Pianist Kenny Werner read a personal message from U.S. President Barack Obama for his widow, Huguette. It read: "Dear Huguette. I was deeply saddened when I heard about your husband's passing. I hope that shared memories will soften your suffering. Lift faith from the support of friends and family. Know that you will be in my thoughts for the next days. May Toots' music lead you and offer you consolation. I'm sure it will do this for all of us."
Toots Thielemans Collection
In December 2016, the Music Division of the Royal Library of Belgium acquired the Toots Thielemans Collection. The collection consists of hundreds of sound recordings (78 rpm, vinyl records and CDs) and thousands of documents, such as photographs, press articles, scores, letters and concert programmes.
Discography
As leader
The Sound (Columbia, 1955)
Man Bites Harmonica (Riverside, 1958)
Time Out for Toots (Decca, 1958)
The Soul of Toots Thielemans with Ray Bryant (Signature, 1960)
The Romantic Sounds of Toots Thielemans (MGM, 1962)
The Whistler and His Guitar (ABC-Paramount, 1964)
Too Much! Toots! (Philips, 1965)
Contrasts (Command, 1966)
Toots (Command, 1968)
Yesterday and Today with Svend Asmussen (A&M, 1973)
Toots Thielemans/Philip Catherine & Friends (Keytone, 1974) [reissued with 2 bonus tracks as Two Generations (Limetree, 1996)]
Captured Alive (Choice, 1974)
Affinity with Bill Evans (Warner Bros., 1979)
The Guitar Session with Gene Bertoncini (Inner City, 1981)
Slow Motion (Jazz Man, 1981)
Live (Inner City, 1982)
Live 2 (Inner City, 1982)
Live 3 (Inner City, 1982)
Live in the Netherlands (Pablo, 1982)
Bringing It Together with Stephane Grappelli (1984)
Only Trust Your Heart (Concord Jazz, 1988)
Apple Dimple (Denon, 1990)
For My Lady with Shirley Horn (EmArcy, 1991)
Footprints (EmArcy, 1992)
The Brazil Project (Private Music, 1992)
The Brazil Project Volume 2 (Private Music, 1993)
Do Not Leave Me (Milan, 1994)
East Coast West Coast (Private Music, 1994)
Chez Toots (Private Music, 1998)
The Live Takes Volume 1 (Narada, 2000)
Toots Thielemans and Kenny Werner (Verve, 2001)
One More for the Road (Verve, 2006)
As sideman
With John Denver
Aerie (RCA Records, 1971)
Farewell Andromeda (RCA Records, 1973)
With Eliane Elias
Illusions (Denon, 1986)
Bossa Nova Stories (Blue Note Records, 2008)
With Bill Evans
Affinity (Warner Bros. Records, 1979)
With Michael Franks
Passionfruit (Warner Bros. Records, 1983)
With Dizzy Gillespie
Digital at Montreux, 1980 (Pablo, 1980)
With Peggy Lee
Blues Cross Country (Capitol Records, 1962)
Somethin' Groovy! (Capitol Records, 1967)
With Urbie Green
The Fox (CTI, 1976)
With Shirley Horn
I Remember Miles (Verve, 1998)
With Billy Joel
An Innocent Man (Columbia Records, 1983)
With James Taylor
James Taylor at Christmas (Columbia Records, 2006)
With Melanie
Gather Me (Neighborhood Records, 1971)
As I See It Now (Neighborhood Records, 1975)
With Brook Benton
Brook Benton Today (Atlantic Records, 1970)
With Sheena Easton
No Sound But a Heart (EMI, 1987)
With Diane Schuur
Love Songs (GPR, 1993)
With Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones Explores the Music of Henry Mancini (Mercury Records, 1964)
Walk, Don't Run (Mainstream Records, 1966)
You've Got It Bad Girl (A&M Records, 1973)
Mellow Madness (A&M Records, 1975)
The Dude (A&M Records, 1981)
With Sarah Vaughan
Songs of The Beatles (Atlantic Records, 1981)
With Fumio Karashima
Rencontre (Polydor Records, 1999)
With Natalie Cole
Stardust (Elektra Records, 1996)
With James Last
Theme from Der Landarzt (Polydor Records, 1987)
With Joe Lovano
Flights of Fancy: Trio Fascination Edition Two (Blue Note Records, 2001)
With Jaco Pastorius
Word of Mouth (Warner Bros. Records, 1981)
With Oscar Peterson
The Oscar Peterson Big 6 at Montreux (Pablo, 1975)
Live at the North Sea Jazz Festival, 1980 (Pablo, 1980)
With George Shearing and Dakota Staton
In the Night (Capitol Records, 1958)
With Elis Regina
Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil (Phillips, 1969)
With Julian Lennon
Valotte (Atlantic Records, 1984)
With Pat Metheny
Secret Story (Geffen, 1992)
With George Shearing
Latin Affair (Capitol Records, 1958)
With Paul Simon
Still Crazy After All These Years (Columbia Records, 1975)
With Jay Anderson
Local Color (DMP, 1994)
References
Further reading
Leonard, Vince. "Math Dropout Thielemans Scores With Jazz Harmonica". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 28 October 1978.
Herdies, Rita. "Profile: Toots Thielemans". The Rotarian. June 1993.
Hall, Fred. "Seventy and Still Swinging: A Love for Performing Keeps These Jazz Greats as Ageless as Their Music". The Rotarian. March 1995. pp. 14 - 17.
External links
Official MySpace page
NEA Jazz Masters
Toots Thielemans Interview NAMM Oral History Library (2005)
1922 births
2016 deaths
20th-century guitarists
20th-century Belgian musicians
21st-century guitarists
21st-century Belgian musicians
Barons of Belgium
Bebop harmonica players
Belgian emigrants to the United States
Belgian expatriates in the United States
Belgian jazz guitarists
Belgian jazz harmonica players
Brazilian jazz (genre) harmonica players
Jazz harmonica players
Latin jazz harmonica players
Mainstream jazz harmonica players
Musicians from Brussels
People from Uccle
Private Music artists
Riverside Records artists
Whistlers
EmArcy Records artists | true | [
"Caught Up: Motion From the Motion Picture is the soundtrack to Darin Scott's 1998 crime film Caught Up. It was released on February 24, 1998 through Virgin Records's Noo Trybe label and consisted entirely of hip hop music. The soundtrack did fairly well on the Billboard charts, making it to #30 on the Billboard 200 and #6 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1998 soundtrack albums\nDrama film soundtracks\nHip hop soundtracks\nGangsta rap soundtracks\nVirgin Records soundtracks\nAlbums produced by Bink (record producer)\nAlbums produced by Daz Dillinger\nAlbums produced by DJ Premier\nAlbums produced by DJ Quik\nAlbums produced by Jermaine Dupri\nAlbums produced by KRS-One\nAlbums produced by Mike Dean (record producer)\nAlbums produced by Soopafly\nAlbums produced by Soulshock and Karlin\nAlbums produced by The Legendary Traxster\nAlbums produced by True Master",
"Tropic Thunder: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was released on August 5, 2008, the week before the film was released in theaters.\n\nFive songs, \"Cum On Feel the Noize\" by Quiet Riot, \"Sympathy for the Devil\" by The Rolling Stones, \"For What It's Worth\" by Buffalo Springfield, \"Low\" by Flo Rida and T-Pain, and \"Get Back\" by Ludacris, were not present on the soundtrack, yet did appear in the film. The soundtrack features songs from The Temptations, MC Hammer, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Edwin Starr, and other artists. The single \"Name of the Game\" by The Crystal Method featuring Ryu has an exclusive remix on the soundtrack.\n\nThe soundtrack debuted 20th on Billboard'''s Top Soundtracks list and peaked at 39th on its Top Independent Albums list. James Christopher Monger of allmusic compared the music to other film's soundtracks such as Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Forrest Gump'' and called it \"...a fun but slight listen that plays out like an old late-'70s K-Tel compilation with a few bonus cuts from the future.\"\n\nTrack listing\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n Soundtracks for 'Tropic Thunder' at Internet Movie Database\n\n2008 soundtrack albums\nFilm scores\nAction film soundtracks\nComedy film soundtracks"
] |
[
"Toots Thielemans",
"1960s-1970s",
"What happened in the 1960's?",
"In the 1960s he performed on television with Peggy Lee. In 1969 he recorded \"Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil\" with singer Elis Regina",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"During his career he performed on many film soundtracks, such as The Pawnbroker (1964),",
"what other soundtracks did he record on?",
"), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Turkish Delight (1973), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974"
] | C_e34099f5ebef414597c4e7b5a400b5ea_1 | did he win any types of awards? | 4 | Did Toots Thielemans win any types of awards? | Toots Thielemans | A jazz standard by Toots Thielemans is his own composition, "Bluesette," which he performed on harmonica or while playing the guitar and whistling in unison. He said, "If there's a piece of music that describes me, it's that song." First recorded by him in 1962, with lyrics added by Norman Gimbel, the song became a major worldwide hit. It has since been covered by over one hundred artists., Toots also wrote the beautiful ballad Lady Fingers which appeared on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass best selling album Whipped Cream And Other Delights. He worked both as a bandleader and as a sideman, including many projects with composer/arranger Quincy Jones. In the 1960s he performed on television with Peggy Lee. In 1969 he recorded "Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil" with singer Elis Regina and performed with her on Swedish television special. During his career he performed on many film soundtracks, such as The Pawnbroker (1964), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Turkish Delight (1973), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974), The Yakuza (1974), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), The Wiz (1978), Jean de Florette (1986), and French Kiss (1995). His theme to the popular Sesame Street television show was heard for 40 years. His music was heard on the Belgian television series Witse, and in the Netherlands, for the Baantjer program. He composed the music for the 1974 Swedish film Dunderklumpen!, in which he also provided the voice of the animated character Pellegnillot. His whistling and harmonica playing was heard on Old Spice commercials in the 1960s. He played harmonica on "Night Game" on Paul Simon's 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans (29 April 1922 – 22 August 2016), known professionally as Toots Thielemans, was a Belgian jazz musician. He was mostly known for his chromatic harmonica playing, as well as his guitar, whistling skills, and composing. According to jazz historian Ted Gioia, his most important contribution was in "championing the humble harmonica", which Thielemans made into a "legitimate voice in jazz". He eventually became the "preeminent" jazz harmonica player.
His first professional performances were with Benny Goodman's band when they toured Europe in 1949 and 1950. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1951, becoming a citizen in 1957. From 1953 to 1959 he played with George Shearing, and then led his own groups on tours in the U.S. and Europe. In 1961 he recorded and performed live one of his own compositions, "Bluesette", which featured him playing guitar and whistling. In the 1970s and 1980s, he continued touring and recording, appearing with musicians such as Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Bill Evans, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Werner, Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Mina Mazzini, Elis Regina, Quincy Jones, George Shearing, Natalie Cole, Billy Joel, Paul Simon and Paquito D'Rivera.
Among the film soundtracks that Thielemans recorded are The Pawnbroker (1964), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974) and Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). His harmonica theme song for the popular Sesame Street TV show was heard for 40 years. He often performed and recorded with Quincy Jones, who once called him "one of the greatest musicians of our time." In 2009 he was designated a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honor for a jazz musician in the United States.
Early years
Thielemans was born in Brussels on 29 April 1922. His parents owned a café. He began playing music at an early age, using a homemade accordion at age three. During the German occupation of Belgium beginning in 1940, he became attracted to jazz, but was then playing on full-size accordion or a harmonica, which he taught himself to play in his teens.
After being introduced to the music of Belgian-born jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt, he became inspired to teach himself guitar, which he did by listening to Reinhardt's recordings. At the time he was a college student majoring in math. By the war's end in 1945, he considered himself a full-time musician. He said in 1950, "Django is still one of my main influences, I think, for lyricism. He can make me cry when I hear him." During an interview in 1988, he recalled, "I guess I was born at the right time to live and adapt and be touched by the evolution in the jazz language."
He played in two Silverio Pisu's stories: Giacomino passerotto vagabondo and Manolo gattino sognatore.
Career
1940s–1950s
In 1949 he joined a jam session in Paris with Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach and others. He first heard the faster bebop style of jazz from records by Parker and Dizzy Gillespie after they had reached Belgium after the war. They became his musical "prophets." As his small collection of jazz records grew, the music of Benny Goodman and Lester Young began to impress him the most.
During a visit to the U.S. in 1948, an agent of Benny Goodman heard him play at a small New York music club. Not long after he returned to his home in Belgium, he received a letter inviting him to join Goodman's band while they toured in Europe. He readily accepted the invitation and joined their tours in 1949 and 1950. During the tour, Goodman was "shocked" when he learned that these tours were the first time Thielemans had earned money from his playing. Although Thielemans was hired on as a guitarist, when Goodman's group debuted at the London Palladium, he played the harmonica due to union restrictions.
During those years, he also made his first record with fellow band member, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims. In 1951 he toured with singer-songwriter and compatriot Bobbejaan Schoepen, performing strictly as a guitarist.
Thielemans moved to the United States in 1952 where he was a member of Charlie Parker's All-Stars and worked with Miles Davis and Dinah Washington. In 1957 he became a U.S. citizen. From 1953 to 1959 he played guitar and harmonica with the George Shearing Quintet. With Shearing, he added whistling to his repertoire. While playing in Hamburg in 1960 on tour with Shearing, a young musician and observer —John Lennon— noticed that Thielemans played a Rickenbacker guitar. Lennon was impressed, and felt he had to have an American guitar, on the principle that "if was good enough for Thielemans it was good enough for me." Lennon and the Beatles helped make Rickenbacker world-famous.
In 1955, Thielmans he recorded his first album as a band leader, "The Sound." During the 1950s, Thielemans had dominated the "miscellaneous instrument" category in Down Beat magazine's poll. Jerry Murad, of Jerry Murad's Harmonicats recalls Thielemans's mastery:
From 1959 on he toured internationally with his small group along with intermittently recording in the studio. He recorded with singers and musicians including Ella Fitzgerald, Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Stephane Grappelli, J.J. Johnson, Oscar Peterson, Shirley Horn, Joe Pass, and jazz pianist Bill Evans, among others. Thielemans says that his recording with Evans's trio, Affinity, (1979) was one of his favorites.
1960s–1970s
Toots Thielemans wrote "Bluesette," a jazz standard, which he performed on harmonica or while playing the guitar and whistling in unison. He said, "If there's a piece of music that describes me, it's that song." First recorded by him in 1962, with lyrics added by Norman Gimbel, the song became a major worldwide hit. It has since been covered by over one hundred artists. Toots also wrote the ballad "Lady Fingers," which appeared on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass's album "Whipped Cream and Other Delights."
He worked both as a bandleader and as a sideman, including many projects with composer/arranger Quincy Jones. In the 1960s he performed on television with Peggy Lee. In 1969 he recorded "Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil" with singer Elis Regina and performed with her on Swedish television special.
During his career he performed on many film soundtracks, such as The Pawnbroker (1964), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Turkish Delight (1973), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974), The Yakuza (1974), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), The Wiz (1978), Jean de Florette (1986), and French Kiss (1995). His theme to the popular Sesame Street television show was heard for 40 years.
His music was heard on the Belgian television series Witse, and in the Netherlands, for the Baantjer program. He composed the music for the 1974 Swedish film Dunderklumpen!, in which he also provided the voice of the animated character Pellegnillot. His whistling and harmonica playing was heard on Old Spice commercials in the 1960s. He played harmonica on "Night Game" on Paul Simon's 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years.
1980s and later
During the early 1980s Thielemans was a guest a number of times on Late Night with David Letterman. He has performed with the bassist Jaco Pastorius, and in 1983 he contributed to Billy Joel's album An Innocent Man, in the song, "Leave A Tender Moment Alone." (The two later collaborated on this selection in concert, and this was recorded on video.) A year later, he appeared on the Julian Lennon song "Too Late for Goodbyes" from the album Valotte.
In 1984, he recorded with Billy Eckstine on the singer's final album (I Am a Singer), featuring ballads and standards arranged and conducted by Angelo DiPippo. In the 1990s, Thielemans embarked on theme projects that included world music. In 1998 he released a French-flavoured album titled Chez Toots featuring guest singer Johnny Mathis.
During those years, he often recorded songs as personal tributes to those who were influential during his career. On Chez Toots, for example, he included "Dance For Victor," which he dedicated to his sometimes keyboard accompanist, Victor Feldman. Similarly, he recorded "Waltz for Sonny" as a tribute to saxophonist Sonny Rollins. In June 1998, at Germany's Jazzbaltica, he paid tribute to Frank Sinatra who died a month earlier. And during the first Caspian Jazz and Blues Festival in Azerbaijan in 2002, he performed his recorded version of "Imagine," his tribute to its writer, John Lennon.
Thielemans was well liked for his modesty and kind demeanor in his native Belgium, and was known for describing himself as a Brussels "ket," which means "street kid" in old Brussels slang.
Honours and awards
Thielemans received a joint honorary doctorate from the Université libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. In 2001, he was raised into the Belgian nobility by King Albert II and created Baron Thielemans for life, this in recognition of his contribution to music. Herewith, he chose the motto Be yourself, no more no less.
In 2006, Thielemans was honoured by an all-star tribute concert for him at Carnegie Hall. Pianist Herbie Hancock and clarinetist Paquito D'Rivera were among the performers. In 2009, he was awarded the highest U.S. honour that can be accorded to a jazz musician, the distinction of "Jazz Master," by The National Endowment for the Arts.
Honours
Created "Baron Thielemans" by Royal Order.
Commander of the Order of Leopold
Knight of the Order of Leopold II
Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters
A Brussels metro station under the Avenue de Stalingrad/Stalingradlaan is to be named after the musician.
Later life
He was nominated for the title of the Greatest Belgian in 2005. In the Flemish version, he finished in 20th place, and in the Walloon version he came 44th. On 23 January 2009, he joined guitarist Philip Catherine on stage at the Liberchies church (Belgium) in memory of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Django Reinhardt. In 2012, the Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts in New York celebrated Thielman's 90th birthday with, among others, Herbie Hancock, Eliane Elias, and Kenny Werner. He performed for the occasion and left the stage standing among his friends.
Because of health issues that led to show cancellations, Thielemans announced his retirement on 12 March 2014, cancelling all scheduled concerts. He was also hospitalized for a broken arm. His manager stated that Thielemans "wants to enjoy the rest he deserves." However, he did make one more stage appearance, unannounced, in August 2014, at the Jazz Middelheim Festival in Antwerp.
Death
Thielemans died in Braine-l'Alleud, Belgium, at the age of 94.
After the announcement, the Netherlands-based jazz and pop orchestra Metropole Orkest, along with American musician Quincy Jones, performed at London's Royal Albert Hall in Thielemans' honor. Another concert was performed at the Grand Place, Brussels.
Thielemans was buried on 27 August 2016 in La Hulpe, just outside Brussels. Pianist Kenny Werner read a personal message from U.S. President Barack Obama for his widow, Huguette. It read: "Dear Huguette. I was deeply saddened when I heard about your husband's passing. I hope that shared memories will soften your suffering. Lift faith from the support of friends and family. Know that you will be in my thoughts for the next days. May Toots' music lead you and offer you consolation. I'm sure it will do this for all of us."
Toots Thielemans Collection
In December 2016, the Music Division of the Royal Library of Belgium acquired the Toots Thielemans Collection. The collection consists of hundreds of sound recordings (78 rpm, vinyl records and CDs) and thousands of documents, such as photographs, press articles, scores, letters and concert programmes.
Discography
As leader
The Sound (Columbia, 1955)
Man Bites Harmonica (Riverside, 1958)
Time Out for Toots (Decca, 1958)
The Soul of Toots Thielemans with Ray Bryant (Signature, 1960)
The Romantic Sounds of Toots Thielemans (MGM, 1962)
The Whistler and His Guitar (ABC-Paramount, 1964)
Too Much! Toots! (Philips, 1965)
Contrasts (Command, 1966)
Toots (Command, 1968)
Yesterday and Today with Svend Asmussen (A&M, 1973)
Toots Thielemans/Philip Catherine & Friends (Keytone, 1974) [reissued with 2 bonus tracks as Two Generations (Limetree, 1996)]
Captured Alive (Choice, 1974)
Affinity with Bill Evans (Warner Bros., 1979)
The Guitar Session with Gene Bertoncini (Inner City, 1981)
Slow Motion (Jazz Man, 1981)
Live (Inner City, 1982)
Live 2 (Inner City, 1982)
Live 3 (Inner City, 1982)
Live in the Netherlands (Pablo, 1982)
Bringing It Together with Stephane Grappelli (1984)
Only Trust Your Heart (Concord Jazz, 1988)
Apple Dimple (Denon, 1990)
For My Lady with Shirley Horn (EmArcy, 1991)
Footprints (EmArcy, 1992)
The Brazil Project (Private Music, 1992)
The Brazil Project Volume 2 (Private Music, 1993)
Do Not Leave Me (Milan, 1994)
East Coast West Coast (Private Music, 1994)
Chez Toots (Private Music, 1998)
The Live Takes Volume 1 (Narada, 2000)
Toots Thielemans and Kenny Werner (Verve, 2001)
One More for the Road (Verve, 2006)
As sideman
With John Denver
Aerie (RCA Records, 1971)
Farewell Andromeda (RCA Records, 1973)
With Eliane Elias
Illusions (Denon, 1986)
Bossa Nova Stories (Blue Note Records, 2008)
With Bill Evans
Affinity (Warner Bros. Records, 1979)
With Michael Franks
Passionfruit (Warner Bros. Records, 1983)
With Dizzy Gillespie
Digital at Montreux, 1980 (Pablo, 1980)
With Peggy Lee
Blues Cross Country (Capitol Records, 1962)
Somethin' Groovy! (Capitol Records, 1967)
With Urbie Green
The Fox (CTI, 1976)
With Shirley Horn
I Remember Miles (Verve, 1998)
With Billy Joel
An Innocent Man (Columbia Records, 1983)
With James Taylor
James Taylor at Christmas (Columbia Records, 2006)
With Melanie
Gather Me (Neighborhood Records, 1971)
As I See It Now (Neighborhood Records, 1975)
With Brook Benton
Brook Benton Today (Atlantic Records, 1970)
With Sheena Easton
No Sound But a Heart (EMI, 1987)
With Diane Schuur
Love Songs (GPR, 1993)
With Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones Explores the Music of Henry Mancini (Mercury Records, 1964)
Walk, Don't Run (Mainstream Records, 1966)
You've Got It Bad Girl (A&M Records, 1973)
Mellow Madness (A&M Records, 1975)
The Dude (A&M Records, 1981)
With Sarah Vaughan
Songs of The Beatles (Atlantic Records, 1981)
With Fumio Karashima
Rencontre (Polydor Records, 1999)
With Natalie Cole
Stardust (Elektra Records, 1996)
With James Last
Theme from Der Landarzt (Polydor Records, 1987)
With Joe Lovano
Flights of Fancy: Trio Fascination Edition Two (Blue Note Records, 2001)
With Jaco Pastorius
Word of Mouth (Warner Bros. Records, 1981)
With Oscar Peterson
The Oscar Peterson Big 6 at Montreux (Pablo, 1975)
Live at the North Sea Jazz Festival, 1980 (Pablo, 1980)
With George Shearing and Dakota Staton
In the Night (Capitol Records, 1958)
With Elis Regina
Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil (Phillips, 1969)
With Julian Lennon
Valotte (Atlantic Records, 1984)
With Pat Metheny
Secret Story (Geffen, 1992)
With George Shearing
Latin Affair (Capitol Records, 1958)
With Paul Simon
Still Crazy After All These Years (Columbia Records, 1975)
With Jay Anderson
Local Color (DMP, 1994)
References
Further reading
Leonard, Vince. "Math Dropout Thielemans Scores With Jazz Harmonica". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 28 October 1978.
Herdies, Rita. "Profile: Toots Thielemans". The Rotarian. June 1993.
Hall, Fred. "Seventy and Still Swinging: A Love for Performing Keeps These Jazz Greats as Ageless as Their Music". The Rotarian. March 1995. pp. 14 - 17.
External links
Official MySpace page
NEA Jazz Masters
Toots Thielemans Interview NAMM Oral History Library (2005)
1922 births
2016 deaths
20th-century guitarists
20th-century Belgian musicians
21st-century guitarists
21st-century Belgian musicians
Barons of Belgium
Bebop harmonica players
Belgian emigrants to the United States
Belgian expatriates in the United States
Belgian jazz guitarists
Belgian jazz harmonica players
Brazilian jazz (genre) harmonica players
Jazz harmonica players
Latin jazz harmonica players
Mainstream jazz harmonica players
Musicians from Brussels
People from Uccle
Private Music artists
Riverside Records artists
Whistlers
EmArcy Records artists | false | [
"The 23rd Fangoria Chainsaw Awards is an award ceremony presented for horror films that were released in 2020. The nominees were announced on January 20, 2021. The film The Invisible Man won five of its five nominations, including Best Wide Release, as well as the write-in poll of Best Kill. Color Out Of Space and Possessor each took two awards. His House did not win any of its seven nominations. The ceremony was exclusively livestreamed for the first time on the SHUDDER horror streaming service.\n\nWinners and nominees\n\nReferences\n\nFangoria Chainsaw Awards",
"The following is a list of awards and nominations received by Welsh actor and director Anthony Hopkins. \n\nHe is an Oscar-winning actor, having received six Academy award nominations winning two of these for Best Actor for his performance as Hannibal Lecter in the Jonathan Demme thriller The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and for his performance as Anthony in Florian Zeller's drama The Father (2020). He also was nominated for his performances as in James Ivory's The Remains of the Day (1993), Richard Nixon in Oliver Stone's drama Nixon (1995), John Quincy Adams in Amistad (1997), and Pope Benedict XVI in the Fernando Meirelles drama The Two Popes (2019). \n\nFor his work on film and television, he has received eight Golden Globe award nominations. In 2006 he was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille award for his lifetime achievement in the entertainment industry. He has received six Primetime Emmy award nominations winning two—one in 1976 for his performance as Richard Hauptmann in The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case and the other in 1981 for his performance as Adolf Hitler in The Bunker, as well as seven Screen Actors Guild award nominations all of which have been respectively lost.\n\nMajor associations\n\nAcademy Awards \n2 wins out of 6 nominations\n\nBAFTA Awards \n4 wins (and one honorary award) out of 9 nominations\n\nEmmy Awards \n2 wins out of 6 nominations\n\nGolden Globe Awards \n0 wins (and one honorary award) out of 8 nominations\n\nOlivier Awards \n1 win out of 2 nominations\n\nScreen Actors Guild Awards \n0 wins out of 7 nominations\n\nAudience awards\n\nMTV Movie + TV awards \n0 wins out of 2 nominations\n\nPeople's Choice awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nCritic and association awards\n\nAlliance of Women Film Journalists awards \n1 win out of 2 nominations\n\nBoston Society of Film Critics awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nCableACE awards \n1 win out of 2 nominations\n\nChicago Film Critics Association awards \n1 win out of 5 nominations\n\nCritics' Choice awards \n1 win out of 4 nominations\n\nDallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association awards \n2 wins out of 2 nominations\n\nKansas City Film Critics Circle awards \n2 wins out of 2 nominations\n\nLondon Critics Circle Film awards \n1 win out of 5 nominations\n\nLos Angeles Film Critics Association awards \n1 win out of 2 nominations\n\nNational Board of Review awards \n2 wins out of 2 nominations\n\nNational Society of Film Critics awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nNew York Film Critics Circle awards \n1 win out of 3 nominations\n\nOnline Film & Television Association awards \n1 win out of 3 nominations\n\nOnline Film Critics Society awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nPhoenix Film Critics Society awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nSoutheastern Film Critics Association awards \n1 win out of 2 nominations\n\nSt. Louis Film Critics Association awards \n1 win out of 2 nomination\n\nWomen's Image Network awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nFilm festival awards\n\nHollywood Film Festival awards \n2 wins out of 2 nominations\n\nLocarno International Film Festival awards \n1 win out of 2 nominations\n\nMethod Fest awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nMoscow International Film Festival awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nSan Sebastian International Film Festival awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nSanta Barbara International Film Festival awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nShoWest Convention awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nSitges - Catalonian International Film Festival awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nUSA Film Festival awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nVirginia Film Festival awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nInternational awards\n\nBAFTA/LA Britannia awards \n1 win out of 1 nominations\n\nDavid di Donatello awards \n1 win out of 2 nominations\n\nEuropean Film Awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nEvening Standard British Film awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nJupiter awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nNew Zealand Screen awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nSant Jordi awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nYoga awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nMiscellaneous awards\n\n20/20 awards \n1 win out of 3 nominations\n\nAARP Movies for Grownups awards \n1 win out of 4 nominations\n\nFangoria Chainsaw awards \n3 wins out of 4 nominations\n\nGolden Raspberry awards \n0 wins out of 2 nominations\n\nHasty Pudding Theatricals awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nMovieGuide awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nSatellite awards \n0 wins out of 1 nomination\n\nSaturn awards \n1 win out of 5 nominations\n\nWalk of Fame \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nWestern Heritage awards \n1 win out of 1 nomination\n\nReferences\n\nHopkins, Anthony"
] |
[
"Toots Thielemans",
"1960s-1970s",
"What happened in the 1960's?",
"In the 1960s he performed on television with Peggy Lee. In 1969 he recorded \"Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil\" with singer Elis Regina",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"During his career he performed on many film soundtracks, such as The Pawnbroker (1964),",
"what other soundtracks did he record on?",
"), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Turkish Delight (1973), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974",
"did he win any types of awards?",
"I don't know."
] | C_e34099f5ebef414597c4e7b5a400b5ea_1 | what is the most interesting part of this article, in your opinion? | 5 | What is the most interesting part of Toots Thielemans, 1960s-1970s article, in your opinion? | Toots Thielemans | A jazz standard by Toots Thielemans is his own composition, "Bluesette," which he performed on harmonica or while playing the guitar and whistling in unison. He said, "If there's a piece of music that describes me, it's that song." First recorded by him in 1962, with lyrics added by Norman Gimbel, the song became a major worldwide hit. It has since been covered by over one hundred artists., Toots also wrote the beautiful ballad Lady Fingers which appeared on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass best selling album Whipped Cream And Other Delights. He worked both as a bandleader and as a sideman, including many projects with composer/arranger Quincy Jones. In the 1960s he performed on television with Peggy Lee. In 1969 he recorded "Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil" with singer Elis Regina and performed with her on Swedish television special. During his career he performed on many film soundtracks, such as The Pawnbroker (1964), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Turkish Delight (1973), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974), The Yakuza (1974), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), The Wiz (1978), Jean de Florette (1986), and French Kiss (1995). His theme to the popular Sesame Street television show was heard for 40 years. His music was heard on the Belgian television series Witse, and in the Netherlands, for the Baantjer program. He composed the music for the 1974 Swedish film Dunderklumpen!, in which he also provided the voice of the animated character Pellegnillot. His whistling and harmonica playing was heard on Old Spice commercials in the 1960s. He played harmonica on "Night Game" on Paul Simon's 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years. CANNOTANSWER | He composed the music for the 1974 Swedish film Dunderklumpen!, in which he also provided the voice of the animated character Pellegnillot. | Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans (29 April 1922 – 22 August 2016), known professionally as Toots Thielemans, was a Belgian jazz musician. He was mostly known for his chromatic harmonica playing, as well as his guitar, whistling skills, and composing. According to jazz historian Ted Gioia, his most important contribution was in "championing the humble harmonica", which Thielemans made into a "legitimate voice in jazz". He eventually became the "preeminent" jazz harmonica player.
His first professional performances were with Benny Goodman's band when they toured Europe in 1949 and 1950. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1951, becoming a citizen in 1957. From 1953 to 1959 he played with George Shearing, and then led his own groups on tours in the U.S. and Europe. In 1961 he recorded and performed live one of his own compositions, "Bluesette", which featured him playing guitar and whistling. In the 1970s and 1980s, he continued touring and recording, appearing with musicians such as Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Bill Evans, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Werner, Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Mina Mazzini, Elis Regina, Quincy Jones, George Shearing, Natalie Cole, Billy Joel, Paul Simon and Paquito D'Rivera.
Among the film soundtracks that Thielemans recorded are The Pawnbroker (1964), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974) and Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). His harmonica theme song for the popular Sesame Street TV show was heard for 40 years. He often performed and recorded with Quincy Jones, who once called him "one of the greatest musicians of our time." In 2009 he was designated a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honor for a jazz musician in the United States.
Early years
Thielemans was born in Brussels on 29 April 1922. His parents owned a café. He began playing music at an early age, using a homemade accordion at age three. During the German occupation of Belgium beginning in 1940, he became attracted to jazz, but was then playing on full-size accordion or a harmonica, which he taught himself to play in his teens.
After being introduced to the music of Belgian-born jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt, he became inspired to teach himself guitar, which he did by listening to Reinhardt's recordings. At the time he was a college student majoring in math. By the war's end in 1945, he considered himself a full-time musician. He said in 1950, "Django is still one of my main influences, I think, for lyricism. He can make me cry when I hear him." During an interview in 1988, he recalled, "I guess I was born at the right time to live and adapt and be touched by the evolution in the jazz language."
He played in two Silverio Pisu's stories: Giacomino passerotto vagabondo and Manolo gattino sognatore.
Career
1940s–1950s
In 1949 he joined a jam session in Paris with Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach and others. He first heard the faster bebop style of jazz from records by Parker and Dizzy Gillespie after they had reached Belgium after the war. They became his musical "prophets." As his small collection of jazz records grew, the music of Benny Goodman and Lester Young began to impress him the most.
During a visit to the U.S. in 1948, an agent of Benny Goodman heard him play at a small New York music club. Not long after he returned to his home in Belgium, he received a letter inviting him to join Goodman's band while they toured in Europe. He readily accepted the invitation and joined their tours in 1949 and 1950. During the tour, Goodman was "shocked" when he learned that these tours were the first time Thielemans had earned money from his playing. Although Thielemans was hired on as a guitarist, when Goodman's group debuted at the London Palladium, he played the harmonica due to union restrictions.
During those years, he also made his first record with fellow band member, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims. In 1951 he toured with singer-songwriter and compatriot Bobbejaan Schoepen, performing strictly as a guitarist.
Thielemans moved to the United States in 1952 where he was a member of Charlie Parker's All-Stars and worked with Miles Davis and Dinah Washington. In 1957 he became a U.S. citizen. From 1953 to 1959 he played guitar and harmonica with the George Shearing Quintet. With Shearing, he added whistling to his repertoire. While playing in Hamburg in 1960 on tour with Shearing, a young musician and observer —John Lennon— noticed that Thielemans played a Rickenbacker guitar. Lennon was impressed, and felt he had to have an American guitar, on the principle that "if was good enough for Thielemans it was good enough for me." Lennon and the Beatles helped make Rickenbacker world-famous.
In 1955, Thielmans he recorded his first album as a band leader, "The Sound." During the 1950s, Thielemans had dominated the "miscellaneous instrument" category in Down Beat magazine's poll. Jerry Murad, of Jerry Murad's Harmonicats recalls Thielemans's mastery:
From 1959 on he toured internationally with his small group along with intermittently recording in the studio. He recorded with singers and musicians including Ella Fitzgerald, Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Stephane Grappelli, J.J. Johnson, Oscar Peterson, Shirley Horn, Joe Pass, and jazz pianist Bill Evans, among others. Thielemans says that his recording with Evans's trio, Affinity, (1979) was one of his favorites.
1960s–1970s
Toots Thielemans wrote "Bluesette," a jazz standard, which he performed on harmonica or while playing the guitar and whistling in unison. He said, "If there's a piece of music that describes me, it's that song." First recorded by him in 1962, with lyrics added by Norman Gimbel, the song became a major worldwide hit. It has since been covered by over one hundred artists. Toots also wrote the ballad "Lady Fingers," which appeared on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass's album "Whipped Cream and Other Delights."
He worked both as a bandleader and as a sideman, including many projects with composer/arranger Quincy Jones. In the 1960s he performed on television with Peggy Lee. In 1969 he recorded "Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil" with singer Elis Regina and performed with her on Swedish television special.
During his career he performed on many film soundtracks, such as The Pawnbroker (1964), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Getaway (1972), Turkish Delight (1973), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland Express (1974), The Yakuza (1974), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), The Wiz (1978), Jean de Florette (1986), and French Kiss (1995). His theme to the popular Sesame Street television show was heard for 40 years.
His music was heard on the Belgian television series Witse, and in the Netherlands, for the Baantjer program. He composed the music for the 1974 Swedish film Dunderklumpen!, in which he also provided the voice of the animated character Pellegnillot. His whistling and harmonica playing was heard on Old Spice commercials in the 1960s. He played harmonica on "Night Game" on Paul Simon's 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years.
1980s and later
During the early 1980s Thielemans was a guest a number of times on Late Night with David Letterman. He has performed with the bassist Jaco Pastorius, and in 1983 he contributed to Billy Joel's album An Innocent Man, in the song, "Leave A Tender Moment Alone." (The two later collaborated on this selection in concert, and this was recorded on video.) A year later, he appeared on the Julian Lennon song "Too Late for Goodbyes" from the album Valotte.
In 1984, he recorded with Billy Eckstine on the singer's final album (I Am a Singer), featuring ballads and standards arranged and conducted by Angelo DiPippo. In the 1990s, Thielemans embarked on theme projects that included world music. In 1998 he released a French-flavoured album titled Chez Toots featuring guest singer Johnny Mathis.
During those years, he often recorded songs as personal tributes to those who were influential during his career. On Chez Toots, for example, he included "Dance For Victor," which he dedicated to his sometimes keyboard accompanist, Victor Feldman. Similarly, he recorded "Waltz for Sonny" as a tribute to saxophonist Sonny Rollins. In June 1998, at Germany's Jazzbaltica, he paid tribute to Frank Sinatra who died a month earlier. And during the first Caspian Jazz and Blues Festival in Azerbaijan in 2002, he performed his recorded version of "Imagine," his tribute to its writer, John Lennon.
Thielemans was well liked for his modesty and kind demeanor in his native Belgium, and was known for describing himself as a Brussels "ket," which means "street kid" in old Brussels slang.
Honours and awards
Thielemans received a joint honorary doctorate from the Université libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. In 2001, he was raised into the Belgian nobility by King Albert II and created Baron Thielemans for life, this in recognition of his contribution to music. Herewith, he chose the motto Be yourself, no more no less.
In 2006, Thielemans was honoured by an all-star tribute concert for him at Carnegie Hall. Pianist Herbie Hancock and clarinetist Paquito D'Rivera were among the performers. In 2009, he was awarded the highest U.S. honour that can be accorded to a jazz musician, the distinction of "Jazz Master," by The National Endowment for the Arts.
Honours
Created "Baron Thielemans" by Royal Order.
Commander of the Order of Leopold
Knight of the Order of Leopold II
Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters
A Brussels metro station under the Avenue de Stalingrad/Stalingradlaan is to be named after the musician.
Later life
He was nominated for the title of the Greatest Belgian in 2005. In the Flemish version, he finished in 20th place, and in the Walloon version he came 44th. On 23 January 2009, he joined guitarist Philip Catherine on stage at the Liberchies church (Belgium) in memory of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Django Reinhardt. In 2012, the Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts in New York celebrated Thielman's 90th birthday with, among others, Herbie Hancock, Eliane Elias, and Kenny Werner. He performed for the occasion and left the stage standing among his friends.
Because of health issues that led to show cancellations, Thielemans announced his retirement on 12 March 2014, cancelling all scheduled concerts. He was also hospitalized for a broken arm. His manager stated that Thielemans "wants to enjoy the rest he deserves." However, he did make one more stage appearance, unannounced, in August 2014, at the Jazz Middelheim Festival in Antwerp.
Death
Thielemans died in Braine-l'Alleud, Belgium, at the age of 94.
After the announcement, the Netherlands-based jazz and pop orchestra Metropole Orkest, along with American musician Quincy Jones, performed at London's Royal Albert Hall in Thielemans' honor. Another concert was performed at the Grand Place, Brussels.
Thielemans was buried on 27 August 2016 in La Hulpe, just outside Brussels. Pianist Kenny Werner read a personal message from U.S. President Barack Obama for his widow, Huguette. It read: "Dear Huguette. I was deeply saddened when I heard about your husband's passing. I hope that shared memories will soften your suffering. Lift faith from the support of friends and family. Know that you will be in my thoughts for the next days. May Toots' music lead you and offer you consolation. I'm sure it will do this for all of us."
Toots Thielemans Collection
In December 2016, the Music Division of the Royal Library of Belgium acquired the Toots Thielemans Collection. The collection consists of hundreds of sound recordings (78 rpm, vinyl records and CDs) and thousands of documents, such as photographs, press articles, scores, letters and concert programmes.
Discography
As leader
The Sound (Columbia, 1955)
Man Bites Harmonica (Riverside, 1958)
Time Out for Toots (Decca, 1958)
The Soul of Toots Thielemans with Ray Bryant (Signature, 1960)
The Romantic Sounds of Toots Thielemans (MGM, 1962)
The Whistler and His Guitar (ABC-Paramount, 1964)
Too Much! Toots! (Philips, 1965)
Contrasts (Command, 1966)
Toots (Command, 1968)
Yesterday and Today with Svend Asmussen (A&M, 1973)
Toots Thielemans/Philip Catherine & Friends (Keytone, 1974) [reissued with 2 bonus tracks as Two Generations (Limetree, 1996)]
Captured Alive (Choice, 1974)
Affinity with Bill Evans (Warner Bros., 1979)
The Guitar Session with Gene Bertoncini (Inner City, 1981)
Slow Motion (Jazz Man, 1981)
Live (Inner City, 1982)
Live 2 (Inner City, 1982)
Live 3 (Inner City, 1982)
Live in the Netherlands (Pablo, 1982)
Bringing It Together with Stephane Grappelli (1984)
Only Trust Your Heart (Concord Jazz, 1988)
Apple Dimple (Denon, 1990)
For My Lady with Shirley Horn (EmArcy, 1991)
Footprints (EmArcy, 1992)
The Brazil Project (Private Music, 1992)
The Brazil Project Volume 2 (Private Music, 1993)
Do Not Leave Me (Milan, 1994)
East Coast West Coast (Private Music, 1994)
Chez Toots (Private Music, 1998)
The Live Takes Volume 1 (Narada, 2000)
Toots Thielemans and Kenny Werner (Verve, 2001)
One More for the Road (Verve, 2006)
As sideman
With John Denver
Aerie (RCA Records, 1971)
Farewell Andromeda (RCA Records, 1973)
With Eliane Elias
Illusions (Denon, 1986)
Bossa Nova Stories (Blue Note Records, 2008)
With Bill Evans
Affinity (Warner Bros. Records, 1979)
With Michael Franks
Passionfruit (Warner Bros. Records, 1983)
With Dizzy Gillespie
Digital at Montreux, 1980 (Pablo, 1980)
With Peggy Lee
Blues Cross Country (Capitol Records, 1962)
Somethin' Groovy! (Capitol Records, 1967)
With Urbie Green
The Fox (CTI, 1976)
With Shirley Horn
I Remember Miles (Verve, 1998)
With Billy Joel
An Innocent Man (Columbia Records, 1983)
With James Taylor
James Taylor at Christmas (Columbia Records, 2006)
With Melanie
Gather Me (Neighborhood Records, 1971)
As I See It Now (Neighborhood Records, 1975)
With Brook Benton
Brook Benton Today (Atlantic Records, 1970)
With Sheena Easton
No Sound But a Heart (EMI, 1987)
With Diane Schuur
Love Songs (GPR, 1993)
With Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones Explores the Music of Henry Mancini (Mercury Records, 1964)
Walk, Don't Run (Mainstream Records, 1966)
You've Got It Bad Girl (A&M Records, 1973)
Mellow Madness (A&M Records, 1975)
The Dude (A&M Records, 1981)
With Sarah Vaughan
Songs of The Beatles (Atlantic Records, 1981)
With Fumio Karashima
Rencontre (Polydor Records, 1999)
With Natalie Cole
Stardust (Elektra Records, 1996)
With James Last
Theme from Der Landarzt (Polydor Records, 1987)
With Joe Lovano
Flights of Fancy: Trio Fascination Edition Two (Blue Note Records, 2001)
With Jaco Pastorius
Word of Mouth (Warner Bros. Records, 1981)
With Oscar Peterson
The Oscar Peterson Big 6 at Montreux (Pablo, 1975)
Live at the North Sea Jazz Festival, 1980 (Pablo, 1980)
With George Shearing and Dakota Staton
In the Night (Capitol Records, 1958)
With Elis Regina
Honeysuckle Rose Aquarela Do Brasil (Phillips, 1969)
With Julian Lennon
Valotte (Atlantic Records, 1984)
With Pat Metheny
Secret Story (Geffen, 1992)
With George Shearing
Latin Affair (Capitol Records, 1958)
With Paul Simon
Still Crazy After All These Years (Columbia Records, 1975)
With Jay Anderson
Local Color (DMP, 1994)
References
Further reading
Leonard, Vince. "Math Dropout Thielemans Scores With Jazz Harmonica". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 28 October 1978.
Herdies, Rita. "Profile: Toots Thielemans". The Rotarian. June 1993.
Hall, Fred. "Seventy and Still Swinging: A Love for Performing Keeps These Jazz Greats as Ageless as Their Music". The Rotarian. March 1995. pp. 14 - 17.
External links
Official MySpace page
NEA Jazz Masters
Toots Thielemans Interview NAMM Oral History Library (2005)
1922 births
2016 deaths
20th-century guitarists
20th-century Belgian musicians
21st-century guitarists
21st-century Belgian musicians
Barons of Belgium
Bebop harmonica players
Belgian emigrants to the United States
Belgian expatriates in the United States
Belgian jazz guitarists
Belgian jazz harmonica players
Brazilian jazz (genre) harmonica players
Jazz harmonica players
Latin jazz harmonica players
Mainstream jazz harmonica players
Musicians from Brussels
People from Uccle
Private Music artists
Riverside Records artists
Whistlers
EmArcy Records artists | true | [
"The Metallic Metals Act was a fictional piece of legislation included in a 1947 American opinion survey conducted by Sam Gill and published in the March 14, 1947 issue of Tide magazine. When given four possible replies, 70% of respondents claimed to have an opinion on the act. It has become a classic example of the risks of meaningless responses to closed-ended questions and prompted the study of the pseudo-opinion phenomenon.\n\nThe question\nRespondents were asked this question and were given four possible answers: \nWhich of the following statements most closely coincides with your opinion of the Metallic Metals Act?\n It would be a good move on the part of the US.\n It would be a good thing, but should be left to the individual states\n It’s alright for foreign countries, but should not be required here.\n It is of no value at all\n\nInitial publication and reaction\nSam Gill was a Marketing Research Director for Sherman & Marquette, Inc when he included a question about the fictional Metallic Metals Act in a survey. He reported on the results in the March 14, 1947 issue of Tide magazine in an article titled \"How Do You Stand on Sin?\", saying that 70% of respondents claimed to have an opinion on the topic. Gill also asked respondents if they favored incest, an unfamiliar term to most people at the time, and one third supported it. The article did not include any information on the size or make-up of the sample population, nor how much pressure the interviewer applied to receive a response.\n\nA similar study by Eugene Hartley in 1946 asked college students how connected they felt to students of various nationalities. His questionnaire included three imaginary nationalities, but a majority of students did not question them. Together, these two studies are the earliest publicized examples of opinion surveys on fake subjects, a phenomenon known as a pseudo-opinion. At the time, the results of both studies amused laymen but were not immediately taken seriously in the field of public opinion because most professionals felt the studies were ridiculous and reflected negatively on their field. One exception, Stanley L. Payne, wrote about Gill's study in the 1951 The Public Opinion Quarterly journal article \"Thoughts About Meaningless Questions\" and called for further investigation into this type of non-sampling error.\n\nLegacy\nDespite Payne's call to action, pseudo-opinions remained largely unstudied until the 1980s, but in 1970 Philip Converse postulated that answering \"don't know\" is seen by respondents as an admission of \"mental incapacity\". In 1981, researchers Howard Schuman and Stanley Presser were unable to locate documentation for Gill's study and concluded it should be taken as an anecdote rather than a true study. Their research found that pseudo-opinions are a significant source of error but not as prevalent as Hartley and Gill's studies suggested.\n\nThe Metallic Metals Act is considered a classic example of pseudo-opinions and difficulties with close-ended survey questions and continues to be supported by later studies. By 1991, it had become standard practice to include a false question in opinion surveys to gauge the degree of pseudo-opinions. A study by the University of Cincinnati found 20 to 40 percent of Americans will provide pseudo-opinions because of social pressure, using context clues to select an answer they believe will please the questioner. This has occasionally provided a source for jokes on talk shows and comedy shows who air interviews to mock the respondents. Other studies have shown the phenomenon is not limited to the United States. In a 2019 opinion piece written for The Guardian, Richard Seymour speculated that most opinion polls only represent what respondents heard most recently in the news media.\n\nReferences\n\nPsychology experiments\nHoaxes in the United States\n1940s hoaxes\n1947 introductions",
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region"
] |
[
"The Undertones",
"Casbah Rock"
] | C_39b6cbda764e492ea1376605d128ea80_0 | What was Casbah Rock? | 1 | What was Casbah Rock? | The Undertones | By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at The Casbah, where the band began to perform in February. The Undertones had occasionally earned money at venues where they had performed throughout 1976, but these gigs at The Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis, as performing at The Casbah earned the group up to PS40 a week. This inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at this venue. By mid-year, the concerts the Undertones performed would include the song "Teenage Kicks", which had been written by guitarist John O'Neill in mid-1977. The gigs performed at The Casbah gave the Undertones increased confidence in their musical ability, and in June 1977 they performed concerts outside Derry for the first time, supporting a Dublin punk group named The Radiators from Space. In March 1978, the Undertones recorded a demo tape at Magee University in Derry and sent copies of the tape to various record companies in the hope of securing a record deal, but only received official letters of rejection. The band had also sent a copy of their recordings to influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, requesting he play the songs on his radio programme. Peel replied to the band, offering to pay for a recording session in Belfast. On 16 June 1978, the band recorded their debut four-song EP "Teenage Kicks" on a budget of only PS200. The EP was engineered by Davy Shannon at Wizard Sound Studios, Belfast - and was released on Belfast's Good Vibrations record label. The title song became a hit with support from John Peel, who considered Teenage Kicks his all-time favourite song, an opinion he held until his death in 2004. Seymour Stein, the president of Sire Records - in London on business - heard John Peel play "Teenage Kicks" on BBC Radio 1 and became interested in the band. Stein sent a London-based representative named Paul McNally to Derry to discuss a record deal with the band. McNally saw the band play live in what would ultimately prove to be their final performance at The Casbah on 29 September 1978. The following day, McNally convened with the Undertones to discuss a record contract. Three members of the band signed the proposed contract on this date, with the understanding that Feargal Sharkey and Michael Bradley would discuss negotiations to the contract with Seymour Stein in person in London. CANNOTANSWER | By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at The Casbah, | The Undertones are a rock band formed in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. From 1975 to 1983, the Undertones consisted of Feargal Sharkey (vocals), John O'Neill (rhythm guitar, vocals), Damian O'Neill (lead guitar, vocals), Michael Bradley (bass, vocals) and Billy Doherty (drums). Much of the earlier Undertones material drew influence from punk rock and new wave; the Undertones also incorporated elements of rock, glam rock and post-punk into material released after 1979, before citing soul and Motown as the influence for the material released upon their final album. The Undertones released thirteen singles and four studio albums between 1978 and 1983 before Sharkey announced his intention to leave the band in May 1983, citing musical differences as the reason for the break up.
Despite the backdrop of the Troubles in Derry and across Northern Ireland, the vast majority (though not all) of the material the Undertones released focused not upon the political climate, but upon issues such as adolescence, teenage angst and heartbreak. AllMusic has stated that guitarists John and Damian O'Neill "mated infectious guitar hooks to 1960s garage, 1970s glam rock, and Feargal Sharkey's signature vocal quaver."
In 1999, the Undertones reformed, replacing lead singer Sharkey with Paul McLoone.
The Undertones remain the most successful band to have emerged from Derry, and one of the most successful bands to have emerged from Northern Ireland.
Formation and early gigs
The Undertones formed in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. The band members were five friends from Creggan and the Bogside, who originally drew inspiration from such artists as the Beatles, Small Faces and Lindisfarne and who decided in part to form their own band due to both their common interest in music and the fact that—because of the Troubles— many entertainment venues in the city were closed in late evenings.
The band initially rehearsed cover versions at the home of the guitarists, brothers John and Vincent O'Neill, and in the shed of a neighbour. (In early 1976, before the band had played gigs at any venues, Vincent O'Neill left the band; he was soon replaced by his younger brother Damian.)
Beginning in February 1976 the group, at this stage still unnamed, began playing gigs at various minor local venues, including schools, parish halls and Scout huts, where the band's lead singer, Feargal Sharkey, was a local Scout leader. Sharkey was also responsible for giving the band their first name: at the introduction to a gig at Saint Joseph's Secondary School in Derry on 16 March 1976, Feargal Sharkey was asked the name of the band and quickly replied "The Hot Rods". At a later gig, Sharkey named the band "Little Feat": another name already used by another group.
Later that year, drummer Billy Doherty proposed an alternate name for the group: The Undertones, which Doherty had discovered in his school history book. The other members of the band agreed to the proposal.
With the arrival of punk rock in late 1976, the artistic focus of the band changed. Artists such as the Adverts, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and, particularly, the Ramones became major influences on the Undertones.
In addition to being a Scout leader, Feargal Sharkey worked as a television repairman and delivery man. The van which Sharkey drove in this employment was used by the Undertones to transport their equipment to and from various venues.
The Casbah
By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at the Casbah, where the band began to perform in February. The Undertones had occasionally earned money at venues where they had performed throughout 1976, but these gigs at the Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis, as performing at the Casbah earned the group up to £30 for each attendance fee. Both the money earned and their popularity at this venue inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at the Casbah. By the following year, the concerts the Undertones performed would include the song "Teenage Kicks", which had been written by guitarist John O'Neill in mid-1977. The gigs performed at the Casbah gave the Undertones increased confidence in their musical ability, and in June 1977 they performed concerts outside Derry for the first time, supporting a Dublin punk group named The Radiators from Space.
In March 1978, the Undertones recorded a demo tape at Magee University in Derry and sent copies of the tape to various record companies in the hope of securing a record deal, but only received official letters of rejection. The band had also sent a copy of their recordings to influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, requesting he play the songs on his radio programme. Peel replied to the band, offering to pay for a recording session in Belfast. On 15 June 1978, the band recorded their debut four-song EP "Teenage Kicks" on a budget of only £200. The EP was engineered by Davy Shannon at Wizard Studios, Belfast, and was released on Belfast's Good Vibrations record label. The title song became a hit with support from John Peel, who considered Teenage Kicks his all-time favourite song, an opinion he held through to his death in 2004.
Sire Records
Seymour Stein, the president of Sire Records – in London on business – heard John Peel play "Teenage Kicks" on BBC Radio 1 and became interested in the band. Stein sent a London-based representative named Paul McNally to Derry to discuss a record deal with the band. McNally saw the band play live in what would ultimately prove to be their final performance at the Casbah on 29 September 1978. The following day, McNally convened with the Undertones to discuss a record contract. Three members of the band signed the proposed contract on this date, with the understanding that Feargal Sharkey and Michael Bradley would discuss negotiations to the contract with Seymour Stein in person in London.
Teenage Kicks (1978–1979)
On 2 October 1978, Bradley and Sharkey agreed to an increased advance fee of £10,000 offered by Stein upon the recording contract and signed to Sire Records on a five-year contract. Sire Records subsequently obtained all rights to the material released upon the Teenage Kicks EP and the song was re-released as a standard vinyl single upon Sire's own label two weeks later.
On 26 October, the Undertones performed "Teenage Kicks" live on Top of the Pops. With help from Peel (who had also recorded and broadcast a Peel Session with the Undertones on the 16th), Teenage Kicks peaked at number 31 in the UK Singles Chart the following month.
In November 1978, the Undertones embarked on their first tour of the UK. This tour lasted until 16 December and saw the band appear as the supporting act for The Rezillos and John Otway in England and Wales in addition to headlining in three concerts in Belfast and Derry.
In January 1979, the Undertones recorded their eponymous debut album at Eden Studios in Acton, West London, using producer Roger Bechirian, whom the band had worked with for the first time the previous December, when Bechirian had produced the band's second single, "Get Over You". Much of the material upon their first album had been performed regularly at the Casbah, and the band were able to record this album in the space of less than four weeks.
Following the release of "Get Over You" in February 1979, the Undertones' eponymous debut album was released in May. The primary lyrical concern of the songs focused upon youthful relationships and adolescence. Three further punk singles "Jimmy Jimmy", "Here Comes the Summer" and "You've Got My Number (Why Don't You Use It?)" were released between April and October 1979, each to critical acclaim. In September 1979, the Undertones toured the United States for the first time, supporting The Clash with eight concerts in six different States.
Hypnotised (1980)
Following the 'You Got My Number tour' of October 1979, the Undertones began recording the songs for their second album, Hypnotised, at Wisseloord Studios in the Netherlands. The recording of the songs began in December. Ten songs were recorded before the band returned to Derry prior to Christmas to write and record further songs for the album. Three further songs were written during this break: "Tearproof", "More Songs About Chocolate and Girls" and "Wednesday Week".
In January 1980, the production of Hypnotised was finished at Eden Studios in London, with the Undertones recording the three further songs written the previous December, plus two further songs—"Hypnotised" and a cover of "Under The Boardwalk"—which had been written that month. Following the completion of their second LP, the band embarked upon a two-week tour of Ireland before touring continental Europe for the first time in March.
On 28 March 1980, the Undertones released their sixth single, "My Perfect Cousin". The song, which had been written the previous summer by Damian O'Neill and Michael Bradley, reached number 9 in the UK charts and would subsequently prove to be the band's highest charting single in the United Kingdom. The following month, on 21 April 1980, the band's second LP, Hypnotised was released. This album reached number 6 in the UK Albums Chart, remaining in the Top 10 for one month. The same week the album was released, the Undertones embarked on their 'Humming tour', which saw the band play a total of 25 gigs across the UK between April and June.
Less than two weeks after the completion of the 'Humming tour', the Undertones toured the United States for the second time; this time as the headlining band. "Wednesday Week"—the second single to be released from Hypnotised—was released in July 1980. This single reached number 11 in the UK chart and remained in the Top 40 for a total of seven weeks.
Between September and December 1980, the Undertones performed two further tours: the 'Disaster Tour (European Style)', which saw the band perform in continental Europe and—in December—the 'See No More' tour of the UK.
In terms of chart sales, the year 1980 was the Undertones' most successful year. In a review by Sounds magazine the same year, the Undertones were described as: "Possibly the best pop group in the English speaking world."
EMI
Positive Touch (1981–1982)
In December 1980, the Undertones announced their intention to split from Sire Records as they were unhappy with the lack of promotion they were receiving outside of the UK, particularly in the US. Following negotiations, their manager, Andy Ferguson, succeeded in the band retaining ownership rights to the material released on Sire Records; Ferguson subsequently signed the group to EMI in March 1981.
On 4 January 1981, the band began recording their third album, Positive Touch, again at Wisseloord Studios, and again with Roger Bechirian as producer. The band recorded a total of eight songs in five days before returning to Derry. Later the same month, the band returned to Wisseloord Studios to complete the recording of the LP. The songs on this album indicated a change in both musical and lyrical influences: although the songs remained largely guitar-oriented, the band had written songs which focused upon the Troubles in Northern Ireland such as "Crisis of Mine", "You're Welcome" and the single "It's Going To Happen!", which preceded the release of the LP and was inspired by the 1980–81 Hunger Strikes. In addition, several songs upon the LP included instruments such as pianos, saxophones, recorders and brass instruments, with two further songs ("Julie Ocean" and "It's Going To Happen!") drawing musical inspiration from contemporary artists Orange Juice and Dexy's Midnight Runners respectively. The band themselves were content with the change of influences for Positive Touch, which bassist Michael Bradley later described as a "natural progression" for the band, adding that, at the time, consensus between the band members was that the songs upon the LP were their best yet.
One month prior to the release of this third album, in April 1981, the Undertones embarked on their 'Positive Touch tour'; this tour saw the band perform a total of 36 gigs across the UK mainland in the space of less than two months.
Positive Touch was released in May 1981. This third album peaked at number 17 in the UK charts—remaining in the Top 40 for a total of four weeks. The album also received favourable reviews from several music critics and was listed by NME as one of the best albums to be released in 1981, although neither the album nor either of the singles released were as successful as any of the material released the previous year.
Following the conclusion of their 'Positive Touch tour' in June 1981, the Undertones released their second single of 1981, "Julie Ocean". The single – an extended recording of the 90-second album version – was produced by Hugh Jones and Dave Balfe.
On 29 September 1981, the Undertones embarked on their biggest tour of Continental Europe, which lasted until 20 October 1981 and saw the band perform a total of 19 concerts in six countries.
1982 saw a lull in activity from the Undertones, who only performed live on a total of five occasions throughout the entire year. Two of these gigs were held in England, with three further live appearances held in the United States in August. Much of the time the band spent together was devoted towards writing and recording songs for their next LP in their 8-track demo studio. Damian O'Neill, the Undertones' lead guitarist, later admitted: "We (had) definitely lost a bit of the spark. I don't know but I tend to think some of us got too complacent sitting in our homes in Derry." The Undertones released two studio singles, "Beautiful Friend" and "The Love Parade", in February and October; both of these singles failed to make an impact upon the UK charts.
The Sin of Pride (1983)
In March 1983, the Undertones released their fourth album, The Sin of Pride. This album, which drew inspiration from both soul and Motown, was produced by Mike Hedges, who had replaced Roger Bechirian as the Undertones' producer following the 1981 release of Positive Touch. Feargal Sharkey is known to have stated he had worked harder upon this album than at any point in his singing career to date, and that he considers this album the finest the Undertones ever produced. The Sin of Pride was met with critical acclaim upon release, and the Undertones performed several gigs in both Scotland and England to promote the release of this album; it reached number 43 in the UK chart.
The Undertones released two further studio singles in 1983; their first single, "Got To Have You Back"—which was inspired by both ABC and Smokey Robinson—was released in February and their second single, "Chain of Love", was released in May. Both failed to make any major impact on the UK chart.
Disbandment
In April 1983, the Undertones embarked on their 'UK Sin of Pride tour' to promote their latest album. By this stage in their career, the band were acutely aware of the pressure they were under from EMI, who were unhappy with the lack of chart success of much of the material the band had released since the release of their Positive Touch LP. In addition, internal tensions between various members of the band, in particular between Feargal Sharkey and John O'Neill, had deteriorated significantly. These factors led to Sharkey announcing his intentions to leave the Undertones during the 'European Tour 1983', which the group performed in May of that year.
To fulfill agreed commitments, the Undertones remained together for a further two months, performing several gigs across continental Europe before disbanding in mid-1983, with their final concert being played at Punchestown Racecourse in County Kildare in Ireland on 17 July.
Subsequent careers
Following the disbandment of the Undertones in 1983, Feargal Sharkey was invited by Vince Clarke and Eric Radcliffe of the synthpop duet The Assembly to provide lead vocals on the single "Never Never," which was released by The Assembly in November 1983 and peaked at number 4 in the UK charts. Sharkey was never officially a member of The Assembly and his vocal contribution to "Never Never" proved to be Sharkey's only recording with the band, who would only issue this one single before folding.
Sharkey subsequently embarked upon a brief, but commercially successful solo career in the mid 1980s to early 1990s.
Two of the other band members, John O'Neill and Damian O'Neill, formed That Petrol Emotion in 1984. That Petrol Emotion released a total of fifteen singles and six albums between 1985 and 1994.
In the 1990s John O'Neill formed a trip hop group called Rare under the stage name Seán Ó'Néill with vocalist Mary Gallagher. They only had one notable chart appearance and disbanded shortly after the release of their only album in 1998.
Reunion
The Undertones reformed in November 1999, initially to play concerts in Derry. For their reformation, the Undertones replaced Sharkey (who declined to rejoin) with singer Paul McLoone. Since 1999, the Undertones have performed several tours across the UK, Ireland, Continental Europe, Japan, Turkey and North America and continue to perform live.
Noteworthy gigs by the Undertones since their 1999 reformation include performing at the Glastonbury Festival in June 2005, providing pre-match entertainment prior to kick-off at Celtic Park in the UEFA Champions League play-off between Celtic and Arsenal in August 2009 and, in March and April 2011, performing a series of UK gigs in which they played their debut album, The Undertones, in its entirety as part of each show. This tour was timed to accompany a re-release of a double compilation album containing all of the A- and B-sides of their singles.
Since their reformation, the Undertones have released two albums of original material with Paul McLoone providing vocals: Get What You Need on 30 September 2003; and Dig Yourself Deep, on 15 October 2007.
In April 2013, the Undertones released their first new material for over five years with the double A-side single "Much Too Late / When It Hurts I Count To Ten." This single—limited to 1,000 numbered copies—was released as part of the Record Store Day promotion in the UK and was recorded at Toe Rag Studios in London.
Media recognition
In a 2000 poll by Q to discover the 100 greatest British albums of all time as voted by the British public, the Undertones' eponymous debut LP was voted the 90th greatest British album.
The Undertones have also been the subject of two documentaries: The first documentary to be produced: The Story of the Undertones: Teenage Kicks, was recorded in 2001 and released in 2004. Directed by Tom Collins, this 65-minute documentary was produced with the cooperation of John Peel, who interviews all current and former members of the band (with the exception of Vincent O'Neill) in addition to Seymour Stein and Eamonn McCann. In this documentary, the band discuss their formation, career, subsequent careers, personal lives and 1999 reunion.
The second documentary relating to The Undertones: Here Comes the Summer: The Undertones Story, was commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on BBC Four in September 2012. This documentary also features with interviews with current and former members of the Undertones (excluding Feargal Sharkey) in addition to numerous fans, friends, journalists, and additional personnel involved in the band's recordings and career.
The band were also portrayed in the 2013 film Good Vibrations about Terri Hooley and the Good Vibrations record label, featuring Jodie Whittaker and Richard Dormer.
Members
Current members
John O'Neill – rhythm guitar and backing vocals (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Michael Bradley – bass guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Billy Doherty – drums (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Damian O'Neill – lead guitar, keyboards and backing vocals (1976–1983, 1999–present)
Paul McLoone – lead vocals (1999–present)
Former members
Vincent O'Neill – guitar (1975–1976)
Feargal Sharkey – lead vocals (1975–1983)
Discography
The Undertones (1979)
Hypnotised (1980)
Positive Touch (1981)
The Sin of Pride (1983)
Get What You Need (2003)
Dig Yourself Deep (2007)
Notes
References
Further reading
Bradley, Michael (2016). Teenage Kicks: My Life as an Undertone. Omnibus Press.
External links
Official Site
History of the band from an unofficial fan site
Sold On Song Top 100: Teenage Kicks (No. 51)
Teenage Kicks from Salon.com
History of Punk in Derry, Northern Ireland.
Profile of The Undertones
A Panorama of The Undertones Playing in Brooke Park, Derry, August 2007
Official press release for the Undertones' 'True Confessions' greatest hits album
1974 establishments in Northern Ireland
Harvest Records artists
Musical groups established in 1974
Musical groups from Derry (city)
New wave musical groups from Northern Ireland
Pop punk groups from Northern Ireland
Punk rock groups from Northern Ireland
Rykodisc artists
Sire Records artists | true | [
"The Casbah Recording Studio or simply Casbah is a recording studio in the Orange County suburb of Fullerton, California that helped to spawn several highly successful acts, including Berlin, Stacey Q, and Social Distortion.\n\nFounding of Casbah\nCasbah was founded in the late 1970s by bandmates Jon St. James, and Charles \"Chaz\" Ramirez, with money borrowed from St. James' parents. Initially it boasted only a TEAC 8-track tape machine, a mixing console and a few effects. St. James purchased additional electronic devices and rack mount equipment using money he earned doing a series of sound-alike jingles for the now-defunct Los Angeles rock and roll station KMET 94.7 FM. In the early 1980s, the 8-track TEAC was replaced with a Tascam 16 track, which was considered the standard in many studios at the time. It was on that reel-to-reel tape machine that Stacey Q's Better Than Heaven album was recorded. The Casbah attracted a variety of talent, including Righteous Brothers keyboardist John Van Tongeren and Berlin drummer, synthesist and producer Dan Van Patten, who lent their abilities to a variety of projects. As a songwriter, guitarist, and producer, St. James helped to bring the talents of techno-pop diva Stacey Q, the dance-pop duo Bardeux, and the dance-pop artist Katalina to a wide audience.\n\nPunk Rock Boom\nCasbah's roll in the punk boom can be heavily attributed to St. James's partnership with Charles \"Chaz\" Ramirez. While St. James and Ramirez had very different styles, their partnership gave birth to classic records by iconic punk bands such as the Adolescents, Social Distortion, Agent Orange, The Cadillac Tramps, and The Vandals. \"Chaz\", as he was known to most, was guitarist for Eddie and the Subtitles, a local punk band that was influential on younger Fullerton punks as the Adolescents and Social Distortion, both of which recorded their early demos and singles at Casbah, and continued recording albums there as their popularity grew. “I don’t think they shared musical tastes\" stated Michael Hutchinson, producer for Billy Idol and Berlin, observing \"I don’t know how excited Chaz was about Berlin – he was more excited about punk stuff.” Yet there was an excitement that came from the blending of the two distinct cultures; one typified by Chaz and his cronies’ slacker ethos, the other by St. James and his commercial sensibilities and keen awareness of musical trends. After the success of Stacey Q's Better Than Heaven, St. James deferred ownership of The Casbah to Ramirez.\n\nRamirez and his influence played a vital role in fostering the punk rock boom that became Orange County's signature contribution to '80s music, helping Fullerton to become the epicenter for early OC punk. Under Ramirez, Casbah became known as a Meca for the punk rock scene. “Most punk bands wanted to go there and record,” stated Hutchinson, “Mostly, I think because of the vibe, and because of Chaz. Chaz always cared that everybody got what they wanted and had a good time,\" added Hutchinson. Mike Ness, front-man for Social Distortion, said of Ramirez \"He was a fun guy, probably one of the most well-liked guys I ever met,\" adding \"I don't think he had an enemy in the world.\" Ramirez described punk rock as \"the cool new folk music, the new music of the people,\" adding \"People equate folk music with nylon string guitars, but folk music is folk music, and this is it.\"\n\nRamirez co-produced Social Distortion's first two albums, Mommy's Little Monster and Prison Bound, and continued to help the band fashion its sound in demo sessions and rehearsals at Casbah after it graduated in 1990 to Epic Records.\n\nRamirez was able to branch beyond punk. He engineered Berlin's hot-selling 1983 album, Pleasure Victim And he worked closely with Stryper, the metal band whose glossier sound helped it become the best-selling Orange County rock band of the '80s. \"Chaz wasn't just a punk rock producer at all,\" Sweet said. \"He 100% knew what he was doing, and he was one of the easiest guys to work with in the business,\" said Michael Sweet, lead singer of Stryper.\n\nIn 1998, Ramirez brought on partner Greg Heil, who engineered and produced the album \"Johny Bravo\" for Joyride (former members of the Adolescents), \"post-punk\" alternative bands such as Breakfast with Amy, Fluffy, and EXIT, and speed-metal bands such as The Crucified.\n\nTragically, Chaz Ramirez died on Wednesday, Dec 2, 1992, following an accidental fall, after years of shaping some of the most memorable and widely heard rock music to have come out of Orange County. He was 39 years old.\n\nFollowing the passing of Ramirez, Social Distortion began leasing the space, where they continue using the studio for practicing and recording new material.\n\nThe new Casbah\nSt. James recently opened a new Casbah recording studio in downtown Fullerton—a Pro Tools equipped digital studio offering recording, mixing, and mastering services.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nRecording studios in California\nBuildings and structures in Fullerton, California\nOrange County, California culture\nCulture of Fullerton, California",
"\"Rock the Casbah\" is a song by the English punk rock band The Clash, released in 1982. The song was released as the second single from their fifth album, Combat Rock. It reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US (their second and last top 40 and only top 10 single in the United States) and, along with the track \"Mustapha Dance\", it also reached number eight on the dance chart.\n\nRecording\n\"Rock the Casbah\" was composed by the band's drummer Topper Headon, based on a piano part that he had been toying with. Finding himself in the studio without his three bandmates, Headon progressively taped the drum, piano and bass parts, recording the bulk of the song's musical instrumentation himself.\n\nThis origin makes \"Rock the Casbah\" different from the majority of Clash songs, which tended to originate with music written by the Joe Strummer–Mick Jones songwriting partnership. Upon entering the studio to hear Headon's recording, the other Clash members were impressed with his creation, stating that they felt the musical track was essentially complete. From this point, relatively minor overdubs were added, such as guitars and percussion.\n\nHowever, Strummer was not impressed by the page of suggested lyrics that Headon gave him. According to Clash guitar technician Digby Cleaver, they were \"a soppy set of lyrics about how much he missed his girlfriend\". \"Strummer just took one look at these words and said, 'How incredibly interesting!', screwed the piece of paper into a ball and chucked it backwards over his head.\"\n\nStrummer had been developing a set of lyrical ideas that he was looking to match with an appropriate tune. Before hearing Headon's music, Strummer had already come up with the phrases \"rock the casbah\" and \"you'll have to let that raga drop\" as lyrical ideas that he was considering for future songs. After hearing Headon's music, Strummer went into the studio's toilets and wrote lyrics to match the song's melody.\n\nThe version of the song on Combat Rock, as well as many other Clash compilations, features an electronic sound effect beginning at the 1:52-minute point of the song. This noise is a monophonic version of the song \"Dixie\". The sound effect source was generated by the alarm from a digital wristwatch that Mick Jones owned, and was intentionally added to the recording by Jones.\n\nLyrics\nJoe Strummer had been toying with the phrase \"rock the casbah\" prior to hearing Topper Headon's musical track that would form the basis of the song. This phrase had originated during a jam session with Strummer's violinist friend Tymon Dogg. Dogg began playing Eastern scales with his violin and Strummer started shouting \"rock the casbah!\" Not hearing Strummer properly, Dogg thought that Strummer had been shouting at him to \"stop, you cadger!\"\n\nFurther inspiration for the lyrics of \"Rock the Casbah\" originated from Strummer observing the band's manager Bernie Rhodes moaning about The Clash's increasing tendency to perform lengthy songs. Rhodes asked the band facetiously \"does everything have to be as long as this rāga?\" (referring to the Indian musical style known for its length and complexity). Strummer later returned to his room at the Iroquois Hotel in New York City and wrote the opening lines to the song: \"The King told the boogie-men 'you have to let that rāga drop.'\"\n\nThe song gives a fabulist account of a ban on Western rock music by an Arab king. The lyrics describe the king's efforts to stop his population from listening to this music, such as ordering his military's jet fighters to bomb any people in violation of the ban. The pilots ignore the orders, and instead play rock music on their cockpit radios. The population then proceed to \"rock the casbah\" by dancing to the music. This scenario was inspired by the ban on Western music in Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.\n\nThe song's lyrics feature various Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, and Sanskrit loan-words, such as \"sharif\", \"bedouin\", \"sheikh\", \"kosher\", \"rāga\", \"muezzin\", \"minaret\", and \"casbah\".\n\nSingle\nThe single version has more pronounced bass. Also when Joe Strummer screams \"The crowd caught a whiff / Of that crazy casbah jive\" at the end of the third verse the word \"jive\" is sustained for several seconds with digital delay. Additionally, the sound effects of the jet fighters in the last verse are lower in the mix, particularly just after \"drop your bombs between the minarets.\" The single version of the song is what is played in the music video. \"Mustapha Dance\", which features in many releases of the single, is an instrumental remix of the song.\n\nSingle issues\nThe single has several issues, all with different cover, format and B-side (see the table below).\n\nMusic video\nThe music video for \"Rock the Casbah\" was filmed in Austin, Texas by director Don Letts on 8 and 9 June 1982. It intermixes footage of The Clash (with Terry Chimes on the drums) miming a performance of the song, with a storyline depicting two characters travelling together throughout Texas. The video depicts a Muslim hitchhiker and a Hasidic Jewish limo driver befriending each other on the road and skanking together through the streets to a Clash concert at Austin's City Coliseum. Throughout the video, an armadillo appears at points. At one point they are seen eating hamburgers in front of a Burger King restaurant. At another point, the Muslim character is seen drinking a beer; Letts stated that all that imagery was \"about breaking taboos.\"\n\nThe Clash is shown miming a performance of the song in front of a pumpjack in a Texas oil field. For most of the video clip, guitarist Mick Jones's face is obscured by a veiled camouflage hat. The reason for this is that Jones was in a bad mood during the film shoot. Jones' face remains hidden until the final 30 seconds of the clip, when Strummer pulls the hat off at the \"he thinks it's not kosher!\" line.\n\nLegacy\nThe song was chosen by Armed Forces Radio to be the first song broadcast on the service covering the area during Operation Desert Storm. In one of the campfire scenes late in the 2007 documentary Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, a friend states that Strummer wept when he heard that the phrase \"Rock the Casbah\" was written on an American bomb that was to be detonated on Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War.\n\nFollowing the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, the song was placed on the list of post-9/11 inappropriate titles distributed by Clear Channel. In 2006, the conservative National Review released their list of the top 50 \"Conservative Rock Songs\", with \"Rock the Casbah\" at number 20, noting the Clear Channel list as well as frequent requests to the British Forces Broadcasting Service during the Iraq War. Cultural reviewer and political analyst Charlie Pierce commented that \"the notion of the Clash as spokesfolk for adventurism in the Middle East might have been enough to bring Joe Strummer back from the dead.\"\n\nVulture writer Bill Wyman in 2017 ranked the song number ten of all the band's 139 songs, calling it \"one of the greatest rock singles of all time.\" Wyman further wrote, \"Like other Clash songs, this song requires some historical context\" about Iran, starting from the 1953 coup d'état—which overthrew the democratically elected leader Mohammad Mosaddegh—to the 1979 Revolution—resulting in overthrowing Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's (the Shah) rule and then hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran, rupturing their diplomatic relations—followed by Jimmy Carter—who was criticised for the handling of the hostage crisis—losing his 1980 US presidential election to Ronald Reagan.\n\nCover versions\nThe Algerian rock singer Rachid Taha covered the song (in Arabic) on his 2004 album Tékitoi. On 27 November 2005 at the Astoria, London, during the Stop the War Coalition Benefit Concert, \"...for the night's grandstanding conclusion, the Clash legend Mick Jones strides on in a skinny black suit and plays probably the most exciting guitar he has delivered in years. He and the band are brilliant on Taha's definitive take on \"Rock the Casbah\", for which the audience goes berserk.\" They again played Taha's version of the song, \"Rock el Casbah\", in February 2006, at the France 4 TV show Taratatà. In 2007 at the Barbican, \".... The band were later joined by special guest Mick Jones from The Clash who performed on \"Rock El Casbah\" and then stayed on stage for the remainder of the show.\"\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertifications\n\nPersonnel\nJoe Strummer – lead vocals, guitar\nMick Jones – guitar, backing vocals, sound effects\nPaul Simonon – backing vocals\nTopper Headon – drums, piano, bass guitar\n\nReferences\n\nBibliography\n\nExternal links\n\"A Brief History of 'Rock the Casbah'\" City Pages (15 December 1999)\n\n1982 singles\n1982 songs\nThe Clash songs\nDance-punk songs\nMacaronic songs\nCBS Records singles\nColumbia Records singles\nEpic Records singles\nBritish new wave songs\nPolitical songs\nWorks about the Middle East\nProtest songs"
] |
[
"The Undertones",
"Casbah Rock",
"What was Casbah Rock?",
"By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at The Casbah,"
] | C_39b6cbda764e492ea1376605d128ea80_0 | When was their second concert at the Casbah? | 2 | When was The Undertones' second concert at the Casbah? | The Undertones | By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at The Casbah, where the band began to perform in February. The Undertones had occasionally earned money at venues where they had performed throughout 1976, but these gigs at The Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis, as performing at The Casbah earned the group up to PS40 a week. This inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at this venue. By mid-year, the concerts the Undertones performed would include the song "Teenage Kicks", which had been written by guitarist John O'Neill in mid-1977. The gigs performed at The Casbah gave the Undertones increased confidence in their musical ability, and in June 1977 they performed concerts outside Derry for the first time, supporting a Dublin punk group named The Radiators from Space. In March 1978, the Undertones recorded a demo tape at Magee University in Derry and sent copies of the tape to various record companies in the hope of securing a record deal, but only received official letters of rejection. The band had also sent a copy of their recordings to influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, requesting he play the songs on his radio programme. Peel replied to the band, offering to pay for a recording session in Belfast. On 16 June 1978, the band recorded their debut four-song EP "Teenage Kicks" on a budget of only PS200. The EP was engineered by Davy Shannon at Wizard Sound Studios, Belfast - and was released on Belfast's Good Vibrations record label. The title song became a hit with support from John Peel, who considered Teenage Kicks his all-time favourite song, an opinion he held until his death in 2004. Seymour Stein, the president of Sire Records - in London on business - heard John Peel play "Teenage Kicks" on BBC Radio 1 and became interested in the band. Stein sent a London-based representative named Paul McNally to Derry to discuss a record deal with the band. McNally saw the band play live in what would ultimately prove to be their final performance at The Casbah on 29 September 1978. The following day, McNally convened with the Undertones to discuss a record contract. Three members of the band signed the proposed contract on this date, with the understanding that Feargal Sharkey and Michael Bradley would discuss negotiations to the contract with Seymour Stein in person in London. CANNOTANSWER | The Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis, | The Undertones are a rock band formed in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. From 1975 to 1983, the Undertones consisted of Feargal Sharkey (vocals), John O'Neill (rhythm guitar, vocals), Damian O'Neill (lead guitar, vocals), Michael Bradley (bass, vocals) and Billy Doherty (drums). Much of the earlier Undertones material drew influence from punk rock and new wave; the Undertones also incorporated elements of rock, glam rock and post-punk into material released after 1979, before citing soul and Motown as the influence for the material released upon their final album. The Undertones released thirteen singles and four studio albums between 1978 and 1983 before Sharkey announced his intention to leave the band in May 1983, citing musical differences as the reason for the break up.
Despite the backdrop of the Troubles in Derry and across Northern Ireland, the vast majority (though not all) of the material the Undertones released focused not upon the political climate, but upon issues such as adolescence, teenage angst and heartbreak. AllMusic has stated that guitarists John and Damian O'Neill "mated infectious guitar hooks to 1960s garage, 1970s glam rock, and Feargal Sharkey's signature vocal quaver."
In 1999, the Undertones reformed, replacing lead singer Sharkey with Paul McLoone.
The Undertones remain the most successful band to have emerged from Derry, and one of the most successful bands to have emerged from Northern Ireland.
Formation and early gigs
The Undertones formed in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. The band members were five friends from Creggan and the Bogside, who originally drew inspiration from such artists as the Beatles, Small Faces and Lindisfarne and who decided in part to form their own band due to both their common interest in music and the fact that—because of the Troubles— many entertainment venues in the city were closed in late evenings.
The band initially rehearsed cover versions at the home of the guitarists, brothers John and Vincent O'Neill, and in the shed of a neighbour. (In early 1976, before the band had played gigs at any venues, Vincent O'Neill left the band; he was soon replaced by his younger brother Damian.)
Beginning in February 1976 the group, at this stage still unnamed, began playing gigs at various minor local venues, including schools, parish halls and Scout huts, where the band's lead singer, Feargal Sharkey, was a local Scout leader. Sharkey was also responsible for giving the band their first name: at the introduction to a gig at Saint Joseph's Secondary School in Derry on 16 March 1976, Feargal Sharkey was asked the name of the band and quickly replied "The Hot Rods". At a later gig, Sharkey named the band "Little Feat": another name already used by another group.
Later that year, drummer Billy Doherty proposed an alternate name for the group: The Undertones, which Doherty had discovered in his school history book. The other members of the band agreed to the proposal.
With the arrival of punk rock in late 1976, the artistic focus of the band changed. Artists such as the Adverts, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and, particularly, the Ramones became major influences on the Undertones.
In addition to being a Scout leader, Feargal Sharkey worked as a television repairman and delivery man. The van which Sharkey drove in this employment was used by the Undertones to transport their equipment to and from various venues.
The Casbah
By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at the Casbah, where the band began to perform in February. The Undertones had occasionally earned money at venues where they had performed throughout 1976, but these gigs at the Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis, as performing at the Casbah earned the group up to £30 for each attendance fee. Both the money earned and their popularity at this venue inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at the Casbah. By the following year, the concerts the Undertones performed would include the song "Teenage Kicks", which had been written by guitarist John O'Neill in mid-1977. The gigs performed at the Casbah gave the Undertones increased confidence in their musical ability, and in June 1977 they performed concerts outside Derry for the first time, supporting a Dublin punk group named The Radiators from Space.
In March 1978, the Undertones recorded a demo tape at Magee University in Derry and sent copies of the tape to various record companies in the hope of securing a record deal, but only received official letters of rejection. The band had also sent a copy of their recordings to influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, requesting he play the songs on his radio programme. Peel replied to the band, offering to pay for a recording session in Belfast. On 15 June 1978, the band recorded their debut four-song EP "Teenage Kicks" on a budget of only £200. The EP was engineered by Davy Shannon at Wizard Studios, Belfast, and was released on Belfast's Good Vibrations record label. The title song became a hit with support from John Peel, who considered Teenage Kicks his all-time favourite song, an opinion he held through to his death in 2004.
Sire Records
Seymour Stein, the president of Sire Records – in London on business – heard John Peel play "Teenage Kicks" on BBC Radio 1 and became interested in the band. Stein sent a London-based representative named Paul McNally to Derry to discuss a record deal with the band. McNally saw the band play live in what would ultimately prove to be their final performance at the Casbah on 29 September 1978. The following day, McNally convened with the Undertones to discuss a record contract. Three members of the band signed the proposed contract on this date, with the understanding that Feargal Sharkey and Michael Bradley would discuss negotiations to the contract with Seymour Stein in person in London.
Teenage Kicks (1978–1979)
On 2 October 1978, Bradley and Sharkey agreed to an increased advance fee of £10,000 offered by Stein upon the recording contract and signed to Sire Records on a five-year contract. Sire Records subsequently obtained all rights to the material released upon the Teenage Kicks EP and the song was re-released as a standard vinyl single upon Sire's own label two weeks later.
On 26 October, the Undertones performed "Teenage Kicks" live on Top of the Pops. With help from Peel (who had also recorded and broadcast a Peel Session with the Undertones on the 16th), Teenage Kicks peaked at number 31 in the UK Singles Chart the following month.
In November 1978, the Undertones embarked on their first tour of the UK. This tour lasted until 16 December and saw the band appear as the supporting act for The Rezillos and John Otway in England and Wales in addition to headlining in three concerts in Belfast and Derry.
In January 1979, the Undertones recorded their eponymous debut album at Eden Studios in Acton, West London, using producer Roger Bechirian, whom the band had worked with for the first time the previous December, when Bechirian had produced the band's second single, "Get Over You". Much of the material upon their first album had been performed regularly at the Casbah, and the band were able to record this album in the space of less than four weeks.
Following the release of "Get Over You" in February 1979, the Undertones' eponymous debut album was released in May. The primary lyrical concern of the songs focused upon youthful relationships and adolescence. Three further punk singles "Jimmy Jimmy", "Here Comes the Summer" and "You've Got My Number (Why Don't You Use It?)" were released between April and October 1979, each to critical acclaim. In September 1979, the Undertones toured the United States for the first time, supporting The Clash with eight concerts in six different States.
Hypnotised (1980)
Following the 'You Got My Number tour' of October 1979, the Undertones began recording the songs for their second album, Hypnotised, at Wisseloord Studios in the Netherlands. The recording of the songs began in December. Ten songs were recorded before the band returned to Derry prior to Christmas to write and record further songs for the album. Three further songs were written during this break: "Tearproof", "More Songs About Chocolate and Girls" and "Wednesday Week".
In January 1980, the production of Hypnotised was finished at Eden Studios in London, with the Undertones recording the three further songs written the previous December, plus two further songs—"Hypnotised" and a cover of "Under The Boardwalk"—which had been written that month. Following the completion of their second LP, the band embarked upon a two-week tour of Ireland before touring continental Europe for the first time in March.
On 28 March 1980, the Undertones released their sixth single, "My Perfect Cousin". The song, which had been written the previous summer by Damian O'Neill and Michael Bradley, reached number 9 in the UK charts and would subsequently prove to be the band's highest charting single in the United Kingdom. The following month, on 21 April 1980, the band's second LP, Hypnotised was released. This album reached number 6 in the UK Albums Chart, remaining in the Top 10 for one month. The same week the album was released, the Undertones embarked on their 'Humming tour', which saw the band play a total of 25 gigs across the UK between April and June.
Less than two weeks after the completion of the 'Humming tour', the Undertones toured the United States for the second time; this time as the headlining band. "Wednesday Week"—the second single to be released from Hypnotised—was released in July 1980. This single reached number 11 in the UK chart and remained in the Top 40 for a total of seven weeks.
Between September and December 1980, the Undertones performed two further tours: the 'Disaster Tour (European Style)', which saw the band perform in continental Europe and—in December—the 'See No More' tour of the UK.
In terms of chart sales, the year 1980 was the Undertones' most successful year. In a review by Sounds magazine the same year, the Undertones were described as: "Possibly the best pop group in the English speaking world."
EMI
Positive Touch (1981–1982)
In December 1980, the Undertones announced their intention to split from Sire Records as they were unhappy with the lack of promotion they were receiving outside of the UK, particularly in the US. Following negotiations, their manager, Andy Ferguson, succeeded in the band retaining ownership rights to the material released on Sire Records; Ferguson subsequently signed the group to EMI in March 1981.
On 4 January 1981, the band began recording their third album, Positive Touch, again at Wisseloord Studios, and again with Roger Bechirian as producer. The band recorded a total of eight songs in five days before returning to Derry. Later the same month, the band returned to Wisseloord Studios to complete the recording of the LP. The songs on this album indicated a change in both musical and lyrical influences: although the songs remained largely guitar-oriented, the band had written songs which focused upon the Troubles in Northern Ireland such as "Crisis of Mine", "You're Welcome" and the single "It's Going To Happen!", which preceded the release of the LP and was inspired by the 1980–81 Hunger Strikes. In addition, several songs upon the LP included instruments such as pianos, saxophones, recorders and brass instruments, with two further songs ("Julie Ocean" and "It's Going To Happen!") drawing musical inspiration from contemporary artists Orange Juice and Dexy's Midnight Runners respectively. The band themselves were content with the change of influences for Positive Touch, which bassist Michael Bradley later described as a "natural progression" for the band, adding that, at the time, consensus between the band members was that the songs upon the LP were their best yet.
One month prior to the release of this third album, in April 1981, the Undertones embarked on their 'Positive Touch tour'; this tour saw the band perform a total of 36 gigs across the UK mainland in the space of less than two months.
Positive Touch was released in May 1981. This third album peaked at number 17 in the UK charts—remaining in the Top 40 for a total of four weeks. The album also received favourable reviews from several music critics and was listed by NME as one of the best albums to be released in 1981, although neither the album nor either of the singles released were as successful as any of the material released the previous year.
Following the conclusion of their 'Positive Touch tour' in June 1981, the Undertones released their second single of 1981, "Julie Ocean". The single – an extended recording of the 90-second album version – was produced by Hugh Jones and Dave Balfe.
On 29 September 1981, the Undertones embarked on their biggest tour of Continental Europe, which lasted until 20 October 1981 and saw the band perform a total of 19 concerts in six countries.
1982 saw a lull in activity from the Undertones, who only performed live on a total of five occasions throughout the entire year. Two of these gigs were held in England, with three further live appearances held in the United States in August. Much of the time the band spent together was devoted towards writing and recording songs for their next LP in their 8-track demo studio. Damian O'Neill, the Undertones' lead guitarist, later admitted: "We (had) definitely lost a bit of the spark. I don't know but I tend to think some of us got too complacent sitting in our homes in Derry." The Undertones released two studio singles, "Beautiful Friend" and "The Love Parade", in February and October; both of these singles failed to make an impact upon the UK charts.
The Sin of Pride (1983)
In March 1983, the Undertones released their fourth album, The Sin of Pride. This album, which drew inspiration from both soul and Motown, was produced by Mike Hedges, who had replaced Roger Bechirian as the Undertones' producer following the 1981 release of Positive Touch. Feargal Sharkey is known to have stated he had worked harder upon this album than at any point in his singing career to date, and that he considers this album the finest the Undertones ever produced. The Sin of Pride was met with critical acclaim upon release, and the Undertones performed several gigs in both Scotland and England to promote the release of this album; it reached number 43 in the UK chart.
The Undertones released two further studio singles in 1983; their first single, "Got To Have You Back"—which was inspired by both ABC and Smokey Robinson—was released in February and their second single, "Chain of Love", was released in May. Both failed to make any major impact on the UK chart.
Disbandment
In April 1983, the Undertones embarked on their 'UK Sin of Pride tour' to promote their latest album. By this stage in their career, the band were acutely aware of the pressure they were under from EMI, who were unhappy with the lack of chart success of much of the material the band had released since the release of their Positive Touch LP. In addition, internal tensions between various members of the band, in particular between Feargal Sharkey and John O'Neill, had deteriorated significantly. These factors led to Sharkey announcing his intentions to leave the Undertones during the 'European Tour 1983', which the group performed in May of that year.
To fulfill agreed commitments, the Undertones remained together for a further two months, performing several gigs across continental Europe before disbanding in mid-1983, with their final concert being played at Punchestown Racecourse in County Kildare in Ireland on 17 July.
Subsequent careers
Following the disbandment of the Undertones in 1983, Feargal Sharkey was invited by Vince Clarke and Eric Radcliffe of the synthpop duet The Assembly to provide lead vocals on the single "Never Never," which was released by The Assembly in November 1983 and peaked at number 4 in the UK charts. Sharkey was never officially a member of The Assembly and his vocal contribution to "Never Never" proved to be Sharkey's only recording with the band, who would only issue this one single before folding.
Sharkey subsequently embarked upon a brief, but commercially successful solo career in the mid 1980s to early 1990s.
Two of the other band members, John O'Neill and Damian O'Neill, formed That Petrol Emotion in 1984. That Petrol Emotion released a total of fifteen singles and six albums between 1985 and 1994.
In the 1990s John O'Neill formed a trip hop group called Rare under the stage name Seán Ó'Néill with vocalist Mary Gallagher. They only had one notable chart appearance and disbanded shortly after the release of their only album in 1998.
Reunion
The Undertones reformed in November 1999, initially to play concerts in Derry. For their reformation, the Undertones replaced Sharkey (who declined to rejoin) with singer Paul McLoone. Since 1999, the Undertones have performed several tours across the UK, Ireland, Continental Europe, Japan, Turkey and North America and continue to perform live.
Noteworthy gigs by the Undertones since their 1999 reformation include performing at the Glastonbury Festival in June 2005, providing pre-match entertainment prior to kick-off at Celtic Park in the UEFA Champions League play-off between Celtic and Arsenal in August 2009 and, in March and April 2011, performing a series of UK gigs in which they played their debut album, The Undertones, in its entirety as part of each show. This tour was timed to accompany a re-release of a double compilation album containing all of the A- and B-sides of their singles.
Since their reformation, the Undertones have released two albums of original material with Paul McLoone providing vocals: Get What You Need on 30 September 2003; and Dig Yourself Deep, on 15 October 2007.
In April 2013, the Undertones released their first new material for over five years with the double A-side single "Much Too Late / When It Hurts I Count To Ten." This single—limited to 1,000 numbered copies—was released as part of the Record Store Day promotion in the UK and was recorded at Toe Rag Studios in London.
Media recognition
In a 2000 poll by Q to discover the 100 greatest British albums of all time as voted by the British public, the Undertones' eponymous debut LP was voted the 90th greatest British album.
The Undertones have also been the subject of two documentaries: The first documentary to be produced: The Story of the Undertones: Teenage Kicks, was recorded in 2001 and released in 2004. Directed by Tom Collins, this 65-minute documentary was produced with the cooperation of John Peel, who interviews all current and former members of the band (with the exception of Vincent O'Neill) in addition to Seymour Stein and Eamonn McCann. In this documentary, the band discuss their formation, career, subsequent careers, personal lives and 1999 reunion.
The second documentary relating to The Undertones: Here Comes the Summer: The Undertones Story, was commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on BBC Four in September 2012. This documentary also features with interviews with current and former members of the Undertones (excluding Feargal Sharkey) in addition to numerous fans, friends, journalists, and additional personnel involved in the band's recordings and career.
The band were also portrayed in the 2013 film Good Vibrations about Terri Hooley and the Good Vibrations record label, featuring Jodie Whittaker and Richard Dormer.
Members
Current members
John O'Neill – rhythm guitar and backing vocals (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Michael Bradley – bass guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Billy Doherty – drums (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Damian O'Neill – lead guitar, keyboards and backing vocals (1976–1983, 1999–present)
Paul McLoone – lead vocals (1999–present)
Former members
Vincent O'Neill – guitar (1975–1976)
Feargal Sharkey – lead vocals (1975–1983)
Discography
The Undertones (1979)
Hypnotised (1980)
Positive Touch (1981)
The Sin of Pride (1983)
Get What You Need (2003)
Dig Yourself Deep (2007)
Notes
References
Further reading
Bradley, Michael (2016). Teenage Kicks: My Life as an Undertone. Omnibus Press.
External links
Official Site
History of the band from an unofficial fan site
Sold On Song Top 100: Teenage Kicks (No. 51)
Teenage Kicks from Salon.com
History of Punk in Derry, Northern Ireland.
Profile of The Undertones
A Panorama of The Undertones Playing in Brooke Park, Derry, August 2007
Official press release for the Undertones' 'True Confessions' greatest hits album
1974 establishments in Northern Ireland
Harvest Records artists
Musical groups established in 1974
Musical groups from Derry (city)
New wave musical groups from Northern Ireland
Pop punk groups from Northern Ireland
Punk rock groups from Northern Ireland
Rykodisc artists
Sire Records artists | true | [
"\"Rock the Casbah\" is a song by the English punk rock band The Clash, released in 1982. The song was released as the second single from their fifth album, Combat Rock. It reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US (their second and last top 40 and only top 10 single in the United States) and, along with the track \"Mustapha Dance\", it also reached number eight on the dance chart.\n\nRecording\n\"Rock the Casbah\" was composed by the band's drummer Topper Headon, based on a piano part that he had been toying with. Finding himself in the studio without his three bandmates, Headon progressively taped the drum, piano and bass parts, recording the bulk of the song's musical instrumentation himself.\n\nThis origin makes \"Rock the Casbah\" different from the majority of Clash songs, which tended to originate with music written by the Joe Strummer–Mick Jones songwriting partnership. Upon entering the studio to hear Headon's recording, the other Clash members were impressed with his creation, stating that they felt the musical track was essentially complete. From this point, relatively minor overdubs were added, such as guitars and percussion.\n\nHowever, Strummer was not impressed by the page of suggested lyrics that Headon gave him. According to Clash guitar technician Digby Cleaver, they were \"a soppy set of lyrics about how much he missed his girlfriend\". \"Strummer just took one look at these words and said, 'How incredibly interesting!', screwed the piece of paper into a ball and chucked it backwards over his head.\"\n\nStrummer had been developing a set of lyrical ideas that he was looking to match with an appropriate tune. Before hearing Headon's music, Strummer had already come up with the phrases \"rock the casbah\" and \"you'll have to let that raga drop\" as lyrical ideas that he was considering for future songs. After hearing Headon's music, Strummer went into the studio's toilets and wrote lyrics to match the song's melody.\n\nThe version of the song on Combat Rock, as well as many other Clash compilations, features an electronic sound effect beginning at the 1:52-minute point of the song. This noise is a monophonic version of the song \"Dixie\". The sound effect source was generated by the alarm from a digital wristwatch that Mick Jones owned, and was intentionally added to the recording by Jones.\n\nLyrics\nJoe Strummer had been toying with the phrase \"rock the casbah\" prior to hearing Topper Headon's musical track that would form the basis of the song. This phrase had originated during a jam session with Strummer's violinist friend Tymon Dogg. Dogg began playing Eastern scales with his violin and Strummer started shouting \"rock the casbah!\" Not hearing Strummer properly, Dogg thought that Strummer had been shouting at him to \"stop, you cadger!\"\n\nFurther inspiration for the lyrics of \"Rock the Casbah\" originated from Strummer observing the band's manager Bernie Rhodes moaning about The Clash's increasing tendency to perform lengthy songs. Rhodes asked the band facetiously \"does everything have to be as long as this rāga?\" (referring to the Indian musical style known for its length and complexity). Strummer later returned to his room at the Iroquois Hotel in New York City and wrote the opening lines to the song: \"The King told the boogie-men 'you have to let that rāga drop.'\"\n\nThe song gives a fabulist account of a ban on Western rock music by an Arab king. The lyrics describe the king's efforts to stop his population from listening to this music, such as ordering his military's jet fighters to bomb any people in violation of the ban. The pilots ignore the orders, and instead play rock music on their cockpit radios. The population then proceed to \"rock the casbah\" by dancing to the music. This scenario was inspired by the ban on Western music in Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.\n\nThe song's lyrics feature various Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, and Sanskrit loan-words, such as \"sharif\", \"bedouin\", \"sheikh\", \"kosher\", \"rāga\", \"muezzin\", \"minaret\", and \"casbah\".\n\nSingle\nThe single version has more pronounced bass. Also when Joe Strummer screams \"The crowd caught a whiff / Of that crazy casbah jive\" at the end of the third verse the word \"jive\" is sustained for several seconds with digital delay. Additionally, the sound effects of the jet fighters in the last verse are lower in the mix, particularly just after \"drop your bombs between the minarets.\" The single version of the song is what is played in the music video. \"Mustapha Dance\", which features in many releases of the single, is an instrumental remix of the song.\n\nSingle issues\nThe single has several issues, all with different cover, format and B-side (see the table below).\n\nMusic video\nThe music video for \"Rock the Casbah\" was filmed in Austin, Texas by director Don Letts on 8 and 9 June 1982. It intermixes footage of The Clash (with Terry Chimes on the drums) miming a performance of the song, with a storyline depicting two characters travelling together throughout Texas. The video depicts a Muslim hitchhiker and a Hasidic Jewish limo driver befriending each other on the road and skanking together through the streets to a Clash concert at Austin's City Coliseum. Throughout the video, an armadillo appears at points. At one point they are seen eating hamburgers in front of a Burger King restaurant. At another point, the Muslim character is seen drinking a beer; Letts stated that all that imagery was \"about breaking taboos.\"\n\nThe Clash is shown miming a performance of the song in front of a pumpjack in a Texas oil field. For most of the video clip, guitarist Mick Jones's face is obscured by a veiled camouflage hat. The reason for this is that Jones was in a bad mood during the film shoot. Jones' face remains hidden until the final 30 seconds of the clip, when Strummer pulls the hat off at the \"he thinks it's not kosher!\" line.\n\nLegacy\nThe song was chosen by Armed Forces Radio to be the first song broadcast on the service covering the area during Operation Desert Storm. In one of the campfire scenes late in the 2007 documentary Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, a friend states that Strummer wept when he heard that the phrase \"Rock the Casbah\" was written on an American bomb that was to be detonated on Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War.\n\nFollowing the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, the song was placed on the list of post-9/11 inappropriate titles distributed by Clear Channel. In 2006, the conservative National Review released their list of the top 50 \"Conservative Rock Songs\", with \"Rock the Casbah\" at number 20, noting the Clear Channel list as well as frequent requests to the British Forces Broadcasting Service during the Iraq War. Cultural reviewer and political analyst Charlie Pierce commented that \"the notion of the Clash as spokesfolk for adventurism in the Middle East might have been enough to bring Joe Strummer back from the dead.\"\n\nVulture writer Bill Wyman in 2017 ranked the song number ten of all the band's 139 songs, calling it \"one of the greatest rock singles of all time.\" Wyman further wrote, \"Like other Clash songs, this song requires some historical context\" about Iran, starting from the 1953 coup d'état—which overthrew the democratically elected leader Mohammad Mosaddegh—to the 1979 Revolution—resulting in overthrowing Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's (the Shah) rule and then hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran, rupturing their diplomatic relations—followed by Jimmy Carter—who was criticised for the handling of the hostage crisis—losing his 1980 US presidential election to Ronald Reagan.\n\nCover versions\nThe Algerian rock singer Rachid Taha covered the song (in Arabic) on his 2004 album Tékitoi. On 27 November 2005 at the Astoria, London, during the Stop the War Coalition Benefit Concert, \"...for the night's grandstanding conclusion, the Clash legend Mick Jones strides on in a skinny black suit and plays probably the most exciting guitar he has delivered in years. He and the band are brilliant on Taha's definitive take on \"Rock the Casbah\", for which the audience goes berserk.\" They again played Taha's version of the song, \"Rock el Casbah\", in February 2006, at the France 4 TV show Taratatà. In 2007 at the Barbican, \".... The band were later joined by special guest Mick Jones from The Clash who performed on \"Rock El Casbah\" and then stayed on stage for the remainder of the show.\"\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertifications\n\nPersonnel\nJoe Strummer – lead vocals, guitar\nMick Jones – guitar, backing vocals, sound effects\nPaul Simonon – backing vocals\nTopper Headon – drums, piano, bass guitar\n\nReferences\n\nBibliography\n\nExternal links\n\"A Brief History of 'Rock the Casbah'\" City Pages (15 December 1999)\n\n1982 singles\n1982 songs\nThe Clash songs\nDance-punk songs\nMacaronic songs\nCBS Records singles\nColumbia Records singles\nEpic Records singles\nBritish new wave songs\nPolitical songs\nWorks about the Middle East\nProtest songs",
"Mustapha Skandrani, (17 November 1920 in the Lower Casbah, Algiers – 8 October 2005) was an Algerian pianist, performer of chaâbi music.\n\nEarly life\nBorn in 1920, in the Casbah of Algiers, in Algeria, Skandrani's family were of Turkish origin and originally came from Iskander, Turkey. Indeed, his family surname \"Skandrani\" is a Turkish origin surname used in Algeria by families from İskenderun.\n\nHe grew up and studied until the elementary certificate without problem in the secular Casbah.\n\nCareer\nSkandrani made his radio debut with the composer Rachid Ksentini and his partner Marie Soussan. That was followed by a tour of Algeria in 1940 with Umm Kulthum, Mahieddine Bachtarzi, Driscar, Mustapha Kateb and others. On his return from tour, he accompanied all the stars who attended concerts among other Dahmane Ben Achour, El Hadj Menouar and the dean of Chaabi music El Hadj M'Hamed El Anka. As a conductor of the concert part, Skandrani was present in 46 creations of the Arab Theatre of the Opera of Algiers.\n\nIn 1956, musicologist El Boudali Safir assigned Skandrani to the modern orchestra as a replacement for El Hadj M'Hamed El Anka. He was also the soloist in the classical orchestra commissioned to Abderrazak Fakhardji, a position he held until the independence of Algeria, combining its radio business with interests in the emerging television.\n\nBeginning in 1938, Skandrani composed over 300 modern compositions or chaâbi and 187 qasida and ditties including \"Youm El Djemaa\", \"El Haraz\", \"Kifechhilti\", \"Qahoua ou lateye\", \"A bouya Hnini\" \"A laini filaati. \" From 1966 to 1981, he was a teacher at the Conservatory of Algiers and served as director from 1981.\n\nHe died on 8 October 2005 at the age of 85 at his home in Algiers after a long illness. He is buried at the Sidi M'hamed Cemetery.\n\nDiscography \n\n Touchia (1963 EP, Pathé)\n Stikhbar (1965 LP, Pathé)\n Khlassat (1965 LP, Pathé)\n Le Piano Dans La Musique Arabe (1992 Compilation, Artistes Arabes Associés)\n Les Virtuoses (1993 Compilation, Artistes Arabes Associés)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1920 births\n2005 deaths\nAlgerian people of Turkish descent\nAlgerian musicians\nAlgerian pianists\nPeople from Casbah\n20th-century pianists\n21st-century Algerian people"
] |
[
"The Undertones",
"Casbah Rock",
"What was Casbah Rock?",
"By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at The Casbah,",
"When was their second concert at the Casbah?",
"The Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis,"
] | C_39b6cbda764e492ea1376605d128ea80_0 | Did they produce an album of any of their shows there? | 3 | Did The Undertones produce an album of any of their shows at the Casbah Rock? | The Undertones | By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at The Casbah, where the band began to perform in February. The Undertones had occasionally earned money at venues where they had performed throughout 1976, but these gigs at The Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis, as performing at The Casbah earned the group up to PS40 a week. This inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at this venue. By mid-year, the concerts the Undertones performed would include the song "Teenage Kicks", which had been written by guitarist John O'Neill in mid-1977. The gigs performed at The Casbah gave the Undertones increased confidence in their musical ability, and in June 1977 they performed concerts outside Derry for the first time, supporting a Dublin punk group named The Radiators from Space. In March 1978, the Undertones recorded a demo tape at Magee University in Derry and sent copies of the tape to various record companies in the hope of securing a record deal, but only received official letters of rejection. The band had also sent a copy of their recordings to influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, requesting he play the songs on his radio programme. Peel replied to the band, offering to pay for a recording session in Belfast. On 16 June 1978, the band recorded their debut four-song EP "Teenage Kicks" on a budget of only PS200. The EP was engineered by Davy Shannon at Wizard Sound Studios, Belfast - and was released on Belfast's Good Vibrations record label. The title song became a hit with support from John Peel, who considered Teenage Kicks his all-time favourite song, an opinion he held until his death in 2004. Seymour Stein, the president of Sire Records - in London on business - heard John Peel play "Teenage Kicks" on BBC Radio 1 and became interested in the band. Stein sent a London-based representative named Paul McNally to Derry to discuss a record deal with the band. McNally saw the band play live in what would ultimately prove to be their final performance at The Casbah on 29 September 1978. The following day, McNally convened with the Undertones to discuss a record contract. Three members of the band signed the proposed contract on this date, with the understanding that Feargal Sharkey and Michael Bradley would discuss negotiations to the contract with Seymour Stein in person in London. CANNOTANSWER | This inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at this venue. | The Undertones are a rock band formed in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. From 1975 to 1983, the Undertones consisted of Feargal Sharkey (vocals), John O'Neill (rhythm guitar, vocals), Damian O'Neill (lead guitar, vocals), Michael Bradley (bass, vocals) and Billy Doherty (drums). Much of the earlier Undertones material drew influence from punk rock and new wave; the Undertones also incorporated elements of rock, glam rock and post-punk into material released after 1979, before citing soul and Motown as the influence for the material released upon their final album. The Undertones released thirteen singles and four studio albums between 1978 and 1983 before Sharkey announced his intention to leave the band in May 1983, citing musical differences as the reason for the break up.
Despite the backdrop of the Troubles in Derry and across Northern Ireland, the vast majority (though not all) of the material the Undertones released focused not upon the political climate, but upon issues such as adolescence, teenage angst and heartbreak. AllMusic has stated that guitarists John and Damian O'Neill "mated infectious guitar hooks to 1960s garage, 1970s glam rock, and Feargal Sharkey's signature vocal quaver."
In 1999, the Undertones reformed, replacing lead singer Sharkey with Paul McLoone.
The Undertones remain the most successful band to have emerged from Derry, and one of the most successful bands to have emerged from Northern Ireland.
Formation and early gigs
The Undertones formed in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. The band members were five friends from Creggan and the Bogside, who originally drew inspiration from such artists as the Beatles, Small Faces and Lindisfarne and who decided in part to form their own band due to both their common interest in music and the fact that—because of the Troubles— many entertainment venues in the city were closed in late evenings.
The band initially rehearsed cover versions at the home of the guitarists, brothers John and Vincent O'Neill, and in the shed of a neighbour. (In early 1976, before the band had played gigs at any venues, Vincent O'Neill left the band; he was soon replaced by his younger brother Damian.)
Beginning in February 1976 the group, at this stage still unnamed, began playing gigs at various minor local venues, including schools, parish halls and Scout huts, where the band's lead singer, Feargal Sharkey, was a local Scout leader. Sharkey was also responsible for giving the band their first name: at the introduction to a gig at Saint Joseph's Secondary School in Derry on 16 March 1976, Feargal Sharkey was asked the name of the band and quickly replied "The Hot Rods". At a later gig, Sharkey named the band "Little Feat": another name already used by another group.
Later that year, drummer Billy Doherty proposed an alternate name for the group: The Undertones, which Doherty had discovered in his school history book. The other members of the band agreed to the proposal.
With the arrival of punk rock in late 1976, the artistic focus of the band changed. Artists such as the Adverts, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and, particularly, the Ramones became major influences on the Undertones.
In addition to being a Scout leader, Feargal Sharkey worked as a television repairman and delivery man. The van which Sharkey drove in this employment was used by the Undertones to transport their equipment to and from various venues.
The Casbah
By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at the Casbah, where the band began to perform in February. The Undertones had occasionally earned money at venues where they had performed throughout 1976, but these gigs at the Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis, as performing at the Casbah earned the group up to £30 for each attendance fee. Both the money earned and their popularity at this venue inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at the Casbah. By the following year, the concerts the Undertones performed would include the song "Teenage Kicks", which had been written by guitarist John O'Neill in mid-1977. The gigs performed at the Casbah gave the Undertones increased confidence in their musical ability, and in June 1977 they performed concerts outside Derry for the first time, supporting a Dublin punk group named The Radiators from Space.
In March 1978, the Undertones recorded a demo tape at Magee University in Derry and sent copies of the tape to various record companies in the hope of securing a record deal, but only received official letters of rejection. The band had also sent a copy of their recordings to influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, requesting he play the songs on his radio programme. Peel replied to the band, offering to pay for a recording session in Belfast. On 15 June 1978, the band recorded their debut four-song EP "Teenage Kicks" on a budget of only £200. The EP was engineered by Davy Shannon at Wizard Studios, Belfast, and was released on Belfast's Good Vibrations record label. The title song became a hit with support from John Peel, who considered Teenage Kicks his all-time favourite song, an opinion he held through to his death in 2004.
Sire Records
Seymour Stein, the president of Sire Records – in London on business – heard John Peel play "Teenage Kicks" on BBC Radio 1 and became interested in the band. Stein sent a London-based representative named Paul McNally to Derry to discuss a record deal with the band. McNally saw the band play live in what would ultimately prove to be their final performance at the Casbah on 29 September 1978. The following day, McNally convened with the Undertones to discuss a record contract. Three members of the band signed the proposed contract on this date, with the understanding that Feargal Sharkey and Michael Bradley would discuss negotiations to the contract with Seymour Stein in person in London.
Teenage Kicks (1978–1979)
On 2 October 1978, Bradley and Sharkey agreed to an increased advance fee of £10,000 offered by Stein upon the recording contract and signed to Sire Records on a five-year contract. Sire Records subsequently obtained all rights to the material released upon the Teenage Kicks EP and the song was re-released as a standard vinyl single upon Sire's own label two weeks later.
On 26 October, the Undertones performed "Teenage Kicks" live on Top of the Pops. With help from Peel (who had also recorded and broadcast a Peel Session with the Undertones on the 16th), Teenage Kicks peaked at number 31 in the UK Singles Chart the following month.
In November 1978, the Undertones embarked on their first tour of the UK. This tour lasted until 16 December and saw the band appear as the supporting act for The Rezillos and John Otway in England and Wales in addition to headlining in three concerts in Belfast and Derry.
In January 1979, the Undertones recorded their eponymous debut album at Eden Studios in Acton, West London, using producer Roger Bechirian, whom the band had worked with for the first time the previous December, when Bechirian had produced the band's second single, "Get Over You". Much of the material upon their first album had been performed regularly at the Casbah, and the band were able to record this album in the space of less than four weeks.
Following the release of "Get Over You" in February 1979, the Undertones' eponymous debut album was released in May. The primary lyrical concern of the songs focused upon youthful relationships and adolescence. Three further punk singles "Jimmy Jimmy", "Here Comes the Summer" and "You've Got My Number (Why Don't You Use It?)" were released between April and October 1979, each to critical acclaim. In September 1979, the Undertones toured the United States for the first time, supporting The Clash with eight concerts in six different States.
Hypnotised (1980)
Following the 'You Got My Number tour' of October 1979, the Undertones began recording the songs for their second album, Hypnotised, at Wisseloord Studios in the Netherlands. The recording of the songs began in December. Ten songs were recorded before the band returned to Derry prior to Christmas to write and record further songs for the album. Three further songs were written during this break: "Tearproof", "More Songs About Chocolate and Girls" and "Wednesday Week".
In January 1980, the production of Hypnotised was finished at Eden Studios in London, with the Undertones recording the three further songs written the previous December, plus two further songs—"Hypnotised" and a cover of "Under The Boardwalk"—which had been written that month. Following the completion of their second LP, the band embarked upon a two-week tour of Ireland before touring continental Europe for the first time in March.
On 28 March 1980, the Undertones released their sixth single, "My Perfect Cousin". The song, which had been written the previous summer by Damian O'Neill and Michael Bradley, reached number 9 in the UK charts and would subsequently prove to be the band's highest charting single in the United Kingdom. The following month, on 21 April 1980, the band's second LP, Hypnotised was released. This album reached number 6 in the UK Albums Chart, remaining in the Top 10 for one month. The same week the album was released, the Undertones embarked on their 'Humming tour', which saw the band play a total of 25 gigs across the UK between April and June.
Less than two weeks after the completion of the 'Humming tour', the Undertones toured the United States for the second time; this time as the headlining band. "Wednesday Week"—the second single to be released from Hypnotised—was released in July 1980. This single reached number 11 in the UK chart and remained in the Top 40 for a total of seven weeks.
Between September and December 1980, the Undertones performed two further tours: the 'Disaster Tour (European Style)', which saw the band perform in continental Europe and—in December—the 'See No More' tour of the UK.
In terms of chart sales, the year 1980 was the Undertones' most successful year. In a review by Sounds magazine the same year, the Undertones were described as: "Possibly the best pop group in the English speaking world."
EMI
Positive Touch (1981–1982)
In December 1980, the Undertones announced their intention to split from Sire Records as they were unhappy with the lack of promotion they were receiving outside of the UK, particularly in the US. Following negotiations, their manager, Andy Ferguson, succeeded in the band retaining ownership rights to the material released on Sire Records; Ferguson subsequently signed the group to EMI in March 1981.
On 4 January 1981, the band began recording their third album, Positive Touch, again at Wisseloord Studios, and again with Roger Bechirian as producer. The band recorded a total of eight songs in five days before returning to Derry. Later the same month, the band returned to Wisseloord Studios to complete the recording of the LP. The songs on this album indicated a change in both musical and lyrical influences: although the songs remained largely guitar-oriented, the band had written songs which focused upon the Troubles in Northern Ireland such as "Crisis of Mine", "You're Welcome" and the single "It's Going To Happen!", which preceded the release of the LP and was inspired by the 1980–81 Hunger Strikes. In addition, several songs upon the LP included instruments such as pianos, saxophones, recorders and brass instruments, with two further songs ("Julie Ocean" and "It's Going To Happen!") drawing musical inspiration from contemporary artists Orange Juice and Dexy's Midnight Runners respectively. The band themselves were content with the change of influences for Positive Touch, which bassist Michael Bradley later described as a "natural progression" for the band, adding that, at the time, consensus between the band members was that the songs upon the LP were their best yet.
One month prior to the release of this third album, in April 1981, the Undertones embarked on their 'Positive Touch tour'; this tour saw the band perform a total of 36 gigs across the UK mainland in the space of less than two months.
Positive Touch was released in May 1981. This third album peaked at number 17 in the UK charts—remaining in the Top 40 for a total of four weeks. The album also received favourable reviews from several music critics and was listed by NME as one of the best albums to be released in 1981, although neither the album nor either of the singles released were as successful as any of the material released the previous year.
Following the conclusion of their 'Positive Touch tour' in June 1981, the Undertones released their second single of 1981, "Julie Ocean". The single – an extended recording of the 90-second album version – was produced by Hugh Jones and Dave Balfe.
On 29 September 1981, the Undertones embarked on their biggest tour of Continental Europe, which lasted until 20 October 1981 and saw the band perform a total of 19 concerts in six countries.
1982 saw a lull in activity from the Undertones, who only performed live on a total of five occasions throughout the entire year. Two of these gigs were held in England, with three further live appearances held in the United States in August. Much of the time the band spent together was devoted towards writing and recording songs for their next LP in their 8-track demo studio. Damian O'Neill, the Undertones' lead guitarist, later admitted: "We (had) definitely lost a bit of the spark. I don't know but I tend to think some of us got too complacent sitting in our homes in Derry." The Undertones released two studio singles, "Beautiful Friend" and "The Love Parade", in February and October; both of these singles failed to make an impact upon the UK charts.
The Sin of Pride (1983)
In March 1983, the Undertones released their fourth album, The Sin of Pride. This album, which drew inspiration from both soul and Motown, was produced by Mike Hedges, who had replaced Roger Bechirian as the Undertones' producer following the 1981 release of Positive Touch. Feargal Sharkey is known to have stated he had worked harder upon this album than at any point in his singing career to date, and that he considers this album the finest the Undertones ever produced. The Sin of Pride was met with critical acclaim upon release, and the Undertones performed several gigs in both Scotland and England to promote the release of this album; it reached number 43 in the UK chart.
The Undertones released two further studio singles in 1983; their first single, "Got To Have You Back"—which was inspired by both ABC and Smokey Robinson—was released in February and their second single, "Chain of Love", was released in May. Both failed to make any major impact on the UK chart.
Disbandment
In April 1983, the Undertones embarked on their 'UK Sin of Pride tour' to promote their latest album. By this stage in their career, the band were acutely aware of the pressure they were under from EMI, who were unhappy with the lack of chart success of much of the material the band had released since the release of their Positive Touch LP. In addition, internal tensions between various members of the band, in particular between Feargal Sharkey and John O'Neill, had deteriorated significantly. These factors led to Sharkey announcing his intentions to leave the Undertones during the 'European Tour 1983', which the group performed in May of that year.
To fulfill agreed commitments, the Undertones remained together for a further two months, performing several gigs across continental Europe before disbanding in mid-1983, with their final concert being played at Punchestown Racecourse in County Kildare in Ireland on 17 July.
Subsequent careers
Following the disbandment of the Undertones in 1983, Feargal Sharkey was invited by Vince Clarke and Eric Radcliffe of the synthpop duet The Assembly to provide lead vocals on the single "Never Never," which was released by The Assembly in November 1983 and peaked at number 4 in the UK charts. Sharkey was never officially a member of The Assembly and his vocal contribution to "Never Never" proved to be Sharkey's only recording with the band, who would only issue this one single before folding.
Sharkey subsequently embarked upon a brief, but commercially successful solo career in the mid 1980s to early 1990s.
Two of the other band members, John O'Neill and Damian O'Neill, formed That Petrol Emotion in 1984. That Petrol Emotion released a total of fifteen singles and six albums between 1985 and 1994.
In the 1990s John O'Neill formed a trip hop group called Rare under the stage name Seán Ó'Néill with vocalist Mary Gallagher. They only had one notable chart appearance and disbanded shortly after the release of their only album in 1998.
Reunion
The Undertones reformed in November 1999, initially to play concerts in Derry. For their reformation, the Undertones replaced Sharkey (who declined to rejoin) with singer Paul McLoone. Since 1999, the Undertones have performed several tours across the UK, Ireland, Continental Europe, Japan, Turkey and North America and continue to perform live.
Noteworthy gigs by the Undertones since their 1999 reformation include performing at the Glastonbury Festival in June 2005, providing pre-match entertainment prior to kick-off at Celtic Park in the UEFA Champions League play-off between Celtic and Arsenal in August 2009 and, in March and April 2011, performing a series of UK gigs in which they played their debut album, The Undertones, in its entirety as part of each show. This tour was timed to accompany a re-release of a double compilation album containing all of the A- and B-sides of their singles.
Since their reformation, the Undertones have released two albums of original material with Paul McLoone providing vocals: Get What You Need on 30 September 2003; and Dig Yourself Deep, on 15 October 2007.
In April 2013, the Undertones released their first new material for over five years with the double A-side single "Much Too Late / When It Hurts I Count To Ten." This single—limited to 1,000 numbered copies—was released as part of the Record Store Day promotion in the UK and was recorded at Toe Rag Studios in London.
Media recognition
In a 2000 poll by Q to discover the 100 greatest British albums of all time as voted by the British public, the Undertones' eponymous debut LP was voted the 90th greatest British album.
The Undertones have also been the subject of two documentaries: The first documentary to be produced: The Story of the Undertones: Teenage Kicks, was recorded in 2001 and released in 2004. Directed by Tom Collins, this 65-minute documentary was produced with the cooperation of John Peel, who interviews all current and former members of the band (with the exception of Vincent O'Neill) in addition to Seymour Stein and Eamonn McCann. In this documentary, the band discuss their formation, career, subsequent careers, personal lives and 1999 reunion.
The second documentary relating to The Undertones: Here Comes the Summer: The Undertones Story, was commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on BBC Four in September 2012. This documentary also features with interviews with current and former members of the Undertones (excluding Feargal Sharkey) in addition to numerous fans, friends, journalists, and additional personnel involved in the band's recordings and career.
The band were also portrayed in the 2013 film Good Vibrations about Terri Hooley and the Good Vibrations record label, featuring Jodie Whittaker and Richard Dormer.
Members
Current members
John O'Neill – rhythm guitar and backing vocals (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Michael Bradley – bass guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Billy Doherty – drums (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Damian O'Neill – lead guitar, keyboards and backing vocals (1976–1983, 1999–present)
Paul McLoone – lead vocals (1999–present)
Former members
Vincent O'Neill – guitar (1975–1976)
Feargal Sharkey – lead vocals (1975–1983)
Discography
The Undertones (1979)
Hypnotised (1980)
Positive Touch (1981)
The Sin of Pride (1983)
Get What You Need (2003)
Dig Yourself Deep (2007)
Notes
References
Further reading
Bradley, Michael (2016). Teenage Kicks: My Life as an Undertone. Omnibus Press.
External links
Official Site
History of the band from an unofficial fan site
Sold On Song Top 100: Teenage Kicks (No. 51)
Teenage Kicks from Salon.com
History of Punk in Derry, Northern Ireland.
Profile of The Undertones
A Panorama of The Undertones Playing in Brooke Park, Derry, August 2007
Official press release for the Undertones' 'True Confessions' greatest hits album
1974 establishments in Northern Ireland
Harvest Records artists
Musical groups established in 1974
Musical groups from Derry (city)
New wave musical groups from Northern Ireland
Pop punk groups from Northern Ireland
Punk rock groups from Northern Ireland
Rykodisc artists
Sire Records artists | false | [
"House of Lords is the fourth album by Lords of the Underground, their first album in eight years. The album was released on August 21, 2007 for Affluent Records and was produced by Marley Marl, K-Def and DJ Lord Jazz. Like the group's previous album Resurrection the album received very little promotion and was a commercial failure, and it did not make it to the Billboard charts nor did it produce any hit singles.\n\nTrack listing\n\"Intro\"- 0:44\n\"I Love Hip Hop\"- 3:14\n\"Fab 3\"- 3:22\n\"English Mami\"- 3:38\n\"Yes Were Fresh\"- 3:20\n\"Belly of the Beast\"- 3:53\n\"Hum It Out\"- 3:22\n\"Slick Talk\"- 3:25\n\"Say My Name\"- 3:54\n\"No Pass\"- 2:37\n\"To Love Me\"- 4:02\n\"The Clinic\"- 3:32\n\"Certified\"- 2:47\n\"What Yall Wanna Know\"- 3:26\n\"What Is an MC\"- 3:21\n\"Remember Me\"- 3:39\n\nLords of the Underground albums\n2007 albums",
"Storm Corrosion was a musical collaboration between Mikael Åkerfeldt of Swedish progressive metal band Opeth and Steven Wilson, an English solo artist and frontman of the progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. Åkerfeldt and Wilson began a longstanding musical partnership in 2001 when Wilson produced Opeth's fifth studio album Blackwater Park. The two began writing together for a new project in 2010, releasing their self-titled only studio album in 2012 through Roadrunner Records.\n\nA critical success, Storm Corrosion marks a paradigm shift for Åkerfeldt and Wilson. Not wanting the project to be a progressive metal supergroup, the two used it as an opportunity to explore their more esoteric tastes in music, including Comus and Scott Walker. No touring or live performances of the album occurred, nor were any plans for future music established, with the two instead opting to return to their respective other musical projects.\n\nHistory\n\nFormation\nMikael Åkerfeldt became aware of Steven Wilson in the mid-1990s after Åkerfeldt's best friend Jonas Renkse played him the Porcupine Tree album The Sky Moves Sideways. Years later, Åkerfeldt received a surprise e-mail from Wilson who had been given a copy of the Opeth album Still Life by a French journalist. The two ended up meeting for dinner in London where Åkerfeldt asked Wilson to produce the next Opeth album. It was also during this dinner that the two first spoke of a possible collaboration.\n\nAfter their meeting in London, Åkerfeldt and Wilson began a longstanding musical partnership. Wilson went on to produce three Opeth albums – Blackwater Park, Deliverance, and Damnation – and mixed three Opeth albums, Heritage, Damnation, and Pale Communion. In 2005, Åkerfeldt contributed some guitar and vocals to Deadwing, Porcupine Tree's eighth album. Porcupine Tree and Opeth also co-headlined a North American tour together in the summer of 2003. Although the collaboration was announced as early as 2006, it was only in March 2010 that the two began writing music together, done on an on and off basis. Originally, ex-Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy was to be involved, but was excluded because Åkerfeldt and Wilson felt the music would have little room for drums. In early 2011, Storm Corrosion was announced as the project's title.\n\nStorm Corrosion (2010–2012)\nAfter more than a year of writing, Storm Corrosion's first album was completed in September 2011. In February 2012, it was announced that the collaboration had signed with Roadrunner Records and that their album would be self-titled and released on 24 April. This release date was eventually pushed back to 8 May. The guitar work on the album was handled by Åkerfeldt while Wilson concentrated on the keyboards and song arrangement. Gavin Harrison of Porcupine Tree played drums, although only 15 to 20 percent of the album needed them. Reflecting back on their experience working together, Åkerfeldt and Wilson were largely positive, noting that they never had any artistic struggles over creative control and that each other's contributions were \"exactly 50/50\". Wilson has declared the album the completion of a trilogy, alongside Opeth's Heritage and Wilson's solo album Grace for Drowning, all of which were released over a year-long period from 2011 to 2012.\n\nThe first song used in promotion of Storm Corrosion was \"Drag Ropes\", released via YouTube on 24 April. Upon its release, the album was critically well received, and was nominated for the Album of the Year Award by Prog, presented by Classic Rock Magazine, and Best Surround Sound Album at the 2012 Grammy Awards. Åkerfeldt and Wilson chose not to tour or put on any live performances of the group's material, although Wilson did perform their single Drag Ropes on a few solo shows, during his Hand. Cannot. Erase. tour. While the two expressed interest in working together again, they do not particularly have any plans for any new Storm Corrosion material.\n\nIn 2019, Åkerfeldt said there were talks about a follow-up to the first one.\n\nMusical style\n\nDespite their reputations as frontmen in the heavy metal and progressive rock genres, Mikael Åkerfeldt and Steven Wilson did not want Storm Corrosion to be a progressive metal supergroup. In an early interview regarding the project, Wilson went so far as to say that the music sounded unlike anything he or Åkerfeldt had done up until that point, including the Opeth album Damnation, which a lot of fans assumed would be the case. Instead, the two used the project as an opportunity to explore their more esoteric tastes in music, such as Comus, Popol Vuh, Univers Zero, Steve Reich, David Crosby, Talk Talk, and Scott Walker.\n\nStorm Corrosion's sound can best be described as ambient, epic, enchanting, and orchestral. In the press release for the self-titled first album, Åkerfeldt described the music as \"a bit frightening, exhausting, profound and rather intense\". In an interview with Face Culture, Wilson described the album as \"mellow, strange, and disturbing\". Critics have described the album's sound as having \"an eerie gloom about the music that harks back to the drug-fuelled experimental avant-gardism of the 70s\", \"unhinged\" and \"experimental\", and with a \"flowing and expansive folk-touched sound\".\n\nDiscography\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nRock music duos\nMusical groups established in 2010\nMusical groups disestablished in 2012\n2010 establishments in Sweden"
] |
[
"The Undertones",
"Casbah Rock",
"What was Casbah Rock?",
"By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at The Casbah,",
"When was their second concert at the Casbah?",
"The Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis,",
"Did they produce an album of any of their shows there?",
"This inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at this venue."
] | C_39b6cbda764e492ea1376605d128ea80_0 | What inspired the band to write and rehearse? | 4 | What inspired The Undertones to write and rehearse? | The Undertones | By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at The Casbah, where the band began to perform in February. The Undertones had occasionally earned money at venues where they had performed throughout 1976, but these gigs at The Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis, as performing at The Casbah earned the group up to PS40 a week. This inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at this venue. By mid-year, the concerts the Undertones performed would include the song "Teenage Kicks", which had been written by guitarist John O'Neill in mid-1977. The gigs performed at The Casbah gave the Undertones increased confidence in their musical ability, and in June 1977 they performed concerts outside Derry for the first time, supporting a Dublin punk group named The Radiators from Space. In March 1978, the Undertones recorded a demo tape at Magee University in Derry and sent copies of the tape to various record companies in the hope of securing a record deal, but only received official letters of rejection. The band had also sent a copy of their recordings to influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, requesting he play the songs on his radio programme. Peel replied to the band, offering to pay for a recording session in Belfast. On 16 June 1978, the band recorded their debut four-song EP "Teenage Kicks" on a budget of only PS200. The EP was engineered by Davy Shannon at Wizard Sound Studios, Belfast - and was released on Belfast's Good Vibrations record label. The title song became a hit with support from John Peel, who considered Teenage Kicks his all-time favourite song, an opinion he held until his death in 2004. Seymour Stein, the president of Sire Records - in London on business - heard John Peel play "Teenage Kicks" on BBC Radio 1 and became interested in the band. Stein sent a London-based representative named Paul McNally to Derry to discuss a record deal with the band. McNally saw the band play live in what would ultimately prove to be their final performance at The Casbah on 29 September 1978. The following day, McNally convened with the Undertones to discuss a record contract. Three members of the band signed the proposed contract on this date, with the understanding that Feargal Sharkey and Michael Bradley would discuss negotiations to the contract with Seymour Stein in person in London. CANNOTANSWER | performing at The Casbah earned the group up to PS40 a week. | The Undertones are a rock band formed in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. From 1975 to 1983, the Undertones consisted of Feargal Sharkey (vocals), John O'Neill (rhythm guitar, vocals), Damian O'Neill (lead guitar, vocals), Michael Bradley (bass, vocals) and Billy Doherty (drums). Much of the earlier Undertones material drew influence from punk rock and new wave; the Undertones also incorporated elements of rock, glam rock and post-punk into material released after 1979, before citing soul and Motown as the influence for the material released upon their final album. The Undertones released thirteen singles and four studio albums between 1978 and 1983 before Sharkey announced his intention to leave the band in May 1983, citing musical differences as the reason for the break up.
Despite the backdrop of the Troubles in Derry and across Northern Ireland, the vast majority (though not all) of the material the Undertones released focused not upon the political climate, but upon issues such as adolescence, teenage angst and heartbreak. AllMusic has stated that guitarists John and Damian O'Neill "mated infectious guitar hooks to 1960s garage, 1970s glam rock, and Feargal Sharkey's signature vocal quaver."
In 1999, the Undertones reformed, replacing lead singer Sharkey with Paul McLoone.
The Undertones remain the most successful band to have emerged from Derry, and one of the most successful bands to have emerged from Northern Ireland.
Formation and early gigs
The Undertones formed in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. The band members were five friends from Creggan and the Bogside, who originally drew inspiration from such artists as the Beatles, Small Faces and Lindisfarne and who decided in part to form their own band due to both their common interest in music and the fact that—because of the Troubles— many entertainment venues in the city were closed in late evenings.
The band initially rehearsed cover versions at the home of the guitarists, brothers John and Vincent O'Neill, and in the shed of a neighbour. (In early 1976, before the band had played gigs at any venues, Vincent O'Neill left the band; he was soon replaced by his younger brother Damian.)
Beginning in February 1976 the group, at this stage still unnamed, began playing gigs at various minor local venues, including schools, parish halls and Scout huts, where the band's lead singer, Feargal Sharkey, was a local Scout leader. Sharkey was also responsible for giving the band their first name: at the introduction to a gig at Saint Joseph's Secondary School in Derry on 16 March 1976, Feargal Sharkey was asked the name of the band and quickly replied "The Hot Rods". At a later gig, Sharkey named the band "Little Feat": another name already used by another group.
Later that year, drummer Billy Doherty proposed an alternate name for the group: The Undertones, which Doherty had discovered in his school history book. The other members of the band agreed to the proposal.
With the arrival of punk rock in late 1976, the artistic focus of the band changed. Artists such as the Adverts, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and, particularly, the Ramones became major influences on the Undertones.
In addition to being a Scout leader, Feargal Sharkey worked as a television repairman and delivery man. The van which Sharkey drove in this employment was used by the Undertones to transport their equipment to and from various venues.
The Casbah
By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at the Casbah, where the band began to perform in February. The Undertones had occasionally earned money at venues where they had performed throughout 1976, but these gigs at the Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis, as performing at the Casbah earned the group up to £30 for each attendance fee. Both the money earned and their popularity at this venue inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at the Casbah. By the following year, the concerts the Undertones performed would include the song "Teenage Kicks", which had been written by guitarist John O'Neill in mid-1977. The gigs performed at the Casbah gave the Undertones increased confidence in their musical ability, and in June 1977 they performed concerts outside Derry for the first time, supporting a Dublin punk group named The Radiators from Space.
In March 1978, the Undertones recorded a demo tape at Magee University in Derry and sent copies of the tape to various record companies in the hope of securing a record deal, but only received official letters of rejection. The band had also sent a copy of their recordings to influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, requesting he play the songs on his radio programme. Peel replied to the band, offering to pay for a recording session in Belfast. On 15 June 1978, the band recorded their debut four-song EP "Teenage Kicks" on a budget of only £200. The EP was engineered by Davy Shannon at Wizard Studios, Belfast, and was released on Belfast's Good Vibrations record label. The title song became a hit with support from John Peel, who considered Teenage Kicks his all-time favourite song, an opinion he held through to his death in 2004.
Sire Records
Seymour Stein, the president of Sire Records – in London on business – heard John Peel play "Teenage Kicks" on BBC Radio 1 and became interested in the band. Stein sent a London-based representative named Paul McNally to Derry to discuss a record deal with the band. McNally saw the band play live in what would ultimately prove to be their final performance at the Casbah on 29 September 1978. The following day, McNally convened with the Undertones to discuss a record contract. Three members of the band signed the proposed contract on this date, with the understanding that Feargal Sharkey and Michael Bradley would discuss negotiations to the contract with Seymour Stein in person in London.
Teenage Kicks (1978–1979)
On 2 October 1978, Bradley and Sharkey agreed to an increased advance fee of £10,000 offered by Stein upon the recording contract and signed to Sire Records on a five-year contract. Sire Records subsequently obtained all rights to the material released upon the Teenage Kicks EP and the song was re-released as a standard vinyl single upon Sire's own label two weeks later.
On 26 October, the Undertones performed "Teenage Kicks" live on Top of the Pops. With help from Peel (who had also recorded and broadcast a Peel Session with the Undertones on the 16th), Teenage Kicks peaked at number 31 in the UK Singles Chart the following month.
In November 1978, the Undertones embarked on their first tour of the UK. This tour lasted until 16 December and saw the band appear as the supporting act for The Rezillos and John Otway in England and Wales in addition to headlining in three concerts in Belfast and Derry.
In January 1979, the Undertones recorded their eponymous debut album at Eden Studios in Acton, West London, using producer Roger Bechirian, whom the band had worked with for the first time the previous December, when Bechirian had produced the band's second single, "Get Over You". Much of the material upon their first album had been performed regularly at the Casbah, and the band were able to record this album in the space of less than four weeks.
Following the release of "Get Over You" in February 1979, the Undertones' eponymous debut album was released in May. The primary lyrical concern of the songs focused upon youthful relationships and adolescence. Three further punk singles "Jimmy Jimmy", "Here Comes the Summer" and "You've Got My Number (Why Don't You Use It?)" were released between April and October 1979, each to critical acclaim. In September 1979, the Undertones toured the United States for the first time, supporting The Clash with eight concerts in six different States.
Hypnotised (1980)
Following the 'You Got My Number tour' of October 1979, the Undertones began recording the songs for their second album, Hypnotised, at Wisseloord Studios in the Netherlands. The recording of the songs began in December. Ten songs were recorded before the band returned to Derry prior to Christmas to write and record further songs for the album. Three further songs were written during this break: "Tearproof", "More Songs About Chocolate and Girls" and "Wednesday Week".
In January 1980, the production of Hypnotised was finished at Eden Studios in London, with the Undertones recording the three further songs written the previous December, plus two further songs—"Hypnotised" and a cover of "Under The Boardwalk"—which had been written that month. Following the completion of their second LP, the band embarked upon a two-week tour of Ireland before touring continental Europe for the first time in March.
On 28 March 1980, the Undertones released their sixth single, "My Perfect Cousin". The song, which had been written the previous summer by Damian O'Neill and Michael Bradley, reached number 9 in the UK charts and would subsequently prove to be the band's highest charting single in the United Kingdom. The following month, on 21 April 1980, the band's second LP, Hypnotised was released. This album reached number 6 in the UK Albums Chart, remaining in the Top 10 for one month. The same week the album was released, the Undertones embarked on their 'Humming tour', which saw the band play a total of 25 gigs across the UK between April and June.
Less than two weeks after the completion of the 'Humming tour', the Undertones toured the United States for the second time; this time as the headlining band. "Wednesday Week"—the second single to be released from Hypnotised—was released in July 1980. This single reached number 11 in the UK chart and remained in the Top 40 for a total of seven weeks.
Between September and December 1980, the Undertones performed two further tours: the 'Disaster Tour (European Style)', which saw the band perform in continental Europe and—in December—the 'See No More' tour of the UK.
In terms of chart sales, the year 1980 was the Undertones' most successful year. In a review by Sounds magazine the same year, the Undertones were described as: "Possibly the best pop group in the English speaking world."
EMI
Positive Touch (1981–1982)
In December 1980, the Undertones announced their intention to split from Sire Records as they were unhappy with the lack of promotion they were receiving outside of the UK, particularly in the US. Following negotiations, their manager, Andy Ferguson, succeeded in the band retaining ownership rights to the material released on Sire Records; Ferguson subsequently signed the group to EMI in March 1981.
On 4 January 1981, the band began recording their third album, Positive Touch, again at Wisseloord Studios, and again with Roger Bechirian as producer. The band recorded a total of eight songs in five days before returning to Derry. Later the same month, the band returned to Wisseloord Studios to complete the recording of the LP. The songs on this album indicated a change in both musical and lyrical influences: although the songs remained largely guitar-oriented, the band had written songs which focused upon the Troubles in Northern Ireland such as "Crisis of Mine", "You're Welcome" and the single "It's Going To Happen!", which preceded the release of the LP and was inspired by the 1980–81 Hunger Strikes. In addition, several songs upon the LP included instruments such as pianos, saxophones, recorders and brass instruments, with two further songs ("Julie Ocean" and "It's Going To Happen!") drawing musical inspiration from contemporary artists Orange Juice and Dexy's Midnight Runners respectively. The band themselves were content with the change of influences for Positive Touch, which bassist Michael Bradley later described as a "natural progression" for the band, adding that, at the time, consensus between the band members was that the songs upon the LP were their best yet.
One month prior to the release of this third album, in April 1981, the Undertones embarked on their 'Positive Touch tour'; this tour saw the band perform a total of 36 gigs across the UK mainland in the space of less than two months.
Positive Touch was released in May 1981. This third album peaked at number 17 in the UK charts—remaining in the Top 40 for a total of four weeks. The album also received favourable reviews from several music critics and was listed by NME as one of the best albums to be released in 1981, although neither the album nor either of the singles released were as successful as any of the material released the previous year.
Following the conclusion of their 'Positive Touch tour' in June 1981, the Undertones released their second single of 1981, "Julie Ocean". The single – an extended recording of the 90-second album version – was produced by Hugh Jones and Dave Balfe.
On 29 September 1981, the Undertones embarked on their biggest tour of Continental Europe, which lasted until 20 October 1981 and saw the band perform a total of 19 concerts in six countries.
1982 saw a lull in activity from the Undertones, who only performed live on a total of five occasions throughout the entire year. Two of these gigs were held in England, with three further live appearances held in the United States in August. Much of the time the band spent together was devoted towards writing and recording songs for their next LP in their 8-track demo studio. Damian O'Neill, the Undertones' lead guitarist, later admitted: "We (had) definitely lost a bit of the spark. I don't know but I tend to think some of us got too complacent sitting in our homes in Derry." The Undertones released two studio singles, "Beautiful Friend" and "The Love Parade", in February and October; both of these singles failed to make an impact upon the UK charts.
The Sin of Pride (1983)
In March 1983, the Undertones released their fourth album, The Sin of Pride. This album, which drew inspiration from both soul and Motown, was produced by Mike Hedges, who had replaced Roger Bechirian as the Undertones' producer following the 1981 release of Positive Touch. Feargal Sharkey is known to have stated he had worked harder upon this album than at any point in his singing career to date, and that he considers this album the finest the Undertones ever produced. The Sin of Pride was met with critical acclaim upon release, and the Undertones performed several gigs in both Scotland and England to promote the release of this album; it reached number 43 in the UK chart.
The Undertones released two further studio singles in 1983; their first single, "Got To Have You Back"—which was inspired by both ABC and Smokey Robinson—was released in February and their second single, "Chain of Love", was released in May. Both failed to make any major impact on the UK chart.
Disbandment
In April 1983, the Undertones embarked on their 'UK Sin of Pride tour' to promote their latest album. By this stage in their career, the band were acutely aware of the pressure they were under from EMI, who were unhappy with the lack of chart success of much of the material the band had released since the release of their Positive Touch LP. In addition, internal tensions between various members of the band, in particular between Feargal Sharkey and John O'Neill, had deteriorated significantly. These factors led to Sharkey announcing his intentions to leave the Undertones during the 'European Tour 1983', which the group performed in May of that year.
To fulfill agreed commitments, the Undertones remained together for a further two months, performing several gigs across continental Europe before disbanding in mid-1983, with their final concert being played at Punchestown Racecourse in County Kildare in Ireland on 17 July.
Subsequent careers
Following the disbandment of the Undertones in 1983, Feargal Sharkey was invited by Vince Clarke and Eric Radcliffe of the synthpop duet The Assembly to provide lead vocals on the single "Never Never," which was released by The Assembly in November 1983 and peaked at number 4 in the UK charts. Sharkey was never officially a member of The Assembly and his vocal contribution to "Never Never" proved to be Sharkey's only recording with the band, who would only issue this one single before folding.
Sharkey subsequently embarked upon a brief, but commercially successful solo career in the mid 1980s to early 1990s.
Two of the other band members, John O'Neill and Damian O'Neill, formed That Petrol Emotion in 1984. That Petrol Emotion released a total of fifteen singles and six albums between 1985 and 1994.
In the 1990s John O'Neill formed a trip hop group called Rare under the stage name Seán Ó'Néill with vocalist Mary Gallagher. They only had one notable chart appearance and disbanded shortly after the release of their only album in 1998.
Reunion
The Undertones reformed in November 1999, initially to play concerts in Derry. For their reformation, the Undertones replaced Sharkey (who declined to rejoin) with singer Paul McLoone. Since 1999, the Undertones have performed several tours across the UK, Ireland, Continental Europe, Japan, Turkey and North America and continue to perform live.
Noteworthy gigs by the Undertones since their 1999 reformation include performing at the Glastonbury Festival in June 2005, providing pre-match entertainment prior to kick-off at Celtic Park in the UEFA Champions League play-off between Celtic and Arsenal in August 2009 and, in March and April 2011, performing a series of UK gigs in which they played their debut album, The Undertones, in its entirety as part of each show. This tour was timed to accompany a re-release of a double compilation album containing all of the A- and B-sides of their singles.
Since their reformation, the Undertones have released two albums of original material with Paul McLoone providing vocals: Get What You Need on 30 September 2003; and Dig Yourself Deep, on 15 October 2007.
In April 2013, the Undertones released their first new material for over five years with the double A-side single "Much Too Late / When It Hurts I Count To Ten." This single—limited to 1,000 numbered copies—was released as part of the Record Store Day promotion in the UK and was recorded at Toe Rag Studios in London.
Media recognition
In a 2000 poll by Q to discover the 100 greatest British albums of all time as voted by the British public, the Undertones' eponymous debut LP was voted the 90th greatest British album.
The Undertones have also been the subject of two documentaries: The first documentary to be produced: The Story of the Undertones: Teenage Kicks, was recorded in 2001 and released in 2004. Directed by Tom Collins, this 65-minute documentary was produced with the cooperation of John Peel, who interviews all current and former members of the band (with the exception of Vincent O'Neill) in addition to Seymour Stein and Eamonn McCann. In this documentary, the band discuss their formation, career, subsequent careers, personal lives and 1999 reunion.
The second documentary relating to The Undertones: Here Comes the Summer: The Undertones Story, was commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on BBC Four in September 2012. This documentary also features with interviews with current and former members of the Undertones (excluding Feargal Sharkey) in addition to numerous fans, friends, journalists, and additional personnel involved in the band's recordings and career.
The band were also portrayed in the 2013 film Good Vibrations about Terri Hooley and the Good Vibrations record label, featuring Jodie Whittaker and Richard Dormer.
Members
Current members
John O'Neill – rhythm guitar and backing vocals (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Michael Bradley – bass guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Billy Doherty – drums (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Damian O'Neill – lead guitar, keyboards and backing vocals (1976–1983, 1999–present)
Paul McLoone – lead vocals (1999–present)
Former members
Vincent O'Neill – guitar (1975–1976)
Feargal Sharkey – lead vocals (1975–1983)
Discography
The Undertones (1979)
Hypnotised (1980)
Positive Touch (1981)
The Sin of Pride (1983)
Get What You Need (2003)
Dig Yourself Deep (2007)
Notes
References
Further reading
Bradley, Michael (2016). Teenage Kicks: My Life as an Undertone. Omnibus Press.
External links
Official Site
History of the band from an unofficial fan site
Sold On Song Top 100: Teenage Kicks (No. 51)
Teenage Kicks from Salon.com
History of Punk in Derry, Northern Ireland.
Profile of The Undertones
A Panorama of The Undertones Playing in Brooke Park, Derry, August 2007
Official press release for the Undertones' 'True Confessions' greatest hits album
1974 establishments in Northern Ireland
Harvest Records artists
Musical groups established in 1974
Musical groups from Derry (city)
New wave musical groups from Northern Ireland
Pop punk groups from Northern Ireland
Punk rock groups from Northern Ireland
Rykodisc artists
Sire Records artists | false | [
"Monoculture is the debut studio album by American indie rock band Sainthood Reps. It was produced by Mike Sapone and released on August 9, 2011, by Tooth & Nail Records.\n\nBackground\nIn 2010, following the release of a split EP with O'Brother, Sainthood Reps received an e-mail from Tooth & Nail Records expressing interest in signing them, convincing them to put on hold plans for a double EP (four songs from which ended up on the album). After receiving more songs from the band, however, the label expressed concern about signing what was then a mostly instrumental band with few vocals. An agreement was made to include both instrumental and vocal songs on the album, but during the seven months ultimately taken to finalize the contract, the band rented out a practice space to rehearse and write songs in preparation for the eventual recording process. It was during this process, according to guitarist Derrick Sherman, that the group \"found [its] sound\", ultimately abandoning the instrumental songs so as to have \"a more cohesive record\".\n\nReception\n\nThe album received largely positive reviews. Jason Heller of The A.V. Club included it in his monthly \"Loud\" column.\n\nTrack listing\n\"Monoculture\" - 3:16\n\"Dingus\" - 3:00\n\"Telemarketeer\" - 4:10\n\"Animal Glue\" - 3:18\n\"Hunter\" - 4:00\n\"No/Survival\" - 2:14\n\"Hotfoot\" - 4:35\n\"Holiday Makers\" - 4:52\n\"reactor, reactor, reactor, REACTOR!\" - 4:36\n\"Widow\" - 6:26\n\nReferences \n\nTooth & Nail Records albums\n2011 debut albums\nSainthood Reps albums\nAlbums produced by Mike Sapone",
"The Wherehouse, officially titled A. Wherehouse, is a warehouse located at 55 Pond Street in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States.\n\nIt was rented out by the rock band Aerosmith, starting in 1975 and continuing into the 1980s. The warehouse featured a garage where the band members would park their cars, upstairs offices for the band's personnel, and a ground-level recording studio and stage where the band would often rehearse, write, and record music. The band would also hold meetings here and use the building to rest and relax.\n\nSteve Leber and David Krebs, managers for Aerosmith during the 1970s, also managed Ted Nugent and Mahogany Rush. Those artists also used the Wherehouse as a practice and tour rehearsal site when they were in Boston.\n\nThe Wherehouse was also the birthplace of Aero Force One, the band's official fan club. Ray Tabano, musician and founding member of the band in 1970, left the band and started up the club in 1971, writing newsletters and selling merchandise out of the building. Tabano was also responsible for the general maintenance of the building and its offices.\n\nOccasionally, Aerosmith would rent out the stage and studio to other musicians. The band Boston scored their famous record deal when they rented out the building and played for record company executives here.\n\nFurther reading\nWalk This Way: The Autobiography of Aerosmith\n\nReferences\n\nAerosmith\nBuildings and structures in Waltham, Massachusetts"
] |
[
"The Undertones",
"Casbah Rock",
"What was Casbah Rock?",
"By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at The Casbah,",
"When was their second concert at the Casbah?",
"The Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis,",
"Did they produce an album of any of their shows there?",
"This inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at this venue.",
"What inspired the band to write and rehearse?",
"performing at The Casbah earned the group up to PS40 a week."
] | C_39b6cbda764e492ea1376605d128ea80_0 | What were some of the songs they performed there? | 5 | What were some of the songs The Undertones performed at the Casbah Rock? | The Undertones | By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at The Casbah, where the band began to perform in February. The Undertones had occasionally earned money at venues where they had performed throughout 1976, but these gigs at The Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis, as performing at The Casbah earned the group up to PS40 a week. This inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at this venue. By mid-year, the concerts the Undertones performed would include the song "Teenage Kicks", which had been written by guitarist John O'Neill in mid-1977. The gigs performed at The Casbah gave the Undertones increased confidence in their musical ability, and in June 1977 they performed concerts outside Derry for the first time, supporting a Dublin punk group named The Radiators from Space. In March 1978, the Undertones recorded a demo tape at Magee University in Derry and sent copies of the tape to various record companies in the hope of securing a record deal, but only received official letters of rejection. The band had also sent a copy of their recordings to influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, requesting he play the songs on his radio programme. Peel replied to the band, offering to pay for a recording session in Belfast. On 16 June 1978, the band recorded their debut four-song EP "Teenage Kicks" on a budget of only PS200. The EP was engineered by Davy Shannon at Wizard Sound Studios, Belfast - and was released on Belfast's Good Vibrations record label. The title song became a hit with support from John Peel, who considered Teenage Kicks his all-time favourite song, an opinion he held until his death in 2004. Seymour Stein, the president of Sire Records - in London on business - heard John Peel play "Teenage Kicks" on BBC Radio 1 and became interested in the band. Stein sent a London-based representative named Paul McNally to Derry to discuss a record deal with the band. McNally saw the band play live in what would ultimately prove to be their final performance at The Casbah on 29 September 1978. The following day, McNally convened with the Undertones to discuss a record contract. Three members of the band signed the proposed contract on this date, with the understanding that Feargal Sharkey and Michael Bradley would discuss negotiations to the contract with Seymour Stein in person in London. CANNOTANSWER | By mid-year, the concerts the Undertones performed would include the song "Teenage Kicks", | The Undertones are a rock band formed in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. From 1975 to 1983, the Undertones consisted of Feargal Sharkey (vocals), John O'Neill (rhythm guitar, vocals), Damian O'Neill (lead guitar, vocals), Michael Bradley (bass, vocals) and Billy Doherty (drums). Much of the earlier Undertones material drew influence from punk rock and new wave; the Undertones also incorporated elements of rock, glam rock and post-punk into material released after 1979, before citing soul and Motown as the influence for the material released upon their final album. The Undertones released thirteen singles and four studio albums between 1978 and 1983 before Sharkey announced his intention to leave the band in May 1983, citing musical differences as the reason for the break up.
Despite the backdrop of the Troubles in Derry and across Northern Ireland, the vast majority (though not all) of the material the Undertones released focused not upon the political climate, but upon issues such as adolescence, teenage angst and heartbreak. AllMusic has stated that guitarists John and Damian O'Neill "mated infectious guitar hooks to 1960s garage, 1970s glam rock, and Feargal Sharkey's signature vocal quaver."
In 1999, the Undertones reformed, replacing lead singer Sharkey with Paul McLoone.
The Undertones remain the most successful band to have emerged from Derry, and one of the most successful bands to have emerged from Northern Ireland.
Formation and early gigs
The Undertones formed in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. The band members were five friends from Creggan and the Bogside, who originally drew inspiration from such artists as the Beatles, Small Faces and Lindisfarne and who decided in part to form their own band due to both their common interest in music and the fact that—because of the Troubles— many entertainment venues in the city were closed in late evenings.
The band initially rehearsed cover versions at the home of the guitarists, brothers John and Vincent O'Neill, and in the shed of a neighbour. (In early 1976, before the band had played gigs at any venues, Vincent O'Neill left the band; he was soon replaced by his younger brother Damian.)
Beginning in February 1976 the group, at this stage still unnamed, began playing gigs at various minor local venues, including schools, parish halls and Scout huts, where the band's lead singer, Feargal Sharkey, was a local Scout leader. Sharkey was also responsible for giving the band their first name: at the introduction to a gig at Saint Joseph's Secondary School in Derry on 16 March 1976, Feargal Sharkey was asked the name of the band and quickly replied "The Hot Rods". At a later gig, Sharkey named the band "Little Feat": another name already used by another group.
Later that year, drummer Billy Doherty proposed an alternate name for the group: The Undertones, which Doherty had discovered in his school history book. The other members of the band agreed to the proposal.
With the arrival of punk rock in late 1976, the artistic focus of the band changed. Artists such as the Adverts, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and, particularly, the Ramones became major influences on the Undertones.
In addition to being a Scout leader, Feargal Sharkey worked as a television repairman and delivery man. The van which Sharkey drove in this employment was used by the Undertones to transport their equipment to and from various venues.
The Casbah
By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at the Casbah, where the band began to perform in February. The Undertones had occasionally earned money at venues where they had performed throughout 1976, but these gigs at the Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis, as performing at the Casbah earned the group up to £30 for each attendance fee. Both the money earned and their popularity at this venue inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at the Casbah. By the following year, the concerts the Undertones performed would include the song "Teenage Kicks", which had been written by guitarist John O'Neill in mid-1977. The gigs performed at the Casbah gave the Undertones increased confidence in their musical ability, and in June 1977 they performed concerts outside Derry for the first time, supporting a Dublin punk group named The Radiators from Space.
In March 1978, the Undertones recorded a demo tape at Magee University in Derry and sent copies of the tape to various record companies in the hope of securing a record deal, but only received official letters of rejection. The band had also sent a copy of their recordings to influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, requesting he play the songs on his radio programme. Peel replied to the band, offering to pay for a recording session in Belfast. On 15 June 1978, the band recorded their debut four-song EP "Teenage Kicks" on a budget of only £200. The EP was engineered by Davy Shannon at Wizard Studios, Belfast, and was released on Belfast's Good Vibrations record label. The title song became a hit with support from John Peel, who considered Teenage Kicks his all-time favourite song, an opinion he held through to his death in 2004.
Sire Records
Seymour Stein, the president of Sire Records – in London on business – heard John Peel play "Teenage Kicks" on BBC Radio 1 and became interested in the band. Stein sent a London-based representative named Paul McNally to Derry to discuss a record deal with the band. McNally saw the band play live in what would ultimately prove to be their final performance at the Casbah on 29 September 1978. The following day, McNally convened with the Undertones to discuss a record contract. Three members of the band signed the proposed contract on this date, with the understanding that Feargal Sharkey and Michael Bradley would discuss negotiations to the contract with Seymour Stein in person in London.
Teenage Kicks (1978–1979)
On 2 October 1978, Bradley and Sharkey agreed to an increased advance fee of £10,000 offered by Stein upon the recording contract and signed to Sire Records on a five-year contract. Sire Records subsequently obtained all rights to the material released upon the Teenage Kicks EP and the song was re-released as a standard vinyl single upon Sire's own label two weeks later.
On 26 October, the Undertones performed "Teenage Kicks" live on Top of the Pops. With help from Peel (who had also recorded and broadcast a Peel Session with the Undertones on the 16th), Teenage Kicks peaked at number 31 in the UK Singles Chart the following month.
In November 1978, the Undertones embarked on their first tour of the UK. This tour lasted until 16 December and saw the band appear as the supporting act for The Rezillos and John Otway in England and Wales in addition to headlining in three concerts in Belfast and Derry.
In January 1979, the Undertones recorded their eponymous debut album at Eden Studios in Acton, West London, using producer Roger Bechirian, whom the band had worked with for the first time the previous December, when Bechirian had produced the band's second single, "Get Over You". Much of the material upon their first album had been performed regularly at the Casbah, and the band were able to record this album in the space of less than four weeks.
Following the release of "Get Over You" in February 1979, the Undertones' eponymous debut album was released in May. The primary lyrical concern of the songs focused upon youthful relationships and adolescence. Three further punk singles "Jimmy Jimmy", "Here Comes the Summer" and "You've Got My Number (Why Don't You Use It?)" were released between April and October 1979, each to critical acclaim. In September 1979, the Undertones toured the United States for the first time, supporting The Clash with eight concerts in six different States.
Hypnotised (1980)
Following the 'You Got My Number tour' of October 1979, the Undertones began recording the songs for their second album, Hypnotised, at Wisseloord Studios in the Netherlands. The recording of the songs began in December. Ten songs were recorded before the band returned to Derry prior to Christmas to write and record further songs for the album. Three further songs were written during this break: "Tearproof", "More Songs About Chocolate and Girls" and "Wednesday Week".
In January 1980, the production of Hypnotised was finished at Eden Studios in London, with the Undertones recording the three further songs written the previous December, plus two further songs—"Hypnotised" and a cover of "Under The Boardwalk"—which had been written that month. Following the completion of their second LP, the band embarked upon a two-week tour of Ireland before touring continental Europe for the first time in March.
On 28 March 1980, the Undertones released their sixth single, "My Perfect Cousin". The song, which had been written the previous summer by Damian O'Neill and Michael Bradley, reached number 9 in the UK charts and would subsequently prove to be the band's highest charting single in the United Kingdom. The following month, on 21 April 1980, the band's second LP, Hypnotised was released. This album reached number 6 in the UK Albums Chart, remaining in the Top 10 for one month. The same week the album was released, the Undertones embarked on their 'Humming tour', which saw the band play a total of 25 gigs across the UK between April and June.
Less than two weeks after the completion of the 'Humming tour', the Undertones toured the United States for the second time; this time as the headlining band. "Wednesday Week"—the second single to be released from Hypnotised—was released in July 1980. This single reached number 11 in the UK chart and remained in the Top 40 for a total of seven weeks.
Between September and December 1980, the Undertones performed two further tours: the 'Disaster Tour (European Style)', which saw the band perform in continental Europe and—in December—the 'See No More' tour of the UK.
In terms of chart sales, the year 1980 was the Undertones' most successful year. In a review by Sounds magazine the same year, the Undertones were described as: "Possibly the best pop group in the English speaking world."
EMI
Positive Touch (1981–1982)
In December 1980, the Undertones announced their intention to split from Sire Records as they were unhappy with the lack of promotion they were receiving outside of the UK, particularly in the US. Following negotiations, their manager, Andy Ferguson, succeeded in the band retaining ownership rights to the material released on Sire Records; Ferguson subsequently signed the group to EMI in March 1981.
On 4 January 1981, the band began recording their third album, Positive Touch, again at Wisseloord Studios, and again with Roger Bechirian as producer. The band recorded a total of eight songs in five days before returning to Derry. Later the same month, the band returned to Wisseloord Studios to complete the recording of the LP. The songs on this album indicated a change in both musical and lyrical influences: although the songs remained largely guitar-oriented, the band had written songs which focused upon the Troubles in Northern Ireland such as "Crisis of Mine", "You're Welcome" and the single "It's Going To Happen!", which preceded the release of the LP and was inspired by the 1980–81 Hunger Strikes. In addition, several songs upon the LP included instruments such as pianos, saxophones, recorders and brass instruments, with two further songs ("Julie Ocean" and "It's Going To Happen!") drawing musical inspiration from contemporary artists Orange Juice and Dexy's Midnight Runners respectively. The band themselves were content with the change of influences for Positive Touch, which bassist Michael Bradley later described as a "natural progression" for the band, adding that, at the time, consensus between the band members was that the songs upon the LP were their best yet.
One month prior to the release of this third album, in April 1981, the Undertones embarked on their 'Positive Touch tour'; this tour saw the band perform a total of 36 gigs across the UK mainland in the space of less than two months.
Positive Touch was released in May 1981. This third album peaked at number 17 in the UK charts—remaining in the Top 40 for a total of four weeks. The album also received favourable reviews from several music critics and was listed by NME as one of the best albums to be released in 1981, although neither the album nor either of the singles released were as successful as any of the material released the previous year.
Following the conclusion of their 'Positive Touch tour' in June 1981, the Undertones released their second single of 1981, "Julie Ocean". The single – an extended recording of the 90-second album version – was produced by Hugh Jones and Dave Balfe.
On 29 September 1981, the Undertones embarked on their biggest tour of Continental Europe, which lasted until 20 October 1981 and saw the band perform a total of 19 concerts in six countries.
1982 saw a lull in activity from the Undertones, who only performed live on a total of five occasions throughout the entire year. Two of these gigs were held in England, with three further live appearances held in the United States in August. Much of the time the band spent together was devoted towards writing and recording songs for their next LP in their 8-track demo studio. Damian O'Neill, the Undertones' lead guitarist, later admitted: "We (had) definitely lost a bit of the spark. I don't know but I tend to think some of us got too complacent sitting in our homes in Derry." The Undertones released two studio singles, "Beautiful Friend" and "The Love Parade", in February and October; both of these singles failed to make an impact upon the UK charts.
The Sin of Pride (1983)
In March 1983, the Undertones released their fourth album, The Sin of Pride. This album, which drew inspiration from both soul and Motown, was produced by Mike Hedges, who had replaced Roger Bechirian as the Undertones' producer following the 1981 release of Positive Touch. Feargal Sharkey is known to have stated he had worked harder upon this album than at any point in his singing career to date, and that he considers this album the finest the Undertones ever produced. The Sin of Pride was met with critical acclaim upon release, and the Undertones performed several gigs in both Scotland and England to promote the release of this album; it reached number 43 in the UK chart.
The Undertones released two further studio singles in 1983; their first single, "Got To Have You Back"—which was inspired by both ABC and Smokey Robinson—was released in February and their second single, "Chain of Love", was released in May. Both failed to make any major impact on the UK chart.
Disbandment
In April 1983, the Undertones embarked on their 'UK Sin of Pride tour' to promote their latest album. By this stage in their career, the band were acutely aware of the pressure they were under from EMI, who were unhappy with the lack of chart success of much of the material the band had released since the release of their Positive Touch LP. In addition, internal tensions between various members of the band, in particular between Feargal Sharkey and John O'Neill, had deteriorated significantly. These factors led to Sharkey announcing his intentions to leave the Undertones during the 'European Tour 1983', which the group performed in May of that year.
To fulfill agreed commitments, the Undertones remained together for a further two months, performing several gigs across continental Europe before disbanding in mid-1983, with their final concert being played at Punchestown Racecourse in County Kildare in Ireland on 17 July.
Subsequent careers
Following the disbandment of the Undertones in 1983, Feargal Sharkey was invited by Vince Clarke and Eric Radcliffe of the synthpop duet The Assembly to provide lead vocals on the single "Never Never," which was released by The Assembly in November 1983 and peaked at number 4 in the UK charts. Sharkey was never officially a member of The Assembly and his vocal contribution to "Never Never" proved to be Sharkey's only recording with the band, who would only issue this one single before folding.
Sharkey subsequently embarked upon a brief, but commercially successful solo career in the mid 1980s to early 1990s.
Two of the other band members, John O'Neill and Damian O'Neill, formed That Petrol Emotion in 1984. That Petrol Emotion released a total of fifteen singles and six albums between 1985 and 1994.
In the 1990s John O'Neill formed a trip hop group called Rare under the stage name Seán Ó'Néill with vocalist Mary Gallagher. They only had one notable chart appearance and disbanded shortly after the release of their only album in 1998.
Reunion
The Undertones reformed in November 1999, initially to play concerts in Derry. For their reformation, the Undertones replaced Sharkey (who declined to rejoin) with singer Paul McLoone. Since 1999, the Undertones have performed several tours across the UK, Ireland, Continental Europe, Japan, Turkey and North America and continue to perform live.
Noteworthy gigs by the Undertones since their 1999 reformation include performing at the Glastonbury Festival in June 2005, providing pre-match entertainment prior to kick-off at Celtic Park in the UEFA Champions League play-off between Celtic and Arsenal in August 2009 and, in March and April 2011, performing a series of UK gigs in which they played their debut album, The Undertones, in its entirety as part of each show. This tour was timed to accompany a re-release of a double compilation album containing all of the A- and B-sides of their singles.
Since their reformation, the Undertones have released two albums of original material with Paul McLoone providing vocals: Get What You Need on 30 September 2003; and Dig Yourself Deep, on 15 October 2007.
In April 2013, the Undertones released their first new material for over five years with the double A-side single "Much Too Late / When It Hurts I Count To Ten." This single—limited to 1,000 numbered copies—was released as part of the Record Store Day promotion in the UK and was recorded at Toe Rag Studios in London.
Media recognition
In a 2000 poll by Q to discover the 100 greatest British albums of all time as voted by the British public, the Undertones' eponymous debut LP was voted the 90th greatest British album.
The Undertones have also been the subject of two documentaries: The first documentary to be produced: The Story of the Undertones: Teenage Kicks, was recorded in 2001 and released in 2004. Directed by Tom Collins, this 65-minute documentary was produced with the cooperation of John Peel, who interviews all current and former members of the band (with the exception of Vincent O'Neill) in addition to Seymour Stein and Eamonn McCann. In this documentary, the band discuss their formation, career, subsequent careers, personal lives and 1999 reunion.
The second documentary relating to The Undertones: Here Comes the Summer: The Undertones Story, was commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on BBC Four in September 2012. This documentary also features with interviews with current and former members of the Undertones (excluding Feargal Sharkey) in addition to numerous fans, friends, journalists, and additional personnel involved in the band's recordings and career.
The band were also portrayed in the 2013 film Good Vibrations about Terri Hooley and the Good Vibrations record label, featuring Jodie Whittaker and Richard Dormer.
Members
Current members
John O'Neill – rhythm guitar and backing vocals (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Michael Bradley – bass guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Billy Doherty – drums (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Damian O'Neill – lead guitar, keyboards and backing vocals (1976–1983, 1999–present)
Paul McLoone – lead vocals (1999–present)
Former members
Vincent O'Neill – guitar (1975–1976)
Feargal Sharkey – lead vocals (1975–1983)
Discography
The Undertones (1979)
Hypnotised (1980)
Positive Touch (1981)
The Sin of Pride (1983)
Get What You Need (2003)
Dig Yourself Deep (2007)
Notes
References
Further reading
Bradley, Michael (2016). Teenage Kicks: My Life as an Undertone. Omnibus Press.
External links
Official Site
History of the band from an unofficial fan site
Sold On Song Top 100: Teenage Kicks (No. 51)
Teenage Kicks from Salon.com
History of Punk in Derry, Northern Ireland.
Profile of The Undertones
A Panorama of The Undertones Playing in Brooke Park, Derry, August 2007
Official press release for the Undertones' 'True Confessions' greatest hits album
1974 establishments in Northern Ireland
Harvest Records artists
Musical groups established in 1974
Musical groups from Derry (city)
New wave musical groups from Northern Ireland
Pop punk groups from Northern Ireland
Punk rock groups from Northern Ireland
Rykodisc artists
Sire Records artists | false | [
"Space Songs is an album in the \"Ballads For The Age of Science\" or \"Singing Science\" series of scientific music for children from the late 1950s and early 1960s. Songs were written by Hy Zaret (lyrics) and Lou Singer (music). \"Space Songs\" was released in 1959 by Hy Zaret's label \"Motivation Records\" (a division of Argosy Music Corp.) and was performed by Tom Glazer and Dottie Evans.\n\nOther albums in the \"Ballads for the Age of Science\" series were: \"Energy and Motion Songs,\" performed by Tom Glazer and Dottie Evans; \"Weather Songs,\" performed by Tom Glazer and The Weathervanes; \"Experiment Songs,\" performed by Dorothy Collins; \"Nature Songs,\" and \"More Nature Songs,\" both performed by Marais and Miranda.\n\nTrack listing\n\"Zoom A Little Zoom\"\n\"What Is The Milky Way?\"\n\"Constellation Jig\"\n\"Beep, Beep\"\n\"Why Does The Sun Shine?\"\n\"What Is A Shooting Star?\"\n\"Longitude And Latitude\"\n\"It's A Scientific Fact\"\n\"Ballad Of Sir Isaac Newton\"\n\"Friction\"\n\"Why Are Stars Of Different Colors?\"\n\"Why Do Stars Twinkle?\"\n\"What Is Gravity?\"\n\"Planet Minuet\"\n\"Why Go Up There?\"\n\nSpace Songs in popular media\n\nIsaac Asimov wrote an essay called \"Catskills in the Sky\" which appeared in the August 1960 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He tells an anecdote about his children receiving this album as a present. He liked the music so much, especially the song \"Why Go Up There,\" that he appropriated the album for his own record collection. (And in the essay, gives reasons as why mankind should \"go up there.\")\n\nJapanese electronic music producer and DJ Yoshinori Sunahara sampled \"Zoom a Little Zoom\" in his song \"Journey Beyond the Stars\", which featured on his 1998 album Take Off and Landing.\n\nThe song \"Zoom a Little Zoom\" has notably been used in the popular online vlog Rocketboom as its theme song.\n\nOn September 27, 2005 episode of Rocketboom featured the songs \"Why Do Stars Twinkle?\" and \"Beep,Beep\".\n\nThe band They Might Be Giants has recorded cover versions of two Space Songs, \"Why Does The Sun Shine?\", and \"What Is A Shooting Star? (A Shooting Star Is Not A Star)\", as well as a reply to the former called \"Why Does the Sun Really Shine?\" which corrects scientific errors in the original.\n\nIn 2008 Chloé Leloup, Miss LaLaVox und Achim Treu reworked the album under the title \"The Space Songs - Ballads for the Age of Science\". The album was released on the label Sopot Records.\n\nThe lyrics of the first stanza of \"Why Does the Sun Shine?\" also appear verbatim in the book Stars: A Golden Guide, apart from the omission of \"its core is\" before \"a gigantic nuclear furnace\".\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nInformation about the Singing Science series\nThey Might Be Giants\nMen From Earth authors of new songs about space.\nRocketboom\nBallads for the Age of Science\n\n1959 albums\nChildren's music albums",
"\"Then What\" is a song by Australian rapper Illy and was released in May 2019 as the lead single from Illy's forthcoming sixth studio album, The Space Between (2021). \"Then What\" peaked at number 33 on the ARIA Charts and was certified platinum.\n\n\"Then What\" was written about the changes since Illy's last album Two Degrees in 2016 and its success. Illy told Ben & Liam on Triple J \"You notice people come around that weren't there before. When the times are good, they're there, and inevitably you sort of go quiet, start working on new stuff and they're not around anymore. It's not something to get bummed about, I find it funny because it's a cliché but it's true. I wanted to write a song addressing that.\"\n\nAt the APRA Music Awards of 2020, \"Then What\" was nominated for Most Performed Urban Work of the Year.\n\nReception\nZanda Wilson from The Music Network said \"('Then What') is cut from the same cloth as some of his biggest radio hits, with Illy's clean and energetic combination of rapping and singing underpinned by production with pop sensibilities.\"\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertifications\n\nReferences \n\n2019 singles\n2019 songs\nIlly (rapper) songs"
] |
[
"The Undertones",
"Casbah Rock",
"What was Casbah Rock?",
"By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at The Casbah,",
"When was their second concert at the Casbah?",
"The Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis,",
"Did they produce an album of any of their shows there?",
"This inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at this venue.",
"What inspired the band to write and rehearse?",
"performing at The Casbah earned the group up to PS40 a week.",
"What were some of the songs they performed there?",
"By mid-year, the concerts the Undertones performed would include the song \"Teenage Kicks\","
] | C_39b6cbda764e492ea1376605d128ea80_0 | Was Teenage Kicks well received? | 6 | Was Teenage Kicks by The Undertones well received? | The Undertones | By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at The Casbah, where the band began to perform in February. The Undertones had occasionally earned money at venues where they had performed throughout 1976, but these gigs at The Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis, as performing at The Casbah earned the group up to PS40 a week. This inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at this venue. By mid-year, the concerts the Undertones performed would include the song "Teenage Kicks", which had been written by guitarist John O'Neill in mid-1977. The gigs performed at The Casbah gave the Undertones increased confidence in their musical ability, and in June 1977 they performed concerts outside Derry for the first time, supporting a Dublin punk group named The Radiators from Space. In March 1978, the Undertones recorded a demo tape at Magee University in Derry and sent copies of the tape to various record companies in the hope of securing a record deal, but only received official letters of rejection. The band had also sent a copy of their recordings to influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, requesting he play the songs on his radio programme. Peel replied to the band, offering to pay for a recording session in Belfast. On 16 June 1978, the band recorded their debut four-song EP "Teenage Kicks" on a budget of only PS200. The EP was engineered by Davy Shannon at Wizard Sound Studios, Belfast - and was released on Belfast's Good Vibrations record label. The title song became a hit with support from John Peel, who considered Teenage Kicks his all-time favourite song, an opinion he held until his death in 2004. Seymour Stein, the president of Sire Records - in London on business - heard John Peel play "Teenage Kicks" on BBC Radio 1 and became interested in the band. Stein sent a London-based representative named Paul McNally to Derry to discuss a record deal with the band. McNally saw the band play live in what would ultimately prove to be their final performance at The Casbah on 29 September 1978. The following day, McNally convened with the Undertones to discuss a record contract. Three members of the band signed the proposed contract on this date, with the understanding that Feargal Sharkey and Michael Bradley would discuss negotiations to the contract with Seymour Stein in person in London. CANNOTANSWER | The title song became a hit with support from John Peel, who considered Teenage Kicks his all-time favourite song, an opinion he held until his death in 2004. | The Undertones are a rock band formed in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. From 1975 to 1983, the Undertones consisted of Feargal Sharkey (vocals), John O'Neill (rhythm guitar, vocals), Damian O'Neill (lead guitar, vocals), Michael Bradley (bass, vocals) and Billy Doherty (drums). Much of the earlier Undertones material drew influence from punk rock and new wave; the Undertones also incorporated elements of rock, glam rock and post-punk into material released after 1979, before citing soul and Motown as the influence for the material released upon their final album. The Undertones released thirteen singles and four studio albums between 1978 and 1983 before Sharkey announced his intention to leave the band in May 1983, citing musical differences as the reason for the break up.
Despite the backdrop of the Troubles in Derry and across Northern Ireland, the vast majority (though not all) of the material the Undertones released focused not upon the political climate, but upon issues such as adolescence, teenage angst and heartbreak. AllMusic has stated that guitarists John and Damian O'Neill "mated infectious guitar hooks to 1960s garage, 1970s glam rock, and Feargal Sharkey's signature vocal quaver."
In 1999, the Undertones reformed, replacing lead singer Sharkey with Paul McLoone.
The Undertones remain the most successful band to have emerged from Derry, and one of the most successful bands to have emerged from Northern Ireland.
Formation and early gigs
The Undertones formed in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. The band members were five friends from Creggan and the Bogside, who originally drew inspiration from such artists as the Beatles, Small Faces and Lindisfarne and who decided in part to form their own band due to both their common interest in music and the fact that—because of the Troubles— many entertainment venues in the city were closed in late evenings.
The band initially rehearsed cover versions at the home of the guitarists, brothers John and Vincent O'Neill, and in the shed of a neighbour. (In early 1976, before the band had played gigs at any venues, Vincent O'Neill left the band; he was soon replaced by his younger brother Damian.)
Beginning in February 1976 the group, at this stage still unnamed, began playing gigs at various minor local venues, including schools, parish halls and Scout huts, where the band's lead singer, Feargal Sharkey, was a local Scout leader. Sharkey was also responsible for giving the band their first name: at the introduction to a gig at Saint Joseph's Secondary School in Derry on 16 March 1976, Feargal Sharkey was asked the name of the band and quickly replied "The Hot Rods". At a later gig, Sharkey named the band "Little Feat": another name already used by another group.
Later that year, drummer Billy Doherty proposed an alternate name for the group: The Undertones, which Doherty had discovered in his school history book. The other members of the band agreed to the proposal.
With the arrival of punk rock in late 1976, the artistic focus of the band changed. Artists such as the Adverts, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and, particularly, the Ramones became major influences on the Undertones.
In addition to being a Scout leader, Feargal Sharkey worked as a television repairman and delivery man. The van which Sharkey drove in this employment was used by the Undertones to transport their equipment to and from various venues.
The Casbah
By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at the Casbah, where the band began to perform in February. The Undertones had occasionally earned money at venues where they had performed throughout 1976, but these gigs at the Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis, as performing at the Casbah earned the group up to £30 for each attendance fee. Both the money earned and their popularity at this venue inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at the Casbah. By the following year, the concerts the Undertones performed would include the song "Teenage Kicks", which had been written by guitarist John O'Neill in mid-1977. The gigs performed at the Casbah gave the Undertones increased confidence in their musical ability, and in June 1977 they performed concerts outside Derry for the first time, supporting a Dublin punk group named The Radiators from Space.
In March 1978, the Undertones recorded a demo tape at Magee University in Derry and sent copies of the tape to various record companies in the hope of securing a record deal, but only received official letters of rejection. The band had also sent a copy of their recordings to influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, requesting he play the songs on his radio programme. Peel replied to the band, offering to pay for a recording session in Belfast. On 15 June 1978, the band recorded their debut four-song EP "Teenage Kicks" on a budget of only £200. The EP was engineered by Davy Shannon at Wizard Studios, Belfast, and was released on Belfast's Good Vibrations record label. The title song became a hit with support from John Peel, who considered Teenage Kicks his all-time favourite song, an opinion he held through to his death in 2004.
Sire Records
Seymour Stein, the president of Sire Records – in London on business – heard John Peel play "Teenage Kicks" on BBC Radio 1 and became interested in the band. Stein sent a London-based representative named Paul McNally to Derry to discuss a record deal with the band. McNally saw the band play live in what would ultimately prove to be their final performance at the Casbah on 29 September 1978. The following day, McNally convened with the Undertones to discuss a record contract. Three members of the band signed the proposed contract on this date, with the understanding that Feargal Sharkey and Michael Bradley would discuss negotiations to the contract with Seymour Stein in person in London.
Teenage Kicks (1978–1979)
On 2 October 1978, Bradley and Sharkey agreed to an increased advance fee of £10,000 offered by Stein upon the recording contract and signed to Sire Records on a five-year contract. Sire Records subsequently obtained all rights to the material released upon the Teenage Kicks EP and the song was re-released as a standard vinyl single upon Sire's own label two weeks later.
On 26 October, the Undertones performed "Teenage Kicks" live on Top of the Pops. With help from Peel (who had also recorded and broadcast a Peel Session with the Undertones on the 16th), Teenage Kicks peaked at number 31 in the UK Singles Chart the following month.
In November 1978, the Undertones embarked on their first tour of the UK. This tour lasted until 16 December and saw the band appear as the supporting act for The Rezillos and John Otway in England and Wales in addition to headlining in three concerts in Belfast and Derry.
In January 1979, the Undertones recorded their eponymous debut album at Eden Studios in Acton, West London, using producer Roger Bechirian, whom the band had worked with for the first time the previous December, when Bechirian had produced the band's second single, "Get Over You". Much of the material upon their first album had been performed regularly at the Casbah, and the band were able to record this album in the space of less than four weeks.
Following the release of "Get Over You" in February 1979, the Undertones' eponymous debut album was released in May. The primary lyrical concern of the songs focused upon youthful relationships and adolescence. Three further punk singles "Jimmy Jimmy", "Here Comes the Summer" and "You've Got My Number (Why Don't You Use It?)" were released between April and October 1979, each to critical acclaim. In September 1979, the Undertones toured the United States for the first time, supporting The Clash with eight concerts in six different States.
Hypnotised (1980)
Following the 'You Got My Number tour' of October 1979, the Undertones began recording the songs for their second album, Hypnotised, at Wisseloord Studios in the Netherlands. The recording of the songs began in December. Ten songs were recorded before the band returned to Derry prior to Christmas to write and record further songs for the album. Three further songs were written during this break: "Tearproof", "More Songs About Chocolate and Girls" and "Wednesday Week".
In January 1980, the production of Hypnotised was finished at Eden Studios in London, with the Undertones recording the three further songs written the previous December, plus two further songs—"Hypnotised" and a cover of "Under The Boardwalk"—which had been written that month. Following the completion of their second LP, the band embarked upon a two-week tour of Ireland before touring continental Europe for the first time in March.
On 28 March 1980, the Undertones released their sixth single, "My Perfect Cousin". The song, which had been written the previous summer by Damian O'Neill and Michael Bradley, reached number 9 in the UK charts and would subsequently prove to be the band's highest charting single in the United Kingdom. The following month, on 21 April 1980, the band's second LP, Hypnotised was released. This album reached number 6 in the UK Albums Chart, remaining in the Top 10 for one month. The same week the album was released, the Undertones embarked on their 'Humming tour', which saw the band play a total of 25 gigs across the UK between April and June.
Less than two weeks after the completion of the 'Humming tour', the Undertones toured the United States for the second time; this time as the headlining band. "Wednesday Week"—the second single to be released from Hypnotised—was released in July 1980. This single reached number 11 in the UK chart and remained in the Top 40 for a total of seven weeks.
Between September and December 1980, the Undertones performed two further tours: the 'Disaster Tour (European Style)', which saw the band perform in continental Europe and—in December—the 'See No More' tour of the UK.
In terms of chart sales, the year 1980 was the Undertones' most successful year. In a review by Sounds magazine the same year, the Undertones were described as: "Possibly the best pop group in the English speaking world."
EMI
Positive Touch (1981–1982)
In December 1980, the Undertones announced their intention to split from Sire Records as they were unhappy with the lack of promotion they were receiving outside of the UK, particularly in the US. Following negotiations, their manager, Andy Ferguson, succeeded in the band retaining ownership rights to the material released on Sire Records; Ferguson subsequently signed the group to EMI in March 1981.
On 4 January 1981, the band began recording their third album, Positive Touch, again at Wisseloord Studios, and again with Roger Bechirian as producer. The band recorded a total of eight songs in five days before returning to Derry. Later the same month, the band returned to Wisseloord Studios to complete the recording of the LP. The songs on this album indicated a change in both musical and lyrical influences: although the songs remained largely guitar-oriented, the band had written songs which focused upon the Troubles in Northern Ireland such as "Crisis of Mine", "You're Welcome" and the single "It's Going To Happen!", which preceded the release of the LP and was inspired by the 1980–81 Hunger Strikes. In addition, several songs upon the LP included instruments such as pianos, saxophones, recorders and brass instruments, with two further songs ("Julie Ocean" and "It's Going To Happen!") drawing musical inspiration from contemporary artists Orange Juice and Dexy's Midnight Runners respectively. The band themselves were content with the change of influences for Positive Touch, which bassist Michael Bradley later described as a "natural progression" for the band, adding that, at the time, consensus between the band members was that the songs upon the LP were their best yet.
One month prior to the release of this third album, in April 1981, the Undertones embarked on their 'Positive Touch tour'; this tour saw the band perform a total of 36 gigs across the UK mainland in the space of less than two months.
Positive Touch was released in May 1981. This third album peaked at number 17 in the UK charts—remaining in the Top 40 for a total of four weeks. The album also received favourable reviews from several music critics and was listed by NME as one of the best albums to be released in 1981, although neither the album nor either of the singles released were as successful as any of the material released the previous year.
Following the conclusion of their 'Positive Touch tour' in June 1981, the Undertones released their second single of 1981, "Julie Ocean". The single – an extended recording of the 90-second album version – was produced by Hugh Jones and Dave Balfe.
On 29 September 1981, the Undertones embarked on their biggest tour of Continental Europe, which lasted until 20 October 1981 and saw the band perform a total of 19 concerts in six countries.
1982 saw a lull in activity from the Undertones, who only performed live on a total of five occasions throughout the entire year. Two of these gigs were held in England, with three further live appearances held in the United States in August. Much of the time the band spent together was devoted towards writing and recording songs for their next LP in their 8-track demo studio. Damian O'Neill, the Undertones' lead guitarist, later admitted: "We (had) definitely lost a bit of the spark. I don't know but I tend to think some of us got too complacent sitting in our homes in Derry." The Undertones released two studio singles, "Beautiful Friend" and "The Love Parade", in February and October; both of these singles failed to make an impact upon the UK charts.
The Sin of Pride (1983)
In March 1983, the Undertones released their fourth album, The Sin of Pride. This album, which drew inspiration from both soul and Motown, was produced by Mike Hedges, who had replaced Roger Bechirian as the Undertones' producer following the 1981 release of Positive Touch. Feargal Sharkey is known to have stated he had worked harder upon this album than at any point in his singing career to date, and that he considers this album the finest the Undertones ever produced. The Sin of Pride was met with critical acclaim upon release, and the Undertones performed several gigs in both Scotland and England to promote the release of this album; it reached number 43 in the UK chart.
The Undertones released two further studio singles in 1983; their first single, "Got To Have You Back"—which was inspired by both ABC and Smokey Robinson—was released in February and their second single, "Chain of Love", was released in May. Both failed to make any major impact on the UK chart.
Disbandment
In April 1983, the Undertones embarked on their 'UK Sin of Pride tour' to promote their latest album. By this stage in their career, the band were acutely aware of the pressure they were under from EMI, who were unhappy with the lack of chart success of much of the material the band had released since the release of their Positive Touch LP. In addition, internal tensions between various members of the band, in particular between Feargal Sharkey and John O'Neill, had deteriorated significantly. These factors led to Sharkey announcing his intentions to leave the Undertones during the 'European Tour 1983', which the group performed in May of that year.
To fulfill agreed commitments, the Undertones remained together for a further two months, performing several gigs across continental Europe before disbanding in mid-1983, with their final concert being played at Punchestown Racecourse in County Kildare in Ireland on 17 July.
Subsequent careers
Following the disbandment of the Undertones in 1983, Feargal Sharkey was invited by Vince Clarke and Eric Radcliffe of the synthpop duet The Assembly to provide lead vocals on the single "Never Never," which was released by The Assembly in November 1983 and peaked at number 4 in the UK charts. Sharkey was never officially a member of The Assembly and his vocal contribution to "Never Never" proved to be Sharkey's only recording with the band, who would only issue this one single before folding.
Sharkey subsequently embarked upon a brief, but commercially successful solo career in the mid 1980s to early 1990s.
Two of the other band members, John O'Neill and Damian O'Neill, formed That Petrol Emotion in 1984. That Petrol Emotion released a total of fifteen singles and six albums between 1985 and 1994.
In the 1990s John O'Neill formed a trip hop group called Rare under the stage name Seán Ó'Néill with vocalist Mary Gallagher. They only had one notable chart appearance and disbanded shortly after the release of their only album in 1998.
Reunion
The Undertones reformed in November 1999, initially to play concerts in Derry. For their reformation, the Undertones replaced Sharkey (who declined to rejoin) with singer Paul McLoone. Since 1999, the Undertones have performed several tours across the UK, Ireland, Continental Europe, Japan, Turkey and North America and continue to perform live.
Noteworthy gigs by the Undertones since their 1999 reformation include performing at the Glastonbury Festival in June 2005, providing pre-match entertainment prior to kick-off at Celtic Park in the UEFA Champions League play-off between Celtic and Arsenal in August 2009 and, in March and April 2011, performing a series of UK gigs in which they played their debut album, The Undertones, in its entirety as part of each show. This tour was timed to accompany a re-release of a double compilation album containing all of the A- and B-sides of their singles.
Since their reformation, the Undertones have released two albums of original material with Paul McLoone providing vocals: Get What You Need on 30 September 2003; and Dig Yourself Deep, on 15 October 2007.
In April 2013, the Undertones released their first new material for over five years with the double A-side single "Much Too Late / When It Hurts I Count To Ten." This single—limited to 1,000 numbered copies—was released as part of the Record Store Day promotion in the UK and was recorded at Toe Rag Studios in London.
Media recognition
In a 2000 poll by Q to discover the 100 greatest British albums of all time as voted by the British public, the Undertones' eponymous debut LP was voted the 90th greatest British album.
The Undertones have also been the subject of two documentaries: The first documentary to be produced: The Story of the Undertones: Teenage Kicks, was recorded in 2001 and released in 2004. Directed by Tom Collins, this 65-minute documentary was produced with the cooperation of John Peel, who interviews all current and former members of the band (with the exception of Vincent O'Neill) in addition to Seymour Stein and Eamonn McCann. In this documentary, the band discuss their formation, career, subsequent careers, personal lives and 1999 reunion.
The second documentary relating to The Undertones: Here Comes the Summer: The Undertones Story, was commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on BBC Four in September 2012. This documentary also features with interviews with current and former members of the Undertones (excluding Feargal Sharkey) in addition to numerous fans, friends, journalists, and additional personnel involved in the band's recordings and career.
The band were also portrayed in the 2013 film Good Vibrations about Terri Hooley and the Good Vibrations record label, featuring Jodie Whittaker and Richard Dormer.
Members
Current members
John O'Neill – rhythm guitar and backing vocals (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Michael Bradley – bass guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Billy Doherty – drums (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Damian O'Neill – lead guitar, keyboards and backing vocals (1976–1983, 1999–present)
Paul McLoone – lead vocals (1999–present)
Former members
Vincent O'Neill – guitar (1975–1976)
Feargal Sharkey – lead vocals (1975–1983)
Discography
The Undertones (1979)
Hypnotised (1980)
Positive Touch (1981)
The Sin of Pride (1983)
Get What You Need (2003)
Dig Yourself Deep (2007)
Notes
References
Further reading
Bradley, Michael (2016). Teenage Kicks: My Life as an Undertone. Omnibus Press.
External links
Official Site
History of the band from an unofficial fan site
Sold On Song Top 100: Teenage Kicks (No. 51)
Teenage Kicks from Salon.com
History of Punk in Derry, Northern Ireland.
Profile of The Undertones
A Panorama of The Undertones Playing in Brooke Park, Derry, August 2007
Official press release for the Undertones' 'True Confessions' greatest hits album
1974 establishments in Northern Ireland
Harvest Records artists
Musical groups established in 1974
Musical groups from Derry (city)
New wave musical groups from Northern Ireland
Pop punk groups from Northern Ireland
Punk rock groups from Northern Ireland
Rykodisc artists
Sire Records artists | false | [
"\"Teenage Kicks\" was a 1978 pop punk single by The Undertones.\n\nTeenage Kicks may also refer to:\n Teenage Kicks (TV series), a 2008 British sitcom\n Teenage Kicks (band), a Canadian alternative rock band, active from 2010\n Teenage Kicks (film), a 2016 Australian drama film directed by Craig Boreham\n \"One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks)\", a 2013 One Direction song for Comic Relief",
"\"Teenage Kicks\" is the debut single by Northern Irish punk rock band the Undertones. Written in the summer of 1977 by the band's principal songwriter, John O'Neill, the song was recorded on 15 June 1978 and initially released that September on independent Belfast record label Good Vibrations, before the band signed to Sire Records on 2 October 1978. Sire Records subsequently obtained all copyrights to the material released upon the Teenage Kicks EP and the song was re-released as a standard vinyl single on Sire's own label on 14 October that year, reaching number 31 in the UK Singles Chart two weeks after its release\n\nThe single was not included upon the original May 1979 release of the band's debut album The Undertones; however, the October 1979 re-release of this debut album included both \"Teenage Kicks\" and the Undertones' second single, \"Get Over You\".\n\nInfluential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel is known to have repeatedly stated \"Teenage Kicks\" to be his all-time favourite song from 1978 until his death in 2004. When he first played the song on his show on 25 September, he played the song twice (something he had never previously done). Peel also specifically requested sections of the lyrics of the song be engraved upon his tombstone. The song has also been ranked as the second best indie song of all time in a 2016 poll conducted by an alternative music radio station.\n\nIn 2008, the song served as the theme song to the ITV sitcom of the same name.\n\nImpact\n\nJohn Peel\nUpon first hearing \"Teenage Kicks\" in September 1978, BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel is reported to have burst into tears, and readily admitted to still being moved to tears upon hearing the song in interviews granted to journalists up until his death. To judge songs he had heard for the first time as to worthiness of airplay upon his show, Peel often rated new bands' songs with a series of asterisks, with each song judged upon a scale of one to five asterisks: Peel was so taken by \"Teenage Kicks\", he awarded the song 28 stars. On one occasion, he is known to have played the song twice in a row, with the explanation given to his audience being, \"It doesn't get much better than this.\"\n\nIn a 2001 interview given to The Guardian, Peel stated that apart from his name, the only words he wished to be engraved upon his gravestone were the opening lyrics to \"Teenage Kicks\": \"Teenage dreams so hard to beat?\"\n\nIn February 2008, a headstone engraved with these words was placed on his grave in the Suffolk village of Great Finborough.\n\nIn 2004, a mural in tribute to Peel, featuring the opening line of \"Teenage Kicks\", appeared on a Belfast flyover.\n\nDocumentaries\n Teenage Kicks - The Undertones is a 2001 documentary film directed by Tom Collins.\n Here Comes the Summer: The Undertones Story is a 2012 BBC-commissioned documentary focusing upon the Undertones. The documentary was broadcast on BBC Four in September that year. This documentary also features interviews with current and former members of the Undertones (excluding Feargal Sharkey) in addition to fans, friends and additional personnel involved in the band's recordings and career.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nCertifications\n\nCovers\n \"Teenage Kicks\" was acoustically covered by Snow Patrol in a tribute to John Peel, and was played at his funeral.\n All-male pop group One Direction covered \"Teenage Kicks\" (in a medley with Blondie's single \"One Way or Another\") for the 2013 Comic Relief single \"One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks)\".\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n 2016 Guardian news article describing Michael Bradley's recollections of the writing and recording of the \"Teenage Kicks\" EP\n Contemporary article detailing the recording process of the \"Teenage Kicks\" EP\n The Undertones' official website\n\nSongs about teenagers\n1978 debut singles\n1978 songs\nSire Records singles\nSongs written by John O'Neill (guitarist)\nThe Undertones songs"
] |
[
"The Undertones",
"Casbah Rock",
"What was Casbah Rock?",
"By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at The Casbah,",
"When was their second concert at the Casbah?",
"The Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis,",
"Did they produce an album of any of their shows there?",
"This inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at this venue.",
"What inspired the band to write and rehearse?",
"performing at The Casbah earned the group up to PS40 a week.",
"What were some of the songs they performed there?",
"By mid-year, the concerts the Undertones performed would include the song \"Teenage Kicks\",",
"Was Teenage Kicks well received?",
"The title song became a hit with support from John Peel, who considered Teenage Kicks his all-time favourite song, an opinion he held until his death in 2004."
] | C_39b6cbda764e492ea1376605d128ea80_0 | How high was Teenage Kicks on the charts? | 7 | How high was Teenage Kicks by The Undertones on the charts? | The Undertones | By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at The Casbah, where the band began to perform in February. The Undertones had occasionally earned money at venues where they had performed throughout 1976, but these gigs at The Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis, as performing at The Casbah earned the group up to PS40 a week. This inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at this venue. By mid-year, the concerts the Undertones performed would include the song "Teenage Kicks", which had been written by guitarist John O'Neill in mid-1977. The gigs performed at The Casbah gave the Undertones increased confidence in their musical ability, and in June 1977 they performed concerts outside Derry for the first time, supporting a Dublin punk group named The Radiators from Space. In March 1978, the Undertones recorded a demo tape at Magee University in Derry and sent copies of the tape to various record companies in the hope of securing a record deal, but only received official letters of rejection. The band had also sent a copy of their recordings to influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, requesting he play the songs on his radio programme. Peel replied to the band, offering to pay for a recording session in Belfast. On 16 June 1978, the band recorded their debut four-song EP "Teenage Kicks" on a budget of only PS200. The EP was engineered by Davy Shannon at Wizard Sound Studios, Belfast - and was released on Belfast's Good Vibrations record label. The title song became a hit with support from John Peel, who considered Teenage Kicks his all-time favourite song, an opinion he held until his death in 2004. Seymour Stein, the president of Sire Records - in London on business - heard John Peel play "Teenage Kicks" on BBC Radio 1 and became interested in the band. Stein sent a London-based representative named Paul McNally to Derry to discuss a record deal with the band. McNally saw the band play live in what would ultimately prove to be their final performance at The Casbah on 29 September 1978. The following day, McNally convened with the Undertones to discuss a record contract. Three members of the band signed the proposed contract on this date, with the understanding that Feargal Sharkey and Michael Bradley would discuss negotiations to the contract with Seymour Stein in person in London. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | The Undertones are a rock band formed in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. From 1975 to 1983, the Undertones consisted of Feargal Sharkey (vocals), John O'Neill (rhythm guitar, vocals), Damian O'Neill (lead guitar, vocals), Michael Bradley (bass, vocals) and Billy Doherty (drums). Much of the earlier Undertones material drew influence from punk rock and new wave; the Undertones also incorporated elements of rock, glam rock and post-punk into material released after 1979, before citing soul and Motown as the influence for the material released upon their final album. The Undertones released thirteen singles and four studio albums between 1978 and 1983 before Sharkey announced his intention to leave the band in May 1983, citing musical differences as the reason for the break up.
Despite the backdrop of the Troubles in Derry and across Northern Ireland, the vast majority (though not all) of the material the Undertones released focused not upon the political climate, but upon issues such as adolescence, teenage angst and heartbreak. AllMusic has stated that guitarists John and Damian O'Neill "mated infectious guitar hooks to 1960s garage, 1970s glam rock, and Feargal Sharkey's signature vocal quaver."
In 1999, the Undertones reformed, replacing lead singer Sharkey with Paul McLoone.
The Undertones remain the most successful band to have emerged from Derry, and one of the most successful bands to have emerged from Northern Ireland.
Formation and early gigs
The Undertones formed in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. The band members were five friends from Creggan and the Bogside, who originally drew inspiration from such artists as the Beatles, Small Faces and Lindisfarne and who decided in part to form their own band due to both their common interest in music and the fact that—because of the Troubles— many entertainment venues in the city were closed in late evenings.
The band initially rehearsed cover versions at the home of the guitarists, brothers John and Vincent O'Neill, and in the shed of a neighbour. (In early 1976, before the band had played gigs at any venues, Vincent O'Neill left the band; he was soon replaced by his younger brother Damian.)
Beginning in February 1976 the group, at this stage still unnamed, began playing gigs at various minor local venues, including schools, parish halls and Scout huts, where the band's lead singer, Feargal Sharkey, was a local Scout leader. Sharkey was also responsible for giving the band their first name: at the introduction to a gig at Saint Joseph's Secondary School in Derry on 16 March 1976, Feargal Sharkey was asked the name of the band and quickly replied "The Hot Rods". At a later gig, Sharkey named the band "Little Feat": another name already used by another group.
Later that year, drummer Billy Doherty proposed an alternate name for the group: The Undertones, which Doherty had discovered in his school history book. The other members of the band agreed to the proposal.
With the arrival of punk rock in late 1976, the artistic focus of the band changed. Artists such as the Adverts, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and, particularly, the Ramones became major influences on the Undertones.
In addition to being a Scout leader, Feargal Sharkey worked as a television repairman and delivery man. The van which Sharkey drove in this employment was used by the Undertones to transport their equipment to and from various venues.
The Casbah
By 1977 the band were performing their own three-chord pop punk material, which was performed alongside cover versions at concerts, primarily at the Casbah, where the band began to perform in February. The Undertones had occasionally earned money at venues where they had performed throughout 1976, but these gigs at the Casbah were the first performances for which the Undertones were paid on a regular basis, as performing at the Casbah earned the group up to £30 for each attendance fee. Both the money earned and their popularity at this venue inspired the band to write and rehearse further material, as a means of remaining a popular act at the Casbah. By the following year, the concerts the Undertones performed would include the song "Teenage Kicks", which had been written by guitarist John O'Neill in mid-1977. The gigs performed at the Casbah gave the Undertones increased confidence in their musical ability, and in June 1977 they performed concerts outside Derry for the first time, supporting a Dublin punk group named The Radiators from Space.
In March 1978, the Undertones recorded a demo tape at Magee University in Derry and sent copies of the tape to various record companies in the hope of securing a record deal, but only received official letters of rejection. The band had also sent a copy of their recordings to influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, requesting he play the songs on his radio programme. Peel replied to the band, offering to pay for a recording session in Belfast. On 15 June 1978, the band recorded their debut four-song EP "Teenage Kicks" on a budget of only £200. The EP was engineered by Davy Shannon at Wizard Studios, Belfast, and was released on Belfast's Good Vibrations record label. The title song became a hit with support from John Peel, who considered Teenage Kicks his all-time favourite song, an opinion he held through to his death in 2004.
Sire Records
Seymour Stein, the president of Sire Records – in London on business – heard John Peel play "Teenage Kicks" on BBC Radio 1 and became interested in the band. Stein sent a London-based representative named Paul McNally to Derry to discuss a record deal with the band. McNally saw the band play live in what would ultimately prove to be their final performance at the Casbah on 29 September 1978. The following day, McNally convened with the Undertones to discuss a record contract. Three members of the band signed the proposed contract on this date, with the understanding that Feargal Sharkey and Michael Bradley would discuss negotiations to the contract with Seymour Stein in person in London.
Teenage Kicks (1978–1979)
On 2 October 1978, Bradley and Sharkey agreed to an increased advance fee of £10,000 offered by Stein upon the recording contract and signed to Sire Records on a five-year contract. Sire Records subsequently obtained all rights to the material released upon the Teenage Kicks EP and the song was re-released as a standard vinyl single upon Sire's own label two weeks later.
On 26 October, the Undertones performed "Teenage Kicks" live on Top of the Pops. With help from Peel (who had also recorded and broadcast a Peel Session with the Undertones on the 16th), Teenage Kicks peaked at number 31 in the UK Singles Chart the following month.
In November 1978, the Undertones embarked on their first tour of the UK. This tour lasted until 16 December and saw the band appear as the supporting act for The Rezillos and John Otway in England and Wales in addition to headlining in three concerts in Belfast and Derry.
In January 1979, the Undertones recorded their eponymous debut album at Eden Studios in Acton, West London, using producer Roger Bechirian, whom the band had worked with for the first time the previous December, when Bechirian had produced the band's second single, "Get Over You". Much of the material upon their first album had been performed regularly at the Casbah, and the band were able to record this album in the space of less than four weeks.
Following the release of "Get Over You" in February 1979, the Undertones' eponymous debut album was released in May. The primary lyrical concern of the songs focused upon youthful relationships and adolescence. Three further punk singles "Jimmy Jimmy", "Here Comes the Summer" and "You've Got My Number (Why Don't You Use It?)" were released between April and October 1979, each to critical acclaim. In September 1979, the Undertones toured the United States for the first time, supporting The Clash with eight concerts in six different States.
Hypnotised (1980)
Following the 'You Got My Number tour' of October 1979, the Undertones began recording the songs for their second album, Hypnotised, at Wisseloord Studios in the Netherlands. The recording of the songs began in December. Ten songs were recorded before the band returned to Derry prior to Christmas to write and record further songs for the album. Three further songs were written during this break: "Tearproof", "More Songs About Chocolate and Girls" and "Wednesday Week".
In January 1980, the production of Hypnotised was finished at Eden Studios in London, with the Undertones recording the three further songs written the previous December, plus two further songs—"Hypnotised" and a cover of "Under The Boardwalk"—which had been written that month. Following the completion of their second LP, the band embarked upon a two-week tour of Ireland before touring continental Europe for the first time in March.
On 28 March 1980, the Undertones released their sixth single, "My Perfect Cousin". The song, which had been written the previous summer by Damian O'Neill and Michael Bradley, reached number 9 in the UK charts and would subsequently prove to be the band's highest charting single in the United Kingdom. The following month, on 21 April 1980, the band's second LP, Hypnotised was released. This album reached number 6 in the UK Albums Chart, remaining in the Top 10 for one month. The same week the album was released, the Undertones embarked on their 'Humming tour', which saw the band play a total of 25 gigs across the UK between April and June.
Less than two weeks after the completion of the 'Humming tour', the Undertones toured the United States for the second time; this time as the headlining band. "Wednesday Week"—the second single to be released from Hypnotised—was released in July 1980. This single reached number 11 in the UK chart and remained in the Top 40 for a total of seven weeks.
Between September and December 1980, the Undertones performed two further tours: the 'Disaster Tour (European Style)', which saw the band perform in continental Europe and—in December—the 'See No More' tour of the UK.
In terms of chart sales, the year 1980 was the Undertones' most successful year. In a review by Sounds magazine the same year, the Undertones were described as: "Possibly the best pop group in the English speaking world."
EMI
Positive Touch (1981–1982)
In December 1980, the Undertones announced their intention to split from Sire Records as they were unhappy with the lack of promotion they were receiving outside of the UK, particularly in the US. Following negotiations, their manager, Andy Ferguson, succeeded in the band retaining ownership rights to the material released on Sire Records; Ferguson subsequently signed the group to EMI in March 1981.
On 4 January 1981, the band began recording their third album, Positive Touch, again at Wisseloord Studios, and again with Roger Bechirian as producer. The band recorded a total of eight songs in five days before returning to Derry. Later the same month, the band returned to Wisseloord Studios to complete the recording of the LP. The songs on this album indicated a change in both musical and lyrical influences: although the songs remained largely guitar-oriented, the band had written songs which focused upon the Troubles in Northern Ireland such as "Crisis of Mine", "You're Welcome" and the single "It's Going To Happen!", which preceded the release of the LP and was inspired by the 1980–81 Hunger Strikes. In addition, several songs upon the LP included instruments such as pianos, saxophones, recorders and brass instruments, with two further songs ("Julie Ocean" and "It's Going To Happen!") drawing musical inspiration from contemporary artists Orange Juice and Dexy's Midnight Runners respectively. The band themselves were content with the change of influences for Positive Touch, which bassist Michael Bradley later described as a "natural progression" for the band, adding that, at the time, consensus between the band members was that the songs upon the LP were their best yet.
One month prior to the release of this third album, in April 1981, the Undertones embarked on their 'Positive Touch tour'; this tour saw the band perform a total of 36 gigs across the UK mainland in the space of less than two months.
Positive Touch was released in May 1981. This third album peaked at number 17 in the UK charts—remaining in the Top 40 for a total of four weeks. The album also received favourable reviews from several music critics and was listed by NME as one of the best albums to be released in 1981, although neither the album nor either of the singles released were as successful as any of the material released the previous year.
Following the conclusion of their 'Positive Touch tour' in June 1981, the Undertones released their second single of 1981, "Julie Ocean". The single – an extended recording of the 90-second album version – was produced by Hugh Jones and Dave Balfe.
On 29 September 1981, the Undertones embarked on their biggest tour of Continental Europe, which lasted until 20 October 1981 and saw the band perform a total of 19 concerts in six countries.
1982 saw a lull in activity from the Undertones, who only performed live on a total of five occasions throughout the entire year. Two of these gigs were held in England, with three further live appearances held in the United States in August. Much of the time the band spent together was devoted towards writing and recording songs for their next LP in their 8-track demo studio. Damian O'Neill, the Undertones' lead guitarist, later admitted: "We (had) definitely lost a bit of the spark. I don't know but I tend to think some of us got too complacent sitting in our homes in Derry." The Undertones released two studio singles, "Beautiful Friend" and "The Love Parade", in February and October; both of these singles failed to make an impact upon the UK charts.
The Sin of Pride (1983)
In March 1983, the Undertones released their fourth album, The Sin of Pride. This album, which drew inspiration from both soul and Motown, was produced by Mike Hedges, who had replaced Roger Bechirian as the Undertones' producer following the 1981 release of Positive Touch. Feargal Sharkey is known to have stated he had worked harder upon this album than at any point in his singing career to date, and that he considers this album the finest the Undertones ever produced. The Sin of Pride was met with critical acclaim upon release, and the Undertones performed several gigs in both Scotland and England to promote the release of this album; it reached number 43 in the UK chart.
The Undertones released two further studio singles in 1983; their first single, "Got To Have You Back"—which was inspired by both ABC and Smokey Robinson—was released in February and their second single, "Chain of Love", was released in May. Both failed to make any major impact on the UK chart.
Disbandment
In April 1983, the Undertones embarked on their 'UK Sin of Pride tour' to promote their latest album. By this stage in their career, the band were acutely aware of the pressure they were under from EMI, who were unhappy with the lack of chart success of much of the material the band had released since the release of their Positive Touch LP. In addition, internal tensions between various members of the band, in particular between Feargal Sharkey and John O'Neill, had deteriorated significantly. These factors led to Sharkey announcing his intentions to leave the Undertones during the 'European Tour 1983', which the group performed in May of that year.
To fulfill agreed commitments, the Undertones remained together for a further two months, performing several gigs across continental Europe before disbanding in mid-1983, with their final concert being played at Punchestown Racecourse in County Kildare in Ireland on 17 July.
Subsequent careers
Following the disbandment of the Undertones in 1983, Feargal Sharkey was invited by Vince Clarke and Eric Radcliffe of the synthpop duet The Assembly to provide lead vocals on the single "Never Never," which was released by The Assembly in November 1983 and peaked at number 4 in the UK charts. Sharkey was never officially a member of The Assembly and his vocal contribution to "Never Never" proved to be Sharkey's only recording with the band, who would only issue this one single before folding.
Sharkey subsequently embarked upon a brief, but commercially successful solo career in the mid 1980s to early 1990s.
Two of the other band members, John O'Neill and Damian O'Neill, formed That Petrol Emotion in 1984. That Petrol Emotion released a total of fifteen singles and six albums between 1985 and 1994.
In the 1990s John O'Neill formed a trip hop group called Rare under the stage name Seán Ó'Néill with vocalist Mary Gallagher. They only had one notable chart appearance and disbanded shortly after the release of their only album in 1998.
Reunion
The Undertones reformed in November 1999, initially to play concerts in Derry. For their reformation, the Undertones replaced Sharkey (who declined to rejoin) with singer Paul McLoone. Since 1999, the Undertones have performed several tours across the UK, Ireland, Continental Europe, Japan, Turkey and North America and continue to perform live.
Noteworthy gigs by the Undertones since their 1999 reformation include performing at the Glastonbury Festival in June 2005, providing pre-match entertainment prior to kick-off at Celtic Park in the UEFA Champions League play-off between Celtic and Arsenal in August 2009 and, in March and April 2011, performing a series of UK gigs in which they played their debut album, The Undertones, in its entirety as part of each show. This tour was timed to accompany a re-release of a double compilation album containing all of the A- and B-sides of their singles.
Since their reformation, the Undertones have released two albums of original material with Paul McLoone providing vocals: Get What You Need on 30 September 2003; and Dig Yourself Deep, on 15 October 2007.
In April 2013, the Undertones released their first new material for over five years with the double A-side single "Much Too Late / When It Hurts I Count To Ten." This single—limited to 1,000 numbered copies—was released as part of the Record Store Day promotion in the UK and was recorded at Toe Rag Studios in London.
Media recognition
In a 2000 poll by Q to discover the 100 greatest British albums of all time as voted by the British public, the Undertones' eponymous debut LP was voted the 90th greatest British album.
The Undertones have also been the subject of two documentaries: The first documentary to be produced: The Story of the Undertones: Teenage Kicks, was recorded in 2001 and released in 2004. Directed by Tom Collins, this 65-minute documentary was produced with the cooperation of John Peel, who interviews all current and former members of the band (with the exception of Vincent O'Neill) in addition to Seymour Stein and Eamonn McCann. In this documentary, the band discuss their formation, career, subsequent careers, personal lives and 1999 reunion.
The second documentary relating to The Undertones: Here Comes the Summer: The Undertones Story, was commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on BBC Four in September 2012. This documentary also features with interviews with current and former members of the Undertones (excluding Feargal Sharkey) in addition to numerous fans, friends, journalists, and additional personnel involved in the band's recordings and career.
The band were also portrayed in the 2013 film Good Vibrations about Terri Hooley and the Good Vibrations record label, featuring Jodie Whittaker and Richard Dormer.
Members
Current members
John O'Neill – rhythm guitar and backing vocals (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Michael Bradley – bass guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Billy Doherty – drums (1975–1983, 1999–present)
Damian O'Neill – lead guitar, keyboards and backing vocals (1976–1983, 1999–present)
Paul McLoone – lead vocals (1999–present)
Former members
Vincent O'Neill – guitar (1975–1976)
Feargal Sharkey – lead vocals (1975–1983)
Discography
The Undertones (1979)
Hypnotised (1980)
Positive Touch (1981)
The Sin of Pride (1983)
Get What You Need (2003)
Dig Yourself Deep (2007)
Notes
References
Further reading
Bradley, Michael (2016). Teenage Kicks: My Life as an Undertone. Omnibus Press.
External links
Official Site
History of the band from an unofficial fan site
Sold On Song Top 100: Teenage Kicks (No. 51)
Teenage Kicks from Salon.com
History of Punk in Derry, Northern Ireland.
Profile of The Undertones
A Panorama of The Undertones Playing in Brooke Park, Derry, August 2007
Official press release for the Undertones' 'True Confessions' greatest hits album
1974 establishments in Northern Ireland
Harvest Records artists
Musical groups established in 1974
Musical groups from Derry (city)
New wave musical groups from Northern Ireland
Pop punk groups from Northern Ireland
Punk rock groups from Northern Ireland
Rykodisc artists
Sire Records artists | false | [
"\"Teenage Kicks\" is the debut single by Northern Irish punk rock band the Undertones. Written in the summer of 1977 by the band's principal songwriter, John O'Neill, the song was recorded on 15 June 1978 and initially released that September on independent Belfast record label Good Vibrations, before the band signed to Sire Records on 2 October 1978. Sire Records subsequently obtained all copyrights to the material released upon the Teenage Kicks EP and the song was re-released as a standard vinyl single on Sire's own label on 14 October that year, reaching number 31 in the UK Singles Chart two weeks after its release\n\nThe single was not included upon the original May 1979 release of the band's debut album The Undertones; however, the October 1979 re-release of this debut album included both \"Teenage Kicks\" and the Undertones' second single, \"Get Over You\".\n\nInfluential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel is known to have repeatedly stated \"Teenage Kicks\" to be his all-time favourite song from 1978 until his death in 2004. When he first played the song on his show on 25 September, he played the song twice (something he had never previously done). Peel also specifically requested sections of the lyrics of the song be engraved upon his tombstone. The song has also been ranked as the second best indie song of all time in a 2016 poll conducted by an alternative music radio station.\n\nIn 2008, the song served as the theme song to the ITV sitcom of the same name.\n\nImpact\n\nJohn Peel\nUpon first hearing \"Teenage Kicks\" in September 1978, BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel is reported to have burst into tears, and readily admitted to still being moved to tears upon hearing the song in interviews granted to journalists up until his death. To judge songs he had heard for the first time as to worthiness of airplay upon his show, Peel often rated new bands' songs with a series of asterisks, with each song judged upon a scale of one to five asterisks: Peel was so taken by \"Teenage Kicks\", he awarded the song 28 stars. On one occasion, he is known to have played the song twice in a row, with the explanation given to his audience being, \"It doesn't get much better than this.\"\n\nIn a 2001 interview given to The Guardian, Peel stated that apart from his name, the only words he wished to be engraved upon his gravestone were the opening lyrics to \"Teenage Kicks\": \"Teenage dreams so hard to beat?\"\n\nIn February 2008, a headstone engraved with these words was placed on his grave in the Suffolk village of Great Finborough.\n\nIn 2004, a mural in tribute to Peel, featuring the opening line of \"Teenage Kicks\", appeared on a Belfast flyover.\n\nDocumentaries\n Teenage Kicks - The Undertones is a 2001 documentary film directed by Tom Collins.\n Here Comes the Summer: The Undertones Story is a 2012 BBC-commissioned documentary focusing upon the Undertones. The documentary was broadcast on BBC Four in September that year. This documentary also features interviews with current and former members of the Undertones (excluding Feargal Sharkey) in addition to fans, friends and additional personnel involved in the band's recordings and career.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nCertifications\n\nCovers\n \"Teenage Kicks\" was acoustically covered by Snow Patrol in a tribute to John Peel, and was played at his funeral.\n All-male pop group One Direction covered \"Teenage Kicks\" (in a medley with Blondie's single \"One Way or Another\") for the 2013 Comic Relief single \"One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks)\".\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n 2016 Guardian news article describing Michael Bradley's recollections of the writing and recording of the \"Teenage Kicks\" EP\n Contemporary article detailing the recording process of the \"Teenage Kicks\" EP\n The Undertones' official website\n\nSongs about teenagers\n1978 debut singles\n1978 songs\nSire Records singles\nSongs written by John O'Neill (guitarist)\nThe Undertones songs",
"\"One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks)\" is a cover recorded by English-Irish boy band One Direction, released as the 2013 Comic Relief charity single on 17 February 2013. It is a medley of Blondie's \"One Way or Another\" and The Undertones' \"Teenage Kicks\", both originally released in 1978. The song was produced by Julian Bunetta and John Ryan.\n\n\"One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks)\" debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart, making it One Direction's third UK number one. It was nominated for Best British Single at the 2014 Brit Awards.\n\nBackground and response\nAhead of its release, an early version of the song leaked online to the dismay of One Direction and Syco Music. A spokesperson told The Daily Mirror, \"It is very disappointing that the song has been leaked and we are currently investigating the matter.\"\n\nThe single received mixed reviews from music critics. Robert Copsey of Digital Spy said \"the cheeky lyrics, bouncy pop-rock melody and singalong chorus feel like an obvious but reassuringly safe option for this year's official Comic Relief single\", concluding that it was \"predictable but [...] undeniably fun\". About.com critic Bill Lamb called the single a \"strong performance\", assessing, \"The layering of the 'Na Na Na Na' bridge from 'One Way Or Another' with the chorus, \"I wanna hold you wanna hold you tight, get teenage kicks right through the night\" is truly inspiring.\" However, Lamb also noted that \"lyrically, 'One Way Or Another' is nearly a song about the finer points of stalking, and that can be just a bit creepy coming from young males.\"<ref name=Lamb>{{cite web|last=Lamb|first=Bill|title=One Direction - \"One Way Or Another (Samsung Galaxy S5 is Best For One direcrtion)\"|url=http://top40.about.com/od/singles/gr/One-Direction-one-Way-Or-Another-teenage-Kicks.htm|publisher=The New York Times Company|work=About.com|access-date=23 February 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130430023023/http://top40.about.com/od/singles/gr/One-Direction-one-Way-Or-Another-teenage-Kicks.htm|archive-date=30 April 2013|url-status=dead}}</ref>\n\nJessica Sager of PopCrush summarised it as \"catchy, fun and ... sounds exactly what you'd expect when One Direction cover Blondie.\" Sager additionally praised Louis Tomlinson's vocals as sounding \"phenomenal\" in his solo. Writing for MTV, Jenna Rubenstein assessed: \"1D's version sticks mainly to the original's vibe, mixing in sugary-sweet pop production with Blondie's punk rock sensibilities.\"\n\nWriting for The Observer, Kitty Empire was scathing, describing the medley as \"execrable\". When the single reached number 1 in the Irish Singles Chart, RTÉ described the news as \"shocking\", noting the single as \"just a bit ho hum\". The Belfast Telegraph was equally critical, blasting the cover as a \"travesty\" that had been \"re-worked into a sanitised Comic Relief single\", which were \"scrappy shadows of the originals\".\n\nPopMatters gave it the No.1 spot on its \"Best Mainstream Pop Singles Of 2013\" list, calling it \"the most inspired, fun track of the year\".\n\nThe song was later included in the Japanese Edition of the band's third studio album, Midnight Memories as 19th track.\n\n Commercial performance\nIt entered at number one on the UK Singles Chart on 24 February 2013, shifting 113,000 copies in its first week—the second highest first-week UK sales for any song in 2013 at the time. It marks their third chart-topper and seventh top ten hit in the United Kingdom. As of March 2013, the song has sold 292,000 copies in the UK.\n\n Music video \nThe music video for \"One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks)\" was shot in Ghana, Tokyo, New York City, and London, including at 10 Downing Street, featuring a cameo from then British Prime Minister David Cameron. The clip was released on 20 February 2013.\n\n Live performances \nOne Direction debuted the song live during the 2013 Brit Awards on 20 February 2013. The group also performed the song live during the Comic Relief telethon on 15 March 2013.\n\n Track listing \n Digital download \"One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks)\" – 2:37\n \"One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks)\" – 3:07\n \"One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks)\" – 2:37\n\n Digital download (Live version)'''\n \"One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks)\" – 3:20\n\nCharts and certifications\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertifications\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences \n\n2013 singles\nOne Direction songs\nComic Relief singles\nSongs written by Debbie Harry\nSongs written by Nigel Harrison\nSongs written by John O'Neill (guitarist)\nIrish Singles Chart number-one singles\nUK Singles Chart number-one singles\nNumber-one singles in Denmark\nNumber-one singles in Poland\nNumber-one singles in Scotland\n2013 songs\nMusic medleys"
] |
[
"Lady Antebellum",
"2013-2016: Golden, 747, and hiatus"
] | C_2deeae8c13964cbda4e09aca4aa14166_0 | What was the Golden all about? | 1 | What was Lady Antebellum's Golden all about? | Lady Antebellum | On January 22, 2013, "Downtown," the first single from a new album, was released to country radio. It was made available on iTunes starting February 5, 2013, and reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in April 2013. The new album, Golden, was released on May 7, 2013. The album's second single, "Goodbye Town", was released to country radio on May 13, 2013, and peaked at number 11 on the Country Airplay chart. The third single from the Golden era, "Compass", was released to the iTunes Store on October 1, 2013 and reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in March 2014. It is one of the new recordings featured on the deluxe edition re-issue of Golden, which was released on November 12, 2013. Unlike all of their previous releases, it was produced by Nathan Chapman. They also sang backing vocals on Darius Rucker's 2013 single "Wagon Wheel". "Bartender" was released to country radio on May 12, 2014, as the lead single for the group's sixth studio album, and was made available to digital retailers on May 19. In July 2014, the album's title was confirmed as 747, and the track listing was confirmed. Chapman produced this album as well. "Bartender" became the group's ninth number 1 hit on the Country Airplay charts in 2014, with "Freestyle" as the second single. The third single "Long Stretch of Love was released on February 7, 2015, in the UK and on March 23, to country radio in the US. They sang two songs, "I Did With You" and "Falling For You", for the 2014 film The Best of Me. In October 2015, while appearing on Good Morning America, the group announced that they would be taking some down time once they finish with their Wheels Up Tour. During their break Kelley will be working on his solo career. Kelley stated that Lady Antebellum is his priority but wanted to try working alone out. On September 28, 2015, he released his debut solo single titled "The Driver" which features Dierks Bentley and Eric Paslay. On October 12, 2015, Charles Kelley announced his tour dates for his solo tour. He is excited to get out of his comfort zone and having fans not know every word to all of his songs. He will be playing some Lady A songs, but his tour will showcase only his soon-to-be-released solo material. Also during the break, Hillary Scott announced that she and her family (her mother, father and sister) would be working a gospel album titled Love Remains which was released on 29 July. In 2016, Lady Antebellum were selected as one of 30 artists to perform on "Forever Country", a mash-up track of Take Me Home, Country Roads, On the Road Again and I Will Always Love You which celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards. CANNOTANSWER | the deluxe edition re-issue of Golden, | false | [
"Golden Grove is an urban place in Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is 4 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, adjacent to the suburbs of Newtown, Darlington and Eveleigh. Golden Grove is part of the local government area of the City of Sydney. The locality is around Golden Grove street, surrounding Forbes street, Wilson street, Abercrombie street, along with the Golden Grove Housing Estate, Forbes Street Reserve, Golden Grove Ministry Centre.\nThe former suburb of the postcode 2006 was named after the First Fleet store ship that left Portsmouth on 13 May 1787, and arrived at Port Jackson, Sydney Australia, on 26 January 1788.\n\nHistory\nA few years after the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, a suburb in the city of Sydney was named for the Golden Grove.\n\nBuilt in 1780 as the Russian Merchant, the ship's name was changed five years before its departure for Botany Bay It was a prescient move – even back then, Russian collusion wasn't something to make public. Known as “Noah’s Ark of Australia” (sorry, Rusty), the Golden Grove carried a bunch of animals to a wild, inhospitable place unprepared for the subsequent chaos of colonisation.\nDespite the fleet's lasting legacy being in evidence literally everywhere in the colony of New South Wales, someone thought a suburban tribute was a good idea. Thus, Golden Grove was born in the approximate location of today's Darlington/Newtown border.\nWilliam Shepherd, the first white settler here, was originally offered Grose Farm, on which the Sydney University now stands, but he declined it, saying it was too far out of town. Instead he took up what is today known as Darlington. Shepherd's southern neighbour was James Chisholm. His grant was called Golden Grove. It was resumed in 1878 to build the Eveleigh Railway Workshops. A section of it was subdivided in about 1881. The small allotments in it were advertised as 'workmen's dwellings' and most home building occurred here during the late 1880s. The name Golden Grove is still used today.\n\nPublic Housing\n\nDuring the 1980s, the Housing Commission constructed a High Density housing estate, containing a 7-story tower block and numerous Radburn townhouse/maisonette flats, home to approximately 300-500 people. The Area was also once home to an adjacent public housing apartment block on Wilson street which eventually diminished in quality and was demolished, with replacement public housing flats constructed in a mixed development across the road in Carriageworks.\n\nAccording to the 2016 Index of Relative Socio-economic Advantage and Disadvantage, the local SA1s of Golden Grove and North Eveleigh: 11703133252 11703133508 Score: 960 and 850 compared to the City of Sydney average of 1095, making the locality the most disadvantaged area in all three suburbs of Newtown, Eveleigh and Darlington, and containing the highest ratio of public housing. (54%)\n\nReferences\n\n The Names of Sydney: Suburbs D to G\n Golden Grove, NSW – Darlington, NSW\n History of our centre: Golden Grove | The Healing Ministry, St. Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney\n\nExternal links \n Golden Grove Geographical Names Board of New South Wales\n\nSydney localities",
"The 1928 California Golden Bears football team was an American football team that represented the University of California, Berkeley in the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) during the 1928 college football season. In their third year under head coach Nibs Price, the team compiled a 6–2–2 record (3–0–2 against PCC opponents), finished in second place in the PCC, lost to Georgia Tech in the 1929 Rose Bowl, and outscored its opponents by a combined total of 141 to 36.\n\nThe Rose Bowl game has become one of the most famous moments in Rose Bowl history. In the second quarter, California's defense forced a Georgia Tech fumble on their own 30-yard line, and the loose ball was scooped up by California center Roy Riegels. He began to run towards the Georgia Tech end zone for a score, but then, in trying to get around the Tech players, he inexplicably turned around and headed in the other direction. Riegels advanced all the way to the Golden Bears' one-yard line before teammate Benny Lom was able to stop him, whereupon he was immediately tackled by what seemed like the entire Georgia Tech team. California elected to punt on the next play; the punt was blocked for a safety, giving the Yellow Jackets a 2–0 lead and what turned out to be the decisive points.\n\nSchedule\n\nReferences\n\nCalifornia\nCalifornia Golden Bears football seasons\nCalifornia Golden Bears football",
"The Golden Gate of Kyiv () was the main gate in the 11th century fortifications of Kiev (today Kyiv), the capital of Kievan Rus'. It was named in imitation of the Golden Gate of Constantinople. The structure was dismantled in the Middle Ages, leaving few vestiges of its existence. It was rebuilt completely by the Soviet authorities in 1982, though no images of the original gates have survived. The decision has been immensely controversial because there were many competing reconstructions of what the original gate might have looked like.\n\nThe rebuilt structure on the corner of Volodymyr street and Yaroslaviv Val Street contains a branch of the National Sanctuary \"Sophia of Kyiv\" museum. The name Zoloti Vorota is also used for a nearby theater and the Zoloti Vorota station of the Kyiv Metro.\n\nHistory\n\nModern history accepts this gateway as one of three constructed by Yaroslav the Wise. The golden gates were built in 1017-1024 (6545 by the Byzantine calendar) at about the same time the Saint Sophia Cathedral was erected. Mentions of an older construction, such as the one presented on a painting by Jan Matejko of king Bolesław I of Poland striking the Golden Gate with his sword during the intervention in the Kyivan succession crisis in 1018, it is now regarded a legend. Originally named simply the Southern Gate, it was one of the three main entrances to the walled city, along with the Ladski and Zhydivski (Polish and Jewish) Gates. The last two have not survived. The stone fortifications stretched for only 3.5 km. The fortification of the Old Kyiv (Upper City) stretched from the Southern Gates down to what is now Independence Square and where the Lechitic Gate was located. From there, the moat followed what is now Kostyol Street, skirting St. Michael's Monastery and continuing along today's Zhytomyr Street toward the Jewish Gates (at Lviv Square). From there, the fortification stretched what is now Yaroslaviv Val (\"Yaroslav's Rampart\") Street back to the Southern Gate.\n\nLater, the Southern Gate became known as the Great Gate of Kyiv. After the Blahovist Church (Church of the Annunciation) was built next to the gate, its golden domes became a prominent landmark easily visible from outside the city. Since then, the gateway has been referred to as the Golden Gate of Kyiv. The gate's passageway was about high and wide. For almost half a millennium, it served as the city's Triumphal Arch, a prominent symbol of Kyiv. Reputedly, it was modeled on the Golden Gate of Constantinople. Later, a similar name was given to the gates of Vladimir city where one of the Monomakh's descendants, Andrei I Bogolyubsky, established his own state, the Grand Duchy of Vladimir. In 1240, the gate was partially destroyed by Batu Khan's Golden Horde. It remained as a gate to the city (often used for ceremonies) through the eighteenth century, although it gradually fell into ruins. \n\nIn 1832, Metropolitan Eugenius had the ruins excavated and an initial survey for their conservation was undertaken. Further works in the 1970s added an adjacent pavilion, housing a museum of the gate. In the museum, visitors can learn about the history of construction of the Golden gate as well as ancient Kyiv.\n\nIn 1982, the gate was completely reconstructed for the 1500th anniversary of Kyiv, though this was challenged. Some art historians called for this reconstruction to be demolished and for the ruins of the original gate to be exposed to public view. \n\nIn 1989, with the expansion of the Kyiv Metro, Zoloti Vorota station was opened nearby to the landmark. Its architectural assemble is based on the internal decorations of ancient Ruthenian churches.\n\nIn 1997, the monument to Yaroslav the Wise was unveiled near the west end face of the Golden Gate. It is an enlarged bronze copy of an experimental figuring by Kavaleridze.\n\nChurch above the passage\nIn addition to mentioning the construction of the church above the passage of the Golden Gate in the chronicle, it is also mentioned in Metropolitan Ilarion's \"Word of Law and Grace\" of the Golden Gate.\n\nGate Church had to serve \"the heavenly protection of the city\", but was also a regular church – people arrived to pray there.\n\nThe bell chapel is reproduced in the form of a three-nave four-pillar single-dome temple. In the architectural decoration of the facades used ornaments from the brick, typical for the ancient buildings of that period. The floor of the church is decorated with a mosaic, the picture of which is based on the ancient floor design of Saint Sophia's Cathedral in Kyiv.\n\nReconstruction of the monument reproduces the segments of the shaft adjoining to the gate. On the outside they have suspended slopes. At the top of the shaft there are wooden bunks. On the ends conventionally shown internal structures. From the city side on the facade there are warehouses. Inside the restored shaft segments there is an exposition of the Museum of the Golden Gate and the stairs leading to the balcony, from which a magnificent panorama of the city is visible.\n\nSquare \nThe was created in the second half of the 19th century. Botanical natural monument was created by the decision of the Kyiv executive committee № 363 20 March 1972.\n\nSee also \n Golden Gates in Vladimir, the only extant example of a gateway of medieval Rus'.\n Pictures at an Exhibition, by composer Modest Mussorgsky, is a musical suite, one part of which was inspired by Viktor Hartmann's project for another gate in Kyiv.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n Kiev Info - History of the gate\n Golden Gate at the Encyclopedia of Ukraine\n oldkyiv.org.ua - History of the gate\n\nBuildings and structures in Kyiv\nRebuilt buildings and structures in Ukraine\nGates in Ukraine\nHistory of Kyiv\nShevchenkivskyi District, Kyiv\nBuildings and structures completed in 1024\nArchitecture in Kyiv\nTourist attractions in Kyiv\nVolodymyrska Street"
] |
|
[
"Lady Antebellum",
"2013-2016: Golden, 747, and hiatus",
"What was the Golden all about?",
"the deluxe edition re-issue of Golden,"
] | C_2deeae8c13964cbda4e09aca4aa14166_0 | When was it published? | 2 | When was Lady Antebellum's Golden published? | Lady Antebellum | On January 22, 2013, "Downtown," the first single from a new album, was released to country radio. It was made available on iTunes starting February 5, 2013, and reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in April 2013. The new album, Golden, was released on May 7, 2013. The album's second single, "Goodbye Town", was released to country radio on May 13, 2013, and peaked at number 11 on the Country Airplay chart. The third single from the Golden era, "Compass", was released to the iTunes Store on October 1, 2013 and reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in March 2014. It is one of the new recordings featured on the deluxe edition re-issue of Golden, which was released on November 12, 2013. Unlike all of their previous releases, it was produced by Nathan Chapman. They also sang backing vocals on Darius Rucker's 2013 single "Wagon Wheel". "Bartender" was released to country radio on May 12, 2014, as the lead single for the group's sixth studio album, and was made available to digital retailers on May 19. In July 2014, the album's title was confirmed as 747, and the track listing was confirmed. Chapman produced this album as well. "Bartender" became the group's ninth number 1 hit on the Country Airplay charts in 2014, with "Freestyle" as the second single. The third single "Long Stretch of Love was released on February 7, 2015, in the UK and on March 23, to country radio in the US. They sang two songs, "I Did With You" and "Falling For You", for the 2014 film The Best of Me. In October 2015, while appearing on Good Morning America, the group announced that they would be taking some down time once they finish with their Wheels Up Tour. During their break Kelley will be working on his solo career. Kelley stated that Lady Antebellum is his priority but wanted to try working alone out. On September 28, 2015, he released his debut solo single titled "The Driver" which features Dierks Bentley and Eric Paslay. On October 12, 2015, Charles Kelley announced his tour dates for his solo tour. He is excited to get out of his comfort zone and having fans not know every word to all of his songs. He will be playing some Lady A songs, but his tour will showcase only his soon-to-be-released solo material. Also during the break, Hillary Scott announced that she and her family (her mother, father and sister) would be working a gospel album titled Love Remains which was released on 29 July. In 2016, Lady Antebellum were selected as one of 30 artists to perform on "Forever Country", a mash-up track of Take Me Home, Country Roads, On the Road Again and I Will Always Love You which celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards. CANNOTANSWER | November 12, 2013. | false | [
"This is a list of notable books by young authors and of books written by notable writers in their early years. These books were written, or substantially completed, before the author's twentieth birthday. \n\nAlexandra Adornetto (born 18 April 1994) wrote her debut novel, The Shadow Thief, when she was 13. It was published in 2007. Other books written by her as a teenager are: The Lampo Circus (2008), Von Gobstopper's Arcade (2009), Halo (2010) and Hades (2011).\nMargery Allingham (1904–1966) had her first novel, Blackkerchief Dick, about smugglers in 17th century Essex, published in 1923, when she was 19.\nJorge Amado (1912–2001) had his debut novel, The Country of Carnival, published in 1931, when he was 18.\nPrateek Arora wrote his debut novel Village 1104 at the age of 16. It was published in 2010.\nDaisy Ashford (1881–1972) wrote The Young Visiters while aged nine. This novella was first published in 1919, preserving her juvenile punctuation and spelling. An earlier work, The Life of Father McSwiney, was dictated to her father when she was four. It was published almost a century later in 1983.\nAmelia Atwater-Rhodes (born 1984) had her first novel, In the Forests of the Night, published in 1999. Subsequent novels include Demon in My View (2000), Shattered Mirror (2001), Midnight Predator (2002), Hawksong (2003) and Snakecharm (2004).\nJane Austen (1775–1817) wrote Lady Susan, a short epistolary novel, between 1793 and 1795 when she was aged 18-20.\nRuskin Bond (born 1934) wrote his semi-autobiographical novel The Room on the Roof when he was 17. It was published in 1955.\nMarjorie Bowen (1885–1952) wrote the historical novel The Viper of Milan when she was 16. Published in 1906 after several rejections, it became a bestseller.\nOliver Madox Brown (1855–1874) finished his novel Gabriel Denver in early 1872, when he was 17. It was published the following year.\nPamela Brown (1924–1989) finished her children's novel about an amateur theatre company, The Swish of the Curtain (1941), when she was 16 and later wrote other books about the stage.\nCeleste and Carmel Buckingham wrote The Lost Princess when they were 11 and 9.\nFlavia Bujor (born 8 August 1988) wrote The Prophecy of the Stones (2002) when she was 13.\nLord Byron (1788–1824) published two volumes of poetry in his teens, Fugitive Pieces and Hours of Idleness.\nTaylor Caldwell's The Romance of Atlantis was written when she was 12.\n (1956–1976), Le Don de Vorace, was published in 1974.\nHilda Conkling (1910–1986) had her poems published in Poems by a Little Girl (1920), Shoes of the Wind (1922) and Silverhorn (1924).\nAbraham Cowley (1618–1667), Tragicall History of Piramus and Thisbe (1628), Poetical Blossoms (published 1633).\nMaureen Daly (1921–2006) completed Seventeenth Summer before she was 20. It was published in 1942.\nJuliette Davies (born 2000) wrote the first book in the JJ Halo series when she was eight years old. The series was published the following year.\nSamuel R. Delany (born 1 April 1942) published his The Jewels of Aptor in 1962.\nPatricia Finney's A Shadow of Gulls was published in 1977 when she was 18. Its sequel, The Crow Goddess, was published in 1978.\nBarbara Newhall Follett (1914–1939) wrote her first novel The House Without Windows at the age of eight. The manuscript was destroyed in a house fire and she later retyped her manuscript at the age of 12. The novel was published by Knopf publishing house in January 1927.\nFord Madox Ford (né Hueffer) (1873–1939) published in 1892 two children's stories, The Brown Owl and The Feather, and a novel, The Shifting of the Fire.\nAnne Frank (1929–1945) wrote her diary for two-and-a-half years starting on her 13th birthday. It was published posthumously as Het Achterhuis in 1947 and then in English translation in 1952 as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. An unabridged translation followed in 1996.\nMiles Franklin wrote My Brilliant Career (1901) when she was a teenager.\nAlec Greven's How to Talk to Girls was published in 2008 when he was nine years old. Subsequently he has published How to Talk to Moms, How to Talk to Dads and How to Talk to Santa.\nFaïza Guène (born 1985) had Kiffe kiffe demain published in 2004, when she was 19. It has since been translated into 22 languages, including English (as Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow).\nSonya Hartnett (born 1968) was thirteen years old when she wrote her first novel, Trouble All the Way, which was published in Australia in 1984.\nAlex and Brett Harris wrote the best-selling book Do Hard Things (2008), a non-fiction book challenging teenagers to \"rebel against low expectations\", at age 19. Two years later came a follow-up book called Start Here (2010).\nGeorgette Heyer (1902–1974) wrote The Black Moth when she was 17 and received a publishing contract when she was 18. It was published just after she turned 19.\nSusan Hill (born 1942), The Enclosure, published in 1961.\nS. E. Hinton (born 1948), The Outsiders, first published in 1967.\nPalle Huld (1912–2010) wrote A Boy Scout Around the World (Jorden Rundt i 44 dage) when he was 15, following a sponsored journey around the world.\nGeorge Vernon Hudson (1867–1946) completed An Elementary Manual of New Zealand Entomology at the end of 1886, when he was 19, but not published until 1892.\nKatharine Hull (1921–1977) and Pamela Whitlock (1920–1982) wrote the children's outdoor adventure novel The Far-Distant Oxus in 1937. It was followed in 1938 by Escape to Persia and in 1939 by Oxus in Summer.\nLeigh Hunt (1784–1859) published Juvenilia; or, a Collection of Poems Written between the ages of Twelve and Sixteen by J. H. L. Hunt, Late of the Grammar School of Christ's Hospital in March 1801.\nKody Keplinger (born 1991) wrote her debut novel The DUFF when she was 17.\nGordon Korman (born 1963), This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall (1978), three sequels, and I Want to Go Home (1981).\nMatthew Gregory Lewis (1775–1818) wrote the Gothic novel The Monk, now regarded as a classic of the genre, before he was twenty. It was published in 1796.\nNina Lugovskaya (1918–1993), a painter, theater director and Gulag survivor, kept a diary in 1932–37, which shows strong social sensitivities. It was found in the Russian State Archives and published 2003. It appeared in English in the same year.\nJoyce Maynard (born 1953) completed Looking Back while she was 19. It was first published in 1973.\nMargaret Mitchell (1900–1949) wrote her novella Lost Laysen at the age of fifteen and gave the two notebooks containing the manuscript to her boyfriend, Henry Love Angel. The novel was published posthumously in 1996.\nBen Okri, the Nigerian poet and novelist, (born 1959) wrote his first book Flowers and Shadows while he was 19.\nAlice Oseman(born 1994) wrote the novel Solitaire when she was 17 and it was published in 2014.\nHelen Oyeyemi (born 1984) completed The Icarus Girl while still 18. First published in 2005.\nChristopher Paolini (born 1983) had Eragon, the first novel of the Inheritance Cycle, first published 2002.\nEmily Pepys (1833–1877), daughter of a bishop, wrote a vivid private journal over six months of 1844–45, aged ten. It was discovered much later and published in 1984.\nAnya Reiss (born 1991) wrote her play Spur of the Moment when she was 17. It was both performed and published in 2010, when she was 18.\nArthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) wrote almost all his prose and poetry while still a teenager, for example Le Soleil était encore chaud (1866), Le Bateau ivre (1871) and Une Saison en Enfer (1873).\nJohn Thomas Romney Robinson (1792–1882) saw his juvenile poems published in 1806, when he was 13.\nFrançoise Sagan (1935–2004) had Bonjour tristesse published in 1954, when she was 18.\nMary Shelley (1797–1851) completed Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus during May 1817, when she was 19. It was first published in the following year.\nMattie Stepanek (1990–2004), an American poet, published seven best-selling books of poetry.\nJohn Steptoe (1950–1989), author and illustrator, began his picture book Stevie at 16. It was published in 1969 in Life.\nAnna Stothard (born 1983) saw her Isabel and Rocco published when she was 19.\nDorothy Straight (born 1958) in 1962 wrote How the World Began, which was published by Pantheon Books in 1964. She holds the Guinness world record for the youngest female published author.\nJalaluddin Al-Suyuti (c. 1445–1505) wrote his first book, Sharh Al-Isti'aadha wal-Basmalah, at the age of 17.\nF. J. Thwaites (1908–1979) wrote his bestselling novel The Broken Melody when he was 19.\nJohn Kennedy Toole (1937–1969) wrote The Neon Bible in 1954 when he was 16. It was not published until 1989.\nAlec Waugh (1898–1981) wrote his novel about school life, The Loom of Youth, after leaving school. It was published in 1917.\nCatherine Webb (born 1986) had five young adult books published before she was 20: Mirror Dreams (2002), Mirror Wakes (2003), Waywalkers (2003), Timekeepers (2004) and The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle (February 2006).\nNancy Yi Fan (born 1993) published her debut Swordbird when she was 12. Other books she published as a teenager include Sword Quest (2008) and Sword Mountain (2012).\nKat Zhang (born 1991) was 20 when she sold, in a three-book deal, her entire Hybrid Chronicles trilogy. The first book, What's Left of Me, was published 2012.\n\nSee also \nLists of books\n\nReferences \n\nBooks Written By Children and Teenagers\nbooks\nChildren And Teenagers, Written By\nChi",
"Ísafold was an Icelandic newspaper, published weekly. It was founded in 1874 by the politician Björn Jónsson, who was the editor until 1909, when he became prime minister.\n\nÍsafold was published until 1929, when it merged with Morgunblaðið.\n\nReferences\n\n1874 establishments in Iceland\n1929 disestablishments in Iceland\nDefunct newspapers published in Iceland\nDefunct weekly newspapers\nPublications established in 1874\nPublications disestablished in 1929\nWeekly newspapers published in Iceland",
"The London Evening News was a newspaper whose first issue was published on 14 August 1855.\n\n(Usually when people mention the London Evening News they are actually referring to The Evening News published in London from 1881 to 1980 when it was incorporated into the Evening Standard. The last issue was published on Friday 31 October 1980.)\n\nSources\n\nDefunct newspapers published in the United Kingdom\nLondon newspapers\nPublications established in 1855\n1855 establishments in England"
] |
|
[
"Lady Antebellum",
"2013-2016: Golden, 747, and hiatus",
"What was the Golden all about?",
"the deluxe edition re-issue of Golden,",
"When was it published?",
"November 12, 2013."
] | C_2deeae8c13964cbda4e09aca4aa14166_0 | What was 747 about? | 3 | What was Lady Antebellum's 747 about? | Lady Antebellum | On January 22, 2013, "Downtown," the first single from a new album, was released to country radio. It was made available on iTunes starting February 5, 2013, and reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in April 2013. The new album, Golden, was released on May 7, 2013. The album's second single, "Goodbye Town", was released to country radio on May 13, 2013, and peaked at number 11 on the Country Airplay chart. The third single from the Golden era, "Compass", was released to the iTunes Store on October 1, 2013 and reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in March 2014. It is one of the new recordings featured on the deluxe edition re-issue of Golden, which was released on November 12, 2013. Unlike all of their previous releases, it was produced by Nathan Chapman. They also sang backing vocals on Darius Rucker's 2013 single "Wagon Wheel". "Bartender" was released to country radio on May 12, 2014, as the lead single for the group's sixth studio album, and was made available to digital retailers on May 19. In July 2014, the album's title was confirmed as 747, and the track listing was confirmed. Chapman produced this album as well. "Bartender" became the group's ninth number 1 hit on the Country Airplay charts in 2014, with "Freestyle" as the second single. The third single "Long Stretch of Love was released on February 7, 2015, in the UK and on March 23, to country radio in the US. They sang two songs, "I Did With You" and "Falling For You", for the 2014 film The Best of Me. In October 2015, while appearing on Good Morning America, the group announced that they would be taking some down time once they finish with their Wheels Up Tour. During their break Kelley will be working on his solo career. Kelley stated that Lady Antebellum is his priority but wanted to try working alone out. On September 28, 2015, he released his debut solo single titled "The Driver" which features Dierks Bentley and Eric Paslay. On October 12, 2015, Charles Kelley announced his tour dates for his solo tour. He is excited to get out of his comfort zone and having fans not know every word to all of his songs. He will be playing some Lady A songs, but his tour will showcase only his soon-to-be-released solo material. Also during the break, Hillary Scott announced that she and her family (her mother, father and sister) would be working a gospel album titled Love Remains which was released on 29 July. In 2016, Lady Antebellum were selected as one of 30 artists to perform on "Forever Country", a mash-up track of Take Me Home, Country Roads, On the Road Again and I Will Always Love You which celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards. CANNOTANSWER | album's title was confirmed as 747, | false | [
"\"What About Us\" is a single released by British-Irish girl group the Saturdays. Their first international single, it is the lead single from their first American-only release EP, Chasing the Saturdays (2013). It also acts as the second single from their fourth studio album Living for the Weekend (2013). The single was first released in the United States and Canada on 18 December 2012 via digital download, before being released in the United Kingdom on 16 March 2013 via CD single and digital download. The single was written by Camille Purcell, Ollie Jacobs, Philip Jacobs. There are two different versions of the track which have been recorded and released: a solo version, which was released exclusively in the US and Canada, and a version featuring Jamaican rapper Sean Paul, which was released internationally. Music critics gave the song positive feedback, but questioned the heavily auto-tuned chorus and the move away from the group's traditional sound.\n\nA music video was released for the song was published and released via the Saturdays' Vevo account on 11 January 2013. The video was filmed in Los Angeles, where the band were filming their US reality series, Chasing the Saturdays, which is broadcast through E!. An acoustic version of \"Somebody Else's Life\", which can be heard on the opening titles of the show, was released as a B-side. The Saturdays went on to a promotional tour in order to get the song \"out there\" in the United States, and appeared on a number of different chat shows including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Jeff Probst Show, Fashion Police, Chelsea Lately and The Today Show in New York City. They later went on to a promotional tour in the UK, visiting radio stations around the country.\n\n\"What About Us\" gained commercial success, debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart to become the Saturdays' twelfth UK top 10 single and first ever number-one. In Ireland, the song debuted at number six on the Irish Singles Chart, gaining the group their fifth top 10 single there. With first-week sales of 114,000 copies and 40,000 copies more sold than their closest competitor to number one, \"What About Us\" was the fastest-selling single of 2013 in the UK until it was overtaken by Naughty Boy's \"La La La\" two months later. In December 2013, it was announced as the eleventh fastest-selling single of the year overall. As of August 2014, the song has sold over 400,000 copies in the UK. On 23 December 2013, Mollie King posted a photo on Instagram of her holding a 500,000 sales plaque from their record label, with the message that \"What About Us\" had sold over 500,000 copies in UK and USA, with 120,000 copies in the US alone even without charting on the Billboard Hot 100.\n\nBackground \n\nIn 2012, it was announced that the Saturdays had received an offer to star in their own reality television programme, Chasing the Saturdays, broadcast through E! Network. While filming their show, the band began visiting the recording studio, where they began work with Rodney \"Darkchild\" Jerkins.\n\nThe Saturdays felt comfortable with their US labels, and thanked them for not only giving them a chance in North America, but for making them feel at ease and welcome which took a lot of \"weight of our shoulders\". The band said they have always respected the labels due to the massive success they've had with artists. The band had been working with Demi Lovato in the recording studio.\n\nComposition\n\n\"What About Us\" was written and produced by Ollie Jacobs and acts as the Saturdays first single to be released in North America where it could appear on the Billboard Hot 100 and Canadian Hot 100. In America its release coincided with their TV show, Chasing the Saturdays. The track is the band's fourteenth single to be released in the United Kingdom and Ireland and the track is a dance-pop song. Before the release of the song, Mollie King said that the band were excited to share the track as they had the song \"for months\" She said: \"I can't wait for everyone to hear it and to get to perform it. I'm just so excited about this one, I think it's going down really well.\" The band said they didn't want to change their type of music just for the American public and would stick to their roots and the genre they enjoyed to perform. King spoke: \"We've always made a point that we don't want to change to go to America. We wanted to go over as we are and if they like us, they like us and if they don't, they don't!\" King said that the track is reggae pop music, a little different from what band usually record, but the track is still really \"dancey\" and \"upbeat\", as well a good song to dance to on either stage or at a club. When Una Healy was asked what the song was about she said that she \"did not know\" what the song was exactly about. \"To be honest I was trying to figure out the other day what exactly it's about. I could bullshit away telling you, but I really don't know. But I think it's all about someone driving you crazy.\" She said she \"thinks\" that 'What About Us' part means \"me and you getting together\". She did point out that she did know that the song was about \"making you happy\" and that the track was good for the summer and will get you on the dancefloor. The band teased saying that \"What About Us\" is a pop track, and that is a good indication of what the expect from the album, and that they've paired up with Diane Warren to record a few ballads and not just pop tracks. \"What About Us\" is the only collaboration on the album.\n\nRelease\n\"What About Us\" was confirmed as the Saturdays' first single to be released in North America, and would be released on 18 December 2012 to coincide with their American reality show, Chasing the Saturdays. It was also revealed that the track would be released as the lead single from the band's North America released only Extended play, Chasing the Saturdays, which was named after the show. Some critics said that releasing \"What About Us\" from an EP for the US market was a \"wise decision\". One critic said: For, throwing out a traditional release on the back of a show that isn't (yet) a hit would ultimately be setting them up for failure. What's more, the EP allows their \"storyline\" for the next season of the show (should there be one) to revolve around recording an album. In the United Kingdom, it was revealed that \"What About Us\" would be the follow-up single from \"30 Days\" in the UK and Ireland, and therefore would not be the lead single from the band's fourth studio album. The band announced that before the release of the album, there would be another single release from the album. The follow-up single was revealed to be titled \"Gentleman\".\n\nJust like all the band's previous singles, the record was accepted by all A-Lists at radio stations. The UK and Ireland version of the track features a guest rap from Sean Paul. Whereas the North American version does not feature vocals from Sean Paul and only vocals from the band. The original version of the track last 3 minutes and 24 seconds, whereas the version which features Sean Paul lasts 3 minutes and 40 seconds. The single was released with B-side, an Acoustic version of a brand new track, \"Somebody Else's Life\", which is the opening theme to Chasing the Saturdays. \"What About Us\" was released as a digital download EP, and this featured the single version which features Sean Paul, the solo version and the B-side track. Upon the release in North America, there was a digital remixes EP which featured remixes of \"What About Us\" by a number of DJs including: Seamus Haji, Guy Scheiman, the Buzz Junkies and 2nd Adventure and this was also made available to purchase on 18 December 2012. While in the UK, the CD single was made available to be from stores from 18 March 2013. On the CD single featured \"What About Us\", the B-side \"Somebody Else's Life\".\n\nThe band decided to release \"What About Us\" differently between the United Kingdom and the United States, \"What About Us\" was released onto the charts without any airplay and without a music video accompanying the release, something the band experienced in the UK, with \"Notorious\". Whereas in the UK, \"What About Us\" was released with airplay and the music video being released before the release of the single. During this time, Frankie Sandford became ambassadors for mental health after Sandford battled depression. The band said they choose \"What About Us\" to be the lead single in the US and follow-up single from \"30 Days\" because they all loved it once they demoed it and it gave them a \"really good feeling\" They also said it is a fresh start for a new album, with a \"reggae vibe\", but still a pop record. The Saturdays said that Sean Paul was \"perfect\" for the UK version of the song. They said that he was \"just so nice\" and that he would be present during some of the promotional performances when the single was released.\n\nCritical reception\nRobert Copsey of Digital Spy said that Rochelle Humes asks in a \"curious Jamaican-flecked timbre\" during the intro of \"What About Us\". During the lyrics \"Oh why are we are waiting so long I'm suffocating\", and he went on to say that it is in reference to \"man-related drama\" and also pointing out that there is plenty of that on their reality series, Chasing the Saturdays. Copsey later went on to tip the band for their first number-one single as he said: \"but we suspect it could also be a sly wink at their enduring quest for a number one single\". He said that track was \"radio-friendly\" due to the \"trace beats\" and \"demanding their contrary lover to give up the hard-to-get schtick sharpish\". Although he didn't think that the song was \"original\" enough for the band, but is \"strangely addictive\" and he would be happy to see the song at the top of the charts.\n\n4Music described the song as a \"electro-pop affair with a bucket-load of synths thrown in for good measure. It's quite good, but we wonder if they should reconsider this single choice if they truly want to launch an invasion on America's charts.\" Idolator wrote a mixed review criticizing the track for lacking the group's signature style; \"While the beat is pounding enough to nab the girls a chart hit, it doesn’t feel true to the spirit of The Sats. Then again, maybe it isn’t supposed to.\" Jessica Sager from PopCrush also touched on the departure from their original sound; \"It’s a pretty big departure from their usual sugary oeuvre, but not necessarily in a bad way.\" She went on to praise Sean Paul's feature; \"His presence on the track gives it an air of authenticity and fun, but pretty much only during his own verses and interjections.\" However, she criticised the mediocre attempt at dialect the groups sing in throughout the track; \"When the Saturdays try to emulate island tones, it sounds a little awkward and they start out like that right off the bat, but go in and out of the undistinguished dialect throughout the song.\" She also felt that the heavily Auto-Tuned chorus was not need; \"The Auto-Tune seems extraneous, because the Saturdays can actually sing well without it.\" She end the review by labeling their latest effort as \"generic\" and \"not the best the Saturdays have to offer\", also rating it two and a half stars out of five.\n\nCommercial reception\n\"What About Us\" debuted at number 44 on the US Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart for the week dated 8 December 2012. This marks their first ever chart entry in the United States and it has since peaked at number twenty-seven. The song debuted at number 79 on the Canadian Hot 100, becoming the highest Canadian debut for a new artist in 2013.\n\nThe Saturdays admitted that they did not want to get their hopes up on debuting at number one on the UK Singles Charts due to being beaten to number-one three times before with \"Forever Is Over\", \"Just Can't Get Enough\" and \"Missing You\", after being number one on the Official Chart Update. During the latter two occasions, it was rapper Flo Rida who had pushed them back to numbers two and three respectively. It was revealed that the Saturdays had knocked Justin Timberlake's \"Mirrors\" off the number-one spot on the UK Singles Chart. This became the band's first ever number-one single in the United Kingdom, it also became Sean Paul's second number one in the United Kingdom after being featured on \"Breathe\" in 2003. For every one copy that Timberlake's \"Mirrors\" sold, the Saturdays sold two more copies of \"What About Us\". \"What About Us\" sold 114,000 copies in the first week of release, making it, at the time, the fastest selling single of 2013. The track sold 40,000 copies more than Timberlake, who was pushed back to number-two on the UK Singles Charts. The band said they were thrilled to be the UK's number-one with \"What About Us\". They went on to thanking their fans for supporting the single and supporting them for the past five years.\n\n\"What About Us\" debuted at number six on the Irish Singles Chart, marking the band's fifth top ten single in that country. \"What About Us\" made its debut at number thirty-six on the New Zealand Singles Chart.\n\nMusic video\nThe music video for \"What About Us\" was filmed during the summer of 2012 in Los Angeles, while the Saturdays were filming their reality television series. The North American version of the video was released via the Saturdays' official Vevo account on YouTube on 11 January 2013. A variant of the video, featuring vocals and additional scenes of the women with Sean Paul, was later released on 5 February 2013.\n\nLive performances and promotion\nThe Saturdays appeared in a number of nightclubs throughout 2012 in the United States performing \"What About Us\" along other hits. On 14 January 2013, the group made their first televised performance of the single on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. It was their first performance done on American television. On 16 January, the girls performed \"What About Us\" on The Today Show in New York City. Along with the performances, they appeared on chat shows such as Chelsea Lately, Daybreak, Fashion Police, Lorraine, The Jeff Probst Show, Loose Women, Alan Carr: Chatty Man, Sunday Brunch and What's Cooking? to promote the single.\n\nTrack listings\nUS digital download\n\"What About Us\" - 3:24\n\nCD Single - UK Version Only\n\"What About Us\" (featuring Sean Paul) - 3:40\n\"What About Us\" - 3:24\n\"Somebody Else's Life\" (Acoustic) - 3:18\n\nUS Digital remixes EP\n\"What About Us\" (Seamus Haji Radio Edit) - 3:06\n\"What About Us\" (Seamus Haji Club Mix) - 6:35\n\"What About Us\" (Seamus Haji Dub) - 6:49\n\"What About Us\" (Guy Scheiman Radio Edit) - 3:59\n\"What About Us\" (Guy Scheiman Club Mix) - 7:35\n\"What About Us\" (Guy Scheiman Dub) - 7:20\n\"What About Us\" (The Buzz Junkies Radio Edit) - 3:23\n\"What About Us\" (The Buzz Junkies Club Mix) - 4:32\n\"What About Us\" (featuring Sean Paul) - 4:32\n\"What About Us\" (2nd Adventure Radio Edit) - 4:24\n\"What About Us\" (2nd Adventure Club Mix) - 6:36\n\nEurope and Oceania EP - digital download\n\"What About Us\" (featuring Sean Paul) - 3:40\n\"What About Us\" (featuring Sean Paul) [The Buzz Junkies Radio Edit] - 3:23\n\"What About Us\" (featuring Sean Paul) [Seamus Haji Radio Edit] - 3:37\n\"What About Us\" (Guy Scheiman Radio Edit) - 3:58\n\"What About Us\" (Extended Mix) - 3:49 (only available through pre-order)\n\nUK Digital Remixes EP\n\"What About Us\" (Guy Scheiman Club Mix) - 7:35\n\"What About Us\" (2nd Adventure Club Mix) - 6:36\n\"What About Us\" (Seamus Haji Club Mix) - 6:35\n\"What About Us\" (The Buzz Junkies Club Mix) - 4:32\n\"What About Us\" (2nd Adventure Radio Edit) - 4:24\n\nRevamped Version\n\"What About Us\" - 3:24\n\"Somebody Else's Life\" (Acoustic) - 3:18\n\"What About Us\" (Extended Mix) - 3:49\n\"What About Us\" (2nd Adventure Radio Edit) - 4:24\n\"What About Us\" (Guy Scheiman Radio Edit) - 3:58\n\"What About Us\" (featuring Sean Paul) - 4:32\n\"What About Us\" (featuring Sean Paul) [The Buzz Junkies Radio Edit] - 3:23\n\"What About Us\" (featuring Sean Paul) [Seamus Haji Radio Edit] - 3:37\n\"What About Us\" (2nd Adventure Club Mix) - 6:36\n\"What About Us\" (Guy Scheiman Club Mix) - 7:35\n\"What About Us\" (The Buzz Junkies Club Mix) - 4:32\n\"What About Us\" (Seamus Haji Club Mix) - 6:35\n\nCredits and personnel\n\"What About Us\" was recorded at Rollover Studios in London.\n\nOllie Jacobs a.k.a. Art Bastian ~ Songwriter, Producer, Vocal Producer, Mix Engineer\n\nPhillip Jacobs ~ co-writer\nCamille Purcell ~ co-writer\nThe Saturdays ~ vocals\nSean Paul ~ guest vocalist\n\nCharts and certifications\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertifications\n\nRelease and radio history\n\nSee also\n\nList of UK Singles Chart number ones of the 2010s\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n feat. Sean Paul\n\nThe Saturdays songs\nSean Paul songs\n2012 singles\nDance-pop songs\nNumber-one singles in Scotland\nUK Singles Chart number-one singles\nSongs written by Camille Purcell\n2012 songs\nFascination Records singles\nSongs written by Ollie Jacobs",
"No Turning Back: The Story So Far is the first compilation album by Shannon Noll. The album includes tracks from Noll's three studio albums to date, That's What I'm Talking About (2004), Lift (2005) and Turn It Up (2008) and five brand new tracks. The album was released in September 2008 and peaked at number 7 on the ARIA Charts, becoming Noll's fourth consecutive top ten album.\n\nUpon released, Noll said \"It was only once we started talking about the idea that it sank in how many singles there's been, from \"What About Me\" right through to \"Loud\" and \"In Pieces\". All these songs mean so much to me and showcase a journey that I've been through with my songwriting and recording, my career in general. It's great to have the new songs on the album, as they are just a taste of what we've got planned for next year!\"\n\nSingles\nThe first single taken from the album was \"Summertime\", which was originally by 2007 Canadian Idol Brian Melo. The track peaked at number 54 on the ARIA Chart.\n\nTrack listing\n\"Summertime\" – 3:42\n\"Shine\" – 3:34\n\"Lift\" – 3:56\n\"Lonely\" – 4:42\n\"Now I Run\" – 3:44\n\"What About Me\" – 3:21\n\"Drive\" – 3:58\n\"Learn to Fly\" – 4:09\n\"Don't Give Up\" (with Natalie Bassingthwaighte) – 4:40\n\"Loud\" – 3:10\n\"In Pieces\" – 3:32\n\"Tomorrow\" – 3:57\n\"No Turning Back\" – 3:43\n\"Crash\" – 3:21\n\"You're Never Alone\" – 5:01\n\"Sorry Is Just Too Late\" (featuring Kari Kimmel) (iTunes exclusive bonus track) – 3:54\n\nDisc 2 (DVD edition)\n\"What About Me\"\n\"Drive\"\n\"Learn to Fly\"\n\"Lonely\"\n\"Shine\"\n\"Lift\"\n\"Now I Run\"\n\"Loud\"\n\"In Pieces\"\n\"Don't Give Up\" (with Natalie Bassingthwaighte)\n\nOmissions\nThe compilation omits the following singles:\n \"Rise Up\" with Australian Idol Top 12 (2003) – was a collaborative single and is not considered part of Noll's official discography.\n \"New Beginning\" (2004) – was a radio-only single release from That's What I'm Talking About.\n \"C'mon Aussie C'mon\" (2004) – was a charity single only.\n \"Twelve Days of Christmas\" with Dreamtime Christmas All-Stars (2004) – was a collaborative single and is not considered part of Noll's official discography.\n \"Everybody Needs a Little Help\" (2008) – was a radio-only single release from Turn It Up.\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\nShannon Noll albums\nSony BMG albums\n2008 greatest hits albums\nCompilation albums by Australian artists",
"\"What I Go to School For\" is the debut single of English pop punk band Busted. It was written by James Bourne, Charlie Simpson, Matt Willis, Steve Robson, and John McLaughlin and produced by Steve Robson. The song was inspired by a teacher that Matt Willis had a crush on at school.\n\nThe song was released on 16 September 2002 and reached number three on the UK Singles Chart. A young Jade Ewen (who would later join girl group Sugababes) appears in the music video.\n\nBackground\nMatt Willis told the Essex Chronicle that the song came about after a night out in TOTs 2000 (now known as Talk nightclub) in James Bourne's hometown of Southend-on-Sea. \"We were too young, we got drunk and went to TOTs,\" Willis said. \"Then we walked home and continued drinking on the way – it took us ages. When we got back to James' house, we went to his bedroom and just picked up the guitar and that’s when we started writing What I Go to School For.\"\n\nIn 2003, the real-life inspiration for the song was revealed to be Willis' former teacher Michelle Blair, who made a surprise appearance on The Frank Skinner Show on ITV during an interview with Willis. Blair, who was 28 and had been married for three years at the time of her appearance on The Frank Skinner Show, was Willis' dance teacher at the Sylvia Young Theatre School when Willis was 15. Speaking about the surprise appearance with Willis on the show, Blair said: \"It was hilarious – he looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him up. I only found out the song was about me after it came out – it's really flattering.\" Blair said that at the time she was not aware of her pupil's crush on her, but that she did remember him from the dance classes: \"He was quite cheeky and charming and always had something to say in class. He used to tell us he was in a band, but I never dreamed they were going to be this big and I certainly hadn't a clue I was going to feature in one of their songs!\"\n\nCommenting on the veracity of these events as portrayed in the song, Blair said: \"I think he's used a bit of artistic licence in the song. It was a dance class so we never used any pencils but I suppose he had ample opportunity to look at my bum. There was never any tree outside my bedroom window though – I think I might have noticed a Peeping Tom.\" Reflecting on his time under the tutelage of Miss Blair, Willis said, \"She was kind of nice and there was always something really sexy about her.\" Being identified as the object of adolescent lust, and the subject of a pop song, hasn't caused any friction with her husband, according to Blair: \"My husband thinks its (sic) hilarious and takes the mickey. I don't think he's really worried I'm going to run off with a pop star. I'm proud of them. Looking back it was obvious Matt had what it takes.\"\n\nOn 29 October 2012, Michelle Blair appeared as the correct answer in the \"line-up\" section of BBC Two panel Never Mind the Buzzcocks.\n\nMusical\nWhat I Go to School For became the title of a musical theatre production produced by Youth Music Theatre UK following the story of Busted from their origins in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, through to their break-up in 2005. The musical was written by Elliot Davis with songs from the Busted albums and new music by James Bourne. It was directed by Steven Dexter and played at the Theatre Royal, Brighton in 2016.\n\nMusic video\nThe video for the song features model Lorna Roberts as Miss McKenzie, the object of the band's desire. Then 14-year-old Jade Ewen, who later joined the Sugababes, appears in the video as a schoolgirl. The filming of the What I Go To School For video was later parodied in the video for the Busted song Nineties.\n\nTrack listings\n\nUK CD1 and Australian CD single\n \"What I Go to School For\" (single version) – 3:30\n \"What I Go to School For\" (acoustic version) – 3:26\n \"What I Go to School For\" (alternative version) – 3:31\n \"What I Go to School For\" (instrumental mix) – 3:28\n \"What I Go to School For\" (CD-ROM video)\n\nUK CD2\n \"What I Go to School For\" (single version)\n \"Brown Eyed Girl\"\n Interactvie interview (CD-ROM video)\n\nUK cassette single\n \"What I Go to School For\"\n \"Dawson's Geek\"\n \"What I Go to School For\" (acoustic version)\n\nUS enhanced CD single\n \"What I Go to School For\" (radio version)\n \"What I Go to School For\" (album version)\n \"What I Go to School For\" (CD-ROM video)\n\nCharts and certifications\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertifications\n\nRelease history\n\nCover versions\n \"What I Go to School For\" was parodied by the Amateur Transplants on their 2004 album Fitness to Practice.\n The Jonas Brothers covered the song for their 2006 album It's About Time.\n\nReferences\n\n2002 debut singles\n2002 songs\nBusted (band) songs\nIsland Records singles\nSongs about school\nSongs written by Charlie Simpson\nSongs written by James Bourne\nSongs written by Matt Willis\nSongs written by Steve Robson\nUniversal Records singles"
] |
|
[
"Lady Antebellum",
"2013-2016: Golden, 747, and hiatus",
"What was the Golden all about?",
"the deluxe edition re-issue of Golden,",
"When was it published?",
"November 12, 2013.",
"What was 747 about?",
"album's title was confirmed as 747,"
] | C_2deeae8c13964cbda4e09aca4aa14166_0 | How did 747 do? | 4 | How did Lady Antebellum's 747 do? | Lady Antebellum | On January 22, 2013, "Downtown," the first single from a new album, was released to country radio. It was made available on iTunes starting February 5, 2013, and reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in April 2013. The new album, Golden, was released on May 7, 2013. The album's second single, "Goodbye Town", was released to country radio on May 13, 2013, and peaked at number 11 on the Country Airplay chart. The third single from the Golden era, "Compass", was released to the iTunes Store on October 1, 2013 and reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in March 2014. It is one of the new recordings featured on the deluxe edition re-issue of Golden, which was released on November 12, 2013. Unlike all of their previous releases, it was produced by Nathan Chapman. They also sang backing vocals on Darius Rucker's 2013 single "Wagon Wheel". "Bartender" was released to country radio on May 12, 2014, as the lead single for the group's sixth studio album, and was made available to digital retailers on May 19. In July 2014, the album's title was confirmed as 747, and the track listing was confirmed. Chapman produced this album as well. "Bartender" became the group's ninth number 1 hit on the Country Airplay charts in 2014, with "Freestyle" as the second single. The third single "Long Stretch of Love was released on February 7, 2015, in the UK and on March 23, to country radio in the US. They sang two songs, "I Did With You" and "Falling For You", for the 2014 film The Best of Me. In October 2015, while appearing on Good Morning America, the group announced that they would be taking some down time once they finish with their Wheels Up Tour. During their break Kelley will be working on his solo career. Kelley stated that Lady Antebellum is his priority but wanted to try working alone out. On September 28, 2015, he released his debut solo single titled "The Driver" which features Dierks Bentley and Eric Paslay. On October 12, 2015, Charles Kelley announced his tour dates for his solo tour. He is excited to get out of his comfort zone and having fans not know every word to all of his songs. He will be playing some Lady A songs, but his tour will showcase only his soon-to-be-released solo material. Also during the break, Hillary Scott announced that she and her family (her mother, father and sister) would be working a gospel album titled Love Remains which was released on 29 July. In 2016, Lady Antebellum were selected as one of 30 artists to perform on "Forever Country", a mash-up track of Take Me Home, Country Roads, On the Road Again and I Will Always Love You which celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards. CANNOTANSWER | "Bartender" became the group's ninth number 1 hit | false | [
"The Migraine Disability Assessment Test (MIDAS) is a test used by doctors to determine how severely migraines affect a patient's life. Patients are asked questions about the frequency and duration of their headaches, as well as how often these headaches limited their ability to participate in activities at work, at school, or at home.\n\nThe test was evaluated by the professional journal Neurology in 2001; it was found to be both reliable and valid.\n\nQuestions\nThe MIDAS contains the following questions:\n\n On how many days in the last 3 months did you miss work or school because of your headaches?\n How many days in the last 3 months was your productivity at work or school reduced by half or more because of your headaches? (Do not include days you counted in question 1 where you missed work or school.)\n On how many days in the last 3 months did you not do household work because of your headaches?\n How many days in the last three months was your productivity in household work reduced by half of more because of your headaches? (Do not include days you counted in question 3 where you did not do household work.)\n On how many days in the last 3 months did you miss family, social or leisure activities because of your headaches?\n\nThe patient's score consists of the total of these five questions. Additionally, there is a section for patients to share with their doctors:\n\nWhat your Physician will need to know about your headache:\n\nA. On how many days in the last 3 months did you have a headache?\n(If a headache lasted more than 1 day, count each day.)\t\n\nB. On a scale of 0 - 10, on average how painful were these headaches? \n(where 0 = no pain at all and 10 = pain as bad as it can be.)\n\nScoring\nOnce scored, the test gives the patient an idea of how debilitating his/her migraines are based on this scale:\n\n0 to 5, MIDAS Grade I, Little or no disability \n\n6 to 10, MIDAS Grade II, Mild disability\n\n11 to 20, MIDAS Grade III, Moderate disability\n\n21+, MIDAS Grade IV, Severe disability\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nMigraine Treatment\n\nMigraine",
"\"How Do I Deal\" is a song by American actress Jennifer Love Hewitt from the soundtrack to the film I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. The song was released as a single on November 17, 1998, with an accompanying music video. The single became Hewitt's one and only appearance on the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, peaking at number 59 in a seven-week run. Although not a big success in America, the single reached number five in New Zealand and peaked at number eight in Australia, where it is certified gold.\n\nTrack listings\nUS CD, 7-inch, and cassette single\n \"How Do I Deal\" (single version) – 3:23\n \"Try to Say Goodbye\" (performed by Jory Eve) – 3:36\n\nEuropean CD single\n \"How Do I Deal\" – 3:24\n \"Sugar Is Sweeter\" (performed by CJ Bolland) – 5:34\n\nAustralian CD single\n \"How Do I Deal\" – 3:23\n \"Sugar Is Sweeter\" (Danny Saber Remix featuring Justin Warfield, performed by CJ Bolland) – 4:57\n \"Try to Say Goodbye\" (performed by Jory Eve) – 3:35\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertifications\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\n143 Records singles\n1998 songs\n1999 singles\nJennifer Love Hewitt songs\nI Know What You Did Last Summer (franchise)\nMusic videos directed by Joseph Kahn\nSong recordings produced by Bruce Fairbairn\nSong recordings produced by David Foster\nSongs written for films\nWarner Records singles",
"How Do You Do may refer to:\n\nHow Do You Do (Miyuki Nakajima album)\nHow Do You Do (Mayer Hawthorne album)\n\"How Do You Do!\", a song by Roxette\n\"How Do You Do?\" (beFour song)\n\"How Do You Do\" (Mouth & MacNeal song)\n\"How Do You Do\" (Shakira song)\n\"How Do You Do?\", a song by the Boomtown Rats released as the B-side to \"Like Clockwork\"\n\"How Do You Do?\", a song from the Disney film Song of the South\n\"How Do You Do?\", a song from the Wee Sing film The Marvelous Musical Mansion\n\nSee also\n How Are You (disambiguation)\n How Have You Been (disambiguation)\n How You Been (disambiguation)"
] |
|
[
"Lady Antebellum",
"2013-2016: Golden, 747, and hiatus",
"What was the Golden all about?",
"the deluxe edition re-issue of Golden,",
"When was it published?",
"November 12, 2013.",
"What was 747 about?",
"album's title was confirmed as 747,",
"How did 747 do?",
"\"Bartender\" became the group's ninth number 1 hit"
] | C_2deeae8c13964cbda4e09aca4aa14166_0 | What was hiatus about? | 5 | What was Lady Antebellum's hiatus about? | Lady Antebellum | On January 22, 2013, "Downtown," the first single from a new album, was released to country radio. It was made available on iTunes starting February 5, 2013, and reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in April 2013. The new album, Golden, was released on May 7, 2013. The album's second single, "Goodbye Town", was released to country radio on May 13, 2013, and peaked at number 11 on the Country Airplay chart. The third single from the Golden era, "Compass", was released to the iTunes Store on October 1, 2013 and reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in March 2014. It is one of the new recordings featured on the deluxe edition re-issue of Golden, which was released on November 12, 2013. Unlike all of their previous releases, it was produced by Nathan Chapman. They also sang backing vocals on Darius Rucker's 2013 single "Wagon Wheel". "Bartender" was released to country radio on May 12, 2014, as the lead single for the group's sixth studio album, and was made available to digital retailers on May 19. In July 2014, the album's title was confirmed as 747, and the track listing was confirmed. Chapman produced this album as well. "Bartender" became the group's ninth number 1 hit on the Country Airplay charts in 2014, with "Freestyle" as the second single. The third single "Long Stretch of Love was released on February 7, 2015, in the UK and on March 23, to country radio in the US. They sang two songs, "I Did With You" and "Falling For You", for the 2014 film The Best of Me. In October 2015, while appearing on Good Morning America, the group announced that they would be taking some down time once they finish with their Wheels Up Tour. During their break Kelley will be working on his solo career. Kelley stated that Lady Antebellum is his priority but wanted to try working alone out. On September 28, 2015, he released his debut solo single titled "The Driver" which features Dierks Bentley and Eric Paslay. On October 12, 2015, Charles Kelley announced his tour dates for his solo tour. He is excited to get out of his comfort zone and having fans not know every word to all of his songs. He will be playing some Lady A songs, but his tour will showcase only his soon-to-be-released solo material. Also during the break, Hillary Scott announced that she and her family (her mother, father and sister) would be working a gospel album titled Love Remains which was released on 29 July. In 2016, Lady Antebellum were selected as one of 30 artists to perform on "Forever Country", a mash-up track of Take Me Home, Country Roads, On the Road Again and I Will Always Love You which celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards. CANNOTANSWER | while appearing on Good Morning America, the group announced that they would be taking some down time once they finish with their Wheels Up Tour. | false | [
"\"Hold On\" is a song recorded by the Christian group, Stellar Kart. It was released as the final single from the album We Can't Stand Sitting Down on July 25, 2006, and reached number #24 in 2006 on the Hot Christian Songs chart.\n\nComposition \n\"Hold On\" was the 16th most played song on Contemporary Christian music radio stations in 2007. It is about holding on to what you got. The band Stellar Kart lasted from 2001-2014, they are currently on Hiatus and Kailey Monner is part of the band.\n\nReferences\n\n2006 singles\nStellar Kart songs\n2006 songs",
"Hiatus was a Belgian hardcore punk band from Liege, Belgium, formed in 1989, that broke up in 1996.\n\nHistory \nHiatus formed in May 1989, at this time the line-up was Phill, Ben, Raf and Phil. They played in a Doom/Discharge/E.N.T. style and recorded a rehearsal demo called \"The Frightening Men Story\". In May 1990, they put out their second rehearsal demo called \"In My Mind\" and soon after Wills joined them on bass.\n\nThe band went into the studio and recorded a set of songs which were released on two 7\"s and various compilations. Their first 7\" \"I don't scare easily but...\" was released on the French label Urban Alert Records and had a second pressing on Nabate/Mother Peace Records. A split 7\" with RMR from Japan called \"Severe Existence\" was Hiatus' second 7\" and was released on the Japanese label MCR Co.\n\nPhil and Raf left and some new members joined: Azill on guitars and vocals and for a short time Vrokker and Leffe from Chronic Disease. During August 91, Hiatus toured the United States and Canada with The Wurst from Rhode Island and played with bands like Rorschach, and Born Against. In November 1991, they recorded another studio session. From this recording the \"Way Of Doom\" 7\" and Hiatus/Embittered 7\" were released in 1992. In February 1992, Hiatus toured Europe with No Security from Sweden, also in 1992 they toured the U.K. with Mushroom Attack from the Netherlands.\n\nIn 1993, their \"From Resignation ... To Revolt\" LP was released on Sound Pollution. Hiatus also toured Europe and Eastern Europe that year. Among others, there were four dates in Sweden, booked by the band Viktors Haufnarren and Resistance Productions. The four France dates were booked by Six Feet Over, Ultimate Disorder, Catalogue Du Grand Nord and Maloka collective. In early August, they made a five dates tour in Spain with the band Six Feet Over. The tour was booked by a member of the Spanish band Positi Caustico. The August 15 date at the \"Festes Alternatives a Gracia\" in Barna was a huge success, with thousands of punks and anarchists. Hiatus played there with the band Speereth. The last date in the tour was in Luxembourg, toured by Diff (No More and Subway Arts).\n\nIn early 1994, the Doom/Hiatus 7-inch was released. In February 1995, they recorded their \"El sueño de la razón produce monstruos\" LP. In June 1995, they toured the United States and Canada again. A self-titled mini LP was released on Skuld Releases/Profane Existence in 1996, the songs on it showed a big progression from their earlier releases with elements of modern hardcore being added to their crust punk sound. Azill and Willy from Hiatus also play in Unhinged who have a 7\" and LP out on Nabate.\n\nMembers\n\nFinal line-up \n Willis \"Wills\" Nollomont - lead vocals (1993-1996)\n Azill Kamizoll - guitar (1989-1996)\n Phil - guitar (1989-1996)\n Jonas Babybel - bass (1994-1996)\n Ben \"Plastic\" Fery - drums (1989-1996)\n\nPast members \n Fred - bass (1994)\n Chris Gascoigne - bass (1989-1994)\n Phill Kill - lead vocals (1991-1993)\n Rafi - lead vocals (1989-1991)\n\nDiscography\n\nAlbums \n From Resignation... To Revolt (1993)\n El Sueño De La Razón Produce Monstruos (1995)\n Old-fashioned Shit for Consumers (1995)\n Hiatus (1996)\n\nEPs \n Hiatus (1990)\n I Don't Scare Easily But... (1991)\n Way Of Doom (1991)\n\nSplits \n Hiatus \"Severe Existence\" /RMR (1990)\n Hiatus \"Blind Justice For All\" / Embittered (1992)\n Hiatus/Fleas And Lice (1992)\n Hiatus/Doom (1994)\n Hiatus/Subcaos (1994)\n\nCompilations \n They Ain't Seen Nothing Yet (1991)\n Walk Across America (1992)\n Machination World (1993)\n Sons Of Bleeuargh 2 (1993)\n Die Human Race (1996)\n\nLive albums \n Hiatus/Sauna/Svart Snö - Live in Copenhagen (1992)\n\nDemos \n The Frightening Men Story (1989)\n In My Mind (1990)\n\nExternal links\nAlmost no information to be found on the web nowadays, the above info from former \n (broken) saved out of archive.org\n.\n Check La Zone, their home venue.\n crust demos blog\n\nCrust and d-beat groups\nBelgian hardcore punk groups",
"Värsta språket (Swedish: \"The Worst Language\" (figuratively \"The coolest language\")) was a Swedish television series about the Swedish language. The series, which was hosted by Fredrik Lindström and produced by Karin af Klintberg, was broadcast on SVT between October 2002 and April 2003. The series discussed issues with the Swedish language in an entertaining way.\n\nAfter two seasons, Fredrik Lindström claimed that the attention from the programme was a burden to him and that he would no longer host it anymore. The show was therefore put on hiatus. Lindström did however return with another language-related series called Svenska dialektmysterier in 2006.\n\nLindström and af Klintberg were given Stora journalistpriset for the programme.\n\nMuch of what was mentioned in the show is recorded and can be read in Lindström's two books: Världens dåligaste språk (\"The World's baddest [sic!] language\") and Jordens smartaste ord (\"The smartest words on Earth\").\n\nNotes\n\nSee also \n\n Typisk norsk – a Norwegian television program based on the concept\n\nExternal links \n \n\nSveriges Television original programming\nSwedish documentary television series"
] |
|
[
"Lady Antebellum",
"2013-2016: Golden, 747, and hiatus",
"What was the Golden all about?",
"the deluxe edition re-issue of Golden,",
"When was it published?",
"November 12, 2013.",
"What was 747 about?",
"album's title was confirmed as 747,",
"How did 747 do?",
"\"Bartender\" became the group's ninth number 1 hit",
"What was hiatus about?",
"while appearing on Good Morning America, the group announced that they would be taking some down time once they finish with their Wheels Up Tour."
] | C_2deeae8c13964cbda4e09aca4aa14166_0 | How long did their hiatus last? | 6 | How long did Lady Antebellum's hiatus last? | Lady Antebellum | On January 22, 2013, "Downtown," the first single from a new album, was released to country radio. It was made available on iTunes starting February 5, 2013, and reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in April 2013. The new album, Golden, was released on May 7, 2013. The album's second single, "Goodbye Town", was released to country radio on May 13, 2013, and peaked at number 11 on the Country Airplay chart. The third single from the Golden era, "Compass", was released to the iTunes Store on October 1, 2013 and reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in March 2014. It is one of the new recordings featured on the deluxe edition re-issue of Golden, which was released on November 12, 2013. Unlike all of their previous releases, it was produced by Nathan Chapman. They also sang backing vocals on Darius Rucker's 2013 single "Wagon Wheel". "Bartender" was released to country radio on May 12, 2014, as the lead single for the group's sixth studio album, and was made available to digital retailers on May 19. In July 2014, the album's title was confirmed as 747, and the track listing was confirmed. Chapman produced this album as well. "Bartender" became the group's ninth number 1 hit on the Country Airplay charts in 2014, with "Freestyle" as the second single. The third single "Long Stretch of Love was released on February 7, 2015, in the UK and on March 23, to country radio in the US. They sang two songs, "I Did With You" and "Falling For You", for the 2014 film The Best of Me. In October 2015, while appearing on Good Morning America, the group announced that they would be taking some down time once they finish with their Wheels Up Tour. During their break Kelley will be working on his solo career. Kelley stated that Lady Antebellum is his priority but wanted to try working alone out. On September 28, 2015, he released his debut solo single titled "The Driver" which features Dierks Bentley and Eric Paslay. On October 12, 2015, Charles Kelley announced his tour dates for his solo tour. He is excited to get out of his comfort zone and having fans not know every word to all of his songs. He will be playing some Lady A songs, but his tour will showcase only his soon-to-be-released solo material. Also during the break, Hillary Scott announced that she and her family (her mother, father and sister) would be working a gospel album titled Love Remains which was released on 29 July. In 2016, Lady Antebellum were selected as one of 30 artists to perform on "Forever Country", a mash-up track of Take Me Home, Country Roads, On the Road Again and I Will Always Love You which celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | false | [
"Glossary is an American rock band from Murfreesboro, Tennessee that formed in 1997.\n\nHistory\nGlossary released their debut LP Southern by the Grace of Location on Champ Records in 1998, followed by All We've Learned About Living in 2000. They released a pair of albums on Undertow Music, How We Handle Our Midnights (2003) and For What I Don't Become (2006), followed by Feral Fire in 2010 on Liberty & Lament records, and finally Long Live All of Us in 2011 via Last Chance Records and Xtra Mile Recordings. The band appeared on an episode of Last Call With Carson Daly in 2013, performing Lonely is a Town.\n\nIn 2013 the band was forced to cancel tour dates and go on hiatus after drummer Eric Giles injured his shoulder. The band reunited for a series of 20th anniversary shows in late 2017.\n\nIn addition to Glossary, vocalist Joey Kneiser has released two solo albums, each with backing vocals from Glossary bandmate Kelly Smith.\n\nDiscography\n\nGlossary\n2020 A Very Glossary Christmas EP (Young Buffalo)\n2011 Long Live All of Us (Xtra Mile Recordings/Last Chance Records)\n2010 Feral Fire (Liberty & Lament/Undertow)\n2007 The Better Angels of Our Nature (Last Chance Records/Undertow)\n2006 For What I Don't Become (Undertow)\n2003 How We Handle Our Midnights (Undertow)\n2000 This Is All We've Learned About Living (Champ Records)\n1998 Southern by the Grace of Location (Champ Records)\n\nJoey Kneiser solo\n2015 The Wildness (This Is American Music)\n2012 Moonlight for the Graveyard Heart EP (self-released)\n2010 The All Night Bedroom Revival (Undertow)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n \n\nMusical groups from Tennessee\n1997 establishments in Tennessee\nMusical groups established in 1997",
"The 1908 Northwestern Purple team represented Northwestern University during the 1908 college football season. In their first and only year under head coach Alton Johnson, and following a two-year hiatus in which Northwestern did not field a football team, the Purple compiled a 2–2 record (0–2 against Western Conference opponents) and finished in last place in the Western Conference.\n\nSchedule\n\nReferences\n\nNorthwestern\nNorthwestern Wildcats football seasons\nNorthwestern Purple football",
"Above, Over And Beyond is Hale's third album released on April 28, 2008 by EMI Philippines. The album contains singles Pitong Araw, Leap Of Faith, Over And Over (And Over Again) and Sandali Na Lang. It was the last album to feature drummer\nOmnie Saroca.\n\nHistory \n\nHaving to deal with the pressure they encountered due to their instant success after the release of their two preceding albums, Hale decided to make a 10-month hiatus from the music industry as they reasoned out it was affecting their status as musical artistes and their performances. During their time of hiatus, they established the Treehouse Productions where they would help the needy children suffering from illnesses through music.\n\nIt was not long until Hale was motivated to put in work for their third effort. After the release of the first single of this album, Pitong Araw, the album was later released on April 28, 2008.\n\nTrack listing\n\nReferences \n\n2008 albums\nHale (band) albums"
] |
|
[
"Lady Antebellum",
"2013-2016: Golden, 747, and hiatus",
"What was the Golden all about?",
"the deluxe edition re-issue of Golden,",
"When was it published?",
"November 12, 2013.",
"What was 747 about?",
"album's title was confirmed as 747,",
"How did 747 do?",
"\"Bartender\" became the group's ninth number 1 hit",
"What was hiatus about?",
"while appearing on Good Morning America, the group announced that they would be taking some down time once they finish with their Wheels Up Tour.",
"How long did their hiatus last?",
"I don't know."
] | C_2deeae8c13964cbda4e09aca4aa14166_0 | What was their Wheels Up Tour about and/or where? | 7 | What was Lady Antebellum's Wheels Up Tour about and/or where? | Lady Antebellum | On January 22, 2013, "Downtown," the first single from a new album, was released to country radio. It was made available on iTunes starting February 5, 2013, and reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in April 2013. The new album, Golden, was released on May 7, 2013. The album's second single, "Goodbye Town", was released to country radio on May 13, 2013, and peaked at number 11 on the Country Airplay chart. The third single from the Golden era, "Compass", was released to the iTunes Store on October 1, 2013 and reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in March 2014. It is one of the new recordings featured on the deluxe edition re-issue of Golden, which was released on November 12, 2013. Unlike all of their previous releases, it was produced by Nathan Chapman. They also sang backing vocals on Darius Rucker's 2013 single "Wagon Wheel". "Bartender" was released to country radio on May 12, 2014, as the lead single for the group's sixth studio album, and was made available to digital retailers on May 19. In July 2014, the album's title was confirmed as 747, and the track listing was confirmed. Chapman produced this album as well. "Bartender" became the group's ninth number 1 hit on the Country Airplay charts in 2014, with "Freestyle" as the second single. The third single "Long Stretch of Love was released on February 7, 2015, in the UK and on March 23, to country radio in the US. They sang two songs, "I Did With You" and "Falling For You", for the 2014 film The Best of Me. In October 2015, while appearing on Good Morning America, the group announced that they would be taking some down time once they finish with their Wheels Up Tour. During their break Kelley will be working on his solo career. Kelley stated that Lady Antebellum is his priority but wanted to try working alone out. On September 28, 2015, he released his debut solo single titled "The Driver" which features Dierks Bentley and Eric Paslay. On October 12, 2015, Charles Kelley announced his tour dates for his solo tour. He is excited to get out of his comfort zone and having fans not know every word to all of his songs. He will be playing some Lady A songs, but his tour will showcase only his soon-to-be-released solo material. Also during the break, Hillary Scott announced that she and her family (her mother, father and sister) would be working a gospel album titled Love Remains which was released on 29 July. In 2016, Lady Antebellum were selected as one of 30 artists to perform on "Forever Country", a mash-up track of Take Me Home, Country Roads, On the Road Again and I Will Always Love You which celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | false | [
"Steel Wheels is the 19th British (and 21st American) studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones. Released on 29 August 1989, it was the final album of new material that the band would record for Columbia Records.\n\nHeralded as a major comeback upon its release, Steel Wheels is notable for the patching up of the working relationship between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, a reversion to a more classic style of music and the launching of the band's biggest world tour to date. It is also the final full-length studio album to involve long-time bassist Bill Wyman, preceding the announcement of his departure in January 1993. Wyman's final tenure with the band would be on two studio tracks for the 1991 album Flashpoint. Steel Wheels was also the first album not to feature former member and frequent contributor on piano Ian Stewart, who died shortly before the release of their previous album Dirty Work. It was produced by Richards and Jagger, along with Chris Kimsey, who had previously produced the Stones' 1983 Undercover.\n\nAfter the relative disappointment of their prior two albums, Steel Wheels was a hit, reaching multi-platinum status in the United States, Top 5 status in numerous markets around the world, and spawning two hit singles: \"Mixed Emotions\", which peaked at No. 1 in Canada and No. 5 in the United States, and \"Rock and a Hard Place\", the band's last Top-40 hit in the US. Critics were generally lukewarm towards the album, exemplified by Stephen Thomas Erlewine: \"It doesn't make for a great Stones album, but it's not bad, and it feels like a comeback.\"\n\nBackground\nFollowing the release of 1986's Dirty Work, and Jagger's pursuit of a solo career, relations between him and the Stones-committed Richards worsened considerably. While Jagger released the tepidly received Primitive Cool in 1987, Richards recorded Talk Is Cheap, his solo debut, released in 1988 to positive reviews. The two years apart appeared to have healed the wounds sufficiently to begin resurrecting their partnership and band.\n\nMeeting in January 1989, just preceding the Stones' induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the chemistry between Jagger and Richards easily outshone whatever differences they had, and after composing some 50 songs in a matter of weeks, Ronnie Wood, Wyman and Charlie Watts were called in to begin recording what would become Steel Wheels, beckoning Undercover co-producer Chris Kimsey to perform the same role.\n\nRecording in Montserrat and London during the spring, Steel Wheels was designed to emulate a classic Rolling Stones sound. One notable exception was \"Continental Drift,\" an Eastern-flavoured piece, with The Master Musicians of Jajouka led by Bachir Attar, recorded in June 1989 in Tangier, coordinated by Cherie Nutting. With much of the past disagreements behind them, sessions for Steel Wheels were fairly harmonious.\n\nRelease and reception\n\nThe massive, worldwide Steel Wheels Tour was launched in late August 1989, concurrently with Steel Wheels arrival and the release of lead single \"Mixed Emotions,\" a partially biographical reference to Jagger and Richards' recent woes that proved to be the Rolling Stones' last major hit single in the United States, reaching No. 5. Critical reaction was warm, with Steel Wheels reaching No. 2 in the UK and No. 3 in the US where it went double-platinum. Follow-up singles were \"Rock and a Hard Place,\" \"Almost Hear You Sigh\" and \"Terrifying.\"\nThe Steel Wheels Tour, which finished in mid-1990 after being re-titled the Urban Jungle Tour, was a financial success. In 1990, FOX aired a 3-D television special of the Steel Wheels tour. Unlike anaglyphic 3-D which requires the familiar red and green glasses, the method used was the Pulfrich Effect which permitted full-colour video. The film was shot by Gerald Marks of PullTime 3-D in NYC. An IMAX film of the tour was released the next year, which still plays sporadically at IMAX venues around the world.\n\nAnthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone writes \"All the ambivalence, recriminations, attempted rapprochement and psychological one-upmanship evident on Steel Wheels testify that the Stones are right in the element that has historically spawned their best music – a murky, dangerously charged environment in which nothing is merely what it seems. Against all odds, and at this late date, the Stones have once again generated an album that will have the world dancing to deeply troubling, unresolved emotions.\"\n\nStephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic writes \"The Stones sound good, and Mick and Keith both get off a killer ballad apiece with \"Almost Hear You Sigh\" and \"Slipping Away,\" respectively. It doesn't make for a great Stones album, but it's not bad, and it feels like a comeback – which it was supposed to, after all.\"\n\nIn 2000 it was voted number 568 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums.\n\nThe album was the Rolling Stones' first digital recording. In 1994, Steel Wheels was remastered and reissued by Virgin Records, and again in 2009 by Universal Music. An SHM-CD version was released on 2 December 2015 by Universal Japan, mastered from the original British master tape.\n\nTrack listing\n\nPersonnel\nAdapted from Steel Wheels liner notes.\n\nThe Rolling Stones\nMick Jagger – lead vocals (except 8 & 12), backing vocals (1, 2, 9, 12), guitar (1, 2, 4-7, 11), harmonica (5, 11), shakers (2, 3), keyboards (10)\nKeith Richards – acoustic guitar (10), classical guitar (9), guitar (except 9 & 10), backing vocals (2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 12), lead vocals (8 & 12), bicycle spokes (10)\nRonnie Wood – guitar (2, 3, 5-9, 12), bass guitar (1, 4, 11), acoustic bass (10), dobro (11), backing vocals (9)\nBill Wyman – bass guitar (2, 3, 5-9, 12)\nCharlie Watts – drums (all tracks)\n\nAdditional musicians\nChuck Leavell – organ (1-3, 6, 8, 12), piano (1, 2, 12), keyboards (7, 9), Wurlitzer (8)\nMatt Clifford – electric piano (12), piano (6), keyboards (3, 5, 7, 9, 11), clavinet (8), harmonium (6), percussion programming (10), strings (12)\nSarah Dash – backing vocals (2, 7, 9, 10, 12)\nLisa Fischer – backing vocals (2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 12)\nBernard Fowler – backing vocals (1, 2, 5-10, 12)\nLuis Jardim – percussion (2, 6, 8, 9)\nPhil Beer – mandolin (6), fiddle (6)\nThe Kick Horns – brass (1, 2, 7, 12)\nRoddy Lorimer – trumpet (3)\nThe Master Musicians of Jajouka led by Bachir Attar Farafina – African-Moroccan instruments (10)\nSonia Morgan – backing vocals (10)\nTessa Niles – backing vocals (10)\nChris Jagger – literary editor (6, 9)\n\nTechnical and design\nRecording engineer – Christopher Marc Potter\nAssistant engineer – Rupert Coulson\nRecorded at Air Studios, Montserrat\nMixed by Michael Brauer, Christopher Marc Potter, Chris Kimsey\nArt direction and design – John Warwicker\nLogo design – Mark Morton\nMastering – Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound, NYC\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertifications and sales\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1989 albums\nAlbums produced by Chris Kimsey\nAlbums produced by the Glimmer Twins\nRolling Stones Records albums\nThe Rolling Stones albums\nVirgin Records albums\nColumbia Records albums\nAlbums recorded at Olympic Sound Studios\nAlbums recorded at AIR Studios",
"\"Rock and a Hard Place\" is a song by the English rock band the Rolling Stones from their 1989 album Steel Wheels. It is the second single from the album, and remains the most recent Billboard top 40 hit by the band.\n\nRecording\nCredited to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, \"Rock and a Hard Place\" was recorded at Montserrat's AIR Studios and London's Olympic Studios in the spring months of 1989. On the song, Richards said in the liner notes to the 1993 compilation album Jump Back (on which it was included), \"This was like going back to the way we worked in the early days, before Exile, when we were living round the corner from each other in London. Mick and I hadn't got together in four years since Dirty Work, but as soon as we met up in Barbados for a fortnight, with a couple guitars and pianos, everything was fine.\" At the time of release, Jagger said, \"This is one of those songs like \"Start Me Up\", where the minute you hear the opening notes, you head for the dance floor. It's real '70s, in the best possible way.\"\n\nWith Jagger on lead vocals, Richards, Ron Wood and Jagger perform guitars for the recording. Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts perform bass and drums, respectively. Keyboards are played by Matt Clifford and Chuck Leavell. The Kick Horns provided brass for the recording. Lisa Fischer, Sarah Dash and Bernard Fowler all perform backing vocals.\n\nRelease\n\"Rock and a Hard Place\" was released as the second single from Steel Wheels on 13 November 1989 in the UK. \"Cook Cook Blues\", a slow blues outtake from the 1983 album Undercover, was the B-side. The single reached No. 63 in the UK, No. 23 in the U.S. and No. 1 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. The song has been performed by the Stones sporadically since its release, appearing on the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour, Voodoo Lounge Tour, Bridges to Babylon Tour, and Licks Tour.\n\nA music video was shot at Sullivan Stadium, in Foxborough, Massachusetts during the band's three sold out night stand at that venue and directed by Wayne Isham. The video reached the Top 10 of MTV's Top 20 Video Countdown in December, 1989.\n\nA live recording captured during the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour was included on the 1991 live album Flashpoint as well as their Live at The Tokyo Dome release.\n\nThe studio album and/or single version were included on the compilations Jump Back and Honk.\n\nTrack listing\n\"Rock and a Hard Place\" – 4:05\n\"Cook Cook Blues\" – 4:08\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n1989 singles\nThe Rolling Stones songs\n1989 songs\nSongs written by Jagger–Richards\nMusic videos directed by Wayne Isham\nSong recordings produced by Jagger–Richards\nSong recordings produced by Chris Kimsey",
"Where We Are Tour: Live from the O2 is a concert DVD by Irish boy band Westlife from their Where We Are Tour.\n\nBackground\nDuring the group's Where We Are Tour, it was confirmed that their May 14 concert at the O2 Arena, London, England was recorded. The release date was then set as 29 November 2010 for both DVD and Blu-ray formats, making it the band's first release on Blu-ray. Pre-order links were set up by Play.com on 12 October 2010. The album includes an unseen backstage documentary during said tour and the music video of \"What About Now\". \n\nAccording to description released:‘The Where We Are Tour: Live From The 02’ also gives fans a rare, intimate glimpse into the lives of Nicky Byrne, Kian Egan, Mark Feehily and Shane Filan with the bonus ‘Where We Are – The Documentary’. This compelling behind the scenes documentary provides a fly on the wall insight into the lives of the band in the run up and during the tour. The boys also chat exclusively about why this tour meant so much to them. Both the DVD and Blu-ray versions will also include the epic ‘What About Now’ video. In addition, the Blu-ray will feature a full hour and a half exclusive commentary where the boys discuss the show in detail and talk about what we can expect from the next tour. It is simply essential viewing for any Westlife fan.\n\nTrack listing\n\"Where We Are\"\n\"What About Now\"\n\"When You're Looking Like That\"\n\"My Love\"\n\"Uptown Girl\"\n\"Swear It Again\"\n\"Mandy\"\n\"If I Let You Go\"\n\"Shadows\"\n\"Home\"\n\"I'm Already There\"\n\"I Gotta Feeling\"\n\"Halo\"/\"How to Break a Heart\"\n\"The Boys Are Back in Town\"\n\"Sex on Fire\"\n\"What Makes a Man\"\n\"Flying Without Wings\"\n\"World of Our Own\"\n\"I'll See You Again\"\n\"You Raise Me Up\"\n\nChart performance\n\nCertifications\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\nWestlife video albums\n2010 video albums\nSony BMG video albums"
] |
|
[
"Lady Antebellum",
"2013-2016: Golden, 747, and hiatus",
"What was the Golden all about?",
"the deluxe edition re-issue of Golden,",
"When was it published?",
"November 12, 2013.",
"What was 747 about?",
"album's title was confirmed as 747,",
"How did 747 do?",
"\"Bartender\" became the group's ninth number 1 hit",
"What was hiatus about?",
"while appearing on Good Morning America, the group announced that they would be taking some down time once they finish with their Wheels Up Tour.",
"How long did their hiatus last?",
"I don't know.",
"What was their Wheels Up Tour about and/or where?",
"I don't know."
] | C_2deeae8c13964cbda4e09aca4aa14166_0 | What did they do on their down time? | 8 | What did Lady Antebellum do on their down time? | Lady Antebellum | On January 22, 2013, "Downtown," the first single from a new album, was released to country radio. It was made available on iTunes starting February 5, 2013, and reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in April 2013. The new album, Golden, was released on May 7, 2013. The album's second single, "Goodbye Town", was released to country radio on May 13, 2013, and peaked at number 11 on the Country Airplay chart. The third single from the Golden era, "Compass", was released to the iTunes Store on October 1, 2013 and reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in March 2014. It is one of the new recordings featured on the deluxe edition re-issue of Golden, which was released on November 12, 2013. Unlike all of their previous releases, it was produced by Nathan Chapman. They also sang backing vocals on Darius Rucker's 2013 single "Wagon Wheel". "Bartender" was released to country radio on May 12, 2014, as the lead single for the group's sixth studio album, and was made available to digital retailers on May 19. In July 2014, the album's title was confirmed as 747, and the track listing was confirmed. Chapman produced this album as well. "Bartender" became the group's ninth number 1 hit on the Country Airplay charts in 2014, with "Freestyle" as the second single. The third single "Long Stretch of Love was released on February 7, 2015, in the UK and on March 23, to country radio in the US. They sang two songs, "I Did With You" and "Falling For You", for the 2014 film The Best of Me. In October 2015, while appearing on Good Morning America, the group announced that they would be taking some down time once they finish with their Wheels Up Tour. During their break Kelley will be working on his solo career. Kelley stated that Lady Antebellum is his priority but wanted to try working alone out. On September 28, 2015, he released his debut solo single titled "The Driver" which features Dierks Bentley and Eric Paslay. On October 12, 2015, Charles Kelley announced his tour dates for his solo tour. He is excited to get out of his comfort zone and having fans not know every word to all of his songs. He will be playing some Lady A songs, but his tour will showcase only his soon-to-be-released solo material. Also during the break, Hillary Scott announced that she and her family (her mother, father and sister) would be working a gospel album titled Love Remains which was released on 29 July. In 2016, Lady Antebellum were selected as one of 30 artists to perform on "Forever Country", a mash-up track of Take Me Home, Country Roads, On the Road Again and I Will Always Love You which celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards. CANNOTANSWER | During their break Kelley will be working on his solo career. | false | [
"\"What Did I Do to You?\" is a song recorded by British singer Lisa Stansfield for her 1989 album, Affection. It was written by Stansfield, Ian Devaney and Andy Morris, and produced by Devaney and Morris. The song was released as the fourth European single on 30 April 1990. It included three previously unreleased songs written by Stansfield, Devaney and Morris: \"My Apple Heart,\" \"Lay Me Down\" and \"Something's Happenin'.\" \"What Did I Do to You?\" was remixed by Mark Saunders and by the Grammy Award-winning American house music DJ and producer, David Morales. The single became a top forty hit in the European countries reaching number eighteen in Finland, number twenty in Ireland and number twenty-five in the United Kingdom. \"What Did I Do to You?\" was also released in Japan.\n\nIn 2014, the remixes of \"What Did I Do to You?\" were included on the deluxe 2CD + DVD re-release of Affection and on People Hold On ... The Remix Anthology. They were also featured on The Collection 1989–2003 box set (2014), including previously unreleased Red Zone Mix by David Morales.\n\nCritical reception\nThe song received positive reviews from music critics. Matthew Hocter from Albumism viewed it as a \"upbeat offering\". David Giles from Music Week said it is \"beautifully performed\" by Stansfield. A reviewer from Reading Eagle wrote that \"What Did I Do to You?\" \"would be right at home on the \"Saturday Night Fever\" soundtrack.\"\n\nMusic video\nA music video was produced to promote the single, directed by Philip Richardson, who had previously directed the videos for \"All Around the World\" and \"Live Together\". It features Stansfield with her kiss curls, dressed in a white outfit and performing with her band on a stage in front of a jumping audience. The video was later published on Stansfield's official YouTube channel in November 2009. It has amassed more than 1,6 million views as of October 2021.\n\nTrack listings\n\n European/UK 7\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix Edit) – 4:20\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n European/UK/Japanese CD single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix Edit) – 4:20\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 5:19\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 4:17\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n UK 10\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix) – 5:52\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 5:19\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 4:17\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n European/UK 12\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Morales Mix) – 7:59\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 4:22\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 3:19\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:15\n\n UK 12\" promotional single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Morales Mix) – 7:59\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Anti Poll Tax Dub) – 6:31\n\n Other remixes\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Red Zone Mix) – 7:45\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\nLisa Stansfield songs\n1990 singles\nSongs written by Lisa Stansfield\n1989 songs\nArista Records singles\nSongs written by Ian Devaney\nSongs written by Andy Morris (musician)",
"T-Connection was a funk and disco group from Nassau, the Bahamas, who scored two hits on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1977 and 1979. They did better on the US Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart, where they had five Top 10 hits, including \"Do What You Wanna Do\", which reached #1, and \"Everything Is Cool\", which peaked at #10 on the US Billboard R&B chart. In the United Kingdom, they scored five entries in the UK Singles Chart, with \"Do What You Wanna Do\" their highest placed success at #11.\n\nTheir track \"Groove to Get Down\" has been heavily sampled due to its inclusion on the 1986 Ultimate Breaks and Beats series.\n\nGroup members included the brothers Theophilus \"T\" and Kirkwood Coakley, plus guitarists David Mackey and Monty Brown and drummer Anthony Flowers.\n\nDiscography\n\nAlbums\n Magic (TK Records, 1977)\n On Fire (TK Records, 1978)\n T-Connection (TK Records, 1978)\n Totally Connected (TK Records, 1980) \n Everything Is Cool (Capitol, 1981) \n Pure & Natural (Capitol, 1982) \n The Game of Life (Capitol, 1983) \n Take It to the Limit (Capitol, 1984)\n\nSingles\n\nSee also\nList of Billboard number-one dance club songs\nList of artists who reached number one on the U.S. Dance Club Songs chart\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nDisco groups\nBahamian musical groups",
"\"What Would Steve Do?\" is the second single released by Mumm-Ra on Columbia Records, which was released on February 19, 2007. It is a re-recorded version of the self-release they did in April 2006. It reached #40 in the UK Singles Chart, making it their highest charting single.\n\nTrack listings\nAll songs written by Mumm-Ra.\n\nCD\n\"What Would Steve Do?\"\n\"Cute As\"\n\"Without You\"\n\n7\"\n\"What Would Steve Do?\"\n\"What Would Steve Do? (Floorboard Mix)\"\n\nGatefold 7\"\n\"What Would Steve Do?\"\n\"Cute As\"\n\nReferences\n\n2007 singles\nMumm-Ra (band) songs\n2006 songs\nColumbia Records singles"
] |
|
[
"Skinny Puppy",
"Live performances"
] | C_c1a207f3a2e648579ef56e74dbf1253f_1 | when did skinny puppy's live performances begin? | 1 | When did Skinny Puppy's live performances begin? | Skinny Puppy | Skinny Puppy is noted for theatrical and controversial live performances which blend performance art with music, especially in an ambitious period that spanned their Head Trauma (1987-1988), VIVIsectVI (1988), Too Dark Park (1990), and Last Rights (1992) tours. Ogre has been critical of the bands early performances, telling Spin magazine in 1992 that "I would do things on stage that would blow-they just wouldn't work". Live performances involved periods of musical improvisation, film projections, and elaborate stage props and machines, many of which are designed and built by Ogre himself. While discussing Skinny Puppy's performances, Ogre once remarked that "our shows combine images with theater. It works better than just coming out and doing a horror magic routine". On-stage theatrics included Ogre being suspended from racks and cables, play with a hangman's noose, Key cutting steel with an angle grinder, and mock executions of Ogre and George H.W. Bush. Following the 2004 Presidential Election in the United States, promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances. This reaction was prompted by the performance of a mock execution on stage, during which Ogre was decapitated by actors dressed as then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The band was also asked by Samsung (who had been asked by Ogre to sponsor the band with a large flat screen) to "not insult the president" while performing on stage. In a 1987 television interview with Kim Clarke Champniss, Key explained that while Ogre follows a "rough guideline" during a live performance, a majority of his on-stage theatrics are thought up of spontaneously. Key told Champniss that Ogre's demeanor on stage could "range from just a sort of laid back kind of lurking to a rampant psycho". Ogre once remarked that touring was, for himself, like "dating hydrogen peroxide", referencing the numerous injuries which he would acquire over the course of touring. Though Ogre and Key have remained the only constant members of Skinny Puppy's live act since the death of Dwayne Goettel, several other musicians have been hired to accompany the pair since 2004. They include drummer Justin Bennett, guitarist William Morrison, and guitarist Matthew Setzer. CANNOTANSWER | (1987-1988), | Skinny Puppy is a Canadian industrial music group formed in Vancouver in 1982. The group is among the founders of the industrial rock and electro-industrial genres. Initially envisioned as an experimental side-project by cEvin Key (Kevin Crompton) while he was in the new wave band Images in Vogue, Skinny Puppy evolved into a full-time project with the addition of vocalist Nivek Ogre (Kevin Ogilvie).
Over the course of a dozen studio albums and many live tours, Key and Ogre have been the only constant members. Other members have included Dwayne Goettel (1986–1995), Dave "Rave" Ogilvie (long-time associate, producer, and "unofficial" fourth member until 1996; not a relative of Kevin Ogilvie), Mark Walk (2003–present), and a number of guests, including Bill Leeb (1985–1986, under the pseudonym Wilhelm Schroeder), Al Jourgensen (1989), Danny Carey (2004), and many others.
After the self-release of their first cassette in 1984, Skinny Puppy soon signed to Vancouver label Nettwerk, anchoring its early roster. From their Nettwerk debut EP Remission in 1984 to their 1992 album Last Rights, Skinny Puppy developed into an influential band with a dedicated cult following, fusing elements of industrial, funk,
noise, new wave, electro, and rock music and making innovative use of sampling. Over the course of several tours of North America and Europe in this period, they became known for theatrical, horror-themed live performances and videos, drawing attention to issues such as chemical warfare and animal testing.
In 1993, Skinny Puppy left Nettwerk and long-time producer Rave, signing with American Recordings and relocating to Malibu, California, where drug problems and tension between band members plagued the recording of their next album, The Process (1996). Ogre quit Skinny Puppy in June 1995, and Goettel died of a heroin overdose two months later. Key and Ogre, already active in a number of other projects, went their separate ways, reuniting for a one-off Skinny Puppy concert at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden, Germany, in 2000. Reforming Skinny Puppy in 2003 with producer Mark Walk, they released their ninth album, The Greater Wrong of the Right (2004), which was followed by the release of the albums Mythmaker (2007) and HanDover (2011). In 2013, they released their twelfth album, Weapon, which was inspired by allegations that their music had been used for torture in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
History
Formation and first releases (1982–1985)
Skinny Puppy formed in 1982 as a side project for Kevin Crompton in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Crompton was dissatisfied with the pop direction of the band he was in, Images in Vogue, and began Skinny Puppy with the intention of doing something more compelling and experimental. Images in Vogue had become a popular act in Vancouver, achieving several radio hits and opening for groups such as Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, and Roxy Music. Crompton had planned Skinny Puppy to be a side project while he continued his work in Images in Vogue; however, when Images in Vogue relocated to Toronto, Crompton made Skinny Puppy his full-time project. Crompton had already created the name for the project and recorded several songs when he asked Kevin Graham Ogilvie to join. Ogilvie had been a roommate of Images in Vogue member Gary Blair Smith and had met Crompton at a party in late 1982. To avoid the confusion of having two people named Kevin in one band, the pair created stage names, with Crompton becoming cEvin Key and Ogilvie becoming Nivek Ogre.
Using Key's apartment as a makeshift studio, the duo began recording songs and in 1983 with the help of Images in Vogue recording engineer Dave "Rave" Ogilvie (no relation to Ogre), Skinny Puppy released the EP Back & Forth. This was the beginning of a long partnership between Skinny Puppy and Rave, who would serve as their producer until 1993, and again in 1995, and was occasionally listed as a member of the band in album liner notes. Though only 35 copies were ever printed, the self-released Back & Forth drew the attention of Vancouver startup label Nettwerk, who signed the band later that year. The first live Skinny Puppy show was held at the Unovis art gallery in Vancouver in February 1984; the British group Alien Sex Fiend were among the 300 people in attendance.
Ogre has said that Skinny Puppy acted as an escape for Key, who wished to distance himself from Images in Vogue: "He was looking for something to break out of [Images in Vogue], and maybe I was it". Key would continue to drum for Images in Vogue until the group relocated to Toronto in 1985. Key's concept behind Skinny Puppy came from the group's first song ever recorded, "K-9". The idea, according to Key, was to create music which explored "life as seen through a dog's eyes". Skinny Puppy also incorporated the use of "B-grade horror movie visuals", including fake blood and props, into their live performances. Key justified these "shock gore" antics with the following:
What we're presenting isn't much different from what [the audience] is subjected to in everyday life. For example, a commercial is a very plastic view of existence and reality. When you watch a TV show and see a world with picture-perfect endings, all you have to do is switch the station and watch the news.
Having scored a record deal with Nettwerk and with interest surrounding the Back & Forth EP growing, Skinny Puppy was invited to Vancouver's Mushroom Studios to work on new material. It was here that the group recruited Bill Leeb to perform bass synth and backing vocals. Like Ogre and Key before him, Leeb created a stage name, Wilhelm Schroeder; "my real name is Wilhelm" said Leeb, "Schroeder we picked out from the guy playing the piano in the Charlie Brown cartoon". Skinny Puppy released their second EP, Remission in December 1984, almost a year following Back & Forth.
Remission marked the first time Skinny Puppy would collaborate with artist Steven Gilmore, who created the album artwork. The EP was initially only released in vinyl, but was later given a cassette release in 1985. According to Nettwerk VP of A&R and Marketing George Maniatis, Remission "grabbed everybody by the you-know-whats" and, for Nettwerk Records, brought with it an association with industrial dance music. The EP was supported by music videos for the songs "Far Too Frail" and "Smothered Hope", the latter of which being the closest thing to a hit song any North American industrial act had achieved at the time.
Skinny Puppy released its first full-length album, Bites, in 1985 and was produced by Key and Dave Ogilvie. Tom Ellard of the Australian electronic act Severed Heads lent a hand to the production of Bites, acting as a producer and performing various sampling and mixing duties. Described by Billboard magazine as "techno dance...a la Kraftwerk", Bites yielded the underground hit "Assimilate". Key and Ogre opened for Chris & Cosey on their 1985 Canadian tour as Hell 'O' Death Day; some of the material the duo had performed would appear on Bites as bonus tracks. One of these bonus tracks, a song called "The Centre Bullet", featured lyrics by Legendary Pink Dots founder Edward Ka-Spel.
While Skinny Puppy had become well received by underground audiences in most major urban areas, due in part to their anti-consumerist themes and Cure-like aesthetics, not everyone was friendly to the group. Key described Skinny Puppy as the antithesis of "the Bruce Springsteen mentality of music", rejecting "Top 40 conformity". Toronto-based music journalist and DJ Greg Clow recalled Michael Williams, who was a VJ for Muchmusic, introducing him to Skinny Puppy, describing them as "Canada's answer to Depeche Mode".
Dwayne Goettel and stylistic transition (1986–1987)
In 1986, Nettwerk made a distribution deal with Capitol Records, allowing Skinny Puppy and others in Nettwerk's roster to expand their respective audiences. Capitol manager Stephen Powers stated that signing groups such as Skinny Puppy gave the company "a real credibility" with the alternative and college music scenes. Skinny Puppy also signed to Play It Again Sam, allowing the group's music to expand into Europe. It was this expansion into the European market that would help to make Skinny Puppy a "cash cow" for Nettwerk in the early years. In a 2007 interview with CraveOnline, Ogre commented on Skinny Puppy's time with Capitol, saying:
We're so lucky to have gotten here, and if we look back on the fact that we were on Capitol Records at a certain point, being distributed and making these albums under budget… there was one year when we were the only band on the label to profit, when MC Hammer lost a shitload of money. I can still appreciate how odd it was that we had the chance to do that because it doesn't really happen in a lot of cases.
Bill Leeb left Skinny Puppy in 1986 to pursue his own musical project, Front Line Assembly. Leeb gave his reasons for leaving the group stating that his bandmates expressed different ideas from his own and that he had been interested in singing. Leeb's replacement would be quiet Alberta native Dwayne Goettel. A classically trained musician, Goettel had been in a duo named Water with vocalist Sandy Weir and had worked with the synthpop band Psyche, among others.
Skinny Puppy's production values improved with the addition of Goettel, with Key remarking that "Dwayne brought us a whole new sense and aesthetic that we didn't have. Up to that point, we were really punk rock in our approach". Key continued on that "he [Goettel] had an incredible knowledge of equipment and at a very early stage was really the master of sampling, which had really just begun". Goettel's contributions to Skinny Puppy's second full-length effort, 1986's Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse, helped to propel the band towards the style of their "chaotic future masterworks". To promote the album, the band made an appearance on CBC Radio's Brave New Waves program in September 1986, and released their first single, "Dig It". A music video for "Dig It" was produced and received extensive airplay on MTV.
Further promotion for the album came from a world tour with the band Severed Heads. The tour proved to be a vital learning experience for the group, having encounters with, according to Key, "tour managers and agents that didn't pay us". In 1987, the song "Stairs and Flowers" was released as a single, as was a new song titled "Chainsaw". The group attracted the attention of the Parent Music Resource Center (PMRC), which named Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse one of several albums believed to be "violent, sexually explicit, or condoning substance abuse". The album was named by Melody Maker magazine as one of the best releases of the year.
Later in 1987 came Skinny Puppy's third full-length album, Cleanse Fold and Manipulate. Described as "a turning point, where experimentation is just beginning to gel with innovation", the album marks the point where the group began to explore more political themes, delving into topics such as the AIDS epidemic and the Vietnam War. A song from the album, "Addiction" was released as a single. The group later went on tour, with a performance at Toronto's Concert Hall being released on VHS in 1989 and CD in 1991 as Ain't It Dead Yet?. Also released in 1987 was Bites and Remission (through Capitol Records) and Remission & Bites (European release, through Pay It Again Sam), both compilations of Skinny Puppy's first two Nettwerk releases.
Subsequent success (1988–1989)
Skinny Puppy's live performances had become increasingly more elaborate, with Ogre interacting with an onstage crucifix and other "crudely constructed" stage props. Craig MacInnis of the Toronto Star described their new stage show as "neo-dadaist shock theatre", while Tom Lanham of the San Francisco Chronicle referred to it as "grotesque". The band continued to tour in 1988 with the European Head Trauma tour, supported by Edward Ka-Spel. Following the tour, the group returned to the studio to record what Ogre described would be the band's most critical statement regarding animal testing.
Skinny Puppy released their fourth album, VIVIsectVI, in 1988; the album's name is a pun intended to associate vivisection with Satanism (i.e. the "666 sect"). The group's primary aim with the album was to bring attention to the topic of vivisection and other issues regarding animal rights. The album's subject matter also deals with subjects such as chemical warfare, environmental waste, and disease. Lead track "Dogshit" was released as a single in 1988 under the name "Censor"; the name change was made by the band when it was decided that the single would not sell well with its original name. The single "Testure", which denounced the testing of animals for research purposes, reached No. 19 on Billboards Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in 1989. According to Ogre, "Testure" was intended to be accessible in the hope of spreading their "anti-vivisectionist" message. "It's the only song I think they will be able to play on the radio", he said. "I hope they do play it because it's the only way we can go beyond our ranks and our loyal fans who already understand the message". "Testure" also featured several well-chosen samples from the film The Plague Dogs, an animated adventure about two dogs who escape from a research laboratory. Melody Maker named VIVIsectVI one of the best albums of 1988.
Skinny Puppy toured in support of the album, featuring an early incarnation of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails as their opening act. The concept for the live show revolved around a vivisectionist (played by Ogre) who is eventually transformed into a tortured animal; the idea was to portray the "inner workings of the mind under the strain of vivisection". The stage show included the mock vivisection of a stuffed dog the band had named Chud. Following a show in Cincinnati, Ohio, Key, Ogre, and tour manager Dan McGee were arrested for "disorderly conduct" when an audience member, believing the stuffed animal Ogre was "vivisecting" to be a real dog, called the police. Two plainclothes officers entered the group's dressing room demanding they inspect the prop. Following a heated argument, the trio spent the night in jail, but were released the following day after paying a $200 fine.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the band members began working on various side projects. Key and Goettel were involved with The Tear Garden (a collaboration with The Legendary Pink Dots) and Doubting Thomas (an outlet for their non-Skinny Puppy instrumentals). The band Hilt, a collaboration between Key and Goettel, and Al Nelson, also started when Nettwerk challenged the group to produce an album for as little money as possible. Ogre struck up a friendship with Ministry's Al Jourgensen, having first worked together during the recording of the PTP song "Show Me Your Spine" (featured in the 1987 film RoboCop).
For Skinny Puppy's fifth album, Rabies, released in 1989, Jourgensen joined Rave as producer. The album, featuring Jourgensen's electric guitar work and backing vocals, drew mixed reception from fans. Despite these reactions, the album was a commercial success, selling 150,000 copies and receiving extensive airplay on college radio. The single "Worlock" – which featured samples of Charles Manson singing parts of the song "Helter Skelter" from The Beatles' White Album, accompanied by a fragmented portion of the songs guitar introduction – helped to bring the band "massive popularity". A video produced for the song, featuring spliced-together footage from dozens of horror films and a statement denouncing censorship of the genre by the MPAA, was circulated widely as a promotional and bootleg item. The song "Tin Omen" was also released as a single and "Hexonxonx" received some airplay on alternative radio. In spite of the album's initial mixed reception, Brad Filicky in a 2003 issue of CMJ magazine named Rabies as a classic album, calling it "a masterpiece of the industrial genre".
This period marked the beginning of divisions within the band, as rather than tour in support of Rabies, Ogre joined Ministry while they toured in support of their album The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste (1989); Ogre contributed guitars, keyboards, and vocals during the tour. Ogre had also begun working with the Ministry side project Revolting Cocks. Key was later quoted saying of Ogre's involvement with Ministry and, later on, Martin Atkins' Pigface that he sometimes felt "like a wife that's been cheated on".
Too Dark Park (1990–1991)
Following the production of Rabies, a divide grew between the group members, with Key and Goettel often siding against Ogre, feeling he was more interested in solo work. The group were ultimately disappointed with the outcome of Rabies, with Goettel saying that the completed product was "less within the Skinny Puppy vision", and Key being displeased with Jourgensen's involvement. Ogre also expressed his disapproval for the album, claiming that he had "flopped". "The work and artistic environment really weren't there at all either. It was completely negative".
Key and Goettel completed work on some of their side projects such a Hilt, releasing their first effort, Call the Ambulance (Before I Hurt Myself), which was produced by Rave. Key also reunited with Bill Leeb to form the project known as Cyberaktif; Goettel acted as an assistant producer and provided some instrumentation. Jourgensen offered Ogre the chance to tour with the Revolting Cocks, having provided vocals on their previous tour. Ogre refused the offer, citing some occurrences during his time with Ministry which led him to question his friendship with Jourgensen.
The group, having finished work on their various side projects, returned to the studio and released their sixth studio album, Too Dark Park, in 1990. Goettel said in a radio interview that the major intentions behind the album were to reevaluate what Skinny Puppy was and create a new style of music to mark the beginning of a new decade. This reevaluation included hiring Jim Cummins (I, Braineater) to design the cover artwork, feeling that their longtime designer Steven Gilmore had lost his creative spark.
Described as "forceful and consistently abrasive", Too Dark Park was what Key referred to as the true successor to "the last pure" Skinny Puppy album, VIVIsectVI. Critics such as Staci Bonner of Spin magazine applauded the use of sampling and stated that the album was a "return to the bloodbath" for the group. The album yielded the singles "Tormentor" and "Spasmolytic", the latter of which spawned a music video directed by Jim Van Bebber. Billboard called "Spasmolytic" a "delicious mind-altering affair", a sentiment shared by Wil Lewellyn of Treblezine who included the song in a list of the best underground songs of the 1990s.
Environmental degradation was a major theme on both the album and the North American Too Dark Park tour. For the tour, Key took on the role of drummer, leaving Goettel as lead keyboardist. Key told Alternative Press that "we could very well have a backing tape and stand behind synths playing two notes on the keyboard, but we've decided to physically strain ourselves and learn additional parts along with what we've already written". Onstage theatrics included a segment with Ogre performing on stucco stilts and pneumatic crutches, Ogre being hoisted from the stage by cables, and a backing film featuring scenes of graphic violence, most notably sequences from the Japanese film series Guinea Pig. Ogre later gave insight on the backing film's conception, saying:
We did an experiment ... We've always been accused of celebrating violence for idiotic reasons. [So] we used some images in our show from a film called Guinea Pig. They're these incredibly realistic, but simulated, Japanese snuff films. We inserted them into this roller-coaster ride of violent images and people were quite disgusted. People were vomiting in front of the stage. People came up to me after the show, saying I was the most disgusting human being-until they found out what it was all about. The whole reason we did that was to see if there was a difference. Will people react differently to something that's real as opposed to something they know is staged? They will. There's a whole different set of emotions people go through. It doesn't look like it looks on TV. It's quite sickening.
Ogre, who considered the tour to be a high point in his career, compared the band's performances to something like intense car races. "People go there expecting an accident to happen ... I was really running off that car-crash energy".
Following the tour, Ogre became involved with Martin Atkins' project Pigface in 1991, for a short time becoming the group's lead vocalist. Pigface included talent from several other industrial groups such as William Rieflin of Ministry and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who helped record the song "Suck". Ogre and Reznor performed the song together in the live album Welcome to Mexico... Asshole. Also on the album was a cover of the song "T.F.W.O." from Too Dark Park, led by Ogre.
In 2003, Alexander Chow of Spin magazine named Too Dark Park an essential industrial album, stating that "schizophrenic beats, manic-depressive mumblings, and just the right dose of fist-raising choruses" made for a dance floor favorite.
Last Rights (1992)
Following Too Dark Park, Skinny Puppy was commissioned by the dance group La La La Human Steps to compose several songs for their 1991 production Infante C'est Destroy, a duty shared alongside the likes of Einstürzende Neubauten. It was also during this time that Ogre made a concerted effort to rid his drug addictions. In an interview with CITR-FM, Ogre discussed his ordeals with hepatitis A and subsequent hospilization; he also thanked Pigface for looking after him during his "hour of need".
Skinny Puppy released their seventh studio album, Last Rights, in 1992. It was the last album the band released under Nettwerk/Capitol. Relationships between the band members during the album's production were "tense and unhealthy", with Ogre, under the supervision of Rave, coming into the studio at night to perform vocals for the music Key and Goettel composed earlier in the day. Ogre said that the production of Last Rights acted as a form of therapy which he used to help him come to terms with his addictions. "It's painful for me to be reminded of certain things, but for me to say it never happened is wrong. I'll be glad to put it behind me, but I had to do this".
Described by Entertainment Weekly as a "nonstop stretch of horrific soundscapes", Last Rights became the first Skinny Puppy record to chart on the Billboard 200, peaking at No. 193. The album remained on Billboard's Heatseekers album chart for several weeks, peaking at No. 10. The track "Inquisition" was released as a single and included several alternative cuts of the song, as well as the b-side "LaHuman8" (one of the tracks produced for La La La Human Steps). A second single, "Love in Vein", was never released, although an unfinished remix intended for it later appeared on Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996. A music video was created for the song "Killing Game" which featured a student dance troupe performing in "high-contrast black and white".
A track titled "Left Handshake" was excluded from Last Rights, leaving a blank track 10 on some copies of the album. Clearance for a lengthy vocal sample from Timothy Leary's Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out, was approved by Leary, but denied by the copyright holder, Henry G. Saperstein. Commenting on the ordeal, Key said, "We tried to convince him, but he [Saperstein] said, 'it doesn't matter what Leary said, he doesn't own his own work'". The song, in which Ogre provides commentary to Leary's instructions for avoiding a "bad trip", was eventually released on the initial European edition of Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996, and on a limited edition single called "Track 10" sold at the Skinny Puppy reunion concert in 2000 at Dresden.
The stage show for the Last Rights tour in North America, much like the album itself, was built around a detailed narrative inspired by Ogre's past ordeals with drug abuse. The show involved Ogre interacting with a backing film by way of a virtual reality machine, a tree made of human heads and fetuses, and numerous other props and costumes. For this tour, Key once more focused exclusively on live drumming, leaving Goettel on keyboard duty. One incident that occurred at a show in Boston involved several concert goers climbing on stage and grabbing at Ogre's various masks and props, several of which were stolen. The band's manager, Tim Gore, pursued the thieves but was punched by a security guard. Following the punch, Gore began having issues breathing and was taken to a hospital; the guard was fired as a result of the incident.
The Process, Goettel's death and breakup (1993–1999)
In 1993, Skinny Puppy contributed the song "Ode to Groovy" to the compilation album In Defense of Animals, released through Restless Records. The album was named after the animal rights group of the same name. Though the track is credited to Skinny Puppy, Ogre and Rave were the only people to work on it.
Ogre, Key, and Goettel signed a contract with American Recordings and moved to Malibu, California to record The Process, a concept album inspired by 1960s cult The Process Church of The Final Judgment, with Roli Mosimann producing. The recording sessions were beset by everything from fires and floods, to the Northridge earthquake. Mosimann was eventually replaced with Martin Atkins. Atkins' presence exacerbated the rift that was forming between Ogre and the rest of the band. The band's bickering and excessive drug use made the recording process so long and costly that American reduced Skinny Puppy's contract from three albums to one. In 1994, Key and Goettel returned to Vancouver with the master tapes, but Ogre remained in Los Angeles and quit Skinny Puppy in June 1995. Goettel was found dead of a heroin overdose in his parents' home two months later.
The Process was eventually completed with Rave and released in 1996. It was dedicated to the memory of Goettel. It was an overall stylistic departure from their previous albums, prominently featuring untreated vocals, guitar, and more accessible song structures. The liner notes that accompanied the CD included thank-yous to "Electronic Music Lovers" and "Puppy People", followed by the words "The End" in bold type. The album charted on the Billboard 200 at No. 102 and reached the No. 1 spot on Billboard'''s Heatseekers album chart.
During the Process era, a loose-knit art/philosophy collective also known as The Process was formed, with early contributions from Ogre and Genesis P-Orridge, among others. P-Orridge and Chris Carter jammed with Skinny Puppy during this period, a recording of which was eventually released as Puppy Gristle on a limited basis in 2002. The creation of the Download project, which Key and Goettel formed with Mark Spybey and Phil Western, also occurred at this time. Download explored everything from electronic improvisation with spoken vocals to techno, and toured in 1996.
Earlier, in 1993, Goettel and Western had issued a breakbeat hardcore single (under the name aDuck) on their own label, Subconscious Records. After Goettel's death, Subconscious evolved into a recording studio and record label imprint that Key used to release a number of his own and Skinny Puppy's recordings. Key also continued to work with The Tear Garden, produced industrial/trance music with Western in the side project platEAU, and released his first solo album in 1998.
Ogre had toured extensively with Martin Atkins' industrial supergroup Pigface since 1991, and toured with them again after leaving Skinny Puppy. He recorded material for his side project WELT. with Ruby's Mark Walk before quitting Skinny Puppy, but due to legal issues with American Recordings, this would not see release until 2001 under the new name, ohGr. In the meantime, he toured with KMFDM, and released an album with Martin Atkins under the name Rx (also known as Ritalin). The ohGr and Rx releases included some of Ogre's most positive and forward-thinking songwriting to date. Several collections were released while Skinny Puppy was dormant, including Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996, and The Singles Collect and B-Sides Collect in 1999. Nettwerk commissioned a remix album in 1998; titled remix dystemper, it featured various Skinny Puppy tracks re-worked by artists including Autechre, Deftones, and Guru. Ogre and Walk also took part, contributing a remix of "Dig It" and an updated version of Remissions "Smothered Hope" with new vocals by Ogre.
In 1999, "Draining Faces" appeared on the soundtrack for The Blair Witch Project.
Reunion, The Greater Wrong of the Right and Mythmaker (2000–2008)
In August 2000, at the insistence of German promoters, Ogre and Key reunited and performed live as Skinny Puppy for the first time since 1992 at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden. The show was meant to be a continuation of the Last Rights tour, with the stage design taking influence from those performances. Rather than find a replacement for Goettel, the band simply left the keyboard station on stage empty. The performance was filmed and recorded, and a live album, Doomsday: Back and Forth Series 5: Live in Dresden, was released in 2001; a DVD release was planned but canceled by Nettwerk. Live clips of "Testure" and "Worlock" as well as a behind the scenes interview with the band were broadcast on Crazy Clip TV in Germany and "Worlock" was included on a VCD compilation by German magazine Sonic Seducer in 2002.
Key joined ohGr on drums for its 2001 tour, while Ogre appeared on the track "Frozen Sky" on Key's 2001 album The Ghost of Each Room. When asked by Terrorizer magazine about the future of Skinny Puppy, Key responded:
Our goals for the future are to combine everything, take the best of what we can do with Ogre, and the best of what we have from our past, as well as the future stuff that we can do, and put it into one touring situation which I'm sure will stroll back into bloodville.
The first new Skinny Puppy track in several years, "Optimissed", appeared on the Underworld soundtrack in 2003. Ogre, Key, Mark Walk and various guests, including Danny Carey of Tool and Wayne Static of Static-X, recorded the band's ninth studio album, The Greater Wrong of the Right, released in 2004 on Synthetic Symphony, a sub-label of SPV. The album, described by Key as being based in "pseudopop", received generally favorable reviews from critics and landed on several Billboard charts. A music video was made for the song "Pro-Test" which featured a style unlike many of the group's previous work, so much so that some were unsure if it was an official video.
Skinny Puppy toured North America and Europe in support of the album in 2004, joined by William Morrison on guitar and Justin Bennett on drums. Shows in Toronto and Montreal were filmed for the live DVD Greater Wrong of the Right Live, which was released in September 2005. The DVD included Information Warfare, a documentary made by Morrison about the U.S.-led wars in Iraq. The anti-Bush administration stance taken by the band at their live shows drew the ire of PABAAH (Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood), which attempted a boycott of college radio stations that played Skinny Puppy.
Skinny Puppy toured Europe again in 2005, and returned to the studio to complete their next album, Mythmaker, which was released in January 2007. The album reached No. 4 on the Independent Albums Chart, No. 5 on the Dance/Electronic Albums Chart, and No. 17 on the Heatseekers Chart, but barely broke the Billboard 200. The band's 2007 North American and European tour, titled Mythrus, began in May 2007. While some fans longed for the sounds of their earlier days, Ogre, speaking with Electronic Musician, stated the band's intention was to move forward rather than dwell in the past. "Some people think that the stuff we do now is a pale imitation of the past. All of the older stuff had a time and place, and we decided to move forward to where we are now".
In Solvent See tour and HanDover (2009–2012)
According to a news posting on the official Skinny Puppy website, the band's next studio album was originally slated for release in October 2009, but the release of this album was delayed due to insolvency issues with the SPV label (thus leading to Ogre naming the 2009 tour the "In Solvent See" tour). These issues were not expected to be resolved until the end of 2009. However, the "In Solvent See" Tour took place as planned, and began on 30 October.
In October 2010, there were reports that the new Skinny Puppy album would be released in February 2011. In May 2011, Skinny Puppy announced that they finished recording a new album titled HanDover, and that they were soliciting it to other record labels for a September 2011 release date. On 27 August 2011, HanDover was officially confirmed as having a 25 October 2011, release in the United States and a 28 October 2011, release in Europe. Steven R Gilmore created the artwork for the album once again. The album landed on a number of Billboard charts, including a spot at No. 168 on the Billboard 200 and No. 9 on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart.
Skinny Puppy were scheduled to perform at numerous European festivals in the summer of 2010, including the Amphi Festival in Germany, the 2010 Waregem Gothic Festival in Belgium, and the Recession Festival in Denmark. A live album, titled Bootlegged, Broke and in Solvent Seas and recorded on the band's 2010 European tour, was released on 12 June 2012.
Weapon and subsequent tours (2013–present)
Skinny Puppy announced that a new album, entitled Weapon, would be released on 28 May 2013. The album was inspired by news brought to the band by a former guard at Guantanamo Bay that their music had been used to torture inmates. Inspiration also came from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and from Ogre's personal views on the human species; in an interview with Vice, Ogre stated that he "view[s] the human being primarily as a weapon, and a lot of the things that we've created have had disastrous effects on us as a species". The album was released to generally favorable reviews from critics, several noting the 1980s-esque musical style, and included a re-hashed version of the Remission-era track "Solvent".
Key told the Phoenix New Times that the band had been dissatisfied with HanDovers production schedule, noting that it had taken them several years to produce the album. For Weapon, they made a return to the fast-paced, one-song-a-day style of their early years. The decision to remake the song "Solvent" helped to set the album's quickened pace; Key said that the music they were making for the album wouldn't sound correct "If it didn't sound like something we had just made quickly, like in the old days".
The band released a music video for the song "Illisit" and in October 2013, announced their Live Shape For Arms Tour, a North American tour starting in January 2014 at The Observatory in Santa Ana, CA. In early 2014, Ogre and Key sent an invoice of $666,000 to the US government for the use of their music at Guantanamo Bay, bringing the issue to the attention of mainstream media outlets. Later in 2014, the Alliance of Sound tour was announced, with performances by Skinny Puppy, VNV Nation, Haujobb, and Youth Code. However, in early November, Front Line Assembly replaced VNV Nation and the tour was renamed Eye vs. Spy, which was a 17-city North American tour between 28 November to 20 December 2014.
In June 2015, Skinny Puppy performed at the Amnesia Rockfest in Montebello, Canada, alongside acts such as Ministry and The Dillinger Escape Plan. Following two successful tours with Weapon, the band yet again embarked with Youth Code, this time to play shows across North America in 2015 and across Europe in 2017 under the Down the SocioPath tour, which dropped all Weapon tracks and instead introduced many songs from the band's 1996 album, The Process, which had not been accompanied by any live performances due to the death of Goettel in 1995. Unlike the previous tours for Weapon, Down the SocioPath scaled back the theatrics and introduced Matthew Setzer as a live guitarist. Ogre began these concerts in a white hooded robe which was removed to reveal a suit into which a stagehand inserted oversized needles. The Down the Sociopath Too Euro 2017 leg lasted from 30 May to 16 June 2017. The tour included stops at the Download Festival in France, Primavera Sound, and Wave-Gotik-Treffen.
Style
Sound
Inspired by the music of Suicide, SPK, Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Cabaret Voltaire, Chrome, Throbbing Gristle, Bauhaus, Joy Division, New Order, Depeche Mode, Fad Gadget, Nocturnal Emissions, Portion Control, and The Legendary Pink Dots, music which had been accessible to the band primarily via tape exchange, Skinny Puppy experimented with analog and digital recording techniques, composing multi-layered music with synthesizers, drum machines, acoustic percussion, tape loops, samplers, and conventional rock music instruments to create what they called "audio sculpture". Their extensive use of sampling from horror films and radio broadcasts served to "clarify or obscure" song meanings, and they applied liberal amounts of distortion and other effects to Ogre's vocals, which are often delivered as a stream of consciousness. Lyrics commonly reference social and political subjects including animal rights, environmental degradation, drug addiction, suicide, war, privacy, and self-determination. They have also used their music to draw attention to events such as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the AIDS epidemic, and the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Skinny Puppy's often informal, improvisational approach to musical composition is indicated by use of the term "brap", coined by them and defined as a verb meaning "to get together, hook up electronic instruments, get high, and record".
Initially a dark synth-pop group, Skinny Puppy took on a more industrial sound following the inclusion of Dwayne Goettel in 1986, and later came to be recognized as pioneers of the electro-industrial genre. Their music has been described as encompassing a range styles including ambient music, avant-funk, noise rock and industrial metal. The music that followed Goettel's death has been likened to genres such as glitch and intelligent dance music. The Village Voice described Skinny Puppy's early work as "dark electro-pop", while Billboard's Bill Coleman thought of them as a "moody techno-outfit" with an "aggravating" musical delivery. People magazine called Ogre's vocals "incomprehensible", and likened the group's use of sampling to noises heard on "a TV set in an adjoining hotel room". AllMusic referred to Skinny Puppy's music as "primal" and "Kraftwerk gone netherworld", going on to say that unlike the bands that followed in their wake, "Ogre and Key knew how to craft tunes and marry them to the most ingenious of sound patterns". Ogre told the Windsor Star in 1986 that "in some sense our music, or the feeling expressed by our music, is felt by a lot more people" than had been anticipated.
Ogre said in an interview with Auxiliary Magazine in June 2013, "there is a very military side to Industrial music, and we are far more in the psychedelic side."
Music videos
Due to their graphic nature, the majority of Skinny Puppy's videos received limited commercial airplay, or were outright banned from broadcast. The music video for "Stairs and Flowers" was banned by the Canadian Censorship Bureau because of scenes depicting "an excrement-covered woman being beaten by soldiers"; the woman in question was Ogre soaked in mud. The letterbox effect used in the video for "Dig It", which portrayed stock market footage, was accused by both the bureau and MuchMusic to instead be showing pornography. Also banned was the video for "Testure", an action resulting from a viewer poll held by CityTV, as was the video for the song "Worlock", which was banned from MTV. Ogre, a self-described horror fan, defended the "Worlock" video by saying "I knew there was no way they'd play 'Worlock' there [the United States]. But I went out to make that video so no one would play it!"; he affirmed that the video was meant to draw attention to censorship in horror films. Some of the band's videos have received airplay, such as those for the promotional songs "Killing Game" and "Pro-test"; "Dig It" was also regularly played on MTV. A 30-second television promo was produced for the band by Capital Records in 1987, featuring a mix of scenes from the "Stairs and Flowers" and "Dig It" videos.
In a 1990 radio interview, Goettel explained the group's outlook on music videos, stating that "it's great to do videos when you have the money to do them, but for Skinny Puppy's part it's less of a promotional tool". He said that touring and word of mouth were their preferred avenues of promotion. "When a video gets made its not like 'OK we're going to spend $50,000 and it's going to sell this many more records'... it doesn't sell any more records".
Live performances
Skinny Puppy is noted for theatrical and controversial live performances which blend performance art with music. Ogre has been critical of the band's early performances, telling Spin magazine in 1992 that "I would do things on stage that would blow – they just wouldn't work". Live performances involved periods of musical improvisation, film projections, and elaborate stage props and machines, many of which are designed and built by Ogre himself. While discussing Skinny Puppy's performances, Ogre remarked that "our shows combine images with theater. It works better than just coming out and doing a horror magic routine". He explained to the Vancouver Sun in 1988 that he wanted his act to have "that grey area where anything could happen – where I can cut my head off by accident and people will go, 'wow, that's great'".
On-stage theatrics have included Ogre being suspended from racks and cables, play with a hangman's noose, use of an angle grinder, and mock executions of Ogre and George H.W. Bush. Following the 2004 United States presidential election, promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances. This reaction was prompted by the performance of a mock execution on stage, during which Ogre was "decapitated" by actors dressed as then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The band was also asked by Samsung (who had been asked by Ogre to sponsor the band with a large flat screen) to "not insult the president" while performing on stage. In a 1987 television interview with Kim Clarke Champniss, Key explained that while Ogre follows a "rough guideline" during a live performance, a majority of his on-stage theatrics are conceived spontaneously. Key told Champniss that Ogre's demeanor on stage could "range from just a sort of laid back kind of lurking to a rampant psycho". Ogre once remarked that touring was, for himself, like "dating hydrogen peroxide", referencing the numerous injuries which he would acquire over the course of touring.
Though Ogre and Key have remained the only constant members of Skinny Puppy's live act since Goettel's death, the pair have hired various other musicians to assist them onstage. They include drummer Justin Bennett, guitarist William Morrison, and guitarist Matthew Setzer.
Influence and legacy
Despite little mainstream airplay, several Skinny Puppy releases have charted in North America and Europe, and their influence on industrial and electronic music is considerable. Widely considered originators of a unique sound and live performance style, Skinny Puppy are also known as pioneers of the industrial rock and electro-industrial genres. They were one of the earliest groups to help popularize industrial music, and the Los Angeles Times recognized Ogre as the "first industrial rock star". Their gloomy and androgynous aesthetic helped attract the attention of the goth scene, from which they were able to draw a larger female audience than any previous industrial group. By the end of the 90s, they had sold some two million records for Nettwerk worldwide, and two of their releases, Remission and Bites, were certified gold in Canada.
Their music has spawned "a litter of like-minded bands", extending from independent acts like Tin Omen, to industrial rock project Nine Inch Nails, who opened for Skinny Puppy for a short time on their 1988 VIVIsectVI tour. Trent Reznor also acknowledged that Skinny Puppy's "Dig It" inspired the very first Nine Inch Nails track written, "Down in It". Canadian synth-pop artist Grimes includes Skinny Puppy as an influence on her music, having grown up in Vancouver's industrial music scene. Sara Taylor of the EBM group Youth Code has said that the song "Worlock" was "one of the most influential songs" she had ever heard. Other artists impacted by Skinny Puppy's music include Marilyn Manson, Chester Bennington, Moby, Jonathan Davis, Daron Malakian, 3Teeth, Foals vocalist Yannis Philippakis, Al Jourgensen, Chris Vrenna, John Grant, Mortiis,Blush Response, Celldweller, Finite Automata, Shooter Jennings, Death Grips vocalist MC Ride, X Marks the Pedwalk, Wumpscut, Haujobb, Orgy, Filter, Front Line Assembly, Orphx, Crystal Castles, AFI side project Blaqk Audio, and Mayhem vocalist Attila Csihar.
The band inspired a tribute album, Hymns of the Worlock: A Tribute to Skinny Puppy published by Cleopatra Records, which features groups such as Crocodile Shop and The Electric Hellfire Club. Skinny Puppy's remix album Remix dystemper includes contributions from a wide array of musicians such as electronic music DJ Josh Wink, Guru, KMFDM, Deftones, and former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna. Vrenna's solo project, Tweaker, opened for Skinny Puppy during their 2004 North American tour. Danny Carey from Tool and Wayne Static of Static-X provided drums and backup vocals, respectively, for the song "Use Less" from The Greater Wrong of the Right.
Ogre worked with KMFDM on several occasions, touring with them in 1997 and providing vocals on the song "Torture" from their album Symbols (the song also features production from Dave Ogilvie) as well as for the songs "That's All" and "Full Worm Garden" from 1999's Adios. Skinny Puppy also provided a remix for the Mötley Crüe song "Hooligan's Holiday"; Nikki Sixx reported that the band "just dumped the whole song in the computer and went off".
Skinny Puppy's music has been included in the soundtracks of films such as Bad Influence, An American Werewolf in Paris, The Blair Witch Project, Underworld, and Saw II, among others. The group was given a brief role as the "gang of goons" in the 1995 dark comedy film The Doom Generation. The 1996 Video Game Descent II included original music from Ogre and Mark Walk, while the 2014 PlayStation exclusive LittleBigPlanet 3 featured the song "Rodent" from the album Rabies.
Alternative Press included Skinny Puppy in their 1996 list of "100 underground inspirations of the past 20 years."
While discussing the possibility of Nine Inch Nails being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Richard Patrick of the band Filter remarked "what about Skinny Puppy?", going on to say that while Nine Inch Nails is the more famous of the two, Skinny Puppy were one of the first groups to craft "scary and mean" industrial music.
Side-projects
Key and Ogre are active in a number of other projects besides Skinny Puppy. Key has released several solo albums including Music for Cats and The Ghost of Each Room in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Doubting Thomas, a project led by Key and the late Dwayne Goettel, was an outlet for mostly instrumental compositions (save for several film and television samples). The projects only releases were Father Don't Cry in 1990 and The Infidel in 1991, both released through Wax Trax! Records. Download was founded by Key and Goettel in 1995 and included the assistance of frequent Skinny Puppy contributors Ken Marshall and Anthony Valcic. The group has released a number of records since its formation and notably provided the soundtrack album Charlie's Family in 1997 for the film The Manson Family, directed by Jim Van Bebber; the film was released six years after the album. Bebber had approached Key to produce the soundtrack, having previously directed several Skinny Puppy videos as well as the short horror film Chunk Blower, which starred Goettel and Bill Leeb of Front Line Assembly. Other notable projects include The Tear Garden with Edward Ka-Spel for The Legendary Pink Dots, platEAU with Phil Western, and Cyberaktif with Goettel and Leeb. Key also works as Scaremeister, his film scoring alter ego, having previously contributed to John Debney's score for End of Days. Scaremeister composed the album 31 Spirits, a collection of short musical pieces which have been used in the trailers of numerous films such as Inglourious Basterds, My Bloody Valentine, and The Book of Eli.
Ogre's main project outside Skinny Puppy is ohGr, which has released five albums, Welt (2001), SunnyPsyOp (2003), Devils in my Details (2008), UnDeveloped (2011), and TrickS (2018). In the mid-nineties, Ogre and producer Martin Atkins created the project known as Rx (formerly known as Ritalin). Rx released only one album, Bedside Toxicology, in 1998. He also toured extensively with Pigface (1991–1995) and Ministry (1987–1990) and appeared on a number of Pigface and Ministry-related recordings.
Guantanamo Bay torture allegations
Skinny Puppy have accused the US military of using their music to torture inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, without the band's knowledge or permission. In response, the band have sent an "invoice" to the Pentagon.
Members
Current
Nivek Ogre – vocals, keyboards (1982–1996, 2003–present)
cEvin Key – guitars, drums, bass, synthesizers (1982–1996, 2003–present)
Mark Walk – keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, bass, drums (2003–present)
Former
Dwayne Goettel – keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, bass (1986–1995; died 1995)
Bill Leeb (Wilhelm Schroeder) – bass synth, backing vocals (1984–1986)
Touring
Justin Bennett – drums (2004–present)
Matthew Setzer – guitars (2015–present)
William Morrison – guitars (2004–2005)
Timeline
Discography
Remission (1984)
Bites (1985)
Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse (1986)
Cleanse Fold and Manipulate (1987)
VIVIsectVI (1988)
Rabies (1989)
Too Dark Park (1990)
Last Rights (1992)
The Process (1996)
The Greater Wrong of the Right (2004)
Mythmaker (2007)
hanDover (2011)
Weapon (2013)
Videography
Ain't It Dead Yet?, 1991, VHS/DVD
Live performance at The Concert Hall, Toronto, Ontario, 31 May and 1 June 1987.
Video Collection (1984-1992), 1996, VHS/DVD
Includes videos for "Dig It", "Stairs and Flowers", "Far Too Frail" (live footage 1985), "Smothered Hope" (live footage 1985), "Deep Down Trauma Hounds" (live footage from the 1987 Ain't It Dead Yet? performance), "Testure", "Spasmolytic", and "Killing Game".
Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4, 1996, 2-CD
Includes a number of video clips on those editions which included a CD-ROM portion.
Greater Wrong of the Right LIVE, 2005, 2-DVD
Live performances in Toronto, Ontario, and Montreal, Quebec in late 2004. Also includes videos for "Pro-Test", "Spasmolytic" (live footage 1990), and "Love in Vein" (live footage 1992).
A number of other, promo-only videos were released, including "State Aid" (live footage 1988), "Worlock" (1990), "Candle" (1996), "Curcible" (1996), "Hardset Head" (1996), and "Haze" (2007).
See also
Go Ask Ogre List of bands from British Columbia
Music of Vancouver
References
Citations
Bibliography
Further reading
Interviews in IndustrialnatioN'' Magazine Issue No. 5, Issue No. 13, & Issue No. 21.
External links
American Recordings (record label) artists
Canadian electronic music groups
Canadian industrial music groups
Canadian techno music groups
Capitol Records artists
Dark ambient music groups
Dependent Records artists
Electro-industrial music groups
Electronic body music groups
Musical groups established in 1982
Musical groups disestablished in 1995
Musical groups reestablished in 2003
Noise musical groups
Canadian post-punk music groups
Musical groups from Vancouver
Industrial rock musical groups
Metropolis Records artists
1982 establishments in British Columbia
1996 disestablishments in British Columbia
2003 establishments in British Columbia | false | [
"The Canadian electro-industrial band Skinny Puppy has recorded many original songs, remixes, demos, outtakes, and improvisations. They appear listed below.\n\nStudio songs and in-house remixes\n\nStudio improvisations, demos, and outtakes\n\nLive improvisations and songs\n\nReferences\n\nNotes\n\nSources\n\nExternal links\nSkinny Puppy songs at AllMusic\n\nSkinny Puppy",
"The Canadian electro-industrial band Skinny Puppy has released twelve studio albums and two extended plays along with a number of live albums, compilations, and singles. The group formed in 1982 and released its debut EP, Back & Forth, in 1984. Later that year, Skinny Puppy was picked up by Nettwerk and released another EP, Remission, in December 1984. The band's first studio album, 1985's Bites, was its last with the original lineup of vocalist Nivek Ogre and producer / multi-instrumentalist cEvin Key; Dwayne Goettel joined in 1986, and the band released its next two albums, Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse and Cleanse Fold and Manipulate, in 1986 and 1987 respectively.\n\nVIVIsectVI (1988), Skinny Puppy's fourth album, was one of the band's most well-received efforts, placing on Melody Maker's best of 1988 list and garnering several retrospective accolades. Bradley Torreano of AllMusic hailed the album as a masterpiece, and Jim Harper of the same publication saw VIVIsectVI as the beginning of electro-industrial music. Rabies followed VIVIsectVI in 1989 and marked the band experimenting with industrial metal thanks to the influence of Ministry frontman Al Jourgensen. Key and Goettel expressed dissatisfaction with the album, and Skinny Puppy quickly returned to the studio for its sixth album, 1990's Too Dark Park.\n\nToo Dark Park was another critical highlight of the band's career, and Key described it as a return to form for Skinny Puppy. In 1992, with the band on the brink of dissolution due to Ogre's worsening drug addiction, Last Rights was released and saw the band pushing further into extreme noise territory. The making of Skinny Puppy's next and eighth album, The Process (which would eventually be released in 1996), was fraught with difficulties both internal and external; the band shifted to a new record label with a new recording studio and new producers, Ogre left, Goettel died of a heroin overdose, and the band ultimately dissolved with the album unfinished. Following dissolution, Skinny Puppy released several compilations and a live improvisation album titled Puppy Gristle (which had been recorded in 1993). Ogre and Key reunited in 2000 and a year later released a live album documenting Skinny Puppy's revival. The band returned to the studio and released The Greater Wrong of the Right in 2004, Mythmaker in 2007, HanDover in 2011, and Weapon in 2013.\n\nAlbums\n\nStudio albums\n\nExtended plays\n\nCompilation albums\n\nLive albums\n\nOther releases\n\nSingles\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Skinny Puppy on AllMusic\n Skinny Puppy on Bandcamp\n Skinny Puppy on Discogs\n\nDiscography\nDiscographies of Canadian artists"
] |
[
"Skinny Puppy",
"Live performances",
"when did skinny puppy's live performances begin?",
"(1987-1988),"
] | C_c1a207f3a2e648579ef56e74dbf1253f_1 | who were part of this band? | 2 | Who was part of Skinny Puppy? | Skinny Puppy | Skinny Puppy is noted for theatrical and controversial live performances which blend performance art with music, especially in an ambitious period that spanned their Head Trauma (1987-1988), VIVIsectVI (1988), Too Dark Park (1990), and Last Rights (1992) tours. Ogre has been critical of the bands early performances, telling Spin magazine in 1992 that "I would do things on stage that would blow-they just wouldn't work". Live performances involved periods of musical improvisation, film projections, and elaborate stage props and machines, many of which are designed and built by Ogre himself. While discussing Skinny Puppy's performances, Ogre once remarked that "our shows combine images with theater. It works better than just coming out and doing a horror magic routine". On-stage theatrics included Ogre being suspended from racks and cables, play with a hangman's noose, Key cutting steel with an angle grinder, and mock executions of Ogre and George H.W. Bush. Following the 2004 Presidential Election in the United States, promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances. This reaction was prompted by the performance of a mock execution on stage, during which Ogre was decapitated by actors dressed as then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The band was also asked by Samsung (who had been asked by Ogre to sponsor the band with a large flat screen) to "not insult the president" while performing on stage. In a 1987 television interview with Kim Clarke Champniss, Key explained that while Ogre follows a "rough guideline" during a live performance, a majority of his on-stage theatrics are thought up of spontaneously. Key told Champniss that Ogre's demeanor on stage could "range from just a sort of laid back kind of lurking to a rampant psycho". Ogre once remarked that touring was, for himself, like "dating hydrogen peroxide", referencing the numerous injuries which he would acquire over the course of touring. Though Ogre and Key have remained the only constant members of Skinny Puppy's live act since the death of Dwayne Goettel, several other musicians have been hired to accompany the pair since 2004. They include drummer Justin Bennett, guitarist William Morrison, and guitarist Matthew Setzer. CANNOTANSWER | Key cutting steel with an angle grinder, | Skinny Puppy is a Canadian industrial music group formed in Vancouver in 1982. The group is among the founders of the industrial rock and electro-industrial genres. Initially envisioned as an experimental side-project by cEvin Key (Kevin Crompton) while he was in the new wave band Images in Vogue, Skinny Puppy evolved into a full-time project with the addition of vocalist Nivek Ogre (Kevin Ogilvie).
Over the course of a dozen studio albums and many live tours, Key and Ogre have been the only constant members. Other members have included Dwayne Goettel (1986–1995), Dave "Rave" Ogilvie (long-time associate, producer, and "unofficial" fourth member until 1996; not a relative of Kevin Ogilvie), Mark Walk (2003–present), and a number of guests, including Bill Leeb (1985–1986, under the pseudonym Wilhelm Schroeder), Al Jourgensen (1989), Danny Carey (2004), and many others.
After the self-release of their first cassette in 1984, Skinny Puppy soon signed to Vancouver label Nettwerk, anchoring its early roster. From their Nettwerk debut EP Remission in 1984 to their 1992 album Last Rights, Skinny Puppy developed into an influential band with a dedicated cult following, fusing elements of industrial, funk,
noise, new wave, electro, and rock music and making innovative use of sampling. Over the course of several tours of North America and Europe in this period, they became known for theatrical, horror-themed live performances and videos, drawing attention to issues such as chemical warfare and animal testing.
In 1993, Skinny Puppy left Nettwerk and long-time producer Rave, signing with American Recordings and relocating to Malibu, California, where drug problems and tension between band members plagued the recording of their next album, The Process (1996). Ogre quit Skinny Puppy in June 1995, and Goettel died of a heroin overdose two months later. Key and Ogre, already active in a number of other projects, went their separate ways, reuniting for a one-off Skinny Puppy concert at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden, Germany, in 2000. Reforming Skinny Puppy in 2003 with producer Mark Walk, they released their ninth album, The Greater Wrong of the Right (2004), which was followed by the release of the albums Mythmaker (2007) and HanDover (2011). In 2013, they released their twelfth album, Weapon, which was inspired by allegations that their music had been used for torture in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
History
Formation and first releases (1982–1985)
Skinny Puppy formed in 1982 as a side project for Kevin Crompton in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Crompton was dissatisfied with the pop direction of the band he was in, Images in Vogue, and began Skinny Puppy with the intention of doing something more compelling and experimental. Images in Vogue had become a popular act in Vancouver, achieving several radio hits and opening for groups such as Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, and Roxy Music. Crompton had planned Skinny Puppy to be a side project while he continued his work in Images in Vogue; however, when Images in Vogue relocated to Toronto, Crompton made Skinny Puppy his full-time project. Crompton had already created the name for the project and recorded several songs when he asked Kevin Graham Ogilvie to join. Ogilvie had been a roommate of Images in Vogue member Gary Blair Smith and had met Crompton at a party in late 1982. To avoid the confusion of having two people named Kevin in one band, the pair created stage names, with Crompton becoming cEvin Key and Ogilvie becoming Nivek Ogre.
Using Key's apartment as a makeshift studio, the duo began recording songs and in 1983 with the help of Images in Vogue recording engineer Dave "Rave" Ogilvie (no relation to Ogre), Skinny Puppy released the EP Back & Forth. This was the beginning of a long partnership between Skinny Puppy and Rave, who would serve as their producer until 1993, and again in 1995, and was occasionally listed as a member of the band in album liner notes. Though only 35 copies were ever printed, the self-released Back & Forth drew the attention of Vancouver startup label Nettwerk, who signed the band later that year. The first live Skinny Puppy show was held at the Unovis art gallery in Vancouver in February 1984; the British group Alien Sex Fiend were among the 300 people in attendance.
Ogre has said that Skinny Puppy acted as an escape for Key, who wished to distance himself from Images in Vogue: "He was looking for something to break out of [Images in Vogue], and maybe I was it". Key would continue to drum for Images in Vogue until the group relocated to Toronto in 1985. Key's concept behind Skinny Puppy came from the group's first song ever recorded, "K-9". The idea, according to Key, was to create music which explored "life as seen through a dog's eyes". Skinny Puppy also incorporated the use of "B-grade horror movie visuals", including fake blood and props, into their live performances. Key justified these "shock gore" antics with the following:
What we're presenting isn't much different from what [the audience] is subjected to in everyday life. For example, a commercial is a very plastic view of existence and reality. When you watch a TV show and see a world with picture-perfect endings, all you have to do is switch the station and watch the news.
Having scored a record deal with Nettwerk and with interest surrounding the Back & Forth EP growing, Skinny Puppy was invited to Vancouver's Mushroom Studios to work on new material. It was here that the group recruited Bill Leeb to perform bass synth and backing vocals. Like Ogre and Key before him, Leeb created a stage name, Wilhelm Schroeder; "my real name is Wilhelm" said Leeb, "Schroeder we picked out from the guy playing the piano in the Charlie Brown cartoon". Skinny Puppy released their second EP, Remission in December 1984, almost a year following Back & Forth.
Remission marked the first time Skinny Puppy would collaborate with artist Steven Gilmore, who created the album artwork. The EP was initially only released in vinyl, but was later given a cassette release in 1985. According to Nettwerk VP of A&R and Marketing George Maniatis, Remission "grabbed everybody by the you-know-whats" and, for Nettwerk Records, brought with it an association with industrial dance music. The EP was supported by music videos for the songs "Far Too Frail" and "Smothered Hope", the latter of which being the closest thing to a hit song any North American industrial act had achieved at the time.
Skinny Puppy released its first full-length album, Bites, in 1985 and was produced by Key and Dave Ogilvie. Tom Ellard of the Australian electronic act Severed Heads lent a hand to the production of Bites, acting as a producer and performing various sampling and mixing duties. Described by Billboard magazine as "techno dance...a la Kraftwerk", Bites yielded the underground hit "Assimilate". Key and Ogre opened for Chris & Cosey on their 1985 Canadian tour as Hell 'O' Death Day; some of the material the duo had performed would appear on Bites as bonus tracks. One of these bonus tracks, a song called "The Centre Bullet", featured lyrics by Legendary Pink Dots founder Edward Ka-Spel.
While Skinny Puppy had become well received by underground audiences in most major urban areas, due in part to their anti-consumerist themes and Cure-like aesthetics, not everyone was friendly to the group. Key described Skinny Puppy as the antithesis of "the Bruce Springsteen mentality of music", rejecting "Top 40 conformity". Toronto-based music journalist and DJ Greg Clow recalled Michael Williams, who was a VJ for Muchmusic, introducing him to Skinny Puppy, describing them as "Canada's answer to Depeche Mode".
Dwayne Goettel and stylistic transition (1986–1987)
In 1986, Nettwerk made a distribution deal with Capitol Records, allowing Skinny Puppy and others in Nettwerk's roster to expand their respective audiences. Capitol manager Stephen Powers stated that signing groups such as Skinny Puppy gave the company "a real credibility" with the alternative and college music scenes. Skinny Puppy also signed to Play It Again Sam, allowing the group's music to expand into Europe. It was this expansion into the European market that would help to make Skinny Puppy a "cash cow" for Nettwerk in the early years. In a 2007 interview with CraveOnline, Ogre commented on Skinny Puppy's time with Capitol, saying:
We're so lucky to have gotten here, and if we look back on the fact that we were on Capitol Records at a certain point, being distributed and making these albums under budget… there was one year when we were the only band on the label to profit, when MC Hammer lost a shitload of money. I can still appreciate how odd it was that we had the chance to do that because it doesn't really happen in a lot of cases.
Bill Leeb left Skinny Puppy in 1986 to pursue his own musical project, Front Line Assembly. Leeb gave his reasons for leaving the group stating that his bandmates expressed different ideas from his own and that he had been interested in singing. Leeb's replacement would be quiet Alberta native Dwayne Goettel. A classically trained musician, Goettel had been in a duo named Water with vocalist Sandy Weir and had worked with the synthpop band Psyche, among others.
Skinny Puppy's production values improved with the addition of Goettel, with Key remarking that "Dwayne brought us a whole new sense and aesthetic that we didn't have. Up to that point, we were really punk rock in our approach". Key continued on that "he [Goettel] had an incredible knowledge of equipment and at a very early stage was really the master of sampling, which had really just begun". Goettel's contributions to Skinny Puppy's second full-length effort, 1986's Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse, helped to propel the band towards the style of their "chaotic future masterworks". To promote the album, the band made an appearance on CBC Radio's Brave New Waves program in September 1986, and released their first single, "Dig It". A music video for "Dig It" was produced and received extensive airplay on MTV.
Further promotion for the album came from a world tour with the band Severed Heads. The tour proved to be a vital learning experience for the group, having encounters with, according to Key, "tour managers and agents that didn't pay us". In 1987, the song "Stairs and Flowers" was released as a single, as was a new song titled "Chainsaw". The group attracted the attention of the Parent Music Resource Center (PMRC), which named Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse one of several albums believed to be "violent, sexually explicit, or condoning substance abuse". The album was named by Melody Maker magazine as one of the best releases of the year.
Later in 1987 came Skinny Puppy's third full-length album, Cleanse Fold and Manipulate. Described as "a turning point, where experimentation is just beginning to gel with innovation", the album marks the point where the group began to explore more political themes, delving into topics such as the AIDS epidemic and the Vietnam War. A song from the album, "Addiction" was released as a single. The group later went on tour, with a performance at Toronto's Concert Hall being released on VHS in 1989 and CD in 1991 as Ain't It Dead Yet?. Also released in 1987 was Bites and Remission (through Capitol Records) and Remission & Bites (European release, through Pay It Again Sam), both compilations of Skinny Puppy's first two Nettwerk releases.
Subsequent success (1988–1989)
Skinny Puppy's live performances had become increasingly more elaborate, with Ogre interacting with an onstage crucifix and other "crudely constructed" stage props. Craig MacInnis of the Toronto Star described their new stage show as "neo-dadaist shock theatre", while Tom Lanham of the San Francisco Chronicle referred to it as "grotesque". The band continued to tour in 1988 with the European Head Trauma tour, supported by Edward Ka-Spel. Following the tour, the group returned to the studio to record what Ogre described would be the band's most critical statement regarding animal testing.
Skinny Puppy released their fourth album, VIVIsectVI, in 1988; the album's name is a pun intended to associate vivisection with Satanism (i.e. the "666 sect"). The group's primary aim with the album was to bring attention to the topic of vivisection and other issues regarding animal rights. The album's subject matter also deals with subjects such as chemical warfare, environmental waste, and disease. Lead track "Dogshit" was released as a single in 1988 under the name "Censor"; the name change was made by the band when it was decided that the single would not sell well with its original name. The single "Testure", which denounced the testing of animals for research purposes, reached No. 19 on Billboards Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in 1989. According to Ogre, "Testure" was intended to be accessible in the hope of spreading their "anti-vivisectionist" message. "It's the only song I think they will be able to play on the radio", he said. "I hope they do play it because it's the only way we can go beyond our ranks and our loyal fans who already understand the message". "Testure" also featured several well-chosen samples from the film The Plague Dogs, an animated adventure about two dogs who escape from a research laboratory. Melody Maker named VIVIsectVI one of the best albums of 1988.
Skinny Puppy toured in support of the album, featuring an early incarnation of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails as their opening act. The concept for the live show revolved around a vivisectionist (played by Ogre) who is eventually transformed into a tortured animal; the idea was to portray the "inner workings of the mind under the strain of vivisection". The stage show included the mock vivisection of a stuffed dog the band had named Chud. Following a show in Cincinnati, Ohio, Key, Ogre, and tour manager Dan McGee were arrested for "disorderly conduct" when an audience member, believing the stuffed animal Ogre was "vivisecting" to be a real dog, called the police. Two plainclothes officers entered the group's dressing room demanding they inspect the prop. Following a heated argument, the trio spent the night in jail, but were released the following day after paying a $200 fine.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the band members began working on various side projects. Key and Goettel were involved with The Tear Garden (a collaboration with The Legendary Pink Dots) and Doubting Thomas (an outlet for their non-Skinny Puppy instrumentals). The band Hilt, a collaboration between Key and Goettel, and Al Nelson, also started when Nettwerk challenged the group to produce an album for as little money as possible. Ogre struck up a friendship with Ministry's Al Jourgensen, having first worked together during the recording of the PTP song "Show Me Your Spine" (featured in the 1987 film RoboCop).
For Skinny Puppy's fifth album, Rabies, released in 1989, Jourgensen joined Rave as producer. The album, featuring Jourgensen's electric guitar work and backing vocals, drew mixed reception from fans. Despite these reactions, the album was a commercial success, selling 150,000 copies and receiving extensive airplay on college radio. The single "Worlock" – which featured samples of Charles Manson singing parts of the song "Helter Skelter" from The Beatles' White Album, accompanied by a fragmented portion of the songs guitar introduction – helped to bring the band "massive popularity". A video produced for the song, featuring spliced-together footage from dozens of horror films and a statement denouncing censorship of the genre by the MPAA, was circulated widely as a promotional and bootleg item. The song "Tin Omen" was also released as a single and "Hexonxonx" received some airplay on alternative radio. In spite of the album's initial mixed reception, Brad Filicky in a 2003 issue of CMJ magazine named Rabies as a classic album, calling it "a masterpiece of the industrial genre".
This period marked the beginning of divisions within the band, as rather than tour in support of Rabies, Ogre joined Ministry while they toured in support of their album The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste (1989); Ogre contributed guitars, keyboards, and vocals during the tour. Ogre had also begun working with the Ministry side project Revolting Cocks. Key was later quoted saying of Ogre's involvement with Ministry and, later on, Martin Atkins' Pigface that he sometimes felt "like a wife that's been cheated on".
Too Dark Park (1990–1991)
Following the production of Rabies, a divide grew between the group members, with Key and Goettel often siding against Ogre, feeling he was more interested in solo work. The group were ultimately disappointed with the outcome of Rabies, with Goettel saying that the completed product was "less within the Skinny Puppy vision", and Key being displeased with Jourgensen's involvement. Ogre also expressed his disapproval for the album, claiming that he had "flopped". "The work and artistic environment really weren't there at all either. It was completely negative".
Key and Goettel completed work on some of their side projects such a Hilt, releasing their first effort, Call the Ambulance (Before I Hurt Myself), which was produced by Rave. Key also reunited with Bill Leeb to form the project known as Cyberaktif; Goettel acted as an assistant producer and provided some instrumentation. Jourgensen offered Ogre the chance to tour with the Revolting Cocks, having provided vocals on their previous tour. Ogre refused the offer, citing some occurrences during his time with Ministry which led him to question his friendship with Jourgensen.
The group, having finished work on their various side projects, returned to the studio and released their sixth studio album, Too Dark Park, in 1990. Goettel said in a radio interview that the major intentions behind the album were to reevaluate what Skinny Puppy was and create a new style of music to mark the beginning of a new decade. This reevaluation included hiring Jim Cummins (I, Braineater) to design the cover artwork, feeling that their longtime designer Steven Gilmore had lost his creative spark.
Described as "forceful and consistently abrasive", Too Dark Park was what Key referred to as the true successor to "the last pure" Skinny Puppy album, VIVIsectVI. Critics such as Staci Bonner of Spin magazine applauded the use of sampling and stated that the album was a "return to the bloodbath" for the group. The album yielded the singles "Tormentor" and "Spasmolytic", the latter of which spawned a music video directed by Jim Van Bebber. Billboard called "Spasmolytic" a "delicious mind-altering affair", a sentiment shared by Wil Lewellyn of Treblezine who included the song in a list of the best underground songs of the 1990s.
Environmental degradation was a major theme on both the album and the North American Too Dark Park tour. For the tour, Key took on the role of drummer, leaving Goettel as lead keyboardist. Key told Alternative Press that "we could very well have a backing tape and stand behind synths playing two notes on the keyboard, but we've decided to physically strain ourselves and learn additional parts along with what we've already written". Onstage theatrics included a segment with Ogre performing on stucco stilts and pneumatic crutches, Ogre being hoisted from the stage by cables, and a backing film featuring scenes of graphic violence, most notably sequences from the Japanese film series Guinea Pig. Ogre later gave insight on the backing film's conception, saying:
We did an experiment ... We've always been accused of celebrating violence for idiotic reasons. [So] we used some images in our show from a film called Guinea Pig. They're these incredibly realistic, but simulated, Japanese snuff films. We inserted them into this roller-coaster ride of violent images and people were quite disgusted. People were vomiting in front of the stage. People came up to me after the show, saying I was the most disgusting human being-until they found out what it was all about. The whole reason we did that was to see if there was a difference. Will people react differently to something that's real as opposed to something they know is staged? They will. There's a whole different set of emotions people go through. It doesn't look like it looks on TV. It's quite sickening.
Ogre, who considered the tour to be a high point in his career, compared the band's performances to something like intense car races. "People go there expecting an accident to happen ... I was really running off that car-crash energy".
Following the tour, Ogre became involved with Martin Atkins' project Pigface in 1991, for a short time becoming the group's lead vocalist. Pigface included talent from several other industrial groups such as William Rieflin of Ministry and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who helped record the song "Suck". Ogre and Reznor performed the song together in the live album Welcome to Mexico... Asshole. Also on the album was a cover of the song "T.F.W.O." from Too Dark Park, led by Ogre.
In 2003, Alexander Chow of Spin magazine named Too Dark Park an essential industrial album, stating that "schizophrenic beats, manic-depressive mumblings, and just the right dose of fist-raising choruses" made for a dance floor favorite.
Last Rights (1992)
Following Too Dark Park, Skinny Puppy was commissioned by the dance group La La La Human Steps to compose several songs for their 1991 production Infante C'est Destroy, a duty shared alongside the likes of Einstürzende Neubauten. It was also during this time that Ogre made a concerted effort to rid his drug addictions. In an interview with CITR-FM, Ogre discussed his ordeals with hepatitis A and subsequent hospilization; he also thanked Pigface for looking after him during his "hour of need".
Skinny Puppy released their seventh studio album, Last Rights, in 1992. It was the last album the band released under Nettwerk/Capitol. Relationships between the band members during the album's production were "tense and unhealthy", with Ogre, under the supervision of Rave, coming into the studio at night to perform vocals for the music Key and Goettel composed earlier in the day. Ogre said that the production of Last Rights acted as a form of therapy which he used to help him come to terms with his addictions. "It's painful for me to be reminded of certain things, but for me to say it never happened is wrong. I'll be glad to put it behind me, but I had to do this".
Described by Entertainment Weekly as a "nonstop stretch of horrific soundscapes", Last Rights became the first Skinny Puppy record to chart on the Billboard 200, peaking at No. 193. The album remained on Billboard's Heatseekers album chart for several weeks, peaking at No. 10. The track "Inquisition" was released as a single and included several alternative cuts of the song, as well as the b-side "LaHuman8" (one of the tracks produced for La La La Human Steps). A second single, "Love in Vein", was never released, although an unfinished remix intended for it later appeared on Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996. A music video was created for the song "Killing Game" which featured a student dance troupe performing in "high-contrast black and white".
A track titled "Left Handshake" was excluded from Last Rights, leaving a blank track 10 on some copies of the album. Clearance for a lengthy vocal sample from Timothy Leary's Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out, was approved by Leary, but denied by the copyright holder, Henry G. Saperstein. Commenting on the ordeal, Key said, "We tried to convince him, but he [Saperstein] said, 'it doesn't matter what Leary said, he doesn't own his own work'". The song, in which Ogre provides commentary to Leary's instructions for avoiding a "bad trip", was eventually released on the initial European edition of Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996, and on a limited edition single called "Track 10" sold at the Skinny Puppy reunion concert in 2000 at Dresden.
The stage show for the Last Rights tour in North America, much like the album itself, was built around a detailed narrative inspired by Ogre's past ordeals with drug abuse. The show involved Ogre interacting with a backing film by way of a virtual reality machine, a tree made of human heads and fetuses, and numerous other props and costumes. For this tour, Key once more focused exclusively on live drumming, leaving Goettel on keyboard duty. One incident that occurred at a show in Boston involved several concert goers climbing on stage and grabbing at Ogre's various masks and props, several of which were stolen. The band's manager, Tim Gore, pursued the thieves but was punched by a security guard. Following the punch, Gore began having issues breathing and was taken to a hospital; the guard was fired as a result of the incident.
The Process, Goettel's death and breakup (1993–1999)
In 1993, Skinny Puppy contributed the song "Ode to Groovy" to the compilation album In Defense of Animals, released through Restless Records. The album was named after the animal rights group of the same name. Though the track is credited to Skinny Puppy, Ogre and Rave were the only people to work on it.
Ogre, Key, and Goettel signed a contract with American Recordings and moved to Malibu, California to record The Process, a concept album inspired by 1960s cult The Process Church of The Final Judgment, with Roli Mosimann producing. The recording sessions were beset by everything from fires and floods, to the Northridge earthquake. Mosimann was eventually replaced with Martin Atkins. Atkins' presence exacerbated the rift that was forming between Ogre and the rest of the band. The band's bickering and excessive drug use made the recording process so long and costly that American reduced Skinny Puppy's contract from three albums to one. In 1994, Key and Goettel returned to Vancouver with the master tapes, but Ogre remained in Los Angeles and quit Skinny Puppy in June 1995. Goettel was found dead of a heroin overdose in his parents' home two months later.
The Process was eventually completed with Rave and released in 1996. It was dedicated to the memory of Goettel. It was an overall stylistic departure from their previous albums, prominently featuring untreated vocals, guitar, and more accessible song structures. The liner notes that accompanied the CD included thank-yous to "Electronic Music Lovers" and "Puppy People", followed by the words "The End" in bold type. The album charted on the Billboard 200 at No. 102 and reached the No. 1 spot on Billboard'''s Heatseekers album chart.
During the Process era, a loose-knit art/philosophy collective also known as The Process was formed, with early contributions from Ogre and Genesis P-Orridge, among others. P-Orridge and Chris Carter jammed with Skinny Puppy during this period, a recording of which was eventually released as Puppy Gristle on a limited basis in 2002. The creation of the Download project, which Key and Goettel formed with Mark Spybey and Phil Western, also occurred at this time. Download explored everything from electronic improvisation with spoken vocals to techno, and toured in 1996.
Earlier, in 1993, Goettel and Western had issued a breakbeat hardcore single (under the name aDuck) on their own label, Subconscious Records. After Goettel's death, Subconscious evolved into a recording studio and record label imprint that Key used to release a number of his own and Skinny Puppy's recordings. Key also continued to work with The Tear Garden, produced industrial/trance music with Western in the side project platEAU, and released his first solo album in 1998.
Ogre had toured extensively with Martin Atkins' industrial supergroup Pigface since 1991, and toured with them again after leaving Skinny Puppy. He recorded material for his side project WELT. with Ruby's Mark Walk before quitting Skinny Puppy, but due to legal issues with American Recordings, this would not see release until 2001 under the new name, ohGr. In the meantime, he toured with KMFDM, and released an album with Martin Atkins under the name Rx (also known as Ritalin). The ohGr and Rx releases included some of Ogre's most positive and forward-thinking songwriting to date. Several collections were released while Skinny Puppy was dormant, including Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996, and The Singles Collect and B-Sides Collect in 1999. Nettwerk commissioned a remix album in 1998; titled remix dystemper, it featured various Skinny Puppy tracks re-worked by artists including Autechre, Deftones, and Guru. Ogre and Walk also took part, contributing a remix of "Dig It" and an updated version of Remissions "Smothered Hope" with new vocals by Ogre.
In 1999, "Draining Faces" appeared on the soundtrack for The Blair Witch Project.
Reunion, The Greater Wrong of the Right and Mythmaker (2000–2008)
In August 2000, at the insistence of German promoters, Ogre and Key reunited and performed live as Skinny Puppy for the first time since 1992 at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden. The show was meant to be a continuation of the Last Rights tour, with the stage design taking influence from those performances. Rather than find a replacement for Goettel, the band simply left the keyboard station on stage empty. The performance was filmed and recorded, and a live album, Doomsday: Back and Forth Series 5: Live in Dresden, was released in 2001; a DVD release was planned but canceled by Nettwerk. Live clips of "Testure" and "Worlock" as well as a behind the scenes interview with the band were broadcast on Crazy Clip TV in Germany and "Worlock" was included on a VCD compilation by German magazine Sonic Seducer in 2002.
Key joined ohGr on drums for its 2001 tour, while Ogre appeared on the track "Frozen Sky" on Key's 2001 album The Ghost of Each Room. When asked by Terrorizer magazine about the future of Skinny Puppy, Key responded:
Our goals for the future are to combine everything, take the best of what we can do with Ogre, and the best of what we have from our past, as well as the future stuff that we can do, and put it into one touring situation which I'm sure will stroll back into bloodville.
The first new Skinny Puppy track in several years, "Optimissed", appeared on the Underworld soundtrack in 2003. Ogre, Key, Mark Walk and various guests, including Danny Carey of Tool and Wayne Static of Static-X, recorded the band's ninth studio album, The Greater Wrong of the Right, released in 2004 on Synthetic Symphony, a sub-label of SPV. The album, described by Key as being based in "pseudopop", received generally favorable reviews from critics and landed on several Billboard charts. A music video was made for the song "Pro-Test" which featured a style unlike many of the group's previous work, so much so that some were unsure if it was an official video.
Skinny Puppy toured North America and Europe in support of the album in 2004, joined by William Morrison on guitar and Justin Bennett on drums. Shows in Toronto and Montreal were filmed for the live DVD Greater Wrong of the Right Live, which was released in September 2005. The DVD included Information Warfare, a documentary made by Morrison about the U.S.-led wars in Iraq. The anti-Bush administration stance taken by the band at their live shows drew the ire of PABAAH (Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood), which attempted a boycott of college radio stations that played Skinny Puppy.
Skinny Puppy toured Europe again in 2005, and returned to the studio to complete their next album, Mythmaker, which was released in January 2007. The album reached No. 4 on the Independent Albums Chart, No. 5 on the Dance/Electronic Albums Chart, and No. 17 on the Heatseekers Chart, but barely broke the Billboard 200. The band's 2007 North American and European tour, titled Mythrus, began in May 2007. While some fans longed for the sounds of their earlier days, Ogre, speaking with Electronic Musician, stated the band's intention was to move forward rather than dwell in the past. "Some people think that the stuff we do now is a pale imitation of the past. All of the older stuff had a time and place, and we decided to move forward to where we are now".
In Solvent See tour and HanDover (2009–2012)
According to a news posting on the official Skinny Puppy website, the band's next studio album was originally slated for release in October 2009, but the release of this album was delayed due to insolvency issues with the SPV label (thus leading to Ogre naming the 2009 tour the "In Solvent See" tour). These issues were not expected to be resolved until the end of 2009. However, the "In Solvent See" Tour took place as planned, and began on 30 October.
In October 2010, there were reports that the new Skinny Puppy album would be released in February 2011. In May 2011, Skinny Puppy announced that they finished recording a new album titled HanDover, and that they were soliciting it to other record labels for a September 2011 release date. On 27 August 2011, HanDover was officially confirmed as having a 25 October 2011, release in the United States and a 28 October 2011, release in Europe. Steven R Gilmore created the artwork for the album once again. The album landed on a number of Billboard charts, including a spot at No. 168 on the Billboard 200 and No. 9 on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart.
Skinny Puppy were scheduled to perform at numerous European festivals in the summer of 2010, including the Amphi Festival in Germany, the 2010 Waregem Gothic Festival in Belgium, and the Recession Festival in Denmark. A live album, titled Bootlegged, Broke and in Solvent Seas and recorded on the band's 2010 European tour, was released on 12 June 2012.
Weapon and subsequent tours (2013–present)
Skinny Puppy announced that a new album, entitled Weapon, would be released on 28 May 2013. The album was inspired by news brought to the band by a former guard at Guantanamo Bay that their music had been used to torture inmates. Inspiration also came from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and from Ogre's personal views on the human species; in an interview with Vice, Ogre stated that he "view[s] the human being primarily as a weapon, and a lot of the things that we've created have had disastrous effects on us as a species". The album was released to generally favorable reviews from critics, several noting the 1980s-esque musical style, and included a re-hashed version of the Remission-era track "Solvent".
Key told the Phoenix New Times that the band had been dissatisfied with HanDovers production schedule, noting that it had taken them several years to produce the album. For Weapon, they made a return to the fast-paced, one-song-a-day style of their early years. The decision to remake the song "Solvent" helped to set the album's quickened pace; Key said that the music they were making for the album wouldn't sound correct "If it didn't sound like something we had just made quickly, like in the old days".
The band released a music video for the song "Illisit" and in October 2013, announced their Live Shape For Arms Tour, a North American tour starting in January 2014 at The Observatory in Santa Ana, CA. In early 2014, Ogre and Key sent an invoice of $666,000 to the US government for the use of their music at Guantanamo Bay, bringing the issue to the attention of mainstream media outlets. Later in 2014, the Alliance of Sound tour was announced, with performances by Skinny Puppy, VNV Nation, Haujobb, and Youth Code. However, in early November, Front Line Assembly replaced VNV Nation and the tour was renamed Eye vs. Spy, which was a 17-city North American tour between 28 November to 20 December 2014.
In June 2015, Skinny Puppy performed at the Amnesia Rockfest in Montebello, Canada, alongside acts such as Ministry and The Dillinger Escape Plan. Following two successful tours with Weapon, the band yet again embarked with Youth Code, this time to play shows across North America in 2015 and across Europe in 2017 under the Down the SocioPath tour, which dropped all Weapon tracks and instead introduced many songs from the band's 1996 album, The Process, which had not been accompanied by any live performances due to the death of Goettel in 1995. Unlike the previous tours for Weapon, Down the SocioPath scaled back the theatrics and introduced Matthew Setzer as a live guitarist. Ogre began these concerts in a white hooded robe which was removed to reveal a suit into which a stagehand inserted oversized needles. The Down the Sociopath Too Euro 2017 leg lasted from 30 May to 16 June 2017. The tour included stops at the Download Festival in France, Primavera Sound, and Wave-Gotik-Treffen.
Style
Sound
Inspired by the music of Suicide, SPK, Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Cabaret Voltaire, Chrome, Throbbing Gristle, Bauhaus, Joy Division, New Order, Depeche Mode, Fad Gadget, Nocturnal Emissions, Portion Control, and The Legendary Pink Dots, music which had been accessible to the band primarily via tape exchange, Skinny Puppy experimented with analog and digital recording techniques, composing multi-layered music with synthesizers, drum machines, acoustic percussion, tape loops, samplers, and conventional rock music instruments to create what they called "audio sculpture". Their extensive use of sampling from horror films and radio broadcasts served to "clarify or obscure" song meanings, and they applied liberal amounts of distortion and other effects to Ogre's vocals, which are often delivered as a stream of consciousness. Lyrics commonly reference social and political subjects including animal rights, environmental degradation, drug addiction, suicide, war, privacy, and self-determination. They have also used their music to draw attention to events such as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the AIDS epidemic, and the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Skinny Puppy's often informal, improvisational approach to musical composition is indicated by use of the term "brap", coined by them and defined as a verb meaning "to get together, hook up electronic instruments, get high, and record".
Initially a dark synth-pop group, Skinny Puppy took on a more industrial sound following the inclusion of Dwayne Goettel in 1986, and later came to be recognized as pioneers of the electro-industrial genre. Their music has been described as encompassing a range styles including ambient music, avant-funk, noise rock and industrial metal. The music that followed Goettel's death has been likened to genres such as glitch and intelligent dance music. The Village Voice described Skinny Puppy's early work as "dark electro-pop", while Billboard's Bill Coleman thought of them as a "moody techno-outfit" with an "aggravating" musical delivery. People magazine called Ogre's vocals "incomprehensible", and likened the group's use of sampling to noises heard on "a TV set in an adjoining hotel room". AllMusic referred to Skinny Puppy's music as "primal" and "Kraftwerk gone netherworld", going on to say that unlike the bands that followed in their wake, "Ogre and Key knew how to craft tunes and marry them to the most ingenious of sound patterns". Ogre told the Windsor Star in 1986 that "in some sense our music, or the feeling expressed by our music, is felt by a lot more people" than had been anticipated.
Ogre said in an interview with Auxiliary Magazine in June 2013, "there is a very military side to Industrial music, and we are far more in the psychedelic side."
Music videos
Due to their graphic nature, the majority of Skinny Puppy's videos received limited commercial airplay, or were outright banned from broadcast. The music video for "Stairs and Flowers" was banned by the Canadian Censorship Bureau because of scenes depicting "an excrement-covered woman being beaten by soldiers"; the woman in question was Ogre soaked in mud. The letterbox effect used in the video for "Dig It", which portrayed stock market footage, was accused by both the bureau and MuchMusic to instead be showing pornography. Also banned was the video for "Testure", an action resulting from a viewer poll held by CityTV, as was the video for the song "Worlock", which was banned from MTV. Ogre, a self-described horror fan, defended the "Worlock" video by saying "I knew there was no way they'd play 'Worlock' there [the United States]. But I went out to make that video so no one would play it!"; he affirmed that the video was meant to draw attention to censorship in horror films. Some of the band's videos have received airplay, such as those for the promotional songs "Killing Game" and "Pro-test"; "Dig It" was also regularly played on MTV. A 30-second television promo was produced for the band by Capital Records in 1987, featuring a mix of scenes from the "Stairs and Flowers" and "Dig It" videos.
In a 1990 radio interview, Goettel explained the group's outlook on music videos, stating that "it's great to do videos when you have the money to do them, but for Skinny Puppy's part it's less of a promotional tool". He said that touring and word of mouth were their preferred avenues of promotion. "When a video gets made its not like 'OK we're going to spend $50,000 and it's going to sell this many more records'... it doesn't sell any more records".
Live performances
Skinny Puppy is noted for theatrical and controversial live performances which blend performance art with music. Ogre has been critical of the band's early performances, telling Spin magazine in 1992 that "I would do things on stage that would blow – they just wouldn't work". Live performances involved periods of musical improvisation, film projections, and elaborate stage props and machines, many of which are designed and built by Ogre himself. While discussing Skinny Puppy's performances, Ogre remarked that "our shows combine images with theater. It works better than just coming out and doing a horror magic routine". He explained to the Vancouver Sun in 1988 that he wanted his act to have "that grey area where anything could happen – where I can cut my head off by accident and people will go, 'wow, that's great'".
On-stage theatrics have included Ogre being suspended from racks and cables, play with a hangman's noose, use of an angle grinder, and mock executions of Ogre and George H.W. Bush. Following the 2004 United States presidential election, promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances. This reaction was prompted by the performance of a mock execution on stage, during which Ogre was "decapitated" by actors dressed as then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The band was also asked by Samsung (who had been asked by Ogre to sponsor the band with a large flat screen) to "not insult the president" while performing on stage. In a 1987 television interview with Kim Clarke Champniss, Key explained that while Ogre follows a "rough guideline" during a live performance, a majority of his on-stage theatrics are conceived spontaneously. Key told Champniss that Ogre's demeanor on stage could "range from just a sort of laid back kind of lurking to a rampant psycho". Ogre once remarked that touring was, for himself, like "dating hydrogen peroxide", referencing the numerous injuries which he would acquire over the course of touring.
Though Ogre and Key have remained the only constant members of Skinny Puppy's live act since Goettel's death, the pair have hired various other musicians to assist them onstage. They include drummer Justin Bennett, guitarist William Morrison, and guitarist Matthew Setzer.
Influence and legacy
Despite little mainstream airplay, several Skinny Puppy releases have charted in North America and Europe, and their influence on industrial and electronic music is considerable. Widely considered originators of a unique sound and live performance style, Skinny Puppy are also known as pioneers of the industrial rock and electro-industrial genres. They were one of the earliest groups to help popularize industrial music, and the Los Angeles Times recognized Ogre as the "first industrial rock star". Their gloomy and androgynous aesthetic helped attract the attention of the goth scene, from which they were able to draw a larger female audience than any previous industrial group. By the end of the 90s, they had sold some two million records for Nettwerk worldwide, and two of their releases, Remission and Bites, were certified gold in Canada.
Their music has spawned "a litter of like-minded bands", extending from independent acts like Tin Omen, to industrial rock project Nine Inch Nails, who opened for Skinny Puppy for a short time on their 1988 VIVIsectVI tour. Trent Reznor also acknowledged that Skinny Puppy's "Dig It" inspired the very first Nine Inch Nails track written, "Down in It". Canadian synth-pop artist Grimes includes Skinny Puppy as an influence on her music, having grown up in Vancouver's industrial music scene. Sara Taylor of the EBM group Youth Code has said that the song "Worlock" was "one of the most influential songs" she had ever heard. Other artists impacted by Skinny Puppy's music include Marilyn Manson, Chester Bennington, Moby, Jonathan Davis, Daron Malakian, 3Teeth, Foals vocalist Yannis Philippakis, Al Jourgensen, Chris Vrenna, John Grant, Mortiis,Blush Response, Celldweller, Finite Automata, Shooter Jennings, Death Grips vocalist MC Ride, X Marks the Pedwalk, Wumpscut, Haujobb, Orgy, Filter, Front Line Assembly, Orphx, Crystal Castles, AFI side project Blaqk Audio, and Mayhem vocalist Attila Csihar.
The band inspired a tribute album, Hymns of the Worlock: A Tribute to Skinny Puppy published by Cleopatra Records, which features groups such as Crocodile Shop and The Electric Hellfire Club. Skinny Puppy's remix album Remix dystemper includes contributions from a wide array of musicians such as electronic music DJ Josh Wink, Guru, KMFDM, Deftones, and former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna. Vrenna's solo project, Tweaker, opened for Skinny Puppy during their 2004 North American tour. Danny Carey from Tool and Wayne Static of Static-X provided drums and backup vocals, respectively, for the song "Use Less" from The Greater Wrong of the Right.
Ogre worked with KMFDM on several occasions, touring with them in 1997 and providing vocals on the song "Torture" from their album Symbols (the song also features production from Dave Ogilvie) as well as for the songs "That's All" and "Full Worm Garden" from 1999's Adios. Skinny Puppy also provided a remix for the Mötley Crüe song "Hooligan's Holiday"; Nikki Sixx reported that the band "just dumped the whole song in the computer and went off".
Skinny Puppy's music has been included in the soundtracks of films such as Bad Influence, An American Werewolf in Paris, The Blair Witch Project, Underworld, and Saw II, among others. The group was given a brief role as the "gang of goons" in the 1995 dark comedy film The Doom Generation. The 1996 Video Game Descent II included original music from Ogre and Mark Walk, while the 2014 PlayStation exclusive LittleBigPlanet 3 featured the song "Rodent" from the album Rabies.
Alternative Press included Skinny Puppy in their 1996 list of "100 underground inspirations of the past 20 years."
While discussing the possibility of Nine Inch Nails being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Richard Patrick of the band Filter remarked "what about Skinny Puppy?", going on to say that while Nine Inch Nails is the more famous of the two, Skinny Puppy were one of the first groups to craft "scary and mean" industrial music.
Side-projects
Key and Ogre are active in a number of other projects besides Skinny Puppy. Key has released several solo albums including Music for Cats and The Ghost of Each Room in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Doubting Thomas, a project led by Key and the late Dwayne Goettel, was an outlet for mostly instrumental compositions (save for several film and television samples). The projects only releases were Father Don't Cry in 1990 and The Infidel in 1991, both released through Wax Trax! Records. Download was founded by Key and Goettel in 1995 and included the assistance of frequent Skinny Puppy contributors Ken Marshall and Anthony Valcic. The group has released a number of records since its formation and notably provided the soundtrack album Charlie's Family in 1997 for the film The Manson Family, directed by Jim Van Bebber; the film was released six years after the album. Bebber had approached Key to produce the soundtrack, having previously directed several Skinny Puppy videos as well as the short horror film Chunk Blower, which starred Goettel and Bill Leeb of Front Line Assembly. Other notable projects include The Tear Garden with Edward Ka-Spel for The Legendary Pink Dots, platEAU with Phil Western, and Cyberaktif with Goettel and Leeb. Key also works as Scaremeister, his film scoring alter ego, having previously contributed to John Debney's score for End of Days. Scaremeister composed the album 31 Spirits, a collection of short musical pieces which have been used in the trailers of numerous films such as Inglourious Basterds, My Bloody Valentine, and The Book of Eli.
Ogre's main project outside Skinny Puppy is ohGr, which has released five albums, Welt (2001), SunnyPsyOp (2003), Devils in my Details (2008), UnDeveloped (2011), and TrickS (2018). In the mid-nineties, Ogre and producer Martin Atkins created the project known as Rx (formerly known as Ritalin). Rx released only one album, Bedside Toxicology, in 1998. He also toured extensively with Pigface (1991–1995) and Ministry (1987–1990) and appeared on a number of Pigface and Ministry-related recordings.
Guantanamo Bay torture allegations
Skinny Puppy have accused the US military of using their music to torture inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, without the band's knowledge or permission. In response, the band have sent an "invoice" to the Pentagon.
Members
Current
Nivek Ogre – vocals, keyboards (1982–1996, 2003–present)
cEvin Key – guitars, drums, bass, synthesizers (1982–1996, 2003–present)
Mark Walk – keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, bass, drums (2003–present)
Former
Dwayne Goettel – keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, bass (1986–1995; died 1995)
Bill Leeb (Wilhelm Schroeder) – bass synth, backing vocals (1984–1986)
Touring
Justin Bennett – drums (2004–present)
Matthew Setzer – guitars (2015–present)
William Morrison – guitars (2004–2005)
Timeline
Discography
Remission (1984)
Bites (1985)
Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse (1986)
Cleanse Fold and Manipulate (1987)
VIVIsectVI (1988)
Rabies (1989)
Too Dark Park (1990)
Last Rights (1992)
The Process (1996)
The Greater Wrong of the Right (2004)
Mythmaker (2007)
hanDover (2011)
Weapon (2013)
Videography
Ain't It Dead Yet?, 1991, VHS/DVD
Live performance at The Concert Hall, Toronto, Ontario, 31 May and 1 June 1987.
Video Collection (1984-1992), 1996, VHS/DVD
Includes videos for "Dig It", "Stairs and Flowers", "Far Too Frail" (live footage 1985), "Smothered Hope" (live footage 1985), "Deep Down Trauma Hounds" (live footage from the 1987 Ain't It Dead Yet? performance), "Testure", "Spasmolytic", and "Killing Game".
Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4, 1996, 2-CD
Includes a number of video clips on those editions which included a CD-ROM portion.
Greater Wrong of the Right LIVE, 2005, 2-DVD
Live performances in Toronto, Ontario, and Montreal, Quebec in late 2004. Also includes videos for "Pro-Test", "Spasmolytic" (live footage 1990), and "Love in Vein" (live footage 1992).
A number of other, promo-only videos were released, including "State Aid" (live footage 1988), "Worlock" (1990), "Candle" (1996), "Curcible" (1996), "Hardset Head" (1996), and "Haze" (2007).
See also
Go Ask Ogre List of bands from British Columbia
Music of Vancouver
References
Citations
Bibliography
Further reading
Interviews in IndustrialnatioN'' Magazine Issue No. 5, Issue No. 13, & Issue No. 21.
External links
American Recordings (record label) artists
Canadian electronic music groups
Canadian industrial music groups
Canadian techno music groups
Capitol Records artists
Dark ambient music groups
Dependent Records artists
Electro-industrial music groups
Electronic body music groups
Musical groups established in 1982
Musical groups disestablished in 1995
Musical groups reestablished in 2003
Noise musical groups
Canadian post-punk music groups
Musical groups from Vancouver
Industrial rock musical groups
Metropolis Records artists
1982 establishments in British Columbia
1996 disestablishments in British Columbia
2003 establishments in British Columbia | false | [
"The Battle Born World Tour is the fourth major concert tour by American rock band The Killers, in support of their fourth studio album Battle Born, which was released in September 2012. The tour included the band's biggest show to date at Wembley Stadium. It also saw them visit new territories including Russia, Ukraine, China and South East Asia. The tour was the 43rd highest grossing worldwide during 2013.\n\nSynopsis\nDuring the summer of 2012, The Killers played festivals across Europe and North America as well as intimate shows in small venues. The band then began a promo tour in September 2012, before the proper tour started on October 26, 2012 in Glasgow, Scotland. The band then went on to play shows in 41 different countries across Europe, North America, South America, Asia and Oceania. Ted Sablay who toured with the band during the Sam's Town Tour returned as an additional musician, alongside Jake Blanton who previously toured with frontman Brandon Flowers during his solo tour.\n\nThe stage setup included a giant lightbulb keyboard stand similar to the one used during the Day & Age World Tour but this time in the shape of the lightning bolt from the cover of the Battle Born album. The pyrotechnics for the tour were provided by Le Maitre Events. \n\nOn November 13, 2012 the band's show at Manchester Arena was stopped during the fifth song of the night \"Bling (Confession of a King)\" with lead singer Brandon Flowers telling the crowd that his voice had 'gone' and he couldn't continue, the following night's show also in Manchester was cancelled. Two days later both shows were rescheduled and eventually took place on 17 and 18 February 2013.\n\nThe band's shows on December 13, 14 & 15th in Camden, New York City & Toronto were cancelled after Brandon Flowers contracted laryngitis, the band were later forced to cancel a number of shows during their European tour in March 2013 due to winter storms. All of these shows were rescheduled for May & June 2013 with the exception of the band's scheduled appearance Caprices Festival in Switzerland which was cancelled indefinitely.\n\nBassist Mark Stoermer didn't perform with the band during the Asian leg of the tour, believed to be as a result of a back injury. He tweeted \"Everything is alright, just need to spend this time at home. Looking forward to returning.\" Keuning was stressed during his absence, telling the NME that he was \"sick of this\". Jake Blanton played bass in his absence. He returned for the final show of the tour in Las Vegas.\n\nWembley Stadium\nOn June 22, 2013 the band headlined Wembley Stadium, it was their biggest show to date with 69,745 people in attendance. At the show, the band performed a new song that was written specifically for the night titled 'The Wembley Song', the song namechecked various bands who had headlined both the old and new stadium, and also made references to the 1966 World Cup Final and the old stadiums famous Twin Towers. The final verse of the song explored the band's career to date (\"From Dave's Apartment to Wembley\").\n\nLater that night the band headed across town to play a surprise set at the 600 capacity The Garage, London. Fans were let in on a first-come, first-served basis and the setlist consisted of a mix of hits and more obscure tracks that the band rarely play live. The band had done a similar thing in El Paso the previous month. Both shows were professionally filmed by director Giorgio Testi, a video of the 'Wembley Song' was posted on the band's official YouTube channel and they have hinted that more footage from the show may be released at some point.\n\nCritical reviews were positive, Mark Beaumont in The Guardian gave a 5 star review calling it \"A night the stadium league got a whole lot brighter, and lightning struck London twice\". In a glowing write-up Gigwise stated \"their 23-song strong set feels like every good Wembley gig should: historic\". In another good review the Evening Standard remarked \"The Killers seemed genuinely thrilled to be here, especially as their career first burst into life in London\".\n\nSet list\n\nCovers\nDuring this tour Guitarist Dave Keuning and Singer Brandon Flowers would often play a short cover that had some sort of connection to the town or region in which the band were performing. These included songs by The Beatles, Oasis, The Smiths, U2, Van Morrison, Alphaville, Frank Sinatra, The Strokes, Travis, Prince, Crowded House, Otis Redding, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Dean Martin, Bob Seger and more. On January 26, 2013, Australia Day, the band performed in Melbourne, and did a cover of the Australian folk song Waltzing Matilda. During their headline performance at Life Is Beautiful Festival on October 27, 2013 they performed a cover of Pale Blue Eyes in tribute to Lou Reed who had died earlier that day.\n\nPersonnel\n\nThe Killers\n Brandon Flowers – lead vocals, keyboards, piano, bass on \"For Reasons Unknown\"\n Dave Keuning – lead guitar, backing vocals\n Mark Stoermer – bass, backing vocals, rhythm guitar on \"For Reasons Unknown\"\n Ronnie Vannucci Jr. – drums, percussion\n\nAdditional musicians\n Ted Sablay – rhythm guitar, lead guitar, keyboards, backing vocals\n Jake Blanton – keyboards, rhythm guitar, lead guitar, backing vocals, bass (during the tour of Asia, except for \"For Reasons Unknown\")\n Rob Whited – percussion\n Bobby Lee Parker – acoustic guitar\n\nOpening acts\nTegan & Sara: October 26 – December 3, 2012, December 13–21, 2012\nLouis XIV: December 28–29, 2012 February 26 – March 11, 2013 April 9–14, 2013\nMost Thieves: December 28–29, 2012; June 6, 2013; June 17, 2013\nSteve Smyth: January 22, 2013\nHowling Bells: February 17–22, 2013\nWe Are The Grand: April 2, 2013\nThe Felice Brothers: April 27 – May 2, 2013\nThe Virgins: May 6–19, 2013, August 1, 2013 August 3–17, 2013\nThe Gaslight Anthem: June 22, 2013\nJames: June 22, 2013\nFrank Ocean: July 13, 2013\nTwo Door Cinema Club: July 13, 2013\nHaim: July 13, 2013\nKyoto Protocol: September 22, 2013\nSandwich: September 26, 2013\n\nTour dates\n\nCancellations and rescheduled shows\n\nFestivals and other miscellaneous performances\nThis concert was a part of \"Firefly Music Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Coke Live Music Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Sziget Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Frequency Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"V Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Zurich Openair\"\nThis concert was a part of \"A Perfect Day Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Electric Picnic Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Berlin Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"iTunes Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"DCode Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Deck the Hall Ball\"\nThis concert was a part of \"December to Remember\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Wrex the Halls\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Not So Silent Night\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Almost Acoustic Christmas\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Big Day Out\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Lollapalooza Brazil\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Festival Estéreo Picnic\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Rock im Park\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Rock am Ring\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Rock in Roma\"\nThis concert was a part of \"City Sound Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Pinkpop Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Isle of Wight Festival 2013\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Park Live Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"T in the Park\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Lucca Summer Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Super Bock Super Rock Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Festival Internacional de Benicàssim\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Lollapalooza\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Raise Up Your Summer Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"LouFest\"\nThis concert was a part of \"2013 Singapore Grand Prix\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Sandance Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Life Is Beautiful Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Caprices Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Bridge School Benefit\"\nThis concert was a part of \"March Madness Music Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Hangout Music Fest\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Festival d'été de Québec\"\nThis concert was a part of \"RBC Royal Bank Bluesfest\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Big Red Music Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"V Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Glasgow Summer Sessions\"\nBassist Mark Stoermer was absent from this leg of the tour. Jake Blanton played Bass.\n\nBox office score data\n\nTV\n\nNotable television performances\n\nReferences\n\nThe Killers concert tours\n2012 concert tours\n2013 concert tours",
"The Second Coming Tour is the seventh concert tour by American rock band, Faith No More. The tour supported their sixth greatest hits album, The Very Best Definitive Ultimate Greatest Hits Collection (2009). The tour primarily visited Europe with additional shows in Asia, Australasia and the Americas. Beginning in June 2009, the tour played over fifty shows, with a majority being an appearance at a music festival. It marks the band's first tour after over a decade hiatus.\n\nBackground\n\nThe band garnered media attention, when talks of a tour in the United Kingdom began to circulate in November 2008. These rumors were later dismissed by bassist Billy Gould. He stated:\n\"If anything like this were to happen, it would have to come from the band, and I haven't spoken with any of them in over a year. So as far as I know, there isn't anything to talk about, and I'm pretty sure that if you were to contact Patton, he would tell you the same thing.\"\n\nOn February 24, 2009, the band announced they were reforming with the same lineup during their 1997 album era. This announcement was following by a statement from the band's publicity hinted at a European tour. A month later, it was revealed the band was the headlining act for the Download Festival. News of other festival appearances later followed. The band posted pictures on their social media for their rehearsals for the tour. With more shows in Europe revealed, many fans wondered about shows in North America. Gould mentioned the thought of touring the US was \"not out of the question\" but chances were slim, as there was heavy demand elsewhere.\n\nThe tour officially ended in March 2010. However, the band continued to tour throughout the year and into 2012 with several one-off concerts and festival shows in the United States and Europe.\n\nOpening acts\n\nEagles of Death Metal \nSelfish Cunt \nFarmers Market \nZu \nHarmful \nCMX \nWaltari \nKid606 \nKurban \nFirewater \nAdebisi Shank \nEmergency Blanket \nLerdo \nSepultura \nFiskales Ad-Hok \nPato Machete \nClondementto \nNeil Hamburger\n\nSetlist\nThe following setlist was obtained from the concert held on June 16, 2009; at the Kindl-Bühne Wuhlheide in Berlin, Germany. It does not represent all concerts for the duration of the tour.\n\"Reunited\"\n\"The Real Thing\"\n\"From Out of Nowhere\"\n\"Land of Sunshine\"\n\"Caffeine\"\n\"Evidence\"\n\"Chinese Arithmetic\" \n\"Surprise! You're Dead!\"\n\"Easy\"\n\"Cuckoo for Caca\"\n\"Ashes to Ashes\"\n\"Midlife Crisis\"\n\"Introduce Yourself\"\n\"The Gentle Art of Making Enemies\"\n\"I Started a Joke\"\n\"King for a Day\"\n\"Be Aggressive\"\n\"Epic\"\n\"Mark Bowen\"\nEncore\n\"Stripsearch\"\n\"We Care a Lot\"\n\"Pristina\"\n\nTour dates\n\nFestivals and other miscellaneous performances\n\nThis concert was a part of the \"Download Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Greenfield Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Rock in Idro\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Nova Rock Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Hurricane Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Southside Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Hove Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Peace & Love\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Roskilde Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Open'er Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Ruisrock\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Sudoeste\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Spirit of Burgas\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Sziget Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Pukkelpop\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Lowlands\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Highfield-Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Area4\"\nThis concert was a part of \"The Edge Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Reading Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Rock en Seine\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Leeds Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Pepsi Music Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of the \"Maquinaria Festival\"\nThis concert was a part of \"Soundwave\"\n\nCancellations and rescheduled shows\n\nBox office score data\n\nExternal links\nFaith No More Official site\n\nReferences\n\nFaith No More concert tours\n2009 concert tours\n2010 concert tours\nReunion concert tours"
] |
[
"Skinny Puppy",
"Live performances",
"when did skinny puppy's live performances begin?",
"(1987-1988),",
"who were part of this band?",
"Key cutting steel with an angle grinder,"
] | C_c1a207f3a2e648579ef56e74dbf1253f_1 | what is the high light of their live performance? | 3 | What is the highlight of Skinny Puppy's live performance? | Skinny Puppy | Skinny Puppy is noted for theatrical and controversial live performances which blend performance art with music, especially in an ambitious period that spanned their Head Trauma (1987-1988), VIVIsectVI (1988), Too Dark Park (1990), and Last Rights (1992) tours. Ogre has been critical of the bands early performances, telling Spin magazine in 1992 that "I would do things on stage that would blow-they just wouldn't work". Live performances involved periods of musical improvisation, film projections, and elaborate stage props and machines, many of which are designed and built by Ogre himself. While discussing Skinny Puppy's performances, Ogre once remarked that "our shows combine images with theater. It works better than just coming out and doing a horror magic routine". On-stage theatrics included Ogre being suspended from racks and cables, play with a hangman's noose, Key cutting steel with an angle grinder, and mock executions of Ogre and George H.W. Bush. Following the 2004 Presidential Election in the United States, promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances. This reaction was prompted by the performance of a mock execution on stage, during which Ogre was decapitated by actors dressed as then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The band was also asked by Samsung (who had been asked by Ogre to sponsor the band with a large flat screen) to "not insult the president" while performing on stage. In a 1987 television interview with Kim Clarke Champniss, Key explained that while Ogre follows a "rough guideline" during a live performance, a majority of his on-stage theatrics are thought up of spontaneously. Key told Champniss that Ogre's demeanor on stage could "range from just a sort of laid back kind of lurking to a rampant psycho". Ogre once remarked that touring was, for himself, like "dating hydrogen peroxide", referencing the numerous injuries which he would acquire over the course of touring. Though Ogre and Key have remained the only constant members of Skinny Puppy's live act since the death of Dwayne Goettel, several other musicians have been hired to accompany the pair since 2004. They include drummer Justin Bennett, guitarist William Morrison, and guitarist Matthew Setzer. CANNOTANSWER | using fake blood during their performances. | Skinny Puppy is a Canadian industrial music group formed in Vancouver in 1982. The group is among the founders of the industrial rock and electro-industrial genres. Initially envisioned as an experimental side-project by cEvin Key (Kevin Crompton) while he was in the new wave band Images in Vogue, Skinny Puppy evolved into a full-time project with the addition of vocalist Nivek Ogre (Kevin Ogilvie).
Over the course of a dozen studio albums and many live tours, Key and Ogre have been the only constant members. Other members have included Dwayne Goettel (1986–1995), Dave "Rave" Ogilvie (long-time associate, producer, and "unofficial" fourth member until 1996; not a relative of Kevin Ogilvie), Mark Walk (2003–present), and a number of guests, including Bill Leeb (1985–1986, under the pseudonym Wilhelm Schroeder), Al Jourgensen (1989), Danny Carey (2004), and many others.
After the self-release of their first cassette in 1984, Skinny Puppy soon signed to Vancouver label Nettwerk, anchoring its early roster. From their Nettwerk debut EP Remission in 1984 to their 1992 album Last Rights, Skinny Puppy developed into an influential band with a dedicated cult following, fusing elements of industrial, funk,
noise, new wave, electro, and rock music and making innovative use of sampling. Over the course of several tours of North America and Europe in this period, they became known for theatrical, horror-themed live performances and videos, drawing attention to issues such as chemical warfare and animal testing.
In 1993, Skinny Puppy left Nettwerk and long-time producer Rave, signing with American Recordings and relocating to Malibu, California, where drug problems and tension between band members plagued the recording of their next album, The Process (1996). Ogre quit Skinny Puppy in June 1995, and Goettel died of a heroin overdose two months later. Key and Ogre, already active in a number of other projects, went their separate ways, reuniting for a one-off Skinny Puppy concert at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden, Germany, in 2000. Reforming Skinny Puppy in 2003 with producer Mark Walk, they released their ninth album, The Greater Wrong of the Right (2004), which was followed by the release of the albums Mythmaker (2007) and HanDover (2011). In 2013, they released their twelfth album, Weapon, which was inspired by allegations that their music had been used for torture in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
History
Formation and first releases (1982–1985)
Skinny Puppy formed in 1982 as a side project for Kevin Crompton in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Crompton was dissatisfied with the pop direction of the band he was in, Images in Vogue, and began Skinny Puppy with the intention of doing something more compelling and experimental. Images in Vogue had become a popular act in Vancouver, achieving several radio hits and opening for groups such as Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, and Roxy Music. Crompton had planned Skinny Puppy to be a side project while he continued his work in Images in Vogue; however, when Images in Vogue relocated to Toronto, Crompton made Skinny Puppy his full-time project. Crompton had already created the name for the project and recorded several songs when he asked Kevin Graham Ogilvie to join. Ogilvie had been a roommate of Images in Vogue member Gary Blair Smith and had met Crompton at a party in late 1982. To avoid the confusion of having two people named Kevin in one band, the pair created stage names, with Crompton becoming cEvin Key and Ogilvie becoming Nivek Ogre.
Using Key's apartment as a makeshift studio, the duo began recording songs and in 1983 with the help of Images in Vogue recording engineer Dave "Rave" Ogilvie (no relation to Ogre), Skinny Puppy released the EP Back & Forth. This was the beginning of a long partnership between Skinny Puppy and Rave, who would serve as their producer until 1993, and again in 1995, and was occasionally listed as a member of the band in album liner notes. Though only 35 copies were ever printed, the self-released Back & Forth drew the attention of Vancouver startup label Nettwerk, who signed the band later that year. The first live Skinny Puppy show was held at the Unovis art gallery in Vancouver in February 1984; the British group Alien Sex Fiend were among the 300 people in attendance.
Ogre has said that Skinny Puppy acted as an escape for Key, who wished to distance himself from Images in Vogue: "He was looking for something to break out of [Images in Vogue], and maybe I was it". Key would continue to drum for Images in Vogue until the group relocated to Toronto in 1985. Key's concept behind Skinny Puppy came from the group's first song ever recorded, "K-9". The idea, according to Key, was to create music which explored "life as seen through a dog's eyes". Skinny Puppy also incorporated the use of "B-grade horror movie visuals", including fake blood and props, into their live performances. Key justified these "shock gore" antics with the following:
What we're presenting isn't much different from what [the audience] is subjected to in everyday life. For example, a commercial is a very plastic view of existence and reality. When you watch a TV show and see a world with picture-perfect endings, all you have to do is switch the station and watch the news.
Having scored a record deal with Nettwerk and with interest surrounding the Back & Forth EP growing, Skinny Puppy was invited to Vancouver's Mushroom Studios to work on new material. It was here that the group recruited Bill Leeb to perform bass synth and backing vocals. Like Ogre and Key before him, Leeb created a stage name, Wilhelm Schroeder; "my real name is Wilhelm" said Leeb, "Schroeder we picked out from the guy playing the piano in the Charlie Brown cartoon". Skinny Puppy released their second EP, Remission in December 1984, almost a year following Back & Forth.
Remission marked the first time Skinny Puppy would collaborate with artist Steven Gilmore, who created the album artwork. The EP was initially only released in vinyl, but was later given a cassette release in 1985. According to Nettwerk VP of A&R and Marketing George Maniatis, Remission "grabbed everybody by the you-know-whats" and, for Nettwerk Records, brought with it an association with industrial dance music. The EP was supported by music videos for the songs "Far Too Frail" and "Smothered Hope", the latter of which being the closest thing to a hit song any North American industrial act had achieved at the time.
Skinny Puppy released its first full-length album, Bites, in 1985 and was produced by Key and Dave Ogilvie. Tom Ellard of the Australian electronic act Severed Heads lent a hand to the production of Bites, acting as a producer and performing various sampling and mixing duties. Described by Billboard magazine as "techno dance...a la Kraftwerk", Bites yielded the underground hit "Assimilate". Key and Ogre opened for Chris & Cosey on their 1985 Canadian tour as Hell 'O' Death Day; some of the material the duo had performed would appear on Bites as bonus tracks. One of these bonus tracks, a song called "The Centre Bullet", featured lyrics by Legendary Pink Dots founder Edward Ka-Spel.
While Skinny Puppy had become well received by underground audiences in most major urban areas, due in part to their anti-consumerist themes and Cure-like aesthetics, not everyone was friendly to the group. Key described Skinny Puppy as the antithesis of "the Bruce Springsteen mentality of music", rejecting "Top 40 conformity". Toronto-based music journalist and DJ Greg Clow recalled Michael Williams, who was a VJ for Muchmusic, introducing him to Skinny Puppy, describing them as "Canada's answer to Depeche Mode".
Dwayne Goettel and stylistic transition (1986–1987)
In 1986, Nettwerk made a distribution deal with Capitol Records, allowing Skinny Puppy and others in Nettwerk's roster to expand their respective audiences. Capitol manager Stephen Powers stated that signing groups such as Skinny Puppy gave the company "a real credibility" with the alternative and college music scenes. Skinny Puppy also signed to Play It Again Sam, allowing the group's music to expand into Europe. It was this expansion into the European market that would help to make Skinny Puppy a "cash cow" for Nettwerk in the early years. In a 2007 interview with CraveOnline, Ogre commented on Skinny Puppy's time with Capitol, saying:
We're so lucky to have gotten here, and if we look back on the fact that we were on Capitol Records at a certain point, being distributed and making these albums under budget… there was one year when we were the only band on the label to profit, when MC Hammer lost a shitload of money. I can still appreciate how odd it was that we had the chance to do that because it doesn't really happen in a lot of cases.
Bill Leeb left Skinny Puppy in 1986 to pursue his own musical project, Front Line Assembly. Leeb gave his reasons for leaving the group stating that his bandmates expressed different ideas from his own and that he had been interested in singing. Leeb's replacement would be quiet Alberta native Dwayne Goettel. A classically trained musician, Goettel had been in a duo named Water with vocalist Sandy Weir and had worked with the synthpop band Psyche, among others.
Skinny Puppy's production values improved with the addition of Goettel, with Key remarking that "Dwayne brought us a whole new sense and aesthetic that we didn't have. Up to that point, we were really punk rock in our approach". Key continued on that "he [Goettel] had an incredible knowledge of equipment and at a very early stage was really the master of sampling, which had really just begun". Goettel's contributions to Skinny Puppy's second full-length effort, 1986's Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse, helped to propel the band towards the style of their "chaotic future masterworks". To promote the album, the band made an appearance on CBC Radio's Brave New Waves program in September 1986, and released their first single, "Dig It". A music video for "Dig It" was produced and received extensive airplay on MTV.
Further promotion for the album came from a world tour with the band Severed Heads. The tour proved to be a vital learning experience for the group, having encounters with, according to Key, "tour managers and agents that didn't pay us". In 1987, the song "Stairs and Flowers" was released as a single, as was a new song titled "Chainsaw". The group attracted the attention of the Parent Music Resource Center (PMRC), which named Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse one of several albums believed to be "violent, sexually explicit, or condoning substance abuse". The album was named by Melody Maker magazine as one of the best releases of the year.
Later in 1987 came Skinny Puppy's third full-length album, Cleanse Fold and Manipulate. Described as "a turning point, where experimentation is just beginning to gel with innovation", the album marks the point where the group began to explore more political themes, delving into topics such as the AIDS epidemic and the Vietnam War. A song from the album, "Addiction" was released as a single. The group later went on tour, with a performance at Toronto's Concert Hall being released on VHS in 1989 and CD in 1991 as Ain't It Dead Yet?. Also released in 1987 was Bites and Remission (through Capitol Records) and Remission & Bites (European release, through Pay It Again Sam), both compilations of Skinny Puppy's first two Nettwerk releases.
Subsequent success (1988–1989)
Skinny Puppy's live performances had become increasingly more elaborate, with Ogre interacting with an onstage crucifix and other "crudely constructed" stage props. Craig MacInnis of the Toronto Star described their new stage show as "neo-dadaist shock theatre", while Tom Lanham of the San Francisco Chronicle referred to it as "grotesque". The band continued to tour in 1988 with the European Head Trauma tour, supported by Edward Ka-Spel. Following the tour, the group returned to the studio to record what Ogre described would be the band's most critical statement regarding animal testing.
Skinny Puppy released their fourth album, VIVIsectVI, in 1988; the album's name is a pun intended to associate vivisection with Satanism (i.e. the "666 sect"). The group's primary aim with the album was to bring attention to the topic of vivisection and other issues regarding animal rights. The album's subject matter also deals with subjects such as chemical warfare, environmental waste, and disease. Lead track "Dogshit" was released as a single in 1988 under the name "Censor"; the name change was made by the band when it was decided that the single would not sell well with its original name. The single "Testure", which denounced the testing of animals for research purposes, reached No. 19 on Billboards Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in 1989. According to Ogre, "Testure" was intended to be accessible in the hope of spreading their "anti-vivisectionist" message. "It's the only song I think they will be able to play on the radio", he said. "I hope they do play it because it's the only way we can go beyond our ranks and our loyal fans who already understand the message". "Testure" also featured several well-chosen samples from the film The Plague Dogs, an animated adventure about two dogs who escape from a research laboratory. Melody Maker named VIVIsectVI one of the best albums of 1988.
Skinny Puppy toured in support of the album, featuring an early incarnation of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails as their opening act. The concept for the live show revolved around a vivisectionist (played by Ogre) who is eventually transformed into a tortured animal; the idea was to portray the "inner workings of the mind under the strain of vivisection". The stage show included the mock vivisection of a stuffed dog the band had named Chud. Following a show in Cincinnati, Ohio, Key, Ogre, and tour manager Dan McGee were arrested for "disorderly conduct" when an audience member, believing the stuffed animal Ogre was "vivisecting" to be a real dog, called the police. Two plainclothes officers entered the group's dressing room demanding they inspect the prop. Following a heated argument, the trio spent the night in jail, but were released the following day after paying a $200 fine.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the band members began working on various side projects. Key and Goettel were involved with The Tear Garden (a collaboration with The Legendary Pink Dots) and Doubting Thomas (an outlet for their non-Skinny Puppy instrumentals). The band Hilt, a collaboration between Key and Goettel, and Al Nelson, also started when Nettwerk challenged the group to produce an album for as little money as possible. Ogre struck up a friendship with Ministry's Al Jourgensen, having first worked together during the recording of the PTP song "Show Me Your Spine" (featured in the 1987 film RoboCop).
For Skinny Puppy's fifth album, Rabies, released in 1989, Jourgensen joined Rave as producer. The album, featuring Jourgensen's electric guitar work and backing vocals, drew mixed reception from fans. Despite these reactions, the album was a commercial success, selling 150,000 copies and receiving extensive airplay on college radio. The single "Worlock" – which featured samples of Charles Manson singing parts of the song "Helter Skelter" from The Beatles' White Album, accompanied by a fragmented portion of the songs guitar introduction – helped to bring the band "massive popularity". A video produced for the song, featuring spliced-together footage from dozens of horror films and a statement denouncing censorship of the genre by the MPAA, was circulated widely as a promotional and bootleg item. The song "Tin Omen" was also released as a single and "Hexonxonx" received some airplay on alternative radio. In spite of the album's initial mixed reception, Brad Filicky in a 2003 issue of CMJ magazine named Rabies as a classic album, calling it "a masterpiece of the industrial genre".
This period marked the beginning of divisions within the band, as rather than tour in support of Rabies, Ogre joined Ministry while they toured in support of their album The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste (1989); Ogre contributed guitars, keyboards, and vocals during the tour. Ogre had also begun working with the Ministry side project Revolting Cocks. Key was later quoted saying of Ogre's involvement with Ministry and, later on, Martin Atkins' Pigface that he sometimes felt "like a wife that's been cheated on".
Too Dark Park (1990–1991)
Following the production of Rabies, a divide grew between the group members, with Key and Goettel often siding against Ogre, feeling he was more interested in solo work. The group were ultimately disappointed with the outcome of Rabies, with Goettel saying that the completed product was "less within the Skinny Puppy vision", and Key being displeased with Jourgensen's involvement. Ogre also expressed his disapproval for the album, claiming that he had "flopped". "The work and artistic environment really weren't there at all either. It was completely negative".
Key and Goettel completed work on some of their side projects such a Hilt, releasing their first effort, Call the Ambulance (Before I Hurt Myself), which was produced by Rave. Key also reunited with Bill Leeb to form the project known as Cyberaktif; Goettel acted as an assistant producer and provided some instrumentation. Jourgensen offered Ogre the chance to tour with the Revolting Cocks, having provided vocals on their previous tour. Ogre refused the offer, citing some occurrences during his time with Ministry which led him to question his friendship with Jourgensen.
The group, having finished work on their various side projects, returned to the studio and released their sixth studio album, Too Dark Park, in 1990. Goettel said in a radio interview that the major intentions behind the album were to reevaluate what Skinny Puppy was and create a new style of music to mark the beginning of a new decade. This reevaluation included hiring Jim Cummins (I, Braineater) to design the cover artwork, feeling that their longtime designer Steven Gilmore had lost his creative spark.
Described as "forceful and consistently abrasive", Too Dark Park was what Key referred to as the true successor to "the last pure" Skinny Puppy album, VIVIsectVI. Critics such as Staci Bonner of Spin magazine applauded the use of sampling and stated that the album was a "return to the bloodbath" for the group. The album yielded the singles "Tormentor" and "Spasmolytic", the latter of which spawned a music video directed by Jim Van Bebber. Billboard called "Spasmolytic" a "delicious mind-altering affair", a sentiment shared by Wil Lewellyn of Treblezine who included the song in a list of the best underground songs of the 1990s.
Environmental degradation was a major theme on both the album and the North American Too Dark Park tour. For the tour, Key took on the role of drummer, leaving Goettel as lead keyboardist. Key told Alternative Press that "we could very well have a backing tape and stand behind synths playing two notes on the keyboard, but we've decided to physically strain ourselves and learn additional parts along with what we've already written". Onstage theatrics included a segment with Ogre performing on stucco stilts and pneumatic crutches, Ogre being hoisted from the stage by cables, and a backing film featuring scenes of graphic violence, most notably sequences from the Japanese film series Guinea Pig. Ogre later gave insight on the backing film's conception, saying:
We did an experiment ... We've always been accused of celebrating violence for idiotic reasons. [So] we used some images in our show from a film called Guinea Pig. They're these incredibly realistic, but simulated, Japanese snuff films. We inserted them into this roller-coaster ride of violent images and people were quite disgusted. People were vomiting in front of the stage. People came up to me after the show, saying I was the most disgusting human being-until they found out what it was all about. The whole reason we did that was to see if there was a difference. Will people react differently to something that's real as opposed to something they know is staged? They will. There's a whole different set of emotions people go through. It doesn't look like it looks on TV. It's quite sickening.
Ogre, who considered the tour to be a high point in his career, compared the band's performances to something like intense car races. "People go there expecting an accident to happen ... I was really running off that car-crash energy".
Following the tour, Ogre became involved with Martin Atkins' project Pigface in 1991, for a short time becoming the group's lead vocalist. Pigface included talent from several other industrial groups such as William Rieflin of Ministry and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who helped record the song "Suck". Ogre and Reznor performed the song together in the live album Welcome to Mexico... Asshole. Also on the album was a cover of the song "T.F.W.O." from Too Dark Park, led by Ogre.
In 2003, Alexander Chow of Spin magazine named Too Dark Park an essential industrial album, stating that "schizophrenic beats, manic-depressive mumblings, and just the right dose of fist-raising choruses" made for a dance floor favorite.
Last Rights (1992)
Following Too Dark Park, Skinny Puppy was commissioned by the dance group La La La Human Steps to compose several songs for their 1991 production Infante C'est Destroy, a duty shared alongside the likes of Einstürzende Neubauten. It was also during this time that Ogre made a concerted effort to rid his drug addictions. In an interview with CITR-FM, Ogre discussed his ordeals with hepatitis A and subsequent hospilization; he also thanked Pigface for looking after him during his "hour of need".
Skinny Puppy released their seventh studio album, Last Rights, in 1992. It was the last album the band released under Nettwerk/Capitol. Relationships between the band members during the album's production were "tense and unhealthy", with Ogre, under the supervision of Rave, coming into the studio at night to perform vocals for the music Key and Goettel composed earlier in the day. Ogre said that the production of Last Rights acted as a form of therapy which he used to help him come to terms with his addictions. "It's painful for me to be reminded of certain things, but for me to say it never happened is wrong. I'll be glad to put it behind me, but I had to do this".
Described by Entertainment Weekly as a "nonstop stretch of horrific soundscapes", Last Rights became the first Skinny Puppy record to chart on the Billboard 200, peaking at No. 193. The album remained on Billboard's Heatseekers album chart for several weeks, peaking at No. 10. The track "Inquisition" was released as a single and included several alternative cuts of the song, as well as the b-side "LaHuman8" (one of the tracks produced for La La La Human Steps). A second single, "Love in Vein", was never released, although an unfinished remix intended for it later appeared on Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996. A music video was created for the song "Killing Game" which featured a student dance troupe performing in "high-contrast black and white".
A track titled "Left Handshake" was excluded from Last Rights, leaving a blank track 10 on some copies of the album. Clearance for a lengthy vocal sample from Timothy Leary's Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out, was approved by Leary, but denied by the copyright holder, Henry G. Saperstein. Commenting on the ordeal, Key said, "We tried to convince him, but he [Saperstein] said, 'it doesn't matter what Leary said, he doesn't own his own work'". The song, in which Ogre provides commentary to Leary's instructions for avoiding a "bad trip", was eventually released on the initial European edition of Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996, and on a limited edition single called "Track 10" sold at the Skinny Puppy reunion concert in 2000 at Dresden.
The stage show for the Last Rights tour in North America, much like the album itself, was built around a detailed narrative inspired by Ogre's past ordeals with drug abuse. The show involved Ogre interacting with a backing film by way of a virtual reality machine, a tree made of human heads and fetuses, and numerous other props and costumes. For this tour, Key once more focused exclusively on live drumming, leaving Goettel on keyboard duty. One incident that occurred at a show in Boston involved several concert goers climbing on stage and grabbing at Ogre's various masks and props, several of which were stolen. The band's manager, Tim Gore, pursued the thieves but was punched by a security guard. Following the punch, Gore began having issues breathing and was taken to a hospital; the guard was fired as a result of the incident.
The Process, Goettel's death and breakup (1993–1999)
In 1993, Skinny Puppy contributed the song "Ode to Groovy" to the compilation album In Defense of Animals, released through Restless Records. The album was named after the animal rights group of the same name. Though the track is credited to Skinny Puppy, Ogre and Rave were the only people to work on it.
Ogre, Key, and Goettel signed a contract with American Recordings and moved to Malibu, California to record The Process, a concept album inspired by 1960s cult The Process Church of The Final Judgment, with Roli Mosimann producing. The recording sessions were beset by everything from fires and floods, to the Northridge earthquake. Mosimann was eventually replaced with Martin Atkins. Atkins' presence exacerbated the rift that was forming between Ogre and the rest of the band. The band's bickering and excessive drug use made the recording process so long and costly that American reduced Skinny Puppy's contract from three albums to one. In 1994, Key and Goettel returned to Vancouver with the master tapes, but Ogre remained in Los Angeles and quit Skinny Puppy in June 1995. Goettel was found dead of a heroin overdose in his parents' home two months later.
The Process was eventually completed with Rave and released in 1996. It was dedicated to the memory of Goettel. It was an overall stylistic departure from their previous albums, prominently featuring untreated vocals, guitar, and more accessible song structures. The liner notes that accompanied the CD included thank-yous to "Electronic Music Lovers" and "Puppy People", followed by the words "The End" in bold type. The album charted on the Billboard 200 at No. 102 and reached the No. 1 spot on Billboard'''s Heatseekers album chart.
During the Process era, a loose-knit art/philosophy collective also known as The Process was formed, with early contributions from Ogre and Genesis P-Orridge, among others. P-Orridge and Chris Carter jammed with Skinny Puppy during this period, a recording of which was eventually released as Puppy Gristle on a limited basis in 2002. The creation of the Download project, which Key and Goettel formed with Mark Spybey and Phil Western, also occurred at this time. Download explored everything from electronic improvisation with spoken vocals to techno, and toured in 1996.
Earlier, in 1993, Goettel and Western had issued a breakbeat hardcore single (under the name aDuck) on their own label, Subconscious Records. After Goettel's death, Subconscious evolved into a recording studio and record label imprint that Key used to release a number of his own and Skinny Puppy's recordings. Key also continued to work with The Tear Garden, produced industrial/trance music with Western in the side project platEAU, and released his first solo album in 1998.
Ogre had toured extensively with Martin Atkins' industrial supergroup Pigface since 1991, and toured with them again after leaving Skinny Puppy. He recorded material for his side project WELT. with Ruby's Mark Walk before quitting Skinny Puppy, but due to legal issues with American Recordings, this would not see release until 2001 under the new name, ohGr. In the meantime, he toured with KMFDM, and released an album with Martin Atkins under the name Rx (also known as Ritalin). The ohGr and Rx releases included some of Ogre's most positive and forward-thinking songwriting to date. Several collections were released while Skinny Puppy was dormant, including Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996, and The Singles Collect and B-Sides Collect in 1999. Nettwerk commissioned a remix album in 1998; titled remix dystemper, it featured various Skinny Puppy tracks re-worked by artists including Autechre, Deftones, and Guru. Ogre and Walk also took part, contributing a remix of "Dig It" and an updated version of Remissions "Smothered Hope" with new vocals by Ogre.
In 1999, "Draining Faces" appeared on the soundtrack for The Blair Witch Project.
Reunion, The Greater Wrong of the Right and Mythmaker (2000–2008)
In August 2000, at the insistence of German promoters, Ogre and Key reunited and performed live as Skinny Puppy for the first time since 1992 at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden. The show was meant to be a continuation of the Last Rights tour, with the stage design taking influence from those performances. Rather than find a replacement for Goettel, the band simply left the keyboard station on stage empty. The performance was filmed and recorded, and a live album, Doomsday: Back and Forth Series 5: Live in Dresden, was released in 2001; a DVD release was planned but canceled by Nettwerk. Live clips of "Testure" and "Worlock" as well as a behind the scenes interview with the band were broadcast on Crazy Clip TV in Germany and "Worlock" was included on a VCD compilation by German magazine Sonic Seducer in 2002.
Key joined ohGr on drums for its 2001 tour, while Ogre appeared on the track "Frozen Sky" on Key's 2001 album The Ghost of Each Room. When asked by Terrorizer magazine about the future of Skinny Puppy, Key responded:
Our goals for the future are to combine everything, take the best of what we can do with Ogre, and the best of what we have from our past, as well as the future stuff that we can do, and put it into one touring situation which I'm sure will stroll back into bloodville.
The first new Skinny Puppy track in several years, "Optimissed", appeared on the Underworld soundtrack in 2003. Ogre, Key, Mark Walk and various guests, including Danny Carey of Tool and Wayne Static of Static-X, recorded the band's ninth studio album, The Greater Wrong of the Right, released in 2004 on Synthetic Symphony, a sub-label of SPV. The album, described by Key as being based in "pseudopop", received generally favorable reviews from critics and landed on several Billboard charts. A music video was made for the song "Pro-Test" which featured a style unlike many of the group's previous work, so much so that some were unsure if it was an official video.
Skinny Puppy toured North America and Europe in support of the album in 2004, joined by William Morrison on guitar and Justin Bennett on drums. Shows in Toronto and Montreal were filmed for the live DVD Greater Wrong of the Right Live, which was released in September 2005. The DVD included Information Warfare, a documentary made by Morrison about the U.S.-led wars in Iraq. The anti-Bush administration stance taken by the band at their live shows drew the ire of PABAAH (Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood), which attempted a boycott of college radio stations that played Skinny Puppy.
Skinny Puppy toured Europe again in 2005, and returned to the studio to complete their next album, Mythmaker, which was released in January 2007. The album reached No. 4 on the Independent Albums Chart, No. 5 on the Dance/Electronic Albums Chart, and No. 17 on the Heatseekers Chart, but barely broke the Billboard 200. The band's 2007 North American and European tour, titled Mythrus, began in May 2007. While some fans longed for the sounds of their earlier days, Ogre, speaking with Electronic Musician, stated the band's intention was to move forward rather than dwell in the past. "Some people think that the stuff we do now is a pale imitation of the past. All of the older stuff had a time and place, and we decided to move forward to where we are now".
In Solvent See tour and HanDover (2009–2012)
According to a news posting on the official Skinny Puppy website, the band's next studio album was originally slated for release in October 2009, but the release of this album was delayed due to insolvency issues with the SPV label (thus leading to Ogre naming the 2009 tour the "In Solvent See" tour). These issues were not expected to be resolved until the end of 2009. However, the "In Solvent See" Tour took place as planned, and began on 30 October.
In October 2010, there were reports that the new Skinny Puppy album would be released in February 2011. In May 2011, Skinny Puppy announced that they finished recording a new album titled HanDover, and that they were soliciting it to other record labels for a September 2011 release date. On 27 August 2011, HanDover was officially confirmed as having a 25 October 2011, release in the United States and a 28 October 2011, release in Europe. Steven R Gilmore created the artwork for the album once again. The album landed on a number of Billboard charts, including a spot at No. 168 on the Billboard 200 and No. 9 on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart.
Skinny Puppy were scheduled to perform at numerous European festivals in the summer of 2010, including the Amphi Festival in Germany, the 2010 Waregem Gothic Festival in Belgium, and the Recession Festival in Denmark. A live album, titled Bootlegged, Broke and in Solvent Seas and recorded on the band's 2010 European tour, was released on 12 June 2012.
Weapon and subsequent tours (2013–present)
Skinny Puppy announced that a new album, entitled Weapon, would be released on 28 May 2013. The album was inspired by news brought to the band by a former guard at Guantanamo Bay that their music had been used to torture inmates. Inspiration also came from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and from Ogre's personal views on the human species; in an interview with Vice, Ogre stated that he "view[s] the human being primarily as a weapon, and a lot of the things that we've created have had disastrous effects on us as a species". The album was released to generally favorable reviews from critics, several noting the 1980s-esque musical style, and included a re-hashed version of the Remission-era track "Solvent".
Key told the Phoenix New Times that the band had been dissatisfied with HanDovers production schedule, noting that it had taken them several years to produce the album. For Weapon, they made a return to the fast-paced, one-song-a-day style of their early years. The decision to remake the song "Solvent" helped to set the album's quickened pace; Key said that the music they were making for the album wouldn't sound correct "If it didn't sound like something we had just made quickly, like in the old days".
The band released a music video for the song "Illisit" and in October 2013, announced their Live Shape For Arms Tour, a North American tour starting in January 2014 at The Observatory in Santa Ana, CA. In early 2014, Ogre and Key sent an invoice of $666,000 to the US government for the use of their music at Guantanamo Bay, bringing the issue to the attention of mainstream media outlets. Later in 2014, the Alliance of Sound tour was announced, with performances by Skinny Puppy, VNV Nation, Haujobb, and Youth Code. However, in early November, Front Line Assembly replaced VNV Nation and the tour was renamed Eye vs. Spy, which was a 17-city North American tour between 28 November to 20 December 2014.
In June 2015, Skinny Puppy performed at the Amnesia Rockfest in Montebello, Canada, alongside acts such as Ministry and The Dillinger Escape Plan. Following two successful tours with Weapon, the band yet again embarked with Youth Code, this time to play shows across North America in 2015 and across Europe in 2017 under the Down the SocioPath tour, which dropped all Weapon tracks and instead introduced many songs from the band's 1996 album, The Process, which had not been accompanied by any live performances due to the death of Goettel in 1995. Unlike the previous tours for Weapon, Down the SocioPath scaled back the theatrics and introduced Matthew Setzer as a live guitarist. Ogre began these concerts in a white hooded robe which was removed to reveal a suit into which a stagehand inserted oversized needles. The Down the Sociopath Too Euro 2017 leg lasted from 30 May to 16 June 2017. The tour included stops at the Download Festival in France, Primavera Sound, and Wave-Gotik-Treffen.
Style
Sound
Inspired by the music of Suicide, SPK, Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Cabaret Voltaire, Chrome, Throbbing Gristle, Bauhaus, Joy Division, New Order, Depeche Mode, Fad Gadget, Nocturnal Emissions, Portion Control, and The Legendary Pink Dots, music which had been accessible to the band primarily via tape exchange, Skinny Puppy experimented with analog and digital recording techniques, composing multi-layered music with synthesizers, drum machines, acoustic percussion, tape loops, samplers, and conventional rock music instruments to create what they called "audio sculpture". Their extensive use of sampling from horror films and radio broadcasts served to "clarify or obscure" song meanings, and they applied liberal amounts of distortion and other effects to Ogre's vocals, which are often delivered as a stream of consciousness. Lyrics commonly reference social and political subjects including animal rights, environmental degradation, drug addiction, suicide, war, privacy, and self-determination. They have also used their music to draw attention to events such as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the AIDS epidemic, and the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Skinny Puppy's often informal, improvisational approach to musical composition is indicated by use of the term "brap", coined by them and defined as a verb meaning "to get together, hook up electronic instruments, get high, and record".
Initially a dark synth-pop group, Skinny Puppy took on a more industrial sound following the inclusion of Dwayne Goettel in 1986, and later came to be recognized as pioneers of the electro-industrial genre. Their music has been described as encompassing a range styles including ambient music, avant-funk, noise rock and industrial metal. The music that followed Goettel's death has been likened to genres such as glitch and intelligent dance music. The Village Voice described Skinny Puppy's early work as "dark electro-pop", while Billboard's Bill Coleman thought of them as a "moody techno-outfit" with an "aggravating" musical delivery. People magazine called Ogre's vocals "incomprehensible", and likened the group's use of sampling to noises heard on "a TV set in an adjoining hotel room". AllMusic referred to Skinny Puppy's music as "primal" and "Kraftwerk gone netherworld", going on to say that unlike the bands that followed in their wake, "Ogre and Key knew how to craft tunes and marry them to the most ingenious of sound patterns". Ogre told the Windsor Star in 1986 that "in some sense our music, or the feeling expressed by our music, is felt by a lot more people" than had been anticipated.
Ogre said in an interview with Auxiliary Magazine in June 2013, "there is a very military side to Industrial music, and we are far more in the psychedelic side."
Music videos
Due to their graphic nature, the majority of Skinny Puppy's videos received limited commercial airplay, or were outright banned from broadcast. The music video for "Stairs and Flowers" was banned by the Canadian Censorship Bureau because of scenes depicting "an excrement-covered woman being beaten by soldiers"; the woman in question was Ogre soaked in mud. The letterbox effect used in the video for "Dig It", which portrayed stock market footage, was accused by both the bureau and MuchMusic to instead be showing pornography. Also banned was the video for "Testure", an action resulting from a viewer poll held by CityTV, as was the video for the song "Worlock", which was banned from MTV. Ogre, a self-described horror fan, defended the "Worlock" video by saying "I knew there was no way they'd play 'Worlock' there [the United States]. But I went out to make that video so no one would play it!"; he affirmed that the video was meant to draw attention to censorship in horror films. Some of the band's videos have received airplay, such as those for the promotional songs "Killing Game" and "Pro-test"; "Dig It" was also regularly played on MTV. A 30-second television promo was produced for the band by Capital Records in 1987, featuring a mix of scenes from the "Stairs and Flowers" and "Dig It" videos.
In a 1990 radio interview, Goettel explained the group's outlook on music videos, stating that "it's great to do videos when you have the money to do them, but for Skinny Puppy's part it's less of a promotional tool". He said that touring and word of mouth were their preferred avenues of promotion. "When a video gets made its not like 'OK we're going to spend $50,000 and it's going to sell this many more records'... it doesn't sell any more records".
Live performances
Skinny Puppy is noted for theatrical and controversial live performances which blend performance art with music. Ogre has been critical of the band's early performances, telling Spin magazine in 1992 that "I would do things on stage that would blow – they just wouldn't work". Live performances involved periods of musical improvisation, film projections, and elaborate stage props and machines, many of which are designed and built by Ogre himself. While discussing Skinny Puppy's performances, Ogre remarked that "our shows combine images with theater. It works better than just coming out and doing a horror magic routine". He explained to the Vancouver Sun in 1988 that he wanted his act to have "that grey area where anything could happen – where I can cut my head off by accident and people will go, 'wow, that's great'".
On-stage theatrics have included Ogre being suspended from racks and cables, play with a hangman's noose, use of an angle grinder, and mock executions of Ogre and George H.W. Bush. Following the 2004 United States presidential election, promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances. This reaction was prompted by the performance of a mock execution on stage, during which Ogre was "decapitated" by actors dressed as then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The band was also asked by Samsung (who had been asked by Ogre to sponsor the band with a large flat screen) to "not insult the president" while performing on stage. In a 1987 television interview with Kim Clarke Champniss, Key explained that while Ogre follows a "rough guideline" during a live performance, a majority of his on-stage theatrics are conceived spontaneously. Key told Champniss that Ogre's demeanor on stage could "range from just a sort of laid back kind of lurking to a rampant psycho". Ogre once remarked that touring was, for himself, like "dating hydrogen peroxide", referencing the numerous injuries which he would acquire over the course of touring.
Though Ogre and Key have remained the only constant members of Skinny Puppy's live act since Goettel's death, the pair have hired various other musicians to assist them onstage. They include drummer Justin Bennett, guitarist William Morrison, and guitarist Matthew Setzer.
Influence and legacy
Despite little mainstream airplay, several Skinny Puppy releases have charted in North America and Europe, and their influence on industrial and electronic music is considerable. Widely considered originators of a unique sound and live performance style, Skinny Puppy are also known as pioneers of the industrial rock and electro-industrial genres. They were one of the earliest groups to help popularize industrial music, and the Los Angeles Times recognized Ogre as the "first industrial rock star". Their gloomy and androgynous aesthetic helped attract the attention of the goth scene, from which they were able to draw a larger female audience than any previous industrial group. By the end of the 90s, they had sold some two million records for Nettwerk worldwide, and two of their releases, Remission and Bites, were certified gold in Canada.
Their music has spawned "a litter of like-minded bands", extending from independent acts like Tin Omen, to industrial rock project Nine Inch Nails, who opened for Skinny Puppy for a short time on their 1988 VIVIsectVI tour. Trent Reznor also acknowledged that Skinny Puppy's "Dig It" inspired the very first Nine Inch Nails track written, "Down in It". Canadian synth-pop artist Grimes includes Skinny Puppy as an influence on her music, having grown up in Vancouver's industrial music scene. Sara Taylor of the EBM group Youth Code has said that the song "Worlock" was "one of the most influential songs" she had ever heard. Other artists impacted by Skinny Puppy's music include Marilyn Manson, Chester Bennington, Moby, Jonathan Davis, Daron Malakian, 3Teeth, Foals vocalist Yannis Philippakis, Al Jourgensen, Chris Vrenna, John Grant, Mortiis,Blush Response, Celldweller, Finite Automata, Shooter Jennings, Death Grips vocalist MC Ride, X Marks the Pedwalk, Wumpscut, Haujobb, Orgy, Filter, Front Line Assembly, Orphx, Crystal Castles, AFI side project Blaqk Audio, and Mayhem vocalist Attila Csihar.
The band inspired a tribute album, Hymns of the Worlock: A Tribute to Skinny Puppy published by Cleopatra Records, which features groups such as Crocodile Shop and The Electric Hellfire Club. Skinny Puppy's remix album Remix dystemper includes contributions from a wide array of musicians such as electronic music DJ Josh Wink, Guru, KMFDM, Deftones, and former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna. Vrenna's solo project, Tweaker, opened for Skinny Puppy during their 2004 North American tour. Danny Carey from Tool and Wayne Static of Static-X provided drums and backup vocals, respectively, for the song "Use Less" from The Greater Wrong of the Right.
Ogre worked with KMFDM on several occasions, touring with them in 1997 and providing vocals on the song "Torture" from their album Symbols (the song also features production from Dave Ogilvie) as well as for the songs "That's All" and "Full Worm Garden" from 1999's Adios. Skinny Puppy also provided a remix for the Mötley Crüe song "Hooligan's Holiday"; Nikki Sixx reported that the band "just dumped the whole song in the computer and went off".
Skinny Puppy's music has been included in the soundtracks of films such as Bad Influence, An American Werewolf in Paris, The Blair Witch Project, Underworld, and Saw II, among others. The group was given a brief role as the "gang of goons" in the 1995 dark comedy film The Doom Generation. The 1996 Video Game Descent II included original music from Ogre and Mark Walk, while the 2014 PlayStation exclusive LittleBigPlanet 3 featured the song "Rodent" from the album Rabies.
Alternative Press included Skinny Puppy in their 1996 list of "100 underground inspirations of the past 20 years."
While discussing the possibility of Nine Inch Nails being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Richard Patrick of the band Filter remarked "what about Skinny Puppy?", going on to say that while Nine Inch Nails is the more famous of the two, Skinny Puppy were one of the first groups to craft "scary and mean" industrial music.
Side-projects
Key and Ogre are active in a number of other projects besides Skinny Puppy. Key has released several solo albums including Music for Cats and The Ghost of Each Room in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Doubting Thomas, a project led by Key and the late Dwayne Goettel, was an outlet for mostly instrumental compositions (save for several film and television samples). The projects only releases were Father Don't Cry in 1990 and The Infidel in 1991, both released through Wax Trax! Records. Download was founded by Key and Goettel in 1995 and included the assistance of frequent Skinny Puppy contributors Ken Marshall and Anthony Valcic. The group has released a number of records since its formation and notably provided the soundtrack album Charlie's Family in 1997 for the film The Manson Family, directed by Jim Van Bebber; the film was released six years after the album. Bebber had approached Key to produce the soundtrack, having previously directed several Skinny Puppy videos as well as the short horror film Chunk Blower, which starred Goettel and Bill Leeb of Front Line Assembly. Other notable projects include The Tear Garden with Edward Ka-Spel for The Legendary Pink Dots, platEAU with Phil Western, and Cyberaktif with Goettel and Leeb. Key also works as Scaremeister, his film scoring alter ego, having previously contributed to John Debney's score for End of Days. Scaremeister composed the album 31 Spirits, a collection of short musical pieces which have been used in the trailers of numerous films such as Inglourious Basterds, My Bloody Valentine, and The Book of Eli.
Ogre's main project outside Skinny Puppy is ohGr, which has released five albums, Welt (2001), SunnyPsyOp (2003), Devils in my Details (2008), UnDeveloped (2011), and TrickS (2018). In the mid-nineties, Ogre and producer Martin Atkins created the project known as Rx (formerly known as Ritalin). Rx released only one album, Bedside Toxicology, in 1998. He also toured extensively with Pigface (1991–1995) and Ministry (1987–1990) and appeared on a number of Pigface and Ministry-related recordings.
Guantanamo Bay torture allegations
Skinny Puppy have accused the US military of using their music to torture inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, without the band's knowledge or permission. In response, the band have sent an "invoice" to the Pentagon.
Members
Current
Nivek Ogre – vocals, keyboards (1982–1996, 2003–present)
cEvin Key – guitars, drums, bass, synthesizers (1982–1996, 2003–present)
Mark Walk – keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, bass, drums (2003–present)
Former
Dwayne Goettel – keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, bass (1986–1995; died 1995)
Bill Leeb (Wilhelm Schroeder) – bass synth, backing vocals (1984–1986)
Touring
Justin Bennett – drums (2004–present)
Matthew Setzer – guitars (2015–present)
William Morrison – guitars (2004–2005)
Timeline
Discography
Remission (1984)
Bites (1985)
Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse (1986)
Cleanse Fold and Manipulate (1987)
VIVIsectVI (1988)
Rabies (1989)
Too Dark Park (1990)
Last Rights (1992)
The Process (1996)
The Greater Wrong of the Right (2004)
Mythmaker (2007)
hanDover (2011)
Weapon (2013)
Videography
Ain't It Dead Yet?, 1991, VHS/DVD
Live performance at The Concert Hall, Toronto, Ontario, 31 May and 1 June 1987.
Video Collection (1984-1992), 1996, VHS/DVD
Includes videos for "Dig It", "Stairs and Flowers", "Far Too Frail" (live footage 1985), "Smothered Hope" (live footage 1985), "Deep Down Trauma Hounds" (live footage from the 1987 Ain't It Dead Yet? performance), "Testure", "Spasmolytic", and "Killing Game".
Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4, 1996, 2-CD
Includes a number of video clips on those editions which included a CD-ROM portion.
Greater Wrong of the Right LIVE, 2005, 2-DVD
Live performances in Toronto, Ontario, and Montreal, Quebec in late 2004. Also includes videos for "Pro-Test", "Spasmolytic" (live footage 1990), and "Love in Vein" (live footage 1992).
A number of other, promo-only videos were released, including "State Aid" (live footage 1988), "Worlock" (1990), "Candle" (1996), "Curcible" (1996), "Hardset Head" (1996), and "Haze" (2007).
See also
Go Ask Ogre List of bands from British Columbia
Music of Vancouver
References
Citations
Bibliography
Further reading
Interviews in IndustrialnatioN'' Magazine Issue No. 5, Issue No. 13, & Issue No. 21.
External links
American Recordings (record label) artists
Canadian electronic music groups
Canadian industrial music groups
Canadian techno music groups
Capitol Records artists
Dark ambient music groups
Dependent Records artists
Electro-industrial music groups
Electronic body music groups
Musical groups established in 1982
Musical groups disestablished in 1995
Musical groups reestablished in 2003
Noise musical groups
Canadian post-punk music groups
Musical groups from Vancouver
Industrial rock musical groups
Metropolis Records artists
1982 establishments in British Columbia
1996 disestablishments in British Columbia
2003 establishments in British Columbia | true | [
"Best of the Soul Years is a 2015 compilation album by Australian singer-songwriter, Jimmy Barnes. The album is compiled from his three platinum-selling albums of soul and R&B classics; Soul Deep (1991), Soul Deeper... Songs from the Deep South (2000) and The Rhythm and the Blues (2009). The album also includes two new recordings, \"In the Midnight Hour\" and \"Mustang Sally\".\nThe album was released in Australia on 14 August 2015 and peaked at number 3.\n\nTrack listing\nCD (Disc 1)/Digital download\n \"River Deep – Mountain High\"\n \"I Gotcha\"\n \"In the Midnight Hour\"\n \"(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher\"\n \"Land of 1000 Dances\"\n \"Mustang Sally\"\n \"Chain of Fools\"\n \"Red Hot\"\n \"Hallelujah I Love Her So\"\n \"Hold On, I'm Comin'\"\n \"Shake, Rattle and Roll\"\n \"What Becomes of the Broken Hearted\"\n \"Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours\"\n \"Ain't No Mountain High Enough\"\n \"When Something Is Wrong with My Baby\" (with John Farnham)\n \"Reflections\"\n\nDVD (Disc 2)\n \"(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher\" (live performance at The Palais)\n \"River Deep – Mountain High\" (live performance at The Palais)\n \"In the Midnight Hour\" (live performance at The Palais)\n \"Land of 1000 Dances\" (music video)\n \"Mustang Sally\" (music video)\n \"Chain of Fools\" (music video)\n \"Red Hot\" (music video)\n \"Hallelujah I Love Her So\" (music video)\n \"Shake Rattle and Roll\" (music video)\n \"Hold On, I'm Comin'\" (live performance at The Basement)\n \"What Becomes of the Broken Hearted\" (live performance at The Basement)\n \"Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours\" (live performance at The Palais)\n \"Ain't No Mountain High Enough\" (music video)\n \"When Something Is Wrong with My Baby\" (music video)\n \"In the Midnight Hour\" (music video)\n\nCharts\n\nCertifications\n\nReferences\n\nMushroom Records compilation albums\n2015 greatest hits albums\nJimmy Barnes albums\nCompilation albums by Australian artists",
"\"What a Beautiful Name\" is a song by Australian praise and worship group Hillsong Worship. The song, written and led by Brooke Ligertwood and co-written with Ben Fielding, refers to the promise of salvation through Jesus Christ as represented by His Holy Name. The \"genre-smashing single\" contributed to Hillsong being named Billboards Top Christian Artist of 2017. \"What a Beautiful Name\" won two Dove Awards for Song of the Year and Worship Song of the Year in 2017. It won the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song. \"What a Beautiful Name\" was released on 6 January 2017, as the lead single from their 25th live album, Let There Be Light (2016).\n\nBackground\n\"What a Beautiful Name\" was composed in December 2015 in Sydney, Australia, for the upcoming Hillsong Conference, the annual church gathering. The scriptural foundation of the song can be found in , and .\n\nComposition\nAccording to sheet music published at Sheetmusicdirect.com by Hillsong Publishing, \"What a Beautiful Name\" is a slow tempo of 68 beats per minute. Written in common time, the song is in the key of D major. Brooke Ligertwood's vocal range spans from A3 to B4 during the song.\n\nMusic video\nA video for the song was recorded at the Hillsong Conference in Sydney and was released on 30 September 2016. The YouTube video has more than 400 million views as of 16 April 2021.\n\nCriticism and Reception\nMusic critic Matt Collar praised Hillsong Worship for their \"passionate, faith-based sound\" and wrote that fans of the group \"will surely appreciate this emotive, uplifting Christian pop.\"\n\nHowever, theologian and pastor John Piper had criticised this song for heresy, saying\n\nAnother pastor, Sam Storms criticised the song along similar lines, but stopped short of labelling it \"heretical\".\n\nHillsong responded to the criticisms of the song with a blog by singer Ben Fielding to defend the scriptural inspiration behind it.\n\nJake Gosselin attributes the popularity of the song in the Christian community to a number of factors. He writes that \"What a Beautiful Name\" is \"singable.\" In practice this refers to the \"small vocal range\" of the song which is \"one note over an octave.\" This translates to a song that is easy to sing and which does not strain the voice with notes that are too high or too low. He also comments that the song is written in the key of D which is \"the optimal key for both men and women.\"\n\nChart performance\n\"What a Beautiful Name\" had its worldwide digital release on 6 January 2017, and topped Billboard's Hot Christian Songs chart on 25 February. The single has held the top position for 37 weeks making it the third-longest-leading No. 1 in the 14-year history of the Hot Christian chart. The song which claims the distinction as the longest-leading No. 1 is \"Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)\" and was released by another Hillsong unit, Hillsong United. \"Oceans\" led the Hot Christian chart for 61 weeks. The song has stayed on the chart for 77 weeks, making it the third longest running song on the chart.\n\n\"What a Beautiful Name\" is ranked as the No. 1 song of the year for 2017 on the Christian Digital Sales chart, No. 3 on Christian Streaming Songs, and is also the No. 3 song on Christian Airplay. The song spent nine weeks as No. 1 on Christian Airplay and was Hillsong Worship's first No. 1 on the chart. What a Beautiful Name also leads the CCLI, the international licensing service for 250,000 churches.\n\n\"What a Beautiful Name\" is a track from Hillsong Worship's 25th live album, Let There Be Light. The album was released on 14 October 2016, and debuted as No. 1 on the Top Christian Albums chart. For 2017, Let There be Light was ranked the No. 9 of the year.\n\nAwards and accolades\nHillsong Worship was named Billboard's Top Christian Artist of 2017, as well as Top Christian Duo/Group. \"What a Beautiful Name\" earned two Dove awards, Song of the Year and Worship Song of the Year. \"What a Beautiful Name\" won the award for Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song at the 60th Grammy Awards, the first for Hillsong Worship.\n\nLive performances\nThe song was recorded at a live performance at the annual Hillsong Conference in 2016. Hillsong performed the song at the 48th Annual Dove Awards held at Allen Arena in Nashville. The performance was well received and \"had audience members on their feet with their hands in the air.\"\n\nWhen asked about performing the song in an interview with Billboards Jim Asker, Ligertwood said about the audience: \nFinally, she said about performing the song:\n\nOther versions\nIn July 2017, the Voices of Lee, the \"elite\" a cappella singing group, posted a video of the song to their Facebook page. The cover was an instant hit and reached the so-called viral threshold of 5 million views in two days. As of October 2017, it had amassed 33 million views. The group represents Lee University in Tennessee; the video was filmed in the school's chapel.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nDecade-end charts\n\nCertifications\n\nRelease history\n\nFurther reading\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \"What a Beautiful Name\" video \n \"The Story Behind What a Beautiful Name\" video\n Lyrics and chords\n\n2017 singles\n2016 songs\nSparrow Records singles\nSongs written by Brooke Fraser\nHillsong Worship songs"
] |
[
"Skinny Puppy",
"Live performances",
"when did skinny puppy's live performances begin?",
"(1987-1988),",
"who were part of this band?",
"Key cutting steel with an angle grinder,",
"what is the high light of their live performance?",
"using fake blood during their performances."
] | C_c1a207f3a2e648579ef56e74dbf1253f_1 | what kind of response this had with the audience? | 4 | What kind of response did using fake blood have with Skinny Puppy's audience? | Skinny Puppy | Skinny Puppy is noted for theatrical and controversial live performances which blend performance art with music, especially in an ambitious period that spanned their Head Trauma (1987-1988), VIVIsectVI (1988), Too Dark Park (1990), and Last Rights (1992) tours. Ogre has been critical of the bands early performances, telling Spin magazine in 1992 that "I would do things on stage that would blow-they just wouldn't work". Live performances involved periods of musical improvisation, film projections, and elaborate stage props and machines, many of which are designed and built by Ogre himself. While discussing Skinny Puppy's performances, Ogre once remarked that "our shows combine images with theater. It works better than just coming out and doing a horror magic routine". On-stage theatrics included Ogre being suspended from racks and cables, play with a hangman's noose, Key cutting steel with an angle grinder, and mock executions of Ogre and George H.W. Bush. Following the 2004 Presidential Election in the United States, promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances. This reaction was prompted by the performance of a mock execution on stage, during which Ogre was decapitated by actors dressed as then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The band was also asked by Samsung (who had been asked by Ogre to sponsor the band with a large flat screen) to "not insult the president" while performing on stage. In a 1987 television interview with Kim Clarke Champniss, Key explained that while Ogre follows a "rough guideline" during a live performance, a majority of his on-stage theatrics are thought up of spontaneously. Key told Champniss that Ogre's demeanor on stage could "range from just a sort of laid back kind of lurking to a rampant psycho". Ogre once remarked that touring was, for himself, like "dating hydrogen peroxide", referencing the numerous injuries which he would acquire over the course of touring. Though Ogre and Key have remained the only constant members of Skinny Puppy's live act since the death of Dwayne Goettel, several other musicians have been hired to accompany the pair since 2004. They include drummer Justin Bennett, guitarist William Morrison, and guitarist Matthew Setzer. CANNOTANSWER | promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances. | Skinny Puppy is a Canadian industrial music group formed in Vancouver in 1982. The group is among the founders of the industrial rock and electro-industrial genres. Initially envisioned as an experimental side-project by cEvin Key (Kevin Crompton) while he was in the new wave band Images in Vogue, Skinny Puppy evolved into a full-time project with the addition of vocalist Nivek Ogre (Kevin Ogilvie).
Over the course of a dozen studio albums and many live tours, Key and Ogre have been the only constant members. Other members have included Dwayne Goettel (1986–1995), Dave "Rave" Ogilvie (long-time associate, producer, and "unofficial" fourth member until 1996; not a relative of Kevin Ogilvie), Mark Walk (2003–present), and a number of guests, including Bill Leeb (1985–1986, under the pseudonym Wilhelm Schroeder), Al Jourgensen (1989), Danny Carey (2004), and many others.
After the self-release of their first cassette in 1984, Skinny Puppy soon signed to Vancouver label Nettwerk, anchoring its early roster. From their Nettwerk debut EP Remission in 1984 to their 1992 album Last Rights, Skinny Puppy developed into an influential band with a dedicated cult following, fusing elements of industrial, funk,
noise, new wave, electro, and rock music and making innovative use of sampling. Over the course of several tours of North America and Europe in this period, they became known for theatrical, horror-themed live performances and videos, drawing attention to issues such as chemical warfare and animal testing.
In 1993, Skinny Puppy left Nettwerk and long-time producer Rave, signing with American Recordings and relocating to Malibu, California, where drug problems and tension between band members plagued the recording of their next album, The Process (1996). Ogre quit Skinny Puppy in June 1995, and Goettel died of a heroin overdose two months later. Key and Ogre, already active in a number of other projects, went their separate ways, reuniting for a one-off Skinny Puppy concert at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden, Germany, in 2000. Reforming Skinny Puppy in 2003 with producer Mark Walk, they released their ninth album, The Greater Wrong of the Right (2004), which was followed by the release of the albums Mythmaker (2007) and HanDover (2011). In 2013, they released their twelfth album, Weapon, which was inspired by allegations that their music had been used for torture in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
History
Formation and first releases (1982–1985)
Skinny Puppy formed in 1982 as a side project for Kevin Crompton in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Crompton was dissatisfied with the pop direction of the band he was in, Images in Vogue, and began Skinny Puppy with the intention of doing something more compelling and experimental. Images in Vogue had become a popular act in Vancouver, achieving several radio hits and opening for groups such as Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, and Roxy Music. Crompton had planned Skinny Puppy to be a side project while he continued his work in Images in Vogue; however, when Images in Vogue relocated to Toronto, Crompton made Skinny Puppy his full-time project. Crompton had already created the name for the project and recorded several songs when he asked Kevin Graham Ogilvie to join. Ogilvie had been a roommate of Images in Vogue member Gary Blair Smith and had met Crompton at a party in late 1982. To avoid the confusion of having two people named Kevin in one band, the pair created stage names, with Crompton becoming cEvin Key and Ogilvie becoming Nivek Ogre.
Using Key's apartment as a makeshift studio, the duo began recording songs and in 1983 with the help of Images in Vogue recording engineer Dave "Rave" Ogilvie (no relation to Ogre), Skinny Puppy released the EP Back & Forth. This was the beginning of a long partnership between Skinny Puppy and Rave, who would serve as their producer until 1993, and again in 1995, and was occasionally listed as a member of the band in album liner notes. Though only 35 copies were ever printed, the self-released Back & Forth drew the attention of Vancouver startup label Nettwerk, who signed the band later that year. The first live Skinny Puppy show was held at the Unovis art gallery in Vancouver in February 1984; the British group Alien Sex Fiend were among the 300 people in attendance.
Ogre has said that Skinny Puppy acted as an escape for Key, who wished to distance himself from Images in Vogue: "He was looking for something to break out of [Images in Vogue], and maybe I was it". Key would continue to drum for Images in Vogue until the group relocated to Toronto in 1985. Key's concept behind Skinny Puppy came from the group's first song ever recorded, "K-9". The idea, according to Key, was to create music which explored "life as seen through a dog's eyes". Skinny Puppy also incorporated the use of "B-grade horror movie visuals", including fake blood and props, into their live performances. Key justified these "shock gore" antics with the following:
What we're presenting isn't much different from what [the audience] is subjected to in everyday life. For example, a commercial is a very plastic view of existence and reality. When you watch a TV show and see a world with picture-perfect endings, all you have to do is switch the station and watch the news.
Having scored a record deal with Nettwerk and with interest surrounding the Back & Forth EP growing, Skinny Puppy was invited to Vancouver's Mushroom Studios to work on new material. It was here that the group recruited Bill Leeb to perform bass synth and backing vocals. Like Ogre and Key before him, Leeb created a stage name, Wilhelm Schroeder; "my real name is Wilhelm" said Leeb, "Schroeder we picked out from the guy playing the piano in the Charlie Brown cartoon". Skinny Puppy released their second EP, Remission in December 1984, almost a year following Back & Forth.
Remission marked the first time Skinny Puppy would collaborate with artist Steven Gilmore, who created the album artwork. The EP was initially only released in vinyl, but was later given a cassette release in 1985. According to Nettwerk VP of A&R and Marketing George Maniatis, Remission "grabbed everybody by the you-know-whats" and, for Nettwerk Records, brought with it an association with industrial dance music. The EP was supported by music videos for the songs "Far Too Frail" and "Smothered Hope", the latter of which being the closest thing to a hit song any North American industrial act had achieved at the time.
Skinny Puppy released its first full-length album, Bites, in 1985 and was produced by Key and Dave Ogilvie. Tom Ellard of the Australian electronic act Severed Heads lent a hand to the production of Bites, acting as a producer and performing various sampling and mixing duties. Described by Billboard magazine as "techno dance...a la Kraftwerk", Bites yielded the underground hit "Assimilate". Key and Ogre opened for Chris & Cosey on their 1985 Canadian tour as Hell 'O' Death Day; some of the material the duo had performed would appear on Bites as bonus tracks. One of these bonus tracks, a song called "The Centre Bullet", featured lyrics by Legendary Pink Dots founder Edward Ka-Spel.
While Skinny Puppy had become well received by underground audiences in most major urban areas, due in part to their anti-consumerist themes and Cure-like aesthetics, not everyone was friendly to the group. Key described Skinny Puppy as the antithesis of "the Bruce Springsteen mentality of music", rejecting "Top 40 conformity". Toronto-based music journalist and DJ Greg Clow recalled Michael Williams, who was a VJ for Muchmusic, introducing him to Skinny Puppy, describing them as "Canada's answer to Depeche Mode".
Dwayne Goettel and stylistic transition (1986–1987)
In 1986, Nettwerk made a distribution deal with Capitol Records, allowing Skinny Puppy and others in Nettwerk's roster to expand their respective audiences. Capitol manager Stephen Powers stated that signing groups such as Skinny Puppy gave the company "a real credibility" with the alternative and college music scenes. Skinny Puppy also signed to Play It Again Sam, allowing the group's music to expand into Europe. It was this expansion into the European market that would help to make Skinny Puppy a "cash cow" for Nettwerk in the early years. In a 2007 interview with CraveOnline, Ogre commented on Skinny Puppy's time with Capitol, saying:
We're so lucky to have gotten here, and if we look back on the fact that we were on Capitol Records at a certain point, being distributed and making these albums under budget… there was one year when we were the only band on the label to profit, when MC Hammer lost a shitload of money. I can still appreciate how odd it was that we had the chance to do that because it doesn't really happen in a lot of cases.
Bill Leeb left Skinny Puppy in 1986 to pursue his own musical project, Front Line Assembly. Leeb gave his reasons for leaving the group stating that his bandmates expressed different ideas from his own and that he had been interested in singing. Leeb's replacement would be quiet Alberta native Dwayne Goettel. A classically trained musician, Goettel had been in a duo named Water with vocalist Sandy Weir and had worked with the synthpop band Psyche, among others.
Skinny Puppy's production values improved with the addition of Goettel, with Key remarking that "Dwayne brought us a whole new sense and aesthetic that we didn't have. Up to that point, we were really punk rock in our approach". Key continued on that "he [Goettel] had an incredible knowledge of equipment and at a very early stage was really the master of sampling, which had really just begun". Goettel's contributions to Skinny Puppy's second full-length effort, 1986's Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse, helped to propel the band towards the style of their "chaotic future masterworks". To promote the album, the band made an appearance on CBC Radio's Brave New Waves program in September 1986, and released their first single, "Dig It". A music video for "Dig It" was produced and received extensive airplay on MTV.
Further promotion for the album came from a world tour with the band Severed Heads. The tour proved to be a vital learning experience for the group, having encounters with, according to Key, "tour managers and agents that didn't pay us". In 1987, the song "Stairs and Flowers" was released as a single, as was a new song titled "Chainsaw". The group attracted the attention of the Parent Music Resource Center (PMRC), which named Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse one of several albums believed to be "violent, sexually explicit, or condoning substance abuse". The album was named by Melody Maker magazine as one of the best releases of the year.
Later in 1987 came Skinny Puppy's third full-length album, Cleanse Fold and Manipulate. Described as "a turning point, where experimentation is just beginning to gel with innovation", the album marks the point where the group began to explore more political themes, delving into topics such as the AIDS epidemic and the Vietnam War. A song from the album, "Addiction" was released as a single. The group later went on tour, with a performance at Toronto's Concert Hall being released on VHS in 1989 and CD in 1991 as Ain't It Dead Yet?. Also released in 1987 was Bites and Remission (through Capitol Records) and Remission & Bites (European release, through Pay It Again Sam), both compilations of Skinny Puppy's first two Nettwerk releases.
Subsequent success (1988–1989)
Skinny Puppy's live performances had become increasingly more elaborate, with Ogre interacting with an onstage crucifix and other "crudely constructed" stage props. Craig MacInnis of the Toronto Star described their new stage show as "neo-dadaist shock theatre", while Tom Lanham of the San Francisco Chronicle referred to it as "grotesque". The band continued to tour in 1988 with the European Head Trauma tour, supported by Edward Ka-Spel. Following the tour, the group returned to the studio to record what Ogre described would be the band's most critical statement regarding animal testing.
Skinny Puppy released their fourth album, VIVIsectVI, in 1988; the album's name is a pun intended to associate vivisection with Satanism (i.e. the "666 sect"). The group's primary aim with the album was to bring attention to the topic of vivisection and other issues regarding animal rights. The album's subject matter also deals with subjects such as chemical warfare, environmental waste, and disease. Lead track "Dogshit" was released as a single in 1988 under the name "Censor"; the name change was made by the band when it was decided that the single would not sell well with its original name. The single "Testure", which denounced the testing of animals for research purposes, reached No. 19 on Billboards Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in 1989. According to Ogre, "Testure" was intended to be accessible in the hope of spreading their "anti-vivisectionist" message. "It's the only song I think they will be able to play on the radio", he said. "I hope they do play it because it's the only way we can go beyond our ranks and our loyal fans who already understand the message". "Testure" also featured several well-chosen samples from the film The Plague Dogs, an animated adventure about two dogs who escape from a research laboratory. Melody Maker named VIVIsectVI one of the best albums of 1988.
Skinny Puppy toured in support of the album, featuring an early incarnation of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails as their opening act. The concept for the live show revolved around a vivisectionist (played by Ogre) who is eventually transformed into a tortured animal; the idea was to portray the "inner workings of the mind under the strain of vivisection". The stage show included the mock vivisection of a stuffed dog the band had named Chud. Following a show in Cincinnati, Ohio, Key, Ogre, and tour manager Dan McGee were arrested for "disorderly conduct" when an audience member, believing the stuffed animal Ogre was "vivisecting" to be a real dog, called the police. Two plainclothes officers entered the group's dressing room demanding they inspect the prop. Following a heated argument, the trio spent the night in jail, but were released the following day after paying a $200 fine.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the band members began working on various side projects. Key and Goettel were involved with The Tear Garden (a collaboration with The Legendary Pink Dots) and Doubting Thomas (an outlet for their non-Skinny Puppy instrumentals). The band Hilt, a collaboration between Key and Goettel, and Al Nelson, also started when Nettwerk challenged the group to produce an album for as little money as possible. Ogre struck up a friendship with Ministry's Al Jourgensen, having first worked together during the recording of the PTP song "Show Me Your Spine" (featured in the 1987 film RoboCop).
For Skinny Puppy's fifth album, Rabies, released in 1989, Jourgensen joined Rave as producer. The album, featuring Jourgensen's electric guitar work and backing vocals, drew mixed reception from fans. Despite these reactions, the album was a commercial success, selling 150,000 copies and receiving extensive airplay on college radio. The single "Worlock" – which featured samples of Charles Manson singing parts of the song "Helter Skelter" from The Beatles' White Album, accompanied by a fragmented portion of the songs guitar introduction – helped to bring the band "massive popularity". A video produced for the song, featuring spliced-together footage from dozens of horror films and a statement denouncing censorship of the genre by the MPAA, was circulated widely as a promotional and bootleg item. The song "Tin Omen" was also released as a single and "Hexonxonx" received some airplay on alternative radio. In spite of the album's initial mixed reception, Brad Filicky in a 2003 issue of CMJ magazine named Rabies as a classic album, calling it "a masterpiece of the industrial genre".
This period marked the beginning of divisions within the band, as rather than tour in support of Rabies, Ogre joined Ministry while they toured in support of their album The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste (1989); Ogre contributed guitars, keyboards, and vocals during the tour. Ogre had also begun working with the Ministry side project Revolting Cocks. Key was later quoted saying of Ogre's involvement with Ministry and, later on, Martin Atkins' Pigface that he sometimes felt "like a wife that's been cheated on".
Too Dark Park (1990–1991)
Following the production of Rabies, a divide grew between the group members, with Key and Goettel often siding against Ogre, feeling he was more interested in solo work. The group were ultimately disappointed with the outcome of Rabies, with Goettel saying that the completed product was "less within the Skinny Puppy vision", and Key being displeased with Jourgensen's involvement. Ogre also expressed his disapproval for the album, claiming that he had "flopped". "The work and artistic environment really weren't there at all either. It was completely negative".
Key and Goettel completed work on some of their side projects such a Hilt, releasing their first effort, Call the Ambulance (Before I Hurt Myself), which was produced by Rave. Key also reunited with Bill Leeb to form the project known as Cyberaktif; Goettel acted as an assistant producer and provided some instrumentation. Jourgensen offered Ogre the chance to tour with the Revolting Cocks, having provided vocals on their previous tour. Ogre refused the offer, citing some occurrences during his time with Ministry which led him to question his friendship with Jourgensen.
The group, having finished work on their various side projects, returned to the studio and released their sixth studio album, Too Dark Park, in 1990. Goettel said in a radio interview that the major intentions behind the album were to reevaluate what Skinny Puppy was and create a new style of music to mark the beginning of a new decade. This reevaluation included hiring Jim Cummins (I, Braineater) to design the cover artwork, feeling that their longtime designer Steven Gilmore had lost his creative spark.
Described as "forceful and consistently abrasive", Too Dark Park was what Key referred to as the true successor to "the last pure" Skinny Puppy album, VIVIsectVI. Critics such as Staci Bonner of Spin magazine applauded the use of sampling and stated that the album was a "return to the bloodbath" for the group. The album yielded the singles "Tormentor" and "Spasmolytic", the latter of which spawned a music video directed by Jim Van Bebber. Billboard called "Spasmolytic" a "delicious mind-altering affair", a sentiment shared by Wil Lewellyn of Treblezine who included the song in a list of the best underground songs of the 1990s.
Environmental degradation was a major theme on both the album and the North American Too Dark Park tour. For the tour, Key took on the role of drummer, leaving Goettel as lead keyboardist. Key told Alternative Press that "we could very well have a backing tape and stand behind synths playing two notes on the keyboard, but we've decided to physically strain ourselves and learn additional parts along with what we've already written". Onstage theatrics included a segment with Ogre performing on stucco stilts and pneumatic crutches, Ogre being hoisted from the stage by cables, and a backing film featuring scenes of graphic violence, most notably sequences from the Japanese film series Guinea Pig. Ogre later gave insight on the backing film's conception, saying:
We did an experiment ... We've always been accused of celebrating violence for idiotic reasons. [So] we used some images in our show from a film called Guinea Pig. They're these incredibly realistic, but simulated, Japanese snuff films. We inserted them into this roller-coaster ride of violent images and people were quite disgusted. People were vomiting in front of the stage. People came up to me after the show, saying I was the most disgusting human being-until they found out what it was all about. The whole reason we did that was to see if there was a difference. Will people react differently to something that's real as opposed to something they know is staged? They will. There's a whole different set of emotions people go through. It doesn't look like it looks on TV. It's quite sickening.
Ogre, who considered the tour to be a high point in his career, compared the band's performances to something like intense car races. "People go there expecting an accident to happen ... I was really running off that car-crash energy".
Following the tour, Ogre became involved with Martin Atkins' project Pigface in 1991, for a short time becoming the group's lead vocalist. Pigface included talent from several other industrial groups such as William Rieflin of Ministry and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who helped record the song "Suck". Ogre and Reznor performed the song together in the live album Welcome to Mexico... Asshole. Also on the album was a cover of the song "T.F.W.O." from Too Dark Park, led by Ogre.
In 2003, Alexander Chow of Spin magazine named Too Dark Park an essential industrial album, stating that "schizophrenic beats, manic-depressive mumblings, and just the right dose of fist-raising choruses" made for a dance floor favorite.
Last Rights (1992)
Following Too Dark Park, Skinny Puppy was commissioned by the dance group La La La Human Steps to compose several songs for their 1991 production Infante C'est Destroy, a duty shared alongside the likes of Einstürzende Neubauten. It was also during this time that Ogre made a concerted effort to rid his drug addictions. In an interview with CITR-FM, Ogre discussed his ordeals with hepatitis A and subsequent hospilization; he also thanked Pigface for looking after him during his "hour of need".
Skinny Puppy released their seventh studio album, Last Rights, in 1992. It was the last album the band released under Nettwerk/Capitol. Relationships between the band members during the album's production were "tense and unhealthy", with Ogre, under the supervision of Rave, coming into the studio at night to perform vocals for the music Key and Goettel composed earlier in the day. Ogre said that the production of Last Rights acted as a form of therapy which he used to help him come to terms with his addictions. "It's painful for me to be reminded of certain things, but for me to say it never happened is wrong. I'll be glad to put it behind me, but I had to do this".
Described by Entertainment Weekly as a "nonstop stretch of horrific soundscapes", Last Rights became the first Skinny Puppy record to chart on the Billboard 200, peaking at No. 193. The album remained on Billboard's Heatseekers album chart for several weeks, peaking at No. 10. The track "Inquisition" was released as a single and included several alternative cuts of the song, as well as the b-side "LaHuman8" (one of the tracks produced for La La La Human Steps). A second single, "Love in Vein", was never released, although an unfinished remix intended for it later appeared on Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996. A music video was created for the song "Killing Game" which featured a student dance troupe performing in "high-contrast black and white".
A track titled "Left Handshake" was excluded from Last Rights, leaving a blank track 10 on some copies of the album. Clearance for a lengthy vocal sample from Timothy Leary's Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out, was approved by Leary, but denied by the copyright holder, Henry G. Saperstein. Commenting on the ordeal, Key said, "We tried to convince him, but he [Saperstein] said, 'it doesn't matter what Leary said, he doesn't own his own work'". The song, in which Ogre provides commentary to Leary's instructions for avoiding a "bad trip", was eventually released on the initial European edition of Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996, and on a limited edition single called "Track 10" sold at the Skinny Puppy reunion concert in 2000 at Dresden.
The stage show for the Last Rights tour in North America, much like the album itself, was built around a detailed narrative inspired by Ogre's past ordeals with drug abuse. The show involved Ogre interacting with a backing film by way of a virtual reality machine, a tree made of human heads and fetuses, and numerous other props and costumes. For this tour, Key once more focused exclusively on live drumming, leaving Goettel on keyboard duty. One incident that occurred at a show in Boston involved several concert goers climbing on stage and grabbing at Ogre's various masks and props, several of which were stolen. The band's manager, Tim Gore, pursued the thieves but was punched by a security guard. Following the punch, Gore began having issues breathing and was taken to a hospital; the guard was fired as a result of the incident.
The Process, Goettel's death and breakup (1993–1999)
In 1993, Skinny Puppy contributed the song "Ode to Groovy" to the compilation album In Defense of Animals, released through Restless Records. The album was named after the animal rights group of the same name. Though the track is credited to Skinny Puppy, Ogre and Rave were the only people to work on it.
Ogre, Key, and Goettel signed a contract with American Recordings and moved to Malibu, California to record The Process, a concept album inspired by 1960s cult The Process Church of The Final Judgment, with Roli Mosimann producing. The recording sessions were beset by everything from fires and floods, to the Northridge earthquake. Mosimann was eventually replaced with Martin Atkins. Atkins' presence exacerbated the rift that was forming between Ogre and the rest of the band. The band's bickering and excessive drug use made the recording process so long and costly that American reduced Skinny Puppy's contract from three albums to one. In 1994, Key and Goettel returned to Vancouver with the master tapes, but Ogre remained in Los Angeles and quit Skinny Puppy in June 1995. Goettel was found dead of a heroin overdose in his parents' home two months later.
The Process was eventually completed with Rave and released in 1996. It was dedicated to the memory of Goettel. It was an overall stylistic departure from their previous albums, prominently featuring untreated vocals, guitar, and more accessible song structures. The liner notes that accompanied the CD included thank-yous to "Electronic Music Lovers" and "Puppy People", followed by the words "The End" in bold type. The album charted on the Billboard 200 at No. 102 and reached the No. 1 spot on Billboard'''s Heatseekers album chart.
During the Process era, a loose-knit art/philosophy collective also known as The Process was formed, with early contributions from Ogre and Genesis P-Orridge, among others. P-Orridge and Chris Carter jammed with Skinny Puppy during this period, a recording of which was eventually released as Puppy Gristle on a limited basis in 2002. The creation of the Download project, which Key and Goettel formed with Mark Spybey and Phil Western, also occurred at this time. Download explored everything from electronic improvisation with spoken vocals to techno, and toured in 1996.
Earlier, in 1993, Goettel and Western had issued a breakbeat hardcore single (under the name aDuck) on their own label, Subconscious Records. After Goettel's death, Subconscious evolved into a recording studio and record label imprint that Key used to release a number of his own and Skinny Puppy's recordings. Key also continued to work with The Tear Garden, produced industrial/trance music with Western in the side project platEAU, and released his first solo album in 1998.
Ogre had toured extensively with Martin Atkins' industrial supergroup Pigface since 1991, and toured with them again after leaving Skinny Puppy. He recorded material for his side project WELT. with Ruby's Mark Walk before quitting Skinny Puppy, but due to legal issues with American Recordings, this would not see release until 2001 under the new name, ohGr. In the meantime, he toured with KMFDM, and released an album with Martin Atkins under the name Rx (also known as Ritalin). The ohGr and Rx releases included some of Ogre's most positive and forward-thinking songwriting to date. Several collections were released while Skinny Puppy was dormant, including Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996, and The Singles Collect and B-Sides Collect in 1999. Nettwerk commissioned a remix album in 1998; titled remix dystemper, it featured various Skinny Puppy tracks re-worked by artists including Autechre, Deftones, and Guru. Ogre and Walk also took part, contributing a remix of "Dig It" and an updated version of Remissions "Smothered Hope" with new vocals by Ogre.
In 1999, "Draining Faces" appeared on the soundtrack for The Blair Witch Project.
Reunion, The Greater Wrong of the Right and Mythmaker (2000–2008)
In August 2000, at the insistence of German promoters, Ogre and Key reunited and performed live as Skinny Puppy for the first time since 1992 at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden. The show was meant to be a continuation of the Last Rights tour, with the stage design taking influence from those performances. Rather than find a replacement for Goettel, the band simply left the keyboard station on stage empty. The performance was filmed and recorded, and a live album, Doomsday: Back and Forth Series 5: Live in Dresden, was released in 2001; a DVD release was planned but canceled by Nettwerk. Live clips of "Testure" and "Worlock" as well as a behind the scenes interview with the band were broadcast on Crazy Clip TV in Germany and "Worlock" was included on a VCD compilation by German magazine Sonic Seducer in 2002.
Key joined ohGr on drums for its 2001 tour, while Ogre appeared on the track "Frozen Sky" on Key's 2001 album The Ghost of Each Room. When asked by Terrorizer magazine about the future of Skinny Puppy, Key responded:
Our goals for the future are to combine everything, take the best of what we can do with Ogre, and the best of what we have from our past, as well as the future stuff that we can do, and put it into one touring situation which I'm sure will stroll back into bloodville.
The first new Skinny Puppy track in several years, "Optimissed", appeared on the Underworld soundtrack in 2003. Ogre, Key, Mark Walk and various guests, including Danny Carey of Tool and Wayne Static of Static-X, recorded the band's ninth studio album, The Greater Wrong of the Right, released in 2004 on Synthetic Symphony, a sub-label of SPV. The album, described by Key as being based in "pseudopop", received generally favorable reviews from critics and landed on several Billboard charts. A music video was made for the song "Pro-Test" which featured a style unlike many of the group's previous work, so much so that some were unsure if it was an official video.
Skinny Puppy toured North America and Europe in support of the album in 2004, joined by William Morrison on guitar and Justin Bennett on drums. Shows in Toronto and Montreal were filmed for the live DVD Greater Wrong of the Right Live, which was released in September 2005. The DVD included Information Warfare, a documentary made by Morrison about the U.S.-led wars in Iraq. The anti-Bush administration stance taken by the band at their live shows drew the ire of PABAAH (Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood), which attempted a boycott of college radio stations that played Skinny Puppy.
Skinny Puppy toured Europe again in 2005, and returned to the studio to complete their next album, Mythmaker, which was released in January 2007. The album reached No. 4 on the Independent Albums Chart, No. 5 on the Dance/Electronic Albums Chart, and No. 17 on the Heatseekers Chart, but barely broke the Billboard 200. The band's 2007 North American and European tour, titled Mythrus, began in May 2007. While some fans longed for the sounds of their earlier days, Ogre, speaking with Electronic Musician, stated the band's intention was to move forward rather than dwell in the past. "Some people think that the stuff we do now is a pale imitation of the past. All of the older stuff had a time and place, and we decided to move forward to where we are now".
In Solvent See tour and HanDover (2009–2012)
According to a news posting on the official Skinny Puppy website, the band's next studio album was originally slated for release in October 2009, but the release of this album was delayed due to insolvency issues with the SPV label (thus leading to Ogre naming the 2009 tour the "In Solvent See" tour). These issues were not expected to be resolved until the end of 2009. However, the "In Solvent See" Tour took place as planned, and began on 30 October.
In October 2010, there were reports that the new Skinny Puppy album would be released in February 2011. In May 2011, Skinny Puppy announced that they finished recording a new album titled HanDover, and that they were soliciting it to other record labels for a September 2011 release date. On 27 August 2011, HanDover was officially confirmed as having a 25 October 2011, release in the United States and a 28 October 2011, release in Europe. Steven R Gilmore created the artwork for the album once again. The album landed on a number of Billboard charts, including a spot at No. 168 on the Billboard 200 and No. 9 on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart.
Skinny Puppy were scheduled to perform at numerous European festivals in the summer of 2010, including the Amphi Festival in Germany, the 2010 Waregem Gothic Festival in Belgium, and the Recession Festival in Denmark. A live album, titled Bootlegged, Broke and in Solvent Seas and recorded on the band's 2010 European tour, was released on 12 June 2012.
Weapon and subsequent tours (2013–present)
Skinny Puppy announced that a new album, entitled Weapon, would be released on 28 May 2013. The album was inspired by news brought to the band by a former guard at Guantanamo Bay that their music had been used to torture inmates. Inspiration also came from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and from Ogre's personal views on the human species; in an interview with Vice, Ogre stated that he "view[s] the human being primarily as a weapon, and a lot of the things that we've created have had disastrous effects on us as a species". The album was released to generally favorable reviews from critics, several noting the 1980s-esque musical style, and included a re-hashed version of the Remission-era track "Solvent".
Key told the Phoenix New Times that the band had been dissatisfied with HanDovers production schedule, noting that it had taken them several years to produce the album. For Weapon, they made a return to the fast-paced, one-song-a-day style of their early years. The decision to remake the song "Solvent" helped to set the album's quickened pace; Key said that the music they were making for the album wouldn't sound correct "If it didn't sound like something we had just made quickly, like in the old days".
The band released a music video for the song "Illisit" and in October 2013, announced their Live Shape For Arms Tour, a North American tour starting in January 2014 at The Observatory in Santa Ana, CA. In early 2014, Ogre and Key sent an invoice of $666,000 to the US government for the use of their music at Guantanamo Bay, bringing the issue to the attention of mainstream media outlets. Later in 2014, the Alliance of Sound tour was announced, with performances by Skinny Puppy, VNV Nation, Haujobb, and Youth Code. However, in early November, Front Line Assembly replaced VNV Nation and the tour was renamed Eye vs. Spy, which was a 17-city North American tour between 28 November to 20 December 2014.
In June 2015, Skinny Puppy performed at the Amnesia Rockfest in Montebello, Canada, alongside acts such as Ministry and The Dillinger Escape Plan. Following two successful tours with Weapon, the band yet again embarked with Youth Code, this time to play shows across North America in 2015 and across Europe in 2017 under the Down the SocioPath tour, which dropped all Weapon tracks and instead introduced many songs from the band's 1996 album, The Process, which had not been accompanied by any live performances due to the death of Goettel in 1995. Unlike the previous tours for Weapon, Down the SocioPath scaled back the theatrics and introduced Matthew Setzer as a live guitarist. Ogre began these concerts in a white hooded robe which was removed to reveal a suit into which a stagehand inserted oversized needles. The Down the Sociopath Too Euro 2017 leg lasted from 30 May to 16 June 2017. The tour included stops at the Download Festival in France, Primavera Sound, and Wave-Gotik-Treffen.
Style
Sound
Inspired by the music of Suicide, SPK, Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Cabaret Voltaire, Chrome, Throbbing Gristle, Bauhaus, Joy Division, New Order, Depeche Mode, Fad Gadget, Nocturnal Emissions, Portion Control, and The Legendary Pink Dots, music which had been accessible to the band primarily via tape exchange, Skinny Puppy experimented with analog and digital recording techniques, composing multi-layered music with synthesizers, drum machines, acoustic percussion, tape loops, samplers, and conventional rock music instruments to create what they called "audio sculpture". Their extensive use of sampling from horror films and radio broadcasts served to "clarify or obscure" song meanings, and they applied liberal amounts of distortion and other effects to Ogre's vocals, which are often delivered as a stream of consciousness. Lyrics commonly reference social and political subjects including animal rights, environmental degradation, drug addiction, suicide, war, privacy, and self-determination. They have also used their music to draw attention to events such as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the AIDS epidemic, and the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Skinny Puppy's often informal, improvisational approach to musical composition is indicated by use of the term "brap", coined by them and defined as a verb meaning "to get together, hook up electronic instruments, get high, and record".
Initially a dark synth-pop group, Skinny Puppy took on a more industrial sound following the inclusion of Dwayne Goettel in 1986, and later came to be recognized as pioneers of the electro-industrial genre. Their music has been described as encompassing a range styles including ambient music, avant-funk, noise rock and industrial metal. The music that followed Goettel's death has been likened to genres such as glitch and intelligent dance music. The Village Voice described Skinny Puppy's early work as "dark electro-pop", while Billboard's Bill Coleman thought of them as a "moody techno-outfit" with an "aggravating" musical delivery. People magazine called Ogre's vocals "incomprehensible", and likened the group's use of sampling to noises heard on "a TV set in an adjoining hotel room". AllMusic referred to Skinny Puppy's music as "primal" and "Kraftwerk gone netherworld", going on to say that unlike the bands that followed in their wake, "Ogre and Key knew how to craft tunes and marry them to the most ingenious of sound patterns". Ogre told the Windsor Star in 1986 that "in some sense our music, or the feeling expressed by our music, is felt by a lot more people" than had been anticipated.
Ogre said in an interview with Auxiliary Magazine in June 2013, "there is a very military side to Industrial music, and we are far more in the psychedelic side."
Music videos
Due to their graphic nature, the majority of Skinny Puppy's videos received limited commercial airplay, or were outright banned from broadcast. The music video for "Stairs and Flowers" was banned by the Canadian Censorship Bureau because of scenes depicting "an excrement-covered woman being beaten by soldiers"; the woman in question was Ogre soaked in mud. The letterbox effect used in the video for "Dig It", which portrayed stock market footage, was accused by both the bureau and MuchMusic to instead be showing pornography. Also banned was the video for "Testure", an action resulting from a viewer poll held by CityTV, as was the video for the song "Worlock", which was banned from MTV. Ogre, a self-described horror fan, defended the "Worlock" video by saying "I knew there was no way they'd play 'Worlock' there [the United States]. But I went out to make that video so no one would play it!"; he affirmed that the video was meant to draw attention to censorship in horror films. Some of the band's videos have received airplay, such as those for the promotional songs "Killing Game" and "Pro-test"; "Dig It" was also regularly played on MTV. A 30-second television promo was produced for the band by Capital Records in 1987, featuring a mix of scenes from the "Stairs and Flowers" and "Dig It" videos.
In a 1990 radio interview, Goettel explained the group's outlook on music videos, stating that "it's great to do videos when you have the money to do them, but for Skinny Puppy's part it's less of a promotional tool". He said that touring and word of mouth were their preferred avenues of promotion. "When a video gets made its not like 'OK we're going to spend $50,000 and it's going to sell this many more records'... it doesn't sell any more records".
Live performances
Skinny Puppy is noted for theatrical and controversial live performances which blend performance art with music. Ogre has been critical of the band's early performances, telling Spin magazine in 1992 that "I would do things on stage that would blow – they just wouldn't work". Live performances involved periods of musical improvisation, film projections, and elaborate stage props and machines, many of which are designed and built by Ogre himself. While discussing Skinny Puppy's performances, Ogre remarked that "our shows combine images with theater. It works better than just coming out and doing a horror magic routine". He explained to the Vancouver Sun in 1988 that he wanted his act to have "that grey area where anything could happen – where I can cut my head off by accident and people will go, 'wow, that's great'".
On-stage theatrics have included Ogre being suspended from racks and cables, play with a hangman's noose, use of an angle grinder, and mock executions of Ogre and George H.W. Bush. Following the 2004 United States presidential election, promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances. This reaction was prompted by the performance of a mock execution on stage, during which Ogre was "decapitated" by actors dressed as then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The band was also asked by Samsung (who had been asked by Ogre to sponsor the band with a large flat screen) to "not insult the president" while performing on stage. In a 1987 television interview with Kim Clarke Champniss, Key explained that while Ogre follows a "rough guideline" during a live performance, a majority of his on-stage theatrics are conceived spontaneously. Key told Champniss that Ogre's demeanor on stage could "range from just a sort of laid back kind of lurking to a rampant psycho". Ogre once remarked that touring was, for himself, like "dating hydrogen peroxide", referencing the numerous injuries which he would acquire over the course of touring.
Though Ogre and Key have remained the only constant members of Skinny Puppy's live act since Goettel's death, the pair have hired various other musicians to assist them onstage. They include drummer Justin Bennett, guitarist William Morrison, and guitarist Matthew Setzer.
Influence and legacy
Despite little mainstream airplay, several Skinny Puppy releases have charted in North America and Europe, and their influence on industrial and electronic music is considerable. Widely considered originators of a unique sound and live performance style, Skinny Puppy are also known as pioneers of the industrial rock and electro-industrial genres. They were one of the earliest groups to help popularize industrial music, and the Los Angeles Times recognized Ogre as the "first industrial rock star". Their gloomy and androgynous aesthetic helped attract the attention of the goth scene, from which they were able to draw a larger female audience than any previous industrial group. By the end of the 90s, they had sold some two million records for Nettwerk worldwide, and two of their releases, Remission and Bites, were certified gold in Canada.
Their music has spawned "a litter of like-minded bands", extending from independent acts like Tin Omen, to industrial rock project Nine Inch Nails, who opened for Skinny Puppy for a short time on their 1988 VIVIsectVI tour. Trent Reznor also acknowledged that Skinny Puppy's "Dig It" inspired the very first Nine Inch Nails track written, "Down in It". Canadian synth-pop artist Grimes includes Skinny Puppy as an influence on her music, having grown up in Vancouver's industrial music scene. Sara Taylor of the EBM group Youth Code has said that the song "Worlock" was "one of the most influential songs" she had ever heard. Other artists impacted by Skinny Puppy's music include Marilyn Manson, Chester Bennington, Moby, Jonathan Davis, Daron Malakian, 3Teeth, Foals vocalist Yannis Philippakis, Al Jourgensen, Chris Vrenna, John Grant, Mortiis,Blush Response, Celldweller, Finite Automata, Shooter Jennings, Death Grips vocalist MC Ride, X Marks the Pedwalk, Wumpscut, Haujobb, Orgy, Filter, Front Line Assembly, Orphx, Crystal Castles, AFI side project Blaqk Audio, and Mayhem vocalist Attila Csihar.
The band inspired a tribute album, Hymns of the Worlock: A Tribute to Skinny Puppy published by Cleopatra Records, which features groups such as Crocodile Shop and The Electric Hellfire Club. Skinny Puppy's remix album Remix dystemper includes contributions from a wide array of musicians such as electronic music DJ Josh Wink, Guru, KMFDM, Deftones, and former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna. Vrenna's solo project, Tweaker, opened for Skinny Puppy during their 2004 North American tour. Danny Carey from Tool and Wayne Static of Static-X provided drums and backup vocals, respectively, for the song "Use Less" from The Greater Wrong of the Right.
Ogre worked with KMFDM on several occasions, touring with them in 1997 and providing vocals on the song "Torture" from their album Symbols (the song also features production from Dave Ogilvie) as well as for the songs "That's All" and "Full Worm Garden" from 1999's Adios. Skinny Puppy also provided a remix for the Mötley Crüe song "Hooligan's Holiday"; Nikki Sixx reported that the band "just dumped the whole song in the computer and went off".
Skinny Puppy's music has been included in the soundtracks of films such as Bad Influence, An American Werewolf in Paris, The Blair Witch Project, Underworld, and Saw II, among others. The group was given a brief role as the "gang of goons" in the 1995 dark comedy film The Doom Generation. The 1996 Video Game Descent II included original music from Ogre and Mark Walk, while the 2014 PlayStation exclusive LittleBigPlanet 3 featured the song "Rodent" from the album Rabies.
Alternative Press included Skinny Puppy in their 1996 list of "100 underground inspirations of the past 20 years."
While discussing the possibility of Nine Inch Nails being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Richard Patrick of the band Filter remarked "what about Skinny Puppy?", going on to say that while Nine Inch Nails is the more famous of the two, Skinny Puppy were one of the first groups to craft "scary and mean" industrial music.
Side-projects
Key and Ogre are active in a number of other projects besides Skinny Puppy. Key has released several solo albums including Music for Cats and The Ghost of Each Room in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Doubting Thomas, a project led by Key and the late Dwayne Goettel, was an outlet for mostly instrumental compositions (save for several film and television samples). The projects only releases were Father Don't Cry in 1990 and The Infidel in 1991, both released through Wax Trax! Records. Download was founded by Key and Goettel in 1995 and included the assistance of frequent Skinny Puppy contributors Ken Marshall and Anthony Valcic. The group has released a number of records since its formation and notably provided the soundtrack album Charlie's Family in 1997 for the film The Manson Family, directed by Jim Van Bebber; the film was released six years after the album. Bebber had approached Key to produce the soundtrack, having previously directed several Skinny Puppy videos as well as the short horror film Chunk Blower, which starred Goettel and Bill Leeb of Front Line Assembly. Other notable projects include The Tear Garden with Edward Ka-Spel for The Legendary Pink Dots, platEAU with Phil Western, and Cyberaktif with Goettel and Leeb. Key also works as Scaremeister, his film scoring alter ego, having previously contributed to John Debney's score for End of Days. Scaremeister composed the album 31 Spirits, a collection of short musical pieces which have been used in the trailers of numerous films such as Inglourious Basterds, My Bloody Valentine, and The Book of Eli.
Ogre's main project outside Skinny Puppy is ohGr, which has released five albums, Welt (2001), SunnyPsyOp (2003), Devils in my Details (2008), UnDeveloped (2011), and TrickS (2018). In the mid-nineties, Ogre and producer Martin Atkins created the project known as Rx (formerly known as Ritalin). Rx released only one album, Bedside Toxicology, in 1998. He also toured extensively with Pigface (1991–1995) and Ministry (1987–1990) and appeared on a number of Pigface and Ministry-related recordings.
Guantanamo Bay torture allegations
Skinny Puppy have accused the US military of using their music to torture inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, without the band's knowledge or permission. In response, the band have sent an "invoice" to the Pentagon.
Members
Current
Nivek Ogre – vocals, keyboards (1982–1996, 2003–present)
cEvin Key – guitars, drums, bass, synthesizers (1982–1996, 2003–present)
Mark Walk – keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, bass, drums (2003–present)
Former
Dwayne Goettel – keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, bass (1986–1995; died 1995)
Bill Leeb (Wilhelm Schroeder) – bass synth, backing vocals (1984–1986)
Touring
Justin Bennett – drums (2004–present)
Matthew Setzer – guitars (2015–present)
William Morrison – guitars (2004–2005)
Timeline
Discography
Remission (1984)
Bites (1985)
Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse (1986)
Cleanse Fold and Manipulate (1987)
VIVIsectVI (1988)
Rabies (1989)
Too Dark Park (1990)
Last Rights (1992)
The Process (1996)
The Greater Wrong of the Right (2004)
Mythmaker (2007)
hanDover (2011)
Weapon (2013)
Videography
Ain't It Dead Yet?, 1991, VHS/DVD
Live performance at The Concert Hall, Toronto, Ontario, 31 May and 1 June 1987.
Video Collection (1984-1992), 1996, VHS/DVD
Includes videos for "Dig It", "Stairs and Flowers", "Far Too Frail" (live footage 1985), "Smothered Hope" (live footage 1985), "Deep Down Trauma Hounds" (live footage from the 1987 Ain't It Dead Yet? performance), "Testure", "Spasmolytic", and "Killing Game".
Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4, 1996, 2-CD
Includes a number of video clips on those editions which included a CD-ROM portion.
Greater Wrong of the Right LIVE, 2005, 2-DVD
Live performances in Toronto, Ontario, and Montreal, Quebec in late 2004. Also includes videos for "Pro-Test", "Spasmolytic" (live footage 1990), and "Love in Vein" (live footage 1992).
A number of other, promo-only videos were released, including "State Aid" (live footage 1988), "Worlock" (1990), "Candle" (1996), "Curcible" (1996), "Hardset Head" (1996), and "Haze" (2007).
See also
Go Ask Ogre List of bands from British Columbia
Music of Vancouver
References
Citations
Bibliography
Further reading
Interviews in IndustrialnatioN'' Magazine Issue No. 5, Issue No. 13, & Issue No. 21.
External links
American Recordings (record label) artists
Canadian electronic music groups
Canadian industrial music groups
Canadian techno music groups
Capitol Records artists
Dark ambient music groups
Dependent Records artists
Electro-industrial music groups
Electronic body music groups
Musical groups established in 1982
Musical groups disestablished in 1995
Musical groups reestablished in 2003
Noise musical groups
Canadian post-punk music groups
Musical groups from Vancouver
Industrial rock musical groups
Metropolis Records artists
1982 establishments in British Columbia
1996 disestablishments in British Columbia
2003 establishments in British Columbia | true | [
"Audience response is a type of interaction associated with the use of audience response systems, to create interactivity between a presenter and its audience.\n\nSystems for co-located audiences combine wireless hardware with presentation software, and systems for remote audiences may use telephones or web polls for audiences watching through television or the Internet. Various names are used for this technology, including real time response, the worm, dial testing, and audience response meters. In educational settings, such systems are often called \"student response systems\" or \"personal response systems.\" The hand-held remote control that students use to convey their responses to questions is often called a \"clicker.\"\n\nMore recent entrants into the market do not require specialized hardware. There are commercial and open-source, cloud-based tools that allow responses from the audience using a range of personal computing devices such as cell phones, smartphones, and laptops. These types of systems have added new types of functionality as well, such as free text responses that are aggregated into sortable word clouds, as well as the more traditional true/false and multiple choice style questions. This type of system also mitigates some of the concerns articulated below in the \"Challenges of audience response\" section.\n\nCo-located audiences \n\nHardware Based Audience Response:\nThe presenter uses a computer and a video projector to project a presentation for the audience to see. In the most common use of such audience response systems, presentation slides built with the audience response software display questions with several possible answers, more commonly referred to as multiple choice questions. The audience participates by selecting the answer they believe to be correct and pushing the corresponding key on their individual wireless keypad. Their answer is then sent to a base station – or receiver – that is also attached to the presenter's computer. The audience response software collects the results, and the aggregate data is graphically displayed within the presentation for all to see. Some clickers also have additional keys, allowing the presenter to ask (and audience members to answer) True/False questions or even questions calling for particular numerical answers.\n\nDepending on the presenter's requirements, the data can either be collected anonymously (e.g., in the case of voting) or it can be traced to individual participants in circumstances where tracking is required (e.g., classroom quizzes, homework, or questions that ultimately count towards a student's course grade). Incoming data may also be stored in a database that resides on the host computer, and data reports can be created after the presentation for further analysis.\n\nSoftware/Cloud Based Audience Response:\nThe presenter uses a computer to create the questions, sometimes called polls. In this case however, those questions can be open ended, dial testing, and votable open ended as well as multiple choice. Those questions are then downloaded into the presenter's presentation program of choice. During the presentation, the questions automatically display within the presentation program, or from a web browser, and can in some cases even be displayed only on the participant's tablet computer or smartphone. Results are instantly tabulated via the internet, and presented on screen in real time, including grading the \"correct\" answer if desired. Some services offer presenters real time moderation for open ended responses or questions prior to displaying them on screen.\n\nDepending on the presenter's requirements, the data can be collected anonymously, or it can be traced to individual participants who have created accounts in advance of the poll. This method is commonly used on corporate training where attendance must be verified, and in classrooms, where grades must be assigned. Data from both methods can be saved and analyzed by the presenter and loaded manually or via API into learning management systems.\n\nDistributed, virtual, or hybrid \nOnly software or cloud based audience response systems can accommodate distributed audiences, due to the inconveniences and costs of hardware devices.\n\nBenefits \nThere are many reasons for the use of audience response systems (ARS). The tendency to answer based on crowd psychology is reduced because, unlike hand raising, it is difficult to see which selection others are making. The ARS also allows for faster tabulation of answers for large groups than manual methods. Additionally, many college professors use ARS systems to take attendance or grade answers in large lecture halls, which would be highly time-consuming without the system.\n\nAudience response offers many potential benefits to those who use it in group settings.\n Improve attentiveness: In a study done at four University of Wisconsin campuses (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, and University of Wisconsin–Whitewater), faculty members and students in courses using clickers were given a survey that assessed their attitudes about clicker use in Fall 2005 and its effect on teaching and learning. Of the 27 faculty members who responded to the survey, 94 percent either agreed or strongly agreed with the claim \"Clickers increased student engagement in the classroom,\" with the remaining six percent responding that they were neutral about that claim. (None of the faculty respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed with the claim.) Similarly, 69 percent of the 2,684 student respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the claim \"Clickers led me to become engaged in class,\" with only 13 percent disagreeing or strongly disagreeing with that claim.\n Increase knowledge retention: In the same University of Wisconsin study, 74 percent of the faculty respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the claim \"Clickers have been beneficial to my students' learning,\" with the remaining 26 percent choosing a \"neutral\" response. (No faculty respondent disagreed or strongly disagreed with the claim.) Similarly, 53 percent of the student respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the claim \"Clickers have been beneficial to my learning,\" with only 19 percent disagreeing or strongly disagreeing with that claim. In a different but related study, Catherine Crouch and Eric Mazur more directly measured the results of Peer Instruction and \"ConcepTests\" on student learning and retention of information at the end of a semester. Faculty members using this \"Peer Instruction\" pedagogical technique present information to students, then ask the students a question that tests their understanding of a key concept. Students indicate their answer to the instructor using an audience response system, and then they discuss with their fellow students why they chose a particular answer, trying to explain to one another their underlying thinking. The instructor then asks the question again to see the new student results. The study authors used scanned forms and hand-raising for audience response in the initial year of the study, and then they switched to a computer-based audience response system in the following years. The \"clicker\" use was only part of a multi-pronged attempt to introduce peer instruction, but overall they found that \"the students taught with P[eer] I[instruction] (Spring 2000, N = 155) significantly outperformed the students taught traditionally (Spring 1999, N = 178)\" on two standard tests – the \"Force Concept Inventory and the Mechanics Baseline Test\" – and on traditional course exams as well. A Johns Hopkins study on the use of audience response systems in Continuing Medical Education (CME) for physicians and other health personnel found no significant difference in knowledge scores between ARS and non-ARS participants in a clinical round table trial involving 42 programs across the United States.\n Poll anonymously: Unlike a show of hands or a raising of cards with letters on them, sending responses by hand-held remotes is much more anonymous. Except perhaps for a student (our audience member) who watches what the person next to him/her submits, the other students (or audience members) can't really see what response his/her fellow audience members are giving, and the software that summarizes the results aggregates the responses, listing what percent of respondents chose a particular answer, but not what individual respondents said. With some audience response systems, the software allows you to ask questions in truly anonymous mode, so that the database (or \"gradebook\") is not even associating answers with individual respondents.\n Track individual responses: The \"clickers\" that audience members use to send their responses to the receiver (and thus to the presenter's computer) are often registered to a particular user, with some kind of identifying number. When a user sends his/her response, the information is stored in a database (sometimes called the \"Gradebook\" in academic models of audience response systems) associated with each particular number, and presenters have access to that information after the end of the interactive session. Audience response systems can often be linked to a Learning management system, which increases the ability to keep track of individual student performance in an academic setting.\n Display polling results immediately: The audience response system includes software that runs on the presenter's computer that records and tabulates the responses by audience members. Generally, once a question has ended (polling from the audience has ceased), the software displays a bar chart indicating what percent of audience members chose the various possible responses. For questions with right/wrong answers, audience members can get immediate feedback about whether they chose the correct answer, since it can be indicated on the bar chart. For survey-type polling questions, audience members can see from the summary how many other audience members chose the same response, along with how many audience members (or what percent of the audience) chose different responses.\n Create an interactive and fun learning environment: Clickers are in many ways novel devices, so the novelty itself can add interest to the learning environment. More important, though, is the interactive nature of audience response systems. Having been asked a particular question about a concept or opinion, students are genuinely interested in seeing the results. They want to learn if they answered the question correctly, and they want to see how their response compares to the responses of their fellow audience members. The increased student engagement cited in the University of Wisconsin study (see footnote 1 below) attests to the ability of audience response systems to improve the learning environment.\n Confirm audience understanding of key points immediately: In the University of Wisconsin study previously cited, faculty members were unanimous in their recognition of this key advantage of audience response systems. In other words, 100% of the faculty respondents either agreed or strongly agreed with the claim \"Clickers allowed me to assess student knowledge on a particular concept.\". Students also recognized this benefit for their own self-assessment. 75% of student respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the claim, \"Clickers helped me get instant feedback on what I knew and didn't know.\" In a published article, a member of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Physics Education Research Group (UMPERG)articulated this advantage in more detail, using the term \"Classroom Communication System (CCS)\" for what we have been calling an audience response system:\nBy providing feedback to an instructor about students' background knowledge and preconceptions, CCS-based pedagogy can help the instructor design learning and experiences appropriate to student's state of knowledge and explicitly confront and resolve misconceptions. By providing frequent feedback about students' ongoing learning and confusions, it can help an instructor dynamically adjust her teaching to students' real, immediate, changing needs.\n Gather data for reporting and analysis: Unlike other forms of audience participation (such as a show of hands or holding up of response cards), audience response systems use software to record audience responses, and those responses are stored in a database. Database entries are linked to a particular user, based on some ID number entered into the handheld remote device or based on a registration between the user and the company that manufactures the handheld device. Answers can be analyzed over time, and the data can be used for educational research or other forms of analysis.\n\nChallenges \nAudience response systems may present some difficulties in both their deployment and use.\n The per-unit purchase price of ARS devices, typically 10 times the cost of a software only solution\n The maintenance and repair of devices when owned by a central unit or organization\n The configuration, troubleshooting and support of the related presentation software (which may or may not work well with ARS devices)\n The reliability and performance of the devices under non-optimal conditions of the room in which the devices are used\n For hardware only applications: a Lack of open ended questions, dial testing capabilities, and other non standard question formats.\n\nApplications \nAudience response is utilized across a broad range of industries and organizations. A few examples include:\n Political Campaigns\n Political news events\n Corporate training\n Control self-assessment\n Delegate voting\n Public participation in municipal or environmental planning\n Market research\n Decision support\n Game shows e.g. Ask the audience on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?\n Conferences and events\n Executive decision making\n Continuing medical education\n ROI measurement and assessment\n Sales Effectiveness Training\n Hospital patient exit surveys\n\nAudience response systems \nAn audience response system (ARS), or personal response system (PRS), allow large groups of people to vote on a topic or answer a question. Depending on the solution chosen, each person has a device with which selections can be made, or a mobile device that they can use to respond. In a hardware solution, each remote communicates with a computer via receivers located around the room or via a single receiver connected to the presenter's computer using a USB connector. In a software solution, each device communicates with the question via SMS or the internet. After a set time – or after all participants have answered – the system ends the polling for that particular question and tabulates the results. Typically, the results are instantly made available to the participants via a bar graph displayed on the projector but can also be viewed in a web browser for some systems.\n\nIn situations where tracking is required, the serial number of each remote control or the students identity number is entered beforehand in the control computer's database. In this way the answer of each individual can later be identified.\n\nIn addition to the presenter's computer and projector, the typical audience response system has the following components:\n base station (receiver)--for hardware based solutions only\n wireless keypads (one for each participant)--or mobile devices for software/cloud based solutions\n audience response system software\n\nHistory \nSince the 1960s, a number of companies have offered Response Systems, several of whom are now defunct or changed their business model.\n\nCirca 1966, Audience Studies Institute of Hollywood, California developed a proprietary analog ARS system for evaluating the response of a theater audience to unreleased motion pictures, television shows and commercials. This early ARS was used by ASI's clients – major motion picture and television studios and advertising agencies – to evaluate the effectiveness of whatever it was they wanted to accomplish: for example, selling more products, increasing movie ticket sales, and achieving a higher fee per commercial slot. Often, a client would show different versions to different audiences, e.g. different movie endings, to gauge their relative effectiveness. ASI would give out free tickets on the street to bring people into the theater, called the \"Preview House,\" for particular showings where each attendee would fill out a questionnaire and then be placed in a seat with a \"dial\" handset outfitted with a single knob that each attendee would turn to a position to indicate his or her level of interest. Turning the knob all the way left for \"dull\" to turning all the way to the right for \"great.\" In 1976, ASI upgraded their system to become fully digital, have Yes/No buttons and, in some cases, numeric keys for entering in numbers, choices and monetary amounts.\n\nAnother of the industry’s very earliest systems was the Consensor. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, William W. (Bill) Simmons, an IBM executive, reflected on how unproductive most meetings were. Simmons had become essentially a nonacademic futurist in building up IBM's long-range planning operations. He was one of the pioneers of applied futures studies in the private sector, that is, future studies applied to corporate planning. Through this work he had met Theodore J. (Ted) Gordon of The Futures Group (now part of Palladium International). Gordon had conceived and partially developed what would today be called an audience response system, and Simmons immediately saw practical applications for it in large corporate meetings, to allow people to air their true opinions in anonymous fashion, so that each individual's Likert scale answer value for a question would remain secret, but the group's average, weighted with weighting factors, would be instantly displayed. Thus (something approximating) the group's true consensus would be known, even though individual middle managers or aspiring junior executives would not have to jeopardize their conformity to effect this result. (IBM's organizational culture was famous for its valuing of conformity; and this was common at other firms, too.) Simmons retired from IBM in January 1972, and soon after he formed a startup company with Gordon, called Applied Futures, Inc., to develop and market the system, which they called the Consensor [connoting consensus + sensor]. Applied Futures was one of the first audience response companies. In 1972, while Gordon and his assistant Harold S. (Hal) Becker were still working on development, Applied Futures filed for a patent (), which was granted in 1973 with Gordon and Becker as inventors. Another patent, filed for in 1974 and granted in 1976 (), lists Simmons and James A. Marquis. Sales began in 1974.\n\nThe Consensor was a system of dials, wires, and three lights; red, yellow, and green. A question was asked verbally and people would turn their dials anywhere from 0 to 10. If the majority agreed, the green lamp would light. If not, either the yellow or red lamp would light, depending on the level of disagreement.\n\nAlthough business was strong for this fledgling company, the command-and-control management style of the day proved a formidable opponent to this new tool, which promoted consensus building. In his memoir Simmons describes how junior-executive sales prospects tended to like the idea, imagining themselves heroically speaking truth to power (but not paying any price for being a maverick), while their senior-executive bosses tended to see the Consensor as \"a blatant attempt to impose democratic procedures into a corporate hierarchy that is anything but democratic.\" Simmons observed that \"A majority of corporations are run as fiefdoms, with the CEO playing the role of Supreme Power; he may be a benevolent dictator, but nonetheless still a dictator.\" He described this type of senior executives, with ironic tone, as \"secure in the knowledge of their own infallibility.\" Nonetheless, Applied Futures sold plenty of units to business firms and government agencies. In October 1984, it became a subsidiary of Brooks International Corporation, a management consulting firm.\n\nOne of the early educational uses of an audience response system occurred at Rice University. Students in a computer-equipped classroom were able to rate how well they understood portions of a lecture, answer multiple choice questions, and answer short essay questions. Results could be tallied and displayed to the class.\n\nAudience response technology has evolved over time, moving away from hardware that required extensive wiring towards hand held wireless devices and small, portable receivers. In the 1980s, the Consensor product line evolved toward peripherals that could be plugged into a PC, and a software application to run thereon. Wireless LANs allow today's peripherals to be cordless. Another example of this is Microsoft's Mouse Mischief, a PowerPoint add-in, which has made it easier for teachers, professors, and office professionals to integrate audience response into their presentations.\n\nThe advent of smartphones has made possible systems in which audience members download an app (or run it as SaaS in their web browser) which then communicates with the audience response system (which is itself just software running on someone's device, whether desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone) via the local wireless network, the cellular telephone network, or both. In this model, the entire audience response system is a software product; all of the hardware is what the users brought with them.\n\nExperts \nThere are two books that have been written specifically about audience response systems by people who are considered experts in the use of audience response technology. In 2009, Derek Bruff, a professor at Vanderbilt University, published Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creating Active Learning Environments. In 2015, David Campt, a meeting strategist and civic engagement consultant, released Read the Room for Real: How a Simple Technology Creates Better Meetings was published; this book focused on using audience response technology in non-academic environments.\n\nHardware \nThe majority of current audience response systems use wireless hardware. Two primary technologies exist to transmit data from the keypads to the base stations: infrared (IR) and radio frequency (RF). A few companies also offer Web-based software that routes the data over the Internet (sometimes in a unified system with IR and RF equipment). Cell phone-based systems are also becoming available.\n\nInfrared \nThe oldest of these technologies, IR audience response systems are better suited for smaller groups. IR uses the same technology as a TV remote, and is therefore the only one of the four technologies that requires line-of-sight between the keypad and receiver. This works well for a single keypad but can fail due to interference when signals from multiple keypads arrive simultaneously at the receiver. IR systems are typically more affordable than RF systems, but do not provide information back to the keypad.\n\nUse in educational settings \n\nAudience response systems can be used as a way of incorporating active learning in a lecture or other classroom-type setting, for example by quizzing students, taking a quick survey, etc. They can also be used for taking attendance. They can be used effectively by students as young as 9 or 10, depending on their maturity level. An educator is able to generate worksheets and let students enter their answer choices at their own pace. After each question, the educator is able to instantly show the results of any quiz, for example in the form of histogram thus creating rapid 2-way feedback about how well learners are doing.\n\nThe fact that students can send responses anonymously means that sensitive topics can be included more readily than would otherwise be the case. An example of this is in helping students to learn about plagiarism.\n\nAudience response systems can also be used in classroom settings to simulate randomized controlled trials (RCT) such as 'Live the Trial', a mock RCT used to teach the concepts of clinical research. The mock trial answered the question 'Do red smarties make you happier?\".\n\nRadio frequency (RF) \nIdeal for large group environments, RF systems can accommodate hundreds of voters on a single base station. Using some systems, multiple base stations can be linked together in order to handle audiences that number in thousands. Other systems allow over a thousand on just one base. Because the data travels via radio frequency, the participant merely needs to be within range of the base station (300 – 500 feet). Some advanced models can accommodate additional features, such as short word answers, user log-in capabilities, and even multi-site polling.\n\nInternet \n\nWeb-based audience response systems work with the participants' existing computing devices. These include notebook computers, smartphones and PDAs, which are typically connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi, as well as classroom desktop computers. If the facilitator's computer is also Wi-Fi-enabled, they can even create their own IP network, allowing a closed system that doesn't depend on a separate base station. The web server resides on or is accessible to the facilitator's computer, letting them control a set of web pages presenting questions. Participants log into the server using web browsers and see the questions with forms to input their responses. The summarized responses are available on a different set of pages, which can be displayed through the projector and also on each participant's device.\n\nInternet has also made it possible to gather audience responses in massive scale. Various implementations of the concept exist. For example, Microsoft featured Bing Pulse during the 2013 State of The Union (US) address by president Barack Obama. The system allowed registered users to input their responses (positive, negative, neutral) to the address and visualized the results as a trending graph in real time. Bing Pulse has since been used to cast over 35 million votes during national news broadcasts and other live meetings. Over 10,000 viewers powered the iPowow Viewer Vote which tracked live viewer emotional response for Channel 7 during the 2013 Australian Federal Election debates and displayed as a live \"worm\" graph on the broadcast screen. For advertising and media research, online \"dial testing\" using an onscreen scale slider that is controlled by a mouse (or finger swipe on a touchscreen) is being used in conjunction with surveys and online communities to gather continuous feedback on video or audio files.\n\nCell phone \nThe familiarity and widespread use of cell phones and text messaging has now given rise to systems that collect SMS responses and display them through a web page. These solutions don't require specialized voting hardware, but they do require telecom hardware (such as a mobile phone) and software, along with a web server, and therefore tend to be operated by dedicated vendors selling usage. They are typically favored by traveling speaking professionals and large conference halls that don't want to distribute, rent, or purchase proprietary ARS hardware. Computing devices with web browsers can also use these serviceLLs through SMS gateways, if a separate web interface isn't provided.\n\nCell Phone enabled response systems, such as SMS Response System, are able to take text inputs from the audience and receive multiple responses to questions per SMS. This allows a new pedagogical approach to teaching and learning, such as the work by Derek Bruff and an initiative on SMSRS.\n\nThe advantage of using such SMS type of response system is not limited to the logistical advantage of the presenter keeping no device inventory, it comes with an associated range of pedagogical advantages, such as agile learning, peer instruction (as possible with all types of response systems), it affords additional educational features like MCQ-Reasoning – a feature developed in a SMSRS system in Singapore that allows respondents to tag a reason to their choice of options in an MCQ, thus eliminating potential case of \"guessing-the-correct-answer\" syndrome, and text mining of SMS responses (to provide the gist of the messages collectively in a visual map).\n\nInteractive SMS Forum is another feature that is proprietary to SMS-type response systems where audiences not only post their questions, but can also answer the questions posted by others via SMS.\n\nSmartphone / HTTP voting \nWith increasing penetration of smartphones with permanent internet connections, live audience response/voting can be achieved over the HTTP protocol. SMS is still a solid solution because of its penetration and stability, but won't easily allow multi-voting support and might cause problem with multi-country audiences. The issue with SMS not supporting multi-country audiences is projected to be solved with SMS hubbing.\n\nIn classrooms and conferences with Wi-Fi support or anywhere with GPRS coverage, software systems can be used for live audience feedback, mood measurement or live polling. These systems frequently support voting with both mobile apps as well as mobile browsers. These apps invoke available local area networks (LAN) and provide a charge-free and cuts the needs to devoted hardware.\n\nWith mobile apps and browser enabled voting, there aren't any setup costs for hardware since the audience uses their own phones as voting devices and the result is often presented in any browser controlled by the lecturer.\n\nWith a standard mobile browser solution these are click and go solutions without additional installations. Therefore, live audiences can be reached, and smartphone voting can be used – as with SMS – in any number of different locations. With the GPRS solution the audience does not necessary need to be in the same area as the lecturer as with radio frequency, infrared or Bluetooth-based response systems.\n\nSoftware \n\nAudience response software enables the presenter to collect participant data, display graphical polling results, and export the data to be used in reporting and analysis. Usually the presenter can create and deliver her entire presentation with the ARS software, either as a stand-alone presentation platform or as a plug-in to PowerPoint or Keynote.\n\nSee also \n Interactive whiteboard\n Presentation software\n Public speaking\n Learning management system\n\nReferences\n\nBibliography \n \n \n\nAudience measurement\nPolling terms\nLearning methods\nPromotion and marketing communications\n\nde:Audience Response System",
"Graham Hill: Driven was a one-off television documentary that chronicled the life of the British motor racing driver Graham Hill.\n\nThe documentary was produced by Mark Stewart Productions, and was first shown in front of a private audience of around 60 people, including Hill's widow, daughters and son, on 8 March 2007. Following this, it was sent to a number of television companies to view, with the BBC eventually acquiring rights to show the programme in the UK. its first television showing was on BBC Four on 26 May 2008.\n\nThe programme combines archive footage of Hill both racing and making public appearances with contemporary interviews. Home movie footage of Hill at home with his family was also included in the programme. Viewing figures for its first airing were 240,000.\n\nCritical response\nGabrielle Starkey writing for The Times newspaper described the programme as \"an evocative profile of Britain's most rakish sportsman\". The Independent's Brian Viner described it as an \"affectionate documentary\" but notes it \"did not dwell too much on the flipside of [Hill's] showmanship\".\n\nIt was one of The Daily Telegraph newspaper's \"iPlayer choices\", Simon Horsford writing that the programme \"touches on what kind of man the free-spirited Hill really was\".\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\nBBC television documentaries\n2008 television specials\nDocumentary films about auto racing\nDocumentary films about sportspeople"
] |
[
"Skinny Puppy",
"Live performances",
"when did skinny puppy's live performances begin?",
"(1987-1988),",
"who were part of this band?",
"Key cutting steel with an angle grinder,",
"what is the high light of their live performance?",
"using fake blood during their performances.",
"what kind of response this had with the audience?",
"promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances."
] | C_c1a207f3a2e648579ef56e74dbf1253f_1 | what other interesting information about their live performance | 5 | Other than using fake blood, what other interesting information is there about Skinny Puppy's live performances? | Skinny Puppy | Skinny Puppy is noted for theatrical and controversial live performances which blend performance art with music, especially in an ambitious period that spanned their Head Trauma (1987-1988), VIVIsectVI (1988), Too Dark Park (1990), and Last Rights (1992) tours. Ogre has been critical of the bands early performances, telling Spin magazine in 1992 that "I would do things on stage that would blow-they just wouldn't work". Live performances involved periods of musical improvisation, film projections, and elaborate stage props and machines, many of which are designed and built by Ogre himself. While discussing Skinny Puppy's performances, Ogre once remarked that "our shows combine images with theater. It works better than just coming out and doing a horror magic routine". On-stage theatrics included Ogre being suspended from racks and cables, play with a hangman's noose, Key cutting steel with an angle grinder, and mock executions of Ogre and George H.W. Bush. Following the 2004 Presidential Election in the United States, promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances. This reaction was prompted by the performance of a mock execution on stage, during which Ogre was decapitated by actors dressed as then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The band was also asked by Samsung (who had been asked by Ogre to sponsor the band with a large flat screen) to "not insult the president" while performing on stage. In a 1987 television interview with Kim Clarke Champniss, Key explained that while Ogre follows a "rough guideline" during a live performance, a majority of his on-stage theatrics are thought up of spontaneously. Key told Champniss that Ogre's demeanor on stage could "range from just a sort of laid back kind of lurking to a rampant psycho". Ogre once remarked that touring was, for himself, like "dating hydrogen peroxide", referencing the numerous injuries which he would acquire over the course of touring. Though Ogre and Key have remained the only constant members of Skinny Puppy's live act since the death of Dwayne Goettel, several other musicians have been hired to accompany the pair since 2004. They include drummer Justin Bennett, guitarist William Morrison, and guitarist Matthew Setzer. CANNOTANSWER | Ogre was decapitated by actors dressed as then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. | Skinny Puppy is a Canadian industrial music group formed in Vancouver in 1982. The group is among the founders of the industrial rock and electro-industrial genres. Initially envisioned as an experimental side-project by cEvin Key (Kevin Crompton) while he was in the new wave band Images in Vogue, Skinny Puppy evolved into a full-time project with the addition of vocalist Nivek Ogre (Kevin Ogilvie).
Over the course of a dozen studio albums and many live tours, Key and Ogre have been the only constant members. Other members have included Dwayne Goettel (1986–1995), Dave "Rave" Ogilvie (long-time associate, producer, and "unofficial" fourth member until 1996; not a relative of Kevin Ogilvie), Mark Walk (2003–present), and a number of guests, including Bill Leeb (1985–1986, under the pseudonym Wilhelm Schroeder), Al Jourgensen (1989), Danny Carey (2004), and many others.
After the self-release of their first cassette in 1984, Skinny Puppy soon signed to Vancouver label Nettwerk, anchoring its early roster. From their Nettwerk debut EP Remission in 1984 to their 1992 album Last Rights, Skinny Puppy developed into an influential band with a dedicated cult following, fusing elements of industrial, funk,
noise, new wave, electro, and rock music and making innovative use of sampling. Over the course of several tours of North America and Europe in this period, they became known for theatrical, horror-themed live performances and videos, drawing attention to issues such as chemical warfare and animal testing.
In 1993, Skinny Puppy left Nettwerk and long-time producer Rave, signing with American Recordings and relocating to Malibu, California, where drug problems and tension between band members plagued the recording of their next album, The Process (1996). Ogre quit Skinny Puppy in June 1995, and Goettel died of a heroin overdose two months later. Key and Ogre, already active in a number of other projects, went their separate ways, reuniting for a one-off Skinny Puppy concert at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden, Germany, in 2000. Reforming Skinny Puppy in 2003 with producer Mark Walk, they released their ninth album, The Greater Wrong of the Right (2004), which was followed by the release of the albums Mythmaker (2007) and HanDover (2011). In 2013, they released their twelfth album, Weapon, which was inspired by allegations that their music had been used for torture in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
History
Formation and first releases (1982–1985)
Skinny Puppy formed in 1982 as a side project for Kevin Crompton in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Crompton was dissatisfied with the pop direction of the band he was in, Images in Vogue, and began Skinny Puppy with the intention of doing something more compelling and experimental. Images in Vogue had become a popular act in Vancouver, achieving several radio hits and opening for groups such as Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, and Roxy Music. Crompton had planned Skinny Puppy to be a side project while he continued his work in Images in Vogue; however, when Images in Vogue relocated to Toronto, Crompton made Skinny Puppy his full-time project. Crompton had already created the name for the project and recorded several songs when he asked Kevin Graham Ogilvie to join. Ogilvie had been a roommate of Images in Vogue member Gary Blair Smith and had met Crompton at a party in late 1982. To avoid the confusion of having two people named Kevin in one band, the pair created stage names, with Crompton becoming cEvin Key and Ogilvie becoming Nivek Ogre.
Using Key's apartment as a makeshift studio, the duo began recording songs and in 1983 with the help of Images in Vogue recording engineer Dave "Rave" Ogilvie (no relation to Ogre), Skinny Puppy released the EP Back & Forth. This was the beginning of a long partnership between Skinny Puppy and Rave, who would serve as their producer until 1993, and again in 1995, and was occasionally listed as a member of the band in album liner notes. Though only 35 copies were ever printed, the self-released Back & Forth drew the attention of Vancouver startup label Nettwerk, who signed the band later that year. The first live Skinny Puppy show was held at the Unovis art gallery in Vancouver in February 1984; the British group Alien Sex Fiend were among the 300 people in attendance.
Ogre has said that Skinny Puppy acted as an escape for Key, who wished to distance himself from Images in Vogue: "He was looking for something to break out of [Images in Vogue], and maybe I was it". Key would continue to drum for Images in Vogue until the group relocated to Toronto in 1985. Key's concept behind Skinny Puppy came from the group's first song ever recorded, "K-9". The idea, according to Key, was to create music which explored "life as seen through a dog's eyes". Skinny Puppy also incorporated the use of "B-grade horror movie visuals", including fake blood and props, into their live performances. Key justified these "shock gore" antics with the following:
What we're presenting isn't much different from what [the audience] is subjected to in everyday life. For example, a commercial is a very plastic view of existence and reality. When you watch a TV show and see a world with picture-perfect endings, all you have to do is switch the station and watch the news.
Having scored a record deal with Nettwerk and with interest surrounding the Back & Forth EP growing, Skinny Puppy was invited to Vancouver's Mushroom Studios to work on new material. It was here that the group recruited Bill Leeb to perform bass synth and backing vocals. Like Ogre and Key before him, Leeb created a stage name, Wilhelm Schroeder; "my real name is Wilhelm" said Leeb, "Schroeder we picked out from the guy playing the piano in the Charlie Brown cartoon". Skinny Puppy released their second EP, Remission in December 1984, almost a year following Back & Forth.
Remission marked the first time Skinny Puppy would collaborate with artist Steven Gilmore, who created the album artwork. The EP was initially only released in vinyl, but was later given a cassette release in 1985. According to Nettwerk VP of A&R and Marketing George Maniatis, Remission "grabbed everybody by the you-know-whats" and, for Nettwerk Records, brought with it an association with industrial dance music. The EP was supported by music videos for the songs "Far Too Frail" and "Smothered Hope", the latter of which being the closest thing to a hit song any North American industrial act had achieved at the time.
Skinny Puppy released its first full-length album, Bites, in 1985 and was produced by Key and Dave Ogilvie. Tom Ellard of the Australian electronic act Severed Heads lent a hand to the production of Bites, acting as a producer and performing various sampling and mixing duties. Described by Billboard magazine as "techno dance...a la Kraftwerk", Bites yielded the underground hit "Assimilate". Key and Ogre opened for Chris & Cosey on their 1985 Canadian tour as Hell 'O' Death Day; some of the material the duo had performed would appear on Bites as bonus tracks. One of these bonus tracks, a song called "The Centre Bullet", featured lyrics by Legendary Pink Dots founder Edward Ka-Spel.
While Skinny Puppy had become well received by underground audiences in most major urban areas, due in part to their anti-consumerist themes and Cure-like aesthetics, not everyone was friendly to the group. Key described Skinny Puppy as the antithesis of "the Bruce Springsteen mentality of music", rejecting "Top 40 conformity". Toronto-based music journalist and DJ Greg Clow recalled Michael Williams, who was a VJ for Muchmusic, introducing him to Skinny Puppy, describing them as "Canada's answer to Depeche Mode".
Dwayne Goettel and stylistic transition (1986–1987)
In 1986, Nettwerk made a distribution deal with Capitol Records, allowing Skinny Puppy and others in Nettwerk's roster to expand their respective audiences. Capitol manager Stephen Powers stated that signing groups such as Skinny Puppy gave the company "a real credibility" with the alternative and college music scenes. Skinny Puppy also signed to Play It Again Sam, allowing the group's music to expand into Europe. It was this expansion into the European market that would help to make Skinny Puppy a "cash cow" for Nettwerk in the early years. In a 2007 interview with CraveOnline, Ogre commented on Skinny Puppy's time with Capitol, saying:
We're so lucky to have gotten here, and if we look back on the fact that we were on Capitol Records at a certain point, being distributed and making these albums under budget… there was one year when we were the only band on the label to profit, when MC Hammer lost a shitload of money. I can still appreciate how odd it was that we had the chance to do that because it doesn't really happen in a lot of cases.
Bill Leeb left Skinny Puppy in 1986 to pursue his own musical project, Front Line Assembly. Leeb gave his reasons for leaving the group stating that his bandmates expressed different ideas from his own and that he had been interested in singing. Leeb's replacement would be quiet Alberta native Dwayne Goettel. A classically trained musician, Goettel had been in a duo named Water with vocalist Sandy Weir and had worked with the synthpop band Psyche, among others.
Skinny Puppy's production values improved with the addition of Goettel, with Key remarking that "Dwayne brought us a whole new sense and aesthetic that we didn't have. Up to that point, we were really punk rock in our approach". Key continued on that "he [Goettel] had an incredible knowledge of equipment and at a very early stage was really the master of sampling, which had really just begun". Goettel's contributions to Skinny Puppy's second full-length effort, 1986's Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse, helped to propel the band towards the style of their "chaotic future masterworks". To promote the album, the band made an appearance on CBC Radio's Brave New Waves program in September 1986, and released their first single, "Dig It". A music video for "Dig It" was produced and received extensive airplay on MTV.
Further promotion for the album came from a world tour with the band Severed Heads. The tour proved to be a vital learning experience for the group, having encounters with, according to Key, "tour managers and agents that didn't pay us". In 1987, the song "Stairs and Flowers" was released as a single, as was a new song titled "Chainsaw". The group attracted the attention of the Parent Music Resource Center (PMRC), which named Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse one of several albums believed to be "violent, sexually explicit, or condoning substance abuse". The album was named by Melody Maker magazine as one of the best releases of the year.
Later in 1987 came Skinny Puppy's third full-length album, Cleanse Fold and Manipulate. Described as "a turning point, where experimentation is just beginning to gel with innovation", the album marks the point where the group began to explore more political themes, delving into topics such as the AIDS epidemic and the Vietnam War. A song from the album, "Addiction" was released as a single. The group later went on tour, with a performance at Toronto's Concert Hall being released on VHS in 1989 and CD in 1991 as Ain't It Dead Yet?. Also released in 1987 was Bites and Remission (through Capitol Records) and Remission & Bites (European release, through Pay It Again Sam), both compilations of Skinny Puppy's first two Nettwerk releases.
Subsequent success (1988–1989)
Skinny Puppy's live performances had become increasingly more elaborate, with Ogre interacting with an onstage crucifix and other "crudely constructed" stage props. Craig MacInnis of the Toronto Star described their new stage show as "neo-dadaist shock theatre", while Tom Lanham of the San Francisco Chronicle referred to it as "grotesque". The band continued to tour in 1988 with the European Head Trauma tour, supported by Edward Ka-Spel. Following the tour, the group returned to the studio to record what Ogre described would be the band's most critical statement regarding animal testing.
Skinny Puppy released their fourth album, VIVIsectVI, in 1988; the album's name is a pun intended to associate vivisection with Satanism (i.e. the "666 sect"). The group's primary aim with the album was to bring attention to the topic of vivisection and other issues regarding animal rights. The album's subject matter also deals with subjects such as chemical warfare, environmental waste, and disease. Lead track "Dogshit" was released as a single in 1988 under the name "Censor"; the name change was made by the band when it was decided that the single would not sell well with its original name. The single "Testure", which denounced the testing of animals for research purposes, reached No. 19 on Billboards Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in 1989. According to Ogre, "Testure" was intended to be accessible in the hope of spreading their "anti-vivisectionist" message. "It's the only song I think they will be able to play on the radio", he said. "I hope they do play it because it's the only way we can go beyond our ranks and our loyal fans who already understand the message". "Testure" also featured several well-chosen samples from the film The Plague Dogs, an animated adventure about two dogs who escape from a research laboratory. Melody Maker named VIVIsectVI one of the best albums of 1988.
Skinny Puppy toured in support of the album, featuring an early incarnation of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails as their opening act. The concept for the live show revolved around a vivisectionist (played by Ogre) who is eventually transformed into a tortured animal; the idea was to portray the "inner workings of the mind under the strain of vivisection". The stage show included the mock vivisection of a stuffed dog the band had named Chud. Following a show in Cincinnati, Ohio, Key, Ogre, and tour manager Dan McGee were arrested for "disorderly conduct" when an audience member, believing the stuffed animal Ogre was "vivisecting" to be a real dog, called the police. Two plainclothes officers entered the group's dressing room demanding they inspect the prop. Following a heated argument, the trio spent the night in jail, but were released the following day after paying a $200 fine.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the band members began working on various side projects. Key and Goettel were involved with The Tear Garden (a collaboration with The Legendary Pink Dots) and Doubting Thomas (an outlet for their non-Skinny Puppy instrumentals). The band Hilt, a collaboration between Key and Goettel, and Al Nelson, also started when Nettwerk challenged the group to produce an album for as little money as possible. Ogre struck up a friendship with Ministry's Al Jourgensen, having first worked together during the recording of the PTP song "Show Me Your Spine" (featured in the 1987 film RoboCop).
For Skinny Puppy's fifth album, Rabies, released in 1989, Jourgensen joined Rave as producer. The album, featuring Jourgensen's electric guitar work and backing vocals, drew mixed reception from fans. Despite these reactions, the album was a commercial success, selling 150,000 copies and receiving extensive airplay on college radio. The single "Worlock" – which featured samples of Charles Manson singing parts of the song "Helter Skelter" from The Beatles' White Album, accompanied by a fragmented portion of the songs guitar introduction – helped to bring the band "massive popularity". A video produced for the song, featuring spliced-together footage from dozens of horror films and a statement denouncing censorship of the genre by the MPAA, was circulated widely as a promotional and bootleg item. The song "Tin Omen" was also released as a single and "Hexonxonx" received some airplay on alternative radio. In spite of the album's initial mixed reception, Brad Filicky in a 2003 issue of CMJ magazine named Rabies as a classic album, calling it "a masterpiece of the industrial genre".
This period marked the beginning of divisions within the band, as rather than tour in support of Rabies, Ogre joined Ministry while they toured in support of their album The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste (1989); Ogre contributed guitars, keyboards, and vocals during the tour. Ogre had also begun working with the Ministry side project Revolting Cocks. Key was later quoted saying of Ogre's involvement with Ministry and, later on, Martin Atkins' Pigface that he sometimes felt "like a wife that's been cheated on".
Too Dark Park (1990–1991)
Following the production of Rabies, a divide grew between the group members, with Key and Goettel often siding against Ogre, feeling he was more interested in solo work. The group were ultimately disappointed with the outcome of Rabies, with Goettel saying that the completed product was "less within the Skinny Puppy vision", and Key being displeased with Jourgensen's involvement. Ogre also expressed his disapproval for the album, claiming that he had "flopped". "The work and artistic environment really weren't there at all either. It was completely negative".
Key and Goettel completed work on some of their side projects such a Hilt, releasing their first effort, Call the Ambulance (Before I Hurt Myself), which was produced by Rave. Key also reunited with Bill Leeb to form the project known as Cyberaktif; Goettel acted as an assistant producer and provided some instrumentation. Jourgensen offered Ogre the chance to tour with the Revolting Cocks, having provided vocals on their previous tour. Ogre refused the offer, citing some occurrences during his time with Ministry which led him to question his friendship with Jourgensen.
The group, having finished work on their various side projects, returned to the studio and released their sixth studio album, Too Dark Park, in 1990. Goettel said in a radio interview that the major intentions behind the album were to reevaluate what Skinny Puppy was and create a new style of music to mark the beginning of a new decade. This reevaluation included hiring Jim Cummins (I, Braineater) to design the cover artwork, feeling that their longtime designer Steven Gilmore had lost his creative spark.
Described as "forceful and consistently abrasive", Too Dark Park was what Key referred to as the true successor to "the last pure" Skinny Puppy album, VIVIsectVI. Critics such as Staci Bonner of Spin magazine applauded the use of sampling and stated that the album was a "return to the bloodbath" for the group. The album yielded the singles "Tormentor" and "Spasmolytic", the latter of which spawned a music video directed by Jim Van Bebber. Billboard called "Spasmolytic" a "delicious mind-altering affair", a sentiment shared by Wil Lewellyn of Treblezine who included the song in a list of the best underground songs of the 1990s.
Environmental degradation was a major theme on both the album and the North American Too Dark Park tour. For the tour, Key took on the role of drummer, leaving Goettel as lead keyboardist. Key told Alternative Press that "we could very well have a backing tape and stand behind synths playing two notes on the keyboard, but we've decided to physically strain ourselves and learn additional parts along with what we've already written". Onstage theatrics included a segment with Ogre performing on stucco stilts and pneumatic crutches, Ogre being hoisted from the stage by cables, and a backing film featuring scenes of graphic violence, most notably sequences from the Japanese film series Guinea Pig. Ogre later gave insight on the backing film's conception, saying:
We did an experiment ... We've always been accused of celebrating violence for idiotic reasons. [So] we used some images in our show from a film called Guinea Pig. They're these incredibly realistic, but simulated, Japanese snuff films. We inserted them into this roller-coaster ride of violent images and people were quite disgusted. People were vomiting in front of the stage. People came up to me after the show, saying I was the most disgusting human being-until they found out what it was all about. The whole reason we did that was to see if there was a difference. Will people react differently to something that's real as opposed to something they know is staged? They will. There's a whole different set of emotions people go through. It doesn't look like it looks on TV. It's quite sickening.
Ogre, who considered the tour to be a high point in his career, compared the band's performances to something like intense car races. "People go there expecting an accident to happen ... I was really running off that car-crash energy".
Following the tour, Ogre became involved with Martin Atkins' project Pigface in 1991, for a short time becoming the group's lead vocalist. Pigface included talent from several other industrial groups such as William Rieflin of Ministry and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who helped record the song "Suck". Ogre and Reznor performed the song together in the live album Welcome to Mexico... Asshole. Also on the album was a cover of the song "T.F.W.O." from Too Dark Park, led by Ogre.
In 2003, Alexander Chow of Spin magazine named Too Dark Park an essential industrial album, stating that "schizophrenic beats, manic-depressive mumblings, and just the right dose of fist-raising choruses" made for a dance floor favorite.
Last Rights (1992)
Following Too Dark Park, Skinny Puppy was commissioned by the dance group La La La Human Steps to compose several songs for their 1991 production Infante C'est Destroy, a duty shared alongside the likes of Einstürzende Neubauten. It was also during this time that Ogre made a concerted effort to rid his drug addictions. In an interview with CITR-FM, Ogre discussed his ordeals with hepatitis A and subsequent hospilization; he also thanked Pigface for looking after him during his "hour of need".
Skinny Puppy released their seventh studio album, Last Rights, in 1992. It was the last album the band released under Nettwerk/Capitol. Relationships between the band members during the album's production were "tense and unhealthy", with Ogre, under the supervision of Rave, coming into the studio at night to perform vocals for the music Key and Goettel composed earlier in the day. Ogre said that the production of Last Rights acted as a form of therapy which he used to help him come to terms with his addictions. "It's painful for me to be reminded of certain things, but for me to say it never happened is wrong. I'll be glad to put it behind me, but I had to do this".
Described by Entertainment Weekly as a "nonstop stretch of horrific soundscapes", Last Rights became the first Skinny Puppy record to chart on the Billboard 200, peaking at No. 193. The album remained on Billboard's Heatseekers album chart for several weeks, peaking at No. 10. The track "Inquisition" was released as a single and included several alternative cuts of the song, as well as the b-side "LaHuman8" (one of the tracks produced for La La La Human Steps). A second single, "Love in Vein", was never released, although an unfinished remix intended for it later appeared on Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996. A music video was created for the song "Killing Game" which featured a student dance troupe performing in "high-contrast black and white".
A track titled "Left Handshake" was excluded from Last Rights, leaving a blank track 10 on some copies of the album. Clearance for a lengthy vocal sample from Timothy Leary's Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out, was approved by Leary, but denied by the copyright holder, Henry G. Saperstein. Commenting on the ordeal, Key said, "We tried to convince him, but he [Saperstein] said, 'it doesn't matter what Leary said, he doesn't own his own work'". The song, in which Ogre provides commentary to Leary's instructions for avoiding a "bad trip", was eventually released on the initial European edition of Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996, and on a limited edition single called "Track 10" sold at the Skinny Puppy reunion concert in 2000 at Dresden.
The stage show for the Last Rights tour in North America, much like the album itself, was built around a detailed narrative inspired by Ogre's past ordeals with drug abuse. The show involved Ogre interacting with a backing film by way of a virtual reality machine, a tree made of human heads and fetuses, and numerous other props and costumes. For this tour, Key once more focused exclusively on live drumming, leaving Goettel on keyboard duty. One incident that occurred at a show in Boston involved several concert goers climbing on stage and grabbing at Ogre's various masks and props, several of which were stolen. The band's manager, Tim Gore, pursued the thieves but was punched by a security guard. Following the punch, Gore began having issues breathing and was taken to a hospital; the guard was fired as a result of the incident.
The Process, Goettel's death and breakup (1993–1999)
In 1993, Skinny Puppy contributed the song "Ode to Groovy" to the compilation album In Defense of Animals, released through Restless Records. The album was named after the animal rights group of the same name. Though the track is credited to Skinny Puppy, Ogre and Rave were the only people to work on it.
Ogre, Key, and Goettel signed a contract with American Recordings and moved to Malibu, California to record The Process, a concept album inspired by 1960s cult The Process Church of The Final Judgment, with Roli Mosimann producing. The recording sessions were beset by everything from fires and floods, to the Northridge earthquake. Mosimann was eventually replaced with Martin Atkins. Atkins' presence exacerbated the rift that was forming between Ogre and the rest of the band. The band's bickering and excessive drug use made the recording process so long and costly that American reduced Skinny Puppy's contract from three albums to one. In 1994, Key and Goettel returned to Vancouver with the master tapes, but Ogre remained in Los Angeles and quit Skinny Puppy in June 1995. Goettel was found dead of a heroin overdose in his parents' home two months later.
The Process was eventually completed with Rave and released in 1996. It was dedicated to the memory of Goettel. It was an overall stylistic departure from their previous albums, prominently featuring untreated vocals, guitar, and more accessible song structures. The liner notes that accompanied the CD included thank-yous to "Electronic Music Lovers" and "Puppy People", followed by the words "The End" in bold type. The album charted on the Billboard 200 at No. 102 and reached the No. 1 spot on Billboard'''s Heatseekers album chart.
During the Process era, a loose-knit art/philosophy collective also known as The Process was formed, with early contributions from Ogre and Genesis P-Orridge, among others. P-Orridge and Chris Carter jammed with Skinny Puppy during this period, a recording of which was eventually released as Puppy Gristle on a limited basis in 2002. The creation of the Download project, which Key and Goettel formed with Mark Spybey and Phil Western, also occurred at this time. Download explored everything from electronic improvisation with spoken vocals to techno, and toured in 1996.
Earlier, in 1993, Goettel and Western had issued a breakbeat hardcore single (under the name aDuck) on their own label, Subconscious Records. After Goettel's death, Subconscious evolved into a recording studio and record label imprint that Key used to release a number of his own and Skinny Puppy's recordings. Key also continued to work with The Tear Garden, produced industrial/trance music with Western in the side project platEAU, and released his first solo album in 1998.
Ogre had toured extensively with Martin Atkins' industrial supergroup Pigface since 1991, and toured with them again after leaving Skinny Puppy. He recorded material for his side project WELT. with Ruby's Mark Walk before quitting Skinny Puppy, but due to legal issues with American Recordings, this would not see release until 2001 under the new name, ohGr. In the meantime, he toured with KMFDM, and released an album with Martin Atkins under the name Rx (also known as Ritalin). The ohGr and Rx releases included some of Ogre's most positive and forward-thinking songwriting to date. Several collections were released while Skinny Puppy was dormant, including Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996, and The Singles Collect and B-Sides Collect in 1999. Nettwerk commissioned a remix album in 1998; titled remix dystemper, it featured various Skinny Puppy tracks re-worked by artists including Autechre, Deftones, and Guru. Ogre and Walk also took part, contributing a remix of "Dig It" and an updated version of Remissions "Smothered Hope" with new vocals by Ogre.
In 1999, "Draining Faces" appeared on the soundtrack for The Blair Witch Project.
Reunion, The Greater Wrong of the Right and Mythmaker (2000–2008)
In August 2000, at the insistence of German promoters, Ogre and Key reunited and performed live as Skinny Puppy for the first time since 1992 at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden. The show was meant to be a continuation of the Last Rights tour, with the stage design taking influence from those performances. Rather than find a replacement for Goettel, the band simply left the keyboard station on stage empty. The performance was filmed and recorded, and a live album, Doomsday: Back and Forth Series 5: Live in Dresden, was released in 2001; a DVD release was planned but canceled by Nettwerk. Live clips of "Testure" and "Worlock" as well as a behind the scenes interview with the band were broadcast on Crazy Clip TV in Germany and "Worlock" was included on a VCD compilation by German magazine Sonic Seducer in 2002.
Key joined ohGr on drums for its 2001 tour, while Ogre appeared on the track "Frozen Sky" on Key's 2001 album The Ghost of Each Room. When asked by Terrorizer magazine about the future of Skinny Puppy, Key responded:
Our goals for the future are to combine everything, take the best of what we can do with Ogre, and the best of what we have from our past, as well as the future stuff that we can do, and put it into one touring situation which I'm sure will stroll back into bloodville.
The first new Skinny Puppy track in several years, "Optimissed", appeared on the Underworld soundtrack in 2003. Ogre, Key, Mark Walk and various guests, including Danny Carey of Tool and Wayne Static of Static-X, recorded the band's ninth studio album, The Greater Wrong of the Right, released in 2004 on Synthetic Symphony, a sub-label of SPV. The album, described by Key as being based in "pseudopop", received generally favorable reviews from critics and landed on several Billboard charts. A music video was made for the song "Pro-Test" which featured a style unlike many of the group's previous work, so much so that some were unsure if it was an official video.
Skinny Puppy toured North America and Europe in support of the album in 2004, joined by William Morrison on guitar and Justin Bennett on drums. Shows in Toronto and Montreal were filmed for the live DVD Greater Wrong of the Right Live, which was released in September 2005. The DVD included Information Warfare, a documentary made by Morrison about the U.S.-led wars in Iraq. The anti-Bush administration stance taken by the band at their live shows drew the ire of PABAAH (Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood), which attempted a boycott of college radio stations that played Skinny Puppy.
Skinny Puppy toured Europe again in 2005, and returned to the studio to complete their next album, Mythmaker, which was released in January 2007. The album reached No. 4 on the Independent Albums Chart, No. 5 on the Dance/Electronic Albums Chart, and No. 17 on the Heatseekers Chart, but barely broke the Billboard 200. The band's 2007 North American and European tour, titled Mythrus, began in May 2007. While some fans longed for the sounds of their earlier days, Ogre, speaking with Electronic Musician, stated the band's intention was to move forward rather than dwell in the past. "Some people think that the stuff we do now is a pale imitation of the past. All of the older stuff had a time and place, and we decided to move forward to where we are now".
In Solvent See tour and HanDover (2009–2012)
According to a news posting on the official Skinny Puppy website, the band's next studio album was originally slated for release in October 2009, but the release of this album was delayed due to insolvency issues with the SPV label (thus leading to Ogre naming the 2009 tour the "In Solvent See" tour). These issues were not expected to be resolved until the end of 2009. However, the "In Solvent See" Tour took place as planned, and began on 30 October.
In October 2010, there were reports that the new Skinny Puppy album would be released in February 2011. In May 2011, Skinny Puppy announced that they finished recording a new album titled HanDover, and that they were soliciting it to other record labels for a September 2011 release date. On 27 August 2011, HanDover was officially confirmed as having a 25 October 2011, release in the United States and a 28 October 2011, release in Europe. Steven R Gilmore created the artwork for the album once again. The album landed on a number of Billboard charts, including a spot at No. 168 on the Billboard 200 and No. 9 on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart.
Skinny Puppy were scheduled to perform at numerous European festivals in the summer of 2010, including the Amphi Festival in Germany, the 2010 Waregem Gothic Festival in Belgium, and the Recession Festival in Denmark. A live album, titled Bootlegged, Broke and in Solvent Seas and recorded on the band's 2010 European tour, was released on 12 June 2012.
Weapon and subsequent tours (2013–present)
Skinny Puppy announced that a new album, entitled Weapon, would be released on 28 May 2013. The album was inspired by news brought to the band by a former guard at Guantanamo Bay that their music had been used to torture inmates. Inspiration also came from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and from Ogre's personal views on the human species; in an interview with Vice, Ogre stated that he "view[s] the human being primarily as a weapon, and a lot of the things that we've created have had disastrous effects on us as a species". The album was released to generally favorable reviews from critics, several noting the 1980s-esque musical style, and included a re-hashed version of the Remission-era track "Solvent".
Key told the Phoenix New Times that the band had been dissatisfied with HanDovers production schedule, noting that it had taken them several years to produce the album. For Weapon, they made a return to the fast-paced, one-song-a-day style of their early years. The decision to remake the song "Solvent" helped to set the album's quickened pace; Key said that the music they were making for the album wouldn't sound correct "If it didn't sound like something we had just made quickly, like in the old days".
The band released a music video for the song "Illisit" and in October 2013, announced their Live Shape For Arms Tour, a North American tour starting in January 2014 at The Observatory in Santa Ana, CA. In early 2014, Ogre and Key sent an invoice of $666,000 to the US government for the use of their music at Guantanamo Bay, bringing the issue to the attention of mainstream media outlets. Later in 2014, the Alliance of Sound tour was announced, with performances by Skinny Puppy, VNV Nation, Haujobb, and Youth Code. However, in early November, Front Line Assembly replaced VNV Nation and the tour was renamed Eye vs. Spy, which was a 17-city North American tour between 28 November to 20 December 2014.
In June 2015, Skinny Puppy performed at the Amnesia Rockfest in Montebello, Canada, alongside acts such as Ministry and The Dillinger Escape Plan. Following two successful tours with Weapon, the band yet again embarked with Youth Code, this time to play shows across North America in 2015 and across Europe in 2017 under the Down the SocioPath tour, which dropped all Weapon tracks and instead introduced many songs from the band's 1996 album, The Process, which had not been accompanied by any live performances due to the death of Goettel in 1995. Unlike the previous tours for Weapon, Down the SocioPath scaled back the theatrics and introduced Matthew Setzer as a live guitarist. Ogre began these concerts in a white hooded robe which was removed to reveal a suit into which a stagehand inserted oversized needles. The Down the Sociopath Too Euro 2017 leg lasted from 30 May to 16 June 2017. The tour included stops at the Download Festival in France, Primavera Sound, and Wave-Gotik-Treffen.
Style
Sound
Inspired by the music of Suicide, SPK, Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Cabaret Voltaire, Chrome, Throbbing Gristle, Bauhaus, Joy Division, New Order, Depeche Mode, Fad Gadget, Nocturnal Emissions, Portion Control, and The Legendary Pink Dots, music which had been accessible to the band primarily via tape exchange, Skinny Puppy experimented with analog and digital recording techniques, composing multi-layered music with synthesizers, drum machines, acoustic percussion, tape loops, samplers, and conventional rock music instruments to create what they called "audio sculpture". Their extensive use of sampling from horror films and radio broadcasts served to "clarify or obscure" song meanings, and they applied liberal amounts of distortion and other effects to Ogre's vocals, which are often delivered as a stream of consciousness. Lyrics commonly reference social and political subjects including animal rights, environmental degradation, drug addiction, suicide, war, privacy, and self-determination. They have also used their music to draw attention to events such as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the AIDS epidemic, and the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Skinny Puppy's often informal, improvisational approach to musical composition is indicated by use of the term "brap", coined by them and defined as a verb meaning "to get together, hook up electronic instruments, get high, and record".
Initially a dark synth-pop group, Skinny Puppy took on a more industrial sound following the inclusion of Dwayne Goettel in 1986, and later came to be recognized as pioneers of the electro-industrial genre. Their music has been described as encompassing a range styles including ambient music, avant-funk, noise rock and industrial metal. The music that followed Goettel's death has been likened to genres such as glitch and intelligent dance music. The Village Voice described Skinny Puppy's early work as "dark electro-pop", while Billboard's Bill Coleman thought of them as a "moody techno-outfit" with an "aggravating" musical delivery. People magazine called Ogre's vocals "incomprehensible", and likened the group's use of sampling to noises heard on "a TV set in an adjoining hotel room". AllMusic referred to Skinny Puppy's music as "primal" and "Kraftwerk gone netherworld", going on to say that unlike the bands that followed in their wake, "Ogre and Key knew how to craft tunes and marry them to the most ingenious of sound patterns". Ogre told the Windsor Star in 1986 that "in some sense our music, or the feeling expressed by our music, is felt by a lot more people" than had been anticipated.
Ogre said in an interview with Auxiliary Magazine in June 2013, "there is a very military side to Industrial music, and we are far more in the psychedelic side."
Music videos
Due to their graphic nature, the majority of Skinny Puppy's videos received limited commercial airplay, or were outright banned from broadcast. The music video for "Stairs and Flowers" was banned by the Canadian Censorship Bureau because of scenes depicting "an excrement-covered woman being beaten by soldiers"; the woman in question was Ogre soaked in mud. The letterbox effect used in the video for "Dig It", which portrayed stock market footage, was accused by both the bureau and MuchMusic to instead be showing pornography. Also banned was the video for "Testure", an action resulting from a viewer poll held by CityTV, as was the video for the song "Worlock", which was banned from MTV. Ogre, a self-described horror fan, defended the "Worlock" video by saying "I knew there was no way they'd play 'Worlock' there [the United States]. But I went out to make that video so no one would play it!"; he affirmed that the video was meant to draw attention to censorship in horror films. Some of the band's videos have received airplay, such as those for the promotional songs "Killing Game" and "Pro-test"; "Dig It" was also regularly played on MTV. A 30-second television promo was produced for the band by Capital Records in 1987, featuring a mix of scenes from the "Stairs and Flowers" and "Dig It" videos.
In a 1990 radio interview, Goettel explained the group's outlook on music videos, stating that "it's great to do videos when you have the money to do them, but for Skinny Puppy's part it's less of a promotional tool". He said that touring and word of mouth were their preferred avenues of promotion. "When a video gets made its not like 'OK we're going to spend $50,000 and it's going to sell this many more records'... it doesn't sell any more records".
Live performances
Skinny Puppy is noted for theatrical and controversial live performances which blend performance art with music. Ogre has been critical of the band's early performances, telling Spin magazine in 1992 that "I would do things on stage that would blow – they just wouldn't work". Live performances involved periods of musical improvisation, film projections, and elaborate stage props and machines, many of which are designed and built by Ogre himself. While discussing Skinny Puppy's performances, Ogre remarked that "our shows combine images with theater. It works better than just coming out and doing a horror magic routine". He explained to the Vancouver Sun in 1988 that he wanted his act to have "that grey area where anything could happen – where I can cut my head off by accident and people will go, 'wow, that's great'".
On-stage theatrics have included Ogre being suspended from racks and cables, play with a hangman's noose, use of an angle grinder, and mock executions of Ogre and George H.W. Bush. Following the 2004 United States presidential election, promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances. This reaction was prompted by the performance of a mock execution on stage, during which Ogre was "decapitated" by actors dressed as then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The band was also asked by Samsung (who had been asked by Ogre to sponsor the band with a large flat screen) to "not insult the president" while performing on stage. In a 1987 television interview with Kim Clarke Champniss, Key explained that while Ogre follows a "rough guideline" during a live performance, a majority of his on-stage theatrics are conceived spontaneously. Key told Champniss that Ogre's demeanor on stage could "range from just a sort of laid back kind of lurking to a rampant psycho". Ogre once remarked that touring was, for himself, like "dating hydrogen peroxide", referencing the numerous injuries which he would acquire over the course of touring.
Though Ogre and Key have remained the only constant members of Skinny Puppy's live act since Goettel's death, the pair have hired various other musicians to assist them onstage. They include drummer Justin Bennett, guitarist William Morrison, and guitarist Matthew Setzer.
Influence and legacy
Despite little mainstream airplay, several Skinny Puppy releases have charted in North America and Europe, and their influence on industrial and electronic music is considerable. Widely considered originators of a unique sound and live performance style, Skinny Puppy are also known as pioneers of the industrial rock and electro-industrial genres. They were one of the earliest groups to help popularize industrial music, and the Los Angeles Times recognized Ogre as the "first industrial rock star". Their gloomy and androgynous aesthetic helped attract the attention of the goth scene, from which they were able to draw a larger female audience than any previous industrial group. By the end of the 90s, they had sold some two million records for Nettwerk worldwide, and two of their releases, Remission and Bites, were certified gold in Canada.
Their music has spawned "a litter of like-minded bands", extending from independent acts like Tin Omen, to industrial rock project Nine Inch Nails, who opened for Skinny Puppy for a short time on their 1988 VIVIsectVI tour. Trent Reznor also acknowledged that Skinny Puppy's "Dig It" inspired the very first Nine Inch Nails track written, "Down in It". Canadian synth-pop artist Grimes includes Skinny Puppy as an influence on her music, having grown up in Vancouver's industrial music scene. Sara Taylor of the EBM group Youth Code has said that the song "Worlock" was "one of the most influential songs" she had ever heard. Other artists impacted by Skinny Puppy's music include Marilyn Manson, Chester Bennington, Moby, Jonathan Davis, Daron Malakian, 3Teeth, Foals vocalist Yannis Philippakis, Al Jourgensen, Chris Vrenna, John Grant, Mortiis,Blush Response, Celldweller, Finite Automata, Shooter Jennings, Death Grips vocalist MC Ride, X Marks the Pedwalk, Wumpscut, Haujobb, Orgy, Filter, Front Line Assembly, Orphx, Crystal Castles, AFI side project Blaqk Audio, and Mayhem vocalist Attila Csihar.
The band inspired a tribute album, Hymns of the Worlock: A Tribute to Skinny Puppy published by Cleopatra Records, which features groups such as Crocodile Shop and The Electric Hellfire Club. Skinny Puppy's remix album Remix dystemper includes contributions from a wide array of musicians such as electronic music DJ Josh Wink, Guru, KMFDM, Deftones, and former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna. Vrenna's solo project, Tweaker, opened for Skinny Puppy during their 2004 North American tour. Danny Carey from Tool and Wayne Static of Static-X provided drums and backup vocals, respectively, for the song "Use Less" from The Greater Wrong of the Right.
Ogre worked with KMFDM on several occasions, touring with them in 1997 and providing vocals on the song "Torture" from their album Symbols (the song also features production from Dave Ogilvie) as well as for the songs "That's All" and "Full Worm Garden" from 1999's Adios. Skinny Puppy also provided a remix for the Mötley Crüe song "Hooligan's Holiday"; Nikki Sixx reported that the band "just dumped the whole song in the computer and went off".
Skinny Puppy's music has been included in the soundtracks of films such as Bad Influence, An American Werewolf in Paris, The Blair Witch Project, Underworld, and Saw II, among others. The group was given a brief role as the "gang of goons" in the 1995 dark comedy film The Doom Generation. The 1996 Video Game Descent II included original music from Ogre and Mark Walk, while the 2014 PlayStation exclusive LittleBigPlanet 3 featured the song "Rodent" from the album Rabies.
Alternative Press included Skinny Puppy in their 1996 list of "100 underground inspirations of the past 20 years."
While discussing the possibility of Nine Inch Nails being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Richard Patrick of the band Filter remarked "what about Skinny Puppy?", going on to say that while Nine Inch Nails is the more famous of the two, Skinny Puppy were one of the first groups to craft "scary and mean" industrial music.
Side-projects
Key and Ogre are active in a number of other projects besides Skinny Puppy. Key has released several solo albums including Music for Cats and The Ghost of Each Room in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Doubting Thomas, a project led by Key and the late Dwayne Goettel, was an outlet for mostly instrumental compositions (save for several film and television samples). The projects only releases were Father Don't Cry in 1990 and The Infidel in 1991, both released through Wax Trax! Records. Download was founded by Key and Goettel in 1995 and included the assistance of frequent Skinny Puppy contributors Ken Marshall and Anthony Valcic. The group has released a number of records since its formation and notably provided the soundtrack album Charlie's Family in 1997 for the film The Manson Family, directed by Jim Van Bebber; the film was released six years after the album. Bebber had approached Key to produce the soundtrack, having previously directed several Skinny Puppy videos as well as the short horror film Chunk Blower, which starred Goettel and Bill Leeb of Front Line Assembly. Other notable projects include The Tear Garden with Edward Ka-Spel for The Legendary Pink Dots, platEAU with Phil Western, and Cyberaktif with Goettel and Leeb. Key also works as Scaremeister, his film scoring alter ego, having previously contributed to John Debney's score for End of Days. Scaremeister composed the album 31 Spirits, a collection of short musical pieces which have been used in the trailers of numerous films such as Inglourious Basterds, My Bloody Valentine, and The Book of Eli.
Ogre's main project outside Skinny Puppy is ohGr, which has released five albums, Welt (2001), SunnyPsyOp (2003), Devils in my Details (2008), UnDeveloped (2011), and TrickS (2018). In the mid-nineties, Ogre and producer Martin Atkins created the project known as Rx (formerly known as Ritalin). Rx released only one album, Bedside Toxicology, in 1998. He also toured extensively with Pigface (1991–1995) and Ministry (1987–1990) and appeared on a number of Pigface and Ministry-related recordings.
Guantanamo Bay torture allegations
Skinny Puppy have accused the US military of using their music to torture inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, without the band's knowledge or permission. In response, the band have sent an "invoice" to the Pentagon.
Members
Current
Nivek Ogre – vocals, keyboards (1982–1996, 2003–present)
cEvin Key – guitars, drums, bass, synthesizers (1982–1996, 2003–present)
Mark Walk – keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, bass, drums (2003–present)
Former
Dwayne Goettel – keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, bass (1986–1995; died 1995)
Bill Leeb (Wilhelm Schroeder) – bass synth, backing vocals (1984–1986)
Touring
Justin Bennett – drums (2004–present)
Matthew Setzer – guitars (2015–present)
William Morrison – guitars (2004–2005)
Timeline
Discography
Remission (1984)
Bites (1985)
Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse (1986)
Cleanse Fold and Manipulate (1987)
VIVIsectVI (1988)
Rabies (1989)
Too Dark Park (1990)
Last Rights (1992)
The Process (1996)
The Greater Wrong of the Right (2004)
Mythmaker (2007)
hanDover (2011)
Weapon (2013)
Videography
Ain't It Dead Yet?, 1991, VHS/DVD
Live performance at The Concert Hall, Toronto, Ontario, 31 May and 1 June 1987.
Video Collection (1984-1992), 1996, VHS/DVD
Includes videos for "Dig It", "Stairs and Flowers", "Far Too Frail" (live footage 1985), "Smothered Hope" (live footage 1985), "Deep Down Trauma Hounds" (live footage from the 1987 Ain't It Dead Yet? performance), "Testure", "Spasmolytic", and "Killing Game".
Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4, 1996, 2-CD
Includes a number of video clips on those editions which included a CD-ROM portion.
Greater Wrong of the Right LIVE, 2005, 2-DVD
Live performances in Toronto, Ontario, and Montreal, Quebec in late 2004. Also includes videos for "Pro-Test", "Spasmolytic" (live footage 1990), and "Love in Vein" (live footage 1992).
A number of other, promo-only videos were released, including "State Aid" (live footage 1988), "Worlock" (1990), "Candle" (1996), "Curcible" (1996), "Hardset Head" (1996), and "Haze" (2007).
See also
Go Ask Ogre List of bands from British Columbia
Music of Vancouver
References
Citations
Bibliography
Further reading
Interviews in IndustrialnatioN'' Magazine Issue No. 5, Issue No. 13, & Issue No. 21.
External links
American Recordings (record label) artists
Canadian electronic music groups
Canadian industrial music groups
Canadian techno music groups
Capitol Records artists
Dark ambient music groups
Dependent Records artists
Electro-industrial music groups
Electronic body music groups
Musical groups established in 1982
Musical groups disestablished in 1995
Musical groups reestablished in 2003
Noise musical groups
Canadian post-punk music groups
Musical groups from Vancouver
Industrial rock musical groups
Metropolis Records artists
1982 establishments in British Columbia
1996 disestablishments in British Columbia
2003 establishments in British Columbia | false | [
"Khit Thit Pyo May (; lit. Girls in New Era) is a popular Burmese live talk show broadcast on MRTV-4. The talk show follows the conversations of beautiful and talented women. The panel covers a wide range of topics but mostly focuses on girls. For instance, the group discusses news and links them to issues that many women find interesting. Experts and celebrities often make guest appearances. The daily TV show is broadcast every morning since 2012.\n\nKhit Thit Pyo May was listed on The Myanmar Times \"Top 10 Myanmar TV Shows\" in 2019.\n\nBroadcast schedule\nMondays live show– meeting with the astrologers for ask about business, health, education, love affair and marriage affair. The astrologer answers what people ask about business, health, education, love affair and marriage affair from phone and Facebook page.\nTuesdays live show– meeting with the doctors for ask about health. The doctor answers what people ask about health from phone and Facebook page.\nWednesdays live show– meeting with successful men or women for ask life improvement. He or she answers what people ask about life improvement from phone and Facebook page.\nThursdays live show– meeting for ask women's beauty and physical activities with related persons. He or she answers what people ask about women's beauty and physical activities from phone and Facebook page.\nFridays live show– meeting with celebrities for ask about art activities. The celebrity answers what people ask about his or her art activities from phone and Facebook page.\nSaturdays live show– meeting with celebrities or famous persons for ask about love affair. The celebrity or famous person answers live what people asking about love affair from phone and Facebook page.\nSundays recorded show– extra day and not live show, talking with famous persons and other information.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\nBurmese television series\nTelevision series by MRTV-4",
"DiscoveryBox is a children's magazine by Bayard Presse. It is targeted at children from 9 to 12 years old. Inside there are topics about science, animals, current events, nature, history and the world. It also includes games and quizzes. It is designed for the completely independent reader and is the 3rd and final instalment of the Box series (after StoryBox and AdventureBox).\n\nDiscoveryBox is mostly non fictional and is designed to answer questions and expand the knowledge of its readers in the subjects that it covers each month.\n\nThere is a current shortage in this type of information rich magazine for this age group at the moment and children find the magazine very interesting. It is designed to build on what they have learned in School and it takes many of its subjects from the British Curriculum so reinforces what they have learned as well as adding additional interesting facts that they may not have previously known about.\n\nBecause there is a shortage of information magazines for children this age, both ESL and English speaking students like to read this book as the information is specially presented for them. As it is specifically designed for the ages 9 to 12 the magazine takes subjects that they would find interesting such as The Olympic Games, Space Exploration and Avalanches being just a few of the previous topics covered.\n\nIn July 2009 DiscoveryBox collaborated with the movie Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs with a behind-the-scenes look at 3D animation.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n DiscoveryBox Website\n DiscoveryBox Information Page\n Bayard English magazine Website\n\nChildren's magazines published in France\nFrench-language magazines\nMonthly magazines published in France\nMagazines established in 1995"
] |
[
"Skinny Puppy",
"Live performances",
"when did skinny puppy's live performances begin?",
"(1987-1988),",
"who were part of this band?",
"Key cutting steel with an angle grinder,",
"what is the high light of their live performance?",
"using fake blood during their performances.",
"what kind of response this had with the audience?",
"promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances.",
"what other interesting information about their live performance",
"Ogre was decapitated by actors dressed as then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney."
] | C_c1a207f3a2e648579ef56e74dbf1253f_1 | did they win any awards for their performance? | 6 | Did Skinny Puppy win any awards for their performance? | Skinny Puppy | Skinny Puppy is noted for theatrical and controversial live performances which blend performance art with music, especially in an ambitious period that spanned their Head Trauma (1987-1988), VIVIsectVI (1988), Too Dark Park (1990), and Last Rights (1992) tours. Ogre has been critical of the bands early performances, telling Spin magazine in 1992 that "I would do things on stage that would blow-they just wouldn't work". Live performances involved periods of musical improvisation, film projections, and elaborate stage props and machines, many of which are designed and built by Ogre himself. While discussing Skinny Puppy's performances, Ogre once remarked that "our shows combine images with theater. It works better than just coming out and doing a horror magic routine". On-stage theatrics included Ogre being suspended from racks and cables, play with a hangman's noose, Key cutting steel with an angle grinder, and mock executions of Ogre and George H.W. Bush. Following the 2004 Presidential Election in the United States, promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances. This reaction was prompted by the performance of a mock execution on stage, during which Ogre was decapitated by actors dressed as then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The band was also asked by Samsung (who had been asked by Ogre to sponsor the band with a large flat screen) to "not insult the president" while performing on stage. In a 1987 television interview with Kim Clarke Champniss, Key explained that while Ogre follows a "rough guideline" during a live performance, a majority of his on-stage theatrics are thought up of spontaneously. Key told Champniss that Ogre's demeanor on stage could "range from just a sort of laid back kind of lurking to a rampant psycho". Ogre once remarked that touring was, for himself, like "dating hydrogen peroxide", referencing the numerous injuries which he would acquire over the course of touring. Though Ogre and Key have remained the only constant members of Skinny Puppy's live act since the death of Dwayne Goettel, several other musicians have been hired to accompany the pair since 2004. They include drummer Justin Bennett, guitarist William Morrison, and guitarist Matthew Setzer. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Skinny Puppy is a Canadian industrial music group formed in Vancouver in 1982. The group is among the founders of the industrial rock and electro-industrial genres. Initially envisioned as an experimental side-project by cEvin Key (Kevin Crompton) while he was in the new wave band Images in Vogue, Skinny Puppy evolved into a full-time project with the addition of vocalist Nivek Ogre (Kevin Ogilvie).
Over the course of a dozen studio albums and many live tours, Key and Ogre have been the only constant members. Other members have included Dwayne Goettel (1986–1995), Dave "Rave" Ogilvie (long-time associate, producer, and "unofficial" fourth member until 1996; not a relative of Kevin Ogilvie), Mark Walk (2003–present), and a number of guests, including Bill Leeb (1985–1986, under the pseudonym Wilhelm Schroeder), Al Jourgensen (1989), Danny Carey (2004), and many others.
After the self-release of their first cassette in 1984, Skinny Puppy soon signed to Vancouver label Nettwerk, anchoring its early roster. From their Nettwerk debut EP Remission in 1984 to their 1992 album Last Rights, Skinny Puppy developed into an influential band with a dedicated cult following, fusing elements of industrial, funk,
noise, new wave, electro, and rock music and making innovative use of sampling. Over the course of several tours of North America and Europe in this period, they became known for theatrical, horror-themed live performances and videos, drawing attention to issues such as chemical warfare and animal testing.
In 1993, Skinny Puppy left Nettwerk and long-time producer Rave, signing with American Recordings and relocating to Malibu, California, where drug problems and tension between band members plagued the recording of their next album, The Process (1996). Ogre quit Skinny Puppy in June 1995, and Goettel died of a heroin overdose two months later. Key and Ogre, already active in a number of other projects, went their separate ways, reuniting for a one-off Skinny Puppy concert at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden, Germany, in 2000. Reforming Skinny Puppy in 2003 with producer Mark Walk, they released their ninth album, The Greater Wrong of the Right (2004), which was followed by the release of the albums Mythmaker (2007) and HanDover (2011). In 2013, they released their twelfth album, Weapon, which was inspired by allegations that their music had been used for torture in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
History
Formation and first releases (1982–1985)
Skinny Puppy formed in 1982 as a side project for Kevin Crompton in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Crompton was dissatisfied with the pop direction of the band he was in, Images in Vogue, and began Skinny Puppy with the intention of doing something more compelling and experimental. Images in Vogue had become a popular act in Vancouver, achieving several radio hits and opening for groups such as Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, and Roxy Music. Crompton had planned Skinny Puppy to be a side project while he continued his work in Images in Vogue; however, when Images in Vogue relocated to Toronto, Crompton made Skinny Puppy his full-time project. Crompton had already created the name for the project and recorded several songs when he asked Kevin Graham Ogilvie to join. Ogilvie had been a roommate of Images in Vogue member Gary Blair Smith and had met Crompton at a party in late 1982. To avoid the confusion of having two people named Kevin in one band, the pair created stage names, with Crompton becoming cEvin Key and Ogilvie becoming Nivek Ogre.
Using Key's apartment as a makeshift studio, the duo began recording songs and in 1983 with the help of Images in Vogue recording engineer Dave "Rave" Ogilvie (no relation to Ogre), Skinny Puppy released the EP Back & Forth. This was the beginning of a long partnership between Skinny Puppy and Rave, who would serve as their producer until 1993, and again in 1995, and was occasionally listed as a member of the band in album liner notes. Though only 35 copies were ever printed, the self-released Back & Forth drew the attention of Vancouver startup label Nettwerk, who signed the band later that year. The first live Skinny Puppy show was held at the Unovis art gallery in Vancouver in February 1984; the British group Alien Sex Fiend were among the 300 people in attendance.
Ogre has said that Skinny Puppy acted as an escape for Key, who wished to distance himself from Images in Vogue: "He was looking for something to break out of [Images in Vogue], and maybe I was it". Key would continue to drum for Images in Vogue until the group relocated to Toronto in 1985. Key's concept behind Skinny Puppy came from the group's first song ever recorded, "K-9". The idea, according to Key, was to create music which explored "life as seen through a dog's eyes". Skinny Puppy also incorporated the use of "B-grade horror movie visuals", including fake blood and props, into their live performances. Key justified these "shock gore" antics with the following:
What we're presenting isn't much different from what [the audience] is subjected to in everyday life. For example, a commercial is a very plastic view of existence and reality. When you watch a TV show and see a world with picture-perfect endings, all you have to do is switch the station and watch the news.
Having scored a record deal with Nettwerk and with interest surrounding the Back & Forth EP growing, Skinny Puppy was invited to Vancouver's Mushroom Studios to work on new material. It was here that the group recruited Bill Leeb to perform bass synth and backing vocals. Like Ogre and Key before him, Leeb created a stage name, Wilhelm Schroeder; "my real name is Wilhelm" said Leeb, "Schroeder we picked out from the guy playing the piano in the Charlie Brown cartoon". Skinny Puppy released their second EP, Remission in December 1984, almost a year following Back & Forth.
Remission marked the first time Skinny Puppy would collaborate with artist Steven Gilmore, who created the album artwork. The EP was initially only released in vinyl, but was later given a cassette release in 1985. According to Nettwerk VP of A&R and Marketing George Maniatis, Remission "grabbed everybody by the you-know-whats" and, for Nettwerk Records, brought with it an association with industrial dance music. The EP was supported by music videos for the songs "Far Too Frail" and "Smothered Hope", the latter of which being the closest thing to a hit song any North American industrial act had achieved at the time.
Skinny Puppy released its first full-length album, Bites, in 1985 and was produced by Key and Dave Ogilvie. Tom Ellard of the Australian electronic act Severed Heads lent a hand to the production of Bites, acting as a producer and performing various sampling and mixing duties. Described by Billboard magazine as "techno dance...a la Kraftwerk", Bites yielded the underground hit "Assimilate". Key and Ogre opened for Chris & Cosey on their 1985 Canadian tour as Hell 'O' Death Day; some of the material the duo had performed would appear on Bites as bonus tracks. One of these bonus tracks, a song called "The Centre Bullet", featured lyrics by Legendary Pink Dots founder Edward Ka-Spel.
While Skinny Puppy had become well received by underground audiences in most major urban areas, due in part to their anti-consumerist themes and Cure-like aesthetics, not everyone was friendly to the group. Key described Skinny Puppy as the antithesis of "the Bruce Springsteen mentality of music", rejecting "Top 40 conformity". Toronto-based music journalist and DJ Greg Clow recalled Michael Williams, who was a VJ for Muchmusic, introducing him to Skinny Puppy, describing them as "Canada's answer to Depeche Mode".
Dwayne Goettel and stylistic transition (1986–1987)
In 1986, Nettwerk made a distribution deal with Capitol Records, allowing Skinny Puppy and others in Nettwerk's roster to expand their respective audiences. Capitol manager Stephen Powers stated that signing groups such as Skinny Puppy gave the company "a real credibility" with the alternative and college music scenes. Skinny Puppy also signed to Play It Again Sam, allowing the group's music to expand into Europe. It was this expansion into the European market that would help to make Skinny Puppy a "cash cow" for Nettwerk in the early years. In a 2007 interview with CraveOnline, Ogre commented on Skinny Puppy's time with Capitol, saying:
We're so lucky to have gotten here, and if we look back on the fact that we were on Capitol Records at a certain point, being distributed and making these albums under budget… there was one year when we were the only band on the label to profit, when MC Hammer lost a shitload of money. I can still appreciate how odd it was that we had the chance to do that because it doesn't really happen in a lot of cases.
Bill Leeb left Skinny Puppy in 1986 to pursue his own musical project, Front Line Assembly. Leeb gave his reasons for leaving the group stating that his bandmates expressed different ideas from his own and that he had been interested in singing. Leeb's replacement would be quiet Alberta native Dwayne Goettel. A classically trained musician, Goettel had been in a duo named Water with vocalist Sandy Weir and had worked with the synthpop band Psyche, among others.
Skinny Puppy's production values improved with the addition of Goettel, with Key remarking that "Dwayne brought us a whole new sense and aesthetic that we didn't have. Up to that point, we were really punk rock in our approach". Key continued on that "he [Goettel] had an incredible knowledge of equipment and at a very early stage was really the master of sampling, which had really just begun". Goettel's contributions to Skinny Puppy's second full-length effort, 1986's Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse, helped to propel the band towards the style of their "chaotic future masterworks". To promote the album, the band made an appearance on CBC Radio's Brave New Waves program in September 1986, and released their first single, "Dig It". A music video for "Dig It" was produced and received extensive airplay on MTV.
Further promotion for the album came from a world tour with the band Severed Heads. The tour proved to be a vital learning experience for the group, having encounters with, according to Key, "tour managers and agents that didn't pay us". In 1987, the song "Stairs and Flowers" was released as a single, as was a new song titled "Chainsaw". The group attracted the attention of the Parent Music Resource Center (PMRC), which named Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse one of several albums believed to be "violent, sexually explicit, or condoning substance abuse". The album was named by Melody Maker magazine as one of the best releases of the year.
Later in 1987 came Skinny Puppy's third full-length album, Cleanse Fold and Manipulate. Described as "a turning point, where experimentation is just beginning to gel with innovation", the album marks the point where the group began to explore more political themes, delving into topics such as the AIDS epidemic and the Vietnam War. A song from the album, "Addiction" was released as a single. The group later went on tour, with a performance at Toronto's Concert Hall being released on VHS in 1989 and CD in 1991 as Ain't It Dead Yet?. Also released in 1987 was Bites and Remission (through Capitol Records) and Remission & Bites (European release, through Pay It Again Sam), both compilations of Skinny Puppy's first two Nettwerk releases.
Subsequent success (1988–1989)
Skinny Puppy's live performances had become increasingly more elaborate, with Ogre interacting with an onstage crucifix and other "crudely constructed" stage props. Craig MacInnis of the Toronto Star described their new stage show as "neo-dadaist shock theatre", while Tom Lanham of the San Francisco Chronicle referred to it as "grotesque". The band continued to tour in 1988 with the European Head Trauma tour, supported by Edward Ka-Spel. Following the tour, the group returned to the studio to record what Ogre described would be the band's most critical statement regarding animal testing.
Skinny Puppy released their fourth album, VIVIsectVI, in 1988; the album's name is a pun intended to associate vivisection with Satanism (i.e. the "666 sect"). The group's primary aim with the album was to bring attention to the topic of vivisection and other issues regarding animal rights. The album's subject matter also deals with subjects such as chemical warfare, environmental waste, and disease. Lead track "Dogshit" was released as a single in 1988 under the name "Censor"; the name change was made by the band when it was decided that the single would not sell well with its original name. The single "Testure", which denounced the testing of animals for research purposes, reached No. 19 on Billboards Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in 1989. According to Ogre, "Testure" was intended to be accessible in the hope of spreading their "anti-vivisectionist" message. "It's the only song I think they will be able to play on the radio", he said. "I hope they do play it because it's the only way we can go beyond our ranks and our loyal fans who already understand the message". "Testure" also featured several well-chosen samples from the film The Plague Dogs, an animated adventure about two dogs who escape from a research laboratory. Melody Maker named VIVIsectVI one of the best albums of 1988.
Skinny Puppy toured in support of the album, featuring an early incarnation of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails as their opening act. The concept for the live show revolved around a vivisectionist (played by Ogre) who is eventually transformed into a tortured animal; the idea was to portray the "inner workings of the mind under the strain of vivisection". The stage show included the mock vivisection of a stuffed dog the band had named Chud. Following a show in Cincinnati, Ohio, Key, Ogre, and tour manager Dan McGee were arrested for "disorderly conduct" when an audience member, believing the stuffed animal Ogre was "vivisecting" to be a real dog, called the police. Two plainclothes officers entered the group's dressing room demanding they inspect the prop. Following a heated argument, the trio spent the night in jail, but were released the following day after paying a $200 fine.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the band members began working on various side projects. Key and Goettel were involved with The Tear Garden (a collaboration with The Legendary Pink Dots) and Doubting Thomas (an outlet for their non-Skinny Puppy instrumentals). The band Hilt, a collaboration between Key and Goettel, and Al Nelson, also started when Nettwerk challenged the group to produce an album for as little money as possible. Ogre struck up a friendship with Ministry's Al Jourgensen, having first worked together during the recording of the PTP song "Show Me Your Spine" (featured in the 1987 film RoboCop).
For Skinny Puppy's fifth album, Rabies, released in 1989, Jourgensen joined Rave as producer. The album, featuring Jourgensen's electric guitar work and backing vocals, drew mixed reception from fans. Despite these reactions, the album was a commercial success, selling 150,000 copies and receiving extensive airplay on college radio. The single "Worlock" – which featured samples of Charles Manson singing parts of the song "Helter Skelter" from The Beatles' White Album, accompanied by a fragmented portion of the songs guitar introduction – helped to bring the band "massive popularity". A video produced for the song, featuring spliced-together footage from dozens of horror films and a statement denouncing censorship of the genre by the MPAA, was circulated widely as a promotional and bootleg item. The song "Tin Omen" was also released as a single and "Hexonxonx" received some airplay on alternative radio. In spite of the album's initial mixed reception, Brad Filicky in a 2003 issue of CMJ magazine named Rabies as a classic album, calling it "a masterpiece of the industrial genre".
This period marked the beginning of divisions within the band, as rather than tour in support of Rabies, Ogre joined Ministry while they toured in support of their album The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste (1989); Ogre contributed guitars, keyboards, and vocals during the tour. Ogre had also begun working with the Ministry side project Revolting Cocks. Key was later quoted saying of Ogre's involvement with Ministry and, later on, Martin Atkins' Pigface that he sometimes felt "like a wife that's been cheated on".
Too Dark Park (1990–1991)
Following the production of Rabies, a divide grew between the group members, with Key and Goettel often siding against Ogre, feeling he was more interested in solo work. The group were ultimately disappointed with the outcome of Rabies, with Goettel saying that the completed product was "less within the Skinny Puppy vision", and Key being displeased with Jourgensen's involvement. Ogre also expressed his disapproval for the album, claiming that he had "flopped". "The work and artistic environment really weren't there at all either. It was completely negative".
Key and Goettel completed work on some of their side projects such a Hilt, releasing their first effort, Call the Ambulance (Before I Hurt Myself), which was produced by Rave. Key also reunited with Bill Leeb to form the project known as Cyberaktif; Goettel acted as an assistant producer and provided some instrumentation. Jourgensen offered Ogre the chance to tour with the Revolting Cocks, having provided vocals on their previous tour. Ogre refused the offer, citing some occurrences during his time with Ministry which led him to question his friendship with Jourgensen.
The group, having finished work on their various side projects, returned to the studio and released their sixth studio album, Too Dark Park, in 1990. Goettel said in a radio interview that the major intentions behind the album were to reevaluate what Skinny Puppy was and create a new style of music to mark the beginning of a new decade. This reevaluation included hiring Jim Cummins (I, Braineater) to design the cover artwork, feeling that their longtime designer Steven Gilmore had lost his creative spark.
Described as "forceful and consistently abrasive", Too Dark Park was what Key referred to as the true successor to "the last pure" Skinny Puppy album, VIVIsectVI. Critics such as Staci Bonner of Spin magazine applauded the use of sampling and stated that the album was a "return to the bloodbath" for the group. The album yielded the singles "Tormentor" and "Spasmolytic", the latter of which spawned a music video directed by Jim Van Bebber. Billboard called "Spasmolytic" a "delicious mind-altering affair", a sentiment shared by Wil Lewellyn of Treblezine who included the song in a list of the best underground songs of the 1990s.
Environmental degradation was a major theme on both the album and the North American Too Dark Park tour. For the tour, Key took on the role of drummer, leaving Goettel as lead keyboardist. Key told Alternative Press that "we could very well have a backing tape and stand behind synths playing two notes on the keyboard, but we've decided to physically strain ourselves and learn additional parts along with what we've already written". Onstage theatrics included a segment with Ogre performing on stucco stilts and pneumatic crutches, Ogre being hoisted from the stage by cables, and a backing film featuring scenes of graphic violence, most notably sequences from the Japanese film series Guinea Pig. Ogre later gave insight on the backing film's conception, saying:
We did an experiment ... We've always been accused of celebrating violence for idiotic reasons. [So] we used some images in our show from a film called Guinea Pig. They're these incredibly realistic, but simulated, Japanese snuff films. We inserted them into this roller-coaster ride of violent images and people were quite disgusted. People were vomiting in front of the stage. People came up to me after the show, saying I was the most disgusting human being-until they found out what it was all about. The whole reason we did that was to see if there was a difference. Will people react differently to something that's real as opposed to something they know is staged? They will. There's a whole different set of emotions people go through. It doesn't look like it looks on TV. It's quite sickening.
Ogre, who considered the tour to be a high point in his career, compared the band's performances to something like intense car races. "People go there expecting an accident to happen ... I was really running off that car-crash energy".
Following the tour, Ogre became involved with Martin Atkins' project Pigface in 1991, for a short time becoming the group's lead vocalist. Pigface included talent from several other industrial groups such as William Rieflin of Ministry and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who helped record the song "Suck". Ogre and Reznor performed the song together in the live album Welcome to Mexico... Asshole. Also on the album was a cover of the song "T.F.W.O." from Too Dark Park, led by Ogre.
In 2003, Alexander Chow of Spin magazine named Too Dark Park an essential industrial album, stating that "schizophrenic beats, manic-depressive mumblings, and just the right dose of fist-raising choruses" made for a dance floor favorite.
Last Rights (1992)
Following Too Dark Park, Skinny Puppy was commissioned by the dance group La La La Human Steps to compose several songs for their 1991 production Infante C'est Destroy, a duty shared alongside the likes of Einstürzende Neubauten. It was also during this time that Ogre made a concerted effort to rid his drug addictions. In an interview with CITR-FM, Ogre discussed his ordeals with hepatitis A and subsequent hospilization; he also thanked Pigface for looking after him during his "hour of need".
Skinny Puppy released their seventh studio album, Last Rights, in 1992. It was the last album the band released under Nettwerk/Capitol. Relationships between the band members during the album's production were "tense and unhealthy", with Ogre, under the supervision of Rave, coming into the studio at night to perform vocals for the music Key and Goettel composed earlier in the day. Ogre said that the production of Last Rights acted as a form of therapy which he used to help him come to terms with his addictions. "It's painful for me to be reminded of certain things, but for me to say it never happened is wrong. I'll be glad to put it behind me, but I had to do this".
Described by Entertainment Weekly as a "nonstop stretch of horrific soundscapes", Last Rights became the first Skinny Puppy record to chart on the Billboard 200, peaking at No. 193. The album remained on Billboard's Heatseekers album chart for several weeks, peaking at No. 10. The track "Inquisition" was released as a single and included several alternative cuts of the song, as well as the b-side "LaHuman8" (one of the tracks produced for La La La Human Steps). A second single, "Love in Vein", was never released, although an unfinished remix intended for it later appeared on Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996. A music video was created for the song "Killing Game" which featured a student dance troupe performing in "high-contrast black and white".
A track titled "Left Handshake" was excluded from Last Rights, leaving a blank track 10 on some copies of the album. Clearance for a lengthy vocal sample from Timothy Leary's Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out, was approved by Leary, but denied by the copyright holder, Henry G. Saperstein. Commenting on the ordeal, Key said, "We tried to convince him, but he [Saperstein] said, 'it doesn't matter what Leary said, he doesn't own his own work'". The song, in which Ogre provides commentary to Leary's instructions for avoiding a "bad trip", was eventually released on the initial European edition of Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996, and on a limited edition single called "Track 10" sold at the Skinny Puppy reunion concert in 2000 at Dresden.
The stage show for the Last Rights tour in North America, much like the album itself, was built around a detailed narrative inspired by Ogre's past ordeals with drug abuse. The show involved Ogre interacting with a backing film by way of a virtual reality machine, a tree made of human heads and fetuses, and numerous other props and costumes. For this tour, Key once more focused exclusively on live drumming, leaving Goettel on keyboard duty. One incident that occurred at a show in Boston involved several concert goers climbing on stage and grabbing at Ogre's various masks and props, several of which were stolen. The band's manager, Tim Gore, pursued the thieves but was punched by a security guard. Following the punch, Gore began having issues breathing and was taken to a hospital; the guard was fired as a result of the incident.
The Process, Goettel's death and breakup (1993–1999)
In 1993, Skinny Puppy contributed the song "Ode to Groovy" to the compilation album In Defense of Animals, released through Restless Records. The album was named after the animal rights group of the same name. Though the track is credited to Skinny Puppy, Ogre and Rave were the only people to work on it.
Ogre, Key, and Goettel signed a contract with American Recordings and moved to Malibu, California to record The Process, a concept album inspired by 1960s cult The Process Church of The Final Judgment, with Roli Mosimann producing. The recording sessions were beset by everything from fires and floods, to the Northridge earthquake. Mosimann was eventually replaced with Martin Atkins. Atkins' presence exacerbated the rift that was forming between Ogre and the rest of the band. The band's bickering and excessive drug use made the recording process so long and costly that American reduced Skinny Puppy's contract from three albums to one. In 1994, Key and Goettel returned to Vancouver with the master tapes, but Ogre remained in Los Angeles and quit Skinny Puppy in June 1995. Goettel was found dead of a heroin overdose in his parents' home two months later.
The Process was eventually completed with Rave and released in 1996. It was dedicated to the memory of Goettel. It was an overall stylistic departure from their previous albums, prominently featuring untreated vocals, guitar, and more accessible song structures. The liner notes that accompanied the CD included thank-yous to "Electronic Music Lovers" and "Puppy People", followed by the words "The End" in bold type. The album charted on the Billboard 200 at No. 102 and reached the No. 1 spot on Billboard'''s Heatseekers album chart.
During the Process era, a loose-knit art/philosophy collective also known as The Process was formed, with early contributions from Ogre and Genesis P-Orridge, among others. P-Orridge and Chris Carter jammed with Skinny Puppy during this period, a recording of which was eventually released as Puppy Gristle on a limited basis in 2002. The creation of the Download project, which Key and Goettel formed with Mark Spybey and Phil Western, also occurred at this time. Download explored everything from electronic improvisation with spoken vocals to techno, and toured in 1996.
Earlier, in 1993, Goettel and Western had issued a breakbeat hardcore single (under the name aDuck) on their own label, Subconscious Records. After Goettel's death, Subconscious evolved into a recording studio and record label imprint that Key used to release a number of his own and Skinny Puppy's recordings. Key also continued to work with The Tear Garden, produced industrial/trance music with Western in the side project platEAU, and released his first solo album in 1998.
Ogre had toured extensively with Martin Atkins' industrial supergroup Pigface since 1991, and toured with them again after leaving Skinny Puppy. He recorded material for his side project WELT. with Ruby's Mark Walk before quitting Skinny Puppy, but due to legal issues with American Recordings, this would not see release until 2001 under the new name, ohGr. In the meantime, he toured with KMFDM, and released an album with Martin Atkins under the name Rx (also known as Ritalin). The ohGr and Rx releases included some of Ogre's most positive and forward-thinking songwriting to date. Several collections were released while Skinny Puppy was dormant, including Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996, and The Singles Collect and B-Sides Collect in 1999. Nettwerk commissioned a remix album in 1998; titled remix dystemper, it featured various Skinny Puppy tracks re-worked by artists including Autechre, Deftones, and Guru. Ogre and Walk also took part, contributing a remix of "Dig It" and an updated version of Remissions "Smothered Hope" with new vocals by Ogre.
In 1999, "Draining Faces" appeared on the soundtrack for The Blair Witch Project.
Reunion, The Greater Wrong of the Right and Mythmaker (2000–2008)
In August 2000, at the insistence of German promoters, Ogre and Key reunited and performed live as Skinny Puppy for the first time since 1992 at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden. The show was meant to be a continuation of the Last Rights tour, with the stage design taking influence from those performances. Rather than find a replacement for Goettel, the band simply left the keyboard station on stage empty. The performance was filmed and recorded, and a live album, Doomsday: Back and Forth Series 5: Live in Dresden, was released in 2001; a DVD release was planned but canceled by Nettwerk. Live clips of "Testure" and "Worlock" as well as a behind the scenes interview with the band were broadcast on Crazy Clip TV in Germany and "Worlock" was included on a VCD compilation by German magazine Sonic Seducer in 2002.
Key joined ohGr on drums for its 2001 tour, while Ogre appeared on the track "Frozen Sky" on Key's 2001 album The Ghost of Each Room. When asked by Terrorizer magazine about the future of Skinny Puppy, Key responded:
Our goals for the future are to combine everything, take the best of what we can do with Ogre, and the best of what we have from our past, as well as the future stuff that we can do, and put it into one touring situation which I'm sure will stroll back into bloodville.
The first new Skinny Puppy track in several years, "Optimissed", appeared on the Underworld soundtrack in 2003. Ogre, Key, Mark Walk and various guests, including Danny Carey of Tool and Wayne Static of Static-X, recorded the band's ninth studio album, The Greater Wrong of the Right, released in 2004 on Synthetic Symphony, a sub-label of SPV. The album, described by Key as being based in "pseudopop", received generally favorable reviews from critics and landed on several Billboard charts. A music video was made for the song "Pro-Test" which featured a style unlike many of the group's previous work, so much so that some were unsure if it was an official video.
Skinny Puppy toured North America and Europe in support of the album in 2004, joined by William Morrison on guitar and Justin Bennett on drums. Shows in Toronto and Montreal were filmed for the live DVD Greater Wrong of the Right Live, which was released in September 2005. The DVD included Information Warfare, a documentary made by Morrison about the U.S.-led wars in Iraq. The anti-Bush administration stance taken by the band at their live shows drew the ire of PABAAH (Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood), which attempted a boycott of college radio stations that played Skinny Puppy.
Skinny Puppy toured Europe again in 2005, and returned to the studio to complete their next album, Mythmaker, which was released in January 2007. The album reached No. 4 on the Independent Albums Chart, No. 5 on the Dance/Electronic Albums Chart, and No. 17 on the Heatseekers Chart, but barely broke the Billboard 200. The band's 2007 North American and European tour, titled Mythrus, began in May 2007. While some fans longed for the sounds of their earlier days, Ogre, speaking with Electronic Musician, stated the band's intention was to move forward rather than dwell in the past. "Some people think that the stuff we do now is a pale imitation of the past. All of the older stuff had a time and place, and we decided to move forward to where we are now".
In Solvent See tour and HanDover (2009–2012)
According to a news posting on the official Skinny Puppy website, the band's next studio album was originally slated for release in October 2009, but the release of this album was delayed due to insolvency issues with the SPV label (thus leading to Ogre naming the 2009 tour the "In Solvent See" tour). These issues were not expected to be resolved until the end of 2009. However, the "In Solvent See" Tour took place as planned, and began on 30 October.
In October 2010, there were reports that the new Skinny Puppy album would be released in February 2011. In May 2011, Skinny Puppy announced that they finished recording a new album titled HanDover, and that they were soliciting it to other record labels for a September 2011 release date. On 27 August 2011, HanDover was officially confirmed as having a 25 October 2011, release in the United States and a 28 October 2011, release in Europe. Steven R Gilmore created the artwork for the album once again. The album landed on a number of Billboard charts, including a spot at No. 168 on the Billboard 200 and No. 9 on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart.
Skinny Puppy were scheduled to perform at numerous European festivals in the summer of 2010, including the Amphi Festival in Germany, the 2010 Waregem Gothic Festival in Belgium, and the Recession Festival in Denmark. A live album, titled Bootlegged, Broke and in Solvent Seas and recorded on the band's 2010 European tour, was released on 12 June 2012.
Weapon and subsequent tours (2013–present)
Skinny Puppy announced that a new album, entitled Weapon, would be released on 28 May 2013. The album was inspired by news brought to the band by a former guard at Guantanamo Bay that their music had been used to torture inmates. Inspiration also came from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and from Ogre's personal views on the human species; in an interview with Vice, Ogre stated that he "view[s] the human being primarily as a weapon, and a lot of the things that we've created have had disastrous effects on us as a species". The album was released to generally favorable reviews from critics, several noting the 1980s-esque musical style, and included a re-hashed version of the Remission-era track "Solvent".
Key told the Phoenix New Times that the band had been dissatisfied with HanDovers production schedule, noting that it had taken them several years to produce the album. For Weapon, they made a return to the fast-paced, one-song-a-day style of their early years. The decision to remake the song "Solvent" helped to set the album's quickened pace; Key said that the music they were making for the album wouldn't sound correct "If it didn't sound like something we had just made quickly, like in the old days".
The band released a music video for the song "Illisit" and in October 2013, announced their Live Shape For Arms Tour, a North American tour starting in January 2014 at The Observatory in Santa Ana, CA. In early 2014, Ogre and Key sent an invoice of $666,000 to the US government for the use of their music at Guantanamo Bay, bringing the issue to the attention of mainstream media outlets. Later in 2014, the Alliance of Sound tour was announced, with performances by Skinny Puppy, VNV Nation, Haujobb, and Youth Code. However, in early November, Front Line Assembly replaced VNV Nation and the tour was renamed Eye vs. Spy, which was a 17-city North American tour between 28 November to 20 December 2014.
In June 2015, Skinny Puppy performed at the Amnesia Rockfest in Montebello, Canada, alongside acts such as Ministry and The Dillinger Escape Plan. Following two successful tours with Weapon, the band yet again embarked with Youth Code, this time to play shows across North America in 2015 and across Europe in 2017 under the Down the SocioPath tour, which dropped all Weapon tracks and instead introduced many songs from the band's 1996 album, The Process, which had not been accompanied by any live performances due to the death of Goettel in 1995. Unlike the previous tours for Weapon, Down the SocioPath scaled back the theatrics and introduced Matthew Setzer as a live guitarist. Ogre began these concerts in a white hooded robe which was removed to reveal a suit into which a stagehand inserted oversized needles. The Down the Sociopath Too Euro 2017 leg lasted from 30 May to 16 June 2017. The tour included stops at the Download Festival in France, Primavera Sound, and Wave-Gotik-Treffen.
Style
Sound
Inspired by the music of Suicide, SPK, Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Cabaret Voltaire, Chrome, Throbbing Gristle, Bauhaus, Joy Division, New Order, Depeche Mode, Fad Gadget, Nocturnal Emissions, Portion Control, and The Legendary Pink Dots, music which had been accessible to the band primarily via tape exchange, Skinny Puppy experimented with analog and digital recording techniques, composing multi-layered music with synthesizers, drum machines, acoustic percussion, tape loops, samplers, and conventional rock music instruments to create what they called "audio sculpture". Their extensive use of sampling from horror films and radio broadcasts served to "clarify or obscure" song meanings, and they applied liberal amounts of distortion and other effects to Ogre's vocals, which are often delivered as a stream of consciousness. Lyrics commonly reference social and political subjects including animal rights, environmental degradation, drug addiction, suicide, war, privacy, and self-determination. They have also used their music to draw attention to events such as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the AIDS epidemic, and the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Skinny Puppy's often informal, improvisational approach to musical composition is indicated by use of the term "brap", coined by them and defined as a verb meaning "to get together, hook up electronic instruments, get high, and record".
Initially a dark synth-pop group, Skinny Puppy took on a more industrial sound following the inclusion of Dwayne Goettel in 1986, and later came to be recognized as pioneers of the electro-industrial genre. Their music has been described as encompassing a range styles including ambient music, avant-funk, noise rock and industrial metal. The music that followed Goettel's death has been likened to genres such as glitch and intelligent dance music. The Village Voice described Skinny Puppy's early work as "dark electro-pop", while Billboard's Bill Coleman thought of them as a "moody techno-outfit" with an "aggravating" musical delivery. People magazine called Ogre's vocals "incomprehensible", and likened the group's use of sampling to noises heard on "a TV set in an adjoining hotel room". AllMusic referred to Skinny Puppy's music as "primal" and "Kraftwerk gone netherworld", going on to say that unlike the bands that followed in their wake, "Ogre and Key knew how to craft tunes and marry them to the most ingenious of sound patterns". Ogre told the Windsor Star in 1986 that "in some sense our music, or the feeling expressed by our music, is felt by a lot more people" than had been anticipated.
Ogre said in an interview with Auxiliary Magazine in June 2013, "there is a very military side to Industrial music, and we are far more in the psychedelic side."
Music videos
Due to their graphic nature, the majority of Skinny Puppy's videos received limited commercial airplay, or were outright banned from broadcast. The music video for "Stairs and Flowers" was banned by the Canadian Censorship Bureau because of scenes depicting "an excrement-covered woman being beaten by soldiers"; the woman in question was Ogre soaked in mud. The letterbox effect used in the video for "Dig It", which portrayed stock market footage, was accused by both the bureau and MuchMusic to instead be showing pornography. Also banned was the video for "Testure", an action resulting from a viewer poll held by CityTV, as was the video for the song "Worlock", which was banned from MTV. Ogre, a self-described horror fan, defended the "Worlock" video by saying "I knew there was no way they'd play 'Worlock' there [the United States]. But I went out to make that video so no one would play it!"; he affirmed that the video was meant to draw attention to censorship in horror films. Some of the band's videos have received airplay, such as those for the promotional songs "Killing Game" and "Pro-test"; "Dig It" was also regularly played on MTV. A 30-second television promo was produced for the band by Capital Records in 1987, featuring a mix of scenes from the "Stairs and Flowers" and "Dig It" videos.
In a 1990 radio interview, Goettel explained the group's outlook on music videos, stating that "it's great to do videos when you have the money to do them, but for Skinny Puppy's part it's less of a promotional tool". He said that touring and word of mouth were their preferred avenues of promotion. "When a video gets made its not like 'OK we're going to spend $50,000 and it's going to sell this many more records'... it doesn't sell any more records".
Live performances
Skinny Puppy is noted for theatrical and controversial live performances which blend performance art with music. Ogre has been critical of the band's early performances, telling Spin magazine in 1992 that "I would do things on stage that would blow – they just wouldn't work". Live performances involved periods of musical improvisation, film projections, and elaborate stage props and machines, many of which are designed and built by Ogre himself. While discussing Skinny Puppy's performances, Ogre remarked that "our shows combine images with theater. It works better than just coming out and doing a horror magic routine". He explained to the Vancouver Sun in 1988 that he wanted his act to have "that grey area where anything could happen – where I can cut my head off by accident and people will go, 'wow, that's great'".
On-stage theatrics have included Ogre being suspended from racks and cables, play with a hangman's noose, use of an angle grinder, and mock executions of Ogre and George H.W. Bush. Following the 2004 United States presidential election, promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances. This reaction was prompted by the performance of a mock execution on stage, during which Ogre was "decapitated" by actors dressed as then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The band was also asked by Samsung (who had been asked by Ogre to sponsor the band with a large flat screen) to "not insult the president" while performing on stage. In a 1987 television interview with Kim Clarke Champniss, Key explained that while Ogre follows a "rough guideline" during a live performance, a majority of his on-stage theatrics are conceived spontaneously. Key told Champniss that Ogre's demeanor on stage could "range from just a sort of laid back kind of lurking to a rampant psycho". Ogre once remarked that touring was, for himself, like "dating hydrogen peroxide", referencing the numerous injuries which he would acquire over the course of touring.
Though Ogre and Key have remained the only constant members of Skinny Puppy's live act since Goettel's death, the pair have hired various other musicians to assist them onstage. They include drummer Justin Bennett, guitarist William Morrison, and guitarist Matthew Setzer.
Influence and legacy
Despite little mainstream airplay, several Skinny Puppy releases have charted in North America and Europe, and their influence on industrial and electronic music is considerable. Widely considered originators of a unique sound and live performance style, Skinny Puppy are also known as pioneers of the industrial rock and electro-industrial genres. They were one of the earliest groups to help popularize industrial music, and the Los Angeles Times recognized Ogre as the "first industrial rock star". Their gloomy and androgynous aesthetic helped attract the attention of the goth scene, from which they were able to draw a larger female audience than any previous industrial group. By the end of the 90s, they had sold some two million records for Nettwerk worldwide, and two of their releases, Remission and Bites, were certified gold in Canada.
Their music has spawned "a litter of like-minded bands", extending from independent acts like Tin Omen, to industrial rock project Nine Inch Nails, who opened for Skinny Puppy for a short time on their 1988 VIVIsectVI tour. Trent Reznor also acknowledged that Skinny Puppy's "Dig It" inspired the very first Nine Inch Nails track written, "Down in It". Canadian synth-pop artist Grimes includes Skinny Puppy as an influence on her music, having grown up in Vancouver's industrial music scene. Sara Taylor of the EBM group Youth Code has said that the song "Worlock" was "one of the most influential songs" she had ever heard. Other artists impacted by Skinny Puppy's music include Marilyn Manson, Chester Bennington, Moby, Jonathan Davis, Daron Malakian, 3Teeth, Foals vocalist Yannis Philippakis, Al Jourgensen, Chris Vrenna, John Grant, Mortiis,Blush Response, Celldweller, Finite Automata, Shooter Jennings, Death Grips vocalist MC Ride, X Marks the Pedwalk, Wumpscut, Haujobb, Orgy, Filter, Front Line Assembly, Orphx, Crystal Castles, AFI side project Blaqk Audio, and Mayhem vocalist Attila Csihar.
The band inspired a tribute album, Hymns of the Worlock: A Tribute to Skinny Puppy published by Cleopatra Records, which features groups such as Crocodile Shop and The Electric Hellfire Club. Skinny Puppy's remix album Remix dystemper includes contributions from a wide array of musicians such as electronic music DJ Josh Wink, Guru, KMFDM, Deftones, and former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna. Vrenna's solo project, Tweaker, opened for Skinny Puppy during their 2004 North American tour. Danny Carey from Tool and Wayne Static of Static-X provided drums and backup vocals, respectively, for the song "Use Less" from The Greater Wrong of the Right.
Ogre worked with KMFDM on several occasions, touring with them in 1997 and providing vocals on the song "Torture" from their album Symbols (the song also features production from Dave Ogilvie) as well as for the songs "That's All" and "Full Worm Garden" from 1999's Adios. Skinny Puppy also provided a remix for the Mötley Crüe song "Hooligan's Holiday"; Nikki Sixx reported that the band "just dumped the whole song in the computer and went off".
Skinny Puppy's music has been included in the soundtracks of films such as Bad Influence, An American Werewolf in Paris, The Blair Witch Project, Underworld, and Saw II, among others. The group was given a brief role as the "gang of goons" in the 1995 dark comedy film The Doom Generation. The 1996 Video Game Descent II included original music from Ogre and Mark Walk, while the 2014 PlayStation exclusive LittleBigPlanet 3 featured the song "Rodent" from the album Rabies.
Alternative Press included Skinny Puppy in their 1996 list of "100 underground inspirations of the past 20 years."
While discussing the possibility of Nine Inch Nails being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Richard Patrick of the band Filter remarked "what about Skinny Puppy?", going on to say that while Nine Inch Nails is the more famous of the two, Skinny Puppy were one of the first groups to craft "scary and mean" industrial music.
Side-projects
Key and Ogre are active in a number of other projects besides Skinny Puppy. Key has released several solo albums including Music for Cats and The Ghost of Each Room in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Doubting Thomas, a project led by Key and the late Dwayne Goettel, was an outlet for mostly instrumental compositions (save for several film and television samples). The projects only releases were Father Don't Cry in 1990 and The Infidel in 1991, both released through Wax Trax! Records. Download was founded by Key and Goettel in 1995 and included the assistance of frequent Skinny Puppy contributors Ken Marshall and Anthony Valcic. The group has released a number of records since its formation and notably provided the soundtrack album Charlie's Family in 1997 for the film The Manson Family, directed by Jim Van Bebber; the film was released six years after the album. Bebber had approached Key to produce the soundtrack, having previously directed several Skinny Puppy videos as well as the short horror film Chunk Blower, which starred Goettel and Bill Leeb of Front Line Assembly. Other notable projects include The Tear Garden with Edward Ka-Spel for The Legendary Pink Dots, platEAU with Phil Western, and Cyberaktif with Goettel and Leeb. Key also works as Scaremeister, his film scoring alter ego, having previously contributed to John Debney's score for End of Days. Scaremeister composed the album 31 Spirits, a collection of short musical pieces which have been used in the trailers of numerous films such as Inglourious Basterds, My Bloody Valentine, and The Book of Eli.
Ogre's main project outside Skinny Puppy is ohGr, which has released five albums, Welt (2001), SunnyPsyOp (2003), Devils in my Details (2008), UnDeveloped (2011), and TrickS (2018). In the mid-nineties, Ogre and producer Martin Atkins created the project known as Rx (formerly known as Ritalin). Rx released only one album, Bedside Toxicology, in 1998. He also toured extensively with Pigface (1991–1995) and Ministry (1987–1990) and appeared on a number of Pigface and Ministry-related recordings.
Guantanamo Bay torture allegations
Skinny Puppy have accused the US military of using their music to torture inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, without the band's knowledge or permission. In response, the band have sent an "invoice" to the Pentagon.
Members
Current
Nivek Ogre – vocals, keyboards (1982–1996, 2003–present)
cEvin Key – guitars, drums, bass, synthesizers (1982–1996, 2003–present)
Mark Walk – keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, bass, drums (2003–present)
Former
Dwayne Goettel – keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, bass (1986–1995; died 1995)
Bill Leeb (Wilhelm Schroeder) – bass synth, backing vocals (1984–1986)
Touring
Justin Bennett – drums (2004–present)
Matthew Setzer – guitars (2015–present)
William Morrison – guitars (2004–2005)
Timeline
Discography
Remission (1984)
Bites (1985)
Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse (1986)
Cleanse Fold and Manipulate (1987)
VIVIsectVI (1988)
Rabies (1989)
Too Dark Park (1990)
Last Rights (1992)
The Process (1996)
The Greater Wrong of the Right (2004)
Mythmaker (2007)
hanDover (2011)
Weapon (2013)
Videography
Ain't It Dead Yet?, 1991, VHS/DVD
Live performance at The Concert Hall, Toronto, Ontario, 31 May and 1 June 1987.
Video Collection (1984-1992), 1996, VHS/DVD
Includes videos for "Dig It", "Stairs and Flowers", "Far Too Frail" (live footage 1985), "Smothered Hope" (live footage 1985), "Deep Down Trauma Hounds" (live footage from the 1987 Ain't It Dead Yet? performance), "Testure", "Spasmolytic", and "Killing Game".
Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4, 1996, 2-CD
Includes a number of video clips on those editions which included a CD-ROM portion.
Greater Wrong of the Right LIVE, 2005, 2-DVD
Live performances in Toronto, Ontario, and Montreal, Quebec in late 2004. Also includes videos for "Pro-Test", "Spasmolytic" (live footage 1990), and "Love in Vein" (live footage 1992).
A number of other, promo-only videos were released, including "State Aid" (live footage 1988), "Worlock" (1990), "Candle" (1996), "Curcible" (1996), "Hardset Head" (1996), and "Haze" (2007).
See also
Go Ask Ogre List of bands from British Columbia
Music of Vancouver
References
Citations
Bibliography
Further reading
Interviews in IndustrialnatioN'' Magazine Issue No. 5, Issue No. 13, & Issue No. 21.
External links
American Recordings (record label) artists
Canadian electronic music groups
Canadian industrial music groups
Canadian techno music groups
Capitol Records artists
Dark ambient music groups
Dependent Records artists
Electro-industrial music groups
Electronic body music groups
Musical groups established in 1982
Musical groups disestablished in 1995
Musical groups reestablished in 2003
Noise musical groups
Canadian post-punk music groups
Musical groups from Vancouver
Industrial rock musical groups
Metropolis Records artists
1982 establishments in British Columbia
1996 disestablishments in British Columbia
2003 establishments in British Columbia | false | [
"The following is a list of awards and nominations for American actor Charlie Sheen. He won a Golden Globe award for Best Lead Actor in a Television Series - Comedy or Musical for his performance as Charlie Crawford on Spin City in 2002, and received two further nominations in 2005 and 2006 in the same category for his performance as Charlie Harper on Two and a Half Men. He has been nominated for four Primetime Emmy awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for the same role; these came in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009. Sheen also shared a Screen Actors Guild award nomination for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Motion Picture for Being John Malkovich in 2000, and received two nominations for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series in 2005 and 2010. He was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contribution to Motion Picture in 1994.\n\nPrestigious awards\n\nGolden Globe awards \n1 win of 3 nominations\n\nPrimetime Emmy awards \n0 wins of 4 nominations\n\nScreen Actors Guild awards \n0 wins of 3 nominations\n\nAudience awards\n\nNickelodeon Kids' Choice awards \n0 wins of 1 nomination\n\nPeople's Choice awards \n0 wins of 4 nominations\n\nTeen Choice awards \n0 wins of 3 nominations\n\nCritic and association awards\n\nAward Circuit Community awards \n0 wins of 1 nomination\n\nInternational awards\n\nALMA awards \n1 win of 5 nominations\n\nMiscellaneous awards\n\nGolden Raspberry awards \n0 wins of 1 nomination\n\nTV Land awards \n1 win of 1 nomination\n\nWalk of Fame Star \n1 win of 1 nomination\n\nWestern Heritage awards \n1 win of 1 nomination\n\nReferences\n\nLists of awards received by actor",
"The Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Vocal or Instrumental was an award presented at the 31st Grammy Awards in 1989 to honor quality hard rock/metal works (albums or songs). The Grammy Awards, an annual ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards, are presented by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to \"honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position.\"\n\nOverview\nThe Academy recognized hard rock music artists for the first time in 1989 with the category Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Vocal or Instrumental, combining two of the most popular music genres of the 1980s. Metallica, who were expected to win the inaugural award for their album ...And Justice for All, lost to Jethro Tull whose album Crest of a Knave won, also beating out Jane's Addiction, Iggy Pop, as well as AC/DC.\n\nThis choice led to widespread criticism of the Academy, as journalists suggested that Jethro Tull's music did not belong in either the hard rock or heavy metal genres. In response, the Academy separated the genres creating the categories Best Hard Rock Performance and Best Metal Performance. This incident is often considered an example of the Grammy Awards being out of touch with popular sentiment, and was named the biggest upset in Grammy history by Entertainment Weekly.\n\nIn 2012, the combined Hard Rock/Metal category returned following a major overhaul of Grammy Award categories. The separate Best Hard Rock Performance and Best Metal Performance categories were merged into the slightly renamed Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance category. However, in June 2013, it was announced that the combined category was being discontinued in favor of reinstating Best Metal Performance. Beginning in 2014, quality hard rock performances were recognized under the category Best Rock Performance.\n\nAward\nIn 1988, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences added a Hard Rock/Metal Performance category for the 31st Grammy Awards. Nominated works for the award were Blow Up Your Video by AC/DC, \"Cold Metal\" by Iggy Pop (from the album Instinct), Nothing's Shocking by Jane's Addiction, Crest of a Knave by Jethro Tull, and ...And Justice for All by Metallica. Jethro Tull's lead singer Ian Anderson was surprised by the band's nomination, as both Anderson and music critics did not consider the group's music to be part of the heavy metal music genre.\n\nMetallica's performance at the ceremony, held in February 1989 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, marked the first time a heavy metal group had performed during the Grammy Awards. Metallica was expected to win the award, and members of Jethro Tull were told by their record label Chrysalis Records not to bother attending the ceremony because they \"weren't likely to win.\" However, Jethro Tull won the award (recipients included members Ian Anderson, Martin Barre, and Dave Pegg), and when presenters Alice Cooper and Lita Ford announced the result, booing could be heard from the crowd. Anderson, who assumed that the band was being recognized for their twenty-year history, as opposed to a single album, later stated that he was \"lucky\" not to have attended the ceremony, as \"there's no way I could have accepted it under those circumstances.\"\n\nControversy and aftermath\n\nThe result, considered an \"embarrassment\" for the Academy, generated much controversy. In response to the criticism they received over the award, Jethro Tull's record label took out an advertisement in Billboard magazine with a picture of a flute (part of their trademark sound) lying amid a pile of iron rebars and the line, \"The flute is a heavy, metal instrument!\" Metallica also added a sticker to subsequent releases of ...And Justice for All, reading: \"Grammy Award LOSERS\".\n\nSeparate awards for Best Hard Rock Performance and Best Metal Performance were introduced in 1990. Beginning that year, Metallica won three consecutive Grammy Awards for Best Metal Performance for the song \"One\" from ...And Justice for All, their cover of Queen's \"Stone Cold Crazy\", and their eponymous album in 1992. When Metallica won the Grammy in 1992, drummer Lars Ulrich referenced the previous award by facetiously \"thanking\" Jethro Tull for not putting out an album that year, though they actually had released the album Catfish Rising in 1991. A decade after Jethro Tull defeated Metallica, Ulrich admitted: \"I'd be lying if I didn't tell you I was disappointed. Human nature is that you'd rather win than lose, but Jethro Tull walking away with it makes a huge mockery of the intentions of the event.\" As of 2010, Metallica holds the record for the most wins in the metal category, with a total of six.\n\nThis incident is often cited as an example of the Grammy Awards selection committee being out of touch with popular sentiment, and was named the biggest upset in Grammy history by Entertainment Weekly. Other publications that have included the Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance upset in their lists of top Grammy moments include Cracked.com (number one), Time (number ten), and the Ventura County Star (number twenty).\n\nSee also\n\n 1989 in heavy metal music\n Jethro Tull discography\n List of awards and nominations received by Metallica\n Metallica discography\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nOfficial site of the Grammy Awards\nVideo: 31st Annual Grammy Awards – Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance\nRock on the Net – Grammy Awards: Best Hard Rock Performance\n\n1989 disestablishments in the United States\n1989 establishments in the United States\nAwards disestablished in 1989\nAwards established in 1989\nHard Rock Metal Performance\nHard Rock Metal Performance Vocal Or Instrumental"
] |
[
"Skinny Puppy",
"Live performances",
"when did skinny puppy's live performances begin?",
"(1987-1988),",
"who were part of this band?",
"Key cutting steel with an angle grinder,",
"what is the high light of their live performance?",
"using fake blood during their performances.",
"what kind of response this had with the audience?",
"promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances.",
"what other interesting information about their live performance",
"Ogre was decapitated by actors dressed as then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.",
"did they win any awards for their performance?",
"I don't know."
] | C_c1a207f3a2e648579ef56e74dbf1253f_1 | anything else? | 7 | Anything else about Skinny Puppy other than their live performances? | Skinny Puppy | Skinny Puppy is noted for theatrical and controversial live performances which blend performance art with music, especially in an ambitious period that spanned their Head Trauma (1987-1988), VIVIsectVI (1988), Too Dark Park (1990), and Last Rights (1992) tours. Ogre has been critical of the bands early performances, telling Spin magazine in 1992 that "I would do things on stage that would blow-they just wouldn't work". Live performances involved periods of musical improvisation, film projections, and elaborate stage props and machines, many of which are designed and built by Ogre himself. While discussing Skinny Puppy's performances, Ogre once remarked that "our shows combine images with theater. It works better than just coming out and doing a horror magic routine". On-stage theatrics included Ogre being suspended from racks and cables, play with a hangman's noose, Key cutting steel with an angle grinder, and mock executions of Ogre and George H.W. Bush. Following the 2004 Presidential Election in the United States, promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances. This reaction was prompted by the performance of a mock execution on stage, during which Ogre was decapitated by actors dressed as then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The band was also asked by Samsung (who had been asked by Ogre to sponsor the band with a large flat screen) to "not insult the president" while performing on stage. In a 1987 television interview with Kim Clarke Champniss, Key explained that while Ogre follows a "rough guideline" during a live performance, a majority of his on-stage theatrics are thought up of spontaneously. Key told Champniss that Ogre's demeanor on stage could "range from just a sort of laid back kind of lurking to a rampant psycho". Ogre once remarked that touring was, for himself, like "dating hydrogen peroxide", referencing the numerous injuries which he would acquire over the course of touring. Though Ogre and Key have remained the only constant members of Skinny Puppy's live act since the death of Dwayne Goettel, several other musicians have been hired to accompany the pair since 2004. They include drummer Justin Bennett, guitarist William Morrison, and guitarist Matthew Setzer. CANNOTANSWER | several other musicians have been hired to accompany the pair since 2004. | Skinny Puppy is a Canadian industrial music group formed in Vancouver in 1982. The group is among the founders of the industrial rock and electro-industrial genres. Initially envisioned as an experimental side-project by cEvin Key (Kevin Crompton) while he was in the new wave band Images in Vogue, Skinny Puppy evolved into a full-time project with the addition of vocalist Nivek Ogre (Kevin Ogilvie).
Over the course of a dozen studio albums and many live tours, Key and Ogre have been the only constant members. Other members have included Dwayne Goettel (1986–1995), Dave "Rave" Ogilvie (long-time associate, producer, and "unofficial" fourth member until 1996; not a relative of Kevin Ogilvie), Mark Walk (2003–present), and a number of guests, including Bill Leeb (1985–1986, under the pseudonym Wilhelm Schroeder), Al Jourgensen (1989), Danny Carey (2004), and many others.
After the self-release of their first cassette in 1984, Skinny Puppy soon signed to Vancouver label Nettwerk, anchoring its early roster. From their Nettwerk debut EP Remission in 1984 to their 1992 album Last Rights, Skinny Puppy developed into an influential band with a dedicated cult following, fusing elements of industrial, funk,
noise, new wave, electro, and rock music and making innovative use of sampling. Over the course of several tours of North America and Europe in this period, they became known for theatrical, horror-themed live performances and videos, drawing attention to issues such as chemical warfare and animal testing.
In 1993, Skinny Puppy left Nettwerk and long-time producer Rave, signing with American Recordings and relocating to Malibu, California, where drug problems and tension between band members plagued the recording of their next album, The Process (1996). Ogre quit Skinny Puppy in June 1995, and Goettel died of a heroin overdose two months later. Key and Ogre, already active in a number of other projects, went their separate ways, reuniting for a one-off Skinny Puppy concert at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden, Germany, in 2000. Reforming Skinny Puppy in 2003 with producer Mark Walk, they released their ninth album, The Greater Wrong of the Right (2004), which was followed by the release of the albums Mythmaker (2007) and HanDover (2011). In 2013, they released their twelfth album, Weapon, which was inspired by allegations that their music had been used for torture in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
History
Formation and first releases (1982–1985)
Skinny Puppy formed in 1982 as a side project for Kevin Crompton in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Crompton was dissatisfied with the pop direction of the band he was in, Images in Vogue, and began Skinny Puppy with the intention of doing something more compelling and experimental. Images in Vogue had become a popular act in Vancouver, achieving several radio hits and opening for groups such as Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, and Roxy Music. Crompton had planned Skinny Puppy to be a side project while he continued his work in Images in Vogue; however, when Images in Vogue relocated to Toronto, Crompton made Skinny Puppy his full-time project. Crompton had already created the name for the project and recorded several songs when he asked Kevin Graham Ogilvie to join. Ogilvie had been a roommate of Images in Vogue member Gary Blair Smith and had met Crompton at a party in late 1982. To avoid the confusion of having two people named Kevin in one band, the pair created stage names, with Crompton becoming cEvin Key and Ogilvie becoming Nivek Ogre.
Using Key's apartment as a makeshift studio, the duo began recording songs and in 1983 with the help of Images in Vogue recording engineer Dave "Rave" Ogilvie (no relation to Ogre), Skinny Puppy released the EP Back & Forth. This was the beginning of a long partnership between Skinny Puppy and Rave, who would serve as their producer until 1993, and again in 1995, and was occasionally listed as a member of the band in album liner notes. Though only 35 copies were ever printed, the self-released Back & Forth drew the attention of Vancouver startup label Nettwerk, who signed the band later that year. The first live Skinny Puppy show was held at the Unovis art gallery in Vancouver in February 1984; the British group Alien Sex Fiend were among the 300 people in attendance.
Ogre has said that Skinny Puppy acted as an escape for Key, who wished to distance himself from Images in Vogue: "He was looking for something to break out of [Images in Vogue], and maybe I was it". Key would continue to drum for Images in Vogue until the group relocated to Toronto in 1985. Key's concept behind Skinny Puppy came from the group's first song ever recorded, "K-9". The idea, according to Key, was to create music which explored "life as seen through a dog's eyes". Skinny Puppy also incorporated the use of "B-grade horror movie visuals", including fake blood and props, into their live performances. Key justified these "shock gore" antics with the following:
What we're presenting isn't much different from what [the audience] is subjected to in everyday life. For example, a commercial is a very plastic view of existence and reality. When you watch a TV show and see a world with picture-perfect endings, all you have to do is switch the station and watch the news.
Having scored a record deal with Nettwerk and with interest surrounding the Back & Forth EP growing, Skinny Puppy was invited to Vancouver's Mushroom Studios to work on new material. It was here that the group recruited Bill Leeb to perform bass synth and backing vocals. Like Ogre and Key before him, Leeb created a stage name, Wilhelm Schroeder; "my real name is Wilhelm" said Leeb, "Schroeder we picked out from the guy playing the piano in the Charlie Brown cartoon". Skinny Puppy released their second EP, Remission in December 1984, almost a year following Back & Forth.
Remission marked the first time Skinny Puppy would collaborate with artist Steven Gilmore, who created the album artwork. The EP was initially only released in vinyl, but was later given a cassette release in 1985. According to Nettwerk VP of A&R and Marketing George Maniatis, Remission "grabbed everybody by the you-know-whats" and, for Nettwerk Records, brought with it an association with industrial dance music. The EP was supported by music videos for the songs "Far Too Frail" and "Smothered Hope", the latter of which being the closest thing to a hit song any North American industrial act had achieved at the time.
Skinny Puppy released its first full-length album, Bites, in 1985 and was produced by Key and Dave Ogilvie. Tom Ellard of the Australian electronic act Severed Heads lent a hand to the production of Bites, acting as a producer and performing various sampling and mixing duties. Described by Billboard magazine as "techno dance...a la Kraftwerk", Bites yielded the underground hit "Assimilate". Key and Ogre opened for Chris & Cosey on their 1985 Canadian tour as Hell 'O' Death Day; some of the material the duo had performed would appear on Bites as bonus tracks. One of these bonus tracks, a song called "The Centre Bullet", featured lyrics by Legendary Pink Dots founder Edward Ka-Spel.
While Skinny Puppy had become well received by underground audiences in most major urban areas, due in part to their anti-consumerist themes and Cure-like aesthetics, not everyone was friendly to the group. Key described Skinny Puppy as the antithesis of "the Bruce Springsteen mentality of music", rejecting "Top 40 conformity". Toronto-based music journalist and DJ Greg Clow recalled Michael Williams, who was a VJ for Muchmusic, introducing him to Skinny Puppy, describing them as "Canada's answer to Depeche Mode".
Dwayne Goettel and stylistic transition (1986–1987)
In 1986, Nettwerk made a distribution deal with Capitol Records, allowing Skinny Puppy and others in Nettwerk's roster to expand their respective audiences. Capitol manager Stephen Powers stated that signing groups such as Skinny Puppy gave the company "a real credibility" with the alternative and college music scenes. Skinny Puppy also signed to Play It Again Sam, allowing the group's music to expand into Europe. It was this expansion into the European market that would help to make Skinny Puppy a "cash cow" for Nettwerk in the early years. In a 2007 interview with CraveOnline, Ogre commented on Skinny Puppy's time with Capitol, saying:
We're so lucky to have gotten here, and if we look back on the fact that we were on Capitol Records at a certain point, being distributed and making these albums under budget… there was one year when we were the only band on the label to profit, when MC Hammer lost a shitload of money. I can still appreciate how odd it was that we had the chance to do that because it doesn't really happen in a lot of cases.
Bill Leeb left Skinny Puppy in 1986 to pursue his own musical project, Front Line Assembly. Leeb gave his reasons for leaving the group stating that his bandmates expressed different ideas from his own and that he had been interested in singing. Leeb's replacement would be quiet Alberta native Dwayne Goettel. A classically trained musician, Goettel had been in a duo named Water with vocalist Sandy Weir and had worked with the synthpop band Psyche, among others.
Skinny Puppy's production values improved with the addition of Goettel, with Key remarking that "Dwayne brought us a whole new sense and aesthetic that we didn't have. Up to that point, we were really punk rock in our approach". Key continued on that "he [Goettel] had an incredible knowledge of equipment and at a very early stage was really the master of sampling, which had really just begun". Goettel's contributions to Skinny Puppy's second full-length effort, 1986's Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse, helped to propel the band towards the style of their "chaotic future masterworks". To promote the album, the band made an appearance on CBC Radio's Brave New Waves program in September 1986, and released their first single, "Dig It". A music video for "Dig It" was produced and received extensive airplay on MTV.
Further promotion for the album came from a world tour with the band Severed Heads. The tour proved to be a vital learning experience for the group, having encounters with, according to Key, "tour managers and agents that didn't pay us". In 1987, the song "Stairs and Flowers" was released as a single, as was a new song titled "Chainsaw". The group attracted the attention of the Parent Music Resource Center (PMRC), which named Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse one of several albums believed to be "violent, sexually explicit, or condoning substance abuse". The album was named by Melody Maker magazine as one of the best releases of the year.
Later in 1987 came Skinny Puppy's third full-length album, Cleanse Fold and Manipulate. Described as "a turning point, where experimentation is just beginning to gel with innovation", the album marks the point where the group began to explore more political themes, delving into topics such as the AIDS epidemic and the Vietnam War. A song from the album, "Addiction" was released as a single. The group later went on tour, with a performance at Toronto's Concert Hall being released on VHS in 1989 and CD in 1991 as Ain't It Dead Yet?. Also released in 1987 was Bites and Remission (through Capitol Records) and Remission & Bites (European release, through Pay It Again Sam), both compilations of Skinny Puppy's first two Nettwerk releases.
Subsequent success (1988–1989)
Skinny Puppy's live performances had become increasingly more elaborate, with Ogre interacting with an onstage crucifix and other "crudely constructed" stage props. Craig MacInnis of the Toronto Star described their new stage show as "neo-dadaist shock theatre", while Tom Lanham of the San Francisco Chronicle referred to it as "grotesque". The band continued to tour in 1988 with the European Head Trauma tour, supported by Edward Ka-Spel. Following the tour, the group returned to the studio to record what Ogre described would be the band's most critical statement regarding animal testing.
Skinny Puppy released their fourth album, VIVIsectVI, in 1988; the album's name is a pun intended to associate vivisection with Satanism (i.e. the "666 sect"). The group's primary aim with the album was to bring attention to the topic of vivisection and other issues regarding animal rights. The album's subject matter also deals with subjects such as chemical warfare, environmental waste, and disease. Lead track "Dogshit" was released as a single in 1988 under the name "Censor"; the name change was made by the band when it was decided that the single would not sell well with its original name. The single "Testure", which denounced the testing of animals for research purposes, reached No. 19 on Billboards Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in 1989. According to Ogre, "Testure" was intended to be accessible in the hope of spreading their "anti-vivisectionist" message. "It's the only song I think they will be able to play on the radio", he said. "I hope they do play it because it's the only way we can go beyond our ranks and our loyal fans who already understand the message". "Testure" also featured several well-chosen samples from the film The Plague Dogs, an animated adventure about two dogs who escape from a research laboratory. Melody Maker named VIVIsectVI one of the best albums of 1988.
Skinny Puppy toured in support of the album, featuring an early incarnation of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails as their opening act. The concept for the live show revolved around a vivisectionist (played by Ogre) who is eventually transformed into a tortured animal; the idea was to portray the "inner workings of the mind under the strain of vivisection". The stage show included the mock vivisection of a stuffed dog the band had named Chud. Following a show in Cincinnati, Ohio, Key, Ogre, and tour manager Dan McGee were arrested for "disorderly conduct" when an audience member, believing the stuffed animal Ogre was "vivisecting" to be a real dog, called the police. Two plainclothes officers entered the group's dressing room demanding they inspect the prop. Following a heated argument, the trio spent the night in jail, but were released the following day after paying a $200 fine.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the band members began working on various side projects. Key and Goettel were involved with The Tear Garden (a collaboration with The Legendary Pink Dots) and Doubting Thomas (an outlet for their non-Skinny Puppy instrumentals). The band Hilt, a collaboration between Key and Goettel, and Al Nelson, also started when Nettwerk challenged the group to produce an album for as little money as possible. Ogre struck up a friendship with Ministry's Al Jourgensen, having first worked together during the recording of the PTP song "Show Me Your Spine" (featured in the 1987 film RoboCop).
For Skinny Puppy's fifth album, Rabies, released in 1989, Jourgensen joined Rave as producer. The album, featuring Jourgensen's electric guitar work and backing vocals, drew mixed reception from fans. Despite these reactions, the album was a commercial success, selling 150,000 copies and receiving extensive airplay on college radio. The single "Worlock" – which featured samples of Charles Manson singing parts of the song "Helter Skelter" from The Beatles' White Album, accompanied by a fragmented portion of the songs guitar introduction – helped to bring the band "massive popularity". A video produced for the song, featuring spliced-together footage from dozens of horror films and a statement denouncing censorship of the genre by the MPAA, was circulated widely as a promotional and bootleg item. The song "Tin Omen" was also released as a single and "Hexonxonx" received some airplay on alternative radio. In spite of the album's initial mixed reception, Brad Filicky in a 2003 issue of CMJ magazine named Rabies as a classic album, calling it "a masterpiece of the industrial genre".
This period marked the beginning of divisions within the band, as rather than tour in support of Rabies, Ogre joined Ministry while they toured in support of their album The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste (1989); Ogre contributed guitars, keyboards, and vocals during the tour. Ogre had also begun working with the Ministry side project Revolting Cocks. Key was later quoted saying of Ogre's involvement with Ministry and, later on, Martin Atkins' Pigface that he sometimes felt "like a wife that's been cheated on".
Too Dark Park (1990–1991)
Following the production of Rabies, a divide grew between the group members, with Key and Goettel often siding against Ogre, feeling he was more interested in solo work. The group were ultimately disappointed with the outcome of Rabies, with Goettel saying that the completed product was "less within the Skinny Puppy vision", and Key being displeased with Jourgensen's involvement. Ogre also expressed his disapproval for the album, claiming that he had "flopped". "The work and artistic environment really weren't there at all either. It was completely negative".
Key and Goettel completed work on some of their side projects such a Hilt, releasing their first effort, Call the Ambulance (Before I Hurt Myself), which was produced by Rave. Key also reunited with Bill Leeb to form the project known as Cyberaktif; Goettel acted as an assistant producer and provided some instrumentation. Jourgensen offered Ogre the chance to tour with the Revolting Cocks, having provided vocals on their previous tour. Ogre refused the offer, citing some occurrences during his time with Ministry which led him to question his friendship with Jourgensen.
The group, having finished work on their various side projects, returned to the studio and released their sixth studio album, Too Dark Park, in 1990. Goettel said in a radio interview that the major intentions behind the album were to reevaluate what Skinny Puppy was and create a new style of music to mark the beginning of a new decade. This reevaluation included hiring Jim Cummins (I, Braineater) to design the cover artwork, feeling that their longtime designer Steven Gilmore had lost his creative spark.
Described as "forceful and consistently abrasive", Too Dark Park was what Key referred to as the true successor to "the last pure" Skinny Puppy album, VIVIsectVI. Critics such as Staci Bonner of Spin magazine applauded the use of sampling and stated that the album was a "return to the bloodbath" for the group. The album yielded the singles "Tormentor" and "Spasmolytic", the latter of which spawned a music video directed by Jim Van Bebber. Billboard called "Spasmolytic" a "delicious mind-altering affair", a sentiment shared by Wil Lewellyn of Treblezine who included the song in a list of the best underground songs of the 1990s.
Environmental degradation was a major theme on both the album and the North American Too Dark Park tour. For the tour, Key took on the role of drummer, leaving Goettel as lead keyboardist. Key told Alternative Press that "we could very well have a backing tape and stand behind synths playing two notes on the keyboard, but we've decided to physically strain ourselves and learn additional parts along with what we've already written". Onstage theatrics included a segment with Ogre performing on stucco stilts and pneumatic crutches, Ogre being hoisted from the stage by cables, and a backing film featuring scenes of graphic violence, most notably sequences from the Japanese film series Guinea Pig. Ogre later gave insight on the backing film's conception, saying:
We did an experiment ... We've always been accused of celebrating violence for idiotic reasons. [So] we used some images in our show from a film called Guinea Pig. They're these incredibly realistic, but simulated, Japanese snuff films. We inserted them into this roller-coaster ride of violent images and people were quite disgusted. People were vomiting in front of the stage. People came up to me after the show, saying I was the most disgusting human being-until they found out what it was all about. The whole reason we did that was to see if there was a difference. Will people react differently to something that's real as opposed to something they know is staged? They will. There's a whole different set of emotions people go through. It doesn't look like it looks on TV. It's quite sickening.
Ogre, who considered the tour to be a high point in his career, compared the band's performances to something like intense car races. "People go there expecting an accident to happen ... I was really running off that car-crash energy".
Following the tour, Ogre became involved with Martin Atkins' project Pigface in 1991, for a short time becoming the group's lead vocalist. Pigface included talent from several other industrial groups such as William Rieflin of Ministry and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who helped record the song "Suck". Ogre and Reznor performed the song together in the live album Welcome to Mexico... Asshole. Also on the album was a cover of the song "T.F.W.O." from Too Dark Park, led by Ogre.
In 2003, Alexander Chow of Spin magazine named Too Dark Park an essential industrial album, stating that "schizophrenic beats, manic-depressive mumblings, and just the right dose of fist-raising choruses" made for a dance floor favorite.
Last Rights (1992)
Following Too Dark Park, Skinny Puppy was commissioned by the dance group La La La Human Steps to compose several songs for their 1991 production Infante C'est Destroy, a duty shared alongside the likes of Einstürzende Neubauten. It was also during this time that Ogre made a concerted effort to rid his drug addictions. In an interview with CITR-FM, Ogre discussed his ordeals with hepatitis A and subsequent hospilization; he also thanked Pigface for looking after him during his "hour of need".
Skinny Puppy released their seventh studio album, Last Rights, in 1992. It was the last album the band released under Nettwerk/Capitol. Relationships between the band members during the album's production were "tense and unhealthy", with Ogre, under the supervision of Rave, coming into the studio at night to perform vocals for the music Key and Goettel composed earlier in the day. Ogre said that the production of Last Rights acted as a form of therapy which he used to help him come to terms with his addictions. "It's painful for me to be reminded of certain things, but for me to say it never happened is wrong. I'll be glad to put it behind me, but I had to do this".
Described by Entertainment Weekly as a "nonstop stretch of horrific soundscapes", Last Rights became the first Skinny Puppy record to chart on the Billboard 200, peaking at No. 193. The album remained on Billboard's Heatseekers album chart for several weeks, peaking at No. 10. The track "Inquisition" was released as a single and included several alternative cuts of the song, as well as the b-side "LaHuman8" (one of the tracks produced for La La La Human Steps). A second single, "Love in Vein", was never released, although an unfinished remix intended for it later appeared on Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996. A music video was created for the song "Killing Game" which featured a student dance troupe performing in "high-contrast black and white".
A track titled "Left Handshake" was excluded from Last Rights, leaving a blank track 10 on some copies of the album. Clearance for a lengthy vocal sample from Timothy Leary's Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out, was approved by Leary, but denied by the copyright holder, Henry G. Saperstein. Commenting on the ordeal, Key said, "We tried to convince him, but he [Saperstein] said, 'it doesn't matter what Leary said, he doesn't own his own work'". The song, in which Ogre provides commentary to Leary's instructions for avoiding a "bad trip", was eventually released on the initial European edition of Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996, and on a limited edition single called "Track 10" sold at the Skinny Puppy reunion concert in 2000 at Dresden.
The stage show for the Last Rights tour in North America, much like the album itself, was built around a detailed narrative inspired by Ogre's past ordeals with drug abuse. The show involved Ogre interacting with a backing film by way of a virtual reality machine, a tree made of human heads and fetuses, and numerous other props and costumes. For this tour, Key once more focused exclusively on live drumming, leaving Goettel on keyboard duty. One incident that occurred at a show in Boston involved several concert goers climbing on stage and grabbing at Ogre's various masks and props, several of which were stolen. The band's manager, Tim Gore, pursued the thieves but was punched by a security guard. Following the punch, Gore began having issues breathing and was taken to a hospital; the guard was fired as a result of the incident.
The Process, Goettel's death and breakup (1993–1999)
In 1993, Skinny Puppy contributed the song "Ode to Groovy" to the compilation album In Defense of Animals, released through Restless Records. The album was named after the animal rights group of the same name. Though the track is credited to Skinny Puppy, Ogre and Rave were the only people to work on it.
Ogre, Key, and Goettel signed a contract with American Recordings and moved to Malibu, California to record The Process, a concept album inspired by 1960s cult The Process Church of The Final Judgment, with Roli Mosimann producing. The recording sessions were beset by everything from fires and floods, to the Northridge earthquake. Mosimann was eventually replaced with Martin Atkins. Atkins' presence exacerbated the rift that was forming between Ogre and the rest of the band. The band's bickering and excessive drug use made the recording process so long and costly that American reduced Skinny Puppy's contract from three albums to one. In 1994, Key and Goettel returned to Vancouver with the master tapes, but Ogre remained in Los Angeles and quit Skinny Puppy in June 1995. Goettel was found dead of a heroin overdose in his parents' home two months later.
The Process was eventually completed with Rave and released in 1996. It was dedicated to the memory of Goettel. It was an overall stylistic departure from their previous albums, prominently featuring untreated vocals, guitar, and more accessible song structures. The liner notes that accompanied the CD included thank-yous to "Electronic Music Lovers" and "Puppy People", followed by the words "The End" in bold type. The album charted on the Billboard 200 at No. 102 and reached the No. 1 spot on Billboard'''s Heatseekers album chart.
During the Process era, a loose-knit art/philosophy collective also known as The Process was formed, with early contributions from Ogre and Genesis P-Orridge, among others. P-Orridge and Chris Carter jammed with Skinny Puppy during this period, a recording of which was eventually released as Puppy Gristle on a limited basis in 2002. The creation of the Download project, which Key and Goettel formed with Mark Spybey and Phil Western, also occurred at this time. Download explored everything from electronic improvisation with spoken vocals to techno, and toured in 1996.
Earlier, in 1993, Goettel and Western had issued a breakbeat hardcore single (under the name aDuck) on their own label, Subconscious Records. After Goettel's death, Subconscious evolved into a recording studio and record label imprint that Key used to release a number of his own and Skinny Puppy's recordings. Key also continued to work with The Tear Garden, produced industrial/trance music with Western in the side project platEAU, and released his first solo album in 1998.
Ogre had toured extensively with Martin Atkins' industrial supergroup Pigface since 1991, and toured with them again after leaving Skinny Puppy. He recorded material for his side project WELT. with Ruby's Mark Walk before quitting Skinny Puppy, but due to legal issues with American Recordings, this would not see release until 2001 under the new name, ohGr. In the meantime, he toured with KMFDM, and released an album with Martin Atkins under the name Rx (also known as Ritalin). The ohGr and Rx releases included some of Ogre's most positive and forward-thinking songwriting to date. Several collections were released while Skinny Puppy was dormant, including Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4 in 1996, and The Singles Collect and B-Sides Collect in 1999. Nettwerk commissioned a remix album in 1998; titled remix dystemper, it featured various Skinny Puppy tracks re-worked by artists including Autechre, Deftones, and Guru. Ogre and Walk also took part, contributing a remix of "Dig It" and an updated version of Remissions "Smothered Hope" with new vocals by Ogre.
In 1999, "Draining Faces" appeared on the soundtrack for The Blair Witch Project.
Reunion, The Greater Wrong of the Right and Mythmaker (2000–2008)
In August 2000, at the insistence of German promoters, Ogre and Key reunited and performed live as Skinny Puppy for the first time since 1992 at the Doomsday Festival in Dresden. The show was meant to be a continuation of the Last Rights tour, with the stage design taking influence from those performances. Rather than find a replacement for Goettel, the band simply left the keyboard station on stage empty. The performance was filmed and recorded, and a live album, Doomsday: Back and Forth Series 5: Live in Dresden, was released in 2001; a DVD release was planned but canceled by Nettwerk. Live clips of "Testure" and "Worlock" as well as a behind the scenes interview with the band were broadcast on Crazy Clip TV in Germany and "Worlock" was included on a VCD compilation by German magazine Sonic Seducer in 2002.
Key joined ohGr on drums for its 2001 tour, while Ogre appeared on the track "Frozen Sky" on Key's 2001 album The Ghost of Each Room. When asked by Terrorizer magazine about the future of Skinny Puppy, Key responded:
Our goals for the future are to combine everything, take the best of what we can do with Ogre, and the best of what we have from our past, as well as the future stuff that we can do, and put it into one touring situation which I'm sure will stroll back into bloodville.
The first new Skinny Puppy track in several years, "Optimissed", appeared on the Underworld soundtrack in 2003. Ogre, Key, Mark Walk and various guests, including Danny Carey of Tool and Wayne Static of Static-X, recorded the band's ninth studio album, The Greater Wrong of the Right, released in 2004 on Synthetic Symphony, a sub-label of SPV. The album, described by Key as being based in "pseudopop", received generally favorable reviews from critics and landed on several Billboard charts. A music video was made for the song "Pro-Test" which featured a style unlike many of the group's previous work, so much so that some were unsure if it was an official video.
Skinny Puppy toured North America and Europe in support of the album in 2004, joined by William Morrison on guitar and Justin Bennett on drums. Shows in Toronto and Montreal were filmed for the live DVD Greater Wrong of the Right Live, which was released in September 2005. The DVD included Information Warfare, a documentary made by Morrison about the U.S.-led wars in Iraq. The anti-Bush administration stance taken by the band at their live shows drew the ire of PABAAH (Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood), which attempted a boycott of college radio stations that played Skinny Puppy.
Skinny Puppy toured Europe again in 2005, and returned to the studio to complete their next album, Mythmaker, which was released in January 2007. The album reached No. 4 on the Independent Albums Chart, No. 5 on the Dance/Electronic Albums Chart, and No. 17 on the Heatseekers Chart, but barely broke the Billboard 200. The band's 2007 North American and European tour, titled Mythrus, began in May 2007. While some fans longed for the sounds of their earlier days, Ogre, speaking with Electronic Musician, stated the band's intention was to move forward rather than dwell in the past. "Some people think that the stuff we do now is a pale imitation of the past. All of the older stuff had a time and place, and we decided to move forward to where we are now".
In Solvent See tour and HanDover (2009–2012)
According to a news posting on the official Skinny Puppy website, the band's next studio album was originally slated for release in October 2009, but the release of this album was delayed due to insolvency issues with the SPV label (thus leading to Ogre naming the 2009 tour the "In Solvent See" tour). These issues were not expected to be resolved until the end of 2009. However, the "In Solvent See" Tour took place as planned, and began on 30 October.
In October 2010, there were reports that the new Skinny Puppy album would be released in February 2011. In May 2011, Skinny Puppy announced that they finished recording a new album titled HanDover, and that they were soliciting it to other record labels for a September 2011 release date. On 27 August 2011, HanDover was officially confirmed as having a 25 October 2011, release in the United States and a 28 October 2011, release in Europe. Steven R Gilmore created the artwork for the album once again. The album landed on a number of Billboard charts, including a spot at No. 168 on the Billboard 200 and No. 9 on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart.
Skinny Puppy were scheduled to perform at numerous European festivals in the summer of 2010, including the Amphi Festival in Germany, the 2010 Waregem Gothic Festival in Belgium, and the Recession Festival in Denmark. A live album, titled Bootlegged, Broke and in Solvent Seas and recorded on the band's 2010 European tour, was released on 12 June 2012.
Weapon and subsequent tours (2013–present)
Skinny Puppy announced that a new album, entitled Weapon, would be released on 28 May 2013. The album was inspired by news brought to the band by a former guard at Guantanamo Bay that their music had been used to torture inmates. Inspiration also came from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and from Ogre's personal views on the human species; in an interview with Vice, Ogre stated that he "view[s] the human being primarily as a weapon, and a lot of the things that we've created have had disastrous effects on us as a species". The album was released to generally favorable reviews from critics, several noting the 1980s-esque musical style, and included a re-hashed version of the Remission-era track "Solvent".
Key told the Phoenix New Times that the band had been dissatisfied with HanDovers production schedule, noting that it had taken them several years to produce the album. For Weapon, they made a return to the fast-paced, one-song-a-day style of their early years. The decision to remake the song "Solvent" helped to set the album's quickened pace; Key said that the music they were making for the album wouldn't sound correct "If it didn't sound like something we had just made quickly, like in the old days".
The band released a music video for the song "Illisit" and in October 2013, announced their Live Shape For Arms Tour, a North American tour starting in January 2014 at The Observatory in Santa Ana, CA. In early 2014, Ogre and Key sent an invoice of $666,000 to the US government for the use of their music at Guantanamo Bay, bringing the issue to the attention of mainstream media outlets. Later in 2014, the Alliance of Sound tour was announced, with performances by Skinny Puppy, VNV Nation, Haujobb, and Youth Code. However, in early November, Front Line Assembly replaced VNV Nation and the tour was renamed Eye vs. Spy, which was a 17-city North American tour between 28 November to 20 December 2014.
In June 2015, Skinny Puppy performed at the Amnesia Rockfest in Montebello, Canada, alongside acts such as Ministry and The Dillinger Escape Plan. Following two successful tours with Weapon, the band yet again embarked with Youth Code, this time to play shows across North America in 2015 and across Europe in 2017 under the Down the SocioPath tour, which dropped all Weapon tracks and instead introduced many songs from the band's 1996 album, The Process, which had not been accompanied by any live performances due to the death of Goettel in 1995. Unlike the previous tours for Weapon, Down the SocioPath scaled back the theatrics and introduced Matthew Setzer as a live guitarist. Ogre began these concerts in a white hooded robe which was removed to reveal a suit into which a stagehand inserted oversized needles. The Down the Sociopath Too Euro 2017 leg lasted from 30 May to 16 June 2017. The tour included stops at the Download Festival in France, Primavera Sound, and Wave-Gotik-Treffen.
Style
Sound
Inspired by the music of Suicide, SPK, Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Cabaret Voltaire, Chrome, Throbbing Gristle, Bauhaus, Joy Division, New Order, Depeche Mode, Fad Gadget, Nocturnal Emissions, Portion Control, and The Legendary Pink Dots, music which had been accessible to the band primarily via tape exchange, Skinny Puppy experimented with analog and digital recording techniques, composing multi-layered music with synthesizers, drum machines, acoustic percussion, tape loops, samplers, and conventional rock music instruments to create what they called "audio sculpture". Their extensive use of sampling from horror films and radio broadcasts served to "clarify or obscure" song meanings, and they applied liberal amounts of distortion and other effects to Ogre's vocals, which are often delivered as a stream of consciousness. Lyrics commonly reference social and political subjects including animal rights, environmental degradation, drug addiction, suicide, war, privacy, and self-determination. They have also used their music to draw attention to events such as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the AIDS epidemic, and the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Skinny Puppy's often informal, improvisational approach to musical composition is indicated by use of the term "brap", coined by them and defined as a verb meaning "to get together, hook up electronic instruments, get high, and record".
Initially a dark synth-pop group, Skinny Puppy took on a more industrial sound following the inclusion of Dwayne Goettel in 1986, and later came to be recognized as pioneers of the electro-industrial genre. Their music has been described as encompassing a range styles including ambient music, avant-funk, noise rock and industrial metal. The music that followed Goettel's death has been likened to genres such as glitch and intelligent dance music. The Village Voice described Skinny Puppy's early work as "dark electro-pop", while Billboard's Bill Coleman thought of them as a "moody techno-outfit" with an "aggravating" musical delivery. People magazine called Ogre's vocals "incomprehensible", and likened the group's use of sampling to noises heard on "a TV set in an adjoining hotel room". AllMusic referred to Skinny Puppy's music as "primal" and "Kraftwerk gone netherworld", going on to say that unlike the bands that followed in their wake, "Ogre and Key knew how to craft tunes and marry them to the most ingenious of sound patterns". Ogre told the Windsor Star in 1986 that "in some sense our music, or the feeling expressed by our music, is felt by a lot more people" than had been anticipated.
Ogre said in an interview with Auxiliary Magazine in June 2013, "there is a very military side to Industrial music, and we are far more in the psychedelic side."
Music videos
Due to their graphic nature, the majority of Skinny Puppy's videos received limited commercial airplay, or were outright banned from broadcast. The music video for "Stairs and Flowers" was banned by the Canadian Censorship Bureau because of scenes depicting "an excrement-covered woman being beaten by soldiers"; the woman in question was Ogre soaked in mud. The letterbox effect used in the video for "Dig It", which portrayed stock market footage, was accused by both the bureau and MuchMusic to instead be showing pornography. Also banned was the video for "Testure", an action resulting from a viewer poll held by CityTV, as was the video for the song "Worlock", which was banned from MTV. Ogre, a self-described horror fan, defended the "Worlock" video by saying "I knew there was no way they'd play 'Worlock' there [the United States]. But I went out to make that video so no one would play it!"; he affirmed that the video was meant to draw attention to censorship in horror films. Some of the band's videos have received airplay, such as those for the promotional songs "Killing Game" and "Pro-test"; "Dig It" was also regularly played on MTV. A 30-second television promo was produced for the band by Capital Records in 1987, featuring a mix of scenes from the "Stairs and Flowers" and "Dig It" videos.
In a 1990 radio interview, Goettel explained the group's outlook on music videos, stating that "it's great to do videos when you have the money to do them, but for Skinny Puppy's part it's less of a promotional tool". He said that touring and word of mouth were their preferred avenues of promotion. "When a video gets made its not like 'OK we're going to spend $50,000 and it's going to sell this many more records'... it doesn't sell any more records".
Live performances
Skinny Puppy is noted for theatrical and controversial live performances which blend performance art with music. Ogre has been critical of the band's early performances, telling Spin magazine in 1992 that "I would do things on stage that would blow – they just wouldn't work". Live performances involved periods of musical improvisation, film projections, and elaborate stage props and machines, many of which are designed and built by Ogre himself. While discussing Skinny Puppy's performances, Ogre remarked that "our shows combine images with theater. It works better than just coming out and doing a horror magic routine". He explained to the Vancouver Sun in 1988 that he wanted his act to have "that grey area where anything could happen – where I can cut my head off by accident and people will go, 'wow, that's great'".
On-stage theatrics have included Ogre being suspended from racks and cables, play with a hangman's noose, use of an angle grinder, and mock executions of Ogre and George H.W. Bush. Following the 2004 United States presidential election, promoters began to ask the band to refrain from using fake blood during their performances. This reaction was prompted by the performance of a mock execution on stage, during which Ogre was "decapitated" by actors dressed as then U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The band was also asked by Samsung (who had been asked by Ogre to sponsor the band with a large flat screen) to "not insult the president" while performing on stage. In a 1987 television interview with Kim Clarke Champniss, Key explained that while Ogre follows a "rough guideline" during a live performance, a majority of his on-stage theatrics are conceived spontaneously. Key told Champniss that Ogre's demeanor on stage could "range from just a sort of laid back kind of lurking to a rampant psycho". Ogre once remarked that touring was, for himself, like "dating hydrogen peroxide", referencing the numerous injuries which he would acquire over the course of touring.
Though Ogre and Key have remained the only constant members of Skinny Puppy's live act since Goettel's death, the pair have hired various other musicians to assist them onstage. They include drummer Justin Bennett, guitarist William Morrison, and guitarist Matthew Setzer.
Influence and legacy
Despite little mainstream airplay, several Skinny Puppy releases have charted in North America and Europe, and their influence on industrial and electronic music is considerable. Widely considered originators of a unique sound and live performance style, Skinny Puppy are also known as pioneers of the industrial rock and electro-industrial genres. They were one of the earliest groups to help popularize industrial music, and the Los Angeles Times recognized Ogre as the "first industrial rock star". Their gloomy and androgynous aesthetic helped attract the attention of the goth scene, from which they were able to draw a larger female audience than any previous industrial group. By the end of the 90s, they had sold some two million records for Nettwerk worldwide, and two of their releases, Remission and Bites, were certified gold in Canada.
Their music has spawned "a litter of like-minded bands", extending from independent acts like Tin Omen, to industrial rock project Nine Inch Nails, who opened for Skinny Puppy for a short time on their 1988 VIVIsectVI tour. Trent Reznor also acknowledged that Skinny Puppy's "Dig It" inspired the very first Nine Inch Nails track written, "Down in It". Canadian synth-pop artist Grimes includes Skinny Puppy as an influence on her music, having grown up in Vancouver's industrial music scene. Sara Taylor of the EBM group Youth Code has said that the song "Worlock" was "one of the most influential songs" she had ever heard. Other artists impacted by Skinny Puppy's music include Marilyn Manson, Chester Bennington, Moby, Jonathan Davis, Daron Malakian, 3Teeth, Foals vocalist Yannis Philippakis, Al Jourgensen, Chris Vrenna, John Grant, Mortiis,Blush Response, Celldweller, Finite Automata, Shooter Jennings, Death Grips vocalist MC Ride, X Marks the Pedwalk, Wumpscut, Haujobb, Orgy, Filter, Front Line Assembly, Orphx, Crystal Castles, AFI side project Blaqk Audio, and Mayhem vocalist Attila Csihar.
The band inspired a tribute album, Hymns of the Worlock: A Tribute to Skinny Puppy published by Cleopatra Records, which features groups such as Crocodile Shop and The Electric Hellfire Club. Skinny Puppy's remix album Remix dystemper includes contributions from a wide array of musicians such as electronic music DJ Josh Wink, Guru, KMFDM, Deftones, and former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna. Vrenna's solo project, Tweaker, opened for Skinny Puppy during their 2004 North American tour. Danny Carey from Tool and Wayne Static of Static-X provided drums and backup vocals, respectively, for the song "Use Less" from The Greater Wrong of the Right.
Ogre worked with KMFDM on several occasions, touring with them in 1997 and providing vocals on the song "Torture" from their album Symbols (the song also features production from Dave Ogilvie) as well as for the songs "That's All" and "Full Worm Garden" from 1999's Adios. Skinny Puppy also provided a remix for the Mötley Crüe song "Hooligan's Holiday"; Nikki Sixx reported that the band "just dumped the whole song in the computer and went off".
Skinny Puppy's music has been included in the soundtracks of films such as Bad Influence, An American Werewolf in Paris, The Blair Witch Project, Underworld, and Saw II, among others. The group was given a brief role as the "gang of goons" in the 1995 dark comedy film The Doom Generation. The 1996 Video Game Descent II included original music from Ogre and Mark Walk, while the 2014 PlayStation exclusive LittleBigPlanet 3 featured the song "Rodent" from the album Rabies.
Alternative Press included Skinny Puppy in their 1996 list of "100 underground inspirations of the past 20 years."
While discussing the possibility of Nine Inch Nails being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Richard Patrick of the band Filter remarked "what about Skinny Puppy?", going on to say that while Nine Inch Nails is the more famous of the two, Skinny Puppy were one of the first groups to craft "scary and mean" industrial music.
Side-projects
Key and Ogre are active in a number of other projects besides Skinny Puppy. Key has released several solo albums including Music for Cats and The Ghost of Each Room in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Doubting Thomas, a project led by Key and the late Dwayne Goettel, was an outlet for mostly instrumental compositions (save for several film and television samples). The projects only releases were Father Don't Cry in 1990 and The Infidel in 1991, both released through Wax Trax! Records. Download was founded by Key and Goettel in 1995 and included the assistance of frequent Skinny Puppy contributors Ken Marshall and Anthony Valcic. The group has released a number of records since its formation and notably provided the soundtrack album Charlie's Family in 1997 for the film The Manson Family, directed by Jim Van Bebber; the film was released six years after the album. Bebber had approached Key to produce the soundtrack, having previously directed several Skinny Puppy videos as well as the short horror film Chunk Blower, which starred Goettel and Bill Leeb of Front Line Assembly. Other notable projects include The Tear Garden with Edward Ka-Spel for The Legendary Pink Dots, platEAU with Phil Western, and Cyberaktif with Goettel and Leeb. Key also works as Scaremeister, his film scoring alter ego, having previously contributed to John Debney's score for End of Days. Scaremeister composed the album 31 Spirits, a collection of short musical pieces which have been used in the trailers of numerous films such as Inglourious Basterds, My Bloody Valentine, and The Book of Eli.
Ogre's main project outside Skinny Puppy is ohGr, which has released five albums, Welt (2001), SunnyPsyOp (2003), Devils in my Details (2008), UnDeveloped (2011), and TrickS (2018). In the mid-nineties, Ogre and producer Martin Atkins created the project known as Rx (formerly known as Ritalin). Rx released only one album, Bedside Toxicology, in 1998. He also toured extensively with Pigface (1991–1995) and Ministry (1987–1990) and appeared on a number of Pigface and Ministry-related recordings.
Guantanamo Bay torture allegations
Skinny Puppy have accused the US military of using their music to torture inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, without the band's knowledge or permission. In response, the band have sent an "invoice" to the Pentagon.
Members
Current
Nivek Ogre – vocals, keyboards (1982–1996, 2003–present)
cEvin Key – guitars, drums, bass, synthesizers (1982–1996, 2003–present)
Mark Walk – keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, bass, drums (2003–present)
Former
Dwayne Goettel – keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, bass (1986–1995; died 1995)
Bill Leeb (Wilhelm Schroeder) – bass synth, backing vocals (1984–1986)
Touring
Justin Bennett – drums (2004–present)
Matthew Setzer – guitars (2015–present)
William Morrison – guitars (2004–2005)
Timeline
Discography
Remission (1984)
Bites (1985)
Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse (1986)
Cleanse Fold and Manipulate (1987)
VIVIsectVI (1988)
Rabies (1989)
Too Dark Park (1990)
Last Rights (1992)
The Process (1996)
The Greater Wrong of the Right (2004)
Mythmaker (2007)
hanDover (2011)
Weapon (2013)
Videography
Ain't It Dead Yet?, 1991, VHS/DVD
Live performance at The Concert Hall, Toronto, Ontario, 31 May and 1 June 1987.
Video Collection (1984-1992), 1996, VHS/DVD
Includes videos for "Dig It", "Stairs and Flowers", "Far Too Frail" (live footage 1985), "Smothered Hope" (live footage 1985), "Deep Down Trauma Hounds" (live footage from the 1987 Ain't It Dead Yet? performance), "Testure", "Spasmolytic", and "Killing Game".
Brap: Back and Forth Series 3 & 4, 1996, 2-CD
Includes a number of video clips on those editions which included a CD-ROM portion.
Greater Wrong of the Right LIVE, 2005, 2-DVD
Live performances in Toronto, Ontario, and Montreal, Quebec in late 2004. Also includes videos for "Pro-Test", "Spasmolytic" (live footage 1990), and "Love in Vein" (live footage 1992).
A number of other, promo-only videos were released, including "State Aid" (live footage 1988), "Worlock" (1990), "Candle" (1996), "Curcible" (1996), "Hardset Head" (1996), and "Haze" (2007).
See also
Go Ask Ogre List of bands from British Columbia
Music of Vancouver
References
Citations
Bibliography
Further reading
Interviews in IndustrialnatioN'' Magazine Issue No. 5, Issue No. 13, & Issue No. 21.
External links
American Recordings (record label) artists
Canadian electronic music groups
Canadian industrial music groups
Canadian techno music groups
Capitol Records artists
Dark ambient music groups
Dependent Records artists
Electro-industrial music groups
Electronic body music groups
Musical groups established in 1982
Musical groups disestablished in 1995
Musical groups reestablished in 2003
Noise musical groups
Canadian post-punk music groups
Musical groups from Vancouver
Industrial rock musical groups
Metropolis Records artists
1982 establishments in British Columbia
1996 disestablishments in British Columbia
2003 establishments in British Columbia | false | [
"Say Anything may refer to:\n\nFilm and television\n Say Anything..., a 1989 American film by Cameron Crowe\n \"Say Anything\" (BoJack Horseman), a television episode\n\nMusic\n Say Anything (band), an American rock band\n Say Anything (album), a 2009 album by the band\n \"Say Anything\", a 2012 song by Say Anything from Anarchy, My Dear\n \"Say Anything\" (Marianas Trench song), 2006\n \"Say Anything\" (X Japan song), 1991\n \"Say Anything\", a song by Aimee Mann from Whatever, 1993\n \"Say Anything\", a song by the Bouncing Souls from The Bouncing Souls, 1997\n \"Say Anything\", a song by Good Charlotte from The Young and the Hopeless, 2002\n \"Say Anything\", a song by Girl in Red, 2018\n \"Say Anything\", a song by Will Young from Lexicon, 2019\n \"Say Anything (Else)\", a song by Cartel from Chroma, 2005\n\nOther uses\n Say Anything (party game), a 2008 board game published by North Star Games\n \"Say Anything\", a column in YM magazine\n\nSee also\n Say Something (disambiguation)",
"In baseball, a fair ball is a batted ball that entitles the batter to attempt to reach first base. By contrast, a foul ball is a batted ball that does not entitle the batter to attempt to reach first base. Whether a batted ball is fair or foul is determined by the location of the ball at the appropriate reference point, as follows:\n\n if the ball leaves the playing field without touching anything, the point where the ball leaves the field;\n else, if the ball first lands past first or third base without touching anything, the point where the ball lands;\n else, if the ball rolls or bounces past first or third base without touching anything other than the ground, the point where the ball passes the base;\n else, if the ball touches anything other than the ground (such as an umpire, a player, or any equipment left on the field) before any of the above happens, the point of such touching;\n else (the ball comes to a rest before reaching first or third base), the point where the ball comes to a rest.\n\nIf any part of the ball is on or above fair territory at the appropriate reference point, it is fair; else it is foul. Fair territory or fair ground is defined as the area of the playing field between the two foul lines, and includes the foul lines themselves and the foul poles. However, certain exceptions exist:\n\n A ball that touches first, second, or third base is always fair.\n Under Rule 5.09(a)(7)-(8), if a batted ball touches the batter or his bat while the batter is in the batter's box and not intentionally interfering with the course of the ball, the ball is foul.\n A ball that hits the foul pole without first having touched anything else off the bat is fair.\n Ground rules may provide whether a ball hitting specific objects (e.g. roof, overhead speaker) is fair or foul.\n\nOn a fair ball, the batter attempts to reach first base or any subsequent base, runners attempt to advance and fielders try to record outs. A fair ball is considered a live ball until the ball becomes dead by leaving the field or any other method.\n\nReferences\n\nBaseball rules"
] |
[
"Julia Louis-Dreyfus",
"1990-98: The Seinfeld years"
] | C_b80e7efaaae84899b32fadeec27cad96_0 | What role did Julia Louis-Dreyfus play on Seinfeld? | 1 | What role did Julia Louis-Dreyfus play on Seinfeld? | Julia Louis-Dreyfus | In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes. One of the episodes that she did not appear in was the inaugural pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles", because her character was not initially intended to be a part of the series. It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric, and demanded that creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David add a woman to the cast. It was revealed in the commentary on the DVD package that the addition of a female character was the condition for commissioning the show. Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy their own TV success, including Patricia Heaton, Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Mullally. On the "Notes About Nothing" featurette on the DVD package, Seinfeld says that Louis-Dreyfus' ability to eat a peanut M&M without breaking the peanut aptly describes the actress: "She cracks you up without breaking your nuts." Her performance on the series was met with critical acclaim, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s. Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning one in 1995 and two in both 1997 and 1998, and seven American Comedy Awards, winning five times in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998. In 1996, she received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, an award she was nominated for on seven occasions from 1992 to 1998. After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a "shocker", and that after being in both positions, it was "much better to win than to lose." In 1998, Seinfeld decided to end the series after nine seasons. The series finale aired on May 14 and was one of the most watched TV events in history, with over 76 million people tuning in. During her time on Seinfeld she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry. CANNOTANSWER | In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes. | Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus ( ; born January 13, 1961) is an American actress, comedian, and producer. She is known for her work in the comedy television series Saturday Night Live (1982–1985), Seinfeld (1989–1998), The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006–2010), and Veep (2012–2019). She is one of the most award-winning actresses in American television history, having received more Primetime Emmy Awards and more Screen Actors Guild Awards than any other performer, tying Cloris Leachman (with eight) for the most acting wins.
Louis-Dreyfus broke into comedy as a performer in The Practical Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois, which led to her casting in the sketch show Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985. Her breakthrough came in 1990 with a nine-season run playing Elaine Benes on Seinfeld, one of the most critically and commercially successful sitcoms of all time. Her other notable television roles include Christine Campbell in The New Adventures of Old Christine, which had a five-season run on CBS; and Selina Meyer in Veep, which ran for seven seasons on HBO. Her film roles include Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), Deconstructing Harry (1997), and Enough Said (2013). She also provided voices for the animated films A Bug's Life (1998), Planes (2013), and Onward (2020). In 2021, she began portraying Valentina Allegra de Fontaine in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Louis-Dreyfus has received eleven Emmy Awards, eight for acting and three for producing. She has also received a Golden Globe Award, nine Screen Actors Guild Awards, five American Comedy Awards, and two Critics' Choice Television Awards. Louis-Dreyfus received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010 and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2016, Lena Dunham in Time named Louis-Dreyfus as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in the artists category in the annual Time 100 list. In 2018, she received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, presented by the Kennedy Center as America's highest comedy honor.
Early life
Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus was born in New York City on January 13, 1961. Her American-born mother, Judith (née LeFever), was a writer and special needs tutor, and her French-born father, Gérard Louis-Dreyfus, chaired the Louis Dreyfus Company. Her paternal grandfather, Pierre Louis-Dreyfus, was president of the Louis Dreyfus Group; he was a member of a Jewish family from Alsace and served as a cavalry officer and member of the French Resistance during World War II. She is also a great-great-granddaughter of Léopold Louis-Dreyfus, who in 1851 founded the Louis Dreyfus Group, a French commodities and shipping conglomerate, which members of her family still control; and is distantly related to Alfred Dreyfus of the infamous Dreyfus affair. Her paternal grandmother was born in the US, of partial Mexican origin, and Catholic; during the 1940s, she moved Julia's father to America from France.
In 1962, one year after Louis-Dreyfus's birth, her parents divorced. After moving to Washington, D.C., when Julia was four, her mother married L. Thompson Bowles, dean of the George Washington University Medical School; Louis-Dreyfus gained a half-sister Lauren Bowles, also an actress. Due to her stepfather's work with Project HOPE, Louis-Dreyfus spent her childhood in several states and countries, including Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia. She graduated from the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1979. She later said, "There were things I did in school that, had there been boys in the classroom, I would have been less motivated to do. For instance, I was president of the honor society."
Louis-Dreyfus attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she was a member of the Delta Gamma sorority. She studied theatre and performed in the Mee-Ow Show, a student-run improv and sketch comedy revue, before dropping out during her junior year to take a job at Saturday Night Live. In 2007, she received an honorary doctor of arts degree from Northwestern University.
Career
1982–1988: Early career and Saturday Night Live
As part of her comedic training, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in The Second City, one of Chicago's best-known improvisational theatre groups. It was her performance with The Practical Theatre Company at their "Golden 50th Anniversary Jubilee" that led to her being asked to join the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live at the age of 21.
Louis-Dreyfus subsequently became a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985, the youngest female cast member in the history of the program at that time. During her time on SNL, she appeared alongside several actors who would later rise to prominence, such as Eddie Murphy, Jim Belushi, Billy Crystal, and Martin Short. It was during her third and final year on SNL that she met writer Larry David during his only year on the show, who would later co-create Seinfeld. Louis-Dreyfus has commented that her casting on SNL was a "Cinderella-getting-to-go-to-the-ball kind of experience"; however, she has also admitted that at times it was often quite tense, stating that she "didn't know how to navigate the waters of show business in general and specifically doing a live sketch-comedy show".
Recurring characters on Saturday Night Live
April May June, a televangelist
Becky, El Dorko's (Gary Kroeger) date
Consuela, Chi Chi's friend and co-host of Let's Watch TV
Darla in SNL 's parody of The Little Rascals
Weather Woman, a superhero who controls the weather
Patti Lynn Hunnsucker, a teenage correspondent on Weekend Update
Following her 1985 departure from SNL, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in several films, including Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); Soul Man (1986), starring C. Thomas Howell; and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), in which she starred alongside fellow SNL alumnus Chevy Chase. In 1987 Louis-Dreyfus appeared in the NBC sitcom pilot The Art of Being Nick, an intended spin-off from Family Ties starring Scott Valentine. When the pilot did not make it to series, Louis-Dreyfus was retained by producer Gary David Goldberg for a role on his new sitcom Day by Day, as the sarcastic and materialistic neighbor, Eileen Swift. Premiering in early 1988, Day by Day aired for two seasons on NBC before being cancelled.
1989–1998: Seinfeld and widespread recognition
In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes. One of the episodes that she did not appear in was the pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles", because her character was not initially intended to be a part of the series. It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric and demanded that creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld add a woman to the cast. It was revealed in the commentary on the DVD package that the addition of a female character was the condition for commissioning the show. Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy TV success, including Patricia Heaton and Megan Mullally.
On the "Notes About Nothing" featurette on the DVD package, Seinfeld says that Louis-Dreyfus's ability to eat a peanut M&M without breaking the peanut aptly describes the actress: "She cracks you up without breaking your nuts."
Louis-Dreyfus garnered critical acclaim for her performance on the series, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s. Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning one in 1995 and two in both 1997 and 1998, and seven American Comedy Awards, winning five times in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998. In 1996, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, an award she was nominated for on seven occasions from 1992 to 1998. After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a "shocker", and that after being in both positions, it was "much better to win than to lose."
In 1998, Jerry Seinfeld decided to end the series after nine seasons. The series finale aired on May 14 and was one of the most-watched TV events in history, with over 76 million viewers tuning in.
During her time on Seinfeld, she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry.
1999–2004: Post-Seinfeld
Following a voice role in the highly successful Pixar film A Bug's Life, Louis-Dreyfus lent her voice as Snake's girlfriend Gloria in The Simpsons episode "A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love". In 2001, she made several special guest appearances on Seinfeld co-creator Larry David's show Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing herself fictionally trying to break the "curse" by planning to star in a show in which she would play an actress affected by a Seinfeld-like curse.
After several years away from a regular TV job, Louis-Dreyfus began a new single-camera sitcom, Watching Ellie, which premiered on NBC in February 2002. The series was created by husband Brad Hall and co-starred Steve Carell and Louis-Dreyfus's half-sister Lauren Bowles. The initial premise of the show was to present viewers with a "slice of life" from the goings-on and happenings of the life of Ellie Riggs, a Southern California jazz singer. The first season included a 22-minute countdown kept digitally in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, which many critics panned, claiming it was useless and "did nothing for the show." Overall, the show received mixed reviews but debuted strongly with over 16 million viewers tuning in for the series premiere, and maintained an average audience of about 10 million viewers per week.
When the series returned for a second season in the spring of 2003, it suffered a decline in viewership, averaging around eight million viewers per week. The show had undergone a drastic stylistic change between the production of seasons one and two. The first season was filmed in the single-camera format, but the second season was presented as a traditional multicamera sitcom filmed in front of a live studio audience. With dwindling viewership and failing to retain the numbers from its Frasier lead-in, the series was cancelled by NBC in May 2003.
Following NBC's cancellation of Watching Ellie, the media began circulating rumors of a so-called "Seinfeld curse", which claimed that none of the former Seinfeld actors could ever achieve success again in the television industry. Louis-Dreyfus dismissed the rumor as "a made-up thing by the media", while Seinfeld co-creator Larry David asserted that the curse was "completely idiotic."
Louis-Dreyfus was interested in the role of Susan Mayer on Desperate Housewives, the role that ultimately went to Teri Hatcher. Instead, Louis-Dreyfus scored a recurring guest role as Maggie Lizer, the deceitful prosecutor and love interest of Michael Bluth on the Emmy-winning comedy Arrested Development, from 2004 to 2005.
2005–2010: The New Adventures of Old Christine
In 2005, Louis-Dreyfus was cast in the title role of a new CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine. The series and its concept were created by writer and producer of Will & Grace, Kari Lizer. The series told the story of Christine Campbell, a single mother who manages to maintain a fantastic relationship with her ex-husband while running a women's gym. The series debuted on CBS in March 2006 to an audience of 15 million and was initially a ratings winner for the network.
Louis-Dreyfus also garnered considerable critical acclaim for her performance on the show, with Brian Lowry of Variety stating that Louis-Dreyfus broke the so-called "Seinfeld curse [...] with one of the best conventional half-hours to come along in a while." Alessandra Stanley from The New York Times asserted that Louis-Dreyfus's performance on the series proved she is "one of the funniest women on network television." Louis-Dreyfus additionally earned the 2006 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in the first season. Referring to the curse, she stated in her acceptance speech, "I'm not somebody who really believes in curses, but curse this, baby!" Throughout the course of the series, she received five consecutive Emmy Award nominations, three consecutive Satellite Award nominations, two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and a nomination for a Golden Globe Award. In 2007, she also received two nominations for a People's Choice Award due to her return to popularity, thanks to the success of Old Christine.
In May 2006, Louis-Dreyfus hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live, becoming the first female former cast member to return to the show in the hosting role. In the episode, she appeared with her Seinfeld co-stars Jason Alexander and Jerry Seinfeld in her opening monologue, parodying the so-called "Seinfeld curse". After a successful reception from her 2006 episode, Louis-Dreyfus was invited again to host SNL on March 17, 2007, and again on April 17, 2016. Louis-Dreyfus reprised her role as Gloria in two Simpsons episodes: 2007's "I Don't Wanna Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and 2008's "Sex, Pies and Idiot Scrapes". In the fall of 2009, she appeared with the rest of the cast of Seinfeld in four episodes of the seventh season of Larry David's sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm. The reunion shows received much media attention, and the episode received strong ratings for the HBO series.
In 2009, Louis-Dreyfus was granted the honorary award for Legacy of Laughter at the TV Land Awards. Previous winners had included Lucille Ball and Mike Myers. She was presented with the award by friend Amy Poehler. The following year, Louis-Dreyfus received the 2,407th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on May 4, 2010, for her remarkable contribution to the broadcast television industry as both an actress and a comedian. Originally, the star was set with Louis-Dreyfus's name spelled incorrectly. It was missing both the 'o' and the hyphen in her last name. The star was corrected and the misspelled portion was removed and presented to the actress. Celebrity guests at the event included past and current colleagues from throughout her career, including Clark Gregg, Larry David, Eric McCormack, and Jason Alexander.
Old Christine was cancelled by CBS on May 18, 2010, after 4 years. After its disbandment from CBS, discussions were held with ABC for the show to be revived on the network, but these plans never came to fruition.
In the spring of 2010, Louis-Dreyfus guest-starred several times in the third season of the web series Web Therapy, starring Lisa Kudrow. Louis-Dreyfus played the sister of the main character Fiona Wallice, who gives her therapy online. When the series made the transition to cable television on the Showtime network, Louis-Dreyfus's appearance from the web series was included in the second season, airing in July 2012.
In fall 2010, Louis-Dreyfus made a guest appearance on the live episode of the Emmy-winning comedy 30 Rock. She played Tina Fey's role of Liz Lemon in the cutaway shots. Louis-Dreyfus was among several Saturday Night Live alumni appearing in the episode, including Rachel Dratch, Bill Hader, and regulars Tracy Morgan and Fey herself. Louis-Dreyfus also starred in a "Women of SNL" special on November 1, 2010, on NBC.
2011–2019: Veep
In May and June 2011, Louis-Dreyfus teamed up with husband Brad Hall for her first short film, Picture Paris. This was the first time the couple had collaborated since their early-2000s NBC comedy Watching Ellie. Hall wrote and directed the film, while Louis-Dreyfus played the lead role of an ordinary woman with an extraordinary obsession with the city of Paris. The film premiered on January 29, 2012, at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and has received considerable critical acclaim. It made its television premiere on HBO on December 17, 2012.
In early 2011, HBO confirmed that Louis-Dreyfus had been cast in the lead role of U.S. Vice President Selina Meyer in a new satirical comedy series titled Veep. The series was commissioned for a first season of eight episodes. It was announced, in addition to her starring role, Louis-Dreyfus would also serve as a producer of the series. In preparation for her role, Louis-Dreyfus spoke with two former vice presidents, including Al Gore, senators, speechwriters, chiefs of staffs of various offices, and schedulers. Louis-Dreyfus has commended HBO for allowing the cast and crew to engage in a "protracted pre-production process", which included a six-week rehearsal period before filming began.
The first season was filmed in the fall of 2011, in Baltimore, and the series premiered on April 22, 2012. The premiere episode was met with high praise from critics, particularly for Louis-Dreyfus's performance. The Hollywood Reporter asserted that the character of Selina Meyer was her "best post-Seinfeld role" to date and claimed that she gives "an Emmy-worthy effort", while the Los Angeles Times contended that the series demonstrates that she is "one of the medium's great comediennes." Following the success of the first season, Louis-Dreyfus was named by the Huffington Post as one of the funniest people of 2012, asserting that she is the "most magnetic and naturally funny woman on TV since Mary Tyler Moore."
For her performance on Veep, Louis-Dreyfus has received several accolades, most notably six consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series from 2012 to 2017. Her Emmy wins for Veep, following previous wins for Seinfeld and The New Adventures of Old Christine, resulted in her becoming the only woman to win an acting award for three separate comedy series. Her sixth win for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2016 surpassed the record previously held by Mary Tyler Moore and Candice Bergen for the most wins in that category. In 2017 her sixth consecutive win and eighth acting win overall made her the performer with the most Emmys for the same role in the same series (surpassing Candice Bergen and Don Knotts) and put her in a tie with Cloris Leachman for the most Emmys ever won by a performer. She was also nominated as one of the producers for Veep in the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series category from 2012 to 2014, but the show lost to Modern Family on all three occasions. The show, however, won the top award from 2015 to 2017.
Louis-Dreyfus has also received five Critics' Choice Television Award nominations, winning twice in 2013 and 2014, ten Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning twice in 2014 and 2017, and five Television Critics Association Award nominations, winning once in 2014. Her performance has additionally garnered her five Satellite Award nominations and five consecutive Golden Globe Award nominations.
Louis-Dreyfus lent her voice to the 2013 animated film Planes, in the role of Rochelle. To date, the film has grossed well over $200 million at the box office worldwide. She also starred in the film Enough Said, directed by Nicole Holofcener, which was released on September 18, 2013. This marked her debut as a lead actress in a full-length feature film. The film garnered rave reviews from film critics, ranking among the best-reviewed films of 2013. The website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 96% based on 152 reviews, many of them praising Louis-Dreyfus's performance. She received several Best Actress nominations for her role in the film at award ceremonies, including the Golden Globe Awards, Satellite Awards, Critics' Choice Movie Awards, and the American Comedy Awards.
Since December 2014, Louis-Dreyfus has appeared in a series of television commercials for Old Navy.
On April 16, 2016, she hosted Saturday Night Live for the third time with musical guest Nick Jonas. During the episode's cold open, she reprised her role of Elaine Benes from Seinfeld.
2020–present: Production deal with Apple TV+
In 2020, Louis-Dreyfus headlined the comedy-drama Downhill, opposite Will Ferrell. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released on February 14. Next, she voiced a suburban elf mother in Pixar's Onward opposite Tom Holland and Chris Pratt. The film was released on March 6, 2020.
In January 2020, Louis-Dreyfus signed a multi-year deal with Apple TV+. Under the deal, she will develop new projects for Apple TV+ as both an executive producer and star.
In 2021, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, which is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though she was originally intended to debut in the film Black Widow (where she appears in the post credit scene).
Personal life
Louis-Dreyfus's maternal half-sister, Lauren Bowles, is also an actress. She also has two paternal half-sisters: Phoebe and Emma, the latter of whom died in August 2018. Robert Louis-Dreyfus (1946–2009), one of her cousins, was former CEO of Adidas and owner of the Olympique de Marseille football club.
While at Northwestern, Louis-Dreyfus met future husband and Saturday Night Live comedian Brad Hall. They married in 1987 and have two sons together: Henry (born 1992) and Charles (born 1997). Henry is a singer-songwriter, who has performed on The Tonight Show. Charles was a walk-on for the Northwestern Wildcats men's basketball team. In 2007, Louis-Dreyfus was invited back to Northwestern to receive an honorary Doctor of Arts degree.
Louis-Dreyfus has stated that she holds much respect for "women who are not afraid of making themselves look bad or foolish to get a laugh", and cites her acting idols as Lucille Ball, Mary Tyler Moore, Madeline Kahn, Teri Garr, Valerie Harper, and Cloris Leachman. Actress Tina Fey has stated that Louis-Dreyfus served as inspiration for her character Liz Lemon on the award-winning NBC comedy series 30 Rock.
On September 28, 2017, Louis-Dreyfus announced on Twitter her diagnosis of breast cancer, a diagnosis she received one day after receiving a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role in Veep. She stated, "One in eight women get breast cancer. Today, I'm the one. The good news is that I have the most glorious group of supportive and caring family and friends, and fantastic insurance through my union. The bad news is that not all women are so lucky, so let's fight all cancers and make universal healthcare a reality." She announced on the October 18, 2018, episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! that she was cancer-free.
Politics
Louis-Dreyfus supported Al Gore's 2000 U.S. presidential bid, and also endorsed Barack Obama's bid for the presidency in 2008 and 2012. She appeared in a video that urged President Obama to reject the proposal of the Keystone XL pipeline, arguing that if the pipeline ever were to leak, it would cause mass pollution across the U.S. Additionally, she has voiced her concern for several environmental issues and has raised millions for Heal the Bay, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Trust for Public Land. She also worked for the successful passage of Proposition O, which allocated US$500 million for cleaning up the Los Angeles water supply.
In late October 2010, before the United States Senate election in California, Louis-Dreyfus starred in a humorous Barbara Boxer ad regarding energy policy.
During the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Louis-Dreyfus announced her endorsement of Hillary Clinton for the United States presidential election of that year.
In her acceptance speech at the 2017 Screen Actors Guild Awards, she denounced President Donald Trump's executive order of travel ban as "un-American," and said, "My father fled religious persecution in Nazi-occupied France."
Louis-Dreyfus emceed the final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, endorsing Joe Biden. She has also published information regarding voting by mail and urged all Americans to vote.
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
Julia Louis-Dreyfus has won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series seven times; once for her role on The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006) and six consecutive wins for playing Selina Meyer on Veep (2012–17), as well as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series on one occasion for Seinfeld (1996). As of 2017, she holds the record for the most Primetime Emmy wins as an actor for the same role and is tied with Cloris Leachman for the most acting Primetime Emmy wins (with eight). She has also been nominated for nine Golden Globe Awards, winning one for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film for her role as Elaine Benes on Seinfeld (1995). She has also been nominated for twenty-one Screen Actors Guild Awards and has won five for individual performance (nine all together) for her portrayals on Seinfeld (1997–98) and Veep (2014, 2017–18).
In 2018 she was the twentieth recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
See also
Alfred Dreyfus – A distant relative at the center of the Dreyfus Affair miscarriage of justice
References
External links
Julia Louis-Dreyfus at Emmys.com
Julia Louis-Dreyfus Video produced by Makers: Women Who Make America
1961 births
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses
20th-century American comedians
21st-century American comedians
Actresses from Maryland
Actresses from New York City
American film actresses
American people of Brazilian descent
American people of French-Jewish descent
American people of Mexican descent
American sketch comedians
American stage actresses
American television actresses
American voice actresses
American women comedians
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (television) winners
Comedians from New York City
Hispanic and Latino American actresses
Living people
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Northwestern University School of Communication alumni
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actress in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
People from Bethesda, Maryland
People from Manhattan
Philanthropists from New York (state) | true | [
"Julia Dreyfus may refer to:\n\nJulia Louis-Dreyfus, US actress most known for her role on the 1990s NBC sitcom Seinfeld\nJulie Dreyfus, French actress and distant relative of the aforementioned American actress.",
"Julia Louis-Dreyfus has been nominated for nine Golden Globe Awards, winning one for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film for her role as Elaine Benes on Seinfeld (1995). She has also been nominated for twenty-one Screen Actors Guild Awards and has won five for individual performance (nine all together) for her portrayals on Seinfeld (1997–98) and Veep (2014, 2017–18).\n\nAdditionally, she has won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series seven times; once for her role on The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006) and six consecutive wins for playing Selina Meyer on Veep (2012–17), as well as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series on one occasion for Seinfeld (1996). As of 2017, she holds the record for the most Primetime Emmy wins as an actor for the same role and is tied with Cloris Leachman for the most acting Primetime Emmy wins (with eight).\n\nIn 2018 she was the twentieth recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.\n\nMajor associations\n\nPrimetime Emmy Awards\nThe Primetime Emmy Award is an American award bestowed by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in recognition of excellence in American primetime television programming. Louis-Dreyfus has received eleven awards from twenty six nominations.\n\nGolden Globe Awards\nThe Golden Globe Awards are accolades bestowed by the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, recognizing excellence in film and television, both domestic and foreign. Louis-Dreyfus has received one award from nine nominations.\n\nScreen Actors Guild Awards\nThe Screen Actors Guild Award is an accolade given by the Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) to recognize outstanding performances in film and primetime television. Louis-Dreyfus has received nine awards from twenty-one nominations.\n\nIndustry awards\n\nAmerican Comedy Awards\nThe American Comedy Awards are a group of awards presented annually in the United States recognizing performances and performers in the field of comedy, with an emphasis on television comedy and comedy films. Louis-Dreyfus has received five awards from ten nominations.\n\nCritics' Choice Awards\nThe Critics' Choice Awards—both film and television—are accolades presented by the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BTJA) (US). Louis-Dreyfus has received two awards from six nominations.\n\nPeople's Choice Awards\nThe People's Choice Awards is an American awards show, recognizing the people and the work of popular culture, voted on by the general public. Louis-Dreyfus has received six nominations.\n\nProducers Guild of America Awards\nThe Producers Guild of America Award was originally established in 1990 by the Producers Guild of America as the Golden Laurel Awards, created by PGA Treasurer Joel Freeman with the support of Guild President Leonard Stern, in order to honor the visionaries who produce and execute motion picture and television product. Louis-Dreyfus has received four nominations.\n\nSatellite Awards\nThe Satellite Awards are annual awards given by the International Press Academy that are commonly noted in entertainment industry journals and blogs. Louis-Dreyfus has received ten nominations.\n\nTelevision Critics Association Awards\nThe TCA Awards are awards presented by the Television Critics Association in recognition of excellence in television. Louis-Dreyfus has received one award from seven nominations.\n\nNote\n\nReferences\n\nLouis-Dreyfus, Julia"
] |
[
"Julia Louis-Dreyfus",
"1990-98: The Seinfeld years",
"What role did Julia Louis-Dreyfus play on Seinfeld?",
"In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes."
] | C_b80e7efaaae84899b32fadeec27cad96_0 | How was she chosen for the role? | 2 | How was Julia Louis-Dreyfus chosen for the role of Elaine Benes? | Julia Louis-Dreyfus | In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes. One of the episodes that she did not appear in was the inaugural pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles", because her character was not initially intended to be a part of the series. It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric, and demanded that creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David add a woman to the cast. It was revealed in the commentary on the DVD package that the addition of a female character was the condition for commissioning the show. Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy their own TV success, including Patricia Heaton, Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Mullally. On the "Notes About Nothing" featurette on the DVD package, Seinfeld says that Louis-Dreyfus' ability to eat a peanut M&M without breaking the peanut aptly describes the actress: "She cracks you up without breaking your nuts." Her performance on the series was met with critical acclaim, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s. Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning one in 1995 and two in both 1997 and 1998, and seven American Comedy Awards, winning five times in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998. In 1996, she received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, an award she was nominated for on seven occasions from 1992 to 1998. After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a "shocker", and that after being in both positions, it was "much better to win than to lose." In 1998, Seinfeld decided to end the series after nine seasons. The series finale aired on May 14 and was one of the most watched TV events in history, with over 76 million people tuning in. During her time on Seinfeld she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry. CANNOTANSWER | It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric, and demanded that creators Jerry Seinfeld | Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus ( ; born January 13, 1961) is an American actress, comedian, and producer. She is known for her work in the comedy television series Saturday Night Live (1982–1985), Seinfeld (1989–1998), The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006–2010), and Veep (2012–2019). She is one of the most award-winning actresses in American television history, having received more Primetime Emmy Awards and more Screen Actors Guild Awards than any other performer, tying Cloris Leachman (with eight) for the most acting wins.
Louis-Dreyfus broke into comedy as a performer in The Practical Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois, which led to her casting in the sketch show Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985. Her breakthrough came in 1990 with a nine-season run playing Elaine Benes on Seinfeld, one of the most critically and commercially successful sitcoms of all time. Her other notable television roles include Christine Campbell in The New Adventures of Old Christine, which had a five-season run on CBS; and Selina Meyer in Veep, which ran for seven seasons on HBO. Her film roles include Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), Deconstructing Harry (1997), and Enough Said (2013). She also provided voices for the animated films A Bug's Life (1998), Planes (2013), and Onward (2020). In 2021, she began portraying Valentina Allegra de Fontaine in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Louis-Dreyfus has received eleven Emmy Awards, eight for acting and three for producing. She has also received a Golden Globe Award, nine Screen Actors Guild Awards, five American Comedy Awards, and two Critics' Choice Television Awards. Louis-Dreyfus received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010 and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2016, Lena Dunham in Time named Louis-Dreyfus as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in the artists category in the annual Time 100 list. In 2018, she received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, presented by the Kennedy Center as America's highest comedy honor.
Early life
Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus was born in New York City on January 13, 1961. Her American-born mother, Judith (née LeFever), was a writer and special needs tutor, and her French-born father, Gérard Louis-Dreyfus, chaired the Louis Dreyfus Company. Her paternal grandfather, Pierre Louis-Dreyfus, was president of the Louis Dreyfus Group; he was a member of a Jewish family from Alsace and served as a cavalry officer and member of the French Resistance during World War II. She is also a great-great-granddaughter of Léopold Louis-Dreyfus, who in 1851 founded the Louis Dreyfus Group, a French commodities and shipping conglomerate, which members of her family still control; and is distantly related to Alfred Dreyfus of the infamous Dreyfus affair. Her paternal grandmother was born in the US, of partial Mexican origin, and Catholic; during the 1940s, she moved Julia's father to America from France.
In 1962, one year after Louis-Dreyfus's birth, her parents divorced. After moving to Washington, D.C., when Julia was four, her mother married L. Thompson Bowles, dean of the George Washington University Medical School; Louis-Dreyfus gained a half-sister Lauren Bowles, also an actress. Due to her stepfather's work with Project HOPE, Louis-Dreyfus spent her childhood in several states and countries, including Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia. She graduated from the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1979. She later said, "There were things I did in school that, had there been boys in the classroom, I would have been less motivated to do. For instance, I was president of the honor society."
Louis-Dreyfus attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she was a member of the Delta Gamma sorority. She studied theatre and performed in the Mee-Ow Show, a student-run improv and sketch comedy revue, before dropping out during her junior year to take a job at Saturday Night Live. In 2007, she received an honorary doctor of arts degree from Northwestern University.
Career
1982–1988: Early career and Saturday Night Live
As part of her comedic training, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in The Second City, one of Chicago's best-known improvisational theatre groups. It was her performance with The Practical Theatre Company at their "Golden 50th Anniversary Jubilee" that led to her being asked to join the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live at the age of 21.
Louis-Dreyfus subsequently became a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985, the youngest female cast member in the history of the program at that time. During her time on SNL, she appeared alongside several actors who would later rise to prominence, such as Eddie Murphy, Jim Belushi, Billy Crystal, and Martin Short. It was during her third and final year on SNL that she met writer Larry David during his only year on the show, who would later co-create Seinfeld. Louis-Dreyfus has commented that her casting on SNL was a "Cinderella-getting-to-go-to-the-ball kind of experience"; however, she has also admitted that at times it was often quite tense, stating that she "didn't know how to navigate the waters of show business in general and specifically doing a live sketch-comedy show".
Recurring characters on Saturday Night Live
April May June, a televangelist
Becky, El Dorko's (Gary Kroeger) date
Consuela, Chi Chi's friend and co-host of Let's Watch TV
Darla in SNL 's parody of The Little Rascals
Weather Woman, a superhero who controls the weather
Patti Lynn Hunnsucker, a teenage correspondent on Weekend Update
Following her 1985 departure from SNL, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in several films, including Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); Soul Man (1986), starring C. Thomas Howell; and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), in which she starred alongside fellow SNL alumnus Chevy Chase. In 1987 Louis-Dreyfus appeared in the NBC sitcom pilot The Art of Being Nick, an intended spin-off from Family Ties starring Scott Valentine. When the pilot did not make it to series, Louis-Dreyfus was retained by producer Gary David Goldberg for a role on his new sitcom Day by Day, as the sarcastic and materialistic neighbor, Eileen Swift. Premiering in early 1988, Day by Day aired for two seasons on NBC before being cancelled.
1989–1998: Seinfeld and widespread recognition
In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes. One of the episodes that she did not appear in was the pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles", because her character was not initially intended to be a part of the series. It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric and demanded that creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld add a woman to the cast. It was revealed in the commentary on the DVD package that the addition of a female character was the condition for commissioning the show. Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy TV success, including Patricia Heaton and Megan Mullally.
On the "Notes About Nothing" featurette on the DVD package, Seinfeld says that Louis-Dreyfus's ability to eat a peanut M&M without breaking the peanut aptly describes the actress: "She cracks you up without breaking your nuts."
Louis-Dreyfus garnered critical acclaim for her performance on the series, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s. Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning one in 1995 and two in both 1997 and 1998, and seven American Comedy Awards, winning five times in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998. In 1996, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, an award she was nominated for on seven occasions from 1992 to 1998. After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a "shocker", and that after being in both positions, it was "much better to win than to lose."
In 1998, Jerry Seinfeld decided to end the series after nine seasons. The series finale aired on May 14 and was one of the most-watched TV events in history, with over 76 million viewers tuning in.
During her time on Seinfeld, she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry.
1999–2004: Post-Seinfeld
Following a voice role in the highly successful Pixar film A Bug's Life, Louis-Dreyfus lent her voice as Snake's girlfriend Gloria in The Simpsons episode "A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love". In 2001, she made several special guest appearances on Seinfeld co-creator Larry David's show Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing herself fictionally trying to break the "curse" by planning to star in a show in which she would play an actress affected by a Seinfeld-like curse.
After several years away from a regular TV job, Louis-Dreyfus began a new single-camera sitcom, Watching Ellie, which premiered on NBC in February 2002. The series was created by husband Brad Hall and co-starred Steve Carell and Louis-Dreyfus's half-sister Lauren Bowles. The initial premise of the show was to present viewers with a "slice of life" from the goings-on and happenings of the life of Ellie Riggs, a Southern California jazz singer. The first season included a 22-minute countdown kept digitally in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, which many critics panned, claiming it was useless and "did nothing for the show." Overall, the show received mixed reviews but debuted strongly with over 16 million viewers tuning in for the series premiere, and maintained an average audience of about 10 million viewers per week.
When the series returned for a second season in the spring of 2003, it suffered a decline in viewership, averaging around eight million viewers per week. The show had undergone a drastic stylistic change between the production of seasons one and two. The first season was filmed in the single-camera format, but the second season was presented as a traditional multicamera sitcom filmed in front of a live studio audience. With dwindling viewership and failing to retain the numbers from its Frasier lead-in, the series was cancelled by NBC in May 2003.
Following NBC's cancellation of Watching Ellie, the media began circulating rumors of a so-called "Seinfeld curse", which claimed that none of the former Seinfeld actors could ever achieve success again in the television industry. Louis-Dreyfus dismissed the rumor as "a made-up thing by the media", while Seinfeld co-creator Larry David asserted that the curse was "completely idiotic."
Louis-Dreyfus was interested in the role of Susan Mayer on Desperate Housewives, the role that ultimately went to Teri Hatcher. Instead, Louis-Dreyfus scored a recurring guest role as Maggie Lizer, the deceitful prosecutor and love interest of Michael Bluth on the Emmy-winning comedy Arrested Development, from 2004 to 2005.
2005–2010: The New Adventures of Old Christine
In 2005, Louis-Dreyfus was cast in the title role of a new CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine. The series and its concept were created by writer and producer of Will & Grace, Kari Lizer. The series told the story of Christine Campbell, a single mother who manages to maintain a fantastic relationship with her ex-husband while running a women's gym. The series debuted on CBS in March 2006 to an audience of 15 million and was initially a ratings winner for the network.
Louis-Dreyfus also garnered considerable critical acclaim for her performance on the show, with Brian Lowry of Variety stating that Louis-Dreyfus broke the so-called "Seinfeld curse [...] with one of the best conventional half-hours to come along in a while." Alessandra Stanley from The New York Times asserted that Louis-Dreyfus's performance on the series proved she is "one of the funniest women on network television." Louis-Dreyfus additionally earned the 2006 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in the first season. Referring to the curse, she stated in her acceptance speech, "I'm not somebody who really believes in curses, but curse this, baby!" Throughout the course of the series, she received five consecutive Emmy Award nominations, three consecutive Satellite Award nominations, two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and a nomination for a Golden Globe Award. In 2007, she also received two nominations for a People's Choice Award due to her return to popularity, thanks to the success of Old Christine.
In May 2006, Louis-Dreyfus hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live, becoming the first female former cast member to return to the show in the hosting role. In the episode, she appeared with her Seinfeld co-stars Jason Alexander and Jerry Seinfeld in her opening monologue, parodying the so-called "Seinfeld curse". After a successful reception from her 2006 episode, Louis-Dreyfus was invited again to host SNL on March 17, 2007, and again on April 17, 2016. Louis-Dreyfus reprised her role as Gloria in two Simpsons episodes: 2007's "I Don't Wanna Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and 2008's "Sex, Pies and Idiot Scrapes". In the fall of 2009, she appeared with the rest of the cast of Seinfeld in four episodes of the seventh season of Larry David's sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm. The reunion shows received much media attention, and the episode received strong ratings for the HBO series.
In 2009, Louis-Dreyfus was granted the honorary award for Legacy of Laughter at the TV Land Awards. Previous winners had included Lucille Ball and Mike Myers. She was presented with the award by friend Amy Poehler. The following year, Louis-Dreyfus received the 2,407th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on May 4, 2010, for her remarkable contribution to the broadcast television industry as both an actress and a comedian. Originally, the star was set with Louis-Dreyfus's name spelled incorrectly. It was missing both the 'o' and the hyphen in her last name. The star was corrected and the misspelled portion was removed and presented to the actress. Celebrity guests at the event included past and current colleagues from throughout her career, including Clark Gregg, Larry David, Eric McCormack, and Jason Alexander.
Old Christine was cancelled by CBS on May 18, 2010, after 4 years. After its disbandment from CBS, discussions were held with ABC for the show to be revived on the network, but these plans never came to fruition.
In the spring of 2010, Louis-Dreyfus guest-starred several times in the third season of the web series Web Therapy, starring Lisa Kudrow. Louis-Dreyfus played the sister of the main character Fiona Wallice, who gives her therapy online. When the series made the transition to cable television on the Showtime network, Louis-Dreyfus's appearance from the web series was included in the second season, airing in July 2012.
In fall 2010, Louis-Dreyfus made a guest appearance on the live episode of the Emmy-winning comedy 30 Rock. She played Tina Fey's role of Liz Lemon in the cutaway shots. Louis-Dreyfus was among several Saturday Night Live alumni appearing in the episode, including Rachel Dratch, Bill Hader, and regulars Tracy Morgan and Fey herself. Louis-Dreyfus also starred in a "Women of SNL" special on November 1, 2010, on NBC.
2011–2019: Veep
In May and June 2011, Louis-Dreyfus teamed up with husband Brad Hall for her first short film, Picture Paris. This was the first time the couple had collaborated since their early-2000s NBC comedy Watching Ellie. Hall wrote and directed the film, while Louis-Dreyfus played the lead role of an ordinary woman with an extraordinary obsession with the city of Paris. The film premiered on January 29, 2012, at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and has received considerable critical acclaim. It made its television premiere on HBO on December 17, 2012.
In early 2011, HBO confirmed that Louis-Dreyfus had been cast in the lead role of U.S. Vice President Selina Meyer in a new satirical comedy series titled Veep. The series was commissioned for a first season of eight episodes. It was announced, in addition to her starring role, Louis-Dreyfus would also serve as a producer of the series. In preparation for her role, Louis-Dreyfus spoke with two former vice presidents, including Al Gore, senators, speechwriters, chiefs of staffs of various offices, and schedulers. Louis-Dreyfus has commended HBO for allowing the cast and crew to engage in a "protracted pre-production process", which included a six-week rehearsal period before filming began.
The first season was filmed in the fall of 2011, in Baltimore, and the series premiered on April 22, 2012. The premiere episode was met with high praise from critics, particularly for Louis-Dreyfus's performance. The Hollywood Reporter asserted that the character of Selina Meyer was her "best post-Seinfeld role" to date and claimed that she gives "an Emmy-worthy effort", while the Los Angeles Times contended that the series demonstrates that she is "one of the medium's great comediennes." Following the success of the first season, Louis-Dreyfus was named by the Huffington Post as one of the funniest people of 2012, asserting that she is the "most magnetic and naturally funny woman on TV since Mary Tyler Moore."
For her performance on Veep, Louis-Dreyfus has received several accolades, most notably six consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series from 2012 to 2017. Her Emmy wins for Veep, following previous wins for Seinfeld and The New Adventures of Old Christine, resulted in her becoming the only woman to win an acting award for three separate comedy series. Her sixth win for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2016 surpassed the record previously held by Mary Tyler Moore and Candice Bergen for the most wins in that category. In 2017 her sixth consecutive win and eighth acting win overall made her the performer with the most Emmys for the same role in the same series (surpassing Candice Bergen and Don Knotts) and put her in a tie with Cloris Leachman for the most Emmys ever won by a performer. She was also nominated as one of the producers for Veep in the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series category from 2012 to 2014, but the show lost to Modern Family on all three occasions. The show, however, won the top award from 2015 to 2017.
Louis-Dreyfus has also received five Critics' Choice Television Award nominations, winning twice in 2013 and 2014, ten Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning twice in 2014 and 2017, and five Television Critics Association Award nominations, winning once in 2014. Her performance has additionally garnered her five Satellite Award nominations and five consecutive Golden Globe Award nominations.
Louis-Dreyfus lent her voice to the 2013 animated film Planes, in the role of Rochelle. To date, the film has grossed well over $200 million at the box office worldwide. She also starred in the film Enough Said, directed by Nicole Holofcener, which was released on September 18, 2013. This marked her debut as a lead actress in a full-length feature film. The film garnered rave reviews from film critics, ranking among the best-reviewed films of 2013. The website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 96% based on 152 reviews, many of them praising Louis-Dreyfus's performance. She received several Best Actress nominations for her role in the film at award ceremonies, including the Golden Globe Awards, Satellite Awards, Critics' Choice Movie Awards, and the American Comedy Awards.
Since December 2014, Louis-Dreyfus has appeared in a series of television commercials for Old Navy.
On April 16, 2016, she hosted Saturday Night Live for the third time with musical guest Nick Jonas. During the episode's cold open, she reprised her role of Elaine Benes from Seinfeld.
2020–present: Production deal with Apple TV+
In 2020, Louis-Dreyfus headlined the comedy-drama Downhill, opposite Will Ferrell. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released on February 14. Next, she voiced a suburban elf mother in Pixar's Onward opposite Tom Holland and Chris Pratt. The film was released on March 6, 2020.
In January 2020, Louis-Dreyfus signed a multi-year deal with Apple TV+. Under the deal, she will develop new projects for Apple TV+ as both an executive producer and star.
In 2021, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, which is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though she was originally intended to debut in the film Black Widow (where she appears in the post credit scene).
Personal life
Louis-Dreyfus's maternal half-sister, Lauren Bowles, is also an actress. She also has two paternal half-sisters: Phoebe and Emma, the latter of whom died in August 2018. Robert Louis-Dreyfus (1946–2009), one of her cousins, was former CEO of Adidas and owner of the Olympique de Marseille football club.
While at Northwestern, Louis-Dreyfus met future husband and Saturday Night Live comedian Brad Hall. They married in 1987 and have two sons together: Henry (born 1992) and Charles (born 1997). Henry is a singer-songwriter, who has performed on The Tonight Show. Charles was a walk-on for the Northwestern Wildcats men's basketball team. In 2007, Louis-Dreyfus was invited back to Northwestern to receive an honorary Doctor of Arts degree.
Louis-Dreyfus has stated that she holds much respect for "women who are not afraid of making themselves look bad or foolish to get a laugh", and cites her acting idols as Lucille Ball, Mary Tyler Moore, Madeline Kahn, Teri Garr, Valerie Harper, and Cloris Leachman. Actress Tina Fey has stated that Louis-Dreyfus served as inspiration for her character Liz Lemon on the award-winning NBC comedy series 30 Rock.
On September 28, 2017, Louis-Dreyfus announced on Twitter her diagnosis of breast cancer, a diagnosis she received one day after receiving a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role in Veep. She stated, "One in eight women get breast cancer. Today, I'm the one. The good news is that I have the most glorious group of supportive and caring family and friends, and fantastic insurance through my union. The bad news is that not all women are so lucky, so let's fight all cancers and make universal healthcare a reality." She announced on the October 18, 2018, episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! that she was cancer-free.
Politics
Louis-Dreyfus supported Al Gore's 2000 U.S. presidential bid, and also endorsed Barack Obama's bid for the presidency in 2008 and 2012. She appeared in a video that urged President Obama to reject the proposal of the Keystone XL pipeline, arguing that if the pipeline ever were to leak, it would cause mass pollution across the U.S. Additionally, she has voiced her concern for several environmental issues and has raised millions for Heal the Bay, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Trust for Public Land. She also worked for the successful passage of Proposition O, which allocated US$500 million for cleaning up the Los Angeles water supply.
In late October 2010, before the United States Senate election in California, Louis-Dreyfus starred in a humorous Barbara Boxer ad regarding energy policy.
During the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Louis-Dreyfus announced her endorsement of Hillary Clinton for the United States presidential election of that year.
In her acceptance speech at the 2017 Screen Actors Guild Awards, she denounced President Donald Trump's executive order of travel ban as "un-American," and said, "My father fled religious persecution in Nazi-occupied France."
Louis-Dreyfus emceed the final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, endorsing Joe Biden. She has also published information regarding voting by mail and urged all Americans to vote.
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
Julia Louis-Dreyfus has won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series seven times; once for her role on The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006) and six consecutive wins for playing Selina Meyer on Veep (2012–17), as well as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series on one occasion for Seinfeld (1996). As of 2017, she holds the record for the most Primetime Emmy wins as an actor for the same role and is tied with Cloris Leachman for the most acting Primetime Emmy wins (with eight). She has also been nominated for nine Golden Globe Awards, winning one for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film for her role as Elaine Benes on Seinfeld (1995). She has also been nominated for twenty-one Screen Actors Guild Awards and has won five for individual performance (nine all together) for her portrayals on Seinfeld (1997–98) and Veep (2014, 2017–18).
In 2018 she was the twentieth recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
See also
Alfred Dreyfus – A distant relative at the center of the Dreyfus Affair miscarriage of justice
References
External links
Julia Louis-Dreyfus at Emmys.com
Julia Louis-Dreyfus Video produced by Makers: Women Who Make America
1961 births
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses
20th-century American comedians
21st-century American comedians
Actresses from Maryland
Actresses from New York City
American film actresses
American people of Brazilian descent
American people of French-Jewish descent
American people of Mexican descent
American sketch comedians
American stage actresses
American television actresses
American voice actresses
American women comedians
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (television) winners
Comedians from New York City
Hispanic and Latino American actresses
Living people
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Northwestern University School of Communication alumni
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actress in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
People from Bethesda, Maryland
People from Manhattan
Philanthropists from New York (state) | false | [
"\nThe following is a list of Playboy Playmates of 1985. Playboy magazine names its Playmate of the Month each month throughout the year.\n\nJanuary\n\nJoan Bennett (born August 30, 1964, in Chicago, Illinois) is a former American model. She was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for January 1985.\n\nFebruary\n\nCherie Witter (born October 22, 1963) is an American model and actress. She was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month for February 1985.\n\nMarch\n\nDonna Smith (born March 15, 1960, in Portland, Oregon) is an American model. She was the March 1985 Playboy Playmate of the Month.\n\nApril\n\nCindy Brooks (born November 5, 1951) is an American model and actress. She was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month in April 1985. She briefly held a regular role on Days of Our Lives in 1989.\n\nMay\n\nKathleen Ann Shower (born March 8, 1953) is an American model and actress. Known as Kathy Shower she is Playboy's Playmate of the Month for May 1985 and Playmate of the Year for 1986.\n\nFollowing Playboy, Shower had an acting career, mainly within the action adventure (American Kickboxer 2, The Further Adventures of Tennessee Buck) and erotic thriller genres (Boundaries, LA Goddess and Velvet Dreams), as well as TV work including a continuing role in Santa Barbara. In 2009, Shower completed an independent film entitled Kathy Shower: Playmate Model Mom.\n\nJune\n\nDevin Renee DeVasquez (born June 25, 1963, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana) is an American model and actress. She was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month in June 1985. Her centerfold was photographed by Richard Fegley.\n\nDeVasquez has appeared in over 100 commercials and authored the book The Naked Truth About A Pinup Model. She is married to actor Ronn Moss.\n\nJuly\n\nHope Marie Carlton (born March 3, 1966, in Riverhead NY), an American model and actress, was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for the July 1985 issue. She married Robert Keith Levin in 1991; the couple divorced in 2005. She is known for starring in the movies Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987), Savage Beach (1989) and Bloodmatch (1991), as well as for her cameo in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 (1988). Some of her later roles are credited to \"Hope Levin.\"\n\nAugust\n\nCher Butler (born March 6, 1964) is an American model and actress. She was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month for August 1985. In her only film role, the female lead in Crack House (1989), she was billed as \"Cheryl Kay\".\n\nSeptember\n\nVenice Kong (born 17 December 1961 in St. Mary, Jamaica) is a Jamaican model and actress of Chinese-Jamaican heritage. She was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month in September 1985.\n\nOctober\n\nCynthia Brimhall (born March 10, 1964, in Ogden, Utah) is an American model and B-movie actress. She was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month in October 1985. She went on to perform in several Andy Sidaris films and appeared on The Price Is Right as one of \"Barker's Beauties.\"\n\nHers was the first centerfold to appear without the famous staple, as Playboy moved to a new binding method.\n\nNovember\n\nPamela Saunders (born July 9, 1963, in Miami) is an American model. She was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for its November 1985 issue.\n\nDecember\n\nCarol Ficatier de Beaufort (born 20 February 1958 in Auxerre, France) is a French model and actress. She was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month for December 1985. In 1993, Ficatier moved to Rome, Italy to study art history.\n\nSee also\n List of people in Playboy 1980–1989\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\n1985-related lists\n1985\nPlaymates Of 1985",
"\nThe following is a list of Playboy Playmates of 1990. Playboy magazine names its Playmate of the Month each month throughout the year.\n\nJanuary\n\nPeggy McIntaggart (also known as Peggy Sands and Peggy Sanders) (born September 6, 1961, Penetanguishene, Ontario) is a Canadian model, actress, photographer and stylist who was Playboy's Playmate of the Month for January 1990.\n\nMcIntaggart grew up in Ontario, Canada. In 1980, when she was twenty, she entered the Miss Nude World contest in Stoney Creek, Ontario, on a dare and ended up winning. As a result, she decided to pursue a career in modeling. After appearing in Playboy, McIntaggart began acting. She appeared in Baywatch, Beverly Hills Cop II and Camp Fear. McIntaggart also worked as Hugh Hefner's make-up artist and hair stylist. She dated Bob Seagren. The relationship ended in 2007. Today, McIntaggart works as a stylist and photographer.\n\nFebruary\n\nPamela Denise Anderson (born July 1, 1967) is a Canadian actress. She is a famous glamour model, actress, producer, author, activist, and former showgirl, known for her roles on the television series Home Improvement, Baywatch, and V.I.P.\n\nShe was chosen as a Playmate of the Month for Playboy magazine in February 1990. For a time, she was known as Pamela Anderson Lee (or Pamela Lee) after marrying Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee. She holds both United States and Canadian citizenship.\n\nAnderson's Playboy career spans approximately three decades (1989–2016), and she has appeared on more Playboy covers than anyone else (fourteen). She has also made appearances in the publication's newsstand specials.\n\nMarch\n\nDeborah Driggs (born December 13, 1963, in Oakland, California) is an American model and actress. She was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month for March 1990. She also appeared on the cover of the magazine for its April 1990 issue. She was married to the Olympic gymnast Mitch Gaylord from June 28, 1992, through January 1, 2003 and they have three children. She is the coauthor, along with Karen Risch, of the book Hot Pink: The Girls' Guide to Primping, Passion, and Pubic Fashion. She also appeared in one of the videos for the Devo single \"Post Post-Modern Man\".\n\nApril\n\nLisa Matthews (born Lisa Reich on September 24, 1969, in Peoria, Illinois) is an American model and actress. She was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month for April 1990, and was later named 1991's Playmate of the Year. She received over $100,000 for her winnings. That year, Matthews appeared in the Bruce Willis film Hudson Hawk. She dated the movie's producer, Joel Silver. In 2017 at the age of 48 Matthews duplicated her Playmate of the Year cover along with her cohorts Kimberly Conrad, Renee Tenison, Candace Collins, Cathy St. George, Kemp Muhl, and Monique St. Pierre nearly three decades on.\n\nMay\n\nTina Bockrath (born 30 June 1967 in Dayton, Ohio) is an American model and actress. She was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month for May 1990 and has appeared in numerous Playboy videos. Bockrath was the final Playmate of the Month photographed by Pompeo Posar.\n\nJune\n\nBonnie Marino (born December 20, 1961, in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American model and actress. She was chosen as the Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for June 1990.\n\nJuly\n\nJacqueline Sheen (born March 3, 1963, in Dallas) is an American model and actress. She was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month for July 1990 and has appeared in numerous Playboy videos.\n\nAugust\n\nMelissa Evridge (born November 2, 1968, in Lexington, Kentucky) is an American model and actress. She was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month for August 1990 and has appeared in numerous Playboy videos. She also appeared on the cover of the October 1990 issue of the magazine.\n\nSeptember\n\nKerri Kendall (born September 25, 1970) is a Californian model and actress. She was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month in September 1990 and has appeared in numerous Playboy videos. She also appeared as a model for Perfect 10.\n\nOctober\n\nAlison Armitage (born 26 February 1965 in London, England) is a British actress. Under the pseudonym Brittany York, she was Playboy's Playmate of the Month for October 1990.\n\nArmitage had a leading role in the television series Acapulco H.E.A.T. from 1993 to 1994 and from 1996 to 1997. She has also had bit parts in movies such as Jerry Maguire and Driven. She also appeared in a pictorial in Maxim magazine in 1999.\n\nNovember\n\nLorraine Olivia (born February 20, 1968, in Geneva, Illinois) is an American model and actress. She was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month for November 1990. She had a bit part in the 1993 film Coneheads, playing an attractive dancer on Remulac.\n\nDecember\n\nMorgan Fox (born 28 May 1970 in Prince George, British Columbia) is a Canadian model and actress.\n\nIn 1988 she became Miss World Canada. In 1990, she played the role of \"Robunda Hooters\" in the film Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders. She was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month for December 1990 and has appeared in Playboy videos.\n\nSee also\n List of people in Playboy 1990–1999\n\nReferences\n\n1990-related lists\n1990\nPlaymates Of 1990"
] |
[
"Julia Louis-Dreyfus",
"1990-98: The Seinfeld years",
"What role did Julia Louis-Dreyfus play on Seinfeld?",
"In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes.",
"How was she chosen for the role?",
"It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric, and demanded that creators Jerry Seinfeld"
] | C_b80e7efaaae84899b32fadeec27cad96_0 | How did the public respond to her performance? | 3 | How did the public respond to Julia Louis-Dreyfus' performance on Sienfeld? | Julia Louis-Dreyfus | In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes. One of the episodes that she did not appear in was the inaugural pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles", because her character was not initially intended to be a part of the series. It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric, and demanded that creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David add a woman to the cast. It was revealed in the commentary on the DVD package that the addition of a female character was the condition for commissioning the show. Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy their own TV success, including Patricia Heaton, Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Mullally. On the "Notes About Nothing" featurette on the DVD package, Seinfeld says that Louis-Dreyfus' ability to eat a peanut M&M without breaking the peanut aptly describes the actress: "She cracks you up without breaking your nuts." Her performance on the series was met with critical acclaim, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s. Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning one in 1995 and two in both 1997 and 1998, and seven American Comedy Awards, winning five times in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998. In 1996, she received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, an award she was nominated for on seven occasions from 1992 to 1998. After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a "shocker", and that after being in both positions, it was "much better to win than to lose." In 1998, Seinfeld decided to end the series after nine seasons. The series finale aired on May 14 and was one of the most watched TV events in history, with over 76 million people tuning in. During her time on Seinfeld she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry. CANNOTANSWER | Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy their own TV success, including Patricia Heaton, Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Mullally. | Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus ( ; born January 13, 1961) is an American actress, comedian, and producer. She is known for her work in the comedy television series Saturday Night Live (1982–1985), Seinfeld (1989–1998), The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006–2010), and Veep (2012–2019). She is one of the most award-winning actresses in American television history, having received more Primetime Emmy Awards and more Screen Actors Guild Awards than any other performer, tying Cloris Leachman (with eight) for the most acting wins.
Louis-Dreyfus broke into comedy as a performer in The Practical Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois, which led to her casting in the sketch show Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985. Her breakthrough came in 1990 with a nine-season run playing Elaine Benes on Seinfeld, one of the most critically and commercially successful sitcoms of all time. Her other notable television roles include Christine Campbell in The New Adventures of Old Christine, which had a five-season run on CBS; and Selina Meyer in Veep, which ran for seven seasons on HBO. Her film roles include Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), Deconstructing Harry (1997), and Enough Said (2013). She also provided voices for the animated films A Bug's Life (1998), Planes (2013), and Onward (2020). In 2021, she began portraying Valentina Allegra de Fontaine in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Louis-Dreyfus has received eleven Emmy Awards, eight for acting and three for producing. She has also received a Golden Globe Award, nine Screen Actors Guild Awards, five American Comedy Awards, and two Critics' Choice Television Awards. Louis-Dreyfus received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010 and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2016, Lena Dunham in Time named Louis-Dreyfus as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in the artists category in the annual Time 100 list. In 2018, she received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, presented by the Kennedy Center as America's highest comedy honor.
Early life
Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus was born in New York City on January 13, 1961. Her American-born mother, Judith (née LeFever), was a writer and special needs tutor, and her French-born father, Gérard Louis-Dreyfus, chaired the Louis Dreyfus Company. Her paternal grandfather, Pierre Louis-Dreyfus, was president of the Louis Dreyfus Group; he was a member of a Jewish family from Alsace and served as a cavalry officer and member of the French Resistance during World War II. She is also a great-great-granddaughter of Léopold Louis-Dreyfus, who in 1851 founded the Louis Dreyfus Group, a French commodities and shipping conglomerate, which members of her family still control; and is distantly related to Alfred Dreyfus of the infamous Dreyfus affair. Her paternal grandmother was born in the US, of partial Mexican origin, and Catholic; during the 1940s, she moved Julia's father to America from France.
In 1962, one year after Louis-Dreyfus's birth, her parents divorced. After moving to Washington, D.C., when Julia was four, her mother married L. Thompson Bowles, dean of the George Washington University Medical School; Louis-Dreyfus gained a half-sister Lauren Bowles, also an actress. Due to her stepfather's work with Project HOPE, Louis-Dreyfus spent her childhood in several states and countries, including Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia. She graduated from the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1979. She later said, "There were things I did in school that, had there been boys in the classroom, I would have been less motivated to do. For instance, I was president of the honor society."
Louis-Dreyfus attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she was a member of the Delta Gamma sorority. She studied theatre and performed in the Mee-Ow Show, a student-run improv and sketch comedy revue, before dropping out during her junior year to take a job at Saturday Night Live. In 2007, she received an honorary doctor of arts degree from Northwestern University.
Career
1982–1988: Early career and Saturday Night Live
As part of her comedic training, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in The Second City, one of Chicago's best-known improvisational theatre groups. It was her performance with The Practical Theatre Company at their "Golden 50th Anniversary Jubilee" that led to her being asked to join the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live at the age of 21.
Louis-Dreyfus subsequently became a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985, the youngest female cast member in the history of the program at that time. During her time on SNL, she appeared alongside several actors who would later rise to prominence, such as Eddie Murphy, Jim Belushi, Billy Crystal, and Martin Short. It was during her third and final year on SNL that she met writer Larry David during his only year on the show, who would later co-create Seinfeld. Louis-Dreyfus has commented that her casting on SNL was a "Cinderella-getting-to-go-to-the-ball kind of experience"; however, she has also admitted that at times it was often quite tense, stating that she "didn't know how to navigate the waters of show business in general and specifically doing a live sketch-comedy show".
Recurring characters on Saturday Night Live
April May June, a televangelist
Becky, El Dorko's (Gary Kroeger) date
Consuela, Chi Chi's friend and co-host of Let's Watch TV
Darla in SNL 's parody of The Little Rascals
Weather Woman, a superhero who controls the weather
Patti Lynn Hunnsucker, a teenage correspondent on Weekend Update
Following her 1985 departure from SNL, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in several films, including Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); Soul Man (1986), starring C. Thomas Howell; and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), in which she starred alongside fellow SNL alumnus Chevy Chase. In 1987 Louis-Dreyfus appeared in the NBC sitcom pilot The Art of Being Nick, an intended spin-off from Family Ties starring Scott Valentine. When the pilot did not make it to series, Louis-Dreyfus was retained by producer Gary David Goldberg for a role on his new sitcom Day by Day, as the sarcastic and materialistic neighbor, Eileen Swift. Premiering in early 1988, Day by Day aired for two seasons on NBC before being cancelled.
1989–1998: Seinfeld and widespread recognition
In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes. One of the episodes that she did not appear in was the pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles", because her character was not initially intended to be a part of the series. It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric and demanded that creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld add a woman to the cast. It was revealed in the commentary on the DVD package that the addition of a female character was the condition for commissioning the show. Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy TV success, including Patricia Heaton and Megan Mullally.
On the "Notes About Nothing" featurette on the DVD package, Seinfeld says that Louis-Dreyfus's ability to eat a peanut M&M without breaking the peanut aptly describes the actress: "She cracks you up without breaking your nuts."
Louis-Dreyfus garnered critical acclaim for her performance on the series, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s. Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning one in 1995 and two in both 1997 and 1998, and seven American Comedy Awards, winning five times in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998. In 1996, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, an award she was nominated for on seven occasions from 1992 to 1998. After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a "shocker", and that after being in both positions, it was "much better to win than to lose."
In 1998, Jerry Seinfeld decided to end the series after nine seasons. The series finale aired on May 14 and was one of the most-watched TV events in history, with over 76 million viewers tuning in.
During her time on Seinfeld, she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry.
1999–2004: Post-Seinfeld
Following a voice role in the highly successful Pixar film A Bug's Life, Louis-Dreyfus lent her voice as Snake's girlfriend Gloria in The Simpsons episode "A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love". In 2001, she made several special guest appearances on Seinfeld co-creator Larry David's show Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing herself fictionally trying to break the "curse" by planning to star in a show in which she would play an actress affected by a Seinfeld-like curse.
After several years away from a regular TV job, Louis-Dreyfus began a new single-camera sitcom, Watching Ellie, which premiered on NBC in February 2002. The series was created by husband Brad Hall and co-starred Steve Carell and Louis-Dreyfus's half-sister Lauren Bowles. The initial premise of the show was to present viewers with a "slice of life" from the goings-on and happenings of the life of Ellie Riggs, a Southern California jazz singer. The first season included a 22-minute countdown kept digitally in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, which many critics panned, claiming it was useless and "did nothing for the show." Overall, the show received mixed reviews but debuted strongly with over 16 million viewers tuning in for the series premiere, and maintained an average audience of about 10 million viewers per week.
When the series returned for a second season in the spring of 2003, it suffered a decline in viewership, averaging around eight million viewers per week. The show had undergone a drastic stylistic change between the production of seasons one and two. The first season was filmed in the single-camera format, but the second season was presented as a traditional multicamera sitcom filmed in front of a live studio audience. With dwindling viewership and failing to retain the numbers from its Frasier lead-in, the series was cancelled by NBC in May 2003.
Following NBC's cancellation of Watching Ellie, the media began circulating rumors of a so-called "Seinfeld curse", which claimed that none of the former Seinfeld actors could ever achieve success again in the television industry. Louis-Dreyfus dismissed the rumor as "a made-up thing by the media", while Seinfeld co-creator Larry David asserted that the curse was "completely idiotic."
Louis-Dreyfus was interested in the role of Susan Mayer on Desperate Housewives, the role that ultimately went to Teri Hatcher. Instead, Louis-Dreyfus scored a recurring guest role as Maggie Lizer, the deceitful prosecutor and love interest of Michael Bluth on the Emmy-winning comedy Arrested Development, from 2004 to 2005.
2005–2010: The New Adventures of Old Christine
In 2005, Louis-Dreyfus was cast in the title role of a new CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine. The series and its concept were created by writer and producer of Will & Grace, Kari Lizer. The series told the story of Christine Campbell, a single mother who manages to maintain a fantastic relationship with her ex-husband while running a women's gym. The series debuted on CBS in March 2006 to an audience of 15 million and was initially a ratings winner for the network.
Louis-Dreyfus also garnered considerable critical acclaim for her performance on the show, with Brian Lowry of Variety stating that Louis-Dreyfus broke the so-called "Seinfeld curse [...] with one of the best conventional half-hours to come along in a while." Alessandra Stanley from The New York Times asserted that Louis-Dreyfus's performance on the series proved she is "one of the funniest women on network television." Louis-Dreyfus additionally earned the 2006 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in the first season. Referring to the curse, she stated in her acceptance speech, "I'm not somebody who really believes in curses, but curse this, baby!" Throughout the course of the series, she received five consecutive Emmy Award nominations, three consecutive Satellite Award nominations, two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and a nomination for a Golden Globe Award. In 2007, she also received two nominations for a People's Choice Award due to her return to popularity, thanks to the success of Old Christine.
In May 2006, Louis-Dreyfus hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live, becoming the first female former cast member to return to the show in the hosting role. In the episode, she appeared with her Seinfeld co-stars Jason Alexander and Jerry Seinfeld in her opening monologue, parodying the so-called "Seinfeld curse". After a successful reception from her 2006 episode, Louis-Dreyfus was invited again to host SNL on March 17, 2007, and again on April 17, 2016. Louis-Dreyfus reprised her role as Gloria in two Simpsons episodes: 2007's "I Don't Wanna Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and 2008's "Sex, Pies and Idiot Scrapes". In the fall of 2009, she appeared with the rest of the cast of Seinfeld in four episodes of the seventh season of Larry David's sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm. The reunion shows received much media attention, and the episode received strong ratings for the HBO series.
In 2009, Louis-Dreyfus was granted the honorary award for Legacy of Laughter at the TV Land Awards. Previous winners had included Lucille Ball and Mike Myers. She was presented with the award by friend Amy Poehler. The following year, Louis-Dreyfus received the 2,407th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on May 4, 2010, for her remarkable contribution to the broadcast television industry as both an actress and a comedian. Originally, the star was set with Louis-Dreyfus's name spelled incorrectly. It was missing both the 'o' and the hyphen in her last name. The star was corrected and the misspelled portion was removed and presented to the actress. Celebrity guests at the event included past and current colleagues from throughout her career, including Clark Gregg, Larry David, Eric McCormack, and Jason Alexander.
Old Christine was cancelled by CBS on May 18, 2010, after 4 years. After its disbandment from CBS, discussions were held with ABC for the show to be revived on the network, but these plans never came to fruition.
In the spring of 2010, Louis-Dreyfus guest-starred several times in the third season of the web series Web Therapy, starring Lisa Kudrow. Louis-Dreyfus played the sister of the main character Fiona Wallice, who gives her therapy online. When the series made the transition to cable television on the Showtime network, Louis-Dreyfus's appearance from the web series was included in the second season, airing in July 2012.
In fall 2010, Louis-Dreyfus made a guest appearance on the live episode of the Emmy-winning comedy 30 Rock. She played Tina Fey's role of Liz Lemon in the cutaway shots. Louis-Dreyfus was among several Saturday Night Live alumni appearing in the episode, including Rachel Dratch, Bill Hader, and regulars Tracy Morgan and Fey herself. Louis-Dreyfus also starred in a "Women of SNL" special on November 1, 2010, on NBC.
2011–2019: Veep
In May and June 2011, Louis-Dreyfus teamed up with husband Brad Hall for her first short film, Picture Paris. This was the first time the couple had collaborated since their early-2000s NBC comedy Watching Ellie. Hall wrote and directed the film, while Louis-Dreyfus played the lead role of an ordinary woman with an extraordinary obsession with the city of Paris. The film premiered on January 29, 2012, at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and has received considerable critical acclaim. It made its television premiere on HBO on December 17, 2012.
In early 2011, HBO confirmed that Louis-Dreyfus had been cast in the lead role of U.S. Vice President Selina Meyer in a new satirical comedy series titled Veep. The series was commissioned for a first season of eight episodes. It was announced, in addition to her starring role, Louis-Dreyfus would also serve as a producer of the series. In preparation for her role, Louis-Dreyfus spoke with two former vice presidents, including Al Gore, senators, speechwriters, chiefs of staffs of various offices, and schedulers. Louis-Dreyfus has commended HBO for allowing the cast and crew to engage in a "protracted pre-production process", which included a six-week rehearsal period before filming began.
The first season was filmed in the fall of 2011, in Baltimore, and the series premiered on April 22, 2012. The premiere episode was met with high praise from critics, particularly for Louis-Dreyfus's performance. The Hollywood Reporter asserted that the character of Selina Meyer was her "best post-Seinfeld role" to date and claimed that she gives "an Emmy-worthy effort", while the Los Angeles Times contended that the series demonstrates that she is "one of the medium's great comediennes." Following the success of the first season, Louis-Dreyfus was named by the Huffington Post as one of the funniest people of 2012, asserting that she is the "most magnetic and naturally funny woman on TV since Mary Tyler Moore."
For her performance on Veep, Louis-Dreyfus has received several accolades, most notably six consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series from 2012 to 2017. Her Emmy wins for Veep, following previous wins for Seinfeld and The New Adventures of Old Christine, resulted in her becoming the only woman to win an acting award for three separate comedy series. Her sixth win for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2016 surpassed the record previously held by Mary Tyler Moore and Candice Bergen for the most wins in that category. In 2017 her sixth consecutive win and eighth acting win overall made her the performer with the most Emmys for the same role in the same series (surpassing Candice Bergen and Don Knotts) and put her in a tie with Cloris Leachman for the most Emmys ever won by a performer. She was also nominated as one of the producers for Veep in the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series category from 2012 to 2014, but the show lost to Modern Family on all three occasions. The show, however, won the top award from 2015 to 2017.
Louis-Dreyfus has also received five Critics' Choice Television Award nominations, winning twice in 2013 and 2014, ten Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning twice in 2014 and 2017, and five Television Critics Association Award nominations, winning once in 2014. Her performance has additionally garnered her five Satellite Award nominations and five consecutive Golden Globe Award nominations.
Louis-Dreyfus lent her voice to the 2013 animated film Planes, in the role of Rochelle. To date, the film has grossed well over $200 million at the box office worldwide. She also starred in the film Enough Said, directed by Nicole Holofcener, which was released on September 18, 2013. This marked her debut as a lead actress in a full-length feature film. The film garnered rave reviews from film critics, ranking among the best-reviewed films of 2013. The website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 96% based on 152 reviews, many of them praising Louis-Dreyfus's performance. She received several Best Actress nominations for her role in the film at award ceremonies, including the Golden Globe Awards, Satellite Awards, Critics' Choice Movie Awards, and the American Comedy Awards.
Since December 2014, Louis-Dreyfus has appeared in a series of television commercials for Old Navy.
On April 16, 2016, she hosted Saturday Night Live for the third time with musical guest Nick Jonas. During the episode's cold open, she reprised her role of Elaine Benes from Seinfeld.
2020–present: Production deal with Apple TV+
In 2020, Louis-Dreyfus headlined the comedy-drama Downhill, opposite Will Ferrell. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released on February 14. Next, she voiced a suburban elf mother in Pixar's Onward opposite Tom Holland and Chris Pratt. The film was released on March 6, 2020.
In January 2020, Louis-Dreyfus signed a multi-year deal with Apple TV+. Under the deal, she will develop new projects for Apple TV+ as both an executive producer and star.
In 2021, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, which is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though she was originally intended to debut in the film Black Widow (where she appears in the post credit scene).
Personal life
Louis-Dreyfus's maternal half-sister, Lauren Bowles, is also an actress. She also has two paternal half-sisters: Phoebe and Emma, the latter of whom died in August 2018. Robert Louis-Dreyfus (1946–2009), one of her cousins, was former CEO of Adidas and owner of the Olympique de Marseille football club.
While at Northwestern, Louis-Dreyfus met future husband and Saturday Night Live comedian Brad Hall. They married in 1987 and have two sons together: Henry (born 1992) and Charles (born 1997). Henry is a singer-songwriter, who has performed on The Tonight Show. Charles was a walk-on for the Northwestern Wildcats men's basketball team. In 2007, Louis-Dreyfus was invited back to Northwestern to receive an honorary Doctor of Arts degree.
Louis-Dreyfus has stated that she holds much respect for "women who are not afraid of making themselves look bad or foolish to get a laugh", and cites her acting idols as Lucille Ball, Mary Tyler Moore, Madeline Kahn, Teri Garr, Valerie Harper, and Cloris Leachman. Actress Tina Fey has stated that Louis-Dreyfus served as inspiration for her character Liz Lemon on the award-winning NBC comedy series 30 Rock.
On September 28, 2017, Louis-Dreyfus announced on Twitter her diagnosis of breast cancer, a diagnosis she received one day after receiving a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role in Veep. She stated, "One in eight women get breast cancer. Today, I'm the one. The good news is that I have the most glorious group of supportive and caring family and friends, and fantastic insurance through my union. The bad news is that not all women are so lucky, so let's fight all cancers and make universal healthcare a reality." She announced on the October 18, 2018, episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! that she was cancer-free.
Politics
Louis-Dreyfus supported Al Gore's 2000 U.S. presidential bid, and also endorsed Barack Obama's bid for the presidency in 2008 and 2012. She appeared in a video that urged President Obama to reject the proposal of the Keystone XL pipeline, arguing that if the pipeline ever were to leak, it would cause mass pollution across the U.S. Additionally, she has voiced her concern for several environmental issues and has raised millions for Heal the Bay, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Trust for Public Land. She also worked for the successful passage of Proposition O, which allocated US$500 million for cleaning up the Los Angeles water supply.
In late October 2010, before the United States Senate election in California, Louis-Dreyfus starred in a humorous Barbara Boxer ad regarding energy policy.
During the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Louis-Dreyfus announced her endorsement of Hillary Clinton for the United States presidential election of that year.
In her acceptance speech at the 2017 Screen Actors Guild Awards, she denounced President Donald Trump's executive order of travel ban as "un-American," and said, "My father fled religious persecution in Nazi-occupied France."
Louis-Dreyfus emceed the final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, endorsing Joe Biden. She has also published information regarding voting by mail and urged all Americans to vote.
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
Julia Louis-Dreyfus has won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series seven times; once for her role on The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006) and six consecutive wins for playing Selina Meyer on Veep (2012–17), as well as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series on one occasion for Seinfeld (1996). As of 2017, she holds the record for the most Primetime Emmy wins as an actor for the same role and is tied with Cloris Leachman for the most acting Primetime Emmy wins (with eight). She has also been nominated for nine Golden Globe Awards, winning one for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film for her role as Elaine Benes on Seinfeld (1995). She has also been nominated for twenty-one Screen Actors Guild Awards and has won five for individual performance (nine all together) for her portrayals on Seinfeld (1997–98) and Veep (2014, 2017–18).
In 2018 she was the twentieth recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
See also
Alfred Dreyfus – A distant relative at the center of the Dreyfus Affair miscarriage of justice
References
External links
Julia Louis-Dreyfus at Emmys.com
Julia Louis-Dreyfus Video produced by Makers: Women Who Make America
1961 births
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses
20th-century American comedians
21st-century American comedians
Actresses from Maryland
Actresses from New York City
American film actresses
American people of Brazilian descent
American people of French-Jewish descent
American people of Mexican descent
American sketch comedians
American stage actresses
American television actresses
American voice actresses
American women comedians
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (television) winners
Comedians from New York City
Hispanic and Latino American actresses
Living people
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Northwestern University School of Communication alumni
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actress in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
People from Bethesda, Maryland
People from Manhattan
Philanthropists from New York (state) | false | [
"Daniela Drummond-Barbosa is a Brazilian-American geneticist who is a Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research considers stem cell regulation.\n\nEarly life and education \nDrummond-Barbosa grew up in Belo Horizonte in Brazil. She earned her undergraduate degree in biological sciences at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in 1991. She moved to New Haven, Connecticut for her graduate studies, where she worked with Daniel DiMaio on the interactions between platelet-derived growth factor receptors and the bovine papillomavirus E5 protein. She joined the laboratory of Allan C. Spradling at the Carnegie Institution for Science for her postdoctoral research. Here she first identified that stem cells and their derivatives responded to diet.\n\nResearch and career \nDrummond-Barbosa continued to study the regulation of stem cells as she started her independent career at Vanderbilt University. She focused on how germline stem cells are regulated by diet and the control of meiotic maturation in Drosophila. In 2009 Drummond-Barbosa was appointed to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research considers how adult stem cells sense and respond to external and systemic environments. She has focused on the ovarian stem cells of Drosophila and how they respond to diet, concentrating on hormones, insulin and adipose tissue.\n\nAwards \n 1990 Conselho Nacional de Pesquisas Scientific Initiation Fellowship\n 1997 National Institutes of Health National Research Service Award\n 2006 Vanderbilt University Chancellor's Award for Research\n 2007 American Cancer Society Research Scholar\n 2014 Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science\n 2017 Johns Hopkins University Shikani/El Hibri Prize for Discovery & Innovation\n\nSelected publications\n\nReferences \n\nLiving people\nYear of birth missing (living people)\nPeople from Belo Horizonte\nJohns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health faculty",
"Quantiacs is a crowd-sourced quant platform hosting algorithmic trading contests and a marketplace serving investors and quants.\n\nHistory \nQuantiacs was founded in 2014.\n\nThe company has grown from a base of users of 6,500 quants in April 2017 to over 10,000 quants in January 2018.\n\nBusiness model \nThe company invests some of its own money in the competition winners and aims to become a marketplace for automated trading systems. Quantiacs does not charge management fees to investors and assigns performance fees of 10% of the strategy net new profits to the quants who developed the systems.\n\nThe performance of the algorithms can be controlled on the Quantiacs website as their charts are publicly displayed.\n\nThe company focuses on quantitative strategies with long term performance horizons, highly scalable and with multiple years of backtested data. Algorithms are tested for at least 6 months to ensure their statistical robustness before being eligible for trading.\n\nIn December 2020 a study has used public data from Quantiacs to show how investors respond to the availability of new predictive signals.\n\nTechnology \nQuantiacs provides an open-source backtester and it supported Matlab and Python until 2021. In 2021 it released a new version of its backtesting engine focused on Python. Users can work online or use a local version of the backtester for own design and testing of systems.\n\nReferences \n\nCrowdsourcing\nAmerican companies established in 2014"
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"What role did Julia Louis-Dreyfus play on Seinfeld?",
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"How was she chosen for the role?",
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] | C_b80e7efaaae84899b32fadeec27cad96_0 | Did she ever win an Emmy for the role? | 4 | Did Julia Louis-Dreyfus ever win an Emmy for the role of Elaine Benes on Sienfeld? | Julia Louis-Dreyfus | In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes. One of the episodes that she did not appear in was the inaugural pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles", because her character was not initially intended to be a part of the series. It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric, and demanded that creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David add a woman to the cast. It was revealed in the commentary on the DVD package that the addition of a female character was the condition for commissioning the show. Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy their own TV success, including Patricia Heaton, Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Mullally. On the "Notes About Nothing" featurette on the DVD package, Seinfeld says that Louis-Dreyfus' ability to eat a peanut M&M without breaking the peanut aptly describes the actress: "She cracks you up without breaking your nuts." Her performance on the series was met with critical acclaim, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s. Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning one in 1995 and two in both 1997 and 1998, and seven American Comedy Awards, winning five times in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998. In 1996, she received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, an award she was nominated for on seven occasions from 1992 to 1998. After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a "shocker", and that after being in both positions, it was "much better to win than to lose." In 1998, Seinfeld decided to end the series after nine seasons. The series finale aired on May 14 and was one of the most watched TV events in history, with over 76 million people tuning in. During her time on Seinfeld she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry. CANNOTANSWER | Her performance on the series was met with critical acclaim, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s. | Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus ( ; born January 13, 1961) is an American actress, comedian, and producer. She is known for her work in the comedy television series Saturday Night Live (1982–1985), Seinfeld (1989–1998), The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006–2010), and Veep (2012–2019). She is one of the most award-winning actresses in American television history, having received more Primetime Emmy Awards and more Screen Actors Guild Awards than any other performer, tying Cloris Leachman (with eight) for the most acting wins.
Louis-Dreyfus broke into comedy as a performer in The Practical Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois, which led to her casting in the sketch show Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985. Her breakthrough came in 1990 with a nine-season run playing Elaine Benes on Seinfeld, one of the most critically and commercially successful sitcoms of all time. Her other notable television roles include Christine Campbell in The New Adventures of Old Christine, which had a five-season run on CBS; and Selina Meyer in Veep, which ran for seven seasons on HBO. Her film roles include Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), Deconstructing Harry (1997), and Enough Said (2013). She also provided voices for the animated films A Bug's Life (1998), Planes (2013), and Onward (2020). In 2021, she began portraying Valentina Allegra de Fontaine in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Louis-Dreyfus has received eleven Emmy Awards, eight for acting and three for producing. She has also received a Golden Globe Award, nine Screen Actors Guild Awards, five American Comedy Awards, and two Critics' Choice Television Awards. Louis-Dreyfus received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010 and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2016, Lena Dunham in Time named Louis-Dreyfus as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in the artists category in the annual Time 100 list. In 2018, she received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, presented by the Kennedy Center as America's highest comedy honor.
Early life
Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus was born in New York City on January 13, 1961. Her American-born mother, Judith (née LeFever), was a writer and special needs tutor, and her French-born father, Gérard Louis-Dreyfus, chaired the Louis Dreyfus Company. Her paternal grandfather, Pierre Louis-Dreyfus, was president of the Louis Dreyfus Group; he was a member of a Jewish family from Alsace and served as a cavalry officer and member of the French Resistance during World War II. She is also a great-great-granddaughter of Léopold Louis-Dreyfus, who in 1851 founded the Louis Dreyfus Group, a French commodities and shipping conglomerate, which members of her family still control; and is distantly related to Alfred Dreyfus of the infamous Dreyfus affair. Her paternal grandmother was born in the US, of partial Mexican origin, and Catholic; during the 1940s, she moved Julia's father to America from France.
In 1962, one year after Louis-Dreyfus's birth, her parents divorced. After moving to Washington, D.C., when Julia was four, her mother married L. Thompson Bowles, dean of the George Washington University Medical School; Louis-Dreyfus gained a half-sister Lauren Bowles, also an actress. Due to her stepfather's work with Project HOPE, Louis-Dreyfus spent her childhood in several states and countries, including Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia. She graduated from the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1979. She later said, "There were things I did in school that, had there been boys in the classroom, I would have been less motivated to do. For instance, I was president of the honor society."
Louis-Dreyfus attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she was a member of the Delta Gamma sorority. She studied theatre and performed in the Mee-Ow Show, a student-run improv and sketch comedy revue, before dropping out during her junior year to take a job at Saturday Night Live. In 2007, she received an honorary doctor of arts degree from Northwestern University.
Career
1982–1988: Early career and Saturday Night Live
As part of her comedic training, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in The Second City, one of Chicago's best-known improvisational theatre groups. It was her performance with The Practical Theatre Company at their "Golden 50th Anniversary Jubilee" that led to her being asked to join the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live at the age of 21.
Louis-Dreyfus subsequently became a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985, the youngest female cast member in the history of the program at that time. During her time on SNL, she appeared alongside several actors who would later rise to prominence, such as Eddie Murphy, Jim Belushi, Billy Crystal, and Martin Short. It was during her third and final year on SNL that she met writer Larry David during his only year on the show, who would later co-create Seinfeld. Louis-Dreyfus has commented that her casting on SNL was a "Cinderella-getting-to-go-to-the-ball kind of experience"; however, she has also admitted that at times it was often quite tense, stating that she "didn't know how to navigate the waters of show business in general and specifically doing a live sketch-comedy show".
Recurring characters on Saturday Night Live
April May June, a televangelist
Becky, El Dorko's (Gary Kroeger) date
Consuela, Chi Chi's friend and co-host of Let's Watch TV
Darla in SNL 's parody of The Little Rascals
Weather Woman, a superhero who controls the weather
Patti Lynn Hunnsucker, a teenage correspondent on Weekend Update
Following her 1985 departure from SNL, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in several films, including Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); Soul Man (1986), starring C. Thomas Howell; and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), in which she starred alongside fellow SNL alumnus Chevy Chase. In 1987 Louis-Dreyfus appeared in the NBC sitcom pilot The Art of Being Nick, an intended spin-off from Family Ties starring Scott Valentine. When the pilot did not make it to series, Louis-Dreyfus was retained by producer Gary David Goldberg for a role on his new sitcom Day by Day, as the sarcastic and materialistic neighbor, Eileen Swift. Premiering in early 1988, Day by Day aired for two seasons on NBC before being cancelled.
1989–1998: Seinfeld and widespread recognition
In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes. One of the episodes that she did not appear in was the pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles", because her character was not initially intended to be a part of the series. It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric and demanded that creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld add a woman to the cast. It was revealed in the commentary on the DVD package that the addition of a female character was the condition for commissioning the show. Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy TV success, including Patricia Heaton and Megan Mullally.
On the "Notes About Nothing" featurette on the DVD package, Seinfeld says that Louis-Dreyfus's ability to eat a peanut M&M without breaking the peanut aptly describes the actress: "She cracks you up without breaking your nuts."
Louis-Dreyfus garnered critical acclaim for her performance on the series, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s. Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning one in 1995 and two in both 1997 and 1998, and seven American Comedy Awards, winning five times in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998. In 1996, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, an award she was nominated for on seven occasions from 1992 to 1998. After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a "shocker", and that after being in both positions, it was "much better to win than to lose."
In 1998, Jerry Seinfeld decided to end the series after nine seasons. The series finale aired on May 14 and was one of the most-watched TV events in history, with over 76 million viewers tuning in.
During her time on Seinfeld, she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry.
1999–2004: Post-Seinfeld
Following a voice role in the highly successful Pixar film A Bug's Life, Louis-Dreyfus lent her voice as Snake's girlfriend Gloria in The Simpsons episode "A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love". In 2001, she made several special guest appearances on Seinfeld co-creator Larry David's show Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing herself fictionally trying to break the "curse" by planning to star in a show in which she would play an actress affected by a Seinfeld-like curse.
After several years away from a regular TV job, Louis-Dreyfus began a new single-camera sitcom, Watching Ellie, which premiered on NBC in February 2002. The series was created by husband Brad Hall and co-starred Steve Carell and Louis-Dreyfus's half-sister Lauren Bowles. The initial premise of the show was to present viewers with a "slice of life" from the goings-on and happenings of the life of Ellie Riggs, a Southern California jazz singer. The first season included a 22-minute countdown kept digitally in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, which many critics panned, claiming it was useless and "did nothing for the show." Overall, the show received mixed reviews but debuted strongly with over 16 million viewers tuning in for the series premiere, and maintained an average audience of about 10 million viewers per week.
When the series returned for a second season in the spring of 2003, it suffered a decline in viewership, averaging around eight million viewers per week. The show had undergone a drastic stylistic change between the production of seasons one and two. The first season was filmed in the single-camera format, but the second season was presented as a traditional multicamera sitcom filmed in front of a live studio audience. With dwindling viewership and failing to retain the numbers from its Frasier lead-in, the series was cancelled by NBC in May 2003.
Following NBC's cancellation of Watching Ellie, the media began circulating rumors of a so-called "Seinfeld curse", which claimed that none of the former Seinfeld actors could ever achieve success again in the television industry. Louis-Dreyfus dismissed the rumor as "a made-up thing by the media", while Seinfeld co-creator Larry David asserted that the curse was "completely idiotic."
Louis-Dreyfus was interested in the role of Susan Mayer on Desperate Housewives, the role that ultimately went to Teri Hatcher. Instead, Louis-Dreyfus scored a recurring guest role as Maggie Lizer, the deceitful prosecutor and love interest of Michael Bluth on the Emmy-winning comedy Arrested Development, from 2004 to 2005.
2005–2010: The New Adventures of Old Christine
In 2005, Louis-Dreyfus was cast in the title role of a new CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine. The series and its concept were created by writer and producer of Will & Grace, Kari Lizer. The series told the story of Christine Campbell, a single mother who manages to maintain a fantastic relationship with her ex-husband while running a women's gym. The series debuted on CBS in March 2006 to an audience of 15 million and was initially a ratings winner for the network.
Louis-Dreyfus also garnered considerable critical acclaim for her performance on the show, with Brian Lowry of Variety stating that Louis-Dreyfus broke the so-called "Seinfeld curse [...] with one of the best conventional half-hours to come along in a while." Alessandra Stanley from The New York Times asserted that Louis-Dreyfus's performance on the series proved she is "one of the funniest women on network television." Louis-Dreyfus additionally earned the 2006 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in the first season. Referring to the curse, she stated in her acceptance speech, "I'm not somebody who really believes in curses, but curse this, baby!" Throughout the course of the series, she received five consecutive Emmy Award nominations, three consecutive Satellite Award nominations, two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and a nomination for a Golden Globe Award. In 2007, she also received two nominations for a People's Choice Award due to her return to popularity, thanks to the success of Old Christine.
In May 2006, Louis-Dreyfus hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live, becoming the first female former cast member to return to the show in the hosting role. In the episode, she appeared with her Seinfeld co-stars Jason Alexander and Jerry Seinfeld in her opening monologue, parodying the so-called "Seinfeld curse". After a successful reception from her 2006 episode, Louis-Dreyfus was invited again to host SNL on March 17, 2007, and again on April 17, 2016. Louis-Dreyfus reprised her role as Gloria in two Simpsons episodes: 2007's "I Don't Wanna Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and 2008's "Sex, Pies and Idiot Scrapes". In the fall of 2009, she appeared with the rest of the cast of Seinfeld in four episodes of the seventh season of Larry David's sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm. The reunion shows received much media attention, and the episode received strong ratings for the HBO series.
In 2009, Louis-Dreyfus was granted the honorary award for Legacy of Laughter at the TV Land Awards. Previous winners had included Lucille Ball and Mike Myers. She was presented with the award by friend Amy Poehler. The following year, Louis-Dreyfus received the 2,407th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on May 4, 2010, for her remarkable contribution to the broadcast television industry as both an actress and a comedian. Originally, the star was set with Louis-Dreyfus's name spelled incorrectly. It was missing both the 'o' and the hyphen in her last name. The star was corrected and the misspelled portion was removed and presented to the actress. Celebrity guests at the event included past and current colleagues from throughout her career, including Clark Gregg, Larry David, Eric McCormack, and Jason Alexander.
Old Christine was cancelled by CBS on May 18, 2010, after 4 years. After its disbandment from CBS, discussions were held with ABC for the show to be revived on the network, but these plans never came to fruition.
In the spring of 2010, Louis-Dreyfus guest-starred several times in the third season of the web series Web Therapy, starring Lisa Kudrow. Louis-Dreyfus played the sister of the main character Fiona Wallice, who gives her therapy online. When the series made the transition to cable television on the Showtime network, Louis-Dreyfus's appearance from the web series was included in the second season, airing in July 2012.
In fall 2010, Louis-Dreyfus made a guest appearance on the live episode of the Emmy-winning comedy 30 Rock. She played Tina Fey's role of Liz Lemon in the cutaway shots. Louis-Dreyfus was among several Saturday Night Live alumni appearing in the episode, including Rachel Dratch, Bill Hader, and regulars Tracy Morgan and Fey herself. Louis-Dreyfus also starred in a "Women of SNL" special on November 1, 2010, on NBC.
2011–2019: Veep
In May and June 2011, Louis-Dreyfus teamed up with husband Brad Hall for her first short film, Picture Paris. This was the first time the couple had collaborated since their early-2000s NBC comedy Watching Ellie. Hall wrote and directed the film, while Louis-Dreyfus played the lead role of an ordinary woman with an extraordinary obsession with the city of Paris. The film premiered on January 29, 2012, at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and has received considerable critical acclaim. It made its television premiere on HBO on December 17, 2012.
In early 2011, HBO confirmed that Louis-Dreyfus had been cast in the lead role of U.S. Vice President Selina Meyer in a new satirical comedy series titled Veep. The series was commissioned for a first season of eight episodes. It was announced, in addition to her starring role, Louis-Dreyfus would also serve as a producer of the series. In preparation for her role, Louis-Dreyfus spoke with two former vice presidents, including Al Gore, senators, speechwriters, chiefs of staffs of various offices, and schedulers. Louis-Dreyfus has commended HBO for allowing the cast and crew to engage in a "protracted pre-production process", which included a six-week rehearsal period before filming began.
The first season was filmed in the fall of 2011, in Baltimore, and the series premiered on April 22, 2012. The premiere episode was met with high praise from critics, particularly for Louis-Dreyfus's performance. The Hollywood Reporter asserted that the character of Selina Meyer was her "best post-Seinfeld role" to date and claimed that she gives "an Emmy-worthy effort", while the Los Angeles Times contended that the series demonstrates that she is "one of the medium's great comediennes." Following the success of the first season, Louis-Dreyfus was named by the Huffington Post as one of the funniest people of 2012, asserting that she is the "most magnetic and naturally funny woman on TV since Mary Tyler Moore."
For her performance on Veep, Louis-Dreyfus has received several accolades, most notably six consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series from 2012 to 2017. Her Emmy wins for Veep, following previous wins for Seinfeld and The New Adventures of Old Christine, resulted in her becoming the only woman to win an acting award for three separate comedy series. Her sixth win for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2016 surpassed the record previously held by Mary Tyler Moore and Candice Bergen for the most wins in that category. In 2017 her sixth consecutive win and eighth acting win overall made her the performer with the most Emmys for the same role in the same series (surpassing Candice Bergen and Don Knotts) and put her in a tie with Cloris Leachman for the most Emmys ever won by a performer. She was also nominated as one of the producers for Veep in the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series category from 2012 to 2014, but the show lost to Modern Family on all three occasions. The show, however, won the top award from 2015 to 2017.
Louis-Dreyfus has also received five Critics' Choice Television Award nominations, winning twice in 2013 and 2014, ten Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning twice in 2014 and 2017, and five Television Critics Association Award nominations, winning once in 2014. Her performance has additionally garnered her five Satellite Award nominations and five consecutive Golden Globe Award nominations.
Louis-Dreyfus lent her voice to the 2013 animated film Planes, in the role of Rochelle. To date, the film has grossed well over $200 million at the box office worldwide. She also starred in the film Enough Said, directed by Nicole Holofcener, which was released on September 18, 2013. This marked her debut as a lead actress in a full-length feature film. The film garnered rave reviews from film critics, ranking among the best-reviewed films of 2013. The website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 96% based on 152 reviews, many of them praising Louis-Dreyfus's performance. She received several Best Actress nominations for her role in the film at award ceremonies, including the Golden Globe Awards, Satellite Awards, Critics' Choice Movie Awards, and the American Comedy Awards.
Since December 2014, Louis-Dreyfus has appeared in a series of television commercials for Old Navy.
On April 16, 2016, she hosted Saturday Night Live for the third time with musical guest Nick Jonas. During the episode's cold open, she reprised her role of Elaine Benes from Seinfeld.
2020–present: Production deal with Apple TV+
In 2020, Louis-Dreyfus headlined the comedy-drama Downhill, opposite Will Ferrell. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released on February 14. Next, she voiced a suburban elf mother in Pixar's Onward opposite Tom Holland and Chris Pratt. The film was released on March 6, 2020.
In January 2020, Louis-Dreyfus signed a multi-year deal with Apple TV+. Under the deal, she will develop new projects for Apple TV+ as both an executive producer and star.
In 2021, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, which is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though she was originally intended to debut in the film Black Widow (where she appears in the post credit scene).
Personal life
Louis-Dreyfus's maternal half-sister, Lauren Bowles, is also an actress. She also has two paternal half-sisters: Phoebe and Emma, the latter of whom died in August 2018. Robert Louis-Dreyfus (1946–2009), one of her cousins, was former CEO of Adidas and owner of the Olympique de Marseille football club.
While at Northwestern, Louis-Dreyfus met future husband and Saturday Night Live comedian Brad Hall. They married in 1987 and have two sons together: Henry (born 1992) and Charles (born 1997). Henry is a singer-songwriter, who has performed on The Tonight Show. Charles was a walk-on for the Northwestern Wildcats men's basketball team. In 2007, Louis-Dreyfus was invited back to Northwestern to receive an honorary Doctor of Arts degree.
Louis-Dreyfus has stated that she holds much respect for "women who are not afraid of making themselves look bad or foolish to get a laugh", and cites her acting idols as Lucille Ball, Mary Tyler Moore, Madeline Kahn, Teri Garr, Valerie Harper, and Cloris Leachman. Actress Tina Fey has stated that Louis-Dreyfus served as inspiration for her character Liz Lemon on the award-winning NBC comedy series 30 Rock.
On September 28, 2017, Louis-Dreyfus announced on Twitter her diagnosis of breast cancer, a diagnosis she received one day after receiving a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role in Veep. She stated, "One in eight women get breast cancer. Today, I'm the one. The good news is that I have the most glorious group of supportive and caring family and friends, and fantastic insurance through my union. The bad news is that not all women are so lucky, so let's fight all cancers and make universal healthcare a reality." She announced on the October 18, 2018, episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! that she was cancer-free.
Politics
Louis-Dreyfus supported Al Gore's 2000 U.S. presidential bid, and also endorsed Barack Obama's bid for the presidency in 2008 and 2012. She appeared in a video that urged President Obama to reject the proposal of the Keystone XL pipeline, arguing that if the pipeline ever were to leak, it would cause mass pollution across the U.S. Additionally, she has voiced her concern for several environmental issues and has raised millions for Heal the Bay, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Trust for Public Land. She also worked for the successful passage of Proposition O, which allocated US$500 million for cleaning up the Los Angeles water supply.
In late October 2010, before the United States Senate election in California, Louis-Dreyfus starred in a humorous Barbara Boxer ad regarding energy policy.
During the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Louis-Dreyfus announced her endorsement of Hillary Clinton for the United States presidential election of that year.
In her acceptance speech at the 2017 Screen Actors Guild Awards, she denounced President Donald Trump's executive order of travel ban as "un-American," and said, "My father fled religious persecution in Nazi-occupied France."
Louis-Dreyfus emceed the final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, endorsing Joe Biden. She has also published information regarding voting by mail and urged all Americans to vote.
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
Julia Louis-Dreyfus has won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series seven times; once for her role on The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006) and six consecutive wins for playing Selina Meyer on Veep (2012–17), as well as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series on one occasion for Seinfeld (1996). As of 2017, she holds the record for the most Primetime Emmy wins as an actor for the same role and is tied with Cloris Leachman for the most acting Primetime Emmy wins (with eight). She has also been nominated for nine Golden Globe Awards, winning one for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film for her role as Elaine Benes on Seinfeld (1995). She has also been nominated for twenty-one Screen Actors Guild Awards and has won five for individual performance (nine all together) for her portrayals on Seinfeld (1997–98) and Veep (2014, 2017–18).
In 2018 she was the twentieth recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
See also
Alfred Dreyfus – A distant relative at the center of the Dreyfus Affair miscarriage of justice
References
External links
Julia Louis-Dreyfus at Emmys.com
Julia Louis-Dreyfus Video produced by Makers: Women Who Make America
1961 births
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses
20th-century American comedians
21st-century American comedians
Actresses from Maryland
Actresses from New York City
American film actresses
American people of Brazilian descent
American people of French-Jewish descent
American people of Mexican descent
American sketch comedians
American stage actresses
American television actresses
American voice actresses
American women comedians
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (television) winners
Comedians from New York City
Hispanic and Latino American actresses
Living people
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Northwestern University School of Communication alumni
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actress in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
People from Bethesda, Maryland
People from Manhattan
Philanthropists from New York (state) | false | [
"The 23rd Emmy Awards, later known as the 23rd Primetime Emmy Awards, were handed out on May 9, 1971. The ceremony was hosted by Johnny Carson. Winners are listed in bold and series' networks are in parentheses.\n\nThe top shows of the night were All in the Family and The Bold Ones: The Senator. The Bold Ones: The Senator, along with other shows, had the most major nominations (nine) and wins (four) on the night.\n\nActress Lee Grant set an Emmy milestone when she joined the exclusive club of actors who were nominated for two performances in the same acting category. She won the award for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, for her performance in The Neon Ceiling, she was also nominated for an episode of Columbo.\n\nSusan Hampshire became PBS' first win in the Lead Actress, Drama category, for The First Churchills, as well as being the network's first ever Acting win. (Hampshire also won in the same category, the previous year, again beating the Big Three television networks, but from the NET network, a network which dissolved within a year, but became the direct predecessor for PBS.)\n\nDavid Burns became the second posthumous performance in Emmy history to win, for ITV Sunday Night Theatre.\n\nWinners and nominees\n\nPrograms\n\nActing\n\nLead performances\n\nSupporting performances\n\nSingle performances\n\nDirecting\n\nWriting\n\nMost major nominations\nBy network \n NBC – 46\n CBS – 29\n ABC – 23\n PBS – 11\n\n By program\n The Bold Ones: The Senator (NBC) / Hallmark Hall of Fame (NBC) – 9\n Mary Tyler Moore (CBS) – 8\n All in the Family (CBS) – 7\n The Flip Wilson Show (NBC) / Marcus Welby, M.D. (ABC) / The Odd Couple (ABC) / Vanished (NBC) – 4\n\nMost major awards\nBy network \n NBC – 14\n CBS – 9\n PBS – 5\n ABC – 3\n\n By program\n The Bold Ones: The Senator (NBC) / Hallmark Hall of Fame (NBC) / Mary Tyler Moore (CBS) – 4\n All in the Family (CBS) – 3\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Emmys.com list of 1971 Nominees & Winners\n \n\n023\nPrimetime Emmy Awards\nPrimetime Emmy Awards\nPrimetime Emmy Awards",
"Anneke von der Lippe (born 22 July 1964) is a Norwegian actress. She made history as the first Norwegian actress – and Nordic - to win an International Emmy Award.\n\nBiography \nShe graduated from the Norwegian National Academy of Theatre in 1988, and has since acted both at Det Norske Teatret (the Norwegian Theater) and at Nationaltheatret (the National Theatre), in roles such as \"Nora\" in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, \"Masja\" in Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters, and \"Gwendolen Fairfax\" in Oscar Wildes The Importance of Being Earnest.\n\nShe has won the Amanda – the main Norwegian film award – for best actress twice: for Krigerens hjerte in 1992, and for Over stork og stein and Pan in 1995. She was named one of European films \"Shooting Stars\" by European Film Promotion in 1998. In 2005, she was, as the first Norwegian actor ever, nominated for an International Emmy Award for her role in the TV-drama Ved kongens bord.\n\nIn 2015 Anneke won an International Emmy Award for her role in the NRK TV-drama Øyevitne.\n\nVon der Lippe lives in Oslo, and is married to director Morten Cranner, with two children.\n\nSelected filmography\n Krigerens hjerte (1992)\n Flaggermusvinger (1992)\n Over stork og stein (1994)\n Pan (1995)\n Only Clouds Move the Stars (1998)\n Misery Harbour (1999)\n Barbara (1997)\n Misery Harbour (1999)\n Lime (2001)\n Ved kongens bord (TV) (2005)\n Trigger (2006)\n Ulvenatten (2008)\n Øyevitne (TV) (2014)\n Homesick (2015)\n Kielergata (2018)\n The Girl from Oslo (TV series) (2021)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nAnneke von der Lippe biography from Nationaltheateret.\nInterview from Dagbladet.\n\n1964 births\nLiving people\nNorwegian film actresses\nNorwegian stage actresses\nNorwegian television actresses\nActresses from Oslo\nOslo National Academy of the Arts alumni\nPeople educated at Oslo Waldorf School\nInternational Emmy Award for Best Actress winners"
] |
[
"Julia Louis-Dreyfus",
"1990-98: The Seinfeld years",
"What role did Julia Louis-Dreyfus play on Seinfeld?",
"In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes.",
"How was she chosen for the role?",
"It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric, and demanded that creators Jerry Seinfeld",
"How did the public respond to her performance?",
"Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy their own TV success, including Patricia Heaton, Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Mullally.",
"Did she ever win an Emmy for the role?",
"Her performance on the series was met with critical acclaim, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s."
] | C_b80e7efaaae84899b32fadeec27cad96_0 | Did she do work on any other projects during 1990 to 1998? | 5 | Besides her role on Sienfeld, did Julia Louis-Dreyfus do work on any other projects during 1990 to 1998? | Julia Louis-Dreyfus | In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes. One of the episodes that she did not appear in was the inaugural pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles", because her character was not initially intended to be a part of the series. It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric, and demanded that creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David add a woman to the cast. It was revealed in the commentary on the DVD package that the addition of a female character was the condition for commissioning the show. Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy their own TV success, including Patricia Heaton, Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Mullally. On the "Notes About Nothing" featurette on the DVD package, Seinfeld says that Louis-Dreyfus' ability to eat a peanut M&M without breaking the peanut aptly describes the actress: "She cracks you up without breaking your nuts." Her performance on the series was met with critical acclaim, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s. Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning one in 1995 and two in both 1997 and 1998, and seven American Comedy Awards, winning five times in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998. In 1996, she received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, an award she was nominated for on seven occasions from 1992 to 1998. After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a "shocker", and that after being in both positions, it was "much better to win than to lose." In 1998, Seinfeld decided to end the series after nine seasons. The series finale aired on May 14 and was one of the most watched TV events in history, with over 76 million people tuning in. During her time on Seinfeld she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry. CANNOTANSWER | Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, | Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus ( ; born January 13, 1961) is an American actress, comedian, and producer. She is known for her work in the comedy television series Saturday Night Live (1982–1985), Seinfeld (1989–1998), The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006–2010), and Veep (2012–2019). She is one of the most award-winning actresses in American television history, having received more Primetime Emmy Awards and more Screen Actors Guild Awards than any other performer, tying Cloris Leachman (with eight) for the most acting wins.
Louis-Dreyfus broke into comedy as a performer in The Practical Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois, which led to her casting in the sketch show Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985. Her breakthrough came in 1990 with a nine-season run playing Elaine Benes on Seinfeld, one of the most critically and commercially successful sitcoms of all time. Her other notable television roles include Christine Campbell in The New Adventures of Old Christine, which had a five-season run on CBS; and Selina Meyer in Veep, which ran for seven seasons on HBO. Her film roles include Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), Deconstructing Harry (1997), and Enough Said (2013). She also provided voices for the animated films A Bug's Life (1998), Planes (2013), and Onward (2020). In 2021, she began portraying Valentina Allegra de Fontaine in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Louis-Dreyfus has received eleven Emmy Awards, eight for acting and three for producing. She has also received a Golden Globe Award, nine Screen Actors Guild Awards, five American Comedy Awards, and two Critics' Choice Television Awards. Louis-Dreyfus received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010 and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2016, Lena Dunham in Time named Louis-Dreyfus as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in the artists category in the annual Time 100 list. In 2018, she received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, presented by the Kennedy Center as America's highest comedy honor.
Early life
Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus was born in New York City on January 13, 1961. Her American-born mother, Judith (née LeFever), was a writer and special needs tutor, and her French-born father, Gérard Louis-Dreyfus, chaired the Louis Dreyfus Company. Her paternal grandfather, Pierre Louis-Dreyfus, was president of the Louis Dreyfus Group; he was a member of a Jewish family from Alsace and served as a cavalry officer and member of the French Resistance during World War II. She is also a great-great-granddaughter of Léopold Louis-Dreyfus, who in 1851 founded the Louis Dreyfus Group, a French commodities and shipping conglomerate, which members of her family still control; and is distantly related to Alfred Dreyfus of the infamous Dreyfus affair. Her paternal grandmother was born in the US, of partial Mexican origin, and Catholic; during the 1940s, she moved Julia's father to America from France.
In 1962, one year after Louis-Dreyfus's birth, her parents divorced. After moving to Washington, D.C., when Julia was four, her mother married L. Thompson Bowles, dean of the George Washington University Medical School; Louis-Dreyfus gained a half-sister Lauren Bowles, also an actress. Due to her stepfather's work with Project HOPE, Louis-Dreyfus spent her childhood in several states and countries, including Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia. She graduated from the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1979. She later said, "There were things I did in school that, had there been boys in the classroom, I would have been less motivated to do. For instance, I was president of the honor society."
Louis-Dreyfus attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she was a member of the Delta Gamma sorority. She studied theatre and performed in the Mee-Ow Show, a student-run improv and sketch comedy revue, before dropping out during her junior year to take a job at Saturday Night Live. In 2007, she received an honorary doctor of arts degree from Northwestern University.
Career
1982–1988: Early career and Saturday Night Live
As part of her comedic training, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in The Second City, one of Chicago's best-known improvisational theatre groups. It was her performance with The Practical Theatre Company at their "Golden 50th Anniversary Jubilee" that led to her being asked to join the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live at the age of 21.
Louis-Dreyfus subsequently became a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985, the youngest female cast member in the history of the program at that time. During her time on SNL, she appeared alongside several actors who would later rise to prominence, such as Eddie Murphy, Jim Belushi, Billy Crystal, and Martin Short. It was during her third and final year on SNL that she met writer Larry David during his only year on the show, who would later co-create Seinfeld. Louis-Dreyfus has commented that her casting on SNL was a "Cinderella-getting-to-go-to-the-ball kind of experience"; however, she has also admitted that at times it was often quite tense, stating that she "didn't know how to navigate the waters of show business in general and specifically doing a live sketch-comedy show".
Recurring characters on Saturday Night Live
April May June, a televangelist
Becky, El Dorko's (Gary Kroeger) date
Consuela, Chi Chi's friend and co-host of Let's Watch TV
Darla in SNL 's parody of The Little Rascals
Weather Woman, a superhero who controls the weather
Patti Lynn Hunnsucker, a teenage correspondent on Weekend Update
Following her 1985 departure from SNL, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in several films, including Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); Soul Man (1986), starring C. Thomas Howell; and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), in which she starred alongside fellow SNL alumnus Chevy Chase. In 1987 Louis-Dreyfus appeared in the NBC sitcom pilot The Art of Being Nick, an intended spin-off from Family Ties starring Scott Valentine. When the pilot did not make it to series, Louis-Dreyfus was retained by producer Gary David Goldberg for a role on his new sitcom Day by Day, as the sarcastic and materialistic neighbor, Eileen Swift. Premiering in early 1988, Day by Day aired for two seasons on NBC before being cancelled.
1989–1998: Seinfeld and widespread recognition
In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes. One of the episodes that she did not appear in was the pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles", because her character was not initially intended to be a part of the series. It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric and demanded that creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld add a woman to the cast. It was revealed in the commentary on the DVD package that the addition of a female character was the condition for commissioning the show. Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy TV success, including Patricia Heaton and Megan Mullally.
On the "Notes About Nothing" featurette on the DVD package, Seinfeld says that Louis-Dreyfus's ability to eat a peanut M&M without breaking the peanut aptly describes the actress: "She cracks you up without breaking your nuts."
Louis-Dreyfus garnered critical acclaim for her performance on the series, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s. Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning one in 1995 and two in both 1997 and 1998, and seven American Comedy Awards, winning five times in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998. In 1996, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, an award she was nominated for on seven occasions from 1992 to 1998. After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a "shocker", and that after being in both positions, it was "much better to win than to lose."
In 1998, Jerry Seinfeld decided to end the series after nine seasons. The series finale aired on May 14 and was one of the most-watched TV events in history, with over 76 million viewers tuning in.
During her time on Seinfeld, she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry.
1999–2004: Post-Seinfeld
Following a voice role in the highly successful Pixar film A Bug's Life, Louis-Dreyfus lent her voice as Snake's girlfriend Gloria in The Simpsons episode "A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love". In 2001, she made several special guest appearances on Seinfeld co-creator Larry David's show Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing herself fictionally trying to break the "curse" by planning to star in a show in which she would play an actress affected by a Seinfeld-like curse.
After several years away from a regular TV job, Louis-Dreyfus began a new single-camera sitcom, Watching Ellie, which premiered on NBC in February 2002. The series was created by husband Brad Hall and co-starred Steve Carell and Louis-Dreyfus's half-sister Lauren Bowles. The initial premise of the show was to present viewers with a "slice of life" from the goings-on and happenings of the life of Ellie Riggs, a Southern California jazz singer. The first season included a 22-minute countdown kept digitally in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, which many critics panned, claiming it was useless and "did nothing for the show." Overall, the show received mixed reviews but debuted strongly with over 16 million viewers tuning in for the series premiere, and maintained an average audience of about 10 million viewers per week.
When the series returned for a second season in the spring of 2003, it suffered a decline in viewership, averaging around eight million viewers per week. The show had undergone a drastic stylistic change between the production of seasons one and two. The first season was filmed in the single-camera format, but the second season was presented as a traditional multicamera sitcom filmed in front of a live studio audience. With dwindling viewership and failing to retain the numbers from its Frasier lead-in, the series was cancelled by NBC in May 2003.
Following NBC's cancellation of Watching Ellie, the media began circulating rumors of a so-called "Seinfeld curse", which claimed that none of the former Seinfeld actors could ever achieve success again in the television industry. Louis-Dreyfus dismissed the rumor as "a made-up thing by the media", while Seinfeld co-creator Larry David asserted that the curse was "completely idiotic."
Louis-Dreyfus was interested in the role of Susan Mayer on Desperate Housewives, the role that ultimately went to Teri Hatcher. Instead, Louis-Dreyfus scored a recurring guest role as Maggie Lizer, the deceitful prosecutor and love interest of Michael Bluth on the Emmy-winning comedy Arrested Development, from 2004 to 2005.
2005–2010: The New Adventures of Old Christine
In 2005, Louis-Dreyfus was cast in the title role of a new CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine. The series and its concept were created by writer and producer of Will & Grace, Kari Lizer. The series told the story of Christine Campbell, a single mother who manages to maintain a fantastic relationship with her ex-husband while running a women's gym. The series debuted on CBS in March 2006 to an audience of 15 million and was initially a ratings winner for the network.
Louis-Dreyfus also garnered considerable critical acclaim for her performance on the show, with Brian Lowry of Variety stating that Louis-Dreyfus broke the so-called "Seinfeld curse [...] with one of the best conventional half-hours to come along in a while." Alessandra Stanley from The New York Times asserted that Louis-Dreyfus's performance on the series proved she is "one of the funniest women on network television." Louis-Dreyfus additionally earned the 2006 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in the first season. Referring to the curse, she stated in her acceptance speech, "I'm not somebody who really believes in curses, but curse this, baby!" Throughout the course of the series, she received five consecutive Emmy Award nominations, three consecutive Satellite Award nominations, two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and a nomination for a Golden Globe Award. In 2007, she also received two nominations for a People's Choice Award due to her return to popularity, thanks to the success of Old Christine.
In May 2006, Louis-Dreyfus hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live, becoming the first female former cast member to return to the show in the hosting role. In the episode, she appeared with her Seinfeld co-stars Jason Alexander and Jerry Seinfeld in her opening monologue, parodying the so-called "Seinfeld curse". After a successful reception from her 2006 episode, Louis-Dreyfus was invited again to host SNL on March 17, 2007, and again on April 17, 2016. Louis-Dreyfus reprised her role as Gloria in two Simpsons episodes: 2007's "I Don't Wanna Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and 2008's "Sex, Pies and Idiot Scrapes". In the fall of 2009, she appeared with the rest of the cast of Seinfeld in four episodes of the seventh season of Larry David's sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm. The reunion shows received much media attention, and the episode received strong ratings for the HBO series.
In 2009, Louis-Dreyfus was granted the honorary award for Legacy of Laughter at the TV Land Awards. Previous winners had included Lucille Ball and Mike Myers. She was presented with the award by friend Amy Poehler. The following year, Louis-Dreyfus received the 2,407th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on May 4, 2010, for her remarkable contribution to the broadcast television industry as both an actress and a comedian. Originally, the star was set with Louis-Dreyfus's name spelled incorrectly. It was missing both the 'o' and the hyphen in her last name. The star was corrected and the misspelled portion was removed and presented to the actress. Celebrity guests at the event included past and current colleagues from throughout her career, including Clark Gregg, Larry David, Eric McCormack, and Jason Alexander.
Old Christine was cancelled by CBS on May 18, 2010, after 4 years. After its disbandment from CBS, discussions were held with ABC for the show to be revived on the network, but these plans never came to fruition.
In the spring of 2010, Louis-Dreyfus guest-starred several times in the third season of the web series Web Therapy, starring Lisa Kudrow. Louis-Dreyfus played the sister of the main character Fiona Wallice, who gives her therapy online. When the series made the transition to cable television on the Showtime network, Louis-Dreyfus's appearance from the web series was included in the second season, airing in July 2012.
In fall 2010, Louis-Dreyfus made a guest appearance on the live episode of the Emmy-winning comedy 30 Rock. She played Tina Fey's role of Liz Lemon in the cutaway shots. Louis-Dreyfus was among several Saturday Night Live alumni appearing in the episode, including Rachel Dratch, Bill Hader, and regulars Tracy Morgan and Fey herself. Louis-Dreyfus also starred in a "Women of SNL" special on November 1, 2010, on NBC.
2011–2019: Veep
In May and June 2011, Louis-Dreyfus teamed up with husband Brad Hall for her first short film, Picture Paris. This was the first time the couple had collaborated since their early-2000s NBC comedy Watching Ellie. Hall wrote and directed the film, while Louis-Dreyfus played the lead role of an ordinary woman with an extraordinary obsession with the city of Paris. The film premiered on January 29, 2012, at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and has received considerable critical acclaim. It made its television premiere on HBO on December 17, 2012.
In early 2011, HBO confirmed that Louis-Dreyfus had been cast in the lead role of U.S. Vice President Selina Meyer in a new satirical comedy series titled Veep. The series was commissioned for a first season of eight episodes. It was announced, in addition to her starring role, Louis-Dreyfus would also serve as a producer of the series. In preparation for her role, Louis-Dreyfus spoke with two former vice presidents, including Al Gore, senators, speechwriters, chiefs of staffs of various offices, and schedulers. Louis-Dreyfus has commended HBO for allowing the cast and crew to engage in a "protracted pre-production process", which included a six-week rehearsal period before filming began.
The first season was filmed in the fall of 2011, in Baltimore, and the series premiered on April 22, 2012. The premiere episode was met with high praise from critics, particularly for Louis-Dreyfus's performance. The Hollywood Reporter asserted that the character of Selina Meyer was her "best post-Seinfeld role" to date and claimed that she gives "an Emmy-worthy effort", while the Los Angeles Times contended that the series demonstrates that she is "one of the medium's great comediennes." Following the success of the first season, Louis-Dreyfus was named by the Huffington Post as one of the funniest people of 2012, asserting that she is the "most magnetic and naturally funny woman on TV since Mary Tyler Moore."
For her performance on Veep, Louis-Dreyfus has received several accolades, most notably six consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series from 2012 to 2017. Her Emmy wins for Veep, following previous wins for Seinfeld and The New Adventures of Old Christine, resulted in her becoming the only woman to win an acting award for three separate comedy series. Her sixth win for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2016 surpassed the record previously held by Mary Tyler Moore and Candice Bergen for the most wins in that category. In 2017 her sixth consecutive win and eighth acting win overall made her the performer with the most Emmys for the same role in the same series (surpassing Candice Bergen and Don Knotts) and put her in a tie with Cloris Leachman for the most Emmys ever won by a performer. She was also nominated as one of the producers for Veep in the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series category from 2012 to 2014, but the show lost to Modern Family on all three occasions. The show, however, won the top award from 2015 to 2017.
Louis-Dreyfus has also received five Critics' Choice Television Award nominations, winning twice in 2013 and 2014, ten Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning twice in 2014 and 2017, and five Television Critics Association Award nominations, winning once in 2014. Her performance has additionally garnered her five Satellite Award nominations and five consecutive Golden Globe Award nominations.
Louis-Dreyfus lent her voice to the 2013 animated film Planes, in the role of Rochelle. To date, the film has grossed well over $200 million at the box office worldwide. She also starred in the film Enough Said, directed by Nicole Holofcener, which was released on September 18, 2013. This marked her debut as a lead actress in a full-length feature film. The film garnered rave reviews from film critics, ranking among the best-reviewed films of 2013. The website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 96% based on 152 reviews, many of them praising Louis-Dreyfus's performance. She received several Best Actress nominations for her role in the film at award ceremonies, including the Golden Globe Awards, Satellite Awards, Critics' Choice Movie Awards, and the American Comedy Awards.
Since December 2014, Louis-Dreyfus has appeared in a series of television commercials for Old Navy.
On April 16, 2016, she hosted Saturday Night Live for the third time with musical guest Nick Jonas. During the episode's cold open, she reprised her role of Elaine Benes from Seinfeld.
2020–present: Production deal with Apple TV+
In 2020, Louis-Dreyfus headlined the comedy-drama Downhill, opposite Will Ferrell. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released on February 14. Next, she voiced a suburban elf mother in Pixar's Onward opposite Tom Holland and Chris Pratt. The film was released on March 6, 2020.
In January 2020, Louis-Dreyfus signed a multi-year deal with Apple TV+. Under the deal, she will develop new projects for Apple TV+ as both an executive producer and star.
In 2021, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, which is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though she was originally intended to debut in the film Black Widow (where she appears in the post credit scene).
Personal life
Louis-Dreyfus's maternal half-sister, Lauren Bowles, is also an actress. She also has two paternal half-sisters: Phoebe and Emma, the latter of whom died in August 2018. Robert Louis-Dreyfus (1946–2009), one of her cousins, was former CEO of Adidas and owner of the Olympique de Marseille football club.
While at Northwestern, Louis-Dreyfus met future husband and Saturday Night Live comedian Brad Hall. They married in 1987 and have two sons together: Henry (born 1992) and Charles (born 1997). Henry is a singer-songwriter, who has performed on The Tonight Show. Charles was a walk-on for the Northwestern Wildcats men's basketball team. In 2007, Louis-Dreyfus was invited back to Northwestern to receive an honorary Doctor of Arts degree.
Louis-Dreyfus has stated that she holds much respect for "women who are not afraid of making themselves look bad or foolish to get a laugh", and cites her acting idols as Lucille Ball, Mary Tyler Moore, Madeline Kahn, Teri Garr, Valerie Harper, and Cloris Leachman. Actress Tina Fey has stated that Louis-Dreyfus served as inspiration for her character Liz Lemon on the award-winning NBC comedy series 30 Rock.
On September 28, 2017, Louis-Dreyfus announced on Twitter her diagnosis of breast cancer, a diagnosis she received one day after receiving a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role in Veep. She stated, "One in eight women get breast cancer. Today, I'm the one. The good news is that I have the most glorious group of supportive and caring family and friends, and fantastic insurance through my union. The bad news is that not all women are so lucky, so let's fight all cancers and make universal healthcare a reality." She announced on the October 18, 2018, episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! that she was cancer-free.
Politics
Louis-Dreyfus supported Al Gore's 2000 U.S. presidential bid, and also endorsed Barack Obama's bid for the presidency in 2008 and 2012. She appeared in a video that urged President Obama to reject the proposal of the Keystone XL pipeline, arguing that if the pipeline ever were to leak, it would cause mass pollution across the U.S. Additionally, she has voiced her concern for several environmental issues and has raised millions for Heal the Bay, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Trust for Public Land. She also worked for the successful passage of Proposition O, which allocated US$500 million for cleaning up the Los Angeles water supply.
In late October 2010, before the United States Senate election in California, Louis-Dreyfus starred in a humorous Barbara Boxer ad regarding energy policy.
During the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Louis-Dreyfus announced her endorsement of Hillary Clinton for the United States presidential election of that year.
In her acceptance speech at the 2017 Screen Actors Guild Awards, she denounced President Donald Trump's executive order of travel ban as "un-American," and said, "My father fled religious persecution in Nazi-occupied France."
Louis-Dreyfus emceed the final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, endorsing Joe Biden. She has also published information regarding voting by mail and urged all Americans to vote.
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
Julia Louis-Dreyfus has won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series seven times; once for her role on The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006) and six consecutive wins for playing Selina Meyer on Veep (2012–17), as well as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series on one occasion for Seinfeld (1996). As of 2017, she holds the record for the most Primetime Emmy wins as an actor for the same role and is tied with Cloris Leachman for the most acting Primetime Emmy wins (with eight). She has also been nominated for nine Golden Globe Awards, winning one for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film for her role as Elaine Benes on Seinfeld (1995). She has also been nominated for twenty-one Screen Actors Guild Awards and has won five for individual performance (nine all together) for her portrayals on Seinfeld (1997–98) and Veep (2014, 2017–18).
In 2018 she was the twentieth recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
See also
Alfred Dreyfus – A distant relative at the center of the Dreyfus Affair miscarriage of justice
References
External links
Julia Louis-Dreyfus at Emmys.com
Julia Louis-Dreyfus Video produced by Makers: Women Who Make America
1961 births
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses
20th-century American comedians
21st-century American comedians
Actresses from Maryland
Actresses from New York City
American film actresses
American people of Brazilian descent
American people of French-Jewish descent
American people of Mexican descent
American sketch comedians
American stage actresses
American television actresses
American voice actresses
American women comedians
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (television) winners
Comedians from New York City
Hispanic and Latino American actresses
Living people
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Northwestern University School of Communication alumni
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actress in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
People from Bethesda, Maryland
People from Manhattan
Philanthropists from New York (state) | true | [
"vWorker was an employment website that enabled companies to outsource projects and independent contractors to find work. Together with Elance, Freelancer.com, Guru.com, and Upwork, it was one of the largest global freelance marketplaces of its kind. It organized and streamlined the management of outsourced employees.\n\nOn November 19, 2012, Freelancer.com acquired vWorker \"for a price in the millions\" and the URL was redirected.\n\nHistory\nvWorker was founded in 2001 in Tampa, Florida by Ian Ippolito under the name of Rent A Coder. Ippolito had previously launched the Planet Source Code website for sharing the source code of computer programs and wanted to create a platform for intermediating paid programming projects.\n\nThe type of job board that he had in mind differed from a static Craigslist-type online bulletin board by being enriched with features that would exclude the possibility that employers give out advance payments for work that does not get delivered when agreed or that does not meet their requirements, and the chance that contractors deliver their work online but never hear back from employers who choose not to pay. These protective features included time tracking software for pay-for-time projects, escrow accounts into which employers place the funds for a job and from which the mediating company pays contractors when the work is delivered, arbitration support for settling disputes, and a double blind rating system from previous employers and contractors for reputation management to build trust and credibility between parties who do not know each other. At the time the features were introduced, Rent A Coder was the first online marketplace to protect both employers and employees with escrowing and arbitration.\n\nvWorker added several innovative features including trialsourcing, in which a competition is used for an initial sample of work, before hiring the freelancer in a traditional outsourcing manner.\n\nContributing factors to its growth were improved technological infrastructures (high-speed internet, open source and rapid development tools), increased competition and demand for expertise not available internally, and the late-2000s financial crisis that made employers look for project-based alternatives to full-time employment, while the smaller number of available full-time jobs in people's immediate physical location made many of them become self-employed or try freelancing to earn additional income.\n\nOn April 15, 2010, the site expanded to a hundred new work categories that included, in addition to programming, also graphic design, writing, personal assistance, paralegal work, and others. To reflect the wider site audience, the company changed its name to vWorker, short for \"virtual worker\".\n\nThe company was listed on the Inc. 5000 ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States for 4 consecutive years from 2007 to 2010.\n\nIn 2010, the site had approximately $3 million in revenue.\n\nAs of 17 November 2012, 1.3 million projects had been posted on the site with users earning $139 million. At that time, the site had 15 workers and $11.1 million in revenue.\n\nBusiness model\nvWorker allowed employers to post projects and jobs on the website. Workers who were registered with the site competed for the opportunity to work on the projects by posting bids. Employers chose the bid they preferred and escrowed the funds with vWorker. When job were completed, employer authorized the release of the funds to the worker.\n\nEmployers did not pay any fees to list their jobs and workers were not charged subscription fees. vWorker made money by charging 6.5%–9% commission fees on successfully completed hourly projects and 7.5%–15% fees on fixed price projects; the commissions included strictly enforced arbitration and payment guarantees.\n\nAccording to the model described, vWorker was not a freelancing marketplace in a traditional sense where workers created works on their own initiative, and then try to market and sell them while keeping the copyright to their work. On vWorker, all projects were performed on a work for hire basis in which an employer requested a certain task to be performed according to his or her specifications and received the copyright to the work produced.\n\nModern freelancing marketplaces are frequently also said to be characterized by a reverse auction type bidding system in which sellers compete to offer the lowest price that meets the specifications of a buyer's bid request, and prices decrease during the auction as sellers compete to offer lower bids than their competitors.\n\nThe bidding system on vWorker differed slightly from that general model. Because vWorker used closed or hidden bidding, a person who submitted a bid did not know the prices that other bidders quoted and could not modify his or her own bid accordingly, so there was no necessary decrease in bid amounts during the auction. It also turned out that the lowest bid on vWorker was chosen only by 20% of the employers and that most buyers tended to choose the bid that was submitted last.\n\nCriticisms\nIn 2004, workers in Livingston County, New York accidentally released private information about low-income and foster care families on the vWorker website while posting a project.\n\nvWorker was also sometimes used by students to hire people to do their homework.\n\nvWorker's solution was to strengthen its copyright and intellectual property complaint system so that it can be used by site users and members of the public for removing sensitive materials. Professors could use the same system to remove projects for homework because the professor who created the homework owns the copyright.\n\nSee also\n Contingent workforce\n Crowdsourcing\n Freelance marketplace\n Intermediation\n Outsourcing\n Remote work\n\nReferences\n\nCrowdsourcing\nDefunct American websites\nFreelance marketplace websites\nEmployment websites in the United States\nInternet properties established in 2001\nInternet properties disestablished in 2012\nOnline employment auction websites\nOnline marketplaces of the United States\nTelecommuting",
"Dato' Sri Siti Nurhaliza On Tour is an Asian concert tour by Malaysian singer Siti Nurhaliza. The concert was held on February 21 to March 16, 2019 to coincide with 24th anniversary of Siti's musical career. Estimated at a budget about RM10 million, Siti Nurhaliza on Tour was touted as the most expensive concerts in the Malaysian entertainment history. Siti went on planned to embark her concert tour in London which scheduled in April.\n\nBackground\nThe concert was announced by Siti during the concert's press conference in 18 December 2018. She discloses that the organizer, Shiraz Projects to received any sponsorships openly to any parties for her concert, which slated to toured four countries by 2019. She commented: \"I’m blessed that the organiser behind the tour (Shiraz Project), has arranged for vocal training sessions from the very best. There’s always room for improvement in anything you do, even if you’ve been doing it for a long time,\".\n\nTour dates\n\nSee also\n List of Siti Nurhaliza concert tours\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Dato' Sri Siti Nurhaliza On Tour on Facebook\n\n2019 concert tours\nSiti Nurhaliza concert tours"
] |
[
"Julia Louis-Dreyfus",
"1990-98: The Seinfeld years",
"What role did Julia Louis-Dreyfus play on Seinfeld?",
"In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes.",
"How was she chosen for the role?",
"It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric, and demanded that creators Jerry Seinfeld",
"How did the public respond to her performance?",
"Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy their own TV success, including Patricia Heaton, Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Mullally.",
"Did she ever win an Emmy for the role?",
"Her performance on the series was met with critical acclaim, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s.",
"Did she do work on any other projects during 1990 to 1998?",
"Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations,"
] | C_b80e7efaaae84899b32fadeec27cad96_0 | Did she work with any notable actors or actresses during this period? | 6 | Other than Jerry Sienfeld, did Julia Louis-Dreyfus work with any notable actors or actresses during the period of 1990 to 1998? | Julia Louis-Dreyfus | In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes. One of the episodes that she did not appear in was the inaugural pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles", because her character was not initially intended to be a part of the series. It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric, and demanded that creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David add a woman to the cast. It was revealed in the commentary on the DVD package that the addition of a female character was the condition for commissioning the show. Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy their own TV success, including Patricia Heaton, Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Mullally. On the "Notes About Nothing" featurette on the DVD package, Seinfeld says that Louis-Dreyfus' ability to eat a peanut M&M without breaking the peanut aptly describes the actress: "She cracks you up without breaking your nuts." Her performance on the series was met with critical acclaim, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s. Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning one in 1995 and two in both 1997 and 1998, and seven American Comedy Awards, winning five times in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998. In 1996, she received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, an award she was nominated for on seven occasions from 1992 to 1998. After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a "shocker", and that after being in both positions, it was "much better to win than to lose." In 1998, Seinfeld decided to end the series after nine seasons. The series finale aired on May 14 and was one of the most watched TV events in history, with over 76 million people tuning in. During her time on Seinfeld she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry. CANNOTANSWER | she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry. | Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus ( ; born January 13, 1961) is an American actress, comedian, and producer. She is known for her work in the comedy television series Saturday Night Live (1982–1985), Seinfeld (1989–1998), The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006–2010), and Veep (2012–2019). She is one of the most award-winning actresses in American television history, having received more Primetime Emmy Awards and more Screen Actors Guild Awards than any other performer, tying Cloris Leachman (with eight) for the most acting wins.
Louis-Dreyfus broke into comedy as a performer in The Practical Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois, which led to her casting in the sketch show Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985. Her breakthrough came in 1990 with a nine-season run playing Elaine Benes on Seinfeld, one of the most critically and commercially successful sitcoms of all time. Her other notable television roles include Christine Campbell in The New Adventures of Old Christine, which had a five-season run on CBS; and Selina Meyer in Veep, which ran for seven seasons on HBO. Her film roles include Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), Deconstructing Harry (1997), and Enough Said (2013). She also provided voices for the animated films A Bug's Life (1998), Planes (2013), and Onward (2020). In 2021, she began portraying Valentina Allegra de Fontaine in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Louis-Dreyfus has received eleven Emmy Awards, eight for acting and three for producing. She has also received a Golden Globe Award, nine Screen Actors Guild Awards, five American Comedy Awards, and two Critics' Choice Television Awards. Louis-Dreyfus received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010 and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2016, Lena Dunham in Time named Louis-Dreyfus as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in the artists category in the annual Time 100 list. In 2018, she received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, presented by the Kennedy Center as America's highest comedy honor.
Early life
Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus was born in New York City on January 13, 1961. Her American-born mother, Judith (née LeFever), was a writer and special needs tutor, and her French-born father, Gérard Louis-Dreyfus, chaired the Louis Dreyfus Company. Her paternal grandfather, Pierre Louis-Dreyfus, was president of the Louis Dreyfus Group; he was a member of a Jewish family from Alsace and served as a cavalry officer and member of the French Resistance during World War II. She is also a great-great-granddaughter of Léopold Louis-Dreyfus, who in 1851 founded the Louis Dreyfus Group, a French commodities and shipping conglomerate, which members of her family still control; and is distantly related to Alfred Dreyfus of the infamous Dreyfus affair. Her paternal grandmother was born in the US, of partial Mexican origin, and Catholic; during the 1940s, she moved Julia's father to America from France.
In 1962, one year after Louis-Dreyfus's birth, her parents divorced. After moving to Washington, D.C., when Julia was four, her mother married L. Thompson Bowles, dean of the George Washington University Medical School; Louis-Dreyfus gained a half-sister Lauren Bowles, also an actress. Due to her stepfather's work with Project HOPE, Louis-Dreyfus spent her childhood in several states and countries, including Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia. She graduated from the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1979. She later said, "There were things I did in school that, had there been boys in the classroom, I would have been less motivated to do. For instance, I was president of the honor society."
Louis-Dreyfus attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she was a member of the Delta Gamma sorority. She studied theatre and performed in the Mee-Ow Show, a student-run improv and sketch comedy revue, before dropping out during her junior year to take a job at Saturday Night Live. In 2007, she received an honorary doctor of arts degree from Northwestern University.
Career
1982–1988: Early career and Saturday Night Live
As part of her comedic training, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in The Second City, one of Chicago's best-known improvisational theatre groups. It was her performance with The Practical Theatre Company at their "Golden 50th Anniversary Jubilee" that led to her being asked to join the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live at the age of 21.
Louis-Dreyfus subsequently became a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985, the youngest female cast member in the history of the program at that time. During her time on SNL, she appeared alongside several actors who would later rise to prominence, such as Eddie Murphy, Jim Belushi, Billy Crystal, and Martin Short. It was during her third and final year on SNL that she met writer Larry David during his only year on the show, who would later co-create Seinfeld. Louis-Dreyfus has commented that her casting on SNL was a "Cinderella-getting-to-go-to-the-ball kind of experience"; however, she has also admitted that at times it was often quite tense, stating that she "didn't know how to navigate the waters of show business in general and specifically doing a live sketch-comedy show".
Recurring characters on Saturday Night Live
April May June, a televangelist
Becky, El Dorko's (Gary Kroeger) date
Consuela, Chi Chi's friend and co-host of Let's Watch TV
Darla in SNL 's parody of The Little Rascals
Weather Woman, a superhero who controls the weather
Patti Lynn Hunnsucker, a teenage correspondent on Weekend Update
Following her 1985 departure from SNL, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in several films, including Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); Soul Man (1986), starring C. Thomas Howell; and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), in which she starred alongside fellow SNL alumnus Chevy Chase. In 1987 Louis-Dreyfus appeared in the NBC sitcom pilot The Art of Being Nick, an intended spin-off from Family Ties starring Scott Valentine. When the pilot did not make it to series, Louis-Dreyfus was retained by producer Gary David Goldberg for a role on his new sitcom Day by Day, as the sarcastic and materialistic neighbor, Eileen Swift. Premiering in early 1988, Day by Day aired for two seasons on NBC before being cancelled.
1989–1998: Seinfeld and widespread recognition
In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes. One of the episodes that she did not appear in was the pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles", because her character was not initially intended to be a part of the series. It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric and demanded that creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld add a woman to the cast. It was revealed in the commentary on the DVD package that the addition of a female character was the condition for commissioning the show. Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy TV success, including Patricia Heaton and Megan Mullally.
On the "Notes About Nothing" featurette on the DVD package, Seinfeld says that Louis-Dreyfus's ability to eat a peanut M&M without breaking the peanut aptly describes the actress: "She cracks you up without breaking your nuts."
Louis-Dreyfus garnered critical acclaim for her performance on the series, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s. Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning one in 1995 and two in both 1997 and 1998, and seven American Comedy Awards, winning five times in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998. In 1996, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, an award she was nominated for on seven occasions from 1992 to 1998. After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a "shocker", and that after being in both positions, it was "much better to win than to lose."
In 1998, Jerry Seinfeld decided to end the series after nine seasons. The series finale aired on May 14 and was one of the most-watched TV events in history, with over 76 million viewers tuning in.
During her time on Seinfeld, she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry.
1999–2004: Post-Seinfeld
Following a voice role in the highly successful Pixar film A Bug's Life, Louis-Dreyfus lent her voice as Snake's girlfriend Gloria in The Simpsons episode "A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love". In 2001, she made several special guest appearances on Seinfeld co-creator Larry David's show Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing herself fictionally trying to break the "curse" by planning to star in a show in which she would play an actress affected by a Seinfeld-like curse.
After several years away from a regular TV job, Louis-Dreyfus began a new single-camera sitcom, Watching Ellie, which premiered on NBC in February 2002. The series was created by husband Brad Hall and co-starred Steve Carell and Louis-Dreyfus's half-sister Lauren Bowles. The initial premise of the show was to present viewers with a "slice of life" from the goings-on and happenings of the life of Ellie Riggs, a Southern California jazz singer. The first season included a 22-minute countdown kept digitally in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, which many critics panned, claiming it was useless and "did nothing for the show." Overall, the show received mixed reviews but debuted strongly with over 16 million viewers tuning in for the series premiere, and maintained an average audience of about 10 million viewers per week.
When the series returned for a second season in the spring of 2003, it suffered a decline in viewership, averaging around eight million viewers per week. The show had undergone a drastic stylistic change between the production of seasons one and two. The first season was filmed in the single-camera format, but the second season was presented as a traditional multicamera sitcom filmed in front of a live studio audience. With dwindling viewership and failing to retain the numbers from its Frasier lead-in, the series was cancelled by NBC in May 2003.
Following NBC's cancellation of Watching Ellie, the media began circulating rumors of a so-called "Seinfeld curse", which claimed that none of the former Seinfeld actors could ever achieve success again in the television industry. Louis-Dreyfus dismissed the rumor as "a made-up thing by the media", while Seinfeld co-creator Larry David asserted that the curse was "completely idiotic."
Louis-Dreyfus was interested in the role of Susan Mayer on Desperate Housewives, the role that ultimately went to Teri Hatcher. Instead, Louis-Dreyfus scored a recurring guest role as Maggie Lizer, the deceitful prosecutor and love interest of Michael Bluth on the Emmy-winning comedy Arrested Development, from 2004 to 2005.
2005–2010: The New Adventures of Old Christine
In 2005, Louis-Dreyfus was cast in the title role of a new CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine. The series and its concept were created by writer and producer of Will & Grace, Kari Lizer. The series told the story of Christine Campbell, a single mother who manages to maintain a fantastic relationship with her ex-husband while running a women's gym. The series debuted on CBS in March 2006 to an audience of 15 million and was initially a ratings winner for the network.
Louis-Dreyfus also garnered considerable critical acclaim for her performance on the show, with Brian Lowry of Variety stating that Louis-Dreyfus broke the so-called "Seinfeld curse [...] with one of the best conventional half-hours to come along in a while." Alessandra Stanley from The New York Times asserted that Louis-Dreyfus's performance on the series proved she is "one of the funniest women on network television." Louis-Dreyfus additionally earned the 2006 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in the first season. Referring to the curse, she stated in her acceptance speech, "I'm not somebody who really believes in curses, but curse this, baby!" Throughout the course of the series, she received five consecutive Emmy Award nominations, three consecutive Satellite Award nominations, two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and a nomination for a Golden Globe Award. In 2007, she also received two nominations for a People's Choice Award due to her return to popularity, thanks to the success of Old Christine.
In May 2006, Louis-Dreyfus hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live, becoming the first female former cast member to return to the show in the hosting role. In the episode, she appeared with her Seinfeld co-stars Jason Alexander and Jerry Seinfeld in her opening monologue, parodying the so-called "Seinfeld curse". After a successful reception from her 2006 episode, Louis-Dreyfus was invited again to host SNL on March 17, 2007, and again on April 17, 2016. Louis-Dreyfus reprised her role as Gloria in two Simpsons episodes: 2007's "I Don't Wanna Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and 2008's "Sex, Pies and Idiot Scrapes". In the fall of 2009, she appeared with the rest of the cast of Seinfeld in four episodes of the seventh season of Larry David's sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm. The reunion shows received much media attention, and the episode received strong ratings for the HBO series.
In 2009, Louis-Dreyfus was granted the honorary award for Legacy of Laughter at the TV Land Awards. Previous winners had included Lucille Ball and Mike Myers. She was presented with the award by friend Amy Poehler. The following year, Louis-Dreyfus received the 2,407th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on May 4, 2010, for her remarkable contribution to the broadcast television industry as both an actress and a comedian. Originally, the star was set with Louis-Dreyfus's name spelled incorrectly. It was missing both the 'o' and the hyphen in her last name. The star was corrected and the misspelled portion was removed and presented to the actress. Celebrity guests at the event included past and current colleagues from throughout her career, including Clark Gregg, Larry David, Eric McCormack, and Jason Alexander.
Old Christine was cancelled by CBS on May 18, 2010, after 4 years. After its disbandment from CBS, discussions were held with ABC for the show to be revived on the network, but these plans never came to fruition.
In the spring of 2010, Louis-Dreyfus guest-starred several times in the third season of the web series Web Therapy, starring Lisa Kudrow. Louis-Dreyfus played the sister of the main character Fiona Wallice, who gives her therapy online. When the series made the transition to cable television on the Showtime network, Louis-Dreyfus's appearance from the web series was included in the second season, airing in July 2012.
In fall 2010, Louis-Dreyfus made a guest appearance on the live episode of the Emmy-winning comedy 30 Rock. She played Tina Fey's role of Liz Lemon in the cutaway shots. Louis-Dreyfus was among several Saturday Night Live alumni appearing in the episode, including Rachel Dratch, Bill Hader, and regulars Tracy Morgan and Fey herself. Louis-Dreyfus also starred in a "Women of SNL" special on November 1, 2010, on NBC.
2011–2019: Veep
In May and June 2011, Louis-Dreyfus teamed up with husband Brad Hall for her first short film, Picture Paris. This was the first time the couple had collaborated since their early-2000s NBC comedy Watching Ellie. Hall wrote and directed the film, while Louis-Dreyfus played the lead role of an ordinary woman with an extraordinary obsession with the city of Paris. The film premiered on January 29, 2012, at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and has received considerable critical acclaim. It made its television premiere on HBO on December 17, 2012.
In early 2011, HBO confirmed that Louis-Dreyfus had been cast in the lead role of U.S. Vice President Selina Meyer in a new satirical comedy series titled Veep. The series was commissioned for a first season of eight episodes. It was announced, in addition to her starring role, Louis-Dreyfus would also serve as a producer of the series. In preparation for her role, Louis-Dreyfus spoke with two former vice presidents, including Al Gore, senators, speechwriters, chiefs of staffs of various offices, and schedulers. Louis-Dreyfus has commended HBO for allowing the cast and crew to engage in a "protracted pre-production process", which included a six-week rehearsal period before filming began.
The first season was filmed in the fall of 2011, in Baltimore, and the series premiered on April 22, 2012. The premiere episode was met with high praise from critics, particularly for Louis-Dreyfus's performance. The Hollywood Reporter asserted that the character of Selina Meyer was her "best post-Seinfeld role" to date and claimed that she gives "an Emmy-worthy effort", while the Los Angeles Times contended that the series demonstrates that she is "one of the medium's great comediennes." Following the success of the first season, Louis-Dreyfus was named by the Huffington Post as one of the funniest people of 2012, asserting that she is the "most magnetic and naturally funny woman on TV since Mary Tyler Moore."
For her performance on Veep, Louis-Dreyfus has received several accolades, most notably six consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series from 2012 to 2017. Her Emmy wins for Veep, following previous wins for Seinfeld and The New Adventures of Old Christine, resulted in her becoming the only woman to win an acting award for three separate comedy series. Her sixth win for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2016 surpassed the record previously held by Mary Tyler Moore and Candice Bergen for the most wins in that category. In 2017 her sixth consecutive win and eighth acting win overall made her the performer with the most Emmys for the same role in the same series (surpassing Candice Bergen and Don Knotts) and put her in a tie with Cloris Leachman for the most Emmys ever won by a performer. She was also nominated as one of the producers for Veep in the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series category from 2012 to 2014, but the show lost to Modern Family on all three occasions. The show, however, won the top award from 2015 to 2017.
Louis-Dreyfus has also received five Critics' Choice Television Award nominations, winning twice in 2013 and 2014, ten Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning twice in 2014 and 2017, and five Television Critics Association Award nominations, winning once in 2014. Her performance has additionally garnered her five Satellite Award nominations and five consecutive Golden Globe Award nominations.
Louis-Dreyfus lent her voice to the 2013 animated film Planes, in the role of Rochelle. To date, the film has grossed well over $200 million at the box office worldwide. She also starred in the film Enough Said, directed by Nicole Holofcener, which was released on September 18, 2013. This marked her debut as a lead actress in a full-length feature film. The film garnered rave reviews from film critics, ranking among the best-reviewed films of 2013. The website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 96% based on 152 reviews, many of them praising Louis-Dreyfus's performance. She received several Best Actress nominations for her role in the film at award ceremonies, including the Golden Globe Awards, Satellite Awards, Critics' Choice Movie Awards, and the American Comedy Awards.
Since December 2014, Louis-Dreyfus has appeared in a series of television commercials for Old Navy.
On April 16, 2016, she hosted Saturday Night Live for the third time with musical guest Nick Jonas. During the episode's cold open, she reprised her role of Elaine Benes from Seinfeld.
2020–present: Production deal with Apple TV+
In 2020, Louis-Dreyfus headlined the comedy-drama Downhill, opposite Will Ferrell. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released on February 14. Next, she voiced a suburban elf mother in Pixar's Onward opposite Tom Holland and Chris Pratt. The film was released on March 6, 2020.
In January 2020, Louis-Dreyfus signed a multi-year deal with Apple TV+. Under the deal, she will develop new projects for Apple TV+ as both an executive producer and star.
In 2021, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, which is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though she was originally intended to debut in the film Black Widow (where she appears in the post credit scene).
Personal life
Louis-Dreyfus's maternal half-sister, Lauren Bowles, is also an actress. She also has two paternal half-sisters: Phoebe and Emma, the latter of whom died in August 2018. Robert Louis-Dreyfus (1946–2009), one of her cousins, was former CEO of Adidas and owner of the Olympique de Marseille football club.
While at Northwestern, Louis-Dreyfus met future husband and Saturday Night Live comedian Brad Hall. They married in 1987 and have two sons together: Henry (born 1992) and Charles (born 1997). Henry is a singer-songwriter, who has performed on The Tonight Show. Charles was a walk-on for the Northwestern Wildcats men's basketball team. In 2007, Louis-Dreyfus was invited back to Northwestern to receive an honorary Doctor of Arts degree.
Louis-Dreyfus has stated that she holds much respect for "women who are not afraid of making themselves look bad or foolish to get a laugh", and cites her acting idols as Lucille Ball, Mary Tyler Moore, Madeline Kahn, Teri Garr, Valerie Harper, and Cloris Leachman. Actress Tina Fey has stated that Louis-Dreyfus served as inspiration for her character Liz Lemon on the award-winning NBC comedy series 30 Rock.
On September 28, 2017, Louis-Dreyfus announced on Twitter her diagnosis of breast cancer, a diagnosis she received one day after receiving a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role in Veep. She stated, "One in eight women get breast cancer. Today, I'm the one. The good news is that I have the most glorious group of supportive and caring family and friends, and fantastic insurance through my union. The bad news is that not all women are so lucky, so let's fight all cancers and make universal healthcare a reality." She announced on the October 18, 2018, episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! that she was cancer-free.
Politics
Louis-Dreyfus supported Al Gore's 2000 U.S. presidential bid, and also endorsed Barack Obama's bid for the presidency in 2008 and 2012. She appeared in a video that urged President Obama to reject the proposal of the Keystone XL pipeline, arguing that if the pipeline ever were to leak, it would cause mass pollution across the U.S. Additionally, she has voiced her concern for several environmental issues and has raised millions for Heal the Bay, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Trust for Public Land. She also worked for the successful passage of Proposition O, which allocated US$500 million for cleaning up the Los Angeles water supply.
In late October 2010, before the United States Senate election in California, Louis-Dreyfus starred in a humorous Barbara Boxer ad regarding energy policy.
During the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Louis-Dreyfus announced her endorsement of Hillary Clinton for the United States presidential election of that year.
In her acceptance speech at the 2017 Screen Actors Guild Awards, she denounced President Donald Trump's executive order of travel ban as "un-American," and said, "My father fled religious persecution in Nazi-occupied France."
Louis-Dreyfus emceed the final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, endorsing Joe Biden. She has also published information regarding voting by mail and urged all Americans to vote.
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
Julia Louis-Dreyfus has won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series seven times; once for her role on The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006) and six consecutive wins for playing Selina Meyer on Veep (2012–17), as well as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series on one occasion for Seinfeld (1996). As of 2017, she holds the record for the most Primetime Emmy wins as an actor for the same role and is tied with Cloris Leachman for the most acting Primetime Emmy wins (with eight). She has also been nominated for nine Golden Globe Awards, winning one for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film for her role as Elaine Benes on Seinfeld (1995). She has also been nominated for twenty-one Screen Actors Guild Awards and has won five for individual performance (nine all together) for her portrayals on Seinfeld (1997–98) and Veep (2014, 2017–18).
In 2018 she was the twentieth recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
See also
Alfred Dreyfus – A distant relative at the center of the Dreyfus Affair miscarriage of justice
References
External links
Julia Louis-Dreyfus at Emmys.com
Julia Louis-Dreyfus Video produced by Makers: Women Who Make America
1961 births
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses
20th-century American comedians
21st-century American comedians
Actresses from Maryland
Actresses from New York City
American film actresses
American people of Brazilian descent
American people of French-Jewish descent
American people of Mexican descent
American sketch comedians
American stage actresses
American television actresses
American voice actresses
American women comedians
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (television) winners
Comedians from New York City
Hispanic and Latino American actresses
Living people
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Northwestern University School of Communication alumni
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actress in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
People from Bethesda, Maryland
People from Manhattan
Philanthropists from New York (state) | true | [
"Samantha Marie Ware (born September 3, 1991), also known by her singer stage name Sameya, is an American actress and singer. She is best known for portraying Jane Hayward in the sixth season of Glee (2015), as well as Angela Archer in the Netflix series What/If (2019). Ware also played Lily in the Nike web series Margot vs. Lily (2016).\n\nEarly life and career \nHailing from Lincoln, Nebraska, Ware started her acting career while attending Doane University at the age of 19. She started acting in theater productions, being cast in a Las Vegas production of The Lion King as Nala and later in 2012 national tour for The Book of Mormon, for which she won the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Supporting Performer. She was subsequently cast in major roles on the TV series Glee and What/If.\n\nPersonal life \nIn June 2020, Ware accused Glee series main cast member Lea Michele, whom she worked with in late 2014 during Ware's recurring role in the sixth season of the series, of being very rude to her on set, behaving with \"traumatic microaggressions\". Ware made her comments in direct response to Michele having posted a message on social media saying \"George Floyd did not deserve this. This was not an isolated incident and it must end. #BlackLives Matter\", though she did not specifically state that Michele's rude behavior towards new actors with minor roles was akin to the racism involved in the murder of George Floyd.\n\nTwo other actors who co-starred with Michele in the main cast, Heather Morris and Amber Riley, made statements confirming that Michele could be frustratingly rude to everyone on set, but neither saw any link between her wide-ranging rudeness and the implication of Michele being racist. Michele responded with an apology, noting that the comments from numerous cast members in response to Ware's accusation had made her aware that her general treatment of all cast members during those years was \"insensitive or inappropriate\", a sign of \"immaturity\", understood that she was \"unnecessarily difficult\" towards others around her, and she would \"keep working to better myself and take responsibility for my actions.\"\n\nFilmography\n\nFilm and television\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n \n \n\n1991 births\nLiving people\n21st-century American actresses\n21st-century American women singers\nAfrican-American actresses\nAmerican musical theatre actresses\nAmerican stage actresses\nAmerican film actresses\nAmerican television actresses\n21st-century African-American women singers\nAmerican women pop singers\nActors from Lincoln, Nebraska\nMusicians from Lincoln, Nebraska\nActresses from Nebraska\nSingers from Nebraska\n21st-century American singers",
"is a Japanese actress and voice actress.\n\nCareer\nNomura was previously affiliated with Tokyo Actor's Consumer's Cooperative Society, then Aoni Production and now she is affiliated with Ken Production, an agency founded by the late Kenji Utsumi.\n\nPersonal life\nShe was married to fellow voice actor Kenji Utsumi until his death in 2013.\n\nNotable voice roles\nSpeed Racer (1967): Mitchi Shimura (\"Trixie\"; episode 5 onwards)\nBabel II (1973): Yumiko Furumi\nSazae-san (1976–2005): Wakame Isono (2nd voice)\nDoraemon (1979-2005): Shizuka Minamoto\nCalimero (1974): Priscila\nMaya the Bee (1975): Maya\nKämpfer (2009): Tora Harakiri\n\nAwards\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\n1938 births\nLiving people\nVoice actresses from Yokohama\nJapanese video game actresses\nJapanese voice actresses\nTokyo Actor's Consumer's Cooperative Society voice actors\nAoni Production voice actors\nKen Production voice actors\n20th-century Japanese actresses\n21st-century Japanese actresses"
] |
[
"Julia Louis-Dreyfus",
"1990-98: The Seinfeld years",
"What role did Julia Louis-Dreyfus play on Seinfeld?",
"In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes.",
"How was she chosen for the role?",
"It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric, and demanded that creators Jerry Seinfeld",
"How did the public respond to her performance?",
"Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy their own TV success, including Patricia Heaton, Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Mullally.",
"Did she ever win an Emmy for the role?",
"Her performance on the series was met with critical acclaim, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s.",
"Did she do work on any other projects during 1990 to 1998?",
"Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations,",
"Did she work with any notable actors or actresses during this period?",
"she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry."
] | C_b80e7efaaae84899b32fadeec27cad96_0 | Did Julia mention whether she enjoyed playing the character of Elaine? | 7 | Did Julia Louis-Dreyfus mention whether she enjoyed playing the character of Elaine Benes on Sienfeld? | Julia Louis-Dreyfus | In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes. One of the episodes that she did not appear in was the inaugural pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles", because her character was not initially intended to be a part of the series. It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric, and demanded that creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David add a woman to the cast. It was revealed in the commentary on the DVD package that the addition of a female character was the condition for commissioning the show. Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy their own TV success, including Patricia Heaton, Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Mullally. On the "Notes About Nothing" featurette on the DVD package, Seinfeld says that Louis-Dreyfus' ability to eat a peanut M&M without breaking the peanut aptly describes the actress: "She cracks you up without breaking your nuts." Her performance on the series was met with critical acclaim, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s. Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning one in 1995 and two in both 1997 and 1998, and seven American Comedy Awards, winning five times in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998. In 1996, she received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, an award she was nominated for on seven occasions from 1992 to 1998. After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a "shocker", and that after being in both positions, it was "much better to win than to lose." In 1998, Seinfeld decided to end the series after nine seasons. The series finale aired on May 14 and was one of the most watched TV events in history, with over 76 million people tuning in. During her time on Seinfeld she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry. CANNOTANSWER | After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a "shocker", and that after being in both positions, it was "much better to win than to lose." | Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus ( ; born January 13, 1961) is an American actress, comedian, and producer. She is known for her work in the comedy television series Saturday Night Live (1982–1985), Seinfeld (1989–1998), The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006–2010), and Veep (2012–2019). She is one of the most award-winning actresses in American television history, having received more Primetime Emmy Awards and more Screen Actors Guild Awards than any other performer, tying Cloris Leachman (with eight) for the most acting wins.
Louis-Dreyfus broke into comedy as a performer in The Practical Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois, which led to her casting in the sketch show Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985. Her breakthrough came in 1990 with a nine-season run playing Elaine Benes on Seinfeld, one of the most critically and commercially successful sitcoms of all time. Her other notable television roles include Christine Campbell in The New Adventures of Old Christine, which had a five-season run on CBS; and Selina Meyer in Veep, which ran for seven seasons on HBO. Her film roles include Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), Deconstructing Harry (1997), and Enough Said (2013). She also provided voices for the animated films A Bug's Life (1998), Planes (2013), and Onward (2020). In 2021, she began portraying Valentina Allegra de Fontaine in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Louis-Dreyfus has received eleven Emmy Awards, eight for acting and three for producing. She has also received a Golden Globe Award, nine Screen Actors Guild Awards, five American Comedy Awards, and two Critics' Choice Television Awards. Louis-Dreyfus received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010 and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2016, Lena Dunham in Time named Louis-Dreyfus as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in the artists category in the annual Time 100 list. In 2018, she received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, presented by the Kennedy Center as America's highest comedy honor.
Early life
Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus was born in New York City on January 13, 1961. Her American-born mother, Judith (née LeFever), was a writer and special needs tutor, and her French-born father, Gérard Louis-Dreyfus, chaired the Louis Dreyfus Company. Her paternal grandfather, Pierre Louis-Dreyfus, was president of the Louis Dreyfus Group; he was a member of a Jewish family from Alsace and served as a cavalry officer and member of the French Resistance during World War II. She is also a great-great-granddaughter of Léopold Louis-Dreyfus, who in 1851 founded the Louis Dreyfus Group, a French commodities and shipping conglomerate, which members of her family still control; and is distantly related to Alfred Dreyfus of the infamous Dreyfus affair. Her paternal grandmother was born in the US, of partial Mexican origin, and Catholic; during the 1940s, she moved Julia's father to America from France.
In 1962, one year after Louis-Dreyfus's birth, her parents divorced. After moving to Washington, D.C., when Julia was four, her mother married L. Thompson Bowles, dean of the George Washington University Medical School; Louis-Dreyfus gained a half-sister Lauren Bowles, also an actress. Due to her stepfather's work with Project HOPE, Louis-Dreyfus spent her childhood in several states and countries, including Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia. She graduated from the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1979. She later said, "There were things I did in school that, had there been boys in the classroom, I would have been less motivated to do. For instance, I was president of the honor society."
Louis-Dreyfus attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she was a member of the Delta Gamma sorority. She studied theatre and performed in the Mee-Ow Show, a student-run improv and sketch comedy revue, before dropping out during her junior year to take a job at Saturday Night Live. In 2007, she received an honorary doctor of arts degree from Northwestern University.
Career
1982–1988: Early career and Saturday Night Live
As part of her comedic training, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in The Second City, one of Chicago's best-known improvisational theatre groups. It was her performance with The Practical Theatre Company at their "Golden 50th Anniversary Jubilee" that led to her being asked to join the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live at the age of 21.
Louis-Dreyfus subsequently became a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985, the youngest female cast member in the history of the program at that time. During her time on SNL, she appeared alongside several actors who would later rise to prominence, such as Eddie Murphy, Jim Belushi, Billy Crystal, and Martin Short. It was during her third and final year on SNL that she met writer Larry David during his only year on the show, who would later co-create Seinfeld. Louis-Dreyfus has commented that her casting on SNL was a "Cinderella-getting-to-go-to-the-ball kind of experience"; however, she has also admitted that at times it was often quite tense, stating that she "didn't know how to navigate the waters of show business in general and specifically doing a live sketch-comedy show".
Recurring characters on Saturday Night Live
April May June, a televangelist
Becky, El Dorko's (Gary Kroeger) date
Consuela, Chi Chi's friend and co-host of Let's Watch TV
Darla in SNL 's parody of The Little Rascals
Weather Woman, a superhero who controls the weather
Patti Lynn Hunnsucker, a teenage correspondent on Weekend Update
Following her 1985 departure from SNL, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in several films, including Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); Soul Man (1986), starring C. Thomas Howell; and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), in which she starred alongside fellow SNL alumnus Chevy Chase. In 1987 Louis-Dreyfus appeared in the NBC sitcom pilot The Art of Being Nick, an intended spin-off from Family Ties starring Scott Valentine. When the pilot did not make it to series, Louis-Dreyfus was retained by producer Gary David Goldberg for a role on his new sitcom Day by Day, as the sarcastic and materialistic neighbor, Eileen Swift. Premiering in early 1988, Day by Day aired for two seasons on NBC before being cancelled.
1989–1998: Seinfeld and widespread recognition
In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes. One of the episodes that she did not appear in was the pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles", because her character was not initially intended to be a part of the series. It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric and demanded that creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld add a woman to the cast. It was revealed in the commentary on the DVD package that the addition of a female character was the condition for commissioning the show. Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy TV success, including Patricia Heaton and Megan Mullally.
On the "Notes About Nothing" featurette on the DVD package, Seinfeld says that Louis-Dreyfus's ability to eat a peanut M&M without breaking the peanut aptly describes the actress: "She cracks you up without breaking your nuts."
Louis-Dreyfus garnered critical acclaim for her performance on the series, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s. Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning one in 1995 and two in both 1997 and 1998, and seven American Comedy Awards, winning five times in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998. In 1996, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, an award she was nominated for on seven occasions from 1992 to 1998. After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a "shocker", and that after being in both positions, it was "much better to win than to lose."
In 1998, Jerry Seinfeld decided to end the series after nine seasons. The series finale aired on May 14 and was one of the most-watched TV events in history, with over 76 million viewers tuning in.
During her time on Seinfeld, she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry.
1999–2004: Post-Seinfeld
Following a voice role in the highly successful Pixar film A Bug's Life, Louis-Dreyfus lent her voice as Snake's girlfriend Gloria in The Simpsons episode "A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love". In 2001, she made several special guest appearances on Seinfeld co-creator Larry David's show Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing herself fictionally trying to break the "curse" by planning to star in a show in which she would play an actress affected by a Seinfeld-like curse.
After several years away from a regular TV job, Louis-Dreyfus began a new single-camera sitcom, Watching Ellie, which premiered on NBC in February 2002. The series was created by husband Brad Hall and co-starred Steve Carell and Louis-Dreyfus's half-sister Lauren Bowles. The initial premise of the show was to present viewers with a "slice of life" from the goings-on and happenings of the life of Ellie Riggs, a Southern California jazz singer. The first season included a 22-minute countdown kept digitally in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, which many critics panned, claiming it was useless and "did nothing for the show." Overall, the show received mixed reviews but debuted strongly with over 16 million viewers tuning in for the series premiere, and maintained an average audience of about 10 million viewers per week.
When the series returned for a second season in the spring of 2003, it suffered a decline in viewership, averaging around eight million viewers per week. The show had undergone a drastic stylistic change between the production of seasons one and two. The first season was filmed in the single-camera format, but the second season was presented as a traditional multicamera sitcom filmed in front of a live studio audience. With dwindling viewership and failing to retain the numbers from its Frasier lead-in, the series was cancelled by NBC in May 2003.
Following NBC's cancellation of Watching Ellie, the media began circulating rumors of a so-called "Seinfeld curse", which claimed that none of the former Seinfeld actors could ever achieve success again in the television industry. Louis-Dreyfus dismissed the rumor as "a made-up thing by the media", while Seinfeld co-creator Larry David asserted that the curse was "completely idiotic."
Louis-Dreyfus was interested in the role of Susan Mayer on Desperate Housewives, the role that ultimately went to Teri Hatcher. Instead, Louis-Dreyfus scored a recurring guest role as Maggie Lizer, the deceitful prosecutor and love interest of Michael Bluth on the Emmy-winning comedy Arrested Development, from 2004 to 2005.
2005–2010: The New Adventures of Old Christine
In 2005, Louis-Dreyfus was cast in the title role of a new CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine. The series and its concept were created by writer and producer of Will & Grace, Kari Lizer. The series told the story of Christine Campbell, a single mother who manages to maintain a fantastic relationship with her ex-husband while running a women's gym. The series debuted on CBS in March 2006 to an audience of 15 million and was initially a ratings winner for the network.
Louis-Dreyfus also garnered considerable critical acclaim for her performance on the show, with Brian Lowry of Variety stating that Louis-Dreyfus broke the so-called "Seinfeld curse [...] with one of the best conventional half-hours to come along in a while." Alessandra Stanley from The New York Times asserted that Louis-Dreyfus's performance on the series proved she is "one of the funniest women on network television." Louis-Dreyfus additionally earned the 2006 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in the first season. Referring to the curse, she stated in her acceptance speech, "I'm not somebody who really believes in curses, but curse this, baby!" Throughout the course of the series, she received five consecutive Emmy Award nominations, three consecutive Satellite Award nominations, two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and a nomination for a Golden Globe Award. In 2007, she also received two nominations for a People's Choice Award due to her return to popularity, thanks to the success of Old Christine.
In May 2006, Louis-Dreyfus hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live, becoming the first female former cast member to return to the show in the hosting role. In the episode, she appeared with her Seinfeld co-stars Jason Alexander and Jerry Seinfeld in her opening monologue, parodying the so-called "Seinfeld curse". After a successful reception from her 2006 episode, Louis-Dreyfus was invited again to host SNL on March 17, 2007, and again on April 17, 2016. Louis-Dreyfus reprised her role as Gloria in two Simpsons episodes: 2007's "I Don't Wanna Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and 2008's "Sex, Pies and Idiot Scrapes". In the fall of 2009, she appeared with the rest of the cast of Seinfeld in four episodes of the seventh season of Larry David's sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm. The reunion shows received much media attention, and the episode received strong ratings for the HBO series.
In 2009, Louis-Dreyfus was granted the honorary award for Legacy of Laughter at the TV Land Awards. Previous winners had included Lucille Ball and Mike Myers. She was presented with the award by friend Amy Poehler. The following year, Louis-Dreyfus received the 2,407th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on May 4, 2010, for her remarkable contribution to the broadcast television industry as both an actress and a comedian. Originally, the star was set with Louis-Dreyfus's name spelled incorrectly. It was missing both the 'o' and the hyphen in her last name. The star was corrected and the misspelled portion was removed and presented to the actress. Celebrity guests at the event included past and current colleagues from throughout her career, including Clark Gregg, Larry David, Eric McCormack, and Jason Alexander.
Old Christine was cancelled by CBS on May 18, 2010, after 4 years. After its disbandment from CBS, discussions were held with ABC for the show to be revived on the network, but these plans never came to fruition.
In the spring of 2010, Louis-Dreyfus guest-starred several times in the third season of the web series Web Therapy, starring Lisa Kudrow. Louis-Dreyfus played the sister of the main character Fiona Wallice, who gives her therapy online. When the series made the transition to cable television on the Showtime network, Louis-Dreyfus's appearance from the web series was included in the second season, airing in July 2012.
In fall 2010, Louis-Dreyfus made a guest appearance on the live episode of the Emmy-winning comedy 30 Rock. She played Tina Fey's role of Liz Lemon in the cutaway shots. Louis-Dreyfus was among several Saturday Night Live alumni appearing in the episode, including Rachel Dratch, Bill Hader, and regulars Tracy Morgan and Fey herself. Louis-Dreyfus also starred in a "Women of SNL" special on November 1, 2010, on NBC.
2011–2019: Veep
In May and June 2011, Louis-Dreyfus teamed up with husband Brad Hall for her first short film, Picture Paris. This was the first time the couple had collaborated since their early-2000s NBC comedy Watching Ellie. Hall wrote and directed the film, while Louis-Dreyfus played the lead role of an ordinary woman with an extraordinary obsession with the city of Paris. The film premiered on January 29, 2012, at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and has received considerable critical acclaim. It made its television premiere on HBO on December 17, 2012.
In early 2011, HBO confirmed that Louis-Dreyfus had been cast in the lead role of U.S. Vice President Selina Meyer in a new satirical comedy series titled Veep. The series was commissioned for a first season of eight episodes. It was announced, in addition to her starring role, Louis-Dreyfus would also serve as a producer of the series. In preparation for her role, Louis-Dreyfus spoke with two former vice presidents, including Al Gore, senators, speechwriters, chiefs of staffs of various offices, and schedulers. Louis-Dreyfus has commended HBO for allowing the cast and crew to engage in a "protracted pre-production process", which included a six-week rehearsal period before filming began.
The first season was filmed in the fall of 2011, in Baltimore, and the series premiered on April 22, 2012. The premiere episode was met with high praise from critics, particularly for Louis-Dreyfus's performance. The Hollywood Reporter asserted that the character of Selina Meyer was her "best post-Seinfeld role" to date and claimed that she gives "an Emmy-worthy effort", while the Los Angeles Times contended that the series demonstrates that she is "one of the medium's great comediennes." Following the success of the first season, Louis-Dreyfus was named by the Huffington Post as one of the funniest people of 2012, asserting that she is the "most magnetic and naturally funny woman on TV since Mary Tyler Moore."
For her performance on Veep, Louis-Dreyfus has received several accolades, most notably six consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series from 2012 to 2017. Her Emmy wins for Veep, following previous wins for Seinfeld and The New Adventures of Old Christine, resulted in her becoming the only woman to win an acting award for three separate comedy series. Her sixth win for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2016 surpassed the record previously held by Mary Tyler Moore and Candice Bergen for the most wins in that category. In 2017 her sixth consecutive win and eighth acting win overall made her the performer with the most Emmys for the same role in the same series (surpassing Candice Bergen and Don Knotts) and put her in a tie with Cloris Leachman for the most Emmys ever won by a performer. She was also nominated as one of the producers for Veep in the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series category from 2012 to 2014, but the show lost to Modern Family on all three occasions. The show, however, won the top award from 2015 to 2017.
Louis-Dreyfus has also received five Critics' Choice Television Award nominations, winning twice in 2013 and 2014, ten Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning twice in 2014 and 2017, and five Television Critics Association Award nominations, winning once in 2014. Her performance has additionally garnered her five Satellite Award nominations and five consecutive Golden Globe Award nominations.
Louis-Dreyfus lent her voice to the 2013 animated film Planes, in the role of Rochelle. To date, the film has grossed well over $200 million at the box office worldwide. She also starred in the film Enough Said, directed by Nicole Holofcener, which was released on September 18, 2013. This marked her debut as a lead actress in a full-length feature film. The film garnered rave reviews from film critics, ranking among the best-reviewed films of 2013. The website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 96% based on 152 reviews, many of them praising Louis-Dreyfus's performance. She received several Best Actress nominations for her role in the film at award ceremonies, including the Golden Globe Awards, Satellite Awards, Critics' Choice Movie Awards, and the American Comedy Awards.
Since December 2014, Louis-Dreyfus has appeared in a series of television commercials for Old Navy.
On April 16, 2016, she hosted Saturday Night Live for the third time with musical guest Nick Jonas. During the episode's cold open, she reprised her role of Elaine Benes from Seinfeld.
2020–present: Production deal with Apple TV+
In 2020, Louis-Dreyfus headlined the comedy-drama Downhill, opposite Will Ferrell. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released on February 14. Next, she voiced a suburban elf mother in Pixar's Onward opposite Tom Holland and Chris Pratt. The film was released on March 6, 2020.
In January 2020, Louis-Dreyfus signed a multi-year deal with Apple TV+. Under the deal, she will develop new projects for Apple TV+ as both an executive producer and star.
In 2021, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, which is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though she was originally intended to debut in the film Black Widow (where she appears in the post credit scene).
Personal life
Louis-Dreyfus's maternal half-sister, Lauren Bowles, is also an actress. She also has two paternal half-sisters: Phoebe and Emma, the latter of whom died in August 2018. Robert Louis-Dreyfus (1946–2009), one of her cousins, was former CEO of Adidas and owner of the Olympique de Marseille football club.
While at Northwestern, Louis-Dreyfus met future husband and Saturday Night Live comedian Brad Hall. They married in 1987 and have two sons together: Henry (born 1992) and Charles (born 1997). Henry is a singer-songwriter, who has performed on The Tonight Show. Charles was a walk-on for the Northwestern Wildcats men's basketball team. In 2007, Louis-Dreyfus was invited back to Northwestern to receive an honorary Doctor of Arts degree.
Louis-Dreyfus has stated that she holds much respect for "women who are not afraid of making themselves look bad or foolish to get a laugh", and cites her acting idols as Lucille Ball, Mary Tyler Moore, Madeline Kahn, Teri Garr, Valerie Harper, and Cloris Leachman. Actress Tina Fey has stated that Louis-Dreyfus served as inspiration for her character Liz Lemon on the award-winning NBC comedy series 30 Rock.
On September 28, 2017, Louis-Dreyfus announced on Twitter her diagnosis of breast cancer, a diagnosis she received one day after receiving a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role in Veep. She stated, "One in eight women get breast cancer. Today, I'm the one. The good news is that I have the most glorious group of supportive and caring family and friends, and fantastic insurance through my union. The bad news is that not all women are so lucky, so let's fight all cancers and make universal healthcare a reality." She announced on the October 18, 2018, episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! that she was cancer-free.
Politics
Louis-Dreyfus supported Al Gore's 2000 U.S. presidential bid, and also endorsed Barack Obama's bid for the presidency in 2008 and 2012. She appeared in a video that urged President Obama to reject the proposal of the Keystone XL pipeline, arguing that if the pipeline ever were to leak, it would cause mass pollution across the U.S. Additionally, she has voiced her concern for several environmental issues and has raised millions for Heal the Bay, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Trust for Public Land. She also worked for the successful passage of Proposition O, which allocated US$500 million for cleaning up the Los Angeles water supply.
In late October 2010, before the United States Senate election in California, Louis-Dreyfus starred in a humorous Barbara Boxer ad regarding energy policy.
During the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Louis-Dreyfus announced her endorsement of Hillary Clinton for the United States presidential election of that year.
In her acceptance speech at the 2017 Screen Actors Guild Awards, she denounced President Donald Trump's executive order of travel ban as "un-American," and said, "My father fled religious persecution in Nazi-occupied France."
Louis-Dreyfus emceed the final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, endorsing Joe Biden. She has also published information regarding voting by mail and urged all Americans to vote.
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
Julia Louis-Dreyfus has won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series seven times; once for her role on The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006) and six consecutive wins for playing Selina Meyer on Veep (2012–17), as well as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series on one occasion for Seinfeld (1996). As of 2017, she holds the record for the most Primetime Emmy wins as an actor for the same role and is tied with Cloris Leachman for the most acting Primetime Emmy wins (with eight). She has also been nominated for nine Golden Globe Awards, winning one for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film for her role as Elaine Benes on Seinfeld (1995). She has also been nominated for twenty-one Screen Actors Guild Awards and has won five for individual performance (nine all together) for her portrayals on Seinfeld (1997–98) and Veep (2014, 2017–18).
In 2018 she was the twentieth recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
See also
Alfred Dreyfus – A distant relative at the center of the Dreyfus Affair miscarriage of justice
References
External links
Julia Louis-Dreyfus at Emmys.com
Julia Louis-Dreyfus Video produced by Makers: Women Who Make America
1961 births
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses
20th-century American comedians
21st-century American comedians
Actresses from Maryland
Actresses from New York City
American film actresses
American people of Brazilian descent
American people of French-Jewish descent
American people of Mexican descent
American sketch comedians
American stage actresses
American television actresses
American voice actresses
American women comedians
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (television) winners
Comedians from New York City
Hispanic and Latino American actresses
Living people
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Northwestern University School of Communication alumni
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actress in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
People from Bethesda, Maryland
People from Manhattan
Philanthropists from New York (state) | true | [
"Elaine Marley–Threepwood is a fictional character in the Monkey Island series of graphic adventure video games. Created by Ron Gilbert for LucasArts, the character first appears in The Secret of Monkey Island and is one of the core characters in the franchise. Originally conceived as a ruthless island governor, the character evolved during development into the protagonist's love interest. While the first two games in the series did not feature voice acting, Elaine was voiced by Alexandra Boyd in The Curse of Monkey Island and by Charity James in Escape from Monkey Island; Boyd would reprise the role for later entries in the franchise.\n\nElaine is the governor of the Tri-Island Area, a fictional group of pirate islands in the Caribbean. She is loved by the undead pirate LeChuck, who never ceases to pursue her affections and attempts to turn her into his undead bride, but Elaine instead falls in love with hapless protagonist Guybrush Threepwood. Elaine is consistently kidnapped by LeChuck, prompting Guybrush to attempt a rescue, although Elaine is usually more than capable of escaping predicaments by herself. She eventually marries Guybrush and relinquishes her gubernatorial responsibilities to her grandfather, travelling with Guybrush to the fictional Gulf of Melange to cure the outbreak of a voodoo-empowered pox.\n\nThe character has enjoyed positive critical reception. Several sources commended Elaine's aberration of the damsel in distress stereotype. Elaine has been ranked on a number of lists regarding the best female characters in the video game industry, and has received praise for her visual design and resilient personality. Critics have also complimented Boyd's and James' voice acting for the character in the later installments of the series, though some expressed disappointment at the character's reduced lines in The Curse of Monkey Island.\n\nCharacter design\nThe original script for The Secret of Monkey Island called for a character simply named \"the Governor\"; Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert had envisioned her as a far more ruthless character. The name \"Elaine\" was created later in development by Dave Grossman, who wrote the final scenes of the game in which protagonist Guybrush Threepwood disrupts the wedding of antagonist LeChuck and the governor. One of Grossman's options for gatecrashing the wedding is having Guybrush scream \"Elaine!\" in a parody of a similar scene in the 1967 film The Graduate; Gilbert appreciated the reference, so Elaine was adopted as the governor's name. As development on the game further progressed, the character evolved from being a ruthless governor to the player character's love interest.\n\nWhen the player talks to a number of characters in The Secret of Monkey Island, a close-up portrait of the character is shown. Elaine's appearance in this portrait was based on Avril Harrison, an artist working at LucasArts. Gilbert always felt bothered by these close-up portraits, stating that \"while they were great art, I never felt they matched the style of the rest of the game\". In the 2009 Special Edition, these close-ups were redone in the same stylized artwork featured in the rest of the game.\n\nIn The Curse of Monkey Island, Elaine realises that Guybrush is her true love, and marries him. However, Ron Gilbert did not intend for the relationship between the characters to develop in this way, stating that Elaine \"never really liked Guybrush and thought of him as more of a little brother\". Gilbert was not involved in the production of The Curse of Monkey Island; while thinking that the new development team \"did a pretty good job of capturing what Monkey Island was about\", the relationship between Elaine and Guybrush \"was the thing that bugged [Gilbert] the most about The Curse of Monkey Island\".\n\nThe Curse of Monkey Island was the first Monkey Island game to feature voice acting; in it, the part of Elaine Marley was given to British actress Alexandra Boyd. Boyd explains that she got the part of Elaine as she had worked with voice director Darragh O'Farrell previously; O'Farrell brought Boyd in to read for the part. Boyd joked that \"I figured I got the part because I have red hair like her\". Boyd was not contacted to return as the character for Escape from Monkey Island; Elaine was instead voiced by American actress Charity James. Nevertheless, Boyd reprised the role for Telltale Games' Tales of Monkey Island and the later enhanced remakes of the first two games. Boyd was glad to return, stating that the character \"is very well written and it’s fun doing all that shouting at LeChuck and Guybrush! Exhausting but fun\". Rather than travelling to Telltale's studio in San Rafael, Boyd instead recorded her lines for Tales of Monkey Island in London, communicating with the director remotely with Skype. The development of Elaine's character was one of Gilbert's aims for Tales of Monkey Island; Gilbert wanted Elaine to \"be better informed and more capable than most of the other characters\".\n\nAttributes and depiction\nIntelligent and highly resourceful, Elaine is depicted as a caring and kind person. She is usually more than capable of taking care of herself; on the multiple occasions that she is kidnapped by LeChuck, she is usually able to escape at her own volition and formulate plans to defeat her adversaries. In addition, Elaine is proficient in personal combat and displays an understanding of strategy in battle, reinforced by calm personality that allows Elaine to use common sense and stay composed despite dire situations. While attracted to piracy, Elaine is initially wary of pursuing a relationship with pirates due to a bad liaison with LeChuck while the pirate captain was still alive. Nevertheless, Elaine falls in love with Guybrush, seeing past his faults in favor of his kind personality and sharp wit. While Elaine is the dominant partner in their relationship, she still has faith in his abilities regardless of Guybrush's hapless disposition.\n\nElaine is usually depicted as a beautiful woman with long red hair and with green eyes. She wears a variety of pirate clothing consistent with the game's Golden Age of Piracy setting; her outfit usually consists of pantaloons, a blouse worn under a lightweight tunic, a sash, boots and a headscarf. Elaine usually wears gold earrings, though by Tales of Monkey Island, she wears her diamond engagement ring as an earring until Chapter 2. Her appearances in The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge are in the form of pixel art, with appearances slightly differing between the EGA, Amiga and VGA versions of the games. By The Curse of Monkey Island, Elaine is rendered in a cartoon art style by LucasArts artists Larry Ahern and Bill Tiller, although the character's choice of clothing remains consistent. Escape from Monkey Island translated Ahern and Tiller's depiction into 3D graphics, while the later special editions and Tales of Monkey Island produced a more stylized art form for the character. While under LeChuck's influence as his demon bride in Tales of Monkey Island, Elaine is dressed in a Gothic wedding dress and a tiara, her eyes are pupiless and her skin is given a green hue.\n\nAppearances\n\nElaine Marley debuts in The Secret of Monkey Island as the governor of Mêlée Island, on which hapless protagonist Guybrush Threepwood is striving to become a pirate. As governor, she attracts many suitors, one of these being the pirate captain LeChuck. Although Elaine rebukes\nLeChuck's advances, he nevertheless pursues her love and aims to impress her by discovering the secret of Monkey Island. The exhibition ultimately costs LeChuck his life, but he returns as a ghost still intent on marrying Elaine. LeChuck's ambitions for Elaine's hand in marriage—whether given willingly or not—form a major part of the franchise's plot. Elaine first encounters Guybrush when he breaks into the governor's mansion on Mêlée Island in an attempt to steal a valuable idol. Elaine has been fascinated to meet Guybrush since hearing of his arrival on the island and his strange name, however, their first meeting is stunted by Guybrush being too awestruck by Elaine's beauty to say anything intelligible. When the local sheriff tries to drown Guybrush after a fight, Elaine nevertheless rushes to his aid, confessing that she feels deeply attracted to Guybrush, which he reciprocates. She implores Guybrush to finish his pirate trials before they act on their new-found love, but is kidnapped by LeChuck and taken to his hideout on Monkey Island when the ghost pirate's crew suddenly raids the island. Guybrush mounts a rescue attempt, but fails to reach Elaine before LeChuck's ship returns to Mêlée Island for LeChuck's wedding to Elaine. The well-intentioned Threepwood gatecrashes the wedding, but in actuality ruins Elaine's own plan to defeat LeChuck with an anti-ghost concoction. Guybrush still manages to destroy LeChuck, and the game closes with the happy couple watching the fireworks as the evil pirate's ghost form explodes.\n\nElaine's role is significantly reduced for the sequel Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, though the majority of the story is conveyed by Guybrush to Elaine in the form of a flashback. Between the games, the two have broken off their relationship and Elaine has moved to her governor's mansion on Booty Island. When Guybrush appears at the mansion, she presumes he has come to apologize; instead he is looking for a map that belonged to Elaine's grandfather, which leads to fabled treasure Big Whoop. After discovering Guybrush's intentions, Elaine is infuriated and refuses to speak to him. Guybrush eventually becomes trapped at the site of Big Whoop, with Elaine arriving to rescue him. Guybrush falls into a chasm, where he is confronted by LeChuck, recently resurrected as a zombie. As the game ends with Guybrush thinking he is a child in a theme park, Elaine is seen worrying that LeChuck has placed a curse on Guybrush.\n\nIn The Curse of Monkey Island, with Guybrush indisposed at the end of LeChuck's Revenge, LeChuck attacks Plunder Island, the third island covered by Elaine's gubernatorial powers. LeChuck's efforts to buy Elaine's love are again rebuked by Elaine during an exchange of cannon fire; Elaine is angry at LeChuck for having apparently killed Guybrush, who she realises is the true love of her life. The battle is interrupted by Guybrush, who has escaped from LeChuck's curse and helps defeat the zombie pirate. Afterwards, Guybrush proposes to Elaine, giving her a diamond ring found in LeChuck's hold. Unknown to Guybrush, the ring is cursed and turns Elaine into solid gold. Guybrush manages to remove the curse, but both are captured by a reincarnated demon LeChuck. LeChuck plans to turn Elaine into a fellow undead creature, forcing her to accept him as he will be the only other person in a similar condition. Both Elaine and Guybrush escape, with Elaine eluding LeChuck until he is trapped under an avalanche of ice by Guybrush. Elaine and Guybrush marry, and leave on their honeymoon.\n\nElaine and Guybrush return to Mêlée Island in Escape from Monkey Island from their lengthy honeymoon to find that she has been declared legally dead; as a result the governorship of the Tri-Island Area is up for election. While Elaine and Guybrush work on reversing her legal demise, they discover that the other candidate in the election is actually LeChuck in disguise, but the townspeople, feeling neglected by Elaine's long absence, do not believe her. Guybrush leaves to prevent the Ultimate Insult, a powerful voodoo talisman, from falling into the hands of LeChuck's co-conspirator Ozzie Mandrill. Elaine is defeated in the election and LeChuck becomes governor, while Guybrush is captured and marooned on Monkey Island. On Monkey Island, Guybrush discovers that resident castaway Herman Toothrot is actually Horatio Marley, Elaine's long thought dead grandfather. The two escape Monkey Island and defeat LeChuck and Mandrill. Elaine asks Horatio to take over her position as governor of the Tri-Island Area, and Guybrush and Elaine depart.\n\nIn Tales of Monkey Island, set several years after Escape from Monkey Island, Elaine has once again been kidnapped by LeChuck. In his rescue attempt, Guybrush inadvertently releases a voodoo pox over Gulf of Melange, which turns LeChuck into a human. While events separate Guybrush and Elaine, she befriends the now seemingly unmalicious LeChuck, and helps him return monkeys used for his voodoo spells to their homes. Elaine also attempts, without success, to arbitrate between merpeople with access to a cure for the pox and infected pirates. When negotiations break down, Elaine participates in a battle around the Jerkbait Islands to drive off the pirates. However, Elaine becomes infected with the pox and loses control, travelling to Flotsam Island to sack the town and kill Morgan LeFlay, a bounty hunter who she sees as a rival for Guybrush's love. Guybrush cures the pox, but LeChuck turns on him and fatally stabs him; Elaine cradles her husband as he dies. LeChuck takes Elaine captive and appears to convince her to join him as his demon bride; however, Elaine only submits to LeChuck to acquire a voodoo cutlass capable of destroying LeChuck. Guybrush returns as a ghost and maneuvers LeChuck into a position where Elaine can attack him with the cutlass. With LeChuck defeated, Guybrush restores himself to life by using a spell with Elaine's wedding ring, and returns to his wife.\n\nReception\nThe character of Elaine Marley has garnered a positive reception from critics within the video game industry. Described by GameSpot as the impetus for the whole series, critics lauded Elaine's non-conformity to the damsel in distress stereotype. GameSpot noted that Elaine is usually much more proficient at escaping trouble \"than the so-called hero who comes to save her\", while the video game culture journal Eludamos approved of the character for allowing a level of \"feminine expression which did not necessary always conform to passive ideals of the damsel in distress\". The website That Guy with the Glasses put Elaine as the eighth best female character in gaming, describing her as possibly the only staple character in the series to have \"a shred of sanity and smarts\", praising the character's independence and resilience as well as noting that as a woman in the Golden Age of Piracy, Elaine has risen to a position of power far above what would be historically considered normal for the time.\n\nEurogamer commended Elaine's design as \"worthy of acclaim\", naming her the \"Best Female Supporting Character\" in their 2001 annual Gaming Globes awards, while IGN described her alongside Guybrush and LeChuck as one of \"the most beloved adventure characters of all time\". Alexandra Boyd and Charity James too have been praised for their voicing of Elaine; Computer Games Magazine described Boyd's work for The Curse of Monkey Island as \"wonderful\", though lamented that she did not speak more in the game, while Macworld admired the character's depiction in Escape from Monkey Island as \"beautiful and plucky\". Gadgette also listed Elaine as 4th of their favorite female video game character. IGN India, The Guardian, and GamesRadar all claimed that Elaine and Guybrush were the best video game romance.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Elaine Marley on the Monkey Island Wiki\n\nFemale characters in video games\nFictional governors\nFictional female pirates\nFictional socialites\nMonkey Island characters\nPolitician characters in video games\nVideo game characters introduced in 1990",
"Martha Julia () is a Mexican actress. She is best known for playing Isadora Duarte Montalvo in the telenovela Destilando Amor.\n\nCareer\nMartha Julia debuted as soap opera actress in 1995 playing Consuelo Flores, a mistress, in the melodrama El premio mayor. Two years later she returned as the same character in Salud, dinero y amor. She returned to television in 2001 in the soap opera Amigas y rivales playing the character of Margarita.\n\nShe acted in the soap operas Las vías del amor (2002) and Luciana y Nicolás (2003), the latter which was filmed in Peru. In May 2004, she participated as a housemate/tenant in Big Brother VIP 3 (Part 2). In 2005, she acted in the soap opera La Madrastra as the character Ana Rosa.\n\nLater in 2007, Martha Julia was in the soap opera Destilando Amor playing the antagonist Isadora. In 2008, she joined the cast of Alma de Hierro as Paty, which was produced by Roberto Gómez Fernández.\n\nIn 2010, she was a villain in Niña de mi corazón, a production of Pedro Damián, playing the character Tamara. In October of that same year, she had a role as a maid-of-honor in Soy tu dueña, a production of Nicandro Díaz González. Later that year she joined the cast of Cuando me enamoro, produced by Carlos Moreno Laguillo, in the role of Marina.\n\nMartha Julia played the antagonist Flor Escutia in Corona de lágrimas.\n\nFilmography\n\nTelevision roles\n\nExternal links\n \n\nLiving people\nMexican telenovela actresses\nMexican television actresses\nPeople from Culiacán\nActresses from Sinaloa\n20th-century Mexican actresses\n21st-century Mexican actresses\nYear of birth missing (living people)"
] |
[
"Julia Louis-Dreyfus",
"1990-98: The Seinfeld years",
"What role did Julia Louis-Dreyfus play on Seinfeld?",
"In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes.",
"How was she chosen for the role?",
"It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric, and demanded that creators Jerry Seinfeld",
"How did the public respond to her performance?",
"Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy their own TV success, including Patricia Heaton, Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Mullally.",
"Did she ever win an Emmy for the role?",
"Her performance on the series was met with critical acclaim, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s.",
"Did she do work on any other projects during 1990 to 1998?",
"Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations,",
"Did she work with any notable actors or actresses during this period?",
"she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry.",
"Did Julia mention whether she enjoyed playing the character of Elaine?",
"After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a \"shocker\", and that after being in both positions, it was \"much better to win than to lose.\""
] | C_b80e7efaaae84899b32fadeec27cad96_0 | When was Seinfeld cancelled? | 8 | When was Seinfeld cancelled? | Julia Louis-Dreyfus | In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes. One of the episodes that she did not appear in was the inaugural pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles", because her character was not initially intended to be a part of the series. It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric, and demanded that creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David add a woman to the cast. It was revealed in the commentary on the DVD package that the addition of a female character was the condition for commissioning the show. Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy their own TV success, including Patricia Heaton, Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Mullally. On the "Notes About Nothing" featurette on the DVD package, Seinfeld says that Louis-Dreyfus' ability to eat a peanut M&M without breaking the peanut aptly describes the actress: "She cracks you up without breaking your nuts." Her performance on the series was met with critical acclaim, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s. Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning one in 1995 and two in both 1997 and 1998, and seven American Comedy Awards, winning five times in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998. In 1996, she received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, an award she was nominated for on seven occasions from 1992 to 1998. After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a "shocker", and that after being in both positions, it was "much better to win than to lose." In 1998, Seinfeld decided to end the series after nine seasons. The series finale aired on May 14 and was one of the most watched TV events in history, with over 76 million people tuning in. During her time on Seinfeld she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry. CANNOTANSWER | In 1998, Seinfeld decided to end the series after nine seasons. The series finale aired on | Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus ( ; born January 13, 1961) is an American actress, comedian, and producer. She is known for her work in the comedy television series Saturday Night Live (1982–1985), Seinfeld (1989–1998), The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006–2010), and Veep (2012–2019). She is one of the most award-winning actresses in American television history, having received more Primetime Emmy Awards and more Screen Actors Guild Awards than any other performer, tying Cloris Leachman (with eight) for the most acting wins.
Louis-Dreyfus broke into comedy as a performer in The Practical Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois, which led to her casting in the sketch show Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985. Her breakthrough came in 1990 with a nine-season run playing Elaine Benes on Seinfeld, one of the most critically and commercially successful sitcoms of all time. Her other notable television roles include Christine Campbell in The New Adventures of Old Christine, which had a five-season run on CBS; and Selina Meyer in Veep, which ran for seven seasons on HBO. Her film roles include Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), Deconstructing Harry (1997), and Enough Said (2013). She also provided voices for the animated films A Bug's Life (1998), Planes (2013), and Onward (2020). In 2021, she began portraying Valentina Allegra de Fontaine in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Louis-Dreyfus has received eleven Emmy Awards, eight for acting and three for producing. She has also received a Golden Globe Award, nine Screen Actors Guild Awards, five American Comedy Awards, and two Critics' Choice Television Awards. Louis-Dreyfus received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010 and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2016, Lena Dunham in Time named Louis-Dreyfus as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in the artists category in the annual Time 100 list. In 2018, she received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, presented by the Kennedy Center as America's highest comedy honor.
Early life
Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus was born in New York City on January 13, 1961. Her American-born mother, Judith (née LeFever), was a writer and special needs tutor, and her French-born father, Gérard Louis-Dreyfus, chaired the Louis Dreyfus Company. Her paternal grandfather, Pierre Louis-Dreyfus, was president of the Louis Dreyfus Group; he was a member of a Jewish family from Alsace and served as a cavalry officer and member of the French Resistance during World War II. She is also a great-great-granddaughter of Léopold Louis-Dreyfus, who in 1851 founded the Louis Dreyfus Group, a French commodities and shipping conglomerate, which members of her family still control; and is distantly related to Alfred Dreyfus of the infamous Dreyfus affair. Her paternal grandmother was born in the US, of partial Mexican origin, and Catholic; during the 1940s, she moved Julia's father to America from France.
In 1962, one year after Louis-Dreyfus's birth, her parents divorced. After moving to Washington, D.C., when Julia was four, her mother married L. Thompson Bowles, dean of the George Washington University Medical School; Louis-Dreyfus gained a half-sister Lauren Bowles, also an actress. Due to her stepfather's work with Project HOPE, Louis-Dreyfus spent her childhood in several states and countries, including Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia. She graduated from the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1979. She later said, "There were things I did in school that, had there been boys in the classroom, I would have been less motivated to do. For instance, I was president of the honor society."
Louis-Dreyfus attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she was a member of the Delta Gamma sorority. She studied theatre and performed in the Mee-Ow Show, a student-run improv and sketch comedy revue, before dropping out during her junior year to take a job at Saturday Night Live. In 2007, she received an honorary doctor of arts degree from Northwestern University.
Career
1982–1988: Early career and Saturday Night Live
As part of her comedic training, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in The Second City, one of Chicago's best-known improvisational theatre groups. It was her performance with The Practical Theatre Company at their "Golden 50th Anniversary Jubilee" that led to her being asked to join the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live at the age of 21.
Louis-Dreyfus subsequently became a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985, the youngest female cast member in the history of the program at that time. During her time on SNL, she appeared alongside several actors who would later rise to prominence, such as Eddie Murphy, Jim Belushi, Billy Crystal, and Martin Short. It was during her third and final year on SNL that she met writer Larry David during his only year on the show, who would later co-create Seinfeld. Louis-Dreyfus has commented that her casting on SNL was a "Cinderella-getting-to-go-to-the-ball kind of experience"; however, she has also admitted that at times it was often quite tense, stating that she "didn't know how to navigate the waters of show business in general and specifically doing a live sketch-comedy show".
Recurring characters on Saturday Night Live
April May June, a televangelist
Becky, El Dorko's (Gary Kroeger) date
Consuela, Chi Chi's friend and co-host of Let's Watch TV
Darla in SNL 's parody of The Little Rascals
Weather Woman, a superhero who controls the weather
Patti Lynn Hunnsucker, a teenage correspondent on Weekend Update
Following her 1985 departure from SNL, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in several films, including Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); Soul Man (1986), starring C. Thomas Howell; and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), in which she starred alongside fellow SNL alumnus Chevy Chase. In 1987 Louis-Dreyfus appeared in the NBC sitcom pilot The Art of Being Nick, an intended spin-off from Family Ties starring Scott Valentine. When the pilot did not make it to series, Louis-Dreyfus was retained by producer Gary David Goldberg for a role on his new sitcom Day by Day, as the sarcastic and materialistic neighbor, Eileen Swift. Premiering in early 1988, Day by Day aired for two seasons on NBC before being cancelled.
1989–1998: Seinfeld and widespread recognition
In the early 1990s, Louis-Dreyfus became famous for the role of Elaine Benes on NBC's Seinfeld. She played the role for nine seasons, appearing in all but three episodes. One of the episodes that she did not appear in was the pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles", because her character was not initially intended to be a part of the series. It was only after the first episode that NBC executives felt the show was too male-centric and demanded that creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld add a woman to the cast. It was revealed in the commentary on the DVD package that the addition of a female character was the condition for commissioning the show. Louis-Dreyfus won the role over several other actresses who would also eventually enjoy TV success, including Patricia Heaton and Megan Mullally.
On the "Notes About Nothing" featurette on the DVD package, Seinfeld says that Louis-Dreyfus's ability to eat a peanut M&M without breaking the peanut aptly describes the actress: "She cracks you up without breaking your nuts."
Louis-Dreyfus garnered critical acclaim for her performance on the series, and she was a regular winner and nominee at television award shows throughout the 1990s. Her performance earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, winning once in 1994, nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning one in 1995 and two in both 1997 and 1998, and seven American Comedy Awards, winning five times in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997 and 1998. In 1996, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, an award she was nominated for on seven occasions from 1992 to 1998. After receiving the award, Louis-Dreyfus claimed the win was a "shocker", and that after being in both positions, it was "much better to win than to lose."
In 1998, Jerry Seinfeld decided to end the series after nine seasons. The series finale aired on May 14 and was one of the most-watched TV events in history, with over 76 million viewers tuning in.
During her time on Seinfeld, she appeared in several films, including Fathers' Day, opposite Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, and Woody Allen's Oscar-nominated Deconstructing Harry.
1999–2004: Post-Seinfeld
Following a voice role in the highly successful Pixar film A Bug's Life, Louis-Dreyfus lent her voice as Snake's girlfriend Gloria in The Simpsons episode "A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love". In 2001, she made several special guest appearances on Seinfeld co-creator Larry David's show Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing herself fictionally trying to break the "curse" by planning to star in a show in which she would play an actress affected by a Seinfeld-like curse.
After several years away from a regular TV job, Louis-Dreyfus began a new single-camera sitcom, Watching Ellie, which premiered on NBC in February 2002. The series was created by husband Brad Hall and co-starred Steve Carell and Louis-Dreyfus's half-sister Lauren Bowles. The initial premise of the show was to present viewers with a "slice of life" from the goings-on and happenings of the life of Ellie Riggs, a Southern California jazz singer. The first season included a 22-minute countdown kept digitally in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, which many critics panned, claiming it was useless and "did nothing for the show." Overall, the show received mixed reviews but debuted strongly with over 16 million viewers tuning in for the series premiere, and maintained an average audience of about 10 million viewers per week.
When the series returned for a second season in the spring of 2003, it suffered a decline in viewership, averaging around eight million viewers per week. The show had undergone a drastic stylistic change between the production of seasons one and two. The first season was filmed in the single-camera format, but the second season was presented as a traditional multicamera sitcom filmed in front of a live studio audience. With dwindling viewership and failing to retain the numbers from its Frasier lead-in, the series was cancelled by NBC in May 2003.
Following NBC's cancellation of Watching Ellie, the media began circulating rumors of a so-called "Seinfeld curse", which claimed that none of the former Seinfeld actors could ever achieve success again in the television industry. Louis-Dreyfus dismissed the rumor as "a made-up thing by the media", while Seinfeld co-creator Larry David asserted that the curse was "completely idiotic."
Louis-Dreyfus was interested in the role of Susan Mayer on Desperate Housewives, the role that ultimately went to Teri Hatcher. Instead, Louis-Dreyfus scored a recurring guest role as Maggie Lizer, the deceitful prosecutor and love interest of Michael Bluth on the Emmy-winning comedy Arrested Development, from 2004 to 2005.
2005–2010: The New Adventures of Old Christine
In 2005, Louis-Dreyfus was cast in the title role of a new CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine. The series and its concept were created by writer and producer of Will & Grace, Kari Lizer. The series told the story of Christine Campbell, a single mother who manages to maintain a fantastic relationship with her ex-husband while running a women's gym. The series debuted on CBS in March 2006 to an audience of 15 million and was initially a ratings winner for the network.
Louis-Dreyfus also garnered considerable critical acclaim for her performance on the show, with Brian Lowry of Variety stating that Louis-Dreyfus broke the so-called "Seinfeld curse [...] with one of the best conventional half-hours to come along in a while." Alessandra Stanley from The New York Times asserted that Louis-Dreyfus's performance on the series proved she is "one of the funniest women on network television." Louis-Dreyfus additionally earned the 2006 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in the first season. Referring to the curse, she stated in her acceptance speech, "I'm not somebody who really believes in curses, but curse this, baby!" Throughout the course of the series, she received five consecutive Emmy Award nominations, three consecutive Satellite Award nominations, two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and a nomination for a Golden Globe Award. In 2007, she also received two nominations for a People's Choice Award due to her return to popularity, thanks to the success of Old Christine.
In May 2006, Louis-Dreyfus hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live, becoming the first female former cast member to return to the show in the hosting role. In the episode, she appeared with her Seinfeld co-stars Jason Alexander and Jerry Seinfeld in her opening monologue, parodying the so-called "Seinfeld curse". After a successful reception from her 2006 episode, Louis-Dreyfus was invited again to host SNL on March 17, 2007, and again on April 17, 2016. Louis-Dreyfus reprised her role as Gloria in two Simpsons episodes: 2007's "I Don't Wanna Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and 2008's "Sex, Pies and Idiot Scrapes". In the fall of 2009, she appeared with the rest of the cast of Seinfeld in four episodes of the seventh season of Larry David's sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm. The reunion shows received much media attention, and the episode received strong ratings for the HBO series.
In 2009, Louis-Dreyfus was granted the honorary award for Legacy of Laughter at the TV Land Awards. Previous winners had included Lucille Ball and Mike Myers. She was presented with the award by friend Amy Poehler. The following year, Louis-Dreyfus received the 2,407th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on May 4, 2010, for her remarkable contribution to the broadcast television industry as both an actress and a comedian. Originally, the star was set with Louis-Dreyfus's name spelled incorrectly. It was missing both the 'o' and the hyphen in her last name. The star was corrected and the misspelled portion was removed and presented to the actress. Celebrity guests at the event included past and current colleagues from throughout her career, including Clark Gregg, Larry David, Eric McCormack, and Jason Alexander.
Old Christine was cancelled by CBS on May 18, 2010, after 4 years. After its disbandment from CBS, discussions were held with ABC for the show to be revived on the network, but these plans never came to fruition.
In the spring of 2010, Louis-Dreyfus guest-starred several times in the third season of the web series Web Therapy, starring Lisa Kudrow. Louis-Dreyfus played the sister of the main character Fiona Wallice, who gives her therapy online. When the series made the transition to cable television on the Showtime network, Louis-Dreyfus's appearance from the web series was included in the second season, airing in July 2012.
In fall 2010, Louis-Dreyfus made a guest appearance on the live episode of the Emmy-winning comedy 30 Rock. She played Tina Fey's role of Liz Lemon in the cutaway shots. Louis-Dreyfus was among several Saturday Night Live alumni appearing in the episode, including Rachel Dratch, Bill Hader, and regulars Tracy Morgan and Fey herself. Louis-Dreyfus also starred in a "Women of SNL" special on November 1, 2010, on NBC.
2011–2019: Veep
In May and June 2011, Louis-Dreyfus teamed up with husband Brad Hall for her first short film, Picture Paris. This was the first time the couple had collaborated since their early-2000s NBC comedy Watching Ellie. Hall wrote and directed the film, while Louis-Dreyfus played the lead role of an ordinary woman with an extraordinary obsession with the city of Paris. The film premiered on January 29, 2012, at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and has received considerable critical acclaim. It made its television premiere on HBO on December 17, 2012.
In early 2011, HBO confirmed that Louis-Dreyfus had been cast in the lead role of U.S. Vice President Selina Meyer in a new satirical comedy series titled Veep. The series was commissioned for a first season of eight episodes. It was announced, in addition to her starring role, Louis-Dreyfus would also serve as a producer of the series. In preparation for her role, Louis-Dreyfus spoke with two former vice presidents, including Al Gore, senators, speechwriters, chiefs of staffs of various offices, and schedulers. Louis-Dreyfus has commended HBO for allowing the cast and crew to engage in a "protracted pre-production process", which included a six-week rehearsal period before filming began.
The first season was filmed in the fall of 2011, in Baltimore, and the series premiered on April 22, 2012. The premiere episode was met with high praise from critics, particularly for Louis-Dreyfus's performance. The Hollywood Reporter asserted that the character of Selina Meyer was her "best post-Seinfeld role" to date and claimed that she gives "an Emmy-worthy effort", while the Los Angeles Times contended that the series demonstrates that she is "one of the medium's great comediennes." Following the success of the first season, Louis-Dreyfus was named by the Huffington Post as one of the funniest people of 2012, asserting that she is the "most magnetic and naturally funny woman on TV since Mary Tyler Moore."
For her performance on Veep, Louis-Dreyfus has received several accolades, most notably six consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series from 2012 to 2017. Her Emmy wins for Veep, following previous wins for Seinfeld and The New Adventures of Old Christine, resulted in her becoming the only woman to win an acting award for three separate comedy series. Her sixth win for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2016 surpassed the record previously held by Mary Tyler Moore and Candice Bergen for the most wins in that category. In 2017 her sixth consecutive win and eighth acting win overall made her the performer with the most Emmys for the same role in the same series (surpassing Candice Bergen and Don Knotts) and put her in a tie with Cloris Leachman for the most Emmys ever won by a performer. She was also nominated as one of the producers for Veep in the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series category from 2012 to 2014, but the show lost to Modern Family on all three occasions. The show, however, won the top award from 2015 to 2017.
Louis-Dreyfus has also received five Critics' Choice Television Award nominations, winning twice in 2013 and 2014, ten Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning twice in 2014 and 2017, and five Television Critics Association Award nominations, winning once in 2014. Her performance has additionally garnered her five Satellite Award nominations and five consecutive Golden Globe Award nominations.
Louis-Dreyfus lent her voice to the 2013 animated film Planes, in the role of Rochelle. To date, the film has grossed well over $200 million at the box office worldwide. She also starred in the film Enough Said, directed by Nicole Holofcener, which was released on September 18, 2013. This marked her debut as a lead actress in a full-length feature film. The film garnered rave reviews from film critics, ranking among the best-reviewed films of 2013. The website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 96% based on 152 reviews, many of them praising Louis-Dreyfus's performance. She received several Best Actress nominations for her role in the film at award ceremonies, including the Golden Globe Awards, Satellite Awards, Critics' Choice Movie Awards, and the American Comedy Awards.
Since December 2014, Louis-Dreyfus has appeared in a series of television commercials for Old Navy.
On April 16, 2016, she hosted Saturday Night Live for the third time with musical guest Nick Jonas. During the episode's cold open, she reprised her role of Elaine Benes from Seinfeld.
2020–present: Production deal with Apple TV+
In 2020, Louis-Dreyfus headlined the comedy-drama Downhill, opposite Will Ferrell. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released on February 14. Next, she voiced a suburban elf mother in Pixar's Onward opposite Tom Holland and Chris Pratt. The film was released on March 6, 2020.
In January 2020, Louis-Dreyfus signed a multi-year deal with Apple TV+. Under the deal, she will develop new projects for Apple TV+ as both an executive producer and star.
In 2021, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, which is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though she was originally intended to debut in the film Black Widow (where she appears in the post credit scene).
Personal life
Louis-Dreyfus's maternal half-sister, Lauren Bowles, is also an actress. She also has two paternal half-sisters: Phoebe and Emma, the latter of whom died in August 2018. Robert Louis-Dreyfus (1946–2009), one of her cousins, was former CEO of Adidas and owner of the Olympique de Marseille football club.
While at Northwestern, Louis-Dreyfus met future husband and Saturday Night Live comedian Brad Hall. They married in 1987 and have two sons together: Henry (born 1992) and Charles (born 1997). Henry is a singer-songwriter, who has performed on The Tonight Show. Charles was a walk-on for the Northwestern Wildcats men's basketball team. In 2007, Louis-Dreyfus was invited back to Northwestern to receive an honorary Doctor of Arts degree.
Louis-Dreyfus has stated that she holds much respect for "women who are not afraid of making themselves look bad or foolish to get a laugh", and cites her acting idols as Lucille Ball, Mary Tyler Moore, Madeline Kahn, Teri Garr, Valerie Harper, and Cloris Leachman. Actress Tina Fey has stated that Louis-Dreyfus served as inspiration for her character Liz Lemon on the award-winning NBC comedy series 30 Rock.
On September 28, 2017, Louis-Dreyfus announced on Twitter her diagnosis of breast cancer, a diagnosis she received one day after receiving a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role in Veep. She stated, "One in eight women get breast cancer. Today, I'm the one. The good news is that I have the most glorious group of supportive and caring family and friends, and fantastic insurance through my union. The bad news is that not all women are so lucky, so let's fight all cancers and make universal healthcare a reality." She announced on the October 18, 2018, episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! that she was cancer-free.
Politics
Louis-Dreyfus supported Al Gore's 2000 U.S. presidential bid, and also endorsed Barack Obama's bid for the presidency in 2008 and 2012. She appeared in a video that urged President Obama to reject the proposal of the Keystone XL pipeline, arguing that if the pipeline ever were to leak, it would cause mass pollution across the U.S. Additionally, she has voiced her concern for several environmental issues and has raised millions for Heal the Bay, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Trust for Public Land. She also worked for the successful passage of Proposition O, which allocated US$500 million for cleaning up the Los Angeles water supply.
In late October 2010, before the United States Senate election in California, Louis-Dreyfus starred in a humorous Barbara Boxer ad regarding energy policy.
During the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Louis-Dreyfus announced her endorsement of Hillary Clinton for the United States presidential election of that year.
In her acceptance speech at the 2017 Screen Actors Guild Awards, she denounced President Donald Trump's executive order of travel ban as "un-American," and said, "My father fled religious persecution in Nazi-occupied France."
Louis-Dreyfus emceed the final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, endorsing Joe Biden. She has also published information regarding voting by mail and urged all Americans to vote.
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
Julia Louis-Dreyfus has won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series seven times; once for her role on The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006) and six consecutive wins for playing Selina Meyer on Veep (2012–17), as well as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series on one occasion for Seinfeld (1996). As of 2017, she holds the record for the most Primetime Emmy wins as an actor for the same role and is tied with Cloris Leachman for the most acting Primetime Emmy wins (with eight). She has also been nominated for nine Golden Globe Awards, winning one for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film for her role as Elaine Benes on Seinfeld (1995). She has also been nominated for twenty-one Screen Actors Guild Awards and has won five for individual performance (nine all together) for her portrayals on Seinfeld (1997–98) and Veep (2014, 2017–18).
In 2018 she was the twentieth recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
See also
Alfred Dreyfus – A distant relative at the center of the Dreyfus Affair miscarriage of justice
References
External links
Julia Louis-Dreyfus at Emmys.com
Julia Louis-Dreyfus Video produced by Makers: Women Who Make America
1961 births
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses
20th-century American comedians
21st-century American comedians
Actresses from Maryland
Actresses from New York City
American film actresses
American people of Brazilian descent
American people of French-Jewish descent
American people of Mexican descent
American sketch comedians
American stage actresses
American television actresses
American voice actresses
American women comedians
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (television) winners
Comedians from New York City
Hispanic and Latino American actresses
Living people
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Northwestern University School of Communication alumni
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actress in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
People from Bethesda, Maryland
People from Manhattan
Philanthropists from New York (state) | false | [
"\"The Seinfeld Chronicles\" (also known as \"Good News, Bad News\", \"Pilot\", or simply \"Seinfeld\") is the pilot episode of the American sitcom Seinfeld, which first aired on NBC on July 5, 1989.\n\nThe first of the 180 Seinfeld episodes, it was written by show creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld and directed by Art Wolff. It revolves around a fictionalized version of Seinfeld, who is unsure about the romantic intentions of a woman he met, and frets about the meaning of her signals with his best friend George (Jason Alexander) and neighbor Kessler (Michael Richards, whose character was later renamed \"Kramer\").\n\nThough they were asked to create a 90-minute TV special, Seinfeld and David wrote a TV pilot as they felt their \"show about nothing\" concept would fit better in the shorter, more conventional half-hour format. The storyline and main characters were inspired by real-life events and people. Though NBC executives were unsure about the show, they, as Warren Littlefield later stated, \"They all said, 'Ah, what the hell, let's try a pilot on this thing and see what happens'.\" However, test audiences reacted extremely negatively. Although NBC would still broadcast the pilot to see how audiences and critics reacted, they decided not to order a first season of the show. Castle Rock Entertainment, which produced the pilot (and the subsequent series), had another pilot produced for NBC featuring actress Ann Jillian in her own eponymous series. After The Seinfeld Chronicles''' poor reception, the production company turned to Jillian's series, which tested better and had earned a full-season order. (It ran a single 13-episode season and was cancelled by the end of 1990.)\n\nWhen The Seinfeld Chronicles aired, it was watched by nearly 11% of American households and received generally favorable reviews from critics, most of whom were disappointed that NBC did not order a first season. Convinced the show had potential, and supported by the positive reviews, NBC executive Rick Ludwin convinced his superiors to order a four-episode first season (the smallest order in US TV history), offering a part of his personal budget in return. The show, renamed Seinfeld, went on to become the most successful sitcom in television history.\n\nPlot\nThe series opens with Jerry Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld) and his best friend, George Costanza (Jason Alexander) seated at Pete's Luncheonette, debating the placement of one of George's shirt buttons. Jerry tells George about a woman he met in Lansing, Michigan, Laura (Pamela Brull), who is coming to New York, and the two discuss whether or not she has romantic intentions. The next evening, Jerry tells his neighbor Kessler (Michael Richards) that he thinks he misunderstood the situation with Laura. However, he then receives a telephone call from Laura, who asks if she can stay overnight at his apartment. Though Jerry agrees, he is still unsure whether or not her visit is intended to be romantic. George and Jerry continue to debate the issue, with Jerry determined to find the true nature of her visit.\n\nWhile waiting at the airport for Laura to arrive, Jerry and George try to identify the possible signals Laura might give upon her arrival, with George explaining the meaning of various greetings. However, when Laura arrives, her greeting is ambiguous. Upon arriving at Jerry's apartment Laura removes her shoes and some excess clothing to get comfortable, asks for wine, and turns down the light and asks if she can stay over a second night. As Jerry removes his own shoes and begins to grow confident, the phone rings for Laura. When Laura gets off the phone she tells Jerry: \"Never get engaged.\" Jerry then realizes that he has no chance with Laura, but has already committed himself – and his one-bedroom apartment – to an entire weekend with her, including a five-hour sightseeing boat ride around Manhattan.\n\nProduction\n\nConception and writingThe Seinfeld Chronicles was written as the pilot for the show that would eventually be called Seinfeld, though earlier versions of the script would refer to the program as Stand Up and The Jerry Seinfeld Show. The idea for the show started on November 2, 1988, after NBC executives had approached comedian Jerry Seinfeld to do a project with the network, upon a suggestion by George Shapiro, Seinfeld's manager at the time. Seinfeld enlisted fellow comedian Larry David to help him develop it, and they wrote a concept for a 90-minute-special (that was to air one weekend in place of Saturday Night Live) about how comedians get their material. However, upon further discussion, Seinfeld felt that the concept could not be sustained for 90 minutes, and the two decided that the project was to become a pilot for a series rather than a special. Developed by NBC executive Rick Ludwin, and produced by Castle Rock Entertainment, it was a mix of Seinfeld's stand-up comedy routines and idiosyncratic, conversational scenes focusing on mundane aspects of everyday life.\n\nConceived as a \"show about nothing,\" in which the main characters would \"just make fun of stuff\", Seinfeld said that the idea of the pilot episode was to explore the \"gaps in society where there are no rules.\" The storyline, as well as most of the main characters, were inspired by the personal lives of its creators. Jerry was a fictionalized version of Seinfeld, George a fictionalized version of Larry David and Kessler was based on David's neighbor Kenny Kramer. Though Seinfeld was initially concerned the \"wacky neighbor\" would be too much of a cliché, David convinced him to put the character in the script. However, anticipating that the actual Kramer would exploit the benefits of having a TV character based on him, David hesitated to call the character Kramer. Thus, in the pilot, the character's name is \"Kessler\". However, intrigued by the name, Seinfeld was convinced that the character's name should be Kramer, prompting Kenny Kramer to call NBC's legal department with various financial and legal demands, most of which he received. The name inconsistency would eventually be addressed in the season 9 episode \"The Betrayal\" in which Kramer explains that Kessler is the name on his apartment buzzer.\n\nDavid and Seinfeld re-wrote the script several times before submitting it to the network, dropping and adding various elements. Originally George, who was called Bennett in early drafts, was a comedian as well, and the first scene of the episode focused on Jerry and George discussing their stand-up material. The character of Kramer was not included in the first draft of the script; in another draft he is called \"Hoffman\". Another element that was added was Kessler's dog, since it was originally planned that Jerry's stand-up routines would match the events of each episode. Though the stand-up routine about dogs was eventually dropped, a scene in which Kessler enters with his dog remained in the episode. When David and Seinfeld eventually submitted the script, the network executives were unsure whether or not to produce the pilot, but as NBC executive Warren Littlefield would later state \"we all said, ah what the hell, let's try a pilot on this thing and see what happens\".\n\nDirected by Art Wolff, the pilot was filmed in front of a live studio audience on April 27, 1989, at Stage 9 of Ren-Mar Studios, the same studio where The Dick Van Dyke Show was filmed, which was seen by the crew as a good omen. The exterior of Pete's Luncheonette, the restaurant in which the episode opens, was a leftover set piece from The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984). Seinfeld's stand-up routine was recorded at Ren-Mar Studios in Hollywood, in front of an audience of paid extras, though not all of the recorded material was included in the broadcast version. Additionally, a scene was recorded featuring Jerry and George driving to the airport talking about changing lanes on the road and giving \"Thank you waves\", but was cut before broadcasting. The music used in the episode was composed by Jep Epstein; however, when the show was picked up, Epstein's tune was replaced by the trademark slap bass music by Jonathan Wolff.\n\nCastingThe Seinfeld Chronicles featured four characters that were intended to be series regulars if the show was to be picked up for a first season: Jerry, George, Kramer and Claire the waitress. Though it was already settled that Seinfeld would play a fictionalized version of himself, auditions were held for the other three characters. Though George was based on Larry David, David was keen on writing, and did not have the desire to portray the character himself. Prior to the casting process, Seinfeld pleaded with his friend Jake Johannsen to play the part, but he rejected it. When the casting process started, as casting director Marc Hirschfeld stated, the casting crew \"saw every actor [they] could possibly see in Los Angeles\". Among these actors were Larry Miller (Seinfeld's real-life best friend), Brad Hall, David Alan Grier, and Nathan Lane yet none of them seemed fit for the part. Jason Alexander auditioned for the part via a video tape, though he had very little hope for being cast, as he felt he was doing a Woody Allen impression. However, upon watching the tape, David and Seinfeld were immediately convinced Alexander would be the right actor to cast. However, casting sessions traditionally work with rounds, so Alexander and a few other actors considered for the role were flown to Los Angeles for a second audition. One of the other actors who made it to this round was Larry Miller. As Alexander knew Miller was a close friend of Seinfeld, he was convinced he would not get the part, but eventually did.\n\nKenny Kramer initially demanded that he would play the part of Kessler, as he served as the inspiration for the character. However, David did not want this and it was decided that casting sessions would be held. Among those who auditioned for the part of Kramer were Steve Vinovich, Tony Shalhoub and Larry Hankin. Although he was not cast for the part Hankin would later portray an in-show fictional version of Kramer in the season four episode \"The Pilot\". Seinfeld and David were both familiar with Michael Richards, and David had worked with him on Fridays. Richards did his final audition at the Century Plaza Hotel on April 18, 1989, reputedly finishing with a handstand. David was not sure about casting Richards, as he was trying to cast an actor who resembled the original Kramer. However, impressed by Richards' audition, Seinfeld convinced David that Richards would be the right actor for the part.\n\nLee Garlington was cast as Claire the Waitress, who in an earlier draft of the episode was called \"Meg\". Though initially cast as a series regular, the character was replaced with Elaine Benes when the series was picked up for a first season. Accounts differ on the reason why the character was replaced. Warren Littlefield has said that it was because the character's occupation: \"I thought that as a waitress she'd never be one of the gang. She'd be relegated to pouring coffee, catching up. So I insisted they create a female character they wanted to spend time with\". Dennis Bjorklund of Seinfeld Reference has suggested that the character was dropped in favor of a female character with more sex appeal. However, Alexander said that Garlington was written out of the series because she had re-written her scene and given it to David, who was not happy with this. Seinfeld has, however, stated that this was not the reason the character was removed from the show, but rather that the producers were looking for \"someone who was more involved\". Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who would go on to replace Garlington, has stated that she was not aware of the pilot before becoming a regular on the show, and she will never watch it out of superstition.\n\nReception\nThe pilot was first screened by a group of two dozen NBC executives in Burbank, California in early 1989. Although it did not yield the explosion of laughter garnered by pilots for the decade's previous NBC successes like The Cosby Show and The Golden Girls, it drew mostly positive responses from the executives. One exception was Brandon Tartikoff, who was concerned that the show was \"Too New York, too Jewish\". Before the episode's TV premiere, it was shown to a test audience of 400 households, and met with extremely negative responses. Littlefield later recalled, \"In the history of pilot reports, Seinfeld has got to be one of the worst of all time\". The memo summarizing the test audience's reactions contained feedback such as \"No segment of the audience was eager to watch the show again\" and \"None of the [supporting characters] were particularly liked\". Despite this, and even though the executives had already decided the show would not be picked up for a full season, \"The Seinfeld Chronicles\" was broadcast on July 5, 1989 to see how viewers would react. It finished second in its time slot, behind the CBS police drama Jake and the Fatman, receiving a Nielsen rating of 10.9/19, meaning that the pilot was watched by 10.9% of American households, and that 19% of all televisions in use at the time were tuned into it. With these ratings, \"The Seinfeld Chronicles\" finished in the 21st place of the week it was broadcast, tied with Fox's Totally Hidden Video.\n\nUnlike the test audience, television critics generally reacted positively to the pilot, viewing it as original and innovative. USA Today critic Tom Green summarized it as a \"crisply funny blend of stand-up routines interwoven with more traditional sitcom stuff\". Eric Mink of St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote that he thought the show was \"unusual and intriguing\", yet \"quite funny\". Joe Stein of the San Diego Evening Tribune wrote, \"Not all standup comedians fit into a sitcom format, but Seinfeld does\". A more negative response came from a The Fresno Bee critic: \"I liked the concept, but Seinfeld's jokes were so dull that you hoped the standup stuff would fly by so you could get back to the story\". Though the critic praised Alexander's acting, he commented that his performance was not enough to keep the show \"from being just another piece of summer drivel offered up by a major commercial network\".\n\nVarious critics compared the pilot to It's Garry Shandling's Show. In his review, The Philadelphia Inquirer's Ken Tucker commented, \"Seinfeld's brisk funniness prevents Chronicles from being a rip-off\", while Jerry Krupnick of The Star-Ledger felt that The Seinfeld Chronicles differentiated itself from It's Garry Shandling's Show by its supporting cast, which he praised. By contrast, John Voorhees of The Seattle Times wrote that though he found the show amusing, he considered It's Garry Shandling's Show better, and the Houston Chronicle's Mike McDaniel called it \"a not-as-good Garry Shandling-like show\".\n\nMost critics reacted with disappointment that NBC had not picked up the show. Bob Niedt of the Syracuse Herald-Journal write, \"What gives? Comedy this good, and NBC is keeping—excuse me—A Different World on the schedule?\" Ken Tucker said, \"NBC is making a mistake if it doesn't pick up The Seinfeld Chronicles as a midseason replacement; it's bound to be superior to most of what the network has planned for the fall\".\n\nCasting directors Hirschfeld and Meg Liberman were nominated for a Casting Society of America Artios Award for 'Best Casting for TV, Pilot', but lost to the casting directors of Northern Exposure.\n\nThough the network executives had decided not to pick up The Seinfeld Chronicles for a first season, some of them were reluctant to give up on it, as they felt it had potential. Rick Ludwin, one of the show's greatest supporters, eventually made a deal with Tartikoff, giving up some of his own development money and cancelling a Bob Hope special so the entertainment division could order four more episodes of The Seinfeld Chronicles; these formed the rest of the show's first season. It was a very small order for a new series—the smallest sitcom order in TV history—but when Castle Rock failed to sell the series to another network, they accepted the order. The first season premiered about a year later, with the show renamed Seinfeld to avoid confusion with ABC's The Marshall Chronicles''. The pilot was re-aired on July 5, 1990 as the season's first episode; it received a Nielsen rating of 13.8/26.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n \n\n1989 American television episodes\nAmerican television pilots\nSeinfeld (season 1) episodes\nTelevision episodes written by Larry David\nTelevision episodes written by Jerry Seinfeld",
"Jerome Allen Seinfeld ( ; born April 29, 1954) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer. He is best known for playing a semi-fictionalized version of himself in the sitcom Seinfeld, which he created and wrote with Larry David. The show aired on NBC from 1989 until 1998, becoming one of the most acclaimed and popular American sitcoms of all time. As a stand-up comedian, Seinfeld specializes in observational comedy. In 2004, Comedy Central named him as the 12th-greatest stand-up comedian of all time.\n\nSeinfeld produced, co-wrote, and starred in the 2007 film Bee Movie, which was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. In 2010, he premiered a reality series called The Marriage Ref, which aired for two seasons on NBC. Seinfeld is the creator and host of the web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (2012–2019). He is married to author and philanthropist Jessica Seinfeld, with whom he has three children. Seinfeld has received twenty Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his work on Seinfeld and Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee as well as four Grammy Award nominations for his comedy albums.\n\nEarly life\nSeinfeld was born in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City. His father, Kálmán Seinfeld (1918–1985), was of Hungarian-Jewish descent and collected jokes that he heard while serving in World War II. His mother, Betty (née Hosni; 1915–2014), and her parents, Selim and Salha Hosni, were Jews from Aleppo, Syria. Their nationality was stated as Turkish when they immigrated in 1917, as Syria was under the Ottoman Empire. Seinfeld has an older sister, Carolyn. Salha’s mother Garez Dayan, Seinfeld's great-grandmother, was a member of the noted Dayan rabbinic family, who trace their paternal ancestry back to the Medieval Exilarchs, and from the Exilarchs back to the Biblical King David. Seinfeld's second cousin is musician and actor Evan Seinfeld. Seinfeld grew up in Massapequa, New York, and attended Massapequa High School on Long Island. At the age of 16, he spent time volunteering in Kibbutz Sa'ar in Israel. He attended State University of New York at Oswego, and transferred after his second year to Queens College, City University of New York, whence he graduated with a degree in communications and theater.\n\nCareer\n\nEarly career\nSeinfeld developed an interest in stand-up comedy after brief stints in college productions. He appeared on open-mic nights at Budd Friedman's Improv Club while attending Queens College. After graduation in 1976, he tried out at an open-mic night at New York City's Catch a Rising Star, which led to an appearance in a Rodney Dangerfield HBO special. In 1980, he had a small recurring role on the sitcom Benson, playing Frankie, a mail-delivery boy who had comedy routines that no one wanted to hear. Seinfeld was abruptly fired from the show due to creative differences. Seinfeld has said that he was not told he had been fired until he turned up for the read-through session for an episode and found that there was no script for him. In May 1981, Seinfeld made a successful appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, impressing Carson and the audience, leading to frequent appearances on that show and others, including Late Night with David Letterman. On September 5, 1987, his first one-hour special Stand-Up Confidential aired live on HBO.\n\nSeinfeld\n\nSeinfeld created The Seinfeld Chronicles with Larry David in 1988 for NBC. The show was later renamed Seinfeld to avoid confusion with the short-lived teen sitcom The Marshall Chronicles. By its third season, it had become the most watched sitcom on American television. The final episode aired in 1998, and the show has been a popular syndicated re-run. Along with Seinfeld, the show starred Saturday Night Live veteran Julia Louis-Dreyfus and experienced actors Michael Richards and Jason Alexander. Alexander played George, a caricature of Larry David. Seinfeld is the only actor to appear in every episode of the show.\n\nSeinfeld has said that his show was influenced by the 1950s sitcom The Abbott and Costello Show. In the \"Seinfeld Season 6\" DVD set, commenting on the episode \"The Gymnast,\" Seinfeld cited Jean Shepherd as an influence, saying, \"He really formed my entire comedic sensibility—I learned how to do comedy from Jean Shepherd.\" From 2004 to 2007, the former Seinfeld cast and crew recorded audio commentaries for episodes of the DVD releases of the show.\n\nPost-Seinfeld\nAfter he ended his sitcom, Seinfeld returned to New York City to make a comeback with his stand-up comedy rather than stay in Los Angeles and continue his acting career. In 1998, he went on tour and recorded a comedy special, titled I'm Telling You for the Last Time. The process of developing and performing new material at clubs around the world was chronicled in a 2002 documentary, Comedian, which also featured fellow comic Orny Adams and was directed by Christian Charles. Seinfeld has written several books, mostly archives of past routines. In the late 1990s, Apple Computer came up with the advertising slogan \"Think different\" and produced a 60-second commercial to promote the slogan. This commercial showed people who were able to \"think differently,\" such as Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and many others. It was later cut short to 30 seconds and altered such that Seinfeld was included at the end, although he had not been in the original cut. This shorter version of the commercial aired only once, during the series finale of Seinfeld. In 2004, Seinfeld appeared in two commercial webisodes promoting American Express, titled The Adventures of Seinfeld & Superman. In these, Seinfeld appeared with a cartoon rendering of Superman, to whom reference was made in numerous episodes of Seinfeld as Seinfeld's hero, voiced by Patrick Warburton (character David Puddy on Seinfeld). The webisodes were directed by Barry Levinson and aired briefly on television. Seinfeld and \"Superman\" were also interviewed by Matt Lauer in a specially recorded interview for the Today show. On November 18, 2004, Seinfeld appeared at the National Museum of American History to donate the \"puffy shirt\" he wore in the Seinfeld episode of the same name. He also gave a speech when presenting the \"puffy shirt,\" saying humorously that \"This is the most embarrassing moment of my life.\" On May 13, 2006, Seinfeld had a cameo appearance on Saturday Night Live as host Julia Louis-Dreyfus' assassin. Louis-Dreyfus in her opening monolog mentioned the \"Seinfeld curse.\" While talking about how ridiculous the \"curse\" was, a stage light suddenly fell next to her. The camera moved to a catwalk above the stage where Seinfeld was standing, holding a large pair of bolt cutters. He angrily muttered, \"Damn it!\" upset that it did not hit her. Louis-Dreyfus continued to say that she is indeed not cursed.\n\nOn February 25, 2007, Seinfeld appeared at the 79th Academy Awards as the presenter for \"Best Documentary.\" Before announcing the nominations, he did a short stand-up comedy routine about the unspoken agreement between movie theater owners and movie patrons. On October 4, 2007, Seinfeld made a guest appearance as himself in the 30 Rock episode \"SeinfeldVision.\" On February 24, 2008, at the 80th Academy Awards, Seinfeld appeared as the voice of his Bee Movie animated character Barry, presenting Best Animated Short Film. Before announcing the nominees, he showed a montage of film clips featuring bees, saying that they were some of his early work (as Barry).\n\nOn June 2, 2008, amidst his spring 2008 tour, Seinfeld performed in his hometown of New York City for a one-night-only show at the Hammerstein Ballroom to benefit Stand Up for a Cure, a charity aiding lung cancer research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. In August 2008, the Associated Press reported that Jerry Seinfeld would be the pitchman for Windows Vista, as part of a $300-million advertising campaign by Microsoft. The ads, which were intended to create buzz for Windows in support of the subsequent \"I'm a PC\" advertisements, began airing in mid-September 2008. They were cut from television after three installments; Microsoft opted to continue with the \"I'm a PC\" advertisements and run the Seinfeld ads on the Microsoft website as a series of longer advertisements. In March 2009, it was announced that Seinfeld and the entire cast of Seinfeld would be appearing for a reunion in Larry David's HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm. The fictional reunion took place in the seventh season's finale and starred most of the original cast, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, Michael Richards, in a multiple-episode arc. Seinfeld appeared on an episode of the Starz original series Head Case. As was the case in many of his previous guest appearances on sitcoms, he played himself.\n\nIn Australia, Seinfeld appeared on a series of advertisements for the Greater Building Society, a building society based in New South Wales and southeastern Queensland. His appearance in these ads was highly publicized and considered a coup for the society, being the third time Seinfeld had appeared in a television commercial. The advertisements were filmed in Cedarhurst, Long Island, with the street designed to emulate Beaumont Street in Hamilton, where the Greater's head offices are located. Seinfeld also wrote the scripts for the 15 advertisements that were filmed. The ads largely aired in the Northern New South Wales television market, where the society has most of its branches. Seinfeld was the first guest on Jay Leno's talk show The Jay Leno Show, which premiered on September 14, 2009. Seinfeld was featured on Saturday Night Lives Weekend Update sketch to do the \"Really!?!\" segment with Seth Meyers. He executive produced and occasionally starred as a panelist in The Marriage Ref. On August 30, 2010, Seinfeld made a surprise guest appearance on The Howard Stern Show, mending the feud the two had in the early '90s.\n\nSeinfeld toured the U.S. in 2011 and made his first stand-up appearance in the UK in 11 years. In July 2011, he was a surprise guest on The Daily Show, helping Jon Stewart to suppress his urge to tell \"cheap\" \"Michele Bachmann's husband acts gay\" jokes. Seinfeld also launched a personal archives website at JerrySeinfeld.com and appeared in the HBO special Talking Funny with fellow comedians Chris Rock, Louis C.K., and Ricky Gervais in the same year, which was where the first documentation of Seinfeld saying the word he made up, that word being \"Chaash\".\n\nComedians in Cars Getting Coffee \n\nIn 2012, Seinfeld started a web series titled Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, in which he would pick up a fellow comedian in a different car each episode and take them out for coffee and conversation. The show originally aired on the Crackle streaming service and then was bought by Netflix. The initial series consisted of ten episodes lasting from 7 to 25 minutes each. The show has continued to get high-profile guests such as Tina Fey, Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K., Eddie Murphy, Steve Martin, David Letterman, Chris Rock, John Mulaney, Mel Brooks, Don Rickles, Ellen DeGeneres, Howard Stern, and Jerry Lewis. The show has also hosted Seinfeld alums Larry David, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, and Michael Richards. Season seven featured its most high-profile guest, then-President Barack Obama. In a farewell tribute video for the Obamas before the President left office, Seinfeld stated, \"That knocking on the Oval Office window. That probably was the peak of my entire existence.\"\n\nSeinfeld signed a comedy deal with Netflix in January 2017. As part of the deal, all episodes of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee would be made available on the streaming service, in addition to a new twenty-four-episode season.\n\nOther appearances \nIn June 2013, he appeared on rapper Wale's album The Gifted, on the song \"Outro About Nothing.\" Seinfeld received coverage for his speech at the 2014 Clio Awards ceremony, where he received an honorary award, as media reporters said that he \"mocked\" and \"ripped apart\" the advertising industry; his statement of \"I love advertising because I love lying\" received particular attention.\n\nIn 2014, Jerry Seinfeld hosted the special Don Rickles: One Night Only at the Apollo Theatre. The event celebrated Don Rickles and his career, but also served as a roast among friends. Those who participated in the event included Jon Stewart, David Letterman, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Nathan Lane, Regis Philbin, Robert De Niro, and Martin Scorsese.\n\nOn February 15, 2015, Seinfeld made a guest appearance on the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special, where he hosted the \"Questions from the Audience\" segment, which included cameos from Michael Douglas, John Goodman, James Franco, Larry David, Ellen Cleghorne, Dakota Johnson, Tim Meadows, Bob Odenkirk, and Sarah Palin (who Seinfeld initially mistook for Tina Fey).\n\nOn May 20, 2015, Seinfeld made a guest appearance on David Letterman's final Late Show episode. Seinfeld joined other friends of the show to pay tribute to Letterman. The other guests included Alec Baldwin, Barbara Walters, Steve Martin, Jim Carrey, Chris Rock, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Peyton Manning, Tina Fey, and Bill Murray who all participated in The Top Ten List segment, \"Things I've Always Wanted to Say to Dave.\"\n\nIn January 2017, Seinfeld went on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and joined Dave Chappelle, and Jimmy Fallon in honoring outgoing First Lady Michelle Obama, and played a game of Catchphrase, which Mrs. Obama and Fallon won to Seinfeld's dismay.\n\nIn October 2020, Seinfeld joined Steve Martin in a discussion about comedy at The New Yorker Festival. They discussed subjects ranging from the creative process, Netflix, and The Oscars, to their comedy backgrounds, and the future of comedy during the COVID-19 pandemic.\n\nNetflix deal \nSeinfeld made a deal with the streaming service Netflix that included Seinfeld and Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee on their streaming service as well as two new Seinfeld stand-up specials and the development of scripted and non-scripted comedy programming for Netflix.\n\nOn September 19, 2017, Netflix released the stand-up comedy special Jerry Before Seinfeld. The special follows the comedian as he returns for a stand-up routine at the New York City comedy club, Comic Strip Live, which started his career. The special is intercut with documentary clips and his stand-up special. The special was later released as an LP, CD and download album, and was nominated for a 2018 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.\n\nIn 2020, it was announced that Netflix would be releasing Seinfeld's first original stand-up special in 22 years, 23 Hours to Kill. The special premiered on the streaming service May 5.\n\nBooks\nSeinfeld wrote the book SeinLanguage, released in 1993. Written as his television show was first rising in popularity, it is primarily an adaptation of his stand-up material. The title comes from an article in Entertainment Weekly listing the numerous catchphrases for which the show was responsible. In 2002, he wrote the children's book Halloween. The book was illustrated by James Bennett. Seinfeld wrote the forewords to Ted L. Nancy's Letters from a Nut series of books and Ed Broth's Stories from a Moron. Seinfeld also wrote the foreword to the Peanut Butter & Co. Cookbook. In October 2020, Seinfeld released his new book Is This Anything?. The book chronicles Seinfeld's 45 years working in comedy and contains many of his best bits that span from various decades.\n\nInfluences\nSeinfeld has stated, \"On the Mount Rushmore of stand-up comedy, there are four faces, in my opinion: Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Bill Cosby and Don Rickles.\" Seinfeld has also cited as his influences the humorist Jean Shepherd, Mad Magazine, Jonathan Winters, Jerry Lewis, Robert Klein, and Abbott and Costello.\n\nIn the Netflix comedy special, Jerry Before Seinfeld, he displayed his personal comedy albums collection from when he was a teenager. These albums included:\n\nLenny Bruce – Thank You Masked Man (1972)\nGeorge Carlin – Class Clown (1972)\nSteve Martin – Let's Get Small (1977)\nBob Newhart – The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart (1960)\nMike Nichols and Elaine May – Improvisations to Music (1958)\nMel Brooks and Carl Reiner – 2000 and One Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks (1961)\n\nIn an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Seinfeld stated his five favorite films are The Heartbreak Kid (1972), The Graduate (1967), The In-Laws (1979), A Night at the Opera (1935), and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992).\n\nThose influenced by Seinfeld include John Mulaney, Jim Gaffigan, Judd Apatow, Ellen DeGeneres, and Issa Rae.\n\nPersonal life\nSeinfeld is a fan of the New York Mets, and periodically calls Steve Somers' show on WFAN-AM, a sports talk radio station, as \"Jerry from Queens.\" Seinfeld called four innings of a Mets game on SportsNet New York on June 23, 2010, reuniting with analyst Keith Hernandez, who appeared in the Seinfeld two-part episode entitled \"The Boyfriend.\"\n\nIn a 2014 interview with NBC News, Seinfeld made statements suggesting that he believed he was on the autism spectrum. However, following criticism for his alleged self-diagnosis, he later clarified that he is not autistic and had been commenting on a play about the condition that he \"related to [...] on some level.\"\n\nSeinfeld has made several political contributions, including to George W. Bush's and Al Gore's presidential campaigns in 2000, and subsequently to four Democratic Party primary candidates in 2000 and 2004.\n\nEarly relationships and marriage \n\nYears before Seinfeld was created, Seinfeld dated Carol Leifer. She was a fellow comedian, and one of the inspirations for the Seinfeld character Elaine Benes. On national television with sex therapist and talk show host Dr. Ruth Westheimer, he explained how, in 1984, he was engaged but called it off.\n\nWhen he was 39 years old, Seinfeld started a romantic relationship with Shoshanna Lonstein, who was much younger, 18 years of age, when they began dating. Early in their relationship, Spy Magazine referred to her as \"a legal voter\", mocking her young age. They dated for approximately four years, from 1993 to 1997, before the relationship ended. She transferred from GW to UCLA, in part to be with Seinfeld, and cited missing New York City and constant press coverage as reasons for the relationship ending.\n\nIn August 1998 while at a Reebok Sports Club, Seinfeld met Jessica Sklar, a public relations executive for Tommy Hilfiger who had just returned from a three-week honeymoon in Italy with then husband Eric Nederlander, a theatrical producer and scion of a theater-owning family. Unaware of Sklar's marital status, Seinfeld invited her out. When Sklar eventually told Seinfeld about her relationship situation, she said, “I told him I didn’t think this was the right time for me to be involved with anybody...\" Two months later Sklar filed for divorce and continued dating Seinfeld. The pair married on December 25, 1999. Comedian George Wallace was the best man at the wedding. After the nuptials, Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld bought Billy Joel's house in Amagansett, Long Island, for US$32 million after news of the couple's interest in the property became public in 2000. The Seinfelds have one daughter and two sons.\n\nReligion \nSeinfeld was raised in Judaism by his Jewish parents. Although for the most part he seems to practice the religion in private, he has discreetly mentioned aspects of the culture in his material and interviews and is known to have dated Jewish women only.\n\nSeinfeld stated that he took a Scientology course when he was in his 20s; he said that he found it interesting but that he didn't pursue it any further.\n\nTranscendental Meditation \nIn December 2012, Seinfeld said that he had been practicing Transcendental Meditation (TM) for 40 years. He promoted the use of the technique in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder with Bob Roth of the David Lynch Foundation in December 2012 on Good Morning America, and also appeared at a 2009 David Lynch Foundation benefit for TM, at which Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr appeared. On November 5, 2015, the David Lynch Foundation organized a benefit concert at New York City's Carnegie Hall called \"Change Begins Within\" to promote transcendental meditation for stress control. \"It's been the greatest companion technique of living that I've ever come across, and I'm thrilled to be part of this movement that seems to have really been reinvigorated by Bob [Roth] and David Lynch,\" Seinfeld said. \"I would do anything that I could to promote it in the world, because I think it's the greatest thing as a life tool, as a work tool and just making things make sense.\"\n\nCharity \nIn 1999, Seinfeld auctioned a Breitling Chronomat watch as part of the \"Famous Faces, Watch Auction For Charity\" event in New York City. This watch sold for $11,000.\n\nIn 2001, Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld created the charity organization The Good+Foundation after their first child was born. Good+Foundation grants donations of products and services to programs that have demonstrated a capacity to address family poverty in three focus areas: supporting new mothers, investing in early childhood, and engaging fathers. GOOD+ Foundation has donated over $42M worth of items through its partner network across the United States.\n\nSeinfeld has also participated in Jon Stewart's charity event, Night of Too Many Stars.\n\nWealth\nAccording to Forbes magazine, Seinfeld's cumulative earnings from Seinfeld as of 2004 was $267 million, placing him at the top of the celebrity earnings list that year. He turned down $5 million per episode, for 22 episodes, to continue the show for a 10th season. Seinfeld earned $100 million from syndication deals and stand-up performances in 2004, and $60 million in 2006. He also earned $10 million for appearing with Bill Gates in Microsoft's 2008 advertisements for Windows. Between June 2008 and June 2009, Seinfeld earned $85 million, making him the world's highest-paid comedian during those 12 months. In 2013, Forbes documented Seinfeld's annual income as $32 million. In mid-2013, Seinfeld disputed Forbes claims regarding his income and net worth on The Howard Stern Show. Seinfeld was ranked by Forbes the highest-paid comedian for 2015, the second-highest paid in 2016, and the highest-paid again in 2017. Seinfeld's income between June 2016 and June 2017 was $69 million.\n\nAutomobiles\n\nSeinfeld is an automobile enthusiast and collector, and he owns a collection of about 150 cars, including a large Porsche collection. He rented a hangar at the Santa Monica Airport in Santa Monica, California, for an extended period during the 1990s for storage of some of the vehicles in the collection. In 2002, Seinfeld purchased property on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City where he built a $1.4 million two-story garage to store part of his Porsche collection on the East Coast. One tally has Seinfeld owning 43 Porsches. Paul Bannister has written that Seinfeld's collection includes Porsche 911s from various years, 10 Porsche Boxsters each painted a different color, and the 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder, the same model and pearl-grey color that actor James Dean was driving when he died after crashing the car.\n\nThe Discovery Channel television show Chasing Classic Cars claimed that Seinfeld owns the first and last produced air-cooled Porsche 911s. The centerpiece is a $700,000 Porsche 959, one of only 337 built. He was originally not allowed to drive it, because the car was \"not street legal.\" U.S. emissions and crash tests had not been performed for the model because Porsche refused to donate four Porsche 959s for destruction tests. Seinfeld imported the car \"for exhibition purposes,\" on the stipulation that it may never be driven on U.S. roads. The car was made U.S. street legal in 1999 under the \"Show and Display\" federal law. Seinfeld wrote an article for the February 2004 issue of Automobile, reviewing the Porsche Carrera GT.\n\nIn 2008, Seinfeld was involved in a car accident when the brakes on his 1967 Fiat 500 failed and, to avoid an intersection, he pulled the emergency brake while turning sharply, ultimately causing the car to flip onto its side. No one was hurt.\n\nEspresso machines\nA coffee and espresso machine aficionado, Seinfeld owns multiple espresso machines, including the $17,000 Elektra Belle Epoque and two machines manufactured by Slayer and Breville, respectively. Seinfeld described his single-group Slayer machine, which costs upwards of $8,500, as a \"beautiful machine.\" When NPR asked him about the influence of coffee culture in the U.S., Seinfeld responded in 2013:I never liked [coffee] and I didn't understand it and I used to do a lot of stuff in my stand-up set in the '80s and '90s about how I don't 'get' coffee. And then something happened about five years ago. I started touring a lot, and we would have these great big, fun breakfasts in the hotel and [coffee] just seemed to go really well [with breakfast]. [Now], I've just started this espresso thing.\n\nWork\n\nFilm\n\nTelevision\n\nStand-up home video appearances\n\nReferences\n\nVideo games\n\nDiscography \nComedy specials\n\nDirecting\n\nBibliography \nSeinLanguage (1993)\nHalloween (2002)\nIs This Anything? (2020)\n\nWriting credits for Seinfeld\n\nThe list below only includes episodes mainly written by Seinfeld, as he (and Larry David in Seasons 1 through 7) rewrote the drafts for each episode.\n\nAwards and nominations\n\nPrimetime Emmy Awards\n\nGrammy Awards\n\nGolden Globe Awards\n\nScreen Actors Guild Award\n\nOther awards\nAmerican Comedy Award for Funniest Male Performer in a TV Series (1992)\nAmerican Comedy Award for Funniest Male Performer in a TV Series (1993)\nNominated – American Comedy Award for Funniest Male Performer in a TV Series (1996)\nNominated – American Comedy Award for Funniest Male Performer in a TV Series (1999)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n \n \n \n \n \n\n1954 births\nLiving people\n20th-century American comedians\n20th-century American Jews\n20th-century American male actors\n20th-century American male writers\n20th-century American non-fiction writers\n21st-century American comedians\n21st-century American Jews\n21st-century American male actors\n21st-century American male writers\n21st-century American non-fiction writers\nAmerican Ashkenazi Jews\nAmerican car collectors\nAmerican film producers\nAmerican male comedians\nAmerican male comedy actors\nAmerican male non-fiction writers\nAmerican male screenwriters\nAmerican male television actors\nAmerican male television writers\nAmerican male voice actors\nAmerican memoirists\nAmerican Mizrahi Jews\nAmerican people of Hungarian-Jewish descent\nAmerican people of Syrian-Jewish descent\nAmerican philanthropists\nAmerican stand-up comedians\nAmerican television writers\nAmerican Zionists\nBest Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe (television) winners\nComedians from New York (state)\nComedians from New York City\nFilm producers from New York (state)\nJewish American male actors\nJewish American male comedians\nJewish American writers\nJewish male comedians\nJews and Judaism in New York City\nLas Vegas shows\nMale actors from New York (state)\nMale actors from New York City\nMassapequa High School alumni\nPeople from Amagansett, New York\nPeople from Massapequa, New York\nPeople from the Upper West Side\nPrimetime Emmy Award winners\nQueens College, City University of New York alumni\nScreenwriters from New York (state)\nShowrunners\nState University of New York at Oswego alumni\nTelevision producers from New York City\nWriters from Brooklyn"
] |
[
"Maurice Merleau-Ponty",
"Consciousness"
] | C_418a8e8537914486a97e86b3588e76f0_1 | What is consciousness as define by Maurice Merleau-Ponty? | 1 | What is consciousness as defined by Maurice Merleau-Ponty? | Maurice Merleau-Ponty | In his Phenomenology of Perception (first published in French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty developed the concept of the body-subject (le corps propre) as an alternative to the Cartesian "ego cogito." This distinction is especially important in that Merleau-Ponty perceives the essences of the world existentially. Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually "engaged." The phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the natural sciences, but a correlate of our body and its sensory-motor functions. Taking up and "communing with" (Merleau-Ponty's phrase) the sensible qualities it encounters, the body as incarnated subjectivity intentionally elaborates things within an ever-present world frame, through use of its pre-conscious, pre-predicative understanding of the world's makeup. The elaboration, however, is "inexhaustible" (the hallmark of any perception according to Merleau-Ponty). Things are that upon which our body has a "grip" (prise), while the grip itself is a function of our connaturality with the world's things. The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in an ongoing "becoming." The essential partiality of our view of things, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be copresent with us and with other things than through such "Abschattungen" (sketches, faint outlines, adumbrations). The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background--to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads). Through involvement in the world - being-in-the-world - the perceiver tacitly experiences all the perspectives upon that object coming from all the surrounding things of its environment, as well as the potential perspectives that that object has upon the beings around it. Each object is a "mirror of all others." Our perception of the object through all perspectives is not that of a propositional, or clearly delineated, perception; rather, it is an ambiguous perception founded upon the body's primordial involvement and understanding of the world and of the meanings that constitute the landscape's perceptual gestalt. Only after we have been integrated within the environment so as to perceive objects as such can we turn our attention toward particular objects within the landscape so as to define them more clearly. This attention, however, does not operate by clarifying what is already seen, but by constructing a new Gestalt oriented toward a particular object. Because our bodily involvement with things is always provisional and indeterminate, we encounter meaningful things in a unified though ever open-ended world. CANNOTANSWER | Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually "engaged." | Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest and he wrote on perception, art, politics, religion, biology, psychology, psychoanalysis, language, nature, and history. He was the lead editor of Les Temps modernes, the leftist magazine he established with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in 1945.
At the core of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is a sustained argument for the foundational role perception plays in our experience of the world. Merleau-Ponty understands perception to be an ongoing dialogue between one's lived body and the world which it perceives, in which perceivers passively and actively strive to express the perceived world in concert with others. He was the only major phenomenologist of the first half of the twentieth century to engage extensively with the sciences and especially with Gestalt psychology. It is through this engagement that his writings became influential in the project of naturalizing phenomenology, in which phenomenologists use the results of psychology and cognitive science.
Merleau-Ponty emphasized the body as the primary site of knowing the world, a corrective to the long philosophical tradition of placing consciousness as the source of knowledge, and maintained that the body and that which it perceived could not be disentangled from each other. The articulation of the primacy of embodiment (corporéité) led him away from phenomenology towards what he was to call “indirect ontology” or the ontology of “the flesh of the world” (la chair du monde), seen in his final and incomplete work, The Visible and Invisible, and his last published essay, “Eye and Mind”.
Merleau-Ponty engaged with Marxism throughout his career. His 1947 book, Humanism and Terror, has been widely (mis)understood as a defence of the Soviet show trials. In fact, this text avoids the definitive endorsement of a view on the Soviet Union, but instead engages with the Marxist theory of history as a critique of liberalism, in order to reveal an unresolved antinomy in modern politics, between humanism and terror: if human values can only be achieved through violent force, and if liberal ideas hide illiberal realities, how is just political action to be decided? Merleau-Ponty maintained an engaged though critical relationship to the Marxist left until the end of his life, particularly during his time as the political editor of the journal Les Temps Modernes.
Life
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was born in 1908 in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Inférieure (now Charente-Maritime), France. His father died in 1913 when Merleau-Ponty was five years old. After secondary schooling at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Merleau-Ponty became a student at the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Jean Hyppolite, and Jean Wahl. As Beauvoir recounts in her autobiography, she developed a close friendship with Merleau-Ponty and became smitten with him, but ultimately found him too well-adjusted to bourgeois life and values for her taste. He attended Edmund Husserl's "Paris Lectures" in February 1929. In 1929, Merleau-Ponty received his DES degree (, roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) from the University of Paris, on the basis of the (now-lost) thesis La Notion de multiple intelligible chez Plotin ("Plotinus's Notion of the Intelligible Many"), directed by Émile Bréhier. He passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1930.
Merleau-Ponty was raised as a Catholic. He was friends with the Christian existentialist Gabriel Marcel, and he wrote articles for the Christian leftist journal Esprit, but he left the Church in 1937 because he felt his socialist politics were not compatible with the social and political teaching of the Catholic Church.
An article published in French newspaper Le Monde in October 2014 makes the case of recent discoveries about Merleau-Ponty's likely authorship of the novel Nord. Récit de l'arctique (Grasset, 1928). Convergent sources from close friends (Beauvoir, Elisabeth "Zaza" Lacoin) seem to leave little doubt that Jacques Heller was a pseudonym of the 20-year-old Merleau-Ponty.
Merleau-Ponty taught first at the Lycée de Beauvais (1931–33) and then got a fellowship to do research from the . From 1934 to 1935 he taught at the Lycée de Chartres. He then in 1935 became a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure, where he tutored a young Michel Foucault and Trần Đức Thảo and was awarded his doctorate on the basis of two important books: La structure du comportement (1942) and Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945). During this time, he attended Alexandre Kojeve's influential seminars on Hegel and Aron Gurwitsch's lectures on Gestalt psychology.
In the spring of 1939, he was the first foreign visitor to the newly established Husserl Archives, where he consulted Husserl's unpublished manuscripts and met Eugen Fink and Father Hermann Van Breda. In the summer of 1939, as France entered war against Germany, he served on the frontlines in the French army, where he was wounded in battle in June 1940. Upon returning to Paris in the fall of 1940, he married Suzanne Jolibois, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and founded an underground resistance group with Jean-Paul Sartre called "Under the Boot". He participated in an armed demonstration against the Nazis during the Liberation of Paris.
After teaching at the University of Lyon from 1945 to 1948, Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952.
He was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him the youngest person to have been elected to a chair.
Besides his teaching, Merleau-Ponty was also political editor for the leftist Les Temps modernes from the founding of the journal in October 1945 until December 1952. In his youth he had read Karl Marx's writings and Sartre even claimed that Merleau-Ponty converted him to Marxism. While he was not a member of the French Communist Party and did not identify as a Communist, he laid out an argument justifying the Soviet show trials and violence for progressive ends in general in the work Humanism and Terror in 1947. However, about three years later, he renounced his earlier support for political violence, and he rejected Marxism and advocated a liberal left position in Adventures of the Dialectic (1955). His friendship with Sartre and work with Les Temps modernes ended because of that, since Sartre still had a more favourable attitude towards Soviet communism. Merleau-Ponty was subsequently active in the French non-communist left and in particular in the Union of the Democratic Forces.
Merleau-Ponty died suddenly of a stroke in 1961 at age 53, apparently while preparing for a class on René Descartes, leaving an unfinished manuscript which was posthumously published in 1964, along with a selection of Merleau-Ponty's working notes, by Claude Lefort as The Visible and the Invisible. He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris with his mother Louise, his wife Suzanne and their daughter Marianne.
Thought
Consciousness
In his Phenomenology of Perception (first published in French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty develops the concept of the body-subject (le corps propre) as an alternative to the Cartesian "cogito". This distinction is especially important in that Merleau-Ponty perceives the essences of the world existentially. Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually "engaged". The phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the natural sciences, but a correlate of our body and its sensory-motor functions. Taking up and "communing with" (Merleau-Ponty's phrase) the sensible qualities it encounters, the body as incarnated subjectivity intentionally elaborates things within an ever-present world frame, through use of its pre-conscious, pre-predicative understanding of the world's makeup. The elaboration, however, is "inexhaustible" (the hallmark of any perception according to Merleau-Ponty). Things are that upon which our body has a "grip" (prise), while the grip itself is a function of our connaturality with the world's things. The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in an ongoing "becoming".
The essential partiality of our view of things, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be copresent with us and with other things than through such "Abschattungen" (sketches, faint outlines, adumbrations). The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background—to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads). Through involvement in the world – being-in-the-world – the perceiver tacitly experiences all the perspectives upon that object coming from all the surrounding things of its environment, as well as the potential perspectives that that object has upon the beings around it.
Each object is a "mirror of all others". Our perception of the object through all perspectives is not that of a propositional, or clearly delineated, perception; rather, it is an ambiguous perception founded upon the body's primordial involvement and understanding of the world and of the meanings that constitute the landscape's perceptual Gestalt. Only after we have been integrated within the environment so as to perceive objects as such can we turn our attention toward particular objects within the landscape so as to define them more clearly. This attention, however, does not operate by clarifying what is already seen, but by constructing a new Gestalt oriented toward a particular object. Because our bodily involvement with things is always provisional and indeterminate, we encounter meaningful things in a unified though ever open-ended world.
The primacy of perception
From the time of writing Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty wanted to show, in opposition to the idea that drove the tradition beginning with John Locke, that perception was not the causal product of atomic sensations. This atomist-causal conception was being perpetuated in certain psychological currents of the time, particularly in behaviourism. According to Merleau-Ponty, perception has an active dimension, in that it is a primordial openness to the lifeworld (the "Lebenswelt").
This primordial openness is at the heart of his thesis of the primacy of perception. The slogan of Husserl's phenomenology is "all consciousness is consciousness of something", which implies a distinction between "acts of thought" (the noesis) and "intentional objects of thought" (the noema). Thus, the correlation between noesis and noema becomes the first step in the constitution of analyses of consciousness. However, in studying the posthumous manuscripts of Husserl, who remained one of his major influences, Merleau-Ponty remarked that, in their evolution, Husserl's work brings to light phenomena which are not assimilable to noesis–noema correlation. This is particularly the case when one attends to the phenomena of the body (which is at once body-subject and body-object), subjective time (the consciousness of time is neither an act of consciousness nor an object of thought) and the other (the first considerations of the other in Husserl led to solipsism).
The distinction between "acts of thought" (noesis) and "intentional objects of thought" (noema) does not seem, therefore, to constitute an irreducible ground. It appears rather at a higher level of analysis. Thus, Merleau-Ponty does not postulate that "all consciousness is consciousness of something", which supposes at the outset a noetic-noematic ground. Instead, he develops the thesis according to which "all consciousness is perceptual consciousness". In doing so, he establishes a significant turn in the development of phenomenology, indicating that its conceptualisations should be re-examined in the light of the primacy of perception, in weighing up the philosophical consequences of this thesis.
Corporeity
Taking the study of perception as his point of departure, Merleau-Ponty was led to recognize that one's own body (le corps propre) is not only a thing, a potential object of study for science, but is also a permanent condition of experience, a constituent of the perceptual openness to the world. He therefore underlines the fact that there is an inherence of consciousness and of the body of which the analysis of perception should take account. The primacy of perception signifies a primacy of experience, so to speak, insofar as perception becomes an active and constitutive dimension.
Merleau-Ponty demonstrates a corporeity of consciousness as much as an intentionality of the body, and so stands in contrast with the dualist ontology of mind and body in Descartes, a philosopher to whom Merleau-Ponty continually returned, despite the important differences that separate them. In the Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty wrote: “Insofar as I have hands, feet, a body, I sustain around me intentions which are not dependent on my decisions and which affect my surroundings in a way that I do not choose” (1962, p. 440).
Spatiality
The question concerning corporeity connects also with Merleau-Ponty's reflections on space (l'espace) and the primacy of the dimension of depth (la profondeur) as implied in the notion of being in the world (être au monde; to echo Heidegger's In-der-Welt-sein) and of one's own body (le corps propre). Reflections on spatiality in phenomenology are also central to the advanced philosophical deliberations in architectural theory.
Language
The highlighting of the fact that corporeity intrinsically has a dimension of expressivity which proves to be fundamental to the constitution of the ego is one of the conclusions of The Structure of Behavior that is constantly reiterated in Merleau-Ponty's later works. Following this theme of expressivity, he goes on to examine how an incarnate subject is in a position to undertake actions that transcend the organic level of the body, such as in intellectual operations and the products of one's cultural life.
He carefully considers language, then, as the core of culture, by examining in particular the connections between the unfolding of thought and sense—enriching his perspective not only by an analysis of the acquisition of language and the expressivity of the body, but also by taking into account pathologies of language, painting, cinema, literature, poetry and song.
This work deals mainly with language, beginning with the reflection on artistic expression in The Structure of Behavior—which contains a passage on El Greco (p. 203ff) that prefigures the remarks that he develops in "Cézanne's Doubt" (1945) and follows the discussion in Phenomenology of Perception. The work, undertaken while serving as the Chair of Child Psychology and Pedagogy at the University of the Sorbonne, is not a departure from his philosophical and phenomenological works, but rather an important continuation in the development of his thought.
As the course outlines of his Sorbonne lectures indicate, during this period he continues a dialogue between phenomenology and the diverse work carried out in psychology, all in order to return to the study of the acquisition of language in children, as well as to broadly take advantage of the contribution of Ferdinand de Saussure to linguistics, and to work on the notion of structure through a discussion of work in psychology, linguistics and social anthropology.
Art
Merleau-Ponty distinguishes between primary and secondary modes of expression. This distinction appears in Phenomenology of Perception (p. 207, 2nd note [Fr. ed.]) and is sometimes repeated in terms of spoken and speaking language () (The Prose of the World, p. 10). Spoken language (), or secondary expression, returns to our linguistic baggage, to the cultural heritage that we have acquired, as well as the brute mass of relationships between signs and significations. Speaking language (), or primary expression, such as it is, is language in the production of a sense, language at the advent of a thought, at the moment where it makes itself an advent of sense.
It is speaking language, that is to say, primary expression, that interests Merleau-Ponty and which keeps his attention through his treatment of the nature of production and the reception of expressions, a subject which also overlaps with an analysis of action, of intentionality, of perception, as well as the links between freedom and external conditions.
The notion of style occupies an important place in "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence". In spite of certain similarities with André Malraux, Merleau-Ponty distinguishes himself from Malraux in respect to three conceptions of style, the last of which is employed in Malraux's The Voices of Silence. Merleau-Ponty remarks that in this work "style" is sometimes used by Malraux in a highly subjective sense, understood as a projection of the artist's individuality. Sometimes it is used, on the contrary, in a very metaphysical sense (in Merleau-Ponty's opinion, a mystical sense), in which style is connected with a conception of an "über-artist" expressing "the Spirit of Painting". Finally, it sometimes is reduced to simply designating a categorization of an artistic school or movement. (However, this account of Malraux's notion of style—a key element in his thinking—is open to serious question.)
For Merleau-Ponty, it is these uses of the notion of style that lead Malraux to postulate a cleavage between the objectivity of Italian Renaissance painting and the subjectivity of painting in his own time, a conclusion that Merleau-Ponty disputes. According to Merleau-Ponty, it is important to consider the heart of this problematic, by recognizing that style is first of all a demand owed to the primacy of perception, which also implies taking into consideration the dimensions of historicity and intersubjectivity. (However, Merleau-Ponty's reading of Malraux has been questioned in a recent major study of Malraux's theory of art which argues that Merleau-Ponty seriously misunderstood Malraux.) For Merleau-Ponty, style is born of the interaction between two or more fields of being. Rather than being exclusive to individual human consciousness, consciousness is born of the pre-conscious style of the world, of Nature.
Science
In his essay "Cézanne's Doubt", in which he identifies Paul Cézanne's impressionistic theory of painting as analogous to his own concept of radical reflection, the attempt to return to, and reflect on, prereflective consciousness, Merleau-Ponty identifies science as the opposite of art. In Merleau-Ponty's account, whereas art is an attempt to capture an individual's perception, science is anti-individualistic. In the preface to his Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty presents a phenomenological objection to positivism: that it can tell us nothing about human subjectivity. All that a scientific text can explain is the particular individual experience of that scientist, which cannot be transcended. For Merleau-Ponty, science neglects the depth and profundity of the phenomena that it endeavors to explain.
Merleau-Ponty understood science to be an ex post facto abstraction. Causal and physiological accounts of perception, for example, explain perception in terms that are arrived at only after abstracting from the phenomenon itself. Merleau-Ponty chastised science for taking itself to be the area in which a complete account of nature may be given. The subjective depth of phenomena cannot be given in science as it is. This characterizes Merleau-Ponty's attempt to ground science in phenomenological objectivity and, in essence, to institute a "return to the phenomena".
Influence
Anticognitivist cognitive science
Merleau-Ponty's critical position with respect to science was stated in his Preface to the Phenomenology: he described scientific points of view as "always both naive and at the same time dishonest". Despite, or perhaps because of, this view, his work influenced and anticipated the strands of modern psychology known as post-cognitivism. Hubert Dreyfus has been instrumental in emphasising the relevance of Merleau-Ponty's work to current post-cognitive research, and its criticism of the traditional view of cognitive science.
Dreyfus's seminal critique of cognitivism (or the computational account of the mind), What Computers Can't Do, consciously replays Merleau-Ponty's critique of intellectualist psychology to argue for the irreducibility of corporeal know-how to discrete, syntactic processes. Through the influence of Dreyfus's critique and neurophysiological alternative, Merleau-Ponty became associated with neurophysiological, connectionist accounts of cognition.
With the publication in 1991 of The Embodied Mind by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, this association was extended, if only partially, to another strand of "anti-cognitivist" or post-representationalist cognitive science: embodied or enactive cognitive science, and later in the decade, to neurophenomenology. In addition, Merleau-Ponty's work has also influenced researchers trying to integrate neuroscience with the principles of chaos theory.
It was through this relationship with Merleau-Ponty's work that cognitive science's affair with phenomenology was born, which is represented by a growing number of works, including
Ron McClamrock's Existential Cognition: Computational Minds in the World (1995),
Andy Clark's Being There (1997),
Naturalizing Phenomenology edited by Petitot et al. (1999),
Alva Noë's Action in Perception (2004),
Shaun Gallagher's How the Body Shapes the Mind (2005),
Grammont, Franck Dorothée Legrand, and Pierre Livet (eds.) 2010, Naturalizing Intention in Action, MIT Press 2010 .
The journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
Feminist philosophy
Merleau-Ponty has also been picked up by Australian and Nordic philosophers inspired by the French feminist tradition, including Rosalyn Diprose and .
Heinämaa has argued for a rereading of Merleau-Ponty's influence on Simone de Beauvoir. (She has also challenged Dreyfus's reading of Merleau-Ponty as behaviorist, and as neglecting the importance of the phenomenological reduction to Merleau-Ponty's thought.)
Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body has also been taken up by Iris Young in her essay "Throwing Like a Girl," and its follow-up, "'Throwing Like a Girl': Twenty Years Later". Young analyzes the particular modalities of feminine bodily comportment as they differ from that of men. Young observes that while a man who throws a ball puts his whole body into the motion, a woman throwing a ball generally restricts her own movements as she makes them, and that, generally, in sports, women move in a more tentative, reactive way. Merleau-Ponty argues that we experience the world in terms of the "I can" – that is, oriented towards certain projects based on our capacity and habituality. Young's thesis is that in women, this intentionality is inhibited and ambivalent, rather than confident, experienced as an "I cannot".
Ecophenomenology
Ecophenomenology can be described as the pursuit of the relationalities of worldly engagement, both human and those of other creatures (Brown & Toadvine 2003).
This engagement is situated in a kind of middle ground of relationality, a space that is neither purely objective, because it is reciprocally constituted by a diversity of lived experiences motivating the movements of countless organisms, nor purely subjective, because it is nonetheless a field of material relationships between bodies. It is governed exclusively neither by causality, nor by intentionality. In this space of in-betweenness, phenomenology can overcome its inaugural opposition to naturalism.
David Abram explains Merleau-Ponty's concept of "flesh" (chair) as "the mysterious tissue or matrix that underlies and gives rise to both the perceiver and the perceived as interdependent aspects of its spontaneous activity", and he identifies this elemental matrix with the interdependent web of earthly life. This concept unites subject and object dialectically as determinations within a more primordial reality, which Merleau-Ponty calls "the flesh" and which Abram refers to variously as "the animate earth", "the breathing biosphere" or "the more-than-human natural world". Yet this is not nature or the biosphere conceived as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather "the biosphere as it is experienced and lived from within by the intelligent body — by the attentive human animal who is entirely a part of the world that he or she experiences. Merleau-Ponty's ecophenemonology with its emphasis on holistic dialog within the larger-than-human world also has implications for the ontogenesis and phylogenesis of language; indeed he states that "language is the very voice of the trees, the waves and the forest".
Merleau-Ponty himself refers to "that primordial being which is not yet the subject-being nor the object-being and which in every respect baffles reflection. From this primordial being to us, there is no derivation, nor any break..." Among the many working notes found on his desk at the time of his death, and published with the half-complete manuscript of The Visible and the Invisible, several make it evident that Merleau-Ponty himself recognized a deep affinity between his notion of a primordial "flesh" and a radically transformed understanding of "nature". Hence, in November 1960 he writes: "Do a psychoanalysis of Nature: it is the flesh, the mother." And in the last published working note, written in March 1961, he writes: "Nature as the other side of humanity (as flesh, nowise as 'matter')." This resonates with the conception of space, place, dwelling, and embodiment (in the flesh and physical, vs. virtual and cybernetic), especially as they are addressed against the background of the unfolding of the essence of modern technology. Such analytics figure in a Heideggerian take on “econtology” as an extension of Heidegger's consideration of the question of being (Seinsfrage) by way of the fourfold (Das Geviert) of earth-sky-mortals-divinities (Erde und Himmel, Sterblichen und Göttlichen). In this strand of “ecophenomenology”, ecology is co-entangled with ontology, whereby the worldly existential analytics are grounded in earthiness, and environmentalism is orientated by ontological thinking.
Bibliography
The following table gives a selection of Merleau-Ponty's works in French and English translation.
See also
Gestalt psychology
Process philosophy
Embodied cognition
Enactivism
Difference (philosophy)
Virtuality (philosophy)
Field (physics)
Hylomorphism
Autopoiesis
Emergence
Umwelt
Habit
Body schema
Affordance
Perspectivism
Reflexivity
Invagination (philosophy)
Incarnation
Notes
References
Abram, D. (1988). "Merleau-Ponty and the Voice of the Earth" Environmental Ethics 10, no. 2 (Summer 1988): 101–20.
Alloa, E. (2017) Resistance of the Sensible World. An Introduction to Merleau-Ponty, New York: Fordham University Press.
Alloa,E., F. Chouraqui & R. Kaushik, (2019) (eds.) Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy, Albany: SUNY Press.
Barbaras, R. (2004) The Being of the Phenomenon. Merleau-Ponty's Ontology Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Carbone, M. (2004) The Thinking of the Sensible. Merleau-Ponty's A-Philosophy, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Clark, A. (1997) Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Dillon, M. C. (1997) Merleau-Ponty's Ontology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Gallagher, S. (2003) How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Guilherme, Alexandre and Morgan, W. John, 'Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961)-dialogue as being present to the other'. Chapter 6 in Philosophy, Dialogue, and Education: Nine modern European philosophers, Routledge, London and New York, pp. 89–108, .
Johnson, G., Smith, M. B. (eds.) (1993) The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, Chicago: Northwestern UP 1993.
Landes, D. (2013) Merleau-Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression, New York-London: Bloomsbury.
Lawlor, L., Evans, F. (eds.) (2000) Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty's Notion of Flesh, Albany: SUNY Press.
Petitot, J., Varela, F., Pachoud, B. and Roy, J-M. (eds.) (1999) Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Toadvine, T. (2009) Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Nature. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Tilliette, X. (1970) Maurice Merleau-Ponty ou la mesure de l'homme, Seghers, 1970.
Varela, F. J., Thompson, E. and Rosch, E. (1991) The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press.
External links
Maurice Merleau-Ponty at 18 from the French Government website
English Translations of Merleau-Ponty's Work
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty by Jack Reynolds
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty by Ted Toadvine
The Merleau-Ponty Circle — Association of scholars interested in the works of Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty page at Mythos & Logos
Chiasmi International — Studies Concerning the Thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in English, French and Italian
O’Loughlin, Marjorie, 1995, "Intelligent Bodies and Ecological Subjectivities: Merleau-Ponty’s Corrective to Postmodernism’s “Subjects” of Education."
Popen, Shari, 1995, "Merleau-Ponty Confronts Postmodernism: A Reply to O’Loughlin."
Merleau-Ponty: Reckoning with the Possibility of an 'Other.'
The Journal of French Philosophy — the online home of the Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française
Online Merleau-Ponty Bibliography at PhilPapers.org
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"Phenomenology of Perception () is a 1945 book about perception by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in which the author expounds his thesis of \"the primacy of perception\". The work established Merleau-Ponty as the pre-eminent philosopher of the body, and is considered a major statement of French existentialism.\n\nSummary\nMerleau-Ponty attempts to define phenomenology, which according to him has not yet received a proper definition. He asserts that phenomenology contains a series of apparent contradictions, which include the fact that it attempts to create a philosophy that would be a rigorous science while also offering an account of space, time and the world as people experience them. Merleau-Ponty denies that such contradictions can be resolved by distinguishing between the views of the philosopher Edmund Husserl and those of the philosopher Martin Heidegger, commenting that Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) \"springs from an indication given by Husserl and amounts to no more than an explicit account of the 'natürlicher Weltbegriff' or the 'Lebenswelt' which Husserl, toward the end of his life, identified as the central theme of phenomenology, with the result that the contradiction appears in Husserl's own philosophy\".\n\nFollowing Husserl, Merleau-Ponty attempts to reveal the phenomenological structure of perception. He writes that while the \"notion of sensation ... seems immediate and obvious\", it is in fact confused. Merleau-Ponty asserts that because \"traditional analyses\" have accepted it, they have \"missed the phenomenon of perception.\" Merleau-Ponty argues that while sensation could be understood to mean \"the way in which I am affected and the experiencing of a state of myself\", there is nothing in experience corresponding to \"pure sensation\" or \"an atom of feeling\". He writes that, \"The alleged self-evidence of sensation is not based on any testimony of consciousness, but on widely held prejudice.\" Merleau-Ponty's central thesis is that of the \"primacy of perception.\" He critiques the Cartesian stance of \"cogito ergo sum\" and expounds a different conception of consciousness. Cartesian dualism of mind and body is called into question as the primary way of existing in the world, and is ultimately rejected in favor of an intersubjective conception or dialectical and intentional concept of consciousness. The body is central to Merleau-Ponty's account of perception. In his view, the ability to reflect comes from a pre-reflective ground that serves as the foundation for reflecting on actions.\n\nMerleau-Ponty's account of the body helps him undermine what had been a long-standing conception of consciousness, which hinges on the distinction between the for-itself (subject) and in-itself (object), which plays a central role in the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, whose Being and Nothingness was released in 1943. The body stands between this fundamental distinction between subject and object, ambiguously existing as both. In Merleau-Ponty's discussion of human sexuality, he discusses psychoanalysis. Merleau-Ponty suggests that the body \"can symbolize existence because it brings it into being and actualizes it.\"\n\nPublication history\nPhenomenology of Perception was first published in 1945 by Éditions Gallimard. In 1962, an English translation by Colin Smith was published by Routledge & Kegan Paul. In 2013, Routledge published an English translation by Donald Landes.\n\nReception\nThe philosopher A. J. Ayer criticized Merleau-Ponty's arguments against the sense datum theory of perception, finding them inconclusive. He considered Merleau-Ponty's inclusion of a chapter on sexuality surprising, suggesting that Merleau-Ponty included it to give him an opportunity to revisit the Hegelian dialectic of the master and the slave. He compared Merleau-Ponty's views on sex to those of Sartre in Being and Nothingness. The sociologist Murray S. Davis observed that Merleau-Ponty's view that aspects of psychoanalysis, such as its attribution of meaning to all human actions and the diffusing of sexuality throughout the whole of human existence, are similar to phenomenology is controversial, and that other authors would view psychoanalysis as \"materialistic and mechanical\".\n\nHelmut R. Wagner described Phenomenology of Perception as an important contribution to phenomenology. Rhiannon Goldthorpe called the book Merleau-Ponty's major work, noting that its discussion of subjects such as the relationship of the body to spatial experience, and sexuality, went beyond \"the nominal range of his title.\" The philosopher David Abram observed that while \"the sensible thing\" is \"commonly considered by our philosophical tradition to be passive and inert\", Merleau-Ponty consistently describes it in the active voice in Phenomenology of Perception. He rejected the idea that Merleau-Ponty's \"animistic\" language was the result of poetic license, arguing that he \"writes of the perceived things as entities, of sensible qualities as powers, and of the sensible itself as a field of animate presences, in order to acknowledge and underscore their active, dynamic contribution to perceptual experience.\"\n\nAmerican vice president Al Gore, in a 1999 interview with the critic Louis Menand in The New Yorker, mentioned Phenomenology of Perception as an inspiration. The philosopher Stephen Priest commented that, following the book's publication, Merleau-Ponty decided that in it he had taken \"subject-object dualism as phenomenologically primitive\" and \"made use of a comparatively superficial psychologistic vocabulary\" that he wished to replace. The philosopher Robert Bernasconi observed that the book established Merleau-Ponty as the pre-eminent philosopher of the body, and along with Merleau-Ponty's other writings, found a more receptive audience among analytic philosophers than the works of other phenomenologists.\n\nG. B. Madison observed that the book was recognized as a major statement of French existentialism, and is best known for Merleau-Ponty's central thesis of \"the primacy of perception\". According to Madison, Merleau-Ponty sought to respond in his later work to the charge that by grounding all intellectual and cultural acquisitions in the prereflective and prepersonal life of the body, he was promoting reductionism and anti-intellectualism and undermining the ideals of reason and truth. Madison further stated that some commentators believed that Merleau-Ponty's thought had taken a significantly different direction in his late, unfinished work The Visible and the Invisible, edited by the philosopher Claude Lefort, while others emphasized the continuity of his work, with the issue receiving \"much scholarly discussion\".\n\nReferences\n\nBibliography\nBooks\n\nExternal links\n Excerpts can be found at Google Books: \n Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy listing\n\n1945 non-fiction books\nBooks about perception\nBooks by Maurice Merleau-Ponty\nÉditions Gallimard books\nExistentialist books\nFrench non-fiction books\nPhenomenology literature\nRoutledge books",
"Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest and he wrote on perception, art, politics, religion, biology, psychology, psychoanalysis, language, nature, and history. He was the lead editor of Les Temps modernes, the leftist magazine he established with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in 1945.\n\nAt the core of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is a sustained argument for the foundational role perception plays in our experience of the world. Merleau-Ponty understands perception to be an ongoing dialogue between one's lived body and the world which it perceives, in which perceivers passively and actively strive to express the perceived world in concert with others. He was the only major phenomenologist of the first half of the twentieth century to engage extensively with the sciences and especially with Gestalt psychology. It is through this engagement that his writings became influential in the project of naturalizing phenomenology, in which phenomenologists use the results of psychology and cognitive science.\n\nMerleau-Ponty emphasized the body as the primary site of knowing the world, a corrective to the long philosophical tradition of placing consciousness as the source of knowledge, and maintained that the body and that which it perceived could not be disentangled from each other. The articulation of the primacy of embodiment (corporéité) led him away from phenomenology towards what he was to call “indirect ontology” or the ontology of “the flesh of the world” (la chair du monde), seen in his final and incomplete work, The Visible and Invisible, and his last published essay, “Eye and Mind”.\n\nMerleau-Ponty engaged with Marxism throughout his career. His 1947 book, Humanism and Terror, has been widely (mis)understood as a defence of the Soviet show trials. In fact, this text avoids the definitive endorsement of a view on the Soviet Union, but instead engages with the Marxist theory of history as a critique of liberalism, in order to reveal an unresolved antinomy in modern politics, between humanism and terror: if human values can only be achieved through violent force, and if liberal ideas hide illiberal realities, how is just political action to be decided? Merleau-Ponty maintained an engaged though critical relationship to the Marxist left until the end of his life, particularly during his time as the political editor of the journal Les Temps Modernes.\n\nLife\n\nMaurice Merleau-Ponty was born in 1908 in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Inférieure (now Charente-Maritime), France. His father died in 1913 when Merleau-Ponty was five years old. After secondary schooling at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Merleau-Ponty became a student at the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Jean Hyppolite, and Jean Wahl. As Beauvoir recounts in her autobiography, she developed a close friendship with Merleau-Ponty and became smitten with him, but ultimately found him too well-adjusted to bourgeois life and values for her taste. He attended Edmund Husserl's \"Paris Lectures\" in February 1929. In 1929, Merleau-Ponty received his DES degree (, roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) from the University of Paris, on the basis of the (now-lost) thesis La Notion de multiple intelligible chez Plotin (\"Plotinus's Notion of the Intelligible Many\"), directed by Émile Bréhier. He passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1930.\n\nMerleau-Ponty was raised as a Catholic. He was friends with the Christian existentialist Gabriel Marcel, and he wrote articles for the Christian leftist journal Esprit, but he left the Church in 1937 because he felt his socialist politics were not compatible with the social and political teaching of the Catholic Church.\n\nAn article published in French newspaper Le Monde in October 2014 makes the case of recent discoveries about Merleau-Ponty's likely authorship of the novel Nord. Récit de l'arctique (Grasset, 1928). Convergent sources from close friends (Beauvoir, Elisabeth \"Zaza\" Lacoin) seem to leave little doubt that Jacques Heller was a pseudonym of the 20-year-old Merleau-Ponty.\n\nMerleau-Ponty taught first at the Lycée de Beauvais (1931–33) and then got a fellowship to do research from the . From 1934 to 1935 he taught at the Lycée de Chartres. He then in 1935 became a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure, where he tutored a young Michel Foucault and Trần Đức Thảo and was awarded his doctorate on the basis of two important books: La structure du comportement (1942) and Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945). During this time, he attended Alexandre Kojeve's influential seminars on Hegel and Aron Gurwitsch's lectures on Gestalt psychology.\n\nIn the spring of 1939, he was the first foreign visitor to the newly established Husserl Archives, where he consulted Husserl's unpublished manuscripts and met Eugen Fink and Father Hermann Van Breda. In the summer of 1939, as France entered war against Germany, he served on the frontlines in the French army, where he was wounded in battle in June 1940. Upon returning to Paris in the fall of 1940, he married Suzanne Jolibois, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and founded an underground resistance group with Jean-Paul Sartre called \"Under the Boot\". He participated in an armed demonstration against the Nazis during the Liberation of Paris.\n\nAfter teaching at the University of Lyon from 1945 to 1948, Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952. \nHe was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him the youngest person to have been elected to a chair.\n\nBesides his teaching, Merleau-Ponty was also political editor for the leftist Les Temps modernes from the founding of the journal in October 1945 until December 1952. In his youth he had read Karl Marx's writings and Sartre even claimed that Merleau-Ponty converted him to Marxism. While he was not a member of the French Communist Party and did not identify as a Communist, he laid out an argument justifying the Soviet show trials and violence for progressive ends in general in the work Humanism and Terror in 1947. However, about three years later, he renounced his earlier support for political violence, and he rejected Marxism and advocated a liberal left position in Adventures of the Dialectic (1955). His friendship with Sartre and work with Les Temps modernes ended because of that, since Sartre still had a more favourable attitude towards Soviet communism. Merleau-Ponty was subsequently active in the French non-communist left and in particular in the Union of the Democratic Forces.\n\nMerleau-Ponty died suddenly of a stroke in 1961 at age 53, apparently while preparing for a class on René Descartes, leaving an unfinished manuscript which was posthumously published in 1964, along with a selection of Merleau-Ponty's working notes, by Claude Lefort as The Visible and the Invisible. He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris with his mother Louise, his wife Suzanne and their daughter Marianne.\n\nThought\n\nConsciousness\nIn his Phenomenology of Perception (first published in French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty develops the concept of the body-subject (le corps propre) as an alternative to the Cartesian \"cogito\". This distinction is especially important in that Merleau-Ponty perceives the essences of the world existentially. Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually \"engaged\". The phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the natural sciences, but a correlate of our body and its sensory-motor functions. Taking up and \"communing with\" (Merleau-Ponty's phrase) the sensible qualities it encounters, the body as incarnated subjectivity intentionally elaborates things within an ever-present world frame, through use of its pre-conscious, pre-predicative understanding of the world's makeup. The elaboration, however, is \"inexhaustible\" (the hallmark of any perception according to Merleau-Ponty). Things are that upon which our body has a \"grip\" (prise), while the grip itself is a function of our connaturality with the world's things. The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in an ongoing \"becoming\".\n\nThe essential partiality of our view of things, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be copresent with us and with other things than through such \"Abschattungen\" (sketches, faint outlines, adumbrations). The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background—to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads). Through involvement in the world – being-in-the-world – the perceiver tacitly experiences all the perspectives upon that object coming from all the surrounding things of its environment, as well as the potential perspectives that that object has upon the beings around it.\n\nEach object is a \"mirror of all others\". Our perception of the object through all perspectives is not that of a propositional, or clearly delineated, perception; rather, it is an ambiguous perception founded upon the body's primordial involvement and understanding of the world and of the meanings that constitute the landscape's perceptual Gestalt. Only after we have been integrated within the environment so as to perceive objects as such can we turn our attention toward particular objects within the landscape so as to define them more clearly. This attention, however, does not operate by clarifying what is already seen, but by constructing a new Gestalt oriented toward a particular object. Because our bodily involvement with things is always provisional and indeterminate, we encounter meaningful things in a unified though ever open-ended world.\n\nThe primacy of perception\nFrom the time of writing Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty wanted to show, in opposition to the idea that drove the tradition beginning with John Locke, that perception was not the causal product of atomic sensations. This atomist-causal conception was being perpetuated in certain psychological currents of the time, particularly in behaviourism. According to Merleau-Ponty, perception has an active dimension, in that it is a primordial openness to the lifeworld (the \"Lebenswelt\").\n\nThis primordial openness is at the heart of his thesis of the primacy of perception. The slogan of Husserl's phenomenology is \"all consciousness is consciousness of something\", which implies a distinction between \"acts of thought\" (the noesis) and \"intentional objects of thought\" (the noema). Thus, the correlation between noesis and noema becomes the first step in the constitution of analyses of consciousness. However, in studying the posthumous manuscripts of Husserl, who remained one of his major influences, Merleau-Ponty remarked that, in their evolution, Husserl's work brings to light phenomena which are not assimilable to noesis–noema correlation. This is particularly the case when one attends to the phenomena of the body (which is at once body-subject and body-object), subjective time (the consciousness of time is neither an act of consciousness nor an object of thought) and the other (the first considerations of the other in Husserl led to solipsism).\n\nThe distinction between \"acts of thought\" (noesis) and \"intentional objects of thought\" (noema) does not seem, therefore, to constitute an irreducible ground. It appears rather at a higher level of analysis. Thus, Merleau-Ponty does not postulate that \"all consciousness is consciousness of something\", which supposes at the outset a noetic-noematic ground. Instead, he develops the thesis according to which \"all consciousness is perceptual consciousness\". In doing so, he establishes a significant turn in the development of phenomenology, indicating that its conceptualisations should be re-examined in the light of the primacy of perception, in weighing up the philosophical consequences of this thesis.\n\nCorporeity\n\nTaking the study of perception as his point of departure, Merleau-Ponty was led to recognize that one's own body (le corps propre) is not only a thing, a potential object of study for science, but is also a permanent condition of experience, a constituent of the perceptual openness to the world. He therefore underlines the fact that there is an inherence of consciousness and of the body of which the analysis of perception should take account. The primacy of perception signifies a primacy of experience, so to speak, insofar as perception becomes an active and constitutive dimension.\n\nMerleau-Ponty demonstrates a corporeity of consciousness as much as an intentionality of the body, and so stands in contrast with the dualist ontology of mind and body in Descartes, a philosopher to whom Merleau-Ponty continually returned, despite the important differences that separate them. In the Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty wrote: “Insofar as I have hands, feet, a body, I sustain around me intentions which are not dependent on my decisions and which affect my surroundings in a way that I do not choose” (1962, p. 440).\n\nSpatiality\nThe question concerning corporeity connects also with Merleau-Ponty's reflections on space (l'espace) and the primacy of the dimension of depth (la profondeur) as implied in the notion of being in the world (être au monde; to echo Heidegger's In-der-Welt-sein) and of one's own body (le corps propre). Reflections on spatiality in phenomenology are also central to the advanced philosophical deliberations in architectural theory.\n\nLanguage\nThe highlighting of the fact that corporeity intrinsically has a dimension of expressivity which proves to be fundamental to the constitution of the ego is one of the conclusions of The Structure of Behavior that is constantly reiterated in Merleau-Ponty's later works. Following this theme of expressivity, he goes on to examine how an incarnate subject is in a position to undertake actions that transcend the organic level of the body, such as in intellectual operations and the products of one's cultural life.\n\nHe carefully considers language, then, as the core of culture, by examining in particular the connections between the unfolding of thought and sense—enriching his perspective not only by an analysis of the acquisition of language and the expressivity of the body, but also by taking into account pathologies of language, painting, cinema, literature, poetry and song.\n\nThis work deals mainly with language, beginning with the reflection on artistic expression in The Structure of Behavior—which contains a passage on El Greco (p. 203ff) that prefigures the remarks that he develops in \"Cézanne's Doubt\" (1945) and follows the discussion in Phenomenology of Perception. The work, undertaken while serving as the Chair of Child Psychology and Pedagogy at the University of the Sorbonne, is not a departure from his philosophical and phenomenological works, but rather an important continuation in the development of his thought.\n\nAs the course outlines of his Sorbonne lectures indicate, during this period he continues a dialogue between phenomenology and the diverse work carried out in psychology, all in order to return to the study of the acquisition of language in children, as well as to broadly take advantage of the contribution of Ferdinand de Saussure to linguistics, and to work on the notion of structure through a discussion of work in psychology, linguistics and social anthropology.\n\nArt\nMerleau-Ponty distinguishes between primary and secondary modes of expression. This distinction appears in Phenomenology of Perception (p. 207, 2nd note [Fr. ed.]) and is sometimes repeated in terms of spoken and speaking language () (The Prose of the World, p. 10). Spoken language (), or secondary expression, returns to our linguistic baggage, to the cultural heritage that we have acquired, as well as the brute mass of relationships between signs and significations. Speaking language (), or primary expression, such as it is, is language in the production of a sense, language at the advent of a thought, at the moment where it makes itself an advent of sense.\n\nIt is speaking language, that is to say, primary expression, that interests Merleau-Ponty and which keeps his attention through his treatment of the nature of production and the reception of expressions, a subject which also overlaps with an analysis of action, of intentionality, of perception, as well as the links between freedom and external conditions.\n\nThe notion of style occupies an important place in \"Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence\". In spite of certain similarities with André Malraux, Merleau-Ponty distinguishes himself from Malraux in respect to three conceptions of style, the last of which is employed in Malraux's The Voices of Silence. Merleau-Ponty remarks that in this work \"style\" is sometimes used by Malraux in a highly subjective sense, understood as a projection of the artist's individuality. Sometimes it is used, on the contrary, in a very metaphysical sense (in Merleau-Ponty's opinion, a mystical sense), in which style is connected with a conception of an \"über-artist\" expressing \"the Spirit of Painting\". Finally, it sometimes is reduced to simply designating a categorization of an artistic school or movement. (However, this account of Malraux's notion of style—a key element in his thinking—is open to serious question.)\n\nFor Merleau-Ponty, it is these uses of the notion of style that lead Malraux to postulate a cleavage between the objectivity of Italian Renaissance painting and the subjectivity of painting in his own time, a conclusion that Merleau-Ponty disputes. According to Merleau-Ponty, it is important to consider the heart of this problematic, by recognizing that style is first of all a demand owed to the primacy of perception, which also implies taking into consideration the dimensions of historicity and intersubjectivity. (However, Merleau-Ponty's reading of Malraux has been questioned in a recent major study of Malraux's theory of art which argues that Merleau-Ponty seriously misunderstood Malraux.) For Merleau-Ponty, style is born of the interaction between two or more fields of being. Rather than being exclusive to individual human consciousness, consciousness is born of the pre-conscious style of the world, of Nature.\n\nScience\nIn his essay \"Cézanne's Doubt\", in which he identifies Paul Cézanne's impressionistic theory of painting as analogous to his own concept of radical reflection, the attempt to return to, and reflect on, prereflective consciousness, Merleau-Ponty identifies science as the opposite of art. In Merleau-Ponty's account, whereas art is an attempt to capture an individual's perception, science is anti-individualistic. In the preface to his Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty presents a phenomenological objection to positivism: that it can tell us nothing about human subjectivity. All that a scientific text can explain is the particular individual experience of that scientist, which cannot be transcended. For Merleau-Ponty, science neglects the depth and profundity of the phenomena that it endeavors to explain.\n\nMerleau-Ponty understood science to be an ex post facto abstraction. Causal and physiological accounts of perception, for example, explain perception in terms that are arrived at only after abstracting from the phenomenon itself. Merleau-Ponty chastised science for taking itself to be the area in which a complete account of nature may be given. The subjective depth of phenomena cannot be given in science as it is. This characterizes Merleau-Ponty's attempt to ground science in phenomenological objectivity and, in essence, to institute a \"return to the phenomena\".\n\nInfluence\n\nAnticognitivist cognitive science\nMerleau-Ponty's critical position with respect to science was stated in his Preface to the Phenomenology: he described scientific points of view as \"always both naive and at the same time dishonest\". Despite, or perhaps because of, this view, his work influenced and anticipated the strands of modern psychology known as post-cognitivism. Hubert Dreyfus has been instrumental in emphasising the relevance of Merleau-Ponty's work to current post-cognitive research, and its criticism of the traditional view of cognitive science.\n\nDreyfus's seminal critique of cognitivism (or the computational account of the mind), What Computers Can't Do, consciously replays Merleau-Ponty's critique of intellectualist psychology to argue for the irreducibility of corporeal know-how to discrete, syntactic processes. Through the influence of Dreyfus's critique and neurophysiological alternative, Merleau-Ponty became associated with neurophysiological, connectionist accounts of cognition.\n\nWith the publication in 1991 of The Embodied Mind by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, this association was extended, if only partially, to another strand of \"anti-cognitivist\" or post-representationalist cognitive science: embodied or enactive cognitive science, and later in the decade, to neurophenomenology. In addition, Merleau-Ponty's work has also influenced researchers trying to integrate neuroscience with the principles of chaos theory.\n\nIt was through this relationship with Merleau-Ponty's work that cognitive science's affair with phenomenology was born, which is represented by a growing number of works, including\n Ron McClamrock's Existential Cognition: Computational Minds in the World (1995),\n Andy Clark's Being There (1997),\n Naturalizing Phenomenology edited by Petitot et al. (1999),\n Alva Noë's Action in Perception (2004),\n Shaun Gallagher's How the Body Shapes the Mind (2005),\n Grammont, Franck Dorothée Legrand, and Pierre Livet (eds.) 2010, Naturalizing Intention in Action, MIT Press 2010 .\n The journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.\n\nFeminist philosophy\nMerleau-Ponty has also been picked up by Australian and Nordic philosophers inspired by the French feminist tradition, including Rosalyn Diprose and .\n\nHeinämaa has argued for a rereading of Merleau-Ponty's influence on Simone de Beauvoir. (She has also challenged Dreyfus's reading of Merleau-Ponty as behaviorist, and as neglecting the importance of the phenomenological reduction to Merleau-Ponty's thought.)\n\nMerleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body has also been taken up by Iris Young in her essay \"Throwing Like a Girl,\" and its follow-up, \"'Throwing Like a Girl': Twenty Years Later\". Young analyzes the particular modalities of feminine bodily comportment as they differ from that of men. Young observes that while a man who throws a ball puts his whole body into the motion, a woman throwing a ball generally restricts her own movements as she makes them, and that, generally, in sports, women move in a more tentative, reactive way. Merleau-Ponty argues that we experience the world in terms of the \"I can\" – that is, oriented towards certain projects based on our capacity and habituality. Young's thesis is that in women, this intentionality is inhibited and ambivalent, rather than confident, experienced as an \"I cannot\".\n\nEcophenomenology\nEcophenomenology can be described as the pursuit of the relationalities of worldly engagement, both human and those of other creatures (Brown & Toadvine 2003).\n\nThis engagement is situated in a kind of middle ground of relationality, a space that is neither purely objective, because it is reciprocally constituted by a diversity of lived experiences motivating the movements of countless organisms, nor purely subjective, because it is nonetheless a field of material relationships between bodies. It is governed exclusively neither by causality, nor by intentionality. In this space of in-betweenness, phenomenology can overcome its inaugural opposition to naturalism.\n\nDavid Abram explains Merleau-Ponty's concept of \"flesh\" (chair) as \"the mysterious tissue or matrix that underlies and gives rise to both the perceiver and the perceived as interdependent aspects of its spontaneous activity\", and he identifies this elemental matrix with the interdependent web of earthly life. This concept unites subject and object dialectically as determinations within a more primordial reality, which Merleau-Ponty calls \"the flesh\" and which Abram refers to variously as \"the animate earth\", \"the breathing biosphere\" or \"the more-than-human natural world\". Yet this is not nature or the biosphere conceived as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather \"the biosphere as it is experienced and lived from within by the intelligent body — by the attentive human animal who is entirely a part of the world that he or she experiences. Merleau-Ponty's ecophenemonology with its emphasis on holistic dialog within the larger-than-human world also has implications for the ontogenesis and phylogenesis of language; indeed he states that \"language is the very voice of the trees, the waves and the forest\".\n\nMerleau-Ponty himself refers to \"that primordial being which is not yet the subject-being nor the object-being and which in every respect baffles reflection. From this primordial being to us, there is no derivation, nor any break...\" Among the many working notes found on his desk at the time of his death, and published with the half-complete manuscript of The Visible and the Invisible, several make it evident that Merleau-Ponty himself recognized a deep affinity between his notion of a primordial \"flesh\" and a radically transformed understanding of \"nature\". Hence, in November 1960 he writes: \"Do a psychoanalysis of Nature: it is the flesh, the mother.\" And in the last published working note, written in March 1961, he writes: \"Nature as the other side of humanity (as flesh, nowise as 'matter').\" This resonates with the conception of space, place, dwelling, and embodiment (in the flesh and physical, vs. virtual and cybernetic), especially as they are addressed against the background of the unfolding of the essence of modern technology. Such analytics figure in a Heideggerian take on “econtology” as an extension of Heidegger's consideration of the question of being (Seinsfrage) by way of the fourfold (Das Geviert) of earth-sky-mortals-divinities (Erde und Himmel, Sterblichen und Göttlichen). In this strand of “ecophenomenology”, ecology is co-entangled with ontology, whereby the worldly existential analytics are grounded in earthiness, and environmentalism is orientated by ontological thinking.\n\nBibliography\nThe following table gives a selection of Merleau-Ponty's works in French and English translation.\n\nSee also\nGestalt psychology\nProcess philosophy\nEmbodied cognition\nEnactivism\nDifference (philosophy)\nVirtuality (philosophy)\nField (physics)\nHylomorphism\nAutopoiesis\nEmergence\nUmwelt\nHabit\nBody schema\nAffordance\nPerspectivism\nReflexivity\nInvagination (philosophy)\nIncarnation\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n Abram, D. (1988). \"Merleau-Ponty and the Voice of the Earth\" Environmental Ethics 10, no. 2 (Summer 1988): 101–20.\n Alloa, E. (2017) Resistance of the Sensible World. An Introduction to Merleau-Ponty, New York: Fordham University Press.\n Alloa,E., F. Chouraqui & R. Kaushik, (2019) (eds.) Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy, Albany: SUNY Press.\n Barbaras, R. (2004) The Being of the Phenomenon. Merleau-Ponty's Ontology Bloomington: Indiana University Press.\n Carbone, M. (2004) The Thinking of the Sensible. Merleau-Ponty's A-Philosophy, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.\n Clark, A. (1997) Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.\n Dillon, M. C. (1997) Merleau-Ponty's Ontology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.\n Gallagher, S. (2003) How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.\n Guilherme, Alexandre and Morgan, W. John, 'Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961)-dialogue as being present to the other'. Chapter 6 in Philosophy, Dialogue, and Education: Nine modern European philosophers, Routledge, London and New York, pp. 89–108, .\n Johnson, G., Smith, M. B. (eds.) (1993) The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, Chicago: Northwestern UP 1993.\n Landes, D. (2013) Merleau-Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression, New York-London: Bloomsbury.\n Lawlor, L., Evans, F. (eds.) (2000) Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty's Notion of Flesh, Albany: SUNY Press.\n Petitot, J., Varela, F., Pachoud, B. and Roy, J-M. (eds.) (1999) Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Stanford: Stanford University Press.\n Toadvine, T. (2009) Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Nature. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.\n Tilliette, X. (1970) Maurice Merleau-Ponty ou la mesure de l'homme, Seghers, 1970.\n Varela, F. J., Thompson, E. and Rosch, E. (1991) The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press.\n\nExternal links\n\n \n Maurice Merleau-Ponty at 18 from the French Government website\n English Translations of Merleau-Ponty's Work\n Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty by Jack Reynolds\n Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty by Ted Toadvine\n The Merleau-Ponty Circle — Association of scholars interested in the works of Merleau-Ponty\n Maurice Merleau-Ponty page at Mythos & Logos\n Chiasmi International — Studies Concerning the Thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in English, French and Italian\n O’Loughlin, Marjorie, 1995, \"Intelligent Bodies and Ecological Subjectivities: Merleau-Ponty’s Corrective to Postmodernism’s “Subjects” of Education.\"\n Popen, Shari, 1995, \"Merleau-Ponty Confronts Postmodernism: A Reply to O’Loughlin.\"\n Merleau-Ponty: Reckoning with the Possibility of an 'Other.'\n The Journal of French Philosophy — the online home of the Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française\n Online Merleau-Ponty Bibliography at PhilPapers.org\n\n1908 births\n1961 deaths\n20th-century French non-fiction writers\n20th-century French philosophers\nAction theorists\nBurials at Père Lachaise Cemetery\nCollège de France faculty\nConsciousness researchers and theorists\nContinental philosophers\nCultural critics\nÉcole Normale Supérieure alumni\nEcophenomenologists\nEnactive cognition\nEnvironmental philosophers\nEpistemologists\nExistentialists\nFrench communists\nFrench socialists\nFrench humanists\nFrench male non-fiction writers\nFrench male writers\nLycée Carnot teachers\nLycée Louis-le-Grand alumni\nMarxist theorists\nMoral philosophers\nOntologists\nPeople from Rochefort, Charente-Maritime\nPhenomenologists\nPhilosophers of art\nPhilosophers of culture\nPhilosophers of education\nPhilosophers of ethics and morality\nPhilosophers of language\nPhilosophers of mind\nPhilosophers of psychology\nPhilosophers of science\nPhilosophy writers\nPolitical philosophers\nSocial critics\nSocial philosophers\nUniversity of Lyon faculty\nUniversity of Paris faculty\nFrench magazine founders"
] |
[
"Maurice Merleau-Ponty",
"Consciousness",
"What is consciousness as define by Maurice Merleau-Ponty?",
"Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually \"engaged.\""
] | C_418a8e8537914486a97e86b3588e76f0_1 | What year was Maurice Merleau-Ponty born ? | 2 | When was Maurice Merleau-Ponty born? | Maurice Merleau-Ponty | In his Phenomenology of Perception (first published in French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty developed the concept of the body-subject (le corps propre) as an alternative to the Cartesian "ego cogito." This distinction is especially important in that Merleau-Ponty perceives the essences of the world existentially. Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually "engaged." The phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the natural sciences, but a correlate of our body and its sensory-motor functions. Taking up and "communing with" (Merleau-Ponty's phrase) the sensible qualities it encounters, the body as incarnated subjectivity intentionally elaborates things within an ever-present world frame, through use of its pre-conscious, pre-predicative understanding of the world's makeup. The elaboration, however, is "inexhaustible" (the hallmark of any perception according to Merleau-Ponty). Things are that upon which our body has a "grip" (prise), while the grip itself is a function of our connaturality with the world's things. The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in an ongoing "becoming." The essential partiality of our view of things, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be copresent with us and with other things than through such "Abschattungen" (sketches, faint outlines, adumbrations). The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background--to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads). Through involvement in the world - being-in-the-world - the perceiver tacitly experiences all the perspectives upon that object coming from all the surrounding things of its environment, as well as the potential perspectives that that object has upon the beings around it. Each object is a "mirror of all others." Our perception of the object through all perspectives is not that of a propositional, or clearly delineated, perception; rather, it is an ambiguous perception founded upon the body's primordial involvement and understanding of the world and of the meanings that constitute the landscape's perceptual gestalt. Only after we have been integrated within the environment so as to perceive objects as such can we turn our attention toward particular objects within the landscape so as to define them more clearly. This attention, however, does not operate by clarifying what is already seen, but by constructing a new Gestalt oriented toward a particular object. Because our bodily involvement with things is always provisional and indeterminate, we encounter meaningful things in a unified though ever open-ended world. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest and he wrote on perception, art, politics, religion, biology, psychology, psychoanalysis, language, nature, and history. He was the lead editor of Les Temps modernes, the leftist magazine he established with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in 1945.
At the core of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is a sustained argument for the foundational role perception plays in our experience of the world. Merleau-Ponty understands perception to be an ongoing dialogue between one's lived body and the world which it perceives, in which perceivers passively and actively strive to express the perceived world in concert with others. He was the only major phenomenologist of the first half of the twentieth century to engage extensively with the sciences and especially with Gestalt psychology. It is through this engagement that his writings became influential in the project of naturalizing phenomenology, in which phenomenologists use the results of psychology and cognitive science.
Merleau-Ponty emphasized the body as the primary site of knowing the world, a corrective to the long philosophical tradition of placing consciousness as the source of knowledge, and maintained that the body and that which it perceived could not be disentangled from each other. The articulation of the primacy of embodiment (corporéité) led him away from phenomenology towards what he was to call “indirect ontology” or the ontology of “the flesh of the world” (la chair du monde), seen in his final and incomplete work, The Visible and Invisible, and his last published essay, “Eye and Mind”.
Merleau-Ponty engaged with Marxism throughout his career. His 1947 book, Humanism and Terror, has been widely (mis)understood as a defence of the Soviet show trials. In fact, this text avoids the definitive endorsement of a view on the Soviet Union, but instead engages with the Marxist theory of history as a critique of liberalism, in order to reveal an unresolved antinomy in modern politics, between humanism and terror: if human values can only be achieved through violent force, and if liberal ideas hide illiberal realities, how is just political action to be decided? Merleau-Ponty maintained an engaged though critical relationship to the Marxist left until the end of his life, particularly during his time as the political editor of the journal Les Temps Modernes.
Life
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was born in 1908 in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Inférieure (now Charente-Maritime), France. His father died in 1913 when Merleau-Ponty was five years old. After secondary schooling at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Merleau-Ponty became a student at the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Jean Hyppolite, and Jean Wahl. As Beauvoir recounts in her autobiography, she developed a close friendship with Merleau-Ponty and became smitten with him, but ultimately found him too well-adjusted to bourgeois life and values for her taste. He attended Edmund Husserl's "Paris Lectures" in February 1929. In 1929, Merleau-Ponty received his DES degree (, roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) from the University of Paris, on the basis of the (now-lost) thesis La Notion de multiple intelligible chez Plotin ("Plotinus's Notion of the Intelligible Many"), directed by Émile Bréhier. He passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1930.
Merleau-Ponty was raised as a Catholic. He was friends with the Christian existentialist Gabriel Marcel, and he wrote articles for the Christian leftist journal Esprit, but he left the Church in 1937 because he felt his socialist politics were not compatible with the social and political teaching of the Catholic Church.
An article published in French newspaper Le Monde in October 2014 makes the case of recent discoveries about Merleau-Ponty's likely authorship of the novel Nord. Récit de l'arctique (Grasset, 1928). Convergent sources from close friends (Beauvoir, Elisabeth "Zaza" Lacoin) seem to leave little doubt that Jacques Heller was a pseudonym of the 20-year-old Merleau-Ponty.
Merleau-Ponty taught first at the Lycée de Beauvais (1931–33) and then got a fellowship to do research from the . From 1934 to 1935 he taught at the Lycée de Chartres. He then in 1935 became a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure, where he tutored a young Michel Foucault and Trần Đức Thảo and was awarded his doctorate on the basis of two important books: La structure du comportement (1942) and Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945). During this time, he attended Alexandre Kojeve's influential seminars on Hegel and Aron Gurwitsch's lectures on Gestalt psychology.
In the spring of 1939, he was the first foreign visitor to the newly established Husserl Archives, where he consulted Husserl's unpublished manuscripts and met Eugen Fink and Father Hermann Van Breda. In the summer of 1939, as France entered war against Germany, he served on the frontlines in the French army, where he was wounded in battle in June 1940. Upon returning to Paris in the fall of 1940, he married Suzanne Jolibois, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and founded an underground resistance group with Jean-Paul Sartre called "Under the Boot". He participated in an armed demonstration against the Nazis during the Liberation of Paris.
After teaching at the University of Lyon from 1945 to 1948, Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952.
He was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him the youngest person to have been elected to a chair.
Besides his teaching, Merleau-Ponty was also political editor for the leftist Les Temps modernes from the founding of the journal in October 1945 until December 1952. In his youth he had read Karl Marx's writings and Sartre even claimed that Merleau-Ponty converted him to Marxism. While he was not a member of the French Communist Party and did not identify as a Communist, he laid out an argument justifying the Soviet show trials and violence for progressive ends in general in the work Humanism and Terror in 1947. However, about three years later, he renounced his earlier support for political violence, and he rejected Marxism and advocated a liberal left position in Adventures of the Dialectic (1955). His friendship with Sartre and work with Les Temps modernes ended because of that, since Sartre still had a more favourable attitude towards Soviet communism. Merleau-Ponty was subsequently active in the French non-communist left and in particular in the Union of the Democratic Forces.
Merleau-Ponty died suddenly of a stroke in 1961 at age 53, apparently while preparing for a class on René Descartes, leaving an unfinished manuscript which was posthumously published in 1964, along with a selection of Merleau-Ponty's working notes, by Claude Lefort as The Visible and the Invisible. He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris with his mother Louise, his wife Suzanne and their daughter Marianne.
Thought
Consciousness
In his Phenomenology of Perception (first published in French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty develops the concept of the body-subject (le corps propre) as an alternative to the Cartesian "cogito". This distinction is especially important in that Merleau-Ponty perceives the essences of the world existentially. Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually "engaged". The phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the natural sciences, but a correlate of our body and its sensory-motor functions. Taking up and "communing with" (Merleau-Ponty's phrase) the sensible qualities it encounters, the body as incarnated subjectivity intentionally elaborates things within an ever-present world frame, through use of its pre-conscious, pre-predicative understanding of the world's makeup. The elaboration, however, is "inexhaustible" (the hallmark of any perception according to Merleau-Ponty). Things are that upon which our body has a "grip" (prise), while the grip itself is a function of our connaturality with the world's things. The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in an ongoing "becoming".
The essential partiality of our view of things, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be copresent with us and with other things than through such "Abschattungen" (sketches, faint outlines, adumbrations). The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background—to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads). Through involvement in the world – being-in-the-world – the perceiver tacitly experiences all the perspectives upon that object coming from all the surrounding things of its environment, as well as the potential perspectives that that object has upon the beings around it.
Each object is a "mirror of all others". Our perception of the object through all perspectives is not that of a propositional, or clearly delineated, perception; rather, it is an ambiguous perception founded upon the body's primordial involvement and understanding of the world and of the meanings that constitute the landscape's perceptual Gestalt. Only after we have been integrated within the environment so as to perceive objects as such can we turn our attention toward particular objects within the landscape so as to define them more clearly. This attention, however, does not operate by clarifying what is already seen, but by constructing a new Gestalt oriented toward a particular object. Because our bodily involvement with things is always provisional and indeterminate, we encounter meaningful things in a unified though ever open-ended world.
The primacy of perception
From the time of writing Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty wanted to show, in opposition to the idea that drove the tradition beginning with John Locke, that perception was not the causal product of atomic sensations. This atomist-causal conception was being perpetuated in certain psychological currents of the time, particularly in behaviourism. According to Merleau-Ponty, perception has an active dimension, in that it is a primordial openness to the lifeworld (the "Lebenswelt").
This primordial openness is at the heart of his thesis of the primacy of perception. The slogan of Husserl's phenomenology is "all consciousness is consciousness of something", which implies a distinction between "acts of thought" (the noesis) and "intentional objects of thought" (the noema). Thus, the correlation between noesis and noema becomes the first step in the constitution of analyses of consciousness. However, in studying the posthumous manuscripts of Husserl, who remained one of his major influences, Merleau-Ponty remarked that, in their evolution, Husserl's work brings to light phenomena which are not assimilable to noesis–noema correlation. This is particularly the case when one attends to the phenomena of the body (which is at once body-subject and body-object), subjective time (the consciousness of time is neither an act of consciousness nor an object of thought) and the other (the first considerations of the other in Husserl led to solipsism).
The distinction between "acts of thought" (noesis) and "intentional objects of thought" (noema) does not seem, therefore, to constitute an irreducible ground. It appears rather at a higher level of analysis. Thus, Merleau-Ponty does not postulate that "all consciousness is consciousness of something", which supposes at the outset a noetic-noematic ground. Instead, he develops the thesis according to which "all consciousness is perceptual consciousness". In doing so, he establishes a significant turn in the development of phenomenology, indicating that its conceptualisations should be re-examined in the light of the primacy of perception, in weighing up the philosophical consequences of this thesis.
Corporeity
Taking the study of perception as his point of departure, Merleau-Ponty was led to recognize that one's own body (le corps propre) is not only a thing, a potential object of study for science, but is also a permanent condition of experience, a constituent of the perceptual openness to the world. He therefore underlines the fact that there is an inherence of consciousness and of the body of which the analysis of perception should take account. The primacy of perception signifies a primacy of experience, so to speak, insofar as perception becomes an active and constitutive dimension.
Merleau-Ponty demonstrates a corporeity of consciousness as much as an intentionality of the body, and so stands in contrast with the dualist ontology of mind and body in Descartes, a philosopher to whom Merleau-Ponty continually returned, despite the important differences that separate them. In the Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty wrote: “Insofar as I have hands, feet, a body, I sustain around me intentions which are not dependent on my decisions and which affect my surroundings in a way that I do not choose” (1962, p. 440).
Spatiality
The question concerning corporeity connects also with Merleau-Ponty's reflections on space (l'espace) and the primacy of the dimension of depth (la profondeur) as implied in the notion of being in the world (être au monde; to echo Heidegger's In-der-Welt-sein) and of one's own body (le corps propre). Reflections on spatiality in phenomenology are also central to the advanced philosophical deliberations in architectural theory.
Language
The highlighting of the fact that corporeity intrinsically has a dimension of expressivity which proves to be fundamental to the constitution of the ego is one of the conclusions of The Structure of Behavior that is constantly reiterated in Merleau-Ponty's later works. Following this theme of expressivity, he goes on to examine how an incarnate subject is in a position to undertake actions that transcend the organic level of the body, such as in intellectual operations and the products of one's cultural life.
He carefully considers language, then, as the core of culture, by examining in particular the connections between the unfolding of thought and sense—enriching his perspective not only by an analysis of the acquisition of language and the expressivity of the body, but also by taking into account pathologies of language, painting, cinema, literature, poetry and song.
This work deals mainly with language, beginning with the reflection on artistic expression in The Structure of Behavior—which contains a passage on El Greco (p. 203ff) that prefigures the remarks that he develops in "Cézanne's Doubt" (1945) and follows the discussion in Phenomenology of Perception. The work, undertaken while serving as the Chair of Child Psychology and Pedagogy at the University of the Sorbonne, is not a departure from his philosophical and phenomenological works, but rather an important continuation in the development of his thought.
As the course outlines of his Sorbonne lectures indicate, during this period he continues a dialogue between phenomenology and the diverse work carried out in psychology, all in order to return to the study of the acquisition of language in children, as well as to broadly take advantage of the contribution of Ferdinand de Saussure to linguistics, and to work on the notion of structure through a discussion of work in psychology, linguistics and social anthropology.
Art
Merleau-Ponty distinguishes between primary and secondary modes of expression. This distinction appears in Phenomenology of Perception (p. 207, 2nd note [Fr. ed.]) and is sometimes repeated in terms of spoken and speaking language () (The Prose of the World, p. 10). Spoken language (), or secondary expression, returns to our linguistic baggage, to the cultural heritage that we have acquired, as well as the brute mass of relationships between signs and significations. Speaking language (), or primary expression, such as it is, is language in the production of a sense, language at the advent of a thought, at the moment where it makes itself an advent of sense.
It is speaking language, that is to say, primary expression, that interests Merleau-Ponty and which keeps his attention through his treatment of the nature of production and the reception of expressions, a subject which also overlaps with an analysis of action, of intentionality, of perception, as well as the links between freedom and external conditions.
The notion of style occupies an important place in "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence". In spite of certain similarities with André Malraux, Merleau-Ponty distinguishes himself from Malraux in respect to three conceptions of style, the last of which is employed in Malraux's The Voices of Silence. Merleau-Ponty remarks that in this work "style" is sometimes used by Malraux in a highly subjective sense, understood as a projection of the artist's individuality. Sometimes it is used, on the contrary, in a very metaphysical sense (in Merleau-Ponty's opinion, a mystical sense), in which style is connected with a conception of an "über-artist" expressing "the Spirit of Painting". Finally, it sometimes is reduced to simply designating a categorization of an artistic school or movement. (However, this account of Malraux's notion of style—a key element in his thinking—is open to serious question.)
For Merleau-Ponty, it is these uses of the notion of style that lead Malraux to postulate a cleavage between the objectivity of Italian Renaissance painting and the subjectivity of painting in his own time, a conclusion that Merleau-Ponty disputes. According to Merleau-Ponty, it is important to consider the heart of this problematic, by recognizing that style is first of all a demand owed to the primacy of perception, which also implies taking into consideration the dimensions of historicity and intersubjectivity. (However, Merleau-Ponty's reading of Malraux has been questioned in a recent major study of Malraux's theory of art which argues that Merleau-Ponty seriously misunderstood Malraux.) For Merleau-Ponty, style is born of the interaction between two or more fields of being. Rather than being exclusive to individual human consciousness, consciousness is born of the pre-conscious style of the world, of Nature.
Science
In his essay "Cézanne's Doubt", in which he identifies Paul Cézanne's impressionistic theory of painting as analogous to his own concept of radical reflection, the attempt to return to, and reflect on, prereflective consciousness, Merleau-Ponty identifies science as the opposite of art. In Merleau-Ponty's account, whereas art is an attempt to capture an individual's perception, science is anti-individualistic. In the preface to his Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty presents a phenomenological objection to positivism: that it can tell us nothing about human subjectivity. All that a scientific text can explain is the particular individual experience of that scientist, which cannot be transcended. For Merleau-Ponty, science neglects the depth and profundity of the phenomena that it endeavors to explain.
Merleau-Ponty understood science to be an ex post facto abstraction. Causal and physiological accounts of perception, for example, explain perception in terms that are arrived at only after abstracting from the phenomenon itself. Merleau-Ponty chastised science for taking itself to be the area in which a complete account of nature may be given. The subjective depth of phenomena cannot be given in science as it is. This characterizes Merleau-Ponty's attempt to ground science in phenomenological objectivity and, in essence, to institute a "return to the phenomena".
Influence
Anticognitivist cognitive science
Merleau-Ponty's critical position with respect to science was stated in his Preface to the Phenomenology: he described scientific points of view as "always both naive and at the same time dishonest". Despite, or perhaps because of, this view, his work influenced and anticipated the strands of modern psychology known as post-cognitivism. Hubert Dreyfus has been instrumental in emphasising the relevance of Merleau-Ponty's work to current post-cognitive research, and its criticism of the traditional view of cognitive science.
Dreyfus's seminal critique of cognitivism (or the computational account of the mind), What Computers Can't Do, consciously replays Merleau-Ponty's critique of intellectualist psychology to argue for the irreducibility of corporeal know-how to discrete, syntactic processes. Through the influence of Dreyfus's critique and neurophysiological alternative, Merleau-Ponty became associated with neurophysiological, connectionist accounts of cognition.
With the publication in 1991 of The Embodied Mind by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, this association was extended, if only partially, to another strand of "anti-cognitivist" or post-representationalist cognitive science: embodied or enactive cognitive science, and later in the decade, to neurophenomenology. In addition, Merleau-Ponty's work has also influenced researchers trying to integrate neuroscience with the principles of chaos theory.
It was through this relationship with Merleau-Ponty's work that cognitive science's affair with phenomenology was born, which is represented by a growing number of works, including
Ron McClamrock's Existential Cognition: Computational Minds in the World (1995),
Andy Clark's Being There (1997),
Naturalizing Phenomenology edited by Petitot et al. (1999),
Alva Noë's Action in Perception (2004),
Shaun Gallagher's How the Body Shapes the Mind (2005),
Grammont, Franck Dorothée Legrand, and Pierre Livet (eds.) 2010, Naturalizing Intention in Action, MIT Press 2010 .
The journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
Feminist philosophy
Merleau-Ponty has also been picked up by Australian and Nordic philosophers inspired by the French feminist tradition, including Rosalyn Diprose and .
Heinämaa has argued for a rereading of Merleau-Ponty's influence on Simone de Beauvoir. (She has also challenged Dreyfus's reading of Merleau-Ponty as behaviorist, and as neglecting the importance of the phenomenological reduction to Merleau-Ponty's thought.)
Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body has also been taken up by Iris Young in her essay "Throwing Like a Girl," and its follow-up, "'Throwing Like a Girl': Twenty Years Later". Young analyzes the particular modalities of feminine bodily comportment as they differ from that of men. Young observes that while a man who throws a ball puts his whole body into the motion, a woman throwing a ball generally restricts her own movements as she makes them, and that, generally, in sports, women move in a more tentative, reactive way. Merleau-Ponty argues that we experience the world in terms of the "I can" – that is, oriented towards certain projects based on our capacity and habituality. Young's thesis is that in women, this intentionality is inhibited and ambivalent, rather than confident, experienced as an "I cannot".
Ecophenomenology
Ecophenomenology can be described as the pursuit of the relationalities of worldly engagement, both human and those of other creatures (Brown & Toadvine 2003).
This engagement is situated in a kind of middle ground of relationality, a space that is neither purely objective, because it is reciprocally constituted by a diversity of lived experiences motivating the movements of countless organisms, nor purely subjective, because it is nonetheless a field of material relationships between bodies. It is governed exclusively neither by causality, nor by intentionality. In this space of in-betweenness, phenomenology can overcome its inaugural opposition to naturalism.
David Abram explains Merleau-Ponty's concept of "flesh" (chair) as "the mysterious tissue or matrix that underlies and gives rise to both the perceiver and the perceived as interdependent aspects of its spontaneous activity", and he identifies this elemental matrix with the interdependent web of earthly life. This concept unites subject and object dialectically as determinations within a more primordial reality, which Merleau-Ponty calls "the flesh" and which Abram refers to variously as "the animate earth", "the breathing biosphere" or "the more-than-human natural world". Yet this is not nature or the biosphere conceived as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather "the biosphere as it is experienced and lived from within by the intelligent body — by the attentive human animal who is entirely a part of the world that he or she experiences. Merleau-Ponty's ecophenemonology with its emphasis on holistic dialog within the larger-than-human world also has implications for the ontogenesis and phylogenesis of language; indeed he states that "language is the very voice of the trees, the waves and the forest".
Merleau-Ponty himself refers to "that primordial being which is not yet the subject-being nor the object-being and which in every respect baffles reflection. From this primordial being to us, there is no derivation, nor any break..." Among the many working notes found on his desk at the time of his death, and published with the half-complete manuscript of The Visible and the Invisible, several make it evident that Merleau-Ponty himself recognized a deep affinity between his notion of a primordial "flesh" and a radically transformed understanding of "nature". Hence, in November 1960 he writes: "Do a psychoanalysis of Nature: it is the flesh, the mother." And in the last published working note, written in March 1961, he writes: "Nature as the other side of humanity (as flesh, nowise as 'matter')." This resonates with the conception of space, place, dwelling, and embodiment (in the flesh and physical, vs. virtual and cybernetic), especially as they are addressed against the background of the unfolding of the essence of modern technology. Such analytics figure in a Heideggerian take on “econtology” as an extension of Heidegger's consideration of the question of being (Seinsfrage) by way of the fourfold (Das Geviert) of earth-sky-mortals-divinities (Erde und Himmel, Sterblichen und Göttlichen). In this strand of “ecophenomenology”, ecology is co-entangled with ontology, whereby the worldly existential analytics are grounded in earthiness, and environmentalism is orientated by ontological thinking.
Bibliography
The following table gives a selection of Merleau-Ponty's works in French and English translation.
See also
Gestalt psychology
Process philosophy
Embodied cognition
Enactivism
Difference (philosophy)
Virtuality (philosophy)
Field (physics)
Hylomorphism
Autopoiesis
Emergence
Umwelt
Habit
Body schema
Affordance
Perspectivism
Reflexivity
Invagination (philosophy)
Incarnation
Notes
References
Abram, D. (1988). "Merleau-Ponty and the Voice of the Earth" Environmental Ethics 10, no. 2 (Summer 1988): 101–20.
Alloa, E. (2017) Resistance of the Sensible World. An Introduction to Merleau-Ponty, New York: Fordham University Press.
Alloa,E., F. Chouraqui & R. Kaushik, (2019) (eds.) Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy, Albany: SUNY Press.
Barbaras, R. (2004) The Being of the Phenomenon. Merleau-Ponty's Ontology Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Carbone, M. (2004) The Thinking of the Sensible. Merleau-Ponty's A-Philosophy, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Clark, A. (1997) Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Dillon, M. C. (1997) Merleau-Ponty's Ontology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Gallagher, S. (2003) How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Guilherme, Alexandre and Morgan, W. John, 'Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961)-dialogue as being present to the other'. Chapter 6 in Philosophy, Dialogue, and Education: Nine modern European philosophers, Routledge, London and New York, pp. 89–108, .
Johnson, G., Smith, M. B. (eds.) (1993) The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, Chicago: Northwestern UP 1993.
Landes, D. (2013) Merleau-Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression, New York-London: Bloomsbury.
Lawlor, L., Evans, F. (eds.) (2000) Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty's Notion of Flesh, Albany: SUNY Press.
Petitot, J., Varela, F., Pachoud, B. and Roy, J-M. (eds.) (1999) Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Toadvine, T. (2009) Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Nature. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Tilliette, X. (1970) Maurice Merleau-Ponty ou la mesure de l'homme, Seghers, 1970.
Varela, F. J., Thompson, E. and Rosch, E. (1991) The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press.
External links
Maurice Merleau-Ponty at 18 from the French Government website
English Translations of Merleau-Ponty's Work
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty by Jack Reynolds
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty by Ted Toadvine
The Merleau-Ponty Circle — Association of scholars interested in the works of Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty page at Mythos & Logos
Chiasmi International — Studies Concerning the Thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in English, French and Italian
O’Loughlin, Marjorie, 1995, "Intelligent Bodies and Ecological Subjectivities: Merleau-Ponty’s Corrective to Postmodernism’s “Subjects” of Education."
Popen, Shari, 1995, "Merleau-Ponty Confronts Postmodernism: A Reply to O’Loughlin."
Merleau-Ponty: Reckoning with the Possibility of an 'Other.'
The Journal of French Philosophy — the online home of the Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française
Online Merleau-Ponty Bibliography at PhilPapers.org
1908 births
1961 deaths
20th-century French non-fiction writers
20th-century French philosophers
Action theorists
Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery
Collège de France faculty
Consciousness researchers and theorists
Continental philosophers
Cultural critics
École Normale Supérieure alumni
Ecophenomenologists
Enactive cognition
Environmental philosophers
Epistemologists
Existentialists
French communists
French socialists
French humanists
French male non-fiction writers
French male writers
Lycée Carnot teachers
Lycée Louis-le-Grand alumni
Marxist theorists
Moral philosophers
Ontologists
People from Rochefort, Charente-Maritime
Phenomenologists
Philosophers of art
Philosophers of culture
Philosophers of education
Philosophers of ethics and morality
Philosophers of language
Philosophers of mind
Philosophers of psychology
Philosophers of science
Philosophy writers
Political philosophers
Social critics
Social philosophers
University of Lyon faculty
University of Paris faculty
French magazine founders | false | [
"Phenomenology of Perception () is a 1945 book about perception by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in which the author expounds his thesis of \"the primacy of perception\". The work established Merleau-Ponty as the pre-eminent philosopher of the body, and is considered a major statement of French existentialism.\n\nSummary\nMerleau-Ponty attempts to define phenomenology, which according to him has not yet received a proper definition. He asserts that phenomenology contains a series of apparent contradictions, which include the fact that it attempts to create a philosophy that would be a rigorous science while also offering an account of space, time and the world as people experience them. Merleau-Ponty denies that such contradictions can be resolved by distinguishing between the views of the philosopher Edmund Husserl and those of the philosopher Martin Heidegger, commenting that Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) \"springs from an indication given by Husserl and amounts to no more than an explicit account of the 'natürlicher Weltbegriff' or the 'Lebenswelt' which Husserl, toward the end of his life, identified as the central theme of phenomenology, with the result that the contradiction appears in Husserl's own philosophy\".\n\nFollowing Husserl, Merleau-Ponty attempts to reveal the phenomenological structure of perception. He writes that while the \"notion of sensation ... seems immediate and obvious\", it is in fact confused. Merleau-Ponty asserts that because \"traditional analyses\" have accepted it, they have \"missed the phenomenon of perception.\" Merleau-Ponty argues that while sensation could be understood to mean \"the way in which I am affected and the experiencing of a state of myself\", there is nothing in experience corresponding to \"pure sensation\" or \"an atom of feeling\". He writes that, \"The alleged self-evidence of sensation is not based on any testimony of consciousness, but on widely held prejudice.\" Merleau-Ponty's central thesis is that of the \"primacy of perception.\" He critiques the Cartesian stance of \"cogito ergo sum\" and expounds a different conception of consciousness. Cartesian dualism of mind and body is called into question as the primary way of existing in the world, and is ultimately rejected in favor of an intersubjective conception or dialectical and intentional concept of consciousness. The body is central to Merleau-Ponty's account of perception. In his view, the ability to reflect comes from a pre-reflective ground that serves as the foundation for reflecting on actions.\n\nMerleau-Ponty's account of the body helps him undermine what had been a long-standing conception of consciousness, which hinges on the distinction between the for-itself (subject) and in-itself (object), which plays a central role in the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, whose Being and Nothingness was released in 1943. The body stands between this fundamental distinction between subject and object, ambiguously existing as both. In Merleau-Ponty's discussion of human sexuality, he discusses psychoanalysis. Merleau-Ponty suggests that the body \"can symbolize existence because it brings it into being and actualizes it.\"\n\nPublication history\nPhenomenology of Perception was first published in 1945 by Éditions Gallimard. In 1962, an English translation by Colin Smith was published by Routledge & Kegan Paul. In 2013, Routledge published an English translation by Donald Landes.\n\nReception\nThe philosopher A. J. Ayer criticized Merleau-Ponty's arguments against the sense datum theory of perception, finding them inconclusive. He considered Merleau-Ponty's inclusion of a chapter on sexuality surprising, suggesting that Merleau-Ponty included it to give him an opportunity to revisit the Hegelian dialectic of the master and the slave. He compared Merleau-Ponty's views on sex to those of Sartre in Being and Nothingness. The sociologist Murray S. Davis observed that Merleau-Ponty's view that aspects of psychoanalysis, such as its attribution of meaning to all human actions and the diffusing of sexuality throughout the whole of human existence, are similar to phenomenology is controversial, and that other authors would view psychoanalysis as \"materialistic and mechanical\".\n\nHelmut R. Wagner described Phenomenology of Perception as an important contribution to phenomenology. Rhiannon Goldthorpe called the book Merleau-Ponty's major work, noting that its discussion of subjects such as the relationship of the body to spatial experience, and sexuality, went beyond \"the nominal range of his title.\" The philosopher David Abram observed that while \"the sensible thing\" is \"commonly considered by our philosophical tradition to be passive and inert\", Merleau-Ponty consistently describes it in the active voice in Phenomenology of Perception. He rejected the idea that Merleau-Ponty's \"animistic\" language was the result of poetic license, arguing that he \"writes of the perceived things as entities, of sensible qualities as powers, and of the sensible itself as a field of animate presences, in order to acknowledge and underscore their active, dynamic contribution to perceptual experience.\"\n\nAmerican vice president Al Gore, in a 1999 interview with the critic Louis Menand in The New Yorker, mentioned Phenomenology of Perception as an inspiration. The philosopher Stephen Priest commented that, following the book's publication, Merleau-Ponty decided that in it he had taken \"subject-object dualism as phenomenologically primitive\" and \"made use of a comparatively superficial psychologistic vocabulary\" that he wished to replace. The philosopher Robert Bernasconi observed that the book established Merleau-Ponty as the pre-eminent philosopher of the body, and along with Merleau-Ponty's other writings, found a more receptive audience among analytic philosophers than the works of other phenomenologists.\n\nG. B. Madison observed that the book was recognized as a major statement of French existentialism, and is best known for Merleau-Ponty's central thesis of \"the primacy of perception\". According to Madison, Merleau-Ponty sought to respond in his later work to the charge that by grounding all intellectual and cultural acquisitions in the prereflective and prepersonal life of the body, he was promoting reductionism and anti-intellectualism and undermining the ideals of reason and truth. Madison further stated that some commentators believed that Merleau-Ponty's thought had taken a significantly different direction in his late, unfinished work The Visible and the Invisible, edited by the philosopher Claude Lefort, while others emphasized the continuity of his work, with the issue receiving \"much scholarly discussion\".\n\nReferences\n\nBibliography\nBooks\n\nExternal links\n Excerpts can be found at Google Books: \n Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy listing\n\n1945 non-fiction books\nBooks about perception\nBooks by Maurice Merleau-Ponty\nÉditions Gallimard books\nExistentialist books\nFrench non-fiction books\nPhenomenology literature\nRoutledge books",
"1961 in philosophy\n\nEvents \nHegel Yearbook was established in 1961.\n\nPublications \n Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History (1961)\n Emmanuel Lévinas, Totality and Infinity (1961)\n H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (1961)\n Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961)\n E. H. Carr, What Is History? (1961)\n\nPhilosophical fiction \n Stanisław Lem, Solaris (1961)\n\nBirths\n\nDeaths \n January 4 - Erwin Schrödinger (born 1887)\n May 3 - Maurice Merleau-Ponty (born 1908) \n May 6 - Lucian Blaga (born 1895)\n June 6 - Carl Jung (born 1875)\n December 6 - Frantz Fanon (born 1925)\n\nReferences\n\nSee also \n\nPhilosophy\n20th-century philosophy\nPhilosophy by year"
] |
[
"Maurice Merleau-Ponty",
"Consciousness",
"What is consciousness as define by Maurice Merleau-Ponty?",
"Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually \"engaged.\"",
"What year was Maurice Merleau-Ponty born ?",
"I don't know."
] | C_418a8e8537914486a97e86b3588e76f0_1 | Which philosopher theory did Maurice Merleau - Ponty follow ? | 3 | Which philosopher theory did Maurice Merleau-Ponty follow ? | Maurice Merleau-Ponty | In his Phenomenology of Perception (first published in French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty developed the concept of the body-subject (le corps propre) as an alternative to the Cartesian "ego cogito." This distinction is especially important in that Merleau-Ponty perceives the essences of the world existentially. Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually "engaged." The phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the natural sciences, but a correlate of our body and its sensory-motor functions. Taking up and "communing with" (Merleau-Ponty's phrase) the sensible qualities it encounters, the body as incarnated subjectivity intentionally elaborates things within an ever-present world frame, through use of its pre-conscious, pre-predicative understanding of the world's makeup. The elaboration, however, is "inexhaustible" (the hallmark of any perception according to Merleau-Ponty). Things are that upon which our body has a "grip" (prise), while the grip itself is a function of our connaturality with the world's things. The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in an ongoing "becoming." The essential partiality of our view of things, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be copresent with us and with other things than through such "Abschattungen" (sketches, faint outlines, adumbrations). The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background--to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads). Through involvement in the world - being-in-the-world - the perceiver tacitly experiences all the perspectives upon that object coming from all the surrounding things of its environment, as well as the potential perspectives that that object has upon the beings around it. Each object is a "mirror of all others." Our perception of the object through all perspectives is not that of a propositional, or clearly delineated, perception; rather, it is an ambiguous perception founded upon the body's primordial involvement and understanding of the world and of the meanings that constitute the landscape's perceptual gestalt. Only after we have been integrated within the environment so as to perceive objects as such can we turn our attention toward particular objects within the landscape so as to define them more clearly. This attention, however, does not operate by clarifying what is already seen, but by constructing a new Gestalt oriented toward a particular object. Because our bodily involvement with things is always provisional and indeterminate, we encounter meaningful things in a unified though ever open-ended world. CANNOTANSWER | Merleau-Ponty developed the concept of the body-subject (le corps propre) as an alternative to the Cartesian "ego cogito. | Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest and he wrote on perception, art, politics, religion, biology, psychology, psychoanalysis, language, nature, and history. He was the lead editor of Les Temps modernes, the leftist magazine he established with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in 1945.
At the core of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is a sustained argument for the foundational role perception plays in our experience of the world. Merleau-Ponty understands perception to be an ongoing dialogue between one's lived body and the world which it perceives, in which perceivers passively and actively strive to express the perceived world in concert with others. He was the only major phenomenologist of the first half of the twentieth century to engage extensively with the sciences and especially with Gestalt psychology. It is through this engagement that his writings became influential in the project of naturalizing phenomenology, in which phenomenologists use the results of psychology and cognitive science.
Merleau-Ponty emphasized the body as the primary site of knowing the world, a corrective to the long philosophical tradition of placing consciousness as the source of knowledge, and maintained that the body and that which it perceived could not be disentangled from each other. The articulation of the primacy of embodiment (corporéité) led him away from phenomenology towards what he was to call “indirect ontology” or the ontology of “the flesh of the world” (la chair du monde), seen in his final and incomplete work, The Visible and Invisible, and his last published essay, “Eye and Mind”.
Merleau-Ponty engaged with Marxism throughout his career. His 1947 book, Humanism and Terror, has been widely (mis)understood as a defence of the Soviet show trials. In fact, this text avoids the definitive endorsement of a view on the Soviet Union, but instead engages with the Marxist theory of history as a critique of liberalism, in order to reveal an unresolved antinomy in modern politics, between humanism and terror: if human values can only be achieved through violent force, and if liberal ideas hide illiberal realities, how is just political action to be decided? Merleau-Ponty maintained an engaged though critical relationship to the Marxist left until the end of his life, particularly during his time as the political editor of the journal Les Temps Modernes.
Life
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was born in 1908 in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Inférieure (now Charente-Maritime), France. His father died in 1913 when Merleau-Ponty was five years old. After secondary schooling at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Merleau-Ponty became a student at the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Jean Hyppolite, and Jean Wahl. As Beauvoir recounts in her autobiography, she developed a close friendship with Merleau-Ponty and became smitten with him, but ultimately found him too well-adjusted to bourgeois life and values for her taste. He attended Edmund Husserl's "Paris Lectures" in February 1929. In 1929, Merleau-Ponty received his DES degree (, roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) from the University of Paris, on the basis of the (now-lost) thesis La Notion de multiple intelligible chez Plotin ("Plotinus's Notion of the Intelligible Many"), directed by Émile Bréhier. He passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1930.
Merleau-Ponty was raised as a Catholic. He was friends with the Christian existentialist Gabriel Marcel, and he wrote articles for the Christian leftist journal Esprit, but he left the Church in 1937 because he felt his socialist politics were not compatible with the social and political teaching of the Catholic Church.
An article published in French newspaper Le Monde in October 2014 makes the case of recent discoveries about Merleau-Ponty's likely authorship of the novel Nord. Récit de l'arctique (Grasset, 1928). Convergent sources from close friends (Beauvoir, Elisabeth "Zaza" Lacoin) seem to leave little doubt that Jacques Heller was a pseudonym of the 20-year-old Merleau-Ponty.
Merleau-Ponty taught first at the Lycée de Beauvais (1931–33) and then got a fellowship to do research from the . From 1934 to 1935 he taught at the Lycée de Chartres. He then in 1935 became a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure, where he tutored a young Michel Foucault and Trần Đức Thảo and was awarded his doctorate on the basis of two important books: La structure du comportement (1942) and Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945). During this time, he attended Alexandre Kojeve's influential seminars on Hegel and Aron Gurwitsch's lectures on Gestalt psychology.
In the spring of 1939, he was the first foreign visitor to the newly established Husserl Archives, where he consulted Husserl's unpublished manuscripts and met Eugen Fink and Father Hermann Van Breda. In the summer of 1939, as France entered war against Germany, he served on the frontlines in the French army, where he was wounded in battle in June 1940. Upon returning to Paris in the fall of 1940, he married Suzanne Jolibois, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and founded an underground resistance group with Jean-Paul Sartre called "Under the Boot". He participated in an armed demonstration against the Nazis during the Liberation of Paris.
After teaching at the University of Lyon from 1945 to 1948, Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952.
He was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him the youngest person to have been elected to a chair.
Besides his teaching, Merleau-Ponty was also political editor for the leftist Les Temps modernes from the founding of the journal in October 1945 until December 1952. In his youth he had read Karl Marx's writings and Sartre even claimed that Merleau-Ponty converted him to Marxism. While he was not a member of the French Communist Party and did not identify as a Communist, he laid out an argument justifying the Soviet show trials and violence for progressive ends in general in the work Humanism and Terror in 1947. However, about three years later, he renounced his earlier support for political violence, and he rejected Marxism and advocated a liberal left position in Adventures of the Dialectic (1955). His friendship with Sartre and work with Les Temps modernes ended because of that, since Sartre still had a more favourable attitude towards Soviet communism. Merleau-Ponty was subsequently active in the French non-communist left and in particular in the Union of the Democratic Forces.
Merleau-Ponty died suddenly of a stroke in 1961 at age 53, apparently while preparing for a class on René Descartes, leaving an unfinished manuscript which was posthumously published in 1964, along with a selection of Merleau-Ponty's working notes, by Claude Lefort as The Visible and the Invisible. He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris with his mother Louise, his wife Suzanne and their daughter Marianne.
Thought
Consciousness
In his Phenomenology of Perception (first published in French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty develops the concept of the body-subject (le corps propre) as an alternative to the Cartesian "cogito". This distinction is especially important in that Merleau-Ponty perceives the essences of the world existentially. Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually "engaged". The phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the natural sciences, but a correlate of our body and its sensory-motor functions. Taking up and "communing with" (Merleau-Ponty's phrase) the sensible qualities it encounters, the body as incarnated subjectivity intentionally elaborates things within an ever-present world frame, through use of its pre-conscious, pre-predicative understanding of the world's makeup. The elaboration, however, is "inexhaustible" (the hallmark of any perception according to Merleau-Ponty). Things are that upon which our body has a "grip" (prise), while the grip itself is a function of our connaturality with the world's things. The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in an ongoing "becoming".
The essential partiality of our view of things, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be copresent with us and with other things than through such "Abschattungen" (sketches, faint outlines, adumbrations). The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background—to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads). Through involvement in the world – being-in-the-world – the perceiver tacitly experiences all the perspectives upon that object coming from all the surrounding things of its environment, as well as the potential perspectives that that object has upon the beings around it.
Each object is a "mirror of all others". Our perception of the object through all perspectives is not that of a propositional, or clearly delineated, perception; rather, it is an ambiguous perception founded upon the body's primordial involvement and understanding of the world and of the meanings that constitute the landscape's perceptual Gestalt. Only after we have been integrated within the environment so as to perceive objects as such can we turn our attention toward particular objects within the landscape so as to define them more clearly. This attention, however, does not operate by clarifying what is already seen, but by constructing a new Gestalt oriented toward a particular object. Because our bodily involvement with things is always provisional and indeterminate, we encounter meaningful things in a unified though ever open-ended world.
The primacy of perception
From the time of writing Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty wanted to show, in opposition to the idea that drove the tradition beginning with John Locke, that perception was not the causal product of atomic sensations. This atomist-causal conception was being perpetuated in certain psychological currents of the time, particularly in behaviourism. According to Merleau-Ponty, perception has an active dimension, in that it is a primordial openness to the lifeworld (the "Lebenswelt").
This primordial openness is at the heart of his thesis of the primacy of perception. The slogan of Husserl's phenomenology is "all consciousness is consciousness of something", which implies a distinction between "acts of thought" (the noesis) and "intentional objects of thought" (the noema). Thus, the correlation between noesis and noema becomes the first step in the constitution of analyses of consciousness. However, in studying the posthumous manuscripts of Husserl, who remained one of his major influences, Merleau-Ponty remarked that, in their evolution, Husserl's work brings to light phenomena which are not assimilable to noesis–noema correlation. This is particularly the case when one attends to the phenomena of the body (which is at once body-subject and body-object), subjective time (the consciousness of time is neither an act of consciousness nor an object of thought) and the other (the first considerations of the other in Husserl led to solipsism).
The distinction between "acts of thought" (noesis) and "intentional objects of thought" (noema) does not seem, therefore, to constitute an irreducible ground. It appears rather at a higher level of analysis. Thus, Merleau-Ponty does not postulate that "all consciousness is consciousness of something", which supposes at the outset a noetic-noematic ground. Instead, he develops the thesis according to which "all consciousness is perceptual consciousness". In doing so, he establishes a significant turn in the development of phenomenology, indicating that its conceptualisations should be re-examined in the light of the primacy of perception, in weighing up the philosophical consequences of this thesis.
Corporeity
Taking the study of perception as his point of departure, Merleau-Ponty was led to recognize that one's own body (le corps propre) is not only a thing, a potential object of study for science, but is also a permanent condition of experience, a constituent of the perceptual openness to the world. He therefore underlines the fact that there is an inherence of consciousness and of the body of which the analysis of perception should take account. The primacy of perception signifies a primacy of experience, so to speak, insofar as perception becomes an active and constitutive dimension.
Merleau-Ponty demonstrates a corporeity of consciousness as much as an intentionality of the body, and so stands in contrast with the dualist ontology of mind and body in Descartes, a philosopher to whom Merleau-Ponty continually returned, despite the important differences that separate them. In the Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty wrote: “Insofar as I have hands, feet, a body, I sustain around me intentions which are not dependent on my decisions and which affect my surroundings in a way that I do not choose” (1962, p. 440).
Spatiality
The question concerning corporeity connects also with Merleau-Ponty's reflections on space (l'espace) and the primacy of the dimension of depth (la profondeur) as implied in the notion of being in the world (être au monde; to echo Heidegger's In-der-Welt-sein) and of one's own body (le corps propre). Reflections on spatiality in phenomenology are also central to the advanced philosophical deliberations in architectural theory.
Language
The highlighting of the fact that corporeity intrinsically has a dimension of expressivity which proves to be fundamental to the constitution of the ego is one of the conclusions of The Structure of Behavior that is constantly reiterated in Merleau-Ponty's later works. Following this theme of expressivity, he goes on to examine how an incarnate subject is in a position to undertake actions that transcend the organic level of the body, such as in intellectual operations and the products of one's cultural life.
He carefully considers language, then, as the core of culture, by examining in particular the connections between the unfolding of thought and sense—enriching his perspective not only by an analysis of the acquisition of language and the expressivity of the body, but also by taking into account pathologies of language, painting, cinema, literature, poetry and song.
This work deals mainly with language, beginning with the reflection on artistic expression in The Structure of Behavior—which contains a passage on El Greco (p. 203ff) that prefigures the remarks that he develops in "Cézanne's Doubt" (1945) and follows the discussion in Phenomenology of Perception. The work, undertaken while serving as the Chair of Child Psychology and Pedagogy at the University of the Sorbonne, is not a departure from his philosophical and phenomenological works, but rather an important continuation in the development of his thought.
As the course outlines of his Sorbonne lectures indicate, during this period he continues a dialogue between phenomenology and the diverse work carried out in psychology, all in order to return to the study of the acquisition of language in children, as well as to broadly take advantage of the contribution of Ferdinand de Saussure to linguistics, and to work on the notion of structure through a discussion of work in psychology, linguistics and social anthropology.
Art
Merleau-Ponty distinguishes between primary and secondary modes of expression. This distinction appears in Phenomenology of Perception (p. 207, 2nd note [Fr. ed.]) and is sometimes repeated in terms of spoken and speaking language () (The Prose of the World, p. 10). Spoken language (), or secondary expression, returns to our linguistic baggage, to the cultural heritage that we have acquired, as well as the brute mass of relationships between signs and significations. Speaking language (), or primary expression, such as it is, is language in the production of a sense, language at the advent of a thought, at the moment where it makes itself an advent of sense.
It is speaking language, that is to say, primary expression, that interests Merleau-Ponty and which keeps his attention through his treatment of the nature of production and the reception of expressions, a subject which also overlaps with an analysis of action, of intentionality, of perception, as well as the links between freedom and external conditions.
The notion of style occupies an important place in "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence". In spite of certain similarities with André Malraux, Merleau-Ponty distinguishes himself from Malraux in respect to three conceptions of style, the last of which is employed in Malraux's The Voices of Silence. Merleau-Ponty remarks that in this work "style" is sometimes used by Malraux in a highly subjective sense, understood as a projection of the artist's individuality. Sometimes it is used, on the contrary, in a very metaphysical sense (in Merleau-Ponty's opinion, a mystical sense), in which style is connected with a conception of an "über-artist" expressing "the Spirit of Painting". Finally, it sometimes is reduced to simply designating a categorization of an artistic school or movement. (However, this account of Malraux's notion of style—a key element in his thinking—is open to serious question.)
For Merleau-Ponty, it is these uses of the notion of style that lead Malraux to postulate a cleavage between the objectivity of Italian Renaissance painting and the subjectivity of painting in his own time, a conclusion that Merleau-Ponty disputes. According to Merleau-Ponty, it is important to consider the heart of this problematic, by recognizing that style is first of all a demand owed to the primacy of perception, which also implies taking into consideration the dimensions of historicity and intersubjectivity. (However, Merleau-Ponty's reading of Malraux has been questioned in a recent major study of Malraux's theory of art which argues that Merleau-Ponty seriously misunderstood Malraux.) For Merleau-Ponty, style is born of the interaction between two or more fields of being. Rather than being exclusive to individual human consciousness, consciousness is born of the pre-conscious style of the world, of Nature.
Science
In his essay "Cézanne's Doubt", in which he identifies Paul Cézanne's impressionistic theory of painting as analogous to his own concept of radical reflection, the attempt to return to, and reflect on, prereflective consciousness, Merleau-Ponty identifies science as the opposite of art. In Merleau-Ponty's account, whereas art is an attempt to capture an individual's perception, science is anti-individualistic. In the preface to his Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty presents a phenomenological objection to positivism: that it can tell us nothing about human subjectivity. All that a scientific text can explain is the particular individual experience of that scientist, which cannot be transcended. For Merleau-Ponty, science neglects the depth and profundity of the phenomena that it endeavors to explain.
Merleau-Ponty understood science to be an ex post facto abstraction. Causal and physiological accounts of perception, for example, explain perception in terms that are arrived at only after abstracting from the phenomenon itself. Merleau-Ponty chastised science for taking itself to be the area in which a complete account of nature may be given. The subjective depth of phenomena cannot be given in science as it is. This characterizes Merleau-Ponty's attempt to ground science in phenomenological objectivity and, in essence, to institute a "return to the phenomena".
Influence
Anticognitivist cognitive science
Merleau-Ponty's critical position with respect to science was stated in his Preface to the Phenomenology: he described scientific points of view as "always both naive and at the same time dishonest". Despite, or perhaps because of, this view, his work influenced and anticipated the strands of modern psychology known as post-cognitivism. Hubert Dreyfus has been instrumental in emphasising the relevance of Merleau-Ponty's work to current post-cognitive research, and its criticism of the traditional view of cognitive science.
Dreyfus's seminal critique of cognitivism (or the computational account of the mind), What Computers Can't Do, consciously replays Merleau-Ponty's critique of intellectualist psychology to argue for the irreducibility of corporeal know-how to discrete, syntactic processes. Through the influence of Dreyfus's critique and neurophysiological alternative, Merleau-Ponty became associated with neurophysiological, connectionist accounts of cognition.
With the publication in 1991 of The Embodied Mind by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, this association was extended, if only partially, to another strand of "anti-cognitivist" or post-representationalist cognitive science: embodied or enactive cognitive science, and later in the decade, to neurophenomenology. In addition, Merleau-Ponty's work has also influenced researchers trying to integrate neuroscience with the principles of chaos theory.
It was through this relationship with Merleau-Ponty's work that cognitive science's affair with phenomenology was born, which is represented by a growing number of works, including
Ron McClamrock's Existential Cognition: Computational Minds in the World (1995),
Andy Clark's Being There (1997),
Naturalizing Phenomenology edited by Petitot et al. (1999),
Alva Noë's Action in Perception (2004),
Shaun Gallagher's How the Body Shapes the Mind (2005),
Grammont, Franck Dorothée Legrand, and Pierre Livet (eds.) 2010, Naturalizing Intention in Action, MIT Press 2010 .
The journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
Feminist philosophy
Merleau-Ponty has also been picked up by Australian and Nordic philosophers inspired by the French feminist tradition, including Rosalyn Diprose and .
Heinämaa has argued for a rereading of Merleau-Ponty's influence on Simone de Beauvoir. (She has also challenged Dreyfus's reading of Merleau-Ponty as behaviorist, and as neglecting the importance of the phenomenological reduction to Merleau-Ponty's thought.)
Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body has also been taken up by Iris Young in her essay "Throwing Like a Girl," and its follow-up, "'Throwing Like a Girl': Twenty Years Later". Young analyzes the particular modalities of feminine bodily comportment as they differ from that of men. Young observes that while a man who throws a ball puts his whole body into the motion, a woman throwing a ball generally restricts her own movements as she makes them, and that, generally, in sports, women move in a more tentative, reactive way. Merleau-Ponty argues that we experience the world in terms of the "I can" – that is, oriented towards certain projects based on our capacity and habituality. Young's thesis is that in women, this intentionality is inhibited and ambivalent, rather than confident, experienced as an "I cannot".
Ecophenomenology
Ecophenomenology can be described as the pursuit of the relationalities of worldly engagement, both human and those of other creatures (Brown & Toadvine 2003).
This engagement is situated in a kind of middle ground of relationality, a space that is neither purely objective, because it is reciprocally constituted by a diversity of lived experiences motivating the movements of countless organisms, nor purely subjective, because it is nonetheless a field of material relationships between bodies. It is governed exclusively neither by causality, nor by intentionality. In this space of in-betweenness, phenomenology can overcome its inaugural opposition to naturalism.
David Abram explains Merleau-Ponty's concept of "flesh" (chair) as "the mysterious tissue or matrix that underlies and gives rise to both the perceiver and the perceived as interdependent aspects of its spontaneous activity", and he identifies this elemental matrix with the interdependent web of earthly life. This concept unites subject and object dialectically as determinations within a more primordial reality, which Merleau-Ponty calls "the flesh" and which Abram refers to variously as "the animate earth", "the breathing biosphere" or "the more-than-human natural world". Yet this is not nature or the biosphere conceived as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather "the biosphere as it is experienced and lived from within by the intelligent body — by the attentive human animal who is entirely a part of the world that he or she experiences. Merleau-Ponty's ecophenemonology with its emphasis on holistic dialog within the larger-than-human world also has implications for the ontogenesis and phylogenesis of language; indeed he states that "language is the very voice of the trees, the waves and the forest".
Merleau-Ponty himself refers to "that primordial being which is not yet the subject-being nor the object-being and which in every respect baffles reflection. From this primordial being to us, there is no derivation, nor any break..." Among the many working notes found on his desk at the time of his death, and published with the half-complete manuscript of The Visible and the Invisible, several make it evident that Merleau-Ponty himself recognized a deep affinity between his notion of a primordial "flesh" and a radically transformed understanding of "nature". Hence, in November 1960 he writes: "Do a psychoanalysis of Nature: it is the flesh, the mother." And in the last published working note, written in March 1961, he writes: "Nature as the other side of humanity (as flesh, nowise as 'matter')." This resonates with the conception of space, place, dwelling, and embodiment (in the flesh and physical, vs. virtual and cybernetic), especially as they are addressed against the background of the unfolding of the essence of modern technology. Such analytics figure in a Heideggerian take on “econtology” as an extension of Heidegger's consideration of the question of being (Seinsfrage) by way of the fourfold (Das Geviert) of earth-sky-mortals-divinities (Erde und Himmel, Sterblichen und Göttlichen). In this strand of “ecophenomenology”, ecology is co-entangled with ontology, whereby the worldly existential analytics are grounded in earthiness, and environmentalism is orientated by ontological thinking.
Bibliography
The following table gives a selection of Merleau-Ponty's works in French and English translation.
See also
Gestalt psychology
Process philosophy
Embodied cognition
Enactivism
Difference (philosophy)
Virtuality (philosophy)
Field (physics)
Hylomorphism
Autopoiesis
Emergence
Umwelt
Habit
Body schema
Affordance
Perspectivism
Reflexivity
Invagination (philosophy)
Incarnation
Notes
References
Abram, D. (1988). "Merleau-Ponty and the Voice of the Earth" Environmental Ethics 10, no. 2 (Summer 1988): 101–20.
Alloa, E. (2017) Resistance of the Sensible World. An Introduction to Merleau-Ponty, New York: Fordham University Press.
Alloa,E., F. Chouraqui & R. Kaushik, (2019) (eds.) Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy, Albany: SUNY Press.
Barbaras, R. (2004) The Being of the Phenomenon. Merleau-Ponty's Ontology Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Carbone, M. (2004) The Thinking of the Sensible. Merleau-Ponty's A-Philosophy, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Clark, A. (1997) Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Dillon, M. C. (1997) Merleau-Ponty's Ontology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Gallagher, S. (2003) How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Guilherme, Alexandre and Morgan, W. John, 'Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961)-dialogue as being present to the other'. Chapter 6 in Philosophy, Dialogue, and Education: Nine modern European philosophers, Routledge, London and New York, pp. 89–108, .
Johnson, G., Smith, M. B. (eds.) (1993) The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, Chicago: Northwestern UP 1993.
Landes, D. (2013) Merleau-Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression, New York-London: Bloomsbury.
Lawlor, L., Evans, F. (eds.) (2000) Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty's Notion of Flesh, Albany: SUNY Press.
Petitot, J., Varela, F., Pachoud, B. and Roy, J-M. (eds.) (1999) Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Toadvine, T. (2009) Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Nature. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Tilliette, X. (1970) Maurice Merleau-Ponty ou la mesure de l'homme, Seghers, 1970.
Varela, F. J., Thompson, E. and Rosch, E. (1991) The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press.
External links
Maurice Merleau-Ponty at 18 from the French Government website
English Translations of Merleau-Ponty's Work
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty by Jack Reynolds
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty by Ted Toadvine
The Merleau-Ponty Circle — Association of scholars interested in the works of Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty page at Mythos & Logos
Chiasmi International — Studies Concerning the Thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in English, French and Italian
O’Loughlin, Marjorie, 1995, "Intelligent Bodies and Ecological Subjectivities: Merleau-Ponty’s Corrective to Postmodernism’s “Subjects” of Education."
Popen, Shari, 1995, "Merleau-Ponty Confronts Postmodernism: A Reply to O’Loughlin."
Merleau-Ponty: Reckoning with the Possibility of an 'Other.'
The Journal of French Philosophy — the online home of the Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française
Online Merleau-Ponty Bibliography at PhilPapers.org
1908 births
1961 deaths
20th-century French non-fiction writers
20th-century French philosophers
Action theorists
Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery
Collège de France faculty
Consciousness researchers and theorists
Continental philosophers
Cultural critics
École Normale Supérieure alumni
Ecophenomenologists
Enactive cognition
Environmental philosophers
Epistemologists
Existentialists
French communists
French socialists
French humanists
French male non-fiction writers
French male writers
Lycée Carnot teachers
Lycée Louis-le-Grand alumni
Marxist theorists
Moral philosophers
Ontologists
People from Rochefort, Charente-Maritime
Phenomenologists
Philosophers of art
Philosophers of culture
Philosophers of education
Philosophers of ethics and morality
Philosophers of language
Philosophers of mind
Philosophers of psychology
Philosophers of science
Philosophy writers
Political philosophers
Social critics
Social philosophers
University of Lyon faculty
University of Paris faculty
French magazine founders | false | [
"Phenomenology of Perception () is a 1945 book about perception by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in which the author expounds his thesis of \"the primacy of perception\". The work established Merleau-Ponty as the pre-eminent philosopher of the body, and is considered a major statement of French existentialism.\n\nSummary\nMerleau-Ponty attempts to define phenomenology, which according to him has not yet received a proper definition. He asserts that phenomenology contains a series of apparent contradictions, which include the fact that it attempts to create a philosophy that would be a rigorous science while also offering an account of space, time and the world as people experience them. Merleau-Ponty denies that such contradictions can be resolved by distinguishing between the views of the philosopher Edmund Husserl and those of the philosopher Martin Heidegger, commenting that Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) \"springs from an indication given by Husserl and amounts to no more than an explicit account of the 'natürlicher Weltbegriff' or the 'Lebenswelt' which Husserl, toward the end of his life, identified as the central theme of phenomenology, with the result that the contradiction appears in Husserl's own philosophy\".\n\nFollowing Husserl, Merleau-Ponty attempts to reveal the phenomenological structure of perception. He writes that while the \"notion of sensation ... seems immediate and obvious\", it is in fact confused. Merleau-Ponty asserts that because \"traditional analyses\" have accepted it, they have \"missed the phenomenon of perception.\" Merleau-Ponty argues that while sensation could be understood to mean \"the way in which I am affected and the experiencing of a state of myself\", there is nothing in experience corresponding to \"pure sensation\" or \"an atom of feeling\". He writes that, \"The alleged self-evidence of sensation is not based on any testimony of consciousness, but on widely held prejudice.\" Merleau-Ponty's central thesis is that of the \"primacy of perception.\" He critiques the Cartesian stance of \"cogito ergo sum\" and expounds a different conception of consciousness. Cartesian dualism of mind and body is called into question as the primary way of existing in the world, and is ultimately rejected in favor of an intersubjective conception or dialectical and intentional concept of consciousness. The body is central to Merleau-Ponty's account of perception. In his view, the ability to reflect comes from a pre-reflective ground that serves as the foundation for reflecting on actions.\n\nMerleau-Ponty's account of the body helps him undermine what had been a long-standing conception of consciousness, which hinges on the distinction between the for-itself (subject) and in-itself (object), which plays a central role in the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, whose Being and Nothingness was released in 1943. The body stands between this fundamental distinction between subject and object, ambiguously existing as both. In Merleau-Ponty's discussion of human sexuality, he discusses psychoanalysis. Merleau-Ponty suggests that the body \"can symbolize existence because it brings it into being and actualizes it.\"\n\nPublication history\nPhenomenology of Perception was first published in 1945 by Éditions Gallimard. In 1962, an English translation by Colin Smith was published by Routledge & Kegan Paul. In 2013, Routledge published an English translation by Donald Landes.\n\nReception\nThe philosopher A. J. Ayer criticized Merleau-Ponty's arguments against the sense datum theory of perception, finding them inconclusive. He considered Merleau-Ponty's inclusion of a chapter on sexuality surprising, suggesting that Merleau-Ponty included it to give him an opportunity to revisit the Hegelian dialectic of the master and the slave. He compared Merleau-Ponty's views on sex to those of Sartre in Being and Nothingness. The sociologist Murray S. Davis observed that Merleau-Ponty's view that aspects of psychoanalysis, such as its attribution of meaning to all human actions and the diffusing of sexuality throughout the whole of human existence, are similar to phenomenology is controversial, and that other authors would view psychoanalysis as \"materialistic and mechanical\".\n\nHelmut R. Wagner described Phenomenology of Perception as an important contribution to phenomenology. Rhiannon Goldthorpe called the book Merleau-Ponty's major work, noting that its discussion of subjects such as the relationship of the body to spatial experience, and sexuality, went beyond \"the nominal range of his title.\" The philosopher David Abram observed that while \"the sensible thing\" is \"commonly considered by our philosophical tradition to be passive and inert\", Merleau-Ponty consistently describes it in the active voice in Phenomenology of Perception. He rejected the idea that Merleau-Ponty's \"animistic\" language was the result of poetic license, arguing that he \"writes of the perceived things as entities, of sensible qualities as powers, and of the sensible itself as a field of animate presences, in order to acknowledge and underscore their active, dynamic contribution to perceptual experience.\"\n\nAmerican vice president Al Gore, in a 1999 interview with the critic Louis Menand in The New Yorker, mentioned Phenomenology of Perception as an inspiration. The philosopher Stephen Priest commented that, following the book's publication, Merleau-Ponty decided that in it he had taken \"subject-object dualism as phenomenologically primitive\" and \"made use of a comparatively superficial psychologistic vocabulary\" that he wished to replace. The philosopher Robert Bernasconi observed that the book established Merleau-Ponty as the pre-eminent philosopher of the body, and along with Merleau-Ponty's other writings, found a more receptive audience among analytic philosophers than the works of other phenomenologists.\n\nG. B. Madison observed that the book was recognized as a major statement of French existentialism, and is best known for Merleau-Ponty's central thesis of \"the primacy of perception\". According to Madison, Merleau-Ponty sought to respond in his later work to the charge that by grounding all intellectual and cultural acquisitions in the prereflective and prepersonal life of the body, he was promoting reductionism and anti-intellectualism and undermining the ideals of reason and truth. Madison further stated that some commentators believed that Merleau-Ponty's thought had taken a significantly different direction in his late, unfinished work The Visible and the Invisible, edited by the philosopher Claude Lefort, while others emphasized the continuity of his work, with the issue receiving \"much scholarly discussion\".\n\nReferences\n\nBibliography\nBooks\n\nExternal links\n Excerpts can be found at Google Books: \n Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy listing\n\n1945 non-fiction books\nBooks about perception\nBooks by Maurice Merleau-Ponty\nÉditions Gallimard books\nExistentialist books\nFrench non-fiction books\nPhenomenology literature\nRoutledge books",
"Chiasmi International: Trilingual Studies Concerning the Thought of Merleau-Ponty is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes articles, reviews, and discussions in Italian, French, and English on the thought of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The journal is produced in cooperation with the Italian Società di Studi su Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and is distributed by Mimesis Edizioni in Italy\n, Librairie philosophique J. Vrin in France, and Pennsylvania State University in the United States. All issues are available online from the Philosophy Documentation Center. The journal is abstracted and indexed in The Philosopher's Index, PhilPapers, and the Philosophy Research Index.\n\nSee also \n List of philosophy journals\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n\nAnnual journals\nMultilingual journals\nPhilosophy journals\nPublications established in 1999\nContinental philosophy\nPhilosophy Documentation Center academic journals"
] |
[
"Maurice Merleau-Ponty",
"Consciousness",
"What is consciousness as define by Maurice Merleau-Ponty?",
"Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually \"engaged.\"",
"What year was Maurice Merleau-Ponty born ?",
"I don't know.",
"Which philosopher theory did Maurice Merleau - Ponty follow ?",
"Merleau-Ponty developed the concept of the body-subject (le corps propre) as an alternative to the Cartesian \"ego cogito."
] | C_418a8e8537914486a97e86b3588e76f0_1 | According to Maurice Merleu - Ponty was does consciousness prove about human memories.? | 4 | According to Maurice Merleu-Ponty what does consciousness prove about human memories? | Maurice Merleau-Ponty | In his Phenomenology of Perception (first published in French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty developed the concept of the body-subject (le corps propre) as an alternative to the Cartesian "ego cogito." This distinction is especially important in that Merleau-Ponty perceives the essences of the world existentially. Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually "engaged." The phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the natural sciences, but a correlate of our body and its sensory-motor functions. Taking up and "communing with" (Merleau-Ponty's phrase) the sensible qualities it encounters, the body as incarnated subjectivity intentionally elaborates things within an ever-present world frame, through use of its pre-conscious, pre-predicative understanding of the world's makeup. The elaboration, however, is "inexhaustible" (the hallmark of any perception according to Merleau-Ponty). Things are that upon which our body has a "grip" (prise), while the grip itself is a function of our connaturality with the world's things. The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in an ongoing "becoming." The essential partiality of our view of things, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be copresent with us and with other things than through such "Abschattungen" (sketches, faint outlines, adumbrations). The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background--to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads). Through involvement in the world - being-in-the-world - the perceiver tacitly experiences all the perspectives upon that object coming from all the surrounding things of its environment, as well as the potential perspectives that that object has upon the beings around it. Each object is a "mirror of all others." Our perception of the object through all perspectives is not that of a propositional, or clearly delineated, perception; rather, it is an ambiguous perception founded upon the body's primordial involvement and understanding of the world and of the meanings that constitute the landscape's perceptual gestalt. Only after we have been integrated within the environment so as to perceive objects as such can we turn our attention toward particular objects within the landscape so as to define them more clearly. This attention, however, does not operate by clarifying what is already seen, but by constructing a new Gestalt oriented toward a particular object. Because our bodily involvement with things is always provisional and indeterminate, we encounter meaningful things in a unified though ever open-ended world. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest and he wrote on perception, art, politics, religion, biology, psychology, psychoanalysis, language, nature, and history. He was the lead editor of Les Temps modernes, the leftist magazine he established with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in 1945.
At the core of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is a sustained argument for the foundational role perception plays in our experience of the world. Merleau-Ponty understands perception to be an ongoing dialogue between one's lived body and the world which it perceives, in which perceivers passively and actively strive to express the perceived world in concert with others. He was the only major phenomenologist of the first half of the twentieth century to engage extensively with the sciences and especially with Gestalt psychology. It is through this engagement that his writings became influential in the project of naturalizing phenomenology, in which phenomenologists use the results of psychology and cognitive science.
Merleau-Ponty emphasized the body as the primary site of knowing the world, a corrective to the long philosophical tradition of placing consciousness as the source of knowledge, and maintained that the body and that which it perceived could not be disentangled from each other. The articulation of the primacy of embodiment (corporéité) led him away from phenomenology towards what he was to call “indirect ontology” or the ontology of “the flesh of the world” (la chair du monde), seen in his final and incomplete work, The Visible and Invisible, and his last published essay, “Eye and Mind”.
Merleau-Ponty engaged with Marxism throughout his career. His 1947 book, Humanism and Terror, has been widely (mis)understood as a defence of the Soviet show trials. In fact, this text avoids the definitive endorsement of a view on the Soviet Union, but instead engages with the Marxist theory of history as a critique of liberalism, in order to reveal an unresolved antinomy in modern politics, between humanism and terror: if human values can only be achieved through violent force, and if liberal ideas hide illiberal realities, how is just political action to be decided? Merleau-Ponty maintained an engaged though critical relationship to the Marxist left until the end of his life, particularly during his time as the political editor of the journal Les Temps Modernes.
Life
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was born in 1908 in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Inférieure (now Charente-Maritime), France. His father died in 1913 when Merleau-Ponty was five years old. After secondary schooling at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Merleau-Ponty became a student at the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Jean Hyppolite, and Jean Wahl. As Beauvoir recounts in her autobiography, she developed a close friendship with Merleau-Ponty and became smitten with him, but ultimately found him too well-adjusted to bourgeois life and values for her taste. He attended Edmund Husserl's "Paris Lectures" in February 1929. In 1929, Merleau-Ponty received his DES degree (, roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) from the University of Paris, on the basis of the (now-lost) thesis La Notion de multiple intelligible chez Plotin ("Plotinus's Notion of the Intelligible Many"), directed by Émile Bréhier. He passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1930.
Merleau-Ponty was raised as a Catholic. He was friends with the Christian existentialist Gabriel Marcel, and he wrote articles for the Christian leftist journal Esprit, but he left the Church in 1937 because he felt his socialist politics were not compatible with the social and political teaching of the Catholic Church.
An article published in French newspaper Le Monde in October 2014 makes the case of recent discoveries about Merleau-Ponty's likely authorship of the novel Nord. Récit de l'arctique (Grasset, 1928). Convergent sources from close friends (Beauvoir, Elisabeth "Zaza" Lacoin) seem to leave little doubt that Jacques Heller was a pseudonym of the 20-year-old Merleau-Ponty.
Merleau-Ponty taught first at the Lycée de Beauvais (1931–33) and then got a fellowship to do research from the . From 1934 to 1935 he taught at the Lycée de Chartres. He then in 1935 became a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure, where he tutored a young Michel Foucault and Trần Đức Thảo and was awarded his doctorate on the basis of two important books: La structure du comportement (1942) and Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945). During this time, he attended Alexandre Kojeve's influential seminars on Hegel and Aron Gurwitsch's lectures on Gestalt psychology.
In the spring of 1939, he was the first foreign visitor to the newly established Husserl Archives, where he consulted Husserl's unpublished manuscripts and met Eugen Fink and Father Hermann Van Breda. In the summer of 1939, as France entered war against Germany, he served on the frontlines in the French army, where he was wounded in battle in June 1940. Upon returning to Paris in the fall of 1940, he married Suzanne Jolibois, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and founded an underground resistance group with Jean-Paul Sartre called "Under the Boot". He participated in an armed demonstration against the Nazis during the Liberation of Paris.
After teaching at the University of Lyon from 1945 to 1948, Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952.
He was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him the youngest person to have been elected to a chair.
Besides his teaching, Merleau-Ponty was also political editor for the leftist Les Temps modernes from the founding of the journal in October 1945 until December 1952. In his youth he had read Karl Marx's writings and Sartre even claimed that Merleau-Ponty converted him to Marxism. While he was not a member of the French Communist Party and did not identify as a Communist, he laid out an argument justifying the Soviet show trials and violence for progressive ends in general in the work Humanism and Terror in 1947. However, about three years later, he renounced his earlier support for political violence, and he rejected Marxism and advocated a liberal left position in Adventures of the Dialectic (1955). His friendship with Sartre and work with Les Temps modernes ended because of that, since Sartre still had a more favourable attitude towards Soviet communism. Merleau-Ponty was subsequently active in the French non-communist left and in particular in the Union of the Democratic Forces.
Merleau-Ponty died suddenly of a stroke in 1961 at age 53, apparently while preparing for a class on René Descartes, leaving an unfinished manuscript which was posthumously published in 1964, along with a selection of Merleau-Ponty's working notes, by Claude Lefort as The Visible and the Invisible. He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris with his mother Louise, his wife Suzanne and their daughter Marianne.
Thought
Consciousness
In his Phenomenology of Perception (first published in French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty develops the concept of the body-subject (le corps propre) as an alternative to the Cartesian "cogito". This distinction is especially important in that Merleau-Ponty perceives the essences of the world existentially. Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually "engaged". The phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the natural sciences, but a correlate of our body and its sensory-motor functions. Taking up and "communing with" (Merleau-Ponty's phrase) the sensible qualities it encounters, the body as incarnated subjectivity intentionally elaborates things within an ever-present world frame, through use of its pre-conscious, pre-predicative understanding of the world's makeup. The elaboration, however, is "inexhaustible" (the hallmark of any perception according to Merleau-Ponty). Things are that upon which our body has a "grip" (prise), while the grip itself is a function of our connaturality with the world's things. The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in an ongoing "becoming".
The essential partiality of our view of things, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be copresent with us and with other things than through such "Abschattungen" (sketches, faint outlines, adumbrations). The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background—to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads). Through involvement in the world – being-in-the-world – the perceiver tacitly experiences all the perspectives upon that object coming from all the surrounding things of its environment, as well as the potential perspectives that that object has upon the beings around it.
Each object is a "mirror of all others". Our perception of the object through all perspectives is not that of a propositional, or clearly delineated, perception; rather, it is an ambiguous perception founded upon the body's primordial involvement and understanding of the world and of the meanings that constitute the landscape's perceptual Gestalt. Only after we have been integrated within the environment so as to perceive objects as such can we turn our attention toward particular objects within the landscape so as to define them more clearly. This attention, however, does not operate by clarifying what is already seen, but by constructing a new Gestalt oriented toward a particular object. Because our bodily involvement with things is always provisional and indeterminate, we encounter meaningful things in a unified though ever open-ended world.
The primacy of perception
From the time of writing Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty wanted to show, in opposition to the idea that drove the tradition beginning with John Locke, that perception was not the causal product of atomic sensations. This atomist-causal conception was being perpetuated in certain psychological currents of the time, particularly in behaviourism. According to Merleau-Ponty, perception has an active dimension, in that it is a primordial openness to the lifeworld (the "Lebenswelt").
This primordial openness is at the heart of his thesis of the primacy of perception. The slogan of Husserl's phenomenology is "all consciousness is consciousness of something", which implies a distinction between "acts of thought" (the noesis) and "intentional objects of thought" (the noema). Thus, the correlation between noesis and noema becomes the first step in the constitution of analyses of consciousness. However, in studying the posthumous manuscripts of Husserl, who remained one of his major influences, Merleau-Ponty remarked that, in their evolution, Husserl's work brings to light phenomena which are not assimilable to noesis–noema correlation. This is particularly the case when one attends to the phenomena of the body (which is at once body-subject and body-object), subjective time (the consciousness of time is neither an act of consciousness nor an object of thought) and the other (the first considerations of the other in Husserl led to solipsism).
The distinction between "acts of thought" (noesis) and "intentional objects of thought" (noema) does not seem, therefore, to constitute an irreducible ground. It appears rather at a higher level of analysis. Thus, Merleau-Ponty does not postulate that "all consciousness is consciousness of something", which supposes at the outset a noetic-noematic ground. Instead, he develops the thesis according to which "all consciousness is perceptual consciousness". In doing so, he establishes a significant turn in the development of phenomenology, indicating that its conceptualisations should be re-examined in the light of the primacy of perception, in weighing up the philosophical consequences of this thesis.
Corporeity
Taking the study of perception as his point of departure, Merleau-Ponty was led to recognize that one's own body (le corps propre) is not only a thing, a potential object of study for science, but is also a permanent condition of experience, a constituent of the perceptual openness to the world. He therefore underlines the fact that there is an inherence of consciousness and of the body of which the analysis of perception should take account. The primacy of perception signifies a primacy of experience, so to speak, insofar as perception becomes an active and constitutive dimension.
Merleau-Ponty demonstrates a corporeity of consciousness as much as an intentionality of the body, and so stands in contrast with the dualist ontology of mind and body in Descartes, a philosopher to whom Merleau-Ponty continually returned, despite the important differences that separate them. In the Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty wrote: “Insofar as I have hands, feet, a body, I sustain around me intentions which are not dependent on my decisions and which affect my surroundings in a way that I do not choose” (1962, p. 440).
Spatiality
The question concerning corporeity connects also with Merleau-Ponty's reflections on space (l'espace) and the primacy of the dimension of depth (la profondeur) as implied in the notion of being in the world (être au monde; to echo Heidegger's In-der-Welt-sein) and of one's own body (le corps propre). Reflections on spatiality in phenomenology are also central to the advanced philosophical deliberations in architectural theory.
Language
The highlighting of the fact that corporeity intrinsically has a dimension of expressivity which proves to be fundamental to the constitution of the ego is one of the conclusions of The Structure of Behavior that is constantly reiterated in Merleau-Ponty's later works. Following this theme of expressivity, he goes on to examine how an incarnate subject is in a position to undertake actions that transcend the organic level of the body, such as in intellectual operations and the products of one's cultural life.
He carefully considers language, then, as the core of culture, by examining in particular the connections between the unfolding of thought and sense—enriching his perspective not only by an analysis of the acquisition of language and the expressivity of the body, but also by taking into account pathologies of language, painting, cinema, literature, poetry and song.
This work deals mainly with language, beginning with the reflection on artistic expression in The Structure of Behavior—which contains a passage on El Greco (p. 203ff) that prefigures the remarks that he develops in "Cézanne's Doubt" (1945) and follows the discussion in Phenomenology of Perception. The work, undertaken while serving as the Chair of Child Psychology and Pedagogy at the University of the Sorbonne, is not a departure from his philosophical and phenomenological works, but rather an important continuation in the development of his thought.
As the course outlines of his Sorbonne lectures indicate, during this period he continues a dialogue between phenomenology and the diverse work carried out in psychology, all in order to return to the study of the acquisition of language in children, as well as to broadly take advantage of the contribution of Ferdinand de Saussure to linguistics, and to work on the notion of structure through a discussion of work in psychology, linguistics and social anthropology.
Art
Merleau-Ponty distinguishes between primary and secondary modes of expression. This distinction appears in Phenomenology of Perception (p. 207, 2nd note [Fr. ed.]) and is sometimes repeated in terms of spoken and speaking language () (The Prose of the World, p. 10). Spoken language (), or secondary expression, returns to our linguistic baggage, to the cultural heritage that we have acquired, as well as the brute mass of relationships between signs and significations. Speaking language (), or primary expression, such as it is, is language in the production of a sense, language at the advent of a thought, at the moment where it makes itself an advent of sense.
It is speaking language, that is to say, primary expression, that interests Merleau-Ponty and which keeps his attention through his treatment of the nature of production and the reception of expressions, a subject which also overlaps with an analysis of action, of intentionality, of perception, as well as the links between freedom and external conditions.
The notion of style occupies an important place in "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence". In spite of certain similarities with André Malraux, Merleau-Ponty distinguishes himself from Malraux in respect to three conceptions of style, the last of which is employed in Malraux's The Voices of Silence. Merleau-Ponty remarks that in this work "style" is sometimes used by Malraux in a highly subjective sense, understood as a projection of the artist's individuality. Sometimes it is used, on the contrary, in a very metaphysical sense (in Merleau-Ponty's opinion, a mystical sense), in which style is connected with a conception of an "über-artist" expressing "the Spirit of Painting". Finally, it sometimes is reduced to simply designating a categorization of an artistic school or movement. (However, this account of Malraux's notion of style—a key element in his thinking—is open to serious question.)
For Merleau-Ponty, it is these uses of the notion of style that lead Malraux to postulate a cleavage between the objectivity of Italian Renaissance painting and the subjectivity of painting in his own time, a conclusion that Merleau-Ponty disputes. According to Merleau-Ponty, it is important to consider the heart of this problematic, by recognizing that style is first of all a demand owed to the primacy of perception, which also implies taking into consideration the dimensions of historicity and intersubjectivity. (However, Merleau-Ponty's reading of Malraux has been questioned in a recent major study of Malraux's theory of art which argues that Merleau-Ponty seriously misunderstood Malraux.) For Merleau-Ponty, style is born of the interaction between two or more fields of being. Rather than being exclusive to individual human consciousness, consciousness is born of the pre-conscious style of the world, of Nature.
Science
In his essay "Cézanne's Doubt", in which he identifies Paul Cézanne's impressionistic theory of painting as analogous to his own concept of radical reflection, the attempt to return to, and reflect on, prereflective consciousness, Merleau-Ponty identifies science as the opposite of art. In Merleau-Ponty's account, whereas art is an attempt to capture an individual's perception, science is anti-individualistic. In the preface to his Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty presents a phenomenological objection to positivism: that it can tell us nothing about human subjectivity. All that a scientific text can explain is the particular individual experience of that scientist, which cannot be transcended. For Merleau-Ponty, science neglects the depth and profundity of the phenomena that it endeavors to explain.
Merleau-Ponty understood science to be an ex post facto abstraction. Causal and physiological accounts of perception, for example, explain perception in terms that are arrived at only after abstracting from the phenomenon itself. Merleau-Ponty chastised science for taking itself to be the area in which a complete account of nature may be given. The subjective depth of phenomena cannot be given in science as it is. This characterizes Merleau-Ponty's attempt to ground science in phenomenological objectivity and, in essence, to institute a "return to the phenomena".
Influence
Anticognitivist cognitive science
Merleau-Ponty's critical position with respect to science was stated in his Preface to the Phenomenology: he described scientific points of view as "always both naive and at the same time dishonest". Despite, or perhaps because of, this view, his work influenced and anticipated the strands of modern psychology known as post-cognitivism. Hubert Dreyfus has been instrumental in emphasising the relevance of Merleau-Ponty's work to current post-cognitive research, and its criticism of the traditional view of cognitive science.
Dreyfus's seminal critique of cognitivism (or the computational account of the mind), What Computers Can't Do, consciously replays Merleau-Ponty's critique of intellectualist psychology to argue for the irreducibility of corporeal know-how to discrete, syntactic processes. Through the influence of Dreyfus's critique and neurophysiological alternative, Merleau-Ponty became associated with neurophysiological, connectionist accounts of cognition.
With the publication in 1991 of The Embodied Mind by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, this association was extended, if only partially, to another strand of "anti-cognitivist" or post-representationalist cognitive science: embodied or enactive cognitive science, and later in the decade, to neurophenomenology. In addition, Merleau-Ponty's work has also influenced researchers trying to integrate neuroscience with the principles of chaos theory.
It was through this relationship with Merleau-Ponty's work that cognitive science's affair with phenomenology was born, which is represented by a growing number of works, including
Ron McClamrock's Existential Cognition: Computational Minds in the World (1995),
Andy Clark's Being There (1997),
Naturalizing Phenomenology edited by Petitot et al. (1999),
Alva Noë's Action in Perception (2004),
Shaun Gallagher's How the Body Shapes the Mind (2005),
Grammont, Franck Dorothée Legrand, and Pierre Livet (eds.) 2010, Naturalizing Intention in Action, MIT Press 2010 .
The journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
Feminist philosophy
Merleau-Ponty has also been picked up by Australian and Nordic philosophers inspired by the French feminist tradition, including Rosalyn Diprose and .
Heinämaa has argued for a rereading of Merleau-Ponty's influence on Simone de Beauvoir. (She has also challenged Dreyfus's reading of Merleau-Ponty as behaviorist, and as neglecting the importance of the phenomenological reduction to Merleau-Ponty's thought.)
Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body has also been taken up by Iris Young in her essay "Throwing Like a Girl," and its follow-up, "'Throwing Like a Girl': Twenty Years Later". Young analyzes the particular modalities of feminine bodily comportment as they differ from that of men. Young observes that while a man who throws a ball puts his whole body into the motion, a woman throwing a ball generally restricts her own movements as she makes them, and that, generally, in sports, women move in a more tentative, reactive way. Merleau-Ponty argues that we experience the world in terms of the "I can" – that is, oriented towards certain projects based on our capacity and habituality. Young's thesis is that in women, this intentionality is inhibited and ambivalent, rather than confident, experienced as an "I cannot".
Ecophenomenology
Ecophenomenology can be described as the pursuit of the relationalities of worldly engagement, both human and those of other creatures (Brown & Toadvine 2003).
This engagement is situated in a kind of middle ground of relationality, a space that is neither purely objective, because it is reciprocally constituted by a diversity of lived experiences motivating the movements of countless organisms, nor purely subjective, because it is nonetheless a field of material relationships between bodies. It is governed exclusively neither by causality, nor by intentionality. In this space of in-betweenness, phenomenology can overcome its inaugural opposition to naturalism.
David Abram explains Merleau-Ponty's concept of "flesh" (chair) as "the mysterious tissue or matrix that underlies and gives rise to both the perceiver and the perceived as interdependent aspects of its spontaneous activity", and he identifies this elemental matrix with the interdependent web of earthly life. This concept unites subject and object dialectically as determinations within a more primordial reality, which Merleau-Ponty calls "the flesh" and which Abram refers to variously as "the animate earth", "the breathing biosphere" or "the more-than-human natural world". Yet this is not nature or the biosphere conceived as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather "the biosphere as it is experienced and lived from within by the intelligent body — by the attentive human animal who is entirely a part of the world that he or she experiences. Merleau-Ponty's ecophenemonology with its emphasis on holistic dialog within the larger-than-human world also has implications for the ontogenesis and phylogenesis of language; indeed he states that "language is the very voice of the trees, the waves and the forest".
Merleau-Ponty himself refers to "that primordial being which is not yet the subject-being nor the object-being and which in every respect baffles reflection. From this primordial being to us, there is no derivation, nor any break..." Among the many working notes found on his desk at the time of his death, and published with the half-complete manuscript of The Visible and the Invisible, several make it evident that Merleau-Ponty himself recognized a deep affinity between his notion of a primordial "flesh" and a radically transformed understanding of "nature". Hence, in November 1960 he writes: "Do a psychoanalysis of Nature: it is the flesh, the mother." And in the last published working note, written in March 1961, he writes: "Nature as the other side of humanity (as flesh, nowise as 'matter')." This resonates with the conception of space, place, dwelling, and embodiment (in the flesh and physical, vs. virtual and cybernetic), especially as they are addressed against the background of the unfolding of the essence of modern technology. Such analytics figure in a Heideggerian take on “econtology” as an extension of Heidegger's consideration of the question of being (Seinsfrage) by way of the fourfold (Das Geviert) of earth-sky-mortals-divinities (Erde und Himmel, Sterblichen und Göttlichen). In this strand of “ecophenomenology”, ecology is co-entangled with ontology, whereby the worldly existential analytics are grounded in earthiness, and environmentalism is orientated by ontological thinking.
Bibliography
The following table gives a selection of Merleau-Ponty's works in French and English translation.
See also
Gestalt psychology
Process philosophy
Embodied cognition
Enactivism
Difference (philosophy)
Virtuality (philosophy)
Field (physics)
Hylomorphism
Autopoiesis
Emergence
Umwelt
Habit
Body schema
Affordance
Perspectivism
Reflexivity
Invagination (philosophy)
Incarnation
Notes
References
Abram, D. (1988). "Merleau-Ponty and the Voice of the Earth" Environmental Ethics 10, no. 2 (Summer 1988): 101–20.
Alloa, E. (2017) Resistance of the Sensible World. An Introduction to Merleau-Ponty, New York: Fordham University Press.
Alloa,E., F. Chouraqui & R. Kaushik, (2019) (eds.) Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy, Albany: SUNY Press.
Barbaras, R. (2004) The Being of the Phenomenon. Merleau-Ponty's Ontology Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Carbone, M. (2004) The Thinking of the Sensible. Merleau-Ponty's A-Philosophy, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Clark, A. (1997) Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Dillon, M. C. (1997) Merleau-Ponty's Ontology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Gallagher, S. (2003) How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Guilherme, Alexandre and Morgan, W. John, 'Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961)-dialogue as being present to the other'. Chapter 6 in Philosophy, Dialogue, and Education: Nine modern European philosophers, Routledge, London and New York, pp. 89–108, .
Johnson, G., Smith, M. B. (eds.) (1993) The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, Chicago: Northwestern UP 1993.
Landes, D. (2013) Merleau-Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression, New York-London: Bloomsbury.
Lawlor, L., Evans, F. (eds.) (2000) Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty's Notion of Flesh, Albany: SUNY Press.
Petitot, J., Varela, F., Pachoud, B. and Roy, J-M. (eds.) (1999) Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Toadvine, T. (2009) Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Nature. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Tilliette, X. (1970) Maurice Merleau-Ponty ou la mesure de l'homme, Seghers, 1970.
Varela, F. J., Thompson, E. and Rosch, E. (1991) The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press.
External links
Maurice Merleau-Ponty at 18 from the French Government website
English Translations of Merleau-Ponty's Work
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty by Jack Reynolds
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty by Ted Toadvine
The Merleau-Ponty Circle — Association of scholars interested in the works of Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty page at Mythos & Logos
Chiasmi International — Studies Concerning the Thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in English, French and Italian
O’Loughlin, Marjorie, 1995, "Intelligent Bodies and Ecological Subjectivities: Merleau-Ponty’s Corrective to Postmodernism’s “Subjects” of Education."
Popen, Shari, 1995, "Merleau-Ponty Confronts Postmodernism: A Reply to O’Loughlin."
Merleau-Ponty: Reckoning with the Possibility of an 'Other.'
The Journal of French Philosophy — the online home of the Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française
Online Merleau-Ponty Bibliography at PhilPapers.org
1908 births
1961 deaths
20th-century French non-fiction writers
20th-century French philosophers
Action theorists
Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery
Collège de France faculty
Consciousness researchers and theorists
Continental philosophers
Cultural critics
École Normale Supérieure alumni
Ecophenomenologists
Enactive cognition
Environmental philosophers
Epistemologists
Existentialists
French communists
French socialists
French humanists
French male non-fiction writers
French male writers
Lycée Carnot teachers
Lycée Louis-le-Grand alumni
Marxist theorists
Moral philosophers
Ontologists
People from Rochefort, Charente-Maritime
Phenomenologists
Philosophers of art
Philosophers of culture
Philosophers of education
Philosophers of ethics and morality
Philosophers of language
Philosophers of mind
Philosophers of psychology
Philosophers of science
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University of Lyon faculty
University of Paris faculty
French magazine founders | false | [
"Phenomenology of Perception () is a 1945 book about perception by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in which the author expounds his thesis of \"the primacy of perception\". The work established Merleau-Ponty as the pre-eminent philosopher of the body, and is considered a major statement of French existentialism.\n\nSummary\nMerleau-Ponty attempts to define phenomenology, which according to him has not yet received a proper definition. He asserts that phenomenology contains a series of apparent contradictions, which include the fact that it attempts to create a philosophy that would be a rigorous science while also offering an account of space, time and the world as people experience them. Merleau-Ponty denies that such contradictions can be resolved by distinguishing between the views of the philosopher Edmund Husserl and those of the philosopher Martin Heidegger, commenting that Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) \"springs from an indication given by Husserl and amounts to no more than an explicit account of the 'natürlicher Weltbegriff' or the 'Lebenswelt' which Husserl, toward the end of his life, identified as the central theme of phenomenology, with the result that the contradiction appears in Husserl's own philosophy\".\n\nFollowing Husserl, Merleau-Ponty attempts to reveal the phenomenological structure of perception. He writes that while the \"notion of sensation ... seems immediate and obvious\", it is in fact confused. Merleau-Ponty asserts that because \"traditional analyses\" have accepted it, they have \"missed the phenomenon of perception.\" Merleau-Ponty argues that while sensation could be understood to mean \"the way in which I am affected and the experiencing of a state of myself\", there is nothing in experience corresponding to \"pure sensation\" or \"an atom of feeling\". He writes that, \"The alleged self-evidence of sensation is not based on any testimony of consciousness, but on widely held prejudice.\" Merleau-Ponty's central thesis is that of the \"primacy of perception.\" He critiques the Cartesian stance of \"cogito ergo sum\" and expounds a different conception of consciousness. Cartesian dualism of mind and body is called into question as the primary way of existing in the world, and is ultimately rejected in favor of an intersubjective conception or dialectical and intentional concept of consciousness. The body is central to Merleau-Ponty's account of perception. In his view, the ability to reflect comes from a pre-reflective ground that serves as the foundation for reflecting on actions.\n\nMerleau-Ponty's account of the body helps him undermine what had been a long-standing conception of consciousness, which hinges on the distinction between the for-itself (subject) and in-itself (object), which plays a central role in the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, whose Being and Nothingness was released in 1943. The body stands between this fundamental distinction between subject and object, ambiguously existing as both. In Merleau-Ponty's discussion of human sexuality, he discusses psychoanalysis. Merleau-Ponty suggests that the body \"can symbolize existence because it brings it into being and actualizes it.\"\n\nPublication history\nPhenomenology of Perception was first published in 1945 by Éditions Gallimard. In 1962, an English translation by Colin Smith was published by Routledge & Kegan Paul. In 2013, Routledge published an English translation by Donald Landes.\n\nReception\nThe philosopher A. J. Ayer criticized Merleau-Ponty's arguments against the sense datum theory of perception, finding them inconclusive. He considered Merleau-Ponty's inclusion of a chapter on sexuality surprising, suggesting that Merleau-Ponty included it to give him an opportunity to revisit the Hegelian dialectic of the master and the slave. He compared Merleau-Ponty's views on sex to those of Sartre in Being and Nothingness. The sociologist Murray S. Davis observed that Merleau-Ponty's view that aspects of psychoanalysis, such as its attribution of meaning to all human actions and the diffusing of sexuality throughout the whole of human existence, are similar to phenomenology is controversial, and that other authors would view psychoanalysis as \"materialistic and mechanical\".\n\nHelmut R. Wagner described Phenomenology of Perception as an important contribution to phenomenology. Rhiannon Goldthorpe called the book Merleau-Ponty's major work, noting that its discussion of subjects such as the relationship of the body to spatial experience, and sexuality, went beyond \"the nominal range of his title.\" The philosopher David Abram observed that while \"the sensible thing\" is \"commonly considered by our philosophical tradition to be passive and inert\", Merleau-Ponty consistently describes it in the active voice in Phenomenology of Perception. He rejected the idea that Merleau-Ponty's \"animistic\" language was the result of poetic license, arguing that he \"writes of the perceived things as entities, of sensible qualities as powers, and of the sensible itself as a field of animate presences, in order to acknowledge and underscore their active, dynamic contribution to perceptual experience.\"\n\nAmerican vice president Al Gore, in a 1999 interview with the critic Louis Menand in The New Yorker, mentioned Phenomenology of Perception as an inspiration. The philosopher Stephen Priest commented that, following the book's publication, Merleau-Ponty decided that in it he had taken \"subject-object dualism as phenomenologically primitive\" and \"made use of a comparatively superficial psychologistic vocabulary\" that he wished to replace. The philosopher Robert Bernasconi observed that the book established Merleau-Ponty as the pre-eminent philosopher of the body, and along with Merleau-Ponty's other writings, found a more receptive audience among analytic philosophers than the works of other phenomenologists.\n\nG. B. Madison observed that the book was recognized as a major statement of French existentialism, and is best known for Merleau-Ponty's central thesis of \"the primacy of perception\". According to Madison, Merleau-Ponty sought to respond in his later work to the charge that by grounding all intellectual and cultural acquisitions in the prereflective and prepersonal life of the body, he was promoting reductionism and anti-intellectualism and undermining the ideals of reason and truth. Madison further stated that some commentators believed that Merleau-Ponty's thought had taken a significantly different direction in his late, unfinished work The Visible and the Invisible, edited by the philosopher Claude Lefort, while others emphasized the continuity of his work, with the issue receiving \"much scholarly discussion\".\n\nReferences\n\nBibliography\nBooks\n\nExternal links\n Excerpts can be found at Google Books: \n Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy listing\n\n1945 non-fiction books\nBooks about perception\nBooks by Maurice Merleau-Ponty\nÉditions Gallimard books\nExistentialist books\nFrench non-fiction books\nPhenomenology literature\nRoutledge books",
"Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest and he wrote on perception, art, politics, religion, biology, psychology, psychoanalysis, language, nature, and history. He was the lead editor of Les Temps modernes, the leftist magazine he established with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in 1945.\n\nAt the core of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is a sustained argument for the foundational role perception plays in our experience of the world. Merleau-Ponty understands perception to be an ongoing dialogue between one's lived body and the world which it perceives, in which perceivers passively and actively strive to express the perceived world in concert with others. He was the only major phenomenologist of the first half of the twentieth century to engage extensively with the sciences and especially with Gestalt psychology. It is through this engagement that his writings became influential in the project of naturalizing phenomenology, in which phenomenologists use the results of psychology and cognitive science.\n\nMerleau-Ponty emphasized the body as the primary site of knowing the world, a corrective to the long philosophical tradition of placing consciousness as the source of knowledge, and maintained that the body and that which it perceived could not be disentangled from each other. The articulation of the primacy of embodiment (corporéité) led him away from phenomenology towards what he was to call “indirect ontology” or the ontology of “the flesh of the world” (la chair du monde), seen in his final and incomplete work, The Visible and Invisible, and his last published essay, “Eye and Mind”.\n\nMerleau-Ponty engaged with Marxism throughout his career. His 1947 book, Humanism and Terror, has been widely (mis)understood as a defence of the Soviet show trials. In fact, this text avoids the definitive endorsement of a view on the Soviet Union, but instead engages with the Marxist theory of history as a critique of liberalism, in order to reveal an unresolved antinomy in modern politics, between humanism and terror: if human values can only be achieved through violent force, and if liberal ideas hide illiberal realities, how is just political action to be decided? Merleau-Ponty maintained an engaged though critical relationship to the Marxist left until the end of his life, particularly during his time as the political editor of the journal Les Temps Modernes.\n\nLife\n\nMaurice Merleau-Ponty was born in 1908 in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Inférieure (now Charente-Maritime), France. His father died in 1913 when Merleau-Ponty was five years old. After secondary schooling at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Merleau-Ponty became a student at the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Jean Hyppolite, and Jean Wahl. As Beauvoir recounts in her autobiography, she developed a close friendship with Merleau-Ponty and became smitten with him, but ultimately found him too well-adjusted to bourgeois life and values for her taste. He attended Edmund Husserl's \"Paris Lectures\" in February 1929. In 1929, Merleau-Ponty received his DES degree (, roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) from the University of Paris, on the basis of the (now-lost) thesis La Notion de multiple intelligible chez Plotin (\"Plotinus's Notion of the Intelligible Many\"), directed by Émile Bréhier. He passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1930.\n\nMerleau-Ponty was raised as a Catholic. He was friends with the Christian existentialist Gabriel Marcel, and he wrote articles for the Christian leftist journal Esprit, but he left the Church in 1937 because he felt his socialist politics were not compatible with the social and political teaching of the Catholic Church.\n\nAn article published in French newspaper Le Monde in October 2014 makes the case of recent discoveries about Merleau-Ponty's likely authorship of the novel Nord. Récit de l'arctique (Grasset, 1928). Convergent sources from close friends (Beauvoir, Elisabeth \"Zaza\" Lacoin) seem to leave little doubt that Jacques Heller was a pseudonym of the 20-year-old Merleau-Ponty.\n\nMerleau-Ponty taught first at the Lycée de Beauvais (1931–33) and then got a fellowship to do research from the . From 1934 to 1935 he taught at the Lycée de Chartres. He then in 1935 became a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure, where he tutored a young Michel Foucault and Trần Đức Thảo and was awarded his doctorate on the basis of two important books: La structure du comportement (1942) and Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945). During this time, he attended Alexandre Kojeve's influential seminars on Hegel and Aron Gurwitsch's lectures on Gestalt psychology.\n\nIn the spring of 1939, he was the first foreign visitor to the newly established Husserl Archives, where he consulted Husserl's unpublished manuscripts and met Eugen Fink and Father Hermann Van Breda. In the summer of 1939, as France entered war against Germany, he served on the frontlines in the French army, where he was wounded in battle in June 1940. Upon returning to Paris in the fall of 1940, he married Suzanne Jolibois, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and founded an underground resistance group with Jean-Paul Sartre called \"Under the Boot\". He participated in an armed demonstration against the Nazis during the Liberation of Paris.\n\nAfter teaching at the University of Lyon from 1945 to 1948, Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952. \nHe was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him the youngest person to have been elected to a chair.\n\nBesides his teaching, Merleau-Ponty was also political editor for the leftist Les Temps modernes from the founding of the journal in October 1945 until December 1952. In his youth he had read Karl Marx's writings and Sartre even claimed that Merleau-Ponty converted him to Marxism. While he was not a member of the French Communist Party and did not identify as a Communist, he laid out an argument justifying the Soviet show trials and violence for progressive ends in general in the work Humanism and Terror in 1947. However, about three years later, he renounced his earlier support for political violence, and he rejected Marxism and advocated a liberal left position in Adventures of the Dialectic (1955). His friendship with Sartre and work with Les Temps modernes ended because of that, since Sartre still had a more favourable attitude towards Soviet communism. Merleau-Ponty was subsequently active in the French non-communist left and in particular in the Union of the Democratic Forces.\n\nMerleau-Ponty died suddenly of a stroke in 1961 at age 53, apparently while preparing for a class on René Descartes, leaving an unfinished manuscript which was posthumously published in 1964, along with a selection of Merleau-Ponty's working notes, by Claude Lefort as The Visible and the Invisible. He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris with his mother Louise, his wife Suzanne and their daughter Marianne.\n\nThought\n\nConsciousness\nIn his Phenomenology of Perception (first published in French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty develops the concept of the body-subject (le corps propre) as an alternative to the Cartesian \"cogito\". This distinction is especially important in that Merleau-Ponty perceives the essences of the world existentially. Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually \"engaged\". The phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the natural sciences, but a correlate of our body and its sensory-motor functions. Taking up and \"communing with\" (Merleau-Ponty's phrase) the sensible qualities it encounters, the body as incarnated subjectivity intentionally elaborates things within an ever-present world frame, through use of its pre-conscious, pre-predicative understanding of the world's makeup. The elaboration, however, is \"inexhaustible\" (the hallmark of any perception according to Merleau-Ponty). Things are that upon which our body has a \"grip\" (prise), while the grip itself is a function of our connaturality with the world's things. The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in an ongoing \"becoming\".\n\nThe essential partiality of our view of things, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be copresent with us and with other things than through such \"Abschattungen\" (sketches, faint outlines, adumbrations). The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background—to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads). Through involvement in the world – being-in-the-world – the perceiver tacitly experiences all the perspectives upon that object coming from all the surrounding things of its environment, as well as the potential perspectives that that object has upon the beings around it.\n\nEach object is a \"mirror of all others\". Our perception of the object through all perspectives is not that of a propositional, or clearly delineated, perception; rather, it is an ambiguous perception founded upon the body's primordial involvement and understanding of the world and of the meanings that constitute the landscape's perceptual Gestalt. Only after we have been integrated within the environment so as to perceive objects as such can we turn our attention toward particular objects within the landscape so as to define them more clearly. This attention, however, does not operate by clarifying what is already seen, but by constructing a new Gestalt oriented toward a particular object. Because our bodily involvement with things is always provisional and indeterminate, we encounter meaningful things in a unified though ever open-ended world.\n\nThe primacy of perception\nFrom the time of writing Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty wanted to show, in opposition to the idea that drove the tradition beginning with John Locke, that perception was not the causal product of atomic sensations. This atomist-causal conception was being perpetuated in certain psychological currents of the time, particularly in behaviourism. According to Merleau-Ponty, perception has an active dimension, in that it is a primordial openness to the lifeworld (the \"Lebenswelt\").\n\nThis primordial openness is at the heart of his thesis of the primacy of perception. The slogan of Husserl's phenomenology is \"all consciousness is consciousness of something\", which implies a distinction between \"acts of thought\" (the noesis) and \"intentional objects of thought\" (the noema). Thus, the correlation between noesis and noema becomes the first step in the constitution of analyses of consciousness. However, in studying the posthumous manuscripts of Husserl, who remained one of his major influences, Merleau-Ponty remarked that, in their evolution, Husserl's work brings to light phenomena which are not assimilable to noesis–noema correlation. This is particularly the case when one attends to the phenomena of the body (which is at once body-subject and body-object), subjective time (the consciousness of time is neither an act of consciousness nor an object of thought) and the other (the first considerations of the other in Husserl led to solipsism).\n\nThe distinction between \"acts of thought\" (noesis) and \"intentional objects of thought\" (noema) does not seem, therefore, to constitute an irreducible ground. It appears rather at a higher level of analysis. Thus, Merleau-Ponty does not postulate that \"all consciousness is consciousness of something\", which supposes at the outset a noetic-noematic ground. Instead, he develops the thesis according to which \"all consciousness is perceptual consciousness\". In doing so, he establishes a significant turn in the development of phenomenology, indicating that its conceptualisations should be re-examined in the light of the primacy of perception, in weighing up the philosophical consequences of this thesis.\n\nCorporeity\n\nTaking the study of perception as his point of departure, Merleau-Ponty was led to recognize that one's own body (le corps propre) is not only a thing, a potential object of study for science, but is also a permanent condition of experience, a constituent of the perceptual openness to the world. He therefore underlines the fact that there is an inherence of consciousness and of the body of which the analysis of perception should take account. The primacy of perception signifies a primacy of experience, so to speak, insofar as perception becomes an active and constitutive dimension.\n\nMerleau-Ponty demonstrates a corporeity of consciousness as much as an intentionality of the body, and so stands in contrast with the dualist ontology of mind and body in Descartes, a philosopher to whom Merleau-Ponty continually returned, despite the important differences that separate them. In the Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty wrote: “Insofar as I have hands, feet, a body, I sustain around me intentions which are not dependent on my decisions and which affect my surroundings in a way that I do not choose” (1962, p. 440).\n\nSpatiality\nThe question concerning corporeity connects also with Merleau-Ponty's reflections on space (l'espace) and the primacy of the dimension of depth (la profondeur) as implied in the notion of being in the world (être au monde; to echo Heidegger's In-der-Welt-sein) and of one's own body (le corps propre). Reflections on spatiality in phenomenology are also central to the advanced philosophical deliberations in architectural theory.\n\nLanguage\nThe highlighting of the fact that corporeity intrinsically has a dimension of expressivity which proves to be fundamental to the constitution of the ego is one of the conclusions of The Structure of Behavior that is constantly reiterated in Merleau-Ponty's later works. Following this theme of expressivity, he goes on to examine how an incarnate subject is in a position to undertake actions that transcend the organic level of the body, such as in intellectual operations and the products of one's cultural life.\n\nHe carefully considers language, then, as the core of culture, by examining in particular the connections between the unfolding of thought and sense—enriching his perspective not only by an analysis of the acquisition of language and the expressivity of the body, but also by taking into account pathologies of language, painting, cinema, literature, poetry and song.\n\nThis work deals mainly with language, beginning with the reflection on artistic expression in The Structure of Behavior—which contains a passage on El Greco (p. 203ff) that prefigures the remarks that he develops in \"Cézanne's Doubt\" (1945) and follows the discussion in Phenomenology of Perception. The work, undertaken while serving as the Chair of Child Psychology and Pedagogy at the University of the Sorbonne, is not a departure from his philosophical and phenomenological works, but rather an important continuation in the development of his thought.\n\nAs the course outlines of his Sorbonne lectures indicate, during this period he continues a dialogue between phenomenology and the diverse work carried out in psychology, all in order to return to the study of the acquisition of language in children, as well as to broadly take advantage of the contribution of Ferdinand de Saussure to linguistics, and to work on the notion of structure through a discussion of work in psychology, linguistics and social anthropology.\n\nArt\nMerleau-Ponty distinguishes between primary and secondary modes of expression. This distinction appears in Phenomenology of Perception (p. 207, 2nd note [Fr. ed.]) and is sometimes repeated in terms of spoken and speaking language () (The Prose of the World, p. 10). Spoken language (), or secondary expression, returns to our linguistic baggage, to the cultural heritage that we have acquired, as well as the brute mass of relationships between signs and significations. Speaking language (), or primary expression, such as it is, is language in the production of a sense, language at the advent of a thought, at the moment where it makes itself an advent of sense.\n\nIt is speaking language, that is to say, primary expression, that interests Merleau-Ponty and which keeps his attention through his treatment of the nature of production and the reception of expressions, a subject which also overlaps with an analysis of action, of intentionality, of perception, as well as the links between freedom and external conditions.\n\nThe notion of style occupies an important place in \"Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence\". In spite of certain similarities with André Malraux, Merleau-Ponty distinguishes himself from Malraux in respect to three conceptions of style, the last of which is employed in Malraux's The Voices of Silence. Merleau-Ponty remarks that in this work \"style\" is sometimes used by Malraux in a highly subjective sense, understood as a projection of the artist's individuality. Sometimes it is used, on the contrary, in a very metaphysical sense (in Merleau-Ponty's opinion, a mystical sense), in which style is connected with a conception of an \"über-artist\" expressing \"the Spirit of Painting\". Finally, it sometimes is reduced to simply designating a categorization of an artistic school or movement. (However, this account of Malraux's notion of style—a key element in his thinking—is open to serious question.)\n\nFor Merleau-Ponty, it is these uses of the notion of style that lead Malraux to postulate a cleavage between the objectivity of Italian Renaissance painting and the subjectivity of painting in his own time, a conclusion that Merleau-Ponty disputes. According to Merleau-Ponty, it is important to consider the heart of this problematic, by recognizing that style is first of all a demand owed to the primacy of perception, which also implies taking into consideration the dimensions of historicity and intersubjectivity. (However, Merleau-Ponty's reading of Malraux has been questioned in a recent major study of Malraux's theory of art which argues that Merleau-Ponty seriously misunderstood Malraux.) For Merleau-Ponty, style is born of the interaction between two or more fields of being. Rather than being exclusive to individual human consciousness, consciousness is born of the pre-conscious style of the world, of Nature.\n\nScience\nIn his essay \"Cézanne's Doubt\", in which he identifies Paul Cézanne's impressionistic theory of painting as analogous to his own concept of radical reflection, the attempt to return to, and reflect on, prereflective consciousness, Merleau-Ponty identifies science as the opposite of art. In Merleau-Ponty's account, whereas art is an attempt to capture an individual's perception, science is anti-individualistic. In the preface to his Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty presents a phenomenological objection to positivism: that it can tell us nothing about human subjectivity. All that a scientific text can explain is the particular individual experience of that scientist, which cannot be transcended. For Merleau-Ponty, science neglects the depth and profundity of the phenomena that it endeavors to explain.\n\nMerleau-Ponty understood science to be an ex post facto abstraction. Causal and physiological accounts of perception, for example, explain perception in terms that are arrived at only after abstracting from the phenomenon itself. Merleau-Ponty chastised science for taking itself to be the area in which a complete account of nature may be given. The subjective depth of phenomena cannot be given in science as it is. This characterizes Merleau-Ponty's attempt to ground science in phenomenological objectivity and, in essence, to institute a \"return to the phenomena\".\n\nInfluence\n\nAnticognitivist cognitive science\nMerleau-Ponty's critical position with respect to science was stated in his Preface to the Phenomenology: he described scientific points of view as \"always both naive and at the same time dishonest\". Despite, or perhaps because of, this view, his work influenced and anticipated the strands of modern psychology known as post-cognitivism. Hubert Dreyfus has been instrumental in emphasising the relevance of Merleau-Ponty's work to current post-cognitive research, and its criticism of the traditional view of cognitive science.\n\nDreyfus's seminal critique of cognitivism (or the computational account of the mind), What Computers Can't Do, consciously replays Merleau-Ponty's critique of intellectualist psychology to argue for the irreducibility of corporeal know-how to discrete, syntactic processes. Through the influence of Dreyfus's critique and neurophysiological alternative, Merleau-Ponty became associated with neurophysiological, connectionist accounts of cognition.\n\nWith the publication in 1991 of The Embodied Mind by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, this association was extended, if only partially, to another strand of \"anti-cognitivist\" or post-representationalist cognitive science: embodied or enactive cognitive science, and later in the decade, to neurophenomenology. In addition, Merleau-Ponty's work has also influenced researchers trying to integrate neuroscience with the principles of chaos theory.\n\nIt was through this relationship with Merleau-Ponty's work that cognitive science's affair with phenomenology was born, which is represented by a growing number of works, including\n Ron McClamrock's Existential Cognition: Computational Minds in the World (1995),\n Andy Clark's Being There (1997),\n Naturalizing Phenomenology edited by Petitot et al. (1999),\n Alva Noë's Action in Perception (2004),\n Shaun Gallagher's How the Body Shapes the Mind (2005),\n Grammont, Franck Dorothée Legrand, and Pierre Livet (eds.) 2010, Naturalizing Intention in Action, MIT Press 2010 .\n The journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.\n\nFeminist philosophy\nMerleau-Ponty has also been picked up by Australian and Nordic philosophers inspired by the French feminist tradition, including Rosalyn Diprose and .\n\nHeinämaa has argued for a rereading of Merleau-Ponty's influence on Simone de Beauvoir. (She has also challenged Dreyfus's reading of Merleau-Ponty as behaviorist, and as neglecting the importance of the phenomenological reduction to Merleau-Ponty's thought.)\n\nMerleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body has also been taken up by Iris Young in her essay \"Throwing Like a Girl,\" and its follow-up, \"'Throwing Like a Girl': Twenty Years Later\". Young analyzes the particular modalities of feminine bodily comportment as they differ from that of men. Young observes that while a man who throws a ball puts his whole body into the motion, a woman throwing a ball generally restricts her own movements as she makes them, and that, generally, in sports, women move in a more tentative, reactive way. Merleau-Ponty argues that we experience the world in terms of the \"I can\" – that is, oriented towards certain projects based on our capacity and habituality. Young's thesis is that in women, this intentionality is inhibited and ambivalent, rather than confident, experienced as an \"I cannot\".\n\nEcophenomenology\nEcophenomenology can be described as the pursuit of the relationalities of worldly engagement, both human and those of other creatures (Brown & Toadvine 2003).\n\nThis engagement is situated in a kind of middle ground of relationality, a space that is neither purely objective, because it is reciprocally constituted by a diversity of lived experiences motivating the movements of countless organisms, nor purely subjective, because it is nonetheless a field of material relationships between bodies. It is governed exclusively neither by causality, nor by intentionality. In this space of in-betweenness, phenomenology can overcome its inaugural opposition to naturalism.\n\nDavid Abram explains Merleau-Ponty's concept of \"flesh\" (chair) as \"the mysterious tissue or matrix that underlies and gives rise to both the perceiver and the perceived as interdependent aspects of its spontaneous activity\", and he identifies this elemental matrix with the interdependent web of earthly life. This concept unites subject and object dialectically as determinations within a more primordial reality, which Merleau-Ponty calls \"the flesh\" and which Abram refers to variously as \"the animate earth\", \"the breathing biosphere\" or \"the more-than-human natural world\". Yet this is not nature or the biosphere conceived as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather \"the biosphere as it is experienced and lived from within by the intelligent body — by the attentive human animal who is entirely a part of the world that he or she experiences. Merleau-Ponty's ecophenemonology with its emphasis on holistic dialog within the larger-than-human world also has implications for the ontogenesis and phylogenesis of language; indeed he states that \"language is the very voice of the trees, the waves and the forest\".\n\nMerleau-Ponty himself refers to \"that primordial being which is not yet the subject-being nor the object-being and which in every respect baffles reflection. From this primordial being to us, there is no derivation, nor any break...\" Among the many working notes found on his desk at the time of his death, and published with the half-complete manuscript of The Visible and the Invisible, several make it evident that Merleau-Ponty himself recognized a deep affinity between his notion of a primordial \"flesh\" and a radically transformed understanding of \"nature\". Hence, in November 1960 he writes: \"Do a psychoanalysis of Nature: it is the flesh, the mother.\" And in the last published working note, written in March 1961, he writes: \"Nature as the other side of humanity (as flesh, nowise as 'matter').\" This resonates with the conception of space, place, dwelling, and embodiment (in the flesh and physical, vs. virtual and cybernetic), especially as they are addressed against the background of the unfolding of the essence of modern technology. Such analytics figure in a Heideggerian take on “econtology” as an extension of Heidegger's consideration of the question of being (Seinsfrage) by way of the fourfold (Das Geviert) of earth-sky-mortals-divinities (Erde und Himmel, Sterblichen und Göttlichen). In this strand of “ecophenomenology”, ecology is co-entangled with ontology, whereby the worldly existential analytics are grounded in earthiness, and environmentalism is orientated by ontological thinking.\n\nBibliography\nThe following table gives a selection of Merleau-Ponty's works in French and English translation.\n\nSee also\nGestalt psychology\nProcess philosophy\nEmbodied cognition\nEnactivism\nDifference (philosophy)\nVirtuality (philosophy)\nField (physics)\nHylomorphism\nAutopoiesis\nEmergence\nUmwelt\nHabit\nBody schema\nAffordance\nPerspectivism\nReflexivity\nInvagination (philosophy)\nIncarnation\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n Abram, D. (1988). \"Merleau-Ponty and the Voice of the Earth\" Environmental Ethics 10, no. 2 (Summer 1988): 101–20.\n Alloa, E. (2017) Resistance of the Sensible World. An Introduction to Merleau-Ponty, New York: Fordham University Press.\n Alloa,E., F. Chouraqui & R. Kaushik, (2019) (eds.) Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy, Albany: SUNY Press.\n Barbaras, R. (2004) The Being of the Phenomenon. Merleau-Ponty's Ontology Bloomington: Indiana University Press.\n Carbone, M. (2004) The Thinking of the Sensible. Merleau-Ponty's A-Philosophy, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.\n Clark, A. (1997) Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.\n Dillon, M. C. (1997) Merleau-Ponty's Ontology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.\n Gallagher, S. (2003) How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.\n Guilherme, Alexandre and Morgan, W. John, 'Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961)-dialogue as being present to the other'. Chapter 6 in Philosophy, Dialogue, and Education: Nine modern European philosophers, Routledge, London and New York, pp. 89–108, .\n Johnson, G., Smith, M. B. (eds.) (1993) The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, Chicago: Northwestern UP 1993.\n Landes, D. (2013) Merleau-Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression, New York-London: Bloomsbury.\n Lawlor, L., Evans, F. (eds.) (2000) Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty's Notion of Flesh, Albany: SUNY Press.\n Petitot, J., Varela, F., Pachoud, B. and Roy, J-M. (eds.) (1999) Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Stanford: Stanford University Press.\n Toadvine, T. (2009) Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Nature. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.\n Tilliette, X. (1970) Maurice Merleau-Ponty ou la mesure de l'homme, Seghers, 1970.\n Varela, F. J., Thompson, E. and Rosch, E. (1991) The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press.\n\nExternal links\n\n \n Maurice Merleau-Ponty at 18 from the French Government website\n English Translations of Merleau-Ponty's Work\n Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty by Jack Reynolds\n Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty by Ted Toadvine\n The Merleau-Ponty Circle — Association of scholars interested in the works of Merleau-Ponty\n Maurice Merleau-Ponty page at Mythos & Logos\n Chiasmi International — Studies Concerning the Thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in English, French and Italian\n O’Loughlin, Marjorie, 1995, \"Intelligent Bodies and Ecological Subjectivities: Merleau-Ponty’s Corrective to Postmodernism’s “Subjects” of Education.\"\n Popen, Shari, 1995, \"Merleau-Ponty Confronts Postmodernism: A Reply to O’Loughlin.\"\n Merleau-Ponty: Reckoning with the Possibility of an 'Other.'\n The Journal of French Philosophy — the online home of the Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française\n Online Merleau-Ponty Bibliography at PhilPapers.org\n\n1908 births\n1961 deaths\n20th-century French non-fiction writers\n20th-century French philosophers\nAction theorists\nBurials at Père Lachaise Cemetery\nCollège de France faculty\nConsciousness researchers and theorists\nContinental philosophers\nCultural critics\nÉcole Normale Supérieure alumni\nEcophenomenologists\nEnactive cognition\nEnvironmental philosophers\nEpistemologists\nExistentialists\nFrench communists\nFrench socialists\nFrench humanists\nFrench male non-fiction writers\nFrench male writers\nLycée Carnot teachers\nLycée Louis-le-Grand alumni\nMarxist theorists\nMoral philosophers\nOntologists\nPeople from Rochefort, Charente-Maritime\nPhenomenologists\nPhilosophers of art\nPhilosophers of culture\nPhilosophers of education\nPhilosophers of ethics and morality\nPhilosophers of language\nPhilosophers of mind\nPhilosophers of psychology\nPhilosophers of science\nPhilosophy writers\nPolitical philosophers\nSocial critics\nSocial philosophers\nUniversity of Lyon faculty\nUniversity of Paris faculty\nFrench magazine founders"
] |
[
"Jim Cornette",
"World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment (1993-2005)"
] | C_c10c8c313306435791f91b164088b05c_0 | What were their earlier years like? | 1 | What were Jim Cornette's earlier years like? | Jim Cornette | Cornette went to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1993 while still serving as promoter of SMW. As he had done in other promotions, Cornette held several positions in the WWF, including manager, color commentator and member of the booking committee. Cornette's most notable managerial role in the WWF was as the "American spokesperson" of WWF Champion Yokozuna. Cornette joined the WWF full-time in 1996 after the demise of SMW, and had a major role in scouting and developing new talent. On screen, he led a top heel stable of wrestlers referred to as "Camp Cornette". At any given time, Cornette's charges consisted of Yokozuna, Mantaur, Vader, Owen Hart, and The British Bulldog. He also served as the manager of Tom Prichard and Jimmy Del Ray during their brief stint in the WWF. In 1997, Cornette became a member of the WWF announce team where he served as a color commentator. It was during this time that he also began performing a series of controversial "worked shoots" where he would praise what he felt was right and condemn what he felt was wrong in professional wrestling. Although the segments were produced by the WWF, Cornette did not hesitate to give praise to WCW wrestlers that he felt deserved it. Cornette also became active behind the scenes working on the booking committee for several years before being removed after frequently butting heads with head writer Vince Russo. In 1998, Cornette led an NWA invasion, based on the old Crockett Promotions territory, with a stable including Jeff Jarrett, Barry Windham and The Rock 'n' Roll Express. Later that year, Cornette managed Dan Severn and The New Midnight Express before he stepped back from managing. Cornette then did some color commentating, primarily on Sunday Night Heat, before disappearing from television. Cornette returned to WWF television for one night at WrestleMania X-Seven in Houston, where he took part in the "gimmick battle royal" but was quickly eliminated by Hillbilly Jim. Cornette later became lead booker and part owner of Ohio Valley Wrestling, WWE's lead developmental territory at the time, run by "Nightmare" Danny Davis. As a talent developer, Cornette had previously been instrumental in developing current and former WWE Superstars such as Kane, D'Lo Brown, Sunny and Al Snow during his time running SMW. WWE credits Cornette with helping foster numerous successful superstars including John Cena, Dave Bautista, Randy Orton and Brock Lesnar. In May 2005, Cornette was suspended for several weeks by WWE after slapping OVW developmental wrestler Anthony Carelli backstage after Carelli had "no-sold" fellow wrestler The Boogeyman by laughing at him during a live OVW event. Shortly after Cornette returned from his suspension, a separate incident occurred and the WWE released him from his contract in July 2005. In the spring of 2007, Carelli, who had since been called up to the WWE as Santino Marella, appeared on a Canadian radio program where he publicly challenged Cornette to a match despite Cornette working for rival promotion TNA at the time. CANNOTANSWER | Cornette held several positions in the WWF, | James Mark Cornette (born September 17, 1961) is an American author and podcaster who has previously worked in the professional wrestling industry as an agent, booker, color commentator, manager, promoter, trainer, and occasional professional wrestler.
During his career, he has worked for the Continental Wrestling Association, Mid-South Wrestling, World Class Championship Wrestling, Jim Crockett Promotions, World Championship Wrestling, the World Wrestling Federation (now called WWE), Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (now called Impact Wrestling), and Ring of Honor. From 1991 to 1995, he was the owner and head booker of Smoky Mountain Wrestling, and from 1999 to 2005, was the co-owner, head booker, and head trainer of Ohio Valley Wrestling. During the later years of his career, Cornette focused primarily on backstage positions and transitioned away from his role as an on-screen manager.
In 2017, Cornette retired from managing. During a transitional period prior to the retirement, he worked as an on-screen "authority figure" character in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling and Ring of Honor, promotions where he also held backstage positions. Cornette has also had an extensive commentary career, most recently serving as a color commentator for Major League Wrestling, What Culture Pro Wrestling, and the National Wrestling Alliance. Cornette is a member of the NWA, Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Memphis, and Professional Wrestling Hall of Fames. Cornette is also noted for his long-standing real-life feud with fellow professional wrestling booker Vince Russo; in June 2017, Russo filed a restraining order (EPO) against Cornette for stalking. The Cornette vs. Russo feud has been featured on two episodes of Viceland's Dark Side of the Ring series.
Outside of wrestling, Cornette is known for his left-wing political views – Cornette, an atheist and democratic socialist, has appeared on The Young Turks to document his criticisms of religious and right-wing causes.
Early life
James Cornette was born in Louisville, Kentucky on September 17, 1961 to Doug Cornette (1914–1968), an executive with The Louisville Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times, and Thelma Cornette (1933–2002), a secretary for the Louisville Chamber of Commerce. His father died when he was seven years old. From the age of nine, Cornette had a love for wrestling, claiming that, as a child, he installed a ten-foot antenna on top of his house so he could watch as much regional wrestling as possible.
Professional wrestling career
Early career
Cornette began working at wrestling events at the age of 14, serving as a photographer, ring announcer, timekeeper, magazine correspondent, and public relations correspondent. During this time, from attending matches at the Louisville Gardens, Cornette got to know promoter Christine Jarrett, who was the mother of Jerry Jarrett, promoter of the Continental Wrestling Association (commonly known as the "Memphis territory").
Continental Wrestling Association (1982–1983)
By 1982, Cornette was now also writing programs for arena shows, having photos published in wrestling magazines, and contributing to the Championship Wrestling Magazine. In August, he traveled to Memphis to see the TV match between Jerry Lawler and Ric Flair. After the show ended, Cornette was offered a wrestling managerial role on television by promoter Jerry Jarrett. As Cornette has recalled, despite his presence being tolerated at shows and TV tapings for nearly a decade, the first time he was allowed into the locker room was only after he had become a manager.
Before making his managing debut, Cornette decided to adapt the ring name James E. Cornette in tribute to legendary wrestling promoter James E. Barnett. Cornette made his ringside debut on September 25, 1982, managing Sherri Martel, who herself would later become a wrestling manager. Cornette was given the gimmick of a rich kid turned inept manager whose clients kept firing him after one match. The most notable wrestlers in this angle were Dutch Mantell and Crusher Broomfield (who would later gain fame as One Man Gang and Akeem "The African Dream"). Over the next 14 months Cornette also managed Jesse Barr, Exotic Adrian Street, and a trio called the "Cornette Dynasty" consisting of Carl Fergie, Norman Frederick Charles III, and the Angel. After a short-lived run in Georgia through a deal Jarrett had with Ole Anderson, Cornette returned to Memphis in July 1983, and worked as co-manager alongside Jimmy Hart.
Mid-South Wrestling (1983–1984)
Formation of The Midnight Express
In November 1983, Mid-South promoter Bill Watts recognized his business was down, and was looking to reinvigorate his territory. Watts asked Jerry Jarrett and Jerry Lawler to visit a TV taping and offer their opinions. Jarrett suggested a talent trade, and invited Watts to Memphis to see who he liked. After watching a Memphis TV taping, Watts took singles performers Dennis Condrey and Bobby Eaton to create a new tag team, and also took the existing team of Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson as The Rock 'n' Roll Express. Watts also noticed the brash young manager in Cornette, and in his own words, recalled "He was so obnoxious I wanted to slap him", and "I knew he was instant box office if he could get me that riled up". As the more senior Jimmy Hart was still required by Jarrett, Watts took Cornette to manage his new team, who decided on the name The Midnight Express. Notable wrestlers in the trade who left Mid-South for Memphis included Rick Rude and Jim Neidhart.
Mid-South Wrestling had at that point been a territory featuring bigger wrestlers, and Cornette has stated that The Midnight Express, the Rock 'n' Roll Express, and himself were probably the five smallest members of the roster when he arrived. The influx of the new talent had an immediate impact, and business first rebounded and then skyrocketed. It was during this time that Cornette acquired his tennis racquet which became his trademark. He has stated he had seen a college movie at the time with an obnoxious rich kid carrying a badminton racquet with him (most likely the 1983 film Screwballs), so he decided on a tennis racquet. At times Cornette loaded the racquet with a horse shoe to guard against aggressive fans.
Feud with Magnum TA and Mr. Wrestling II
Cornette and The Midnight Express debuted on Mid-South television on November 23, 1983. After the first few weeks in the territory the team faced the Mid-South tag team champions Magnum T.A. and Mr. Wrestling II. At a TV taping for a contract signing for an upcoming championship match, the Midnights and Cornette attacked Magnum TA and tarred and feathered him. The feud continued through to early March 1984, when The Midnight Express won the Mid-South tag team titles after Mr. Wrestling II walked out on his partner during a match.
The Last Stampede
At a TV taping on March 14, 1984, Cornette and the Midnights staged a celebration for winning the tag team titles, complete with champagne and birthday cake. While Cornette's back was turned, The Rock 'n' Roll Express ran in and shoved Cornette's face in the cake. Cornette was enraged afterwards when Bill Watts replayed the incident on TV as he thought it was funny. This led to a heated altercation between the two, which ended with Watts slapping Cornette. In following weeks, the Midnight Express and Cornette attacked and bloodied Watts leading him to come out of retirement. In a series of matches termed "The Last Stampede", Watts and his masked teammate Stagger Lee (suspected to be Junkyard Dog under a mask) faced the Midnight Express and Cornette all through the territory. The stipulations were simple; if the Midnights won Cornette would run Mid-South Wrestling for 60 days; if they lost, Cornette would be stripped down and forced to wear either a diaper or a dress (the outfits varied by venue). Over 5 weeks, the Last Stampede series shattered box office records for Mid-South, with a record gate and attendance at the Sam Houston Coliseum in Texas, combined attendance of 20,000 people in Tulsa and Oklahoma City (on the same day), and a crowd of 23,000 people at the New Orleans Superdome.
Rock 'n' Roll Express rivalry
Cornette's time in Mid-South was also notable as it marked the beginning of the rivalry with the Rock 'n' Roll Express. Starting in May 1984 immediately following the Last Stampede series, the two teams feuded all through the remainder of the year to packed crowds all through the territory. In particular, the two teams set attendance records in Houston, Tulsa and Oklahoma City, making 1984 the most successful year in Mid-South history, and The Midnight Express and Cornette national stars.
Watts' style and influence
Cornette has consistently acknowledged that Bill Watts's philosophy of believable and credible wrestling, with an unwavering emphasis on toughness, athleticism and serious presentation, has had a major impact on how he thinks the business should be promoted. He has described the promotion as a military school for wrestling, where Watts' strict enforcement of kayfabe, exhausting travel schedule and passionate fans made it a learning experience like no other. Cornette maintains enormous respect for Watts as a promoter, citing his ability to attract huge TV ratings and consistently sold-out arenas in a low population area, and describing Watts as a genius. At the same time, he acknowledges the grind of constant matches, long drives, and fan riots was a grueling test of endurance. At one point Cornette worked 103 days straight before being ordered by doctors to have two to four weeks' bed rest. As events transpired, he took six days off before returning to action.
In describing Mid-South Wrestling, Cornette has offered the following example: "Two weeks of our lives, fourteen days, we did two one hour TV shows, fifteen house shows, two all day promo sets, drove 4700 miles in a car while doing that, and I can't speak for anybody else, but I made—and I was only 22 years old, and just pleased as punch to be there—$5600 for two weeks. In 1984. Not bad."
World Class Championship Wrestling (1984–1985)
The Midnight Express with Cornette had a short stay in World Class Championship Wrestling (WCCW) in Texas where they feuded mainly with The Fantastics (Bobby Fulton and Tommy Rogers). When opportunities in WCCW looked to go nowhere, The Midnight Express started to look elsewhere for employment and what they found would give the team national and international exposure. Cornette later reflected that they were willing to give Dallas a try, as they welcomed living in a modern city, as well as the easier travel schedule when compared to Mid-South. However the inability to get any rivalry with the Von Erichs—and therefore main event money—made the decision to leave for Charlotte an easy one.
Jim Crockett Promotions / World Championship Wrestling (1985–1990, 1993)
Managing the Midnight Express (1985–1990)
Cornette and the Midnight Express spent five years at Jim Crockett Promotions/WCW. After Condrey left the company in early 1987, he was replaced with Stan Lane. With Cornette as manager, each version of the team were National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) World tag team champions (Condrey and Eaton for six months in 1986, Eaton and Lane for a few weeks in late 1988). In addition, Eaton and Lane were three -time NWA United States tag team champions. As a manager, Cornette was known for both his loud mouth and for his ever-present tennis racket, which Cornette often used to ensure victory for his wrestlers, with the implication that the racket case was loaded. Cornette was at his best as a heel manager; fans loved to see the constantly yelling Cornette and his equally annoying charges beaten and humiliated. He and the Midnights were so hated, in fact, that they had to be escorted by police to and from the ring at the house shows and have a police escort to the city limits for fear of being attacked by overzealous fans.
Additionally, Cornette suffered a severe knee injury during a scaffold match between The Midnight Express and The Road Warriors at Starrcade '86. In a shoot interview, Cornette recounted that Dusty Rhodes convinced him to perform a dangerous stunt where he would fall off of the high scaffold, which Cornette estimated was twenty-five feet off the floor of the arena, but about five feet less when measured from the ring mat to the top of the scaffold. The idea was that Paul Ellering, the manager of The Road Warriors, would chase Cornette up the scaffold. Once he was there, he would be met by Road Warrior Animal, who would assist him in getting underneath the scaffold, where Cornette would hang and then drop when ready. Cornette, however, suffered from a severe case of acrophobia and decided that the drop, which he estimated was a total of fourteen feet when he factored in his total body length of eight feet (height plus extended arm length), was, as he put it, "way too goddamn far."
Condrey, Eaton, and Cornette discussed an alternative: Big Bubba Rogers, another wrestler of Cornette's, would catch the manager. However, as Rogers was wearing dark sunglasses inside the arena he misjudged his position and Cornette actually landed flat on his feet, three feet away from Rogers. Cornette tore all the ligaments in one of his knees, broke a bone and damaged the cartilage. The injury was so extensive that when Cornette finally saw a doctor to have the knee drained, the amount of blood and fluid filled an entire bedpan. Cornette later said that he knew he might get seriously hurt when he was told he would have to fall off a scaffold, but that performing in front of such a large audience was more important than his own health.
In 1989, Cornette became the color commentator for Jim Crockett Promotions' nationally syndicated NWA television show, and later took over the same role on the Saturday night TBS broadcasts alongside play-by-play announcer Jim Ross.
In 1989, Cornette became a booker on WCW's creative team. As such, Cornette helped write storylines and shape the format of its television shows. Due to friction and animosity between himself and WCW head Jim Herd, Cornette quit the company after Halloween Havoc 1990.
Managing the Heavenly Bodies (1993)
In January 1993 Cornette briefly returned to World Championship Wrestling (WCW) when WCW was doing a talent trade with Smoky Mountain Wrestling (SMW). Bill Watts, who was the WCW executive vice president, brought The Rock 'n' Roll Express back to WCW and billed them as the Smoky Mountain tag team champions. This incensed Cornette since his team The Heavenly Bodies (Stan Lane and Tom Prichard) were the champions at the time. On the February 6, 1993 episode on WCW Saturday Night, Jim Cornette, the Bodies and Bobby Eaton (who Cornette once again began to manage) confronted the Express during an interview. Bill Watts came out and suggested the Bodies should wrestle the Express. Cornette objected since he claimed that they weren't dressed for it, but the match still took place. The Express won the match by DQ when Eaton interfered in the match, and after the match while Lane held Morton, Cornette put his tennis racket over Morton while Eaton delivered his "Alabama jam" on Morton. Cornette then struck referee Nick Patrick, and then Cornette helped his men beat up the Express.
The following week, Watts came out with the SMW commissioner Bob Armstrong, who stated he was very upset with Cornette's recent actions, and demanded that Cornette come out to apologize for what he had done. Watts stated that the Express was scheduled to wrestle the Wrecking Crew (Rage and Fury) at SuperBrawl III, but then said the Express should wrestle the Bodies instead. Armstrong agreed with Watts and then told Cornette if his Bodies did not wrestle the Express at SuperBrawl III that he would be heavily fined, the Bodies would be stripped of the title, and that he would be suspended. Cornette was very angry and claimed "That he hated WCW!" and later came out to the ring with his men, and attacked two jobbers after a match, one being Joey Maggs. The Express then came out and attacked Cornette and his gang.
During Cornette's second stint in WCW, his Heavenly Bodies teamed with Steve Austin and Brian Pillman in 8-man tag team matches against the Express and the Unified tag team champions Ricky Steamboat and Shane Douglas. The Bodies, Austin and Pillman lost two of those matches, one on a February 27 episode of WCW WorldWide by DQ when Cornette interfered, and one by pinfall. The feud between the Bodies and Express would take place in both SMW and WCW. Bobby Eaton would go to SMW where he would team in 6-man tag team matches with the Bodies. In one of these matches, the Express had a person covered by a sheet in their corner, and after the match Cornette with his men came to the ring to see who was under the sheet and began poking, and kicking at the sheeted man. When Cornette pulled the sheet off, it was Arn Anderson, Eaton's former tag team partner in The Dangerous Alliance, who was underneath; Cornette then fell over in shock. Eaton then tried to shake Anderson's hand, but Arn decked him. Arn said the reason for this was because after he was injured by Erik Watts at a gas station, Eaton never once called him to see how he was doing. Cornette belittled Anderson and claimed that his men were far superior to him. Eaton was also very successful in Smoky Mountain, and under Cornette's guidance he won the SMW TV title. When the Bodies faced the Express at SuperBrawl III, Eaton came out with Cornette, he was despite Cornette's protests forced to return to the dressing room. Like almost always Cornette tried to interfere in the match. When Cornette climbed onto the ring apron and began to argue with the referee, the Express won the match by pinfall when an illegal outside attempt from Eaton, who had since come back to the ring failed.
Smoky Mountain Wrestling (1991–1995)
A firm believer in "old-school" territorial wrestling, Cornette began the Smoky Mountain Wrestling promotion in 1991. SMW promoted shows in Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas. By this point, however, the nature of wrestling in the U.S. had already changed irrevocably, leading Cornette to seek a working relationship with the World Wrestling Federation in 1993. This did not change the new national perception that regional promotions were "minor league". The move also did not help the federation's finances, and Cornette closed SMW's doors in November 1995 and sold all SMW rights and videos to the WWF. Cornette later said that he chose the wrong time to start a wrestling federation because the business as a whole was in a recession.
World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment (1993–2005)
Camp Cornette
Cornette went to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1993 while still serving as promoter of SMW. As he had done in other promotions, Cornette held several positions in the WWF, including manager, color commentator and member of the booking committee. Cornette's most notable managerial role in the WWF was as the "American spokesperson" of WWF Champion Yokozuna. Cornette joined the WWF full-time in 1996 after the demise of SMW, and had a major role in scouting and developing new talent.
On screen, he led a top-heel stable of wrestlers referred to as "Camp Cornette". At any given time, Cornette's charges consisted of Yokozuna, Mantaur, Vader, Owen Hart and The British Bulldog. He also served as the manager of Tom Prichard and Jimmy Del Ray during their brief stint in the WWF. In 1997, Cornette became a member of the WWF announce team where he served as a color commentator. It was during this time that he also began performing a series of controversial "worked shoots" where he would praise what he felt was right and condemn what he felt was wrong in professional wrestling. Although the segments were produced by the WWF, Cornette did not hesitate to give praise to WCW wrestlers that he felt deserved it. Cornette also became active behind the scenes working on the booking committee for several years before being removed after frequently butting heads with writer Vince Russo.
Cornette also was part of the television production staff during this time but eventually left this position as well due in part to constant conflict with producer Kevin Dunn and head writer Vince Russo. Cornette later recounted that things came to a head in Halifax, Nova Scotia in the summer of 1997. During the production meeting for Raw, which was to feature the newly signed The Patriot, Cornette repeatedly tried to steer the discussion toward the treatment of what he thought was a new top-of-the-line heroic character. Dunn told Cornette that he found him to be "tiresome" for continuing to harp on the issue, which enraged Cornette to the point where he mocked Dunn's buck teeth and threatened to assault him in front of everyone in the room. He was eventually forced to apologize to Dunn for his actions.
In June 1997, Cornette made a surprise appearance on the Extreme Championship Wrestling show Orgy of Violence, attacking Tommy Dreamer with his tennis racket as part of the WWF-ECW rivalry angle.
NWA invasion; color commentary
In 1998, Cornette led an NWA invasion, based on the old Crockett Promotions territory, with a stable including Jeff Jarrett, Barry Windham and The Rock 'n' Roll Express. Later that year, Cornette managed Dan Severn and a new version of The Midnight Express before he stepped back from managing. Cornette then did some color commentating, primarily on Sunday Night Heat, before disappearing from television. Cornette returned to WWF television for one night at WrestleMania X-Seven in Houston, where he took part in the "gimmick battle royal", but was quickly eliminated by Hillbilly Jim.
Ohio Valley Wrestling
In 1999, Cornette became lead booker and part-owner of Ohio Valley Wrestling, WWE's lead developmental territory at the time, run by "Nightmare" Danny Davis. As a talent developer, Cornette had previously been instrumental in developing current and former WWE Superstars such as Kane, D'Lo Brown, Sunny and Al Snow during his time running SMW. WWE credits Cornette with helping foster numerous successful superstars including John Cena, Dave Bautista, Randy Orton and Brock Lesnar.
In May 2005, Cornette was suspended for several weeks by WWE after slapping OVW developmental wrestler Anthony Carelli backstage after Carelli had "no-sold" fellow wrestler The Boogeyman by laughing at him during a live OVW event. Shortly after Cornette returned from his suspension, a separate incident occurred and the WWE released him from his contract in July 2005. In the spring of 2007, Carelli, who had since been called up to the WWE as Santino Marella, appeared on a Canadian radio program where he publicly challenged Cornette to a match despite Cornette working for rival promotion TNA at the time.
NWA Total Nonstop Action (2006–2009)
In 2006, Cornette joined NWA Total Nonstop Action as the new face of TNA Management. He held the title of "Management Director" according to the press releases following his premiere at the Slammiversary PPV event on June 18, 2006 in Orlando, Florida. After a brief speech, he departed, but returned at the end of the show in light of the "Orlando Screwjob", taking the NWA World Heavyweight Championship belt after Jeff Jarrett, Larry Zbyszko and Earl Hebner successfully executed a screwjob on Christian Cage and Sting.
As the figurehead "Management Director" of TNA, Cornette did not usually take up more than ten minutes of the show, which could be attributed to both his quick tongue and TNA's lack of desire to create another Mr. McMahon. Matt Morgan had also become Cornette's on-screen bodyguard to prevent harm to his physical being, until leaving that post to become a full-time wrestler. Part of Cornette's gimmick was that when multiple situations build up at once, he often took care of them all swiftly by getting all the TNA wrestlers to come out to the Impact! Zone for a "company meeting" to hear his decisions, or exasperatedly deal swiftly with people who barge into his office. The clear impact of this feature was made evident right from the start, as the first "company meeting" (which aired on the edition of June 29, 2006 of TNA Impact!), where every wrestler was asked to come out and stand at either ramp, saw Cornette clear up several issues:
Forcing The Latin American Xchange to start wrestling again under the threat of termination.
Booking Raven and Zbyszko in a hair vs. hair match against each other for Victory Road 2006.
Disbanding Team Canada as a result of their overly cheating ways (he would later offer them a match which, if they won, would allow them to stay as a unit, with the winner to get a future shot at the championship of their choice; they would lose the match).
Firing Earl Hebner for his role in the "Orlando Screwjob" at Slammiversary 2006. (Hebner had since been rehired, due to a lie detector test on Jeff Jarrett).
Booking America's Most Wanted and Gail Kim in a match against Sirelda, A.J. Styles and Christopher Daniels in an intergender six-person tag team matchup with Styles and Daniels' NWA World Tag Team Championship on the line.
Booking a fatal four-way between Christian Cage, Sting, Scott Steiner, and Samoa Joe for Victory Road 2006.
Finally declaring Jeff Jarrett the official NWA World Heavyweight Champion given that Jarrett defended his title against the winner of the fatal four-way at Victory Road.
Cornette was released from TNA on September 15, 2009. He has said that he was released because he was not "100 percent" behind TNA's creative team, headed by Vince Russo.
Return to ROH and OVW (2009–2012)
In 2009, Cornette signed a contract with Ring of Honor to be their Executive Producer for the Ring of Honor Wrestling show on HDNet.
Cornette made his surprise return to ROH at Glory By Honor VIII: The Final Countdown on September 26, announcing he was the new executive producer for the show. Cornette made his first appearance on Ring of Honor Wrestling on the December 7 episode and immediately made waves by putting ROH champion Austin Aries into a four-way title match later that night and created the Pick 6 contender series.
On September 8, 2010, Ohio Valley Wrestling announced that Cornette would resume his duties as the head booker of the promotion. Cornette left OVW in November 2011, when the promotion announced a working agreement with TNA. On the edition of January 21 of Ring of Honor television, Cornette announced that chairshots to the head were banned and anyone that did so would be fined $5,000. On the February 4 telecast, Cornette made another ban in which the piledriver — in any form — was banned.
On October 8, 2012, it was reported that ROH had replaced Cornette as the head booker with Hunter Johnston, a wrestler who performed under the name Delirious. ROH wrote Cornette off television by having him suffer storyline injuries at the hands of Jay Lethal. As of November 2012, it was revealed that Cornette had left the promotion. The reason for Cornette's absence stems from an outburst he had at the November 3 ROH television taping. At the taping, ROH talent Steve Corino suffered an injury, and no ROH officials were still at the venue to be able to pay for Corino's immediate medical attention or even arrange for an ambulance to be called. This left Corino in pain for hours and Cornette to be the only person there with enough power to handle the situation. Following his departure from Ring of Honor, Cornette decided to take an extended break from professional wrestling to focus on his health and work on personal projects.
What Culture Pro Wrestling (2016–2017)
On October 6, 2016, Cornette made his first appearance doing color commentary in two years, debuting for What Culture Pro Wrestling at their Refuse to Lose event in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He would be joined on the announce team by his long-time friend Jim Ross, who he had not done commentary with in over fifteen years. He then provided commentary for their next event True Legacy, which took place a few days later. Cornette returned to WCPW at their April 1, 2017 State of Emergency event. At the event, Cornette and Matt Striker provided commentary for the British promotion's debut in the United States.
WWE appearances (2017–2018)
On March 31, 2017, Jim Cornette made his first appearance with WWE in 12 years when he inducted The Rock 'n' Roll Express into the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2017. Cornette was also featured in an episode of the WWE Network Original series Table For 3 alongside Eric Bischoff and Michael Hayes. Since then, Cornette made another appearance for WWE, starring in an episode of the WWE Network Original Series Photo Shoot in March 2018.
Return to Impact Wrestling (2017)
Cornette returned to Impact Wrestling, which had formerly been known as TNA, and was attempting to rebrand as Global Force Wrestling (GFW), on August 17, 2017, at Destination X and fired Bruce Prichard. Cornette stated that he was put in charge by Impact's parent company, Anthem Sports & Entertainment, to resolve the Unified GFW World Heavyweight Championship situation. Cornette made the decision to book Low Ki as the twentieth entrant in the GFW World Heavyweight Championship gauntlet match. On September 18, Cornette confirmed he was done with the company. He had been brought in by Jeff Jarrett and the original agreement only included one set of tapings. With Jarrett out of the company, the new creative team was said to be more focused on in-ring action and less on authority figures. According to Cornette, there was no "heat" between him and the company.
National Wrestling Alliance (2018–2019)
The National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) chose Jim Cornette to be the color commentator for the NWA 70th Anniversary show that took place on October 21, 2018. This was the first pay-per-view promoted by the NWA in years. Cornette was joined on commentary by Tony Schiavone for the main event NWA World Heavyweight Championship match between Nick Aldis and Cody Rhodes.
He returned to the promotion for the NWA's Crockett Cup tournament on April 27, 2019. On September 12, Cornette was announced as part of the commentary team for the NWA's weekly studio series, NWA Power. However, on the NWA Power episode broadcast on November 19 during a match between Nick Aldis and Trevor Murdoch, Cornette made the remark "[Trevor Murdoch] is the only man I've ever known that can strap a bucket of fried chicken on his back and ride a motor scooter across Ethiopia. Trevor Murdoch can take care of himself!" Later on the same day, the NWA apologized for the perceived racial overtones of the comment and pulled down the episode to remove the remark. The next day, Cornette left the NWA. Cornette had previously made the same comment on commentary during the March 6, 1995 episode of Monday Night Raw.
Major League Wrestling (2019)
Cornette debuted for Major League Wrestling (MLW) as a color commentator for the March 2, 2019 event Intimidation Games in Chicago, Illinois. He then returned to the commentary desk for their April 2019 events, Rise of the Renegades and Battle Riot II. From the start, he would also work unofficially in an agent-like role for the company. This included coaching younger talent on their television presentation and promos. In March he confirmed he is not signed exclusively to the company, but is open to continually working with them. After immediately being uncertain of his future with them, Cornette continued to do commentary for them, working Fury Road in June and their following event in July. It was reported that following that show he was not signed on for any further shows, as Tony Schiavone had finished his sports commitments and returned to the MLW commentary table. Cornette announced on the December 13, 2019 episode of his Experience podcast that he was officially retired from announcing/commentary.
Views on the professional wrestling industry
Journalist Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated wrote in 2019 that "Cornette remains one of wrestling's more controversial personalities, but his beliefs are rooted in more than four decades of wrestling experience." Cornette has been very vocal against other styles of wrestling, such as Paul Heyman's Extreme Championship Wrestling hardcore style, which he referred to as "hardcore bullshit". "Comedy wrestling" (that which is deemed silly or goofy as opposed to serious) has also been on the receiving end of his rants, with him routinely criticizing those he considers "comedy wrestlers" such as Joey Ryan, Kenny Omega, and Chuck Taylor. He has also criticized the physical appearance of wrestlers; for example Marko Stunt's height or Kevin Steen and Joey Janela's weight. Cornette has garnered some support from industry personalities including former NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion Nick Aldis, who wrote an article for Flagged Sports defending Cornette and his position as NWA commentator after a separate article asked promoters to stop hiring him.
Conflicts with Vince Russo
Cornette worked with writer Vince Russo in the WWF during the 1990s and in TNA during the 2000s, and regularly conflicted with him due to his views on the business, which emphasize entertainment storylines over actual in-ring action to the point of intense hatred on Cornette's part. Cornette has criticized Russo publicly since his departure from TNA in 2009, which Cornette has stated was a result of his lack of support for Russo's creative direction in the company.
In March 2010, Cornette sent then-TNA official Terry Taylor an email in which he said: "I want Vince Russo to die. If I could figure out a way to murder him without going to prison, I would consider it the greatest accomplishment of my life." TNA sent the letter to a California law firm, who characterized his comments as a "terroristic threat" and said "any further threats to contact Vince Russo or any other TNA personnel (directly or indirectly) shall be viewed as acts in furtherance of such threats and shall be pursued and prosecuted accordingly."
During a 2017 podcast, Cornette challenged Russo to a fight. Russo responded by filing a restraining order (EPO) against Cornette for "stalking him across state lines since 1999." As a response, Cornette began selling autographed copies of the restraining order on his personal website, with all proceeds being donated to the Crusade for Children.
The Russo vs. Cornette rivalry was prominently featured in Viceland's Dark Side of the Ring episodes covering the Montreal Screwjob and WWF's Brawl for All, which aired in 2019 and 2020 respectively.
All Elite Wrestling
All Elite Wrestling (AEW) executives The Young Bucks have accused Cornette of being a shock jock who says disparaging things about the company to get listeners for his podcast. AEW commentator Jim Ross defended him and referred to him as a "Kentucky-fried Howard Stern" but said he had always had outspoken views and that he just has a bigger platform now. Ross said that some of these traits had made him "arguably the best manager ever". AEW promoter Tony Khan credits Cornette as being a major influence on his booking career. Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Newsletter agreed with the shock jock characterization, said Cornette had engaged in hate speech and had influenced a fan that tried to run into an AEW ring in July 2021. However, Meltzer also noted that Cornette condemned the fan for his actions.
Personal life
Cornette and his longtime girlfriend Stacey Goff were married October 31, 2007. Goff had previously worked as a manager in Cornette's OVW promotion under the ring name "Synn." Goff, as Synn, was the OVW manager of future WWE Champion Batista.
Cornette currently hosts two podcasts, The Jim Cornette Experience and Jim Cornette's Drive-Thru. In early April 2020, Cornette's YouTube channel exceeded 100,000 subscribers, earning him a Silver Play Button. Both shows were among the most listened to wrestling podcasts in 2021.
Cornette is a supporter of left-wing politics and has been described by Cenk Uygur as a "fire-breathing progressive." In September 2009, during a podcast interview on Who's Slamming Who?, he voiced his support for President Barack Obama's health care reform plans. Cornette had previously described himself as a Democrat and acknowledged having voted for Obama in the 2008 presidential election. Cornette, inversely, is a fierce critic of right-wing politics, condemning what he considers "fearmongering" from the Republican Party as well as controversially labeling former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as "a useless twat." During the time that Donald Trump was President, Cornette frequently referred to Trump on his podcasts as "President Pigshit" and to Trump's wife Melania as "Melanoma" and "The First Cunt". His political beliefs and statements have earned him attention from the non-professional wrestling media, including an appearance on Internet news show The Young Turks. On December 17, 2017, Cornette stated that he is a democratic socialist. In March 2018, Cornette voiced his support for the March for Our Lives rally; he made additional statements advocating for gun control and criticizing the NRA.
Cornette is an atheist and is highly critical of religion.
Cornette has a criminal record which includes a number of assaults, mostly stemming from incidents involving fights with fans who attacked him while he was a manager in the 1980s. The record has made it difficult for him to work in Canada, and he was turned away from the Canadian border in November 2010.
Then Knox County, Tennessee, mayor Tim Burchett declared November 17, 2014 "Jim Cornette Day" during a Southeastern Championship Wrestling taping in Knoxville.
Independent wrestler Phil Earley accused Cornette of pressuring other wrestlers into having sex with his wife during the Speaking Out movement in 2020. Cornette has vehemently denied the allegations.
Awards and accomplishments
The Baltimore Sun
Non-Wrestler of the Year (2007)
Cauliflower Alley Club
Other honoree (1997)
Iconic Heroes Wrestling Excellence
Southern Wrestling Hall of Fame (2015)
Memphis Wrestling Hall of Fame
Class of 2017
National Wrestling Alliance
NWA Hall of Fame (Class of 2005)
New England Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame
Class of 2015
Pro Wrestling Illustrated
Manager of the Year (1985, 1993, 1995)
Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum
Class of 2012
World Wrestling Federation
Slammy Award (2 times)
Best Dressed (1994)
Blue Light Special for Worst Dresser (1996)
Wrestling Observer Newsletter
Best Booker (1993, 2001, 2003)
Best Non-Wrestler (2006)
Best on Interviews (1985–1988, 1993)
Manager of the Year (1984–1990, 1992–1996)
Best Pro Wrestling Book (2009)
Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame (Class of 1996)
Bibliography
Jim Cornette Presents: Behind the Curtain - Real Pro Wrestling Stories (2019)
Rags, Paper and Pins: The Merchandising of Memphis Wrestling (2013)
The Midnight Express & Jim Cornette 25th Anniversary Scrapbook (2009)
Tuesday Night at the Gardens (2015)
References
External links
1961 births
American atheists
American color commentators
American gun control activists
American male professional wrestlers
American men podcasters
American podcasters
American television writers
American YouTubers
Critics of religions
Kentucky Democrats
Kentucky socialists
Living people
People charged with assault
American male television writers
Male YouTubers
Ohio Valley Wrestling
Professional wrestlers from Kentucky
Professional wrestling authority figures
Professional wrestling announcers
Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum
Professional wrestling historians
Professional wrestling managers and valets
Professional wrestling podcasters
Professional wrestling promoters
Professional wrestling trainers
Professional wrestling writers
Screenwriters from Kentucky
Shock jocks
Smoky Mountain Wrestling
Sportspeople from Louisville, Kentucky
YouTube podcasters | true | [
"Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful? is the debut album of new wave band the Waitresses, originally released in 1982 by Polydor, licensed from ZE Records.\n\nThe album peaked at No. 41 in the Billboard 200 chart and included the earlier single \"I Know What Boys Like\".\n\nReception\n\nAllMusic critic Ben Tausig, writing retrospectively, said that the album \"was a unique and fairly important moment in early-'80s new wave\", and noted that \"lead singer Patty Donahue's singing ranged from a playful sexiness on the well-known hit \"I Know What Boys Like\" to a half-talk, half-yell with shades of post-punk groups like Gang of Four and the Raincoats on 'Pussy Strut' and 'Go On.' The guitar and bass were bizarre and funk-influenced in much the same way as other well-known Akron, OH, groups like Devo and the Pretenders\".\n\nTrack listing \nThe original US release contained:\n\"No Guilt\" – 3:46\n\"Wise Up\" – 3:20\n\"Quit\" – 5:10\n\"It's My Car\" – 3:20\n\"Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?\" – 3:40\n\"I Know What Boys Like\" – 3:11\n\"Heat Night\" – 3:43\n\"Redland\" – 2:55\n\"Pussy Strut\" – 4:12\n\"Go On\" – 2:49\n\"Jimmy Tomorrow\" – 5:37\nAll songs written by Chris Butler.\n\nPersonnel \nPatty Donahue – vocals\nMars Williams – reeds\nTracy Wormworth – bass\nDavid Hofstra – bass\nBilly Ficca – drums\nDan Klayman – keyboards\nChris Butler – guitar\nAriel Warner – backing vocals\nwith:\nRalph Carney – saxophone on \"No Guilt\" and \"I Know What Boys Like\"\nDon Christensen – drums on \"No Guilt\"\nRick Dailey – piano on \"I Know What Boys Like\"\nStuart Austin – drums on \"I Know What Boys Like\"\nAndrew Fuhrmann – art direction\n\nCharts\n\nReferences \n\n1982 debut albums\nThe Waitresses albums\nPolydor Records albums",
"Dirty North are a three-piece band from Wythenshawe, Manchester, England, comprising rap, reggae and rock influences amongst others. Forming in 2008, their style is often referred to by the band as \"Wythenshawe Dub\".\n\nIn March 2012, the band were confirmed to be one of the supporting acts at one of The Stone Roses' 2012 summer reunion concerts at Manchester's Heaton Park, playing to an audience of 75,000. The Stone Roses' Reni had said in an earlier press conference when asked about the current state of the music industry, \"Dirty North from Wythenshawe, they're great.\"\n\nIn August 2013, the band released their debut album, Down In The Game, as a pay-what-you-like download through Corporate Records.\n\nDiscography\n \"Mixtape 2008\" (2008)\n \"Mixtape 2 09\" (2009)\n \"Know What I Think\" (2010)\n Down In The Game (2013)\n \"Freestyle EP\" (2014)\n \"Wythenshawe Dub\" (2015)\n\nReferences\n\nMusical groups from Manchester\nMusical groups established in 2008\n2008 establishments in England"
] |
[
"Jim Cornette",
"World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment (1993-2005)",
"What were their earlier years like?",
"Cornette held several positions in the WWF,"
] | C_c10c8c313306435791f91b164088b05c_0 | Did he tag team with anyone? | 2 | Did Jim Cornette tag team with anyone? | Jim Cornette | Cornette went to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1993 while still serving as promoter of SMW. As he had done in other promotions, Cornette held several positions in the WWF, including manager, color commentator and member of the booking committee. Cornette's most notable managerial role in the WWF was as the "American spokesperson" of WWF Champion Yokozuna. Cornette joined the WWF full-time in 1996 after the demise of SMW, and had a major role in scouting and developing new talent. On screen, he led a top heel stable of wrestlers referred to as "Camp Cornette". At any given time, Cornette's charges consisted of Yokozuna, Mantaur, Vader, Owen Hart, and The British Bulldog. He also served as the manager of Tom Prichard and Jimmy Del Ray during their brief stint in the WWF. In 1997, Cornette became a member of the WWF announce team where he served as a color commentator. It was during this time that he also began performing a series of controversial "worked shoots" where he would praise what he felt was right and condemn what he felt was wrong in professional wrestling. Although the segments were produced by the WWF, Cornette did not hesitate to give praise to WCW wrestlers that he felt deserved it. Cornette also became active behind the scenes working on the booking committee for several years before being removed after frequently butting heads with head writer Vince Russo. In 1998, Cornette led an NWA invasion, based on the old Crockett Promotions territory, with a stable including Jeff Jarrett, Barry Windham and The Rock 'n' Roll Express. Later that year, Cornette managed Dan Severn and The New Midnight Express before he stepped back from managing. Cornette then did some color commentating, primarily on Sunday Night Heat, before disappearing from television. Cornette returned to WWF television for one night at WrestleMania X-Seven in Houston, where he took part in the "gimmick battle royal" but was quickly eliminated by Hillbilly Jim. Cornette later became lead booker and part owner of Ohio Valley Wrestling, WWE's lead developmental territory at the time, run by "Nightmare" Danny Davis. As a talent developer, Cornette had previously been instrumental in developing current and former WWE Superstars such as Kane, D'Lo Brown, Sunny and Al Snow during his time running SMW. WWE credits Cornette with helping foster numerous successful superstars including John Cena, Dave Bautista, Randy Orton and Brock Lesnar. In May 2005, Cornette was suspended for several weeks by WWE after slapping OVW developmental wrestler Anthony Carelli backstage after Carelli had "no-sold" fellow wrestler The Boogeyman by laughing at him during a live OVW event. Shortly after Cornette returned from his suspension, a separate incident occurred and the WWE released him from his contract in July 2005. In the spring of 2007, Carelli, who had since been called up to the WWE as Santino Marella, appeared on a Canadian radio program where he publicly challenged Cornette to a match despite Cornette working for rival promotion TNA at the time. CANNOTANSWER | WWE credits Cornette with helping foster numerous successful superstars including John Cena, | James Mark Cornette (born September 17, 1961) is an American author and podcaster who has previously worked in the professional wrestling industry as an agent, booker, color commentator, manager, promoter, trainer, and occasional professional wrestler.
During his career, he has worked for the Continental Wrestling Association, Mid-South Wrestling, World Class Championship Wrestling, Jim Crockett Promotions, World Championship Wrestling, the World Wrestling Federation (now called WWE), Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (now called Impact Wrestling), and Ring of Honor. From 1991 to 1995, he was the owner and head booker of Smoky Mountain Wrestling, and from 1999 to 2005, was the co-owner, head booker, and head trainer of Ohio Valley Wrestling. During the later years of his career, Cornette focused primarily on backstage positions and transitioned away from his role as an on-screen manager.
In 2017, Cornette retired from managing. During a transitional period prior to the retirement, he worked as an on-screen "authority figure" character in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling and Ring of Honor, promotions where he also held backstage positions. Cornette has also had an extensive commentary career, most recently serving as a color commentator for Major League Wrestling, What Culture Pro Wrestling, and the National Wrestling Alliance. Cornette is a member of the NWA, Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Memphis, and Professional Wrestling Hall of Fames. Cornette is also noted for his long-standing real-life feud with fellow professional wrestling booker Vince Russo; in June 2017, Russo filed a restraining order (EPO) against Cornette for stalking. The Cornette vs. Russo feud has been featured on two episodes of Viceland's Dark Side of the Ring series.
Outside of wrestling, Cornette is known for his left-wing political views – Cornette, an atheist and democratic socialist, has appeared on The Young Turks to document his criticisms of religious and right-wing causes.
Early life
James Cornette was born in Louisville, Kentucky on September 17, 1961 to Doug Cornette (1914–1968), an executive with The Louisville Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times, and Thelma Cornette (1933–2002), a secretary for the Louisville Chamber of Commerce. His father died when he was seven years old. From the age of nine, Cornette had a love for wrestling, claiming that, as a child, he installed a ten-foot antenna on top of his house so he could watch as much regional wrestling as possible.
Professional wrestling career
Early career
Cornette began working at wrestling events at the age of 14, serving as a photographer, ring announcer, timekeeper, magazine correspondent, and public relations correspondent. During this time, from attending matches at the Louisville Gardens, Cornette got to know promoter Christine Jarrett, who was the mother of Jerry Jarrett, promoter of the Continental Wrestling Association (commonly known as the "Memphis territory").
Continental Wrestling Association (1982–1983)
By 1982, Cornette was now also writing programs for arena shows, having photos published in wrestling magazines, and contributing to the Championship Wrestling Magazine. In August, he traveled to Memphis to see the TV match between Jerry Lawler and Ric Flair. After the show ended, Cornette was offered a wrestling managerial role on television by promoter Jerry Jarrett. As Cornette has recalled, despite his presence being tolerated at shows and TV tapings for nearly a decade, the first time he was allowed into the locker room was only after he had become a manager.
Before making his managing debut, Cornette decided to adapt the ring name James E. Cornette in tribute to legendary wrestling promoter James E. Barnett. Cornette made his ringside debut on September 25, 1982, managing Sherri Martel, who herself would later become a wrestling manager. Cornette was given the gimmick of a rich kid turned inept manager whose clients kept firing him after one match. The most notable wrestlers in this angle were Dutch Mantell and Crusher Broomfield (who would later gain fame as One Man Gang and Akeem "The African Dream"). Over the next 14 months Cornette also managed Jesse Barr, Exotic Adrian Street, and a trio called the "Cornette Dynasty" consisting of Carl Fergie, Norman Frederick Charles III, and the Angel. After a short-lived run in Georgia through a deal Jarrett had with Ole Anderson, Cornette returned to Memphis in July 1983, and worked as co-manager alongside Jimmy Hart.
Mid-South Wrestling (1983–1984)
Formation of The Midnight Express
In November 1983, Mid-South promoter Bill Watts recognized his business was down, and was looking to reinvigorate his territory. Watts asked Jerry Jarrett and Jerry Lawler to visit a TV taping and offer their opinions. Jarrett suggested a talent trade, and invited Watts to Memphis to see who he liked. After watching a Memphis TV taping, Watts took singles performers Dennis Condrey and Bobby Eaton to create a new tag team, and also took the existing team of Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson as The Rock 'n' Roll Express. Watts also noticed the brash young manager in Cornette, and in his own words, recalled "He was so obnoxious I wanted to slap him", and "I knew he was instant box office if he could get me that riled up". As the more senior Jimmy Hart was still required by Jarrett, Watts took Cornette to manage his new team, who decided on the name The Midnight Express. Notable wrestlers in the trade who left Mid-South for Memphis included Rick Rude and Jim Neidhart.
Mid-South Wrestling had at that point been a territory featuring bigger wrestlers, and Cornette has stated that The Midnight Express, the Rock 'n' Roll Express, and himself were probably the five smallest members of the roster when he arrived. The influx of the new talent had an immediate impact, and business first rebounded and then skyrocketed. It was during this time that Cornette acquired his tennis racquet which became his trademark. He has stated he had seen a college movie at the time with an obnoxious rich kid carrying a badminton racquet with him (most likely the 1983 film Screwballs), so he decided on a tennis racquet. At times Cornette loaded the racquet with a horse shoe to guard against aggressive fans.
Feud with Magnum TA and Mr. Wrestling II
Cornette and The Midnight Express debuted on Mid-South television on November 23, 1983. After the first few weeks in the territory the team faced the Mid-South tag team champions Magnum T.A. and Mr. Wrestling II. At a TV taping for a contract signing for an upcoming championship match, the Midnights and Cornette attacked Magnum TA and tarred and feathered him. The feud continued through to early March 1984, when The Midnight Express won the Mid-South tag team titles after Mr. Wrestling II walked out on his partner during a match.
The Last Stampede
At a TV taping on March 14, 1984, Cornette and the Midnights staged a celebration for winning the tag team titles, complete with champagne and birthday cake. While Cornette's back was turned, The Rock 'n' Roll Express ran in and shoved Cornette's face in the cake. Cornette was enraged afterwards when Bill Watts replayed the incident on TV as he thought it was funny. This led to a heated altercation between the two, which ended with Watts slapping Cornette. In following weeks, the Midnight Express and Cornette attacked and bloodied Watts leading him to come out of retirement. In a series of matches termed "The Last Stampede", Watts and his masked teammate Stagger Lee (suspected to be Junkyard Dog under a mask) faced the Midnight Express and Cornette all through the territory. The stipulations were simple; if the Midnights won Cornette would run Mid-South Wrestling for 60 days; if they lost, Cornette would be stripped down and forced to wear either a diaper or a dress (the outfits varied by venue). Over 5 weeks, the Last Stampede series shattered box office records for Mid-South, with a record gate and attendance at the Sam Houston Coliseum in Texas, combined attendance of 20,000 people in Tulsa and Oklahoma City (on the same day), and a crowd of 23,000 people at the New Orleans Superdome.
Rock 'n' Roll Express rivalry
Cornette's time in Mid-South was also notable as it marked the beginning of the rivalry with the Rock 'n' Roll Express. Starting in May 1984 immediately following the Last Stampede series, the two teams feuded all through the remainder of the year to packed crowds all through the territory. In particular, the two teams set attendance records in Houston, Tulsa and Oklahoma City, making 1984 the most successful year in Mid-South history, and The Midnight Express and Cornette national stars.
Watts' style and influence
Cornette has consistently acknowledged that Bill Watts's philosophy of believable and credible wrestling, with an unwavering emphasis on toughness, athleticism and serious presentation, has had a major impact on how he thinks the business should be promoted. He has described the promotion as a military school for wrestling, where Watts' strict enforcement of kayfabe, exhausting travel schedule and passionate fans made it a learning experience like no other. Cornette maintains enormous respect for Watts as a promoter, citing his ability to attract huge TV ratings and consistently sold-out arenas in a low population area, and describing Watts as a genius. At the same time, he acknowledges the grind of constant matches, long drives, and fan riots was a grueling test of endurance. At one point Cornette worked 103 days straight before being ordered by doctors to have two to four weeks' bed rest. As events transpired, he took six days off before returning to action.
In describing Mid-South Wrestling, Cornette has offered the following example: "Two weeks of our lives, fourteen days, we did two one hour TV shows, fifteen house shows, two all day promo sets, drove 4700 miles in a car while doing that, and I can't speak for anybody else, but I made—and I was only 22 years old, and just pleased as punch to be there—$5600 for two weeks. In 1984. Not bad."
World Class Championship Wrestling (1984–1985)
The Midnight Express with Cornette had a short stay in World Class Championship Wrestling (WCCW) in Texas where they feuded mainly with The Fantastics (Bobby Fulton and Tommy Rogers). When opportunities in WCCW looked to go nowhere, The Midnight Express started to look elsewhere for employment and what they found would give the team national and international exposure. Cornette later reflected that they were willing to give Dallas a try, as they welcomed living in a modern city, as well as the easier travel schedule when compared to Mid-South. However the inability to get any rivalry with the Von Erichs—and therefore main event money—made the decision to leave for Charlotte an easy one.
Jim Crockett Promotions / World Championship Wrestling (1985–1990, 1993)
Managing the Midnight Express (1985–1990)
Cornette and the Midnight Express spent five years at Jim Crockett Promotions/WCW. After Condrey left the company in early 1987, he was replaced with Stan Lane. With Cornette as manager, each version of the team were National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) World tag team champions (Condrey and Eaton for six months in 1986, Eaton and Lane for a few weeks in late 1988). In addition, Eaton and Lane were three -time NWA United States tag team champions. As a manager, Cornette was known for both his loud mouth and for his ever-present tennis racket, which Cornette often used to ensure victory for his wrestlers, with the implication that the racket case was loaded. Cornette was at his best as a heel manager; fans loved to see the constantly yelling Cornette and his equally annoying charges beaten and humiliated. He and the Midnights were so hated, in fact, that they had to be escorted by police to and from the ring at the house shows and have a police escort to the city limits for fear of being attacked by overzealous fans.
Additionally, Cornette suffered a severe knee injury during a scaffold match between The Midnight Express and The Road Warriors at Starrcade '86. In a shoot interview, Cornette recounted that Dusty Rhodes convinced him to perform a dangerous stunt where he would fall off of the high scaffold, which Cornette estimated was twenty-five feet off the floor of the arena, but about five feet less when measured from the ring mat to the top of the scaffold. The idea was that Paul Ellering, the manager of The Road Warriors, would chase Cornette up the scaffold. Once he was there, he would be met by Road Warrior Animal, who would assist him in getting underneath the scaffold, where Cornette would hang and then drop when ready. Cornette, however, suffered from a severe case of acrophobia and decided that the drop, which he estimated was a total of fourteen feet when he factored in his total body length of eight feet (height plus extended arm length), was, as he put it, "way too goddamn far."
Condrey, Eaton, and Cornette discussed an alternative: Big Bubba Rogers, another wrestler of Cornette's, would catch the manager. However, as Rogers was wearing dark sunglasses inside the arena he misjudged his position and Cornette actually landed flat on his feet, three feet away from Rogers. Cornette tore all the ligaments in one of his knees, broke a bone and damaged the cartilage. The injury was so extensive that when Cornette finally saw a doctor to have the knee drained, the amount of blood and fluid filled an entire bedpan. Cornette later said that he knew he might get seriously hurt when he was told he would have to fall off a scaffold, but that performing in front of such a large audience was more important than his own health.
In 1989, Cornette became the color commentator for Jim Crockett Promotions' nationally syndicated NWA television show, and later took over the same role on the Saturday night TBS broadcasts alongside play-by-play announcer Jim Ross.
In 1989, Cornette became a booker on WCW's creative team. As such, Cornette helped write storylines and shape the format of its television shows. Due to friction and animosity between himself and WCW head Jim Herd, Cornette quit the company after Halloween Havoc 1990.
Managing the Heavenly Bodies (1993)
In January 1993 Cornette briefly returned to World Championship Wrestling (WCW) when WCW was doing a talent trade with Smoky Mountain Wrestling (SMW). Bill Watts, who was the WCW executive vice president, brought The Rock 'n' Roll Express back to WCW and billed them as the Smoky Mountain tag team champions. This incensed Cornette since his team The Heavenly Bodies (Stan Lane and Tom Prichard) were the champions at the time. On the February 6, 1993 episode on WCW Saturday Night, Jim Cornette, the Bodies and Bobby Eaton (who Cornette once again began to manage) confronted the Express during an interview. Bill Watts came out and suggested the Bodies should wrestle the Express. Cornette objected since he claimed that they weren't dressed for it, but the match still took place. The Express won the match by DQ when Eaton interfered in the match, and after the match while Lane held Morton, Cornette put his tennis racket over Morton while Eaton delivered his "Alabama jam" on Morton. Cornette then struck referee Nick Patrick, and then Cornette helped his men beat up the Express.
The following week, Watts came out with the SMW commissioner Bob Armstrong, who stated he was very upset with Cornette's recent actions, and demanded that Cornette come out to apologize for what he had done. Watts stated that the Express was scheduled to wrestle the Wrecking Crew (Rage and Fury) at SuperBrawl III, but then said the Express should wrestle the Bodies instead. Armstrong agreed with Watts and then told Cornette if his Bodies did not wrestle the Express at SuperBrawl III that he would be heavily fined, the Bodies would be stripped of the title, and that he would be suspended. Cornette was very angry and claimed "That he hated WCW!" and later came out to the ring with his men, and attacked two jobbers after a match, one being Joey Maggs. The Express then came out and attacked Cornette and his gang.
During Cornette's second stint in WCW, his Heavenly Bodies teamed with Steve Austin and Brian Pillman in 8-man tag team matches against the Express and the Unified tag team champions Ricky Steamboat and Shane Douglas. The Bodies, Austin and Pillman lost two of those matches, one on a February 27 episode of WCW WorldWide by DQ when Cornette interfered, and one by pinfall. The feud between the Bodies and Express would take place in both SMW and WCW. Bobby Eaton would go to SMW where he would team in 6-man tag team matches with the Bodies. In one of these matches, the Express had a person covered by a sheet in their corner, and after the match Cornette with his men came to the ring to see who was under the sheet and began poking, and kicking at the sheeted man. When Cornette pulled the sheet off, it was Arn Anderson, Eaton's former tag team partner in The Dangerous Alliance, who was underneath; Cornette then fell over in shock. Eaton then tried to shake Anderson's hand, but Arn decked him. Arn said the reason for this was because after he was injured by Erik Watts at a gas station, Eaton never once called him to see how he was doing. Cornette belittled Anderson and claimed that his men were far superior to him. Eaton was also very successful in Smoky Mountain, and under Cornette's guidance he won the SMW TV title. When the Bodies faced the Express at SuperBrawl III, Eaton came out with Cornette, he was despite Cornette's protests forced to return to the dressing room. Like almost always Cornette tried to interfere in the match. When Cornette climbed onto the ring apron and began to argue with the referee, the Express won the match by pinfall when an illegal outside attempt from Eaton, who had since come back to the ring failed.
Smoky Mountain Wrestling (1991–1995)
A firm believer in "old-school" territorial wrestling, Cornette began the Smoky Mountain Wrestling promotion in 1991. SMW promoted shows in Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas. By this point, however, the nature of wrestling in the U.S. had already changed irrevocably, leading Cornette to seek a working relationship with the World Wrestling Federation in 1993. This did not change the new national perception that regional promotions were "minor league". The move also did not help the federation's finances, and Cornette closed SMW's doors in November 1995 and sold all SMW rights and videos to the WWF. Cornette later said that he chose the wrong time to start a wrestling federation because the business as a whole was in a recession.
World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment (1993–2005)
Camp Cornette
Cornette went to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1993 while still serving as promoter of SMW. As he had done in other promotions, Cornette held several positions in the WWF, including manager, color commentator and member of the booking committee. Cornette's most notable managerial role in the WWF was as the "American spokesperson" of WWF Champion Yokozuna. Cornette joined the WWF full-time in 1996 after the demise of SMW, and had a major role in scouting and developing new talent.
On screen, he led a top-heel stable of wrestlers referred to as "Camp Cornette". At any given time, Cornette's charges consisted of Yokozuna, Mantaur, Vader, Owen Hart and The British Bulldog. He also served as the manager of Tom Prichard and Jimmy Del Ray during their brief stint in the WWF. In 1997, Cornette became a member of the WWF announce team where he served as a color commentator. It was during this time that he also began performing a series of controversial "worked shoots" where he would praise what he felt was right and condemn what he felt was wrong in professional wrestling. Although the segments were produced by the WWF, Cornette did not hesitate to give praise to WCW wrestlers that he felt deserved it. Cornette also became active behind the scenes working on the booking committee for several years before being removed after frequently butting heads with writer Vince Russo.
Cornette also was part of the television production staff during this time but eventually left this position as well due in part to constant conflict with producer Kevin Dunn and head writer Vince Russo. Cornette later recounted that things came to a head in Halifax, Nova Scotia in the summer of 1997. During the production meeting for Raw, which was to feature the newly signed The Patriot, Cornette repeatedly tried to steer the discussion toward the treatment of what he thought was a new top-of-the-line heroic character. Dunn told Cornette that he found him to be "tiresome" for continuing to harp on the issue, which enraged Cornette to the point where he mocked Dunn's buck teeth and threatened to assault him in front of everyone in the room. He was eventually forced to apologize to Dunn for his actions.
In June 1997, Cornette made a surprise appearance on the Extreme Championship Wrestling show Orgy of Violence, attacking Tommy Dreamer with his tennis racket as part of the WWF-ECW rivalry angle.
NWA invasion; color commentary
In 1998, Cornette led an NWA invasion, based on the old Crockett Promotions territory, with a stable including Jeff Jarrett, Barry Windham and The Rock 'n' Roll Express. Later that year, Cornette managed Dan Severn and a new version of The Midnight Express before he stepped back from managing. Cornette then did some color commentating, primarily on Sunday Night Heat, before disappearing from television. Cornette returned to WWF television for one night at WrestleMania X-Seven in Houston, where he took part in the "gimmick battle royal", but was quickly eliminated by Hillbilly Jim.
Ohio Valley Wrestling
In 1999, Cornette became lead booker and part-owner of Ohio Valley Wrestling, WWE's lead developmental territory at the time, run by "Nightmare" Danny Davis. As a talent developer, Cornette had previously been instrumental in developing current and former WWE Superstars such as Kane, D'Lo Brown, Sunny and Al Snow during his time running SMW. WWE credits Cornette with helping foster numerous successful superstars including John Cena, Dave Bautista, Randy Orton and Brock Lesnar.
In May 2005, Cornette was suspended for several weeks by WWE after slapping OVW developmental wrestler Anthony Carelli backstage after Carelli had "no-sold" fellow wrestler The Boogeyman by laughing at him during a live OVW event. Shortly after Cornette returned from his suspension, a separate incident occurred and the WWE released him from his contract in July 2005. In the spring of 2007, Carelli, who had since been called up to the WWE as Santino Marella, appeared on a Canadian radio program where he publicly challenged Cornette to a match despite Cornette working for rival promotion TNA at the time.
NWA Total Nonstop Action (2006–2009)
In 2006, Cornette joined NWA Total Nonstop Action as the new face of TNA Management. He held the title of "Management Director" according to the press releases following his premiere at the Slammiversary PPV event on June 18, 2006 in Orlando, Florida. After a brief speech, he departed, but returned at the end of the show in light of the "Orlando Screwjob", taking the NWA World Heavyweight Championship belt after Jeff Jarrett, Larry Zbyszko and Earl Hebner successfully executed a screwjob on Christian Cage and Sting.
As the figurehead "Management Director" of TNA, Cornette did not usually take up more than ten minutes of the show, which could be attributed to both his quick tongue and TNA's lack of desire to create another Mr. McMahon. Matt Morgan had also become Cornette's on-screen bodyguard to prevent harm to his physical being, until leaving that post to become a full-time wrestler. Part of Cornette's gimmick was that when multiple situations build up at once, he often took care of them all swiftly by getting all the TNA wrestlers to come out to the Impact! Zone for a "company meeting" to hear his decisions, or exasperatedly deal swiftly with people who barge into his office. The clear impact of this feature was made evident right from the start, as the first "company meeting" (which aired on the edition of June 29, 2006 of TNA Impact!), where every wrestler was asked to come out and stand at either ramp, saw Cornette clear up several issues:
Forcing The Latin American Xchange to start wrestling again under the threat of termination.
Booking Raven and Zbyszko in a hair vs. hair match against each other for Victory Road 2006.
Disbanding Team Canada as a result of their overly cheating ways (he would later offer them a match which, if they won, would allow them to stay as a unit, with the winner to get a future shot at the championship of their choice; they would lose the match).
Firing Earl Hebner for his role in the "Orlando Screwjob" at Slammiversary 2006. (Hebner had since been rehired, due to a lie detector test on Jeff Jarrett).
Booking America's Most Wanted and Gail Kim in a match against Sirelda, A.J. Styles and Christopher Daniels in an intergender six-person tag team matchup with Styles and Daniels' NWA World Tag Team Championship on the line.
Booking a fatal four-way between Christian Cage, Sting, Scott Steiner, and Samoa Joe for Victory Road 2006.
Finally declaring Jeff Jarrett the official NWA World Heavyweight Champion given that Jarrett defended his title against the winner of the fatal four-way at Victory Road.
Cornette was released from TNA on September 15, 2009. He has said that he was released because he was not "100 percent" behind TNA's creative team, headed by Vince Russo.
Return to ROH and OVW (2009–2012)
In 2009, Cornette signed a contract with Ring of Honor to be their Executive Producer for the Ring of Honor Wrestling show on HDNet.
Cornette made his surprise return to ROH at Glory By Honor VIII: The Final Countdown on September 26, announcing he was the new executive producer for the show. Cornette made his first appearance on Ring of Honor Wrestling on the December 7 episode and immediately made waves by putting ROH champion Austin Aries into a four-way title match later that night and created the Pick 6 contender series.
On September 8, 2010, Ohio Valley Wrestling announced that Cornette would resume his duties as the head booker of the promotion. Cornette left OVW in November 2011, when the promotion announced a working agreement with TNA. On the edition of January 21 of Ring of Honor television, Cornette announced that chairshots to the head were banned and anyone that did so would be fined $5,000. On the February 4 telecast, Cornette made another ban in which the piledriver — in any form — was banned.
On October 8, 2012, it was reported that ROH had replaced Cornette as the head booker with Hunter Johnston, a wrestler who performed under the name Delirious. ROH wrote Cornette off television by having him suffer storyline injuries at the hands of Jay Lethal. As of November 2012, it was revealed that Cornette had left the promotion. The reason for Cornette's absence stems from an outburst he had at the November 3 ROH television taping. At the taping, ROH talent Steve Corino suffered an injury, and no ROH officials were still at the venue to be able to pay for Corino's immediate medical attention or even arrange for an ambulance to be called. This left Corino in pain for hours and Cornette to be the only person there with enough power to handle the situation. Following his departure from Ring of Honor, Cornette decided to take an extended break from professional wrestling to focus on his health and work on personal projects.
What Culture Pro Wrestling (2016–2017)
On October 6, 2016, Cornette made his first appearance doing color commentary in two years, debuting for What Culture Pro Wrestling at their Refuse to Lose event in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He would be joined on the announce team by his long-time friend Jim Ross, who he had not done commentary with in over fifteen years. He then provided commentary for their next event True Legacy, which took place a few days later. Cornette returned to WCPW at their April 1, 2017 State of Emergency event. At the event, Cornette and Matt Striker provided commentary for the British promotion's debut in the United States.
WWE appearances (2017–2018)
On March 31, 2017, Jim Cornette made his first appearance with WWE in 12 years when he inducted The Rock 'n' Roll Express into the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2017. Cornette was also featured in an episode of the WWE Network Original series Table For 3 alongside Eric Bischoff and Michael Hayes. Since then, Cornette made another appearance for WWE, starring in an episode of the WWE Network Original Series Photo Shoot in March 2018.
Return to Impact Wrestling (2017)
Cornette returned to Impact Wrestling, which had formerly been known as TNA, and was attempting to rebrand as Global Force Wrestling (GFW), on August 17, 2017, at Destination X and fired Bruce Prichard. Cornette stated that he was put in charge by Impact's parent company, Anthem Sports & Entertainment, to resolve the Unified GFW World Heavyweight Championship situation. Cornette made the decision to book Low Ki as the twentieth entrant in the GFW World Heavyweight Championship gauntlet match. On September 18, Cornette confirmed he was done with the company. He had been brought in by Jeff Jarrett and the original agreement only included one set of tapings. With Jarrett out of the company, the new creative team was said to be more focused on in-ring action and less on authority figures. According to Cornette, there was no "heat" between him and the company.
National Wrestling Alliance (2018–2019)
The National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) chose Jim Cornette to be the color commentator for the NWA 70th Anniversary show that took place on October 21, 2018. This was the first pay-per-view promoted by the NWA in years. Cornette was joined on commentary by Tony Schiavone for the main event NWA World Heavyweight Championship match between Nick Aldis and Cody Rhodes.
He returned to the promotion for the NWA's Crockett Cup tournament on April 27, 2019. On September 12, Cornette was announced as part of the commentary team for the NWA's weekly studio series, NWA Power. However, on the NWA Power episode broadcast on November 19 during a match between Nick Aldis and Trevor Murdoch, Cornette made the remark "[Trevor Murdoch] is the only man I've ever known that can strap a bucket of fried chicken on his back and ride a motor scooter across Ethiopia. Trevor Murdoch can take care of himself!" Later on the same day, the NWA apologized for the perceived racial overtones of the comment and pulled down the episode to remove the remark. The next day, Cornette left the NWA. Cornette had previously made the same comment on commentary during the March 6, 1995 episode of Monday Night Raw.
Major League Wrestling (2019)
Cornette debuted for Major League Wrestling (MLW) as a color commentator for the March 2, 2019 event Intimidation Games in Chicago, Illinois. He then returned to the commentary desk for their April 2019 events, Rise of the Renegades and Battle Riot II. From the start, he would also work unofficially in an agent-like role for the company. This included coaching younger talent on their television presentation and promos. In March he confirmed he is not signed exclusively to the company, but is open to continually working with them. After immediately being uncertain of his future with them, Cornette continued to do commentary for them, working Fury Road in June and their following event in July. It was reported that following that show he was not signed on for any further shows, as Tony Schiavone had finished his sports commitments and returned to the MLW commentary table. Cornette announced on the December 13, 2019 episode of his Experience podcast that he was officially retired from announcing/commentary.
Views on the professional wrestling industry
Journalist Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated wrote in 2019 that "Cornette remains one of wrestling's more controversial personalities, but his beliefs are rooted in more than four decades of wrestling experience." Cornette has been very vocal against other styles of wrestling, such as Paul Heyman's Extreme Championship Wrestling hardcore style, which he referred to as "hardcore bullshit". "Comedy wrestling" (that which is deemed silly or goofy as opposed to serious) has also been on the receiving end of his rants, with him routinely criticizing those he considers "comedy wrestlers" such as Joey Ryan, Kenny Omega, and Chuck Taylor. He has also criticized the physical appearance of wrestlers; for example Marko Stunt's height or Kevin Steen and Joey Janela's weight. Cornette has garnered some support from industry personalities including former NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion Nick Aldis, who wrote an article for Flagged Sports defending Cornette and his position as NWA commentator after a separate article asked promoters to stop hiring him.
Conflicts with Vince Russo
Cornette worked with writer Vince Russo in the WWF during the 1990s and in TNA during the 2000s, and regularly conflicted with him due to his views on the business, which emphasize entertainment storylines over actual in-ring action to the point of intense hatred on Cornette's part. Cornette has criticized Russo publicly since his departure from TNA in 2009, which Cornette has stated was a result of his lack of support for Russo's creative direction in the company.
In March 2010, Cornette sent then-TNA official Terry Taylor an email in which he said: "I want Vince Russo to die. If I could figure out a way to murder him without going to prison, I would consider it the greatest accomplishment of my life." TNA sent the letter to a California law firm, who characterized his comments as a "terroristic threat" and said "any further threats to contact Vince Russo or any other TNA personnel (directly or indirectly) shall be viewed as acts in furtherance of such threats and shall be pursued and prosecuted accordingly."
During a 2017 podcast, Cornette challenged Russo to a fight. Russo responded by filing a restraining order (EPO) against Cornette for "stalking him across state lines since 1999." As a response, Cornette began selling autographed copies of the restraining order on his personal website, with all proceeds being donated to the Crusade for Children.
The Russo vs. Cornette rivalry was prominently featured in Viceland's Dark Side of the Ring episodes covering the Montreal Screwjob and WWF's Brawl for All, which aired in 2019 and 2020 respectively.
All Elite Wrestling
All Elite Wrestling (AEW) executives The Young Bucks have accused Cornette of being a shock jock who says disparaging things about the company to get listeners for his podcast. AEW commentator Jim Ross defended him and referred to him as a "Kentucky-fried Howard Stern" but said he had always had outspoken views and that he just has a bigger platform now. Ross said that some of these traits had made him "arguably the best manager ever". AEW promoter Tony Khan credits Cornette as being a major influence on his booking career. Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Newsletter agreed with the shock jock characterization, said Cornette had engaged in hate speech and had influenced a fan that tried to run into an AEW ring in July 2021. However, Meltzer also noted that Cornette condemned the fan for his actions.
Personal life
Cornette and his longtime girlfriend Stacey Goff were married October 31, 2007. Goff had previously worked as a manager in Cornette's OVW promotion under the ring name "Synn." Goff, as Synn, was the OVW manager of future WWE Champion Batista.
Cornette currently hosts two podcasts, The Jim Cornette Experience and Jim Cornette's Drive-Thru. In early April 2020, Cornette's YouTube channel exceeded 100,000 subscribers, earning him a Silver Play Button. Both shows were among the most listened to wrestling podcasts in 2021.
Cornette is a supporter of left-wing politics and has been described by Cenk Uygur as a "fire-breathing progressive." In September 2009, during a podcast interview on Who's Slamming Who?, he voiced his support for President Barack Obama's health care reform plans. Cornette had previously described himself as a Democrat and acknowledged having voted for Obama in the 2008 presidential election. Cornette, inversely, is a fierce critic of right-wing politics, condemning what he considers "fearmongering" from the Republican Party as well as controversially labeling former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as "a useless twat." During the time that Donald Trump was President, Cornette frequently referred to Trump on his podcasts as "President Pigshit" and to Trump's wife Melania as "Melanoma" and "The First Cunt". His political beliefs and statements have earned him attention from the non-professional wrestling media, including an appearance on Internet news show The Young Turks. On December 17, 2017, Cornette stated that he is a democratic socialist. In March 2018, Cornette voiced his support for the March for Our Lives rally; he made additional statements advocating for gun control and criticizing the NRA.
Cornette is an atheist and is highly critical of religion.
Cornette has a criminal record which includes a number of assaults, mostly stemming from incidents involving fights with fans who attacked him while he was a manager in the 1980s. The record has made it difficult for him to work in Canada, and he was turned away from the Canadian border in November 2010.
Then Knox County, Tennessee, mayor Tim Burchett declared November 17, 2014 "Jim Cornette Day" during a Southeastern Championship Wrestling taping in Knoxville.
Independent wrestler Phil Earley accused Cornette of pressuring other wrestlers into having sex with his wife during the Speaking Out movement in 2020. Cornette has vehemently denied the allegations.
Awards and accomplishments
The Baltimore Sun
Non-Wrestler of the Year (2007)
Cauliflower Alley Club
Other honoree (1997)
Iconic Heroes Wrestling Excellence
Southern Wrestling Hall of Fame (2015)
Memphis Wrestling Hall of Fame
Class of 2017
National Wrestling Alliance
NWA Hall of Fame (Class of 2005)
New England Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame
Class of 2015
Pro Wrestling Illustrated
Manager of the Year (1985, 1993, 1995)
Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum
Class of 2012
World Wrestling Federation
Slammy Award (2 times)
Best Dressed (1994)
Blue Light Special for Worst Dresser (1996)
Wrestling Observer Newsletter
Best Booker (1993, 2001, 2003)
Best Non-Wrestler (2006)
Best on Interviews (1985–1988, 1993)
Manager of the Year (1984–1990, 1992–1996)
Best Pro Wrestling Book (2009)
Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame (Class of 1996)
Bibliography
Jim Cornette Presents: Behind the Curtain - Real Pro Wrestling Stories (2019)
Rags, Paper and Pins: The Merchandising of Memphis Wrestling (2013)
The Midnight Express & Jim Cornette 25th Anniversary Scrapbook (2009)
Tuesday Night at the Gardens (2015)
References
External links
1961 births
American atheists
American color commentators
American gun control activists
American male professional wrestlers
American men podcasters
American podcasters
American television writers
American YouTubers
Critics of religions
Kentucky Democrats
Kentucky socialists
Living people
People charged with assault
American male television writers
Male YouTubers
Ohio Valley Wrestling
Professional wrestlers from Kentucky
Professional wrestling authority figures
Professional wrestling announcers
Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum
Professional wrestling historians
Professional wrestling managers and valets
Professional wrestling podcasters
Professional wrestling promoters
Professional wrestling trainers
Professional wrestling writers
Screenwriters from Kentucky
Shock jocks
Smoky Mountain Wrestling
Sportspeople from Louisville, Kentucky
YouTube podcasters | true | [
"Much like the singles match, tag team professional wrestling matches can and have taken many forms. Just about any singles or melee match type can be adapted to tag teams; for example, hardcore tag team matches are commonplace. Tag team ladder match and variations are also frequently used as a title feud blow-off match. Stipulations, such as \"I quit\" or \"loser leaves town\" may also be applied.\n\nThe following are match variations that are specific to tag team wrestling.\n\nMultiple wrestlers teamed matches\nTag team matches can range from two teams of two fighting, to multiple person teams challenging each other. Such examples are six-man tag team matches or eight-man tag team matches, in which two teams of three or two teams of four fight in a standard one fall tag team match.\n\nRelevos Australianos\nA six-man tag team match between two teams of three wrestlers. Each team has one wrestler designated as team captain. To win, a team must either score a fall against the opposing team's captain, or one fall each against both of the other wrestlers. These matches are often two out of three falls and rules about tagging in are often stretched. This match type is called relevos Australianos (Australian relay) in Mexico and is most often seen in lucha libre promotions such as Lucha Libre AAA World Wide (AAA) and Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) although some non-Mexican promotions have used them as gimmick matches as well.\n\nTeam Relay match\nThe Team Relay match has two or more teams of between 3-12 members to a team and before the match there will be a coin toss to see which team switches out first. Every 3 or 5 minutes the teams will switch. The first team to get a pinfall or a submission wins. Sometimes performed with hardcore rules.\n\nFootball Classic match\nA Football Classic match is a match where two cages are placed at ringside, inside each of which is locked a manager with a weapon. The key for each cage is fastened to a football. Two teams of wrestlers must try and gain possession of the football and take it over to their manager's cage, use the key to unlock the cage, then use the manager's weapon to attack the other team. To get the ball to the cage, the wrestlers must pass it between themeselves and attack any opposing wrestlers who have possession of the ball. In his autobiography; Mick Foley describes the match as \"A fun, fan-inclusive cross between keep away, monkey in the middle, and kill the guy with the ball.\"\n\nElimination-style matches\n\nElimination tag team matches\nElimination tag team matches are the same as a normal tag team match except that a wrestler who suffers a loss is eliminated from participation. The match continues until all members of one team are eliminated. WWE uses the term \"Survivor Series match\" to denote an eight or ten person match held during their yearly Survivor Series pay-per-view. Lucha libre wrestling promotions use the term torneo cibernetico (cybernetic tournament) for multi-person elimination matches. Sometimes in these matches, there can be only one winner, so after the other team has been eliminated former teammates face each other in an elimination match. A further variation is where teams of four or more are composed of tag teams, and once a member of a team is eliminated their partner is also eliminated.\n\nThree-way tag team elimination match\nIn a three-way tag team elimination match, three teams compete as tag teams with two or more members per team. One member of two teams start. Anyone can be tagged in by anyone else and can be subject to immediate disqualification for failure to accept a tag. When a wrestler is pinned, the entire team is eliminated and the last team left of the three wins.\n\nFour-way tag team elimination match\nMuch like in a three-way tag team elimination match, a four-way tag team elimination match (also known as a \"fatal four-way tag team elimination match\", and at times has also been called the \"Raw Bowl\" and the \"Superstars Bowl\"), four teams compete. Anyone can be tagged in by anyone else and can be subject to immediate disqualification for failure to accept a tag. When a wrestler is pinned, the entire team is eliminated and the last team of the four wins.\n\nTag team turmoil \nTag team turmoil is another version of an elimination tag team match. Two teams start, and when one is eliminated a new team comes to the ring until all teams have competed, the remaining team is the winner. Teams may either make their entrance from backstage one at a time when it's their turn to wrestle, or - particularly if the match consists of four teams - all occupy a corner each at the start of the match waiting for their turn. Tag team turmoil matches have taken place at SummerSlam in 1999, Armageddon in 2003, Night of Champions in 2010, Night of Champions Kickoff Show in 2013, Elimination Chamber in 2017, and night one of WrestleMania 37. This type of match has also featured on the May 31, 2011 episode of NXT, with a team consisting of a WWE pro and an NXT rookie, and on the May 8, 2017 episode of Raw, where the winning team earned a number one contender's spot for Matt and Jeff Hardy's WWE Raw Tag Team Championship.\n\nTables and stables \nTables and stables are similar to table matches, however, in an elimination styled-manner. Two teams consisting of four compete, and one wrestler can be eliminated either getting dropped by their opponent through a table, or accidentally falling by themselves. As with a normal table match, the match is a no disqualification and a no countout match.\n\nCaptain's fall match \nA captain's fall match is a match where two teams of multiple competitors compete in an elimination match and captains are assigned to both teams. The purpose of the match is to score a fall over the captain to get the win. Eliminations may occur until the captain is pinned and the team loses if a captain is pinned.\n\nMixed matches\n\nIntergender tag team match\nThis tag-team match features mixed-sex teams. It differs from a mixed tag team match in that wrestler of different genders may face each other. Six-person intergender tag team matches are also common, popularized in the early 2000s by Team Xtreme.\n\nMixed tag team match\nThis type of match features either mixed-sex or mixed-size (midgets with a normal-sized wrestler). Each wrestler is designated by category, which are male or female with mixed-sex teams and normal or midget with mixed-size teams. Only wrestlers in the same category may be in the ring at the same time. For example, if a woman tags her male partner, both women leave the ring and both men enter. If a midget tags his normal-size partner, both midgets leave the ring and both normal-size wrestlers enter.\n\nParejas increibles match\nIn this match the teams are composed of enemies or rivals. It is meant to illustrate the tension between the desire to win and the hatred for one's rival. Matches with these pairs are used more frequently in Mexico than anywhere else. Since 2011 Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) holds their CMLL Torneo Nacional de Parejas Increibles.\n\nIn the United States, however, this type of tag team format is used sometimes used in WWE, where it is called a \"strange bedfellows\" match. The now-defunct World Championship Wrestling referred to this type of tag team format as the \"lethal lottery\", with the members of the winning tag teams advancing to the Battlebowl battle royal.\n\nParejas suicidas\nAnother lucha libre variation of the tag team match, this one begins as a regular tag match but the two members from the losing team are forced to face each other in a lucha de apuestas (bet match), where the loser is forced to either unmask or have their hair shaved off.\n\nScramble\nPrimarily associated with Ring of Honor, a Scramble tag team match has one difference from the normal rules: when a wrestler goes out of the ring either of their own volition or by being forced out, a partner can come in as a replacement without being tagged in. This format is most commonly used in either four corner tags, or with teams of more than 2. The Scramble match can also be done as a six-man scramble where anyone can tag in anyone. This rule is also the norm for all Dragon Gate tag matches.\n\nScramble cage\nA match held inside a cage with wooden platforms in each of the corners for \"high risk\" moves. All men are allowed inside and outside of the cage. The match begins with two teams with another entering every two minutes. The match cannot be won until every team is in the match.\n\nTag team battle royal\nThis match is conducted similarly to a battle royal. If a wrestler is thrown over the ring ropes, both they and their partner are eliminated from the match. In most cases both wrestlers are considered active at the same time and there are no tags, as in a tornado tag team match. Another variation of the tag team battle royal was used during the 2011 WWE draft, where the wrestler's team has to eliminate all members of the opposing team, much like an elimination tag team match where the losing wrestler of a team, who just got thrown over the ring ropes with both feet on the floor, must return to his locker room. In this variation, the team consists of more than 2 men, all of whom are legal at the same time.\n\nTornado tag team match\nOriginally known as the Texas Tornado match. In this match, all wrestlers involved are allowed to be in the ring at the same time, and thus all wrestlers are vulnerable to having a fall scored against them. Whether or not it is truly a \"tag team match\" is debatable, as it involves no tagging, but it is contested between tag teams. The first match of this kind was held on October 2, 1937, in Houston between Milo Steinborn and Whiskers Savage against Tiger Daula and Fazul Mohammed. It was the brainchild of promoter Morris Sigel.\n\nSee also\nProfessional wrestling match types\n\nReferences\n\nTag team wrestling",
"(born September 5, 1977) is a Japanese professional wrestler who works as a freelancer. He is known for working at Gatoh Move Pro Wrestling. He is the current Super Asia Champion in his first reign.\n\nCareer\nFujita started in Big Japan Pro Wrestling (BJW) as a protégé of its top junior heavyweight, Yoshihiro Tajiri. When Tajiri, who was Big Japan junior heavyweight champion, quit the company and gave up the title, Fujita had a decision match against Katsumi Usuda from the Battlarts promotion but ended up losing.\n\nFujita spent his time leaving Big Japan to venture into other Japanese independents, meeting Ikuto Hidaka of Battlarts along the way and making memorable tag team matches with him. The combination, however, despite their combined talent, could not have a future due to their separate schedules; Fujita tried a move to Michinoku Pro Wrestling in 2000, but despite the higher exposure, it did little for him financially and did not raise his stock as a viable junior heavyweight contender.\n\nHe thus headed for Mexico and Puerto Rico, where he won his first major title, the International Wrestling Association junior heavyweight title. Returning to Japan in 2002, he entered New Japan Pro-Wrestling (to which he had been once before, in a Best of the Super Junior tournament), to challenge the heavyweight division, but nothing came out of it. He then headed to Taka Michinoku's Kaientai Dojo promotion, but despite being promoted as a tough-to beat heel, he was never able to win titles there.\n\nA change of pace came in 2004 when he joined Pro Wrestling Zero-One, where old friend Hidaka awaited. The two began teaming more frequently and this time they clicked, collecting several tag team titles along the way. Their greatest victory came in March 2006, when they defeated Pro Wrestling Noah stars Yoshinobu Kanemaru and Takashi Sugiura to win the GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship. Since then Fujita has been a rising star in Japan and has finally shed the \"underachiever\" tag he was saddled with by foreign observers of puroresu.\n\nFujita defeated Baliyan Akki on the day 2 of the 100th Anniversary of Chocopro on March 28, 2021 to win the Super Asia Championship.\n\nChampionships and accomplishments \n\n Big Japan Pro Wrestling\n BJW Deathmatch Heavyweight Championship (1 time)\n UWA World Trios Championship (1 time, current) – with Isami Kodaka and Daiki Shimomura\n DDT Pro-Wrestling\n Ironman Heavymetalweight Championship (1 time)\n KO-D Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Harashima\n UWA World Trios Championship (2 times) – with Mazada and Nosawa Rongai\n Gatoh Move Pro Wrestling\n Super Asia Championship (1 time, current)\n International Wrestling Association\n IWA World Junior Heavyweight Championship (1 time)\n UWA World Junior Heavyweight Championship (1 time)\n Kohaku Wrestling Wars\n UWA World Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Masamune\n Michinoku Pro Wrestling\n Tohoku Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Ikuto Hidaka\n UWA World Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Ikuto Hidaka\n Premier Wrestling Federation\n PWF Unified Tag Team Championship (1 time) - with Ikuto Hidaka\n Pro Wrestling Freedoms\n King of Freedom World Tag Team Championship (2 times) – with Kenji Fukimoto (1) and Rina Yamashita (1)\n Pro Wrestling Noah\n GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Ikuto Hidaka\n Pro Wrestling Zero1\n AWA World Junior Heavyweight Championship (1 time)\n NWA Intercontinental Tag Team Championship (2 times) – with Ikuto Hidaka (1) and Takuya Sugawara (1)\n NWA International Lightweight Tag Team Championship (2 times) – with Ikuto Hidaka (1) and Takuya Sugawara (1)\n WDB Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Saki Maemura\n Passion Cup Tag Tournament (2007)\n Tenkaichi Jr. (2006)\n Tokyo Gurentai\n Tokyo Intercontinental Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Mazada\n Tokyo World Heavyweight Championship (2 time, current)\n Tokyo Sports\n Best Tag Team Award (2005) with Ikuto Hidaka\n Wrestle-1\n UWA World Trios Championship (1 time) – with Mazada and Nosawa Rongai\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n ZERO1 USA English language website\n ZERO1 Japanese language website\n\n1977 births\nJapanese male professional wrestlers\nLiving people"
] |
[
"Jim Cornette",
"World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment (1993-2005)",
"What were their earlier years like?",
"Cornette held several positions in the WWF,",
"Did he tag team with anyone?",
"WWE credits Cornette with helping foster numerous successful superstars including John Cena,"
] | C_c10c8c313306435791f91b164088b05c_0 | Did he win any titles with John Cena? | 3 | Did Jim Cornette win any titles with John Cena? | Jim Cornette | Cornette went to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1993 while still serving as promoter of SMW. As he had done in other promotions, Cornette held several positions in the WWF, including manager, color commentator and member of the booking committee. Cornette's most notable managerial role in the WWF was as the "American spokesperson" of WWF Champion Yokozuna. Cornette joined the WWF full-time in 1996 after the demise of SMW, and had a major role in scouting and developing new talent. On screen, he led a top heel stable of wrestlers referred to as "Camp Cornette". At any given time, Cornette's charges consisted of Yokozuna, Mantaur, Vader, Owen Hart, and The British Bulldog. He also served as the manager of Tom Prichard and Jimmy Del Ray during their brief stint in the WWF. In 1997, Cornette became a member of the WWF announce team where he served as a color commentator. It was during this time that he also began performing a series of controversial "worked shoots" where he would praise what he felt was right and condemn what he felt was wrong in professional wrestling. Although the segments were produced by the WWF, Cornette did not hesitate to give praise to WCW wrestlers that he felt deserved it. Cornette also became active behind the scenes working on the booking committee for several years before being removed after frequently butting heads with head writer Vince Russo. In 1998, Cornette led an NWA invasion, based on the old Crockett Promotions territory, with a stable including Jeff Jarrett, Barry Windham and The Rock 'n' Roll Express. Later that year, Cornette managed Dan Severn and The New Midnight Express before he stepped back from managing. Cornette then did some color commentating, primarily on Sunday Night Heat, before disappearing from television. Cornette returned to WWF television for one night at WrestleMania X-Seven in Houston, where he took part in the "gimmick battle royal" but was quickly eliminated by Hillbilly Jim. Cornette later became lead booker and part owner of Ohio Valley Wrestling, WWE's lead developmental territory at the time, run by "Nightmare" Danny Davis. As a talent developer, Cornette had previously been instrumental in developing current and former WWE Superstars such as Kane, D'Lo Brown, Sunny and Al Snow during his time running SMW. WWE credits Cornette with helping foster numerous successful superstars including John Cena, Dave Bautista, Randy Orton and Brock Lesnar. In May 2005, Cornette was suspended for several weeks by WWE after slapping OVW developmental wrestler Anthony Carelli backstage after Carelli had "no-sold" fellow wrestler The Boogeyman by laughing at him during a live OVW event. Shortly after Cornette returned from his suspension, a separate incident occurred and the WWE released him from his contract in July 2005. In the spring of 2007, Carelli, who had since been called up to the WWE as Santino Marella, appeared on a Canadian radio program where he publicly challenged Cornette to a match despite Cornette working for rival promotion TNA at the time. CANNOTANSWER | helping foster numerous successful superstars including John Cena, | James Mark Cornette (born September 17, 1961) is an American author and podcaster who has previously worked in the professional wrestling industry as an agent, booker, color commentator, manager, promoter, trainer, and occasional professional wrestler.
During his career, he has worked for the Continental Wrestling Association, Mid-South Wrestling, World Class Championship Wrestling, Jim Crockett Promotions, World Championship Wrestling, the World Wrestling Federation (now called WWE), Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (now called Impact Wrestling), and Ring of Honor. From 1991 to 1995, he was the owner and head booker of Smoky Mountain Wrestling, and from 1999 to 2005, was the co-owner, head booker, and head trainer of Ohio Valley Wrestling. During the later years of his career, Cornette focused primarily on backstage positions and transitioned away from his role as an on-screen manager.
In 2017, Cornette retired from managing. During a transitional period prior to the retirement, he worked as an on-screen "authority figure" character in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling and Ring of Honor, promotions where he also held backstage positions. Cornette has also had an extensive commentary career, most recently serving as a color commentator for Major League Wrestling, What Culture Pro Wrestling, and the National Wrestling Alliance. Cornette is a member of the NWA, Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Memphis, and Professional Wrestling Hall of Fames. Cornette is also noted for his long-standing real-life feud with fellow professional wrestling booker Vince Russo; in June 2017, Russo filed a restraining order (EPO) against Cornette for stalking. The Cornette vs. Russo feud has been featured on two episodes of Viceland's Dark Side of the Ring series.
Outside of wrestling, Cornette is known for his left-wing political views – Cornette, an atheist and democratic socialist, has appeared on The Young Turks to document his criticisms of religious and right-wing causes.
Early life
James Cornette was born in Louisville, Kentucky on September 17, 1961 to Doug Cornette (1914–1968), an executive with The Louisville Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times, and Thelma Cornette (1933–2002), a secretary for the Louisville Chamber of Commerce. His father died when he was seven years old. From the age of nine, Cornette had a love for wrestling, claiming that, as a child, he installed a ten-foot antenna on top of his house so he could watch as much regional wrestling as possible.
Professional wrestling career
Early career
Cornette began working at wrestling events at the age of 14, serving as a photographer, ring announcer, timekeeper, magazine correspondent, and public relations correspondent. During this time, from attending matches at the Louisville Gardens, Cornette got to know promoter Christine Jarrett, who was the mother of Jerry Jarrett, promoter of the Continental Wrestling Association (commonly known as the "Memphis territory").
Continental Wrestling Association (1982–1983)
By 1982, Cornette was now also writing programs for arena shows, having photos published in wrestling magazines, and contributing to the Championship Wrestling Magazine. In August, he traveled to Memphis to see the TV match between Jerry Lawler and Ric Flair. After the show ended, Cornette was offered a wrestling managerial role on television by promoter Jerry Jarrett. As Cornette has recalled, despite his presence being tolerated at shows and TV tapings for nearly a decade, the first time he was allowed into the locker room was only after he had become a manager.
Before making his managing debut, Cornette decided to adapt the ring name James E. Cornette in tribute to legendary wrestling promoter James E. Barnett. Cornette made his ringside debut on September 25, 1982, managing Sherri Martel, who herself would later become a wrestling manager. Cornette was given the gimmick of a rich kid turned inept manager whose clients kept firing him after one match. The most notable wrestlers in this angle were Dutch Mantell and Crusher Broomfield (who would later gain fame as One Man Gang and Akeem "The African Dream"). Over the next 14 months Cornette also managed Jesse Barr, Exotic Adrian Street, and a trio called the "Cornette Dynasty" consisting of Carl Fergie, Norman Frederick Charles III, and the Angel. After a short-lived run in Georgia through a deal Jarrett had with Ole Anderson, Cornette returned to Memphis in July 1983, and worked as co-manager alongside Jimmy Hart.
Mid-South Wrestling (1983–1984)
Formation of The Midnight Express
In November 1983, Mid-South promoter Bill Watts recognized his business was down, and was looking to reinvigorate his territory. Watts asked Jerry Jarrett and Jerry Lawler to visit a TV taping and offer their opinions. Jarrett suggested a talent trade, and invited Watts to Memphis to see who he liked. After watching a Memphis TV taping, Watts took singles performers Dennis Condrey and Bobby Eaton to create a new tag team, and also took the existing team of Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson as The Rock 'n' Roll Express. Watts also noticed the brash young manager in Cornette, and in his own words, recalled "He was so obnoxious I wanted to slap him", and "I knew he was instant box office if he could get me that riled up". As the more senior Jimmy Hart was still required by Jarrett, Watts took Cornette to manage his new team, who decided on the name The Midnight Express. Notable wrestlers in the trade who left Mid-South for Memphis included Rick Rude and Jim Neidhart.
Mid-South Wrestling had at that point been a territory featuring bigger wrestlers, and Cornette has stated that The Midnight Express, the Rock 'n' Roll Express, and himself were probably the five smallest members of the roster when he arrived. The influx of the new talent had an immediate impact, and business first rebounded and then skyrocketed. It was during this time that Cornette acquired his tennis racquet which became his trademark. He has stated he had seen a college movie at the time with an obnoxious rich kid carrying a badminton racquet with him (most likely the 1983 film Screwballs), so he decided on a tennis racquet. At times Cornette loaded the racquet with a horse shoe to guard against aggressive fans.
Feud with Magnum TA and Mr. Wrestling II
Cornette and The Midnight Express debuted on Mid-South television on November 23, 1983. After the first few weeks in the territory the team faced the Mid-South tag team champions Magnum T.A. and Mr. Wrestling II. At a TV taping for a contract signing for an upcoming championship match, the Midnights and Cornette attacked Magnum TA and tarred and feathered him. The feud continued through to early March 1984, when The Midnight Express won the Mid-South tag team titles after Mr. Wrestling II walked out on his partner during a match.
The Last Stampede
At a TV taping on March 14, 1984, Cornette and the Midnights staged a celebration for winning the tag team titles, complete with champagne and birthday cake. While Cornette's back was turned, The Rock 'n' Roll Express ran in and shoved Cornette's face in the cake. Cornette was enraged afterwards when Bill Watts replayed the incident on TV as he thought it was funny. This led to a heated altercation between the two, which ended with Watts slapping Cornette. In following weeks, the Midnight Express and Cornette attacked and bloodied Watts leading him to come out of retirement. In a series of matches termed "The Last Stampede", Watts and his masked teammate Stagger Lee (suspected to be Junkyard Dog under a mask) faced the Midnight Express and Cornette all through the territory. The stipulations were simple; if the Midnights won Cornette would run Mid-South Wrestling for 60 days; if they lost, Cornette would be stripped down and forced to wear either a diaper or a dress (the outfits varied by venue). Over 5 weeks, the Last Stampede series shattered box office records for Mid-South, with a record gate and attendance at the Sam Houston Coliseum in Texas, combined attendance of 20,000 people in Tulsa and Oklahoma City (on the same day), and a crowd of 23,000 people at the New Orleans Superdome.
Rock 'n' Roll Express rivalry
Cornette's time in Mid-South was also notable as it marked the beginning of the rivalry with the Rock 'n' Roll Express. Starting in May 1984 immediately following the Last Stampede series, the two teams feuded all through the remainder of the year to packed crowds all through the territory. In particular, the two teams set attendance records in Houston, Tulsa and Oklahoma City, making 1984 the most successful year in Mid-South history, and The Midnight Express and Cornette national stars.
Watts' style and influence
Cornette has consistently acknowledged that Bill Watts's philosophy of believable and credible wrestling, with an unwavering emphasis on toughness, athleticism and serious presentation, has had a major impact on how he thinks the business should be promoted. He has described the promotion as a military school for wrestling, where Watts' strict enforcement of kayfabe, exhausting travel schedule and passionate fans made it a learning experience like no other. Cornette maintains enormous respect for Watts as a promoter, citing his ability to attract huge TV ratings and consistently sold-out arenas in a low population area, and describing Watts as a genius. At the same time, he acknowledges the grind of constant matches, long drives, and fan riots was a grueling test of endurance. At one point Cornette worked 103 days straight before being ordered by doctors to have two to four weeks' bed rest. As events transpired, he took six days off before returning to action.
In describing Mid-South Wrestling, Cornette has offered the following example: "Two weeks of our lives, fourteen days, we did two one hour TV shows, fifteen house shows, two all day promo sets, drove 4700 miles in a car while doing that, and I can't speak for anybody else, but I made—and I was only 22 years old, and just pleased as punch to be there—$5600 for two weeks. In 1984. Not bad."
World Class Championship Wrestling (1984–1985)
The Midnight Express with Cornette had a short stay in World Class Championship Wrestling (WCCW) in Texas where they feuded mainly with The Fantastics (Bobby Fulton and Tommy Rogers). When opportunities in WCCW looked to go nowhere, The Midnight Express started to look elsewhere for employment and what they found would give the team national and international exposure. Cornette later reflected that they were willing to give Dallas a try, as they welcomed living in a modern city, as well as the easier travel schedule when compared to Mid-South. However the inability to get any rivalry with the Von Erichs—and therefore main event money—made the decision to leave for Charlotte an easy one.
Jim Crockett Promotions / World Championship Wrestling (1985–1990, 1993)
Managing the Midnight Express (1985–1990)
Cornette and the Midnight Express spent five years at Jim Crockett Promotions/WCW. After Condrey left the company in early 1987, he was replaced with Stan Lane. With Cornette as manager, each version of the team were National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) World tag team champions (Condrey and Eaton for six months in 1986, Eaton and Lane for a few weeks in late 1988). In addition, Eaton and Lane were three -time NWA United States tag team champions. As a manager, Cornette was known for both his loud mouth and for his ever-present tennis racket, which Cornette often used to ensure victory for his wrestlers, with the implication that the racket case was loaded. Cornette was at his best as a heel manager; fans loved to see the constantly yelling Cornette and his equally annoying charges beaten and humiliated. He and the Midnights were so hated, in fact, that they had to be escorted by police to and from the ring at the house shows and have a police escort to the city limits for fear of being attacked by overzealous fans.
Additionally, Cornette suffered a severe knee injury during a scaffold match between The Midnight Express and The Road Warriors at Starrcade '86. In a shoot interview, Cornette recounted that Dusty Rhodes convinced him to perform a dangerous stunt where he would fall off of the high scaffold, which Cornette estimated was twenty-five feet off the floor of the arena, but about five feet less when measured from the ring mat to the top of the scaffold. The idea was that Paul Ellering, the manager of The Road Warriors, would chase Cornette up the scaffold. Once he was there, he would be met by Road Warrior Animal, who would assist him in getting underneath the scaffold, where Cornette would hang and then drop when ready. Cornette, however, suffered from a severe case of acrophobia and decided that the drop, which he estimated was a total of fourteen feet when he factored in his total body length of eight feet (height plus extended arm length), was, as he put it, "way too goddamn far."
Condrey, Eaton, and Cornette discussed an alternative: Big Bubba Rogers, another wrestler of Cornette's, would catch the manager. However, as Rogers was wearing dark sunglasses inside the arena he misjudged his position and Cornette actually landed flat on his feet, three feet away from Rogers. Cornette tore all the ligaments in one of his knees, broke a bone and damaged the cartilage. The injury was so extensive that when Cornette finally saw a doctor to have the knee drained, the amount of blood and fluid filled an entire bedpan. Cornette later said that he knew he might get seriously hurt when he was told he would have to fall off a scaffold, but that performing in front of such a large audience was more important than his own health.
In 1989, Cornette became the color commentator for Jim Crockett Promotions' nationally syndicated NWA television show, and later took over the same role on the Saturday night TBS broadcasts alongside play-by-play announcer Jim Ross.
In 1989, Cornette became a booker on WCW's creative team. As such, Cornette helped write storylines and shape the format of its television shows. Due to friction and animosity between himself and WCW head Jim Herd, Cornette quit the company after Halloween Havoc 1990.
Managing the Heavenly Bodies (1993)
In January 1993 Cornette briefly returned to World Championship Wrestling (WCW) when WCW was doing a talent trade with Smoky Mountain Wrestling (SMW). Bill Watts, who was the WCW executive vice president, brought The Rock 'n' Roll Express back to WCW and billed them as the Smoky Mountain tag team champions. This incensed Cornette since his team The Heavenly Bodies (Stan Lane and Tom Prichard) were the champions at the time. On the February 6, 1993 episode on WCW Saturday Night, Jim Cornette, the Bodies and Bobby Eaton (who Cornette once again began to manage) confronted the Express during an interview. Bill Watts came out and suggested the Bodies should wrestle the Express. Cornette objected since he claimed that they weren't dressed for it, but the match still took place. The Express won the match by DQ when Eaton interfered in the match, and after the match while Lane held Morton, Cornette put his tennis racket over Morton while Eaton delivered his "Alabama jam" on Morton. Cornette then struck referee Nick Patrick, and then Cornette helped his men beat up the Express.
The following week, Watts came out with the SMW commissioner Bob Armstrong, who stated he was very upset with Cornette's recent actions, and demanded that Cornette come out to apologize for what he had done. Watts stated that the Express was scheduled to wrestle the Wrecking Crew (Rage and Fury) at SuperBrawl III, but then said the Express should wrestle the Bodies instead. Armstrong agreed with Watts and then told Cornette if his Bodies did not wrestle the Express at SuperBrawl III that he would be heavily fined, the Bodies would be stripped of the title, and that he would be suspended. Cornette was very angry and claimed "That he hated WCW!" and later came out to the ring with his men, and attacked two jobbers after a match, one being Joey Maggs. The Express then came out and attacked Cornette and his gang.
During Cornette's second stint in WCW, his Heavenly Bodies teamed with Steve Austin and Brian Pillman in 8-man tag team matches against the Express and the Unified tag team champions Ricky Steamboat and Shane Douglas. The Bodies, Austin and Pillman lost two of those matches, one on a February 27 episode of WCW WorldWide by DQ when Cornette interfered, and one by pinfall. The feud between the Bodies and Express would take place in both SMW and WCW. Bobby Eaton would go to SMW where he would team in 6-man tag team matches with the Bodies. In one of these matches, the Express had a person covered by a sheet in their corner, and after the match Cornette with his men came to the ring to see who was under the sheet and began poking, and kicking at the sheeted man. When Cornette pulled the sheet off, it was Arn Anderson, Eaton's former tag team partner in The Dangerous Alliance, who was underneath; Cornette then fell over in shock. Eaton then tried to shake Anderson's hand, but Arn decked him. Arn said the reason for this was because after he was injured by Erik Watts at a gas station, Eaton never once called him to see how he was doing. Cornette belittled Anderson and claimed that his men were far superior to him. Eaton was also very successful in Smoky Mountain, and under Cornette's guidance he won the SMW TV title. When the Bodies faced the Express at SuperBrawl III, Eaton came out with Cornette, he was despite Cornette's protests forced to return to the dressing room. Like almost always Cornette tried to interfere in the match. When Cornette climbed onto the ring apron and began to argue with the referee, the Express won the match by pinfall when an illegal outside attempt from Eaton, who had since come back to the ring failed.
Smoky Mountain Wrestling (1991–1995)
A firm believer in "old-school" territorial wrestling, Cornette began the Smoky Mountain Wrestling promotion in 1991. SMW promoted shows in Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas. By this point, however, the nature of wrestling in the U.S. had already changed irrevocably, leading Cornette to seek a working relationship with the World Wrestling Federation in 1993. This did not change the new national perception that regional promotions were "minor league". The move also did not help the federation's finances, and Cornette closed SMW's doors in November 1995 and sold all SMW rights and videos to the WWF. Cornette later said that he chose the wrong time to start a wrestling federation because the business as a whole was in a recession.
World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment (1993–2005)
Camp Cornette
Cornette went to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1993 while still serving as promoter of SMW. As he had done in other promotions, Cornette held several positions in the WWF, including manager, color commentator and member of the booking committee. Cornette's most notable managerial role in the WWF was as the "American spokesperson" of WWF Champion Yokozuna. Cornette joined the WWF full-time in 1996 after the demise of SMW, and had a major role in scouting and developing new talent.
On screen, he led a top-heel stable of wrestlers referred to as "Camp Cornette". At any given time, Cornette's charges consisted of Yokozuna, Mantaur, Vader, Owen Hart and The British Bulldog. He also served as the manager of Tom Prichard and Jimmy Del Ray during their brief stint in the WWF. In 1997, Cornette became a member of the WWF announce team where he served as a color commentator. It was during this time that he also began performing a series of controversial "worked shoots" where he would praise what he felt was right and condemn what he felt was wrong in professional wrestling. Although the segments were produced by the WWF, Cornette did not hesitate to give praise to WCW wrestlers that he felt deserved it. Cornette also became active behind the scenes working on the booking committee for several years before being removed after frequently butting heads with writer Vince Russo.
Cornette also was part of the television production staff during this time but eventually left this position as well due in part to constant conflict with producer Kevin Dunn and head writer Vince Russo. Cornette later recounted that things came to a head in Halifax, Nova Scotia in the summer of 1997. During the production meeting for Raw, which was to feature the newly signed The Patriot, Cornette repeatedly tried to steer the discussion toward the treatment of what he thought was a new top-of-the-line heroic character. Dunn told Cornette that he found him to be "tiresome" for continuing to harp on the issue, which enraged Cornette to the point where he mocked Dunn's buck teeth and threatened to assault him in front of everyone in the room. He was eventually forced to apologize to Dunn for his actions.
In June 1997, Cornette made a surprise appearance on the Extreme Championship Wrestling show Orgy of Violence, attacking Tommy Dreamer with his tennis racket as part of the WWF-ECW rivalry angle.
NWA invasion; color commentary
In 1998, Cornette led an NWA invasion, based on the old Crockett Promotions territory, with a stable including Jeff Jarrett, Barry Windham and The Rock 'n' Roll Express. Later that year, Cornette managed Dan Severn and a new version of The Midnight Express before he stepped back from managing. Cornette then did some color commentating, primarily on Sunday Night Heat, before disappearing from television. Cornette returned to WWF television for one night at WrestleMania X-Seven in Houston, where he took part in the "gimmick battle royal", but was quickly eliminated by Hillbilly Jim.
Ohio Valley Wrestling
In 1999, Cornette became lead booker and part-owner of Ohio Valley Wrestling, WWE's lead developmental territory at the time, run by "Nightmare" Danny Davis. As a talent developer, Cornette had previously been instrumental in developing current and former WWE Superstars such as Kane, D'Lo Brown, Sunny and Al Snow during his time running SMW. WWE credits Cornette with helping foster numerous successful superstars including John Cena, Dave Bautista, Randy Orton and Brock Lesnar.
In May 2005, Cornette was suspended for several weeks by WWE after slapping OVW developmental wrestler Anthony Carelli backstage after Carelli had "no-sold" fellow wrestler The Boogeyman by laughing at him during a live OVW event. Shortly after Cornette returned from his suspension, a separate incident occurred and the WWE released him from his contract in July 2005. In the spring of 2007, Carelli, who had since been called up to the WWE as Santino Marella, appeared on a Canadian radio program where he publicly challenged Cornette to a match despite Cornette working for rival promotion TNA at the time.
NWA Total Nonstop Action (2006–2009)
In 2006, Cornette joined NWA Total Nonstop Action as the new face of TNA Management. He held the title of "Management Director" according to the press releases following his premiere at the Slammiversary PPV event on June 18, 2006 in Orlando, Florida. After a brief speech, he departed, but returned at the end of the show in light of the "Orlando Screwjob", taking the NWA World Heavyweight Championship belt after Jeff Jarrett, Larry Zbyszko and Earl Hebner successfully executed a screwjob on Christian Cage and Sting.
As the figurehead "Management Director" of TNA, Cornette did not usually take up more than ten minutes of the show, which could be attributed to both his quick tongue and TNA's lack of desire to create another Mr. McMahon. Matt Morgan had also become Cornette's on-screen bodyguard to prevent harm to his physical being, until leaving that post to become a full-time wrestler. Part of Cornette's gimmick was that when multiple situations build up at once, he often took care of them all swiftly by getting all the TNA wrestlers to come out to the Impact! Zone for a "company meeting" to hear his decisions, or exasperatedly deal swiftly with people who barge into his office. The clear impact of this feature was made evident right from the start, as the first "company meeting" (which aired on the edition of June 29, 2006 of TNA Impact!), where every wrestler was asked to come out and stand at either ramp, saw Cornette clear up several issues:
Forcing The Latin American Xchange to start wrestling again under the threat of termination.
Booking Raven and Zbyszko in a hair vs. hair match against each other for Victory Road 2006.
Disbanding Team Canada as a result of their overly cheating ways (he would later offer them a match which, if they won, would allow them to stay as a unit, with the winner to get a future shot at the championship of their choice; they would lose the match).
Firing Earl Hebner for his role in the "Orlando Screwjob" at Slammiversary 2006. (Hebner had since been rehired, due to a lie detector test on Jeff Jarrett).
Booking America's Most Wanted and Gail Kim in a match against Sirelda, A.J. Styles and Christopher Daniels in an intergender six-person tag team matchup with Styles and Daniels' NWA World Tag Team Championship on the line.
Booking a fatal four-way between Christian Cage, Sting, Scott Steiner, and Samoa Joe for Victory Road 2006.
Finally declaring Jeff Jarrett the official NWA World Heavyweight Champion given that Jarrett defended his title against the winner of the fatal four-way at Victory Road.
Cornette was released from TNA on September 15, 2009. He has said that he was released because he was not "100 percent" behind TNA's creative team, headed by Vince Russo.
Return to ROH and OVW (2009–2012)
In 2009, Cornette signed a contract with Ring of Honor to be their Executive Producer for the Ring of Honor Wrestling show on HDNet.
Cornette made his surprise return to ROH at Glory By Honor VIII: The Final Countdown on September 26, announcing he was the new executive producer for the show. Cornette made his first appearance on Ring of Honor Wrestling on the December 7 episode and immediately made waves by putting ROH champion Austin Aries into a four-way title match later that night and created the Pick 6 contender series.
On September 8, 2010, Ohio Valley Wrestling announced that Cornette would resume his duties as the head booker of the promotion. Cornette left OVW in November 2011, when the promotion announced a working agreement with TNA. On the edition of January 21 of Ring of Honor television, Cornette announced that chairshots to the head were banned and anyone that did so would be fined $5,000. On the February 4 telecast, Cornette made another ban in which the piledriver — in any form — was banned.
On October 8, 2012, it was reported that ROH had replaced Cornette as the head booker with Hunter Johnston, a wrestler who performed under the name Delirious. ROH wrote Cornette off television by having him suffer storyline injuries at the hands of Jay Lethal. As of November 2012, it was revealed that Cornette had left the promotion. The reason for Cornette's absence stems from an outburst he had at the November 3 ROH television taping. At the taping, ROH talent Steve Corino suffered an injury, and no ROH officials were still at the venue to be able to pay for Corino's immediate medical attention or even arrange for an ambulance to be called. This left Corino in pain for hours and Cornette to be the only person there with enough power to handle the situation. Following his departure from Ring of Honor, Cornette decided to take an extended break from professional wrestling to focus on his health and work on personal projects.
What Culture Pro Wrestling (2016–2017)
On October 6, 2016, Cornette made his first appearance doing color commentary in two years, debuting for What Culture Pro Wrestling at their Refuse to Lose event in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He would be joined on the announce team by his long-time friend Jim Ross, who he had not done commentary with in over fifteen years. He then provided commentary for their next event True Legacy, which took place a few days later. Cornette returned to WCPW at their April 1, 2017 State of Emergency event. At the event, Cornette and Matt Striker provided commentary for the British promotion's debut in the United States.
WWE appearances (2017–2018)
On March 31, 2017, Jim Cornette made his first appearance with WWE in 12 years when he inducted The Rock 'n' Roll Express into the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2017. Cornette was also featured in an episode of the WWE Network Original series Table For 3 alongside Eric Bischoff and Michael Hayes. Since then, Cornette made another appearance for WWE, starring in an episode of the WWE Network Original Series Photo Shoot in March 2018.
Return to Impact Wrestling (2017)
Cornette returned to Impact Wrestling, which had formerly been known as TNA, and was attempting to rebrand as Global Force Wrestling (GFW), on August 17, 2017, at Destination X and fired Bruce Prichard. Cornette stated that he was put in charge by Impact's parent company, Anthem Sports & Entertainment, to resolve the Unified GFW World Heavyweight Championship situation. Cornette made the decision to book Low Ki as the twentieth entrant in the GFW World Heavyweight Championship gauntlet match. On September 18, Cornette confirmed he was done with the company. He had been brought in by Jeff Jarrett and the original agreement only included one set of tapings. With Jarrett out of the company, the new creative team was said to be more focused on in-ring action and less on authority figures. According to Cornette, there was no "heat" between him and the company.
National Wrestling Alliance (2018–2019)
The National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) chose Jim Cornette to be the color commentator for the NWA 70th Anniversary show that took place on October 21, 2018. This was the first pay-per-view promoted by the NWA in years. Cornette was joined on commentary by Tony Schiavone for the main event NWA World Heavyweight Championship match between Nick Aldis and Cody Rhodes.
He returned to the promotion for the NWA's Crockett Cup tournament on April 27, 2019. On September 12, Cornette was announced as part of the commentary team for the NWA's weekly studio series, NWA Power. However, on the NWA Power episode broadcast on November 19 during a match between Nick Aldis and Trevor Murdoch, Cornette made the remark "[Trevor Murdoch] is the only man I've ever known that can strap a bucket of fried chicken on his back and ride a motor scooter across Ethiopia. Trevor Murdoch can take care of himself!" Later on the same day, the NWA apologized for the perceived racial overtones of the comment and pulled down the episode to remove the remark. The next day, Cornette left the NWA. Cornette had previously made the same comment on commentary during the March 6, 1995 episode of Monday Night Raw.
Major League Wrestling (2019)
Cornette debuted for Major League Wrestling (MLW) as a color commentator for the March 2, 2019 event Intimidation Games in Chicago, Illinois. He then returned to the commentary desk for their April 2019 events, Rise of the Renegades and Battle Riot II. From the start, he would also work unofficially in an agent-like role for the company. This included coaching younger talent on their television presentation and promos. In March he confirmed he is not signed exclusively to the company, but is open to continually working with them. After immediately being uncertain of his future with them, Cornette continued to do commentary for them, working Fury Road in June and their following event in July. It was reported that following that show he was not signed on for any further shows, as Tony Schiavone had finished his sports commitments and returned to the MLW commentary table. Cornette announced on the December 13, 2019 episode of his Experience podcast that he was officially retired from announcing/commentary.
Views on the professional wrestling industry
Journalist Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated wrote in 2019 that "Cornette remains one of wrestling's more controversial personalities, but his beliefs are rooted in more than four decades of wrestling experience." Cornette has been very vocal against other styles of wrestling, such as Paul Heyman's Extreme Championship Wrestling hardcore style, which he referred to as "hardcore bullshit". "Comedy wrestling" (that which is deemed silly or goofy as opposed to serious) has also been on the receiving end of his rants, with him routinely criticizing those he considers "comedy wrestlers" such as Joey Ryan, Kenny Omega, and Chuck Taylor. He has also criticized the physical appearance of wrestlers; for example Marko Stunt's height or Kevin Steen and Joey Janela's weight. Cornette has garnered some support from industry personalities including former NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion Nick Aldis, who wrote an article for Flagged Sports defending Cornette and his position as NWA commentator after a separate article asked promoters to stop hiring him.
Conflicts with Vince Russo
Cornette worked with writer Vince Russo in the WWF during the 1990s and in TNA during the 2000s, and regularly conflicted with him due to his views on the business, which emphasize entertainment storylines over actual in-ring action to the point of intense hatred on Cornette's part. Cornette has criticized Russo publicly since his departure from TNA in 2009, which Cornette has stated was a result of his lack of support for Russo's creative direction in the company.
In March 2010, Cornette sent then-TNA official Terry Taylor an email in which he said: "I want Vince Russo to die. If I could figure out a way to murder him without going to prison, I would consider it the greatest accomplishment of my life." TNA sent the letter to a California law firm, who characterized his comments as a "terroristic threat" and said "any further threats to contact Vince Russo or any other TNA personnel (directly or indirectly) shall be viewed as acts in furtherance of such threats and shall be pursued and prosecuted accordingly."
During a 2017 podcast, Cornette challenged Russo to a fight. Russo responded by filing a restraining order (EPO) against Cornette for "stalking him across state lines since 1999." As a response, Cornette began selling autographed copies of the restraining order on his personal website, with all proceeds being donated to the Crusade for Children.
The Russo vs. Cornette rivalry was prominently featured in Viceland's Dark Side of the Ring episodes covering the Montreal Screwjob and WWF's Brawl for All, which aired in 2019 and 2020 respectively.
All Elite Wrestling
All Elite Wrestling (AEW) executives The Young Bucks have accused Cornette of being a shock jock who says disparaging things about the company to get listeners for his podcast. AEW commentator Jim Ross defended him and referred to him as a "Kentucky-fried Howard Stern" but said he had always had outspoken views and that he just has a bigger platform now. Ross said that some of these traits had made him "arguably the best manager ever". AEW promoter Tony Khan credits Cornette as being a major influence on his booking career. Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Newsletter agreed with the shock jock characterization, said Cornette had engaged in hate speech and had influenced a fan that tried to run into an AEW ring in July 2021. However, Meltzer also noted that Cornette condemned the fan for his actions.
Personal life
Cornette and his longtime girlfriend Stacey Goff were married October 31, 2007. Goff had previously worked as a manager in Cornette's OVW promotion under the ring name "Synn." Goff, as Synn, was the OVW manager of future WWE Champion Batista.
Cornette currently hosts two podcasts, The Jim Cornette Experience and Jim Cornette's Drive-Thru. In early April 2020, Cornette's YouTube channel exceeded 100,000 subscribers, earning him a Silver Play Button. Both shows were among the most listened to wrestling podcasts in 2021.
Cornette is a supporter of left-wing politics and has been described by Cenk Uygur as a "fire-breathing progressive." In September 2009, during a podcast interview on Who's Slamming Who?, he voiced his support for President Barack Obama's health care reform plans. Cornette had previously described himself as a Democrat and acknowledged having voted for Obama in the 2008 presidential election. Cornette, inversely, is a fierce critic of right-wing politics, condemning what he considers "fearmongering" from the Republican Party as well as controversially labeling former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as "a useless twat." During the time that Donald Trump was President, Cornette frequently referred to Trump on his podcasts as "President Pigshit" and to Trump's wife Melania as "Melanoma" and "The First Cunt". His political beliefs and statements have earned him attention from the non-professional wrestling media, including an appearance on Internet news show The Young Turks. On December 17, 2017, Cornette stated that he is a democratic socialist. In March 2018, Cornette voiced his support for the March for Our Lives rally; he made additional statements advocating for gun control and criticizing the NRA.
Cornette is an atheist and is highly critical of religion.
Cornette has a criminal record which includes a number of assaults, mostly stemming from incidents involving fights with fans who attacked him while he was a manager in the 1980s. The record has made it difficult for him to work in Canada, and he was turned away from the Canadian border in November 2010.
Then Knox County, Tennessee, mayor Tim Burchett declared November 17, 2014 "Jim Cornette Day" during a Southeastern Championship Wrestling taping in Knoxville.
Independent wrestler Phil Earley accused Cornette of pressuring other wrestlers into having sex with his wife during the Speaking Out movement in 2020. Cornette has vehemently denied the allegations.
Awards and accomplishments
The Baltimore Sun
Non-Wrestler of the Year (2007)
Cauliflower Alley Club
Other honoree (1997)
Iconic Heroes Wrestling Excellence
Southern Wrestling Hall of Fame (2015)
Memphis Wrestling Hall of Fame
Class of 2017
National Wrestling Alliance
NWA Hall of Fame (Class of 2005)
New England Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame
Class of 2015
Pro Wrestling Illustrated
Manager of the Year (1985, 1993, 1995)
Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum
Class of 2012
World Wrestling Federation
Slammy Award (2 times)
Best Dressed (1994)
Blue Light Special for Worst Dresser (1996)
Wrestling Observer Newsletter
Best Booker (1993, 2001, 2003)
Best Non-Wrestler (2006)
Best on Interviews (1985–1988, 1993)
Manager of the Year (1984–1990, 1992–1996)
Best Pro Wrestling Book (2009)
Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame (Class of 1996)
Bibliography
Jim Cornette Presents: Behind the Curtain - Real Pro Wrestling Stories (2019)
Rags, Paper and Pins: The Merchandising of Memphis Wrestling (2013)
The Midnight Express & Jim Cornette 25th Anniversary Scrapbook (2009)
Tuesday Night at the Gardens (2015)
References
External links
1961 births
American atheists
American color commentators
American gun control activists
American male professional wrestlers
American men podcasters
American podcasters
American television writers
American YouTubers
Critics of religions
Kentucky Democrats
Kentucky socialists
Living people
People charged with assault
American male television writers
Male YouTubers
Ohio Valley Wrestling
Professional wrestlers from Kentucky
Professional wrestling authority figures
Professional wrestling announcers
Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum
Professional wrestling historians
Professional wrestling managers and valets
Professional wrestling podcasters
Professional wrestling promoters
Professional wrestling trainers
Professional wrestling writers
Screenwriters from Kentucky
Shock jocks
Smoky Mountain Wrestling
Sportspeople from Louisville, Kentucky
YouTube podcasters | true | [
"The John Cena–Randy Orton rivalry was a professional wrestling rivalry within WWE which lasted between 2007 and 2009 and again from 2013 to 2014. In 2021, WWE released a list of John Cena's top 10 rivalries, ranking it as his number one rivalry, as well as describing it as one of the greatest rivalries in WWE history.\n\n2007\n\nOn the July 23, 2007, episode of WWE Raw, Randy Orton interfered and attacked the WWE Champion John Cena after Cena's match that night. Shortly after, Executive Assistant Jonathan Coachman announced Orton as the new number-one contender to the Championship. Cena and Orton would face off at SummerSlam, with Cena winning the match. On the August 27 episode of Raw, during Cena's match with Booker T, Orton attacked Cena causing a disqualification. Orton then attacked Cena's father who was sitting at ringside by punt kicking him, seriously injuring him, taking his rivalry with Cena to a personal level. Cena sought revenge, and the two faced each other at Unforgiven, where Cena intentionally disqualified himself aggressively attacking Orton during and after the match. Cena would torture Orton with his signature submission hold the STFU while allowing Cena's father who recovered from his injuries to kick Orton in the head. After the match, Coachman booked Cena in a Last Man Standing match against Orton for the WWE Championship at No Mercy to settle the personal rivalry without any restriction. On the September 17 episode of Raw, Orton had Cena tied up at the corner of the ring and forced faced Cena's dad to face him in a match which Orton easily won. The rivalry ended prematurely after Cena suffered a legitimate torn pectoral muscle during a match with Mr. Kennedy which took out Cena from action for months and forced him to vacate the WWE Championship. Orton would be awarded the title at No Mercy before losing it to Triple H before winning it back, with all title changes happening on the same night. Orton would remain WWE Champion throughout 2007.\n\n2008\nCena reignited the rivalry upon returning and winning the 2008 Royal Rumble match, challenging Orton for the title at No Way Out instead of WrestleMania 24. But during the match, Orton got himself intentionally disqualified, thus he did not lose the title. The following night on Raw, Cena once again got an opportunity for the WWE Championship defeating Orton for the title opportunity in a match where Triple H was the special guest referee. A triple threat match took place between Orton, Cena and Triple H at WrestleMania 24, which Orton won. At Backlash a fatal four-way elimination match took place between Cena, Orton, Triple H and John \"Bradshaw\" Layfield (JBL). During the match, Orton eliminated Cena, who had previously eliminated JBL. However Triple H eliminated Orton to win the match. This temporarily ended the feud.\n\n2009\nIn July 2009, Cena challenged Triple H and Orton in a triple threat match for the WWE Championship at Night of Champions. At the event, Orton pinned Cena to retain the WWE Championship. This reignited the feud, and various segments were held where the events from 2007 and 2008 would be brought up and The Legacy a villainous stable led by Orton consisting of Ted DiBiase Jr. and Cody Rhodes would attack Cena on numerous occasions. This eventually led to a match at SummerSlam, which Orton won. In an instance, on August 31 episode of Raw, Rhodes tricked Cena into believing he betrayed Legacy, and Cody's father Dusty arranged a match between Orton and Cody with Cena as special guest referee. But during the match Cody betrayed Cena, and along with Orton and Dibiase attacked Cena. However, Cena gained another opportunity to face Orton, this time in an \"I quit\" match at WWE Breaking Point. During the match after a brutal brawl, Orton handcuffed Cena and disrespectfully threw water at him. But Cena was eventually able to break free of the handcuff and tied up Orton with the handcuff while simultaneously applying his STF submission hold. Unable to break free of the situation, Orton was forced to quit, meaning Cena won the match. The match received critical acclaim and is considered the best match between the duo.\n\nOrton would get his rematch at the Hell in a Cell PPV event, in an Hell in a Cell match. This time Orton defeated Cena to win back the WWE Championship. On the October 5 edition of Raw, Cena challenged Orton to one last rematch for the title, this time a 60-minute Iron Man match where the competitor with the most decisions at the end of that time would be named the victor. In order to accept the challenge, Orton added two more conditions to the match—if Cena loses, he would leave Raw and that the match would be \"anything goes\", the conditions which Cena accepted. They also declared that after this match they will no longer be able to face each other for the WWE championship, and they would settle their differences for good. The match took place at Bragging Rights. During the match The Legacy, on behalf of Orton attacked Cena but Kofi Kingston came out to Cena's aid and drove out the Legacy, leaving Cena and Orton one on one. Cena ultimately defeated Orton by 6 falls to 5, making Orton tap out for the final fall using the STF. Despite not being able to face each other for the championship again, Orton and Cena however once more faced off against each other on the December 14, special episode of Raw in order to receive the Slammy Award for the \"Superstar of the Year 2009\" in a tournament final, a match and award that Cena won. This would end their rivalry for nearly four years.\n\n2013–2014\nDuring 2013 Orton was part of the group The Authority, as part of the Authority, Orton received numerous help and privileges from his peers and would feud with fan-favorite wrestler Daniel Bryan, which ended at Hell in a Cell, with Orton beating Bryan and winning the WWE Champion. Also at the event, Cena defeated Alberto del Rio to win the company's other world championship, the World Heavyweight championship. In December, the feud was reignited after Cena suggested that there should only be \"one world champion\" in WWE. The leader of the Authority, Triple H arranged a championship unification Tables, ladders, and chairs match between Cena and Orton for the December 15 TLC event. During the event, Orton defeated Cena to unify the championships. The merged title would briefly be called as the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, after which it would just be called the WWE Championship. The rivalry continued, with Orton once again attacking Cena's father in January 2014. Orton and Cena faced each other again for the WWE Championship at Royal Rumble, in a match Orton won after Cena was distracted by The Wyatt Family. At Elimination Chambers in February, Cena was one of the six participants in the Elimination Chambers match competing for Orton's WWE Championship but was once again attacked by the Wyatt Family, whose interference helped Orton eliminate Cena. The rivalry between Cena and Orton once again momentarily halted as Cena focused his attention on The Wyatt Family, while Orton renewed his rivalry with Daniel Bryan.\n\nAfter eight months, in October the rivalry resumed, with Cena being scheduled to face Orton at Hell in a Cell, in their second Hell in a Cell match on October 26, 2014. Cena went on to defeat Orton in the match, ending their historic rivalry once and for all.\n\nReferences\n\nIndividual rivalries in sports\nProfessional wrestling rivalries\nHistory of WWE\n2007 in professional wrestling\n2009 in professional wrestling\n2014 in professional wrestling\nProfessional wrestling in the United States",
"The 2010 Survivor Series was the 24th annual Survivor Series professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). It was held for wrestlers from the promotion's Raw and SmackDown brand divisions. The event took place on November 21, 2010, at the American Airlines Arena in Miami, Florida. It was the last Survivor Series held under the first brand split, which ended in August 2011, but was reinstated in July 2016.\n\nEight matches were contested at the event. In the main event, Randy Orton defeated Wade Barrett to retain the WWE Championship with John Cena as the special guest referee. As per the stipulation of the match, since Orton won, Cena was (kayfabe) fired from WWE.\n\nProduction\n\nBackground\nSurvivor Series is an annual gimmick pay-per-view (PPV), produced every November by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) since 1987. In what has become the second longest running pay-per-view event in history (behind WWE's WrestleMania), it is one of the promotion's original four pay-per-views, along with WrestleMania, Royal Rumble, and SummerSlam, referred to as the \"Big Four\". The event is traditionally characterized by having Survivor Series matches, which are tag team elimination matches that typically pits teams of four or five wrestlers against each other. The 2010 event was the 24th event in the Survivor Series chronology and featured wrestlers from the Raw and SmackDown brands. It was scheduled to be held on November 21, 2010, at the American Airlines Arena in Miami, Florida.\n\nThe Survivor Series chronology was originally set to end with the 2009 event when during a press conference held on February 11, 2010, WWE Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Vince McMahon announced that WWE would drop the Survivor Series name and rebrand the event. However, following public outcry and several different fan petitions, the name was later reinstated, and in June 2010, WWE started to release tickets for the 2010 event.\n\nStorylines\nSurvivor Series featured professional wrestling matches involving different wrestlers from pre-existing scripted feuds, plots, and storylines that were played out on WWE's television programs, Raw and SmackDown. Wrestlers portrayed heroes or villains as they followed a series of events that built tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches.\n\nThe main rivalry from Raw involved The Nexus leader Wade Barrett against champion Randy Orton for his WWE Championship with Nexus member John Cena as the special guest referee. At Hell in a Cell, two months earlier, Cena lost a match against Barrett, forcing Cena to join Nexus. His main priority as a member of Nexus was to help Barrett secure the WWE Championship from Randy Orton, having Cena help Barrett during a Battle Royale to name a number one contender and forcing Cena to help him during his match against Orton at Bragging Rights. At that match, if Barrett did not win the match, he would have Cena fired for breaking their stipulation from their match at Hell in a Cell. However, Cena attacked Barrett during the match giving him the win via disqualification, though Orton still retained the title. The next day on Raw, when Cena won a match against Orton via disqualification, Barrett named Cena the special guest referee for their match at Survivor Series. This time, if Barrett did not win the title, then he would have Cena fired, but as an incentive for Cena to perform his duty, if Barrett did win the title, Barrett would relieve Cena from his obligation to Nexus. On the November 8th episode of Raw, the General Manager made the stipulation that the match can only be won via pinfall or submission; in addition, the other members of The Nexus will be banned from ringside.\n\nThe main rivalry from SmackDown involved the World Heavyweight Champion Kane against Edge for the World Heavyweight Championship. After defeating his half-brother The Undertaker last month at Bragging Rights after their three-month war, Alberto Del Rio, Rey Mysterio and Edge all interfered in Kane's \"funeral\" for the Undertaker. Afterwards, all three competed in a match against each other for a number one contender spot. At the end of the match, Edge came out victorious and thus became the number one contender against Kane at Survivor Series. Over the next weeks, Edge kidnapped and psychologically tormented Kane's storyline father Paul Bearer.\n\nEvent\n\nPrior to Survivor Series coming on the air, R-Truth (with Eve Torres) pinned Zack Ryder in a dark match.\n\nPreliminary matches\nIn the first match, Daniel Bryan faced Ted DiBiase (with Maryse) for the United States Championship. DiBiase dominated in the beginning utilizing various veteran moves. He then threw Bryan to the outside with a suplex off the apron. Back in the ring, DiBiase attempted Dream Street but Bryan countered and locked in the LeBell Lock, and made DiBiase submit.\n\nNext, John Morrison faced Sheamus. The two opponents exchanged punches and kicks, until Sheamus missed a Bicycle Kick, which landed his legs between the top rope. Morrison capitalized, delivering the Flying Chuck. With Sheamus in a seated position, Morrison delivered a running knee to Sheamus and pinned him for the win.\n\nAfter that, Dolph Ziggler (with Vickie Guerrero) defended the Intercontinental Championship against Kaval. Kaval dominated at first with a series of kicks and even almost put Ziggler away with a diving Moonsault. Ziggler came back after delivering a leg drop bulldog, yet only got a two count. Kaval then attempted an inverted roll-up pin, but Ziggler countered by rolling him up, grabbing his tights for leverage and retained the title.\n\nLater, Team Mysterio (Rey Mysterio, Kofi Kingston, Chris Masters, Big Show, and Montel Vontavious Porter) faced Team Del Rio (Alberto Del Rio, Tyler Reks, Drew McIntyre, Jack Swagger, and Cody Rhodes) in a 5-on-5 Traditional Survivor Series Elimination Match. McIntyre eliminated MVP after Del Rio held MVP's foot down. Del Rio eliminated Masters after Masters tapped out to the Cross Armbreaker. Del Rio was eliminated after Big Show hit him with a KO Punch, knocking out Del Rio and making him unable to continue the match, causing him carried to the back of the arena by WWE officials. Big Show pinned Rhodes after a KO Punch, eliminating Rhodes. Kingston eliminated Reks with a Schoolboy pin. Swagger eliminated Kingston after Kingston submitted to the Ankle Lock. Mysterio eliminated Swagger after a 619 and an aided Splash with Big Show. Big Show eliminated McIntyre after a 619 by Mysterio and a Chokeslam. As a result, Team Mysterio won the match.\n\nIn the fifth match, Natalya defeated Lay-Cool (Layla and Michelle McCool) in a two-on-one handicap match for the Divas Championship, winning the title for the first time. After the match, Beth Phoenix returned to WWE and rescued Natayla from Lay-Cool, who attacked Natalya.\n\nNext, Kane and Edge for the World Heavyweight Championship fought to a draw after both competitors had their shoulders pinned down on the canvas. As a result, Kane retained the title. After the match, Edge attacked Kane by putting him in a wheelchair and pushing him through the fan barrier.\n\nIn the seventh match, The Nexus (Justin Gabriel and Heath Slater) (with David Otunga, Michael McGillicutty, and Husky Harris) retained their Tag Team Championship defeating Santino Marella and Vladimir Kozlov, after The Nexus interfered in the match.\n\nMain event \nThe main event was Randy Orton defending the WWE Championship against Wade Barrett with John Cena as the special guest referee in a free or fired match. The match can only be won by pinfall or submission, and The Nexus was banned from ringside. Randy Orton retained his WWE Championship against Wade Barrett in a free or fired Pinfall-and-submissions-only singles match with John Cena as a special referee. Cena pushed Barrett into a RKO, and because of the stipulations of the match, John Cena was fired. Cena thanked Michael Cole and the fans on his way to the back to close the show.\n\nReception\nThe event was generally well received by critics. The pay-per-view drew 244,000 buys, up from the 235,000 that the previous year's event received.\n\nAftermath\nThe next night, on Raw at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida, Cena thanked the WWE Universe and was given an ovation by other wrestlers backstage as he exited the arena. Barrett taunted him on his way out. The following night on Raw, Wade Barrett demanded a rematch against Randy Orton for the WWE Championship. During the match, John Cena (who had been fired the previous night) attacked Barrett, costing him the match. Immediately after this match, The Miz cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase and defeated Orton to become the new WWE Champion. At WWE TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs 2010, The Miz successfully defended his title against Randy Orton in a Tables match.\n\nWith The Nexus having assaulted security, John Cena was free to enter the arena and attack any and all members of The Nexus. Eventually a mutiny formed within The Nexus, and they threatened to kick Wade Barrett out unless he rehired John Cena. Along with that, the rehiring of Cena was met under the condition that Barrett would face him in a Chairs match at TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs. Cena would go on to win the match at the pay-per-view.\n\nOn the following episode of SmackDown, Kane granted Edge a rematch for the championship in return that his storyline father Paul Bearer would be released from being hostage by Edge. Edge took the opportunity; however, Bearer would still be held hostage. Before the pay-per-view, Kane pushed what he thought was another dummy off of a ladder, only to discover it was actually Paul Bearer himself. At TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs, Kane was scheduled to defend his title in a Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match against Edge; However, Rey Mysterio and Alberto Del Rio, who were in a feud of their own, were added to the match courtesy of SmackDown GM Theodore Long, thus making it a fatal four-way. At TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs, Edge would go on to win the World Heavyweight Championship.\n\nNatalya and Beth Phoenix's feud with LayCool led to a tag team tables match at TLC, which Natalya and Phoenix won.\n\nAfter Survivor Series, the 2010 King of the Ring tournament took place, with John Morrison and Sheamus making their way to the finals. Sheamus would win, becoming the 2010 King of the Ring; he and Morrison would wrestle at TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs in a ladder match to determine the #1 contender for the WWE Championship, which Morrison would win.\n\nJustin Gabriel and Heath Slater would lose the WWE Tag Team Championship to Santino Marella and Vladimir Kozlov. A rematch was granted at TLC: Tables, Ladders, & Chairs, but Marella and Kozlov would retain the titles.\n\nThe 2010 event was the last Survivor Series held under the first brand split, which ended in August 2011. However, the brand split would be reintroduced in July 2016, and the theme of Survivor Series became brand supremacy, featuring the brands in direct competition with each other. Additionally, in April 2011, the promotion ceased using its full name with the \"WWE\" abbreviation becoming an orphaned initialism.\n\nResults\n\nSurvivor Series elimination tag team match\n\nOther on-screen personnel\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nOfficial Survivor Series website\n\n2010 in professional wrestling in Florida\n2010\nEvents in Miami\nProfessional wrestling in Miami\n2010 WWE pay-per-view events\nNovember 2010 events in the United States"
] |
[
"Jim Cornette",
"World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment (1993-2005)",
"What were their earlier years like?",
"Cornette held several positions in the WWF,",
"Did he tag team with anyone?",
"WWE credits Cornette with helping foster numerous successful superstars including John Cena,",
"Did he win any titles with John Cena?",
"helping foster numerous successful superstars including John Cena,"
] | C_c10c8c313306435791f91b164088b05c_0 | Who was his most successful tag team partner? | 4 | Who was Jim Cornette's most successful tag team partner? | Jim Cornette | Cornette went to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1993 while still serving as promoter of SMW. As he had done in other promotions, Cornette held several positions in the WWF, including manager, color commentator and member of the booking committee. Cornette's most notable managerial role in the WWF was as the "American spokesperson" of WWF Champion Yokozuna. Cornette joined the WWF full-time in 1996 after the demise of SMW, and had a major role in scouting and developing new talent. On screen, he led a top heel stable of wrestlers referred to as "Camp Cornette". At any given time, Cornette's charges consisted of Yokozuna, Mantaur, Vader, Owen Hart, and The British Bulldog. He also served as the manager of Tom Prichard and Jimmy Del Ray during their brief stint in the WWF. In 1997, Cornette became a member of the WWF announce team where he served as a color commentator. It was during this time that he also began performing a series of controversial "worked shoots" where he would praise what he felt was right and condemn what he felt was wrong in professional wrestling. Although the segments were produced by the WWF, Cornette did not hesitate to give praise to WCW wrestlers that he felt deserved it. Cornette also became active behind the scenes working on the booking committee for several years before being removed after frequently butting heads with head writer Vince Russo. In 1998, Cornette led an NWA invasion, based on the old Crockett Promotions territory, with a stable including Jeff Jarrett, Barry Windham and The Rock 'n' Roll Express. Later that year, Cornette managed Dan Severn and The New Midnight Express before he stepped back from managing. Cornette then did some color commentating, primarily on Sunday Night Heat, before disappearing from television. Cornette returned to WWF television for one night at WrestleMania X-Seven in Houston, where he took part in the "gimmick battle royal" but was quickly eliminated by Hillbilly Jim. Cornette later became lead booker and part owner of Ohio Valley Wrestling, WWE's lead developmental territory at the time, run by "Nightmare" Danny Davis. As a talent developer, Cornette had previously been instrumental in developing current and former WWE Superstars such as Kane, D'Lo Brown, Sunny and Al Snow during his time running SMW. WWE credits Cornette with helping foster numerous successful superstars including John Cena, Dave Bautista, Randy Orton and Brock Lesnar. In May 2005, Cornette was suspended for several weeks by WWE after slapping OVW developmental wrestler Anthony Carelli backstage after Carelli had "no-sold" fellow wrestler The Boogeyman by laughing at him during a live OVW event. Shortly after Cornette returned from his suspension, a separate incident occurred and the WWE released him from his contract in July 2005. In the spring of 2007, Carelli, who had since been called up to the WWE as Santino Marella, appeared on a Canadian radio program where he publicly challenged Cornette to a match despite Cornette working for rival promotion TNA at the time. CANNOTANSWER | Randy Orton and Brock Lesnar. | James Mark Cornette (born September 17, 1961) is an American author and podcaster who has previously worked in the professional wrestling industry as an agent, booker, color commentator, manager, promoter, trainer, and occasional professional wrestler.
During his career, he has worked for the Continental Wrestling Association, Mid-South Wrestling, World Class Championship Wrestling, Jim Crockett Promotions, World Championship Wrestling, the World Wrestling Federation (now called WWE), Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (now called Impact Wrestling), and Ring of Honor. From 1991 to 1995, he was the owner and head booker of Smoky Mountain Wrestling, and from 1999 to 2005, was the co-owner, head booker, and head trainer of Ohio Valley Wrestling. During the later years of his career, Cornette focused primarily on backstage positions and transitioned away from his role as an on-screen manager.
In 2017, Cornette retired from managing. During a transitional period prior to the retirement, he worked as an on-screen "authority figure" character in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling and Ring of Honor, promotions where he also held backstage positions. Cornette has also had an extensive commentary career, most recently serving as a color commentator for Major League Wrestling, What Culture Pro Wrestling, and the National Wrestling Alliance. Cornette is a member of the NWA, Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Memphis, and Professional Wrestling Hall of Fames. Cornette is also noted for his long-standing real-life feud with fellow professional wrestling booker Vince Russo; in June 2017, Russo filed a restraining order (EPO) against Cornette for stalking. The Cornette vs. Russo feud has been featured on two episodes of Viceland's Dark Side of the Ring series.
Outside of wrestling, Cornette is known for his left-wing political views – Cornette, an atheist and democratic socialist, has appeared on The Young Turks to document his criticisms of religious and right-wing causes.
Early life
James Cornette was born in Louisville, Kentucky on September 17, 1961 to Doug Cornette (1914–1968), an executive with The Louisville Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times, and Thelma Cornette (1933–2002), a secretary for the Louisville Chamber of Commerce. His father died when he was seven years old. From the age of nine, Cornette had a love for wrestling, claiming that, as a child, he installed a ten-foot antenna on top of his house so he could watch as much regional wrestling as possible.
Professional wrestling career
Early career
Cornette began working at wrestling events at the age of 14, serving as a photographer, ring announcer, timekeeper, magazine correspondent, and public relations correspondent. During this time, from attending matches at the Louisville Gardens, Cornette got to know promoter Christine Jarrett, who was the mother of Jerry Jarrett, promoter of the Continental Wrestling Association (commonly known as the "Memphis territory").
Continental Wrestling Association (1982–1983)
By 1982, Cornette was now also writing programs for arena shows, having photos published in wrestling magazines, and contributing to the Championship Wrestling Magazine. In August, he traveled to Memphis to see the TV match between Jerry Lawler and Ric Flair. After the show ended, Cornette was offered a wrestling managerial role on television by promoter Jerry Jarrett. As Cornette has recalled, despite his presence being tolerated at shows and TV tapings for nearly a decade, the first time he was allowed into the locker room was only after he had become a manager.
Before making his managing debut, Cornette decided to adapt the ring name James E. Cornette in tribute to legendary wrestling promoter James E. Barnett. Cornette made his ringside debut on September 25, 1982, managing Sherri Martel, who herself would later become a wrestling manager. Cornette was given the gimmick of a rich kid turned inept manager whose clients kept firing him after one match. The most notable wrestlers in this angle were Dutch Mantell and Crusher Broomfield (who would later gain fame as One Man Gang and Akeem "The African Dream"). Over the next 14 months Cornette also managed Jesse Barr, Exotic Adrian Street, and a trio called the "Cornette Dynasty" consisting of Carl Fergie, Norman Frederick Charles III, and the Angel. After a short-lived run in Georgia through a deal Jarrett had with Ole Anderson, Cornette returned to Memphis in July 1983, and worked as co-manager alongside Jimmy Hart.
Mid-South Wrestling (1983–1984)
Formation of The Midnight Express
In November 1983, Mid-South promoter Bill Watts recognized his business was down, and was looking to reinvigorate his territory. Watts asked Jerry Jarrett and Jerry Lawler to visit a TV taping and offer their opinions. Jarrett suggested a talent trade, and invited Watts to Memphis to see who he liked. After watching a Memphis TV taping, Watts took singles performers Dennis Condrey and Bobby Eaton to create a new tag team, and also took the existing team of Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson as The Rock 'n' Roll Express. Watts also noticed the brash young manager in Cornette, and in his own words, recalled "He was so obnoxious I wanted to slap him", and "I knew he was instant box office if he could get me that riled up". As the more senior Jimmy Hart was still required by Jarrett, Watts took Cornette to manage his new team, who decided on the name The Midnight Express. Notable wrestlers in the trade who left Mid-South for Memphis included Rick Rude and Jim Neidhart.
Mid-South Wrestling had at that point been a territory featuring bigger wrestlers, and Cornette has stated that The Midnight Express, the Rock 'n' Roll Express, and himself were probably the five smallest members of the roster when he arrived. The influx of the new talent had an immediate impact, and business first rebounded and then skyrocketed. It was during this time that Cornette acquired his tennis racquet which became his trademark. He has stated he had seen a college movie at the time with an obnoxious rich kid carrying a badminton racquet with him (most likely the 1983 film Screwballs), so he decided on a tennis racquet. At times Cornette loaded the racquet with a horse shoe to guard against aggressive fans.
Feud with Magnum TA and Mr. Wrestling II
Cornette and The Midnight Express debuted on Mid-South television on November 23, 1983. After the first few weeks in the territory the team faced the Mid-South tag team champions Magnum T.A. and Mr. Wrestling II. At a TV taping for a contract signing for an upcoming championship match, the Midnights and Cornette attacked Magnum TA and tarred and feathered him. The feud continued through to early March 1984, when The Midnight Express won the Mid-South tag team titles after Mr. Wrestling II walked out on his partner during a match.
The Last Stampede
At a TV taping on March 14, 1984, Cornette and the Midnights staged a celebration for winning the tag team titles, complete with champagne and birthday cake. While Cornette's back was turned, The Rock 'n' Roll Express ran in and shoved Cornette's face in the cake. Cornette was enraged afterwards when Bill Watts replayed the incident on TV as he thought it was funny. This led to a heated altercation between the two, which ended with Watts slapping Cornette. In following weeks, the Midnight Express and Cornette attacked and bloodied Watts leading him to come out of retirement. In a series of matches termed "The Last Stampede", Watts and his masked teammate Stagger Lee (suspected to be Junkyard Dog under a mask) faced the Midnight Express and Cornette all through the territory. The stipulations were simple; if the Midnights won Cornette would run Mid-South Wrestling for 60 days; if they lost, Cornette would be stripped down and forced to wear either a diaper or a dress (the outfits varied by venue). Over 5 weeks, the Last Stampede series shattered box office records for Mid-South, with a record gate and attendance at the Sam Houston Coliseum in Texas, combined attendance of 20,000 people in Tulsa and Oklahoma City (on the same day), and a crowd of 23,000 people at the New Orleans Superdome.
Rock 'n' Roll Express rivalry
Cornette's time in Mid-South was also notable as it marked the beginning of the rivalry with the Rock 'n' Roll Express. Starting in May 1984 immediately following the Last Stampede series, the two teams feuded all through the remainder of the year to packed crowds all through the territory. In particular, the two teams set attendance records in Houston, Tulsa and Oklahoma City, making 1984 the most successful year in Mid-South history, and The Midnight Express and Cornette national stars.
Watts' style and influence
Cornette has consistently acknowledged that Bill Watts's philosophy of believable and credible wrestling, with an unwavering emphasis on toughness, athleticism and serious presentation, has had a major impact on how he thinks the business should be promoted. He has described the promotion as a military school for wrestling, where Watts' strict enforcement of kayfabe, exhausting travel schedule and passionate fans made it a learning experience like no other. Cornette maintains enormous respect for Watts as a promoter, citing his ability to attract huge TV ratings and consistently sold-out arenas in a low population area, and describing Watts as a genius. At the same time, he acknowledges the grind of constant matches, long drives, and fan riots was a grueling test of endurance. At one point Cornette worked 103 days straight before being ordered by doctors to have two to four weeks' bed rest. As events transpired, he took six days off before returning to action.
In describing Mid-South Wrestling, Cornette has offered the following example: "Two weeks of our lives, fourteen days, we did two one hour TV shows, fifteen house shows, two all day promo sets, drove 4700 miles in a car while doing that, and I can't speak for anybody else, but I made—and I was only 22 years old, and just pleased as punch to be there—$5600 for two weeks. In 1984. Not bad."
World Class Championship Wrestling (1984–1985)
The Midnight Express with Cornette had a short stay in World Class Championship Wrestling (WCCW) in Texas where they feuded mainly with The Fantastics (Bobby Fulton and Tommy Rogers). When opportunities in WCCW looked to go nowhere, The Midnight Express started to look elsewhere for employment and what they found would give the team national and international exposure. Cornette later reflected that they were willing to give Dallas a try, as they welcomed living in a modern city, as well as the easier travel schedule when compared to Mid-South. However the inability to get any rivalry with the Von Erichs—and therefore main event money—made the decision to leave for Charlotte an easy one.
Jim Crockett Promotions / World Championship Wrestling (1985–1990, 1993)
Managing the Midnight Express (1985–1990)
Cornette and the Midnight Express spent five years at Jim Crockett Promotions/WCW. After Condrey left the company in early 1987, he was replaced with Stan Lane. With Cornette as manager, each version of the team were National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) World tag team champions (Condrey and Eaton for six months in 1986, Eaton and Lane for a few weeks in late 1988). In addition, Eaton and Lane were three -time NWA United States tag team champions. As a manager, Cornette was known for both his loud mouth and for his ever-present tennis racket, which Cornette often used to ensure victory for his wrestlers, with the implication that the racket case was loaded. Cornette was at his best as a heel manager; fans loved to see the constantly yelling Cornette and his equally annoying charges beaten and humiliated. He and the Midnights were so hated, in fact, that they had to be escorted by police to and from the ring at the house shows and have a police escort to the city limits for fear of being attacked by overzealous fans.
Additionally, Cornette suffered a severe knee injury during a scaffold match between The Midnight Express and The Road Warriors at Starrcade '86. In a shoot interview, Cornette recounted that Dusty Rhodes convinced him to perform a dangerous stunt where he would fall off of the high scaffold, which Cornette estimated was twenty-five feet off the floor of the arena, but about five feet less when measured from the ring mat to the top of the scaffold. The idea was that Paul Ellering, the manager of The Road Warriors, would chase Cornette up the scaffold. Once he was there, he would be met by Road Warrior Animal, who would assist him in getting underneath the scaffold, where Cornette would hang and then drop when ready. Cornette, however, suffered from a severe case of acrophobia and decided that the drop, which he estimated was a total of fourteen feet when he factored in his total body length of eight feet (height plus extended arm length), was, as he put it, "way too goddamn far."
Condrey, Eaton, and Cornette discussed an alternative: Big Bubba Rogers, another wrestler of Cornette's, would catch the manager. However, as Rogers was wearing dark sunglasses inside the arena he misjudged his position and Cornette actually landed flat on his feet, three feet away from Rogers. Cornette tore all the ligaments in one of his knees, broke a bone and damaged the cartilage. The injury was so extensive that when Cornette finally saw a doctor to have the knee drained, the amount of blood and fluid filled an entire bedpan. Cornette later said that he knew he might get seriously hurt when he was told he would have to fall off a scaffold, but that performing in front of such a large audience was more important than his own health.
In 1989, Cornette became the color commentator for Jim Crockett Promotions' nationally syndicated NWA television show, and later took over the same role on the Saturday night TBS broadcasts alongside play-by-play announcer Jim Ross.
In 1989, Cornette became a booker on WCW's creative team. As such, Cornette helped write storylines and shape the format of its television shows. Due to friction and animosity between himself and WCW head Jim Herd, Cornette quit the company after Halloween Havoc 1990.
Managing the Heavenly Bodies (1993)
In January 1993 Cornette briefly returned to World Championship Wrestling (WCW) when WCW was doing a talent trade with Smoky Mountain Wrestling (SMW). Bill Watts, who was the WCW executive vice president, brought The Rock 'n' Roll Express back to WCW and billed them as the Smoky Mountain tag team champions. This incensed Cornette since his team The Heavenly Bodies (Stan Lane and Tom Prichard) were the champions at the time. On the February 6, 1993 episode on WCW Saturday Night, Jim Cornette, the Bodies and Bobby Eaton (who Cornette once again began to manage) confronted the Express during an interview. Bill Watts came out and suggested the Bodies should wrestle the Express. Cornette objected since he claimed that they weren't dressed for it, but the match still took place. The Express won the match by DQ when Eaton interfered in the match, and after the match while Lane held Morton, Cornette put his tennis racket over Morton while Eaton delivered his "Alabama jam" on Morton. Cornette then struck referee Nick Patrick, and then Cornette helped his men beat up the Express.
The following week, Watts came out with the SMW commissioner Bob Armstrong, who stated he was very upset with Cornette's recent actions, and demanded that Cornette come out to apologize for what he had done. Watts stated that the Express was scheduled to wrestle the Wrecking Crew (Rage and Fury) at SuperBrawl III, but then said the Express should wrestle the Bodies instead. Armstrong agreed with Watts and then told Cornette if his Bodies did not wrestle the Express at SuperBrawl III that he would be heavily fined, the Bodies would be stripped of the title, and that he would be suspended. Cornette was very angry and claimed "That he hated WCW!" and later came out to the ring with his men, and attacked two jobbers after a match, one being Joey Maggs. The Express then came out and attacked Cornette and his gang.
During Cornette's second stint in WCW, his Heavenly Bodies teamed with Steve Austin and Brian Pillman in 8-man tag team matches against the Express and the Unified tag team champions Ricky Steamboat and Shane Douglas. The Bodies, Austin and Pillman lost two of those matches, one on a February 27 episode of WCW WorldWide by DQ when Cornette interfered, and one by pinfall. The feud between the Bodies and Express would take place in both SMW and WCW. Bobby Eaton would go to SMW where he would team in 6-man tag team matches with the Bodies. In one of these matches, the Express had a person covered by a sheet in their corner, and after the match Cornette with his men came to the ring to see who was under the sheet and began poking, and kicking at the sheeted man. When Cornette pulled the sheet off, it was Arn Anderson, Eaton's former tag team partner in The Dangerous Alliance, who was underneath; Cornette then fell over in shock. Eaton then tried to shake Anderson's hand, but Arn decked him. Arn said the reason for this was because after he was injured by Erik Watts at a gas station, Eaton never once called him to see how he was doing. Cornette belittled Anderson and claimed that his men were far superior to him. Eaton was also very successful in Smoky Mountain, and under Cornette's guidance he won the SMW TV title. When the Bodies faced the Express at SuperBrawl III, Eaton came out with Cornette, he was despite Cornette's protests forced to return to the dressing room. Like almost always Cornette tried to interfere in the match. When Cornette climbed onto the ring apron and began to argue with the referee, the Express won the match by pinfall when an illegal outside attempt from Eaton, who had since come back to the ring failed.
Smoky Mountain Wrestling (1991–1995)
A firm believer in "old-school" territorial wrestling, Cornette began the Smoky Mountain Wrestling promotion in 1991. SMW promoted shows in Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas. By this point, however, the nature of wrestling in the U.S. had already changed irrevocably, leading Cornette to seek a working relationship with the World Wrestling Federation in 1993. This did not change the new national perception that regional promotions were "minor league". The move also did not help the federation's finances, and Cornette closed SMW's doors in November 1995 and sold all SMW rights and videos to the WWF. Cornette later said that he chose the wrong time to start a wrestling federation because the business as a whole was in a recession.
World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment (1993–2005)
Camp Cornette
Cornette went to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1993 while still serving as promoter of SMW. As he had done in other promotions, Cornette held several positions in the WWF, including manager, color commentator and member of the booking committee. Cornette's most notable managerial role in the WWF was as the "American spokesperson" of WWF Champion Yokozuna. Cornette joined the WWF full-time in 1996 after the demise of SMW, and had a major role in scouting and developing new talent.
On screen, he led a top-heel stable of wrestlers referred to as "Camp Cornette". At any given time, Cornette's charges consisted of Yokozuna, Mantaur, Vader, Owen Hart and The British Bulldog. He also served as the manager of Tom Prichard and Jimmy Del Ray during their brief stint in the WWF. In 1997, Cornette became a member of the WWF announce team where he served as a color commentator. It was during this time that he also began performing a series of controversial "worked shoots" where he would praise what he felt was right and condemn what he felt was wrong in professional wrestling. Although the segments were produced by the WWF, Cornette did not hesitate to give praise to WCW wrestlers that he felt deserved it. Cornette also became active behind the scenes working on the booking committee for several years before being removed after frequently butting heads with writer Vince Russo.
Cornette also was part of the television production staff during this time but eventually left this position as well due in part to constant conflict with producer Kevin Dunn and head writer Vince Russo. Cornette later recounted that things came to a head in Halifax, Nova Scotia in the summer of 1997. During the production meeting for Raw, which was to feature the newly signed The Patriot, Cornette repeatedly tried to steer the discussion toward the treatment of what he thought was a new top-of-the-line heroic character. Dunn told Cornette that he found him to be "tiresome" for continuing to harp on the issue, which enraged Cornette to the point where he mocked Dunn's buck teeth and threatened to assault him in front of everyone in the room. He was eventually forced to apologize to Dunn for his actions.
In June 1997, Cornette made a surprise appearance on the Extreme Championship Wrestling show Orgy of Violence, attacking Tommy Dreamer with his tennis racket as part of the WWF-ECW rivalry angle.
NWA invasion; color commentary
In 1998, Cornette led an NWA invasion, based on the old Crockett Promotions territory, with a stable including Jeff Jarrett, Barry Windham and The Rock 'n' Roll Express. Later that year, Cornette managed Dan Severn and a new version of The Midnight Express before he stepped back from managing. Cornette then did some color commentating, primarily on Sunday Night Heat, before disappearing from television. Cornette returned to WWF television for one night at WrestleMania X-Seven in Houston, where he took part in the "gimmick battle royal", but was quickly eliminated by Hillbilly Jim.
Ohio Valley Wrestling
In 1999, Cornette became lead booker and part-owner of Ohio Valley Wrestling, WWE's lead developmental territory at the time, run by "Nightmare" Danny Davis. As a talent developer, Cornette had previously been instrumental in developing current and former WWE Superstars such as Kane, D'Lo Brown, Sunny and Al Snow during his time running SMW. WWE credits Cornette with helping foster numerous successful superstars including John Cena, Dave Bautista, Randy Orton and Brock Lesnar.
In May 2005, Cornette was suspended for several weeks by WWE after slapping OVW developmental wrestler Anthony Carelli backstage after Carelli had "no-sold" fellow wrestler The Boogeyman by laughing at him during a live OVW event. Shortly after Cornette returned from his suspension, a separate incident occurred and the WWE released him from his contract in July 2005. In the spring of 2007, Carelli, who had since been called up to the WWE as Santino Marella, appeared on a Canadian radio program where he publicly challenged Cornette to a match despite Cornette working for rival promotion TNA at the time.
NWA Total Nonstop Action (2006–2009)
In 2006, Cornette joined NWA Total Nonstop Action as the new face of TNA Management. He held the title of "Management Director" according to the press releases following his premiere at the Slammiversary PPV event on June 18, 2006 in Orlando, Florida. After a brief speech, he departed, but returned at the end of the show in light of the "Orlando Screwjob", taking the NWA World Heavyweight Championship belt after Jeff Jarrett, Larry Zbyszko and Earl Hebner successfully executed a screwjob on Christian Cage and Sting.
As the figurehead "Management Director" of TNA, Cornette did not usually take up more than ten minutes of the show, which could be attributed to both his quick tongue and TNA's lack of desire to create another Mr. McMahon. Matt Morgan had also become Cornette's on-screen bodyguard to prevent harm to his physical being, until leaving that post to become a full-time wrestler. Part of Cornette's gimmick was that when multiple situations build up at once, he often took care of them all swiftly by getting all the TNA wrestlers to come out to the Impact! Zone for a "company meeting" to hear his decisions, or exasperatedly deal swiftly with people who barge into his office. The clear impact of this feature was made evident right from the start, as the first "company meeting" (which aired on the edition of June 29, 2006 of TNA Impact!), where every wrestler was asked to come out and stand at either ramp, saw Cornette clear up several issues:
Forcing The Latin American Xchange to start wrestling again under the threat of termination.
Booking Raven and Zbyszko in a hair vs. hair match against each other for Victory Road 2006.
Disbanding Team Canada as a result of their overly cheating ways (he would later offer them a match which, if they won, would allow them to stay as a unit, with the winner to get a future shot at the championship of their choice; they would lose the match).
Firing Earl Hebner for his role in the "Orlando Screwjob" at Slammiversary 2006. (Hebner had since been rehired, due to a lie detector test on Jeff Jarrett).
Booking America's Most Wanted and Gail Kim in a match against Sirelda, A.J. Styles and Christopher Daniels in an intergender six-person tag team matchup with Styles and Daniels' NWA World Tag Team Championship on the line.
Booking a fatal four-way between Christian Cage, Sting, Scott Steiner, and Samoa Joe for Victory Road 2006.
Finally declaring Jeff Jarrett the official NWA World Heavyweight Champion given that Jarrett defended his title against the winner of the fatal four-way at Victory Road.
Cornette was released from TNA on September 15, 2009. He has said that he was released because he was not "100 percent" behind TNA's creative team, headed by Vince Russo.
Return to ROH and OVW (2009–2012)
In 2009, Cornette signed a contract with Ring of Honor to be their Executive Producer for the Ring of Honor Wrestling show on HDNet.
Cornette made his surprise return to ROH at Glory By Honor VIII: The Final Countdown on September 26, announcing he was the new executive producer for the show. Cornette made his first appearance on Ring of Honor Wrestling on the December 7 episode and immediately made waves by putting ROH champion Austin Aries into a four-way title match later that night and created the Pick 6 contender series.
On September 8, 2010, Ohio Valley Wrestling announced that Cornette would resume his duties as the head booker of the promotion. Cornette left OVW in November 2011, when the promotion announced a working agreement with TNA. On the edition of January 21 of Ring of Honor television, Cornette announced that chairshots to the head were banned and anyone that did so would be fined $5,000. On the February 4 telecast, Cornette made another ban in which the piledriver — in any form — was banned.
On October 8, 2012, it was reported that ROH had replaced Cornette as the head booker with Hunter Johnston, a wrestler who performed under the name Delirious. ROH wrote Cornette off television by having him suffer storyline injuries at the hands of Jay Lethal. As of November 2012, it was revealed that Cornette had left the promotion. The reason for Cornette's absence stems from an outburst he had at the November 3 ROH television taping. At the taping, ROH talent Steve Corino suffered an injury, and no ROH officials were still at the venue to be able to pay for Corino's immediate medical attention or even arrange for an ambulance to be called. This left Corino in pain for hours and Cornette to be the only person there with enough power to handle the situation. Following his departure from Ring of Honor, Cornette decided to take an extended break from professional wrestling to focus on his health and work on personal projects.
What Culture Pro Wrestling (2016–2017)
On October 6, 2016, Cornette made his first appearance doing color commentary in two years, debuting for What Culture Pro Wrestling at their Refuse to Lose event in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He would be joined on the announce team by his long-time friend Jim Ross, who he had not done commentary with in over fifteen years. He then provided commentary for their next event True Legacy, which took place a few days later. Cornette returned to WCPW at their April 1, 2017 State of Emergency event. At the event, Cornette and Matt Striker provided commentary for the British promotion's debut in the United States.
WWE appearances (2017–2018)
On March 31, 2017, Jim Cornette made his first appearance with WWE in 12 years when he inducted The Rock 'n' Roll Express into the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2017. Cornette was also featured in an episode of the WWE Network Original series Table For 3 alongside Eric Bischoff and Michael Hayes. Since then, Cornette made another appearance for WWE, starring in an episode of the WWE Network Original Series Photo Shoot in March 2018.
Return to Impact Wrestling (2017)
Cornette returned to Impact Wrestling, which had formerly been known as TNA, and was attempting to rebrand as Global Force Wrestling (GFW), on August 17, 2017, at Destination X and fired Bruce Prichard. Cornette stated that he was put in charge by Impact's parent company, Anthem Sports & Entertainment, to resolve the Unified GFW World Heavyweight Championship situation. Cornette made the decision to book Low Ki as the twentieth entrant in the GFW World Heavyweight Championship gauntlet match. On September 18, Cornette confirmed he was done with the company. He had been brought in by Jeff Jarrett and the original agreement only included one set of tapings. With Jarrett out of the company, the new creative team was said to be more focused on in-ring action and less on authority figures. According to Cornette, there was no "heat" between him and the company.
National Wrestling Alliance (2018–2019)
The National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) chose Jim Cornette to be the color commentator for the NWA 70th Anniversary show that took place on October 21, 2018. This was the first pay-per-view promoted by the NWA in years. Cornette was joined on commentary by Tony Schiavone for the main event NWA World Heavyweight Championship match between Nick Aldis and Cody Rhodes.
He returned to the promotion for the NWA's Crockett Cup tournament on April 27, 2019. On September 12, Cornette was announced as part of the commentary team for the NWA's weekly studio series, NWA Power. However, on the NWA Power episode broadcast on November 19 during a match between Nick Aldis and Trevor Murdoch, Cornette made the remark "[Trevor Murdoch] is the only man I've ever known that can strap a bucket of fried chicken on his back and ride a motor scooter across Ethiopia. Trevor Murdoch can take care of himself!" Later on the same day, the NWA apologized for the perceived racial overtones of the comment and pulled down the episode to remove the remark. The next day, Cornette left the NWA. Cornette had previously made the same comment on commentary during the March 6, 1995 episode of Monday Night Raw.
Major League Wrestling (2019)
Cornette debuted for Major League Wrestling (MLW) as a color commentator for the March 2, 2019 event Intimidation Games in Chicago, Illinois. He then returned to the commentary desk for their April 2019 events, Rise of the Renegades and Battle Riot II. From the start, he would also work unofficially in an agent-like role for the company. This included coaching younger talent on their television presentation and promos. In March he confirmed he is not signed exclusively to the company, but is open to continually working with them. After immediately being uncertain of his future with them, Cornette continued to do commentary for them, working Fury Road in June and their following event in July. It was reported that following that show he was not signed on for any further shows, as Tony Schiavone had finished his sports commitments and returned to the MLW commentary table. Cornette announced on the December 13, 2019 episode of his Experience podcast that he was officially retired from announcing/commentary.
Views on the professional wrestling industry
Journalist Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated wrote in 2019 that "Cornette remains one of wrestling's more controversial personalities, but his beliefs are rooted in more than four decades of wrestling experience." Cornette has been very vocal against other styles of wrestling, such as Paul Heyman's Extreme Championship Wrestling hardcore style, which he referred to as "hardcore bullshit". "Comedy wrestling" (that which is deemed silly or goofy as opposed to serious) has also been on the receiving end of his rants, with him routinely criticizing those he considers "comedy wrestlers" such as Joey Ryan, Kenny Omega, and Chuck Taylor. He has also criticized the physical appearance of wrestlers; for example Marko Stunt's height or Kevin Steen and Joey Janela's weight. Cornette has garnered some support from industry personalities including former NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion Nick Aldis, who wrote an article for Flagged Sports defending Cornette and his position as NWA commentator after a separate article asked promoters to stop hiring him.
Conflicts with Vince Russo
Cornette worked with writer Vince Russo in the WWF during the 1990s and in TNA during the 2000s, and regularly conflicted with him due to his views on the business, which emphasize entertainment storylines over actual in-ring action to the point of intense hatred on Cornette's part. Cornette has criticized Russo publicly since his departure from TNA in 2009, which Cornette has stated was a result of his lack of support for Russo's creative direction in the company.
In March 2010, Cornette sent then-TNA official Terry Taylor an email in which he said: "I want Vince Russo to die. If I could figure out a way to murder him without going to prison, I would consider it the greatest accomplishment of my life." TNA sent the letter to a California law firm, who characterized his comments as a "terroristic threat" and said "any further threats to contact Vince Russo or any other TNA personnel (directly or indirectly) shall be viewed as acts in furtherance of such threats and shall be pursued and prosecuted accordingly."
During a 2017 podcast, Cornette challenged Russo to a fight. Russo responded by filing a restraining order (EPO) against Cornette for "stalking him across state lines since 1999." As a response, Cornette began selling autographed copies of the restraining order on his personal website, with all proceeds being donated to the Crusade for Children.
The Russo vs. Cornette rivalry was prominently featured in Viceland's Dark Side of the Ring episodes covering the Montreal Screwjob and WWF's Brawl for All, which aired in 2019 and 2020 respectively.
All Elite Wrestling
All Elite Wrestling (AEW) executives The Young Bucks have accused Cornette of being a shock jock who says disparaging things about the company to get listeners for his podcast. AEW commentator Jim Ross defended him and referred to him as a "Kentucky-fried Howard Stern" but said he had always had outspoken views and that he just has a bigger platform now. Ross said that some of these traits had made him "arguably the best manager ever". AEW promoter Tony Khan credits Cornette as being a major influence on his booking career. Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Newsletter agreed with the shock jock characterization, said Cornette had engaged in hate speech and had influenced a fan that tried to run into an AEW ring in July 2021. However, Meltzer also noted that Cornette condemned the fan for his actions.
Personal life
Cornette and his longtime girlfriend Stacey Goff were married October 31, 2007. Goff had previously worked as a manager in Cornette's OVW promotion under the ring name "Synn." Goff, as Synn, was the OVW manager of future WWE Champion Batista.
Cornette currently hosts two podcasts, The Jim Cornette Experience and Jim Cornette's Drive-Thru. In early April 2020, Cornette's YouTube channel exceeded 100,000 subscribers, earning him a Silver Play Button. Both shows were among the most listened to wrestling podcasts in 2021.
Cornette is a supporter of left-wing politics and has been described by Cenk Uygur as a "fire-breathing progressive." In September 2009, during a podcast interview on Who's Slamming Who?, he voiced his support for President Barack Obama's health care reform plans. Cornette had previously described himself as a Democrat and acknowledged having voted for Obama in the 2008 presidential election. Cornette, inversely, is a fierce critic of right-wing politics, condemning what he considers "fearmongering" from the Republican Party as well as controversially labeling former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as "a useless twat." During the time that Donald Trump was President, Cornette frequently referred to Trump on his podcasts as "President Pigshit" and to Trump's wife Melania as "Melanoma" and "The First Cunt". His political beliefs and statements have earned him attention from the non-professional wrestling media, including an appearance on Internet news show The Young Turks. On December 17, 2017, Cornette stated that he is a democratic socialist. In March 2018, Cornette voiced his support for the March for Our Lives rally; he made additional statements advocating for gun control and criticizing the NRA.
Cornette is an atheist and is highly critical of religion.
Cornette has a criminal record which includes a number of assaults, mostly stemming from incidents involving fights with fans who attacked him while he was a manager in the 1980s. The record has made it difficult for him to work in Canada, and he was turned away from the Canadian border in November 2010.
Then Knox County, Tennessee, mayor Tim Burchett declared November 17, 2014 "Jim Cornette Day" during a Southeastern Championship Wrestling taping in Knoxville.
Independent wrestler Phil Earley accused Cornette of pressuring other wrestlers into having sex with his wife during the Speaking Out movement in 2020. Cornette has vehemently denied the allegations.
Awards and accomplishments
The Baltimore Sun
Non-Wrestler of the Year (2007)
Cauliflower Alley Club
Other honoree (1997)
Iconic Heroes Wrestling Excellence
Southern Wrestling Hall of Fame (2015)
Memphis Wrestling Hall of Fame
Class of 2017
National Wrestling Alliance
NWA Hall of Fame (Class of 2005)
New England Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame
Class of 2015
Pro Wrestling Illustrated
Manager of the Year (1985, 1993, 1995)
Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum
Class of 2012
World Wrestling Federation
Slammy Award (2 times)
Best Dressed (1994)
Blue Light Special for Worst Dresser (1996)
Wrestling Observer Newsletter
Best Booker (1993, 2001, 2003)
Best Non-Wrestler (2006)
Best on Interviews (1985–1988, 1993)
Manager of the Year (1984–1990, 1992–1996)
Best Pro Wrestling Book (2009)
Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame (Class of 1996)
Bibliography
Jim Cornette Presents: Behind the Curtain - Real Pro Wrestling Stories (2019)
Rags, Paper and Pins: The Merchandising of Memphis Wrestling (2013)
The Midnight Express & Jim Cornette 25th Anniversary Scrapbook (2009)
Tuesday Night at the Gardens (2015)
References
External links
1961 births
American atheists
American color commentators
American gun control activists
American male professional wrestlers
American men podcasters
American podcasters
American television writers
American YouTubers
Critics of religions
Kentucky Democrats
Kentucky socialists
Living people
People charged with assault
American male television writers
Male YouTubers
Ohio Valley Wrestling
Professional wrestlers from Kentucky
Professional wrestling authority figures
Professional wrestling announcers
Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum
Professional wrestling historians
Professional wrestling managers and valets
Professional wrestling podcasters
Professional wrestling promoters
Professional wrestling trainers
Professional wrestling writers
Screenwriters from Kentucky
Shock jocks
Smoky Mountain Wrestling
Sportspeople from Louisville, Kentucky
YouTube podcasters | true | [
"Jeri-Show was a villainous professional wrestling tag team consisting of Big Show and Chris Jericho, which competed in the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) promotion.\n\nThe duo made their debut in July 2009 at WWE's Night of Champions pay-per-view event, where Jericho replaced the legitimate injured Edge with Show as his tag team partner in his defense of the Unified WWE Tag Team Championship (which was made by the unification of the World Tag Team Championship and WWE Tag Team Championship).\n\nThroughout the remainder of 2009, Jeri-Show were involved in several highly promoted feuds and angles, as well as defending the Unified WWE Tag Team Championship and challenging for the World Heavyweight Championship. The duo also headlined two of WWE's pay-per-view events during their short tenure together, with the first being at Survivor Series and the second at TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs.\n\nHistory\n\nUnified WWE Tag Team Champions (2009–2010) \nAt The Bash on June 28, 2009, Jericho and his then partner Edge, both heels, won the Unified WWE Tag Team Championship (which consisted of the World Tag Team Championship and the WWE Tag Team Championship) as surprise entrants in a tag team match. When Edge suffered a torn Achilles tendon shortly thereafter which left him unable to wrestle, Jericho exploited a contractual loophole that allowed him to choose a new partner to replace Edge so that Jericho's reign could continue uninterrupted, while insulting Edge for being injury prone.\n\nOn July 26 at Night of Champions, Jericho revealed fellow heel Big Show as his new tag team partner and they defeated Legacy members Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase to retain the Unified WWE Tag Team Championship, thus allowing Big Show (who was from the Raw brand) and Jericho (who was from the SmackDown brand) to appear on both brands. Jeri-Show would then feud with Cryme Tyme (JTG and Shad Gaspard), which culminated in a successful title defense for Jeri-Show at SummerSlam on August 23. Jericho and Big Show would then feud with Montel Vontavious Porter and Mark Henry, which would also result in another successful title defense for Jeri-Show at Breaking Point on September 13 against them. Next, Jeri-Show would move on to feud with Batista, who then challenged for the Unified WWE Tag Team Championship with Jericho's rival Rey Mysterio at Hell in a Cell on October 4, where resulted in another successful title defense.\n\nOn the October 5 episode of Raw, Jeri-Show would begin a feud with Shawn Michaels and Triple H of D-Generation X (D-X) following a loss in a non-title match. Leading up to Bragging Rights, Jericho was named as a co-captain (with Kane) for Team SmackDown while Big Show joined Team Raw, which was captained by D-X. At Bragging Rights on October 25, Big Show turned on Team Raw when he attacked his teammates Kofi Kingston and Triple H, resulting in Jericho getting the win for Team SmackDown. Big Show would then reveal that his motives for aiding Team SmackDown was so that he would be granted a shot against SmackDown's World Heavyweight Champion The Undertaker, while Jericho would insert himself into the title match as well after defeating Kane, thus making it a triple threat match. At Survivor Series on November 22, The Undertaker retained his World Heavyweight Championship after Jericho and Big Show turned on each other despite working together throughout most of the match. Jeri-Show would then continue their feud with D-X and on December 13 at TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs, they lost the Unified WWE Tag Team Championship to D-X in a Tables, Ladders and Chairs match, ending their reign at 140 days. On the December 14 episode of Raw, Jeri-Show won a Slammy Award for \"Tag Team of the Year\", while that same night they used their rematch clause against D-X, who quickly intentionally disqualified themselves and retained the Unified WWE Tag Team Championship (as a result, Jericho, from the SmackDown brand, could not appear on Raw as he was no longer a Unified WWE Tag Team Champion). D-X granted Jeri-Show yet another rematch for the Unified WWE Tag Team Championship, with the additional stipulation that Jericho had to \"leave Raw forever\" if Jeri-Show lost, which they did on the January 4, 2010 episode of Raw, marking the end of Jeri-Show.\n\nAfter their breakup, Edge made his return at the 2010 Royal Rumble match to feud with Jericho, eliminating Jericho en route to winning the Rumble. Meanwhile, Big Show would go on to win the Unified WWE Tag Team Championship back from D-X when he teamed with The Miz, forming ShoMiz. Jericho would eventually return to Raw again when he was drafted to the Raw brand through the 2010 WWE draft.\n\nUnofficial reunions (2012–2016) \nOn the July 9, 2012 episode of Raw, Jeri-Show (as villains) reunited for one-time to take on John Cena and Kane in a tag team match, which they lost by disqualification.\n\nOn the September 5, 2014 episode of SmackDown, Jeri-Show (as fan favorites) had a one-night reunion, competing in a ten-man tag team match that consisted of themselves teaming with John Cena, Mark Henry and Roman Reigns against Kane, Seth Rollins and The Wyatt Family (Bray Wyatt, Erick Rowan and Luke Harper), which Jeri-Show's team won by disqualification after The Wyatt Family broke up Cena's STF on Rollins and refused to stop their assault on Cena.\n\nOn the January 28, 2016 episode of SmackDown, Big Show helped Jericho, Reigns and Dean Ambrose from a Wyatt Family assault, having a one night reunion for Jeri-Show.\n\nChampionships and accomplishments \n World Wrestling Entertainment\n World Tag Team Championship (1 time)\n WWE Tag Team Championship (1 time)\n Slammy Award (1 time)\n Tag Team of the Year (2009)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n \n Cagematch profile\n\nWWE teams and stables\nWWE World Tag Team Champions",
"Owen Hart and Yokozuna were a professional wrestling tag team who wrestled in World Wrestling Federation.\n\nHistory \nThe team debuted on WrestleMania XI when former WWF Champion Yokozuna was billed as Hart's mystery partner. This was Yokozuna's first appearance since 1994 Survivor Series. They defeated The Smoking Gunns to win the WWF Tag Team Championship.\n\nDuring their World Tag Team Championship reign, Owen Hart and Yokozuna rose to the top of the tag team division of WWF as they went on to make successful title defenses against the likes of The Smoking Gunns and The Allied Powers. The win over the Allied Powers at In Your House 2 PPV event was considered a major upset in fan's eyes at the time. During the next In Your House ppv event two months later, the World Tag Team Championship title defense was included but Hart was replaced by The British Bulldog because Hart was with his wife who was giving birth to their second child. Yokozuna and Bulldog defended the titles against Diesel and Shawn Michaels but lost to Diesel and Michaels when Diesel pinned Hart after a jacknife powerbomb who came to ringside late in the match.\n\nThey went on to hold the title for 175 days during their first reign. Hart and Yokozuna were awarded the titles back the next day by their lawyer Clarence Mason because Hart was pinned in the match who was not a part of the match therefore Michaels and Diesel could not be champions. The same night, Hart and Yokozuna went on to lose the titles to The Smoking Gunns. After the match, their tag team disbanded as Yokozuna focused on singles career while Hart formed a tag team with The British Bulldog in 1996.\n\nChampionships and accomplishments \n World Wrestling Federation\n WWF Tag Team Championship (2 times)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Yokozuna and Owen Hart at Online World of Wrestling\n Yokozuna's WWE Alumni profile\n\nWWE teams and stables\nWWE World Tag Team Champions"
] |
[
"Chuck Schuldiner",
"Biography"
] | C_318d750d0b08450b9db3f152883cbfc5_1 | When was he born? | 1 | When was Chuck Schuldiner born? | Chuck Schuldiner | Schuldiner was born on May 13, 1967, on Long Island, New York to a Jewish father of Austrian descent and a mother from the American South, a convert to Judaism. Both of his parents were teachers. In 1968, his family moved to Florida. Schuldiner was the youngest of three children: he had an older brother named Frank and an older sister named Bethann. He started playing guitar at the age of 9; his 16-year-old brother had died and his parents bought him a guitar, thinking it would help with his grief. He took classical lessons for less than a year in which his teacher taught him "Mary had a Little Lamb", which he did not like very much, and almost stopped completely, until his parents saw an electric guitar at a yard sale and bought it for him. The young Schuldiner immediately took to the instrument. After getting amps, he never stopped playing, writing and teaching himself. Schuldiner was known to spend the weekend in the garage or his room playing his guitar, but was limited to three hours on weekdays when school was in session. Schuldiner first played in public in his early teens. Schuldiner was originally inspired by Metallica, Iron Maiden, Kiss and classical jazz, among others. He was particularly interested in the metal movement known as NWOBHM - New Wave of British Heavy Metal - and cited bands of that genre among his favorites. He frequently cited French band Sortilege as his personal favorite metal group. Slayer, Celtic Frost, Possessed, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond and Metallica were later influences he would apply more to his own band. Later in his career, Schuldiner frequently cited progressive metal bands such as Watchtower, Coroner and Queensryche as influences. The official Schuldiner website, Empty Words, quotes Schuldiner's mother making the claim that he enjoyed all forms of music except country and rap. He also enjoyed jazz and classical music in addition to metal and British alternative acts such as Lush. Schuldiner performed well in school before becoming bored with education, and eventually dropped out. He later regretted this decision. He has stated that if he had not become a musician, he would have liked to have become a veterinarian or a cook. CANNOTANSWER | May 13, 1967, | Charles Michael Schuldiner (May 13, 1967 – December 13, 2001) was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He founded the band Death in 1983 and was their lead vocalist and guitarist until his death in 2001. His obituary in the January 5, 2002, issue of UK's Kerrang! magazine described him as "one of the most significant figures in the history of metal." Schuldiner was ranked No. 10 in Joel McIver's book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists in 2009 and No. 20 in March 2004 Guitar Worlds "The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists". In 1987, Schuldiner founded the publishing company Mutilation Music, affiliated with performance rights organization BMI. Schuldiner died in 2001 of a brain tumor.
Schuldiner is often referred to as "The Godfather of death metal", although he was uncomfortable with this nickname, remarking that "I don't think I should take the credits for this death metal stuff. I'm just a guy from a band, and I think Death is a metal band."
Biography
Early life
Schuldiner was born on May 13, 1967, on Long Island, New York. His father Mal Schuldiner was Jewish and the son of Austrian immigrants, and his mother Jane Schuldiner was from the American South and had converted to Judaism. In 1968, his family moved to Florida.
He started playing guitar at the age of 9. He took classical lessons for less than a year in which his teacher taught him "Mary had a Little Lamb", which he did not like very much, and almost stopped completely until his parents bought him an electric guitar at a yard sale. The young Schuldiner immediately took to the instrument and began playing, writing and teaching himself. He was known to spend the weekend in the garage or his room playing his guitar but was limited to three hours on weekdays when school was in session. Schuldiner first played in public in his early teens.
Schuldiner was originally inspired by Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Kiss and classical jazz, among others. He was particularly interested in the metal movement known as NWOBHM – New Wave of British Heavy Metal – and cited bands of that genre among his favorites. He frequently cited French band Sortilège as his personal favorite metal group. Slayer, Celtic Frost, Possessed, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond and Metallica were later influences he would apply more to his own songwriting. Later in his career, Schuldiner frequently cited progressive metal bands such as Watchtower, Coroner and Queensrÿche as influences. The official Schuldiner website, Empty Words, quotes Schuldiner's mother making the claim that he enjoyed all forms of music except country and rap. He also enjoyed jazz and classical music in addition to metal and British alternative acts such as Lush.
Schuldiner performed well in school before becoming bored with education and eventually dropping out. He later regretted this decision. He has stated that if he had not become a musician, he would have liked to have become a veterinarian or a cook.
Musical career
Taking inspiration from Nasty Savage, Schuldiner formed Death as Mantas in 1983 when he was just 16 years old. Original members were Schuldiner (guitar), Rick Rozz (guitar) and Kam Lee (drums and vocals). In January 1986, Schuldiner moved to Toronto and temporarily joined the Canadian band Slaughter. However, he quickly returned to continue the formation of Death.
Death underwent many lineup changes. With Chris Reifert, Schuldiner eventually released the first Death album, titled Scream Bloody Gore, in 1987. He continued with 1988's Leprosy with the line-up of former Mantas guitarist Rick Rozz and rhythm section Terry Butler on bass and Bill Andrews on drums, and 1990's Spiritual Healing, where guitarist James Murphy had replaced the fired Rozz in 1989.
After Spiritual Healing, Schuldiner stopped working with full-time band members, preferring to work with studio and live venue musicians, due to bad relationships with Death's previous rhythm section and guitarists. This earned Schuldiner something of a 'perfectionist' reputation in the metal community. Schuldiner had also fired his manager Eric Greif but settled and re-hired him before the recording of his next, influential release.
Death's breakthrough album, Human saw the band evolving to a more technical and progressive style, in which Schuldiner displayed his guitar skills more than ever. He continued in this style (and continued the success of the band) with 1993's Individual Thought Patterns, 1995's Symbolic, and finally The Sound of Perseverance in 1998.
He put Death on hold after this to continue Control Denied, which he had been putting together prior to the release of The Sound of Perseverance, and released The Fragile Art of Existence in 1999. Control Denied also had other players from the latest Death album but featured a melodic metal vocalist. Schuldiner also played guitar in the "supergroup" Voodoocult on the album Jesus Killing Machine in 1994 and played a guest solo on Naphobia's 1995 release, Of Hell on the track "As Ancients Evolve" as a favor to the band's bassist at the time who was a friend of Schuldiner's. Schuldiner was also asked to be one of the many guest vocalists on Dave Grohl's 2001 Probot. Grohl, Napalm Death, Ozzy Osbourne, and Anthrax all increased efforts to raise funds for Schuldiner's medical bills with Grohl trying to involve Schuldiner on an album he was working on. In a 1999 interview, Schuldiner spoke about why he didn't sing on the Control Denied album The Fragile Art of Existence "...these vocals are all I ever wanted to do in Death but couldn't. I've had this dream of recording like that for years, and it seems like a dream come true. Tim Aymar is an amazing singer and this is the main difference. I think people will be surprised at the violence and strength of the album. Many people are expecting something like Iron Maiden, but, despite being one of my favorite bands, I didn't want to make an Iron Maiden-like album. I wanted to make an unpredictable album, just like I did in Death, I guess. I don't like to make predictable albums."
Illness and death
In 1999, Schuldiner was diagnosed with brain cancer. He continued to work on his music, continuing his work with Control Denied. He was at first unable to afford the surgery that he needed immediately. A press release called for support from everyone, including fellow artists. Jane Schuldiner urged all who read the statements about Schuldiner and his illness to go out and get insurance, stating her frustration in the American healthcare system. Schuldiner had taken out medical insurance after his first surgery, but the insurer had refused to pay because the cancer pre-dated insurance being taken out. Many artists, including Kid Rock, Korn and Red Hot Chili Peppers, got together during the summer of 2001 to auction off personal items, with the funds assisting Schuldiner's medical expenses, an effort covered by MTV. Matt Heafy, vocalist and guitarist for Trivium, has also stated that the band had played a benefit show for Schuldiner while he was in the hospital in their days as a local band. In November 2001, Schuldiner's condition worsened as he became ill with Pneumocystis carinii.
On December 13, 2001, Schuldiner died at the age of 34 and was cremated. MTV reported that recording artists including Dave Grohl, Mike Patton, Max Cavalera, King Diamond, Ville Valo, Trey Azagthoth, Glen Benton, Jason Newsted, Corey Taylor, and all former and active members of Death, attended his memorial service.
Legacy
With the assistance of Schuldiner's family, former manager Eric Greif handled his legacy as President of Perseverance Holdings Ltd. Schuldiner's mother Jane and sister Beth Schuldiner frequently interact with his fans and both have stated many times that they enjoy his music. Greif kept track of his recordings and handled Schuldiner's intellectual property. Beth Schuldiner has a son named Christopher Steele, who also plays guitar and has all of Schuldiner's guitars. BC Rich also released a statement in their 2008 catalog stating that Schuldiner's signature model Stealth will be available for purchase, and that endorsement is overseen by Steele.
Schuldiner had homes and two dogs in the area surrounding Orlando. Schuldiner built a studio inside the garage where many of his songs such as "Crystal Mountain" were inspired. Schuldiner's home office was the site of the Metal Crusade newsletter and fan club.
A legal battle began from the time of Schuldiner's death on the settlement of the rights to the partially completed second Control Denied album, When Man and Machine Collide, which was recorded in 2000–2001 and was scheduled for release in 2013. Demos of these unreleased Control Denied songs, as well as early Death demos and live Death recordings from 1990, were released in the Zero Tolerance two-part compilation bootlegs by the Dutch Hammerheart Holdings company and the Schuldiners and Greif asserted rights on behalf of Schuldiner's Estate. The matter was settled in November 2009, anticipating the project being finished and released in 2010.
Tribute concerts have been coordinated or funded by Schuldiner's mother and family and various Death tribute groups internationally. Former CKY frontman, Deron Miller, who considers Schuldiner an idol of his, got the idea, while working on various projects with former Death guitarist (and pituitary tumor survivor) James Murphy, to do a tribute album. Murphy announced he would release a Chuck Schuldiner tribute album to commemorate his lasting mark on the metal community and Schuldiner's family publicly offered support for Murphy's effort, though it has never materialized. Schuldiner's sister Beth confirmed via her YouTube channel that Death: Live in Japan, a behind the scenes Death video, as well as a potential boxset containing all of Schuldiner's works including some exclusive copies of handwritten notes by Schuldiner are in the works via Relapse Records. Schuldiner Estate lawyer Eric Greif held a charity Chuck Schuldiner Birthday Bash in Calgary, Alberta, May 13, 2011, featuring speeches by Greif and former Death guitarist Paul Masvidal, as well as bands performing Schuldiner's music. Greif repeated this May 12, 2012, with special guest band Massacre, featuring former Death members Rick Rozz and Terry Butler.
Book
In January 2001, Mahyar Dean, an Iranian metal guitarist/musician, wrote Death, a book about Death and Schuldiner poems. The book includes bilingual lyrics and many articles about the band. The book was sent through the site keepers of emptywords.org to Schuldiner, who in his words was "truly blown away and honored by the obvious work and devotion he put into bringing the book to life".
Beliefs
Schuldiner designed the Death logo and its various incarnations during the length of his career. In 1991, before the release of Human, he cleaned up the logo taking out more intricate details and the "T" in the logo was swapped from an inverted cross to a more regular looking "T", one reason being to quash any implication of religion.
Schuldiner was also openly against hard drugs; he is quoted as saying, "I've tripped several times. That's all because I don't like the hard drugs. And my only drugs are alcohol and grass." Schuldiner also stated that he was pro-choice. He is quoted as saying that "it should be legal. If I was a woman surely I would like to have a choice to have a child or not. In U.S. a lot of new-borns are killed because they were unwanted. It is better to solve it immediately when a woman finds out about the pregnancy and she doesn't want a child. Better to go for an abortion than to kill a baby. That is terrible. Men cannot force women to keep a child when they themselves feel they can't."
Musical style
Schuldiner was mostly self-taught as a guitarist. In 1993, he expressed a disinterest in music theory: "I know enough about what I'm playing to memorize the scales and things, but I have no idea how you would label them. As long as I can play it, memorize it and apply it, I don't need to know what you call it."
In the early days of Death, Schuldiner used a "deep, raspy" death growl vocal technique. He said in 1993 that "it takes a lot of energy and a lot of throat abuse to get through a show."
Equipment
Guitars
Schuldiner's primary guitar throughout most of his career was the B.C. Rich Stealth model, an extremely rare model produced in small amounts under the B.C. Rich US (U-) series name along with the Custom Shop, until it was released to the public as the Chuck Schuldiner Tribute Stealth. The Stealth was also released as an N.J. model in the 1980's and 1990's, but was extremely rare. Prior to this, he used a B.C. Rich Mockingbird copy, built by "someone in Florida", and a B.C Rich Ignitor. Most of Schuldiner's sound came from a DiMarzio X2N pickup placed in the bridge. During the (In)Human Tour of the World (1991–92), Schuldiner briefly endorsed a small Wisconsin custom guitar company called Axtra, who worked with him on designs, though he still insisted on using his B.C. Rich during filming of the Lack of Comprehension video in September 1991 in Orlando.
Amplifiers
The amplifier he used towards the end of his career was a Marshall Valvestate (Model 8100) amplifier head and Valvestate 4x12 speaker cabinets on Individual Thought Patterns as well as the ITP tour and eventually started using Marshall 1960 cabinets. Before that he used various equipment including Randall RG100ES heads and Randall cabinets, and on the (In)Human Tour of the World he used a small GK 250ML miked up, despite having hollow 4x12 stacks 'for show'. On the first two Death albums, he stated he used a Boss distortion pedal, but didn't specify which, after which he used amplifier distortion.
Discography
Death
1987: Scream Bloody Gore
1988: Leprosy
1990: Spiritual Healing
1991: Human
1993: Individual Thought Patterns
1995: Symbolic
1998: The Sound of Perseverance
Voodoocult
1994: Jesus Killing Machine
Control Denied
1999: The Fragile Art of Existence
See also
Honorific nicknames in popular music
References
Sources
The Metal Crusade, official site of The Death Fan Club
Empty Words, official Death/Control Denied archival site
1967 births
2001 deaths
Deaths from pneumonia in Florida
American heavy metal guitarists
American heavy metal singers
American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
Rhythm guitarists
Lead guitarists
Death (metal band) members
Death metal musicians
Deaths from brain tumor
Deaths from cancer in Florida
Neurological disease deaths in Florida
Jewish American musicians
Jewish singers
Jewish American songwriters
Singers from Florida
Singers from New York (state)
People from Glen Cove, New York
Singers from Orlando, Florida
People from Altamonte Springs, Florida
Progressive metal guitarists
Songwriters from Florida
Songwriters from New York (state)
20th-century American singers
Jewish heavy metal musicians
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Florida
Guitarists from New York (state)
American male guitarists
Control Denied members
Voodoocult members
20th-century American male singers
20th-century American Jews
American male songwriters | true | [
"Since the first human spaceflight by the Soviet Union, citizens of 42 countries have flown in space. For each nationality, the launch date of the first mission is listed. The list is based on the nationality of the person at the time of the launch. Only 3 of the 42 \"first flyers\" have been women (Helen Sharman for the United Kingdom in 1991, Anousheh Ansari for Iran in 2006, and Yi So-yeon for South Korea in 2008). Only three nations (Soviet Union/Russia, U.S., China) have launched their own crewed spacecraft, with the Soviets/Russians and the American programs providing rides to other nations' astronauts. Twenty-seven \"first flights\" occurred on Soviet or Russian flights while the United States carried fourteen.\n\nTimeline\nNote: All dates given are UTC. Countries indicated in bold have achieved independent human spaceflight capability.\n\nNotes\n\nOther claims\nThe above list uses the nationality at the time of launch. Lists with differing criteria might include the following people:\n Pavel Popovich, first launched 12 August 1962, was the first Ukrainian-born man in space. At the time, Ukraine was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\n Michael Collins, first launched 18 July 1966 was born in Italy to American parents and was an American citizen when he went into space.\n William Anders, American citizen, first launched 21 December 1968, was the first Hong Kong-born man in space.\n Vladimir Shatalov, first launched 14 January 1969, was the first Kazakh-born man in space. At the time, Kazakhstan was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\n Bill Pogue, first launched 16 November 1973, as an inductee to the 5 Civilized Tribes Hall of Fame can lay claim to being the first Native American in space. See John Herrington below regarding technicality of tribal registration.\n Pyotr Klimuk, first launched 18 December 1973, was the first Belorussian-born man in space. At the time, Belarus was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\n Vladimir Dzhanibekov, first launched 16 March 1978, was the first Uzbek-born man in space. At the time, Uzbekistan was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\n Paul D. Scully-Power, first launched 5 October 1984, was born in Australia, but was an American citizen when he went into space; Australian law at the time forbade dual-citizenship.\n Taylor Gun-Jin Wang, first launched 29 April 1985, was born in China to Chinese parents, but was an American citizen when he went into space.\n Lodewijk van den Berg, launched 29 April 1985, was born in the Netherlands, but was an American citizen when he went into space.\n Patrick Baudry, first launched 17 June 1985, was born in French Cameroun (now part of Cameroon), but was a French citizen when he went into space.\n Shannon Lucid, first launched 17 June 1985, was born in China to American parents of European descent, and was an American citizen when she went into space.\n Franklin Chang-Diaz, first launched 12 January 1986, was born in Costa Rica, but was an American citizen when he went into space\n Musa Manarov, first launched 21 December 1987, was the first Azerbaijan-born man in space. At the time, Azerbaijan was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\n Anatoly Solovyev, first launched 7 June 1988, was the first Latvian-born man in space. At the time, Latvia was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\n Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev and Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Volkov became Russian rather than Soviet citizens while still in orbit aboard Mir, making them the first purely Russian citizens in space.\n James H. Newman, American citizen, first launched 12 September 1993, was born in the portion of the United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands that is now the Federated States of Micronesia.\n Talgat Musabayev, first launched 1 July 1994, was born in the Kazakh SSR and is known in Kazakhstan as the \"first cosmonaut of independent Kazakhstan\", but was a Russian citizen when he went into space.\n Frederick W. Leslie, American citizen, launched 20 October 1995, was born in Panama Canal Zone (now Panama).\n Andy Thomas, first launched 19 May 1996, was born in Australia but like Paul D. Scully-Power was an American citizen when he went to space; Australian law at the time forbade dual-citizenship.\n Carlos I. Noriega, first launched 15 May 1997, was born in Peru, but was an American citizen when he went into space.\n Bjarni Tryggvason, launched 7 August 1997, was born in Iceland, but was a Canadian citizen when he went into space.\n Salizhan Sharipov, first launched 22 January 1998, was born in Kyrgyzstan (then the Kirghiz SSR), but was a Russian citizen when he went into space. Sharipov is of Uzbek ancestry.\n Philippe Perrin, first launched 5 June 2002, was born in Morocco, but was a French citizen when he went into space.\n John Herrington, an American citizen first launched 24 November 2002, is the first tribal registered Native American in space (Chickasaw). See also Bill Pogue above.\n Fyodor Yurchikhin, first launched 7 October 2002, was born in Georgia (then the Georgian SSR). He was a Russian citizen at the time he went into space and is of Pontian Greek descent.\n Joseph M. Acaba, first launched 15 March 2009, was born in the U.S. state of California to American parents of Puerto Rican descent.\n\nGallery\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nCurrent Space Demographics, compiled by William Harwood, CBS News Space Consultant, and Rob Navias, NASA.\n\nLists of firsts in space\nSpaceflight timelines",
"This is a list of notable books by young authors and of books written by notable writers in their early years. These books were written, or substantially completed, before the author's twentieth birthday. \n\nAlexandra Adornetto (born 18 April 1994) wrote her debut novel, The Shadow Thief, when she was 13. It was published in 2007. Other books written by her as a teenager are: The Lampo Circus (2008), Von Gobstopper's Arcade (2009), Halo (2010) and Hades (2011).\nMargery Allingham (1904–1966) had her first novel, Blackkerchief Dick, about smugglers in 17th century Essex, published in 1923, when she was 19.\nJorge Amado (1912–2001) had his debut novel, The Country of Carnival, published in 1931, when he was 18.\nPrateek Arora wrote his debut novel Village 1104 at the age of 16. It was published in 2010.\nDaisy Ashford (1881–1972) wrote The Young Visiters while aged nine. This novella was first published in 1919, preserving her juvenile punctuation and spelling. An earlier work, The Life of Father McSwiney, was dictated to her father when she was four. It was published almost a century later in 1983.\nAmelia Atwater-Rhodes (born 1984) had her first novel, In the Forests of the Night, published in 1999. Subsequent novels include Demon in My View (2000), Shattered Mirror (2001), Midnight Predator (2002), Hawksong (2003) and Snakecharm (2004).\nJane Austen (1775–1817) wrote Lady Susan, a short epistolary novel, between 1793 and 1795 when she was aged 18-20.\nRuskin Bond (born 1934) wrote his semi-autobiographical novel The Room on the Roof when he was 17. It was published in 1955.\nMarjorie Bowen (1885–1952) wrote the historical novel The Viper of Milan when she was 16. Published in 1906 after several rejections, it became a bestseller.\nOliver Madox Brown (1855–1874) finished his novel Gabriel Denver in early 1872, when he was 17. It was published the following year.\nPamela Brown (1924–1989) finished her children's novel about an amateur theatre company, The Swish of the Curtain (1941), when she was 16 and later wrote other books about the stage.\nCeleste and Carmel Buckingham wrote The Lost Princess when they were 11 and 9.\nFlavia Bujor (born 8 August 1988) wrote The Prophecy of the Stones (2002) when she was 13.\nLord Byron (1788–1824) published two volumes of poetry in his teens, Fugitive Pieces and Hours of Idleness.\nTaylor Caldwell's The Romance of Atlantis was written when she was 12.\n (1956–1976), Le Don de Vorace, was published in 1974.\nHilda Conkling (1910–1986) had her poems published in Poems by a Little Girl (1920), Shoes of the Wind (1922) and Silverhorn (1924).\nAbraham Cowley (1618–1667), Tragicall History of Piramus and Thisbe (1628), Poetical Blossoms (published 1633).\nMaureen Daly (1921–2006) completed Seventeenth Summer before she was 20. It was published in 1942.\nJuliette Davies (born 2000) wrote the first book in the JJ Halo series when she was eight years old. The series was published the following year.\nSamuel R. Delany (born 1 April 1942) published his The Jewels of Aptor in 1962.\nPatricia Finney's A Shadow of Gulls was published in 1977 when she was 18. Its sequel, The Crow Goddess, was published in 1978.\nBarbara Newhall Follett (1914–1939) wrote her first novel The House Without Windows at the age of eight. The manuscript was destroyed in a house fire and she later retyped her manuscript at the age of 12. The novel was published by Knopf publishing house in January 1927.\nFord Madox Ford (né Hueffer) (1873–1939) published in 1892 two children's stories, The Brown Owl and The Feather, and a novel, The Shifting of the Fire.\nAnne Frank (1929–1945) wrote her diary for two-and-a-half years starting on her 13th birthday. It was published posthumously as Het Achterhuis in 1947 and then in English translation in 1952 as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. An unabridged translation followed in 1996.\nMiles Franklin wrote My Brilliant Career (1901) when she was a teenager.\nAlec Greven's How to Talk to Girls was published in 2008 when he was nine years old. Subsequently he has published How to Talk to Moms, How to Talk to Dads and How to Talk to Santa.\nFaïza Guène (born 1985) had Kiffe kiffe demain published in 2004, when she was 19. It has since been translated into 22 languages, including English (as Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow).\nSonya Hartnett (born 1968) was thirteen years old when she wrote her first novel, Trouble All the Way, which was published in Australia in 1984.\nAlex and Brett Harris wrote the best-selling book Do Hard Things (2008), a non-fiction book challenging teenagers to \"rebel against low expectations\", at age 19. Two years later came a follow-up book called Start Here (2010).\nGeorgette Heyer (1902–1974) wrote The Black Moth when she was 17 and received a publishing contract when she was 18. It was published just after she turned 19.\nSusan Hill (born 1942), The Enclosure, published in 1961.\nS. E. Hinton (born 1948), The Outsiders, first published in 1967.\nPalle Huld (1912–2010) wrote A Boy Scout Around the World (Jorden Rundt i 44 dage) when he was 15, following a sponsored journey around the world.\nGeorge Vernon Hudson (1867–1946) completed An Elementary Manual of New Zealand Entomology at the end of 1886, when he was 19, but not published until 1892.\nKatharine Hull (1921–1977) and Pamela Whitlock (1920–1982) wrote the children's outdoor adventure novel The Far-Distant Oxus in 1937. It was followed in 1938 by Escape to Persia and in 1939 by Oxus in Summer.\nLeigh Hunt (1784–1859) published Juvenilia; or, a Collection of Poems Written between the ages of Twelve and Sixteen by J. H. L. Hunt, Late of the Grammar School of Christ's Hospital in March 1801.\nKody Keplinger (born 1991) wrote her debut novel The DUFF when she was 17.\nGordon Korman (born 1963), This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall (1978), three sequels, and I Want to Go Home (1981).\nMatthew Gregory Lewis (1775–1818) wrote the Gothic novel The Monk, now regarded as a classic of the genre, before he was twenty. It was published in 1796.\nNina Lugovskaya (1918–1993), a painter, theater director and Gulag survivor, kept a diary in 1932–37, which shows strong social sensitivities. It was found in the Russian State Archives and published 2003. It appeared in English in the same year.\nJoyce Maynard (born 1953) completed Looking Back while she was 19. It was first published in 1973.\nMargaret Mitchell (1900–1949) wrote her novella Lost Laysen at the age of fifteen and gave the two notebooks containing the manuscript to her boyfriend, Henry Love Angel. The novel was published posthumously in 1996.\nBen Okri, the Nigerian poet and novelist, (born 1959) wrote his first book Flowers and Shadows while he was 19.\nAlice Oseman(born 1994) wrote the novel Solitaire when she was 17 and it was published in 2014.\nHelen Oyeyemi (born 1984) completed The Icarus Girl while still 18. First published in 2005.\nChristopher Paolini (born 1983) had Eragon, the first novel of the Inheritance Cycle, first published 2002.\nEmily Pepys (1833–1877), daughter of a bishop, wrote a vivid private journal over six months of 1844–45, aged ten. It was discovered much later and published in 1984.\nAnya Reiss (born 1991) wrote her play Spur of the Moment when she was 17. It was both performed and published in 2010, when she was 18.\nArthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) wrote almost all his prose and poetry while still a teenager, for example Le Soleil était encore chaud (1866), Le Bateau ivre (1871) and Une Saison en Enfer (1873).\nJohn Thomas Romney Robinson (1792–1882) saw his juvenile poems published in 1806, when he was 13.\nFrançoise Sagan (1935–2004) had Bonjour tristesse published in 1954, when she was 18.\nMary Shelley (1797–1851) completed Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus during May 1817, when she was 19. It was first published in the following year.\nMattie Stepanek (1990–2004), an American poet, published seven best-selling books of poetry.\nJohn Steptoe (1950–1989), author and illustrator, began his picture book Stevie at 16. It was published in 1969 in Life.\nAnna Stothard (born 1983) saw her Isabel and Rocco published when she was 19.\nDorothy Straight (born 1958) in 1962 wrote How the World Began, which was published by Pantheon Books in 1964. She holds the Guinness world record for the youngest female published author.\nJalaluddin Al-Suyuti (c. 1445–1505) wrote his first book, Sharh Al-Isti'aadha wal-Basmalah, at the age of 17.\nF. J. Thwaites (1908–1979) wrote his bestselling novel The Broken Melody when he was 19.\nJohn Kennedy Toole (1937–1969) wrote The Neon Bible in 1954 when he was 16. It was not published until 1989.\nAlec Waugh (1898–1981) wrote his novel about school life, The Loom of Youth, after leaving school. It was published in 1917.\nCatherine Webb (born 1986) had five young adult books published before she was 20: Mirror Dreams (2002), Mirror Wakes (2003), Waywalkers (2003), Timekeepers (2004) and The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle (February 2006).\nNancy Yi Fan (born 1993) published her debut Swordbird when she was 12. Other books she published as a teenager include Sword Quest (2008) and Sword Mountain (2012).\nKat Zhang (born 1991) was 20 when she sold, in a three-book deal, her entire Hybrid Chronicles trilogy. The first book, What's Left of Me, was published 2012.\n\nSee also \nLists of books\n\nReferences \n\nBooks Written By Children and Teenagers\nbooks\nChildren And Teenagers, Written By\nChi"
] |
[
"Chuck Schuldiner",
"Biography",
"When was he born?",
"May 13, 1967,"
] | C_318d750d0b08450b9db3f152883cbfc5_1 | Where did he grow up? | 2 | Where did Chuck Schuldiner grow up? | Chuck Schuldiner | Schuldiner was born on May 13, 1967, on Long Island, New York to a Jewish father of Austrian descent and a mother from the American South, a convert to Judaism. Both of his parents were teachers. In 1968, his family moved to Florida. Schuldiner was the youngest of three children: he had an older brother named Frank and an older sister named Bethann. He started playing guitar at the age of 9; his 16-year-old brother had died and his parents bought him a guitar, thinking it would help with his grief. He took classical lessons for less than a year in which his teacher taught him "Mary had a Little Lamb", which he did not like very much, and almost stopped completely, until his parents saw an electric guitar at a yard sale and bought it for him. The young Schuldiner immediately took to the instrument. After getting amps, he never stopped playing, writing and teaching himself. Schuldiner was known to spend the weekend in the garage or his room playing his guitar, but was limited to three hours on weekdays when school was in session. Schuldiner first played in public in his early teens. Schuldiner was originally inspired by Metallica, Iron Maiden, Kiss and classical jazz, among others. He was particularly interested in the metal movement known as NWOBHM - New Wave of British Heavy Metal - and cited bands of that genre among his favorites. He frequently cited French band Sortilege as his personal favorite metal group. Slayer, Celtic Frost, Possessed, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond and Metallica were later influences he would apply more to his own band. Later in his career, Schuldiner frequently cited progressive metal bands such as Watchtower, Coroner and Queensryche as influences. The official Schuldiner website, Empty Words, quotes Schuldiner's mother making the claim that he enjoyed all forms of music except country and rap. He also enjoyed jazz and classical music in addition to metal and British alternative acts such as Lush. Schuldiner performed well in school before becoming bored with education, and eventually dropped out. He later regretted this decision. He has stated that if he had not become a musician, he would have liked to have become a veterinarian or a cook. CANNOTANSWER | his family moved to Florida. | Charles Michael Schuldiner (May 13, 1967 – December 13, 2001) was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He founded the band Death in 1983 and was their lead vocalist and guitarist until his death in 2001. His obituary in the January 5, 2002, issue of UK's Kerrang! magazine described him as "one of the most significant figures in the history of metal." Schuldiner was ranked No. 10 in Joel McIver's book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists in 2009 and No. 20 in March 2004 Guitar Worlds "The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists". In 1987, Schuldiner founded the publishing company Mutilation Music, affiliated with performance rights organization BMI. Schuldiner died in 2001 of a brain tumor.
Schuldiner is often referred to as "The Godfather of death metal", although he was uncomfortable with this nickname, remarking that "I don't think I should take the credits for this death metal stuff. I'm just a guy from a band, and I think Death is a metal band."
Biography
Early life
Schuldiner was born on May 13, 1967, on Long Island, New York. His father Mal Schuldiner was Jewish and the son of Austrian immigrants, and his mother Jane Schuldiner was from the American South and had converted to Judaism. In 1968, his family moved to Florida.
He started playing guitar at the age of 9. He took classical lessons for less than a year in which his teacher taught him "Mary had a Little Lamb", which he did not like very much, and almost stopped completely until his parents bought him an electric guitar at a yard sale. The young Schuldiner immediately took to the instrument and began playing, writing and teaching himself. He was known to spend the weekend in the garage or his room playing his guitar but was limited to three hours on weekdays when school was in session. Schuldiner first played in public in his early teens.
Schuldiner was originally inspired by Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Kiss and classical jazz, among others. He was particularly interested in the metal movement known as NWOBHM – New Wave of British Heavy Metal – and cited bands of that genre among his favorites. He frequently cited French band Sortilège as his personal favorite metal group. Slayer, Celtic Frost, Possessed, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond and Metallica were later influences he would apply more to his own songwriting. Later in his career, Schuldiner frequently cited progressive metal bands such as Watchtower, Coroner and Queensrÿche as influences. The official Schuldiner website, Empty Words, quotes Schuldiner's mother making the claim that he enjoyed all forms of music except country and rap. He also enjoyed jazz and classical music in addition to metal and British alternative acts such as Lush.
Schuldiner performed well in school before becoming bored with education and eventually dropping out. He later regretted this decision. He has stated that if he had not become a musician, he would have liked to have become a veterinarian or a cook.
Musical career
Taking inspiration from Nasty Savage, Schuldiner formed Death as Mantas in 1983 when he was just 16 years old. Original members were Schuldiner (guitar), Rick Rozz (guitar) and Kam Lee (drums and vocals). In January 1986, Schuldiner moved to Toronto and temporarily joined the Canadian band Slaughter. However, he quickly returned to continue the formation of Death.
Death underwent many lineup changes. With Chris Reifert, Schuldiner eventually released the first Death album, titled Scream Bloody Gore, in 1987. He continued with 1988's Leprosy with the line-up of former Mantas guitarist Rick Rozz and rhythm section Terry Butler on bass and Bill Andrews on drums, and 1990's Spiritual Healing, where guitarist James Murphy had replaced the fired Rozz in 1989.
After Spiritual Healing, Schuldiner stopped working with full-time band members, preferring to work with studio and live venue musicians, due to bad relationships with Death's previous rhythm section and guitarists. This earned Schuldiner something of a 'perfectionist' reputation in the metal community. Schuldiner had also fired his manager Eric Greif but settled and re-hired him before the recording of his next, influential release.
Death's breakthrough album, Human saw the band evolving to a more technical and progressive style, in which Schuldiner displayed his guitar skills more than ever. He continued in this style (and continued the success of the band) with 1993's Individual Thought Patterns, 1995's Symbolic, and finally The Sound of Perseverance in 1998.
He put Death on hold after this to continue Control Denied, which he had been putting together prior to the release of The Sound of Perseverance, and released The Fragile Art of Existence in 1999. Control Denied also had other players from the latest Death album but featured a melodic metal vocalist. Schuldiner also played guitar in the "supergroup" Voodoocult on the album Jesus Killing Machine in 1994 and played a guest solo on Naphobia's 1995 release, Of Hell on the track "As Ancients Evolve" as a favor to the band's bassist at the time who was a friend of Schuldiner's. Schuldiner was also asked to be one of the many guest vocalists on Dave Grohl's 2001 Probot. Grohl, Napalm Death, Ozzy Osbourne, and Anthrax all increased efforts to raise funds for Schuldiner's medical bills with Grohl trying to involve Schuldiner on an album he was working on. In a 1999 interview, Schuldiner spoke about why he didn't sing on the Control Denied album The Fragile Art of Existence "...these vocals are all I ever wanted to do in Death but couldn't. I've had this dream of recording like that for years, and it seems like a dream come true. Tim Aymar is an amazing singer and this is the main difference. I think people will be surprised at the violence and strength of the album. Many people are expecting something like Iron Maiden, but, despite being one of my favorite bands, I didn't want to make an Iron Maiden-like album. I wanted to make an unpredictable album, just like I did in Death, I guess. I don't like to make predictable albums."
Illness and death
In 1999, Schuldiner was diagnosed with brain cancer. He continued to work on his music, continuing his work with Control Denied. He was at first unable to afford the surgery that he needed immediately. A press release called for support from everyone, including fellow artists. Jane Schuldiner urged all who read the statements about Schuldiner and his illness to go out and get insurance, stating her frustration in the American healthcare system. Schuldiner had taken out medical insurance after his first surgery, but the insurer had refused to pay because the cancer pre-dated insurance being taken out. Many artists, including Kid Rock, Korn and Red Hot Chili Peppers, got together during the summer of 2001 to auction off personal items, with the funds assisting Schuldiner's medical expenses, an effort covered by MTV. Matt Heafy, vocalist and guitarist for Trivium, has also stated that the band had played a benefit show for Schuldiner while he was in the hospital in their days as a local band. In November 2001, Schuldiner's condition worsened as he became ill with Pneumocystis carinii.
On December 13, 2001, Schuldiner died at the age of 34 and was cremated. MTV reported that recording artists including Dave Grohl, Mike Patton, Max Cavalera, King Diamond, Ville Valo, Trey Azagthoth, Glen Benton, Jason Newsted, Corey Taylor, and all former and active members of Death, attended his memorial service.
Legacy
With the assistance of Schuldiner's family, former manager Eric Greif handled his legacy as President of Perseverance Holdings Ltd. Schuldiner's mother Jane and sister Beth Schuldiner frequently interact with his fans and both have stated many times that they enjoy his music. Greif kept track of his recordings and handled Schuldiner's intellectual property. Beth Schuldiner has a son named Christopher Steele, who also plays guitar and has all of Schuldiner's guitars. BC Rich also released a statement in their 2008 catalog stating that Schuldiner's signature model Stealth will be available for purchase, and that endorsement is overseen by Steele.
Schuldiner had homes and two dogs in the area surrounding Orlando. Schuldiner built a studio inside the garage where many of his songs such as "Crystal Mountain" were inspired. Schuldiner's home office was the site of the Metal Crusade newsletter and fan club.
A legal battle began from the time of Schuldiner's death on the settlement of the rights to the partially completed second Control Denied album, When Man and Machine Collide, which was recorded in 2000–2001 and was scheduled for release in 2013. Demos of these unreleased Control Denied songs, as well as early Death demos and live Death recordings from 1990, were released in the Zero Tolerance two-part compilation bootlegs by the Dutch Hammerheart Holdings company and the Schuldiners and Greif asserted rights on behalf of Schuldiner's Estate. The matter was settled in November 2009, anticipating the project being finished and released in 2010.
Tribute concerts have been coordinated or funded by Schuldiner's mother and family and various Death tribute groups internationally. Former CKY frontman, Deron Miller, who considers Schuldiner an idol of his, got the idea, while working on various projects with former Death guitarist (and pituitary tumor survivor) James Murphy, to do a tribute album. Murphy announced he would release a Chuck Schuldiner tribute album to commemorate his lasting mark on the metal community and Schuldiner's family publicly offered support for Murphy's effort, though it has never materialized. Schuldiner's sister Beth confirmed via her YouTube channel that Death: Live in Japan, a behind the scenes Death video, as well as a potential boxset containing all of Schuldiner's works including some exclusive copies of handwritten notes by Schuldiner are in the works via Relapse Records. Schuldiner Estate lawyer Eric Greif held a charity Chuck Schuldiner Birthday Bash in Calgary, Alberta, May 13, 2011, featuring speeches by Greif and former Death guitarist Paul Masvidal, as well as bands performing Schuldiner's music. Greif repeated this May 12, 2012, with special guest band Massacre, featuring former Death members Rick Rozz and Terry Butler.
Book
In January 2001, Mahyar Dean, an Iranian metal guitarist/musician, wrote Death, a book about Death and Schuldiner poems. The book includes bilingual lyrics and many articles about the band. The book was sent through the site keepers of emptywords.org to Schuldiner, who in his words was "truly blown away and honored by the obvious work and devotion he put into bringing the book to life".
Beliefs
Schuldiner designed the Death logo and its various incarnations during the length of his career. In 1991, before the release of Human, he cleaned up the logo taking out more intricate details and the "T" in the logo was swapped from an inverted cross to a more regular looking "T", one reason being to quash any implication of religion.
Schuldiner was also openly against hard drugs; he is quoted as saying, "I've tripped several times. That's all because I don't like the hard drugs. And my only drugs are alcohol and grass." Schuldiner also stated that he was pro-choice. He is quoted as saying that "it should be legal. If I was a woman surely I would like to have a choice to have a child or not. In U.S. a lot of new-borns are killed because they were unwanted. It is better to solve it immediately when a woman finds out about the pregnancy and she doesn't want a child. Better to go for an abortion than to kill a baby. That is terrible. Men cannot force women to keep a child when they themselves feel they can't."
Musical style
Schuldiner was mostly self-taught as a guitarist. In 1993, he expressed a disinterest in music theory: "I know enough about what I'm playing to memorize the scales and things, but I have no idea how you would label them. As long as I can play it, memorize it and apply it, I don't need to know what you call it."
In the early days of Death, Schuldiner used a "deep, raspy" death growl vocal technique. He said in 1993 that "it takes a lot of energy and a lot of throat abuse to get through a show."
Equipment
Guitars
Schuldiner's primary guitar throughout most of his career was the B.C. Rich Stealth model, an extremely rare model produced in small amounts under the B.C. Rich US (U-) series name along with the Custom Shop, until it was released to the public as the Chuck Schuldiner Tribute Stealth. The Stealth was also released as an N.J. model in the 1980's and 1990's, but was extremely rare. Prior to this, he used a B.C. Rich Mockingbird copy, built by "someone in Florida", and a B.C Rich Ignitor. Most of Schuldiner's sound came from a DiMarzio X2N pickup placed in the bridge. During the (In)Human Tour of the World (1991–92), Schuldiner briefly endorsed a small Wisconsin custom guitar company called Axtra, who worked with him on designs, though he still insisted on using his B.C. Rich during filming of the Lack of Comprehension video in September 1991 in Orlando.
Amplifiers
The amplifier he used towards the end of his career was a Marshall Valvestate (Model 8100) amplifier head and Valvestate 4x12 speaker cabinets on Individual Thought Patterns as well as the ITP tour and eventually started using Marshall 1960 cabinets. Before that he used various equipment including Randall RG100ES heads and Randall cabinets, and on the (In)Human Tour of the World he used a small GK 250ML miked up, despite having hollow 4x12 stacks 'for show'. On the first two Death albums, he stated he used a Boss distortion pedal, but didn't specify which, after which he used amplifier distortion.
Discography
Death
1987: Scream Bloody Gore
1988: Leprosy
1990: Spiritual Healing
1991: Human
1993: Individual Thought Patterns
1995: Symbolic
1998: The Sound of Perseverance
Voodoocult
1994: Jesus Killing Machine
Control Denied
1999: The Fragile Art of Existence
See also
Honorific nicknames in popular music
References
Sources
The Metal Crusade, official site of The Death Fan Club
Empty Words, official Death/Control Denied archival site
1967 births
2001 deaths
Deaths from pneumonia in Florida
American heavy metal guitarists
American heavy metal singers
American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
Rhythm guitarists
Lead guitarists
Death (metal band) members
Death metal musicians
Deaths from brain tumor
Deaths from cancer in Florida
Neurological disease deaths in Florida
Jewish American musicians
Jewish singers
Jewish American songwriters
Singers from Florida
Singers from New York (state)
People from Glen Cove, New York
Singers from Orlando, Florida
People from Altamonte Springs, Florida
Progressive metal guitarists
Songwriters from Florida
Songwriters from New York (state)
20th-century American singers
Jewish heavy metal musicians
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Florida
Guitarists from New York (state)
American male guitarists
Control Denied members
Voodoocult members
20th-century American male singers
20th-century American Jews
American male songwriters | true | [
"Grow Up may refer to:\nAdvance in age\nProgress toward psychological maturity\nGrow Up (book), a 2007 book by Keith Allen\nGrow Up (video game), 2016 video game\n\nMusic\nGrow Up (Desperate Journalist album), 2017\nGrow Up (The Queers album), 1990\nGrow Up (Svoy album), 2011\nGrow Up, a 2015 EP by HALO\n\"Grow Up\" (Olly Murs song)\n\"Grow Up\" (Paramore song)\n\"Grow Up\" (Simple Plan song)\n\"Grow Up\", a song by Rockwell\n\"Grow Up\", a song from the Bratz album Rock Angelz\n\"Grow Up\", a song by Cher Lloyd from Sticks and Stones\n\nSee also\nGrowing Up (disambiguation)\nGrow Up, Tony Phillips, a 2013 film by Emily Hagins",
"\"When I Grow Up\" is the second single from Swedish recording artist Fever Ray's self-titled debut album, Fever Ray (2009).\n\nCritical reception\nPitchfork Media placed \"When I Grow Up\" at number 36 on the website's list of The Top 100 Tracks of 2009.\n\nMusic video\nThe music video for \"When I Grow Up\" was directed by Martin de Thurah. He said of the video's visual statement:\n\n\"That initial idea was something about something coming out of water—something which was about to take form – a state turning into something new. And a double headed creature not deciding which to turn. But the idea had to take a simpler form, to let the song grow by itself. I remembered a photo I took in Croatia two years ago, a swimming pool with its shining blue color in a grey foggy autumn landscape.\"\n\nThe video premiered on Fever Ray's YouTube channel on 19 February 2009. It has received over 12 million views as of March 2016.\n\n\"When I Grow Up\" was placed at number three on Spins list of The 20 Best Videos of 2009.\n\nTrack listings\niTunes single\n\"When I Grow Up\" – 4:31\n\"When I Grow Up\" (Håkan Lidbo's Encephalitis Remix) – 5:59\n\"When I Grow Up\" (D. Lissvik) – 4:28\n\"Memories from When I Grew Up (Remembered by The Subliminal Kid)\" – 16:41\n\"When I Grow Up\" (Van Rivers Dark Sails on the Horizon Mix) – 9:16\n\"When I Grow Up\" (We Grow Apart Vocal Version by Pär Grindvik) – 6:02\n\"When I Grow Up\" (We Grow Apart Inspiration - Take 2 - By Pär Grindvik) – 7:59\n\"When I Grow Up\" (Scuba's High Up Mix) – 6:17\n\"When I Grow Up\" (Scuba's Straight Down Mix) – 5:54\n\"When I Grow Up\" (Video) – 4:04\n\nSwedish 12\" single \nA1. \"When I Grow Up\" (Van Rivers Dark Sails on the Horizon Mix) – 9:10\nA2. \"When I Grow Up\" (D. Lissvik) – 4:28\nB1. \"Memories from When I Grew Up (Remembered by The Subliminal Kid)\" – 16:41\n\nUK promo CD single \n\"When I Grow Up\" (Edit) – 3:42\n\"When I Grow Up\" (D. Lissvik Radio Edit) – 3:19\n\nNominations\n\nAppearances in other media\nThe song was used as part of the soundtrack for the video game Pro Evolution Soccer 2011.\n\nReferences\n\n2009 singles\n2009 songs\nFever Ray songs\nSongs written by Karin Dreijer"
] |
[
"Chuck Schuldiner",
"Biography",
"When was he born?",
"May 13, 1967,",
"Where did he grow up?",
"his family moved to Florida."
] | C_318d750d0b08450b9db3f152883cbfc5_1 | Did he have a good relationship with his parents? | 3 | Did Chuck Schuldiner have a good relationship with his parents? | Chuck Schuldiner | Schuldiner was born on May 13, 1967, on Long Island, New York to a Jewish father of Austrian descent and a mother from the American South, a convert to Judaism. Both of his parents were teachers. In 1968, his family moved to Florida. Schuldiner was the youngest of three children: he had an older brother named Frank and an older sister named Bethann. He started playing guitar at the age of 9; his 16-year-old brother had died and his parents bought him a guitar, thinking it would help with his grief. He took classical lessons for less than a year in which his teacher taught him "Mary had a Little Lamb", which he did not like very much, and almost stopped completely, until his parents saw an electric guitar at a yard sale and bought it for him. The young Schuldiner immediately took to the instrument. After getting amps, he never stopped playing, writing and teaching himself. Schuldiner was known to spend the weekend in the garage or his room playing his guitar, but was limited to three hours on weekdays when school was in session. Schuldiner first played in public in his early teens. Schuldiner was originally inspired by Metallica, Iron Maiden, Kiss and classical jazz, among others. He was particularly interested in the metal movement known as NWOBHM - New Wave of British Heavy Metal - and cited bands of that genre among his favorites. He frequently cited French band Sortilege as his personal favorite metal group. Slayer, Celtic Frost, Possessed, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond and Metallica were later influences he would apply more to his own band. Later in his career, Schuldiner frequently cited progressive metal bands such as Watchtower, Coroner and Queensryche as influences. The official Schuldiner website, Empty Words, quotes Schuldiner's mother making the claim that he enjoyed all forms of music except country and rap. He also enjoyed jazz and classical music in addition to metal and British alternative acts such as Lush. Schuldiner performed well in school before becoming bored with education, and eventually dropped out. He later regretted this decision. He has stated that if he had not become a musician, he would have liked to have become a veterinarian or a cook. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Charles Michael Schuldiner (May 13, 1967 – December 13, 2001) was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He founded the band Death in 1983 and was their lead vocalist and guitarist until his death in 2001. His obituary in the January 5, 2002, issue of UK's Kerrang! magazine described him as "one of the most significant figures in the history of metal." Schuldiner was ranked No. 10 in Joel McIver's book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists in 2009 and No. 20 in March 2004 Guitar Worlds "The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists". In 1987, Schuldiner founded the publishing company Mutilation Music, affiliated with performance rights organization BMI. Schuldiner died in 2001 of a brain tumor.
Schuldiner is often referred to as "The Godfather of death metal", although he was uncomfortable with this nickname, remarking that "I don't think I should take the credits for this death metal stuff. I'm just a guy from a band, and I think Death is a metal band."
Biography
Early life
Schuldiner was born on May 13, 1967, on Long Island, New York. His father Mal Schuldiner was Jewish and the son of Austrian immigrants, and his mother Jane Schuldiner was from the American South and had converted to Judaism. In 1968, his family moved to Florida.
He started playing guitar at the age of 9. He took classical lessons for less than a year in which his teacher taught him "Mary had a Little Lamb", which he did not like very much, and almost stopped completely until his parents bought him an electric guitar at a yard sale. The young Schuldiner immediately took to the instrument and began playing, writing and teaching himself. He was known to spend the weekend in the garage or his room playing his guitar but was limited to three hours on weekdays when school was in session. Schuldiner first played in public in his early teens.
Schuldiner was originally inspired by Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Kiss and classical jazz, among others. He was particularly interested in the metal movement known as NWOBHM – New Wave of British Heavy Metal – and cited bands of that genre among his favorites. He frequently cited French band Sortilège as his personal favorite metal group. Slayer, Celtic Frost, Possessed, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond and Metallica were later influences he would apply more to his own songwriting. Later in his career, Schuldiner frequently cited progressive metal bands such as Watchtower, Coroner and Queensrÿche as influences. The official Schuldiner website, Empty Words, quotes Schuldiner's mother making the claim that he enjoyed all forms of music except country and rap. He also enjoyed jazz and classical music in addition to metal and British alternative acts such as Lush.
Schuldiner performed well in school before becoming bored with education and eventually dropping out. He later regretted this decision. He has stated that if he had not become a musician, he would have liked to have become a veterinarian or a cook.
Musical career
Taking inspiration from Nasty Savage, Schuldiner formed Death as Mantas in 1983 when he was just 16 years old. Original members were Schuldiner (guitar), Rick Rozz (guitar) and Kam Lee (drums and vocals). In January 1986, Schuldiner moved to Toronto and temporarily joined the Canadian band Slaughter. However, he quickly returned to continue the formation of Death.
Death underwent many lineup changes. With Chris Reifert, Schuldiner eventually released the first Death album, titled Scream Bloody Gore, in 1987. He continued with 1988's Leprosy with the line-up of former Mantas guitarist Rick Rozz and rhythm section Terry Butler on bass and Bill Andrews on drums, and 1990's Spiritual Healing, where guitarist James Murphy had replaced the fired Rozz in 1989.
After Spiritual Healing, Schuldiner stopped working with full-time band members, preferring to work with studio and live venue musicians, due to bad relationships with Death's previous rhythm section and guitarists. This earned Schuldiner something of a 'perfectionist' reputation in the metal community. Schuldiner had also fired his manager Eric Greif but settled and re-hired him before the recording of his next, influential release.
Death's breakthrough album, Human saw the band evolving to a more technical and progressive style, in which Schuldiner displayed his guitar skills more than ever. He continued in this style (and continued the success of the band) with 1993's Individual Thought Patterns, 1995's Symbolic, and finally The Sound of Perseverance in 1998.
He put Death on hold after this to continue Control Denied, which he had been putting together prior to the release of The Sound of Perseverance, and released The Fragile Art of Existence in 1999. Control Denied also had other players from the latest Death album but featured a melodic metal vocalist. Schuldiner also played guitar in the "supergroup" Voodoocult on the album Jesus Killing Machine in 1994 and played a guest solo on Naphobia's 1995 release, Of Hell on the track "As Ancients Evolve" as a favor to the band's bassist at the time who was a friend of Schuldiner's. Schuldiner was also asked to be one of the many guest vocalists on Dave Grohl's 2001 Probot. Grohl, Napalm Death, Ozzy Osbourne, and Anthrax all increased efforts to raise funds for Schuldiner's medical bills with Grohl trying to involve Schuldiner on an album he was working on. In a 1999 interview, Schuldiner spoke about why he didn't sing on the Control Denied album The Fragile Art of Existence "...these vocals are all I ever wanted to do in Death but couldn't. I've had this dream of recording like that for years, and it seems like a dream come true. Tim Aymar is an amazing singer and this is the main difference. I think people will be surprised at the violence and strength of the album. Many people are expecting something like Iron Maiden, but, despite being one of my favorite bands, I didn't want to make an Iron Maiden-like album. I wanted to make an unpredictable album, just like I did in Death, I guess. I don't like to make predictable albums."
Illness and death
In 1999, Schuldiner was diagnosed with brain cancer. He continued to work on his music, continuing his work with Control Denied. He was at first unable to afford the surgery that he needed immediately. A press release called for support from everyone, including fellow artists. Jane Schuldiner urged all who read the statements about Schuldiner and his illness to go out and get insurance, stating her frustration in the American healthcare system. Schuldiner had taken out medical insurance after his first surgery, but the insurer had refused to pay because the cancer pre-dated insurance being taken out. Many artists, including Kid Rock, Korn and Red Hot Chili Peppers, got together during the summer of 2001 to auction off personal items, with the funds assisting Schuldiner's medical expenses, an effort covered by MTV. Matt Heafy, vocalist and guitarist for Trivium, has also stated that the band had played a benefit show for Schuldiner while he was in the hospital in their days as a local band. In November 2001, Schuldiner's condition worsened as he became ill with Pneumocystis carinii.
On December 13, 2001, Schuldiner died at the age of 34 and was cremated. MTV reported that recording artists including Dave Grohl, Mike Patton, Max Cavalera, King Diamond, Ville Valo, Trey Azagthoth, Glen Benton, Jason Newsted, Corey Taylor, and all former and active members of Death, attended his memorial service.
Legacy
With the assistance of Schuldiner's family, former manager Eric Greif handled his legacy as President of Perseverance Holdings Ltd. Schuldiner's mother Jane and sister Beth Schuldiner frequently interact with his fans and both have stated many times that they enjoy his music. Greif kept track of his recordings and handled Schuldiner's intellectual property. Beth Schuldiner has a son named Christopher Steele, who also plays guitar and has all of Schuldiner's guitars. BC Rich also released a statement in their 2008 catalog stating that Schuldiner's signature model Stealth will be available for purchase, and that endorsement is overseen by Steele.
Schuldiner had homes and two dogs in the area surrounding Orlando. Schuldiner built a studio inside the garage where many of his songs such as "Crystal Mountain" were inspired. Schuldiner's home office was the site of the Metal Crusade newsletter and fan club.
A legal battle began from the time of Schuldiner's death on the settlement of the rights to the partially completed second Control Denied album, When Man and Machine Collide, which was recorded in 2000–2001 and was scheduled for release in 2013. Demos of these unreleased Control Denied songs, as well as early Death demos and live Death recordings from 1990, were released in the Zero Tolerance two-part compilation bootlegs by the Dutch Hammerheart Holdings company and the Schuldiners and Greif asserted rights on behalf of Schuldiner's Estate. The matter was settled in November 2009, anticipating the project being finished and released in 2010.
Tribute concerts have been coordinated or funded by Schuldiner's mother and family and various Death tribute groups internationally. Former CKY frontman, Deron Miller, who considers Schuldiner an idol of his, got the idea, while working on various projects with former Death guitarist (and pituitary tumor survivor) James Murphy, to do a tribute album. Murphy announced he would release a Chuck Schuldiner tribute album to commemorate his lasting mark on the metal community and Schuldiner's family publicly offered support for Murphy's effort, though it has never materialized. Schuldiner's sister Beth confirmed via her YouTube channel that Death: Live in Japan, a behind the scenes Death video, as well as a potential boxset containing all of Schuldiner's works including some exclusive copies of handwritten notes by Schuldiner are in the works via Relapse Records. Schuldiner Estate lawyer Eric Greif held a charity Chuck Schuldiner Birthday Bash in Calgary, Alberta, May 13, 2011, featuring speeches by Greif and former Death guitarist Paul Masvidal, as well as bands performing Schuldiner's music. Greif repeated this May 12, 2012, with special guest band Massacre, featuring former Death members Rick Rozz and Terry Butler.
Book
In January 2001, Mahyar Dean, an Iranian metal guitarist/musician, wrote Death, a book about Death and Schuldiner poems. The book includes bilingual lyrics and many articles about the band. The book was sent through the site keepers of emptywords.org to Schuldiner, who in his words was "truly blown away and honored by the obvious work and devotion he put into bringing the book to life".
Beliefs
Schuldiner designed the Death logo and its various incarnations during the length of his career. In 1991, before the release of Human, he cleaned up the logo taking out more intricate details and the "T" in the logo was swapped from an inverted cross to a more regular looking "T", one reason being to quash any implication of religion.
Schuldiner was also openly against hard drugs; he is quoted as saying, "I've tripped several times. That's all because I don't like the hard drugs. And my only drugs are alcohol and grass." Schuldiner also stated that he was pro-choice. He is quoted as saying that "it should be legal. If I was a woman surely I would like to have a choice to have a child or not. In U.S. a lot of new-borns are killed because they were unwanted. It is better to solve it immediately when a woman finds out about the pregnancy and she doesn't want a child. Better to go for an abortion than to kill a baby. That is terrible. Men cannot force women to keep a child when they themselves feel they can't."
Musical style
Schuldiner was mostly self-taught as a guitarist. In 1993, he expressed a disinterest in music theory: "I know enough about what I'm playing to memorize the scales and things, but I have no idea how you would label them. As long as I can play it, memorize it and apply it, I don't need to know what you call it."
In the early days of Death, Schuldiner used a "deep, raspy" death growl vocal technique. He said in 1993 that "it takes a lot of energy and a lot of throat abuse to get through a show."
Equipment
Guitars
Schuldiner's primary guitar throughout most of his career was the B.C. Rich Stealth model, an extremely rare model produced in small amounts under the B.C. Rich US (U-) series name along with the Custom Shop, until it was released to the public as the Chuck Schuldiner Tribute Stealth. The Stealth was also released as an N.J. model in the 1980's and 1990's, but was extremely rare. Prior to this, he used a B.C. Rich Mockingbird copy, built by "someone in Florida", and a B.C Rich Ignitor. Most of Schuldiner's sound came from a DiMarzio X2N pickup placed in the bridge. During the (In)Human Tour of the World (1991–92), Schuldiner briefly endorsed a small Wisconsin custom guitar company called Axtra, who worked with him on designs, though he still insisted on using his B.C. Rich during filming of the Lack of Comprehension video in September 1991 in Orlando.
Amplifiers
The amplifier he used towards the end of his career was a Marshall Valvestate (Model 8100) amplifier head and Valvestate 4x12 speaker cabinets on Individual Thought Patterns as well as the ITP tour and eventually started using Marshall 1960 cabinets. Before that he used various equipment including Randall RG100ES heads and Randall cabinets, and on the (In)Human Tour of the World he used a small GK 250ML miked up, despite having hollow 4x12 stacks 'for show'. On the first two Death albums, he stated he used a Boss distortion pedal, but didn't specify which, after which he used amplifier distortion.
Discography
Death
1987: Scream Bloody Gore
1988: Leprosy
1990: Spiritual Healing
1991: Human
1993: Individual Thought Patterns
1995: Symbolic
1998: The Sound of Perseverance
Voodoocult
1994: Jesus Killing Machine
Control Denied
1999: The Fragile Art of Existence
See also
Honorific nicknames in popular music
References
Sources
The Metal Crusade, official site of The Death Fan Club
Empty Words, official Death/Control Denied archival site
1967 births
2001 deaths
Deaths from pneumonia in Florida
American heavy metal guitarists
American heavy metal singers
American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
Rhythm guitarists
Lead guitarists
Death (metal band) members
Death metal musicians
Deaths from brain tumor
Deaths from cancer in Florida
Neurological disease deaths in Florida
Jewish American musicians
Jewish singers
Jewish American songwriters
Singers from Florida
Singers from New York (state)
People from Glen Cove, New York
Singers from Orlando, Florida
People from Altamonte Springs, Florida
Progressive metal guitarists
Songwriters from Florida
Songwriters from New York (state)
20th-century American singers
Jewish heavy metal musicians
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Florida
Guitarists from New York (state)
American male guitarists
Control Denied members
Voodoocult members
20th-century American male singers
20th-century American Jews
American male songwriters | false | [
"The Good Parents is the second full-length novel written by Joan London. It was first published in 2008.\n\nThe book concerns an eighteen-year-old girl, Maya de Jong, who moves to Melbourne and becomes involved in a relationship with her boss. When Maya's parents come to Melbourne to stay with her, they find that Maya has disappeared. London says of the role of parents with older children, \"There's nothing much you can do, except wait and be there\".\n\nAwards and nominations\n\n 2009 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nInterview with Joan London, ABC Radio National The Book Show, 21 August 2008\n\n2008 Australian novels\nNovels set in Melbourne",
"is a Shinto shrine located in the city of Gifu, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. From long ago, it has been considered a good place for married couples and children to go for good luck. One legend associated with Kashimori Shrine is that when Tenma, a mythical horse, landed behind the shrine, it left a hoof print in stone that can still be seen today. Each year, on April 5, the shrine hosts the Gifu Festival, along with Inaba Shrine and Kogane Shrine.\n\nEnshrined god\nThe Ichihaya-no-mikoto god is worshipped here. His parents are the Inishiki-Irihiko-no-mikoto god (Inaba Shrine) and the Nunoshihime-no-mikoto goddess (Kogane Shrine). Because of the relationship between their three gods, these three shrines have a very close relationship. As this shrine is built for the child of the two other gods, it is the smallest of the three shrines.\n\nReferences\n\nBuildings and structures in Gifu\nShinto shrines in Gifu Prefecture"
] |
[
"Chuck Schuldiner",
"Biography",
"When was he born?",
"May 13, 1967,",
"Where did he grow up?",
"his family moved to Florida.",
"Did he have a good relationship with his parents?",
"I don't know."
] | C_318d750d0b08450b9db3f152883cbfc5_1 | Did he have brothers and sisters? | 4 | Did Chuck Schuldiner have any brothers and sisters? | Chuck Schuldiner | Schuldiner was born on May 13, 1967, on Long Island, New York to a Jewish father of Austrian descent and a mother from the American South, a convert to Judaism. Both of his parents were teachers. In 1968, his family moved to Florida. Schuldiner was the youngest of three children: he had an older brother named Frank and an older sister named Bethann. He started playing guitar at the age of 9; his 16-year-old brother had died and his parents bought him a guitar, thinking it would help with his grief. He took classical lessons for less than a year in which his teacher taught him "Mary had a Little Lamb", which he did not like very much, and almost stopped completely, until his parents saw an electric guitar at a yard sale and bought it for him. The young Schuldiner immediately took to the instrument. After getting amps, he never stopped playing, writing and teaching himself. Schuldiner was known to spend the weekend in the garage or his room playing his guitar, but was limited to three hours on weekdays when school was in session. Schuldiner first played in public in his early teens. Schuldiner was originally inspired by Metallica, Iron Maiden, Kiss and classical jazz, among others. He was particularly interested in the metal movement known as NWOBHM - New Wave of British Heavy Metal - and cited bands of that genre among his favorites. He frequently cited French band Sortilege as his personal favorite metal group. Slayer, Celtic Frost, Possessed, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond and Metallica were later influences he would apply more to his own band. Later in his career, Schuldiner frequently cited progressive metal bands such as Watchtower, Coroner and Queensryche as influences. The official Schuldiner website, Empty Words, quotes Schuldiner's mother making the claim that he enjoyed all forms of music except country and rap. He also enjoyed jazz and classical music in addition to metal and British alternative acts such as Lush. Schuldiner performed well in school before becoming bored with education, and eventually dropped out. He later regretted this decision. He has stated that if he had not become a musician, he would have liked to have become a veterinarian or a cook. CANNOTANSWER | he had an older brother | Charles Michael Schuldiner (May 13, 1967 – December 13, 2001) was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He founded the band Death in 1983 and was their lead vocalist and guitarist until his death in 2001. His obituary in the January 5, 2002, issue of UK's Kerrang! magazine described him as "one of the most significant figures in the history of metal." Schuldiner was ranked No. 10 in Joel McIver's book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists in 2009 and No. 20 in March 2004 Guitar Worlds "The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists". In 1987, Schuldiner founded the publishing company Mutilation Music, affiliated with performance rights organization BMI. Schuldiner died in 2001 of a brain tumor.
Schuldiner is often referred to as "The Godfather of death metal", although he was uncomfortable with this nickname, remarking that "I don't think I should take the credits for this death metal stuff. I'm just a guy from a band, and I think Death is a metal band."
Biography
Early life
Schuldiner was born on May 13, 1967, on Long Island, New York. His father Mal Schuldiner was Jewish and the son of Austrian immigrants, and his mother Jane Schuldiner was from the American South and had converted to Judaism. In 1968, his family moved to Florida.
He started playing guitar at the age of 9. He took classical lessons for less than a year in which his teacher taught him "Mary had a Little Lamb", which he did not like very much, and almost stopped completely until his parents bought him an electric guitar at a yard sale. The young Schuldiner immediately took to the instrument and began playing, writing and teaching himself. He was known to spend the weekend in the garage or his room playing his guitar but was limited to three hours on weekdays when school was in session. Schuldiner first played in public in his early teens.
Schuldiner was originally inspired by Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Kiss and classical jazz, among others. He was particularly interested in the metal movement known as NWOBHM – New Wave of British Heavy Metal – and cited bands of that genre among his favorites. He frequently cited French band Sortilège as his personal favorite metal group. Slayer, Celtic Frost, Possessed, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond and Metallica were later influences he would apply more to his own songwriting. Later in his career, Schuldiner frequently cited progressive metal bands such as Watchtower, Coroner and Queensrÿche as influences. The official Schuldiner website, Empty Words, quotes Schuldiner's mother making the claim that he enjoyed all forms of music except country and rap. He also enjoyed jazz and classical music in addition to metal and British alternative acts such as Lush.
Schuldiner performed well in school before becoming bored with education and eventually dropping out. He later regretted this decision. He has stated that if he had not become a musician, he would have liked to have become a veterinarian or a cook.
Musical career
Taking inspiration from Nasty Savage, Schuldiner formed Death as Mantas in 1983 when he was just 16 years old. Original members were Schuldiner (guitar), Rick Rozz (guitar) and Kam Lee (drums and vocals). In January 1986, Schuldiner moved to Toronto and temporarily joined the Canadian band Slaughter. However, he quickly returned to continue the formation of Death.
Death underwent many lineup changes. With Chris Reifert, Schuldiner eventually released the first Death album, titled Scream Bloody Gore, in 1987. He continued with 1988's Leprosy with the line-up of former Mantas guitarist Rick Rozz and rhythm section Terry Butler on bass and Bill Andrews on drums, and 1990's Spiritual Healing, where guitarist James Murphy had replaced the fired Rozz in 1989.
After Spiritual Healing, Schuldiner stopped working with full-time band members, preferring to work with studio and live venue musicians, due to bad relationships with Death's previous rhythm section and guitarists. This earned Schuldiner something of a 'perfectionist' reputation in the metal community. Schuldiner had also fired his manager Eric Greif but settled and re-hired him before the recording of his next, influential release.
Death's breakthrough album, Human saw the band evolving to a more technical and progressive style, in which Schuldiner displayed his guitar skills more than ever. He continued in this style (and continued the success of the band) with 1993's Individual Thought Patterns, 1995's Symbolic, and finally The Sound of Perseverance in 1998.
He put Death on hold after this to continue Control Denied, which he had been putting together prior to the release of The Sound of Perseverance, and released The Fragile Art of Existence in 1999. Control Denied also had other players from the latest Death album but featured a melodic metal vocalist. Schuldiner also played guitar in the "supergroup" Voodoocult on the album Jesus Killing Machine in 1994 and played a guest solo on Naphobia's 1995 release, Of Hell on the track "As Ancients Evolve" as a favor to the band's bassist at the time who was a friend of Schuldiner's. Schuldiner was also asked to be one of the many guest vocalists on Dave Grohl's 2001 Probot. Grohl, Napalm Death, Ozzy Osbourne, and Anthrax all increased efforts to raise funds for Schuldiner's medical bills with Grohl trying to involve Schuldiner on an album he was working on. In a 1999 interview, Schuldiner spoke about why he didn't sing on the Control Denied album The Fragile Art of Existence "...these vocals are all I ever wanted to do in Death but couldn't. I've had this dream of recording like that for years, and it seems like a dream come true. Tim Aymar is an amazing singer and this is the main difference. I think people will be surprised at the violence and strength of the album. Many people are expecting something like Iron Maiden, but, despite being one of my favorite bands, I didn't want to make an Iron Maiden-like album. I wanted to make an unpredictable album, just like I did in Death, I guess. I don't like to make predictable albums."
Illness and death
In 1999, Schuldiner was diagnosed with brain cancer. He continued to work on his music, continuing his work with Control Denied. He was at first unable to afford the surgery that he needed immediately. A press release called for support from everyone, including fellow artists. Jane Schuldiner urged all who read the statements about Schuldiner and his illness to go out and get insurance, stating her frustration in the American healthcare system. Schuldiner had taken out medical insurance after his first surgery, but the insurer had refused to pay because the cancer pre-dated insurance being taken out. Many artists, including Kid Rock, Korn and Red Hot Chili Peppers, got together during the summer of 2001 to auction off personal items, with the funds assisting Schuldiner's medical expenses, an effort covered by MTV. Matt Heafy, vocalist and guitarist for Trivium, has also stated that the band had played a benefit show for Schuldiner while he was in the hospital in their days as a local band. In November 2001, Schuldiner's condition worsened as he became ill with Pneumocystis carinii.
On December 13, 2001, Schuldiner died at the age of 34 and was cremated. MTV reported that recording artists including Dave Grohl, Mike Patton, Max Cavalera, King Diamond, Ville Valo, Trey Azagthoth, Glen Benton, Jason Newsted, Corey Taylor, and all former and active members of Death, attended his memorial service.
Legacy
With the assistance of Schuldiner's family, former manager Eric Greif handled his legacy as President of Perseverance Holdings Ltd. Schuldiner's mother Jane and sister Beth Schuldiner frequently interact with his fans and both have stated many times that they enjoy his music. Greif kept track of his recordings and handled Schuldiner's intellectual property. Beth Schuldiner has a son named Christopher Steele, who also plays guitar and has all of Schuldiner's guitars. BC Rich also released a statement in their 2008 catalog stating that Schuldiner's signature model Stealth will be available for purchase, and that endorsement is overseen by Steele.
Schuldiner had homes and two dogs in the area surrounding Orlando. Schuldiner built a studio inside the garage where many of his songs such as "Crystal Mountain" were inspired. Schuldiner's home office was the site of the Metal Crusade newsletter and fan club.
A legal battle began from the time of Schuldiner's death on the settlement of the rights to the partially completed second Control Denied album, When Man and Machine Collide, which was recorded in 2000–2001 and was scheduled for release in 2013. Demos of these unreleased Control Denied songs, as well as early Death demos and live Death recordings from 1990, were released in the Zero Tolerance two-part compilation bootlegs by the Dutch Hammerheart Holdings company and the Schuldiners and Greif asserted rights on behalf of Schuldiner's Estate. The matter was settled in November 2009, anticipating the project being finished and released in 2010.
Tribute concerts have been coordinated or funded by Schuldiner's mother and family and various Death tribute groups internationally. Former CKY frontman, Deron Miller, who considers Schuldiner an idol of his, got the idea, while working on various projects with former Death guitarist (and pituitary tumor survivor) James Murphy, to do a tribute album. Murphy announced he would release a Chuck Schuldiner tribute album to commemorate his lasting mark on the metal community and Schuldiner's family publicly offered support for Murphy's effort, though it has never materialized. Schuldiner's sister Beth confirmed via her YouTube channel that Death: Live in Japan, a behind the scenes Death video, as well as a potential boxset containing all of Schuldiner's works including some exclusive copies of handwritten notes by Schuldiner are in the works via Relapse Records. Schuldiner Estate lawyer Eric Greif held a charity Chuck Schuldiner Birthday Bash in Calgary, Alberta, May 13, 2011, featuring speeches by Greif and former Death guitarist Paul Masvidal, as well as bands performing Schuldiner's music. Greif repeated this May 12, 2012, with special guest band Massacre, featuring former Death members Rick Rozz and Terry Butler.
Book
In January 2001, Mahyar Dean, an Iranian metal guitarist/musician, wrote Death, a book about Death and Schuldiner poems. The book includes bilingual lyrics and many articles about the band. The book was sent through the site keepers of emptywords.org to Schuldiner, who in his words was "truly blown away and honored by the obvious work and devotion he put into bringing the book to life".
Beliefs
Schuldiner designed the Death logo and its various incarnations during the length of his career. In 1991, before the release of Human, he cleaned up the logo taking out more intricate details and the "T" in the logo was swapped from an inverted cross to a more regular looking "T", one reason being to quash any implication of religion.
Schuldiner was also openly against hard drugs; he is quoted as saying, "I've tripped several times. That's all because I don't like the hard drugs. And my only drugs are alcohol and grass." Schuldiner also stated that he was pro-choice. He is quoted as saying that "it should be legal. If I was a woman surely I would like to have a choice to have a child or not. In U.S. a lot of new-borns are killed because they were unwanted. It is better to solve it immediately when a woman finds out about the pregnancy and she doesn't want a child. Better to go for an abortion than to kill a baby. That is terrible. Men cannot force women to keep a child when they themselves feel they can't."
Musical style
Schuldiner was mostly self-taught as a guitarist. In 1993, he expressed a disinterest in music theory: "I know enough about what I'm playing to memorize the scales and things, but I have no idea how you would label them. As long as I can play it, memorize it and apply it, I don't need to know what you call it."
In the early days of Death, Schuldiner used a "deep, raspy" death growl vocal technique. He said in 1993 that "it takes a lot of energy and a lot of throat abuse to get through a show."
Equipment
Guitars
Schuldiner's primary guitar throughout most of his career was the B.C. Rich Stealth model, an extremely rare model produced in small amounts under the B.C. Rich US (U-) series name along with the Custom Shop, until it was released to the public as the Chuck Schuldiner Tribute Stealth. The Stealth was also released as an N.J. model in the 1980's and 1990's, but was extremely rare. Prior to this, he used a B.C. Rich Mockingbird copy, built by "someone in Florida", and a B.C Rich Ignitor. Most of Schuldiner's sound came from a DiMarzio X2N pickup placed in the bridge. During the (In)Human Tour of the World (1991–92), Schuldiner briefly endorsed a small Wisconsin custom guitar company called Axtra, who worked with him on designs, though he still insisted on using his B.C. Rich during filming of the Lack of Comprehension video in September 1991 in Orlando.
Amplifiers
The amplifier he used towards the end of his career was a Marshall Valvestate (Model 8100) amplifier head and Valvestate 4x12 speaker cabinets on Individual Thought Patterns as well as the ITP tour and eventually started using Marshall 1960 cabinets. Before that he used various equipment including Randall RG100ES heads and Randall cabinets, and on the (In)Human Tour of the World he used a small GK 250ML miked up, despite having hollow 4x12 stacks 'for show'. On the first two Death albums, he stated he used a Boss distortion pedal, but didn't specify which, after which he used amplifier distortion.
Discography
Death
1987: Scream Bloody Gore
1988: Leprosy
1990: Spiritual Healing
1991: Human
1993: Individual Thought Patterns
1995: Symbolic
1998: The Sound of Perseverance
Voodoocult
1994: Jesus Killing Machine
Control Denied
1999: The Fragile Art of Existence
See also
Honorific nicknames in popular music
References
Sources
The Metal Crusade, official site of The Death Fan Club
Empty Words, official Death/Control Denied archival site
1967 births
2001 deaths
Deaths from pneumonia in Florida
American heavy metal guitarists
American heavy metal singers
American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
Rhythm guitarists
Lead guitarists
Death (metal band) members
Death metal musicians
Deaths from brain tumor
Deaths from cancer in Florida
Neurological disease deaths in Florida
Jewish American musicians
Jewish singers
Jewish American songwriters
Singers from Florida
Singers from New York (state)
People from Glen Cove, New York
Singers from Orlando, Florida
People from Altamonte Springs, Florida
Progressive metal guitarists
Songwriters from Florida
Songwriters from New York (state)
20th-century American singers
Jewish heavy metal musicians
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Florida
Guitarists from New York (state)
American male guitarists
Control Denied members
Voodoocult members
20th-century American male singers
20th-century American Jews
American male songwriters | false | [
"Brothers and Sisters may refer to:\n{{TOC rig\n\nBooks\n Brothers and Sisters, a 1994 novel by Bebe Moore Campbell\n Brothers and Sisters, a novel by Ivy Compton-Burnett\n\nFilm and television\n Brothers and Sisters (1979 TV series), an American sitcom\n Brothers and Sisters (1980 film), a 1980 British film\n Brothers and Sisters (1992 film), a 1992 Italian film\n Brothers and Sisters (1998 TV series), a British television series starring Sandra Bee, John Adewole, and Mark Arden\n Brothers & Sisters (2006 TV series), an American television series\n \"Brothers & Sisters\" (Family Guy), episode of Family Guy\n \"Brothers and Sisters\" (The Green Green Grass), episode of The Green Green Grass\n \"Brothers & Sisters\" (Arrow), an episode of Arrow\n\nMusic\n Brothers and Sisters (album), by The Allman Brothers Band\n Brothers & Sisters (album), a 2014 album by Soil & \"Pimp\" Sessions\n Brother, Sister, an album by mewithoutYou\n Brother Sister, an album by the Brand New Heavies\n\nSongs\n \"Brothers and Sisters\", a song by Ziggy Marley & the Melody Makers / Ziggy Marley Joy and Blues (1993)\n \"Brothers and Sisters\", a song by 2 Funky 2 (1993)\n \"Brothers & Sisters\" (song), a 1999 single by Coldplay\t\n \"Brothers and Sisters\", a song by Blur from Think Tank (2003)\n \"Brothers and Sisters\", a song by Twin Atlantic from Great Divide (2004)\n \"Brothers and Sisters\", a song by Joe Kum Yung Memorial Band & Dallas Tamaira from the single Happy Cones (2004)\n\nSee also\n Sibling, an individual who has one or both parents in common\n Birth order\n Brother and Sister (disambiguation)\n Sisters and Brothers (disambiguation)\n Sisters & Brothers, a 2011 Canadian film\n The Sisters Brothers (novel) 2011 Western novel\n The Sisters Brothers (film), 2018 Western film",
"Sisters and brothers are siblings.\n\nSisters and Brothers may also refer to:\n\n\"Sisters and Brothers\", a song by German singer Sandra from The Long Play\nSisters & Brothers, a 2011 Canadian film\n\nSee also\n Sibling, an individual who has one or both parents in common\n Birth order\n The Sisters Brothers (novel) 2011 Western novel\n The Sisters Brothers (film), 2018 Western film\nBrother and Sister (disambiguation)\nBrothers and Sisters (disambiguation)"
] |
[
"Chuck Schuldiner",
"Biography",
"When was he born?",
"May 13, 1967,",
"Where did he grow up?",
"his family moved to Florida.",
"Did he have a good relationship with his parents?",
"I don't know.",
"Did he have brothers and sisters?",
"he had an older brother"
] | C_318d750d0b08450b9db3f152883cbfc5_1 | Did his brother play music? | 5 | Did Chuck Schuldiner's brother play music? | Chuck Schuldiner | Schuldiner was born on May 13, 1967, on Long Island, New York to a Jewish father of Austrian descent and a mother from the American South, a convert to Judaism. Both of his parents were teachers. In 1968, his family moved to Florida. Schuldiner was the youngest of three children: he had an older brother named Frank and an older sister named Bethann. He started playing guitar at the age of 9; his 16-year-old brother had died and his parents bought him a guitar, thinking it would help with his grief. He took classical lessons for less than a year in which his teacher taught him "Mary had a Little Lamb", which he did not like very much, and almost stopped completely, until his parents saw an electric guitar at a yard sale and bought it for him. The young Schuldiner immediately took to the instrument. After getting amps, he never stopped playing, writing and teaching himself. Schuldiner was known to spend the weekend in the garage or his room playing his guitar, but was limited to three hours on weekdays when school was in session. Schuldiner first played in public in his early teens. Schuldiner was originally inspired by Metallica, Iron Maiden, Kiss and classical jazz, among others. He was particularly interested in the metal movement known as NWOBHM - New Wave of British Heavy Metal - and cited bands of that genre among his favorites. He frequently cited French band Sortilege as his personal favorite metal group. Slayer, Celtic Frost, Possessed, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond and Metallica were later influences he would apply more to his own band. Later in his career, Schuldiner frequently cited progressive metal bands such as Watchtower, Coroner and Queensryche as influences. The official Schuldiner website, Empty Words, quotes Schuldiner's mother making the claim that he enjoyed all forms of music except country and rap. He also enjoyed jazz and classical music in addition to metal and British alternative acts such as Lush. Schuldiner performed well in school before becoming bored with education, and eventually dropped out. He later regretted this decision. He has stated that if he had not become a musician, he would have liked to have become a veterinarian or a cook. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Charles Michael Schuldiner (May 13, 1967 – December 13, 2001) was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He founded the band Death in 1983 and was their lead vocalist and guitarist until his death in 2001. His obituary in the January 5, 2002, issue of UK's Kerrang! magazine described him as "one of the most significant figures in the history of metal." Schuldiner was ranked No. 10 in Joel McIver's book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists in 2009 and No. 20 in March 2004 Guitar Worlds "The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists". In 1987, Schuldiner founded the publishing company Mutilation Music, affiliated with performance rights organization BMI. Schuldiner died in 2001 of a brain tumor.
Schuldiner is often referred to as "The Godfather of death metal", although he was uncomfortable with this nickname, remarking that "I don't think I should take the credits for this death metal stuff. I'm just a guy from a band, and I think Death is a metal band."
Biography
Early life
Schuldiner was born on May 13, 1967, on Long Island, New York. His father Mal Schuldiner was Jewish and the son of Austrian immigrants, and his mother Jane Schuldiner was from the American South and had converted to Judaism. In 1968, his family moved to Florida.
He started playing guitar at the age of 9. He took classical lessons for less than a year in which his teacher taught him "Mary had a Little Lamb", which he did not like very much, and almost stopped completely until his parents bought him an electric guitar at a yard sale. The young Schuldiner immediately took to the instrument and began playing, writing and teaching himself. He was known to spend the weekend in the garage or his room playing his guitar but was limited to three hours on weekdays when school was in session. Schuldiner first played in public in his early teens.
Schuldiner was originally inspired by Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Kiss and classical jazz, among others. He was particularly interested in the metal movement known as NWOBHM – New Wave of British Heavy Metal – and cited bands of that genre among his favorites. He frequently cited French band Sortilège as his personal favorite metal group. Slayer, Celtic Frost, Possessed, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond and Metallica were later influences he would apply more to his own songwriting. Later in his career, Schuldiner frequently cited progressive metal bands such as Watchtower, Coroner and Queensrÿche as influences. The official Schuldiner website, Empty Words, quotes Schuldiner's mother making the claim that he enjoyed all forms of music except country and rap. He also enjoyed jazz and classical music in addition to metal and British alternative acts such as Lush.
Schuldiner performed well in school before becoming bored with education and eventually dropping out. He later regretted this decision. He has stated that if he had not become a musician, he would have liked to have become a veterinarian or a cook.
Musical career
Taking inspiration from Nasty Savage, Schuldiner formed Death as Mantas in 1983 when he was just 16 years old. Original members were Schuldiner (guitar), Rick Rozz (guitar) and Kam Lee (drums and vocals). In January 1986, Schuldiner moved to Toronto and temporarily joined the Canadian band Slaughter. However, he quickly returned to continue the formation of Death.
Death underwent many lineup changes. With Chris Reifert, Schuldiner eventually released the first Death album, titled Scream Bloody Gore, in 1987. He continued with 1988's Leprosy with the line-up of former Mantas guitarist Rick Rozz and rhythm section Terry Butler on bass and Bill Andrews on drums, and 1990's Spiritual Healing, where guitarist James Murphy had replaced the fired Rozz in 1989.
After Spiritual Healing, Schuldiner stopped working with full-time band members, preferring to work with studio and live venue musicians, due to bad relationships with Death's previous rhythm section and guitarists. This earned Schuldiner something of a 'perfectionist' reputation in the metal community. Schuldiner had also fired his manager Eric Greif but settled and re-hired him before the recording of his next, influential release.
Death's breakthrough album, Human saw the band evolving to a more technical and progressive style, in which Schuldiner displayed his guitar skills more than ever. He continued in this style (and continued the success of the band) with 1993's Individual Thought Patterns, 1995's Symbolic, and finally The Sound of Perseverance in 1998.
He put Death on hold after this to continue Control Denied, which he had been putting together prior to the release of The Sound of Perseverance, and released The Fragile Art of Existence in 1999. Control Denied also had other players from the latest Death album but featured a melodic metal vocalist. Schuldiner also played guitar in the "supergroup" Voodoocult on the album Jesus Killing Machine in 1994 and played a guest solo on Naphobia's 1995 release, Of Hell on the track "As Ancients Evolve" as a favor to the band's bassist at the time who was a friend of Schuldiner's. Schuldiner was also asked to be one of the many guest vocalists on Dave Grohl's 2001 Probot. Grohl, Napalm Death, Ozzy Osbourne, and Anthrax all increased efforts to raise funds for Schuldiner's medical bills with Grohl trying to involve Schuldiner on an album he was working on. In a 1999 interview, Schuldiner spoke about why he didn't sing on the Control Denied album The Fragile Art of Existence "...these vocals are all I ever wanted to do in Death but couldn't. I've had this dream of recording like that for years, and it seems like a dream come true. Tim Aymar is an amazing singer and this is the main difference. I think people will be surprised at the violence and strength of the album. Many people are expecting something like Iron Maiden, but, despite being one of my favorite bands, I didn't want to make an Iron Maiden-like album. I wanted to make an unpredictable album, just like I did in Death, I guess. I don't like to make predictable albums."
Illness and death
In 1999, Schuldiner was diagnosed with brain cancer. He continued to work on his music, continuing his work with Control Denied. He was at first unable to afford the surgery that he needed immediately. A press release called for support from everyone, including fellow artists. Jane Schuldiner urged all who read the statements about Schuldiner and his illness to go out and get insurance, stating her frustration in the American healthcare system. Schuldiner had taken out medical insurance after his first surgery, but the insurer had refused to pay because the cancer pre-dated insurance being taken out. Many artists, including Kid Rock, Korn and Red Hot Chili Peppers, got together during the summer of 2001 to auction off personal items, with the funds assisting Schuldiner's medical expenses, an effort covered by MTV. Matt Heafy, vocalist and guitarist for Trivium, has also stated that the band had played a benefit show for Schuldiner while he was in the hospital in their days as a local band. In November 2001, Schuldiner's condition worsened as he became ill with Pneumocystis carinii.
On December 13, 2001, Schuldiner died at the age of 34 and was cremated. MTV reported that recording artists including Dave Grohl, Mike Patton, Max Cavalera, King Diamond, Ville Valo, Trey Azagthoth, Glen Benton, Jason Newsted, Corey Taylor, and all former and active members of Death, attended his memorial service.
Legacy
With the assistance of Schuldiner's family, former manager Eric Greif handled his legacy as President of Perseverance Holdings Ltd. Schuldiner's mother Jane and sister Beth Schuldiner frequently interact with his fans and both have stated many times that they enjoy his music. Greif kept track of his recordings and handled Schuldiner's intellectual property. Beth Schuldiner has a son named Christopher Steele, who also plays guitar and has all of Schuldiner's guitars. BC Rich also released a statement in their 2008 catalog stating that Schuldiner's signature model Stealth will be available for purchase, and that endorsement is overseen by Steele.
Schuldiner had homes and two dogs in the area surrounding Orlando. Schuldiner built a studio inside the garage where many of his songs such as "Crystal Mountain" were inspired. Schuldiner's home office was the site of the Metal Crusade newsletter and fan club.
A legal battle began from the time of Schuldiner's death on the settlement of the rights to the partially completed second Control Denied album, When Man and Machine Collide, which was recorded in 2000–2001 and was scheduled for release in 2013. Demos of these unreleased Control Denied songs, as well as early Death demos and live Death recordings from 1990, were released in the Zero Tolerance two-part compilation bootlegs by the Dutch Hammerheart Holdings company and the Schuldiners and Greif asserted rights on behalf of Schuldiner's Estate. The matter was settled in November 2009, anticipating the project being finished and released in 2010.
Tribute concerts have been coordinated or funded by Schuldiner's mother and family and various Death tribute groups internationally. Former CKY frontman, Deron Miller, who considers Schuldiner an idol of his, got the idea, while working on various projects with former Death guitarist (and pituitary tumor survivor) James Murphy, to do a tribute album. Murphy announced he would release a Chuck Schuldiner tribute album to commemorate his lasting mark on the metal community and Schuldiner's family publicly offered support for Murphy's effort, though it has never materialized. Schuldiner's sister Beth confirmed via her YouTube channel that Death: Live in Japan, a behind the scenes Death video, as well as a potential boxset containing all of Schuldiner's works including some exclusive copies of handwritten notes by Schuldiner are in the works via Relapse Records. Schuldiner Estate lawyer Eric Greif held a charity Chuck Schuldiner Birthday Bash in Calgary, Alberta, May 13, 2011, featuring speeches by Greif and former Death guitarist Paul Masvidal, as well as bands performing Schuldiner's music. Greif repeated this May 12, 2012, with special guest band Massacre, featuring former Death members Rick Rozz and Terry Butler.
Book
In January 2001, Mahyar Dean, an Iranian metal guitarist/musician, wrote Death, a book about Death and Schuldiner poems. The book includes bilingual lyrics and many articles about the band. The book was sent through the site keepers of emptywords.org to Schuldiner, who in his words was "truly blown away and honored by the obvious work and devotion he put into bringing the book to life".
Beliefs
Schuldiner designed the Death logo and its various incarnations during the length of his career. In 1991, before the release of Human, he cleaned up the logo taking out more intricate details and the "T" in the logo was swapped from an inverted cross to a more regular looking "T", one reason being to quash any implication of religion.
Schuldiner was also openly against hard drugs; he is quoted as saying, "I've tripped several times. That's all because I don't like the hard drugs. And my only drugs are alcohol and grass." Schuldiner also stated that he was pro-choice. He is quoted as saying that "it should be legal. If I was a woman surely I would like to have a choice to have a child or not. In U.S. a lot of new-borns are killed because they were unwanted. It is better to solve it immediately when a woman finds out about the pregnancy and she doesn't want a child. Better to go for an abortion than to kill a baby. That is terrible. Men cannot force women to keep a child when they themselves feel they can't."
Musical style
Schuldiner was mostly self-taught as a guitarist. In 1993, he expressed a disinterest in music theory: "I know enough about what I'm playing to memorize the scales and things, but I have no idea how you would label them. As long as I can play it, memorize it and apply it, I don't need to know what you call it."
In the early days of Death, Schuldiner used a "deep, raspy" death growl vocal technique. He said in 1993 that "it takes a lot of energy and a lot of throat abuse to get through a show."
Equipment
Guitars
Schuldiner's primary guitar throughout most of his career was the B.C. Rich Stealth model, an extremely rare model produced in small amounts under the B.C. Rich US (U-) series name along with the Custom Shop, until it was released to the public as the Chuck Schuldiner Tribute Stealth. The Stealth was also released as an N.J. model in the 1980's and 1990's, but was extremely rare. Prior to this, he used a B.C. Rich Mockingbird copy, built by "someone in Florida", and a B.C Rich Ignitor. Most of Schuldiner's sound came from a DiMarzio X2N pickup placed in the bridge. During the (In)Human Tour of the World (1991–92), Schuldiner briefly endorsed a small Wisconsin custom guitar company called Axtra, who worked with him on designs, though he still insisted on using his B.C. Rich during filming of the Lack of Comprehension video in September 1991 in Orlando.
Amplifiers
The amplifier he used towards the end of his career was a Marshall Valvestate (Model 8100) amplifier head and Valvestate 4x12 speaker cabinets on Individual Thought Patterns as well as the ITP tour and eventually started using Marshall 1960 cabinets. Before that he used various equipment including Randall RG100ES heads and Randall cabinets, and on the (In)Human Tour of the World he used a small GK 250ML miked up, despite having hollow 4x12 stacks 'for show'. On the first two Death albums, he stated he used a Boss distortion pedal, but didn't specify which, after which he used amplifier distortion.
Discography
Death
1987: Scream Bloody Gore
1988: Leprosy
1990: Spiritual Healing
1991: Human
1993: Individual Thought Patterns
1995: Symbolic
1998: The Sound of Perseverance
Voodoocult
1994: Jesus Killing Machine
Control Denied
1999: The Fragile Art of Existence
See also
Honorific nicknames in popular music
References
Sources
The Metal Crusade, official site of The Death Fan Club
Empty Words, official Death/Control Denied archival site
1967 births
2001 deaths
Deaths from pneumonia in Florida
American heavy metal guitarists
American heavy metal singers
American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
Rhythm guitarists
Lead guitarists
Death (metal band) members
Death metal musicians
Deaths from brain tumor
Deaths from cancer in Florida
Neurological disease deaths in Florida
Jewish American musicians
Jewish singers
Jewish American songwriters
Singers from Florida
Singers from New York (state)
People from Glen Cove, New York
Singers from Orlando, Florida
People from Altamonte Springs, Florida
Progressive metal guitarists
Songwriters from Florida
Songwriters from New York (state)
20th-century American singers
Jewish heavy metal musicians
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Florida
Guitarists from New York (state)
American male guitarists
Control Denied members
Voodoocult members
20th-century American male singers
20th-century American Jews
American male songwriters | false | [
"Nolan Thomas (born Marko Kalfa) is a Latin freestyle artist known for his 1984 single \"Yo' Little Brother\" which peaked at #57 on the Billboard Hot 100. While Marko did appear in the music video and sang all of the other tracks on the Yo' Little Brother album, he did not actually perform the vocals on this particular track: Elan Lanier sang them instead. He was discovered by dance-music producers Mark Liggett and Chris Barbosa of Shannon (\"Let the Music Play\") fame when he was still in high school. The original 12-inch single was initially released by Emergency Records. The music video was conceived by the Manager-Director-Producer team of Stu Sleppin & Bob Teeman. Sleppin & Teeman created the rock star look-a-likes that became known as The Vid Kids. Nolan Thomas & The Vid Kids toured the US in the mid 80's. A full-length LP was released by Mirage/Atco/Atlantic Records in 1984, which yielded two more singles to modest success. In the UK during the mid 80's \"Yo' Little Brother\" received some cult status after it was aired on Channel 4's The Max Headroom Show. In 1989 he released the single \"Once Around The Block\", under the name Mark Kalfa.\n\nKalfa is currently a fashion photographer in New York, NY.\n\nPartial discography\n\"Yo' Little Brother\" 7-inch single (Mirage/Atco/Atlantic Records 99697)#26 US R&B, #57 US POP\nYo' Little Brother album (Mirage/Atco/Atlantic Records 90283)\n1984—\"One Bad Apple\" (Mirage/Atco/Atlantic Records 99651) #48 US R&B, #105 US BUBBLING UNDER SINGLES\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nKalfaco.com\n\nAmerican freestyle musicians\nLiving people\nYear of birth missing (living people)",
"Adelphoe (also Adelphoi and Adelphi – The Brothers) is a play by Roman playwright Terence, adapted partly from plays by Menander and Diphilus. It was first performed in 160 BC at the funeral games of Aemilius Paulus. Exploring the best form of child-rearing, the play inspired Molière's The School for Husbands.\n\nAdelphoe is often considered Terence's masterpiece.\n\nPlot\n\nDemea, father to Aeschinus and Ctesipho, decides to separate his children and raises Ctesipho while allowing his brother Micio to raise Aeschinus. Demea is a strict authoritarian father, and Micio is permissive and democratic. Ctesipho falls in love, but is afraid of exposing his romantic interest due to the strict and cold education he's received from Demea. Therefore, Aeschinus, in order to help his brother, decides to steal the girl away, accepting all blame for the affair. Demea and Micio spar over who did a better job at raising their sons.\n\nAfter a long monologue comparing his methods with his brother's, Demea decides to emulate his brother's urbanity and openhandedness as a means of critique. In the last hundred lines of the play, Demea gives away a great deal of money and a large estate, convinces his brother to marry against his will and free two of his slaves, and then finally delivers a closing speech decrying all such liberality: \"I will tell you: I did it to show you that what they think is your good nature and pleasantness did not happen from real goodness nor from justice and goodness, but from flattery, indulgence, and largess, Micio.\" ( dicam tibi: / ut id ostenderem, quod te isti facilem et festivom putant, / id non fieri ex vera vita neque adeo ex aequo et bono, / sed ex adsentando, indulgendo, largiendo, Micio. lines 985–988)\n\nHe then offers to his sons that he will be their strict father if they so desire him to be, but if they prefer to stay with Micio, they can. Both boys choose to submit to Demea, with Micio's approval. At the end of the play, Ctesipho is going to marry his loved one, Micio marries Sostrata and Aeschinus marries Pamphila, Sostrata's daughter.\n\nCharacters \n\nMicio - Demea's brother and adopted father of Aeschinus\nDemea - Micio's brother and father of Aeschinus and Ctesipho, raised Ctesipho\nSannio - A procurer, owner of the slave \"Music Girl\"\nAeschinus - son of Demea, raised by Micio\nSyrus - slave of Micio\nCtesipho - son of Demea raised\nCanthara - Sostrata's servant\nGeta - Sostrata's slave\nHegio - close friend of Sostrata's late husband\nPamphila - daughter of Sostrata\nMusic Girl - slave of Sannio\nDromo - Demea's slave\nSostrata - widowed woman who lives next to Micio\nParmeno - a slave\n\nReferences\n\nFurther reading\n Barsby, John A. 2002. \"Terence and his Greek Models.\" In Due seminari Plautini. La tradizione del testo; modelli. Edited by C. Questa and R. Rafaelli, 251–277. Urbino, Italy: Quatro Venti.\n Damen, Mark L. 1990. \"Structure and Symmetry in Terence’s Adelphoe.\" Illinois Classical Studies 15:85–106.\n Forehand, Walter E. 1985. Terence. Boston: Twayne.\n Frauenfelder, D. W. 1996. \"Respecting Terence. Adelphoe 155–175.\" Classical World 90:23–32.\n Goldberg, Sander M. 1986. Understanding Terence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.\n Grant, John N. 1980. \"The Beginning of Menander,᾿Αδελφοί, β.\" Classical Quarterly 30:341–355.\n Henderson, John. 1988. \"Entertaining Arguments: Terence Adelphoe.\" In Post-Structuralist Classics. Edited by A. Benyamin, 192–226. London: Routledge.\n Leigh, M. 2004. \"Fatherhood and the Habit of Command: L. Aemilius Paullus and the Adelphoe.\" In Comedy and the Rise of Rome. By Matthew Leigh, 158–191. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.\n Traill, Ariana. 2013. \"Adelphoe.\" In A Companion to Terence. Edited by Anthony Augoustakis and Ariana Traill, 318–341. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.\n Victor, Benjamin. 2012. \"Terentius Orator an Poeta: The endings of Eunuch and Adelphoe.\" Classical Quarterly 62:671–791.\n\nExternal links \n\n \nThe play's Latin text at TheLatinLibrary.com\n Adelphoe at Perseus Digital Library\nReview in BMCR of 2010 translation by David Christenson\n\nWorks by Terence"
] |
[
"Chuck Schuldiner",
"Biography",
"When was he born?",
"May 13, 1967,",
"Where did he grow up?",
"his family moved to Florida.",
"Did he have a good relationship with his parents?",
"I don't know.",
"Did he have brothers and sisters?",
"he had an older brother",
"Did his brother play music?",
"I don't know."
] | C_318d750d0b08450b9db3f152883cbfc5_1 | What was interesting about his early years? | 6 | What was interesting about Chuck Schuldiner's early years? | Chuck Schuldiner | Schuldiner was born on May 13, 1967, on Long Island, New York to a Jewish father of Austrian descent and a mother from the American South, a convert to Judaism. Both of his parents were teachers. In 1968, his family moved to Florida. Schuldiner was the youngest of three children: he had an older brother named Frank and an older sister named Bethann. He started playing guitar at the age of 9; his 16-year-old brother had died and his parents bought him a guitar, thinking it would help with his grief. He took classical lessons for less than a year in which his teacher taught him "Mary had a Little Lamb", which he did not like very much, and almost stopped completely, until his parents saw an electric guitar at a yard sale and bought it for him. The young Schuldiner immediately took to the instrument. After getting amps, he never stopped playing, writing and teaching himself. Schuldiner was known to spend the weekend in the garage or his room playing his guitar, but was limited to three hours on weekdays when school was in session. Schuldiner first played in public in his early teens. Schuldiner was originally inspired by Metallica, Iron Maiden, Kiss and classical jazz, among others. He was particularly interested in the metal movement known as NWOBHM - New Wave of British Heavy Metal - and cited bands of that genre among his favorites. He frequently cited French band Sortilege as his personal favorite metal group. Slayer, Celtic Frost, Possessed, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond and Metallica were later influences he would apply more to his own band. Later in his career, Schuldiner frequently cited progressive metal bands such as Watchtower, Coroner and Queensryche as influences. The official Schuldiner website, Empty Words, quotes Schuldiner's mother making the claim that he enjoyed all forms of music except country and rap. He also enjoyed jazz and classical music in addition to metal and British alternative acts such as Lush. Schuldiner performed well in school before becoming bored with education, and eventually dropped out. He later regretted this decision. He has stated that if he had not become a musician, he would have liked to have become a veterinarian or a cook. CANNOTANSWER | Schuldiner was originally inspired by Metallica, | Charles Michael Schuldiner (May 13, 1967 – December 13, 2001) was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He founded the band Death in 1983 and was their lead vocalist and guitarist until his death in 2001. His obituary in the January 5, 2002, issue of UK's Kerrang! magazine described him as "one of the most significant figures in the history of metal." Schuldiner was ranked No. 10 in Joel McIver's book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists in 2009 and No. 20 in March 2004 Guitar Worlds "The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists". In 1987, Schuldiner founded the publishing company Mutilation Music, affiliated with performance rights organization BMI. Schuldiner died in 2001 of a brain tumor.
Schuldiner is often referred to as "The Godfather of death metal", although he was uncomfortable with this nickname, remarking that "I don't think I should take the credits for this death metal stuff. I'm just a guy from a band, and I think Death is a metal band."
Biography
Early life
Schuldiner was born on May 13, 1967, on Long Island, New York. His father Mal Schuldiner was Jewish and the son of Austrian immigrants, and his mother Jane Schuldiner was from the American South and had converted to Judaism. In 1968, his family moved to Florida.
He started playing guitar at the age of 9. He took classical lessons for less than a year in which his teacher taught him "Mary had a Little Lamb", which he did not like very much, and almost stopped completely until his parents bought him an electric guitar at a yard sale. The young Schuldiner immediately took to the instrument and began playing, writing and teaching himself. He was known to spend the weekend in the garage or his room playing his guitar but was limited to three hours on weekdays when school was in session. Schuldiner first played in public in his early teens.
Schuldiner was originally inspired by Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Kiss and classical jazz, among others. He was particularly interested in the metal movement known as NWOBHM – New Wave of British Heavy Metal – and cited bands of that genre among his favorites. He frequently cited French band Sortilège as his personal favorite metal group. Slayer, Celtic Frost, Possessed, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond and Metallica were later influences he would apply more to his own songwriting. Later in his career, Schuldiner frequently cited progressive metal bands such as Watchtower, Coroner and Queensrÿche as influences. The official Schuldiner website, Empty Words, quotes Schuldiner's mother making the claim that he enjoyed all forms of music except country and rap. He also enjoyed jazz and classical music in addition to metal and British alternative acts such as Lush.
Schuldiner performed well in school before becoming bored with education and eventually dropping out. He later regretted this decision. He has stated that if he had not become a musician, he would have liked to have become a veterinarian or a cook.
Musical career
Taking inspiration from Nasty Savage, Schuldiner formed Death as Mantas in 1983 when he was just 16 years old. Original members were Schuldiner (guitar), Rick Rozz (guitar) and Kam Lee (drums and vocals). In January 1986, Schuldiner moved to Toronto and temporarily joined the Canadian band Slaughter. However, he quickly returned to continue the formation of Death.
Death underwent many lineup changes. With Chris Reifert, Schuldiner eventually released the first Death album, titled Scream Bloody Gore, in 1987. He continued with 1988's Leprosy with the line-up of former Mantas guitarist Rick Rozz and rhythm section Terry Butler on bass and Bill Andrews on drums, and 1990's Spiritual Healing, where guitarist James Murphy had replaced the fired Rozz in 1989.
After Spiritual Healing, Schuldiner stopped working with full-time band members, preferring to work with studio and live venue musicians, due to bad relationships with Death's previous rhythm section and guitarists. This earned Schuldiner something of a 'perfectionist' reputation in the metal community. Schuldiner had also fired his manager Eric Greif but settled and re-hired him before the recording of his next, influential release.
Death's breakthrough album, Human saw the band evolving to a more technical and progressive style, in which Schuldiner displayed his guitar skills more than ever. He continued in this style (and continued the success of the band) with 1993's Individual Thought Patterns, 1995's Symbolic, and finally The Sound of Perseverance in 1998.
He put Death on hold after this to continue Control Denied, which he had been putting together prior to the release of The Sound of Perseverance, and released The Fragile Art of Existence in 1999. Control Denied also had other players from the latest Death album but featured a melodic metal vocalist. Schuldiner also played guitar in the "supergroup" Voodoocult on the album Jesus Killing Machine in 1994 and played a guest solo on Naphobia's 1995 release, Of Hell on the track "As Ancients Evolve" as a favor to the band's bassist at the time who was a friend of Schuldiner's. Schuldiner was also asked to be one of the many guest vocalists on Dave Grohl's 2001 Probot. Grohl, Napalm Death, Ozzy Osbourne, and Anthrax all increased efforts to raise funds for Schuldiner's medical bills with Grohl trying to involve Schuldiner on an album he was working on. In a 1999 interview, Schuldiner spoke about why he didn't sing on the Control Denied album The Fragile Art of Existence "...these vocals are all I ever wanted to do in Death but couldn't. I've had this dream of recording like that for years, and it seems like a dream come true. Tim Aymar is an amazing singer and this is the main difference. I think people will be surprised at the violence and strength of the album. Many people are expecting something like Iron Maiden, but, despite being one of my favorite bands, I didn't want to make an Iron Maiden-like album. I wanted to make an unpredictable album, just like I did in Death, I guess. I don't like to make predictable albums."
Illness and death
In 1999, Schuldiner was diagnosed with brain cancer. He continued to work on his music, continuing his work with Control Denied. He was at first unable to afford the surgery that he needed immediately. A press release called for support from everyone, including fellow artists. Jane Schuldiner urged all who read the statements about Schuldiner and his illness to go out and get insurance, stating her frustration in the American healthcare system. Schuldiner had taken out medical insurance after his first surgery, but the insurer had refused to pay because the cancer pre-dated insurance being taken out. Many artists, including Kid Rock, Korn and Red Hot Chili Peppers, got together during the summer of 2001 to auction off personal items, with the funds assisting Schuldiner's medical expenses, an effort covered by MTV. Matt Heafy, vocalist and guitarist for Trivium, has also stated that the band had played a benefit show for Schuldiner while he was in the hospital in their days as a local band. In November 2001, Schuldiner's condition worsened as he became ill with Pneumocystis carinii.
On December 13, 2001, Schuldiner died at the age of 34 and was cremated. MTV reported that recording artists including Dave Grohl, Mike Patton, Max Cavalera, King Diamond, Ville Valo, Trey Azagthoth, Glen Benton, Jason Newsted, Corey Taylor, and all former and active members of Death, attended his memorial service.
Legacy
With the assistance of Schuldiner's family, former manager Eric Greif handled his legacy as President of Perseverance Holdings Ltd. Schuldiner's mother Jane and sister Beth Schuldiner frequently interact with his fans and both have stated many times that they enjoy his music. Greif kept track of his recordings and handled Schuldiner's intellectual property. Beth Schuldiner has a son named Christopher Steele, who also plays guitar and has all of Schuldiner's guitars. BC Rich also released a statement in their 2008 catalog stating that Schuldiner's signature model Stealth will be available for purchase, and that endorsement is overseen by Steele.
Schuldiner had homes and two dogs in the area surrounding Orlando. Schuldiner built a studio inside the garage where many of his songs such as "Crystal Mountain" were inspired. Schuldiner's home office was the site of the Metal Crusade newsletter and fan club.
A legal battle began from the time of Schuldiner's death on the settlement of the rights to the partially completed second Control Denied album, When Man and Machine Collide, which was recorded in 2000–2001 and was scheduled for release in 2013. Demos of these unreleased Control Denied songs, as well as early Death demos and live Death recordings from 1990, were released in the Zero Tolerance two-part compilation bootlegs by the Dutch Hammerheart Holdings company and the Schuldiners and Greif asserted rights on behalf of Schuldiner's Estate. The matter was settled in November 2009, anticipating the project being finished and released in 2010.
Tribute concerts have been coordinated or funded by Schuldiner's mother and family and various Death tribute groups internationally. Former CKY frontman, Deron Miller, who considers Schuldiner an idol of his, got the idea, while working on various projects with former Death guitarist (and pituitary tumor survivor) James Murphy, to do a tribute album. Murphy announced he would release a Chuck Schuldiner tribute album to commemorate his lasting mark on the metal community and Schuldiner's family publicly offered support for Murphy's effort, though it has never materialized. Schuldiner's sister Beth confirmed via her YouTube channel that Death: Live in Japan, a behind the scenes Death video, as well as a potential boxset containing all of Schuldiner's works including some exclusive copies of handwritten notes by Schuldiner are in the works via Relapse Records. Schuldiner Estate lawyer Eric Greif held a charity Chuck Schuldiner Birthday Bash in Calgary, Alberta, May 13, 2011, featuring speeches by Greif and former Death guitarist Paul Masvidal, as well as bands performing Schuldiner's music. Greif repeated this May 12, 2012, with special guest band Massacre, featuring former Death members Rick Rozz and Terry Butler.
Book
In January 2001, Mahyar Dean, an Iranian metal guitarist/musician, wrote Death, a book about Death and Schuldiner poems. The book includes bilingual lyrics and many articles about the band. The book was sent through the site keepers of emptywords.org to Schuldiner, who in his words was "truly blown away and honored by the obvious work and devotion he put into bringing the book to life".
Beliefs
Schuldiner designed the Death logo and its various incarnations during the length of his career. In 1991, before the release of Human, he cleaned up the logo taking out more intricate details and the "T" in the logo was swapped from an inverted cross to a more regular looking "T", one reason being to quash any implication of religion.
Schuldiner was also openly against hard drugs; he is quoted as saying, "I've tripped several times. That's all because I don't like the hard drugs. And my only drugs are alcohol and grass." Schuldiner also stated that he was pro-choice. He is quoted as saying that "it should be legal. If I was a woman surely I would like to have a choice to have a child or not. In U.S. a lot of new-borns are killed because they were unwanted. It is better to solve it immediately when a woman finds out about the pregnancy and she doesn't want a child. Better to go for an abortion than to kill a baby. That is terrible. Men cannot force women to keep a child when they themselves feel they can't."
Musical style
Schuldiner was mostly self-taught as a guitarist. In 1993, he expressed a disinterest in music theory: "I know enough about what I'm playing to memorize the scales and things, but I have no idea how you would label them. As long as I can play it, memorize it and apply it, I don't need to know what you call it."
In the early days of Death, Schuldiner used a "deep, raspy" death growl vocal technique. He said in 1993 that "it takes a lot of energy and a lot of throat abuse to get through a show."
Equipment
Guitars
Schuldiner's primary guitar throughout most of his career was the B.C. Rich Stealth model, an extremely rare model produced in small amounts under the B.C. Rich US (U-) series name along with the Custom Shop, until it was released to the public as the Chuck Schuldiner Tribute Stealth. The Stealth was also released as an N.J. model in the 1980's and 1990's, but was extremely rare. Prior to this, he used a B.C. Rich Mockingbird copy, built by "someone in Florida", and a B.C Rich Ignitor. Most of Schuldiner's sound came from a DiMarzio X2N pickup placed in the bridge. During the (In)Human Tour of the World (1991–92), Schuldiner briefly endorsed a small Wisconsin custom guitar company called Axtra, who worked with him on designs, though he still insisted on using his B.C. Rich during filming of the Lack of Comprehension video in September 1991 in Orlando.
Amplifiers
The amplifier he used towards the end of his career was a Marshall Valvestate (Model 8100) amplifier head and Valvestate 4x12 speaker cabinets on Individual Thought Patterns as well as the ITP tour and eventually started using Marshall 1960 cabinets. Before that he used various equipment including Randall RG100ES heads and Randall cabinets, and on the (In)Human Tour of the World he used a small GK 250ML miked up, despite having hollow 4x12 stacks 'for show'. On the first two Death albums, he stated he used a Boss distortion pedal, but didn't specify which, after which he used amplifier distortion.
Discography
Death
1987: Scream Bloody Gore
1988: Leprosy
1990: Spiritual Healing
1991: Human
1993: Individual Thought Patterns
1995: Symbolic
1998: The Sound of Perseverance
Voodoocult
1994: Jesus Killing Machine
Control Denied
1999: The Fragile Art of Existence
See also
Honorific nicknames in popular music
References
Sources
The Metal Crusade, official site of The Death Fan Club
Empty Words, official Death/Control Denied archival site
1967 births
2001 deaths
Deaths from pneumonia in Florida
American heavy metal guitarists
American heavy metal singers
American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
Rhythm guitarists
Lead guitarists
Death (metal band) members
Death metal musicians
Deaths from brain tumor
Deaths from cancer in Florida
Neurological disease deaths in Florida
Jewish American musicians
Jewish singers
Jewish American songwriters
Singers from Florida
Singers from New York (state)
People from Glen Cove, New York
Singers from Orlando, Florida
People from Altamonte Springs, Florida
Progressive metal guitarists
Songwriters from Florida
Songwriters from New York (state)
20th-century American singers
Jewish heavy metal musicians
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Florida
Guitarists from New York (state)
American male guitarists
Control Denied members
Voodoocult members
20th-century American male singers
20th-century American Jews
American male songwriters | false | [
"Bridge to Silence is a 1989 American TV movie starring Lee Remick and Marlee Matlin. It was one of Remick's last performance.\n\nRemick called Matlin \" a wonderful actress. She's so open and kind of instinctive and free . . . curious. It was an interesting experience, which I had some concern about. When I started I thought, you know, what's it going to be like for the two of us to communicate? I do not have sign language at my beck and call. But we did. It was terrific.\"\n\nThe movie was filmed in Toronto and directed by Karen Arthur. It was the first time Remick had worked with a female director. \"Interesting working with a woman,\" she said. \"Not that it's different in terms of her work, she's doing the same thing as men do, but I've just never been in that position. Directors have always been kind of father figures. It's interesting. It's wonderful. She's terrific.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nReview at Los Angeles Times\n\n1989 television films\n1989 films\nAmerican films\nAmerican television films\nAmerican drama films\n1980s English-language films\nAmerican Sign Language films",
"Yes, Chef is chef Marcus Samuelsson's 2012 memoir written with journalist Veronica Chambers.\n\nPublished by Random House, Yes, Chef describes Samuelsson's early years in Ethiopia, adoption and childhood in Sweden and then culinary career, concluding with a chapter on his restaurant in Harlem, Red Rooster. In the Washington Post, Robin Shulman called the book as \"a sensitive and compelling account of his rise and his extraordinary life...searching for his place in the world through food.\" Reviewing Yes, Chef for The New York Times, Dwight Garner wrote, \"What lifts this book beyond being merely the plainly told story of an interesting life is Mr. Samuelsson’s filigreed yet often pointed observations about why so few black chefs have risen to the top of the culinary world.\"\n\nYes, Chef was a New York Times best-seller and won the 2013 James Beard Award for Writing and Literature.\n\nReferences\n\nMemoirs\n2012 books\nBooks about food and drink\nBooks about Ethiopia\nBooks about Sweden\nBooks about the United States"
] |
[
"Chuck Schuldiner",
"Biography",
"When was he born?",
"May 13, 1967,",
"Where did he grow up?",
"his family moved to Florida.",
"Did he have a good relationship with his parents?",
"I don't know.",
"Did he have brothers and sisters?",
"he had an older brother",
"Did his brother play music?",
"I don't know.",
"What was interesting about his early years?",
"Schuldiner was originally inspired by Metallica,"
] | C_318d750d0b08450b9db3f152883cbfc5_1 | Which Metallica album did he like the most? | 7 | Which Metallica album did Chuck Schuldiner like the most? | Chuck Schuldiner | Schuldiner was born on May 13, 1967, on Long Island, New York to a Jewish father of Austrian descent and a mother from the American South, a convert to Judaism. Both of his parents were teachers. In 1968, his family moved to Florida. Schuldiner was the youngest of three children: he had an older brother named Frank and an older sister named Bethann. He started playing guitar at the age of 9; his 16-year-old brother had died and his parents bought him a guitar, thinking it would help with his grief. He took classical lessons for less than a year in which his teacher taught him "Mary had a Little Lamb", which he did not like very much, and almost stopped completely, until his parents saw an electric guitar at a yard sale and bought it for him. The young Schuldiner immediately took to the instrument. After getting amps, he never stopped playing, writing and teaching himself. Schuldiner was known to spend the weekend in the garage or his room playing his guitar, but was limited to three hours on weekdays when school was in session. Schuldiner first played in public in his early teens. Schuldiner was originally inspired by Metallica, Iron Maiden, Kiss and classical jazz, among others. He was particularly interested in the metal movement known as NWOBHM - New Wave of British Heavy Metal - and cited bands of that genre among his favorites. He frequently cited French band Sortilege as his personal favorite metal group. Slayer, Celtic Frost, Possessed, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond and Metallica were later influences he would apply more to his own band. Later in his career, Schuldiner frequently cited progressive metal bands such as Watchtower, Coroner and Queensryche as influences. The official Schuldiner website, Empty Words, quotes Schuldiner's mother making the claim that he enjoyed all forms of music except country and rap. He also enjoyed jazz and classical music in addition to metal and British alternative acts such as Lush. Schuldiner performed well in school before becoming bored with education, and eventually dropped out. He later regretted this decision. He has stated that if he had not become a musician, he would have liked to have become a veterinarian or a cook. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Charles Michael Schuldiner (May 13, 1967 – December 13, 2001) was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He founded the band Death in 1983 and was their lead vocalist and guitarist until his death in 2001. His obituary in the January 5, 2002, issue of UK's Kerrang! magazine described him as "one of the most significant figures in the history of metal." Schuldiner was ranked No. 10 in Joel McIver's book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists in 2009 and No. 20 in March 2004 Guitar Worlds "The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists". In 1987, Schuldiner founded the publishing company Mutilation Music, affiliated with performance rights organization BMI. Schuldiner died in 2001 of a brain tumor.
Schuldiner is often referred to as "The Godfather of death metal", although he was uncomfortable with this nickname, remarking that "I don't think I should take the credits for this death metal stuff. I'm just a guy from a band, and I think Death is a metal band."
Biography
Early life
Schuldiner was born on May 13, 1967, on Long Island, New York. His father Mal Schuldiner was Jewish and the son of Austrian immigrants, and his mother Jane Schuldiner was from the American South and had converted to Judaism. In 1968, his family moved to Florida.
He started playing guitar at the age of 9. He took classical lessons for less than a year in which his teacher taught him "Mary had a Little Lamb", which he did not like very much, and almost stopped completely until his parents bought him an electric guitar at a yard sale. The young Schuldiner immediately took to the instrument and began playing, writing and teaching himself. He was known to spend the weekend in the garage or his room playing his guitar but was limited to three hours on weekdays when school was in session. Schuldiner first played in public in his early teens.
Schuldiner was originally inspired by Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Kiss and classical jazz, among others. He was particularly interested in the metal movement known as NWOBHM – New Wave of British Heavy Metal – and cited bands of that genre among his favorites. He frequently cited French band Sortilège as his personal favorite metal group. Slayer, Celtic Frost, Possessed, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond and Metallica were later influences he would apply more to his own songwriting. Later in his career, Schuldiner frequently cited progressive metal bands such as Watchtower, Coroner and Queensrÿche as influences. The official Schuldiner website, Empty Words, quotes Schuldiner's mother making the claim that he enjoyed all forms of music except country and rap. He also enjoyed jazz and classical music in addition to metal and British alternative acts such as Lush.
Schuldiner performed well in school before becoming bored with education and eventually dropping out. He later regretted this decision. He has stated that if he had not become a musician, he would have liked to have become a veterinarian or a cook.
Musical career
Taking inspiration from Nasty Savage, Schuldiner formed Death as Mantas in 1983 when he was just 16 years old. Original members were Schuldiner (guitar), Rick Rozz (guitar) and Kam Lee (drums and vocals). In January 1986, Schuldiner moved to Toronto and temporarily joined the Canadian band Slaughter. However, he quickly returned to continue the formation of Death.
Death underwent many lineup changes. With Chris Reifert, Schuldiner eventually released the first Death album, titled Scream Bloody Gore, in 1987. He continued with 1988's Leprosy with the line-up of former Mantas guitarist Rick Rozz and rhythm section Terry Butler on bass and Bill Andrews on drums, and 1990's Spiritual Healing, where guitarist James Murphy had replaced the fired Rozz in 1989.
After Spiritual Healing, Schuldiner stopped working with full-time band members, preferring to work with studio and live venue musicians, due to bad relationships with Death's previous rhythm section and guitarists. This earned Schuldiner something of a 'perfectionist' reputation in the metal community. Schuldiner had also fired his manager Eric Greif but settled and re-hired him before the recording of his next, influential release.
Death's breakthrough album, Human saw the band evolving to a more technical and progressive style, in which Schuldiner displayed his guitar skills more than ever. He continued in this style (and continued the success of the band) with 1993's Individual Thought Patterns, 1995's Symbolic, and finally The Sound of Perseverance in 1998.
He put Death on hold after this to continue Control Denied, which he had been putting together prior to the release of The Sound of Perseverance, and released The Fragile Art of Existence in 1999. Control Denied also had other players from the latest Death album but featured a melodic metal vocalist. Schuldiner also played guitar in the "supergroup" Voodoocult on the album Jesus Killing Machine in 1994 and played a guest solo on Naphobia's 1995 release, Of Hell on the track "As Ancients Evolve" as a favor to the band's bassist at the time who was a friend of Schuldiner's. Schuldiner was also asked to be one of the many guest vocalists on Dave Grohl's 2001 Probot. Grohl, Napalm Death, Ozzy Osbourne, and Anthrax all increased efforts to raise funds for Schuldiner's medical bills with Grohl trying to involve Schuldiner on an album he was working on. In a 1999 interview, Schuldiner spoke about why he didn't sing on the Control Denied album The Fragile Art of Existence "...these vocals are all I ever wanted to do in Death but couldn't. I've had this dream of recording like that for years, and it seems like a dream come true. Tim Aymar is an amazing singer and this is the main difference. I think people will be surprised at the violence and strength of the album. Many people are expecting something like Iron Maiden, but, despite being one of my favorite bands, I didn't want to make an Iron Maiden-like album. I wanted to make an unpredictable album, just like I did in Death, I guess. I don't like to make predictable albums."
Illness and death
In 1999, Schuldiner was diagnosed with brain cancer. He continued to work on his music, continuing his work with Control Denied. He was at first unable to afford the surgery that he needed immediately. A press release called for support from everyone, including fellow artists. Jane Schuldiner urged all who read the statements about Schuldiner and his illness to go out and get insurance, stating her frustration in the American healthcare system. Schuldiner had taken out medical insurance after his first surgery, but the insurer had refused to pay because the cancer pre-dated insurance being taken out. Many artists, including Kid Rock, Korn and Red Hot Chili Peppers, got together during the summer of 2001 to auction off personal items, with the funds assisting Schuldiner's medical expenses, an effort covered by MTV. Matt Heafy, vocalist and guitarist for Trivium, has also stated that the band had played a benefit show for Schuldiner while he was in the hospital in their days as a local band. In November 2001, Schuldiner's condition worsened as he became ill with Pneumocystis carinii.
On December 13, 2001, Schuldiner died at the age of 34 and was cremated. MTV reported that recording artists including Dave Grohl, Mike Patton, Max Cavalera, King Diamond, Ville Valo, Trey Azagthoth, Glen Benton, Jason Newsted, Corey Taylor, and all former and active members of Death, attended his memorial service.
Legacy
With the assistance of Schuldiner's family, former manager Eric Greif handled his legacy as President of Perseverance Holdings Ltd. Schuldiner's mother Jane and sister Beth Schuldiner frequently interact with his fans and both have stated many times that they enjoy his music. Greif kept track of his recordings and handled Schuldiner's intellectual property. Beth Schuldiner has a son named Christopher Steele, who also plays guitar and has all of Schuldiner's guitars. BC Rich also released a statement in their 2008 catalog stating that Schuldiner's signature model Stealth will be available for purchase, and that endorsement is overseen by Steele.
Schuldiner had homes and two dogs in the area surrounding Orlando. Schuldiner built a studio inside the garage where many of his songs such as "Crystal Mountain" were inspired. Schuldiner's home office was the site of the Metal Crusade newsletter and fan club.
A legal battle began from the time of Schuldiner's death on the settlement of the rights to the partially completed second Control Denied album, When Man and Machine Collide, which was recorded in 2000–2001 and was scheduled for release in 2013. Demos of these unreleased Control Denied songs, as well as early Death demos and live Death recordings from 1990, were released in the Zero Tolerance two-part compilation bootlegs by the Dutch Hammerheart Holdings company and the Schuldiners and Greif asserted rights on behalf of Schuldiner's Estate. The matter was settled in November 2009, anticipating the project being finished and released in 2010.
Tribute concerts have been coordinated or funded by Schuldiner's mother and family and various Death tribute groups internationally. Former CKY frontman, Deron Miller, who considers Schuldiner an idol of his, got the idea, while working on various projects with former Death guitarist (and pituitary tumor survivor) James Murphy, to do a tribute album. Murphy announced he would release a Chuck Schuldiner tribute album to commemorate his lasting mark on the metal community and Schuldiner's family publicly offered support for Murphy's effort, though it has never materialized. Schuldiner's sister Beth confirmed via her YouTube channel that Death: Live in Japan, a behind the scenes Death video, as well as a potential boxset containing all of Schuldiner's works including some exclusive copies of handwritten notes by Schuldiner are in the works via Relapse Records. Schuldiner Estate lawyer Eric Greif held a charity Chuck Schuldiner Birthday Bash in Calgary, Alberta, May 13, 2011, featuring speeches by Greif and former Death guitarist Paul Masvidal, as well as bands performing Schuldiner's music. Greif repeated this May 12, 2012, with special guest band Massacre, featuring former Death members Rick Rozz and Terry Butler.
Book
In January 2001, Mahyar Dean, an Iranian metal guitarist/musician, wrote Death, a book about Death and Schuldiner poems. The book includes bilingual lyrics and many articles about the band. The book was sent through the site keepers of emptywords.org to Schuldiner, who in his words was "truly blown away and honored by the obvious work and devotion he put into bringing the book to life".
Beliefs
Schuldiner designed the Death logo and its various incarnations during the length of his career. In 1991, before the release of Human, he cleaned up the logo taking out more intricate details and the "T" in the logo was swapped from an inverted cross to a more regular looking "T", one reason being to quash any implication of religion.
Schuldiner was also openly against hard drugs; he is quoted as saying, "I've tripped several times. That's all because I don't like the hard drugs. And my only drugs are alcohol and grass." Schuldiner also stated that he was pro-choice. He is quoted as saying that "it should be legal. If I was a woman surely I would like to have a choice to have a child or not. In U.S. a lot of new-borns are killed because they were unwanted. It is better to solve it immediately when a woman finds out about the pregnancy and she doesn't want a child. Better to go for an abortion than to kill a baby. That is terrible. Men cannot force women to keep a child when they themselves feel they can't."
Musical style
Schuldiner was mostly self-taught as a guitarist. In 1993, he expressed a disinterest in music theory: "I know enough about what I'm playing to memorize the scales and things, but I have no idea how you would label them. As long as I can play it, memorize it and apply it, I don't need to know what you call it."
In the early days of Death, Schuldiner used a "deep, raspy" death growl vocal technique. He said in 1993 that "it takes a lot of energy and a lot of throat abuse to get through a show."
Equipment
Guitars
Schuldiner's primary guitar throughout most of his career was the B.C. Rich Stealth model, an extremely rare model produced in small amounts under the B.C. Rich US (U-) series name along with the Custom Shop, until it was released to the public as the Chuck Schuldiner Tribute Stealth. The Stealth was also released as an N.J. model in the 1980's and 1990's, but was extremely rare. Prior to this, he used a B.C. Rich Mockingbird copy, built by "someone in Florida", and a B.C Rich Ignitor. Most of Schuldiner's sound came from a DiMarzio X2N pickup placed in the bridge. During the (In)Human Tour of the World (1991–92), Schuldiner briefly endorsed a small Wisconsin custom guitar company called Axtra, who worked with him on designs, though he still insisted on using his B.C. Rich during filming of the Lack of Comprehension video in September 1991 in Orlando.
Amplifiers
The amplifier he used towards the end of his career was a Marshall Valvestate (Model 8100) amplifier head and Valvestate 4x12 speaker cabinets on Individual Thought Patterns as well as the ITP tour and eventually started using Marshall 1960 cabinets. Before that he used various equipment including Randall RG100ES heads and Randall cabinets, and on the (In)Human Tour of the World he used a small GK 250ML miked up, despite having hollow 4x12 stacks 'for show'. On the first two Death albums, he stated he used a Boss distortion pedal, but didn't specify which, after which he used amplifier distortion.
Discography
Death
1987: Scream Bloody Gore
1988: Leprosy
1990: Spiritual Healing
1991: Human
1993: Individual Thought Patterns
1995: Symbolic
1998: The Sound of Perseverance
Voodoocult
1994: Jesus Killing Machine
Control Denied
1999: The Fragile Art of Existence
See also
Honorific nicknames in popular music
References
Sources
The Metal Crusade, official site of The Death Fan Club
Empty Words, official Death/Control Denied archival site
1967 births
2001 deaths
Deaths from pneumonia in Florida
American heavy metal guitarists
American heavy metal singers
American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
Rhythm guitarists
Lead guitarists
Death (metal band) members
Death metal musicians
Deaths from brain tumor
Deaths from cancer in Florida
Neurological disease deaths in Florida
Jewish American musicians
Jewish singers
Jewish American songwriters
Singers from Florida
Singers from New York (state)
People from Glen Cove, New York
Singers from Orlando, Florida
People from Altamonte Springs, Florida
Progressive metal guitarists
Songwriters from Florida
Songwriters from New York (state)
20th-century American singers
Jewish heavy metal musicians
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Florida
Guitarists from New York (state)
American male guitarists
Control Denied members
Voodoocult members
20th-century American male singers
20th-century American Jews
American male songwriters | false | [
"The Metallica Blacklist is a various artists tribute album featuring covers of every track from Metallica's 1991 self-titled album (commonly known as The Black Album). The collection was assembled in conjunction with the original album's 30th anniversary. Most of the songs are covered multiple times, with 53 artists participating. The album was released in digital formats on September 10, 2021, and in physical formats on October 1, 2021.\n\nBackground \nThe Metallica Blacklist tribute album is part of a larger celebration of the 30th anniversary of The Black Album, and was released on the same day as a deluxe remastered version of the original album. The tribute album was envisioned as an illustration of how The Black Album influenced musicians from many different genres, and was inspired by the existence of several previous tributes to the album, by artists in genres ranging from electronica to classical.\n\nIn preparation for the project, Metallica invited some musicians who had gained notice for covering other Metallica songs in the past, such as The Warning, The Hu, and Rodrigo y Gabriela. Metallica then invited artists from a variety of genres to contribute unique interpretations of the songs. The invited artists were permitted to choose which song to cover. According to a statement made by the band, \"The Metallica Blacklist offers up new dimensions of the record whose gravitational pull first drew the mainstream to Metallica – and provides new insights into the universal and timeless appeal that kept it there: the boundary-smashing influence these 12 songs have had on fans and musicians of all stripes.\"\n\nFor each song on the album, half of the proceeds are donated to Metallica's All Within My Hands Foundation, and the other half are donated to a charity of that artist's choice.\n\nReception \n\nAt Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album has an average score of 66 based on 10 reviews, indicating \"generally favorable reviews\". The album received reviews that were generally favorable toward the project's wide variety of genres and often surprising selection of contributors, but with some qualms about its repetitive or inconsistent nature as a listening experience.\n\nMetal Hammer noted that there are too many versions of some songs, especially \"Enter Sandman\" and \"Nothing Else Matters\", but concluded that the tribute album \"underscores how, unlike any other band in history, Metallica have transcended heavy metal and emerged as one of music's greatest cultural exports.\" Metal Hammer also endeavored to rank all 53 songs on the album, concluding that the best is the version of \"Nothing Else Matters\" by Miley Cyrus, who was supported by Elton John, Yo-Yo Ma, Andrew Watt, Chad Smith, and current Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo.\n\nPitchfork also gave the album a mixed review, calling it \"enormous and uneven\" and criticizing some predictable covers by the hard rock and heavy metal artists, but praising genre-jumping contributions like those by pop singer Rina Sawayama and Ghanaian-American musician Moses Sumney.\n\nRolling Stone made note of some of the more eclectic covers, such as the contributions from jazz musician Kamasi Washington and punk rock supergroup Off! In a separate review, Rolling Stone concluded that the album is a fitting tribute to the ongoing influence of The Black Album.\n\nExclaim! also noted that not all of the 53 songs are fully satisfying, but praised the project for its contributions to charity while ranking Washington's version of \"My Friend of Misery\" as the album's best track. Metal Injection called the album \"a complete reimagining of one of the most iconic records of all time.\"\n\nNME called it \"a fitfully thrilling hodgepodge\" that forces the listener to choose their own favorite version of each song, but concluded that the album is \"a fantastic tribute to one of metal's sacred texts.\"\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nReferences \n\n2021 compilation albums\nMetallica tribute albums",
"Through The Never can refer to:\n\n Metallica: Through the Never, a 2013 Metallica concert film\n Metallica: Through the Never (album), the soundtrack album for the film\n \"Through the Never\", the seventh track on the 1991 Metallica album, Metallica"
] |
[
"Stirling Moss",
"Popular culture"
] | C_019c79656cc44e16b3a71b82930b321c_0 | What did the public think of Stirling Moss? | 1 | What did the public think of Stirling Moss? | Stirling Moss | During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances. In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show What's My Line? (episode with Anita Ekberg). In 1959 he was the subject of the TV programme This Is Your Life. On June 12 the following year he was interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face; Freeman later said that he had thought before the interview that Moss was a playboy, but in their meeting he showed "cold, precise, clinical judgement... a man who could live so close to the edge of death and danger, and trust entirely to his own judgement. This appealed to me". Moss also appeared as himself in the 1964 film The Beauty Jungle, and was one of several celebrities with cameo appearances in the 1967 version of the James Bond film Casino Royale. He played Evelyn Tremble's (Peter Sellers) driver. For many years during and after his career, the rhetorical phrase "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" was supposedly the standard question all British policemen asked speeding motorists. Moss relates he himself was once stopped for speeding and asked just that; he reports the traffic officer had some difficulty believing him. As related in the book The Life and Times of Private Eye, Moss was the subject of a less than respectful cartoon biography in the magazine Private Eye. The cartoon, drawn by Willie Rushton, showed him continually crashing, having his driving licence revoked and finally "hosting television programmes on subjects he knows nothing about". It also made reference to the amnesia Moss suffered from as a result of head injuries sustained in the crash at Goodwood in 1962. According to the book, Moss responded by offering to buy the original of the cartoon, an outcome the book describes as "depressingly common" for its satirical cartoons about famous people. Moss is the narrator of the popular children's series Roary the Racing Car which stars Peter Kay, a role he took on, having been approached by both David Jenkins, who had the original idea, and Keith Chapman, the latter the creator of Bob the Builder, as he saw the TV show as a way of introducing motorsport to the next generation. He is one of the few drivers of his era to create a brand from his name for licensing purposes, which was launched when his website was revamped in 2009 with improved content. Moss is also a supporter of the UK Independence Party. CANNOTANSWER | During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, | Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss (17 September 1929 – 12 April 2020) was a British Formula One racing driver. An inductee into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, he won 212 of the 529 races he entered across several categories of competition and has been described as "the greatest driver never to win the World Championship". In a seven-year span between 1955 and 1961 Moss finished as championship runner-up four times and in third place the other three times.
Early life
Moss was born in London, son of Alfred Moss, a dentist of Bray, Berkshire, and Aileen (née Craufurd). His grandfather was Jewish, from a family that changed their surname from Moses to Moss. He was brought up at Long White Cloud house on the south bank of the River Thames. His father was an amateur racing driver who had come 16th in the 1924 Indianapolis 500. Aileen Moss had also been involved in motorsport, entering prewar hillclimbs at the wheel of a Singer Nine. Stirling was a gifted horse rider as was his younger sister, Pat Moss, who became a successful rally driver in her own right and also married Swedish rally driver Erik Carlsson.
Moss was educated at several independent schools: Shrewsbury House School in Surbiton, Clewer Manor Junior School, and the linked senior school, Haileybury and Imperial Service College, located at Hertford Heath, near Hertford. He disliked school and did not attain a good academic performance. At Haileybury, he was subjected to antisemitic bullying because of his Jewish roots. He concealed the bullying from his parents and used it as "motivation to succeed". Moss received his first car, an Austin 7, from his father at the age of nine, and drove it on the fields around Long White Cloud. He purchased his own car at age 15 after he obtained a driving licence. After the Second World War, Moss was ruled exempt from doing the mandatory two-year national service for men his age because he had nephritis.
Racing career
Moss raced from 1948 to 1962, winning 212 of the 529 races he entered, including 16 Formula One Grands Prix. He competed in as many as 62 races in a single year and drove 84 different makes of car over the course of his racing career. He preferred to race British cars, stating, "Better to lose honourably in a British car than win in a foreign one". At Vanwall, he was instrumental in breaking the German/Italian stranglehold on F1 racing (as was Jack Brabham at Cooper). He remained the English driver with the most Formula One victories until 1991 when Nigel Mansell overtook him after competing in more races.
1948–1954
Moss began his career at the wheel of his father Alfred's 328 BMW, DPX 653. Moss was one of the Cooper Car Company's first customers, using winnings from competing in horse-riding events to pay the deposit on a Cooper 500 racing car in 1948. He then persuaded his father, who opposed his racing and wanted him to be a dentist, to let him buy it. He soon demonstrated his ability with numerous wins at national and international levels, and continued to compete in Formula Three, with Coopers and Kiefts, after he had progressed to more senior categories.
His first major international race victory came on the eve of his 21st birthday at the wheel of a borrowed Jaguar XK120 in the 1950 RAC Tourist Trophy on the Dundrod circuit in Northern Ireland. He went on to win the race six more times, in 1951 (Jaguar C-Type), 1955 (Mercedes-Benz 300SLR), 1958 and 1959 (Aston Martin DBR1), and 1960 and 1961 (Ferrari 250 GT). Enzo Ferrari, the founder of Ferrari, approached Moss and offered him a Formula Two car to drive at the 1951 Bari Grand Prix before a full
-season in 1952. Moss and his father went to Apulia only to find out that the Ferrari car was to be driven by experienced driver Piero Taruffi and were incensed.
Also a competent rally driver, Moss was one of three people to have won a Coupe d'Or (Gold Cup) for three consecutive penalty-free runs on the Alpine Rally (Coupe des Alpes). He finished second in the 1952 Monte Carlo Rally driving a Sunbeam-Talbot 90 with Desmond Scannell and Autocar magazine editor John Cooper as co-drivers.
In 1954, he became the first non-American to win the 12 Hours of Sebring, sharing the Cunningham team's 1.5-liter O.S.C.A. MT4 with American Bill Lloyd.
In 1953 Mercedes-Benz racing boss Alfred Neubauer had spoken to Moss's manager, Ken Gregory, about the possibility of Moss's joining the Mercedes Grand Prix team. Having seen him do well in a relatively uncompetitive car, and wanting to see how he would perform in a better one, Neubauer suggested Moss buy a Maserati for the 1954 season. He bought a Maserati 250F, and although the car's unreliability prevented his scoring high points in the 1954 Drivers' Championship he qualified alongside the Mercedes front runners several times and performed well in the races. He achieved his first Formula One victory when he won the non-Championship Oulton Park International Gold Cup in the Maserati.
In the Italian Grand Prix at Monza he passed both drivers who were regarded as the best in Formula One at the time—Juan Manuel Fangio in a Mercedes and Alberto Ascari in a Ferrari—and took the lead. Ascari retired with engine problems, and Moss led until lap 68 when his engine also failed. Fangio took the victory, and Moss pushed his Maserati to the finish line. Neubauer, already impressed when Moss had tested a Mercedes-Benz W196 at Hockenheim, promptly signed him for 1955.
1955
Moss's first World Championship victory was in the 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree, a race he was also the first British driver to win. Leading a 1–2–3–4 finish for Mercedes, it was the first time he beat Fangio, his teammate and arch rival, who was also his friend and mentor. It has been suggested that Fangio sportingly allowed Moss to win in front of his home crowd. Moss himself asked Fangio repeatedly, and Fangio always replied: "No. You were just better than me that day." The same year, Moss also won the RAC Tourist Trophy, the Targa Florio (sharing the drive with Peter Collins) and the Mille Miglia.
Mille Miglia
In 1955 Moss won Italy's thousand-mile Mille Miglia road race, an achievement Doug Nye described as the "most iconic single day's drive in motor racing history." He was paired with motor racing journalist Denis Jenkinson, who prepared pace note for Moss, and the two completed the race in ten hours and seven minutes. Motor Trend headlined it as "The Most Epic Drive. Ever." Before the race, he had taken a "magic pill" given to him by Fangio, and he has commented that although he did not know what was in it, "Dexedrine and Benzedrine were commonly used in rallies. The object was simply to keep awake, like wartime bomber crews." After the win, he spent the night and the following day driving his girlfriend to Cologne, stopping for breakfast in Munich and lunch in Stuttgart.
1956–1962
Moss won the Nassau Cup at the 1956 and 1957 Bahamas Speed Week. Also in 1957 he won on the longest circuit ever to hold a World Championship Grand Prix, the Pescara Circuit, where he again demonstrated his mastery of long-distance racing. The event lasted three hours and Moss beat Fangio, who started from pole position, by a little over 3 minutes.
In 1958, Moss's forward-thinking attitude made waves in the racing world. Moss won the first race of the season in a rear-engined F1 car, which became the common design by 1961. At Monza that year, he raced in the "Eldorado" Maserati in the Race of Two Worlds, the first single-seater car in Europe to be sponsored by a non-racing brand—the Eldorado Ice Cream Company. This was the first case in Europe of contemporary sponsorship, with the ice cream maker's colors replacing the ones assigned by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA).
Moss's sporting attitude cost him the 1958 Formula One World Championship. When rival Mike Hawthorn was threatened with a penalty after the Portuguese Grand Prix, Moss defended him. Hawthorn was accused of reversing on the track after spinning and stalling his car on an uphill section. Moss had shouted advice to Hawthorn to steer downhill, against traffic, to bump-start the car. Moss's quick thinking, and his defence of Hawthorn before the stewards, preserved Hawthorn's 6 points for finishing second behind Moss. Hawthorn went on to beat Moss for the championship title by one point, even though he had won only one race that year to Moss's four. Moss's loss in the championship could also be attributed to an error in communication between his pit crew and the driver at one race. A point was given for the fastest lap in each race, and the crew signaled "HAWT REC" meaning Hawthorn had set a record lap. Moss read this as "HAWT REG" and thought Hawthorn was making regular laps, so did not try to set a fast lap. The crew was supposed to signal the time of the lap, so Moss would know what he had to beat.
Moss was as gifted in sports cars as in Grand Prix cars. To his victories in the Tourist Trophy, the Sebring 12 Hours and the Mille Miglia he added three consecutive wins (1958–1960) in the 1000 km Nürburgring, the first two in an Aston Martin (in which he did most of the driving), and the third in a Tipo 61 "birdcage" Maserati, co-driving with the American Dan Gurney. The pair lost time when an oil hose blew off, but despite the wet-weather, they made up the time and took first place.
In the 1960 Formula One season, Moss won the Monaco Grand Prix in Rob Walker's Coventry-Climax-powered Lotus 18. Seriously injured in an accident at the Burnenville curve during practice for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, he missed the next three races but recovered sufficiently to win the final one of the season, the United States Grand Prix at Riverside, California.
For the 1961 Formula One season, run under new 1.5-litre rules, Enzo Ferrari fielded the "sharknose" Ferrari 156 with an all-new V6 engine. Moss's Climax-engined Lotus was comparatively underpowered, but he won the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix by 3.6 seconds, beating the Ferraris of Richie Ginther, Wolfgang von Trips, and Phil Hill, and went on to win the partially wet 1961 German Grand Prix.
In 1962, he crashed his Lotus heavily during the Glover Trophy at Goodwood held on Monday 23 April. The accident put him in a coma for a month, and for six months the left side of his body was partially paralysed. He recovered, but retired from professional racing after a private test session in a Lotus 19 the following year, when he lapped a few tenths of a second slower than before. He felt he had not regained his previously instinctive command of the car. He had been runner-up in the Drivers' Championship four years in succession, from 1955 to 1958, and third in each of the next three years.
Speed records
1950
At the Autodrome de Montlhéry, a steeply banked oval track near Paris, Moss and Leslie Johnson took turns at the wheel of the latter's Jaguar XK120 to average for 24 hours, including stops for fuel and tyres. Changing drivers every three hours, they covered a total of . It was the first time a production car had averaged over for 24 hours.
1952
Revisiting Montlhéry, Moss was one of a four-driver team, led by Johnson, who drove a factory-owned Jaguar XK120 fixed-head coupé for 7 days and nights at the French track. Moss, Johnson, Bert Hadley and Jack Fairman averaged to take four World records and five International Class C records, and covered a total of .
1957
In August Moss broke five International Class F records in the purpose-built MG EX181 at Bonneville Salt Flats. The streamlined, supercharged car's speed for the flying kilometer was 245.64 mph, which was the average of two runs in opposite directions.
Broadcasting career
Away from driving, in 1962 he acted as a colour commentator for ABC's Wide World of Sports for Formula One and NASCAR races. He eventually left ABC in 1980. Moss narrated the official 1988 Formula One season review along with Tony Jardine.
Moss also narrated the popular children's series Roary the Racing Car, which stars Peter Kay.
Return to racing
Although ostensibly retired from racing since 1962, Moss did make a number of one-off appearances in professional motorsport events in the following two decades. He also competed in the 1974 London-Sahara-Munich World Cup Rally in a Mercedes-Benz, but retired from the event in the Algerian Sahara. The Holden Torana he shared with Jack Brabham in the 1976 Bathurst 1000 was hit from behind on the grid and eventually retired with engine failure. Moss, at the wheel of the Torana when the V8 engine let go, was criticised by other drivers for staying on the racing line for over ⅔ of the 6.172 km long circuit while returning to the pits as the car was dropping large amounts of oil onto the road. He also shared a Volkswagen Golf GTI with Denny Hulme in the 1979 Benson & Hedges 500 at Pukekohe Park Raceway in New Zealand.
In 1980 he made a comeback to regular competition, in the British Saloon Car Championship with the works-backed GTi Engineering Audi team. For the 1980 season Moss was the team's number two driver to team co-owner Richard Lloyd. For the 1981 season Moss stayed with Audi, as the team moved to Tom Walkinshaw Racing management, driving alongside Martin Brundle.
Throughout his retirement he raced in events for historic cars, driving on behalf of and at the invitation of others, as well as campaigning his own OSCA FS 372 and other vehicles. In 2004, as part of its promotion for the new SLR, Mercedes-Benz reunited Moss with the 300 SLR "No. 722" in which he won the Mille Miglia nearly 50 years earlier. One reporter who rode with Moss that day noted that the 75-year-old driver was "so good . . . that even old and crippled [he was] still better than nearly everyone else". On 9 June 2011 during qualifying for the Le Mans Legends race, Moss announced on Radio Le Mans that he had finally retired from racing, saying that he had scared himself that afternoon. He was 81.
Post racing career
Lister Cars announced the building for sale of the Lister Knobbly Stirling Moss at the Royal Automobile Club in London in June 2016. The car is built to the exact specification of the 1958 model, is the only magnesium-bodied car in the world, and is the only car that was ever endorsed by Moss. Brian Lister invited Moss to drive for Lister on three separate occasions, at Goodwood in 1954, Silverstone in 1958 and at Sebring in 1959, and to celebrate these races, 10 special edition lightweight Lister Knobbly cars are being built. The company announced that the cars will be available for both road and race use, and Moss would personally be handing over each car.
Honours
In 1990, Moss was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.
In the New Year Honours 2000 List, Moss was made a Knight Bachelor for services to motor racing. On 21 March 2000, he was knighted by Prince Charles, standing in for the Queen, who was on an official visit to Australia.
He received the 2005 Segrave Trophy.
In 2006, Moss was awarded the FIA gold medal in recognition of his outstanding contribution to motorsport.
In December 2008, McLaren-Mercedes unveiled their final model of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. The model was named in honour of Moss, hence, Mercedes McLaren SLR Stirling Moss, which has a top speed of with wind deflectors instead of a windscreen.
In 2016, in an academic paper that reported a mathematical modelling study that assessed the relative influence of driver and machine, Moss was ranked the 29th best Formula One driver of all time.
Following Moss's death the Kinrara Trophy race at the Goodwood Revival meeting was renamed in his honour. It is a race for GT cars that competed before 1963.
Biographies
In 1957, Moss published an autobiography called In the Track Of Speed, first published by Muller, London.
In 1963, motorsport author and commentator Ken Purdy published a biographical book entitled All But My Life about Moss (first published by William Kimber & Co, London), based on material gathered through interviews with Moss.
In 2015, when he was aged 85, Moss published a second autobiography, entitled My Racing Life, written with motor sports writer Simon Taylor. In 2016, Philip Porter published the first volume of Stirling Moss - The Definitive Biography covering the period from birth up to the end of 1955, one of Moss's greatest years.
Popular culture
During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances. In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show What's My Line? (episode with Anita Ekberg). In 1959 he was the subject of the TV programme This Is Your Life. On 12 June the following year he was interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face; Freeman later said that he had thought before the interview that Moss was a playboy, but in their meeting he showed "cold, precise, clinical judgement... a man who could live so close to the edge of death and danger, and trust entirely to his own judgement. This appealed to me". Moss also appeared as himself in the 1964 film The Beauty Jungle, and was one of several celebrities with cameo appearances in the 1967 version of the James Bond film Casino Royale. He played Evelyn Tremble's (Peter Sellers) driver.
For many years during and after his career, the rhetorical phrase "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" was supposedly the standard question all British policemen asked speeding motorists. Moss relates he himself was once stopped for speeding and asked just that; he reports the traffic officer had some difficulty believing him. Moss was the subject of a cartoon biography in the magazine Private Eye that said he was interested in cars, women and sex, in that order. The cartoon, drawn by Willie Rushton, showed him continually crashing, having his driving licence revoked and finally "hosting television programmes on subjects he knows nothing about". It also made reference to the amnesia Moss suffered from as a result of head injuries sustained in the crash at Goodwood in 1962. Although there were complaints to the magazine about the cartoons, Moss rang Private Eye to ask if he could use it as a Christmas card.
He was one of the few drivers of his era to create a brand from his name for licensing purposes, which was launched when his website was revamped in 2009 with improved content. In 2004, Moss was a supporter of the UK Independence Party.
Moss was a Mercedes-Benz Brand Ambassador, having kept a close relationship with the brand, and remained an enthusiast and collector of the brand, which includes the Mercedes-Benz W113, Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Stirling Moss among others.
Personal life and death
Moss was married three times. His first wife was Katie Molson; an heir to the Canadian brewer Molson. They were married in 1957 and separated three years later. His second wife was the American public relations executive Elaine Barbarino. They were married in 1964 and divorced in 1968. Their daughter Allison was born in 1967. His third wife was Susie Paine, the daughter of an old friend. They were married from 1980 until his death in 2020. Their son Elliot was born in 1980.
In April 1960, Moss was found guilty of dangerous driving. He was fined £50 and banned from driving for one year after an incident near Chetwynd, Shropshire, when he was test-driving a Mini.
Moss's 80th birthday, on 17 September 2009, fell on the eve of the Goodwood Revival and Lord March celebrated with an 80-car parade on each of the three days. Moss drove a different car each day: a Mercedes-Benz W196 (an open-wheel variant), the Lotus 18 in which he had won the 1961 Monaco GP, and an Aston Martin DBR1.
On 7 March 2010, Moss broke both ankles and four bones in a foot, and also chipped four vertebrae and suffered skin lesions, when he plunged down a lift shaft at his home. In December 2016, he was admitted to hospital in Singapore with a serious chest infection. As a result of this illness and a subsequent lengthy recovery period, Moss announced his retirement from public life in January 2018.
Moss died at his home in Mayfair, London, on 12 April 2020, aged 90, after a long illness.
Racing record
Career highlights
Complete Formula One World Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)
† Indicates shared drive with Hans Herrmann and Karl Kling.
* Indicates shared drive with Cesare Perdisa.
‡ Indicates shared drive with Tony Brooks.
[a] After Moss retired from the race he took over the car of Trintignant. Both drivers did not receive any points for their shared drive.
Non-championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position)
(Races in italics indicate fastest lap)
Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results
Complete 12 Hours of Sebring results
Complete 12 Hours of Reims results
Complete Mille Miglia results
Complete Rallye de Monte Carlo results
Complete Bathurst 1000 results
Complete British Saloon Car Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap.)
† Events with 2 races staged for the different classes.
References
External links
Sir Stirling Moss – Official Web Site
Stirling Moss in the 24 hours of Le Mans
Grand Prix History – Hall of Fame, Stirling Moss
Stirling Moss profile at The 500 Owners Association
BBC Face to Face interview with Stirling Moss and John Freeman, broadcast 12 June 1960
1929 births
2020 deaths
12 Hours of Sebring drivers
24 Hours of Le Mans drivers
BBC Sports Personality of the Year winners
Bonneville 200 MPH Club members
BRDC Gold Star winners
Brighton Speed Trials people
British Racing Partnership Formula One drivers
British Touring Car Championship drivers
Connaught Formula One drivers
Cooper Formula One drivers
English Formula One drivers
English people of Jewish descent
English racing drivers
ERA Formula One drivers
Formula One race winners
Formula One team owners
Hersham and Walton Motors Formula One drivers
International Motorsports Hall of Fame inductees
Knights Bachelor
Maserati Formula One drivers
Mercedes-Benz Formula One drivers
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
People educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College
People from West Kensington
People in sports awarded knighthoods
Rob Walker Racing Team Formula One drivers
Sportspeople from London
Segrave Trophy recipients
Vanwall Formula One drivers
World Sportscar Championship drivers | true | [
"The 1958 RAC Tourist Trophy took place on 13 September, on the Goodwood Circuit, (England). It was also the sixth and final round of the F.I.A. World Sports Car Championship. This was the first time the event had taken place, since 1955 following the death of three drivers during the race.\n\nReport\n\nEntry\n\nA grand total 36 racing cars were registered for this event, of which 29 arrived for practice and qualifying. Scuderia Ferrari, did entry one car for the event, 250 TR 58, but were among those who did not arrive, perhaps the disinterest from Maranello was due to the lack of drivers and the fact that their victory at Le Mans had given them the Championship. The event also did not attract the Belgian equipes. The entry was therefore headed by the three works Aston Martins, entered under the name of David Brown Ltd. Their DBR1/300s were from Stirling Moss/Tony Brooks, Carroll Shelby/Stuart Lewis-Evans and Roy Salvadori/Jack Brabham.\n\nQualifying\n\nThe Aston Martin DBR1/300 of Stirling Moss took pole position, averaging a speed of 93.913 mph around the 2.4 mile circuit.\n\nRace\n\nOf the 29 starters, only the three Astons were considered the potential winners, and so it proved as they finished in the first three places, winning the Team Awards in the process. The winning partnership of Moss/Brooks won in a time of 4hr 01:17.0mins., averaging a speed of 88.324 mph. They covered a distance of 355.2 miles. Just 0.4 seconds behind came Salvadori/Brabham, with Shelby/Lewis-Evans the same margin adrift in complete the podium.\n\nOfficial Classification\n\nClass Winners are in Bold text.\n\n Fastest Lap: Stirling Moss, 1:32.6 secs (93.305 mph)\n\nClass Winners\n\nStandings after the race\n\nReferences\n\nGoodwood\nRAC Tourist Trophy\nRAC",
"The 7th Kanonloppet was a motor race, run to Formula One rules, held on 20 August 1961 at the Karlskoga Circuit, Sweden. The race was run over 30 laps of the little circuit, and was won by British driver Stirling Moss in a Lotus 18/21, run by the UDT Laystall Racing Team.\n\nThis race featured some local drivers who did not compete regularly in Formula One, and also the multiple world motorcycle champion Geoff Duke.\n\nStirling Moss arrived late at the circuit and missed the practice and qualifying sessions, but was allowed to start from the back of the grid.\n\nResults\n\nReferences\n\n \"The Grand Prix Who's Who\", Steve Small, 1995.\n\nKanonloppet\nKanonloppet"
] |
[
"Stirling Moss",
"Popular culture",
"What did the public think of Stirling Moss?",
"During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain,"
] | C_019c79656cc44e16b3a71b82930b321c_0 | When did he begin racing? | 2 | When did Stirling Moss begin racing? | Stirling Moss | During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances. In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show What's My Line? (episode with Anita Ekberg). In 1959 he was the subject of the TV programme This Is Your Life. On June 12 the following year he was interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face; Freeman later said that he had thought before the interview that Moss was a playboy, but in their meeting he showed "cold, precise, clinical judgement... a man who could live so close to the edge of death and danger, and trust entirely to his own judgement. This appealed to me". Moss also appeared as himself in the 1964 film The Beauty Jungle, and was one of several celebrities with cameo appearances in the 1967 version of the James Bond film Casino Royale. He played Evelyn Tremble's (Peter Sellers) driver. For many years during and after his career, the rhetorical phrase "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" was supposedly the standard question all British policemen asked speeding motorists. Moss relates he himself was once stopped for speeding and asked just that; he reports the traffic officer had some difficulty believing him. As related in the book The Life and Times of Private Eye, Moss was the subject of a less than respectful cartoon biography in the magazine Private Eye. The cartoon, drawn by Willie Rushton, showed him continually crashing, having his driving licence revoked and finally "hosting television programmes on subjects he knows nothing about". It also made reference to the amnesia Moss suffered from as a result of head injuries sustained in the crash at Goodwood in 1962. According to the book, Moss responded by offering to buy the original of the cartoon, an outcome the book describes as "depressingly common" for its satirical cartoons about famous people. Moss is the narrator of the popular children's series Roary the Racing Car which stars Peter Kay, a role he took on, having been approached by both David Jenkins, who had the original idea, and Keith Chapman, the latter the creator of Bob the Builder, as he saw the TV show as a way of introducing motorsport to the next generation. He is one of the few drivers of his era to create a brand from his name for licensing purposes, which was launched when his website was revamped in 2009 with improved content. Moss is also a supporter of the UK Independence Party. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss (17 September 1929 – 12 April 2020) was a British Formula One racing driver. An inductee into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, he won 212 of the 529 races he entered across several categories of competition and has been described as "the greatest driver never to win the World Championship". In a seven-year span between 1955 and 1961 Moss finished as championship runner-up four times and in third place the other three times.
Early life
Moss was born in London, son of Alfred Moss, a dentist of Bray, Berkshire, and Aileen (née Craufurd). His grandfather was Jewish, from a family that changed their surname from Moses to Moss. He was brought up at Long White Cloud house on the south bank of the River Thames. His father was an amateur racing driver who had come 16th in the 1924 Indianapolis 500. Aileen Moss had also been involved in motorsport, entering prewar hillclimbs at the wheel of a Singer Nine. Stirling was a gifted horse rider as was his younger sister, Pat Moss, who became a successful rally driver in her own right and also married Swedish rally driver Erik Carlsson.
Moss was educated at several independent schools: Shrewsbury House School in Surbiton, Clewer Manor Junior School, and the linked senior school, Haileybury and Imperial Service College, located at Hertford Heath, near Hertford. He disliked school and did not attain a good academic performance. At Haileybury, he was subjected to antisemitic bullying because of his Jewish roots. He concealed the bullying from his parents and used it as "motivation to succeed". Moss received his first car, an Austin 7, from his father at the age of nine, and drove it on the fields around Long White Cloud. He purchased his own car at age 15 after he obtained a driving licence. After the Second World War, Moss was ruled exempt from doing the mandatory two-year national service for men his age because he had nephritis.
Racing career
Moss raced from 1948 to 1962, winning 212 of the 529 races he entered, including 16 Formula One Grands Prix. He competed in as many as 62 races in a single year and drove 84 different makes of car over the course of his racing career. He preferred to race British cars, stating, "Better to lose honourably in a British car than win in a foreign one". At Vanwall, he was instrumental in breaking the German/Italian stranglehold on F1 racing (as was Jack Brabham at Cooper). He remained the English driver with the most Formula One victories until 1991 when Nigel Mansell overtook him after competing in more races.
1948–1954
Moss began his career at the wheel of his father Alfred's 328 BMW, DPX 653. Moss was one of the Cooper Car Company's first customers, using winnings from competing in horse-riding events to pay the deposit on a Cooper 500 racing car in 1948. He then persuaded his father, who opposed his racing and wanted him to be a dentist, to let him buy it. He soon demonstrated his ability with numerous wins at national and international levels, and continued to compete in Formula Three, with Coopers and Kiefts, after he had progressed to more senior categories.
His first major international race victory came on the eve of his 21st birthday at the wheel of a borrowed Jaguar XK120 in the 1950 RAC Tourist Trophy on the Dundrod circuit in Northern Ireland. He went on to win the race six more times, in 1951 (Jaguar C-Type), 1955 (Mercedes-Benz 300SLR), 1958 and 1959 (Aston Martin DBR1), and 1960 and 1961 (Ferrari 250 GT). Enzo Ferrari, the founder of Ferrari, approached Moss and offered him a Formula Two car to drive at the 1951 Bari Grand Prix before a full
-season in 1952. Moss and his father went to Apulia only to find out that the Ferrari car was to be driven by experienced driver Piero Taruffi and were incensed.
Also a competent rally driver, Moss was one of three people to have won a Coupe d'Or (Gold Cup) for three consecutive penalty-free runs on the Alpine Rally (Coupe des Alpes). He finished second in the 1952 Monte Carlo Rally driving a Sunbeam-Talbot 90 with Desmond Scannell and Autocar magazine editor John Cooper as co-drivers.
In 1954, he became the first non-American to win the 12 Hours of Sebring, sharing the Cunningham team's 1.5-liter O.S.C.A. MT4 with American Bill Lloyd.
In 1953 Mercedes-Benz racing boss Alfred Neubauer had spoken to Moss's manager, Ken Gregory, about the possibility of Moss's joining the Mercedes Grand Prix team. Having seen him do well in a relatively uncompetitive car, and wanting to see how he would perform in a better one, Neubauer suggested Moss buy a Maserati for the 1954 season. He bought a Maserati 250F, and although the car's unreliability prevented his scoring high points in the 1954 Drivers' Championship he qualified alongside the Mercedes front runners several times and performed well in the races. He achieved his first Formula One victory when he won the non-Championship Oulton Park International Gold Cup in the Maserati.
In the Italian Grand Prix at Monza he passed both drivers who were regarded as the best in Formula One at the time—Juan Manuel Fangio in a Mercedes and Alberto Ascari in a Ferrari—and took the lead. Ascari retired with engine problems, and Moss led until lap 68 when his engine also failed. Fangio took the victory, and Moss pushed his Maserati to the finish line. Neubauer, already impressed when Moss had tested a Mercedes-Benz W196 at Hockenheim, promptly signed him for 1955.
1955
Moss's first World Championship victory was in the 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree, a race he was also the first British driver to win. Leading a 1–2–3–4 finish for Mercedes, it was the first time he beat Fangio, his teammate and arch rival, who was also his friend and mentor. It has been suggested that Fangio sportingly allowed Moss to win in front of his home crowd. Moss himself asked Fangio repeatedly, and Fangio always replied: "No. You were just better than me that day." The same year, Moss also won the RAC Tourist Trophy, the Targa Florio (sharing the drive with Peter Collins) and the Mille Miglia.
Mille Miglia
In 1955 Moss won Italy's thousand-mile Mille Miglia road race, an achievement Doug Nye described as the "most iconic single day's drive in motor racing history." He was paired with motor racing journalist Denis Jenkinson, who prepared pace note for Moss, and the two completed the race in ten hours and seven minutes. Motor Trend headlined it as "The Most Epic Drive. Ever." Before the race, he had taken a "magic pill" given to him by Fangio, and he has commented that although he did not know what was in it, "Dexedrine and Benzedrine were commonly used in rallies. The object was simply to keep awake, like wartime bomber crews." After the win, he spent the night and the following day driving his girlfriend to Cologne, stopping for breakfast in Munich and lunch in Stuttgart.
1956–1962
Moss won the Nassau Cup at the 1956 and 1957 Bahamas Speed Week. Also in 1957 he won on the longest circuit ever to hold a World Championship Grand Prix, the Pescara Circuit, where he again demonstrated his mastery of long-distance racing. The event lasted three hours and Moss beat Fangio, who started from pole position, by a little over 3 minutes.
In 1958, Moss's forward-thinking attitude made waves in the racing world. Moss won the first race of the season in a rear-engined F1 car, which became the common design by 1961. At Monza that year, he raced in the "Eldorado" Maserati in the Race of Two Worlds, the first single-seater car in Europe to be sponsored by a non-racing brand—the Eldorado Ice Cream Company. This was the first case in Europe of contemporary sponsorship, with the ice cream maker's colors replacing the ones assigned by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA).
Moss's sporting attitude cost him the 1958 Formula One World Championship. When rival Mike Hawthorn was threatened with a penalty after the Portuguese Grand Prix, Moss defended him. Hawthorn was accused of reversing on the track after spinning and stalling his car on an uphill section. Moss had shouted advice to Hawthorn to steer downhill, against traffic, to bump-start the car. Moss's quick thinking, and his defence of Hawthorn before the stewards, preserved Hawthorn's 6 points for finishing second behind Moss. Hawthorn went on to beat Moss for the championship title by one point, even though he had won only one race that year to Moss's four. Moss's loss in the championship could also be attributed to an error in communication between his pit crew and the driver at one race. A point was given for the fastest lap in each race, and the crew signaled "HAWT REC" meaning Hawthorn had set a record lap. Moss read this as "HAWT REG" and thought Hawthorn was making regular laps, so did not try to set a fast lap. The crew was supposed to signal the time of the lap, so Moss would know what he had to beat.
Moss was as gifted in sports cars as in Grand Prix cars. To his victories in the Tourist Trophy, the Sebring 12 Hours and the Mille Miglia he added three consecutive wins (1958–1960) in the 1000 km Nürburgring, the first two in an Aston Martin (in which he did most of the driving), and the third in a Tipo 61 "birdcage" Maserati, co-driving with the American Dan Gurney. The pair lost time when an oil hose blew off, but despite the wet-weather, they made up the time and took first place.
In the 1960 Formula One season, Moss won the Monaco Grand Prix in Rob Walker's Coventry-Climax-powered Lotus 18. Seriously injured in an accident at the Burnenville curve during practice for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, he missed the next three races but recovered sufficiently to win the final one of the season, the United States Grand Prix at Riverside, California.
For the 1961 Formula One season, run under new 1.5-litre rules, Enzo Ferrari fielded the "sharknose" Ferrari 156 with an all-new V6 engine. Moss's Climax-engined Lotus was comparatively underpowered, but he won the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix by 3.6 seconds, beating the Ferraris of Richie Ginther, Wolfgang von Trips, and Phil Hill, and went on to win the partially wet 1961 German Grand Prix.
In 1962, he crashed his Lotus heavily during the Glover Trophy at Goodwood held on Monday 23 April. The accident put him in a coma for a month, and for six months the left side of his body was partially paralysed. He recovered, but retired from professional racing after a private test session in a Lotus 19 the following year, when he lapped a few tenths of a second slower than before. He felt he had not regained his previously instinctive command of the car. He had been runner-up in the Drivers' Championship four years in succession, from 1955 to 1958, and third in each of the next three years.
Speed records
1950
At the Autodrome de Montlhéry, a steeply banked oval track near Paris, Moss and Leslie Johnson took turns at the wheel of the latter's Jaguar XK120 to average for 24 hours, including stops for fuel and tyres. Changing drivers every three hours, they covered a total of . It was the first time a production car had averaged over for 24 hours.
1952
Revisiting Montlhéry, Moss was one of a four-driver team, led by Johnson, who drove a factory-owned Jaguar XK120 fixed-head coupé for 7 days and nights at the French track. Moss, Johnson, Bert Hadley and Jack Fairman averaged to take four World records and five International Class C records, and covered a total of .
1957
In August Moss broke five International Class F records in the purpose-built MG EX181 at Bonneville Salt Flats. The streamlined, supercharged car's speed for the flying kilometer was 245.64 mph, which was the average of two runs in opposite directions.
Broadcasting career
Away from driving, in 1962 he acted as a colour commentator for ABC's Wide World of Sports for Formula One and NASCAR races. He eventually left ABC in 1980. Moss narrated the official 1988 Formula One season review along with Tony Jardine.
Moss also narrated the popular children's series Roary the Racing Car, which stars Peter Kay.
Return to racing
Although ostensibly retired from racing since 1962, Moss did make a number of one-off appearances in professional motorsport events in the following two decades. He also competed in the 1974 London-Sahara-Munich World Cup Rally in a Mercedes-Benz, but retired from the event in the Algerian Sahara. The Holden Torana he shared with Jack Brabham in the 1976 Bathurst 1000 was hit from behind on the grid and eventually retired with engine failure. Moss, at the wheel of the Torana when the V8 engine let go, was criticised by other drivers for staying on the racing line for over ⅔ of the 6.172 km long circuit while returning to the pits as the car was dropping large amounts of oil onto the road. He also shared a Volkswagen Golf GTI with Denny Hulme in the 1979 Benson & Hedges 500 at Pukekohe Park Raceway in New Zealand.
In 1980 he made a comeback to regular competition, in the British Saloon Car Championship with the works-backed GTi Engineering Audi team. For the 1980 season Moss was the team's number two driver to team co-owner Richard Lloyd. For the 1981 season Moss stayed with Audi, as the team moved to Tom Walkinshaw Racing management, driving alongside Martin Brundle.
Throughout his retirement he raced in events for historic cars, driving on behalf of and at the invitation of others, as well as campaigning his own OSCA FS 372 and other vehicles. In 2004, as part of its promotion for the new SLR, Mercedes-Benz reunited Moss with the 300 SLR "No. 722" in which he won the Mille Miglia nearly 50 years earlier. One reporter who rode with Moss that day noted that the 75-year-old driver was "so good . . . that even old and crippled [he was] still better than nearly everyone else". On 9 June 2011 during qualifying for the Le Mans Legends race, Moss announced on Radio Le Mans that he had finally retired from racing, saying that he had scared himself that afternoon. He was 81.
Post racing career
Lister Cars announced the building for sale of the Lister Knobbly Stirling Moss at the Royal Automobile Club in London in June 2016. The car is built to the exact specification of the 1958 model, is the only magnesium-bodied car in the world, and is the only car that was ever endorsed by Moss. Brian Lister invited Moss to drive for Lister on three separate occasions, at Goodwood in 1954, Silverstone in 1958 and at Sebring in 1959, and to celebrate these races, 10 special edition lightweight Lister Knobbly cars are being built. The company announced that the cars will be available for both road and race use, and Moss would personally be handing over each car.
Honours
In 1990, Moss was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.
In the New Year Honours 2000 List, Moss was made a Knight Bachelor for services to motor racing. On 21 March 2000, he was knighted by Prince Charles, standing in for the Queen, who was on an official visit to Australia.
He received the 2005 Segrave Trophy.
In 2006, Moss was awarded the FIA gold medal in recognition of his outstanding contribution to motorsport.
In December 2008, McLaren-Mercedes unveiled their final model of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. The model was named in honour of Moss, hence, Mercedes McLaren SLR Stirling Moss, which has a top speed of with wind deflectors instead of a windscreen.
In 2016, in an academic paper that reported a mathematical modelling study that assessed the relative influence of driver and machine, Moss was ranked the 29th best Formula One driver of all time.
Following Moss's death the Kinrara Trophy race at the Goodwood Revival meeting was renamed in his honour. It is a race for GT cars that competed before 1963.
Biographies
In 1957, Moss published an autobiography called In the Track Of Speed, first published by Muller, London.
In 1963, motorsport author and commentator Ken Purdy published a biographical book entitled All But My Life about Moss (first published by William Kimber & Co, London), based on material gathered through interviews with Moss.
In 2015, when he was aged 85, Moss published a second autobiography, entitled My Racing Life, written with motor sports writer Simon Taylor. In 2016, Philip Porter published the first volume of Stirling Moss - The Definitive Biography covering the period from birth up to the end of 1955, one of Moss's greatest years.
Popular culture
During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances. In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show What's My Line? (episode with Anita Ekberg). In 1959 he was the subject of the TV programme This Is Your Life. On 12 June the following year he was interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face; Freeman later said that he had thought before the interview that Moss was a playboy, but in their meeting he showed "cold, precise, clinical judgement... a man who could live so close to the edge of death and danger, and trust entirely to his own judgement. This appealed to me". Moss also appeared as himself in the 1964 film The Beauty Jungle, and was one of several celebrities with cameo appearances in the 1967 version of the James Bond film Casino Royale. He played Evelyn Tremble's (Peter Sellers) driver.
For many years during and after his career, the rhetorical phrase "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" was supposedly the standard question all British policemen asked speeding motorists. Moss relates he himself was once stopped for speeding and asked just that; he reports the traffic officer had some difficulty believing him. Moss was the subject of a cartoon biography in the magazine Private Eye that said he was interested in cars, women and sex, in that order. The cartoon, drawn by Willie Rushton, showed him continually crashing, having his driving licence revoked and finally "hosting television programmes on subjects he knows nothing about". It also made reference to the amnesia Moss suffered from as a result of head injuries sustained in the crash at Goodwood in 1962. Although there were complaints to the magazine about the cartoons, Moss rang Private Eye to ask if he could use it as a Christmas card.
He was one of the few drivers of his era to create a brand from his name for licensing purposes, which was launched when his website was revamped in 2009 with improved content. In 2004, Moss was a supporter of the UK Independence Party.
Moss was a Mercedes-Benz Brand Ambassador, having kept a close relationship with the brand, and remained an enthusiast and collector of the brand, which includes the Mercedes-Benz W113, Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Stirling Moss among others.
Personal life and death
Moss was married three times. His first wife was Katie Molson; an heir to the Canadian brewer Molson. They were married in 1957 and separated three years later. His second wife was the American public relations executive Elaine Barbarino. They were married in 1964 and divorced in 1968. Their daughter Allison was born in 1967. His third wife was Susie Paine, the daughter of an old friend. They were married from 1980 until his death in 2020. Their son Elliot was born in 1980.
In April 1960, Moss was found guilty of dangerous driving. He was fined £50 and banned from driving for one year after an incident near Chetwynd, Shropshire, when he was test-driving a Mini.
Moss's 80th birthday, on 17 September 2009, fell on the eve of the Goodwood Revival and Lord March celebrated with an 80-car parade on each of the three days. Moss drove a different car each day: a Mercedes-Benz W196 (an open-wheel variant), the Lotus 18 in which he had won the 1961 Monaco GP, and an Aston Martin DBR1.
On 7 March 2010, Moss broke both ankles and four bones in a foot, and also chipped four vertebrae and suffered skin lesions, when he plunged down a lift shaft at his home. In December 2016, he was admitted to hospital in Singapore with a serious chest infection. As a result of this illness and a subsequent lengthy recovery period, Moss announced his retirement from public life in January 2018.
Moss died at his home in Mayfair, London, on 12 April 2020, aged 90, after a long illness.
Racing record
Career highlights
Complete Formula One World Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)
† Indicates shared drive with Hans Herrmann and Karl Kling.
* Indicates shared drive with Cesare Perdisa.
‡ Indicates shared drive with Tony Brooks.
[a] After Moss retired from the race he took over the car of Trintignant. Both drivers did not receive any points for their shared drive.
Non-championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position)
(Races in italics indicate fastest lap)
Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results
Complete 12 Hours of Sebring results
Complete 12 Hours of Reims results
Complete Mille Miglia results
Complete Rallye de Monte Carlo results
Complete Bathurst 1000 results
Complete British Saloon Car Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap.)
† Events with 2 races staged for the different classes.
References
External links
Sir Stirling Moss – Official Web Site
Stirling Moss in the 24 hours of Le Mans
Grand Prix History – Hall of Fame, Stirling Moss
Stirling Moss profile at The 500 Owners Association
BBC Face to Face interview with Stirling Moss and John Freeman, broadcast 12 June 1960
1929 births
2020 deaths
12 Hours of Sebring drivers
24 Hours of Le Mans drivers
BBC Sports Personality of the Year winners
Bonneville 200 MPH Club members
BRDC Gold Star winners
Brighton Speed Trials people
British Racing Partnership Formula One drivers
British Touring Car Championship drivers
Connaught Formula One drivers
Cooper Formula One drivers
English Formula One drivers
English people of Jewish descent
English racing drivers
ERA Formula One drivers
Formula One race winners
Formula One team owners
Hersham and Walton Motors Formula One drivers
International Motorsports Hall of Fame inductees
Knights Bachelor
Maserati Formula One drivers
Mercedes-Benz Formula One drivers
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
People educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College
People from West Kensington
People in sports awarded knighthoods
Rob Walker Racing Team Formula One drivers
Sportspeople from London
Segrave Trophy recipients
Vanwall Formula One drivers
World Sportscar Championship drivers | false | [
"Tom Bagley (born December 3, 1939, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), is a former driver in the USAC, CART Championship Car, IMSA, Formula Atlantic, and Trans-Am Series. He raced Indycars in the 1978-1980 and 1983 seasons, with 42 combined career starts, including the 1978-1980 Indianapolis 500, finishing in the top ten 23 times, with a best finish, three times, of 4th position. He was USAC Rookie of the Year in 1978, and did not finish worse than 11th in points during his three full-time seasons. He did not begin wheel-to-wheel racing until age 31, after earning a master's degree in Physics from Pennsylvania State University. While in college, Bagley became interested in fuel mileage competitions and then autocross, rising to the attention of Bill Scott, operator of the racing school at Summit Point Motorsports Park. Scott lent Bagley a Formula Ford car to begin his career. Bagley and Janet Guthrie were the only physicists to compete in Indycar in the 1970s. Bagley rose to fame driving Formula Super Vee cars, winning the SCCA championship in 1976, and was USAC co-champion in 1977. Bagley owned and maintained his own race cars in this part of his career. He next joined the Indycar ranks with sponsorship from Kent Oil, driving for Longhorn Racing and Patrick Racing. After retiring from racing full-time, Bagley worked as a physicist for longtime series sponsor PPG Industries, developing new methods for creating powder paints. From 2004 to 2020 he worked at Autobahn Country Club as the Director of Racing Instruction, responsible for designing the safety features at the track and overseeing the instruction, licensing, and racing activities. Bagley still competes in club and endurance races in his Spec Miata and vintage events including the Indy Legends Charity Pro–Am race on occasion. Bagley was described by the SVRA in 2019 as a \"driver who accomplished much with limited resources\" and \"the driver to beat in Formula Super Vee\"\n\nRacing record\n\nSCCA National Championship Runoffs\n\nFormula Super Vee\n\nComplete USAC Mini-Indy Series results\n\nComplete USAC Championship Car results\n\nIndy 500 results\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1939 births\nAtlantic Championship drivers\nChamp Car drivers\nIndianapolis 500 drivers\nLiving people\nRacing drivers from Philadelphia\nTrans-Am Series drivers\nSCCA Formula Super Vee drivers\nFormula Super Vee Champions\nSCCA National Championship Runoffs participants\nCan Am drivers\nFormula Ford drivers\nIMSA GT Championship drivers\nEberly College of Science alumni\nAmerican physicists",
"Shauntia Latrice \"Tia\" Norfleet (born May 1, 1986) is the first and only African American woman to hold a NASCAR driver’s license. The daughter of NASCAR driver Bobby Norfleet, she has completed 1 lap in a late model.\n\nPersonal life\nBorn in Suffolk, Virginia in 1986, Norfleet's interest in racing began at age 7, when her father, NASCAR driver Bobby Norfleet, doubled the battery power of a Hot Wheels Barbie car to increase its speed. Norfleet claims her racing career began at age 14, when she began competing in kart racing events; she went on to attempt a career in drag racing at the local and regional level.\n\nIn 2000, Norfleet switched to entry level spec racing competing in Bandolero cars, then moving to late model stock car racing on short tracks starting with the 2004 racing season; she became the first female African-American driver to purchase a NASCAR Late Model Series racing license.\n\nNorfleet attended local late model events at tracks near her Augusta, Georgia home, starting her Late Model career in 2004. She claimed to begin competing in NASCAR national touring series competition starting in the summer of 2012, and was operating a grassroots funding initiative, claiming it would finance her racing career; however she did not make it to the track in a major series in 2012.\n\nControversy\nIn March 2013, a New York Times article reported that there were numerous inconsistencies in Norfleet's self-promotion efforts. They observe that she has only raced in one low level event, where she ran one lap before parking her car. She also has several criminal offenses on her record, and according to public records is actually 26 years old, not 24 as she has claimed; in addition, the NASCAR license that she has received was the first to be received by an African-American woman, after Tia publicly stated this NASCAR's vice president for public affairs said, “I am uncomfortable with Tia representing herself in the way that she has.” Norfleet responded that the accusations were \"a biased, smear campaign\". Her father responded to the allegations by calling them a \"witchhunt\", by posting pictures of Tia's name on four separate licenses, although it's unclear why because she is the first African American woman to retain such a license regardless of how many she has. He did stand by his daughter by refuting some of the allegations. Tia confirmed that she did indeed have a criminal record, and that her only NASCAR event was indeed a \"start and park\", but also stated that she had never claimed to be a Nationwide Series driver even though she was shown with a NNS patch on her firesuit.\n\nCharitable work\nNorfleet supports the Safe Teen Georgia Driving Academy program, providing driving instruction at Atlanta Motor Speedway on behalf of the group; in addition she is an ambassador for Safe America Driving.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nLiving people\n1986 births\nSportspeople from Suffolk, Virginia\nRacing drivers from Virginia\nAfrican-American racing drivers\nAmerican female racing drivers\nFemale dragster drivers\nNASCAR drivers\nDragster drivers\n21st-century African-American sportspeople\n21st-century African-American women\n20th-century African-American people\n20th-century African-American women"
] |
[
"Stirling Moss",
"Popular culture",
"What did the public think of Stirling Moss?",
"During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain,",
"When did he begin racing?",
"I don't know."
] | C_019c79656cc44e16b3a71b82930b321c_0 | What major races did he compete in? | 3 | What major races did Stirling Moss compete in? | Stirling Moss | During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances. In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show What's My Line? (episode with Anita Ekberg). In 1959 he was the subject of the TV programme This Is Your Life. On June 12 the following year he was interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face; Freeman later said that he had thought before the interview that Moss was a playboy, but in their meeting he showed "cold, precise, clinical judgement... a man who could live so close to the edge of death and danger, and trust entirely to his own judgement. This appealed to me". Moss also appeared as himself in the 1964 film The Beauty Jungle, and was one of several celebrities with cameo appearances in the 1967 version of the James Bond film Casino Royale. He played Evelyn Tremble's (Peter Sellers) driver. For many years during and after his career, the rhetorical phrase "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" was supposedly the standard question all British policemen asked speeding motorists. Moss relates he himself was once stopped for speeding and asked just that; he reports the traffic officer had some difficulty believing him. As related in the book The Life and Times of Private Eye, Moss was the subject of a less than respectful cartoon biography in the magazine Private Eye. The cartoon, drawn by Willie Rushton, showed him continually crashing, having his driving licence revoked and finally "hosting television programmes on subjects he knows nothing about". It also made reference to the amnesia Moss suffered from as a result of head injuries sustained in the crash at Goodwood in 1962. According to the book, Moss responded by offering to buy the original of the cartoon, an outcome the book describes as "depressingly common" for its satirical cartoons about famous people. Moss is the narrator of the popular children's series Roary the Racing Car which stars Peter Kay, a role he took on, having been approached by both David Jenkins, who had the original idea, and Keith Chapman, the latter the creator of Bob the Builder, as he saw the TV show as a way of introducing motorsport to the next generation. He is one of the few drivers of his era to create a brand from his name for licensing purposes, which was launched when his website was revamped in 2009 with improved content. Moss is also a supporter of the UK Independence Party. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss (17 September 1929 – 12 April 2020) was a British Formula One racing driver. An inductee into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, he won 212 of the 529 races he entered across several categories of competition and has been described as "the greatest driver never to win the World Championship". In a seven-year span between 1955 and 1961 Moss finished as championship runner-up four times and in third place the other three times.
Early life
Moss was born in London, son of Alfred Moss, a dentist of Bray, Berkshire, and Aileen (née Craufurd). His grandfather was Jewish, from a family that changed their surname from Moses to Moss. He was brought up at Long White Cloud house on the south bank of the River Thames. His father was an amateur racing driver who had come 16th in the 1924 Indianapolis 500. Aileen Moss had also been involved in motorsport, entering prewar hillclimbs at the wheel of a Singer Nine. Stirling was a gifted horse rider as was his younger sister, Pat Moss, who became a successful rally driver in her own right and also married Swedish rally driver Erik Carlsson.
Moss was educated at several independent schools: Shrewsbury House School in Surbiton, Clewer Manor Junior School, and the linked senior school, Haileybury and Imperial Service College, located at Hertford Heath, near Hertford. He disliked school and did not attain a good academic performance. At Haileybury, he was subjected to antisemitic bullying because of his Jewish roots. He concealed the bullying from his parents and used it as "motivation to succeed". Moss received his first car, an Austin 7, from his father at the age of nine, and drove it on the fields around Long White Cloud. He purchased his own car at age 15 after he obtained a driving licence. After the Second World War, Moss was ruled exempt from doing the mandatory two-year national service for men his age because he had nephritis.
Racing career
Moss raced from 1948 to 1962, winning 212 of the 529 races he entered, including 16 Formula One Grands Prix. He competed in as many as 62 races in a single year and drove 84 different makes of car over the course of his racing career. He preferred to race British cars, stating, "Better to lose honourably in a British car than win in a foreign one". At Vanwall, he was instrumental in breaking the German/Italian stranglehold on F1 racing (as was Jack Brabham at Cooper). He remained the English driver with the most Formula One victories until 1991 when Nigel Mansell overtook him after competing in more races.
1948–1954
Moss began his career at the wheel of his father Alfred's 328 BMW, DPX 653. Moss was one of the Cooper Car Company's first customers, using winnings from competing in horse-riding events to pay the deposit on a Cooper 500 racing car in 1948. He then persuaded his father, who opposed his racing and wanted him to be a dentist, to let him buy it. He soon demonstrated his ability with numerous wins at national and international levels, and continued to compete in Formula Three, with Coopers and Kiefts, after he had progressed to more senior categories.
His first major international race victory came on the eve of his 21st birthday at the wheel of a borrowed Jaguar XK120 in the 1950 RAC Tourist Trophy on the Dundrod circuit in Northern Ireland. He went on to win the race six more times, in 1951 (Jaguar C-Type), 1955 (Mercedes-Benz 300SLR), 1958 and 1959 (Aston Martin DBR1), and 1960 and 1961 (Ferrari 250 GT). Enzo Ferrari, the founder of Ferrari, approached Moss and offered him a Formula Two car to drive at the 1951 Bari Grand Prix before a full
-season in 1952. Moss and his father went to Apulia only to find out that the Ferrari car was to be driven by experienced driver Piero Taruffi and were incensed.
Also a competent rally driver, Moss was one of three people to have won a Coupe d'Or (Gold Cup) for three consecutive penalty-free runs on the Alpine Rally (Coupe des Alpes). He finished second in the 1952 Monte Carlo Rally driving a Sunbeam-Talbot 90 with Desmond Scannell and Autocar magazine editor John Cooper as co-drivers.
In 1954, he became the first non-American to win the 12 Hours of Sebring, sharing the Cunningham team's 1.5-liter O.S.C.A. MT4 with American Bill Lloyd.
In 1953 Mercedes-Benz racing boss Alfred Neubauer had spoken to Moss's manager, Ken Gregory, about the possibility of Moss's joining the Mercedes Grand Prix team. Having seen him do well in a relatively uncompetitive car, and wanting to see how he would perform in a better one, Neubauer suggested Moss buy a Maserati for the 1954 season. He bought a Maserati 250F, and although the car's unreliability prevented his scoring high points in the 1954 Drivers' Championship he qualified alongside the Mercedes front runners several times and performed well in the races. He achieved his first Formula One victory when he won the non-Championship Oulton Park International Gold Cup in the Maserati.
In the Italian Grand Prix at Monza he passed both drivers who were regarded as the best in Formula One at the time—Juan Manuel Fangio in a Mercedes and Alberto Ascari in a Ferrari—and took the lead. Ascari retired with engine problems, and Moss led until lap 68 when his engine also failed. Fangio took the victory, and Moss pushed his Maserati to the finish line. Neubauer, already impressed when Moss had tested a Mercedes-Benz W196 at Hockenheim, promptly signed him for 1955.
1955
Moss's first World Championship victory was in the 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree, a race he was also the first British driver to win. Leading a 1–2–3–4 finish for Mercedes, it was the first time he beat Fangio, his teammate and arch rival, who was also his friend and mentor. It has been suggested that Fangio sportingly allowed Moss to win in front of his home crowd. Moss himself asked Fangio repeatedly, and Fangio always replied: "No. You were just better than me that day." The same year, Moss also won the RAC Tourist Trophy, the Targa Florio (sharing the drive with Peter Collins) and the Mille Miglia.
Mille Miglia
In 1955 Moss won Italy's thousand-mile Mille Miglia road race, an achievement Doug Nye described as the "most iconic single day's drive in motor racing history." He was paired with motor racing journalist Denis Jenkinson, who prepared pace note for Moss, and the two completed the race in ten hours and seven minutes. Motor Trend headlined it as "The Most Epic Drive. Ever." Before the race, he had taken a "magic pill" given to him by Fangio, and he has commented that although he did not know what was in it, "Dexedrine and Benzedrine were commonly used in rallies. The object was simply to keep awake, like wartime bomber crews." After the win, he spent the night and the following day driving his girlfriend to Cologne, stopping for breakfast in Munich and lunch in Stuttgart.
1956–1962
Moss won the Nassau Cup at the 1956 and 1957 Bahamas Speed Week. Also in 1957 he won on the longest circuit ever to hold a World Championship Grand Prix, the Pescara Circuit, where he again demonstrated his mastery of long-distance racing. The event lasted three hours and Moss beat Fangio, who started from pole position, by a little over 3 minutes.
In 1958, Moss's forward-thinking attitude made waves in the racing world. Moss won the first race of the season in a rear-engined F1 car, which became the common design by 1961. At Monza that year, he raced in the "Eldorado" Maserati in the Race of Two Worlds, the first single-seater car in Europe to be sponsored by a non-racing brand—the Eldorado Ice Cream Company. This was the first case in Europe of contemporary sponsorship, with the ice cream maker's colors replacing the ones assigned by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA).
Moss's sporting attitude cost him the 1958 Formula One World Championship. When rival Mike Hawthorn was threatened with a penalty after the Portuguese Grand Prix, Moss defended him. Hawthorn was accused of reversing on the track after spinning and stalling his car on an uphill section. Moss had shouted advice to Hawthorn to steer downhill, against traffic, to bump-start the car. Moss's quick thinking, and his defence of Hawthorn before the stewards, preserved Hawthorn's 6 points for finishing second behind Moss. Hawthorn went on to beat Moss for the championship title by one point, even though he had won only one race that year to Moss's four. Moss's loss in the championship could also be attributed to an error in communication between his pit crew and the driver at one race. A point was given for the fastest lap in each race, and the crew signaled "HAWT REC" meaning Hawthorn had set a record lap. Moss read this as "HAWT REG" and thought Hawthorn was making regular laps, so did not try to set a fast lap. The crew was supposed to signal the time of the lap, so Moss would know what he had to beat.
Moss was as gifted in sports cars as in Grand Prix cars. To his victories in the Tourist Trophy, the Sebring 12 Hours and the Mille Miglia he added three consecutive wins (1958–1960) in the 1000 km Nürburgring, the first two in an Aston Martin (in which he did most of the driving), and the third in a Tipo 61 "birdcage" Maserati, co-driving with the American Dan Gurney. The pair lost time when an oil hose blew off, but despite the wet-weather, they made up the time and took first place.
In the 1960 Formula One season, Moss won the Monaco Grand Prix in Rob Walker's Coventry-Climax-powered Lotus 18. Seriously injured in an accident at the Burnenville curve during practice for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, he missed the next three races but recovered sufficiently to win the final one of the season, the United States Grand Prix at Riverside, California.
For the 1961 Formula One season, run under new 1.5-litre rules, Enzo Ferrari fielded the "sharknose" Ferrari 156 with an all-new V6 engine. Moss's Climax-engined Lotus was comparatively underpowered, but he won the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix by 3.6 seconds, beating the Ferraris of Richie Ginther, Wolfgang von Trips, and Phil Hill, and went on to win the partially wet 1961 German Grand Prix.
In 1962, he crashed his Lotus heavily during the Glover Trophy at Goodwood held on Monday 23 April. The accident put him in a coma for a month, and for six months the left side of his body was partially paralysed. He recovered, but retired from professional racing after a private test session in a Lotus 19 the following year, when he lapped a few tenths of a second slower than before. He felt he had not regained his previously instinctive command of the car. He had been runner-up in the Drivers' Championship four years in succession, from 1955 to 1958, and third in each of the next three years.
Speed records
1950
At the Autodrome de Montlhéry, a steeply banked oval track near Paris, Moss and Leslie Johnson took turns at the wheel of the latter's Jaguar XK120 to average for 24 hours, including stops for fuel and tyres. Changing drivers every three hours, they covered a total of . It was the first time a production car had averaged over for 24 hours.
1952
Revisiting Montlhéry, Moss was one of a four-driver team, led by Johnson, who drove a factory-owned Jaguar XK120 fixed-head coupé for 7 days and nights at the French track. Moss, Johnson, Bert Hadley and Jack Fairman averaged to take four World records and five International Class C records, and covered a total of .
1957
In August Moss broke five International Class F records in the purpose-built MG EX181 at Bonneville Salt Flats. The streamlined, supercharged car's speed for the flying kilometer was 245.64 mph, which was the average of two runs in opposite directions.
Broadcasting career
Away from driving, in 1962 he acted as a colour commentator for ABC's Wide World of Sports for Formula One and NASCAR races. He eventually left ABC in 1980. Moss narrated the official 1988 Formula One season review along with Tony Jardine.
Moss also narrated the popular children's series Roary the Racing Car, which stars Peter Kay.
Return to racing
Although ostensibly retired from racing since 1962, Moss did make a number of one-off appearances in professional motorsport events in the following two decades. He also competed in the 1974 London-Sahara-Munich World Cup Rally in a Mercedes-Benz, but retired from the event in the Algerian Sahara. The Holden Torana he shared with Jack Brabham in the 1976 Bathurst 1000 was hit from behind on the grid and eventually retired with engine failure. Moss, at the wheel of the Torana when the V8 engine let go, was criticised by other drivers for staying on the racing line for over ⅔ of the 6.172 km long circuit while returning to the pits as the car was dropping large amounts of oil onto the road. He also shared a Volkswagen Golf GTI with Denny Hulme in the 1979 Benson & Hedges 500 at Pukekohe Park Raceway in New Zealand.
In 1980 he made a comeback to regular competition, in the British Saloon Car Championship with the works-backed GTi Engineering Audi team. For the 1980 season Moss was the team's number two driver to team co-owner Richard Lloyd. For the 1981 season Moss stayed with Audi, as the team moved to Tom Walkinshaw Racing management, driving alongside Martin Brundle.
Throughout his retirement he raced in events for historic cars, driving on behalf of and at the invitation of others, as well as campaigning his own OSCA FS 372 and other vehicles. In 2004, as part of its promotion for the new SLR, Mercedes-Benz reunited Moss with the 300 SLR "No. 722" in which he won the Mille Miglia nearly 50 years earlier. One reporter who rode with Moss that day noted that the 75-year-old driver was "so good . . . that even old and crippled [he was] still better than nearly everyone else". On 9 June 2011 during qualifying for the Le Mans Legends race, Moss announced on Radio Le Mans that he had finally retired from racing, saying that he had scared himself that afternoon. He was 81.
Post racing career
Lister Cars announced the building for sale of the Lister Knobbly Stirling Moss at the Royal Automobile Club in London in June 2016. The car is built to the exact specification of the 1958 model, is the only magnesium-bodied car in the world, and is the only car that was ever endorsed by Moss. Brian Lister invited Moss to drive for Lister on three separate occasions, at Goodwood in 1954, Silverstone in 1958 and at Sebring in 1959, and to celebrate these races, 10 special edition lightweight Lister Knobbly cars are being built. The company announced that the cars will be available for both road and race use, and Moss would personally be handing over each car.
Honours
In 1990, Moss was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.
In the New Year Honours 2000 List, Moss was made a Knight Bachelor for services to motor racing. On 21 March 2000, he was knighted by Prince Charles, standing in for the Queen, who was on an official visit to Australia.
He received the 2005 Segrave Trophy.
In 2006, Moss was awarded the FIA gold medal in recognition of his outstanding contribution to motorsport.
In December 2008, McLaren-Mercedes unveiled their final model of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. The model was named in honour of Moss, hence, Mercedes McLaren SLR Stirling Moss, which has a top speed of with wind deflectors instead of a windscreen.
In 2016, in an academic paper that reported a mathematical modelling study that assessed the relative influence of driver and machine, Moss was ranked the 29th best Formula One driver of all time.
Following Moss's death the Kinrara Trophy race at the Goodwood Revival meeting was renamed in his honour. It is a race for GT cars that competed before 1963.
Biographies
In 1957, Moss published an autobiography called In the Track Of Speed, first published by Muller, London.
In 1963, motorsport author and commentator Ken Purdy published a biographical book entitled All But My Life about Moss (first published by William Kimber & Co, London), based on material gathered through interviews with Moss.
In 2015, when he was aged 85, Moss published a second autobiography, entitled My Racing Life, written with motor sports writer Simon Taylor. In 2016, Philip Porter published the first volume of Stirling Moss - The Definitive Biography covering the period from birth up to the end of 1955, one of Moss's greatest years.
Popular culture
During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances. In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show What's My Line? (episode with Anita Ekberg). In 1959 he was the subject of the TV programme This Is Your Life. On 12 June the following year he was interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face; Freeman later said that he had thought before the interview that Moss was a playboy, but in their meeting he showed "cold, precise, clinical judgement... a man who could live so close to the edge of death and danger, and trust entirely to his own judgement. This appealed to me". Moss also appeared as himself in the 1964 film The Beauty Jungle, and was one of several celebrities with cameo appearances in the 1967 version of the James Bond film Casino Royale. He played Evelyn Tremble's (Peter Sellers) driver.
For many years during and after his career, the rhetorical phrase "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" was supposedly the standard question all British policemen asked speeding motorists. Moss relates he himself was once stopped for speeding and asked just that; he reports the traffic officer had some difficulty believing him. Moss was the subject of a cartoon biography in the magazine Private Eye that said he was interested in cars, women and sex, in that order. The cartoon, drawn by Willie Rushton, showed him continually crashing, having his driving licence revoked and finally "hosting television programmes on subjects he knows nothing about". It also made reference to the amnesia Moss suffered from as a result of head injuries sustained in the crash at Goodwood in 1962. Although there were complaints to the magazine about the cartoons, Moss rang Private Eye to ask if he could use it as a Christmas card.
He was one of the few drivers of his era to create a brand from his name for licensing purposes, which was launched when his website was revamped in 2009 with improved content. In 2004, Moss was a supporter of the UK Independence Party.
Moss was a Mercedes-Benz Brand Ambassador, having kept a close relationship with the brand, and remained an enthusiast and collector of the brand, which includes the Mercedes-Benz W113, Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Stirling Moss among others.
Personal life and death
Moss was married three times. His first wife was Katie Molson; an heir to the Canadian brewer Molson. They were married in 1957 and separated three years later. His second wife was the American public relations executive Elaine Barbarino. They were married in 1964 and divorced in 1968. Their daughter Allison was born in 1967. His third wife was Susie Paine, the daughter of an old friend. They were married from 1980 until his death in 2020. Their son Elliot was born in 1980.
In April 1960, Moss was found guilty of dangerous driving. He was fined £50 and banned from driving for one year after an incident near Chetwynd, Shropshire, when he was test-driving a Mini.
Moss's 80th birthday, on 17 September 2009, fell on the eve of the Goodwood Revival and Lord March celebrated with an 80-car parade on each of the three days. Moss drove a different car each day: a Mercedes-Benz W196 (an open-wheel variant), the Lotus 18 in which he had won the 1961 Monaco GP, and an Aston Martin DBR1.
On 7 March 2010, Moss broke both ankles and four bones in a foot, and also chipped four vertebrae and suffered skin lesions, when he plunged down a lift shaft at his home. In December 2016, he was admitted to hospital in Singapore with a serious chest infection. As a result of this illness and a subsequent lengthy recovery period, Moss announced his retirement from public life in January 2018.
Moss died at his home in Mayfair, London, on 12 April 2020, aged 90, after a long illness.
Racing record
Career highlights
Complete Formula One World Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)
† Indicates shared drive with Hans Herrmann and Karl Kling.
* Indicates shared drive with Cesare Perdisa.
‡ Indicates shared drive with Tony Brooks.
[a] After Moss retired from the race he took over the car of Trintignant. Both drivers did not receive any points for their shared drive.
Non-championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position)
(Races in italics indicate fastest lap)
Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results
Complete 12 Hours of Sebring results
Complete 12 Hours of Reims results
Complete Mille Miglia results
Complete Rallye de Monte Carlo results
Complete Bathurst 1000 results
Complete British Saloon Car Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap.)
† Events with 2 races staged for the different classes.
References
External links
Sir Stirling Moss – Official Web Site
Stirling Moss in the 24 hours of Le Mans
Grand Prix History – Hall of Fame, Stirling Moss
Stirling Moss profile at The 500 Owners Association
BBC Face to Face interview with Stirling Moss and John Freeman, broadcast 12 June 1960
1929 births
2020 deaths
12 Hours of Sebring drivers
24 Hours of Le Mans drivers
BBC Sports Personality of the Year winners
Bonneville 200 MPH Club members
BRDC Gold Star winners
Brighton Speed Trials people
British Racing Partnership Formula One drivers
British Touring Car Championship drivers
Connaught Formula One drivers
Cooper Formula One drivers
English Formula One drivers
English people of Jewish descent
English racing drivers
ERA Formula One drivers
Formula One race winners
Formula One team owners
Hersham and Walton Motors Formula One drivers
International Motorsports Hall of Fame inductees
Knights Bachelor
Maserati Formula One drivers
Mercedes-Benz Formula One drivers
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
People educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College
People from West Kensington
People in sports awarded knighthoods
Rob Walker Racing Team Formula One drivers
Sportspeople from London
Segrave Trophy recipients
Vanwall Formula One drivers
World Sportscar Championship drivers | false | [
"Karl Jones (born 4 April 1959 in Llantwit Major, Wales) is a British former auto racing driver. He is best known for competing in the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC)\n\nCareer\nJones started racing in 1981, finishing third in his debut season in the Junior Formula Ford 1600 Championship. The following year he finished as runner-up, then champion in 1983 of Brands Hatch FF1600. In 1985 he competed in the BRSCC Production Saloon Championship, finishing as runner-up. He went on to be champion of the series in 1986, driving a Fiat Strada. He spent one more season in the championship, this time competing in a Ford Escort RS Turbo.\n\nHe stepped up to the BTCC in 1988, competing for two seasons in his Duckhams backed Class A Ford Sierra RS500. During his time here, he managed two second place finishes. He did not return in 1990 due to budget reasons. He did compete in the Willhire 24 Hour race that yearIn 1991 he competed in selected events of both the Renault Clio Cup and Ford Fiesta Championship. Jones made a return to the BTCC in 1992, with a BMW M3 for the independent Techspeed Racing team. A troubled season ended after round ten at Knockhill with no championship points.\n\nIn 1993 Jones switched from touring cars to compete in the RS2000 rallysport series with a car owned by Blakes Ford of Liverpool. In 1994 he competed in the Ford Fiesta Championship entered again by Blakes and sponsored by Duckhams.\n\nRacing record\n\nComplete British Saloon / Touring Car Championship results\n(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position – 1988–1990 in class) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap – 1 point awarded ?–1989 in class)\n\n‡ Endurance driver.\n\nComplete World Touring Car Championship results\n(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)\n\nComplete European Touring Car Championship results\n\n(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)\n\nReferences\n\nWelsh racing drivers\n1957 births\nBritish Touring Car Championship drivers\nLiving people\nPeople from Carmarthenshire",
"Karl Cordin (born 3 November 1948) is an Austrian former alpine skier who did only compete in Downhill Races; he competed in the 1972 Winter Olympics, becoming 7th silver medal at FIS Alpine World Ski Championships 1970 in downhill.\n\nBiography\nCording did win three World Cup races: on February 21, 1970, at Jackson Hole, on December 20th, 1970, at Val-d’Isère, and on December 18, 1973, at Zell am See; he did become five-times second and twice third too. He also could achieve the Downhill World Cup in 1969-70.\nHe won the silver medal in the FIS Alpine Skiing World Championships 1970 and became fourth in the FIS Alpine Skiing World Championships 1974; in both races he was overtaken by a racer with a higher number. In 1970, he was in lead (and it looked that he could gain the gold medal) - but Bernhard Russi did win. In 1974, he was on the way to win the bronze medal, but Willi Frommelt did catch it.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\n1948 births\nLiving people\nAustrian male alpine skiers\nOlympic alpine skiers of Austria\nAlpine skiers at the 1972 Winter Olympics\nFIS Alpine Ski World Cup champions"
] |
[
"Stirling Moss",
"Popular culture",
"What did the public think of Stirling Moss?",
"During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain,",
"When did he begin racing?",
"I don't know.",
"What major races did he compete in?",
"I don't know."
] | C_019c79656cc44e16b3a71b82930b321c_0 | What else is interesting about the article? | 4 | Besides having a driving career,What else is interesting about the article? | Stirling Moss | During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances. In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show What's My Line? (episode with Anita Ekberg). In 1959 he was the subject of the TV programme This Is Your Life. On June 12 the following year he was interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face; Freeman later said that he had thought before the interview that Moss was a playboy, but in their meeting he showed "cold, precise, clinical judgement... a man who could live so close to the edge of death and danger, and trust entirely to his own judgement. This appealed to me". Moss also appeared as himself in the 1964 film The Beauty Jungle, and was one of several celebrities with cameo appearances in the 1967 version of the James Bond film Casino Royale. He played Evelyn Tremble's (Peter Sellers) driver. For many years during and after his career, the rhetorical phrase "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" was supposedly the standard question all British policemen asked speeding motorists. Moss relates he himself was once stopped for speeding and asked just that; he reports the traffic officer had some difficulty believing him. As related in the book The Life and Times of Private Eye, Moss was the subject of a less than respectful cartoon biography in the magazine Private Eye. The cartoon, drawn by Willie Rushton, showed him continually crashing, having his driving licence revoked and finally "hosting television programmes on subjects he knows nothing about". It also made reference to the amnesia Moss suffered from as a result of head injuries sustained in the crash at Goodwood in 1962. According to the book, Moss responded by offering to buy the original of the cartoon, an outcome the book describes as "depressingly common" for its satirical cartoons about famous people. Moss is the narrator of the popular children's series Roary the Racing Car which stars Peter Kay, a role he took on, having been approached by both David Jenkins, who had the original idea, and Keith Chapman, the latter the creator of Bob the Builder, as he saw the TV show as a way of introducing motorsport to the next generation. He is one of the few drivers of his era to create a brand from his name for licensing purposes, which was launched when his website was revamped in 2009 with improved content. Moss is also a supporter of the UK Independence Party. CANNOTANSWER | Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances. | Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss (17 September 1929 – 12 April 2020) was a British Formula One racing driver. An inductee into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, he won 212 of the 529 races he entered across several categories of competition and has been described as "the greatest driver never to win the World Championship". In a seven-year span between 1955 and 1961 Moss finished as championship runner-up four times and in third place the other three times.
Early life
Moss was born in London, son of Alfred Moss, a dentist of Bray, Berkshire, and Aileen (née Craufurd). His grandfather was Jewish, from a family that changed their surname from Moses to Moss. He was brought up at Long White Cloud house on the south bank of the River Thames. His father was an amateur racing driver who had come 16th in the 1924 Indianapolis 500. Aileen Moss had also been involved in motorsport, entering prewar hillclimbs at the wheel of a Singer Nine. Stirling was a gifted horse rider as was his younger sister, Pat Moss, who became a successful rally driver in her own right and also married Swedish rally driver Erik Carlsson.
Moss was educated at several independent schools: Shrewsbury House School in Surbiton, Clewer Manor Junior School, and the linked senior school, Haileybury and Imperial Service College, located at Hertford Heath, near Hertford. He disliked school and did not attain a good academic performance. At Haileybury, he was subjected to antisemitic bullying because of his Jewish roots. He concealed the bullying from his parents and used it as "motivation to succeed". Moss received his first car, an Austin 7, from his father at the age of nine, and drove it on the fields around Long White Cloud. He purchased his own car at age 15 after he obtained a driving licence. After the Second World War, Moss was ruled exempt from doing the mandatory two-year national service for men his age because he had nephritis.
Racing career
Moss raced from 1948 to 1962, winning 212 of the 529 races he entered, including 16 Formula One Grands Prix. He competed in as many as 62 races in a single year and drove 84 different makes of car over the course of his racing career. He preferred to race British cars, stating, "Better to lose honourably in a British car than win in a foreign one". At Vanwall, he was instrumental in breaking the German/Italian stranglehold on F1 racing (as was Jack Brabham at Cooper). He remained the English driver with the most Formula One victories until 1991 when Nigel Mansell overtook him after competing in more races.
1948–1954
Moss began his career at the wheel of his father Alfred's 328 BMW, DPX 653. Moss was one of the Cooper Car Company's first customers, using winnings from competing in horse-riding events to pay the deposit on a Cooper 500 racing car in 1948. He then persuaded his father, who opposed his racing and wanted him to be a dentist, to let him buy it. He soon demonstrated his ability with numerous wins at national and international levels, and continued to compete in Formula Three, with Coopers and Kiefts, after he had progressed to more senior categories.
His first major international race victory came on the eve of his 21st birthday at the wheel of a borrowed Jaguar XK120 in the 1950 RAC Tourist Trophy on the Dundrod circuit in Northern Ireland. He went on to win the race six more times, in 1951 (Jaguar C-Type), 1955 (Mercedes-Benz 300SLR), 1958 and 1959 (Aston Martin DBR1), and 1960 and 1961 (Ferrari 250 GT). Enzo Ferrari, the founder of Ferrari, approached Moss and offered him a Formula Two car to drive at the 1951 Bari Grand Prix before a full
-season in 1952. Moss and his father went to Apulia only to find out that the Ferrari car was to be driven by experienced driver Piero Taruffi and were incensed.
Also a competent rally driver, Moss was one of three people to have won a Coupe d'Or (Gold Cup) for three consecutive penalty-free runs on the Alpine Rally (Coupe des Alpes). He finished second in the 1952 Monte Carlo Rally driving a Sunbeam-Talbot 90 with Desmond Scannell and Autocar magazine editor John Cooper as co-drivers.
In 1954, he became the first non-American to win the 12 Hours of Sebring, sharing the Cunningham team's 1.5-liter O.S.C.A. MT4 with American Bill Lloyd.
In 1953 Mercedes-Benz racing boss Alfred Neubauer had spoken to Moss's manager, Ken Gregory, about the possibility of Moss's joining the Mercedes Grand Prix team. Having seen him do well in a relatively uncompetitive car, and wanting to see how he would perform in a better one, Neubauer suggested Moss buy a Maserati for the 1954 season. He bought a Maserati 250F, and although the car's unreliability prevented his scoring high points in the 1954 Drivers' Championship he qualified alongside the Mercedes front runners several times and performed well in the races. He achieved his first Formula One victory when he won the non-Championship Oulton Park International Gold Cup in the Maserati.
In the Italian Grand Prix at Monza he passed both drivers who were regarded as the best in Formula One at the time—Juan Manuel Fangio in a Mercedes and Alberto Ascari in a Ferrari—and took the lead. Ascari retired with engine problems, and Moss led until lap 68 when his engine also failed. Fangio took the victory, and Moss pushed his Maserati to the finish line. Neubauer, already impressed when Moss had tested a Mercedes-Benz W196 at Hockenheim, promptly signed him for 1955.
1955
Moss's first World Championship victory was in the 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree, a race he was also the first British driver to win. Leading a 1–2–3–4 finish for Mercedes, it was the first time he beat Fangio, his teammate and arch rival, who was also his friend and mentor. It has been suggested that Fangio sportingly allowed Moss to win in front of his home crowd. Moss himself asked Fangio repeatedly, and Fangio always replied: "No. You were just better than me that day." The same year, Moss also won the RAC Tourist Trophy, the Targa Florio (sharing the drive with Peter Collins) and the Mille Miglia.
Mille Miglia
In 1955 Moss won Italy's thousand-mile Mille Miglia road race, an achievement Doug Nye described as the "most iconic single day's drive in motor racing history." He was paired with motor racing journalist Denis Jenkinson, who prepared pace note for Moss, and the two completed the race in ten hours and seven minutes. Motor Trend headlined it as "The Most Epic Drive. Ever." Before the race, he had taken a "magic pill" given to him by Fangio, and he has commented that although he did not know what was in it, "Dexedrine and Benzedrine were commonly used in rallies. The object was simply to keep awake, like wartime bomber crews." After the win, he spent the night and the following day driving his girlfriend to Cologne, stopping for breakfast in Munich and lunch in Stuttgart.
1956–1962
Moss won the Nassau Cup at the 1956 and 1957 Bahamas Speed Week. Also in 1957 he won on the longest circuit ever to hold a World Championship Grand Prix, the Pescara Circuit, where he again demonstrated his mastery of long-distance racing. The event lasted three hours and Moss beat Fangio, who started from pole position, by a little over 3 minutes.
In 1958, Moss's forward-thinking attitude made waves in the racing world. Moss won the first race of the season in a rear-engined F1 car, which became the common design by 1961. At Monza that year, he raced in the "Eldorado" Maserati in the Race of Two Worlds, the first single-seater car in Europe to be sponsored by a non-racing brand—the Eldorado Ice Cream Company. This was the first case in Europe of contemporary sponsorship, with the ice cream maker's colors replacing the ones assigned by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA).
Moss's sporting attitude cost him the 1958 Formula One World Championship. When rival Mike Hawthorn was threatened with a penalty after the Portuguese Grand Prix, Moss defended him. Hawthorn was accused of reversing on the track after spinning and stalling his car on an uphill section. Moss had shouted advice to Hawthorn to steer downhill, against traffic, to bump-start the car. Moss's quick thinking, and his defence of Hawthorn before the stewards, preserved Hawthorn's 6 points for finishing second behind Moss. Hawthorn went on to beat Moss for the championship title by one point, even though he had won only one race that year to Moss's four. Moss's loss in the championship could also be attributed to an error in communication between his pit crew and the driver at one race. A point was given for the fastest lap in each race, and the crew signaled "HAWT REC" meaning Hawthorn had set a record lap. Moss read this as "HAWT REG" and thought Hawthorn was making regular laps, so did not try to set a fast lap. The crew was supposed to signal the time of the lap, so Moss would know what he had to beat.
Moss was as gifted in sports cars as in Grand Prix cars. To his victories in the Tourist Trophy, the Sebring 12 Hours and the Mille Miglia he added three consecutive wins (1958–1960) in the 1000 km Nürburgring, the first two in an Aston Martin (in which he did most of the driving), and the third in a Tipo 61 "birdcage" Maserati, co-driving with the American Dan Gurney. The pair lost time when an oil hose blew off, but despite the wet-weather, they made up the time and took first place.
In the 1960 Formula One season, Moss won the Monaco Grand Prix in Rob Walker's Coventry-Climax-powered Lotus 18. Seriously injured in an accident at the Burnenville curve during practice for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, he missed the next three races but recovered sufficiently to win the final one of the season, the United States Grand Prix at Riverside, California.
For the 1961 Formula One season, run under new 1.5-litre rules, Enzo Ferrari fielded the "sharknose" Ferrari 156 with an all-new V6 engine. Moss's Climax-engined Lotus was comparatively underpowered, but he won the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix by 3.6 seconds, beating the Ferraris of Richie Ginther, Wolfgang von Trips, and Phil Hill, and went on to win the partially wet 1961 German Grand Prix.
In 1962, he crashed his Lotus heavily during the Glover Trophy at Goodwood held on Monday 23 April. The accident put him in a coma for a month, and for six months the left side of his body was partially paralysed. He recovered, but retired from professional racing after a private test session in a Lotus 19 the following year, when he lapped a few tenths of a second slower than before. He felt he had not regained his previously instinctive command of the car. He had been runner-up in the Drivers' Championship four years in succession, from 1955 to 1958, and third in each of the next three years.
Speed records
1950
At the Autodrome de Montlhéry, a steeply banked oval track near Paris, Moss and Leslie Johnson took turns at the wheel of the latter's Jaguar XK120 to average for 24 hours, including stops for fuel and tyres. Changing drivers every three hours, they covered a total of . It was the first time a production car had averaged over for 24 hours.
1952
Revisiting Montlhéry, Moss was one of a four-driver team, led by Johnson, who drove a factory-owned Jaguar XK120 fixed-head coupé for 7 days and nights at the French track. Moss, Johnson, Bert Hadley and Jack Fairman averaged to take four World records and five International Class C records, and covered a total of .
1957
In August Moss broke five International Class F records in the purpose-built MG EX181 at Bonneville Salt Flats. The streamlined, supercharged car's speed for the flying kilometer was 245.64 mph, which was the average of two runs in opposite directions.
Broadcasting career
Away from driving, in 1962 he acted as a colour commentator for ABC's Wide World of Sports for Formula One and NASCAR races. He eventually left ABC in 1980. Moss narrated the official 1988 Formula One season review along with Tony Jardine.
Moss also narrated the popular children's series Roary the Racing Car, which stars Peter Kay.
Return to racing
Although ostensibly retired from racing since 1962, Moss did make a number of one-off appearances in professional motorsport events in the following two decades. He also competed in the 1974 London-Sahara-Munich World Cup Rally in a Mercedes-Benz, but retired from the event in the Algerian Sahara. The Holden Torana he shared with Jack Brabham in the 1976 Bathurst 1000 was hit from behind on the grid and eventually retired with engine failure. Moss, at the wheel of the Torana when the V8 engine let go, was criticised by other drivers for staying on the racing line for over ⅔ of the 6.172 km long circuit while returning to the pits as the car was dropping large amounts of oil onto the road. He also shared a Volkswagen Golf GTI with Denny Hulme in the 1979 Benson & Hedges 500 at Pukekohe Park Raceway in New Zealand.
In 1980 he made a comeback to regular competition, in the British Saloon Car Championship with the works-backed GTi Engineering Audi team. For the 1980 season Moss was the team's number two driver to team co-owner Richard Lloyd. For the 1981 season Moss stayed with Audi, as the team moved to Tom Walkinshaw Racing management, driving alongside Martin Brundle.
Throughout his retirement he raced in events for historic cars, driving on behalf of and at the invitation of others, as well as campaigning his own OSCA FS 372 and other vehicles. In 2004, as part of its promotion for the new SLR, Mercedes-Benz reunited Moss with the 300 SLR "No. 722" in which he won the Mille Miglia nearly 50 years earlier. One reporter who rode with Moss that day noted that the 75-year-old driver was "so good . . . that even old and crippled [he was] still better than nearly everyone else". On 9 June 2011 during qualifying for the Le Mans Legends race, Moss announced on Radio Le Mans that he had finally retired from racing, saying that he had scared himself that afternoon. He was 81.
Post racing career
Lister Cars announced the building for sale of the Lister Knobbly Stirling Moss at the Royal Automobile Club in London in June 2016. The car is built to the exact specification of the 1958 model, is the only magnesium-bodied car in the world, and is the only car that was ever endorsed by Moss. Brian Lister invited Moss to drive for Lister on three separate occasions, at Goodwood in 1954, Silverstone in 1958 and at Sebring in 1959, and to celebrate these races, 10 special edition lightweight Lister Knobbly cars are being built. The company announced that the cars will be available for both road and race use, and Moss would personally be handing over each car.
Honours
In 1990, Moss was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.
In the New Year Honours 2000 List, Moss was made a Knight Bachelor for services to motor racing. On 21 March 2000, he was knighted by Prince Charles, standing in for the Queen, who was on an official visit to Australia.
He received the 2005 Segrave Trophy.
In 2006, Moss was awarded the FIA gold medal in recognition of his outstanding contribution to motorsport.
In December 2008, McLaren-Mercedes unveiled their final model of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. The model was named in honour of Moss, hence, Mercedes McLaren SLR Stirling Moss, which has a top speed of with wind deflectors instead of a windscreen.
In 2016, in an academic paper that reported a mathematical modelling study that assessed the relative influence of driver and machine, Moss was ranked the 29th best Formula One driver of all time.
Following Moss's death the Kinrara Trophy race at the Goodwood Revival meeting was renamed in his honour. It is a race for GT cars that competed before 1963.
Biographies
In 1957, Moss published an autobiography called In the Track Of Speed, first published by Muller, London.
In 1963, motorsport author and commentator Ken Purdy published a biographical book entitled All But My Life about Moss (first published by William Kimber & Co, London), based on material gathered through interviews with Moss.
In 2015, when he was aged 85, Moss published a second autobiography, entitled My Racing Life, written with motor sports writer Simon Taylor. In 2016, Philip Porter published the first volume of Stirling Moss - The Definitive Biography covering the period from birth up to the end of 1955, one of Moss's greatest years.
Popular culture
During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances. In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show What's My Line? (episode with Anita Ekberg). In 1959 he was the subject of the TV programme This Is Your Life. On 12 June the following year he was interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face; Freeman later said that he had thought before the interview that Moss was a playboy, but in their meeting he showed "cold, precise, clinical judgement... a man who could live so close to the edge of death and danger, and trust entirely to his own judgement. This appealed to me". Moss also appeared as himself in the 1964 film The Beauty Jungle, and was one of several celebrities with cameo appearances in the 1967 version of the James Bond film Casino Royale. He played Evelyn Tremble's (Peter Sellers) driver.
For many years during and after his career, the rhetorical phrase "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" was supposedly the standard question all British policemen asked speeding motorists. Moss relates he himself was once stopped for speeding and asked just that; he reports the traffic officer had some difficulty believing him. Moss was the subject of a cartoon biography in the magazine Private Eye that said he was interested in cars, women and sex, in that order. The cartoon, drawn by Willie Rushton, showed him continually crashing, having his driving licence revoked and finally "hosting television programmes on subjects he knows nothing about". It also made reference to the amnesia Moss suffered from as a result of head injuries sustained in the crash at Goodwood in 1962. Although there were complaints to the magazine about the cartoons, Moss rang Private Eye to ask if he could use it as a Christmas card.
He was one of the few drivers of his era to create a brand from his name for licensing purposes, which was launched when his website was revamped in 2009 with improved content. In 2004, Moss was a supporter of the UK Independence Party.
Moss was a Mercedes-Benz Brand Ambassador, having kept a close relationship with the brand, and remained an enthusiast and collector of the brand, which includes the Mercedes-Benz W113, Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Stirling Moss among others.
Personal life and death
Moss was married three times. His first wife was Katie Molson; an heir to the Canadian brewer Molson. They were married in 1957 and separated three years later. His second wife was the American public relations executive Elaine Barbarino. They were married in 1964 and divorced in 1968. Their daughter Allison was born in 1967. His third wife was Susie Paine, the daughter of an old friend. They were married from 1980 until his death in 2020. Their son Elliot was born in 1980.
In April 1960, Moss was found guilty of dangerous driving. He was fined £50 and banned from driving for one year after an incident near Chetwynd, Shropshire, when he was test-driving a Mini.
Moss's 80th birthday, on 17 September 2009, fell on the eve of the Goodwood Revival and Lord March celebrated with an 80-car parade on each of the three days. Moss drove a different car each day: a Mercedes-Benz W196 (an open-wheel variant), the Lotus 18 in which he had won the 1961 Monaco GP, and an Aston Martin DBR1.
On 7 March 2010, Moss broke both ankles and four bones in a foot, and also chipped four vertebrae and suffered skin lesions, when he plunged down a lift shaft at his home. In December 2016, he was admitted to hospital in Singapore with a serious chest infection. As a result of this illness and a subsequent lengthy recovery period, Moss announced his retirement from public life in January 2018.
Moss died at his home in Mayfair, London, on 12 April 2020, aged 90, after a long illness.
Racing record
Career highlights
Complete Formula One World Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)
† Indicates shared drive with Hans Herrmann and Karl Kling.
* Indicates shared drive with Cesare Perdisa.
‡ Indicates shared drive with Tony Brooks.
[a] After Moss retired from the race he took over the car of Trintignant. Both drivers did not receive any points for their shared drive.
Non-championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position)
(Races in italics indicate fastest lap)
Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results
Complete 12 Hours of Sebring results
Complete 12 Hours of Reims results
Complete Mille Miglia results
Complete Rallye de Monte Carlo results
Complete Bathurst 1000 results
Complete British Saloon Car Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap.)
† Events with 2 races staged for the different classes.
References
External links
Sir Stirling Moss – Official Web Site
Stirling Moss in the 24 hours of Le Mans
Grand Prix History – Hall of Fame, Stirling Moss
Stirling Moss profile at The 500 Owners Association
BBC Face to Face interview with Stirling Moss and John Freeman, broadcast 12 June 1960
1929 births
2020 deaths
12 Hours of Sebring drivers
24 Hours of Le Mans drivers
BBC Sports Personality of the Year winners
Bonneville 200 MPH Club members
BRDC Gold Star winners
Brighton Speed Trials people
British Racing Partnership Formula One drivers
British Touring Car Championship drivers
Connaught Formula One drivers
Cooper Formula One drivers
English Formula One drivers
English people of Jewish descent
English racing drivers
ERA Formula One drivers
Formula One race winners
Formula One team owners
Hersham and Walton Motors Formula One drivers
International Motorsports Hall of Fame inductees
Knights Bachelor
Maserati Formula One drivers
Mercedes-Benz Formula One drivers
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
People educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College
People from West Kensington
People in sports awarded knighthoods
Rob Walker Racing Team Formula One drivers
Sportspeople from London
Segrave Trophy recipients
Vanwall Formula One drivers
World Sportscar Championship drivers | true | [
"\"What Else Is There?\" is the third single from the Norwegian duo Röyksopp's second album The Understanding. It features the vocals of Karin Dreijer from the Swedish electronica duo The Knife. The album was released in the UK with the help of Astralwerks.\n\nThe single was used in an O2 television advertisement in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia during 2008. It was also used in the 2006 film Cashback and the 2007 film, Meet Bill. Trentemøller's remix of \"What Else is There?\" was featured in an episode of the HBO show Entourage.\n\nThe song was covered by extreme metal band Enslaved as a bonus track for their album E.\n\nThe song was listed as the 375th best song of the 2000s by Pitchfork Media.\n\nOfficial versions\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Album Version) – 5:17\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Radio Edit) – 3:38\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Jacques Lu Cont Radio Mix) – 3:46\n\"What Else Is There?\" (The Emperor Machine Vocal Version) – 8:03\n\"What Else Is There?\" (The Emperor Machine Dub Version) – 7:51\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Mix) – 8:25\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Edit) – 4:50\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Remix) (Radio Edit) – 3:06\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Trentemøller Remix) – 7:42\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Vitalic Remix) – 5:14\n\nResponse\nThe single was officially released on 5 December 2005 in the UK. The single had a limited release on 21 November 2005 to promote the upcoming album. On the UK Singles Chart, it peaked at number 32, while on the UK Dance Chart, it reached number one.\n\nMusic video\nThe music video was directed by Martin de Thurah. It features Norwegian model Marianne Schröder who is shown lip-syncing Dreijer's voice. Schröder is depicted as a floating woman traveling across stormy landscapes and within empty houses. Dreijer makes a cameo appearance as a woman wearing an Elizabethan ruff while dining alone at a festive table.\n\nMovie spots\n\nThe song is also featured in the movie Meet Bill as characters played by Jessica Alba and Aaron Eckhart smoke marijuana while listening to it. It is also part of the end credits music of the film Cashback.\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2005 singles\nRöyksopp songs\nAstralwerks singles\nSongs written by Svein Berge\nSongs written by Torbjørn Brundtland\n2004 songs\nSongs written by Roger Greenaway\nSongs written by Olof Dreijer\nSongs written by Karin Dreijer",
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region"
] |
[
"Stirling Moss",
"Popular culture",
"What did the public think of Stirling Moss?",
"During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain,",
"When did he begin racing?",
"I don't know.",
"What major races did he compete in?",
"I don't know.",
"What else is interesting about the article?",
"Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances."
] | C_019c79656cc44e16b3a71b82930b321c_0 | Did he appear in any magazines or tv shows? | 5 | Did Stirling Moss appear in any magazines or tv shows? | Stirling Moss | During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances. In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show What's My Line? (episode with Anita Ekberg). In 1959 he was the subject of the TV programme This Is Your Life. On June 12 the following year he was interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face; Freeman later said that he had thought before the interview that Moss was a playboy, but in their meeting he showed "cold, precise, clinical judgement... a man who could live so close to the edge of death and danger, and trust entirely to his own judgement. This appealed to me". Moss also appeared as himself in the 1964 film The Beauty Jungle, and was one of several celebrities with cameo appearances in the 1967 version of the James Bond film Casino Royale. He played Evelyn Tremble's (Peter Sellers) driver. For many years during and after his career, the rhetorical phrase "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" was supposedly the standard question all British policemen asked speeding motorists. Moss relates he himself was once stopped for speeding and asked just that; he reports the traffic officer had some difficulty believing him. As related in the book The Life and Times of Private Eye, Moss was the subject of a less than respectful cartoon biography in the magazine Private Eye. The cartoon, drawn by Willie Rushton, showed him continually crashing, having his driving licence revoked and finally "hosting television programmes on subjects he knows nothing about". It also made reference to the amnesia Moss suffered from as a result of head injuries sustained in the crash at Goodwood in 1962. According to the book, Moss responded by offering to buy the original of the cartoon, an outcome the book describes as "depressingly common" for its satirical cartoons about famous people. Moss is the narrator of the popular children's series Roary the Racing Car which stars Peter Kay, a role he took on, having been approached by both David Jenkins, who had the original idea, and Keith Chapman, the latter the creator of Bob the Builder, as he saw the TV show as a way of introducing motorsport to the next generation. He is one of the few drivers of his era to create a brand from his name for licensing purposes, which was launched when his website was revamped in 2009 with improved content. Moss is also a supporter of the UK Independence Party. CANNOTANSWER | In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show What's My Line? ( | Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss (17 September 1929 – 12 April 2020) was a British Formula One racing driver. An inductee into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, he won 212 of the 529 races he entered across several categories of competition and has been described as "the greatest driver never to win the World Championship". In a seven-year span between 1955 and 1961 Moss finished as championship runner-up four times and in third place the other three times.
Early life
Moss was born in London, son of Alfred Moss, a dentist of Bray, Berkshire, and Aileen (née Craufurd). His grandfather was Jewish, from a family that changed their surname from Moses to Moss. He was brought up at Long White Cloud house on the south bank of the River Thames. His father was an amateur racing driver who had come 16th in the 1924 Indianapolis 500. Aileen Moss had also been involved in motorsport, entering prewar hillclimbs at the wheel of a Singer Nine. Stirling was a gifted horse rider as was his younger sister, Pat Moss, who became a successful rally driver in her own right and also married Swedish rally driver Erik Carlsson.
Moss was educated at several independent schools: Shrewsbury House School in Surbiton, Clewer Manor Junior School, and the linked senior school, Haileybury and Imperial Service College, located at Hertford Heath, near Hertford. He disliked school and did not attain a good academic performance. At Haileybury, he was subjected to antisemitic bullying because of his Jewish roots. He concealed the bullying from his parents and used it as "motivation to succeed". Moss received his first car, an Austin 7, from his father at the age of nine, and drove it on the fields around Long White Cloud. He purchased his own car at age 15 after he obtained a driving licence. After the Second World War, Moss was ruled exempt from doing the mandatory two-year national service for men his age because he had nephritis.
Racing career
Moss raced from 1948 to 1962, winning 212 of the 529 races he entered, including 16 Formula One Grands Prix. He competed in as many as 62 races in a single year and drove 84 different makes of car over the course of his racing career. He preferred to race British cars, stating, "Better to lose honourably in a British car than win in a foreign one". At Vanwall, he was instrumental in breaking the German/Italian stranglehold on F1 racing (as was Jack Brabham at Cooper). He remained the English driver with the most Formula One victories until 1991 when Nigel Mansell overtook him after competing in more races.
1948–1954
Moss began his career at the wheel of his father Alfred's 328 BMW, DPX 653. Moss was one of the Cooper Car Company's first customers, using winnings from competing in horse-riding events to pay the deposit on a Cooper 500 racing car in 1948. He then persuaded his father, who opposed his racing and wanted him to be a dentist, to let him buy it. He soon demonstrated his ability with numerous wins at national and international levels, and continued to compete in Formula Three, with Coopers and Kiefts, after he had progressed to more senior categories.
His first major international race victory came on the eve of his 21st birthday at the wheel of a borrowed Jaguar XK120 in the 1950 RAC Tourist Trophy on the Dundrod circuit in Northern Ireland. He went on to win the race six more times, in 1951 (Jaguar C-Type), 1955 (Mercedes-Benz 300SLR), 1958 and 1959 (Aston Martin DBR1), and 1960 and 1961 (Ferrari 250 GT). Enzo Ferrari, the founder of Ferrari, approached Moss and offered him a Formula Two car to drive at the 1951 Bari Grand Prix before a full
-season in 1952. Moss and his father went to Apulia only to find out that the Ferrari car was to be driven by experienced driver Piero Taruffi and were incensed.
Also a competent rally driver, Moss was one of three people to have won a Coupe d'Or (Gold Cup) for three consecutive penalty-free runs on the Alpine Rally (Coupe des Alpes). He finished second in the 1952 Monte Carlo Rally driving a Sunbeam-Talbot 90 with Desmond Scannell and Autocar magazine editor John Cooper as co-drivers.
In 1954, he became the first non-American to win the 12 Hours of Sebring, sharing the Cunningham team's 1.5-liter O.S.C.A. MT4 with American Bill Lloyd.
In 1953 Mercedes-Benz racing boss Alfred Neubauer had spoken to Moss's manager, Ken Gregory, about the possibility of Moss's joining the Mercedes Grand Prix team. Having seen him do well in a relatively uncompetitive car, and wanting to see how he would perform in a better one, Neubauer suggested Moss buy a Maserati for the 1954 season. He bought a Maserati 250F, and although the car's unreliability prevented his scoring high points in the 1954 Drivers' Championship he qualified alongside the Mercedes front runners several times and performed well in the races. He achieved his first Formula One victory when he won the non-Championship Oulton Park International Gold Cup in the Maserati.
In the Italian Grand Prix at Monza he passed both drivers who were regarded as the best in Formula One at the time—Juan Manuel Fangio in a Mercedes and Alberto Ascari in a Ferrari—and took the lead. Ascari retired with engine problems, and Moss led until lap 68 when his engine also failed. Fangio took the victory, and Moss pushed his Maserati to the finish line. Neubauer, already impressed when Moss had tested a Mercedes-Benz W196 at Hockenheim, promptly signed him for 1955.
1955
Moss's first World Championship victory was in the 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree, a race he was also the first British driver to win. Leading a 1–2–3–4 finish for Mercedes, it was the first time he beat Fangio, his teammate and arch rival, who was also his friend and mentor. It has been suggested that Fangio sportingly allowed Moss to win in front of his home crowd. Moss himself asked Fangio repeatedly, and Fangio always replied: "No. You were just better than me that day." The same year, Moss also won the RAC Tourist Trophy, the Targa Florio (sharing the drive with Peter Collins) and the Mille Miglia.
Mille Miglia
In 1955 Moss won Italy's thousand-mile Mille Miglia road race, an achievement Doug Nye described as the "most iconic single day's drive in motor racing history." He was paired with motor racing journalist Denis Jenkinson, who prepared pace note for Moss, and the two completed the race in ten hours and seven minutes. Motor Trend headlined it as "The Most Epic Drive. Ever." Before the race, he had taken a "magic pill" given to him by Fangio, and he has commented that although he did not know what was in it, "Dexedrine and Benzedrine were commonly used in rallies. The object was simply to keep awake, like wartime bomber crews." After the win, he spent the night and the following day driving his girlfriend to Cologne, stopping for breakfast in Munich and lunch in Stuttgart.
1956–1962
Moss won the Nassau Cup at the 1956 and 1957 Bahamas Speed Week. Also in 1957 he won on the longest circuit ever to hold a World Championship Grand Prix, the Pescara Circuit, where he again demonstrated his mastery of long-distance racing. The event lasted three hours and Moss beat Fangio, who started from pole position, by a little over 3 minutes.
In 1958, Moss's forward-thinking attitude made waves in the racing world. Moss won the first race of the season in a rear-engined F1 car, which became the common design by 1961. At Monza that year, he raced in the "Eldorado" Maserati in the Race of Two Worlds, the first single-seater car in Europe to be sponsored by a non-racing brand—the Eldorado Ice Cream Company. This was the first case in Europe of contemporary sponsorship, with the ice cream maker's colors replacing the ones assigned by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA).
Moss's sporting attitude cost him the 1958 Formula One World Championship. When rival Mike Hawthorn was threatened with a penalty after the Portuguese Grand Prix, Moss defended him. Hawthorn was accused of reversing on the track after spinning and stalling his car on an uphill section. Moss had shouted advice to Hawthorn to steer downhill, against traffic, to bump-start the car. Moss's quick thinking, and his defence of Hawthorn before the stewards, preserved Hawthorn's 6 points for finishing second behind Moss. Hawthorn went on to beat Moss for the championship title by one point, even though he had won only one race that year to Moss's four. Moss's loss in the championship could also be attributed to an error in communication between his pit crew and the driver at one race. A point was given for the fastest lap in each race, and the crew signaled "HAWT REC" meaning Hawthorn had set a record lap. Moss read this as "HAWT REG" and thought Hawthorn was making regular laps, so did not try to set a fast lap. The crew was supposed to signal the time of the lap, so Moss would know what he had to beat.
Moss was as gifted in sports cars as in Grand Prix cars. To his victories in the Tourist Trophy, the Sebring 12 Hours and the Mille Miglia he added three consecutive wins (1958–1960) in the 1000 km Nürburgring, the first two in an Aston Martin (in which he did most of the driving), and the third in a Tipo 61 "birdcage" Maserati, co-driving with the American Dan Gurney. The pair lost time when an oil hose blew off, but despite the wet-weather, they made up the time and took first place.
In the 1960 Formula One season, Moss won the Monaco Grand Prix in Rob Walker's Coventry-Climax-powered Lotus 18. Seriously injured in an accident at the Burnenville curve during practice for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, he missed the next three races but recovered sufficiently to win the final one of the season, the United States Grand Prix at Riverside, California.
For the 1961 Formula One season, run under new 1.5-litre rules, Enzo Ferrari fielded the "sharknose" Ferrari 156 with an all-new V6 engine. Moss's Climax-engined Lotus was comparatively underpowered, but he won the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix by 3.6 seconds, beating the Ferraris of Richie Ginther, Wolfgang von Trips, and Phil Hill, and went on to win the partially wet 1961 German Grand Prix.
In 1962, he crashed his Lotus heavily during the Glover Trophy at Goodwood held on Monday 23 April. The accident put him in a coma for a month, and for six months the left side of his body was partially paralysed. He recovered, but retired from professional racing after a private test session in a Lotus 19 the following year, when he lapped a few tenths of a second slower than before. He felt he had not regained his previously instinctive command of the car. He had been runner-up in the Drivers' Championship four years in succession, from 1955 to 1958, and third in each of the next three years.
Speed records
1950
At the Autodrome de Montlhéry, a steeply banked oval track near Paris, Moss and Leslie Johnson took turns at the wheel of the latter's Jaguar XK120 to average for 24 hours, including stops for fuel and tyres. Changing drivers every three hours, they covered a total of . It was the first time a production car had averaged over for 24 hours.
1952
Revisiting Montlhéry, Moss was one of a four-driver team, led by Johnson, who drove a factory-owned Jaguar XK120 fixed-head coupé for 7 days and nights at the French track. Moss, Johnson, Bert Hadley and Jack Fairman averaged to take four World records and five International Class C records, and covered a total of .
1957
In August Moss broke five International Class F records in the purpose-built MG EX181 at Bonneville Salt Flats. The streamlined, supercharged car's speed for the flying kilometer was 245.64 mph, which was the average of two runs in opposite directions.
Broadcasting career
Away from driving, in 1962 he acted as a colour commentator for ABC's Wide World of Sports for Formula One and NASCAR races. He eventually left ABC in 1980. Moss narrated the official 1988 Formula One season review along with Tony Jardine.
Moss also narrated the popular children's series Roary the Racing Car, which stars Peter Kay.
Return to racing
Although ostensibly retired from racing since 1962, Moss did make a number of one-off appearances in professional motorsport events in the following two decades. He also competed in the 1974 London-Sahara-Munich World Cup Rally in a Mercedes-Benz, but retired from the event in the Algerian Sahara. The Holden Torana he shared with Jack Brabham in the 1976 Bathurst 1000 was hit from behind on the grid and eventually retired with engine failure. Moss, at the wheel of the Torana when the V8 engine let go, was criticised by other drivers for staying on the racing line for over ⅔ of the 6.172 km long circuit while returning to the pits as the car was dropping large amounts of oil onto the road. He also shared a Volkswagen Golf GTI with Denny Hulme in the 1979 Benson & Hedges 500 at Pukekohe Park Raceway in New Zealand.
In 1980 he made a comeback to regular competition, in the British Saloon Car Championship with the works-backed GTi Engineering Audi team. For the 1980 season Moss was the team's number two driver to team co-owner Richard Lloyd. For the 1981 season Moss stayed with Audi, as the team moved to Tom Walkinshaw Racing management, driving alongside Martin Brundle.
Throughout his retirement he raced in events for historic cars, driving on behalf of and at the invitation of others, as well as campaigning his own OSCA FS 372 and other vehicles. In 2004, as part of its promotion for the new SLR, Mercedes-Benz reunited Moss with the 300 SLR "No. 722" in which he won the Mille Miglia nearly 50 years earlier. One reporter who rode with Moss that day noted that the 75-year-old driver was "so good . . . that even old and crippled [he was] still better than nearly everyone else". On 9 June 2011 during qualifying for the Le Mans Legends race, Moss announced on Radio Le Mans that he had finally retired from racing, saying that he had scared himself that afternoon. He was 81.
Post racing career
Lister Cars announced the building for sale of the Lister Knobbly Stirling Moss at the Royal Automobile Club in London in June 2016. The car is built to the exact specification of the 1958 model, is the only magnesium-bodied car in the world, and is the only car that was ever endorsed by Moss. Brian Lister invited Moss to drive for Lister on three separate occasions, at Goodwood in 1954, Silverstone in 1958 and at Sebring in 1959, and to celebrate these races, 10 special edition lightweight Lister Knobbly cars are being built. The company announced that the cars will be available for both road and race use, and Moss would personally be handing over each car.
Honours
In 1990, Moss was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.
In the New Year Honours 2000 List, Moss was made a Knight Bachelor for services to motor racing. On 21 March 2000, he was knighted by Prince Charles, standing in for the Queen, who was on an official visit to Australia.
He received the 2005 Segrave Trophy.
In 2006, Moss was awarded the FIA gold medal in recognition of his outstanding contribution to motorsport.
In December 2008, McLaren-Mercedes unveiled their final model of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. The model was named in honour of Moss, hence, Mercedes McLaren SLR Stirling Moss, which has a top speed of with wind deflectors instead of a windscreen.
In 2016, in an academic paper that reported a mathematical modelling study that assessed the relative influence of driver and machine, Moss was ranked the 29th best Formula One driver of all time.
Following Moss's death the Kinrara Trophy race at the Goodwood Revival meeting was renamed in his honour. It is a race for GT cars that competed before 1963.
Biographies
In 1957, Moss published an autobiography called In the Track Of Speed, first published by Muller, London.
In 1963, motorsport author and commentator Ken Purdy published a biographical book entitled All But My Life about Moss (first published by William Kimber & Co, London), based on material gathered through interviews with Moss.
In 2015, when he was aged 85, Moss published a second autobiography, entitled My Racing Life, written with motor sports writer Simon Taylor. In 2016, Philip Porter published the first volume of Stirling Moss - The Definitive Biography covering the period from birth up to the end of 1955, one of Moss's greatest years.
Popular culture
During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances. In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show What's My Line? (episode with Anita Ekberg). In 1959 he was the subject of the TV programme This Is Your Life. On 12 June the following year he was interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face; Freeman later said that he had thought before the interview that Moss was a playboy, but in their meeting he showed "cold, precise, clinical judgement... a man who could live so close to the edge of death and danger, and trust entirely to his own judgement. This appealed to me". Moss also appeared as himself in the 1964 film The Beauty Jungle, and was one of several celebrities with cameo appearances in the 1967 version of the James Bond film Casino Royale. He played Evelyn Tremble's (Peter Sellers) driver.
For many years during and after his career, the rhetorical phrase "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" was supposedly the standard question all British policemen asked speeding motorists. Moss relates he himself was once stopped for speeding and asked just that; he reports the traffic officer had some difficulty believing him. Moss was the subject of a cartoon biography in the magazine Private Eye that said he was interested in cars, women and sex, in that order. The cartoon, drawn by Willie Rushton, showed him continually crashing, having his driving licence revoked and finally "hosting television programmes on subjects he knows nothing about". It also made reference to the amnesia Moss suffered from as a result of head injuries sustained in the crash at Goodwood in 1962. Although there were complaints to the magazine about the cartoons, Moss rang Private Eye to ask if he could use it as a Christmas card.
He was one of the few drivers of his era to create a brand from his name for licensing purposes, which was launched when his website was revamped in 2009 with improved content. In 2004, Moss was a supporter of the UK Independence Party.
Moss was a Mercedes-Benz Brand Ambassador, having kept a close relationship with the brand, and remained an enthusiast and collector of the brand, which includes the Mercedes-Benz W113, Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Stirling Moss among others.
Personal life and death
Moss was married three times. His first wife was Katie Molson; an heir to the Canadian brewer Molson. They were married in 1957 and separated three years later. His second wife was the American public relations executive Elaine Barbarino. They were married in 1964 and divorced in 1968. Their daughter Allison was born in 1967. His third wife was Susie Paine, the daughter of an old friend. They were married from 1980 until his death in 2020. Their son Elliot was born in 1980.
In April 1960, Moss was found guilty of dangerous driving. He was fined £50 and banned from driving for one year after an incident near Chetwynd, Shropshire, when he was test-driving a Mini.
Moss's 80th birthday, on 17 September 2009, fell on the eve of the Goodwood Revival and Lord March celebrated with an 80-car parade on each of the three days. Moss drove a different car each day: a Mercedes-Benz W196 (an open-wheel variant), the Lotus 18 in which he had won the 1961 Monaco GP, and an Aston Martin DBR1.
On 7 March 2010, Moss broke both ankles and four bones in a foot, and also chipped four vertebrae and suffered skin lesions, when he plunged down a lift shaft at his home. In December 2016, he was admitted to hospital in Singapore with a serious chest infection. As a result of this illness and a subsequent lengthy recovery period, Moss announced his retirement from public life in January 2018.
Moss died at his home in Mayfair, London, on 12 April 2020, aged 90, after a long illness.
Racing record
Career highlights
Complete Formula One World Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)
† Indicates shared drive with Hans Herrmann and Karl Kling.
* Indicates shared drive with Cesare Perdisa.
‡ Indicates shared drive with Tony Brooks.
[a] After Moss retired from the race he took over the car of Trintignant. Both drivers did not receive any points for their shared drive.
Non-championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position)
(Races in italics indicate fastest lap)
Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results
Complete 12 Hours of Sebring results
Complete 12 Hours of Reims results
Complete Mille Miglia results
Complete Rallye de Monte Carlo results
Complete Bathurst 1000 results
Complete British Saloon Car Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap.)
† Events with 2 races staged for the different classes.
References
External links
Sir Stirling Moss – Official Web Site
Stirling Moss in the 24 hours of Le Mans
Grand Prix History – Hall of Fame, Stirling Moss
Stirling Moss profile at The 500 Owners Association
BBC Face to Face interview with Stirling Moss and John Freeman, broadcast 12 June 1960
1929 births
2020 deaths
12 Hours of Sebring drivers
24 Hours of Le Mans drivers
BBC Sports Personality of the Year winners
Bonneville 200 MPH Club members
BRDC Gold Star winners
Brighton Speed Trials people
British Racing Partnership Formula One drivers
British Touring Car Championship drivers
Connaught Formula One drivers
Cooper Formula One drivers
English Formula One drivers
English people of Jewish descent
English racing drivers
ERA Formula One drivers
Formula One race winners
Formula One team owners
Hersham and Walton Motors Formula One drivers
International Motorsports Hall of Fame inductees
Knights Bachelor
Maserati Formula One drivers
Mercedes-Benz Formula One drivers
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
People educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College
People from West Kensington
People in sports awarded knighthoods
Rob Walker Racing Team Formula One drivers
Sportspeople from London
Segrave Trophy recipients
Vanwall Formula One drivers
World Sportscar Championship drivers | true | [
"Bravo was a Romanian teens' magazine, the Romanian version of the German original format. It was published bimonthly between 1997 and 2014.\n\nHistory\n\nThe first issue of Bravo was published in 1997. The print edition of the magazine ceased publication in April 2014.\n\nContent\nThe magazine covered most current news, gossips and rumours. It included the \"Loser v Winner corner\", in which there are presented some gestures or projects of fellow worldwide artists, comparing one to each other. It also featured the \"Star - Duel\", where the editors compare two artists, shows, films or series which are from the same domein.\n\nStarting with August, 2009, the readers had the freedom to choose theirselfs' favourite artists to appear on a poster or wallpaper, by sending a text via SMS.\n\nIt featured an exclusive interview with an international superstar, such as Sugababes, Zac Efron or Justin Bieber. The magazine also included breaking news about the most recent or upcoming films and TV series, and new DVD releasings.\n\nThe BRAVO Top 20, or BRAVO CHARTS was the reader's chart. They can vote online on bravonet.ro their favourite songs, from a shortlist of 50 songs. The chart was mediated twice a month.\n\nReferences \n\n Official Web Page\n\n1997 establishments in Romania\n2014 disestablishments in Romania\nBauer Media Group\nBi-monthly magazines\nMagazines established in 1997\nMagazines disestablished in 2014\nMagazines published in Romania\nRomanian-language magazines\nYouth magazines\nCelebrity magazines\nDefunct magazines published in Romania",
"SciFiNow was a British magazine and website published every four weeks by Kelsey Media in the United Kingdom, covering the science fiction, horror and fantasy genres. It launched in April 2007 and the print publication ceased in May 2020, with the website continuing to publish daily content. The magazine features genre TV shows, films and culture of the past, present and future, including TV listings. \n\nIn 2010, SciFiNow won the Best Magazine award at the Fantasy Horror Award ceremony in Orvieto, Italy.\n\nIn 2020, SciFiNow transitioned to an online only media presence, publishing daily news, interviews, reviews and competitions covering films, TV shows, books, focusing on Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy genres. In addition to the content on its own website, longer features are published under the brand-name \"SciFiNow+\" in the subscription-based website and app The Companion.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\n2007 establishments in the United Kingdom\n2020 disestablishments in England\n2020 disestablishments in the United Kingdom\nMagazines established in 2007\nMagazines disestablished in 2020\nMonthly magazines published in the United Kingdom\nScience fiction magazines published in the United Kingdom\nScience fiction-related magazines"
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[
"Stirling Moss",
"Popular culture",
"What did the public think of Stirling Moss?",
"During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain,",
"When did he begin racing?",
"I don't know.",
"What major races did he compete in?",
"I don't know.",
"What else is interesting about the article?",
"Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances.",
"Did he appear in any magazines or tv shows?",
"In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show What's My Line? ("
] | C_019c79656cc44e16b3a71b82930b321c_0 | Did he win? | 6 | Did Stirling Moss win? | Stirling Moss | During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances. In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show What's My Line? (episode with Anita Ekberg). In 1959 he was the subject of the TV programme This Is Your Life. On June 12 the following year he was interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face; Freeman later said that he had thought before the interview that Moss was a playboy, but in their meeting he showed "cold, precise, clinical judgement... a man who could live so close to the edge of death and danger, and trust entirely to his own judgement. This appealed to me". Moss also appeared as himself in the 1964 film The Beauty Jungle, and was one of several celebrities with cameo appearances in the 1967 version of the James Bond film Casino Royale. He played Evelyn Tremble's (Peter Sellers) driver. For many years during and after his career, the rhetorical phrase "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" was supposedly the standard question all British policemen asked speeding motorists. Moss relates he himself was once stopped for speeding and asked just that; he reports the traffic officer had some difficulty believing him. As related in the book The Life and Times of Private Eye, Moss was the subject of a less than respectful cartoon biography in the magazine Private Eye. The cartoon, drawn by Willie Rushton, showed him continually crashing, having his driving licence revoked and finally "hosting television programmes on subjects he knows nothing about". It also made reference to the amnesia Moss suffered from as a result of head injuries sustained in the crash at Goodwood in 1962. According to the book, Moss responded by offering to buy the original of the cartoon, an outcome the book describes as "depressingly common" for its satirical cartoons about famous people. Moss is the narrator of the popular children's series Roary the Racing Car which stars Peter Kay, a role he took on, having been approached by both David Jenkins, who had the original idea, and Keith Chapman, the latter the creator of Bob the Builder, as he saw the TV show as a way of introducing motorsport to the next generation. He is one of the few drivers of his era to create a brand from his name for licensing purposes, which was launched when his website was revamped in 2009 with improved content. Moss is also a supporter of the UK Independence Party. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss (17 September 1929 – 12 April 2020) was a British Formula One racing driver. An inductee into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, he won 212 of the 529 races he entered across several categories of competition and has been described as "the greatest driver never to win the World Championship". In a seven-year span between 1955 and 1961 Moss finished as championship runner-up four times and in third place the other three times.
Early life
Moss was born in London, son of Alfred Moss, a dentist of Bray, Berkshire, and Aileen (née Craufurd). His grandfather was Jewish, from a family that changed their surname from Moses to Moss. He was brought up at Long White Cloud house on the south bank of the River Thames. His father was an amateur racing driver who had come 16th in the 1924 Indianapolis 500. Aileen Moss had also been involved in motorsport, entering prewar hillclimbs at the wheel of a Singer Nine. Stirling was a gifted horse rider as was his younger sister, Pat Moss, who became a successful rally driver in her own right and also married Swedish rally driver Erik Carlsson.
Moss was educated at several independent schools: Shrewsbury House School in Surbiton, Clewer Manor Junior School, and the linked senior school, Haileybury and Imperial Service College, located at Hertford Heath, near Hertford. He disliked school and did not attain a good academic performance. At Haileybury, he was subjected to antisemitic bullying because of his Jewish roots. He concealed the bullying from his parents and used it as "motivation to succeed". Moss received his first car, an Austin 7, from his father at the age of nine, and drove it on the fields around Long White Cloud. He purchased his own car at age 15 after he obtained a driving licence. After the Second World War, Moss was ruled exempt from doing the mandatory two-year national service for men his age because he had nephritis.
Racing career
Moss raced from 1948 to 1962, winning 212 of the 529 races he entered, including 16 Formula One Grands Prix. He competed in as many as 62 races in a single year and drove 84 different makes of car over the course of his racing career. He preferred to race British cars, stating, "Better to lose honourably in a British car than win in a foreign one". At Vanwall, he was instrumental in breaking the German/Italian stranglehold on F1 racing (as was Jack Brabham at Cooper). He remained the English driver with the most Formula One victories until 1991 when Nigel Mansell overtook him after competing in more races.
1948–1954
Moss began his career at the wheel of his father Alfred's 328 BMW, DPX 653. Moss was one of the Cooper Car Company's first customers, using winnings from competing in horse-riding events to pay the deposit on a Cooper 500 racing car in 1948. He then persuaded his father, who opposed his racing and wanted him to be a dentist, to let him buy it. He soon demonstrated his ability with numerous wins at national and international levels, and continued to compete in Formula Three, with Coopers and Kiefts, after he had progressed to more senior categories.
His first major international race victory came on the eve of his 21st birthday at the wheel of a borrowed Jaguar XK120 in the 1950 RAC Tourist Trophy on the Dundrod circuit in Northern Ireland. He went on to win the race six more times, in 1951 (Jaguar C-Type), 1955 (Mercedes-Benz 300SLR), 1958 and 1959 (Aston Martin DBR1), and 1960 and 1961 (Ferrari 250 GT). Enzo Ferrari, the founder of Ferrari, approached Moss and offered him a Formula Two car to drive at the 1951 Bari Grand Prix before a full
-season in 1952. Moss and his father went to Apulia only to find out that the Ferrari car was to be driven by experienced driver Piero Taruffi and were incensed.
Also a competent rally driver, Moss was one of three people to have won a Coupe d'Or (Gold Cup) for three consecutive penalty-free runs on the Alpine Rally (Coupe des Alpes). He finished second in the 1952 Monte Carlo Rally driving a Sunbeam-Talbot 90 with Desmond Scannell and Autocar magazine editor John Cooper as co-drivers.
In 1954, he became the first non-American to win the 12 Hours of Sebring, sharing the Cunningham team's 1.5-liter O.S.C.A. MT4 with American Bill Lloyd.
In 1953 Mercedes-Benz racing boss Alfred Neubauer had spoken to Moss's manager, Ken Gregory, about the possibility of Moss's joining the Mercedes Grand Prix team. Having seen him do well in a relatively uncompetitive car, and wanting to see how he would perform in a better one, Neubauer suggested Moss buy a Maserati for the 1954 season. He bought a Maserati 250F, and although the car's unreliability prevented his scoring high points in the 1954 Drivers' Championship he qualified alongside the Mercedes front runners several times and performed well in the races. He achieved his first Formula One victory when he won the non-Championship Oulton Park International Gold Cup in the Maserati.
In the Italian Grand Prix at Monza he passed both drivers who were regarded as the best in Formula One at the time—Juan Manuel Fangio in a Mercedes and Alberto Ascari in a Ferrari—and took the lead. Ascari retired with engine problems, and Moss led until lap 68 when his engine also failed. Fangio took the victory, and Moss pushed his Maserati to the finish line. Neubauer, already impressed when Moss had tested a Mercedes-Benz W196 at Hockenheim, promptly signed him for 1955.
1955
Moss's first World Championship victory was in the 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree, a race he was also the first British driver to win. Leading a 1–2–3–4 finish for Mercedes, it was the first time he beat Fangio, his teammate and arch rival, who was also his friend and mentor. It has been suggested that Fangio sportingly allowed Moss to win in front of his home crowd. Moss himself asked Fangio repeatedly, and Fangio always replied: "No. You were just better than me that day." The same year, Moss also won the RAC Tourist Trophy, the Targa Florio (sharing the drive with Peter Collins) and the Mille Miglia.
Mille Miglia
In 1955 Moss won Italy's thousand-mile Mille Miglia road race, an achievement Doug Nye described as the "most iconic single day's drive in motor racing history." He was paired with motor racing journalist Denis Jenkinson, who prepared pace note for Moss, and the two completed the race in ten hours and seven minutes. Motor Trend headlined it as "The Most Epic Drive. Ever." Before the race, he had taken a "magic pill" given to him by Fangio, and he has commented that although he did not know what was in it, "Dexedrine and Benzedrine were commonly used in rallies. The object was simply to keep awake, like wartime bomber crews." After the win, he spent the night and the following day driving his girlfriend to Cologne, stopping for breakfast in Munich and lunch in Stuttgart.
1956–1962
Moss won the Nassau Cup at the 1956 and 1957 Bahamas Speed Week. Also in 1957 he won on the longest circuit ever to hold a World Championship Grand Prix, the Pescara Circuit, where he again demonstrated his mastery of long-distance racing. The event lasted three hours and Moss beat Fangio, who started from pole position, by a little over 3 minutes.
In 1958, Moss's forward-thinking attitude made waves in the racing world. Moss won the first race of the season in a rear-engined F1 car, which became the common design by 1961. At Monza that year, he raced in the "Eldorado" Maserati in the Race of Two Worlds, the first single-seater car in Europe to be sponsored by a non-racing brand—the Eldorado Ice Cream Company. This was the first case in Europe of contemporary sponsorship, with the ice cream maker's colors replacing the ones assigned by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA).
Moss's sporting attitude cost him the 1958 Formula One World Championship. When rival Mike Hawthorn was threatened with a penalty after the Portuguese Grand Prix, Moss defended him. Hawthorn was accused of reversing on the track after spinning and stalling his car on an uphill section. Moss had shouted advice to Hawthorn to steer downhill, against traffic, to bump-start the car. Moss's quick thinking, and his defence of Hawthorn before the stewards, preserved Hawthorn's 6 points for finishing second behind Moss. Hawthorn went on to beat Moss for the championship title by one point, even though he had won only one race that year to Moss's four. Moss's loss in the championship could also be attributed to an error in communication between his pit crew and the driver at one race. A point was given for the fastest lap in each race, and the crew signaled "HAWT REC" meaning Hawthorn had set a record lap. Moss read this as "HAWT REG" and thought Hawthorn was making regular laps, so did not try to set a fast lap. The crew was supposed to signal the time of the lap, so Moss would know what he had to beat.
Moss was as gifted in sports cars as in Grand Prix cars. To his victories in the Tourist Trophy, the Sebring 12 Hours and the Mille Miglia he added three consecutive wins (1958–1960) in the 1000 km Nürburgring, the first two in an Aston Martin (in which he did most of the driving), and the third in a Tipo 61 "birdcage" Maserati, co-driving with the American Dan Gurney. The pair lost time when an oil hose blew off, but despite the wet-weather, they made up the time and took first place.
In the 1960 Formula One season, Moss won the Monaco Grand Prix in Rob Walker's Coventry-Climax-powered Lotus 18. Seriously injured in an accident at the Burnenville curve during practice for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, he missed the next three races but recovered sufficiently to win the final one of the season, the United States Grand Prix at Riverside, California.
For the 1961 Formula One season, run under new 1.5-litre rules, Enzo Ferrari fielded the "sharknose" Ferrari 156 with an all-new V6 engine. Moss's Climax-engined Lotus was comparatively underpowered, but he won the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix by 3.6 seconds, beating the Ferraris of Richie Ginther, Wolfgang von Trips, and Phil Hill, and went on to win the partially wet 1961 German Grand Prix.
In 1962, he crashed his Lotus heavily during the Glover Trophy at Goodwood held on Monday 23 April. The accident put him in a coma for a month, and for six months the left side of his body was partially paralysed. He recovered, but retired from professional racing after a private test session in a Lotus 19 the following year, when he lapped a few tenths of a second slower than before. He felt he had not regained his previously instinctive command of the car. He had been runner-up in the Drivers' Championship four years in succession, from 1955 to 1958, and third in each of the next three years.
Speed records
1950
At the Autodrome de Montlhéry, a steeply banked oval track near Paris, Moss and Leslie Johnson took turns at the wheel of the latter's Jaguar XK120 to average for 24 hours, including stops for fuel and tyres. Changing drivers every three hours, they covered a total of . It was the first time a production car had averaged over for 24 hours.
1952
Revisiting Montlhéry, Moss was one of a four-driver team, led by Johnson, who drove a factory-owned Jaguar XK120 fixed-head coupé for 7 days and nights at the French track. Moss, Johnson, Bert Hadley and Jack Fairman averaged to take four World records and five International Class C records, and covered a total of .
1957
In August Moss broke five International Class F records in the purpose-built MG EX181 at Bonneville Salt Flats. The streamlined, supercharged car's speed for the flying kilometer was 245.64 mph, which was the average of two runs in opposite directions.
Broadcasting career
Away from driving, in 1962 he acted as a colour commentator for ABC's Wide World of Sports for Formula One and NASCAR races. He eventually left ABC in 1980. Moss narrated the official 1988 Formula One season review along with Tony Jardine.
Moss also narrated the popular children's series Roary the Racing Car, which stars Peter Kay.
Return to racing
Although ostensibly retired from racing since 1962, Moss did make a number of one-off appearances in professional motorsport events in the following two decades. He also competed in the 1974 London-Sahara-Munich World Cup Rally in a Mercedes-Benz, but retired from the event in the Algerian Sahara. The Holden Torana he shared with Jack Brabham in the 1976 Bathurst 1000 was hit from behind on the grid and eventually retired with engine failure. Moss, at the wheel of the Torana when the V8 engine let go, was criticised by other drivers for staying on the racing line for over ⅔ of the 6.172 km long circuit while returning to the pits as the car was dropping large amounts of oil onto the road. He also shared a Volkswagen Golf GTI with Denny Hulme in the 1979 Benson & Hedges 500 at Pukekohe Park Raceway in New Zealand.
In 1980 he made a comeback to regular competition, in the British Saloon Car Championship with the works-backed GTi Engineering Audi team. For the 1980 season Moss was the team's number two driver to team co-owner Richard Lloyd. For the 1981 season Moss stayed with Audi, as the team moved to Tom Walkinshaw Racing management, driving alongside Martin Brundle.
Throughout his retirement he raced in events for historic cars, driving on behalf of and at the invitation of others, as well as campaigning his own OSCA FS 372 and other vehicles. In 2004, as part of its promotion for the new SLR, Mercedes-Benz reunited Moss with the 300 SLR "No. 722" in which he won the Mille Miglia nearly 50 years earlier. One reporter who rode with Moss that day noted that the 75-year-old driver was "so good . . . that even old and crippled [he was] still better than nearly everyone else". On 9 June 2011 during qualifying for the Le Mans Legends race, Moss announced on Radio Le Mans that he had finally retired from racing, saying that he had scared himself that afternoon. He was 81.
Post racing career
Lister Cars announced the building for sale of the Lister Knobbly Stirling Moss at the Royal Automobile Club in London in June 2016. The car is built to the exact specification of the 1958 model, is the only magnesium-bodied car in the world, and is the only car that was ever endorsed by Moss. Brian Lister invited Moss to drive for Lister on three separate occasions, at Goodwood in 1954, Silverstone in 1958 and at Sebring in 1959, and to celebrate these races, 10 special edition lightweight Lister Knobbly cars are being built. The company announced that the cars will be available for both road and race use, and Moss would personally be handing over each car.
Honours
In 1990, Moss was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.
In the New Year Honours 2000 List, Moss was made a Knight Bachelor for services to motor racing. On 21 March 2000, he was knighted by Prince Charles, standing in for the Queen, who was on an official visit to Australia.
He received the 2005 Segrave Trophy.
In 2006, Moss was awarded the FIA gold medal in recognition of his outstanding contribution to motorsport.
In December 2008, McLaren-Mercedes unveiled their final model of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. The model was named in honour of Moss, hence, Mercedes McLaren SLR Stirling Moss, which has a top speed of with wind deflectors instead of a windscreen.
In 2016, in an academic paper that reported a mathematical modelling study that assessed the relative influence of driver and machine, Moss was ranked the 29th best Formula One driver of all time.
Following Moss's death the Kinrara Trophy race at the Goodwood Revival meeting was renamed in his honour. It is a race for GT cars that competed before 1963.
Biographies
In 1957, Moss published an autobiography called In the Track Of Speed, first published by Muller, London.
In 1963, motorsport author and commentator Ken Purdy published a biographical book entitled All But My Life about Moss (first published by William Kimber & Co, London), based on material gathered through interviews with Moss.
In 2015, when he was aged 85, Moss published a second autobiography, entitled My Racing Life, written with motor sports writer Simon Taylor. In 2016, Philip Porter published the first volume of Stirling Moss - The Definitive Biography covering the period from birth up to the end of 1955, one of Moss's greatest years.
Popular culture
During his driving career, Moss was one of the most recognised celebrities in Britain, leading to many media appearances. In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show What's My Line? (episode with Anita Ekberg). In 1959 he was the subject of the TV programme This Is Your Life. On 12 June the following year he was interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face; Freeman later said that he had thought before the interview that Moss was a playboy, but in their meeting he showed "cold, precise, clinical judgement... a man who could live so close to the edge of death and danger, and trust entirely to his own judgement. This appealed to me". Moss also appeared as himself in the 1964 film The Beauty Jungle, and was one of several celebrities with cameo appearances in the 1967 version of the James Bond film Casino Royale. He played Evelyn Tremble's (Peter Sellers) driver.
For many years during and after his career, the rhetorical phrase "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" was supposedly the standard question all British policemen asked speeding motorists. Moss relates he himself was once stopped for speeding and asked just that; he reports the traffic officer had some difficulty believing him. Moss was the subject of a cartoon biography in the magazine Private Eye that said he was interested in cars, women and sex, in that order. The cartoon, drawn by Willie Rushton, showed him continually crashing, having his driving licence revoked and finally "hosting television programmes on subjects he knows nothing about". It also made reference to the amnesia Moss suffered from as a result of head injuries sustained in the crash at Goodwood in 1962. Although there were complaints to the magazine about the cartoons, Moss rang Private Eye to ask if he could use it as a Christmas card.
He was one of the few drivers of his era to create a brand from his name for licensing purposes, which was launched when his website was revamped in 2009 with improved content. In 2004, Moss was a supporter of the UK Independence Party.
Moss was a Mercedes-Benz Brand Ambassador, having kept a close relationship with the brand, and remained an enthusiast and collector of the brand, which includes the Mercedes-Benz W113, Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Stirling Moss among others.
Personal life and death
Moss was married three times. His first wife was Katie Molson; an heir to the Canadian brewer Molson. They were married in 1957 and separated three years later. His second wife was the American public relations executive Elaine Barbarino. They were married in 1964 and divorced in 1968. Their daughter Allison was born in 1967. His third wife was Susie Paine, the daughter of an old friend. They were married from 1980 until his death in 2020. Their son Elliot was born in 1980.
In April 1960, Moss was found guilty of dangerous driving. He was fined £50 and banned from driving for one year after an incident near Chetwynd, Shropshire, when he was test-driving a Mini.
Moss's 80th birthday, on 17 September 2009, fell on the eve of the Goodwood Revival and Lord March celebrated with an 80-car parade on each of the three days. Moss drove a different car each day: a Mercedes-Benz W196 (an open-wheel variant), the Lotus 18 in which he had won the 1961 Monaco GP, and an Aston Martin DBR1.
On 7 March 2010, Moss broke both ankles and four bones in a foot, and also chipped four vertebrae and suffered skin lesions, when he plunged down a lift shaft at his home. In December 2016, he was admitted to hospital in Singapore with a serious chest infection. As a result of this illness and a subsequent lengthy recovery period, Moss announced his retirement from public life in January 2018.
Moss died at his home in Mayfair, London, on 12 April 2020, aged 90, after a long illness.
Racing record
Career highlights
Complete Formula One World Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)
† Indicates shared drive with Hans Herrmann and Karl Kling.
* Indicates shared drive with Cesare Perdisa.
‡ Indicates shared drive with Tony Brooks.
[a] After Moss retired from the race he took over the car of Trintignant. Both drivers did not receive any points for their shared drive.
Non-championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position)
(Races in italics indicate fastest lap)
Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results
Complete 12 Hours of Sebring results
Complete 12 Hours of Reims results
Complete Mille Miglia results
Complete Rallye de Monte Carlo results
Complete Bathurst 1000 results
Complete British Saloon Car Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap.)
† Events with 2 races staged for the different classes.
References
External links
Sir Stirling Moss – Official Web Site
Stirling Moss in the 24 hours of Le Mans
Grand Prix History – Hall of Fame, Stirling Moss
Stirling Moss profile at The 500 Owners Association
BBC Face to Face interview with Stirling Moss and John Freeman, broadcast 12 June 1960
1929 births
2020 deaths
12 Hours of Sebring drivers
24 Hours of Le Mans drivers
BBC Sports Personality of the Year winners
Bonneville 200 MPH Club members
BRDC Gold Star winners
Brighton Speed Trials people
British Racing Partnership Formula One drivers
British Touring Car Championship drivers
Connaught Formula One drivers
Cooper Formula One drivers
English Formula One drivers
English people of Jewish descent
English racing drivers
ERA Formula One drivers
Formula One race winners
Formula One team owners
Hersham and Walton Motors Formula One drivers
International Motorsports Hall of Fame inductees
Knights Bachelor
Maserati Formula One drivers
Mercedes-Benz Formula One drivers
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
People educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College
People from West Kensington
People in sports awarded knighthoods
Rob Walker Racing Team Formula One drivers
Sportspeople from London
Segrave Trophy recipients
Vanwall Formula One drivers
World Sportscar Championship drivers | false | [
"Karl Cordin (born 3 November 1948) is an Austrian former alpine skier who did only compete in Downhill Races; he competed in the 1972 Winter Olympics, becoming 7th silver medal at FIS Alpine World Ski Championships 1970 in downhill.\n\nBiography\nCording did win three World Cup races: on February 21, 1970, at Jackson Hole, on December 20th, 1970, at Val-d’Isère, and on December 18, 1973, at Zell am See; he did become five-times second and twice third too. He also could achieve the Downhill World Cup in 1969-70.\nHe won the silver medal in the FIS Alpine Skiing World Championships 1970 and became fourth in the FIS Alpine Skiing World Championships 1974; in both races he was overtaken by a racer with a higher number. In 1970, he was in lead (and it looked that he could gain the gold medal) - but Bernhard Russi did win. In 1974, he was on the way to win the bronze medal, but Willi Frommelt did catch it.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\n1948 births\nLiving people\nAustrian male alpine skiers\nOlympic alpine skiers of Austria\nAlpine skiers at the 1972 Winter Olympics\nFIS Alpine Ski World Cup champions",
"The 1972 UEFA European Under-23 Championship, which spanned two years (1970–72) had 23 entrants. Czechoslovakia U-23s won the competition.\n\nThe 23 national teams were divided into eight groups. The group winners played off against each other on a two-legged home-and-away basis until the winner was decided. There was no finals tournament or 3rd-place playoff.\n\nQualifying Stage\n\nDraw\nThe allocation of teams into qualifying groups was based on that of UEFA Euro 1972 qualifying tournament with several changes, reflecting the absence of some nations:\n Group 2 and 8 had the same competing nations\n Group 1 did not include Wales\n Group 3 did not include England and Malta\n Group 4 did not include Northern Ireland and Cyprus\n Group 5 did not include Belgium and Scotland\n Group 6 did not include Republic of Ireland\n Group 7 did not include Luxembourg\n\nGroup 1\n\nGroup 2\n\nGroup 3\n\nGroup 4\n\nGroup 5\n\nGroup 6\n\nGroup 7\n\nGroup 8\n\nKnockout Stages\n{|width=100%\n|valign=\"center\"|\nQuarter Finals\n Bulgaria 2–2 Netherlands\n Netherlands 0–0 Bulgaria\n Bulgaria 2–0 Netherlands\n2–2: win playoff match\n\n Denmark 2–0 Greece\n Greece 5–0 Denmark\n win 5–2 on aggregate\n\n Soviet Union 3–1 West Germany\n West Germany 0–0 Soviet Union\n win 3–1 on aggregate\n\n Sweden 1–0 Czechoslovakia\n Czechoslovakia 3–1 Sweden\n win 3–2 on aggregate|width=\"5%\"| \n|valign=\"center\"|\nSemi Finals\n Czechoslovakia 2–0 Greece\n Greece 2–1 Czechoslovakia win 3–2 on aggregate Soviet Union 4–0 Bulgaria\n Bulgaria 3–3 Soviet Union win 7–3 on aggregate|width=\"5%\"| \n|valign=\"center\"|\nFinal\n Soviet Union 2–2 Czechoslovakia\n Czechoslovakia 3–1 Soviet Union win 5–3 on aggregate finish as Champions\n|}\n\nSee also\n UEFA European Under-21 Championship\n\nExternal links\n RSSSF Results Archive at rsssf.com\n\nUEFA European Under-21 Championship\n1970–71 in European football\n1971–72 in European football\n1972 in youth association football"
] |
[
"Hrólfr Kraki",
"Beowulf and Bjarki"
] | C_82ba42bb74f44967ab7000b78ecbcbf5_1 | Where is beowolf from? | 1 | Where is beowolf from? | Hrólfr Kraki | The standard view is that, if Beowulf himself has a 'cognate' character in Rolf Kraki's story, it is Bodvar Bjarki (Bodvar Biarke), who also has a younger companion, Hjalti (Hialte) - perhaps matching the Beowulf character Wiglaf. Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Gotaland) and one of Bodvar Bjarki's elder brothers, Thorir, becomes a king of Gotaland. Moreover, like Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki arrives in Denmark from Gotaland (Geatland), and upon arriving in Denmark he kills a beast that has been ravaging the Danish court for two years. The monster in Hrolf Kraki's saga, however, is quite unlike the Grendel of Beowulf; but it does have characteristics of a more typical dragon, a creature which appears later in Beowulf. Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark. Proponents of this theory, like J. R. R. Tolkien, argue that both the names Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") and Bjarki are associated with bears. Bodvar Bjarki is constantly associated with bears, his father actually being one. In some of the Hrolf Kraki material, Bodvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Ali, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vanern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bodvar Bjarki are one and the same. This match supports the hypothesis that the adventure with the dragon is also originally derived from the same story. CANNOTANSWER | Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Gotaland) | Hrólfr Kraki (Old Norse: ), Hroðulf, Rolfo, Roluo, Rolf Krage (early 6th century) was a semi-legendary Danish king who appears in both Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian tradition.
Both traditions describe him as a Danish Scylding, the nephew of Hroðgar and the grandson of Healfdene. The consensus view is that Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian traditions describe the same people. Whereas the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf and Widsith do not go further than treating his relationship with Hroðgar and their animosity with Froda and Ingeld, the Scandinavian sources expand on his life as the king at Lejre and on his relationship with Halga, Hroðgar's brother. In Beowulf and Widsith, it is never explained how Hroðgar and Hroðulf are uncle and nephew.
Beowulf
The poem Beowulf introduces Hroðulf as kinsman. Later, the text explains that Hroðulf is Hroðgar's nephew and that "each was true to the other". Hroðgar is given three siblings, brothers Heorogar and Halga and an unnamed sister, all the children of Healfdene and belonging to the royal clan known as the Scyldings. The poem does not indicate which of Hroðgar's siblings is Hroðulf's parent, but later Scandinavian tradition establishes this as Halga.
Hroðgar and queen Wealhþeow had two young sons, Hreðric and Hroðmund, and Hroðulf would be their guardian in case Hroðgar dies. In a deliberately ironic passage it appears that the queen trusts Hroðulf, not suspecting that he will murder her sons to claim the throne for himself:
No existence of any Hreðric or Hroðmund, sons of Hroðgar, has survived in Scandinavian sources (although Hreðric has been suggested to be the same person as Hroerekr/Roricus, a Danish king generally described as a son or successor of Ingjald). This Hroerekr is sometimes said to have been killed by Hrólfr, vindicating the foreshadowing in Beowulf.
The Scyldings were in conflict with another clan or tribe named the Heaðobards led by their king Froda and his son Ingeld. It is in relation to this war that Hroðulf is mentioned in the other Anglo-Saxon poem where he appears, Widsith.
Hrólf and Hroðulf
A common identification is that Hrólf Kraki is the same as the character Hroðulf (Hroðgar's nephew) in Beowulf. There seems to be some foreshadowing in Beowulf that Hroðulf will attempt to usurp the throne from Hroðgar's sons Hreðric and Hroðmund, a deed that also seems to be referred to in Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum (Book 2), where we find: "... our king, who laid low Rorik, the son of Bok the covetous, and wrapped the coward in death." Rorik is the form we would expect Hreðric to take in Danish and we find personages named Rorik or Hrok or similar in most version of the Hrólf Kraki tradition, but differently accounted for, seemingly indicating that Scandinavian tradition had forgotten who exactly Hreðric/Rorik/Hrok was and various story tellers subsequently invented details to explain references to this personage in older poems. The future slaying of Hreðric may be the occasion of the future burning of the hall of Heorot in the beginning of the poem – though some take it instead to refer to the legendary death of Hrólf Kraki, who in Icelandic sources is said to have died in the burning of his hall by his brother-in-law Hjörvard.
Beowulf and Bjarki
The standard view is that, if Beowulf himself has a 'cognate' character in Rolf Kraki's story, it is Bödvar Bjarki (Bodvar Biarke), who also has a younger companion, Hjalti (Hialte) – perhaps matching the Beowulf character Wiglaf. Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Götaland) and one of Bödvar Bjarki's elder brothers, Thorir, becomes a king of Götaland. Moreover, like Beowulf, Bödvar Bjarki arrives in Denmark from Götaland (Geatland), and upon arriving in Denmark he kills a beast that has been ravaging the Danish court for two years. The monster in Hrólf Krakis saga, however, is quite unlike the Grendel of Beowulf; but it does have characteristics of a more typical dragon, a creature which appears later in Beowulf.
Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bödvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark.
Proponents of this theory, like J. R. R. Tolkien, argue that both the names Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") and Bjarki are associated with bears. Bodvar Bjarki is constantly associated with bears, his father actually being one.
In some of the Hrólf Kraki material, Bödvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Áli, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bödvar Bjarki are one and the same. This match supports the hypothesis that the adventure with the dragon is also originally derived from the same story.
Hrothgar and Hróar
As for the king of the Danes, Hroðgar, he is identical to Hróar or Ro, the uncle of Hrólf Kraki who in other sources outside of Beowulf rules as a co-king with his brother Helgi. But in those sources it is Hróar/Hroðgar who dies before his brother or who departs to Northumberland to rule his wife's kingdom leaving Helgi/Halga the sole rule of Denmark. In Beowulf Halga/Helgi has died and Hroðgar is the primary ruler with Hroðulf son of Halga as a junior co-ruler.
Furthermore, the Swedish kings referenced in Beowulf are adequately matched with the 5th and 6th century Swedish kings in Uppsala (see also Swedish semi-legendary kings):
This has obviously nothing to do with a common origin of the Beowulf and Hrólf Kraki legends in particular but simply reflects a shared genealogical tradition.
Widsith
The poem Widsith also mentions Hroðgar and Hroðulf, but indicates that the feud with Ingeld did not end until the latter was defeated at Heorot:
This piece suggests that the conflict between the Scyldings Hroðgar and Hroðulf on one side, and the Heaðobards Froda and Ingeld on the other, was well known in Anglo-Saxon England. This conflict also appears in Scandinavian sources, but in the Norse tradition the Heaðobards had apparently been forgotten and the conflict is instead rendered as a family feud (see Hrólf Kraki's saga and Skjöldunga saga).
Chronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundenses
The Chronicon Lethrense and the included Annales Lundenses tell that Haldan (Healfdene) had two sons, Helghe (Halga) and Ro (Hroðgar). When Haldan died of old age, Helghe and Ro divided the kingdom so that Ro ruled the land, and Helghe the sea. One day, Helghe arrived in Halland/Lolland and slept with Thore, the daughter of one of Ro's farmers. This resulted in a daughter named Yrse. Much later, he met Yrse, and without knowing that she was his daughter, he made her pregnant with Rolf. Eventually, Helghe found out that Yrse was his own daughter and, out of shame, went east and killed himself.
Both Helghe and Ro being dead, a Swedish king, called Hakon in the Chronicon Lethrense proper, and Athisl in the Annales – corresponding to Eadgils – forced the Danes to accept a dog as king. The dog king was succeeded by Rolf Krage.
Rolf Krage was a big man in body and soul and was so generous that no one asked him for anything twice. His sister Skulda was married against Rolf's will to Hartwar or Hiarwarth (Heoroweard), a German earl of Skåne, but reputedly Rolf had given Skulda to him together with Sweden.
This Hartwar arrived in Zealand with a large army and said that he wanted to give his tribute to Rolf, but killed Rolf together with all his men. Only one survived, Wigg, who played along until he was to do homage to Hartwar. Then, he pierced Hartwar with a sword, and so Hartwar was king for only one morning.
Gesta Danorum
The Book 2 of the Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus contains roughly the same information as the Chronicon Lethrense and the Annales Lundenses, i.e. that Ro (Hroðgar) and Helgo (Halga) were the son of Haldanus (Healfdene). When Haldanus died of old age, Ro took the land and Helgo the water. One day during his sea roving, Helgo arrived at Thurø, where he found and raped the young girl Thora, which resulted in Urse (Yrsa). When Helgo after many years returned to Thurø, Thora avenged her lost virginity by sending Urse to Helgo who, unknowingly raped his own daughter. This resulted in Roluo, who was a gifted man, both physically and intellectually and as brave as he was tall. After some time Helgo repelled a Swedish invasion, avenged Ro by killing the Swedish king Hothbrodd, and made the Swedes pay tribute. However, he committed suicide due to shame for his incestuous relationship with Urse. Roluo succeeded him.
The new king of Sweden, Athislus (Eadgils), thought that the tribute to the Daner might be smaller if he married the Danish king's mother and so took Urse for a queen. However, after some time, Urse was so upset with the Swedish king's greed that she thought out a ruse to run away from the king and at the same time liberate him of his wealth. She incited Athislus to rebel against Roluo, and arranged so that Roluo would be invited and promised a wealth in gifts.
At the banquet Roluo was at first not recognised by his mother, but when their fondness was commented on by Athisl, the Swedish king and Roluo made a wager where Roluo would prove his endurance. Roluo was placed in front of a fire that exposed him to such heat that finally a maiden could suffer the sight no more and extinguished the fire. Roluo was greatly recompensed by Athisl for his endurance.
When the banquet had lasted for three days, Urse and Roluo escaped from Uppsala, early in the morning in carriages where they had put all the Swedish king's treasure. In order to lessen their burden, and to occupy any pursuing warriors they spread gold in their path (later in the work, this is referred to as "sowing the Fyrisvellir"), although there was a rumour that she only spread gilded copper. When Athislus, who was pursuing the escapers saw that a precious ring was lying on the ground, he bent down to pick it up. Roluo was pleased to see the king of Sweden bent down, and escaped in the ships with his mother.
A young man named Wigg was impressed with Roluo's bodily size and gave him the cognomen Krage, which meant a tall tree trunk used as a ladder. Roluo liked this name and rewarded Wigg with a heavy bracelet. Wigg, then, swore to Roluo to avenge him, if he was killed.
Roluo later defeated Athislus and gave Sweden to young man named Hiartuar (Heoroweard), who also married Roluo's sister Skulde. Skulde, however, did not like the fact that her husband had to pay taxes to Roluo and so incited Hiartuar to rebel against him. They so went to Lejre (a town which Roluo had built) with arms hidden in the ships, under the pretense that they wanted to pay tribute.
They were well-received, but after the banquet, when most people were drunk asleep, the Swedes and the Goths (i.e. the Geats) proceeded to kill everyone at Roluo's residence. After a long battle, involving Roluo's champion Bjarki, who fought in the shape of a spirit bear until he was awakened by his comrade Hjalti, the Geats won and Roluo was killed.
Hiartuar asked Wigg if he wanted to fight for him, and Wigg said yes. Hiartuar wanted to give Wigg a sword, but he insisted on receiving it by taking the hilt. Having the hilt in his hand, Wigg pierced Hiartuar with the sword and so avenged Roluo. Swedes and Geats then rushed forward and killed Wigg. The Swedish king Høtherus (based on the god Höðr), the brother of Athislus, succeeded Roluo and became the king of a combined Sweden and Denmark.
Hrólfr Kraki's saga
In Hrólfr Kraki's saga, Halfdan (Healfdene) had three children, the sons Helgi (Halga) and Hróarr (Hroðgar) and the daughter Signý. The sister was the eldest and married to Sævil Jarl, with whom she had the son Hrókr. Halfdan was murdered by his own brother Fróði (Froda) and the two brothers had to seek refuge with a man called Vivil on an island, until they could avenge their father and kill Fróði.
Whereas Hróarr moved to Northumbria and married the king's daughter, Helgi (i.e. Halga) went to the Saxons wanting to woo their warlike queen Oluf. She was, however, not interested and humiliated Helgi by shaving his head and covering him with tar, while he was asleep, and sending him back to his ship. Some time later, Helgi returned and through a ruse, he kidnapped the queen for a while during which time he made her pregnant.
Having returned to her kingdom, the queen bore a child, a girl which she named Yrsa after her dog. Yrsa was set to live as a shepherd, until she was 12 years old, when she met her father Helgi who fell in love with her, not knowing it was his daughter. Oluf kept quiet about the parentage and saw it as her revenge that Helgi would wed his own daughter. Helgi and Yrsa had the son Hrólfr.
Learning that Helgi and Yrsa lived happily together, queen Oluf travelled to Denmark to tell her daughter the truth. Yrsa was shocked and although Helgi wanted their relationship to remain as it was, Yrsa insisted on leaving him to live alone. She was later taken by the Swedish king Aðils (Eadgils) as his queen, which made Helgi even more unhappy. Helgi went to Uppsala to fetch her, but was killed by Aðils in battle. In Lejre, he was succeeded by his son Hrólfr.
Hrólfr soon assembled twelve great berserkers named Hrómundr harði, Hrólfr skjóthendi, Svipdagr, Beigaðr, Hvítserkr inn hvati, Haklangr, Harðrefill, Haki inn frækni, Vöttr inn mikilaflaði, Starólfr, Hjalti inn hugprúði and Bödvar Bjarki.
After some time, Bödvar Bjarki encouraged Hrólfr to go Uppsala to claim the gold that Aðils had taken from Helgi after the battle. Hrólfr departed with 120 men and his twelve berserkers and during a rest they were tested by a farmer called Hrani (Odin in disguise) who advised Hrólfr to send back all his troops but his twelve berserkers, as numbers would not help him against Aðils.
They were at first well received, but in his hall, Aðils did his best to stop Hrólfr with pit traps and hidden warriors who attacked the Danes. Finally Aðils entertained them but put them to a test where they had to endure immense heat by a fire. Hrólfr and his berserkers finally had enough and threw the courtiers, who were feeding the fire, into the fire and leapt at Aðils. The Swedish king disappeared through a hollow tree trunk that stood in his hall.
Yrsa admonished Aðils for wanting to kill her son, and went to meet the Danes. She gave them a man named Vöggr to entertain them. This Vöggr remarked that Hrólfr had the thin face of a pole ladder, a Kraki. Happy with his new cognomen Hrólfr gave Vöggr a golden ring, and Vöggr swore to avenge Hrólfr if anyone should kill him. Hrólfr and his company were then attacked by a troll in the shape of a boar in the service of Aðils, but Hrólfr's dog Gram killed it.
They then found out that Aðils had set the hall on fire, and so they broke out of the hall, only to find themselves surrounded by heavily armed warriors in the street. After a fight, king Aðils retreated to summon reinforcements.
Yrsa then provided her son with a silver drinking horn filled with gold and jewels and a famous ring, Svíagris. Then she gave Hrólf and his men twelve of the Swedish king's best horses, and all the armour and provisions they needed.
Hrólfr took a fond farewell of his mother and departed over the Fyrisvellir. When they saw Aðils and his warriors in pursuit, they spread the gold behind themselves. Aðils saw his precious Svíagris on the ground and stooped to pick it up with his spear, whereupon Hrólf cut his back with his sword and screamed in triumph that he had bent the back of the most powerful man in Sweden.
Hrólfr lived in peace for some time. However, his half-elven half-sister Skuld was married to Hjörvarðr (Heoroweard) one of Hrólfr's subkings, and she began to turn her husband against Hrólfr. Under the pretext that they would wait three years before paying the accumulated tribute at one time, Skuld assembled a large army which included strong warriors, criminals, elves and norns. She used seiðr (witchcraft) to hide the great muster from Hrólfr and his champions.
They then arrived at Lejre one yule for the midwinter celebrations, with all the weapons hidden in wagons. A fight started and like in the account found in Gesta Danorum, Bödvar Bjarki fought in the shape of a spirit bear until he was awakened by Hjalti. Skuld used her witchcraft to resuscitate her fallen warriors and after a long fight Hrólfr and all his berserkers fell.
Skuld became the ruler of Denmark but did not rule well. Bödvar Bjarki's brothers Elk-Froði and Þorir Houndsfoot went to Denmark to avenge their brother. The Swedish queen Yrsa gave them a large Swedish army headed by Vöggr. They captured Skuld before she could use her magic and tortured her to death. Then they raised a mound for Hrólfr Kraki where he was buried together with his sword Skofnung.
Skjöldunga saga
The Skjöldunga sagaNerman (1925:150) relates that Helgo (Halga) was the king of Denmark together with his brother Roas (Hroðgar). Helgo raped Olava, the queen of the Saxons, and she bore a daughter named Yrsa. The girl later married king Adillus (Eadgils), the king of Sweden, with whom she had the daughter Scullda.
Some years later, Helgo attacked Sweden and captured Yrsa, not knowing that she was his own daughter. He raped her and took her back to Denmark, where she bore the son Rolfo. After a few years, Yrsa's mother, queen Olava, came to visit her and told her that Helgo was her own father. In horror, Yrsa returned to Adillus, leaving her son behind. Helgo died when Rolfo was eight years old, and Rolfo succeeded him, and ruled together with his uncle Roas. Not much later, Roas was killed by his half-brothers Rærecus and Frodo, whereupon Rolfo became the sole king of Denmark.
In Sweden, Yrsa and Adillus married Scullda to the king of Öland, Hiørvardus (also called Hiorvardus and Hevardus, and who corresponds to Heoroweard in Beowulf). As her half-brother Rolfo was not consulted about this marriage, he was infuriated and he attacked Öland and made Hiørvardus and his kingdom tributary to Denmark.
After some time Adillus requested Rolfo's aid against king Ale (Onela) of Oppland, and Rolfo sent him his berserkers. Adillus then won the war, but refused to pay the expected tribute for the help and so Rolfo came to Uppsala to claim his recompense. After surviving some traps, Rolfo fled with Adillus' gold, helped by his mother Yrsa, and "sowed" it on the Fyrisvellir.
Hiørvardus and his queen Skullda rebelled against Rolfo and killed him. However, Hiørvardus did not live long after this and was killed. Rolfo was succeeded by his father's cousin Rörek, who, however, had to leave Skåne to Valdar and could only keep Zealand.
Skáldskaparmál
In the Skáldskaparmál by Snorri Sturluson, the story of Hrólfr Kraki is presented in order to explain why gold was known by the kenning Kraki's seed.
Snorri relates that Hrólfr was the most renowned king in Denmark for valour, generosity and graciousness. One day a poor boy called Vöggr arrived and expressed his surprise that such a great king would look like a little pole (kraki). Hrólfr said that Vöggr had given him a name and gave Vöggr a golden ring in recompense. In gratitude Vöggr swore to Hrólfr to avenge him, should he be killed.
A second tale was when the king of Sweden, Aðils (Eadgils), was in war with a Norwegian king named Áli (Onela), and they fought in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern. Aðils was married to Yrsa, the mother of Hrólfr and so sent an embassy to Hrólfr asking him for help against Áli. He would receive three valuable gifts in recompense. Hrólfr was involved in a war against the Saxons and could not come in person but sent his twelve berserkers. Áli died in the war, and Aðils took Áli's helmet Battle-boar and his horse Raven. The berserkers demanded three pounds of gold each in pay, and they demanded to choose the gifts that Aðils had promised Hrólfr, that is the two pieces of armour that nothing could pierce: the helmet battle-boar and the mailcoat Finn's heritage. They also wanted the famous ring Svíagris. Aðils considered the pay outrageous and refused.
When Hrólfr heard that Aðils refused to pay, he set off to Uppsala. They brought the ships to the river Fyris and rode directly to the Swedish king's hall at Uppsala with his twelve berserkers. Yrsa welcomed them and led them to their lodgings. Fires were prepared for them and they were given drinks. However, so much wood was heaped on the fires that the clothes started to burn away from their bodies. Hrólfr and his men had enough and threw the courtiers on the fire. Yrsa arrived and gave them a horn full of gold, the ring Svíagris and asked them to flee. As they rode over the Fyrisvellir, they saw Aðils and his men pursuing them. The fleeing men threw their gold on the plain so that the pursuers would stop to collect the gold. Aðils, however, continued the chase on his horse Slöngvir. Hrólfr then threw Svíagris and saw how Aðils stooped down to pick up the ring with his spear. Hrólfr exclaimed that he had seen the mightiest man in Sweden bend his back.
Ynglinga saga
The Skjöldunga saga was used by Snorri Sturluson as a source when he told the story of Aðils (Eadgils) and Yrsa, in his Ynglinga saga, a part of the Heimskringla. What remains of the Skjöldunga saga is a Latin summary by Arngrímur Jónsson, and so the two versions are basically the same, the main difference being that Arngrímur's version is more terse.
Snorri relates that Aðils betook himself to pillage the Saxons, whose king was Geirþjófr and queen Alof the Great. The king and consort were not at home, and so Aðils and his men plundered their residence at ease driving cattle and captives down to the ships. One of the captives was a remarkably beautiful girl named Yrsa, and Snorri writes that everyone was soon impressed with the well-mannered, pretty and intelligent girl. Most impressed was Aðils who made her his queen.
Some years later, Helgi (Halga), who ruled in Lejre, attacked Sweden and captured Yrsa. He raped Yrsa, his own daughter, and took her back to Lejre, where she bore him the son Hrólfr. When the boy was three years of age, Yrsa's mother, queen Alof of Saxony, came to visit her and told her that her husband Helgi was her own father. Horrified, Yrsa returned to Aðils, leaving her son behind, and stayed in Sweden for the rest of her life. When Hrólfr was eight years old, Helgi died during a war expedition and Hrólf was proclaimed king.
Snorri finishes his account by briefly mentioning that the Skjöldunga saga contained an extensive account of how Hrólf came to Uppsala and sowed gold on the Fyrisvellir.
Gróttasöngr
The Gróttasöngr contains a stanza (nr 22) sung by the giantesses Fenja and Menja. It only names Yrsa and the situation that her son and brother (i.e. Hroðulf) will avenge Fródi (Froda):
This piece cannot refer to Hrólfr Kraki's saga where Froda was the half-brother of Healfdene because this Froda was killed by Hroðgar (and therefore they avenged him). It can, however, be interpreted through the Skjöldunga saga in which Hroðulf's uncle Hroðgar was murdered by his half-brother Froda.
Either Frodi's death is the one they want to avenge, or they seek vengeance for Hroðgar, killed by his half brother. The Danish equivalent of hefna is at hævne, meaning revenge (or avenging), in this case for Fródi's murder, indicating no relation to Hroðgars death, but to Frodi's. 'Kin' and 'kinsmen' share a certain reference to blood relation, yet 'brother' can also have the meaning of either: 'one of us' and 'our tribesmen', or simply 'son and brother'. After being recognized for his deeds, Yrsa will see Hroðulf as her son once more.
Gautreks saga
Hrólfr Kraki is mentioned briefly in Gautreks saga, written around 1300, when the adventurer Ref comes to him with a gift consisting of two dogs. In return for this gift Hrólfr gives him a helmet and a chainmail, both made of red gold.
Modern references
Danish playwright Johannes Ewald wrote a play about Rolf Krage (1770), based on Saxo's version of the story in Gesta Danorum. Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger wrote a poem, Helge: et Digt (1814).
The American writer Poul Anderson used this story in his novel Hrolf Kraki's Saga (1973). Anderson's story begins in earlier generations and more or less follows the version in Hrolfr Kraki's Saga described above. The book was well received by many fantasy fans.
"Sellic Spell', a fictionalized treatment of the story by J. R. R. Tolkien, was published in Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary on May 22, 2014, Tolkien himself explaining that his was "a limited...attempt to reconstruct the Anglo-Saxon tale that lies behind the folk-tale element in Beowulf".
The Danish Navy's first ironclad warship was named Rolf Krake.
Notes
Bibliography and external links
English translations of the Old Norse Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans :
The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and his Champions. Trans. Peter Tunstall (2003). Available at Norse saga: The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and Northvegr: The Saga of Hrolf Kraki.
The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki. Trans. Jesse L. Byock (1998). London: Penguin. . Selection from this translation are available at The Viking Site: Excerpts from The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki.
"King Hrolf and his champions" included in Eirik the Red: And Other Icelandic Sagas. Trans. Gwyn Jones (1961). Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press. .
Original texts''':
Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans in Old Norse from heimskringla.no
Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans in Old Norse from heimskringla.no
University of Oregon: Norse: Fornaldarsögur norðurlanda: Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans
Sagnanet: Hrólfs saga kraka
Anderson, Poul (1973). Hrolf Kraki's Saga. New York: Ballantine Books. . New York: Del Rey Books. . Reprinted 1988 by Baen Books, .
Literary Encyclopedia entry
Birger Nerman, 1925, Det svenska rikets uppkomst (in Swedish)Beowulf:
Beowulf read aloud in Old English
Modern English translation by Francis Barton Gummere
Modern English translation by John Lesslie Hall
Ringler, Dick. Beowulf: A New Translation For Oral Delivery, May 2005. Searchable text with full audio available, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.
Several different Modern English translationsChronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundense:
Chronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundense in translation by Peter Tunstall
The same translation at Northvegr
Book 2 of Gesta Danorum at the Online and Medieval & Classical library
The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf by Olson, 1916, at Project Gutenberg
the Ynglinga saga in translation by Samuel Laing, 1844, at Northvegr
The Gróttasöngr in Thorpe's translation
Skáldskaparmál:
Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda in the original language
CyberSamurai Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology: Prose Edda - Skáldskaparmál (English)
CyberSamurai Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology: Prose Edda - Skáldskaparmál (Old Norse)
Malone, Kemp. Studies in Heroic Legend and in Current Speech. S. Einarsson & N.E. Eliason, eds. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger, 1959.
Lukman, Niels Clausen. Skjoldunge und Skilfinge. Hunnen- und Heruler-könige in Ostnordischer Überlieferung. Classica et Mediaevalia, dissertationes III. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag, 1943.
Hemmingsen, Lars. By Word of Mouth: the origins of Danish legendary history - studies in European learned and popular traditions of Dacians and Danes before A.D. 1200. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Copenhagen (Dept. of Folklore), 1995.
Anderson, Carl Edlund. Formation and Resolution of Ideological Contrast in the Early History of Scandinavia''. Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic (Faculty of English).
Overing, Gillian R., and Marijane Osborn. 'Landscape of Desire: Partial Stories of the Medieval Scandinavian World.' Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994: 1-37. (possible sailing times and the account of a "Beowulfian" voyage on the Cattegat)
6th-century monarchs in Europe
English heroic legends
Characters in Beowulf
Heroes in Norse myths and legends
People whose existence is disputed
Scyldings | false | [
"Bewell's Cross is a lost monument which marked the boundary of the county of Bristol when this was created in 1373. It stood in or close to the Gallows Field at the top of St Michael's Hill, the former principal road from Bristol to Wales via the Severn ferry at Aust. It was removed in or before the 19th century, and a stone claimed to be taken from its pedestal is built into the wall of Cotham Church, marked by a plaque.\n\nIt appears to have taken its name from a spring a short way to the north-west whose name appears to be Old English for 'bee well'. But there was a Bristolian called Elias or Elys recorded in about 1270 with the surname Beowolf. It is just possible that Beowolf is a punning alteration of the name of the spring, although Beowulf is known as a rare surname elsewhere.\n\nBewell's Cross may have been historically confused with Bewys Cross in Kingsweston, also now within the boundaries of the city of Bristol.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nAbout Bristol Website\n\nMonuments and memorials in Bristol\nArchaeological sites in Bristol",
"Thurø is a small Danish island in the south-east of Funen and belongs to the Svendborg municipality. Thurø is part of the South Funen Archipelago, comprising c. 55 islands altogether. The island had 3,555 inhabitants .\n\nConnected to Svendborg proper by a small bridge, Thurø has become a popular place to live due to its quiet streets and proximity to both Svendborg and the new motorway to Odense.\n\nThurø is also a holiday destination, with two popular sandy beaches, three campsites and a number of houses for rent.\n\nThe sea around horseshoe-shaped Thurø is considered fine fishing-water, particularly for trout. There are several small harbours around the island and Thurøbund - the inner part of the horseshoe - is a well-known safe nature-harbour used by the sailing fraternity.\n\nThe entire island is served by a direct bus link to Svendborg city centre, from where onward routes cover the Funen region.\n\nHistory \nAccording to legend, and as told in Saxo's Gesta Danorum (chronicles of the Danes), as well as in the Scylding Sagas, Helge (brother to Hroar, both known from the Beowolf poems) once came by this island on one of his raiding expeditions. Here, he came to the house of the elf-woman Thora ( Thurø meaning literally Thora's island -or in some legends Thor's Island), whom he raped. When he returned to the island years later, Thora sent out their daughter, Yrsa, to greet him, as revenge. He raped Yrsa, not knowing it was his own daughter, and she then had his son, Rolf Kraka, who would go on and become one of Denmark's greatest and most legendary kings.\n\nDenmarks oldest \"pacifier-tree\" has been located on Thurø for 85 years. Part of Danish tradition is for children to \"sacrifice\" their pacifiers (dummies) at a local tree to mark their passage from infancy to childhood.\n\nNotable people \n Karin Michaëlis (1872-1950) a Danish journalist and author; from 1933 she took in German emigrants at her property in Thurø, including Bertolt Brecht and Marlene Norst; she is buried in Thurø cemetery \n Laura Brun-Pedersen (1883–1961) a Danish painter of deeply coloured landscapes with human figures and animals; she lived on Thurø for 30 years\n Tom Kristensen (1893 in London – 1974 in Thurø) was a Danish poet, novelist, literary critic and journalist\n Jan Pytlick (born 1967 in Thurø) a Danish handball coach. He was head coach for the Danish women's national handball team 1998-2006 and 2007-2014\n\nReferences\n\nSources \n Den lille Svendborgguide Guide to Svendborg and surroundings\n\nExternal links \n\nIslands of Denmark\nGeography of Funen\nSvendborg Municipality"
] |
[
"Hrólfr Kraki",
"Beowulf and Bjarki",
"Where is beowolf from?",
"Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Gotaland)"
] | C_82ba42bb74f44967ab7000b78ecbcbf5_1 | What does Beowolf do? | 2 | What does Beowolf do? | Hrólfr Kraki | The standard view is that, if Beowulf himself has a 'cognate' character in Rolf Kraki's story, it is Bodvar Bjarki (Bodvar Biarke), who also has a younger companion, Hjalti (Hialte) - perhaps matching the Beowulf character Wiglaf. Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Gotaland) and one of Bodvar Bjarki's elder brothers, Thorir, becomes a king of Gotaland. Moreover, like Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki arrives in Denmark from Gotaland (Geatland), and upon arriving in Denmark he kills a beast that has been ravaging the Danish court for two years. The monster in Hrolf Kraki's saga, however, is quite unlike the Grendel of Beowulf; but it does have characteristics of a more typical dragon, a creature which appears later in Beowulf. Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark. Proponents of this theory, like J. R. R. Tolkien, argue that both the names Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") and Bjarki are associated with bears. Bodvar Bjarki is constantly associated with bears, his father actually being one. In some of the Hrolf Kraki material, Bodvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Ali, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vanern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bodvar Bjarki are one and the same. This match supports the hypothesis that the adventure with the dragon is also originally derived from the same story. CANNOTANSWER | the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. | Hrólfr Kraki (Old Norse: ), Hroðulf, Rolfo, Roluo, Rolf Krage (early 6th century) was a semi-legendary Danish king who appears in both Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian tradition.
Both traditions describe him as a Danish Scylding, the nephew of Hroðgar and the grandson of Healfdene. The consensus view is that Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian traditions describe the same people. Whereas the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf and Widsith do not go further than treating his relationship with Hroðgar and their animosity with Froda and Ingeld, the Scandinavian sources expand on his life as the king at Lejre and on his relationship with Halga, Hroðgar's brother. In Beowulf and Widsith, it is never explained how Hroðgar and Hroðulf are uncle and nephew.
Beowulf
The poem Beowulf introduces Hroðulf as kinsman. Later, the text explains that Hroðulf is Hroðgar's nephew and that "each was true to the other". Hroðgar is given three siblings, brothers Heorogar and Halga and an unnamed sister, all the children of Healfdene and belonging to the royal clan known as the Scyldings. The poem does not indicate which of Hroðgar's siblings is Hroðulf's parent, but later Scandinavian tradition establishes this as Halga.
Hroðgar and queen Wealhþeow had two young sons, Hreðric and Hroðmund, and Hroðulf would be their guardian in case Hroðgar dies. In a deliberately ironic passage it appears that the queen trusts Hroðulf, not suspecting that he will murder her sons to claim the throne for himself:
No existence of any Hreðric or Hroðmund, sons of Hroðgar, has survived in Scandinavian sources (although Hreðric has been suggested to be the same person as Hroerekr/Roricus, a Danish king generally described as a son or successor of Ingjald). This Hroerekr is sometimes said to have been killed by Hrólfr, vindicating the foreshadowing in Beowulf.
The Scyldings were in conflict with another clan or tribe named the Heaðobards led by their king Froda and his son Ingeld. It is in relation to this war that Hroðulf is mentioned in the other Anglo-Saxon poem where he appears, Widsith.
Hrólf and Hroðulf
A common identification is that Hrólf Kraki is the same as the character Hroðulf (Hroðgar's nephew) in Beowulf. There seems to be some foreshadowing in Beowulf that Hroðulf will attempt to usurp the throne from Hroðgar's sons Hreðric and Hroðmund, a deed that also seems to be referred to in Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum (Book 2), where we find: "... our king, who laid low Rorik, the son of Bok the covetous, and wrapped the coward in death." Rorik is the form we would expect Hreðric to take in Danish and we find personages named Rorik or Hrok or similar in most version of the Hrólf Kraki tradition, but differently accounted for, seemingly indicating that Scandinavian tradition had forgotten who exactly Hreðric/Rorik/Hrok was and various story tellers subsequently invented details to explain references to this personage in older poems. The future slaying of Hreðric may be the occasion of the future burning of the hall of Heorot in the beginning of the poem – though some take it instead to refer to the legendary death of Hrólf Kraki, who in Icelandic sources is said to have died in the burning of his hall by his brother-in-law Hjörvard.
Beowulf and Bjarki
The standard view is that, if Beowulf himself has a 'cognate' character in Rolf Kraki's story, it is Bödvar Bjarki (Bodvar Biarke), who also has a younger companion, Hjalti (Hialte) – perhaps matching the Beowulf character Wiglaf. Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Götaland) and one of Bödvar Bjarki's elder brothers, Thorir, becomes a king of Götaland. Moreover, like Beowulf, Bödvar Bjarki arrives in Denmark from Götaland (Geatland), and upon arriving in Denmark he kills a beast that has been ravaging the Danish court for two years. The monster in Hrólf Krakis saga, however, is quite unlike the Grendel of Beowulf; but it does have characteristics of a more typical dragon, a creature which appears later in Beowulf.
Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bödvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark.
Proponents of this theory, like J. R. R. Tolkien, argue that both the names Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") and Bjarki are associated with bears. Bodvar Bjarki is constantly associated with bears, his father actually being one.
In some of the Hrólf Kraki material, Bödvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Áli, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bödvar Bjarki are one and the same. This match supports the hypothesis that the adventure with the dragon is also originally derived from the same story.
Hrothgar and Hróar
As for the king of the Danes, Hroðgar, he is identical to Hróar or Ro, the uncle of Hrólf Kraki who in other sources outside of Beowulf rules as a co-king with his brother Helgi. But in those sources it is Hróar/Hroðgar who dies before his brother or who departs to Northumberland to rule his wife's kingdom leaving Helgi/Halga the sole rule of Denmark. In Beowulf Halga/Helgi has died and Hroðgar is the primary ruler with Hroðulf son of Halga as a junior co-ruler.
Furthermore, the Swedish kings referenced in Beowulf are adequately matched with the 5th and 6th century Swedish kings in Uppsala (see also Swedish semi-legendary kings):
This has obviously nothing to do with a common origin of the Beowulf and Hrólf Kraki legends in particular but simply reflects a shared genealogical tradition.
Widsith
The poem Widsith also mentions Hroðgar and Hroðulf, but indicates that the feud with Ingeld did not end until the latter was defeated at Heorot:
This piece suggests that the conflict between the Scyldings Hroðgar and Hroðulf on one side, and the Heaðobards Froda and Ingeld on the other, was well known in Anglo-Saxon England. This conflict also appears in Scandinavian sources, but in the Norse tradition the Heaðobards had apparently been forgotten and the conflict is instead rendered as a family feud (see Hrólf Kraki's saga and Skjöldunga saga).
Chronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundenses
The Chronicon Lethrense and the included Annales Lundenses tell that Haldan (Healfdene) had two sons, Helghe (Halga) and Ro (Hroðgar). When Haldan died of old age, Helghe and Ro divided the kingdom so that Ro ruled the land, and Helghe the sea. One day, Helghe arrived in Halland/Lolland and slept with Thore, the daughter of one of Ro's farmers. This resulted in a daughter named Yrse. Much later, he met Yrse, and without knowing that she was his daughter, he made her pregnant with Rolf. Eventually, Helghe found out that Yrse was his own daughter and, out of shame, went east and killed himself.
Both Helghe and Ro being dead, a Swedish king, called Hakon in the Chronicon Lethrense proper, and Athisl in the Annales – corresponding to Eadgils – forced the Danes to accept a dog as king. The dog king was succeeded by Rolf Krage.
Rolf Krage was a big man in body and soul and was so generous that no one asked him for anything twice. His sister Skulda was married against Rolf's will to Hartwar or Hiarwarth (Heoroweard), a German earl of Skåne, but reputedly Rolf had given Skulda to him together with Sweden.
This Hartwar arrived in Zealand with a large army and said that he wanted to give his tribute to Rolf, but killed Rolf together with all his men. Only one survived, Wigg, who played along until he was to do homage to Hartwar. Then, he pierced Hartwar with a sword, and so Hartwar was king for only one morning.
Gesta Danorum
The Book 2 of the Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus contains roughly the same information as the Chronicon Lethrense and the Annales Lundenses, i.e. that Ro (Hroðgar) and Helgo (Halga) were the son of Haldanus (Healfdene). When Haldanus died of old age, Ro took the land and Helgo the water. One day during his sea roving, Helgo arrived at Thurø, where he found and raped the young girl Thora, which resulted in Urse (Yrsa). When Helgo after many years returned to Thurø, Thora avenged her lost virginity by sending Urse to Helgo who, unknowingly raped his own daughter. This resulted in Roluo, who was a gifted man, both physically and intellectually and as brave as he was tall. After some time Helgo repelled a Swedish invasion, avenged Ro by killing the Swedish king Hothbrodd, and made the Swedes pay tribute. However, he committed suicide due to shame for his incestuous relationship with Urse. Roluo succeeded him.
The new king of Sweden, Athislus (Eadgils), thought that the tribute to the Daner might be smaller if he married the Danish king's mother and so took Urse for a queen. However, after some time, Urse was so upset with the Swedish king's greed that she thought out a ruse to run away from the king and at the same time liberate him of his wealth. She incited Athislus to rebel against Roluo, and arranged so that Roluo would be invited and promised a wealth in gifts.
At the banquet Roluo was at first not recognised by his mother, but when their fondness was commented on by Athisl, the Swedish king and Roluo made a wager where Roluo would prove his endurance. Roluo was placed in front of a fire that exposed him to such heat that finally a maiden could suffer the sight no more and extinguished the fire. Roluo was greatly recompensed by Athisl for his endurance.
When the banquet had lasted for three days, Urse and Roluo escaped from Uppsala, early in the morning in carriages where they had put all the Swedish king's treasure. In order to lessen their burden, and to occupy any pursuing warriors they spread gold in their path (later in the work, this is referred to as "sowing the Fyrisvellir"), although there was a rumour that she only spread gilded copper. When Athislus, who was pursuing the escapers saw that a precious ring was lying on the ground, he bent down to pick it up. Roluo was pleased to see the king of Sweden bent down, and escaped in the ships with his mother.
A young man named Wigg was impressed with Roluo's bodily size and gave him the cognomen Krage, which meant a tall tree trunk used as a ladder. Roluo liked this name and rewarded Wigg with a heavy bracelet. Wigg, then, swore to Roluo to avenge him, if he was killed.
Roluo later defeated Athislus and gave Sweden to young man named Hiartuar (Heoroweard), who also married Roluo's sister Skulde. Skulde, however, did not like the fact that her husband had to pay taxes to Roluo and so incited Hiartuar to rebel against him. They so went to Lejre (a town which Roluo had built) with arms hidden in the ships, under the pretense that they wanted to pay tribute.
They were well-received, but after the banquet, when most people were drunk asleep, the Swedes and the Goths (i.e. the Geats) proceeded to kill everyone at Roluo's residence. After a long battle, involving Roluo's champion Bjarki, who fought in the shape of a spirit bear until he was awakened by his comrade Hjalti, the Geats won and Roluo was killed.
Hiartuar asked Wigg if he wanted to fight for him, and Wigg said yes. Hiartuar wanted to give Wigg a sword, but he insisted on receiving it by taking the hilt. Having the hilt in his hand, Wigg pierced Hiartuar with the sword and so avenged Roluo. Swedes and Geats then rushed forward and killed Wigg. The Swedish king Høtherus (based on the god Höðr), the brother of Athislus, succeeded Roluo and became the king of a combined Sweden and Denmark.
Hrólfr Kraki's saga
In Hrólfr Kraki's saga, Halfdan (Healfdene) had three children, the sons Helgi (Halga) and Hróarr (Hroðgar) and the daughter Signý. The sister was the eldest and married to Sævil Jarl, with whom she had the son Hrókr. Halfdan was murdered by his own brother Fróði (Froda) and the two brothers had to seek refuge with a man called Vivil on an island, until they could avenge their father and kill Fróði.
Whereas Hróarr moved to Northumbria and married the king's daughter, Helgi (i.e. Halga) went to the Saxons wanting to woo their warlike queen Oluf. She was, however, not interested and humiliated Helgi by shaving his head and covering him with tar, while he was asleep, and sending him back to his ship. Some time later, Helgi returned and through a ruse, he kidnapped the queen for a while during which time he made her pregnant.
Having returned to her kingdom, the queen bore a child, a girl which she named Yrsa after her dog. Yrsa was set to live as a shepherd, until she was 12 years old, when she met her father Helgi who fell in love with her, not knowing it was his daughter. Oluf kept quiet about the parentage and saw it as her revenge that Helgi would wed his own daughter. Helgi and Yrsa had the son Hrólfr.
Learning that Helgi and Yrsa lived happily together, queen Oluf travelled to Denmark to tell her daughter the truth. Yrsa was shocked and although Helgi wanted their relationship to remain as it was, Yrsa insisted on leaving him to live alone. She was later taken by the Swedish king Aðils (Eadgils) as his queen, which made Helgi even more unhappy. Helgi went to Uppsala to fetch her, but was killed by Aðils in battle. In Lejre, he was succeeded by his son Hrólfr.
Hrólfr soon assembled twelve great berserkers named Hrómundr harði, Hrólfr skjóthendi, Svipdagr, Beigaðr, Hvítserkr inn hvati, Haklangr, Harðrefill, Haki inn frækni, Vöttr inn mikilaflaði, Starólfr, Hjalti inn hugprúði and Bödvar Bjarki.
After some time, Bödvar Bjarki encouraged Hrólfr to go Uppsala to claim the gold that Aðils had taken from Helgi after the battle. Hrólfr departed with 120 men and his twelve berserkers and during a rest they were tested by a farmer called Hrani (Odin in disguise) who advised Hrólfr to send back all his troops but his twelve berserkers, as numbers would not help him against Aðils.
They were at first well received, but in his hall, Aðils did his best to stop Hrólfr with pit traps and hidden warriors who attacked the Danes. Finally Aðils entertained them but put them to a test where they had to endure immense heat by a fire. Hrólfr and his berserkers finally had enough and threw the courtiers, who were feeding the fire, into the fire and leapt at Aðils. The Swedish king disappeared through a hollow tree trunk that stood in his hall.
Yrsa admonished Aðils for wanting to kill her son, and went to meet the Danes. She gave them a man named Vöggr to entertain them. This Vöggr remarked that Hrólfr had the thin face of a pole ladder, a Kraki. Happy with his new cognomen Hrólfr gave Vöggr a golden ring, and Vöggr swore to avenge Hrólfr if anyone should kill him. Hrólfr and his company were then attacked by a troll in the shape of a boar in the service of Aðils, but Hrólfr's dog Gram killed it.
They then found out that Aðils had set the hall on fire, and so they broke out of the hall, only to find themselves surrounded by heavily armed warriors in the street. After a fight, king Aðils retreated to summon reinforcements.
Yrsa then provided her son with a silver drinking horn filled with gold and jewels and a famous ring, Svíagris. Then she gave Hrólf and his men twelve of the Swedish king's best horses, and all the armour and provisions they needed.
Hrólfr took a fond farewell of his mother and departed over the Fyrisvellir. When they saw Aðils and his warriors in pursuit, they spread the gold behind themselves. Aðils saw his precious Svíagris on the ground and stooped to pick it up with his spear, whereupon Hrólf cut his back with his sword and screamed in triumph that he had bent the back of the most powerful man in Sweden.
Hrólfr lived in peace for some time. However, his half-elven half-sister Skuld was married to Hjörvarðr (Heoroweard) one of Hrólfr's subkings, and she began to turn her husband against Hrólfr. Under the pretext that they would wait three years before paying the accumulated tribute at one time, Skuld assembled a large army which included strong warriors, criminals, elves and norns. She used seiðr (witchcraft) to hide the great muster from Hrólfr and his champions.
They then arrived at Lejre one yule for the midwinter celebrations, with all the weapons hidden in wagons. A fight started and like in the account found in Gesta Danorum, Bödvar Bjarki fought in the shape of a spirit bear until he was awakened by Hjalti. Skuld used her witchcraft to resuscitate her fallen warriors and after a long fight Hrólfr and all his berserkers fell.
Skuld became the ruler of Denmark but did not rule well. Bödvar Bjarki's brothers Elk-Froði and Þorir Houndsfoot went to Denmark to avenge their brother. The Swedish queen Yrsa gave them a large Swedish army headed by Vöggr. They captured Skuld before she could use her magic and tortured her to death. Then they raised a mound for Hrólfr Kraki where he was buried together with his sword Skofnung.
Skjöldunga saga
The Skjöldunga sagaNerman (1925:150) relates that Helgo (Halga) was the king of Denmark together with his brother Roas (Hroðgar). Helgo raped Olava, the queen of the Saxons, and she bore a daughter named Yrsa. The girl later married king Adillus (Eadgils), the king of Sweden, with whom she had the daughter Scullda.
Some years later, Helgo attacked Sweden and captured Yrsa, not knowing that she was his own daughter. He raped her and took her back to Denmark, where she bore the son Rolfo. After a few years, Yrsa's mother, queen Olava, came to visit her and told her that Helgo was her own father. In horror, Yrsa returned to Adillus, leaving her son behind. Helgo died when Rolfo was eight years old, and Rolfo succeeded him, and ruled together with his uncle Roas. Not much later, Roas was killed by his half-brothers Rærecus and Frodo, whereupon Rolfo became the sole king of Denmark.
In Sweden, Yrsa and Adillus married Scullda to the king of Öland, Hiørvardus (also called Hiorvardus and Hevardus, and who corresponds to Heoroweard in Beowulf). As her half-brother Rolfo was not consulted about this marriage, he was infuriated and he attacked Öland and made Hiørvardus and his kingdom tributary to Denmark.
After some time Adillus requested Rolfo's aid against king Ale (Onela) of Oppland, and Rolfo sent him his berserkers. Adillus then won the war, but refused to pay the expected tribute for the help and so Rolfo came to Uppsala to claim his recompense. After surviving some traps, Rolfo fled with Adillus' gold, helped by his mother Yrsa, and "sowed" it on the Fyrisvellir.
Hiørvardus and his queen Skullda rebelled against Rolfo and killed him. However, Hiørvardus did not live long after this and was killed. Rolfo was succeeded by his father's cousin Rörek, who, however, had to leave Skåne to Valdar and could only keep Zealand.
Skáldskaparmál
In the Skáldskaparmál by Snorri Sturluson, the story of Hrólfr Kraki is presented in order to explain why gold was known by the kenning Kraki's seed.
Snorri relates that Hrólfr was the most renowned king in Denmark for valour, generosity and graciousness. One day a poor boy called Vöggr arrived and expressed his surprise that such a great king would look like a little pole (kraki). Hrólfr said that Vöggr had given him a name and gave Vöggr a golden ring in recompense. In gratitude Vöggr swore to Hrólfr to avenge him, should he be killed.
A second tale was when the king of Sweden, Aðils (Eadgils), was in war with a Norwegian king named Áli (Onela), and they fought in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern. Aðils was married to Yrsa, the mother of Hrólfr and so sent an embassy to Hrólfr asking him for help against Áli. He would receive three valuable gifts in recompense. Hrólfr was involved in a war against the Saxons and could not come in person but sent his twelve berserkers. Áli died in the war, and Aðils took Áli's helmet Battle-boar and his horse Raven. The berserkers demanded three pounds of gold each in pay, and they demanded to choose the gifts that Aðils had promised Hrólfr, that is the two pieces of armour that nothing could pierce: the helmet battle-boar and the mailcoat Finn's heritage. They also wanted the famous ring Svíagris. Aðils considered the pay outrageous and refused.
When Hrólfr heard that Aðils refused to pay, he set off to Uppsala. They brought the ships to the river Fyris and rode directly to the Swedish king's hall at Uppsala with his twelve berserkers. Yrsa welcomed them and led them to their lodgings. Fires were prepared for them and they were given drinks. However, so much wood was heaped on the fires that the clothes started to burn away from their bodies. Hrólfr and his men had enough and threw the courtiers on the fire. Yrsa arrived and gave them a horn full of gold, the ring Svíagris and asked them to flee. As they rode over the Fyrisvellir, they saw Aðils and his men pursuing them. The fleeing men threw their gold on the plain so that the pursuers would stop to collect the gold. Aðils, however, continued the chase on his horse Slöngvir. Hrólfr then threw Svíagris and saw how Aðils stooped down to pick up the ring with his spear. Hrólfr exclaimed that he had seen the mightiest man in Sweden bend his back.
Ynglinga saga
The Skjöldunga saga was used by Snorri Sturluson as a source when he told the story of Aðils (Eadgils) and Yrsa, in his Ynglinga saga, a part of the Heimskringla. What remains of the Skjöldunga saga is a Latin summary by Arngrímur Jónsson, and so the two versions are basically the same, the main difference being that Arngrímur's version is more terse.
Snorri relates that Aðils betook himself to pillage the Saxons, whose king was Geirþjófr and queen Alof the Great. The king and consort were not at home, and so Aðils and his men plundered their residence at ease driving cattle and captives down to the ships. One of the captives was a remarkably beautiful girl named Yrsa, and Snorri writes that everyone was soon impressed with the well-mannered, pretty and intelligent girl. Most impressed was Aðils who made her his queen.
Some years later, Helgi (Halga), who ruled in Lejre, attacked Sweden and captured Yrsa. He raped Yrsa, his own daughter, and took her back to Lejre, where she bore him the son Hrólfr. When the boy was three years of age, Yrsa's mother, queen Alof of Saxony, came to visit her and told her that her husband Helgi was her own father. Horrified, Yrsa returned to Aðils, leaving her son behind, and stayed in Sweden for the rest of her life. When Hrólfr was eight years old, Helgi died during a war expedition and Hrólf was proclaimed king.
Snorri finishes his account by briefly mentioning that the Skjöldunga saga contained an extensive account of how Hrólf came to Uppsala and sowed gold on the Fyrisvellir.
Gróttasöngr
The Gróttasöngr contains a stanza (nr 22) sung by the giantesses Fenja and Menja. It only names Yrsa and the situation that her son and brother (i.e. Hroðulf) will avenge Fródi (Froda):
This piece cannot refer to Hrólfr Kraki's saga where Froda was the half-brother of Healfdene because this Froda was killed by Hroðgar (and therefore they avenged him). It can, however, be interpreted through the Skjöldunga saga in which Hroðulf's uncle Hroðgar was murdered by his half-brother Froda.
Either Frodi's death is the one they want to avenge, or they seek vengeance for Hroðgar, killed by his half brother. The Danish equivalent of hefna is at hævne, meaning revenge (or avenging), in this case for Fródi's murder, indicating no relation to Hroðgars death, but to Frodi's. 'Kin' and 'kinsmen' share a certain reference to blood relation, yet 'brother' can also have the meaning of either: 'one of us' and 'our tribesmen', or simply 'son and brother'. After being recognized for his deeds, Yrsa will see Hroðulf as her son once more.
Gautreks saga
Hrólfr Kraki is mentioned briefly in Gautreks saga, written around 1300, when the adventurer Ref comes to him with a gift consisting of two dogs. In return for this gift Hrólfr gives him a helmet and a chainmail, both made of red gold.
Modern references
Danish playwright Johannes Ewald wrote a play about Rolf Krage (1770), based on Saxo's version of the story in Gesta Danorum. Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger wrote a poem, Helge: et Digt (1814).
The American writer Poul Anderson used this story in his novel Hrolf Kraki's Saga (1973). Anderson's story begins in earlier generations and more or less follows the version in Hrolfr Kraki's Saga described above. The book was well received by many fantasy fans.
"Sellic Spell', a fictionalized treatment of the story by J. R. R. Tolkien, was published in Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary on May 22, 2014, Tolkien himself explaining that his was "a limited...attempt to reconstruct the Anglo-Saxon tale that lies behind the folk-tale element in Beowulf".
The Danish Navy's first ironclad warship was named Rolf Krake.
Notes
Bibliography and external links
English translations of the Old Norse Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans :
The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and his Champions. Trans. Peter Tunstall (2003). Available at Norse saga: The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and Northvegr: The Saga of Hrolf Kraki.
The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki. Trans. Jesse L. Byock (1998). London: Penguin. . Selection from this translation are available at The Viking Site: Excerpts from The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki.
"King Hrolf and his champions" included in Eirik the Red: And Other Icelandic Sagas. Trans. Gwyn Jones (1961). Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press. .
Original texts''':
Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans in Old Norse from heimskringla.no
Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans in Old Norse from heimskringla.no
University of Oregon: Norse: Fornaldarsögur norðurlanda: Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans
Sagnanet: Hrólfs saga kraka
Anderson, Poul (1973). Hrolf Kraki's Saga. New York: Ballantine Books. . New York: Del Rey Books. . Reprinted 1988 by Baen Books, .
Literary Encyclopedia entry
Birger Nerman, 1925, Det svenska rikets uppkomst (in Swedish)Beowulf:
Beowulf read aloud in Old English
Modern English translation by Francis Barton Gummere
Modern English translation by John Lesslie Hall
Ringler, Dick. Beowulf: A New Translation For Oral Delivery, May 2005. Searchable text with full audio available, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.
Several different Modern English translationsChronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundense:
Chronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundense in translation by Peter Tunstall
The same translation at Northvegr
Book 2 of Gesta Danorum at the Online and Medieval & Classical library
The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf by Olson, 1916, at Project Gutenberg
the Ynglinga saga in translation by Samuel Laing, 1844, at Northvegr
The Gróttasöngr in Thorpe's translation
Skáldskaparmál:
Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda in the original language
CyberSamurai Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology: Prose Edda - Skáldskaparmál (English)
CyberSamurai Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology: Prose Edda - Skáldskaparmál (Old Norse)
Malone, Kemp. Studies in Heroic Legend and in Current Speech. S. Einarsson & N.E. Eliason, eds. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger, 1959.
Lukman, Niels Clausen. Skjoldunge und Skilfinge. Hunnen- und Heruler-könige in Ostnordischer Überlieferung. Classica et Mediaevalia, dissertationes III. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag, 1943.
Hemmingsen, Lars. By Word of Mouth: the origins of Danish legendary history - studies in European learned and popular traditions of Dacians and Danes before A.D. 1200. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Copenhagen (Dept. of Folklore), 1995.
Anderson, Carl Edlund. Formation and Resolution of Ideological Contrast in the Early History of Scandinavia''. Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic (Faculty of English).
Overing, Gillian R., and Marijane Osborn. 'Landscape of Desire: Partial Stories of the Medieval Scandinavian World.' Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994: 1-37. (possible sailing times and the account of a "Beowulfian" voyage on the Cattegat)
6th-century monarchs in Europe
English heroic legends
Characters in Beowulf
Heroes in Norse myths and legends
People whose existence is disputed
Scyldings | true | [
"Bewell's Cross is a lost monument which marked the boundary of the county of Bristol when this was created in 1373. It stood in or close to the Gallows Field at the top of St Michael's Hill, the former principal road from Bristol to Wales via the Severn ferry at Aust. It was removed in or before the 19th century, and a stone claimed to be taken from its pedestal is built into the wall of Cotham Church, marked by a plaque.\n\nIt appears to have taken its name from a spring a short way to the north-west whose name appears to be Old English for 'bee well'. But there was a Bristolian called Elias or Elys recorded in about 1270 with the surname Beowolf. It is just possible that Beowolf is a punning alteration of the name of the spring, although Beowulf is known as a rare surname elsewhere.\n\nBewell's Cross may have been historically confused with Bewys Cross in Kingsweston, also now within the boundaries of the city of Bristol.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nAbout Bristol Website\n\nMonuments and memorials in Bristol\nArchaeological sites in Bristol",
"Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do: A signature version of Jeet Kune Do as Bruce Lee taught privately to Ted Wong. Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do practices a greater emphasis on elusiveness and simplified trapping unique to Lee's later approach to combat and encourages the student to further develop his or her abilities through these teachings. The inherent training principles are shaped by the concepts of what was \"originally taught\", by Bruce Lee, which does include such concepts as absorbing what is useful and discarding what isn’t. The focus is with Wing Chun, Western Boxing, and Épée Fencing.\n\nJeet Kune Do"
] |
[
"Hrólfr Kraki",
"Beowulf and Bjarki",
"Where is beowolf from?",
"Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Gotaland)",
"What does Beowolf do?",
"the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela."
] | C_82ba42bb74f44967ab7000b78ecbcbf5_1 | What does beowulf mean? | 3 | What does beowulf mean? | Hrólfr Kraki | The standard view is that, if Beowulf himself has a 'cognate' character in Rolf Kraki's story, it is Bodvar Bjarki (Bodvar Biarke), who also has a younger companion, Hjalti (Hialte) - perhaps matching the Beowulf character Wiglaf. Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Gotaland) and one of Bodvar Bjarki's elder brothers, Thorir, becomes a king of Gotaland. Moreover, like Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki arrives in Denmark from Gotaland (Geatland), and upon arriving in Denmark he kills a beast that has been ravaging the Danish court for two years. The monster in Hrolf Kraki's saga, however, is quite unlike the Grendel of Beowulf; but it does have characteristics of a more typical dragon, a creature which appears later in Beowulf. Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark. Proponents of this theory, like J. R. R. Tolkien, argue that both the names Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") and Bjarki are associated with bears. Bodvar Bjarki is constantly associated with bears, his father actually being one. In some of the Hrolf Kraki material, Bodvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Ali, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vanern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bodvar Bjarki are one and the same. This match supports the hypothesis that the adventure with the dragon is also originally derived from the same story. CANNOTANSWER | Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") | Hrólfr Kraki (Old Norse: ), Hroðulf, Rolfo, Roluo, Rolf Krage (early 6th century) was a semi-legendary Danish king who appears in both Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian tradition.
Both traditions describe him as a Danish Scylding, the nephew of Hroðgar and the grandson of Healfdene. The consensus view is that Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian traditions describe the same people. Whereas the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf and Widsith do not go further than treating his relationship with Hroðgar and their animosity with Froda and Ingeld, the Scandinavian sources expand on his life as the king at Lejre and on his relationship with Halga, Hroðgar's brother. In Beowulf and Widsith, it is never explained how Hroðgar and Hroðulf are uncle and nephew.
Beowulf
The poem Beowulf introduces Hroðulf as kinsman. Later, the text explains that Hroðulf is Hroðgar's nephew and that "each was true to the other". Hroðgar is given three siblings, brothers Heorogar and Halga and an unnamed sister, all the children of Healfdene and belonging to the royal clan known as the Scyldings. The poem does not indicate which of Hroðgar's siblings is Hroðulf's parent, but later Scandinavian tradition establishes this as Halga.
Hroðgar and queen Wealhþeow had two young sons, Hreðric and Hroðmund, and Hroðulf would be their guardian in case Hroðgar dies. In a deliberately ironic passage it appears that the queen trusts Hroðulf, not suspecting that he will murder her sons to claim the throne for himself:
No existence of any Hreðric or Hroðmund, sons of Hroðgar, has survived in Scandinavian sources (although Hreðric has been suggested to be the same person as Hroerekr/Roricus, a Danish king generally described as a son or successor of Ingjald). This Hroerekr is sometimes said to have been killed by Hrólfr, vindicating the foreshadowing in Beowulf.
The Scyldings were in conflict with another clan or tribe named the Heaðobards led by their king Froda and his son Ingeld. It is in relation to this war that Hroðulf is mentioned in the other Anglo-Saxon poem where he appears, Widsith.
Hrólf and Hroðulf
A common identification is that Hrólf Kraki is the same as the character Hroðulf (Hroðgar's nephew) in Beowulf. There seems to be some foreshadowing in Beowulf that Hroðulf will attempt to usurp the throne from Hroðgar's sons Hreðric and Hroðmund, a deed that also seems to be referred to in Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum (Book 2), where we find: "... our king, who laid low Rorik, the son of Bok the covetous, and wrapped the coward in death." Rorik is the form we would expect Hreðric to take in Danish and we find personages named Rorik or Hrok or similar in most version of the Hrólf Kraki tradition, but differently accounted for, seemingly indicating that Scandinavian tradition had forgotten who exactly Hreðric/Rorik/Hrok was and various story tellers subsequently invented details to explain references to this personage in older poems. The future slaying of Hreðric may be the occasion of the future burning of the hall of Heorot in the beginning of the poem – though some take it instead to refer to the legendary death of Hrólf Kraki, who in Icelandic sources is said to have died in the burning of his hall by his brother-in-law Hjörvard.
Beowulf and Bjarki
The standard view is that, if Beowulf himself has a 'cognate' character in Rolf Kraki's story, it is Bödvar Bjarki (Bodvar Biarke), who also has a younger companion, Hjalti (Hialte) – perhaps matching the Beowulf character Wiglaf. Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Götaland) and one of Bödvar Bjarki's elder brothers, Thorir, becomes a king of Götaland. Moreover, like Beowulf, Bödvar Bjarki arrives in Denmark from Götaland (Geatland), and upon arriving in Denmark he kills a beast that has been ravaging the Danish court for two years. The monster in Hrólf Krakis saga, however, is quite unlike the Grendel of Beowulf; but it does have characteristics of a more typical dragon, a creature which appears later in Beowulf.
Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bödvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark.
Proponents of this theory, like J. R. R. Tolkien, argue that both the names Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") and Bjarki are associated with bears. Bodvar Bjarki is constantly associated with bears, his father actually being one.
In some of the Hrólf Kraki material, Bödvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Áli, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bödvar Bjarki are one and the same. This match supports the hypothesis that the adventure with the dragon is also originally derived from the same story.
Hrothgar and Hróar
As for the king of the Danes, Hroðgar, he is identical to Hróar or Ro, the uncle of Hrólf Kraki who in other sources outside of Beowulf rules as a co-king with his brother Helgi. But in those sources it is Hróar/Hroðgar who dies before his brother or who departs to Northumberland to rule his wife's kingdom leaving Helgi/Halga the sole rule of Denmark. In Beowulf Halga/Helgi has died and Hroðgar is the primary ruler with Hroðulf son of Halga as a junior co-ruler.
Furthermore, the Swedish kings referenced in Beowulf are adequately matched with the 5th and 6th century Swedish kings in Uppsala (see also Swedish semi-legendary kings):
This has obviously nothing to do with a common origin of the Beowulf and Hrólf Kraki legends in particular but simply reflects a shared genealogical tradition.
Widsith
The poem Widsith also mentions Hroðgar and Hroðulf, but indicates that the feud with Ingeld did not end until the latter was defeated at Heorot:
This piece suggests that the conflict between the Scyldings Hroðgar and Hroðulf on one side, and the Heaðobards Froda and Ingeld on the other, was well known in Anglo-Saxon England. This conflict also appears in Scandinavian sources, but in the Norse tradition the Heaðobards had apparently been forgotten and the conflict is instead rendered as a family feud (see Hrólf Kraki's saga and Skjöldunga saga).
Chronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundenses
The Chronicon Lethrense and the included Annales Lundenses tell that Haldan (Healfdene) had two sons, Helghe (Halga) and Ro (Hroðgar). When Haldan died of old age, Helghe and Ro divided the kingdom so that Ro ruled the land, and Helghe the sea. One day, Helghe arrived in Halland/Lolland and slept with Thore, the daughter of one of Ro's farmers. This resulted in a daughter named Yrse. Much later, he met Yrse, and without knowing that she was his daughter, he made her pregnant with Rolf. Eventually, Helghe found out that Yrse was his own daughter and, out of shame, went east and killed himself.
Both Helghe and Ro being dead, a Swedish king, called Hakon in the Chronicon Lethrense proper, and Athisl in the Annales – corresponding to Eadgils – forced the Danes to accept a dog as king. The dog king was succeeded by Rolf Krage.
Rolf Krage was a big man in body and soul and was so generous that no one asked him for anything twice. His sister Skulda was married against Rolf's will to Hartwar or Hiarwarth (Heoroweard), a German earl of Skåne, but reputedly Rolf had given Skulda to him together with Sweden.
This Hartwar arrived in Zealand with a large army and said that he wanted to give his tribute to Rolf, but killed Rolf together with all his men. Only one survived, Wigg, who played along until he was to do homage to Hartwar. Then, he pierced Hartwar with a sword, and so Hartwar was king for only one morning.
Gesta Danorum
The Book 2 of the Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus contains roughly the same information as the Chronicon Lethrense and the Annales Lundenses, i.e. that Ro (Hroðgar) and Helgo (Halga) were the son of Haldanus (Healfdene). When Haldanus died of old age, Ro took the land and Helgo the water. One day during his sea roving, Helgo arrived at Thurø, where he found and raped the young girl Thora, which resulted in Urse (Yrsa). When Helgo after many years returned to Thurø, Thora avenged her lost virginity by sending Urse to Helgo who, unknowingly raped his own daughter. This resulted in Roluo, who was a gifted man, both physically and intellectually and as brave as he was tall. After some time Helgo repelled a Swedish invasion, avenged Ro by killing the Swedish king Hothbrodd, and made the Swedes pay tribute. However, he committed suicide due to shame for his incestuous relationship with Urse. Roluo succeeded him.
The new king of Sweden, Athislus (Eadgils), thought that the tribute to the Daner might be smaller if he married the Danish king's mother and so took Urse for a queen. However, after some time, Urse was so upset with the Swedish king's greed that she thought out a ruse to run away from the king and at the same time liberate him of his wealth. She incited Athislus to rebel against Roluo, and arranged so that Roluo would be invited and promised a wealth in gifts.
At the banquet Roluo was at first not recognised by his mother, but when their fondness was commented on by Athisl, the Swedish king and Roluo made a wager where Roluo would prove his endurance. Roluo was placed in front of a fire that exposed him to such heat that finally a maiden could suffer the sight no more and extinguished the fire. Roluo was greatly recompensed by Athisl for his endurance.
When the banquet had lasted for three days, Urse and Roluo escaped from Uppsala, early in the morning in carriages where they had put all the Swedish king's treasure. In order to lessen their burden, and to occupy any pursuing warriors they spread gold in their path (later in the work, this is referred to as "sowing the Fyrisvellir"), although there was a rumour that she only spread gilded copper. When Athislus, who was pursuing the escapers saw that a precious ring was lying on the ground, he bent down to pick it up. Roluo was pleased to see the king of Sweden bent down, and escaped in the ships with his mother.
A young man named Wigg was impressed with Roluo's bodily size and gave him the cognomen Krage, which meant a tall tree trunk used as a ladder. Roluo liked this name and rewarded Wigg with a heavy bracelet. Wigg, then, swore to Roluo to avenge him, if he was killed.
Roluo later defeated Athislus and gave Sweden to young man named Hiartuar (Heoroweard), who also married Roluo's sister Skulde. Skulde, however, did not like the fact that her husband had to pay taxes to Roluo and so incited Hiartuar to rebel against him. They so went to Lejre (a town which Roluo had built) with arms hidden in the ships, under the pretense that they wanted to pay tribute.
They were well-received, but after the banquet, when most people were drunk asleep, the Swedes and the Goths (i.e. the Geats) proceeded to kill everyone at Roluo's residence. After a long battle, involving Roluo's champion Bjarki, who fought in the shape of a spirit bear until he was awakened by his comrade Hjalti, the Geats won and Roluo was killed.
Hiartuar asked Wigg if he wanted to fight for him, and Wigg said yes. Hiartuar wanted to give Wigg a sword, but he insisted on receiving it by taking the hilt. Having the hilt in his hand, Wigg pierced Hiartuar with the sword and so avenged Roluo. Swedes and Geats then rushed forward and killed Wigg. The Swedish king Høtherus (based on the god Höðr), the brother of Athislus, succeeded Roluo and became the king of a combined Sweden and Denmark.
Hrólfr Kraki's saga
In Hrólfr Kraki's saga, Halfdan (Healfdene) had three children, the sons Helgi (Halga) and Hróarr (Hroðgar) and the daughter Signý. The sister was the eldest and married to Sævil Jarl, with whom she had the son Hrókr. Halfdan was murdered by his own brother Fróði (Froda) and the two brothers had to seek refuge with a man called Vivil on an island, until they could avenge their father and kill Fróði.
Whereas Hróarr moved to Northumbria and married the king's daughter, Helgi (i.e. Halga) went to the Saxons wanting to woo their warlike queen Oluf. She was, however, not interested and humiliated Helgi by shaving his head and covering him with tar, while he was asleep, and sending him back to his ship. Some time later, Helgi returned and through a ruse, he kidnapped the queen for a while during which time he made her pregnant.
Having returned to her kingdom, the queen bore a child, a girl which she named Yrsa after her dog. Yrsa was set to live as a shepherd, until she was 12 years old, when she met her father Helgi who fell in love with her, not knowing it was his daughter. Oluf kept quiet about the parentage and saw it as her revenge that Helgi would wed his own daughter. Helgi and Yrsa had the son Hrólfr.
Learning that Helgi and Yrsa lived happily together, queen Oluf travelled to Denmark to tell her daughter the truth. Yrsa was shocked and although Helgi wanted their relationship to remain as it was, Yrsa insisted on leaving him to live alone. She was later taken by the Swedish king Aðils (Eadgils) as his queen, which made Helgi even more unhappy. Helgi went to Uppsala to fetch her, but was killed by Aðils in battle. In Lejre, he was succeeded by his son Hrólfr.
Hrólfr soon assembled twelve great berserkers named Hrómundr harði, Hrólfr skjóthendi, Svipdagr, Beigaðr, Hvítserkr inn hvati, Haklangr, Harðrefill, Haki inn frækni, Vöttr inn mikilaflaði, Starólfr, Hjalti inn hugprúði and Bödvar Bjarki.
After some time, Bödvar Bjarki encouraged Hrólfr to go Uppsala to claim the gold that Aðils had taken from Helgi after the battle. Hrólfr departed with 120 men and his twelve berserkers and during a rest they were tested by a farmer called Hrani (Odin in disguise) who advised Hrólfr to send back all his troops but his twelve berserkers, as numbers would not help him against Aðils.
They were at first well received, but in his hall, Aðils did his best to stop Hrólfr with pit traps and hidden warriors who attacked the Danes. Finally Aðils entertained them but put them to a test where they had to endure immense heat by a fire. Hrólfr and his berserkers finally had enough and threw the courtiers, who were feeding the fire, into the fire and leapt at Aðils. The Swedish king disappeared through a hollow tree trunk that stood in his hall.
Yrsa admonished Aðils for wanting to kill her son, and went to meet the Danes. She gave them a man named Vöggr to entertain them. This Vöggr remarked that Hrólfr had the thin face of a pole ladder, a Kraki. Happy with his new cognomen Hrólfr gave Vöggr a golden ring, and Vöggr swore to avenge Hrólfr if anyone should kill him. Hrólfr and his company were then attacked by a troll in the shape of a boar in the service of Aðils, but Hrólfr's dog Gram killed it.
They then found out that Aðils had set the hall on fire, and so they broke out of the hall, only to find themselves surrounded by heavily armed warriors in the street. After a fight, king Aðils retreated to summon reinforcements.
Yrsa then provided her son with a silver drinking horn filled with gold and jewels and a famous ring, Svíagris. Then she gave Hrólf and his men twelve of the Swedish king's best horses, and all the armour and provisions they needed.
Hrólfr took a fond farewell of his mother and departed over the Fyrisvellir. When they saw Aðils and his warriors in pursuit, they spread the gold behind themselves. Aðils saw his precious Svíagris on the ground and stooped to pick it up with his spear, whereupon Hrólf cut his back with his sword and screamed in triumph that he had bent the back of the most powerful man in Sweden.
Hrólfr lived in peace for some time. However, his half-elven half-sister Skuld was married to Hjörvarðr (Heoroweard) one of Hrólfr's subkings, and she began to turn her husband against Hrólfr. Under the pretext that they would wait three years before paying the accumulated tribute at one time, Skuld assembled a large army which included strong warriors, criminals, elves and norns. She used seiðr (witchcraft) to hide the great muster from Hrólfr and his champions.
They then arrived at Lejre one yule for the midwinter celebrations, with all the weapons hidden in wagons. A fight started and like in the account found in Gesta Danorum, Bödvar Bjarki fought in the shape of a spirit bear until he was awakened by Hjalti. Skuld used her witchcraft to resuscitate her fallen warriors and after a long fight Hrólfr and all his berserkers fell.
Skuld became the ruler of Denmark but did not rule well. Bödvar Bjarki's brothers Elk-Froði and Þorir Houndsfoot went to Denmark to avenge their brother. The Swedish queen Yrsa gave them a large Swedish army headed by Vöggr. They captured Skuld before she could use her magic and tortured her to death. Then they raised a mound for Hrólfr Kraki where he was buried together with his sword Skofnung.
Skjöldunga saga
The Skjöldunga sagaNerman (1925:150) relates that Helgo (Halga) was the king of Denmark together with his brother Roas (Hroðgar). Helgo raped Olava, the queen of the Saxons, and she bore a daughter named Yrsa. The girl later married king Adillus (Eadgils), the king of Sweden, with whom she had the daughter Scullda.
Some years later, Helgo attacked Sweden and captured Yrsa, not knowing that she was his own daughter. He raped her and took her back to Denmark, where she bore the son Rolfo. After a few years, Yrsa's mother, queen Olava, came to visit her and told her that Helgo was her own father. In horror, Yrsa returned to Adillus, leaving her son behind. Helgo died when Rolfo was eight years old, and Rolfo succeeded him, and ruled together with his uncle Roas. Not much later, Roas was killed by his half-brothers Rærecus and Frodo, whereupon Rolfo became the sole king of Denmark.
In Sweden, Yrsa and Adillus married Scullda to the king of Öland, Hiørvardus (also called Hiorvardus and Hevardus, and who corresponds to Heoroweard in Beowulf). As her half-brother Rolfo was not consulted about this marriage, he was infuriated and he attacked Öland and made Hiørvardus and his kingdom tributary to Denmark.
After some time Adillus requested Rolfo's aid against king Ale (Onela) of Oppland, and Rolfo sent him his berserkers. Adillus then won the war, but refused to pay the expected tribute for the help and so Rolfo came to Uppsala to claim his recompense. After surviving some traps, Rolfo fled with Adillus' gold, helped by his mother Yrsa, and "sowed" it on the Fyrisvellir.
Hiørvardus and his queen Skullda rebelled against Rolfo and killed him. However, Hiørvardus did not live long after this and was killed. Rolfo was succeeded by his father's cousin Rörek, who, however, had to leave Skåne to Valdar and could only keep Zealand.
Skáldskaparmál
In the Skáldskaparmál by Snorri Sturluson, the story of Hrólfr Kraki is presented in order to explain why gold was known by the kenning Kraki's seed.
Snorri relates that Hrólfr was the most renowned king in Denmark for valour, generosity and graciousness. One day a poor boy called Vöggr arrived and expressed his surprise that such a great king would look like a little pole (kraki). Hrólfr said that Vöggr had given him a name and gave Vöggr a golden ring in recompense. In gratitude Vöggr swore to Hrólfr to avenge him, should he be killed.
A second tale was when the king of Sweden, Aðils (Eadgils), was in war with a Norwegian king named Áli (Onela), and they fought in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern. Aðils was married to Yrsa, the mother of Hrólfr and so sent an embassy to Hrólfr asking him for help against Áli. He would receive three valuable gifts in recompense. Hrólfr was involved in a war against the Saxons and could not come in person but sent his twelve berserkers. Áli died in the war, and Aðils took Áli's helmet Battle-boar and his horse Raven. The berserkers demanded three pounds of gold each in pay, and they demanded to choose the gifts that Aðils had promised Hrólfr, that is the two pieces of armour that nothing could pierce: the helmet battle-boar and the mailcoat Finn's heritage. They also wanted the famous ring Svíagris. Aðils considered the pay outrageous and refused.
When Hrólfr heard that Aðils refused to pay, he set off to Uppsala. They brought the ships to the river Fyris and rode directly to the Swedish king's hall at Uppsala with his twelve berserkers. Yrsa welcomed them and led them to their lodgings. Fires were prepared for them and they were given drinks. However, so much wood was heaped on the fires that the clothes started to burn away from their bodies. Hrólfr and his men had enough and threw the courtiers on the fire. Yrsa arrived and gave them a horn full of gold, the ring Svíagris and asked them to flee. As they rode over the Fyrisvellir, they saw Aðils and his men pursuing them. The fleeing men threw their gold on the plain so that the pursuers would stop to collect the gold. Aðils, however, continued the chase on his horse Slöngvir. Hrólfr then threw Svíagris and saw how Aðils stooped down to pick up the ring with his spear. Hrólfr exclaimed that he had seen the mightiest man in Sweden bend his back.
Ynglinga saga
The Skjöldunga saga was used by Snorri Sturluson as a source when he told the story of Aðils (Eadgils) and Yrsa, in his Ynglinga saga, a part of the Heimskringla. What remains of the Skjöldunga saga is a Latin summary by Arngrímur Jónsson, and so the two versions are basically the same, the main difference being that Arngrímur's version is more terse.
Snorri relates that Aðils betook himself to pillage the Saxons, whose king was Geirþjófr and queen Alof the Great. The king and consort were not at home, and so Aðils and his men plundered their residence at ease driving cattle and captives down to the ships. One of the captives was a remarkably beautiful girl named Yrsa, and Snorri writes that everyone was soon impressed with the well-mannered, pretty and intelligent girl. Most impressed was Aðils who made her his queen.
Some years later, Helgi (Halga), who ruled in Lejre, attacked Sweden and captured Yrsa. He raped Yrsa, his own daughter, and took her back to Lejre, where she bore him the son Hrólfr. When the boy was three years of age, Yrsa's mother, queen Alof of Saxony, came to visit her and told her that her husband Helgi was her own father. Horrified, Yrsa returned to Aðils, leaving her son behind, and stayed in Sweden for the rest of her life. When Hrólfr was eight years old, Helgi died during a war expedition and Hrólf was proclaimed king.
Snorri finishes his account by briefly mentioning that the Skjöldunga saga contained an extensive account of how Hrólf came to Uppsala and sowed gold on the Fyrisvellir.
Gróttasöngr
The Gróttasöngr contains a stanza (nr 22) sung by the giantesses Fenja and Menja. It only names Yrsa and the situation that her son and brother (i.e. Hroðulf) will avenge Fródi (Froda):
This piece cannot refer to Hrólfr Kraki's saga where Froda was the half-brother of Healfdene because this Froda was killed by Hroðgar (and therefore they avenged him). It can, however, be interpreted through the Skjöldunga saga in which Hroðulf's uncle Hroðgar was murdered by his half-brother Froda.
Either Frodi's death is the one they want to avenge, or they seek vengeance for Hroðgar, killed by his half brother. The Danish equivalent of hefna is at hævne, meaning revenge (or avenging), in this case for Fródi's murder, indicating no relation to Hroðgars death, but to Frodi's. 'Kin' and 'kinsmen' share a certain reference to blood relation, yet 'brother' can also have the meaning of either: 'one of us' and 'our tribesmen', or simply 'son and brother'. After being recognized for his deeds, Yrsa will see Hroðulf as her son once more.
Gautreks saga
Hrólfr Kraki is mentioned briefly in Gautreks saga, written around 1300, when the adventurer Ref comes to him with a gift consisting of two dogs. In return for this gift Hrólfr gives him a helmet and a chainmail, both made of red gold.
Modern references
Danish playwright Johannes Ewald wrote a play about Rolf Krage (1770), based on Saxo's version of the story in Gesta Danorum. Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger wrote a poem, Helge: et Digt (1814).
The American writer Poul Anderson used this story in his novel Hrolf Kraki's Saga (1973). Anderson's story begins in earlier generations and more or less follows the version in Hrolfr Kraki's Saga described above. The book was well received by many fantasy fans.
"Sellic Spell', a fictionalized treatment of the story by J. R. R. Tolkien, was published in Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary on May 22, 2014, Tolkien himself explaining that his was "a limited...attempt to reconstruct the Anglo-Saxon tale that lies behind the folk-tale element in Beowulf".
The Danish Navy's first ironclad warship was named Rolf Krake.
Notes
Bibliography and external links
English translations of the Old Norse Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans :
The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and his Champions. Trans. Peter Tunstall (2003). Available at Norse saga: The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and Northvegr: The Saga of Hrolf Kraki.
The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki. Trans. Jesse L. Byock (1998). London: Penguin. . Selection from this translation are available at The Viking Site: Excerpts from The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki.
"King Hrolf and his champions" included in Eirik the Red: And Other Icelandic Sagas. Trans. Gwyn Jones (1961). Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press. .
Original texts''':
Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans in Old Norse from heimskringla.no
Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans in Old Norse from heimskringla.no
University of Oregon: Norse: Fornaldarsögur norðurlanda: Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans
Sagnanet: Hrólfs saga kraka
Anderson, Poul (1973). Hrolf Kraki's Saga. New York: Ballantine Books. . New York: Del Rey Books. . Reprinted 1988 by Baen Books, .
Literary Encyclopedia entry
Birger Nerman, 1925, Det svenska rikets uppkomst (in Swedish)Beowulf:
Beowulf read aloud in Old English
Modern English translation by Francis Barton Gummere
Modern English translation by John Lesslie Hall
Ringler, Dick. Beowulf: A New Translation For Oral Delivery, May 2005. Searchable text with full audio available, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.
Several different Modern English translationsChronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundense:
Chronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundense in translation by Peter Tunstall
The same translation at Northvegr
Book 2 of Gesta Danorum at the Online and Medieval & Classical library
The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf by Olson, 1916, at Project Gutenberg
the Ynglinga saga in translation by Samuel Laing, 1844, at Northvegr
The Gróttasöngr in Thorpe's translation
Skáldskaparmál:
Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda in the original language
CyberSamurai Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology: Prose Edda - Skáldskaparmál (English)
CyberSamurai Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology: Prose Edda - Skáldskaparmál (Old Norse)
Malone, Kemp. Studies in Heroic Legend and in Current Speech. S. Einarsson & N.E. Eliason, eds. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger, 1959.
Lukman, Niels Clausen. Skjoldunge und Skilfinge. Hunnen- und Heruler-könige in Ostnordischer Überlieferung. Classica et Mediaevalia, dissertationes III. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag, 1943.
Hemmingsen, Lars. By Word of Mouth: the origins of Danish legendary history - studies in European learned and popular traditions of Dacians and Danes before A.D. 1200. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Copenhagen (Dept. of Folklore), 1995.
Anderson, Carl Edlund. Formation and Resolution of Ideological Contrast in the Early History of Scandinavia''. Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic (Faculty of English).
Overing, Gillian R., and Marijane Osborn. 'Landscape of Desire: Partial Stories of the Medieval Scandinavian World.' Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994: 1-37. (possible sailing times and the account of a "Beowulfian" voyage on the Cattegat)
6th-century monarchs in Europe
English heroic legends
Characters in Beowulf
Heroes in Norse myths and legends
People whose existence is disputed
Scyldings | true | [
"Breca (sometimes spelled Breoca or Brecca) was a Bronding who, according to the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, was Beowulf's childhood friend. Breca defeated Beowulf in what, by consensus, is described as a swimming match.\n\nWhile dining, Unferth alludes to the story of their contest as a reproach to Beowulf's impulsiveness and foolhardiness, and Beowulf then relates it in detail, explaining how he needed to stop and defeat multiple sea monsters (nicors) during the match, so, although he arrived at the goal after Breca, his was the more worthy journey.\n\nIn line 522 of Beowulf, Breca is identified as lond Brondinga (“of the Brondings’ land\"). Breca is also mentioned in Widsith, an Anglo-Saxon poem (also known, usually by the translations of Benjamin Thorpe, as The Skôp, or The Gleema's Tale, or The Skald's Tale) known only from a 10th-century copy, as the ruler (in some unspecified previous century) of the Brondings (line 25 of Widsith):\n Cassere weold Creacum, ond Caelic Finnum, ... Caesar rules the Greeks, and Caelic the Finns, ...\n Meaca Myrgingum, Mearchealf Hundingum, Meaca the Myrinings, Marchalf the Hundings,\n þeodric weold Froncum, þyle Rondingum, Theodoric ruled the Franks, Thyle the Rondings,\n Breoca Brondingum, Billing Wernum, ..... Breca the Brondings, Billing the Wernas, .....\n\nThis is presumably the same Breca as mentioned in Beowulf. In Beowulf, Breca is further identified, in line 524, as sunu Bēanstānes (“Beanstan’s son”), as if the name Breca and the mention of Beanstan would be familiar enough to Unferth's audience to adequately identify him (although Beanstan is not otherwise mentioned in any surviving document ).\n\nIt was long ago theorized that the Brondings and Breca lived on the island of Brännö outside of modern Gothenburg (the second largest city in Sweden). On the other hand, from the mention in Widsith, with the Brondings mentioned immediately before the Wernas (and the Wernas supposedly being the Varini on the Elbe), it has been suggested that the Brondings might have located near them, perhaps in Mecklenburg or Pomerania. It has even been suggested that the Brondings, whose name suggests the crashing of waves, are entirely mythical.\n\nThe nature of the contest\nSome scholars have debated whether Beowulf and Breca competed in a swimming match or a rowing match. Ambiguities in the translation of Beowulf have left scholars with multiple interpretations for the Beowulf-Breca “swimming” episode. Karl P. Wentersdorf of Xavier University writes, “An adventure in which two youths spend seven days and nights swimming at sea is more than extraordinary, particularly since they are carrying heavy iron swords and wearing cumbersome coats of chain mail.” Such a remarkable feat would not, however, be very incongruous with the poem's other portrayals of Beowulf's heroic prowess. Unferth describes this as a foolhardy contest or race, but when Beowulf offers his own version of events, it becomes a youthful confidence-building or team-building shared challenge, much like a camping or mountaineering trip, in which the two participants endeavored to stay together rather than one leave the other far behind.\n\nAccording to Wentersdorf, the trouble with translation “results from the ambiguity of the word sund in the lines ymb sund flite (line 508) and he þeaet sunde oferflat (lines 517-518).” Sund, though often translated by scholars as “swim” could, through evolution of language, be interpreted as “rowing”. Beowulf and Breca could have been rowing together or competing to see who was the more prodigious rower. The Old English term rēon, used twice in this portion of Beowulf (namely lines 513 and 540), is not translated as “swim” in any other Anglo-Saxon poetry. The kennings earmum þehton (line 514, þeccean “to cover, conceal”) and mundum brugdon (line 515a, bregdan “to pull, move quickly, swing, draw”), used by Unferth to describe Beowulf's match against Breca, are applicable to both swimming and rowing. Twice in this portion (lines 514 and 540) that sund is used is in the same lines as rēon, and both times forming the three-word phrase on sund rēon, which would seem to mean \"rowing on the sea\" – but there is an Anglo-Saxon word, onsund, which means “sound, physically strong, uninjured”, in most transcriptions of the Beowulf text it does not occur, but in the original manuscript, at line 513 on and sund have apparently been rewritten after being scraped from the parchment and seem slightly closer together than two separate words ordinarily are (although Zupitza's transcription treats them as two separate words), and in line 540 the manuscript clearly uses onsund as a single word and Zupitza transcribes it as a single word – although he drew a thin line of separation after on, which may indicate that he did not know that onsund was a word with a meaning of its own. Onsund is found in a lot of other Anglo-Saxon artifacts. In Icelandic, at least, sund requires a preposition, not found here in Beowulf, to mean swimming rather than merely something aquatic.\n\nUnferth also uses the phrases wada cunnedon (line 509), “made trial of the waters”, and glidon ofer garsecg (line 515), “glided over the sea” during his description of Beowulf's match against Breca. Both terms are equally applicable to swimming and rowing. Rowing was, as much as swimming or water-wrestling, an essential skill for warriors during the Anglo-Saxon era, so a rowing competition between Beowulf and Breca would not have been out of the question. Although there are Nordic tales of swimming competitions, no other has characteristics of such extreme duration and danger as this – which, strictly speaking, was not a race but merely a testing of their own strength. Moreover, the duration of the challenge seems to make rowing more likely than swimming; seven days and nights immersed in Scandinavian waters, in winter no less (line 516), evidently without food nor an opportunity to go ashore for sleep or warmth, seems lethal (and certainly more arduous than Diana Nyad’s five attempts – only the last one successful – to swim from Cuba to Miami, each effort lasting only 2½ days).\n\nAdditionally, the text refers to Beowulf as fleotan (line 543) – “floating”, and being on sidne sæ (line 508), and on deóp wæter (line 510) – “upon the wide sea” and “upon the deep water” and similar expressions—putting him consistently atop or above the water, rather than in or under the water. In line 515, he is described as having glidon ofer garsecg – “glided over / above the surf”; again, an image more in keeping with rowing than swimming. Further, in line 581, fatigued from his struggles with the sea monsters, Beowulf was carried by the currents to the land of the Finns (presumably a great distance) – and here the original manuscript's text clearly reads wudu weallendu – wudu, a word related to “wood” and often meaning “boat” (or perhaps “raft”), as it does in lines 216, 298 and elsewhere, so that Beowulf was carried to the Finns on a tossing, quaking boat; however, several editors and translators saw an obscure difficulty (between the masculine wudu and the neuter weallendu) and insisted on changing the wudu (“boat”) to wadu (“water”), making it appear that Beowulf was carried to the Finns on “surging water” (and, naturally, translators relying on the printed Anglo-Saxon text worked up by such editors were innocently led to the same result).\n\nSignificance of the story \n\nThe story of the aquatic adventure with Breca is introduced into the Beowulf saga for a number of reasons. First, we are introduced to Unferth, evidently a significant member of Hrothgar's court, but we are immediately encouraged to dislike him, because we are told he is motivated by envy and wishes to embarrass Hrothgar's honored guest. Second, it enables the introduction of a separate story (coming before the confrontation with Grendel) attesting, after a fashion, to Beowulf's strength, courage, and resourcefulness. Third, it tells us that Beowulf has already overcome monsters other than Grendel – several of them – so that he is suited for the challenge he faces. When he tells his side of the story, Beowulf manages to include some rude rebuffs to Unferth (the mention of Unferth killing his kin may be nothing more than slanging, just as modern American patois uses an accusation of ‘a particular form of incest’). Further in the saga, when Heriot is being attacked by Grendel's Mother, we shall see Unferth approach Beowulf in humility, offering his own family's heirloom sword.\n\nIn popular culture\n Breca appears as a main character, portrayed by Gísli Örn Garðarsson, in Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands, which depicts him and Beowulf as having become companions as adults after Beowulf saved Breca from a lynch mob.\n\nNotes \n\nEnglish heroic legends\nBreca\nLiterary characters",
"Wiglaf (Proto-Norse: *Wīgalaibaz, meaning \"battle remainder\"; ) is a character in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf. He is the son of Weohstan, a Swede of the Wægmunding clan who had entered the service of Beowulf, king of the Geats. Wiglaf is called Scylfing as a metonym for Swede, as the Scylfings were the ruling Swedish clan. While in the service of the Scylfing Onela, king of the Swedes, Weohstan killed the rebel prince Eanmund and took his sword as a trophy; Wiglaf later inherited it. Weohstan belonged to the clan of the Wægmundings, the same clan Beowulf's father Ecgþeow belonged to; so Wiglaf is Beowulf's distant cousin, and his only living relative at the time of Beowulf's death.\n\nScholars have proposed various interpretations of Wiglaf's role in the poem, but agree that he is important, and that he was Beowulf's nephew, a key relationship in heroic tales of the period.\n\nWiglaf has a counterpart in Scandinavian sources named Hjalti who serves as a side-kick to Beowulf's counterpart Bödvar Bjarki, and in Bjarkamál, Hjalti makes speeches comparable to those made by Wiglaf in Beowulf.\n\nBeowulf\n\nWiglaf first appears in Beowulf at line 2602, as a member of the band of thanes who go with Beowulf to seek out the dragon that has attacked Geat-Land. This is the first time Wiglaf has gone to war at Beowulf's side. He is called a \"praise-worthy shield-warrior\", a \"prince of the Scylfings\", and mæg ælfheres, \"kinsman of Ælfhere.\"\n\nWhen Beowulf damages his sword wounding the dragon and is burned by the dragon's fire, Wiglaf is the only man of Beowulf's band to overcome his fear of the dragon. He rebukes the other thanes and goes to Beowulf's aid crying words of encouragement.\n\nWiglaf does not retreat, though his shield is consumed by fire. When Beowulf wounds the dragon a second time, striking so hard his sword shatters, Wiglaf strikes at the open wound with his own sword, tearing at the dragon's throat so it can no longer breathe fire. His hand is badly burned, but his attack allows Beowulf to close and kill the dragon. The poet says of Wiglaf, \"So should a man be, a thane at need!\"\n\nAt Beowulf's command, Wiglaf gathers treasure from the dragon's lair and piles it where Beowulf can see it. The dying Beowulf tells Wiglaf to \"watch his people's needs\" (by which he means that Wiglaf is to become the next king.) He tells Wiglaf to build him a funeral mound and gives Wiglaf his rings, helm, and mail-shirt. He says that Wiglaf is now \"the last of the Wægmundings.\"\n\nThe other eleven men that came with Beowulf gather around the body, and Wiglaf condemns them for their failure of duty and declares that he will order them exiled. He sends a messenger to tell the other Geats what has happened. When the Geats have gathered, Wiglaf addresses them, mourning Beowulf's death and expressing dismay at the bleak future of the Geats without Beowulf to guard them.\n\nWiglaf's last appearance is at line 3120, where he chooses seven thanes to help him push the dragon's corpse over the cliff into the sea, loot the lair, and lay the treasure on Beowulf's funeral pyre.\n\nSignificance\n\nFlees, and turns back \n\nR. R. Lumiansky notes that while a common interpretation is that Wiglaf is the only one of Beowulf's companions who does not flee, Wiglaf actually flees along with the cowardly companions, as he must be far away from the fight when he addresses the cowards. In this interpretation, Wiglaf then remembers his duty of kinship and the bravery of his father Weohstan. This brings a feeling of remorse, and he tries without success to persuade the companions; he returns to the fight alone. He then feels moved to encourage Beowulf, an action that could be seen as surprising from a youth facing his first fight to a heroic King, and at last to join the fight against the dragon.\n\nA Wægmunding, Beowulf's nephew \n\nNorman E. Eliason notes that Wiglaf is a member of the Waegmundings, a Swedish clan. In his view, this is \"of crucial significance\". As he dies, Beowulf gives Wiglaf his armour and torque, which Eliason glosses as \"very likely a royal emblem he had worn about his neck\", noting that if he had had a son, he would have given this emblem to him. However, the poet, at this crucial moment, leaves the relationship between the two men vague, rather than doing the conventional thing in heroic verse of making it an uncle-nephew relationship, as scholars like Larry Benson have assumed, and like that of Beowulf and Hygelac. Eliason however disagrees with the widespread scholarly interpretation that Beowulf, too, was a Waegmunding, finding the suggestion that he was half-Swedish \"unthinkable or even ridiculous\". But, he writes, the poet \"makes it clear that as a Geat Beowulf had to take vengeance on Onela and that as a Waegmunding he was entitled to Onela's favour\". This leads Eliason to suggest that Beowulf's sister married Weohstan the Waegmunding, so Wiglaf is Beowulf's nephew after all.\n\nAllegory \n\nRichard North revisits the old hypothesis that the Beowulf Wiglaf, and indeed the whole poem, was commissioned by the historical King Wiglaf of Mercia as a memorial to King Beornwulf, at the same time presenting himself as successor; he had been an ealdorman, not the King's son, so the succession could have been in doubt. He notes the resemblance of the names (Beornwulf, Wiglaf) to the heroes in the poem, claiming that Wiglaf cannot be traced to any Scandinavian source.\n\nThe scholar Kevin Kiernan likens the survival of the Beowulf manuscript to Wiglaf's survival of the last fight of Beowulf the hero, noting however that while Wiglaf's efforts were all in vain, the manuscript somehow limped on.\n\nEtymology \n\nWiglaf's name appears to be an example of etymological refraction. The name is composed of two Old English elements, namely wig (fight, battle, war) and laf (what or who is left). When Wiglaf first enters battle alongside his lord, the poem is structured to reflect greater significance on his name. The separation and reversal of the elements of the name in the manuscript suggest that the name \"Wiglaf\" signifies \"the inheritor of strength\" or \"one that is fulfilled through battle\", according to the scholars Patrick J. Gallacher and Helen Damico. \n\nAn alternate understanding of the name in the context of a typical dithematic name, where the two elements may be as independent in meaning as separate names, \"laf\" could be read as \"one who remains, one who survives or endures\". Gallacher and Damico have acknowledged this alternative interpretation but feel that it is unnecessary to argue that one discernible element within a name submerges another as all interpretations are collectively useful in the pursuit of deep analysis.\n\nCultural references\n\nIn the 1981 animated film Grendel Grendel Grendel, Wiglaf (voiced by Ernie Bourne) is portrayed as one of Hrothgar's thanes rather than an ally of Beowulf, and is killed by Grendel.\n\nIn the 2007 film Beowulf (directed by Robert Zemeckis), Wiglaf's role (played by Brendan Gleeson) is larger; he is present in the film from the first introduction of Beowulf and the Geats to the end when Beowulf vanquishes the dragon and dies. The film makes Wiglaf into a sidekick, the second-in-command and the best friend of the epic hero.\n\nIn the 2018 Harry Potter fan-made film Voldemort: Origins of the Heir, the descendant of Rowena Ravenclaw is named Wiglaf Sigurdsson.\n\nSee also\n The Wanderer\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nPrimary\nThis list shows the parts of the Beowulf poem under discussion.\n\nSecondary\n\nCharacters in Beowulf\nEnglish heroic legends\nPeople whose existence is disputed"
] |
[
"Hrólfr Kraki",
"Beowulf and Bjarki",
"Where is beowolf from?",
"Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Gotaland)",
"What does Beowolf do?",
"the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela.",
"What does beowulf mean?",
"Beowulf (lit. \"bee-wolf\", a kenning for \"bear\")"
] | C_82ba42bb74f44967ab7000b78ecbcbf5_1 | Do Beowulf and Bjarki have anything in common? | 4 | Do Beowulf and Bjarki have anything in common? | Hrólfr Kraki | The standard view is that, if Beowulf himself has a 'cognate' character in Rolf Kraki's story, it is Bodvar Bjarki (Bodvar Biarke), who also has a younger companion, Hjalti (Hialte) - perhaps matching the Beowulf character Wiglaf. Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Gotaland) and one of Bodvar Bjarki's elder brothers, Thorir, becomes a king of Gotaland. Moreover, like Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki arrives in Denmark from Gotaland (Geatland), and upon arriving in Denmark he kills a beast that has been ravaging the Danish court for two years. The monster in Hrolf Kraki's saga, however, is quite unlike the Grendel of Beowulf; but it does have characteristics of a more typical dragon, a creature which appears later in Beowulf. Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark. Proponents of this theory, like J. R. R. Tolkien, argue that both the names Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") and Bjarki are associated with bears. Bodvar Bjarki is constantly associated with bears, his father actually being one. In some of the Hrolf Kraki material, Bodvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Ali, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vanern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bodvar Bjarki are one and the same. This match supports the hypothesis that the adventure with the dragon is also originally derived from the same story. CANNOTANSWER | both the names Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") and Bjarki are associated with bears. | Hrólfr Kraki (Old Norse: ), Hroðulf, Rolfo, Roluo, Rolf Krage (early 6th century) was a semi-legendary Danish king who appears in both Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian tradition.
Both traditions describe him as a Danish Scylding, the nephew of Hroðgar and the grandson of Healfdene. The consensus view is that Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian traditions describe the same people. Whereas the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf and Widsith do not go further than treating his relationship with Hroðgar and their animosity with Froda and Ingeld, the Scandinavian sources expand on his life as the king at Lejre and on his relationship with Halga, Hroðgar's brother. In Beowulf and Widsith, it is never explained how Hroðgar and Hroðulf are uncle and nephew.
Beowulf
The poem Beowulf introduces Hroðulf as kinsman. Later, the text explains that Hroðulf is Hroðgar's nephew and that "each was true to the other". Hroðgar is given three siblings, brothers Heorogar and Halga and an unnamed sister, all the children of Healfdene and belonging to the royal clan known as the Scyldings. The poem does not indicate which of Hroðgar's siblings is Hroðulf's parent, but later Scandinavian tradition establishes this as Halga.
Hroðgar and queen Wealhþeow had two young sons, Hreðric and Hroðmund, and Hroðulf would be their guardian in case Hroðgar dies. In a deliberately ironic passage it appears that the queen trusts Hroðulf, not suspecting that he will murder her sons to claim the throne for himself:
No existence of any Hreðric or Hroðmund, sons of Hroðgar, has survived in Scandinavian sources (although Hreðric has been suggested to be the same person as Hroerekr/Roricus, a Danish king generally described as a son or successor of Ingjald). This Hroerekr is sometimes said to have been killed by Hrólfr, vindicating the foreshadowing in Beowulf.
The Scyldings were in conflict with another clan or tribe named the Heaðobards led by their king Froda and his son Ingeld. It is in relation to this war that Hroðulf is mentioned in the other Anglo-Saxon poem where he appears, Widsith.
Hrólf and Hroðulf
A common identification is that Hrólf Kraki is the same as the character Hroðulf (Hroðgar's nephew) in Beowulf. There seems to be some foreshadowing in Beowulf that Hroðulf will attempt to usurp the throne from Hroðgar's sons Hreðric and Hroðmund, a deed that also seems to be referred to in Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum (Book 2), where we find: "... our king, who laid low Rorik, the son of Bok the covetous, and wrapped the coward in death." Rorik is the form we would expect Hreðric to take in Danish and we find personages named Rorik or Hrok or similar in most version of the Hrólf Kraki tradition, but differently accounted for, seemingly indicating that Scandinavian tradition had forgotten who exactly Hreðric/Rorik/Hrok was and various story tellers subsequently invented details to explain references to this personage in older poems. The future slaying of Hreðric may be the occasion of the future burning of the hall of Heorot in the beginning of the poem – though some take it instead to refer to the legendary death of Hrólf Kraki, who in Icelandic sources is said to have died in the burning of his hall by his brother-in-law Hjörvard.
Beowulf and Bjarki
The standard view is that, if Beowulf himself has a 'cognate' character in Rolf Kraki's story, it is Bödvar Bjarki (Bodvar Biarke), who also has a younger companion, Hjalti (Hialte) – perhaps matching the Beowulf character Wiglaf. Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Götaland) and one of Bödvar Bjarki's elder brothers, Thorir, becomes a king of Götaland. Moreover, like Beowulf, Bödvar Bjarki arrives in Denmark from Götaland (Geatland), and upon arriving in Denmark he kills a beast that has been ravaging the Danish court for two years. The monster in Hrólf Krakis saga, however, is quite unlike the Grendel of Beowulf; but it does have characteristics of a more typical dragon, a creature which appears later in Beowulf.
Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bödvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark.
Proponents of this theory, like J. R. R. Tolkien, argue that both the names Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") and Bjarki are associated with bears. Bodvar Bjarki is constantly associated with bears, his father actually being one.
In some of the Hrólf Kraki material, Bödvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Áli, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bödvar Bjarki are one and the same. This match supports the hypothesis that the adventure with the dragon is also originally derived from the same story.
Hrothgar and Hróar
As for the king of the Danes, Hroðgar, he is identical to Hróar or Ro, the uncle of Hrólf Kraki who in other sources outside of Beowulf rules as a co-king with his brother Helgi. But in those sources it is Hróar/Hroðgar who dies before his brother or who departs to Northumberland to rule his wife's kingdom leaving Helgi/Halga the sole rule of Denmark. In Beowulf Halga/Helgi has died and Hroðgar is the primary ruler with Hroðulf son of Halga as a junior co-ruler.
Furthermore, the Swedish kings referenced in Beowulf are adequately matched with the 5th and 6th century Swedish kings in Uppsala (see also Swedish semi-legendary kings):
This has obviously nothing to do with a common origin of the Beowulf and Hrólf Kraki legends in particular but simply reflects a shared genealogical tradition.
Widsith
The poem Widsith also mentions Hroðgar and Hroðulf, but indicates that the feud with Ingeld did not end until the latter was defeated at Heorot:
This piece suggests that the conflict between the Scyldings Hroðgar and Hroðulf on one side, and the Heaðobards Froda and Ingeld on the other, was well known in Anglo-Saxon England. This conflict also appears in Scandinavian sources, but in the Norse tradition the Heaðobards had apparently been forgotten and the conflict is instead rendered as a family feud (see Hrólf Kraki's saga and Skjöldunga saga).
Chronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundenses
The Chronicon Lethrense and the included Annales Lundenses tell that Haldan (Healfdene) had two sons, Helghe (Halga) and Ro (Hroðgar). When Haldan died of old age, Helghe and Ro divided the kingdom so that Ro ruled the land, and Helghe the sea. One day, Helghe arrived in Halland/Lolland and slept with Thore, the daughter of one of Ro's farmers. This resulted in a daughter named Yrse. Much later, he met Yrse, and without knowing that she was his daughter, he made her pregnant with Rolf. Eventually, Helghe found out that Yrse was his own daughter and, out of shame, went east and killed himself.
Both Helghe and Ro being dead, a Swedish king, called Hakon in the Chronicon Lethrense proper, and Athisl in the Annales – corresponding to Eadgils – forced the Danes to accept a dog as king. The dog king was succeeded by Rolf Krage.
Rolf Krage was a big man in body and soul and was so generous that no one asked him for anything twice. His sister Skulda was married against Rolf's will to Hartwar or Hiarwarth (Heoroweard), a German earl of Skåne, but reputedly Rolf had given Skulda to him together with Sweden.
This Hartwar arrived in Zealand with a large army and said that he wanted to give his tribute to Rolf, but killed Rolf together with all his men. Only one survived, Wigg, who played along until he was to do homage to Hartwar. Then, he pierced Hartwar with a sword, and so Hartwar was king for only one morning.
Gesta Danorum
The Book 2 of the Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus contains roughly the same information as the Chronicon Lethrense and the Annales Lundenses, i.e. that Ro (Hroðgar) and Helgo (Halga) were the son of Haldanus (Healfdene). When Haldanus died of old age, Ro took the land and Helgo the water. One day during his sea roving, Helgo arrived at Thurø, where he found and raped the young girl Thora, which resulted in Urse (Yrsa). When Helgo after many years returned to Thurø, Thora avenged her lost virginity by sending Urse to Helgo who, unknowingly raped his own daughter. This resulted in Roluo, who was a gifted man, both physically and intellectually and as brave as he was tall. After some time Helgo repelled a Swedish invasion, avenged Ro by killing the Swedish king Hothbrodd, and made the Swedes pay tribute. However, he committed suicide due to shame for his incestuous relationship with Urse. Roluo succeeded him.
The new king of Sweden, Athislus (Eadgils), thought that the tribute to the Daner might be smaller if he married the Danish king's mother and so took Urse for a queen. However, after some time, Urse was so upset with the Swedish king's greed that she thought out a ruse to run away from the king and at the same time liberate him of his wealth. She incited Athislus to rebel against Roluo, and arranged so that Roluo would be invited and promised a wealth in gifts.
At the banquet Roluo was at first not recognised by his mother, but when their fondness was commented on by Athisl, the Swedish king and Roluo made a wager where Roluo would prove his endurance. Roluo was placed in front of a fire that exposed him to such heat that finally a maiden could suffer the sight no more and extinguished the fire. Roluo was greatly recompensed by Athisl for his endurance.
When the banquet had lasted for three days, Urse and Roluo escaped from Uppsala, early in the morning in carriages where they had put all the Swedish king's treasure. In order to lessen their burden, and to occupy any pursuing warriors they spread gold in their path (later in the work, this is referred to as "sowing the Fyrisvellir"), although there was a rumour that she only spread gilded copper. When Athislus, who was pursuing the escapers saw that a precious ring was lying on the ground, he bent down to pick it up. Roluo was pleased to see the king of Sweden bent down, and escaped in the ships with his mother.
A young man named Wigg was impressed with Roluo's bodily size and gave him the cognomen Krage, which meant a tall tree trunk used as a ladder. Roluo liked this name and rewarded Wigg with a heavy bracelet. Wigg, then, swore to Roluo to avenge him, if he was killed.
Roluo later defeated Athislus and gave Sweden to young man named Hiartuar (Heoroweard), who also married Roluo's sister Skulde. Skulde, however, did not like the fact that her husband had to pay taxes to Roluo and so incited Hiartuar to rebel against him. They so went to Lejre (a town which Roluo had built) with arms hidden in the ships, under the pretense that they wanted to pay tribute.
They were well-received, but after the banquet, when most people were drunk asleep, the Swedes and the Goths (i.e. the Geats) proceeded to kill everyone at Roluo's residence. After a long battle, involving Roluo's champion Bjarki, who fought in the shape of a spirit bear until he was awakened by his comrade Hjalti, the Geats won and Roluo was killed.
Hiartuar asked Wigg if he wanted to fight for him, and Wigg said yes. Hiartuar wanted to give Wigg a sword, but he insisted on receiving it by taking the hilt. Having the hilt in his hand, Wigg pierced Hiartuar with the sword and so avenged Roluo. Swedes and Geats then rushed forward and killed Wigg. The Swedish king Høtherus (based on the god Höðr), the brother of Athislus, succeeded Roluo and became the king of a combined Sweden and Denmark.
Hrólfr Kraki's saga
In Hrólfr Kraki's saga, Halfdan (Healfdene) had three children, the sons Helgi (Halga) and Hróarr (Hroðgar) and the daughter Signý. The sister was the eldest and married to Sævil Jarl, with whom she had the son Hrókr. Halfdan was murdered by his own brother Fróði (Froda) and the two brothers had to seek refuge with a man called Vivil on an island, until they could avenge their father and kill Fróði.
Whereas Hróarr moved to Northumbria and married the king's daughter, Helgi (i.e. Halga) went to the Saxons wanting to woo their warlike queen Oluf. She was, however, not interested and humiliated Helgi by shaving his head and covering him with tar, while he was asleep, and sending him back to his ship. Some time later, Helgi returned and through a ruse, he kidnapped the queen for a while during which time he made her pregnant.
Having returned to her kingdom, the queen bore a child, a girl which she named Yrsa after her dog. Yrsa was set to live as a shepherd, until she was 12 years old, when she met her father Helgi who fell in love with her, not knowing it was his daughter. Oluf kept quiet about the parentage and saw it as her revenge that Helgi would wed his own daughter. Helgi and Yrsa had the son Hrólfr.
Learning that Helgi and Yrsa lived happily together, queen Oluf travelled to Denmark to tell her daughter the truth. Yrsa was shocked and although Helgi wanted their relationship to remain as it was, Yrsa insisted on leaving him to live alone. She was later taken by the Swedish king Aðils (Eadgils) as his queen, which made Helgi even more unhappy. Helgi went to Uppsala to fetch her, but was killed by Aðils in battle. In Lejre, he was succeeded by his son Hrólfr.
Hrólfr soon assembled twelve great berserkers named Hrómundr harði, Hrólfr skjóthendi, Svipdagr, Beigaðr, Hvítserkr inn hvati, Haklangr, Harðrefill, Haki inn frækni, Vöttr inn mikilaflaði, Starólfr, Hjalti inn hugprúði and Bödvar Bjarki.
After some time, Bödvar Bjarki encouraged Hrólfr to go Uppsala to claim the gold that Aðils had taken from Helgi after the battle. Hrólfr departed with 120 men and his twelve berserkers and during a rest they were tested by a farmer called Hrani (Odin in disguise) who advised Hrólfr to send back all his troops but his twelve berserkers, as numbers would not help him against Aðils.
They were at first well received, but in his hall, Aðils did his best to stop Hrólfr with pit traps and hidden warriors who attacked the Danes. Finally Aðils entertained them but put them to a test where they had to endure immense heat by a fire. Hrólfr and his berserkers finally had enough and threw the courtiers, who were feeding the fire, into the fire and leapt at Aðils. The Swedish king disappeared through a hollow tree trunk that stood in his hall.
Yrsa admonished Aðils for wanting to kill her son, and went to meet the Danes. She gave them a man named Vöggr to entertain them. This Vöggr remarked that Hrólfr had the thin face of a pole ladder, a Kraki. Happy with his new cognomen Hrólfr gave Vöggr a golden ring, and Vöggr swore to avenge Hrólfr if anyone should kill him. Hrólfr and his company were then attacked by a troll in the shape of a boar in the service of Aðils, but Hrólfr's dog Gram killed it.
They then found out that Aðils had set the hall on fire, and so they broke out of the hall, only to find themselves surrounded by heavily armed warriors in the street. After a fight, king Aðils retreated to summon reinforcements.
Yrsa then provided her son with a silver drinking horn filled with gold and jewels and a famous ring, Svíagris. Then she gave Hrólf and his men twelve of the Swedish king's best horses, and all the armour and provisions they needed.
Hrólfr took a fond farewell of his mother and departed over the Fyrisvellir. When they saw Aðils and his warriors in pursuit, they spread the gold behind themselves. Aðils saw his precious Svíagris on the ground and stooped to pick it up with his spear, whereupon Hrólf cut his back with his sword and screamed in triumph that he had bent the back of the most powerful man in Sweden.
Hrólfr lived in peace for some time. However, his half-elven half-sister Skuld was married to Hjörvarðr (Heoroweard) one of Hrólfr's subkings, and she began to turn her husband against Hrólfr. Under the pretext that they would wait three years before paying the accumulated tribute at one time, Skuld assembled a large army which included strong warriors, criminals, elves and norns. She used seiðr (witchcraft) to hide the great muster from Hrólfr and his champions.
They then arrived at Lejre one yule for the midwinter celebrations, with all the weapons hidden in wagons. A fight started and like in the account found in Gesta Danorum, Bödvar Bjarki fought in the shape of a spirit bear until he was awakened by Hjalti. Skuld used her witchcraft to resuscitate her fallen warriors and after a long fight Hrólfr and all his berserkers fell.
Skuld became the ruler of Denmark but did not rule well. Bödvar Bjarki's brothers Elk-Froði and Þorir Houndsfoot went to Denmark to avenge their brother. The Swedish queen Yrsa gave them a large Swedish army headed by Vöggr. They captured Skuld before she could use her magic and tortured her to death. Then they raised a mound for Hrólfr Kraki where he was buried together with his sword Skofnung.
Skjöldunga saga
The Skjöldunga sagaNerman (1925:150) relates that Helgo (Halga) was the king of Denmark together with his brother Roas (Hroðgar). Helgo raped Olava, the queen of the Saxons, and she bore a daughter named Yrsa. The girl later married king Adillus (Eadgils), the king of Sweden, with whom she had the daughter Scullda.
Some years later, Helgo attacked Sweden and captured Yrsa, not knowing that she was his own daughter. He raped her and took her back to Denmark, where she bore the son Rolfo. After a few years, Yrsa's mother, queen Olava, came to visit her and told her that Helgo was her own father. In horror, Yrsa returned to Adillus, leaving her son behind. Helgo died when Rolfo was eight years old, and Rolfo succeeded him, and ruled together with his uncle Roas. Not much later, Roas was killed by his half-brothers Rærecus and Frodo, whereupon Rolfo became the sole king of Denmark.
In Sweden, Yrsa and Adillus married Scullda to the king of Öland, Hiørvardus (also called Hiorvardus and Hevardus, and who corresponds to Heoroweard in Beowulf). As her half-brother Rolfo was not consulted about this marriage, he was infuriated and he attacked Öland and made Hiørvardus and his kingdom tributary to Denmark.
After some time Adillus requested Rolfo's aid against king Ale (Onela) of Oppland, and Rolfo sent him his berserkers. Adillus then won the war, but refused to pay the expected tribute for the help and so Rolfo came to Uppsala to claim his recompense. After surviving some traps, Rolfo fled with Adillus' gold, helped by his mother Yrsa, and "sowed" it on the Fyrisvellir.
Hiørvardus and his queen Skullda rebelled against Rolfo and killed him. However, Hiørvardus did not live long after this and was killed. Rolfo was succeeded by his father's cousin Rörek, who, however, had to leave Skåne to Valdar and could only keep Zealand.
Skáldskaparmál
In the Skáldskaparmál by Snorri Sturluson, the story of Hrólfr Kraki is presented in order to explain why gold was known by the kenning Kraki's seed.
Snorri relates that Hrólfr was the most renowned king in Denmark for valour, generosity and graciousness. One day a poor boy called Vöggr arrived and expressed his surprise that such a great king would look like a little pole (kraki). Hrólfr said that Vöggr had given him a name and gave Vöggr a golden ring in recompense. In gratitude Vöggr swore to Hrólfr to avenge him, should he be killed.
A second tale was when the king of Sweden, Aðils (Eadgils), was in war with a Norwegian king named Áli (Onela), and they fought in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern. Aðils was married to Yrsa, the mother of Hrólfr and so sent an embassy to Hrólfr asking him for help against Áli. He would receive three valuable gifts in recompense. Hrólfr was involved in a war against the Saxons and could not come in person but sent his twelve berserkers. Áli died in the war, and Aðils took Áli's helmet Battle-boar and his horse Raven. The berserkers demanded three pounds of gold each in pay, and they demanded to choose the gifts that Aðils had promised Hrólfr, that is the two pieces of armour that nothing could pierce: the helmet battle-boar and the mailcoat Finn's heritage. They also wanted the famous ring Svíagris. Aðils considered the pay outrageous and refused.
When Hrólfr heard that Aðils refused to pay, he set off to Uppsala. They brought the ships to the river Fyris and rode directly to the Swedish king's hall at Uppsala with his twelve berserkers. Yrsa welcomed them and led them to their lodgings. Fires were prepared for them and they were given drinks. However, so much wood was heaped on the fires that the clothes started to burn away from their bodies. Hrólfr and his men had enough and threw the courtiers on the fire. Yrsa arrived and gave them a horn full of gold, the ring Svíagris and asked them to flee. As they rode over the Fyrisvellir, they saw Aðils and his men pursuing them. The fleeing men threw their gold on the plain so that the pursuers would stop to collect the gold. Aðils, however, continued the chase on his horse Slöngvir. Hrólfr then threw Svíagris and saw how Aðils stooped down to pick up the ring with his spear. Hrólfr exclaimed that he had seen the mightiest man in Sweden bend his back.
Ynglinga saga
The Skjöldunga saga was used by Snorri Sturluson as a source when he told the story of Aðils (Eadgils) and Yrsa, in his Ynglinga saga, a part of the Heimskringla. What remains of the Skjöldunga saga is a Latin summary by Arngrímur Jónsson, and so the two versions are basically the same, the main difference being that Arngrímur's version is more terse.
Snorri relates that Aðils betook himself to pillage the Saxons, whose king was Geirþjófr and queen Alof the Great. The king and consort were not at home, and so Aðils and his men plundered their residence at ease driving cattle and captives down to the ships. One of the captives was a remarkably beautiful girl named Yrsa, and Snorri writes that everyone was soon impressed with the well-mannered, pretty and intelligent girl. Most impressed was Aðils who made her his queen.
Some years later, Helgi (Halga), who ruled in Lejre, attacked Sweden and captured Yrsa. He raped Yrsa, his own daughter, and took her back to Lejre, where she bore him the son Hrólfr. When the boy was three years of age, Yrsa's mother, queen Alof of Saxony, came to visit her and told her that her husband Helgi was her own father. Horrified, Yrsa returned to Aðils, leaving her son behind, and stayed in Sweden for the rest of her life. When Hrólfr was eight years old, Helgi died during a war expedition and Hrólf was proclaimed king.
Snorri finishes his account by briefly mentioning that the Skjöldunga saga contained an extensive account of how Hrólf came to Uppsala and sowed gold on the Fyrisvellir.
Gróttasöngr
The Gróttasöngr contains a stanza (nr 22) sung by the giantesses Fenja and Menja. It only names Yrsa and the situation that her son and brother (i.e. Hroðulf) will avenge Fródi (Froda):
This piece cannot refer to Hrólfr Kraki's saga where Froda was the half-brother of Healfdene because this Froda was killed by Hroðgar (and therefore they avenged him). It can, however, be interpreted through the Skjöldunga saga in which Hroðulf's uncle Hroðgar was murdered by his half-brother Froda.
Either Frodi's death is the one they want to avenge, or they seek vengeance for Hroðgar, killed by his half brother. The Danish equivalent of hefna is at hævne, meaning revenge (or avenging), in this case for Fródi's murder, indicating no relation to Hroðgars death, but to Frodi's. 'Kin' and 'kinsmen' share a certain reference to blood relation, yet 'brother' can also have the meaning of either: 'one of us' and 'our tribesmen', or simply 'son and brother'. After being recognized for his deeds, Yrsa will see Hroðulf as her son once more.
Gautreks saga
Hrólfr Kraki is mentioned briefly in Gautreks saga, written around 1300, when the adventurer Ref comes to him with a gift consisting of two dogs. In return for this gift Hrólfr gives him a helmet and a chainmail, both made of red gold.
Modern references
Danish playwright Johannes Ewald wrote a play about Rolf Krage (1770), based on Saxo's version of the story in Gesta Danorum. Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger wrote a poem, Helge: et Digt (1814).
The American writer Poul Anderson used this story in his novel Hrolf Kraki's Saga (1973). Anderson's story begins in earlier generations and more or less follows the version in Hrolfr Kraki's Saga described above. The book was well received by many fantasy fans.
"Sellic Spell', a fictionalized treatment of the story by J. R. R. Tolkien, was published in Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary on May 22, 2014, Tolkien himself explaining that his was "a limited...attempt to reconstruct the Anglo-Saxon tale that lies behind the folk-tale element in Beowulf".
The Danish Navy's first ironclad warship was named Rolf Krake.
Notes
Bibliography and external links
English translations of the Old Norse Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans :
The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and his Champions. Trans. Peter Tunstall (2003). Available at Norse saga: The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and Northvegr: The Saga of Hrolf Kraki.
The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki. Trans. Jesse L. Byock (1998). London: Penguin. . Selection from this translation are available at The Viking Site: Excerpts from The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki.
"King Hrolf and his champions" included in Eirik the Red: And Other Icelandic Sagas. Trans. Gwyn Jones (1961). Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press. .
Original texts''':
Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans in Old Norse from heimskringla.no
Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans in Old Norse from heimskringla.no
University of Oregon: Norse: Fornaldarsögur norðurlanda: Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans
Sagnanet: Hrólfs saga kraka
Anderson, Poul (1973). Hrolf Kraki's Saga. New York: Ballantine Books. . New York: Del Rey Books. . Reprinted 1988 by Baen Books, .
Literary Encyclopedia entry
Birger Nerman, 1925, Det svenska rikets uppkomst (in Swedish)Beowulf:
Beowulf read aloud in Old English
Modern English translation by Francis Barton Gummere
Modern English translation by John Lesslie Hall
Ringler, Dick. Beowulf: A New Translation For Oral Delivery, May 2005. Searchable text with full audio available, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.
Several different Modern English translationsChronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundense:
Chronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundense in translation by Peter Tunstall
The same translation at Northvegr
Book 2 of Gesta Danorum at the Online and Medieval & Classical library
The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf by Olson, 1916, at Project Gutenberg
the Ynglinga saga in translation by Samuel Laing, 1844, at Northvegr
The Gróttasöngr in Thorpe's translation
Skáldskaparmál:
Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda in the original language
CyberSamurai Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology: Prose Edda - Skáldskaparmál (English)
CyberSamurai Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology: Prose Edda - Skáldskaparmál (Old Norse)
Malone, Kemp. Studies in Heroic Legend and in Current Speech. S. Einarsson & N.E. Eliason, eds. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger, 1959.
Lukman, Niels Clausen. Skjoldunge und Skilfinge. Hunnen- und Heruler-könige in Ostnordischer Überlieferung. Classica et Mediaevalia, dissertationes III. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag, 1943.
Hemmingsen, Lars. By Word of Mouth: the origins of Danish legendary history - studies in European learned and popular traditions of Dacians and Danes before A.D. 1200. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Copenhagen (Dept. of Folklore), 1995.
Anderson, Carl Edlund. Formation and Resolution of Ideological Contrast in the Early History of Scandinavia''. Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic (Faculty of English).
Overing, Gillian R., and Marijane Osborn. 'Landscape of Desire: Partial Stories of the Medieval Scandinavian World.' Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994: 1-37. (possible sailing times and the account of a "Beowulfian" voyage on the Cattegat)
6th-century monarchs in Europe
English heroic legends
Characters in Beowulf
Heroes in Norse myths and legends
People whose existence is disputed
Scyldings | false | [
"Bödvar Bjarki ( ), meaning 'Warlike Little-Bear', is the hero appearing in tales of Hrólfr Kraki in the Hrólfs saga kraka in the Latin epitome to the lost Skjöldunga saga, and as Biarco in Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum.\n\nLinks with Beowulf\n\nSome think Bjarki and the hero Beowulf in the Old English poem Beowulf were originally the same personage, while others instead accept some kinship between the two, perhaps pointing to the same distant source. Unlike Beowulf, Bjarki is a shapeshifter, and he is also said to have been Norwegian, which may be explained by the fact that his story was written by Icelandic authors who were mostly of Norwegian descent.\n\nHowever, his brother was the king of Gautland (Geatland) and, like Beowulf, it was from Geatland that Bǫðvarr Bjarki arrived in Denmark. Moreover, upon arriving at the court of Denmark, he kills a monstrous beast that has been terrorizing the court at Yule for two years (comparable to Grendel's role in Beowulf).\n\nBear-form\n\nThe Old Norse poem Bjarkamál (of which only a few stanzas are preserved but which Saxo Grammaticus presents in the form of a florid Latin paraphrase) is understood as a dialogue between Bödvar Bjarki and his younger companion Hjalti which begins with Hjalti again and again urging Bödvar to awake from his sleep and fight for King Hrólf in this last battle in which they are doomed to be defeated. In the Saga of Hrólf Kraki, it is explained that this rousing was ill-done, as Bjarki was in a trance and his spirit in the form of a monstrous bear was already aiding Hrólf far more than Bjarki could do with only his human strength: as Bjarki puts it on awakening, \"You have not been so helpful to the king by this action of yours as you think\".\n\nSee also\n\nReferences\n\nFurther reading\nF. Klauber ed., Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg (Boston 1950) p. xiiiff.\n\nHeroes in Norse myths and legends\nYear of birth unknown\nYear of death unknown",
"Beowulf (; ) is a legendary Geatish hero in the eponymous epic poem, one of the oldest surviving pieces of English literature.\n\nEtymology and origins of the character\nA number of origins have been proposed for the name Beowulf.\n\nBeowulf\nHenry Sweet, a philologist and linguist specializing in Germanic languages, proposed that the name Bēowulf literally means in Old English \"bee-wolf\" or \"bee-hunter\" and that it is a kenning for \"bear\". Recorded instances of similar names mirror this etymology. The AD 1031 Liber Vitae records the name Biuuuwulf. The name is attested to a monk from Durham and means bee wolf in the Old Northumbrian dialect. The 11th century English Domesday Book contains a recorded instance of the name Beulf. The scholar suggested that the name Beowulf derived from a mistranslation of Böðvarr with -varr interpreted as vargr meaning \"wolf\".\nHowever, Sophus Bugge questioned this etymology, and instead suggested that the personage Böðvarr Bjarki derived from Beowulf.\n\nBeow-Wolf\nIn 2005, Andy Orchard theorized an etymology on the basis of the common Old Norse name Þórólfr (which literally translates to \"Thor Wolf\"), stating in parallel that a \"more likely\" meaning for the name would be the \"wolf\" of the Germanic god Beow.\n\nBiewolf\nEnglish philologist Walter William Skeat proposed an etymological origin in a term for \"Woodpecker\" citing the Old Dutch term biewolf for the bird. Skeat states that the black woodpecker is common in Norway and Sweden and further reasons that the \"indominatable nature\" and that the \"bird fights to the death\" could have potentially influenced the choice of the name. This etymological origin has been criticized as not being in accordance to Grimm's law and Skeat may have recanted the proposal at a later date.\n\nBeado-Wulf (war wolf)\nThe editors of Bosworth's monumental dictionary of Anglo-Saxon propose that Beowulf is a variant of beado-wulf meaning \"war wolf\" and that it is cognate with the Icelandic Bodulfr which also means \"war wolf\".\n\nBeowulf before Beowulf\nScholars have long debated the origins of the character Beowulf. Some have argued that Beowulf existed in heroic-legendary tradition prior to the composition of Beowulf, while others have believed that the Beowulf poet invented his Geatish protagonist. Leonard Neidorf has argued that Beowulf was present in (now lost) heroic-legendary cycles before Beowulf was composed. Neidorf argued that the seventh-century usage of the name ‘Biuuulf’ (Beowulf), which involves an element (Beow) that was unproductive in contemporary name-giving, suggests that legends of Beowulf existed well before the composition of our extant poem.\n\nBeowulf manuscript\n\nOrigins in Geatland\n\nAs told in the surviving epic poem, Beowulf was the son of Ecgtheow, a warrior of the Swedish Wægmundings. Ecgþeow had slain Heaðolaf, a man from another clan (named the Wulfings) (according to Scandinavian sources, they were the ruling dynasty of the Geatish petty kingdom of Östergötland). Apparently, because the victim was from a prominent family, the weregild was set too high, and so Ecgþeow was banished and had to seek refuge among the Danes. The Danish king Hroðgar generously paid the weregild, and had Ecgþeow swear an oath.\n\nEcgþeow was in the service of the Geatish king Hreðel, whose daughter he married. They had Beowulf, who grew up with the Geats. Beowulf's childhood friend was Breca the Bronding \"supposed to be the inhabitants of the island Brännö, lying off the coast of West Gothland in the Cattegat\". This would be a realistic location for a childhood friend of Beowulf, and the poem describes a swimming contest between them.\n\nZealand and Grendel\nWhen King Hroðgar, his wife Wealhþeow, and his court were terrorized by the monstrous Grendel, Beowulf left Geatland (West Götaland) and sailed to Zealand with fourteen warriors in order to pay his father's debt. During the night, Grendel arrived to attack the sleeping men and devoured one of the other Geats before seizing Beowulf. As no manmade weapon could harm Grendel, Beowulf fought back with his bare hands and tore off the beast's arm. Grendel fled back to the bog to die from his wound, and his arm was attached to the wall of Heorot. The next day, Beowulf was lauded and a skald (scop) sang and compared Beowulf with the hero Sigmund.\n\nHowever, during the following night Grendel's mother arrived to avenge her son's death and collect weregild. As Beowulf slept in a different building he could not stop her. He resolved to descend into the bog in order to kill her. They fought beside Grendel's corpse, and Beowulf finally won with the aid of an enchanted giant sword stolen from the lair's plundered wooden box.\n\nReturn to Geatland, kingdom, and death\n\nHaving returned to Geatland, Beowulf is described as taking part in a raid (a genuine historic event) against the Franks with his king Higlac. Higlac died during the raid, and Beowulf swam home in full armour. Back in Geatland, queen Hygd offered Beowulf the throne but Beowulf declined in favour of the young prince Heardred. However, Heardred received two Swedish princes, Eadgils and Eanmund who reported that they had fled their uncle Onela who had usurped the Swedish throne. This led to a Swedish invasion in which Heardred was killed. Beowulf was proclaimed king and decided to avenge Heardred and to help Eadgils become king of Sweden.\n\nThe event when Onela was slain was probably a historic event. Even though it is only briefly mentioned in Beowulf, it occurs extensively in several Scandinavian sources where it is called the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern. For example, Snorri Sturluson wrote: Onela rode Raven, as they rode to the ice, but a second one, a grey one, hastened, wounded by spears, eastwards under Eadgils. [...] In this fight Onela died and a great many of his people. Then king Eadgils took from him his helmet Battle-boar and his horse Raven. (Although, in Snorri's text the names are in their corresponding Old Norse forms).\n\nBeowulf ruled the Geats for 50 years, until his realm was terrorized by a fire-breathing dragon after a thief stole a golden cup from its hoard of treasure. After unsuccessfully attacking the dragon with his thegns, Beowulf decided to pursue the monster into its lair at Earnanæs, but only his young Swedish relative Wiglaf dared join him. Beowulf's sword broke; but he dealt the dragon its death-blow with his dagger. He had been mortally wounded by the dragon's poisonous bite. Dying, he was carried out by Wiglaf, and with his last breaths named Wiglaf his rightful heir. His body was burned on a funeral pyre, and his ashes buried in a barrow by the sea.\n\nThe last three lines of the poem are, in Seamus Heaney's translation:\n:They [the Geats] said that of all the kings upon the earth,\nhe was the man most gracious and fair-minded,\nkindest to his people and keenest to win fame.\nThe statement is clear, except for the final word, lof-geornest ('keenest to seek fame'), which is two-edged. It is no shame for a hero to seek fame, but it may be possible to be too eager for it.\n\nReferences\n\n \nCharacters in Beowulf\nDragonslayers\nEnglish mythology\nFictional Vikings\nGeats\nHeroes in Norse myths and legends\nMale characters in literature\nMythological kings\nPeople whose existence is disputed\nFictional monster hunters\nFictional dragonslayers"
] |
[
"Hrólfr Kraki",
"Beowulf and Bjarki",
"Where is beowolf from?",
"Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Gotaland)",
"What does Beowolf do?",
"the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela.",
"What does beowulf mean?",
"Beowulf (lit. \"bee-wolf\", a kenning for \"bear\")",
"Do Beowulf and Bjarki have anything in common?",
"both the names Beowulf (lit. \"bee-wolf\", a kenning for \"bear\") and Bjarki are associated with bears."
] | C_82ba42bb74f44967ab7000b78ecbcbf5_1 | What else is similar? | 5 | What else is similar between Beowulf and Bjarki besides association with bears? | Hrólfr Kraki | The standard view is that, if Beowulf himself has a 'cognate' character in Rolf Kraki's story, it is Bodvar Bjarki (Bodvar Biarke), who also has a younger companion, Hjalti (Hialte) - perhaps matching the Beowulf character Wiglaf. Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Gotaland) and one of Bodvar Bjarki's elder brothers, Thorir, becomes a king of Gotaland. Moreover, like Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki arrives in Denmark from Gotaland (Geatland), and upon arriving in Denmark he kills a beast that has been ravaging the Danish court for two years. The monster in Hrolf Kraki's saga, however, is quite unlike the Grendel of Beowulf; but it does have characteristics of a more typical dragon, a creature which appears later in Beowulf. Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark. Proponents of this theory, like J. R. R. Tolkien, argue that both the names Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") and Bjarki are associated with bears. Bodvar Bjarki is constantly associated with bears, his father actually being one. In some of the Hrolf Kraki material, Bodvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Ali, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vanern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bodvar Bjarki are one and the same. This match supports the hypothesis that the adventure with the dragon is also originally derived from the same story. CANNOTANSWER | Bodvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Ali, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vanern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. | Hrólfr Kraki (Old Norse: ), Hroðulf, Rolfo, Roluo, Rolf Krage (early 6th century) was a semi-legendary Danish king who appears in both Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian tradition.
Both traditions describe him as a Danish Scylding, the nephew of Hroðgar and the grandson of Healfdene. The consensus view is that Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian traditions describe the same people. Whereas the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf and Widsith do not go further than treating his relationship with Hroðgar and their animosity with Froda and Ingeld, the Scandinavian sources expand on his life as the king at Lejre and on his relationship with Halga, Hroðgar's brother. In Beowulf and Widsith, it is never explained how Hroðgar and Hroðulf are uncle and nephew.
Beowulf
The poem Beowulf introduces Hroðulf as kinsman. Later, the text explains that Hroðulf is Hroðgar's nephew and that "each was true to the other". Hroðgar is given three siblings, brothers Heorogar and Halga and an unnamed sister, all the children of Healfdene and belonging to the royal clan known as the Scyldings. The poem does not indicate which of Hroðgar's siblings is Hroðulf's parent, but later Scandinavian tradition establishes this as Halga.
Hroðgar and queen Wealhþeow had two young sons, Hreðric and Hroðmund, and Hroðulf would be their guardian in case Hroðgar dies. In a deliberately ironic passage it appears that the queen trusts Hroðulf, not suspecting that he will murder her sons to claim the throne for himself:
No existence of any Hreðric or Hroðmund, sons of Hroðgar, has survived in Scandinavian sources (although Hreðric has been suggested to be the same person as Hroerekr/Roricus, a Danish king generally described as a son or successor of Ingjald). This Hroerekr is sometimes said to have been killed by Hrólfr, vindicating the foreshadowing in Beowulf.
The Scyldings were in conflict with another clan or tribe named the Heaðobards led by their king Froda and his son Ingeld. It is in relation to this war that Hroðulf is mentioned in the other Anglo-Saxon poem where he appears, Widsith.
Hrólf and Hroðulf
A common identification is that Hrólf Kraki is the same as the character Hroðulf (Hroðgar's nephew) in Beowulf. There seems to be some foreshadowing in Beowulf that Hroðulf will attempt to usurp the throne from Hroðgar's sons Hreðric and Hroðmund, a deed that also seems to be referred to in Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum (Book 2), where we find: "... our king, who laid low Rorik, the son of Bok the covetous, and wrapped the coward in death." Rorik is the form we would expect Hreðric to take in Danish and we find personages named Rorik or Hrok or similar in most version of the Hrólf Kraki tradition, but differently accounted for, seemingly indicating that Scandinavian tradition had forgotten who exactly Hreðric/Rorik/Hrok was and various story tellers subsequently invented details to explain references to this personage in older poems. The future slaying of Hreðric may be the occasion of the future burning of the hall of Heorot in the beginning of the poem – though some take it instead to refer to the legendary death of Hrólf Kraki, who in Icelandic sources is said to have died in the burning of his hall by his brother-in-law Hjörvard.
Beowulf and Bjarki
The standard view is that, if Beowulf himself has a 'cognate' character in Rolf Kraki's story, it is Bödvar Bjarki (Bodvar Biarke), who also has a younger companion, Hjalti (Hialte) – perhaps matching the Beowulf character Wiglaf. Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Götaland) and one of Bödvar Bjarki's elder brothers, Thorir, becomes a king of Götaland. Moreover, like Beowulf, Bödvar Bjarki arrives in Denmark from Götaland (Geatland), and upon arriving in Denmark he kills a beast that has been ravaging the Danish court for two years. The monster in Hrólf Krakis saga, however, is quite unlike the Grendel of Beowulf; but it does have characteristics of a more typical dragon, a creature which appears later in Beowulf.
Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bödvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark.
Proponents of this theory, like J. R. R. Tolkien, argue that both the names Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") and Bjarki are associated with bears. Bodvar Bjarki is constantly associated with bears, his father actually being one.
In some of the Hrólf Kraki material, Bödvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Áli, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bödvar Bjarki are one and the same. This match supports the hypothesis that the adventure with the dragon is also originally derived from the same story.
Hrothgar and Hróar
As for the king of the Danes, Hroðgar, he is identical to Hróar or Ro, the uncle of Hrólf Kraki who in other sources outside of Beowulf rules as a co-king with his brother Helgi. But in those sources it is Hróar/Hroðgar who dies before his brother or who departs to Northumberland to rule his wife's kingdom leaving Helgi/Halga the sole rule of Denmark. In Beowulf Halga/Helgi has died and Hroðgar is the primary ruler with Hroðulf son of Halga as a junior co-ruler.
Furthermore, the Swedish kings referenced in Beowulf are adequately matched with the 5th and 6th century Swedish kings in Uppsala (see also Swedish semi-legendary kings):
This has obviously nothing to do with a common origin of the Beowulf and Hrólf Kraki legends in particular but simply reflects a shared genealogical tradition.
Widsith
The poem Widsith also mentions Hroðgar and Hroðulf, but indicates that the feud with Ingeld did not end until the latter was defeated at Heorot:
This piece suggests that the conflict between the Scyldings Hroðgar and Hroðulf on one side, and the Heaðobards Froda and Ingeld on the other, was well known in Anglo-Saxon England. This conflict also appears in Scandinavian sources, but in the Norse tradition the Heaðobards had apparently been forgotten and the conflict is instead rendered as a family feud (see Hrólf Kraki's saga and Skjöldunga saga).
Chronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundenses
The Chronicon Lethrense and the included Annales Lundenses tell that Haldan (Healfdene) had two sons, Helghe (Halga) and Ro (Hroðgar). When Haldan died of old age, Helghe and Ro divided the kingdom so that Ro ruled the land, and Helghe the sea. One day, Helghe arrived in Halland/Lolland and slept with Thore, the daughter of one of Ro's farmers. This resulted in a daughter named Yrse. Much later, he met Yrse, and without knowing that she was his daughter, he made her pregnant with Rolf. Eventually, Helghe found out that Yrse was his own daughter and, out of shame, went east and killed himself.
Both Helghe and Ro being dead, a Swedish king, called Hakon in the Chronicon Lethrense proper, and Athisl in the Annales – corresponding to Eadgils – forced the Danes to accept a dog as king. The dog king was succeeded by Rolf Krage.
Rolf Krage was a big man in body and soul and was so generous that no one asked him for anything twice. His sister Skulda was married against Rolf's will to Hartwar or Hiarwarth (Heoroweard), a German earl of Skåne, but reputedly Rolf had given Skulda to him together with Sweden.
This Hartwar arrived in Zealand with a large army and said that he wanted to give his tribute to Rolf, but killed Rolf together with all his men. Only one survived, Wigg, who played along until he was to do homage to Hartwar. Then, he pierced Hartwar with a sword, and so Hartwar was king for only one morning.
Gesta Danorum
The Book 2 of the Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus contains roughly the same information as the Chronicon Lethrense and the Annales Lundenses, i.e. that Ro (Hroðgar) and Helgo (Halga) were the son of Haldanus (Healfdene). When Haldanus died of old age, Ro took the land and Helgo the water. One day during his sea roving, Helgo arrived at Thurø, where he found and raped the young girl Thora, which resulted in Urse (Yrsa). When Helgo after many years returned to Thurø, Thora avenged her lost virginity by sending Urse to Helgo who, unknowingly raped his own daughter. This resulted in Roluo, who was a gifted man, both physically and intellectually and as brave as he was tall. After some time Helgo repelled a Swedish invasion, avenged Ro by killing the Swedish king Hothbrodd, and made the Swedes pay tribute. However, he committed suicide due to shame for his incestuous relationship with Urse. Roluo succeeded him.
The new king of Sweden, Athislus (Eadgils), thought that the tribute to the Daner might be smaller if he married the Danish king's mother and so took Urse for a queen. However, after some time, Urse was so upset with the Swedish king's greed that she thought out a ruse to run away from the king and at the same time liberate him of his wealth. She incited Athislus to rebel against Roluo, and arranged so that Roluo would be invited and promised a wealth in gifts.
At the banquet Roluo was at first not recognised by his mother, but when their fondness was commented on by Athisl, the Swedish king and Roluo made a wager where Roluo would prove his endurance. Roluo was placed in front of a fire that exposed him to such heat that finally a maiden could suffer the sight no more and extinguished the fire. Roluo was greatly recompensed by Athisl for his endurance.
When the banquet had lasted for three days, Urse and Roluo escaped from Uppsala, early in the morning in carriages where they had put all the Swedish king's treasure. In order to lessen their burden, and to occupy any pursuing warriors they spread gold in their path (later in the work, this is referred to as "sowing the Fyrisvellir"), although there was a rumour that she only spread gilded copper. When Athislus, who was pursuing the escapers saw that a precious ring was lying on the ground, he bent down to pick it up. Roluo was pleased to see the king of Sweden bent down, and escaped in the ships with his mother.
A young man named Wigg was impressed with Roluo's bodily size and gave him the cognomen Krage, which meant a tall tree trunk used as a ladder. Roluo liked this name and rewarded Wigg with a heavy bracelet. Wigg, then, swore to Roluo to avenge him, if he was killed.
Roluo later defeated Athislus and gave Sweden to young man named Hiartuar (Heoroweard), who also married Roluo's sister Skulde. Skulde, however, did not like the fact that her husband had to pay taxes to Roluo and so incited Hiartuar to rebel against him. They so went to Lejre (a town which Roluo had built) with arms hidden in the ships, under the pretense that they wanted to pay tribute.
They were well-received, but after the banquet, when most people were drunk asleep, the Swedes and the Goths (i.e. the Geats) proceeded to kill everyone at Roluo's residence. After a long battle, involving Roluo's champion Bjarki, who fought in the shape of a spirit bear until he was awakened by his comrade Hjalti, the Geats won and Roluo was killed.
Hiartuar asked Wigg if he wanted to fight for him, and Wigg said yes. Hiartuar wanted to give Wigg a sword, but he insisted on receiving it by taking the hilt. Having the hilt in his hand, Wigg pierced Hiartuar with the sword and so avenged Roluo. Swedes and Geats then rushed forward and killed Wigg. The Swedish king Høtherus (based on the god Höðr), the brother of Athislus, succeeded Roluo and became the king of a combined Sweden and Denmark.
Hrólfr Kraki's saga
In Hrólfr Kraki's saga, Halfdan (Healfdene) had three children, the sons Helgi (Halga) and Hróarr (Hroðgar) and the daughter Signý. The sister was the eldest and married to Sævil Jarl, with whom she had the son Hrókr. Halfdan was murdered by his own brother Fróði (Froda) and the two brothers had to seek refuge with a man called Vivil on an island, until they could avenge their father and kill Fróði.
Whereas Hróarr moved to Northumbria and married the king's daughter, Helgi (i.e. Halga) went to the Saxons wanting to woo their warlike queen Oluf. She was, however, not interested and humiliated Helgi by shaving his head and covering him with tar, while he was asleep, and sending him back to his ship. Some time later, Helgi returned and through a ruse, he kidnapped the queen for a while during which time he made her pregnant.
Having returned to her kingdom, the queen bore a child, a girl which she named Yrsa after her dog. Yrsa was set to live as a shepherd, until she was 12 years old, when she met her father Helgi who fell in love with her, not knowing it was his daughter. Oluf kept quiet about the parentage and saw it as her revenge that Helgi would wed his own daughter. Helgi and Yrsa had the son Hrólfr.
Learning that Helgi and Yrsa lived happily together, queen Oluf travelled to Denmark to tell her daughter the truth. Yrsa was shocked and although Helgi wanted their relationship to remain as it was, Yrsa insisted on leaving him to live alone. She was later taken by the Swedish king Aðils (Eadgils) as his queen, which made Helgi even more unhappy. Helgi went to Uppsala to fetch her, but was killed by Aðils in battle. In Lejre, he was succeeded by his son Hrólfr.
Hrólfr soon assembled twelve great berserkers named Hrómundr harði, Hrólfr skjóthendi, Svipdagr, Beigaðr, Hvítserkr inn hvati, Haklangr, Harðrefill, Haki inn frækni, Vöttr inn mikilaflaði, Starólfr, Hjalti inn hugprúði and Bödvar Bjarki.
After some time, Bödvar Bjarki encouraged Hrólfr to go Uppsala to claim the gold that Aðils had taken from Helgi after the battle. Hrólfr departed with 120 men and his twelve berserkers and during a rest they were tested by a farmer called Hrani (Odin in disguise) who advised Hrólfr to send back all his troops but his twelve berserkers, as numbers would not help him against Aðils.
They were at first well received, but in his hall, Aðils did his best to stop Hrólfr with pit traps and hidden warriors who attacked the Danes. Finally Aðils entertained them but put them to a test where they had to endure immense heat by a fire. Hrólfr and his berserkers finally had enough and threw the courtiers, who were feeding the fire, into the fire and leapt at Aðils. The Swedish king disappeared through a hollow tree trunk that stood in his hall.
Yrsa admonished Aðils for wanting to kill her son, and went to meet the Danes. She gave them a man named Vöggr to entertain them. This Vöggr remarked that Hrólfr had the thin face of a pole ladder, a Kraki. Happy with his new cognomen Hrólfr gave Vöggr a golden ring, and Vöggr swore to avenge Hrólfr if anyone should kill him. Hrólfr and his company were then attacked by a troll in the shape of a boar in the service of Aðils, but Hrólfr's dog Gram killed it.
They then found out that Aðils had set the hall on fire, and so they broke out of the hall, only to find themselves surrounded by heavily armed warriors in the street. After a fight, king Aðils retreated to summon reinforcements.
Yrsa then provided her son with a silver drinking horn filled with gold and jewels and a famous ring, Svíagris. Then she gave Hrólf and his men twelve of the Swedish king's best horses, and all the armour and provisions they needed.
Hrólfr took a fond farewell of his mother and departed over the Fyrisvellir. When they saw Aðils and his warriors in pursuit, they spread the gold behind themselves. Aðils saw his precious Svíagris on the ground and stooped to pick it up with his spear, whereupon Hrólf cut his back with his sword and screamed in triumph that he had bent the back of the most powerful man in Sweden.
Hrólfr lived in peace for some time. However, his half-elven half-sister Skuld was married to Hjörvarðr (Heoroweard) one of Hrólfr's subkings, and she began to turn her husband against Hrólfr. Under the pretext that they would wait three years before paying the accumulated tribute at one time, Skuld assembled a large army which included strong warriors, criminals, elves and norns. She used seiðr (witchcraft) to hide the great muster from Hrólfr and his champions.
They then arrived at Lejre one yule for the midwinter celebrations, with all the weapons hidden in wagons. A fight started and like in the account found in Gesta Danorum, Bödvar Bjarki fought in the shape of a spirit bear until he was awakened by Hjalti. Skuld used her witchcraft to resuscitate her fallen warriors and after a long fight Hrólfr and all his berserkers fell.
Skuld became the ruler of Denmark but did not rule well. Bödvar Bjarki's brothers Elk-Froði and Þorir Houndsfoot went to Denmark to avenge their brother. The Swedish queen Yrsa gave them a large Swedish army headed by Vöggr. They captured Skuld before she could use her magic and tortured her to death. Then they raised a mound for Hrólfr Kraki where he was buried together with his sword Skofnung.
Skjöldunga saga
The Skjöldunga sagaNerman (1925:150) relates that Helgo (Halga) was the king of Denmark together with his brother Roas (Hroðgar). Helgo raped Olava, the queen of the Saxons, and she bore a daughter named Yrsa. The girl later married king Adillus (Eadgils), the king of Sweden, with whom she had the daughter Scullda.
Some years later, Helgo attacked Sweden and captured Yrsa, not knowing that she was his own daughter. He raped her and took her back to Denmark, where she bore the son Rolfo. After a few years, Yrsa's mother, queen Olava, came to visit her and told her that Helgo was her own father. In horror, Yrsa returned to Adillus, leaving her son behind. Helgo died when Rolfo was eight years old, and Rolfo succeeded him, and ruled together with his uncle Roas. Not much later, Roas was killed by his half-brothers Rærecus and Frodo, whereupon Rolfo became the sole king of Denmark.
In Sweden, Yrsa and Adillus married Scullda to the king of Öland, Hiørvardus (also called Hiorvardus and Hevardus, and who corresponds to Heoroweard in Beowulf). As her half-brother Rolfo was not consulted about this marriage, he was infuriated and he attacked Öland and made Hiørvardus and his kingdom tributary to Denmark.
After some time Adillus requested Rolfo's aid against king Ale (Onela) of Oppland, and Rolfo sent him his berserkers. Adillus then won the war, but refused to pay the expected tribute for the help and so Rolfo came to Uppsala to claim his recompense. After surviving some traps, Rolfo fled with Adillus' gold, helped by his mother Yrsa, and "sowed" it on the Fyrisvellir.
Hiørvardus and his queen Skullda rebelled against Rolfo and killed him. However, Hiørvardus did not live long after this and was killed. Rolfo was succeeded by his father's cousin Rörek, who, however, had to leave Skåne to Valdar and could only keep Zealand.
Skáldskaparmál
In the Skáldskaparmál by Snorri Sturluson, the story of Hrólfr Kraki is presented in order to explain why gold was known by the kenning Kraki's seed.
Snorri relates that Hrólfr was the most renowned king in Denmark for valour, generosity and graciousness. One day a poor boy called Vöggr arrived and expressed his surprise that such a great king would look like a little pole (kraki). Hrólfr said that Vöggr had given him a name and gave Vöggr a golden ring in recompense. In gratitude Vöggr swore to Hrólfr to avenge him, should he be killed.
A second tale was when the king of Sweden, Aðils (Eadgils), was in war with a Norwegian king named Áli (Onela), and they fought in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern. Aðils was married to Yrsa, the mother of Hrólfr and so sent an embassy to Hrólfr asking him for help against Áli. He would receive three valuable gifts in recompense. Hrólfr was involved in a war against the Saxons and could not come in person but sent his twelve berserkers. Áli died in the war, and Aðils took Áli's helmet Battle-boar and his horse Raven. The berserkers demanded three pounds of gold each in pay, and they demanded to choose the gifts that Aðils had promised Hrólfr, that is the two pieces of armour that nothing could pierce: the helmet battle-boar and the mailcoat Finn's heritage. They also wanted the famous ring Svíagris. Aðils considered the pay outrageous and refused.
When Hrólfr heard that Aðils refused to pay, he set off to Uppsala. They brought the ships to the river Fyris and rode directly to the Swedish king's hall at Uppsala with his twelve berserkers. Yrsa welcomed them and led them to their lodgings. Fires were prepared for them and they were given drinks. However, so much wood was heaped on the fires that the clothes started to burn away from their bodies. Hrólfr and his men had enough and threw the courtiers on the fire. Yrsa arrived and gave them a horn full of gold, the ring Svíagris and asked them to flee. As they rode over the Fyrisvellir, they saw Aðils and his men pursuing them. The fleeing men threw their gold on the plain so that the pursuers would stop to collect the gold. Aðils, however, continued the chase on his horse Slöngvir. Hrólfr then threw Svíagris and saw how Aðils stooped down to pick up the ring with his spear. Hrólfr exclaimed that he had seen the mightiest man in Sweden bend his back.
Ynglinga saga
The Skjöldunga saga was used by Snorri Sturluson as a source when he told the story of Aðils (Eadgils) and Yrsa, in his Ynglinga saga, a part of the Heimskringla. What remains of the Skjöldunga saga is a Latin summary by Arngrímur Jónsson, and so the two versions are basically the same, the main difference being that Arngrímur's version is more terse.
Snorri relates that Aðils betook himself to pillage the Saxons, whose king was Geirþjófr and queen Alof the Great. The king and consort were not at home, and so Aðils and his men plundered their residence at ease driving cattle and captives down to the ships. One of the captives was a remarkably beautiful girl named Yrsa, and Snorri writes that everyone was soon impressed with the well-mannered, pretty and intelligent girl. Most impressed was Aðils who made her his queen.
Some years later, Helgi (Halga), who ruled in Lejre, attacked Sweden and captured Yrsa. He raped Yrsa, his own daughter, and took her back to Lejre, where she bore him the son Hrólfr. When the boy was three years of age, Yrsa's mother, queen Alof of Saxony, came to visit her and told her that her husband Helgi was her own father. Horrified, Yrsa returned to Aðils, leaving her son behind, and stayed in Sweden for the rest of her life. When Hrólfr was eight years old, Helgi died during a war expedition and Hrólf was proclaimed king.
Snorri finishes his account by briefly mentioning that the Skjöldunga saga contained an extensive account of how Hrólf came to Uppsala and sowed gold on the Fyrisvellir.
Gróttasöngr
The Gróttasöngr contains a stanza (nr 22) sung by the giantesses Fenja and Menja. It only names Yrsa and the situation that her son and brother (i.e. Hroðulf) will avenge Fródi (Froda):
This piece cannot refer to Hrólfr Kraki's saga where Froda was the half-brother of Healfdene because this Froda was killed by Hroðgar (and therefore they avenged him). It can, however, be interpreted through the Skjöldunga saga in which Hroðulf's uncle Hroðgar was murdered by his half-brother Froda.
Either Frodi's death is the one they want to avenge, or they seek vengeance for Hroðgar, killed by his half brother. The Danish equivalent of hefna is at hævne, meaning revenge (or avenging), in this case for Fródi's murder, indicating no relation to Hroðgars death, but to Frodi's. 'Kin' and 'kinsmen' share a certain reference to blood relation, yet 'brother' can also have the meaning of either: 'one of us' and 'our tribesmen', or simply 'son and brother'. After being recognized for his deeds, Yrsa will see Hroðulf as her son once more.
Gautreks saga
Hrólfr Kraki is mentioned briefly in Gautreks saga, written around 1300, when the adventurer Ref comes to him with a gift consisting of two dogs. In return for this gift Hrólfr gives him a helmet and a chainmail, both made of red gold.
Modern references
Danish playwright Johannes Ewald wrote a play about Rolf Krage (1770), based on Saxo's version of the story in Gesta Danorum. Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger wrote a poem, Helge: et Digt (1814).
The American writer Poul Anderson used this story in his novel Hrolf Kraki's Saga (1973). Anderson's story begins in earlier generations and more or less follows the version in Hrolfr Kraki's Saga described above. The book was well received by many fantasy fans.
"Sellic Spell', a fictionalized treatment of the story by J. R. R. Tolkien, was published in Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary on May 22, 2014, Tolkien himself explaining that his was "a limited...attempt to reconstruct the Anglo-Saxon tale that lies behind the folk-tale element in Beowulf".
The Danish Navy's first ironclad warship was named Rolf Krake.
Notes
Bibliography and external links
English translations of the Old Norse Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans :
The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and his Champions. Trans. Peter Tunstall (2003). Available at Norse saga: The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and Northvegr: The Saga of Hrolf Kraki.
The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki. Trans. Jesse L. Byock (1998). London: Penguin. . Selection from this translation are available at The Viking Site: Excerpts from The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki.
"King Hrolf and his champions" included in Eirik the Red: And Other Icelandic Sagas. Trans. Gwyn Jones (1961). Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press. .
Original texts''':
Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans in Old Norse from heimskringla.no
Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans in Old Norse from heimskringla.no
University of Oregon: Norse: Fornaldarsögur norðurlanda: Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans
Sagnanet: Hrólfs saga kraka
Anderson, Poul (1973). Hrolf Kraki's Saga. New York: Ballantine Books. . New York: Del Rey Books. . Reprinted 1988 by Baen Books, .
Literary Encyclopedia entry
Birger Nerman, 1925, Det svenska rikets uppkomst (in Swedish)Beowulf:
Beowulf read aloud in Old English
Modern English translation by Francis Barton Gummere
Modern English translation by John Lesslie Hall
Ringler, Dick. Beowulf: A New Translation For Oral Delivery, May 2005. Searchable text with full audio available, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.
Several different Modern English translationsChronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundense:
Chronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundense in translation by Peter Tunstall
The same translation at Northvegr
Book 2 of Gesta Danorum at the Online and Medieval & Classical library
The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf by Olson, 1916, at Project Gutenberg
the Ynglinga saga in translation by Samuel Laing, 1844, at Northvegr
The Gróttasöngr in Thorpe's translation
Skáldskaparmál:
Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda in the original language
CyberSamurai Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology: Prose Edda - Skáldskaparmál (English)
CyberSamurai Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology: Prose Edda - Skáldskaparmál (Old Norse)
Malone, Kemp. Studies in Heroic Legend and in Current Speech. S. Einarsson & N.E. Eliason, eds. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger, 1959.
Lukman, Niels Clausen. Skjoldunge und Skilfinge. Hunnen- und Heruler-könige in Ostnordischer Überlieferung. Classica et Mediaevalia, dissertationes III. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag, 1943.
Hemmingsen, Lars. By Word of Mouth: the origins of Danish legendary history - studies in European learned and popular traditions of Dacians and Danes before A.D. 1200. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Copenhagen (Dept. of Folklore), 1995.
Anderson, Carl Edlund. Formation and Resolution of Ideological Contrast in the Early History of Scandinavia''. Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic (Faculty of English).
Overing, Gillian R., and Marijane Osborn. 'Landscape of Desire: Partial Stories of the Medieval Scandinavian World.' Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994: 1-37. (possible sailing times and the account of a "Beowulfian" voyage on the Cattegat)
6th-century monarchs in Europe
English heroic legends
Characters in Beowulf
Heroes in Norse myths and legends
People whose existence is disputed
Scyldings | false | [
"\"What Else Is There?\" is the third single from the Norwegian duo Röyksopp's second album The Understanding. It features the vocals of Karin Dreijer from the Swedish electronica duo The Knife. The album was released in the UK with the help of Astralwerks.\n\nThe single was used in an O2 television advertisement in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia during 2008. It was also used in the 2006 film Cashback and the 2007 film, Meet Bill. Trentemøller's remix of \"What Else is There?\" was featured in an episode of the HBO show Entourage.\n\nThe song was covered by extreme metal band Enslaved as a bonus track for their album E.\n\nThe song was listed as the 375th best song of the 2000s by Pitchfork Media.\n\nOfficial versions\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Album Version) – 5:17\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Radio Edit) – 3:38\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Jacques Lu Cont Radio Mix) – 3:46\n\"What Else Is There?\" (The Emperor Machine Vocal Version) – 8:03\n\"What Else Is There?\" (The Emperor Machine Dub Version) – 7:51\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Mix) – 8:25\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Edit) – 4:50\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Remix) (Radio Edit) – 3:06\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Trentemøller Remix) – 7:42\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Vitalic Remix) – 5:14\n\nResponse\nThe single was officially released on 5 December 2005 in the UK. The single had a limited release on 21 November 2005 to promote the upcoming album. On the UK Singles Chart, it peaked at number 32, while on the UK Dance Chart, it reached number one.\n\nMusic video\nThe music video was directed by Martin de Thurah. It features Norwegian model Marianne Schröder who is shown lip-syncing Dreijer's voice. Schröder is depicted as a floating woman traveling across stormy landscapes and within empty houses. Dreijer makes a cameo appearance as a woman wearing an Elizabethan ruff while dining alone at a festive table.\n\nMovie spots\n\nThe song is also featured in the movie Meet Bill as characters played by Jessica Alba and Aaron Eckhart smoke marijuana while listening to it. It is also part of the end credits music of the film Cashback.\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2005 singles\nRöyksopp songs\nAstralwerks singles\nSongs written by Svein Berge\nSongs written by Torbjørn Brundtland\n2004 songs\nSongs written by Roger Greenaway\nSongs written by Olof Dreijer\nSongs written by Karin Dreijer",
"Coincya wrightii, known as Lundy cabbage, is a species of primitive brassicoid, endemic to the island of Lundy off the southwestern coast of England, where it is sufficiently isolated to have formed its own species, with its endemic insect pollinators. Coincya wrightii grows natively only on the eastern cliffs and slopes of the island and nowhere else in the world and is a protected species. It reaches up to a metre in height and with its yellow flowers (seen from May to August) it looks a little similar to oil seed rape. Although it is a member of the cabbage family, it tastes unpleasant – it has been described as \"triple-distilled essence of Brussels sprout\".\n\nThe Lundy cabbage is unique in that two species of beetles that feed on it – the Lundy cabbage flea beetle (Psylliodes luridipennis) and the Lundy cabbage weevil (Ceutorhynchus contractus pallipes) – also occur nowhere else in the world. The number of Lundy cabbages varies from year to year. Grazing by goats, sheep and rabbits is a problem, along with suppression by the invasive alien Rhododendron bushes that have been spreading across the island.\n\nIt is an excellent example of isolation on an island leading to the production of unique species.\n\nSee also\nIsle of Man cabbage\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\"What is a Lundy Cabbage and why is it important?\" (at Archive.org) \nUK Biodiversity Action Plan\nArkive: Coincya wrightii\n\nEndemic flora of England\nLundy\nwrightii\nPlants described in 1989"
] |
[
"Hrólfr Kraki",
"Beowulf and Bjarki",
"Where is beowolf from?",
"Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Gotaland)",
"What does Beowolf do?",
"the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela.",
"What does beowulf mean?",
"Beowulf (lit. \"bee-wolf\", a kenning for \"bear\")",
"Do Beowulf and Bjarki have anything in common?",
"both the names Beowulf (lit. \"bee-wolf\", a kenning for \"bear\") and Bjarki are associated with bears.",
"What else is similar?",
"Bodvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Ali, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vanern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela."
] | C_82ba42bb74f44967ab7000b78ecbcbf5_1 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 6 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article besides common things between Beowulf and Bjarki? | Hrólfr Kraki | The standard view is that, if Beowulf himself has a 'cognate' character in Rolf Kraki's story, it is Bodvar Bjarki (Bodvar Biarke), who also has a younger companion, Hjalti (Hialte) - perhaps matching the Beowulf character Wiglaf. Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Gotaland) and one of Bodvar Bjarki's elder brothers, Thorir, becomes a king of Gotaland. Moreover, like Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki arrives in Denmark from Gotaland (Geatland), and upon arriving in Denmark he kills a beast that has been ravaging the Danish court for two years. The monster in Hrolf Kraki's saga, however, is quite unlike the Grendel of Beowulf; but it does have characteristics of a more typical dragon, a creature which appears later in Beowulf. Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark. Proponents of this theory, like J. R. R. Tolkien, argue that both the names Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") and Bjarki are associated with bears. Bodvar Bjarki is constantly associated with bears, his father actually being one. In some of the Hrolf Kraki material, Bodvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Ali, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vanern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bodvar Bjarki are one and the same. This match supports the hypothesis that the adventure with the dragon is also originally derived from the same story. CANNOTANSWER | As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bodvar Bjarki are one and the same. | Hrólfr Kraki (Old Norse: ), Hroðulf, Rolfo, Roluo, Rolf Krage (early 6th century) was a semi-legendary Danish king who appears in both Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian tradition.
Both traditions describe him as a Danish Scylding, the nephew of Hroðgar and the grandson of Healfdene. The consensus view is that Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian traditions describe the same people. Whereas the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf and Widsith do not go further than treating his relationship with Hroðgar and their animosity with Froda and Ingeld, the Scandinavian sources expand on his life as the king at Lejre and on his relationship with Halga, Hroðgar's brother. In Beowulf and Widsith, it is never explained how Hroðgar and Hroðulf are uncle and nephew.
Beowulf
The poem Beowulf introduces Hroðulf as kinsman. Later, the text explains that Hroðulf is Hroðgar's nephew and that "each was true to the other". Hroðgar is given three siblings, brothers Heorogar and Halga and an unnamed sister, all the children of Healfdene and belonging to the royal clan known as the Scyldings. The poem does not indicate which of Hroðgar's siblings is Hroðulf's parent, but later Scandinavian tradition establishes this as Halga.
Hroðgar and queen Wealhþeow had two young sons, Hreðric and Hroðmund, and Hroðulf would be their guardian in case Hroðgar dies. In a deliberately ironic passage it appears that the queen trusts Hroðulf, not suspecting that he will murder her sons to claim the throne for himself:
No existence of any Hreðric or Hroðmund, sons of Hroðgar, has survived in Scandinavian sources (although Hreðric has been suggested to be the same person as Hroerekr/Roricus, a Danish king generally described as a son or successor of Ingjald). This Hroerekr is sometimes said to have been killed by Hrólfr, vindicating the foreshadowing in Beowulf.
The Scyldings were in conflict with another clan or tribe named the Heaðobards led by their king Froda and his son Ingeld. It is in relation to this war that Hroðulf is mentioned in the other Anglo-Saxon poem where he appears, Widsith.
Hrólf and Hroðulf
A common identification is that Hrólf Kraki is the same as the character Hroðulf (Hroðgar's nephew) in Beowulf. There seems to be some foreshadowing in Beowulf that Hroðulf will attempt to usurp the throne from Hroðgar's sons Hreðric and Hroðmund, a deed that also seems to be referred to in Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum (Book 2), where we find: "... our king, who laid low Rorik, the son of Bok the covetous, and wrapped the coward in death." Rorik is the form we would expect Hreðric to take in Danish and we find personages named Rorik or Hrok or similar in most version of the Hrólf Kraki tradition, but differently accounted for, seemingly indicating that Scandinavian tradition had forgotten who exactly Hreðric/Rorik/Hrok was and various story tellers subsequently invented details to explain references to this personage in older poems. The future slaying of Hreðric may be the occasion of the future burning of the hall of Heorot in the beginning of the poem – though some take it instead to refer to the legendary death of Hrólf Kraki, who in Icelandic sources is said to have died in the burning of his hall by his brother-in-law Hjörvard.
Beowulf and Bjarki
The standard view is that, if Beowulf himself has a 'cognate' character in Rolf Kraki's story, it is Bödvar Bjarki (Bodvar Biarke), who also has a younger companion, Hjalti (Hialte) – perhaps matching the Beowulf character Wiglaf. Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Götaland) and one of Bödvar Bjarki's elder brothers, Thorir, becomes a king of Götaland. Moreover, like Beowulf, Bödvar Bjarki arrives in Denmark from Götaland (Geatland), and upon arriving in Denmark he kills a beast that has been ravaging the Danish court for two years. The monster in Hrólf Krakis saga, however, is quite unlike the Grendel of Beowulf; but it does have characteristics of a more typical dragon, a creature which appears later in Beowulf.
Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bödvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark.
Proponents of this theory, like J. R. R. Tolkien, argue that both the names Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") and Bjarki are associated with bears. Bodvar Bjarki is constantly associated with bears, his father actually being one.
In some of the Hrólf Kraki material, Bödvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Áli, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bödvar Bjarki are one and the same. This match supports the hypothesis that the adventure with the dragon is also originally derived from the same story.
Hrothgar and Hróar
As for the king of the Danes, Hroðgar, he is identical to Hróar or Ro, the uncle of Hrólf Kraki who in other sources outside of Beowulf rules as a co-king with his brother Helgi. But in those sources it is Hróar/Hroðgar who dies before his brother or who departs to Northumberland to rule his wife's kingdom leaving Helgi/Halga the sole rule of Denmark. In Beowulf Halga/Helgi has died and Hroðgar is the primary ruler with Hroðulf son of Halga as a junior co-ruler.
Furthermore, the Swedish kings referenced in Beowulf are adequately matched with the 5th and 6th century Swedish kings in Uppsala (see also Swedish semi-legendary kings):
This has obviously nothing to do with a common origin of the Beowulf and Hrólf Kraki legends in particular but simply reflects a shared genealogical tradition.
Widsith
The poem Widsith also mentions Hroðgar and Hroðulf, but indicates that the feud with Ingeld did not end until the latter was defeated at Heorot:
This piece suggests that the conflict between the Scyldings Hroðgar and Hroðulf on one side, and the Heaðobards Froda and Ingeld on the other, was well known in Anglo-Saxon England. This conflict also appears in Scandinavian sources, but in the Norse tradition the Heaðobards had apparently been forgotten and the conflict is instead rendered as a family feud (see Hrólf Kraki's saga and Skjöldunga saga).
Chronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundenses
The Chronicon Lethrense and the included Annales Lundenses tell that Haldan (Healfdene) had two sons, Helghe (Halga) and Ro (Hroðgar). When Haldan died of old age, Helghe and Ro divided the kingdom so that Ro ruled the land, and Helghe the sea. One day, Helghe arrived in Halland/Lolland and slept with Thore, the daughter of one of Ro's farmers. This resulted in a daughter named Yrse. Much later, he met Yrse, and without knowing that she was his daughter, he made her pregnant with Rolf. Eventually, Helghe found out that Yrse was his own daughter and, out of shame, went east and killed himself.
Both Helghe and Ro being dead, a Swedish king, called Hakon in the Chronicon Lethrense proper, and Athisl in the Annales – corresponding to Eadgils – forced the Danes to accept a dog as king. The dog king was succeeded by Rolf Krage.
Rolf Krage was a big man in body and soul and was so generous that no one asked him for anything twice. His sister Skulda was married against Rolf's will to Hartwar or Hiarwarth (Heoroweard), a German earl of Skåne, but reputedly Rolf had given Skulda to him together with Sweden.
This Hartwar arrived in Zealand with a large army and said that he wanted to give his tribute to Rolf, but killed Rolf together with all his men. Only one survived, Wigg, who played along until he was to do homage to Hartwar. Then, he pierced Hartwar with a sword, and so Hartwar was king for only one morning.
Gesta Danorum
The Book 2 of the Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus contains roughly the same information as the Chronicon Lethrense and the Annales Lundenses, i.e. that Ro (Hroðgar) and Helgo (Halga) were the son of Haldanus (Healfdene). When Haldanus died of old age, Ro took the land and Helgo the water. One day during his sea roving, Helgo arrived at Thurø, where he found and raped the young girl Thora, which resulted in Urse (Yrsa). When Helgo after many years returned to Thurø, Thora avenged her lost virginity by sending Urse to Helgo who, unknowingly raped his own daughter. This resulted in Roluo, who was a gifted man, both physically and intellectually and as brave as he was tall. After some time Helgo repelled a Swedish invasion, avenged Ro by killing the Swedish king Hothbrodd, and made the Swedes pay tribute. However, he committed suicide due to shame for his incestuous relationship with Urse. Roluo succeeded him.
The new king of Sweden, Athislus (Eadgils), thought that the tribute to the Daner might be smaller if he married the Danish king's mother and so took Urse for a queen. However, after some time, Urse was so upset with the Swedish king's greed that she thought out a ruse to run away from the king and at the same time liberate him of his wealth. She incited Athislus to rebel against Roluo, and arranged so that Roluo would be invited and promised a wealth in gifts.
At the banquet Roluo was at first not recognised by his mother, but when their fondness was commented on by Athisl, the Swedish king and Roluo made a wager where Roluo would prove his endurance. Roluo was placed in front of a fire that exposed him to such heat that finally a maiden could suffer the sight no more and extinguished the fire. Roluo was greatly recompensed by Athisl for his endurance.
When the banquet had lasted for three days, Urse and Roluo escaped from Uppsala, early in the morning in carriages where they had put all the Swedish king's treasure. In order to lessen their burden, and to occupy any pursuing warriors they spread gold in their path (later in the work, this is referred to as "sowing the Fyrisvellir"), although there was a rumour that she only spread gilded copper. When Athislus, who was pursuing the escapers saw that a precious ring was lying on the ground, he bent down to pick it up. Roluo was pleased to see the king of Sweden bent down, and escaped in the ships with his mother.
A young man named Wigg was impressed with Roluo's bodily size and gave him the cognomen Krage, which meant a tall tree trunk used as a ladder. Roluo liked this name and rewarded Wigg with a heavy bracelet. Wigg, then, swore to Roluo to avenge him, if he was killed.
Roluo later defeated Athislus and gave Sweden to young man named Hiartuar (Heoroweard), who also married Roluo's sister Skulde. Skulde, however, did not like the fact that her husband had to pay taxes to Roluo and so incited Hiartuar to rebel against him. They so went to Lejre (a town which Roluo had built) with arms hidden in the ships, under the pretense that they wanted to pay tribute.
They were well-received, but after the banquet, when most people were drunk asleep, the Swedes and the Goths (i.e. the Geats) proceeded to kill everyone at Roluo's residence. After a long battle, involving Roluo's champion Bjarki, who fought in the shape of a spirit bear until he was awakened by his comrade Hjalti, the Geats won and Roluo was killed.
Hiartuar asked Wigg if he wanted to fight for him, and Wigg said yes. Hiartuar wanted to give Wigg a sword, but he insisted on receiving it by taking the hilt. Having the hilt in his hand, Wigg pierced Hiartuar with the sword and so avenged Roluo. Swedes and Geats then rushed forward and killed Wigg. The Swedish king Høtherus (based on the god Höðr), the brother of Athislus, succeeded Roluo and became the king of a combined Sweden and Denmark.
Hrólfr Kraki's saga
In Hrólfr Kraki's saga, Halfdan (Healfdene) had three children, the sons Helgi (Halga) and Hróarr (Hroðgar) and the daughter Signý. The sister was the eldest and married to Sævil Jarl, with whom she had the son Hrókr. Halfdan was murdered by his own brother Fróði (Froda) and the two brothers had to seek refuge with a man called Vivil on an island, until they could avenge their father and kill Fróði.
Whereas Hróarr moved to Northumbria and married the king's daughter, Helgi (i.e. Halga) went to the Saxons wanting to woo their warlike queen Oluf. She was, however, not interested and humiliated Helgi by shaving his head and covering him with tar, while he was asleep, and sending him back to his ship. Some time later, Helgi returned and through a ruse, he kidnapped the queen for a while during which time he made her pregnant.
Having returned to her kingdom, the queen bore a child, a girl which she named Yrsa after her dog. Yrsa was set to live as a shepherd, until she was 12 years old, when she met her father Helgi who fell in love with her, not knowing it was his daughter. Oluf kept quiet about the parentage and saw it as her revenge that Helgi would wed his own daughter. Helgi and Yrsa had the son Hrólfr.
Learning that Helgi and Yrsa lived happily together, queen Oluf travelled to Denmark to tell her daughter the truth. Yrsa was shocked and although Helgi wanted their relationship to remain as it was, Yrsa insisted on leaving him to live alone. She was later taken by the Swedish king Aðils (Eadgils) as his queen, which made Helgi even more unhappy. Helgi went to Uppsala to fetch her, but was killed by Aðils in battle. In Lejre, he was succeeded by his son Hrólfr.
Hrólfr soon assembled twelve great berserkers named Hrómundr harði, Hrólfr skjóthendi, Svipdagr, Beigaðr, Hvítserkr inn hvati, Haklangr, Harðrefill, Haki inn frækni, Vöttr inn mikilaflaði, Starólfr, Hjalti inn hugprúði and Bödvar Bjarki.
After some time, Bödvar Bjarki encouraged Hrólfr to go Uppsala to claim the gold that Aðils had taken from Helgi after the battle. Hrólfr departed with 120 men and his twelve berserkers and during a rest they were tested by a farmer called Hrani (Odin in disguise) who advised Hrólfr to send back all his troops but his twelve berserkers, as numbers would not help him against Aðils.
They were at first well received, but in his hall, Aðils did his best to stop Hrólfr with pit traps and hidden warriors who attacked the Danes. Finally Aðils entertained them but put them to a test where they had to endure immense heat by a fire. Hrólfr and his berserkers finally had enough and threw the courtiers, who were feeding the fire, into the fire and leapt at Aðils. The Swedish king disappeared through a hollow tree trunk that stood in his hall.
Yrsa admonished Aðils for wanting to kill her son, and went to meet the Danes. She gave them a man named Vöggr to entertain them. This Vöggr remarked that Hrólfr had the thin face of a pole ladder, a Kraki. Happy with his new cognomen Hrólfr gave Vöggr a golden ring, and Vöggr swore to avenge Hrólfr if anyone should kill him. Hrólfr and his company were then attacked by a troll in the shape of a boar in the service of Aðils, but Hrólfr's dog Gram killed it.
They then found out that Aðils had set the hall on fire, and so they broke out of the hall, only to find themselves surrounded by heavily armed warriors in the street. After a fight, king Aðils retreated to summon reinforcements.
Yrsa then provided her son with a silver drinking horn filled with gold and jewels and a famous ring, Svíagris. Then she gave Hrólf and his men twelve of the Swedish king's best horses, and all the armour and provisions they needed.
Hrólfr took a fond farewell of his mother and departed over the Fyrisvellir. When they saw Aðils and his warriors in pursuit, they spread the gold behind themselves. Aðils saw his precious Svíagris on the ground and stooped to pick it up with his spear, whereupon Hrólf cut his back with his sword and screamed in triumph that he had bent the back of the most powerful man in Sweden.
Hrólfr lived in peace for some time. However, his half-elven half-sister Skuld was married to Hjörvarðr (Heoroweard) one of Hrólfr's subkings, and she began to turn her husband against Hrólfr. Under the pretext that they would wait three years before paying the accumulated tribute at one time, Skuld assembled a large army which included strong warriors, criminals, elves and norns. She used seiðr (witchcraft) to hide the great muster from Hrólfr and his champions.
They then arrived at Lejre one yule for the midwinter celebrations, with all the weapons hidden in wagons. A fight started and like in the account found in Gesta Danorum, Bödvar Bjarki fought in the shape of a spirit bear until he was awakened by Hjalti. Skuld used her witchcraft to resuscitate her fallen warriors and after a long fight Hrólfr and all his berserkers fell.
Skuld became the ruler of Denmark but did not rule well. Bödvar Bjarki's brothers Elk-Froði and Þorir Houndsfoot went to Denmark to avenge their brother. The Swedish queen Yrsa gave them a large Swedish army headed by Vöggr. They captured Skuld before she could use her magic and tortured her to death. Then they raised a mound for Hrólfr Kraki where he was buried together with his sword Skofnung.
Skjöldunga saga
The Skjöldunga sagaNerman (1925:150) relates that Helgo (Halga) was the king of Denmark together with his brother Roas (Hroðgar). Helgo raped Olava, the queen of the Saxons, and she bore a daughter named Yrsa. The girl later married king Adillus (Eadgils), the king of Sweden, with whom she had the daughter Scullda.
Some years later, Helgo attacked Sweden and captured Yrsa, not knowing that she was his own daughter. He raped her and took her back to Denmark, where she bore the son Rolfo. After a few years, Yrsa's mother, queen Olava, came to visit her and told her that Helgo was her own father. In horror, Yrsa returned to Adillus, leaving her son behind. Helgo died when Rolfo was eight years old, and Rolfo succeeded him, and ruled together with his uncle Roas. Not much later, Roas was killed by his half-brothers Rærecus and Frodo, whereupon Rolfo became the sole king of Denmark.
In Sweden, Yrsa and Adillus married Scullda to the king of Öland, Hiørvardus (also called Hiorvardus and Hevardus, and who corresponds to Heoroweard in Beowulf). As her half-brother Rolfo was not consulted about this marriage, he was infuriated and he attacked Öland and made Hiørvardus and his kingdom tributary to Denmark.
After some time Adillus requested Rolfo's aid against king Ale (Onela) of Oppland, and Rolfo sent him his berserkers. Adillus then won the war, but refused to pay the expected tribute for the help and so Rolfo came to Uppsala to claim his recompense. After surviving some traps, Rolfo fled with Adillus' gold, helped by his mother Yrsa, and "sowed" it on the Fyrisvellir.
Hiørvardus and his queen Skullda rebelled against Rolfo and killed him. However, Hiørvardus did not live long after this and was killed. Rolfo was succeeded by his father's cousin Rörek, who, however, had to leave Skåne to Valdar and could only keep Zealand.
Skáldskaparmál
In the Skáldskaparmál by Snorri Sturluson, the story of Hrólfr Kraki is presented in order to explain why gold was known by the kenning Kraki's seed.
Snorri relates that Hrólfr was the most renowned king in Denmark for valour, generosity and graciousness. One day a poor boy called Vöggr arrived and expressed his surprise that such a great king would look like a little pole (kraki). Hrólfr said that Vöggr had given him a name and gave Vöggr a golden ring in recompense. In gratitude Vöggr swore to Hrólfr to avenge him, should he be killed.
A second tale was when the king of Sweden, Aðils (Eadgils), was in war with a Norwegian king named Áli (Onela), and they fought in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern. Aðils was married to Yrsa, the mother of Hrólfr and so sent an embassy to Hrólfr asking him for help against Áli. He would receive three valuable gifts in recompense. Hrólfr was involved in a war against the Saxons and could not come in person but sent his twelve berserkers. Áli died in the war, and Aðils took Áli's helmet Battle-boar and his horse Raven. The berserkers demanded three pounds of gold each in pay, and they demanded to choose the gifts that Aðils had promised Hrólfr, that is the two pieces of armour that nothing could pierce: the helmet battle-boar and the mailcoat Finn's heritage. They also wanted the famous ring Svíagris. Aðils considered the pay outrageous and refused.
When Hrólfr heard that Aðils refused to pay, he set off to Uppsala. They brought the ships to the river Fyris and rode directly to the Swedish king's hall at Uppsala with his twelve berserkers. Yrsa welcomed them and led them to their lodgings. Fires were prepared for them and they were given drinks. However, so much wood was heaped on the fires that the clothes started to burn away from their bodies. Hrólfr and his men had enough and threw the courtiers on the fire. Yrsa arrived and gave them a horn full of gold, the ring Svíagris and asked them to flee. As they rode over the Fyrisvellir, they saw Aðils and his men pursuing them. The fleeing men threw their gold on the plain so that the pursuers would stop to collect the gold. Aðils, however, continued the chase on his horse Slöngvir. Hrólfr then threw Svíagris and saw how Aðils stooped down to pick up the ring with his spear. Hrólfr exclaimed that he had seen the mightiest man in Sweden bend his back.
Ynglinga saga
The Skjöldunga saga was used by Snorri Sturluson as a source when he told the story of Aðils (Eadgils) and Yrsa, in his Ynglinga saga, a part of the Heimskringla. What remains of the Skjöldunga saga is a Latin summary by Arngrímur Jónsson, and so the two versions are basically the same, the main difference being that Arngrímur's version is more terse.
Snorri relates that Aðils betook himself to pillage the Saxons, whose king was Geirþjófr and queen Alof the Great. The king and consort were not at home, and so Aðils and his men plundered their residence at ease driving cattle and captives down to the ships. One of the captives was a remarkably beautiful girl named Yrsa, and Snorri writes that everyone was soon impressed with the well-mannered, pretty and intelligent girl. Most impressed was Aðils who made her his queen.
Some years later, Helgi (Halga), who ruled in Lejre, attacked Sweden and captured Yrsa. He raped Yrsa, his own daughter, and took her back to Lejre, where she bore him the son Hrólfr. When the boy was three years of age, Yrsa's mother, queen Alof of Saxony, came to visit her and told her that her husband Helgi was her own father. Horrified, Yrsa returned to Aðils, leaving her son behind, and stayed in Sweden for the rest of her life. When Hrólfr was eight years old, Helgi died during a war expedition and Hrólf was proclaimed king.
Snorri finishes his account by briefly mentioning that the Skjöldunga saga contained an extensive account of how Hrólf came to Uppsala and sowed gold on the Fyrisvellir.
Gróttasöngr
The Gróttasöngr contains a stanza (nr 22) sung by the giantesses Fenja and Menja. It only names Yrsa and the situation that her son and brother (i.e. Hroðulf) will avenge Fródi (Froda):
This piece cannot refer to Hrólfr Kraki's saga where Froda was the half-brother of Healfdene because this Froda was killed by Hroðgar (and therefore they avenged him). It can, however, be interpreted through the Skjöldunga saga in which Hroðulf's uncle Hroðgar was murdered by his half-brother Froda.
Either Frodi's death is the one they want to avenge, or they seek vengeance for Hroðgar, killed by his half brother. The Danish equivalent of hefna is at hævne, meaning revenge (or avenging), in this case for Fródi's murder, indicating no relation to Hroðgars death, but to Frodi's. 'Kin' and 'kinsmen' share a certain reference to blood relation, yet 'brother' can also have the meaning of either: 'one of us' and 'our tribesmen', or simply 'son and brother'. After being recognized for his deeds, Yrsa will see Hroðulf as her son once more.
Gautreks saga
Hrólfr Kraki is mentioned briefly in Gautreks saga, written around 1300, when the adventurer Ref comes to him with a gift consisting of two dogs. In return for this gift Hrólfr gives him a helmet and a chainmail, both made of red gold.
Modern references
Danish playwright Johannes Ewald wrote a play about Rolf Krage (1770), based on Saxo's version of the story in Gesta Danorum. Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger wrote a poem, Helge: et Digt (1814).
The American writer Poul Anderson used this story in his novel Hrolf Kraki's Saga (1973). Anderson's story begins in earlier generations and more or less follows the version in Hrolfr Kraki's Saga described above. The book was well received by many fantasy fans.
"Sellic Spell', a fictionalized treatment of the story by J. R. R. Tolkien, was published in Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary on May 22, 2014, Tolkien himself explaining that his was "a limited...attempt to reconstruct the Anglo-Saxon tale that lies behind the folk-tale element in Beowulf".
The Danish Navy's first ironclad warship was named Rolf Krake.
Notes
Bibliography and external links
English translations of the Old Norse Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans :
The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and his Champions. Trans. Peter Tunstall (2003). Available at Norse saga: The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and Northvegr: The Saga of Hrolf Kraki.
The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki. Trans. Jesse L. Byock (1998). London: Penguin. . Selection from this translation are available at The Viking Site: Excerpts from The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki.
"King Hrolf and his champions" included in Eirik the Red: And Other Icelandic Sagas. Trans. Gwyn Jones (1961). Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press. .
Original texts''':
Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans in Old Norse from heimskringla.no
Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans in Old Norse from heimskringla.no
University of Oregon: Norse: Fornaldarsögur norðurlanda: Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans
Sagnanet: Hrólfs saga kraka
Anderson, Poul (1973). Hrolf Kraki's Saga. New York: Ballantine Books. . New York: Del Rey Books. . Reprinted 1988 by Baen Books, .
Literary Encyclopedia entry
Birger Nerman, 1925, Det svenska rikets uppkomst (in Swedish)Beowulf:
Beowulf read aloud in Old English
Modern English translation by Francis Barton Gummere
Modern English translation by John Lesslie Hall
Ringler, Dick. Beowulf: A New Translation For Oral Delivery, May 2005. Searchable text with full audio available, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.
Several different Modern English translationsChronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundense:
Chronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundense in translation by Peter Tunstall
The same translation at Northvegr
Book 2 of Gesta Danorum at the Online and Medieval & Classical library
The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf by Olson, 1916, at Project Gutenberg
the Ynglinga saga in translation by Samuel Laing, 1844, at Northvegr
The Gróttasöngr in Thorpe's translation
Skáldskaparmál:
Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda in the original language
CyberSamurai Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology: Prose Edda - Skáldskaparmál (English)
CyberSamurai Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology: Prose Edda - Skáldskaparmál (Old Norse)
Malone, Kemp. Studies in Heroic Legend and in Current Speech. S. Einarsson & N.E. Eliason, eds. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger, 1959.
Lukman, Niels Clausen. Skjoldunge und Skilfinge. Hunnen- und Heruler-könige in Ostnordischer Überlieferung. Classica et Mediaevalia, dissertationes III. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag, 1943.
Hemmingsen, Lars. By Word of Mouth: the origins of Danish legendary history - studies in European learned and popular traditions of Dacians and Danes before A.D. 1200. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Copenhagen (Dept. of Folklore), 1995.
Anderson, Carl Edlund. Formation and Resolution of Ideological Contrast in the Early History of Scandinavia''. Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic (Faculty of English).
Overing, Gillian R., and Marijane Osborn. 'Landscape of Desire: Partial Stories of the Medieval Scandinavian World.' Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994: 1-37. (possible sailing times and the account of a "Beowulfian" voyage on the Cattegat)
6th-century monarchs in Europe
English heroic legends
Characters in Beowulf
Heroes in Norse myths and legends
People whose existence is disputed
Scyldings | false | [
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region",
"Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts"
] |
[
"Hrólfr Kraki",
"Beowulf and Bjarki",
"Where is beowolf from?",
"Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Gotaland)",
"What does Beowolf do?",
"the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela.",
"What does beowulf mean?",
"Beowulf (lit. \"bee-wolf\", a kenning for \"bear\")",
"Do Beowulf and Bjarki have anything in common?",
"both the names Beowulf (lit. \"bee-wolf\", a kenning for \"bear\") and Bjarki are associated with bears.",
"What else is similar?",
"Bodvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Ali, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vanern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bodvar Bjarki are one and the same."
] | C_82ba42bb74f44967ab7000b78ecbcbf5_1 | Do they defeat anyone? | 7 | Do Beowulf and Bjarki defeat anyone? | Hrólfr Kraki | The standard view is that, if Beowulf himself has a 'cognate' character in Rolf Kraki's story, it is Bodvar Bjarki (Bodvar Biarke), who also has a younger companion, Hjalti (Hialte) - perhaps matching the Beowulf character Wiglaf. Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Gotaland) and one of Bodvar Bjarki's elder brothers, Thorir, becomes a king of Gotaland. Moreover, like Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki arrives in Denmark from Gotaland (Geatland), and upon arriving in Denmark he kills a beast that has been ravaging the Danish court for two years. The monster in Hrolf Kraki's saga, however, is quite unlike the Grendel of Beowulf; but it does have characteristics of a more typical dragon, a creature which appears later in Beowulf. Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark. Proponents of this theory, like J. R. R. Tolkien, argue that both the names Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") and Bjarki are associated with bears. Bodvar Bjarki is constantly associated with bears, his father actually being one. In some of the Hrolf Kraki material, Bodvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Ali, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vanern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bodvar Bjarki are one and the same. This match supports the hypothesis that the adventure with the dragon is also originally derived from the same story. CANNOTANSWER | Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark. | Hrólfr Kraki (Old Norse: ), Hroðulf, Rolfo, Roluo, Rolf Krage (early 6th century) was a semi-legendary Danish king who appears in both Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian tradition.
Both traditions describe him as a Danish Scylding, the nephew of Hroðgar and the grandson of Healfdene. The consensus view is that Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian traditions describe the same people. Whereas the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf and Widsith do not go further than treating his relationship with Hroðgar and their animosity with Froda and Ingeld, the Scandinavian sources expand on his life as the king at Lejre and on his relationship with Halga, Hroðgar's brother. In Beowulf and Widsith, it is never explained how Hroðgar and Hroðulf are uncle and nephew.
Beowulf
The poem Beowulf introduces Hroðulf as kinsman. Later, the text explains that Hroðulf is Hroðgar's nephew and that "each was true to the other". Hroðgar is given three siblings, brothers Heorogar and Halga and an unnamed sister, all the children of Healfdene and belonging to the royal clan known as the Scyldings. The poem does not indicate which of Hroðgar's siblings is Hroðulf's parent, but later Scandinavian tradition establishes this as Halga.
Hroðgar and queen Wealhþeow had two young sons, Hreðric and Hroðmund, and Hroðulf would be their guardian in case Hroðgar dies. In a deliberately ironic passage it appears that the queen trusts Hroðulf, not suspecting that he will murder her sons to claim the throne for himself:
No existence of any Hreðric or Hroðmund, sons of Hroðgar, has survived in Scandinavian sources (although Hreðric has been suggested to be the same person as Hroerekr/Roricus, a Danish king generally described as a son or successor of Ingjald). This Hroerekr is sometimes said to have been killed by Hrólfr, vindicating the foreshadowing in Beowulf.
The Scyldings were in conflict with another clan or tribe named the Heaðobards led by their king Froda and his son Ingeld. It is in relation to this war that Hroðulf is mentioned in the other Anglo-Saxon poem where he appears, Widsith.
Hrólf and Hroðulf
A common identification is that Hrólf Kraki is the same as the character Hroðulf (Hroðgar's nephew) in Beowulf. There seems to be some foreshadowing in Beowulf that Hroðulf will attempt to usurp the throne from Hroðgar's sons Hreðric and Hroðmund, a deed that also seems to be referred to in Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum (Book 2), where we find: "... our king, who laid low Rorik, the son of Bok the covetous, and wrapped the coward in death." Rorik is the form we would expect Hreðric to take in Danish and we find personages named Rorik or Hrok or similar in most version of the Hrólf Kraki tradition, but differently accounted for, seemingly indicating that Scandinavian tradition had forgotten who exactly Hreðric/Rorik/Hrok was and various story tellers subsequently invented details to explain references to this personage in older poems. The future slaying of Hreðric may be the occasion of the future burning of the hall of Heorot in the beginning of the poem – though some take it instead to refer to the legendary death of Hrólf Kraki, who in Icelandic sources is said to have died in the burning of his hall by his brother-in-law Hjörvard.
Beowulf and Bjarki
The standard view is that, if Beowulf himself has a 'cognate' character in Rolf Kraki's story, it is Bödvar Bjarki (Bodvar Biarke), who also has a younger companion, Hjalti (Hialte) – perhaps matching the Beowulf character Wiglaf. Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Götaland) and one of Bödvar Bjarki's elder brothers, Thorir, becomes a king of Götaland. Moreover, like Beowulf, Bödvar Bjarki arrives in Denmark from Götaland (Geatland), and upon arriving in Denmark he kills a beast that has been ravaging the Danish court for two years. The monster in Hrólf Krakis saga, however, is quite unlike the Grendel of Beowulf; but it does have characteristics of a more typical dragon, a creature which appears later in Beowulf.
Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bödvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark.
Proponents of this theory, like J. R. R. Tolkien, argue that both the names Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") and Bjarki are associated with bears. Bodvar Bjarki is constantly associated with bears, his father actually being one.
In some of the Hrólf Kraki material, Bödvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Áli, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bödvar Bjarki are one and the same. This match supports the hypothesis that the adventure with the dragon is also originally derived from the same story.
Hrothgar and Hróar
As for the king of the Danes, Hroðgar, he is identical to Hróar or Ro, the uncle of Hrólf Kraki who in other sources outside of Beowulf rules as a co-king with his brother Helgi. But in those sources it is Hróar/Hroðgar who dies before his brother or who departs to Northumberland to rule his wife's kingdom leaving Helgi/Halga the sole rule of Denmark. In Beowulf Halga/Helgi has died and Hroðgar is the primary ruler with Hroðulf son of Halga as a junior co-ruler.
Furthermore, the Swedish kings referenced in Beowulf are adequately matched with the 5th and 6th century Swedish kings in Uppsala (see also Swedish semi-legendary kings):
This has obviously nothing to do with a common origin of the Beowulf and Hrólf Kraki legends in particular but simply reflects a shared genealogical tradition.
Widsith
The poem Widsith also mentions Hroðgar and Hroðulf, but indicates that the feud with Ingeld did not end until the latter was defeated at Heorot:
This piece suggests that the conflict between the Scyldings Hroðgar and Hroðulf on one side, and the Heaðobards Froda and Ingeld on the other, was well known in Anglo-Saxon England. This conflict also appears in Scandinavian sources, but in the Norse tradition the Heaðobards had apparently been forgotten and the conflict is instead rendered as a family feud (see Hrólf Kraki's saga and Skjöldunga saga).
Chronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundenses
The Chronicon Lethrense and the included Annales Lundenses tell that Haldan (Healfdene) had two sons, Helghe (Halga) and Ro (Hroðgar). When Haldan died of old age, Helghe and Ro divided the kingdom so that Ro ruled the land, and Helghe the sea. One day, Helghe arrived in Halland/Lolland and slept with Thore, the daughter of one of Ro's farmers. This resulted in a daughter named Yrse. Much later, he met Yrse, and without knowing that she was his daughter, he made her pregnant with Rolf. Eventually, Helghe found out that Yrse was his own daughter and, out of shame, went east and killed himself.
Both Helghe and Ro being dead, a Swedish king, called Hakon in the Chronicon Lethrense proper, and Athisl in the Annales – corresponding to Eadgils – forced the Danes to accept a dog as king. The dog king was succeeded by Rolf Krage.
Rolf Krage was a big man in body and soul and was so generous that no one asked him for anything twice. His sister Skulda was married against Rolf's will to Hartwar or Hiarwarth (Heoroweard), a German earl of Skåne, but reputedly Rolf had given Skulda to him together with Sweden.
This Hartwar arrived in Zealand with a large army and said that he wanted to give his tribute to Rolf, but killed Rolf together with all his men. Only one survived, Wigg, who played along until he was to do homage to Hartwar. Then, he pierced Hartwar with a sword, and so Hartwar was king for only one morning.
Gesta Danorum
The Book 2 of the Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus contains roughly the same information as the Chronicon Lethrense and the Annales Lundenses, i.e. that Ro (Hroðgar) and Helgo (Halga) were the son of Haldanus (Healfdene). When Haldanus died of old age, Ro took the land and Helgo the water. One day during his sea roving, Helgo arrived at Thurø, where he found and raped the young girl Thora, which resulted in Urse (Yrsa). When Helgo after many years returned to Thurø, Thora avenged her lost virginity by sending Urse to Helgo who, unknowingly raped his own daughter. This resulted in Roluo, who was a gifted man, both physically and intellectually and as brave as he was tall. After some time Helgo repelled a Swedish invasion, avenged Ro by killing the Swedish king Hothbrodd, and made the Swedes pay tribute. However, he committed suicide due to shame for his incestuous relationship with Urse. Roluo succeeded him.
The new king of Sweden, Athislus (Eadgils), thought that the tribute to the Daner might be smaller if he married the Danish king's mother and so took Urse for a queen. However, after some time, Urse was so upset with the Swedish king's greed that she thought out a ruse to run away from the king and at the same time liberate him of his wealth. She incited Athislus to rebel against Roluo, and arranged so that Roluo would be invited and promised a wealth in gifts.
At the banquet Roluo was at first not recognised by his mother, but when their fondness was commented on by Athisl, the Swedish king and Roluo made a wager where Roluo would prove his endurance. Roluo was placed in front of a fire that exposed him to such heat that finally a maiden could suffer the sight no more and extinguished the fire. Roluo was greatly recompensed by Athisl for his endurance.
When the banquet had lasted for three days, Urse and Roluo escaped from Uppsala, early in the morning in carriages where they had put all the Swedish king's treasure. In order to lessen their burden, and to occupy any pursuing warriors they spread gold in their path (later in the work, this is referred to as "sowing the Fyrisvellir"), although there was a rumour that she only spread gilded copper. When Athislus, who was pursuing the escapers saw that a precious ring was lying on the ground, he bent down to pick it up. Roluo was pleased to see the king of Sweden bent down, and escaped in the ships with his mother.
A young man named Wigg was impressed with Roluo's bodily size and gave him the cognomen Krage, which meant a tall tree trunk used as a ladder. Roluo liked this name and rewarded Wigg with a heavy bracelet. Wigg, then, swore to Roluo to avenge him, if he was killed.
Roluo later defeated Athislus and gave Sweden to young man named Hiartuar (Heoroweard), who also married Roluo's sister Skulde. Skulde, however, did not like the fact that her husband had to pay taxes to Roluo and so incited Hiartuar to rebel against him. They so went to Lejre (a town which Roluo had built) with arms hidden in the ships, under the pretense that they wanted to pay tribute.
They were well-received, but after the banquet, when most people were drunk asleep, the Swedes and the Goths (i.e. the Geats) proceeded to kill everyone at Roluo's residence. After a long battle, involving Roluo's champion Bjarki, who fought in the shape of a spirit bear until he was awakened by his comrade Hjalti, the Geats won and Roluo was killed.
Hiartuar asked Wigg if he wanted to fight for him, and Wigg said yes. Hiartuar wanted to give Wigg a sword, but he insisted on receiving it by taking the hilt. Having the hilt in his hand, Wigg pierced Hiartuar with the sword and so avenged Roluo. Swedes and Geats then rushed forward and killed Wigg. The Swedish king Høtherus (based on the god Höðr), the brother of Athislus, succeeded Roluo and became the king of a combined Sweden and Denmark.
Hrólfr Kraki's saga
In Hrólfr Kraki's saga, Halfdan (Healfdene) had three children, the sons Helgi (Halga) and Hróarr (Hroðgar) and the daughter Signý. The sister was the eldest and married to Sævil Jarl, with whom she had the son Hrókr. Halfdan was murdered by his own brother Fróði (Froda) and the two brothers had to seek refuge with a man called Vivil on an island, until they could avenge their father and kill Fróði.
Whereas Hróarr moved to Northumbria and married the king's daughter, Helgi (i.e. Halga) went to the Saxons wanting to woo their warlike queen Oluf. She was, however, not interested and humiliated Helgi by shaving his head and covering him with tar, while he was asleep, and sending him back to his ship. Some time later, Helgi returned and through a ruse, he kidnapped the queen for a while during which time he made her pregnant.
Having returned to her kingdom, the queen bore a child, a girl which she named Yrsa after her dog. Yrsa was set to live as a shepherd, until she was 12 years old, when she met her father Helgi who fell in love with her, not knowing it was his daughter. Oluf kept quiet about the parentage and saw it as her revenge that Helgi would wed his own daughter. Helgi and Yrsa had the son Hrólfr.
Learning that Helgi and Yrsa lived happily together, queen Oluf travelled to Denmark to tell her daughter the truth. Yrsa was shocked and although Helgi wanted their relationship to remain as it was, Yrsa insisted on leaving him to live alone. She was later taken by the Swedish king Aðils (Eadgils) as his queen, which made Helgi even more unhappy. Helgi went to Uppsala to fetch her, but was killed by Aðils in battle. In Lejre, he was succeeded by his son Hrólfr.
Hrólfr soon assembled twelve great berserkers named Hrómundr harði, Hrólfr skjóthendi, Svipdagr, Beigaðr, Hvítserkr inn hvati, Haklangr, Harðrefill, Haki inn frækni, Vöttr inn mikilaflaði, Starólfr, Hjalti inn hugprúði and Bödvar Bjarki.
After some time, Bödvar Bjarki encouraged Hrólfr to go Uppsala to claim the gold that Aðils had taken from Helgi after the battle. Hrólfr departed with 120 men and his twelve berserkers and during a rest they were tested by a farmer called Hrani (Odin in disguise) who advised Hrólfr to send back all his troops but his twelve berserkers, as numbers would not help him against Aðils.
They were at first well received, but in his hall, Aðils did his best to stop Hrólfr with pit traps and hidden warriors who attacked the Danes. Finally Aðils entertained them but put them to a test where they had to endure immense heat by a fire. Hrólfr and his berserkers finally had enough and threw the courtiers, who were feeding the fire, into the fire and leapt at Aðils. The Swedish king disappeared through a hollow tree trunk that stood in his hall.
Yrsa admonished Aðils for wanting to kill her son, and went to meet the Danes. She gave them a man named Vöggr to entertain them. This Vöggr remarked that Hrólfr had the thin face of a pole ladder, a Kraki. Happy with his new cognomen Hrólfr gave Vöggr a golden ring, and Vöggr swore to avenge Hrólfr if anyone should kill him. Hrólfr and his company were then attacked by a troll in the shape of a boar in the service of Aðils, but Hrólfr's dog Gram killed it.
They then found out that Aðils had set the hall on fire, and so they broke out of the hall, only to find themselves surrounded by heavily armed warriors in the street. After a fight, king Aðils retreated to summon reinforcements.
Yrsa then provided her son with a silver drinking horn filled with gold and jewels and a famous ring, Svíagris. Then she gave Hrólf and his men twelve of the Swedish king's best horses, and all the armour and provisions they needed.
Hrólfr took a fond farewell of his mother and departed over the Fyrisvellir. When they saw Aðils and his warriors in pursuit, they spread the gold behind themselves. Aðils saw his precious Svíagris on the ground and stooped to pick it up with his spear, whereupon Hrólf cut his back with his sword and screamed in triumph that he had bent the back of the most powerful man in Sweden.
Hrólfr lived in peace for some time. However, his half-elven half-sister Skuld was married to Hjörvarðr (Heoroweard) one of Hrólfr's subkings, and she began to turn her husband against Hrólfr. Under the pretext that they would wait three years before paying the accumulated tribute at one time, Skuld assembled a large army which included strong warriors, criminals, elves and norns. She used seiðr (witchcraft) to hide the great muster from Hrólfr and his champions.
They then arrived at Lejre one yule for the midwinter celebrations, with all the weapons hidden in wagons. A fight started and like in the account found in Gesta Danorum, Bödvar Bjarki fought in the shape of a spirit bear until he was awakened by Hjalti. Skuld used her witchcraft to resuscitate her fallen warriors and after a long fight Hrólfr and all his berserkers fell.
Skuld became the ruler of Denmark but did not rule well. Bödvar Bjarki's brothers Elk-Froði and Þorir Houndsfoot went to Denmark to avenge their brother. The Swedish queen Yrsa gave them a large Swedish army headed by Vöggr. They captured Skuld before she could use her magic and tortured her to death. Then they raised a mound for Hrólfr Kraki where he was buried together with his sword Skofnung.
Skjöldunga saga
The Skjöldunga sagaNerman (1925:150) relates that Helgo (Halga) was the king of Denmark together with his brother Roas (Hroðgar). Helgo raped Olava, the queen of the Saxons, and she bore a daughter named Yrsa. The girl later married king Adillus (Eadgils), the king of Sweden, with whom she had the daughter Scullda.
Some years later, Helgo attacked Sweden and captured Yrsa, not knowing that she was his own daughter. He raped her and took her back to Denmark, where she bore the son Rolfo. After a few years, Yrsa's mother, queen Olava, came to visit her and told her that Helgo was her own father. In horror, Yrsa returned to Adillus, leaving her son behind. Helgo died when Rolfo was eight years old, and Rolfo succeeded him, and ruled together with his uncle Roas. Not much later, Roas was killed by his half-brothers Rærecus and Frodo, whereupon Rolfo became the sole king of Denmark.
In Sweden, Yrsa and Adillus married Scullda to the king of Öland, Hiørvardus (also called Hiorvardus and Hevardus, and who corresponds to Heoroweard in Beowulf). As her half-brother Rolfo was not consulted about this marriage, he was infuriated and he attacked Öland and made Hiørvardus and his kingdom tributary to Denmark.
After some time Adillus requested Rolfo's aid against king Ale (Onela) of Oppland, and Rolfo sent him his berserkers. Adillus then won the war, but refused to pay the expected tribute for the help and so Rolfo came to Uppsala to claim his recompense. After surviving some traps, Rolfo fled with Adillus' gold, helped by his mother Yrsa, and "sowed" it on the Fyrisvellir.
Hiørvardus and his queen Skullda rebelled against Rolfo and killed him. However, Hiørvardus did not live long after this and was killed. Rolfo was succeeded by his father's cousin Rörek, who, however, had to leave Skåne to Valdar and could only keep Zealand.
Skáldskaparmál
In the Skáldskaparmál by Snorri Sturluson, the story of Hrólfr Kraki is presented in order to explain why gold was known by the kenning Kraki's seed.
Snorri relates that Hrólfr was the most renowned king in Denmark for valour, generosity and graciousness. One day a poor boy called Vöggr arrived and expressed his surprise that such a great king would look like a little pole (kraki). Hrólfr said that Vöggr had given him a name and gave Vöggr a golden ring in recompense. In gratitude Vöggr swore to Hrólfr to avenge him, should he be killed.
A second tale was when the king of Sweden, Aðils (Eadgils), was in war with a Norwegian king named Áli (Onela), and they fought in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern. Aðils was married to Yrsa, the mother of Hrólfr and so sent an embassy to Hrólfr asking him for help against Áli. He would receive three valuable gifts in recompense. Hrólfr was involved in a war against the Saxons and could not come in person but sent his twelve berserkers. Áli died in the war, and Aðils took Áli's helmet Battle-boar and his horse Raven. The berserkers demanded three pounds of gold each in pay, and they demanded to choose the gifts that Aðils had promised Hrólfr, that is the two pieces of armour that nothing could pierce: the helmet battle-boar and the mailcoat Finn's heritage. They also wanted the famous ring Svíagris. Aðils considered the pay outrageous and refused.
When Hrólfr heard that Aðils refused to pay, he set off to Uppsala. They brought the ships to the river Fyris and rode directly to the Swedish king's hall at Uppsala with his twelve berserkers. Yrsa welcomed them and led them to their lodgings. Fires were prepared for them and they were given drinks. However, so much wood was heaped on the fires that the clothes started to burn away from their bodies. Hrólfr and his men had enough and threw the courtiers on the fire. Yrsa arrived and gave them a horn full of gold, the ring Svíagris and asked them to flee. As they rode over the Fyrisvellir, they saw Aðils and his men pursuing them. The fleeing men threw their gold on the plain so that the pursuers would stop to collect the gold. Aðils, however, continued the chase on his horse Slöngvir. Hrólfr then threw Svíagris and saw how Aðils stooped down to pick up the ring with his spear. Hrólfr exclaimed that he had seen the mightiest man in Sweden bend his back.
Ynglinga saga
The Skjöldunga saga was used by Snorri Sturluson as a source when he told the story of Aðils (Eadgils) and Yrsa, in his Ynglinga saga, a part of the Heimskringla. What remains of the Skjöldunga saga is a Latin summary by Arngrímur Jónsson, and so the two versions are basically the same, the main difference being that Arngrímur's version is more terse.
Snorri relates that Aðils betook himself to pillage the Saxons, whose king was Geirþjófr and queen Alof the Great. The king and consort were not at home, and so Aðils and his men plundered their residence at ease driving cattle and captives down to the ships. One of the captives was a remarkably beautiful girl named Yrsa, and Snorri writes that everyone was soon impressed with the well-mannered, pretty and intelligent girl. Most impressed was Aðils who made her his queen.
Some years later, Helgi (Halga), who ruled in Lejre, attacked Sweden and captured Yrsa. He raped Yrsa, his own daughter, and took her back to Lejre, where she bore him the son Hrólfr. When the boy was three years of age, Yrsa's mother, queen Alof of Saxony, came to visit her and told her that her husband Helgi was her own father. Horrified, Yrsa returned to Aðils, leaving her son behind, and stayed in Sweden for the rest of her life. When Hrólfr was eight years old, Helgi died during a war expedition and Hrólf was proclaimed king.
Snorri finishes his account by briefly mentioning that the Skjöldunga saga contained an extensive account of how Hrólf came to Uppsala and sowed gold on the Fyrisvellir.
Gróttasöngr
The Gróttasöngr contains a stanza (nr 22) sung by the giantesses Fenja and Menja. It only names Yrsa and the situation that her son and brother (i.e. Hroðulf) will avenge Fródi (Froda):
This piece cannot refer to Hrólfr Kraki's saga where Froda was the half-brother of Healfdene because this Froda was killed by Hroðgar (and therefore they avenged him). It can, however, be interpreted through the Skjöldunga saga in which Hroðulf's uncle Hroðgar was murdered by his half-brother Froda.
Either Frodi's death is the one they want to avenge, or they seek vengeance for Hroðgar, killed by his half brother. The Danish equivalent of hefna is at hævne, meaning revenge (or avenging), in this case for Fródi's murder, indicating no relation to Hroðgars death, but to Frodi's. 'Kin' and 'kinsmen' share a certain reference to blood relation, yet 'brother' can also have the meaning of either: 'one of us' and 'our tribesmen', or simply 'son and brother'. After being recognized for his deeds, Yrsa will see Hroðulf as her son once more.
Gautreks saga
Hrólfr Kraki is mentioned briefly in Gautreks saga, written around 1300, when the adventurer Ref comes to him with a gift consisting of two dogs. In return for this gift Hrólfr gives him a helmet and a chainmail, both made of red gold.
Modern references
Danish playwright Johannes Ewald wrote a play about Rolf Krage (1770), based on Saxo's version of the story in Gesta Danorum. Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger wrote a poem, Helge: et Digt (1814).
The American writer Poul Anderson used this story in his novel Hrolf Kraki's Saga (1973). Anderson's story begins in earlier generations and more or less follows the version in Hrolfr Kraki's Saga described above. The book was well received by many fantasy fans.
"Sellic Spell', a fictionalized treatment of the story by J. R. R. Tolkien, was published in Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary on May 22, 2014, Tolkien himself explaining that his was "a limited...attempt to reconstruct the Anglo-Saxon tale that lies behind the folk-tale element in Beowulf".
The Danish Navy's first ironclad warship was named Rolf Krake.
Notes
Bibliography and external links
English translations of the Old Norse Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans :
The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and his Champions. Trans. Peter Tunstall (2003). Available at Norse saga: The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and Northvegr: The Saga of Hrolf Kraki.
The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki. Trans. Jesse L. Byock (1998). London: Penguin. . Selection from this translation are available at The Viking Site: Excerpts from The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki.
"King Hrolf and his champions" included in Eirik the Red: And Other Icelandic Sagas. Trans. Gwyn Jones (1961). Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press. .
Original texts''':
Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans in Old Norse from heimskringla.no
Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans in Old Norse from heimskringla.no
University of Oregon: Norse: Fornaldarsögur norðurlanda: Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans
Sagnanet: Hrólfs saga kraka
Anderson, Poul (1973). Hrolf Kraki's Saga. New York: Ballantine Books. . New York: Del Rey Books. . Reprinted 1988 by Baen Books, .
Literary Encyclopedia entry
Birger Nerman, 1925, Det svenska rikets uppkomst (in Swedish)Beowulf:
Beowulf read aloud in Old English
Modern English translation by Francis Barton Gummere
Modern English translation by John Lesslie Hall
Ringler, Dick. Beowulf: A New Translation For Oral Delivery, May 2005. Searchable text with full audio available, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.
Several different Modern English translationsChronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundense:
Chronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundense in translation by Peter Tunstall
The same translation at Northvegr
Book 2 of Gesta Danorum at the Online and Medieval & Classical library
The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf by Olson, 1916, at Project Gutenberg
the Ynglinga saga in translation by Samuel Laing, 1844, at Northvegr
The Gróttasöngr in Thorpe's translation
Skáldskaparmál:
Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda in the original language
CyberSamurai Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology: Prose Edda - Skáldskaparmál (English)
CyberSamurai Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology: Prose Edda - Skáldskaparmál (Old Norse)
Malone, Kemp. Studies in Heroic Legend and in Current Speech. S. Einarsson & N.E. Eliason, eds. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger, 1959.
Lukman, Niels Clausen. Skjoldunge und Skilfinge. Hunnen- und Heruler-könige in Ostnordischer Überlieferung. Classica et Mediaevalia, dissertationes III. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag, 1943.
Hemmingsen, Lars. By Word of Mouth: the origins of Danish legendary history - studies in European learned and popular traditions of Dacians and Danes before A.D. 1200. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Copenhagen (Dept. of Folklore), 1995.
Anderson, Carl Edlund. Formation and Resolution of Ideological Contrast in the Early History of Scandinavia''. Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic (Faculty of English).
Overing, Gillian R., and Marijane Osborn. 'Landscape of Desire: Partial Stories of the Medieval Scandinavian World.' Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994: 1-37. (possible sailing times and the account of a "Beowulfian" voyage on the Cattegat)
6th-century monarchs in Europe
English heroic legends
Characters in Beowulf
Heroes in Norse myths and legends
People whose existence is disputed
Scyldings | false | [
"A Network Unaffiliated Virtual Operator (NUVO) is similar to a Mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) however it has one key difference — a NUVO is not affiliated with a specific carrier. \nNUVO's use real telephone numbers, and through these they combine with all other commercial operators, allowing NUVO users to communicate with anyone — not just other people who use a mobile App, for example.\n\nBy assigning telephone numbers to their users, NUVO's can transmit text messages and voice call to anyone who has a telephone number.\n\nThis allows an app user to communicate with anyone simply by dialing their phone number, rather than limiting their communications to just other app users, as most over the top content (OTT) apps do.\n\nSee also \n MVNO\n Over the top content\n Mobile app \n Voice call \n Telephone number \n Onoff telecom\n Thumbtel\n\nReferences\n\nTelecommunications",
"\"Do It Again\" is a song by the British electronic music duo the Chemical Brothers, included as the fifth track on their sixth studio album, We Are the Night (2007). The song features Ali Love and was released as the first single from the album on 14 May 2007 as a digital download. \"Do It Again\" peaked at number 12 on the UK Singles Chart and reached number two in Italy. The music video for the song was directed by Michael Haussman and is set in rural Morocco. The song was nominated at the 50th Grammy Awards for Best Dance Recording but lost out to Justin Timberlake's \"LoveStoned / I Think That She Knows\".\n\nThe song was used in Paco Rabanne's \"One Million\" video advertisement.\n\nSamples\nEarly versions of the song featured a sample of the song \"On a Journey\" by Elektrik Funk (the line \"I sing the funk electric\"). At last minute, it was dropped and replaced by \"Let's turn this thing electric\".\n\nMusic video\nThe video for \"Do It Again\" is similar to that of Fatboy Slim's \"Ya Mama\" video, which includes a tape that causes uncontrollable dancing. It takes place in Morocco and is centred around a little boy and his older brother. The younger boy has a toothache and must have his tooth removed but he escapes with his brother, whom he begs not to let anyone take his tooth away. Whilst walking through the desert, a cassette tape falls from the sky. It is noteworthy that the writing on the tape is \"Chemical Brothers\" in Arabic, although the translation is not quite accurate. The brothers get a tape player and once they hit play, the music causes them to dance uncontrollably. As they bring it back home, they see that anyone who hears the music starts dancing too. By hitching rides on cars, motorcycles and on top of buses, they travel to a larger city into a market where they use the hypnotic music to help them acquire money from a bank. With it they fix the boy's tooth instead of pulling it out, and return home. It was directed by Michael Haussman.\n\nCredits\n Directed by: Michael Haussman\n Directed of photography: Nicola Pecorini\n Production company: HSA Productions\n\nTrack listings\nUK CD\n \"Do It Again\" (edit)\n \"Do It Again\" (Oliver Huntemann remix) – 6:09\n\nUK 7-inch (limited edition white vinyl)\n \"Do It Again\" (edit)\n \"No Need\"\n\nUK 12-inch\n \"Do It Again\" (extended mix)\n \"Clip Kiss\"\n\nEuropean CD\n \"Do It Again\" (edit)\n \"Do It Again\" (Oliver Huntemann remix)\n \"No Need\"\n\nUS CD\n \"Do It Again\" (extended mix)\n \"Do It Again\" (Oliver Huntemann remix)\n \"Do It Again\" (Audion's House Arrest mix)\n \"Clip Kiss\"\n \"No Need\"\n\nUS 12-inch\n \"Do It Again\" (extended mix)\n \"Clip Kiss\"\n \"Do It Again\" (Audion's House Arrest mix)\n\nUS iTunes and Napster\n \"Do It Again\"\n \"Do It Again\" (extended mix)\n \"Do It Again\" (Oliver Huntemann remix)\n \"Clip Kiss\"\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nReferences\n\n2007 singles\n2007 songs\nAstralwerks singles\nThe Chemical Brothers songs\nMusic videos directed by Michael Haussman\nSongs written by Tom Rowlands\nSongs written by Ed Simons"
] |
[
"Hrólfr Kraki",
"Beowulf and Bjarki",
"Where is beowolf from?",
"Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Gotaland)",
"What does Beowolf do?",
"the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela.",
"What does beowulf mean?",
"Beowulf (lit. \"bee-wolf\", a kenning for \"bear\")",
"Do Beowulf and Bjarki have anything in common?",
"both the names Beowulf (lit. \"bee-wolf\", a kenning for \"bear\") and Bjarki are associated with bears.",
"What else is similar?",
"Bodvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Ali, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vanern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bodvar Bjarki are one and the same.",
"Do they defeat anyone?",
"Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark."
] | C_82ba42bb74f44967ab7000b78ecbcbf5_1 | Did they win? | 8 | Did Beowulf and Bjarki win salying the dragon and the creature in Danmark? | Hrólfr Kraki | The standard view is that, if Beowulf himself has a 'cognate' character in Rolf Kraki's story, it is Bodvar Bjarki (Bodvar Biarke), who also has a younger companion, Hjalti (Hialte) - perhaps matching the Beowulf character Wiglaf. Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Gotaland) and one of Bodvar Bjarki's elder brothers, Thorir, becomes a king of Gotaland. Moreover, like Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki arrives in Denmark from Gotaland (Geatland), and upon arriving in Denmark he kills a beast that has been ravaging the Danish court for two years. The monster in Hrolf Kraki's saga, however, is quite unlike the Grendel of Beowulf; but it does have characteristics of a more typical dragon, a creature which appears later in Beowulf. Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bodvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark. Proponents of this theory, like J. R. R. Tolkien, argue that both the names Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") and Bjarki are associated with bears. Bodvar Bjarki is constantly associated with bears, his father actually being one. In some of the Hrolf Kraki material, Bodvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Ali, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vanern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bodvar Bjarki are one and the same. This match supports the hypothesis that the adventure with the dragon is also originally derived from the same story. CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Hrólfr Kraki (Old Norse: ), Hroðulf, Rolfo, Roluo, Rolf Krage (early 6th century) was a semi-legendary Danish king who appears in both Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian tradition.
Both traditions describe him as a Danish Scylding, the nephew of Hroðgar and the grandson of Healfdene. The consensus view is that Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian traditions describe the same people. Whereas the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf and Widsith do not go further than treating his relationship with Hroðgar and their animosity with Froda and Ingeld, the Scandinavian sources expand on his life as the king at Lejre and on his relationship with Halga, Hroðgar's brother. In Beowulf and Widsith, it is never explained how Hroðgar and Hroðulf are uncle and nephew.
Beowulf
The poem Beowulf introduces Hroðulf as kinsman. Later, the text explains that Hroðulf is Hroðgar's nephew and that "each was true to the other". Hroðgar is given three siblings, brothers Heorogar and Halga and an unnamed sister, all the children of Healfdene and belonging to the royal clan known as the Scyldings. The poem does not indicate which of Hroðgar's siblings is Hroðulf's parent, but later Scandinavian tradition establishes this as Halga.
Hroðgar and queen Wealhþeow had two young sons, Hreðric and Hroðmund, and Hroðulf would be their guardian in case Hroðgar dies. In a deliberately ironic passage it appears that the queen trusts Hroðulf, not suspecting that he will murder her sons to claim the throne for himself:
No existence of any Hreðric or Hroðmund, sons of Hroðgar, has survived in Scandinavian sources (although Hreðric has been suggested to be the same person as Hroerekr/Roricus, a Danish king generally described as a son or successor of Ingjald). This Hroerekr is sometimes said to have been killed by Hrólfr, vindicating the foreshadowing in Beowulf.
The Scyldings were in conflict with another clan or tribe named the Heaðobards led by their king Froda and his son Ingeld. It is in relation to this war that Hroðulf is mentioned in the other Anglo-Saxon poem where he appears, Widsith.
Hrólf and Hroðulf
A common identification is that Hrólf Kraki is the same as the character Hroðulf (Hroðgar's nephew) in Beowulf. There seems to be some foreshadowing in Beowulf that Hroðulf will attempt to usurp the throne from Hroðgar's sons Hreðric and Hroðmund, a deed that also seems to be referred to in Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum (Book 2), where we find: "... our king, who laid low Rorik, the son of Bok the covetous, and wrapped the coward in death." Rorik is the form we would expect Hreðric to take in Danish and we find personages named Rorik or Hrok or similar in most version of the Hrólf Kraki tradition, but differently accounted for, seemingly indicating that Scandinavian tradition had forgotten who exactly Hreðric/Rorik/Hrok was and various story tellers subsequently invented details to explain references to this personage in older poems. The future slaying of Hreðric may be the occasion of the future burning of the hall of Heorot in the beginning of the poem – though some take it instead to refer to the legendary death of Hrólf Kraki, who in Icelandic sources is said to have died in the burning of his hall by his brother-in-law Hjörvard.
Beowulf and Bjarki
The standard view is that, if Beowulf himself has a 'cognate' character in Rolf Kraki's story, it is Bödvar Bjarki (Bodvar Biarke), who also has a younger companion, Hjalti (Hialte) – perhaps matching the Beowulf character Wiglaf. Beowulf comes from Geatland (= Götaland) and one of Bödvar Bjarki's elder brothers, Thorir, becomes a king of Götaland. Moreover, like Beowulf, Bödvar Bjarki arrives in Denmark from Götaland (Geatland), and upon arriving in Denmark he kills a beast that has been ravaging the Danish court for two years. The monster in Hrólf Krakis saga, however, is quite unlike the Grendel of Beowulf; but it does have characteristics of a more typical dragon, a creature which appears later in Beowulf.
Just as Beowulf and Wiglaf slay a dragon at the end of Beowulf, Bödvar Bjarki and Hjalti help each other slay the creature in Denmark.
Proponents of this theory, like J. R. R. Tolkien, argue that both the names Beowulf (lit. "bee-wolf", a kenning for "bear") and Bjarki are associated with bears. Bodvar Bjarki is constantly associated with bears, his father actually being one.
In some of the Hrólf Kraki material, Bödvar Bjarki aids Adils in defeating Adils' uncle Áli, in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern. In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf aids Eadgils in Eadgils' war against Onela. As far as this Swedish adventure is concerned, Beowulf and Bödvar Bjarki are one and the same. This match supports the hypothesis that the adventure with the dragon is also originally derived from the same story.
Hrothgar and Hróar
As for the king of the Danes, Hroðgar, he is identical to Hróar or Ro, the uncle of Hrólf Kraki who in other sources outside of Beowulf rules as a co-king with his brother Helgi. But in those sources it is Hróar/Hroðgar who dies before his brother or who departs to Northumberland to rule his wife's kingdom leaving Helgi/Halga the sole rule of Denmark. In Beowulf Halga/Helgi has died and Hroðgar is the primary ruler with Hroðulf son of Halga as a junior co-ruler.
Furthermore, the Swedish kings referenced in Beowulf are adequately matched with the 5th and 6th century Swedish kings in Uppsala (see also Swedish semi-legendary kings):
This has obviously nothing to do with a common origin of the Beowulf and Hrólf Kraki legends in particular but simply reflects a shared genealogical tradition.
Widsith
The poem Widsith also mentions Hroðgar and Hroðulf, but indicates that the feud with Ingeld did not end until the latter was defeated at Heorot:
This piece suggests that the conflict between the Scyldings Hroðgar and Hroðulf on one side, and the Heaðobards Froda and Ingeld on the other, was well known in Anglo-Saxon England. This conflict also appears in Scandinavian sources, but in the Norse tradition the Heaðobards had apparently been forgotten and the conflict is instead rendered as a family feud (see Hrólf Kraki's saga and Skjöldunga saga).
Chronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundenses
The Chronicon Lethrense and the included Annales Lundenses tell that Haldan (Healfdene) had two sons, Helghe (Halga) and Ro (Hroðgar). When Haldan died of old age, Helghe and Ro divided the kingdom so that Ro ruled the land, and Helghe the sea. One day, Helghe arrived in Halland/Lolland and slept with Thore, the daughter of one of Ro's farmers. This resulted in a daughter named Yrse. Much later, he met Yrse, and without knowing that she was his daughter, he made her pregnant with Rolf. Eventually, Helghe found out that Yrse was his own daughter and, out of shame, went east and killed himself.
Both Helghe and Ro being dead, a Swedish king, called Hakon in the Chronicon Lethrense proper, and Athisl in the Annales – corresponding to Eadgils – forced the Danes to accept a dog as king. The dog king was succeeded by Rolf Krage.
Rolf Krage was a big man in body and soul and was so generous that no one asked him for anything twice. His sister Skulda was married against Rolf's will to Hartwar or Hiarwarth (Heoroweard), a German earl of Skåne, but reputedly Rolf had given Skulda to him together with Sweden.
This Hartwar arrived in Zealand with a large army and said that he wanted to give his tribute to Rolf, but killed Rolf together with all his men. Only one survived, Wigg, who played along until he was to do homage to Hartwar. Then, he pierced Hartwar with a sword, and so Hartwar was king for only one morning.
Gesta Danorum
The Book 2 of the Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus contains roughly the same information as the Chronicon Lethrense and the Annales Lundenses, i.e. that Ro (Hroðgar) and Helgo (Halga) were the son of Haldanus (Healfdene). When Haldanus died of old age, Ro took the land and Helgo the water. One day during his sea roving, Helgo arrived at Thurø, where he found and raped the young girl Thora, which resulted in Urse (Yrsa). When Helgo after many years returned to Thurø, Thora avenged her lost virginity by sending Urse to Helgo who, unknowingly raped his own daughter. This resulted in Roluo, who was a gifted man, both physically and intellectually and as brave as he was tall. After some time Helgo repelled a Swedish invasion, avenged Ro by killing the Swedish king Hothbrodd, and made the Swedes pay tribute. However, he committed suicide due to shame for his incestuous relationship with Urse. Roluo succeeded him.
The new king of Sweden, Athislus (Eadgils), thought that the tribute to the Daner might be smaller if he married the Danish king's mother and so took Urse for a queen. However, after some time, Urse was so upset with the Swedish king's greed that she thought out a ruse to run away from the king and at the same time liberate him of his wealth. She incited Athislus to rebel against Roluo, and arranged so that Roluo would be invited and promised a wealth in gifts.
At the banquet Roluo was at first not recognised by his mother, but when their fondness was commented on by Athisl, the Swedish king and Roluo made a wager where Roluo would prove his endurance. Roluo was placed in front of a fire that exposed him to such heat that finally a maiden could suffer the sight no more and extinguished the fire. Roluo was greatly recompensed by Athisl for his endurance.
When the banquet had lasted for three days, Urse and Roluo escaped from Uppsala, early in the morning in carriages where they had put all the Swedish king's treasure. In order to lessen their burden, and to occupy any pursuing warriors they spread gold in their path (later in the work, this is referred to as "sowing the Fyrisvellir"), although there was a rumour that she only spread gilded copper. When Athislus, who was pursuing the escapers saw that a precious ring was lying on the ground, he bent down to pick it up. Roluo was pleased to see the king of Sweden bent down, and escaped in the ships with his mother.
A young man named Wigg was impressed with Roluo's bodily size and gave him the cognomen Krage, which meant a tall tree trunk used as a ladder. Roluo liked this name and rewarded Wigg with a heavy bracelet. Wigg, then, swore to Roluo to avenge him, if he was killed.
Roluo later defeated Athislus and gave Sweden to young man named Hiartuar (Heoroweard), who also married Roluo's sister Skulde. Skulde, however, did not like the fact that her husband had to pay taxes to Roluo and so incited Hiartuar to rebel against him. They so went to Lejre (a town which Roluo had built) with arms hidden in the ships, under the pretense that they wanted to pay tribute.
They were well-received, but after the banquet, when most people were drunk asleep, the Swedes and the Goths (i.e. the Geats) proceeded to kill everyone at Roluo's residence. After a long battle, involving Roluo's champion Bjarki, who fought in the shape of a spirit bear until he was awakened by his comrade Hjalti, the Geats won and Roluo was killed.
Hiartuar asked Wigg if he wanted to fight for him, and Wigg said yes. Hiartuar wanted to give Wigg a sword, but he insisted on receiving it by taking the hilt. Having the hilt in his hand, Wigg pierced Hiartuar with the sword and so avenged Roluo. Swedes and Geats then rushed forward and killed Wigg. The Swedish king Høtherus (based on the god Höðr), the brother of Athislus, succeeded Roluo and became the king of a combined Sweden and Denmark.
Hrólfr Kraki's saga
In Hrólfr Kraki's saga, Halfdan (Healfdene) had three children, the sons Helgi (Halga) and Hróarr (Hroðgar) and the daughter Signý. The sister was the eldest and married to Sævil Jarl, with whom she had the son Hrókr. Halfdan was murdered by his own brother Fróði (Froda) and the two brothers had to seek refuge with a man called Vivil on an island, until they could avenge their father and kill Fróði.
Whereas Hróarr moved to Northumbria and married the king's daughter, Helgi (i.e. Halga) went to the Saxons wanting to woo their warlike queen Oluf. She was, however, not interested and humiliated Helgi by shaving his head and covering him with tar, while he was asleep, and sending him back to his ship. Some time later, Helgi returned and through a ruse, he kidnapped the queen for a while during which time he made her pregnant.
Having returned to her kingdom, the queen bore a child, a girl which she named Yrsa after her dog. Yrsa was set to live as a shepherd, until she was 12 years old, when she met her father Helgi who fell in love with her, not knowing it was his daughter. Oluf kept quiet about the parentage and saw it as her revenge that Helgi would wed his own daughter. Helgi and Yrsa had the son Hrólfr.
Learning that Helgi and Yrsa lived happily together, queen Oluf travelled to Denmark to tell her daughter the truth. Yrsa was shocked and although Helgi wanted their relationship to remain as it was, Yrsa insisted on leaving him to live alone. She was later taken by the Swedish king Aðils (Eadgils) as his queen, which made Helgi even more unhappy. Helgi went to Uppsala to fetch her, but was killed by Aðils in battle. In Lejre, he was succeeded by his son Hrólfr.
Hrólfr soon assembled twelve great berserkers named Hrómundr harði, Hrólfr skjóthendi, Svipdagr, Beigaðr, Hvítserkr inn hvati, Haklangr, Harðrefill, Haki inn frækni, Vöttr inn mikilaflaði, Starólfr, Hjalti inn hugprúði and Bödvar Bjarki.
After some time, Bödvar Bjarki encouraged Hrólfr to go Uppsala to claim the gold that Aðils had taken from Helgi after the battle. Hrólfr departed with 120 men and his twelve berserkers and during a rest they were tested by a farmer called Hrani (Odin in disguise) who advised Hrólfr to send back all his troops but his twelve berserkers, as numbers would not help him against Aðils.
They were at first well received, but in his hall, Aðils did his best to stop Hrólfr with pit traps and hidden warriors who attacked the Danes. Finally Aðils entertained them but put them to a test where they had to endure immense heat by a fire. Hrólfr and his berserkers finally had enough and threw the courtiers, who were feeding the fire, into the fire and leapt at Aðils. The Swedish king disappeared through a hollow tree trunk that stood in his hall.
Yrsa admonished Aðils for wanting to kill her son, and went to meet the Danes. She gave them a man named Vöggr to entertain them. This Vöggr remarked that Hrólfr had the thin face of a pole ladder, a Kraki. Happy with his new cognomen Hrólfr gave Vöggr a golden ring, and Vöggr swore to avenge Hrólfr if anyone should kill him. Hrólfr and his company were then attacked by a troll in the shape of a boar in the service of Aðils, but Hrólfr's dog Gram killed it.
They then found out that Aðils had set the hall on fire, and so they broke out of the hall, only to find themselves surrounded by heavily armed warriors in the street. After a fight, king Aðils retreated to summon reinforcements.
Yrsa then provided her son with a silver drinking horn filled with gold and jewels and a famous ring, Svíagris. Then she gave Hrólf and his men twelve of the Swedish king's best horses, and all the armour and provisions they needed.
Hrólfr took a fond farewell of his mother and departed over the Fyrisvellir. When they saw Aðils and his warriors in pursuit, they spread the gold behind themselves. Aðils saw his precious Svíagris on the ground and stooped to pick it up with his spear, whereupon Hrólf cut his back with his sword and screamed in triumph that he had bent the back of the most powerful man in Sweden.
Hrólfr lived in peace for some time. However, his half-elven half-sister Skuld was married to Hjörvarðr (Heoroweard) one of Hrólfr's subkings, and she began to turn her husband against Hrólfr. Under the pretext that they would wait three years before paying the accumulated tribute at one time, Skuld assembled a large army which included strong warriors, criminals, elves and norns. She used seiðr (witchcraft) to hide the great muster from Hrólfr and his champions.
They then arrived at Lejre one yule for the midwinter celebrations, with all the weapons hidden in wagons. A fight started and like in the account found in Gesta Danorum, Bödvar Bjarki fought in the shape of a spirit bear until he was awakened by Hjalti. Skuld used her witchcraft to resuscitate her fallen warriors and after a long fight Hrólfr and all his berserkers fell.
Skuld became the ruler of Denmark but did not rule well. Bödvar Bjarki's brothers Elk-Froði and Þorir Houndsfoot went to Denmark to avenge their brother. The Swedish queen Yrsa gave them a large Swedish army headed by Vöggr. They captured Skuld before she could use her magic and tortured her to death. Then they raised a mound for Hrólfr Kraki where he was buried together with his sword Skofnung.
Skjöldunga saga
The Skjöldunga sagaNerman (1925:150) relates that Helgo (Halga) was the king of Denmark together with his brother Roas (Hroðgar). Helgo raped Olava, the queen of the Saxons, and she bore a daughter named Yrsa. The girl later married king Adillus (Eadgils), the king of Sweden, with whom she had the daughter Scullda.
Some years later, Helgo attacked Sweden and captured Yrsa, not knowing that she was his own daughter. He raped her and took her back to Denmark, where she bore the son Rolfo. After a few years, Yrsa's mother, queen Olava, came to visit her and told her that Helgo was her own father. In horror, Yrsa returned to Adillus, leaving her son behind. Helgo died when Rolfo was eight years old, and Rolfo succeeded him, and ruled together with his uncle Roas. Not much later, Roas was killed by his half-brothers Rærecus and Frodo, whereupon Rolfo became the sole king of Denmark.
In Sweden, Yrsa and Adillus married Scullda to the king of Öland, Hiørvardus (also called Hiorvardus and Hevardus, and who corresponds to Heoroweard in Beowulf). As her half-brother Rolfo was not consulted about this marriage, he was infuriated and he attacked Öland and made Hiørvardus and his kingdom tributary to Denmark.
After some time Adillus requested Rolfo's aid against king Ale (Onela) of Oppland, and Rolfo sent him his berserkers. Adillus then won the war, but refused to pay the expected tribute for the help and so Rolfo came to Uppsala to claim his recompense. After surviving some traps, Rolfo fled with Adillus' gold, helped by his mother Yrsa, and "sowed" it on the Fyrisvellir.
Hiørvardus and his queen Skullda rebelled against Rolfo and killed him. However, Hiørvardus did not live long after this and was killed. Rolfo was succeeded by his father's cousin Rörek, who, however, had to leave Skåne to Valdar and could only keep Zealand.
Skáldskaparmál
In the Skáldskaparmál by Snorri Sturluson, the story of Hrólfr Kraki is presented in order to explain why gold was known by the kenning Kraki's seed.
Snorri relates that Hrólfr was the most renowned king in Denmark for valour, generosity and graciousness. One day a poor boy called Vöggr arrived and expressed his surprise that such a great king would look like a little pole (kraki). Hrólfr said that Vöggr had given him a name and gave Vöggr a golden ring in recompense. In gratitude Vöggr swore to Hrólfr to avenge him, should he be killed.
A second tale was when the king of Sweden, Aðils (Eadgils), was in war with a Norwegian king named Áli (Onela), and they fought in the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern. Aðils was married to Yrsa, the mother of Hrólfr and so sent an embassy to Hrólfr asking him for help against Áli. He would receive three valuable gifts in recompense. Hrólfr was involved in a war against the Saxons and could not come in person but sent his twelve berserkers. Áli died in the war, and Aðils took Áli's helmet Battle-boar and his horse Raven. The berserkers demanded three pounds of gold each in pay, and they demanded to choose the gifts that Aðils had promised Hrólfr, that is the two pieces of armour that nothing could pierce: the helmet battle-boar and the mailcoat Finn's heritage. They also wanted the famous ring Svíagris. Aðils considered the pay outrageous and refused.
When Hrólfr heard that Aðils refused to pay, he set off to Uppsala. They brought the ships to the river Fyris and rode directly to the Swedish king's hall at Uppsala with his twelve berserkers. Yrsa welcomed them and led them to their lodgings. Fires were prepared for them and they were given drinks. However, so much wood was heaped on the fires that the clothes started to burn away from their bodies. Hrólfr and his men had enough and threw the courtiers on the fire. Yrsa arrived and gave them a horn full of gold, the ring Svíagris and asked them to flee. As they rode over the Fyrisvellir, they saw Aðils and his men pursuing them. The fleeing men threw their gold on the plain so that the pursuers would stop to collect the gold. Aðils, however, continued the chase on his horse Slöngvir. Hrólfr then threw Svíagris and saw how Aðils stooped down to pick up the ring with his spear. Hrólfr exclaimed that he had seen the mightiest man in Sweden bend his back.
Ynglinga saga
The Skjöldunga saga was used by Snorri Sturluson as a source when he told the story of Aðils (Eadgils) and Yrsa, in his Ynglinga saga, a part of the Heimskringla. What remains of the Skjöldunga saga is a Latin summary by Arngrímur Jónsson, and so the two versions are basically the same, the main difference being that Arngrímur's version is more terse.
Snorri relates that Aðils betook himself to pillage the Saxons, whose king was Geirþjófr and queen Alof the Great. The king and consort were not at home, and so Aðils and his men plundered their residence at ease driving cattle and captives down to the ships. One of the captives was a remarkably beautiful girl named Yrsa, and Snorri writes that everyone was soon impressed with the well-mannered, pretty and intelligent girl. Most impressed was Aðils who made her his queen.
Some years later, Helgi (Halga), who ruled in Lejre, attacked Sweden and captured Yrsa. He raped Yrsa, his own daughter, and took her back to Lejre, where she bore him the son Hrólfr. When the boy was three years of age, Yrsa's mother, queen Alof of Saxony, came to visit her and told her that her husband Helgi was her own father. Horrified, Yrsa returned to Aðils, leaving her son behind, and stayed in Sweden for the rest of her life. When Hrólfr was eight years old, Helgi died during a war expedition and Hrólf was proclaimed king.
Snorri finishes his account by briefly mentioning that the Skjöldunga saga contained an extensive account of how Hrólf came to Uppsala and sowed gold on the Fyrisvellir.
Gróttasöngr
The Gróttasöngr contains a stanza (nr 22) sung by the giantesses Fenja and Menja. It only names Yrsa and the situation that her son and brother (i.e. Hroðulf) will avenge Fródi (Froda):
This piece cannot refer to Hrólfr Kraki's saga where Froda was the half-brother of Healfdene because this Froda was killed by Hroðgar (and therefore they avenged him). It can, however, be interpreted through the Skjöldunga saga in which Hroðulf's uncle Hroðgar was murdered by his half-brother Froda.
Either Frodi's death is the one they want to avenge, or they seek vengeance for Hroðgar, killed by his half brother. The Danish equivalent of hefna is at hævne, meaning revenge (or avenging), in this case for Fródi's murder, indicating no relation to Hroðgars death, but to Frodi's. 'Kin' and 'kinsmen' share a certain reference to blood relation, yet 'brother' can also have the meaning of either: 'one of us' and 'our tribesmen', or simply 'son and brother'. After being recognized for his deeds, Yrsa will see Hroðulf as her son once more.
Gautreks saga
Hrólfr Kraki is mentioned briefly in Gautreks saga, written around 1300, when the adventurer Ref comes to him with a gift consisting of two dogs. In return for this gift Hrólfr gives him a helmet and a chainmail, both made of red gold.
Modern references
Danish playwright Johannes Ewald wrote a play about Rolf Krage (1770), based on Saxo's version of the story in Gesta Danorum. Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger wrote a poem, Helge: et Digt (1814).
The American writer Poul Anderson used this story in his novel Hrolf Kraki's Saga (1973). Anderson's story begins in earlier generations and more or less follows the version in Hrolfr Kraki's Saga described above. The book was well received by many fantasy fans.
"Sellic Spell', a fictionalized treatment of the story by J. R. R. Tolkien, was published in Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary on May 22, 2014, Tolkien himself explaining that his was "a limited...attempt to reconstruct the Anglo-Saxon tale that lies behind the folk-tale element in Beowulf".
The Danish Navy's first ironclad warship was named Rolf Krake.
Notes
Bibliography and external links
English translations of the Old Norse Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans :
The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and his Champions. Trans. Peter Tunstall (2003). Available at Norse saga: The Saga of Hrolf Kraki and Northvegr: The Saga of Hrolf Kraki.
The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki. Trans. Jesse L. Byock (1998). London: Penguin. . Selection from this translation are available at The Viking Site: Excerpts from The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki.
"King Hrolf and his champions" included in Eirik the Red: And Other Icelandic Sagas. Trans. Gwyn Jones (1961). Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press. .
Original texts''':
Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans in Old Norse from heimskringla.no
Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans in Old Norse from heimskringla.no
University of Oregon: Norse: Fornaldarsögur norðurlanda: Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans
Sagnanet: Hrólfs saga kraka
Anderson, Poul (1973). Hrolf Kraki's Saga. New York: Ballantine Books. . New York: Del Rey Books. . Reprinted 1988 by Baen Books, .
Literary Encyclopedia entry
Birger Nerman, 1925, Det svenska rikets uppkomst (in Swedish)Beowulf:
Beowulf read aloud in Old English
Modern English translation by Francis Barton Gummere
Modern English translation by John Lesslie Hall
Ringler, Dick. Beowulf: A New Translation For Oral Delivery, May 2005. Searchable text with full audio available, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.
Several different Modern English translationsChronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundense:
Chronicon Lethrense and Annales Lundense in translation by Peter Tunstall
The same translation at Northvegr
Book 2 of Gesta Danorum at the Online and Medieval & Classical library
The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf by Olson, 1916, at Project Gutenberg
the Ynglinga saga in translation by Samuel Laing, 1844, at Northvegr
The Gróttasöngr in Thorpe's translation
Skáldskaparmál:
Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda in the original language
CyberSamurai Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology: Prose Edda - Skáldskaparmál (English)
CyberSamurai Encyclopedia of Norse Mythology: Prose Edda - Skáldskaparmál (Old Norse)
Malone, Kemp. Studies in Heroic Legend and in Current Speech. S. Einarsson & N.E. Eliason, eds. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger, 1959.
Lukman, Niels Clausen. Skjoldunge und Skilfinge. Hunnen- und Heruler-könige in Ostnordischer Überlieferung. Classica et Mediaevalia, dissertationes III. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag, 1943.
Hemmingsen, Lars. By Word of Mouth: the origins of Danish legendary history - studies in European learned and popular traditions of Dacians and Danes before A.D. 1200. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Copenhagen (Dept. of Folklore), 1995.
Anderson, Carl Edlund. Formation and Resolution of Ideological Contrast in the Early History of Scandinavia''. Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic (Faculty of English).
Overing, Gillian R., and Marijane Osborn. 'Landscape of Desire: Partial Stories of the Medieval Scandinavian World.' Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994: 1-37. (possible sailing times and the account of a "Beowulfian" voyage on the Cattegat)
6th-century monarchs in Europe
English heroic legends
Characters in Beowulf
Heroes in Norse myths and legends
People whose existence is disputed
Scyldings | false | [
"The Gilleys Shield is a trophy symbolising the Open Women's Championship of the Softball Australia organisation (formerly known as the Australian Softball Federation). The competition's full name is the Mack Gilley Shield.\n\nHistory \nIn 1947, Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria participated in the first interstate softball competition in the country. The competition was eventually called the Mack Gilley Shield. For the 2009–2010 season the Shield will for the first time admit the New Zealand White Sox team to the competition.\n\nWinners \nBetween 1947 and 1968, New South Wales did not win a single Mack Gilley Shield. They finally won in 1969, repeating their first-place finish again in 1973, 1981 when they shared the title with Victoria, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1993. Between the start of the competition and 1995, New South Wales won a total of nine Gilley Shields. This total ranked them third amongst all states.\n\nQueensland won the Mack Gilley Shield in 1963, 1966 and 1968. They won again in 1975, 1983, 1984, 1987, 1992 and 1994. In 2012, Queensland finished third in the Gilley Shield. Between the start of the competition and 1995, Queensland won a total of ten Gilley Shields. This total ranked them second amongst all states.\n\nVictoria won the Mack Gilley Shield in 1947, 1949, 1950, and 1951. They won it again in 1954, 1957 and 1958. They did not win in 1959 but won again in 1960, 1961 and 1962. Queensland won in 1963, but Victoria won again in 1964 and 1965 and 1967. Victoria went on to win again in 1970, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1977, and shared the title with New South Wales in 1981. They won again in 1982, and 1985. Between the start of the competition and 1995, Victoria won a total of twenty-two Gilley Shields if the 1981 tie with New South Wales is counted. This was twelve more than any other state.\n\nBetween 1947 and 1994, Tasmania did not win a single Mack Gilley Shield.\n\nSouth Australia won the Mack Gilley Shield in 1956. Between 1957 and 1994, they did not win another championship.\n\nWestern Australia won the Mack Gilley Shield in 1952 and 1953. They did not win in 1954 but won it again in 1955. They missed out in winning from 1956 to 1958, before winning again in 1959. They did not win another championship between 1960 and 1994.\n\nBetween 1947 and 1968, the Australian Capital Territory did not win the Mack Gilley Shield. They finally broke their losing streak by winning in 1978, 1979 and 1980. They did not win again between 1981 and 1994.\n\nBetween 1947 and 1968, the Northern Territory did not win the Mack Gilley Shield. They did not win between 1969 and 1994.\n\nHosting \nNew South Wales hosted the Mack Gilley Shield in Sydney in 1950, 1955, 1961, and 1968. Queensland hosted the Mack Gilley Shield in Brisbane in 1947, 1953, 1959 and 1966. Victoria hosted the Mack Gilley Shield in Melbourne in 1949, 1954, 1960 and 1967. Tasmania hosted the Mack Gilley Shield in Hobart in 1958, 1964 and 1985. South Australia hosted the Mack Gilley Shield in Adelaide in 1951, 1956, and 1962. Western Australia hosted the Mack Gilley Shield in Perth in 1952, 1957, and 1963. The Australian Capital Territory hosted the Mack Gilley Shield in Canberra in 1965. Between 1947 and 1968, the Northern Territory did not host the Mack Gilley Shield.\n\nGilleys Shield Awards \nThere are several awards connected with the Shield including the Midge Nelson Medal for the competition's most valuable player, the Lorraine Woolley Medal for pitching and the Sybil turner Medal for the best batting. In 1985, the Nelson Medal was won by K. Dienelt of the Northern Territory and the Woolley Medal was won by L. Evans of Victoria. In 1986, the Nelson Medal was won by H. Strauss of Queensland and the Woolley Medal was won by C. Bruce of New South Wales. In 1987, the Nelson Medal was won by K. Dienelt of the Northern Territory and the Woolley Medal was won by C. Cunderson of Queensland. 1988 was the first year all three medals were awarded. They were won respectively by L. Ward of New South Wales, M. Roche of New South Wales and V. Grant of Western Australia. In 1989, they respectively went to L. Loughman of Victoria, M. Rouche of New South Wales and L. Martin of South Australia. In 1990, they went to K, McCracken of Victoria, M. Rouche of New South Wales, and G. Ledingham of New South Wales.\n\nAWARD NAMES\nMidge Nelson Medal – Most Valuable Player\nRosemary Adey Medal – Rookie of the Year\nLorraine Woolley Medal – Best Pitcher\nSybil Turner Medal – Best Batter\n\nPrevious Individual Award Winners \n2003\nMost Valuable Player – Tanya Harding (QLD)\nRookie of the Year – Melanie Dunne (QLD)\nBest Pitcher – Kelly Hardie (QLD)\nBest Batter – Kerrie Sheehan (NSW)\n2004\nMost Valuable Player – Tanya Harding (QLD\nRookie of the Year – Kylie Cronk (QLD)\nBest Pitcher – Brooke Wilkins (QLD)\nBest Batter – Natalie Titcume (VIC)\n2005\nMost Valuable Player – Natalie Titcume (VIC)\nRookie of the Year – Krystle Rivers (WA)\nBest Pitcher – Jocelyn McCallum (QLD)\nBest Batter – Amanda Doman (QLD)\n2006\nMost Valuable Player – Amanda Doman (QLD)\nRookie of the Year – Nicole Smith (ACT)\nBest Pitcher – Kelly Hardie (QLD)\nBest Batter – Stacey Porter (NSW)\n\nSee also \nSoftball Australia\nASF National Championships\n\nReferences \n\nSoftball competitions in Australia",
"The African National Congress was a political party in Trinidad and Tobago. The party first contested national elections in 1961, when it received just 0.5% of the vote and failed to win a seat. They did not put forward any candidates for the 1966 elections, but returned for the 1971 elections, in which they received 2.4% of the vote, but again failed to win a seat as the People's National Movement won all 36. The party did not contest any further elections.\n\nReferences\n\nDefunct political parties in Trinidad and Tobago"
] |
[
"Bill Robinson",
"Vaudeville"
] | C_cc55017ed7b34895b46dda0b68d5fec4_1 | What was Vaudeville? | 1 | What was Vaudeville? | Bill Robinson | On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theater in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous traveling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines). By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two colored rule, which forbade solo black acts. When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theaters in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both black and white units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918. Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919-1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit, and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50-52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages. CANNOTANSWER | vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager | Bill Robinson, nicknamed Bojangles (born Luther Robinson; May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949), was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer, the best known and the most highly paid African-American entertainer in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. His career began in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway theatre, the recording industry, Hollywood films, radio, and television.
According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, "Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging", adding a "hitherto-unknown lightness and presence". His signature routine was the Stair Dance, in which he would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. He is also credited with having popularized the word copacetic through his repeated use of it in vaudeville and radio appearances.
He is best known today for his dancing with Shirley Temple in a series of films during the 1930s, and for starring in the musical Stormy Weather (1943), loosely based on his own life and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. He used his popularity to challenge and overcome numerous racial barriers. Robinson was one of the first minstrel and vaudeville performers to appear as Black without the use of blackface makeup, as well as one of the earliest Black performers to perform solo, overcoming vaudeville's two-colored rule. Additionally, he was an early Black headliner in Broadway shows. Robinson was the first Black performer to appear in a Hollywood film in an interracial dance team (with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel, 1935), and the first Black performer to headline a mixed-race Broadway production.
Robinson came under heavy criticism for his apparent tacit acceptance of racial stereotypes of the era, with some critics calling him an Uncle Tom. He strongly resented this, and his biographers suggested that critics were underestimating the difficulties faced by Black performers engaging with mainstream White culture at the time, and ignoring his many efforts to overcome racial prejudice. In his public life, Robinson led efforts to persuade the Dallas Police Department to hire its first Black policeman; lobby President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II for more equal treatment of Black soldiers; and stage the first integrated public event in Miami, a fundraiser which was attended by both Black and White city residents.
Robinson was a popular figure in both the Black and White entertainment worlds of his era, and is remembered for the support that he gave to fellow performers, including Fred Astaire, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens and the Nicholas Brothers. Sammy Davis Jr. and Ann Miller credited him as a teacher and mentor, Miller saying that he "changed the course of my life". Gregory Hines produced and starred in a biographical movie about Robinson for which he won the NAACP Best Actor Award.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the time, Robinson died penniless in 1949, his funeral paid for by longtime friend Ed Sullivan. In 1989, Congress designated Robinson's birthday of May 25 as National Tap Dance Day.
Early life
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was born Luther Robinson in Richmond, Virginia, on May 25, 1878, to Maxwell, a machinist, and Maria Robinson, a church choir director. He and his younger brother William were raised in Richmond's Jackson Ward neighborhood. His grandmother Bedelia Robinson, a former slave, raised him after both of his parents died tragically in 1884: his father died from chronic heart disease and his mother from unknown natural causes. Details of his early life are known only through legend, much of it perpetuated by Robinson himself. He claimed that he was christened Luther, a name that he did not like. He suggested to his younger brother William that they should exchange names, and they eventually did.
His brother subsequently adopted the name of Percy and achieved recognition as a musician under that name.
Career
Early days
At the age of five, Robinson began dancing for small change, appearing as a "hoofer" or busker in local beer gardens and in front of theaters for tossed pennies. A promoter saw him performing outside the Globe Theater in Richmond and offered him a job as a "pick" in a local minstrel show. At that time, minstrel shows were staged by White performers in blackface. Pickaninnies were cute Black children at the edge of the stage singing, dancing, or telling jokes.
In 1890, at the age of 12, Robinson ran away to Washington, D.C., where he did odd jobs at Benning Race Track and worked briefly as a jockey. He teamed up with a young Al Jolson, with Jolson singing while Robinson danced for pennies or to sell newspapers. In 1891, he was hired by Whallen and Martel, touring with Mayme Remington's troupe in a show titled The South Before the War, performing again as a pickaninny, despite his age. He travelled with the show for over a year before growing too mature to play the role credibly.
In 1898, he returned to Richmond where he joined the United States Army as a rifleman when the Spanish–American War broke out. He received an accidental gunshot wound from a second lieutenant who was cleaning his gun.
Vaudeville
On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous travelling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines).
By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap-dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuel's, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two-coloured rule, which forbade solo Black acts.
When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theatres in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both Black and White units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918.
Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919 to 1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50–52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages.
Tap Dance Style
As mentioned above, the chapter of Stearns' Bill Robinson: Up on the Toes entitled Jazz Dance (1966) describes how Robinson introduced dancing "up on the toes" to tap dance. This was a new addition to King Rastus Brown's popular "flat-footed wizardry". Moving primarily from the waist down, Robinson maintained impressive control of his body. Pete Nugent is said to have remarked, "Robinson was the absolute tops in control." That Robinson infrequently dropped his heels marked a significant change in popular tap technique. Due to his adroit ability to be both light on his feet and distinct in his percussive taps, Robinson was called the "Father of Tapology".
In 1918 at the Palace Theatre in New York, Robinson performed the Stair Dance. Claims regarding the origin of the Stair Dance were highly disputed; however, Robinson was widely credited with the dance because he made it popular. The dance involved "a different rhythm for each step each one reverberating with a different pitch and the fact that he had a special set of portable steps enhanced his claim to originating the dance". The popular sensation of the Stair Dance led Robinson to try to secure a patent on the routine through the U.S. Patent Office in Washington D.C., ultimately to no avail; however the lack of a patent did not diminish Robinson's professional command of the Stair Dance. The entertainment community began to associate the Stair Dance exclusively with Robinson as the routine became a standard part of his performances in 1921. Haskins reports that dancer Fred Stone sent Robinson a check for having performed the routine.
Robinson's talents transcended his famous Stair Dance by far. The steps themselves were not essential to Robinson's performances; rather, Robinson would naturally shift into "a little skating step to stop-time; or a Scoot step, a cross-over tap" or many other tap steps involved in his particular movement quality. Robinson changed rhythmic meters and tap steps and syncopated breaks seamlessly. Often Robinson would talk to his audience, share anecdotes, and act as if he were surprised by the action of his feet. His amusing personality was essential to his performances and popularity. Robinson is said to have consistently performed in split-soled wooden shoes, handcrafted by a Chicago craftsman.
Broadway
In 1928, a White impresario, Lew Leslie, produced Blackbirds of 1928 on Broadway, a Black revue for White audiences starring Adelaide Hall and Bill Robinson along with Aida Ward, Tim Moore and other Black stars. The show originally did not include Robinson; only after three weeks of lukewarm reception did Leslie add Robinson as an "extra attraction". The show then became a huge success on Broadway, where it ran for over one year to sell-out performances. On stage, Adelaide Hall and Robinson danced and sang a duet together, which captivated the audiences. From then on, Robinson's public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the White world, maintaining a connection with the Black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofers Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem. So successful was Adelaide Hall's collaboration with Bojangles, they even appeared together on stage at the prestigious Palace Theatre (Broadway) before they were teamed up together again by Marty Forkins (Robinson's manager) to star in another Broadway musical titled, "Brown Buddies", that opened in 1930 at the Liberty Theatre, where it ran for four months before commencing a road tour of the States.
In 1939, Robinson returned to the stage in The Hot Mikado, a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. The show opened at the Broadhurst Theatre, with Robinson cast in the role of the Emperor. His rendition of My Object All Sublime stopped the show and produced eight encores. After Broadway, the show moved to the 1939 New York World's Fair, and was one of the greatest hits of the fair. August 25, 1939, was named Bill Robinson Day at the fair.
Robinson's next Broadway show, All in Fun (1940), was with an all-White cast. Despite having Imogene Coca, Pert Kelton, and other stars, the show received poor reviews at out-of-town tryouts in New Haven and Boston. When the White stars and co-producers, Phil Baker and Leonard Sillman, withdrew, Robinson became the star, the first time an African-American headlined an otherwise all-White production. Although the reviewers were enthusiastic about Robinson, they panned the show, and it failed to attract audiences. All in Fun closed after four performances.
Robinson's next foray on Broadway was the musical comedy Memphis Bound, which opened in May 1945. This production used an all-Black cast including Robinson (who had top billing), Avon Long, Billy Daniels, Ada Brown, and Sheila Guyse. Robinson played the boat pilot and then Sir Joseph Porter in the play-within-a-play of H.M.S. Pinafore. Critics widely praised Robinson's performance and especially his dancing, with his stair dance cited as a high point of the show.
Film career
After 1932, Black stage revues waned in popularity, but Robinson remained in vogue with White audiences for more than a decade in some fourteen motion pictures produced by such companies as RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. Most of them had musical settings, in which he played old-fashioned roles in nostalgic romances.
Early films
Robinson's film debut was in the RKO Pictures 1930 musical Dixiana. RKO was formed in part by a merger of the Keith and Orpheum theater circuits, with whom Robinson had performed as a headliner for many years. He was cast as a specialty performer in a standalone scene. This practice, customary at the time, permitted Southern theaters to remove scenes containing Black performers from their showings of the film. Dixiana was followed by Robinson's first starring role, in Harlem Is Heaven (1932), which is sometimes cited as the first film with an all-Black cast, even though all-Black silent films preceded it and the cast of Harlem Is Heaven includes a White actor with a speaking part, as well as a few White extras. The movie was produced in New York and did not perform well financially, leading Robinson to focus on Hollywood-produced movies after that.
Shirley Temple
The idea for bringing a Black dancer to Fox to star with Temple in The Little Colonel was actually first proposed by Fox head Winfield Sheehan after a discussion with D. W. Griffith. Sheehan set his sights on Robinson but, unsure of his ability as an actor, arranged for a contract that was void if Robinson failed the dramatic test. Robinson passed the test and was brought in to both star with Temple and to teach her tap dancing. They quickly hit it off, as Temple recounted years later:
Robinson walked a step ahead of us, but when he noticed me hurrying to catch up, he shortened his stride to accommodate mine. I kept reaching up for his hand, but he hadn't looked down and seemed unaware. Fannie called his attention to what I was doing, so he stopped short, bent low over me, his eyes wide and rows of brilliant teeth showing in a wide smile. When he took my hand in his, it felt large and cool. For a few moments, we continued walking in silence. "Can I call you Uncle Billy?" I asked. "Why sure you can", he replied... "But then I get to call you darlin.'" It was a deal. From then on, whenever we walked together it was hand in hand, and I was always his "darlin.'"
Temple had already appeared in five films released in 1934, and had performed a tap routine with James Dunn in Stand Up and Cheer! After Robinson was signed by 20th Century Fox, it was decided that he would perform his famous stair dance with Temple. While Robinson liked the idea, he quickly realized that he could not teach his complex stair dance to a seven-year-old in the few days permitted by the shooting schedule. Instead, he taught Temple to kick the riser (face) of each stairstep with her toe. After watching her practice his choreography, Robinson modified his routine to mimic her movements, so that it appeared on film that she was imitating his steps. The sequence was the highlight of the film.
Robinson and Temple became the first interracial dance partners in Hollywood history. The scene was controversial for its time, and was cut out in the south along with all other scenes showing the two making physical contact. Temple and Robinson appeared in four films together: The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Just Around the Corner.
Robinson and Temple became close friends as a result of his dance coaching and acting with her. Robinson carried pictures of Temple with him wherever he traveled, and Temple considered him a lifelong friend, saying in an interview "Bill Robinson treated me as an equal, which was very important to me. He didn't talk down to me, like to a little girl. And I liked people like that. And Bill Robinson was the best of all."
Other films
Robinson refused to play stereotypical roles imposed by Hollywood studios. In a small vignette in Hooray for Love (1935), he played a mayor of Harlem modeled after his own ceremonial honor; in One Mile from Heaven (1937), he played a romantic lead opposite African-American actress Fredi Washington after Hollywood had relaxed its taboo against such roles for Black people.
Robinson appeared opposite Will Rogers in In Old Kentucky (1935), the last movie Rogers made prior to his death in an airplane crash. Robinson and Rogers were good friends, and after Rogers' death, Robinson refused to fly, instead travelling by train to Hollywood for his film work.
Stormy Weather
Robinson's final film appearance was a starring role in the 1943 Fox musical Stormy Weather. Lena Horne co-starred as Robinson's love interest, and the movie also featured Fats Waller in his final movie appearance before his death, playing with Cab Calloway and his orchestra. The Nicholas Brothers are featured in the film's final dance sequence, performing to Calloway's "Jumpin' Jive", in what Fred Astaire called "the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen".
In 2001, Stormy Weather was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Radio and sound recordings
From 1936 until his death in 1949, Robinson made numerous radio and occasional television appearances. The distinctive sound of Robinson's tap dancing was frequently featured, but Robinson also sang, made sound effects, and told jokes and stories from his vaudeville acts. He also addressed the audience directly, something very rare for a Black radio performer in that era.
Robinson also made several recordings, including one in which he demonstrated each of his tap steps and their corresponding sounds. It was also on the radio and in his recordings that Robinson introduced and popularized a word of his own invention, copasetic, which he had used for years in his vaudeville shows, and which was added to Webster's Dictionary in 1934.
Final appearances
The last theatrical project for Robinson was to have been Two Gentlemen from the South, with James Barton as the master and Robinson as his servant, in which the Black and White roles reverse and eventually the two come together as equals, but the show did not open.
Robinson's final public appearance in 1949, a few weeks before his death, was as a surprise guest on a TV show, Ted Mack's The Original Amateur Hour, in which he emotionally embraced a competitor on the show who had tap-danced for the audience. A friend remarked, "he was handing over his crown, like him saying, 'this is my good-bye. '"
Personal life and death
Little is known of Robinson's first marriage to Lena Chase in 1907. They separated in 1916, and the marriage ended in 1922. His second wife was Fannie S. Clay whom he married shortly after his divorce from Chase. They divorced in 1943. His third marriage was in 1944 to Elaine Plaines in Columbus, Ohio, and they remained together until Robinson's death in 1949. There were no children from any of the marriages.
Political figures and celebrities appointed Robinson an honorary mayor of Harlem, a lifetime member of policemen's associations and fraternal orders, and a mascot of the New York Giants major league baseball team. Robinson reciprocated with open-handed generosity and frequently credited the White dancer James Barton for his contribution to his dancing style.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the first half of the 20th century, earning more than US$2 million during his lifetime, Robinson died penniless on November 25, 1949, at the age of 71, 6 months before his 72nd birthday, from heart failure. His funeral was arranged and paid for by longtime friend and television host Ed Sullivan. Robinson lay in repose at the 369th Infantry Regiment Armory in Harlem, where an estimated 32,000 people filed past his open casket to pay their last respects. The schools in Harlem were closed for a half-day so that children could attend or listen to the funeral, which was broadcast over the radio. Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr. conducted the service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and New York Mayor William O'Dwyer gave the eulogy. Robinson is buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens, Brooklyn, New York.
Legacy
Robinson was successful despite the obstacle of racism. A favorite Robinson anecdote is that he seated himself in a restaurant and a customer objected to his presence. When the manager suggested that it might be better if Robinson leave, he smiled and asked, "Have you got a ten-dollar bill?" Politely asking to borrow the manager's note for a moment, Robinson added six $10 bills from his own wallet and mixed them up, then extended the seven bills together, adding, "Here, let's see you pick out the colored one". The restaurant manager served Robinson without further delay.
Robinson co-founded the New York Black Yankees baseball team in Harlem in 1936 with financier James "Soldier Boy" Semler. The team was a successful member of the Negro National League until it disbanded in 1948, after Major League Baseball was desegregated.
In 1989, a joint U.S. Senate/House resolution declared "National Tap Dance Day" to be May 25, the anniversary of Bill Robinson's birth.
Robinson was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1987.
Popular myths, legends, and misconceptions
There are several commonly cited anecdotes about Robinson that are likely the result of conflicting stories put out by Robinson's second wife Fanny, or his manager, Marty Forkins, or by various show business associates of Robinson. There are also numerous documented instances in which Robinson gave conflicting stories to news reporters at different times.
According to his biographer, Robinson had previously served in the Spanish–American War, where he sustained an accidental gunshot wound, was 40 when the U.S entered World War I, and received a letter of commendation from the War Department for his work during the war in boosting morale at training camps in the United States, not overseas.
It has further been claimed that, along with serving in the trenches in World War I, Robinson was also the drum major for the 369th Hellfighters Band and led the regimental band up Fifth Avenue on the 369th's return from overseas.
While numerous sources repeat the claim of Bill Robinson's appointment as drum major in the 369th Regiment Band, this is not mentioned in either Mr. Bojangles, the Bill Robinson biography by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, or A Life in Ragtime, the biography of James Reese Europe, the leader of the 369th regimental band.
The origin of the nickname "Mr. Bojangles"
Tales about the origin of Robinson's nickname even varied across the color line, a consequence of differing opinions of him by Black and White people. To Whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the Black variety artist Tom Fletcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler". Robinson himself said he got the nickname as a child in Richmond, which is the most commonly-accepted version.
Marriage to Fanny Clay
The date and location of Robinson's second marriage, to Fanny Clay, or even the year they met, is uncertain because the couple gave different dates and locations in interviews, possibly because they were worried about unfavorable publicity about the marriage occurring so soon after Robinson's divorce. Robinson's biographer estimates that they met in late 1920 and were married in early 1922.
First Meeting with Marty Forkins
Robinson's meeting with the man who became his manager, Marty Forkins, is said to have occurred when Robinson, working as a waiter, spilled soup on Forkins. After Robinson's death, Forkins and his wife, Rae Samuel, admitted that Samuels made the introduction after having seen Robinson perform with his partner, George Cooper. Their explanation was that the story was made up in order to obscure Robinson's & Cooper's partnership, and to more effectively promote Robinson as a solo act. The ruse was successful, making Robinson one of the first solo acts to break vaudeville's two-colored rule, which required African-American performers to work in pairs.
Legendary dance contest
A dance contest between Robinson and three other dance legends (typically Ray Bolger, Fred Astaire, and James Barton) in which Robinson emerges the victor is recounted in many places, but no verifiable source can be found describing where and when the contest might have taken place.
Copacetic
Robinson is given credit for having popularized the word copacetic and claimed to have invented it while still living in Richmond. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the origins of the word as unknown and documents the earliest written use of the word in 1919, by the newspaperman and author Irving Bacheller, in his serialized book, A Man for the Ages; this was followed by uses in 1926 by Carl Van Vechten in his novel Nigger Heaven, in 1934 in Webster's New International Dictionary, and by John O'Hara in his novel Appointment in Samarra. Haskins' biography of Robinson includes, "Bill was shelling peas at the Jefferson Market, a New York Daily Mirror reporter asked him how he was, and the reply just popped into his head: 'I'm copasetic. The word was not popularized until Robinson used the term as an opening for his vaudeville and radio performances. The word was used in films Robinson made with Shirley Temple in the 1930s.
World record for running backward
One of Robinson's methods for generating publicity in cities where he was not the headliner was to engage in "freak sprinting" races, such as running backward. In 1922, Robinson set the world record for running backward (100 yards in 13.5 seconds). The record stood until 1977, when Paul Wilson ran the distance in 13.3 seconds. Although Robinson's speed running backwards is undisputed, the circumstances in which this feat was accepted as a world record are unclear, and were likely the result of a staged publicity event rather than a sanctioned athletic contest.
The song "Mr. Bojangles"
Jerry Jeff Walker's 1968 folk song "Mr. Bojangles" has been misinterpreted as a song about Robinson. According to Walker, it was instead inspired by Walker's encounter with a street performer in the New Orleans first precinct jail, a street performer who called himself "Bo Jangles". In the song, the street performer is a heavy drinker and has a dog that died. By Robinson's own account and those of his friends, he neither smoked nor drank (although he was a frequent and avid gambler), and he never had a dog.
Controversies
Uncle Tom roles
Robinson came under heavy criticism for playing stereotyped roles, and took offense at such claims. Once, after being called an "Uncle Tom" in the New York newspaper The Age, Robinson went to its office in Harlem, pistol in hand, demanding to see the editor. In his eulogy at Robinson's funeral, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell argued against the claim that Robinson was an "Uncle Tom" figure, focusing on Robinson's ability as an entertainer and a man who transcended color lines.
In 1973, the film historian Donald Bogle, in his history of African Americans in American film, refers to Robinson's role in The Littlest Rebel and other Shirley Temple movies as the "quintessential Uncle Tom". Other critics noted that such criticism fails to account for the genuine affection and chemistry between Robinson and Temple that came through on the screen, and that the role represented a breakthrough for Hollywood stereotypes in that it was the first time a Black man was made the guardian of a white life. Bogle later moderated his criticism by noting that the reliable, articulate Uncle Billy character in The Littlest Rebel was a cut above the characters portrayed by Lincoln "Stepin Fetchit" Perry.
Haskins explains that critics calling Robinson an "Uncle Tom" often disregarded the discriminatory limitations Robinson endured and combated throughout his career. In addition to the impact of Jim Crow policies and the Depression, Haskins writes, "That Bill traveled, at least professionally, in increasingly white circles was not so much a matter of choice as one of reality." Having overcome numerous policies inhibiting his success to reach an unmatched level of stardom, Robinson had limited venue opportunities for a performer of his caliber.
In 1933, Robinson was named an honorary Mayor of Harlem for his philanthropic contributions to his community, and for his renowned success. He took this role seriously, performing over 3,000 benefits in the course of his career, aiding hundreds of unorganized charities and individuals.
Trial and imprisonment
On March 21, 1908, as a result of a dispute with a tailor over a suit, Robinson was arrested in New York City for armed robbery. On September 30, he was convicted and sentenced to 11–15 years hard labor at Sing Sing prison. Robinson had failed to take the charges and trial seriously and paid little attention to mounting a defense. After his conviction, Robinson's partner, George Cooper, organized his most influential friends to vouch for him, and hired a new attorney who produced evidence that Robinson had been falsely accused. Though he was exonerated at his second trial and his accusers were indicted for perjury, the trial and time spent in the Tombs (Manhattan's prison complex) affected Robinson deeply. After he was released, he made a point of registering his pistol at the local police station of each town where he performed. Robinson's second wife, Fanny, also sent a letter of introduction with complimentary tickets and other gifts to the local police chief's wife in each town ahead of Robinson's engagements.
Jesse Owens
After Jesse Owens returned from the 1936 Olympics, Robinson befriended him. Despite his fame from his four Olympic track wins, undermining Adolf Hitler's claims of Aryan supremacy, Owens found most of the offers that had been made to employ him had been nothing more than publicity stunts that had no substance. Robinson was the one exception, finding work for Owens within a few months of his return to the U.S. Robinson also introduced Owens to his manager, Marty Forkins, who secured a series of demonstration races for Owens which were viewed by many as degrading to the dignity of an Olympic athlete, most notably an event in Cuba in which Owens raced against a horse. As a result, Forkins and Robinson were viewed as having taken advantage of Owens. According to Forkins’ son, Robinson had told Owens that he should start running demonstration races that would both earn money for him and keep him in the public eye. Robinson had done many such races (including a race in which he set the world record for running backwards) and did not view them as undignified. Moreover, the events paid Owens well and provided him with a source of funds when no one else was offering him employment or helping him financially. Owens made a gift to Robinson of one of his four Olympic gold medals, as a gesture of gratitude for the help Robinson had given him.
Café Metropole and Jeni Le Gon
In 1937, Robinson caused a stir in the Harlem community by choosing a white dancer, Geneva Sawyer, as his dance partner over Jeni Le Gon in the Twentieth Century Fox film Café Metropole (1937). Le Gon had danced with him in Hooray for Love (1935) and had received favorable reviews. Sawyer had been Shirley Temple's dance coach during the time Temple and Robinson made movies together, and Sawyer had taken tap lessons from Robinson while he was teaching Temple and choreographing her routines. Robinson suggested to the producers that Sawyer could be cast as his partner if she wore blackface. Le Gon's career suffered as a result, and she never worked with Robinson again. Although the scene was shot with Sawyer in blackface, the studio became convinced that a mixed-race adult couple dancing together would be too controversial: both scenes with Robinson were cut from the final version of the movie and the deleted scenes were only released in 2008 as part of a Fox DVD boxed set of Tyrone Power movies.
In popular culture
Fred Astaire paid tribute to Bill Robinson in the tap routine Bojangles of Harlem from the 1936 film Swing Time. In it, Astaire famously dances to three of his shadows.
Duke Ellington composed "Bojangles (A Portrait of Bill Robinson)", a set of rhythmic variations as a salute to the great dancer.
A biography of Bill Robinson by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (Morrow), was published in 1988.
"Bojangles" the musical, premiered as the centerpiece of Barksdale Theatre's (at Hanover Tavern) 40th anniversary season in 1993. Playwright Doug Jones collaborated with composer Charles Strouse (Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, Applause) and Academy Award-winning lyricist Sammy Cahn.
A made-for-television film entitled Bojangles was released in 2001. The film earned the NAACP Best actor Award for Gregory Hines' performance as Robinson.
Arthur Duncan, an exceptional tap dancer in his own right, frequently paid homage to Bill Robinson with the stair routine on The Lawrence Welk Show.
A 2002 children's book titled Rap a Tap Tap: Here's Bojangles - Think of That! by Leo and Diane Dillon pays homage to Robinson.
A character loosely modeled upon Bojangles and Sammy Davis Jr., called "Bonejangles" appears in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005).
Blues for Bojangles is a song composed by Chuck Darwin, and performed by Anita O'Day with the Paul Jordan Orchestra.
Filmography
Selected discography
1929 Ain’t misbehavin’ / Doing the new low down with Irving Mills & His Hotsy Totsy Gang (released September 4, 1929) Brunswick Records Br4535 Re-issued on Cotton Club stars (released 1990) Milan Records OCLC 858508492
1931
Keep a song in your soul / Bill Robinson blues (released April 3, 1931) Brunswick Records E36441-A-B; also issued on Columbia Records 30183
Keep a song in your soul / Just a crazy song (Hi-hi-hi) Brunswick Records Br 6134, 1168b, A9091
1935 Living in a great big way with Jeni Legon (recorded 1934, re-released in 2000 on Hollywood swing & jazz : hot numbers from classic M-G-M, Warner Bros., and RKO films) Rino Records
1943 Stormy Weather Motion picture soundtrack (recorded January–May 1943, re-released 1993) Fox Records: Distributed by Arista Records, 1993.
See also
Racism in the United States
References
Notes
Bibliography
Some biographical material is from the International Tap Association Newsletter, May/June 1993. The biographical material was extrapolated from The American Dictionary of Biography and Webster's American Biographies.
Haskins, James; Mitgang, N. R., Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (New York: William Morrow, 1988).
Williams, Iain Cameron (2002). Underneath A Harlem Moon
External links
Bojangles at the Evergreens Cemetery
1878 births
1949 deaths
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American singers
369th Infantry Regiment personnel
African-American male actors
African-American male dancers
African-American male singers
American male dancers
American male film actors
American male musical theatre actors
American male singers
American male stage actors
American military personnel of World War I
American tap dancers
Burials at the Cemetery of the Evergreens
Deaths from heart disease
Harlem Renaissance
Male actors from Richmond, Virginia
Military personnel from Richmond, Virginia
Musicians from Richmond, Virginia
Singers from Virginia
United States Army soldiers
Vaudeville performers | false | [
"Desvergers, real name Armand-Sacré Chapeau, (1794 – 3rd arrondissement of Paris 26 June 1851 ) was a 19th-century French playwright\n\nBiography \nLittle is known about Desvergers's life except the few lines that were dedicated to him by the media, in particular on the occasion of his death, as in Le Nouvelliste 1 July 1851:\n\nIt is also known that he married Hélène-Elisa Rachel, 12 December 1822 in the 10th and had at least one son, Étienne-Armand-Albert, born March 27, 1827,\n\nWorks \nHe wrote over a hundred vaudevilles, alone or in collaboration, between 1824 and 1848. \n\n 1824 (3 August): L'Anneau de Gygès, comédie-vaudeville in 1 act with Arago at the Théâtre du Vaudeville\n 1826 (9 March): Lia, ou une Nuit d'absence, drama-vaudeville in 2 acts with Arago at the Théâtre du Vaudeville, au bénéfice des incendiés de Salins \n 1827 (16 June): L'Avocat, melodrama in 3 acts and extravaganza with Arago at the Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique\n 1827 (27 July): Le Départ, séjour et retour, roman-vaudeville in 3 periods with Charles Varin and Arago at the Théâtre des Nouveautés\n 1828 (18 March): Yelva, ou l'Orpheline russe vaudeville in 2 parts with Scribe and Ferdinand de Villeneuve at the Théâtre de Madame\n 1828 (16 July): La Matinée aux contre-temps comédie-vaudeville in 1 act, with Duvert and Victor at the Théâtre des Nouveautés\n 1830 (3 March): Arwed, ou les Représailles, épisode de la guerre d'Amérique, drama in 2 acts mingled with couplets with Varin and Arago at the Théâtre du Vaudeville\n 1831: Les jeunes bonnes et les vieux garçons, comédie-vaudeville with Varin; Théâtre Palais-Royal, 15 October. The play was translated into the Russian language by Pyotr Karatygin and was part of the repertoire of the Russian imperial theatres\n 1833 (15 February): Une Passion vaudeville in 1 act, with Varin and ** at the Théâtre du Vaudeville\n 1833 (16 February): Une Répétition générale vaudeville in 1 act, with Scribe and Varin at the Théâtre du Gymnase\n 1833 : Les femmes d’emprunt, vaudeville in 1 act, with Varin. Le vaudeville a été traduit en russe by Piotr Karatyguine and was part of the repertoire in the Russian imperial theaters; en 2001 en Russie a été créé le film \" Le Menteur Paleface \" sur la base de ce vaudeville, the director was Vitaly Moskalenko\n 1834 (2 April): Théophile, ou Ma vocation comédie-vaudeville in 1 act, with Varin et Arago at the Théâtre du Vaudeville\n 1834 (25 January): Les Malheurs d'un joli garçon vaudeville in 1 act, with Varin and Arago at the Théâtre du Vaudeville. The vaudeville was translated into the Russian language by Pavel Feodorov and P.I. Valverch\n 1834 (18 November): Georgette comédie-vaudeville in 1 act, with Varin and Laurencin at the Théâtre du Vaudeville\n 1834 : Ma femme et mon parapluie, comédie-vaudeville in 1 act, with Laurencin and Varin. The vaudeville was translated into the Russian language by Piotr Karatyguine and was part of the repertoire of the imperial Russian theaters.\n 1835 (10 February): Les pages de Bassompierre, with Varin and Arago at the Théâtre du Vaudeville. The play was translated into the Russian language by Dmitry Lensky and was part of the repertoire of the Russian Imperial theaters\n 1836 (2 January): Le Oui fatal, ou le Célibataire sans le savoir comédie-vaudeville in 1 act, with Varin at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin\n 1836 (15 July): Le Chapître des informations, comedy in 1 act, with Varin at the Théâtre du Vaudeville\n 1836 : Un bal du grand monde, vaudeville, with Charles Varin; Théâtre du Vaudeville (7 June). The vaudeville was translated into the Russian language by Pavel Feodorov\n 1836 (20 June): Balthasar, ou le Retour d'Afrique vaudeville in 1 act, with Varin and Derville at the Théâtre des Variétés\n 1836 (20 July): Casanova au Fort Saint-André vaudeville in 3 acts, with Varin and Arago at the Théâtre du Vaudeville \n 1836 (22 October): Le Tour de France, ou un An de travail vaudeville in 1 act, with Varin at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Antoine\n 1836 (30 October): Feu mon frère comédie-vaudeville in 1 act, at the Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique\n 1837 (21 September): Le Tourlourou vaudeville in 5 acts, with Varin and Paul de Kock at the Théâtre du Vaudeville\n 1837 (2 December): Mal noté dans le quartier tableau populaire in 1 act, with Hippolyte Leroux at the Théâtre du Vaudeville\n 1838 (30 July): La Cachuca, ou Trois cœurs tout neufs vaudeville with Martin and Morel at the Théâtre du Gymnase\n 1838 (9 September): L'Ouverture de la chasse tableau-vaudeville in 1 act with Gustave Albitte at the Théâtre des Variétés\n 1839 (28 January): La Gitana vaudeville in 3 acts with Laurencin at the Théâtre du Gymnase\n 1839 (15 July): Les brodequins de Lise vaudeville in 1 act with Laurencin and Gustave Vaëz at the Théâtre du Gymnase. The vaudeville was translated into the Russian language by Piotr Karatyguine and was part of the repertoire of the Russian imperial theaters\n 1845 (12 February): L'Article 170, ou un Mariage à l'étranger comedy in 2 acts with Louis Dugard at the Théâtre royal de l'Odéon\n 1847 (22 May): Barbe-Bleue, ou la Fée Perruchette, féérie-vaudeville in 3 acts and 15 tableaux with Aimé Bourdon, music by Joseph-Simon Lautz at the Gymnase des Jeunes-Élèves.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Desvergers sur data.bnf.fr\n\n19th-century French dramatists and playwrights\nPlace of birth missing\n1794 births\nPlace of death missing\n1851 deaths",
"Vaudeville News (1920-19??) was a weekly newspaper created by the Vaudeville tycoon E.F. Albee in 1920 It was intended for Vaudeville actors and their managers to provide news, information, and advertising to those in the business.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections: Vaudeville News (1920-1929)\n\nWeekly newspapers published in the United States\nPublications established in 1920\nVaudeville"
] |
[
"Bill Robinson",
"Vaudeville",
"What was Vaudeville?",
"vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager"
] | C_cc55017ed7b34895b46dda0b68d5fec4_1 | What was Robinson's role? | 2 | What was Robinson's role in Vaudeville? | Bill Robinson | On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theater in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous traveling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines). By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two colored rule, which forbade solo black acts. When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theaters in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both black and white units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918. Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919-1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit, and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50-52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages. CANNOTANSWER | By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, | Bill Robinson, nicknamed Bojangles (born Luther Robinson; May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949), was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer, the best known and the most highly paid African-American entertainer in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. His career began in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway theatre, the recording industry, Hollywood films, radio, and television.
According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, "Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging", adding a "hitherto-unknown lightness and presence". His signature routine was the Stair Dance, in which he would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. He is also credited with having popularized the word copacetic through his repeated use of it in vaudeville and radio appearances.
He is best known today for his dancing with Shirley Temple in a series of films during the 1930s, and for starring in the musical Stormy Weather (1943), loosely based on his own life and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. He used his popularity to challenge and overcome numerous racial barriers. Robinson was one of the first minstrel and vaudeville performers to appear as Black without the use of blackface makeup, as well as one of the earliest Black performers to perform solo, overcoming vaudeville's two-colored rule. Additionally, he was an early Black headliner in Broadway shows. Robinson was the first Black performer to appear in a Hollywood film in an interracial dance team (with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel, 1935), and the first Black performer to headline a mixed-race Broadway production.
Robinson came under heavy criticism for his apparent tacit acceptance of racial stereotypes of the era, with some critics calling him an Uncle Tom. He strongly resented this, and his biographers suggested that critics were underestimating the difficulties faced by Black performers engaging with mainstream White culture at the time, and ignoring his many efforts to overcome racial prejudice. In his public life, Robinson led efforts to persuade the Dallas Police Department to hire its first Black policeman; lobby President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II for more equal treatment of Black soldiers; and stage the first integrated public event in Miami, a fundraiser which was attended by both Black and White city residents.
Robinson was a popular figure in both the Black and White entertainment worlds of his era, and is remembered for the support that he gave to fellow performers, including Fred Astaire, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens and the Nicholas Brothers. Sammy Davis Jr. and Ann Miller credited him as a teacher and mentor, Miller saying that he "changed the course of my life". Gregory Hines produced and starred in a biographical movie about Robinson for which he won the NAACP Best Actor Award.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the time, Robinson died penniless in 1949, his funeral paid for by longtime friend Ed Sullivan. In 1989, Congress designated Robinson's birthday of May 25 as National Tap Dance Day.
Early life
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was born Luther Robinson in Richmond, Virginia, on May 25, 1878, to Maxwell, a machinist, and Maria Robinson, a church choir director. He and his younger brother William were raised in Richmond's Jackson Ward neighborhood. His grandmother Bedelia Robinson, a former slave, raised him after both of his parents died tragically in 1884: his father died from chronic heart disease and his mother from unknown natural causes. Details of his early life are known only through legend, much of it perpetuated by Robinson himself. He claimed that he was christened Luther, a name that he did not like. He suggested to his younger brother William that they should exchange names, and they eventually did.
His brother subsequently adopted the name of Percy and achieved recognition as a musician under that name.
Career
Early days
At the age of five, Robinson began dancing for small change, appearing as a "hoofer" or busker in local beer gardens and in front of theaters for tossed pennies. A promoter saw him performing outside the Globe Theater in Richmond and offered him a job as a "pick" in a local minstrel show. At that time, minstrel shows were staged by White performers in blackface. Pickaninnies were cute Black children at the edge of the stage singing, dancing, or telling jokes.
In 1890, at the age of 12, Robinson ran away to Washington, D.C., where he did odd jobs at Benning Race Track and worked briefly as a jockey. He teamed up with a young Al Jolson, with Jolson singing while Robinson danced for pennies or to sell newspapers. In 1891, he was hired by Whallen and Martel, touring with Mayme Remington's troupe in a show titled The South Before the War, performing again as a pickaninny, despite his age. He travelled with the show for over a year before growing too mature to play the role credibly.
In 1898, he returned to Richmond where he joined the United States Army as a rifleman when the Spanish–American War broke out. He received an accidental gunshot wound from a second lieutenant who was cleaning his gun.
Vaudeville
On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous travelling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines).
By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap-dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuel's, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two-coloured rule, which forbade solo Black acts.
When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theatres in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both Black and White units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918.
Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919 to 1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50–52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages.
Tap Dance Style
As mentioned above, the chapter of Stearns' Bill Robinson: Up on the Toes entitled Jazz Dance (1966) describes how Robinson introduced dancing "up on the toes" to tap dance. This was a new addition to King Rastus Brown's popular "flat-footed wizardry". Moving primarily from the waist down, Robinson maintained impressive control of his body. Pete Nugent is said to have remarked, "Robinson was the absolute tops in control." That Robinson infrequently dropped his heels marked a significant change in popular tap technique. Due to his adroit ability to be both light on his feet and distinct in his percussive taps, Robinson was called the "Father of Tapology".
In 1918 at the Palace Theatre in New York, Robinson performed the Stair Dance. Claims regarding the origin of the Stair Dance were highly disputed; however, Robinson was widely credited with the dance because he made it popular. The dance involved "a different rhythm for each step each one reverberating with a different pitch and the fact that he had a special set of portable steps enhanced his claim to originating the dance". The popular sensation of the Stair Dance led Robinson to try to secure a patent on the routine through the U.S. Patent Office in Washington D.C., ultimately to no avail; however the lack of a patent did not diminish Robinson's professional command of the Stair Dance. The entertainment community began to associate the Stair Dance exclusively with Robinson as the routine became a standard part of his performances in 1921. Haskins reports that dancer Fred Stone sent Robinson a check for having performed the routine.
Robinson's talents transcended his famous Stair Dance by far. The steps themselves were not essential to Robinson's performances; rather, Robinson would naturally shift into "a little skating step to stop-time; or a Scoot step, a cross-over tap" or many other tap steps involved in his particular movement quality. Robinson changed rhythmic meters and tap steps and syncopated breaks seamlessly. Often Robinson would talk to his audience, share anecdotes, and act as if he were surprised by the action of his feet. His amusing personality was essential to his performances and popularity. Robinson is said to have consistently performed in split-soled wooden shoes, handcrafted by a Chicago craftsman.
Broadway
In 1928, a White impresario, Lew Leslie, produced Blackbirds of 1928 on Broadway, a Black revue for White audiences starring Adelaide Hall and Bill Robinson along with Aida Ward, Tim Moore and other Black stars. The show originally did not include Robinson; only after three weeks of lukewarm reception did Leslie add Robinson as an "extra attraction". The show then became a huge success on Broadway, where it ran for over one year to sell-out performances. On stage, Adelaide Hall and Robinson danced and sang a duet together, which captivated the audiences. From then on, Robinson's public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the White world, maintaining a connection with the Black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofers Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem. So successful was Adelaide Hall's collaboration with Bojangles, they even appeared together on stage at the prestigious Palace Theatre (Broadway) before they were teamed up together again by Marty Forkins (Robinson's manager) to star in another Broadway musical titled, "Brown Buddies", that opened in 1930 at the Liberty Theatre, where it ran for four months before commencing a road tour of the States.
In 1939, Robinson returned to the stage in The Hot Mikado, a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. The show opened at the Broadhurst Theatre, with Robinson cast in the role of the Emperor. His rendition of My Object All Sublime stopped the show and produced eight encores. After Broadway, the show moved to the 1939 New York World's Fair, and was one of the greatest hits of the fair. August 25, 1939, was named Bill Robinson Day at the fair.
Robinson's next Broadway show, All in Fun (1940), was with an all-White cast. Despite having Imogene Coca, Pert Kelton, and other stars, the show received poor reviews at out-of-town tryouts in New Haven and Boston. When the White stars and co-producers, Phil Baker and Leonard Sillman, withdrew, Robinson became the star, the first time an African-American headlined an otherwise all-White production. Although the reviewers were enthusiastic about Robinson, they panned the show, and it failed to attract audiences. All in Fun closed after four performances.
Robinson's next foray on Broadway was the musical comedy Memphis Bound, which opened in May 1945. This production used an all-Black cast including Robinson (who had top billing), Avon Long, Billy Daniels, Ada Brown, and Sheila Guyse. Robinson played the boat pilot and then Sir Joseph Porter in the play-within-a-play of H.M.S. Pinafore. Critics widely praised Robinson's performance and especially his dancing, with his stair dance cited as a high point of the show.
Film career
After 1932, Black stage revues waned in popularity, but Robinson remained in vogue with White audiences for more than a decade in some fourteen motion pictures produced by such companies as RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. Most of them had musical settings, in which he played old-fashioned roles in nostalgic romances.
Early films
Robinson's film debut was in the RKO Pictures 1930 musical Dixiana. RKO was formed in part by a merger of the Keith and Orpheum theater circuits, with whom Robinson had performed as a headliner for many years. He was cast as a specialty performer in a standalone scene. This practice, customary at the time, permitted Southern theaters to remove scenes containing Black performers from their showings of the film. Dixiana was followed by Robinson's first starring role, in Harlem Is Heaven (1932), which is sometimes cited as the first film with an all-Black cast, even though all-Black silent films preceded it and the cast of Harlem Is Heaven includes a White actor with a speaking part, as well as a few White extras. The movie was produced in New York and did not perform well financially, leading Robinson to focus on Hollywood-produced movies after that.
Shirley Temple
The idea for bringing a Black dancer to Fox to star with Temple in The Little Colonel was actually first proposed by Fox head Winfield Sheehan after a discussion with D. W. Griffith. Sheehan set his sights on Robinson but, unsure of his ability as an actor, arranged for a contract that was void if Robinson failed the dramatic test. Robinson passed the test and was brought in to both star with Temple and to teach her tap dancing. They quickly hit it off, as Temple recounted years later:
Robinson walked a step ahead of us, but when he noticed me hurrying to catch up, he shortened his stride to accommodate mine. I kept reaching up for his hand, but he hadn't looked down and seemed unaware. Fannie called his attention to what I was doing, so he stopped short, bent low over me, his eyes wide and rows of brilliant teeth showing in a wide smile. When he took my hand in his, it felt large and cool. For a few moments, we continued walking in silence. "Can I call you Uncle Billy?" I asked. "Why sure you can", he replied... "But then I get to call you darlin.'" It was a deal. From then on, whenever we walked together it was hand in hand, and I was always his "darlin.'"
Temple had already appeared in five films released in 1934, and had performed a tap routine with James Dunn in Stand Up and Cheer! After Robinson was signed by 20th Century Fox, it was decided that he would perform his famous stair dance with Temple. While Robinson liked the idea, he quickly realized that he could not teach his complex stair dance to a seven-year-old in the few days permitted by the shooting schedule. Instead, he taught Temple to kick the riser (face) of each stairstep with her toe. After watching her practice his choreography, Robinson modified his routine to mimic her movements, so that it appeared on film that she was imitating his steps. The sequence was the highlight of the film.
Robinson and Temple became the first interracial dance partners in Hollywood history. The scene was controversial for its time, and was cut out in the south along with all other scenes showing the two making physical contact. Temple and Robinson appeared in four films together: The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Just Around the Corner.
Robinson and Temple became close friends as a result of his dance coaching and acting with her. Robinson carried pictures of Temple with him wherever he traveled, and Temple considered him a lifelong friend, saying in an interview "Bill Robinson treated me as an equal, which was very important to me. He didn't talk down to me, like to a little girl. And I liked people like that. And Bill Robinson was the best of all."
Other films
Robinson refused to play stereotypical roles imposed by Hollywood studios. In a small vignette in Hooray for Love (1935), he played a mayor of Harlem modeled after his own ceremonial honor; in One Mile from Heaven (1937), he played a romantic lead opposite African-American actress Fredi Washington after Hollywood had relaxed its taboo against such roles for Black people.
Robinson appeared opposite Will Rogers in In Old Kentucky (1935), the last movie Rogers made prior to his death in an airplane crash. Robinson and Rogers were good friends, and after Rogers' death, Robinson refused to fly, instead travelling by train to Hollywood for his film work.
Stormy Weather
Robinson's final film appearance was a starring role in the 1943 Fox musical Stormy Weather. Lena Horne co-starred as Robinson's love interest, and the movie also featured Fats Waller in his final movie appearance before his death, playing with Cab Calloway and his orchestra. The Nicholas Brothers are featured in the film's final dance sequence, performing to Calloway's "Jumpin' Jive", in what Fred Astaire called "the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen".
In 2001, Stormy Weather was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Radio and sound recordings
From 1936 until his death in 1949, Robinson made numerous radio and occasional television appearances. The distinctive sound of Robinson's tap dancing was frequently featured, but Robinson also sang, made sound effects, and told jokes and stories from his vaudeville acts. He also addressed the audience directly, something very rare for a Black radio performer in that era.
Robinson also made several recordings, including one in which he demonstrated each of his tap steps and their corresponding sounds. It was also on the radio and in his recordings that Robinson introduced and popularized a word of his own invention, copasetic, which he had used for years in his vaudeville shows, and which was added to Webster's Dictionary in 1934.
Final appearances
The last theatrical project for Robinson was to have been Two Gentlemen from the South, with James Barton as the master and Robinson as his servant, in which the Black and White roles reverse and eventually the two come together as equals, but the show did not open.
Robinson's final public appearance in 1949, a few weeks before his death, was as a surprise guest on a TV show, Ted Mack's The Original Amateur Hour, in which he emotionally embraced a competitor on the show who had tap-danced for the audience. A friend remarked, "he was handing over his crown, like him saying, 'this is my good-bye. '"
Personal life and death
Little is known of Robinson's first marriage to Lena Chase in 1907. They separated in 1916, and the marriage ended in 1922. His second wife was Fannie S. Clay whom he married shortly after his divorce from Chase. They divorced in 1943. His third marriage was in 1944 to Elaine Plaines in Columbus, Ohio, and they remained together until Robinson's death in 1949. There were no children from any of the marriages.
Political figures and celebrities appointed Robinson an honorary mayor of Harlem, a lifetime member of policemen's associations and fraternal orders, and a mascot of the New York Giants major league baseball team. Robinson reciprocated with open-handed generosity and frequently credited the White dancer James Barton for his contribution to his dancing style.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the first half of the 20th century, earning more than US$2 million during his lifetime, Robinson died penniless on November 25, 1949, at the age of 71, 6 months before his 72nd birthday, from heart failure. His funeral was arranged and paid for by longtime friend and television host Ed Sullivan. Robinson lay in repose at the 369th Infantry Regiment Armory in Harlem, where an estimated 32,000 people filed past his open casket to pay their last respects. The schools in Harlem were closed for a half-day so that children could attend or listen to the funeral, which was broadcast over the radio. Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr. conducted the service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and New York Mayor William O'Dwyer gave the eulogy. Robinson is buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens, Brooklyn, New York.
Legacy
Robinson was successful despite the obstacle of racism. A favorite Robinson anecdote is that he seated himself in a restaurant and a customer objected to his presence. When the manager suggested that it might be better if Robinson leave, he smiled and asked, "Have you got a ten-dollar bill?" Politely asking to borrow the manager's note for a moment, Robinson added six $10 bills from his own wallet and mixed them up, then extended the seven bills together, adding, "Here, let's see you pick out the colored one". The restaurant manager served Robinson without further delay.
Robinson co-founded the New York Black Yankees baseball team in Harlem in 1936 with financier James "Soldier Boy" Semler. The team was a successful member of the Negro National League until it disbanded in 1948, after Major League Baseball was desegregated.
In 1989, a joint U.S. Senate/House resolution declared "National Tap Dance Day" to be May 25, the anniversary of Bill Robinson's birth.
Robinson was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1987.
Popular myths, legends, and misconceptions
There are several commonly cited anecdotes about Robinson that are likely the result of conflicting stories put out by Robinson's second wife Fanny, or his manager, Marty Forkins, or by various show business associates of Robinson. There are also numerous documented instances in which Robinson gave conflicting stories to news reporters at different times.
According to his biographer, Robinson had previously served in the Spanish–American War, where he sustained an accidental gunshot wound, was 40 when the U.S entered World War I, and received a letter of commendation from the War Department for his work during the war in boosting morale at training camps in the United States, not overseas.
It has further been claimed that, along with serving in the trenches in World War I, Robinson was also the drum major for the 369th Hellfighters Band and led the regimental band up Fifth Avenue on the 369th's return from overseas.
While numerous sources repeat the claim of Bill Robinson's appointment as drum major in the 369th Regiment Band, this is not mentioned in either Mr. Bojangles, the Bill Robinson biography by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, or A Life in Ragtime, the biography of James Reese Europe, the leader of the 369th regimental band.
The origin of the nickname "Mr. Bojangles"
Tales about the origin of Robinson's nickname even varied across the color line, a consequence of differing opinions of him by Black and White people. To Whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the Black variety artist Tom Fletcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler". Robinson himself said he got the nickname as a child in Richmond, which is the most commonly-accepted version.
Marriage to Fanny Clay
The date and location of Robinson's second marriage, to Fanny Clay, or even the year they met, is uncertain because the couple gave different dates and locations in interviews, possibly because they were worried about unfavorable publicity about the marriage occurring so soon after Robinson's divorce. Robinson's biographer estimates that they met in late 1920 and were married in early 1922.
First Meeting with Marty Forkins
Robinson's meeting with the man who became his manager, Marty Forkins, is said to have occurred when Robinson, working as a waiter, spilled soup on Forkins. After Robinson's death, Forkins and his wife, Rae Samuel, admitted that Samuels made the introduction after having seen Robinson perform with his partner, George Cooper. Their explanation was that the story was made up in order to obscure Robinson's & Cooper's partnership, and to more effectively promote Robinson as a solo act. The ruse was successful, making Robinson one of the first solo acts to break vaudeville's two-colored rule, which required African-American performers to work in pairs.
Legendary dance contest
A dance contest between Robinson and three other dance legends (typically Ray Bolger, Fred Astaire, and James Barton) in which Robinson emerges the victor is recounted in many places, but no verifiable source can be found describing where and when the contest might have taken place.
Copacetic
Robinson is given credit for having popularized the word copacetic and claimed to have invented it while still living in Richmond. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the origins of the word as unknown and documents the earliest written use of the word in 1919, by the newspaperman and author Irving Bacheller, in his serialized book, A Man for the Ages; this was followed by uses in 1926 by Carl Van Vechten in his novel Nigger Heaven, in 1934 in Webster's New International Dictionary, and by John O'Hara in his novel Appointment in Samarra. Haskins' biography of Robinson includes, "Bill was shelling peas at the Jefferson Market, a New York Daily Mirror reporter asked him how he was, and the reply just popped into his head: 'I'm copasetic. The word was not popularized until Robinson used the term as an opening for his vaudeville and radio performances. The word was used in films Robinson made with Shirley Temple in the 1930s.
World record for running backward
One of Robinson's methods for generating publicity in cities where he was not the headliner was to engage in "freak sprinting" races, such as running backward. In 1922, Robinson set the world record for running backward (100 yards in 13.5 seconds). The record stood until 1977, when Paul Wilson ran the distance in 13.3 seconds. Although Robinson's speed running backwards is undisputed, the circumstances in which this feat was accepted as a world record are unclear, and were likely the result of a staged publicity event rather than a sanctioned athletic contest.
The song "Mr. Bojangles"
Jerry Jeff Walker's 1968 folk song "Mr. Bojangles" has been misinterpreted as a song about Robinson. According to Walker, it was instead inspired by Walker's encounter with a street performer in the New Orleans first precinct jail, a street performer who called himself "Bo Jangles". In the song, the street performer is a heavy drinker and has a dog that died. By Robinson's own account and those of his friends, he neither smoked nor drank (although he was a frequent and avid gambler), and he never had a dog.
Controversies
Uncle Tom roles
Robinson came under heavy criticism for playing stereotyped roles, and took offense at such claims. Once, after being called an "Uncle Tom" in the New York newspaper The Age, Robinson went to its office in Harlem, pistol in hand, demanding to see the editor. In his eulogy at Robinson's funeral, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell argued against the claim that Robinson was an "Uncle Tom" figure, focusing on Robinson's ability as an entertainer and a man who transcended color lines.
In 1973, the film historian Donald Bogle, in his history of African Americans in American film, refers to Robinson's role in The Littlest Rebel and other Shirley Temple movies as the "quintessential Uncle Tom". Other critics noted that such criticism fails to account for the genuine affection and chemistry between Robinson and Temple that came through on the screen, and that the role represented a breakthrough for Hollywood stereotypes in that it was the first time a Black man was made the guardian of a white life. Bogle later moderated his criticism by noting that the reliable, articulate Uncle Billy character in The Littlest Rebel was a cut above the characters portrayed by Lincoln "Stepin Fetchit" Perry.
Haskins explains that critics calling Robinson an "Uncle Tom" often disregarded the discriminatory limitations Robinson endured and combated throughout his career. In addition to the impact of Jim Crow policies and the Depression, Haskins writes, "That Bill traveled, at least professionally, in increasingly white circles was not so much a matter of choice as one of reality." Having overcome numerous policies inhibiting his success to reach an unmatched level of stardom, Robinson had limited venue opportunities for a performer of his caliber.
In 1933, Robinson was named an honorary Mayor of Harlem for his philanthropic contributions to his community, and for his renowned success. He took this role seriously, performing over 3,000 benefits in the course of his career, aiding hundreds of unorganized charities and individuals.
Trial and imprisonment
On March 21, 1908, as a result of a dispute with a tailor over a suit, Robinson was arrested in New York City for armed robbery. On September 30, he was convicted and sentenced to 11–15 years hard labor at Sing Sing prison. Robinson had failed to take the charges and trial seriously and paid little attention to mounting a defense. After his conviction, Robinson's partner, George Cooper, organized his most influential friends to vouch for him, and hired a new attorney who produced evidence that Robinson had been falsely accused. Though he was exonerated at his second trial and his accusers were indicted for perjury, the trial and time spent in the Tombs (Manhattan's prison complex) affected Robinson deeply. After he was released, he made a point of registering his pistol at the local police station of each town where he performed. Robinson's second wife, Fanny, also sent a letter of introduction with complimentary tickets and other gifts to the local police chief's wife in each town ahead of Robinson's engagements.
Jesse Owens
After Jesse Owens returned from the 1936 Olympics, Robinson befriended him. Despite his fame from his four Olympic track wins, undermining Adolf Hitler's claims of Aryan supremacy, Owens found most of the offers that had been made to employ him had been nothing more than publicity stunts that had no substance. Robinson was the one exception, finding work for Owens within a few months of his return to the U.S. Robinson also introduced Owens to his manager, Marty Forkins, who secured a series of demonstration races for Owens which were viewed by many as degrading to the dignity of an Olympic athlete, most notably an event in Cuba in which Owens raced against a horse. As a result, Forkins and Robinson were viewed as having taken advantage of Owens. According to Forkins’ son, Robinson had told Owens that he should start running demonstration races that would both earn money for him and keep him in the public eye. Robinson had done many such races (including a race in which he set the world record for running backwards) and did not view them as undignified. Moreover, the events paid Owens well and provided him with a source of funds when no one else was offering him employment or helping him financially. Owens made a gift to Robinson of one of his four Olympic gold medals, as a gesture of gratitude for the help Robinson had given him.
Café Metropole and Jeni Le Gon
In 1937, Robinson caused a stir in the Harlem community by choosing a white dancer, Geneva Sawyer, as his dance partner over Jeni Le Gon in the Twentieth Century Fox film Café Metropole (1937). Le Gon had danced with him in Hooray for Love (1935) and had received favorable reviews. Sawyer had been Shirley Temple's dance coach during the time Temple and Robinson made movies together, and Sawyer had taken tap lessons from Robinson while he was teaching Temple and choreographing her routines. Robinson suggested to the producers that Sawyer could be cast as his partner if she wore blackface. Le Gon's career suffered as a result, and she never worked with Robinson again. Although the scene was shot with Sawyer in blackface, the studio became convinced that a mixed-race adult couple dancing together would be too controversial: both scenes with Robinson were cut from the final version of the movie and the deleted scenes were only released in 2008 as part of a Fox DVD boxed set of Tyrone Power movies.
In popular culture
Fred Astaire paid tribute to Bill Robinson in the tap routine Bojangles of Harlem from the 1936 film Swing Time. In it, Astaire famously dances to three of his shadows.
Duke Ellington composed "Bojangles (A Portrait of Bill Robinson)", a set of rhythmic variations as a salute to the great dancer.
A biography of Bill Robinson by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (Morrow), was published in 1988.
"Bojangles" the musical, premiered as the centerpiece of Barksdale Theatre's (at Hanover Tavern) 40th anniversary season in 1993. Playwright Doug Jones collaborated with composer Charles Strouse (Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, Applause) and Academy Award-winning lyricist Sammy Cahn.
A made-for-television film entitled Bojangles was released in 2001. The film earned the NAACP Best actor Award for Gregory Hines' performance as Robinson.
Arthur Duncan, an exceptional tap dancer in his own right, frequently paid homage to Bill Robinson with the stair routine on The Lawrence Welk Show.
A 2002 children's book titled Rap a Tap Tap: Here's Bojangles - Think of That! by Leo and Diane Dillon pays homage to Robinson.
A character loosely modeled upon Bojangles and Sammy Davis Jr., called "Bonejangles" appears in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005).
Blues for Bojangles is a song composed by Chuck Darwin, and performed by Anita O'Day with the Paul Jordan Orchestra.
Filmography
Selected discography
1929 Ain’t misbehavin’ / Doing the new low down with Irving Mills & His Hotsy Totsy Gang (released September 4, 1929) Brunswick Records Br4535 Re-issued on Cotton Club stars (released 1990) Milan Records OCLC 858508492
1931
Keep a song in your soul / Bill Robinson blues (released April 3, 1931) Brunswick Records E36441-A-B; also issued on Columbia Records 30183
Keep a song in your soul / Just a crazy song (Hi-hi-hi) Brunswick Records Br 6134, 1168b, A9091
1935 Living in a great big way with Jeni Legon (recorded 1934, re-released in 2000 on Hollywood swing & jazz : hot numbers from classic M-G-M, Warner Bros., and RKO films) Rino Records
1943 Stormy Weather Motion picture soundtrack (recorded January–May 1943, re-released 1993) Fox Records: Distributed by Arista Records, 1993.
See also
Racism in the United States
References
Notes
Bibliography
Some biographical material is from the International Tap Association Newsletter, May/June 1993. The biographical material was extrapolated from The American Dictionary of Biography and Webster's American Biographies.
Haskins, James; Mitgang, N. R., Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (New York: William Morrow, 1988).
Williams, Iain Cameron (2002). Underneath A Harlem Moon
External links
Bojangles at the Evergreens Cemetery
1878 births
1949 deaths
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American singers
369th Infantry Regiment personnel
African-American male actors
African-American male dancers
African-American male singers
American male dancers
American male film actors
American male musical theatre actors
American male singers
American male stage actors
American military personnel of World War I
American tap dancers
Burials at the Cemetery of the Evergreens
Deaths from heart disease
Harlem Renaissance
Male actors from Richmond, Virginia
Military personnel from Richmond, Virginia
Musicians from Richmond, Virginia
Singers from Virginia
United States Army soldiers
Vaudeville performers | true | [
"Christopher Robinson (1763 – November 2, 1798) was an American-born soldier, lawyer and political figure in Upper Canada.\n\nEarly life\nHe was born in Virginia in 1763, the son of Oxford-educated Peter Robinson (ca 1719–1768), and nephew of John Robinson, Speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses, and loyalist leader Beverley Robinson (ca 1722–1792). He was also a close relation of John Robinson (bishop of London) (1650–1723), a senior Anglican cleric and influential diplomat.\n\nBorn in Virginia to one of the British colony's most influential families, it has been contended that he was educated at the College of William and Mary, although no evidence exists to support that fact. In fact, his early life remains shrouded in mystery and genealogical legerdemain. What is known is that at some point after his father's death in 1768, he moved to New York, likely to his cousin Beverley's household and was there at the beginning of the American Revolution. On June 26, 1781, he was commissioned an Ensign in the Queen's Rangers under John Graves Simcoe and served through the surrender of the British Army at Yorktown, until 1783.\n\nCanada\nHe retired at half pay in New Brunswick and settled briefly in Queensbury Parish. While in New Brunswick, Robinson married in 1784 Esther Sayre, daughter of Rev. John Sayre, who came to the Colonies on behalf of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. However, Robinson soon moved to Quebec in search of employment. In 1792, Simcoe, now Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, offered him a post as a minor surveyor general and he moved to Kingston.\n\nIn 1794, he received his license to practice law and, in 1796, he was elected to the 2nd Parliament of Upper Canada representing Ontario & Addington. In 1797, he played a role in establishing the Law Society of Upper Canada. A slave owner, in 1797 Robinson sponsored a bill in the Parliament to allow immigrants to bring their slaves with them. The bill was passed but did not become law.\n\nHe died suddenly at York (Toronto) in 1798. Robinson was buried at Victoria Memorial Square. William Fairfield took his place in the legislative assembly in June 1799.\n\nEsther Robinson died in 1827.\n\nHis sons included:\n\n John Beverley, a lawyer, judge and political figure in Upper Canada\n Peter, political figure in who played an important role in promoting immigration from Ireland to Upper Canada\n William Benjamin, a political figure in Upper Canada and Canada West\n\nReferences\n\nFurther reading \n \"Robinson Family Papers, 1684–1915\"\n\n1763 births\n1798 deaths\nMembers of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada\nCanadian surveyors\nCanadian lawyers\nUnited Empire Loyalists\nVirginia colonial people\nLoyalists in the American Revolution from New York (state)",
"Geordie Robinson (born 18 June 1987) is an Australian television, film and theatre actor known for his roles on the television series Underbelly: Badness and Winter.\n\nRobinson's theatre roles include Green Cyc's production of The Taming of the Shrew (2008), as well as starring as Laertes in the Q Theatre production of Hamlet, Sydney (2011).\n\nIn 2011, Robinson was cast in the Australian premiere of the play The Birthday Boys at The National Institute of Dramatic Art. In 2012 Robinson was cast in the television series Underbelly: Badness as Craig \"Schiz\" Bottin, Drug Cook and Decker's associate. In 2014 Robinson acted opposite Rebecca Gibney in the TV series Winter. Robinson previous guest roles included the Australian medical drama All Saints and the pilot Could Gone Pro, along with a small role in the Australian film A Few Best Men. Robinson appeared in the Australian short film The Pear and the upcoming American drama series Girls Like Magic, directed by Mad Men actor Kit Williamson. Robinson appeared in the lead role of Blackrock by Nick Enright in the Australian Theatre Company in Los Angeles (2015).\n\nIn 2016, Robinson played the role of Liam in the Funny or Die and Go90 partnered series.\n\nPersonal life \nRobinson was born in the seaside village of Sawtell, on the North Coast of New South Wales. After graduating high school at Bishop Druitt College in 2006, Geordie was accepted into The Actors Centre Australia's full-time Journey program.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \nOfficial website\n\nActor Geordie Robinson (Focus Magazine)\n\nAustralian male actors\nLiving people\nPeople from the Mid North Coast\n1987 births"
] |
[
"Bill Robinson",
"Vaudeville",
"What was Vaudeville?",
"vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager",
"What was Robinson's role?",
"By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo,"
] | C_cc55017ed7b34895b46dda0b68d5fec4_1 | Did they see any success? | 3 | Did Robinson see any success in Vaudeville? | Bill Robinson | On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theater in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous traveling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines). By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two colored rule, which forbade solo black acts. When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theaters in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both black and white units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918. Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919-1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit, and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50-52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages. CANNOTANSWER | working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. | Bill Robinson, nicknamed Bojangles (born Luther Robinson; May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949), was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer, the best known and the most highly paid African-American entertainer in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. His career began in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway theatre, the recording industry, Hollywood films, radio, and television.
According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, "Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging", adding a "hitherto-unknown lightness and presence". His signature routine was the Stair Dance, in which he would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. He is also credited with having popularized the word copacetic through his repeated use of it in vaudeville and radio appearances.
He is best known today for his dancing with Shirley Temple in a series of films during the 1930s, and for starring in the musical Stormy Weather (1943), loosely based on his own life and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. He used his popularity to challenge and overcome numerous racial barriers. Robinson was one of the first minstrel and vaudeville performers to appear as Black without the use of blackface makeup, as well as one of the earliest Black performers to perform solo, overcoming vaudeville's two-colored rule. Additionally, he was an early Black headliner in Broadway shows. Robinson was the first Black performer to appear in a Hollywood film in an interracial dance team (with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel, 1935), and the first Black performer to headline a mixed-race Broadway production.
Robinson came under heavy criticism for his apparent tacit acceptance of racial stereotypes of the era, with some critics calling him an Uncle Tom. He strongly resented this, and his biographers suggested that critics were underestimating the difficulties faced by Black performers engaging with mainstream White culture at the time, and ignoring his many efforts to overcome racial prejudice. In his public life, Robinson led efforts to persuade the Dallas Police Department to hire its first Black policeman; lobby President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II for more equal treatment of Black soldiers; and stage the first integrated public event in Miami, a fundraiser which was attended by both Black and White city residents.
Robinson was a popular figure in both the Black and White entertainment worlds of his era, and is remembered for the support that he gave to fellow performers, including Fred Astaire, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens and the Nicholas Brothers. Sammy Davis Jr. and Ann Miller credited him as a teacher and mentor, Miller saying that he "changed the course of my life". Gregory Hines produced and starred in a biographical movie about Robinson for which he won the NAACP Best Actor Award.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the time, Robinson died penniless in 1949, his funeral paid for by longtime friend Ed Sullivan. In 1989, Congress designated Robinson's birthday of May 25 as National Tap Dance Day.
Early life
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was born Luther Robinson in Richmond, Virginia, on May 25, 1878, to Maxwell, a machinist, and Maria Robinson, a church choir director. He and his younger brother William were raised in Richmond's Jackson Ward neighborhood. His grandmother Bedelia Robinson, a former slave, raised him after both of his parents died tragically in 1884: his father died from chronic heart disease and his mother from unknown natural causes. Details of his early life are known only through legend, much of it perpetuated by Robinson himself. He claimed that he was christened Luther, a name that he did not like. He suggested to his younger brother William that they should exchange names, and they eventually did.
His brother subsequently adopted the name of Percy and achieved recognition as a musician under that name.
Career
Early days
At the age of five, Robinson began dancing for small change, appearing as a "hoofer" or busker in local beer gardens and in front of theaters for tossed pennies. A promoter saw him performing outside the Globe Theater in Richmond and offered him a job as a "pick" in a local minstrel show. At that time, minstrel shows were staged by White performers in blackface. Pickaninnies were cute Black children at the edge of the stage singing, dancing, or telling jokes.
In 1890, at the age of 12, Robinson ran away to Washington, D.C., where he did odd jobs at Benning Race Track and worked briefly as a jockey. He teamed up with a young Al Jolson, with Jolson singing while Robinson danced for pennies or to sell newspapers. In 1891, he was hired by Whallen and Martel, touring with Mayme Remington's troupe in a show titled The South Before the War, performing again as a pickaninny, despite his age. He travelled with the show for over a year before growing too mature to play the role credibly.
In 1898, he returned to Richmond where he joined the United States Army as a rifleman when the Spanish–American War broke out. He received an accidental gunshot wound from a second lieutenant who was cleaning his gun.
Vaudeville
On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous travelling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines).
By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap-dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuel's, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two-coloured rule, which forbade solo Black acts.
When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theatres in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both Black and White units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918.
Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919 to 1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50–52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages.
Tap Dance Style
As mentioned above, the chapter of Stearns' Bill Robinson: Up on the Toes entitled Jazz Dance (1966) describes how Robinson introduced dancing "up on the toes" to tap dance. This was a new addition to King Rastus Brown's popular "flat-footed wizardry". Moving primarily from the waist down, Robinson maintained impressive control of his body. Pete Nugent is said to have remarked, "Robinson was the absolute tops in control." That Robinson infrequently dropped his heels marked a significant change in popular tap technique. Due to his adroit ability to be both light on his feet and distinct in his percussive taps, Robinson was called the "Father of Tapology".
In 1918 at the Palace Theatre in New York, Robinson performed the Stair Dance. Claims regarding the origin of the Stair Dance were highly disputed; however, Robinson was widely credited with the dance because he made it popular. The dance involved "a different rhythm for each step each one reverberating with a different pitch and the fact that he had a special set of portable steps enhanced his claim to originating the dance". The popular sensation of the Stair Dance led Robinson to try to secure a patent on the routine through the U.S. Patent Office in Washington D.C., ultimately to no avail; however the lack of a patent did not diminish Robinson's professional command of the Stair Dance. The entertainment community began to associate the Stair Dance exclusively with Robinson as the routine became a standard part of his performances in 1921. Haskins reports that dancer Fred Stone sent Robinson a check for having performed the routine.
Robinson's talents transcended his famous Stair Dance by far. The steps themselves were not essential to Robinson's performances; rather, Robinson would naturally shift into "a little skating step to stop-time; or a Scoot step, a cross-over tap" or many other tap steps involved in his particular movement quality. Robinson changed rhythmic meters and tap steps and syncopated breaks seamlessly. Often Robinson would talk to his audience, share anecdotes, and act as if he were surprised by the action of his feet. His amusing personality was essential to his performances and popularity. Robinson is said to have consistently performed in split-soled wooden shoes, handcrafted by a Chicago craftsman.
Broadway
In 1928, a White impresario, Lew Leslie, produced Blackbirds of 1928 on Broadway, a Black revue for White audiences starring Adelaide Hall and Bill Robinson along with Aida Ward, Tim Moore and other Black stars. The show originally did not include Robinson; only after three weeks of lukewarm reception did Leslie add Robinson as an "extra attraction". The show then became a huge success on Broadway, where it ran for over one year to sell-out performances. On stage, Adelaide Hall and Robinson danced and sang a duet together, which captivated the audiences. From then on, Robinson's public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the White world, maintaining a connection with the Black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofers Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem. So successful was Adelaide Hall's collaboration with Bojangles, they even appeared together on stage at the prestigious Palace Theatre (Broadway) before they were teamed up together again by Marty Forkins (Robinson's manager) to star in another Broadway musical titled, "Brown Buddies", that opened in 1930 at the Liberty Theatre, where it ran for four months before commencing a road tour of the States.
In 1939, Robinson returned to the stage in The Hot Mikado, a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. The show opened at the Broadhurst Theatre, with Robinson cast in the role of the Emperor. His rendition of My Object All Sublime stopped the show and produced eight encores. After Broadway, the show moved to the 1939 New York World's Fair, and was one of the greatest hits of the fair. August 25, 1939, was named Bill Robinson Day at the fair.
Robinson's next Broadway show, All in Fun (1940), was with an all-White cast. Despite having Imogene Coca, Pert Kelton, and other stars, the show received poor reviews at out-of-town tryouts in New Haven and Boston. When the White stars and co-producers, Phil Baker and Leonard Sillman, withdrew, Robinson became the star, the first time an African-American headlined an otherwise all-White production. Although the reviewers were enthusiastic about Robinson, they panned the show, and it failed to attract audiences. All in Fun closed after four performances.
Robinson's next foray on Broadway was the musical comedy Memphis Bound, which opened in May 1945. This production used an all-Black cast including Robinson (who had top billing), Avon Long, Billy Daniels, Ada Brown, and Sheila Guyse. Robinson played the boat pilot and then Sir Joseph Porter in the play-within-a-play of H.M.S. Pinafore. Critics widely praised Robinson's performance and especially his dancing, with his stair dance cited as a high point of the show.
Film career
After 1932, Black stage revues waned in popularity, but Robinson remained in vogue with White audiences for more than a decade in some fourteen motion pictures produced by such companies as RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. Most of them had musical settings, in which he played old-fashioned roles in nostalgic romances.
Early films
Robinson's film debut was in the RKO Pictures 1930 musical Dixiana. RKO was formed in part by a merger of the Keith and Orpheum theater circuits, with whom Robinson had performed as a headliner for many years. He was cast as a specialty performer in a standalone scene. This practice, customary at the time, permitted Southern theaters to remove scenes containing Black performers from their showings of the film. Dixiana was followed by Robinson's first starring role, in Harlem Is Heaven (1932), which is sometimes cited as the first film with an all-Black cast, even though all-Black silent films preceded it and the cast of Harlem Is Heaven includes a White actor with a speaking part, as well as a few White extras. The movie was produced in New York and did not perform well financially, leading Robinson to focus on Hollywood-produced movies after that.
Shirley Temple
The idea for bringing a Black dancer to Fox to star with Temple in The Little Colonel was actually first proposed by Fox head Winfield Sheehan after a discussion with D. W. Griffith. Sheehan set his sights on Robinson but, unsure of his ability as an actor, arranged for a contract that was void if Robinson failed the dramatic test. Robinson passed the test and was brought in to both star with Temple and to teach her tap dancing. They quickly hit it off, as Temple recounted years later:
Robinson walked a step ahead of us, but when he noticed me hurrying to catch up, he shortened his stride to accommodate mine. I kept reaching up for his hand, but he hadn't looked down and seemed unaware. Fannie called his attention to what I was doing, so he stopped short, bent low over me, his eyes wide and rows of brilliant teeth showing in a wide smile. When he took my hand in his, it felt large and cool. For a few moments, we continued walking in silence. "Can I call you Uncle Billy?" I asked. "Why sure you can", he replied... "But then I get to call you darlin.'" It was a deal. From then on, whenever we walked together it was hand in hand, and I was always his "darlin.'"
Temple had already appeared in five films released in 1934, and had performed a tap routine with James Dunn in Stand Up and Cheer! After Robinson was signed by 20th Century Fox, it was decided that he would perform his famous stair dance with Temple. While Robinson liked the idea, he quickly realized that he could not teach his complex stair dance to a seven-year-old in the few days permitted by the shooting schedule. Instead, he taught Temple to kick the riser (face) of each stairstep with her toe. After watching her practice his choreography, Robinson modified his routine to mimic her movements, so that it appeared on film that she was imitating his steps. The sequence was the highlight of the film.
Robinson and Temple became the first interracial dance partners in Hollywood history. The scene was controversial for its time, and was cut out in the south along with all other scenes showing the two making physical contact. Temple and Robinson appeared in four films together: The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Just Around the Corner.
Robinson and Temple became close friends as a result of his dance coaching and acting with her. Robinson carried pictures of Temple with him wherever he traveled, and Temple considered him a lifelong friend, saying in an interview "Bill Robinson treated me as an equal, which was very important to me. He didn't talk down to me, like to a little girl. And I liked people like that. And Bill Robinson was the best of all."
Other films
Robinson refused to play stereotypical roles imposed by Hollywood studios. In a small vignette in Hooray for Love (1935), he played a mayor of Harlem modeled after his own ceremonial honor; in One Mile from Heaven (1937), he played a romantic lead opposite African-American actress Fredi Washington after Hollywood had relaxed its taboo against such roles for Black people.
Robinson appeared opposite Will Rogers in In Old Kentucky (1935), the last movie Rogers made prior to his death in an airplane crash. Robinson and Rogers were good friends, and after Rogers' death, Robinson refused to fly, instead travelling by train to Hollywood for his film work.
Stormy Weather
Robinson's final film appearance was a starring role in the 1943 Fox musical Stormy Weather. Lena Horne co-starred as Robinson's love interest, and the movie also featured Fats Waller in his final movie appearance before his death, playing with Cab Calloway and his orchestra. The Nicholas Brothers are featured in the film's final dance sequence, performing to Calloway's "Jumpin' Jive", in what Fred Astaire called "the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen".
In 2001, Stormy Weather was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Radio and sound recordings
From 1936 until his death in 1949, Robinson made numerous radio and occasional television appearances. The distinctive sound of Robinson's tap dancing was frequently featured, but Robinson also sang, made sound effects, and told jokes and stories from his vaudeville acts. He also addressed the audience directly, something very rare for a Black radio performer in that era.
Robinson also made several recordings, including one in which he demonstrated each of his tap steps and their corresponding sounds. It was also on the radio and in his recordings that Robinson introduced and popularized a word of his own invention, copasetic, which he had used for years in his vaudeville shows, and which was added to Webster's Dictionary in 1934.
Final appearances
The last theatrical project for Robinson was to have been Two Gentlemen from the South, with James Barton as the master and Robinson as his servant, in which the Black and White roles reverse and eventually the two come together as equals, but the show did not open.
Robinson's final public appearance in 1949, a few weeks before his death, was as a surprise guest on a TV show, Ted Mack's The Original Amateur Hour, in which he emotionally embraced a competitor on the show who had tap-danced for the audience. A friend remarked, "he was handing over his crown, like him saying, 'this is my good-bye. '"
Personal life and death
Little is known of Robinson's first marriage to Lena Chase in 1907. They separated in 1916, and the marriage ended in 1922. His second wife was Fannie S. Clay whom he married shortly after his divorce from Chase. They divorced in 1943. His third marriage was in 1944 to Elaine Plaines in Columbus, Ohio, and they remained together until Robinson's death in 1949. There were no children from any of the marriages.
Political figures and celebrities appointed Robinson an honorary mayor of Harlem, a lifetime member of policemen's associations and fraternal orders, and a mascot of the New York Giants major league baseball team. Robinson reciprocated with open-handed generosity and frequently credited the White dancer James Barton for his contribution to his dancing style.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the first half of the 20th century, earning more than US$2 million during his lifetime, Robinson died penniless on November 25, 1949, at the age of 71, 6 months before his 72nd birthday, from heart failure. His funeral was arranged and paid for by longtime friend and television host Ed Sullivan. Robinson lay in repose at the 369th Infantry Regiment Armory in Harlem, where an estimated 32,000 people filed past his open casket to pay their last respects. The schools in Harlem were closed for a half-day so that children could attend or listen to the funeral, which was broadcast over the radio. Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr. conducted the service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and New York Mayor William O'Dwyer gave the eulogy. Robinson is buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens, Brooklyn, New York.
Legacy
Robinson was successful despite the obstacle of racism. A favorite Robinson anecdote is that he seated himself in a restaurant and a customer objected to his presence. When the manager suggested that it might be better if Robinson leave, he smiled and asked, "Have you got a ten-dollar bill?" Politely asking to borrow the manager's note for a moment, Robinson added six $10 bills from his own wallet and mixed them up, then extended the seven bills together, adding, "Here, let's see you pick out the colored one". The restaurant manager served Robinson without further delay.
Robinson co-founded the New York Black Yankees baseball team in Harlem in 1936 with financier James "Soldier Boy" Semler. The team was a successful member of the Negro National League until it disbanded in 1948, after Major League Baseball was desegregated.
In 1989, a joint U.S. Senate/House resolution declared "National Tap Dance Day" to be May 25, the anniversary of Bill Robinson's birth.
Robinson was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1987.
Popular myths, legends, and misconceptions
There are several commonly cited anecdotes about Robinson that are likely the result of conflicting stories put out by Robinson's second wife Fanny, or his manager, Marty Forkins, or by various show business associates of Robinson. There are also numerous documented instances in which Robinson gave conflicting stories to news reporters at different times.
According to his biographer, Robinson had previously served in the Spanish–American War, where he sustained an accidental gunshot wound, was 40 when the U.S entered World War I, and received a letter of commendation from the War Department for his work during the war in boosting morale at training camps in the United States, not overseas.
It has further been claimed that, along with serving in the trenches in World War I, Robinson was also the drum major for the 369th Hellfighters Band and led the regimental band up Fifth Avenue on the 369th's return from overseas.
While numerous sources repeat the claim of Bill Robinson's appointment as drum major in the 369th Regiment Band, this is not mentioned in either Mr. Bojangles, the Bill Robinson biography by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, or A Life in Ragtime, the biography of James Reese Europe, the leader of the 369th regimental band.
The origin of the nickname "Mr. Bojangles"
Tales about the origin of Robinson's nickname even varied across the color line, a consequence of differing opinions of him by Black and White people. To Whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the Black variety artist Tom Fletcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler". Robinson himself said he got the nickname as a child in Richmond, which is the most commonly-accepted version.
Marriage to Fanny Clay
The date and location of Robinson's second marriage, to Fanny Clay, or even the year they met, is uncertain because the couple gave different dates and locations in interviews, possibly because they were worried about unfavorable publicity about the marriage occurring so soon after Robinson's divorce. Robinson's biographer estimates that they met in late 1920 and were married in early 1922.
First Meeting with Marty Forkins
Robinson's meeting with the man who became his manager, Marty Forkins, is said to have occurred when Robinson, working as a waiter, spilled soup on Forkins. After Robinson's death, Forkins and his wife, Rae Samuel, admitted that Samuels made the introduction after having seen Robinson perform with his partner, George Cooper. Their explanation was that the story was made up in order to obscure Robinson's & Cooper's partnership, and to more effectively promote Robinson as a solo act. The ruse was successful, making Robinson one of the first solo acts to break vaudeville's two-colored rule, which required African-American performers to work in pairs.
Legendary dance contest
A dance contest between Robinson and three other dance legends (typically Ray Bolger, Fred Astaire, and James Barton) in which Robinson emerges the victor is recounted in many places, but no verifiable source can be found describing where and when the contest might have taken place.
Copacetic
Robinson is given credit for having popularized the word copacetic and claimed to have invented it while still living in Richmond. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the origins of the word as unknown and documents the earliest written use of the word in 1919, by the newspaperman and author Irving Bacheller, in his serialized book, A Man for the Ages; this was followed by uses in 1926 by Carl Van Vechten in his novel Nigger Heaven, in 1934 in Webster's New International Dictionary, and by John O'Hara in his novel Appointment in Samarra. Haskins' biography of Robinson includes, "Bill was shelling peas at the Jefferson Market, a New York Daily Mirror reporter asked him how he was, and the reply just popped into his head: 'I'm copasetic. The word was not popularized until Robinson used the term as an opening for his vaudeville and radio performances. The word was used in films Robinson made with Shirley Temple in the 1930s.
World record for running backward
One of Robinson's methods for generating publicity in cities where he was not the headliner was to engage in "freak sprinting" races, such as running backward. In 1922, Robinson set the world record for running backward (100 yards in 13.5 seconds). The record stood until 1977, when Paul Wilson ran the distance in 13.3 seconds. Although Robinson's speed running backwards is undisputed, the circumstances in which this feat was accepted as a world record are unclear, and were likely the result of a staged publicity event rather than a sanctioned athletic contest.
The song "Mr. Bojangles"
Jerry Jeff Walker's 1968 folk song "Mr. Bojangles" has been misinterpreted as a song about Robinson. According to Walker, it was instead inspired by Walker's encounter with a street performer in the New Orleans first precinct jail, a street performer who called himself "Bo Jangles". In the song, the street performer is a heavy drinker and has a dog that died. By Robinson's own account and those of his friends, he neither smoked nor drank (although he was a frequent and avid gambler), and he never had a dog.
Controversies
Uncle Tom roles
Robinson came under heavy criticism for playing stereotyped roles, and took offense at such claims. Once, after being called an "Uncle Tom" in the New York newspaper The Age, Robinson went to its office in Harlem, pistol in hand, demanding to see the editor. In his eulogy at Robinson's funeral, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell argued against the claim that Robinson was an "Uncle Tom" figure, focusing on Robinson's ability as an entertainer and a man who transcended color lines.
In 1973, the film historian Donald Bogle, in his history of African Americans in American film, refers to Robinson's role in The Littlest Rebel and other Shirley Temple movies as the "quintessential Uncle Tom". Other critics noted that such criticism fails to account for the genuine affection and chemistry between Robinson and Temple that came through on the screen, and that the role represented a breakthrough for Hollywood stereotypes in that it was the first time a Black man was made the guardian of a white life. Bogle later moderated his criticism by noting that the reliable, articulate Uncle Billy character in The Littlest Rebel was a cut above the characters portrayed by Lincoln "Stepin Fetchit" Perry.
Haskins explains that critics calling Robinson an "Uncle Tom" often disregarded the discriminatory limitations Robinson endured and combated throughout his career. In addition to the impact of Jim Crow policies and the Depression, Haskins writes, "That Bill traveled, at least professionally, in increasingly white circles was not so much a matter of choice as one of reality." Having overcome numerous policies inhibiting his success to reach an unmatched level of stardom, Robinson had limited venue opportunities for a performer of his caliber.
In 1933, Robinson was named an honorary Mayor of Harlem for his philanthropic contributions to his community, and for his renowned success. He took this role seriously, performing over 3,000 benefits in the course of his career, aiding hundreds of unorganized charities and individuals.
Trial and imprisonment
On March 21, 1908, as a result of a dispute with a tailor over a suit, Robinson was arrested in New York City for armed robbery. On September 30, he was convicted and sentenced to 11–15 years hard labor at Sing Sing prison. Robinson had failed to take the charges and trial seriously and paid little attention to mounting a defense. After his conviction, Robinson's partner, George Cooper, organized his most influential friends to vouch for him, and hired a new attorney who produced evidence that Robinson had been falsely accused. Though he was exonerated at his second trial and his accusers were indicted for perjury, the trial and time spent in the Tombs (Manhattan's prison complex) affected Robinson deeply. After he was released, he made a point of registering his pistol at the local police station of each town where he performed. Robinson's second wife, Fanny, also sent a letter of introduction with complimentary tickets and other gifts to the local police chief's wife in each town ahead of Robinson's engagements.
Jesse Owens
After Jesse Owens returned from the 1936 Olympics, Robinson befriended him. Despite his fame from his four Olympic track wins, undermining Adolf Hitler's claims of Aryan supremacy, Owens found most of the offers that had been made to employ him had been nothing more than publicity stunts that had no substance. Robinson was the one exception, finding work for Owens within a few months of his return to the U.S. Robinson also introduced Owens to his manager, Marty Forkins, who secured a series of demonstration races for Owens which were viewed by many as degrading to the dignity of an Olympic athlete, most notably an event in Cuba in which Owens raced against a horse. As a result, Forkins and Robinson were viewed as having taken advantage of Owens. According to Forkins’ son, Robinson had told Owens that he should start running demonstration races that would both earn money for him and keep him in the public eye. Robinson had done many such races (including a race in which he set the world record for running backwards) and did not view them as undignified. Moreover, the events paid Owens well and provided him with a source of funds when no one else was offering him employment or helping him financially. Owens made a gift to Robinson of one of his four Olympic gold medals, as a gesture of gratitude for the help Robinson had given him.
Café Metropole and Jeni Le Gon
In 1937, Robinson caused a stir in the Harlem community by choosing a white dancer, Geneva Sawyer, as his dance partner over Jeni Le Gon in the Twentieth Century Fox film Café Metropole (1937). Le Gon had danced with him in Hooray for Love (1935) and had received favorable reviews. Sawyer had been Shirley Temple's dance coach during the time Temple and Robinson made movies together, and Sawyer had taken tap lessons from Robinson while he was teaching Temple and choreographing her routines. Robinson suggested to the producers that Sawyer could be cast as his partner if she wore blackface. Le Gon's career suffered as a result, and she never worked with Robinson again. Although the scene was shot with Sawyer in blackface, the studio became convinced that a mixed-race adult couple dancing together would be too controversial: both scenes with Robinson were cut from the final version of the movie and the deleted scenes were only released in 2008 as part of a Fox DVD boxed set of Tyrone Power movies.
In popular culture
Fred Astaire paid tribute to Bill Robinson in the tap routine Bojangles of Harlem from the 1936 film Swing Time. In it, Astaire famously dances to three of his shadows.
Duke Ellington composed "Bojangles (A Portrait of Bill Robinson)", a set of rhythmic variations as a salute to the great dancer.
A biography of Bill Robinson by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (Morrow), was published in 1988.
"Bojangles" the musical, premiered as the centerpiece of Barksdale Theatre's (at Hanover Tavern) 40th anniversary season in 1993. Playwright Doug Jones collaborated with composer Charles Strouse (Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, Applause) and Academy Award-winning lyricist Sammy Cahn.
A made-for-television film entitled Bojangles was released in 2001. The film earned the NAACP Best actor Award for Gregory Hines' performance as Robinson.
Arthur Duncan, an exceptional tap dancer in his own right, frequently paid homage to Bill Robinson with the stair routine on The Lawrence Welk Show.
A 2002 children's book titled Rap a Tap Tap: Here's Bojangles - Think of That! by Leo and Diane Dillon pays homage to Robinson.
A character loosely modeled upon Bojangles and Sammy Davis Jr., called "Bonejangles" appears in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005).
Blues for Bojangles is a song composed by Chuck Darwin, and performed by Anita O'Day with the Paul Jordan Orchestra.
Filmography
Selected discography
1929 Ain’t misbehavin’ / Doing the new low down with Irving Mills & His Hotsy Totsy Gang (released September 4, 1929) Brunswick Records Br4535 Re-issued on Cotton Club stars (released 1990) Milan Records OCLC 858508492
1931
Keep a song in your soul / Bill Robinson blues (released April 3, 1931) Brunswick Records E36441-A-B; also issued on Columbia Records 30183
Keep a song in your soul / Just a crazy song (Hi-hi-hi) Brunswick Records Br 6134, 1168b, A9091
1935 Living in a great big way with Jeni Legon (recorded 1934, re-released in 2000 on Hollywood swing & jazz : hot numbers from classic M-G-M, Warner Bros., and RKO films) Rino Records
1943 Stormy Weather Motion picture soundtrack (recorded January–May 1943, re-released 1993) Fox Records: Distributed by Arista Records, 1993.
See also
Racism in the United States
References
Notes
Bibliography
Some biographical material is from the International Tap Association Newsletter, May/June 1993. The biographical material was extrapolated from The American Dictionary of Biography and Webster's American Biographies.
Haskins, James; Mitgang, N. R., Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (New York: William Morrow, 1988).
Williams, Iain Cameron (2002). Underneath A Harlem Moon
External links
Bojangles at the Evergreens Cemetery
1878 births
1949 deaths
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American singers
369th Infantry Regiment personnel
African-American male actors
African-American male dancers
African-American male singers
American male dancers
American male film actors
American male musical theatre actors
American male singers
American male stage actors
American military personnel of World War I
American tap dancers
Burials at the Cemetery of the Evergreens
Deaths from heart disease
Harlem Renaissance
Male actors from Richmond, Virginia
Military personnel from Richmond, Virginia
Musicians from Richmond, Virginia
Singers from Virginia
United States Army soldiers
Vaudeville performers | true | [
"Freethinkers' Pinnacle Party or Summit of Freethinkers or Freethinkers Front (, Chekad-e Azadandishan) is an Iranian principalist political party founded in 2000, mostly by Islamic Azad University academics. They competed in the 2000 Iranian legislative election and were able to gain some success. In 2001 and 2005 presidential elections, they supported Abdollah Jassbi and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani respectively. In 2009 presidential election, the party did not support any candidates, but invited people to vote. They also have endorsed The two Societies' electoral list for the Assembly of Experts elections in 2006.\n\nSee also \n:Category:Summit of Freethinkers Party politicians\n\nReferences \n\nPrinciplist political groups in Iran\nPolitical parties established in 2000\nElectoral lists for Iranian legislative election, 2004",
"The Agricultural Party of Greece () was a Greek left-wing political party from 1923 to 1946.\n\nThe party first contested national elections in 1926, when it won four seats in the parliamentary elections. Despite their success in 1926, the party did not contest the 1928 elections,. \n\nDespite its success in 1926, the party did not contest the 1928 elections, but returned in 1936, winning a single seat in the elections that year. The party did not contest any further elections.\n\nOn 27 September 1941, the Agricultural Party of Greece participated in the EAM (Greek National Liberation Front), the biggest resistance organization during the Greek Resistance.\n\nReferences\n\nDefunct socialist parties in Greece\nNational Liberation Front (Greece)\n1920s in Greece\n1930s in Greece\n1940s in Greek politics\nPolitical parties established in 1923\n1923 establishments in Greece\nPolitical parties disestablished in 1946\n1946 disestablishments in Greece"
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[
"Bill Robinson",
"Vaudeville",
"What was Vaudeville?",
"vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager",
"What was Robinson's role?",
"By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo,",
"Did they see any success?",
"working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week."
] | C_cc55017ed7b34895b46dda0b68d5fec4_1 | How long did he perform solo? | 4 | How long did Robinson perform solo? | Bill Robinson | On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theater in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous traveling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines). By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two colored rule, which forbade solo black acts. When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theaters in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both black and white units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918. Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919-1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit, and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50-52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages. CANNOTANSWER | Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, | Bill Robinson, nicknamed Bojangles (born Luther Robinson; May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949), was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer, the best known and the most highly paid African-American entertainer in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. His career began in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway theatre, the recording industry, Hollywood films, radio, and television.
According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, "Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging", adding a "hitherto-unknown lightness and presence". His signature routine was the Stair Dance, in which he would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. He is also credited with having popularized the word copacetic through his repeated use of it in vaudeville and radio appearances.
He is best known today for his dancing with Shirley Temple in a series of films during the 1930s, and for starring in the musical Stormy Weather (1943), loosely based on his own life and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. He used his popularity to challenge and overcome numerous racial barriers. Robinson was one of the first minstrel and vaudeville performers to appear as Black without the use of blackface makeup, as well as one of the earliest Black performers to perform solo, overcoming vaudeville's two-colored rule. Additionally, he was an early Black headliner in Broadway shows. Robinson was the first Black performer to appear in a Hollywood film in an interracial dance team (with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel, 1935), and the first Black performer to headline a mixed-race Broadway production.
Robinson came under heavy criticism for his apparent tacit acceptance of racial stereotypes of the era, with some critics calling him an Uncle Tom. He strongly resented this, and his biographers suggested that critics were underestimating the difficulties faced by Black performers engaging with mainstream White culture at the time, and ignoring his many efforts to overcome racial prejudice. In his public life, Robinson led efforts to persuade the Dallas Police Department to hire its first Black policeman; lobby President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II for more equal treatment of Black soldiers; and stage the first integrated public event in Miami, a fundraiser which was attended by both Black and White city residents.
Robinson was a popular figure in both the Black and White entertainment worlds of his era, and is remembered for the support that he gave to fellow performers, including Fred Astaire, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens and the Nicholas Brothers. Sammy Davis Jr. and Ann Miller credited him as a teacher and mentor, Miller saying that he "changed the course of my life". Gregory Hines produced and starred in a biographical movie about Robinson for which he won the NAACP Best Actor Award.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the time, Robinson died penniless in 1949, his funeral paid for by longtime friend Ed Sullivan. In 1989, Congress designated Robinson's birthday of May 25 as National Tap Dance Day.
Early life
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was born Luther Robinson in Richmond, Virginia, on May 25, 1878, to Maxwell, a machinist, and Maria Robinson, a church choir director. He and his younger brother William were raised in Richmond's Jackson Ward neighborhood. His grandmother Bedelia Robinson, a former slave, raised him after both of his parents died tragically in 1884: his father died from chronic heart disease and his mother from unknown natural causes. Details of his early life are known only through legend, much of it perpetuated by Robinson himself. He claimed that he was christened Luther, a name that he did not like. He suggested to his younger brother William that they should exchange names, and they eventually did.
His brother subsequently adopted the name of Percy and achieved recognition as a musician under that name.
Career
Early days
At the age of five, Robinson began dancing for small change, appearing as a "hoofer" or busker in local beer gardens and in front of theaters for tossed pennies. A promoter saw him performing outside the Globe Theater in Richmond and offered him a job as a "pick" in a local minstrel show. At that time, minstrel shows were staged by White performers in blackface. Pickaninnies were cute Black children at the edge of the stage singing, dancing, or telling jokes.
In 1890, at the age of 12, Robinson ran away to Washington, D.C., where he did odd jobs at Benning Race Track and worked briefly as a jockey. He teamed up with a young Al Jolson, with Jolson singing while Robinson danced for pennies or to sell newspapers. In 1891, he was hired by Whallen and Martel, touring with Mayme Remington's troupe in a show titled The South Before the War, performing again as a pickaninny, despite his age. He travelled with the show for over a year before growing too mature to play the role credibly.
In 1898, he returned to Richmond where he joined the United States Army as a rifleman when the Spanish–American War broke out. He received an accidental gunshot wound from a second lieutenant who was cleaning his gun.
Vaudeville
On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous travelling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines).
By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap-dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuel's, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two-coloured rule, which forbade solo Black acts.
When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theatres in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both Black and White units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918.
Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919 to 1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50–52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages.
Tap Dance Style
As mentioned above, the chapter of Stearns' Bill Robinson: Up on the Toes entitled Jazz Dance (1966) describes how Robinson introduced dancing "up on the toes" to tap dance. This was a new addition to King Rastus Brown's popular "flat-footed wizardry". Moving primarily from the waist down, Robinson maintained impressive control of his body. Pete Nugent is said to have remarked, "Robinson was the absolute tops in control." That Robinson infrequently dropped his heels marked a significant change in popular tap technique. Due to his adroit ability to be both light on his feet and distinct in his percussive taps, Robinson was called the "Father of Tapology".
In 1918 at the Palace Theatre in New York, Robinson performed the Stair Dance. Claims regarding the origin of the Stair Dance were highly disputed; however, Robinson was widely credited with the dance because he made it popular. The dance involved "a different rhythm for each step each one reverberating with a different pitch and the fact that he had a special set of portable steps enhanced his claim to originating the dance". The popular sensation of the Stair Dance led Robinson to try to secure a patent on the routine through the U.S. Patent Office in Washington D.C., ultimately to no avail; however the lack of a patent did not diminish Robinson's professional command of the Stair Dance. The entertainment community began to associate the Stair Dance exclusively with Robinson as the routine became a standard part of his performances in 1921. Haskins reports that dancer Fred Stone sent Robinson a check for having performed the routine.
Robinson's talents transcended his famous Stair Dance by far. The steps themselves were not essential to Robinson's performances; rather, Robinson would naturally shift into "a little skating step to stop-time; or a Scoot step, a cross-over tap" or many other tap steps involved in his particular movement quality. Robinson changed rhythmic meters and tap steps and syncopated breaks seamlessly. Often Robinson would talk to his audience, share anecdotes, and act as if he were surprised by the action of his feet. His amusing personality was essential to his performances and popularity. Robinson is said to have consistently performed in split-soled wooden shoes, handcrafted by a Chicago craftsman.
Broadway
In 1928, a White impresario, Lew Leslie, produced Blackbirds of 1928 on Broadway, a Black revue for White audiences starring Adelaide Hall and Bill Robinson along with Aida Ward, Tim Moore and other Black stars. The show originally did not include Robinson; only after three weeks of lukewarm reception did Leslie add Robinson as an "extra attraction". The show then became a huge success on Broadway, where it ran for over one year to sell-out performances. On stage, Adelaide Hall and Robinson danced and sang a duet together, which captivated the audiences. From then on, Robinson's public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the White world, maintaining a connection with the Black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofers Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem. So successful was Adelaide Hall's collaboration with Bojangles, they even appeared together on stage at the prestigious Palace Theatre (Broadway) before they were teamed up together again by Marty Forkins (Robinson's manager) to star in another Broadway musical titled, "Brown Buddies", that opened in 1930 at the Liberty Theatre, where it ran for four months before commencing a road tour of the States.
In 1939, Robinson returned to the stage in The Hot Mikado, a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. The show opened at the Broadhurst Theatre, with Robinson cast in the role of the Emperor. His rendition of My Object All Sublime stopped the show and produced eight encores. After Broadway, the show moved to the 1939 New York World's Fair, and was one of the greatest hits of the fair. August 25, 1939, was named Bill Robinson Day at the fair.
Robinson's next Broadway show, All in Fun (1940), was with an all-White cast. Despite having Imogene Coca, Pert Kelton, and other stars, the show received poor reviews at out-of-town tryouts in New Haven and Boston. When the White stars and co-producers, Phil Baker and Leonard Sillman, withdrew, Robinson became the star, the first time an African-American headlined an otherwise all-White production. Although the reviewers were enthusiastic about Robinson, they panned the show, and it failed to attract audiences. All in Fun closed after four performances.
Robinson's next foray on Broadway was the musical comedy Memphis Bound, which opened in May 1945. This production used an all-Black cast including Robinson (who had top billing), Avon Long, Billy Daniels, Ada Brown, and Sheila Guyse. Robinson played the boat pilot and then Sir Joseph Porter in the play-within-a-play of H.M.S. Pinafore. Critics widely praised Robinson's performance and especially his dancing, with his stair dance cited as a high point of the show.
Film career
After 1932, Black stage revues waned in popularity, but Robinson remained in vogue with White audiences for more than a decade in some fourteen motion pictures produced by such companies as RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. Most of them had musical settings, in which he played old-fashioned roles in nostalgic romances.
Early films
Robinson's film debut was in the RKO Pictures 1930 musical Dixiana. RKO was formed in part by a merger of the Keith and Orpheum theater circuits, with whom Robinson had performed as a headliner for many years. He was cast as a specialty performer in a standalone scene. This practice, customary at the time, permitted Southern theaters to remove scenes containing Black performers from their showings of the film. Dixiana was followed by Robinson's first starring role, in Harlem Is Heaven (1932), which is sometimes cited as the first film with an all-Black cast, even though all-Black silent films preceded it and the cast of Harlem Is Heaven includes a White actor with a speaking part, as well as a few White extras. The movie was produced in New York and did not perform well financially, leading Robinson to focus on Hollywood-produced movies after that.
Shirley Temple
The idea for bringing a Black dancer to Fox to star with Temple in The Little Colonel was actually first proposed by Fox head Winfield Sheehan after a discussion with D. W. Griffith. Sheehan set his sights on Robinson but, unsure of his ability as an actor, arranged for a contract that was void if Robinson failed the dramatic test. Robinson passed the test and was brought in to both star with Temple and to teach her tap dancing. They quickly hit it off, as Temple recounted years later:
Robinson walked a step ahead of us, but when he noticed me hurrying to catch up, he shortened his stride to accommodate mine. I kept reaching up for his hand, but he hadn't looked down and seemed unaware. Fannie called his attention to what I was doing, so he stopped short, bent low over me, his eyes wide and rows of brilliant teeth showing in a wide smile. When he took my hand in his, it felt large and cool. For a few moments, we continued walking in silence. "Can I call you Uncle Billy?" I asked. "Why sure you can", he replied... "But then I get to call you darlin.'" It was a deal. From then on, whenever we walked together it was hand in hand, and I was always his "darlin.'"
Temple had already appeared in five films released in 1934, and had performed a tap routine with James Dunn in Stand Up and Cheer! After Robinson was signed by 20th Century Fox, it was decided that he would perform his famous stair dance with Temple. While Robinson liked the idea, he quickly realized that he could not teach his complex stair dance to a seven-year-old in the few days permitted by the shooting schedule. Instead, he taught Temple to kick the riser (face) of each stairstep with her toe. After watching her practice his choreography, Robinson modified his routine to mimic her movements, so that it appeared on film that she was imitating his steps. The sequence was the highlight of the film.
Robinson and Temple became the first interracial dance partners in Hollywood history. The scene was controversial for its time, and was cut out in the south along with all other scenes showing the two making physical contact. Temple and Robinson appeared in four films together: The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Just Around the Corner.
Robinson and Temple became close friends as a result of his dance coaching and acting with her. Robinson carried pictures of Temple with him wherever he traveled, and Temple considered him a lifelong friend, saying in an interview "Bill Robinson treated me as an equal, which was very important to me. He didn't talk down to me, like to a little girl. And I liked people like that. And Bill Robinson was the best of all."
Other films
Robinson refused to play stereotypical roles imposed by Hollywood studios. In a small vignette in Hooray for Love (1935), he played a mayor of Harlem modeled after his own ceremonial honor; in One Mile from Heaven (1937), he played a romantic lead opposite African-American actress Fredi Washington after Hollywood had relaxed its taboo against such roles for Black people.
Robinson appeared opposite Will Rogers in In Old Kentucky (1935), the last movie Rogers made prior to his death in an airplane crash. Robinson and Rogers were good friends, and after Rogers' death, Robinson refused to fly, instead travelling by train to Hollywood for his film work.
Stormy Weather
Robinson's final film appearance was a starring role in the 1943 Fox musical Stormy Weather. Lena Horne co-starred as Robinson's love interest, and the movie also featured Fats Waller in his final movie appearance before his death, playing with Cab Calloway and his orchestra. The Nicholas Brothers are featured in the film's final dance sequence, performing to Calloway's "Jumpin' Jive", in what Fred Astaire called "the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen".
In 2001, Stormy Weather was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Radio and sound recordings
From 1936 until his death in 1949, Robinson made numerous radio and occasional television appearances. The distinctive sound of Robinson's tap dancing was frequently featured, but Robinson also sang, made sound effects, and told jokes and stories from his vaudeville acts. He also addressed the audience directly, something very rare for a Black radio performer in that era.
Robinson also made several recordings, including one in which he demonstrated each of his tap steps and their corresponding sounds. It was also on the radio and in his recordings that Robinson introduced and popularized a word of his own invention, copasetic, which he had used for years in his vaudeville shows, and which was added to Webster's Dictionary in 1934.
Final appearances
The last theatrical project for Robinson was to have been Two Gentlemen from the South, with James Barton as the master and Robinson as his servant, in which the Black and White roles reverse and eventually the two come together as equals, but the show did not open.
Robinson's final public appearance in 1949, a few weeks before his death, was as a surprise guest on a TV show, Ted Mack's The Original Amateur Hour, in which he emotionally embraced a competitor on the show who had tap-danced for the audience. A friend remarked, "he was handing over his crown, like him saying, 'this is my good-bye. '"
Personal life and death
Little is known of Robinson's first marriage to Lena Chase in 1907. They separated in 1916, and the marriage ended in 1922. His second wife was Fannie S. Clay whom he married shortly after his divorce from Chase. They divorced in 1943. His third marriage was in 1944 to Elaine Plaines in Columbus, Ohio, and they remained together until Robinson's death in 1949. There were no children from any of the marriages.
Political figures and celebrities appointed Robinson an honorary mayor of Harlem, a lifetime member of policemen's associations and fraternal orders, and a mascot of the New York Giants major league baseball team. Robinson reciprocated with open-handed generosity and frequently credited the White dancer James Barton for his contribution to his dancing style.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the first half of the 20th century, earning more than US$2 million during his lifetime, Robinson died penniless on November 25, 1949, at the age of 71, 6 months before his 72nd birthday, from heart failure. His funeral was arranged and paid for by longtime friend and television host Ed Sullivan. Robinson lay in repose at the 369th Infantry Regiment Armory in Harlem, where an estimated 32,000 people filed past his open casket to pay their last respects. The schools in Harlem were closed for a half-day so that children could attend or listen to the funeral, which was broadcast over the radio. Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr. conducted the service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and New York Mayor William O'Dwyer gave the eulogy. Robinson is buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens, Brooklyn, New York.
Legacy
Robinson was successful despite the obstacle of racism. A favorite Robinson anecdote is that he seated himself in a restaurant and a customer objected to his presence. When the manager suggested that it might be better if Robinson leave, he smiled and asked, "Have you got a ten-dollar bill?" Politely asking to borrow the manager's note for a moment, Robinson added six $10 bills from his own wallet and mixed them up, then extended the seven bills together, adding, "Here, let's see you pick out the colored one". The restaurant manager served Robinson without further delay.
Robinson co-founded the New York Black Yankees baseball team in Harlem in 1936 with financier James "Soldier Boy" Semler. The team was a successful member of the Negro National League until it disbanded in 1948, after Major League Baseball was desegregated.
In 1989, a joint U.S. Senate/House resolution declared "National Tap Dance Day" to be May 25, the anniversary of Bill Robinson's birth.
Robinson was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1987.
Popular myths, legends, and misconceptions
There are several commonly cited anecdotes about Robinson that are likely the result of conflicting stories put out by Robinson's second wife Fanny, or his manager, Marty Forkins, or by various show business associates of Robinson. There are also numerous documented instances in which Robinson gave conflicting stories to news reporters at different times.
According to his biographer, Robinson had previously served in the Spanish–American War, where he sustained an accidental gunshot wound, was 40 when the U.S entered World War I, and received a letter of commendation from the War Department for his work during the war in boosting morale at training camps in the United States, not overseas.
It has further been claimed that, along with serving in the trenches in World War I, Robinson was also the drum major for the 369th Hellfighters Band and led the regimental band up Fifth Avenue on the 369th's return from overseas.
While numerous sources repeat the claim of Bill Robinson's appointment as drum major in the 369th Regiment Band, this is not mentioned in either Mr. Bojangles, the Bill Robinson biography by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, or A Life in Ragtime, the biography of James Reese Europe, the leader of the 369th regimental band.
The origin of the nickname "Mr. Bojangles"
Tales about the origin of Robinson's nickname even varied across the color line, a consequence of differing opinions of him by Black and White people. To Whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the Black variety artist Tom Fletcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler". Robinson himself said he got the nickname as a child in Richmond, which is the most commonly-accepted version.
Marriage to Fanny Clay
The date and location of Robinson's second marriage, to Fanny Clay, or even the year they met, is uncertain because the couple gave different dates and locations in interviews, possibly because they were worried about unfavorable publicity about the marriage occurring so soon after Robinson's divorce. Robinson's biographer estimates that they met in late 1920 and were married in early 1922.
First Meeting with Marty Forkins
Robinson's meeting with the man who became his manager, Marty Forkins, is said to have occurred when Robinson, working as a waiter, spilled soup on Forkins. After Robinson's death, Forkins and his wife, Rae Samuel, admitted that Samuels made the introduction after having seen Robinson perform with his partner, George Cooper. Their explanation was that the story was made up in order to obscure Robinson's & Cooper's partnership, and to more effectively promote Robinson as a solo act. The ruse was successful, making Robinson one of the first solo acts to break vaudeville's two-colored rule, which required African-American performers to work in pairs.
Legendary dance contest
A dance contest between Robinson and three other dance legends (typically Ray Bolger, Fred Astaire, and James Barton) in which Robinson emerges the victor is recounted in many places, but no verifiable source can be found describing where and when the contest might have taken place.
Copacetic
Robinson is given credit for having popularized the word copacetic and claimed to have invented it while still living in Richmond. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the origins of the word as unknown and documents the earliest written use of the word in 1919, by the newspaperman and author Irving Bacheller, in his serialized book, A Man for the Ages; this was followed by uses in 1926 by Carl Van Vechten in his novel Nigger Heaven, in 1934 in Webster's New International Dictionary, and by John O'Hara in his novel Appointment in Samarra. Haskins' biography of Robinson includes, "Bill was shelling peas at the Jefferson Market, a New York Daily Mirror reporter asked him how he was, and the reply just popped into his head: 'I'm copasetic. The word was not popularized until Robinson used the term as an opening for his vaudeville and radio performances. The word was used in films Robinson made with Shirley Temple in the 1930s.
World record for running backward
One of Robinson's methods for generating publicity in cities where he was not the headliner was to engage in "freak sprinting" races, such as running backward. In 1922, Robinson set the world record for running backward (100 yards in 13.5 seconds). The record stood until 1977, when Paul Wilson ran the distance in 13.3 seconds. Although Robinson's speed running backwards is undisputed, the circumstances in which this feat was accepted as a world record are unclear, and were likely the result of a staged publicity event rather than a sanctioned athletic contest.
The song "Mr. Bojangles"
Jerry Jeff Walker's 1968 folk song "Mr. Bojangles" has been misinterpreted as a song about Robinson. According to Walker, it was instead inspired by Walker's encounter with a street performer in the New Orleans first precinct jail, a street performer who called himself "Bo Jangles". In the song, the street performer is a heavy drinker and has a dog that died. By Robinson's own account and those of his friends, he neither smoked nor drank (although he was a frequent and avid gambler), and he never had a dog.
Controversies
Uncle Tom roles
Robinson came under heavy criticism for playing stereotyped roles, and took offense at such claims. Once, after being called an "Uncle Tom" in the New York newspaper The Age, Robinson went to its office in Harlem, pistol in hand, demanding to see the editor. In his eulogy at Robinson's funeral, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell argued against the claim that Robinson was an "Uncle Tom" figure, focusing on Robinson's ability as an entertainer and a man who transcended color lines.
In 1973, the film historian Donald Bogle, in his history of African Americans in American film, refers to Robinson's role in The Littlest Rebel and other Shirley Temple movies as the "quintessential Uncle Tom". Other critics noted that such criticism fails to account for the genuine affection and chemistry between Robinson and Temple that came through on the screen, and that the role represented a breakthrough for Hollywood stereotypes in that it was the first time a Black man was made the guardian of a white life. Bogle later moderated his criticism by noting that the reliable, articulate Uncle Billy character in The Littlest Rebel was a cut above the characters portrayed by Lincoln "Stepin Fetchit" Perry.
Haskins explains that critics calling Robinson an "Uncle Tom" often disregarded the discriminatory limitations Robinson endured and combated throughout his career. In addition to the impact of Jim Crow policies and the Depression, Haskins writes, "That Bill traveled, at least professionally, in increasingly white circles was not so much a matter of choice as one of reality." Having overcome numerous policies inhibiting his success to reach an unmatched level of stardom, Robinson had limited venue opportunities for a performer of his caliber.
In 1933, Robinson was named an honorary Mayor of Harlem for his philanthropic contributions to his community, and for his renowned success. He took this role seriously, performing over 3,000 benefits in the course of his career, aiding hundreds of unorganized charities and individuals.
Trial and imprisonment
On March 21, 1908, as a result of a dispute with a tailor over a suit, Robinson was arrested in New York City for armed robbery. On September 30, he was convicted and sentenced to 11–15 years hard labor at Sing Sing prison. Robinson had failed to take the charges and trial seriously and paid little attention to mounting a defense. After his conviction, Robinson's partner, George Cooper, organized his most influential friends to vouch for him, and hired a new attorney who produced evidence that Robinson had been falsely accused. Though he was exonerated at his second trial and his accusers were indicted for perjury, the trial and time spent in the Tombs (Manhattan's prison complex) affected Robinson deeply. After he was released, he made a point of registering his pistol at the local police station of each town where he performed. Robinson's second wife, Fanny, also sent a letter of introduction with complimentary tickets and other gifts to the local police chief's wife in each town ahead of Robinson's engagements.
Jesse Owens
After Jesse Owens returned from the 1936 Olympics, Robinson befriended him. Despite his fame from his four Olympic track wins, undermining Adolf Hitler's claims of Aryan supremacy, Owens found most of the offers that had been made to employ him had been nothing more than publicity stunts that had no substance. Robinson was the one exception, finding work for Owens within a few months of his return to the U.S. Robinson also introduced Owens to his manager, Marty Forkins, who secured a series of demonstration races for Owens which were viewed by many as degrading to the dignity of an Olympic athlete, most notably an event in Cuba in which Owens raced against a horse. As a result, Forkins and Robinson were viewed as having taken advantage of Owens. According to Forkins’ son, Robinson had told Owens that he should start running demonstration races that would both earn money for him and keep him in the public eye. Robinson had done many such races (including a race in which he set the world record for running backwards) and did not view them as undignified. Moreover, the events paid Owens well and provided him with a source of funds when no one else was offering him employment or helping him financially. Owens made a gift to Robinson of one of his four Olympic gold medals, as a gesture of gratitude for the help Robinson had given him.
Café Metropole and Jeni Le Gon
In 1937, Robinson caused a stir in the Harlem community by choosing a white dancer, Geneva Sawyer, as his dance partner over Jeni Le Gon in the Twentieth Century Fox film Café Metropole (1937). Le Gon had danced with him in Hooray for Love (1935) and had received favorable reviews. Sawyer had been Shirley Temple's dance coach during the time Temple and Robinson made movies together, and Sawyer had taken tap lessons from Robinson while he was teaching Temple and choreographing her routines. Robinson suggested to the producers that Sawyer could be cast as his partner if she wore blackface. Le Gon's career suffered as a result, and she never worked with Robinson again. Although the scene was shot with Sawyer in blackface, the studio became convinced that a mixed-race adult couple dancing together would be too controversial: both scenes with Robinson were cut from the final version of the movie and the deleted scenes were only released in 2008 as part of a Fox DVD boxed set of Tyrone Power movies.
In popular culture
Fred Astaire paid tribute to Bill Robinson in the tap routine Bojangles of Harlem from the 1936 film Swing Time. In it, Astaire famously dances to three of his shadows.
Duke Ellington composed "Bojangles (A Portrait of Bill Robinson)", a set of rhythmic variations as a salute to the great dancer.
A biography of Bill Robinson by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (Morrow), was published in 1988.
"Bojangles" the musical, premiered as the centerpiece of Barksdale Theatre's (at Hanover Tavern) 40th anniversary season in 1993. Playwright Doug Jones collaborated with composer Charles Strouse (Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, Applause) and Academy Award-winning lyricist Sammy Cahn.
A made-for-television film entitled Bojangles was released in 2001. The film earned the NAACP Best actor Award for Gregory Hines' performance as Robinson.
Arthur Duncan, an exceptional tap dancer in his own right, frequently paid homage to Bill Robinson with the stair routine on The Lawrence Welk Show.
A 2002 children's book titled Rap a Tap Tap: Here's Bojangles - Think of That! by Leo and Diane Dillon pays homage to Robinson.
A character loosely modeled upon Bojangles and Sammy Davis Jr., called "Bonejangles" appears in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005).
Blues for Bojangles is a song composed by Chuck Darwin, and performed by Anita O'Day with the Paul Jordan Orchestra.
Filmography
Selected discography
1929 Ain’t misbehavin’ / Doing the new low down with Irving Mills & His Hotsy Totsy Gang (released September 4, 1929) Brunswick Records Br4535 Re-issued on Cotton Club stars (released 1990) Milan Records OCLC 858508492
1931
Keep a song in your soul / Bill Robinson blues (released April 3, 1931) Brunswick Records E36441-A-B; also issued on Columbia Records 30183
Keep a song in your soul / Just a crazy song (Hi-hi-hi) Brunswick Records Br 6134, 1168b, A9091
1935 Living in a great big way with Jeni Legon (recorded 1934, re-released in 2000 on Hollywood swing & jazz : hot numbers from classic M-G-M, Warner Bros., and RKO films) Rino Records
1943 Stormy Weather Motion picture soundtrack (recorded January–May 1943, re-released 1993) Fox Records: Distributed by Arista Records, 1993.
See also
Racism in the United States
References
Notes
Bibliography
Some biographical material is from the International Tap Association Newsletter, May/June 1993. The biographical material was extrapolated from The American Dictionary of Biography and Webster's American Biographies.
Haskins, James; Mitgang, N. R., Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (New York: William Morrow, 1988).
Williams, Iain Cameron (2002). Underneath A Harlem Moon
External links
Bojangles at the Evergreens Cemetery
1878 births
1949 deaths
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American singers
369th Infantry Regiment personnel
African-American male actors
African-American male dancers
African-American male singers
American male dancers
American male film actors
American male musical theatre actors
American male singers
American male stage actors
American military personnel of World War I
American tap dancers
Burials at the Cemetery of the Evergreens
Deaths from heart disease
Harlem Renaissance
Male actors from Richmond, Virginia
Military personnel from Richmond, Virginia
Musicians from Richmond, Virginia
Singers from Virginia
United States Army soldiers
Vaudeville performers | true | [
"Jorma Kaukonen Trio Live is a live album taken from performances from Jorma Kaukonen's 1999 solo tour, and his last album for Relix Records. Performing with Kaukonen were Michael Falzarano and Pete Sears who had both played on his previous solo album, Too Many Years, and had performed with Hot Tuna on their last release, And Furthermore... After the release of this album, Kaukonen and Jack Casady began to perform as \"Jack & Jorma, The Original Acoustic Hot Tuna\" and Falzarano and Sears performed less frequently with Hot Tuna and Kaukonen's solo act, with Sears finally leaving in 2001 and Falzarano leaving in 2002.\n\nTrack listing\n\"True Religion\" (Jorma Kaukonen) – 4:54\n\"How Long Blues\" (Leroy Carr) – 4:02\n\"Death Don't Have No Mercy\" (Rev. Gary Davis) – 5:47\n\"Do Not Go Gentle\" (Kaukonen) – 3:44\n\"I See the Light\" (Kaukonen) – 6:05\n\"Embryonic Journey\" (Kaukonen) – 2:11\n\"Good Shepherd\" (Traditional) – 6:31\n\"San Francisco Bay Blues\" (Jesse Fuller) – 3:48\n\"I Know You Rider\" (Traditional) – 5:07\n\"Just My Way\" (Michael Falzarano) – 9:12\n\"Friend of the Devil\" (Jerry Garcia, Robert Hunter, John Dawson) – 6:03\n\nPersonnel\nJorma Kaukonen – guitars, vocals\nMichael Falzarano – rhythm guitar, vocals\nPete Sears – keyboards\n\nProduction\nMichael Falzarano – producer\nRalph Marsella – engineer\nRobert Minkin – cover photo\nRecorded live during 1999\n\nJorma Kaukonen albums\n2001 live albums\nRelix Records live albums",
"Greg Long (born December 12, 1966) is an American contemporary Christian music solo artist and also a member of the contemporary Christian pop group Avalon.\n\nBackground \n\nLong was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He began singing at the age of two, in his father's revivals. He is married to fellow Avalon band member Janna Long.\n\nAs a solo artist, Long has had four songs reach No. 1 on the Contemporary Christian charts: \"How Long?\" (a duet with Margaret Becker) from his first solo album, then \"What a Friend\" and \"Think About Jesus\" in 1995 and \"Love the Lord\" in 1996. Long was a 1998 GMA Dove Award nominee.\n\nIn 2003, Long joined Avalon, replacing founding member Michael Passons.\n\nDiscography \n\n Cross My Heart (Myrrh Records/Pakaderm Records 1994)\n Days of Grace (Myrrh Records 1996)\n Jesus Saves (Word Records 1998)\n Now (Myrrh Records 2000)\n Born Again (Christian Records 2004)\n The Definitive Collection (Word Records 2008 compilation album)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\n1966 births\nLiving people\nAmerican performers of Christian music\nPeople from Aberdeen, South Dakota\nPeople from Sisseton, South Dakota"
] |
[
"Bill Robinson",
"Vaudeville",
"What was Vaudeville?",
"vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager",
"What was Robinson's role?",
"By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo,",
"Did they see any success?",
"working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week.",
"How long did he perform solo?",
"Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act,"
] | C_cc55017ed7b34895b46dda0b68d5fec4_1 | What was his act about? | 5 | What was Robinson's act about? | Bill Robinson | On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theater in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous traveling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines). By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two colored rule, which forbade solo black acts. When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theaters in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both black and white units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918. Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919-1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit, and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50-52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages. CANNOTANSWER | primarily a tap dancing act, | Bill Robinson, nicknamed Bojangles (born Luther Robinson; May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949), was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer, the best known and the most highly paid African-American entertainer in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. His career began in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway theatre, the recording industry, Hollywood films, radio, and television.
According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, "Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging", adding a "hitherto-unknown lightness and presence". His signature routine was the Stair Dance, in which he would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. He is also credited with having popularized the word copacetic through his repeated use of it in vaudeville and radio appearances.
He is best known today for his dancing with Shirley Temple in a series of films during the 1930s, and for starring in the musical Stormy Weather (1943), loosely based on his own life and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. He used his popularity to challenge and overcome numerous racial barriers. Robinson was one of the first minstrel and vaudeville performers to appear as Black without the use of blackface makeup, as well as one of the earliest Black performers to perform solo, overcoming vaudeville's two-colored rule. Additionally, he was an early Black headliner in Broadway shows. Robinson was the first Black performer to appear in a Hollywood film in an interracial dance team (with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel, 1935), and the first Black performer to headline a mixed-race Broadway production.
Robinson came under heavy criticism for his apparent tacit acceptance of racial stereotypes of the era, with some critics calling him an Uncle Tom. He strongly resented this, and his biographers suggested that critics were underestimating the difficulties faced by Black performers engaging with mainstream White culture at the time, and ignoring his many efforts to overcome racial prejudice. In his public life, Robinson led efforts to persuade the Dallas Police Department to hire its first Black policeman; lobby President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II for more equal treatment of Black soldiers; and stage the first integrated public event in Miami, a fundraiser which was attended by both Black and White city residents.
Robinson was a popular figure in both the Black and White entertainment worlds of his era, and is remembered for the support that he gave to fellow performers, including Fred Astaire, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens and the Nicholas Brothers. Sammy Davis Jr. and Ann Miller credited him as a teacher and mentor, Miller saying that he "changed the course of my life". Gregory Hines produced and starred in a biographical movie about Robinson for which he won the NAACP Best Actor Award.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the time, Robinson died penniless in 1949, his funeral paid for by longtime friend Ed Sullivan. In 1989, Congress designated Robinson's birthday of May 25 as National Tap Dance Day.
Early life
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was born Luther Robinson in Richmond, Virginia, on May 25, 1878, to Maxwell, a machinist, and Maria Robinson, a church choir director. He and his younger brother William were raised in Richmond's Jackson Ward neighborhood. His grandmother Bedelia Robinson, a former slave, raised him after both of his parents died tragically in 1884: his father died from chronic heart disease and his mother from unknown natural causes. Details of his early life are known only through legend, much of it perpetuated by Robinson himself. He claimed that he was christened Luther, a name that he did not like. He suggested to his younger brother William that they should exchange names, and they eventually did.
His brother subsequently adopted the name of Percy and achieved recognition as a musician under that name.
Career
Early days
At the age of five, Robinson began dancing for small change, appearing as a "hoofer" or busker in local beer gardens and in front of theaters for tossed pennies. A promoter saw him performing outside the Globe Theater in Richmond and offered him a job as a "pick" in a local minstrel show. At that time, minstrel shows were staged by White performers in blackface. Pickaninnies were cute Black children at the edge of the stage singing, dancing, or telling jokes.
In 1890, at the age of 12, Robinson ran away to Washington, D.C., where he did odd jobs at Benning Race Track and worked briefly as a jockey. He teamed up with a young Al Jolson, with Jolson singing while Robinson danced for pennies or to sell newspapers. In 1891, he was hired by Whallen and Martel, touring with Mayme Remington's troupe in a show titled The South Before the War, performing again as a pickaninny, despite his age. He travelled with the show for over a year before growing too mature to play the role credibly.
In 1898, he returned to Richmond where he joined the United States Army as a rifleman when the Spanish–American War broke out. He received an accidental gunshot wound from a second lieutenant who was cleaning his gun.
Vaudeville
On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous travelling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines).
By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap-dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuel's, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two-coloured rule, which forbade solo Black acts.
When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theatres in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both Black and White units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918.
Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919 to 1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50–52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages.
Tap Dance Style
As mentioned above, the chapter of Stearns' Bill Robinson: Up on the Toes entitled Jazz Dance (1966) describes how Robinson introduced dancing "up on the toes" to tap dance. This was a new addition to King Rastus Brown's popular "flat-footed wizardry". Moving primarily from the waist down, Robinson maintained impressive control of his body. Pete Nugent is said to have remarked, "Robinson was the absolute tops in control." That Robinson infrequently dropped his heels marked a significant change in popular tap technique. Due to his adroit ability to be both light on his feet and distinct in his percussive taps, Robinson was called the "Father of Tapology".
In 1918 at the Palace Theatre in New York, Robinson performed the Stair Dance. Claims regarding the origin of the Stair Dance were highly disputed; however, Robinson was widely credited with the dance because he made it popular. The dance involved "a different rhythm for each step each one reverberating with a different pitch and the fact that he had a special set of portable steps enhanced his claim to originating the dance". The popular sensation of the Stair Dance led Robinson to try to secure a patent on the routine through the U.S. Patent Office in Washington D.C., ultimately to no avail; however the lack of a patent did not diminish Robinson's professional command of the Stair Dance. The entertainment community began to associate the Stair Dance exclusively with Robinson as the routine became a standard part of his performances in 1921. Haskins reports that dancer Fred Stone sent Robinson a check for having performed the routine.
Robinson's talents transcended his famous Stair Dance by far. The steps themselves were not essential to Robinson's performances; rather, Robinson would naturally shift into "a little skating step to stop-time; or a Scoot step, a cross-over tap" or many other tap steps involved in his particular movement quality. Robinson changed rhythmic meters and tap steps and syncopated breaks seamlessly. Often Robinson would talk to his audience, share anecdotes, and act as if he were surprised by the action of his feet. His amusing personality was essential to his performances and popularity. Robinson is said to have consistently performed in split-soled wooden shoes, handcrafted by a Chicago craftsman.
Broadway
In 1928, a White impresario, Lew Leslie, produced Blackbirds of 1928 on Broadway, a Black revue for White audiences starring Adelaide Hall and Bill Robinson along with Aida Ward, Tim Moore and other Black stars. The show originally did not include Robinson; only after three weeks of lukewarm reception did Leslie add Robinson as an "extra attraction". The show then became a huge success on Broadway, where it ran for over one year to sell-out performances. On stage, Adelaide Hall and Robinson danced and sang a duet together, which captivated the audiences. From then on, Robinson's public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the White world, maintaining a connection with the Black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofers Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem. So successful was Adelaide Hall's collaboration with Bojangles, they even appeared together on stage at the prestigious Palace Theatre (Broadway) before they were teamed up together again by Marty Forkins (Robinson's manager) to star in another Broadway musical titled, "Brown Buddies", that opened in 1930 at the Liberty Theatre, where it ran for four months before commencing a road tour of the States.
In 1939, Robinson returned to the stage in The Hot Mikado, a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. The show opened at the Broadhurst Theatre, with Robinson cast in the role of the Emperor. His rendition of My Object All Sublime stopped the show and produced eight encores. After Broadway, the show moved to the 1939 New York World's Fair, and was one of the greatest hits of the fair. August 25, 1939, was named Bill Robinson Day at the fair.
Robinson's next Broadway show, All in Fun (1940), was with an all-White cast. Despite having Imogene Coca, Pert Kelton, and other stars, the show received poor reviews at out-of-town tryouts in New Haven and Boston. When the White stars and co-producers, Phil Baker and Leonard Sillman, withdrew, Robinson became the star, the first time an African-American headlined an otherwise all-White production. Although the reviewers were enthusiastic about Robinson, they panned the show, and it failed to attract audiences. All in Fun closed after four performances.
Robinson's next foray on Broadway was the musical comedy Memphis Bound, which opened in May 1945. This production used an all-Black cast including Robinson (who had top billing), Avon Long, Billy Daniels, Ada Brown, and Sheila Guyse. Robinson played the boat pilot and then Sir Joseph Porter in the play-within-a-play of H.M.S. Pinafore. Critics widely praised Robinson's performance and especially his dancing, with his stair dance cited as a high point of the show.
Film career
After 1932, Black stage revues waned in popularity, but Robinson remained in vogue with White audiences for more than a decade in some fourteen motion pictures produced by such companies as RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. Most of them had musical settings, in which he played old-fashioned roles in nostalgic romances.
Early films
Robinson's film debut was in the RKO Pictures 1930 musical Dixiana. RKO was formed in part by a merger of the Keith and Orpheum theater circuits, with whom Robinson had performed as a headliner for many years. He was cast as a specialty performer in a standalone scene. This practice, customary at the time, permitted Southern theaters to remove scenes containing Black performers from their showings of the film. Dixiana was followed by Robinson's first starring role, in Harlem Is Heaven (1932), which is sometimes cited as the first film with an all-Black cast, even though all-Black silent films preceded it and the cast of Harlem Is Heaven includes a White actor with a speaking part, as well as a few White extras. The movie was produced in New York and did not perform well financially, leading Robinson to focus on Hollywood-produced movies after that.
Shirley Temple
The idea for bringing a Black dancer to Fox to star with Temple in The Little Colonel was actually first proposed by Fox head Winfield Sheehan after a discussion with D. W. Griffith. Sheehan set his sights on Robinson but, unsure of his ability as an actor, arranged for a contract that was void if Robinson failed the dramatic test. Robinson passed the test and was brought in to both star with Temple and to teach her tap dancing. They quickly hit it off, as Temple recounted years later:
Robinson walked a step ahead of us, but when he noticed me hurrying to catch up, he shortened his stride to accommodate mine. I kept reaching up for his hand, but he hadn't looked down and seemed unaware. Fannie called his attention to what I was doing, so he stopped short, bent low over me, his eyes wide and rows of brilliant teeth showing in a wide smile. When he took my hand in his, it felt large and cool. For a few moments, we continued walking in silence. "Can I call you Uncle Billy?" I asked. "Why sure you can", he replied... "But then I get to call you darlin.'" It was a deal. From then on, whenever we walked together it was hand in hand, and I was always his "darlin.'"
Temple had already appeared in five films released in 1934, and had performed a tap routine with James Dunn in Stand Up and Cheer! After Robinson was signed by 20th Century Fox, it was decided that he would perform his famous stair dance with Temple. While Robinson liked the idea, he quickly realized that he could not teach his complex stair dance to a seven-year-old in the few days permitted by the shooting schedule. Instead, he taught Temple to kick the riser (face) of each stairstep with her toe. After watching her practice his choreography, Robinson modified his routine to mimic her movements, so that it appeared on film that she was imitating his steps. The sequence was the highlight of the film.
Robinson and Temple became the first interracial dance partners in Hollywood history. The scene was controversial for its time, and was cut out in the south along with all other scenes showing the two making physical contact. Temple and Robinson appeared in four films together: The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Just Around the Corner.
Robinson and Temple became close friends as a result of his dance coaching and acting with her. Robinson carried pictures of Temple with him wherever he traveled, and Temple considered him a lifelong friend, saying in an interview "Bill Robinson treated me as an equal, which was very important to me. He didn't talk down to me, like to a little girl. And I liked people like that. And Bill Robinson was the best of all."
Other films
Robinson refused to play stereotypical roles imposed by Hollywood studios. In a small vignette in Hooray for Love (1935), he played a mayor of Harlem modeled after his own ceremonial honor; in One Mile from Heaven (1937), he played a romantic lead opposite African-American actress Fredi Washington after Hollywood had relaxed its taboo against such roles for Black people.
Robinson appeared opposite Will Rogers in In Old Kentucky (1935), the last movie Rogers made prior to his death in an airplane crash. Robinson and Rogers were good friends, and after Rogers' death, Robinson refused to fly, instead travelling by train to Hollywood for his film work.
Stormy Weather
Robinson's final film appearance was a starring role in the 1943 Fox musical Stormy Weather. Lena Horne co-starred as Robinson's love interest, and the movie also featured Fats Waller in his final movie appearance before his death, playing with Cab Calloway and his orchestra. The Nicholas Brothers are featured in the film's final dance sequence, performing to Calloway's "Jumpin' Jive", in what Fred Astaire called "the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen".
In 2001, Stormy Weather was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Radio and sound recordings
From 1936 until his death in 1949, Robinson made numerous radio and occasional television appearances. The distinctive sound of Robinson's tap dancing was frequently featured, but Robinson also sang, made sound effects, and told jokes and stories from his vaudeville acts. He also addressed the audience directly, something very rare for a Black radio performer in that era.
Robinson also made several recordings, including one in which he demonstrated each of his tap steps and their corresponding sounds. It was also on the radio and in his recordings that Robinson introduced and popularized a word of his own invention, copasetic, which he had used for years in his vaudeville shows, and which was added to Webster's Dictionary in 1934.
Final appearances
The last theatrical project for Robinson was to have been Two Gentlemen from the South, with James Barton as the master and Robinson as his servant, in which the Black and White roles reverse and eventually the two come together as equals, but the show did not open.
Robinson's final public appearance in 1949, a few weeks before his death, was as a surprise guest on a TV show, Ted Mack's The Original Amateur Hour, in which he emotionally embraced a competitor on the show who had tap-danced for the audience. A friend remarked, "he was handing over his crown, like him saying, 'this is my good-bye. '"
Personal life and death
Little is known of Robinson's first marriage to Lena Chase in 1907. They separated in 1916, and the marriage ended in 1922. His second wife was Fannie S. Clay whom he married shortly after his divorce from Chase. They divorced in 1943. His third marriage was in 1944 to Elaine Plaines in Columbus, Ohio, and they remained together until Robinson's death in 1949. There were no children from any of the marriages.
Political figures and celebrities appointed Robinson an honorary mayor of Harlem, a lifetime member of policemen's associations and fraternal orders, and a mascot of the New York Giants major league baseball team. Robinson reciprocated with open-handed generosity and frequently credited the White dancer James Barton for his contribution to his dancing style.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the first half of the 20th century, earning more than US$2 million during his lifetime, Robinson died penniless on November 25, 1949, at the age of 71, 6 months before his 72nd birthday, from heart failure. His funeral was arranged and paid for by longtime friend and television host Ed Sullivan. Robinson lay in repose at the 369th Infantry Regiment Armory in Harlem, where an estimated 32,000 people filed past his open casket to pay their last respects. The schools in Harlem were closed for a half-day so that children could attend or listen to the funeral, which was broadcast over the radio. Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr. conducted the service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and New York Mayor William O'Dwyer gave the eulogy. Robinson is buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens, Brooklyn, New York.
Legacy
Robinson was successful despite the obstacle of racism. A favorite Robinson anecdote is that he seated himself in a restaurant and a customer objected to his presence. When the manager suggested that it might be better if Robinson leave, he smiled and asked, "Have you got a ten-dollar bill?" Politely asking to borrow the manager's note for a moment, Robinson added six $10 bills from his own wallet and mixed them up, then extended the seven bills together, adding, "Here, let's see you pick out the colored one". The restaurant manager served Robinson without further delay.
Robinson co-founded the New York Black Yankees baseball team in Harlem in 1936 with financier James "Soldier Boy" Semler. The team was a successful member of the Negro National League until it disbanded in 1948, after Major League Baseball was desegregated.
In 1989, a joint U.S. Senate/House resolution declared "National Tap Dance Day" to be May 25, the anniversary of Bill Robinson's birth.
Robinson was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1987.
Popular myths, legends, and misconceptions
There are several commonly cited anecdotes about Robinson that are likely the result of conflicting stories put out by Robinson's second wife Fanny, or his manager, Marty Forkins, or by various show business associates of Robinson. There are also numerous documented instances in which Robinson gave conflicting stories to news reporters at different times.
According to his biographer, Robinson had previously served in the Spanish–American War, where he sustained an accidental gunshot wound, was 40 when the U.S entered World War I, and received a letter of commendation from the War Department for his work during the war in boosting morale at training camps in the United States, not overseas.
It has further been claimed that, along with serving in the trenches in World War I, Robinson was also the drum major for the 369th Hellfighters Band and led the regimental band up Fifth Avenue on the 369th's return from overseas.
While numerous sources repeat the claim of Bill Robinson's appointment as drum major in the 369th Regiment Band, this is not mentioned in either Mr. Bojangles, the Bill Robinson biography by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, or A Life in Ragtime, the biography of James Reese Europe, the leader of the 369th regimental band.
The origin of the nickname "Mr. Bojangles"
Tales about the origin of Robinson's nickname even varied across the color line, a consequence of differing opinions of him by Black and White people. To Whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the Black variety artist Tom Fletcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler". Robinson himself said he got the nickname as a child in Richmond, which is the most commonly-accepted version.
Marriage to Fanny Clay
The date and location of Robinson's second marriage, to Fanny Clay, or even the year they met, is uncertain because the couple gave different dates and locations in interviews, possibly because they were worried about unfavorable publicity about the marriage occurring so soon after Robinson's divorce. Robinson's biographer estimates that they met in late 1920 and were married in early 1922.
First Meeting with Marty Forkins
Robinson's meeting with the man who became his manager, Marty Forkins, is said to have occurred when Robinson, working as a waiter, spilled soup on Forkins. After Robinson's death, Forkins and his wife, Rae Samuel, admitted that Samuels made the introduction after having seen Robinson perform with his partner, George Cooper. Their explanation was that the story was made up in order to obscure Robinson's & Cooper's partnership, and to more effectively promote Robinson as a solo act. The ruse was successful, making Robinson one of the first solo acts to break vaudeville's two-colored rule, which required African-American performers to work in pairs.
Legendary dance contest
A dance contest between Robinson and three other dance legends (typically Ray Bolger, Fred Astaire, and James Barton) in which Robinson emerges the victor is recounted in many places, but no verifiable source can be found describing where and when the contest might have taken place.
Copacetic
Robinson is given credit for having popularized the word copacetic and claimed to have invented it while still living in Richmond. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the origins of the word as unknown and documents the earliest written use of the word in 1919, by the newspaperman and author Irving Bacheller, in his serialized book, A Man for the Ages; this was followed by uses in 1926 by Carl Van Vechten in his novel Nigger Heaven, in 1934 in Webster's New International Dictionary, and by John O'Hara in his novel Appointment in Samarra. Haskins' biography of Robinson includes, "Bill was shelling peas at the Jefferson Market, a New York Daily Mirror reporter asked him how he was, and the reply just popped into his head: 'I'm copasetic. The word was not popularized until Robinson used the term as an opening for his vaudeville and radio performances. The word was used in films Robinson made with Shirley Temple in the 1930s.
World record for running backward
One of Robinson's methods for generating publicity in cities where he was not the headliner was to engage in "freak sprinting" races, such as running backward. In 1922, Robinson set the world record for running backward (100 yards in 13.5 seconds). The record stood until 1977, when Paul Wilson ran the distance in 13.3 seconds. Although Robinson's speed running backwards is undisputed, the circumstances in which this feat was accepted as a world record are unclear, and were likely the result of a staged publicity event rather than a sanctioned athletic contest.
The song "Mr. Bojangles"
Jerry Jeff Walker's 1968 folk song "Mr. Bojangles" has been misinterpreted as a song about Robinson. According to Walker, it was instead inspired by Walker's encounter with a street performer in the New Orleans first precinct jail, a street performer who called himself "Bo Jangles". In the song, the street performer is a heavy drinker and has a dog that died. By Robinson's own account and those of his friends, he neither smoked nor drank (although he was a frequent and avid gambler), and he never had a dog.
Controversies
Uncle Tom roles
Robinson came under heavy criticism for playing stereotyped roles, and took offense at such claims. Once, after being called an "Uncle Tom" in the New York newspaper The Age, Robinson went to its office in Harlem, pistol in hand, demanding to see the editor. In his eulogy at Robinson's funeral, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell argued against the claim that Robinson was an "Uncle Tom" figure, focusing on Robinson's ability as an entertainer and a man who transcended color lines.
In 1973, the film historian Donald Bogle, in his history of African Americans in American film, refers to Robinson's role in The Littlest Rebel and other Shirley Temple movies as the "quintessential Uncle Tom". Other critics noted that such criticism fails to account for the genuine affection and chemistry between Robinson and Temple that came through on the screen, and that the role represented a breakthrough for Hollywood stereotypes in that it was the first time a Black man was made the guardian of a white life. Bogle later moderated his criticism by noting that the reliable, articulate Uncle Billy character in The Littlest Rebel was a cut above the characters portrayed by Lincoln "Stepin Fetchit" Perry.
Haskins explains that critics calling Robinson an "Uncle Tom" often disregarded the discriminatory limitations Robinson endured and combated throughout his career. In addition to the impact of Jim Crow policies and the Depression, Haskins writes, "That Bill traveled, at least professionally, in increasingly white circles was not so much a matter of choice as one of reality." Having overcome numerous policies inhibiting his success to reach an unmatched level of stardom, Robinson had limited venue opportunities for a performer of his caliber.
In 1933, Robinson was named an honorary Mayor of Harlem for his philanthropic contributions to his community, and for his renowned success. He took this role seriously, performing over 3,000 benefits in the course of his career, aiding hundreds of unorganized charities and individuals.
Trial and imprisonment
On March 21, 1908, as a result of a dispute with a tailor over a suit, Robinson was arrested in New York City for armed robbery. On September 30, he was convicted and sentenced to 11–15 years hard labor at Sing Sing prison. Robinson had failed to take the charges and trial seriously and paid little attention to mounting a defense. After his conviction, Robinson's partner, George Cooper, organized his most influential friends to vouch for him, and hired a new attorney who produced evidence that Robinson had been falsely accused. Though he was exonerated at his second trial and his accusers were indicted for perjury, the trial and time spent in the Tombs (Manhattan's prison complex) affected Robinson deeply. After he was released, he made a point of registering his pistol at the local police station of each town where he performed. Robinson's second wife, Fanny, also sent a letter of introduction with complimentary tickets and other gifts to the local police chief's wife in each town ahead of Robinson's engagements.
Jesse Owens
After Jesse Owens returned from the 1936 Olympics, Robinson befriended him. Despite his fame from his four Olympic track wins, undermining Adolf Hitler's claims of Aryan supremacy, Owens found most of the offers that had been made to employ him had been nothing more than publicity stunts that had no substance. Robinson was the one exception, finding work for Owens within a few months of his return to the U.S. Robinson also introduced Owens to his manager, Marty Forkins, who secured a series of demonstration races for Owens which were viewed by many as degrading to the dignity of an Olympic athlete, most notably an event in Cuba in which Owens raced against a horse. As a result, Forkins and Robinson were viewed as having taken advantage of Owens. According to Forkins’ son, Robinson had told Owens that he should start running demonstration races that would both earn money for him and keep him in the public eye. Robinson had done many such races (including a race in which he set the world record for running backwards) and did not view them as undignified. Moreover, the events paid Owens well and provided him with a source of funds when no one else was offering him employment or helping him financially. Owens made a gift to Robinson of one of his four Olympic gold medals, as a gesture of gratitude for the help Robinson had given him.
Café Metropole and Jeni Le Gon
In 1937, Robinson caused a stir in the Harlem community by choosing a white dancer, Geneva Sawyer, as his dance partner over Jeni Le Gon in the Twentieth Century Fox film Café Metropole (1937). Le Gon had danced with him in Hooray for Love (1935) and had received favorable reviews. Sawyer had been Shirley Temple's dance coach during the time Temple and Robinson made movies together, and Sawyer had taken tap lessons from Robinson while he was teaching Temple and choreographing her routines. Robinson suggested to the producers that Sawyer could be cast as his partner if she wore blackface. Le Gon's career suffered as a result, and she never worked with Robinson again. Although the scene was shot with Sawyer in blackface, the studio became convinced that a mixed-race adult couple dancing together would be too controversial: both scenes with Robinson were cut from the final version of the movie and the deleted scenes were only released in 2008 as part of a Fox DVD boxed set of Tyrone Power movies.
In popular culture
Fred Astaire paid tribute to Bill Robinson in the tap routine Bojangles of Harlem from the 1936 film Swing Time. In it, Astaire famously dances to three of his shadows.
Duke Ellington composed "Bojangles (A Portrait of Bill Robinson)", a set of rhythmic variations as a salute to the great dancer.
A biography of Bill Robinson by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (Morrow), was published in 1988.
"Bojangles" the musical, premiered as the centerpiece of Barksdale Theatre's (at Hanover Tavern) 40th anniversary season in 1993. Playwright Doug Jones collaborated with composer Charles Strouse (Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, Applause) and Academy Award-winning lyricist Sammy Cahn.
A made-for-television film entitled Bojangles was released in 2001. The film earned the NAACP Best actor Award for Gregory Hines' performance as Robinson.
Arthur Duncan, an exceptional tap dancer in his own right, frequently paid homage to Bill Robinson with the stair routine on The Lawrence Welk Show.
A 2002 children's book titled Rap a Tap Tap: Here's Bojangles - Think of That! by Leo and Diane Dillon pays homage to Robinson.
A character loosely modeled upon Bojangles and Sammy Davis Jr., called "Bonejangles" appears in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005).
Blues for Bojangles is a song composed by Chuck Darwin, and performed by Anita O'Day with the Paul Jordan Orchestra.
Filmography
Selected discography
1929 Ain’t misbehavin’ / Doing the new low down with Irving Mills & His Hotsy Totsy Gang (released September 4, 1929) Brunswick Records Br4535 Re-issued on Cotton Club stars (released 1990) Milan Records OCLC 858508492
1931
Keep a song in your soul / Bill Robinson blues (released April 3, 1931) Brunswick Records E36441-A-B; also issued on Columbia Records 30183
Keep a song in your soul / Just a crazy song (Hi-hi-hi) Brunswick Records Br 6134, 1168b, A9091
1935 Living in a great big way with Jeni Legon (recorded 1934, re-released in 2000 on Hollywood swing & jazz : hot numbers from classic M-G-M, Warner Bros., and RKO films) Rino Records
1943 Stormy Weather Motion picture soundtrack (recorded January–May 1943, re-released 1993) Fox Records: Distributed by Arista Records, 1993.
See also
Racism in the United States
References
Notes
Bibliography
Some biographical material is from the International Tap Association Newsletter, May/June 1993. The biographical material was extrapolated from The American Dictionary of Biography and Webster's American Biographies.
Haskins, James; Mitgang, N. R., Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (New York: William Morrow, 1988).
Williams, Iain Cameron (2002). Underneath A Harlem Moon
External links
Bojangles at the Evergreens Cemetery
1878 births
1949 deaths
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American singers
369th Infantry Regiment personnel
African-American male actors
African-American male dancers
African-American male singers
American male dancers
American male film actors
American male musical theatre actors
American male singers
American male stage actors
American military personnel of World War I
American tap dancers
Burials at the Cemetery of the Evergreens
Deaths from heart disease
Harlem Renaissance
Male actors from Richmond, Virginia
Military personnel from Richmond, Virginia
Musicians from Richmond, Virginia
Singers from Virginia
United States Army soldiers
Vaudeville performers | false | [
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"Bill Robinson",
"Vaudeville",
"What was Vaudeville?",
"vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager",
"What was Robinson's role?",
"By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo,",
"Did they see any success?",
"working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week.",
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"primarily a tap dancing act,"
] | C_cc55017ed7b34895b46dda0b68d5fec4_1 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 6 | Other than Robinson, were there any other interesting aspects about this article? | Bill Robinson | On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theater in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous traveling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines). By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two colored rule, which forbade solo black acts. When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theaters in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both black and white units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918. Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919-1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit, and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50-52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages. CANNOTANSWER | Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, | Bill Robinson, nicknamed Bojangles (born Luther Robinson; May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949), was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer, the best known and the most highly paid African-American entertainer in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. His career began in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway theatre, the recording industry, Hollywood films, radio, and television.
According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, "Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging", adding a "hitherto-unknown lightness and presence". His signature routine was the Stair Dance, in which he would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. He is also credited with having popularized the word copacetic through his repeated use of it in vaudeville and radio appearances.
He is best known today for his dancing with Shirley Temple in a series of films during the 1930s, and for starring in the musical Stormy Weather (1943), loosely based on his own life and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. He used his popularity to challenge and overcome numerous racial barriers. Robinson was one of the first minstrel and vaudeville performers to appear as Black without the use of blackface makeup, as well as one of the earliest Black performers to perform solo, overcoming vaudeville's two-colored rule. Additionally, he was an early Black headliner in Broadway shows. Robinson was the first Black performer to appear in a Hollywood film in an interracial dance team (with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel, 1935), and the first Black performer to headline a mixed-race Broadway production.
Robinson came under heavy criticism for his apparent tacit acceptance of racial stereotypes of the era, with some critics calling him an Uncle Tom. He strongly resented this, and his biographers suggested that critics were underestimating the difficulties faced by Black performers engaging with mainstream White culture at the time, and ignoring his many efforts to overcome racial prejudice. In his public life, Robinson led efforts to persuade the Dallas Police Department to hire its first Black policeman; lobby President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II for more equal treatment of Black soldiers; and stage the first integrated public event in Miami, a fundraiser which was attended by both Black and White city residents.
Robinson was a popular figure in both the Black and White entertainment worlds of his era, and is remembered for the support that he gave to fellow performers, including Fred Astaire, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens and the Nicholas Brothers. Sammy Davis Jr. and Ann Miller credited him as a teacher and mentor, Miller saying that he "changed the course of my life". Gregory Hines produced and starred in a biographical movie about Robinson for which he won the NAACP Best Actor Award.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the time, Robinson died penniless in 1949, his funeral paid for by longtime friend Ed Sullivan. In 1989, Congress designated Robinson's birthday of May 25 as National Tap Dance Day.
Early life
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was born Luther Robinson in Richmond, Virginia, on May 25, 1878, to Maxwell, a machinist, and Maria Robinson, a church choir director. He and his younger brother William were raised in Richmond's Jackson Ward neighborhood. His grandmother Bedelia Robinson, a former slave, raised him after both of his parents died tragically in 1884: his father died from chronic heart disease and his mother from unknown natural causes. Details of his early life are known only through legend, much of it perpetuated by Robinson himself. He claimed that he was christened Luther, a name that he did not like. He suggested to his younger brother William that they should exchange names, and they eventually did.
His brother subsequently adopted the name of Percy and achieved recognition as a musician under that name.
Career
Early days
At the age of five, Robinson began dancing for small change, appearing as a "hoofer" or busker in local beer gardens and in front of theaters for tossed pennies. A promoter saw him performing outside the Globe Theater in Richmond and offered him a job as a "pick" in a local minstrel show. At that time, minstrel shows were staged by White performers in blackface. Pickaninnies were cute Black children at the edge of the stage singing, dancing, or telling jokes.
In 1890, at the age of 12, Robinson ran away to Washington, D.C., where he did odd jobs at Benning Race Track and worked briefly as a jockey. He teamed up with a young Al Jolson, with Jolson singing while Robinson danced for pennies or to sell newspapers. In 1891, he was hired by Whallen and Martel, touring with Mayme Remington's troupe in a show titled The South Before the War, performing again as a pickaninny, despite his age. He travelled with the show for over a year before growing too mature to play the role credibly.
In 1898, he returned to Richmond where he joined the United States Army as a rifleman when the Spanish–American War broke out. He received an accidental gunshot wound from a second lieutenant who was cleaning his gun.
Vaudeville
On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous travelling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines).
By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap-dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuel's, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two-coloured rule, which forbade solo Black acts.
When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theatres in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both Black and White units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918.
Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919 to 1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50–52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages.
Tap Dance Style
As mentioned above, the chapter of Stearns' Bill Robinson: Up on the Toes entitled Jazz Dance (1966) describes how Robinson introduced dancing "up on the toes" to tap dance. This was a new addition to King Rastus Brown's popular "flat-footed wizardry". Moving primarily from the waist down, Robinson maintained impressive control of his body. Pete Nugent is said to have remarked, "Robinson was the absolute tops in control." That Robinson infrequently dropped his heels marked a significant change in popular tap technique. Due to his adroit ability to be both light on his feet and distinct in his percussive taps, Robinson was called the "Father of Tapology".
In 1918 at the Palace Theatre in New York, Robinson performed the Stair Dance. Claims regarding the origin of the Stair Dance were highly disputed; however, Robinson was widely credited with the dance because he made it popular. The dance involved "a different rhythm for each step each one reverberating with a different pitch and the fact that he had a special set of portable steps enhanced his claim to originating the dance". The popular sensation of the Stair Dance led Robinson to try to secure a patent on the routine through the U.S. Patent Office in Washington D.C., ultimately to no avail; however the lack of a patent did not diminish Robinson's professional command of the Stair Dance. The entertainment community began to associate the Stair Dance exclusively with Robinson as the routine became a standard part of his performances in 1921. Haskins reports that dancer Fred Stone sent Robinson a check for having performed the routine.
Robinson's talents transcended his famous Stair Dance by far. The steps themselves were not essential to Robinson's performances; rather, Robinson would naturally shift into "a little skating step to stop-time; or a Scoot step, a cross-over tap" or many other tap steps involved in his particular movement quality. Robinson changed rhythmic meters and tap steps and syncopated breaks seamlessly. Often Robinson would talk to his audience, share anecdotes, and act as if he were surprised by the action of his feet. His amusing personality was essential to his performances and popularity. Robinson is said to have consistently performed in split-soled wooden shoes, handcrafted by a Chicago craftsman.
Broadway
In 1928, a White impresario, Lew Leslie, produced Blackbirds of 1928 on Broadway, a Black revue for White audiences starring Adelaide Hall and Bill Robinson along with Aida Ward, Tim Moore and other Black stars. The show originally did not include Robinson; only after three weeks of lukewarm reception did Leslie add Robinson as an "extra attraction". The show then became a huge success on Broadway, where it ran for over one year to sell-out performances. On stage, Adelaide Hall and Robinson danced and sang a duet together, which captivated the audiences. From then on, Robinson's public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the White world, maintaining a connection with the Black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofers Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem. So successful was Adelaide Hall's collaboration with Bojangles, they even appeared together on stage at the prestigious Palace Theatre (Broadway) before they were teamed up together again by Marty Forkins (Robinson's manager) to star in another Broadway musical titled, "Brown Buddies", that opened in 1930 at the Liberty Theatre, where it ran for four months before commencing a road tour of the States.
In 1939, Robinson returned to the stage in The Hot Mikado, a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. The show opened at the Broadhurst Theatre, with Robinson cast in the role of the Emperor. His rendition of My Object All Sublime stopped the show and produced eight encores. After Broadway, the show moved to the 1939 New York World's Fair, and was one of the greatest hits of the fair. August 25, 1939, was named Bill Robinson Day at the fair.
Robinson's next Broadway show, All in Fun (1940), was with an all-White cast. Despite having Imogene Coca, Pert Kelton, and other stars, the show received poor reviews at out-of-town tryouts in New Haven and Boston. When the White stars and co-producers, Phil Baker and Leonard Sillman, withdrew, Robinson became the star, the first time an African-American headlined an otherwise all-White production. Although the reviewers were enthusiastic about Robinson, they panned the show, and it failed to attract audiences. All in Fun closed after four performances.
Robinson's next foray on Broadway was the musical comedy Memphis Bound, which opened in May 1945. This production used an all-Black cast including Robinson (who had top billing), Avon Long, Billy Daniels, Ada Brown, and Sheila Guyse. Robinson played the boat pilot and then Sir Joseph Porter in the play-within-a-play of H.M.S. Pinafore. Critics widely praised Robinson's performance and especially his dancing, with his stair dance cited as a high point of the show.
Film career
After 1932, Black stage revues waned in popularity, but Robinson remained in vogue with White audiences for more than a decade in some fourteen motion pictures produced by such companies as RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. Most of them had musical settings, in which he played old-fashioned roles in nostalgic romances.
Early films
Robinson's film debut was in the RKO Pictures 1930 musical Dixiana. RKO was formed in part by a merger of the Keith and Orpheum theater circuits, with whom Robinson had performed as a headliner for many years. He was cast as a specialty performer in a standalone scene. This practice, customary at the time, permitted Southern theaters to remove scenes containing Black performers from their showings of the film. Dixiana was followed by Robinson's first starring role, in Harlem Is Heaven (1932), which is sometimes cited as the first film with an all-Black cast, even though all-Black silent films preceded it and the cast of Harlem Is Heaven includes a White actor with a speaking part, as well as a few White extras. The movie was produced in New York and did not perform well financially, leading Robinson to focus on Hollywood-produced movies after that.
Shirley Temple
The idea for bringing a Black dancer to Fox to star with Temple in The Little Colonel was actually first proposed by Fox head Winfield Sheehan after a discussion with D. W. Griffith. Sheehan set his sights on Robinson but, unsure of his ability as an actor, arranged for a contract that was void if Robinson failed the dramatic test. Robinson passed the test and was brought in to both star with Temple and to teach her tap dancing. They quickly hit it off, as Temple recounted years later:
Robinson walked a step ahead of us, but when he noticed me hurrying to catch up, he shortened his stride to accommodate mine. I kept reaching up for his hand, but he hadn't looked down and seemed unaware. Fannie called his attention to what I was doing, so he stopped short, bent low over me, his eyes wide and rows of brilliant teeth showing in a wide smile. When he took my hand in his, it felt large and cool. For a few moments, we continued walking in silence. "Can I call you Uncle Billy?" I asked. "Why sure you can", he replied... "But then I get to call you darlin.'" It was a deal. From then on, whenever we walked together it was hand in hand, and I was always his "darlin.'"
Temple had already appeared in five films released in 1934, and had performed a tap routine with James Dunn in Stand Up and Cheer! After Robinson was signed by 20th Century Fox, it was decided that he would perform his famous stair dance with Temple. While Robinson liked the idea, he quickly realized that he could not teach his complex stair dance to a seven-year-old in the few days permitted by the shooting schedule. Instead, he taught Temple to kick the riser (face) of each stairstep with her toe. After watching her practice his choreography, Robinson modified his routine to mimic her movements, so that it appeared on film that she was imitating his steps. The sequence was the highlight of the film.
Robinson and Temple became the first interracial dance partners in Hollywood history. The scene was controversial for its time, and was cut out in the south along with all other scenes showing the two making physical contact. Temple and Robinson appeared in four films together: The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Just Around the Corner.
Robinson and Temple became close friends as a result of his dance coaching and acting with her. Robinson carried pictures of Temple with him wherever he traveled, and Temple considered him a lifelong friend, saying in an interview "Bill Robinson treated me as an equal, which was very important to me. He didn't talk down to me, like to a little girl. And I liked people like that. And Bill Robinson was the best of all."
Other films
Robinson refused to play stereotypical roles imposed by Hollywood studios. In a small vignette in Hooray for Love (1935), he played a mayor of Harlem modeled after his own ceremonial honor; in One Mile from Heaven (1937), he played a romantic lead opposite African-American actress Fredi Washington after Hollywood had relaxed its taboo against such roles for Black people.
Robinson appeared opposite Will Rogers in In Old Kentucky (1935), the last movie Rogers made prior to his death in an airplane crash. Robinson and Rogers were good friends, and after Rogers' death, Robinson refused to fly, instead travelling by train to Hollywood for his film work.
Stormy Weather
Robinson's final film appearance was a starring role in the 1943 Fox musical Stormy Weather. Lena Horne co-starred as Robinson's love interest, and the movie also featured Fats Waller in his final movie appearance before his death, playing with Cab Calloway and his orchestra. The Nicholas Brothers are featured in the film's final dance sequence, performing to Calloway's "Jumpin' Jive", in what Fred Astaire called "the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen".
In 2001, Stormy Weather was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Radio and sound recordings
From 1936 until his death in 1949, Robinson made numerous radio and occasional television appearances. The distinctive sound of Robinson's tap dancing was frequently featured, but Robinson also sang, made sound effects, and told jokes and stories from his vaudeville acts. He also addressed the audience directly, something very rare for a Black radio performer in that era.
Robinson also made several recordings, including one in which he demonstrated each of his tap steps and their corresponding sounds. It was also on the radio and in his recordings that Robinson introduced and popularized a word of his own invention, copasetic, which he had used for years in his vaudeville shows, and which was added to Webster's Dictionary in 1934.
Final appearances
The last theatrical project for Robinson was to have been Two Gentlemen from the South, with James Barton as the master and Robinson as his servant, in which the Black and White roles reverse and eventually the two come together as equals, but the show did not open.
Robinson's final public appearance in 1949, a few weeks before his death, was as a surprise guest on a TV show, Ted Mack's The Original Amateur Hour, in which he emotionally embraced a competitor on the show who had tap-danced for the audience. A friend remarked, "he was handing over his crown, like him saying, 'this is my good-bye. '"
Personal life and death
Little is known of Robinson's first marriage to Lena Chase in 1907. They separated in 1916, and the marriage ended in 1922. His second wife was Fannie S. Clay whom he married shortly after his divorce from Chase. They divorced in 1943. His third marriage was in 1944 to Elaine Plaines in Columbus, Ohio, and they remained together until Robinson's death in 1949. There were no children from any of the marriages.
Political figures and celebrities appointed Robinson an honorary mayor of Harlem, a lifetime member of policemen's associations and fraternal orders, and a mascot of the New York Giants major league baseball team. Robinson reciprocated with open-handed generosity and frequently credited the White dancer James Barton for his contribution to his dancing style.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the first half of the 20th century, earning more than US$2 million during his lifetime, Robinson died penniless on November 25, 1949, at the age of 71, 6 months before his 72nd birthday, from heart failure. His funeral was arranged and paid for by longtime friend and television host Ed Sullivan. Robinson lay in repose at the 369th Infantry Regiment Armory in Harlem, where an estimated 32,000 people filed past his open casket to pay their last respects. The schools in Harlem were closed for a half-day so that children could attend or listen to the funeral, which was broadcast over the radio. Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr. conducted the service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and New York Mayor William O'Dwyer gave the eulogy. Robinson is buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens, Brooklyn, New York.
Legacy
Robinson was successful despite the obstacle of racism. A favorite Robinson anecdote is that he seated himself in a restaurant and a customer objected to his presence. When the manager suggested that it might be better if Robinson leave, he smiled and asked, "Have you got a ten-dollar bill?" Politely asking to borrow the manager's note for a moment, Robinson added six $10 bills from his own wallet and mixed them up, then extended the seven bills together, adding, "Here, let's see you pick out the colored one". The restaurant manager served Robinson without further delay.
Robinson co-founded the New York Black Yankees baseball team in Harlem in 1936 with financier James "Soldier Boy" Semler. The team was a successful member of the Negro National League until it disbanded in 1948, after Major League Baseball was desegregated.
In 1989, a joint U.S. Senate/House resolution declared "National Tap Dance Day" to be May 25, the anniversary of Bill Robinson's birth.
Robinson was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1987.
Popular myths, legends, and misconceptions
There are several commonly cited anecdotes about Robinson that are likely the result of conflicting stories put out by Robinson's second wife Fanny, or his manager, Marty Forkins, or by various show business associates of Robinson. There are also numerous documented instances in which Robinson gave conflicting stories to news reporters at different times.
According to his biographer, Robinson had previously served in the Spanish–American War, where he sustained an accidental gunshot wound, was 40 when the U.S entered World War I, and received a letter of commendation from the War Department for his work during the war in boosting morale at training camps in the United States, not overseas.
It has further been claimed that, along with serving in the trenches in World War I, Robinson was also the drum major for the 369th Hellfighters Band and led the regimental band up Fifth Avenue on the 369th's return from overseas.
While numerous sources repeat the claim of Bill Robinson's appointment as drum major in the 369th Regiment Band, this is not mentioned in either Mr. Bojangles, the Bill Robinson biography by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, or A Life in Ragtime, the biography of James Reese Europe, the leader of the 369th regimental band.
The origin of the nickname "Mr. Bojangles"
Tales about the origin of Robinson's nickname even varied across the color line, a consequence of differing opinions of him by Black and White people. To Whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the Black variety artist Tom Fletcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler". Robinson himself said he got the nickname as a child in Richmond, which is the most commonly-accepted version.
Marriage to Fanny Clay
The date and location of Robinson's second marriage, to Fanny Clay, or even the year they met, is uncertain because the couple gave different dates and locations in interviews, possibly because they were worried about unfavorable publicity about the marriage occurring so soon after Robinson's divorce. Robinson's biographer estimates that they met in late 1920 and were married in early 1922.
First Meeting with Marty Forkins
Robinson's meeting with the man who became his manager, Marty Forkins, is said to have occurred when Robinson, working as a waiter, spilled soup on Forkins. After Robinson's death, Forkins and his wife, Rae Samuel, admitted that Samuels made the introduction after having seen Robinson perform with his partner, George Cooper. Their explanation was that the story was made up in order to obscure Robinson's & Cooper's partnership, and to more effectively promote Robinson as a solo act. The ruse was successful, making Robinson one of the first solo acts to break vaudeville's two-colored rule, which required African-American performers to work in pairs.
Legendary dance contest
A dance contest between Robinson and three other dance legends (typically Ray Bolger, Fred Astaire, and James Barton) in which Robinson emerges the victor is recounted in many places, but no verifiable source can be found describing where and when the contest might have taken place.
Copacetic
Robinson is given credit for having popularized the word copacetic and claimed to have invented it while still living in Richmond. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the origins of the word as unknown and documents the earliest written use of the word in 1919, by the newspaperman and author Irving Bacheller, in his serialized book, A Man for the Ages; this was followed by uses in 1926 by Carl Van Vechten in his novel Nigger Heaven, in 1934 in Webster's New International Dictionary, and by John O'Hara in his novel Appointment in Samarra. Haskins' biography of Robinson includes, "Bill was shelling peas at the Jefferson Market, a New York Daily Mirror reporter asked him how he was, and the reply just popped into his head: 'I'm copasetic. The word was not popularized until Robinson used the term as an opening for his vaudeville and radio performances. The word was used in films Robinson made with Shirley Temple in the 1930s.
World record for running backward
One of Robinson's methods for generating publicity in cities where he was not the headliner was to engage in "freak sprinting" races, such as running backward. In 1922, Robinson set the world record for running backward (100 yards in 13.5 seconds). The record stood until 1977, when Paul Wilson ran the distance in 13.3 seconds. Although Robinson's speed running backwards is undisputed, the circumstances in which this feat was accepted as a world record are unclear, and were likely the result of a staged publicity event rather than a sanctioned athletic contest.
The song "Mr. Bojangles"
Jerry Jeff Walker's 1968 folk song "Mr. Bojangles" has been misinterpreted as a song about Robinson. According to Walker, it was instead inspired by Walker's encounter with a street performer in the New Orleans first precinct jail, a street performer who called himself "Bo Jangles". In the song, the street performer is a heavy drinker and has a dog that died. By Robinson's own account and those of his friends, he neither smoked nor drank (although he was a frequent and avid gambler), and he never had a dog.
Controversies
Uncle Tom roles
Robinson came under heavy criticism for playing stereotyped roles, and took offense at such claims. Once, after being called an "Uncle Tom" in the New York newspaper The Age, Robinson went to its office in Harlem, pistol in hand, demanding to see the editor. In his eulogy at Robinson's funeral, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell argued against the claim that Robinson was an "Uncle Tom" figure, focusing on Robinson's ability as an entertainer and a man who transcended color lines.
In 1973, the film historian Donald Bogle, in his history of African Americans in American film, refers to Robinson's role in The Littlest Rebel and other Shirley Temple movies as the "quintessential Uncle Tom". Other critics noted that such criticism fails to account for the genuine affection and chemistry between Robinson and Temple that came through on the screen, and that the role represented a breakthrough for Hollywood stereotypes in that it was the first time a Black man was made the guardian of a white life. Bogle later moderated his criticism by noting that the reliable, articulate Uncle Billy character in The Littlest Rebel was a cut above the characters portrayed by Lincoln "Stepin Fetchit" Perry.
Haskins explains that critics calling Robinson an "Uncle Tom" often disregarded the discriminatory limitations Robinson endured and combated throughout his career. In addition to the impact of Jim Crow policies and the Depression, Haskins writes, "That Bill traveled, at least professionally, in increasingly white circles was not so much a matter of choice as one of reality." Having overcome numerous policies inhibiting his success to reach an unmatched level of stardom, Robinson had limited venue opportunities for a performer of his caliber.
In 1933, Robinson was named an honorary Mayor of Harlem for his philanthropic contributions to his community, and for his renowned success. He took this role seriously, performing over 3,000 benefits in the course of his career, aiding hundreds of unorganized charities and individuals.
Trial and imprisonment
On March 21, 1908, as a result of a dispute with a tailor over a suit, Robinson was arrested in New York City for armed robbery. On September 30, he was convicted and sentenced to 11–15 years hard labor at Sing Sing prison. Robinson had failed to take the charges and trial seriously and paid little attention to mounting a defense. After his conviction, Robinson's partner, George Cooper, organized his most influential friends to vouch for him, and hired a new attorney who produced evidence that Robinson had been falsely accused. Though he was exonerated at his second trial and his accusers were indicted for perjury, the trial and time spent in the Tombs (Manhattan's prison complex) affected Robinson deeply. After he was released, he made a point of registering his pistol at the local police station of each town where he performed. Robinson's second wife, Fanny, also sent a letter of introduction with complimentary tickets and other gifts to the local police chief's wife in each town ahead of Robinson's engagements.
Jesse Owens
After Jesse Owens returned from the 1936 Olympics, Robinson befriended him. Despite his fame from his four Olympic track wins, undermining Adolf Hitler's claims of Aryan supremacy, Owens found most of the offers that had been made to employ him had been nothing more than publicity stunts that had no substance. Robinson was the one exception, finding work for Owens within a few months of his return to the U.S. Robinson also introduced Owens to his manager, Marty Forkins, who secured a series of demonstration races for Owens which were viewed by many as degrading to the dignity of an Olympic athlete, most notably an event in Cuba in which Owens raced against a horse. As a result, Forkins and Robinson were viewed as having taken advantage of Owens. According to Forkins’ son, Robinson had told Owens that he should start running demonstration races that would both earn money for him and keep him in the public eye. Robinson had done many such races (including a race in which he set the world record for running backwards) and did not view them as undignified. Moreover, the events paid Owens well and provided him with a source of funds when no one else was offering him employment or helping him financially. Owens made a gift to Robinson of one of his four Olympic gold medals, as a gesture of gratitude for the help Robinson had given him.
Café Metropole and Jeni Le Gon
In 1937, Robinson caused a stir in the Harlem community by choosing a white dancer, Geneva Sawyer, as his dance partner over Jeni Le Gon in the Twentieth Century Fox film Café Metropole (1937). Le Gon had danced with him in Hooray for Love (1935) and had received favorable reviews. Sawyer had been Shirley Temple's dance coach during the time Temple and Robinson made movies together, and Sawyer had taken tap lessons from Robinson while he was teaching Temple and choreographing her routines. Robinson suggested to the producers that Sawyer could be cast as his partner if she wore blackface. Le Gon's career suffered as a result, and she never worked with Robinson again. Although the scene was shot with Sawyer in blackface, the studio became convinced that a mixed-race adult couple dancing together would be too controversial: both scenes with Robinson were cut from the final version of the movie and the deleted scenes were only released in 2008 as part of a Fox DVD boxed set of Tyrone Power movies.
In popular culture
Fred Astaire paid tribute to Bill Robinson in the tap routine Bojangles of Harlem from the 1936 film Swing Time. In it, Astaire famously dances to three of his shadows.
Duke Ellington composed "Bojangles (A Portrait of Bill Robinson)", a set of rhythmic variations as a salute to the great dancer.
A biography of Bill Robinson by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (Morrow), was published in 1988.
"Bojangles" the musical, premiered as the centerpiece of Barksdale Theatre's (at Hanover Tavern) 40th anniversary season in 1993. Playwright Doug Jones collaborated with composer Charles Strouse (Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, Applause) and Academy Award-winning lyricist Sammy Cahn.
A made-for-television film entitled Bojangles was released in 2001. The film earned the NAACP Best actor Award for Gregory Hines' performance as Robinson.
Arthur Duncan, an exceptional tap dancer in his own right, frequently paid homage to Bill Robinson with the stair routine on The Lawrence Welk Show.
A 2002 children's book titled Rap a Tap Tap: Here's Bojangles - Think of That! by Leo and Diane Dillon pays homage to Robinson.
A character loosely modeled upon Bojangles and Sammy Davis Jr., called "Bonejangles" appears in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005).
Blues for Bojangles is a song composed by Chuck Darwin, and performed by Anita O'Day with the Paul Jordan Orchestra.
Filmography
Selected discography
1929 Ain’t misbehavin’ / Doing the new low down with Irving Mills & His Hotsy Totsy Gang (released September 4, 1929) Brunswick Records Br4535 Re-issued on Cotton Club stars (released 1990) Milan Records OCLC 858508492
1931
Keep a song in your soul / Bill Robinson blues (released April 3, 1931) Brunswick Records E36441-A-B; also issued on Columbia Records 30183
Keep a song in your soul / Just a crazy song (Hi-hi-hi) Brunswick Records Br 6134, 1168b, A9091
1935 Living in a great big way with Jeni Legon (recorded 1934, re-released in 2000 on Hollywood swing & jazz : hot numbers from classic M-G-M, Warner Bros., and RKO films) Rino Records
1943 Stormy Weather Motion picture soundtrack (recorded January–May 1943, re-released 1993) Fox Records: Distributed by Arista Records, 1993.
See also
Racism in the United States
References
Notes
Bibliography
Some biographical material is from the International Tap Association Newsletter, May/June 1993. The biographical material was extrapolated from The American Dictionary of Biography and Webster's American Biographies.
Haskins, James; Mitgang, N. R., Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (New York: William Morrow, 1988).
Williams, Iain Cameron (2002). Underneath A Harlem Moon
External links
Bojangles at the Evergreens Cemetery
1878 births
1949 deaths
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American singers
369th Infantry Regiment personnel
African-American male actors
African-American male dancers
African-American male singers
American male dancers
American male film actors
American male musical theatre actors
American male singers
American male stage actors
American military personnel of World War I
American tap dancers
Burials at the Cemetery of the Evergreens
Deaths from heart disease
Harlem Renaissance
Male actors from Richmond, Virginia
Military personnel from Richmond, Virginia
Musicians from Richmond, Virginia
Singers from Virginia
United States Army soldiers
Vaudeville performers | true | [
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region",
"Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts"
] |
[
"Bill Robinson",
"Vaudeville",
"What was Vaudeville?",
"vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager",
"What was Robinson's role?",
"By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo,",
"Did they see any success?",
"working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week.",
"How long did he perform solo?",
"Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act,",
"What was his act about?",
"primarily a tap dancing act,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops,"
] | C_cc55017ed7b34895b46dda0b68d5fec4_1 | Where did he perform for the troops? | 7 | Where did Robinson perform for the troops? | Bill Robinson | On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theater in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous traveling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines). By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two colored rule, which forbade solo black acts. When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theaters in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both black and white units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918. Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919-1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit, and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50-52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages. CANNOTANSWER | Liberty Theaters in the training camps. | Bill Robinson, nicknamed Bojangles (born Luther Robinson; May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949), was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer, the best known and the most highly paid African-American entertainer in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. His career began in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway theatre, the recording industry, Hollywood films, radio, and television.
According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, "Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging", adding a "hitherto-unknown lightness and presence". His signature routine was the Stair Dance, in which he would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. He is also credited with having popularized the word copacetic through his repeated use of it in vaudeville and radio appearances.
He is best known today for his dancing with Shirley Temple in a series of films during the 1930s, and for starring in the musical Stormy Weather (1943), loosely based on his own life and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. He used his popularity to challenge and overcome numerous racial barriers. Robinson was one of the first minstrel and vaudeville performers to appear as Black without the use of blackface makeup, as well as one of the earliest Black performers to perform solo, overcoming vaudeville's two-colored rule. Additionally, he was an early Black headliner in Broadway shows. Robinson was the first Black performer to appear in a Hollywood film in an interracial dance team (with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel, 1935), and the first Black performer to headline a mixed-race Broadway production.
Robinson came under heavy criticism for his apparent tacit acceptance of racial stereotypes of the era, with some critics calling him an Uncle Tom. He strongly resented this, and his biographers suggested that critics were underestimating the difficulties faced by Black performers engaging with mainstream White culture at the time, and ignoring his many efforts to overcome racial prejudice. In his public life, Robinson led efforts to persuade the Dallas Police Department to hire its first Black policeman; lobby President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II for more equal treatment of Black soldiers; and stage the first integrated public event in Miami, a fundraiser which was attended by both Black and White city residents.
Robinson was a popular figure in both the Black and White entertainment worlds of his era, and is remembered for the support that he gave to fellow performers, including Fred Astaire, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens and the Nicholas Brothers. Sammy Davis Jr. and Ann Miller credited him as a teacher and mentor, Miller saying that he "changed the course of my life". Gregory Hines produced and starred in a biographical movie about Robinson for which he won the NAACP Best Actor Award.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the time, Robinson died penniless in 1949, his funeral paid for by longtime friend Ed Sullivan. In 1989, Congress designated Robinson's birthday of May 25 as National Tap Dance Day.
Early life
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was born Luther Robinson in Richmond, Virginia, on May 25, 1878, to Maxwell, a machinist, and Maria Robinson, a church choir director. He and his younger brother William were raised in Richmond's Jackson Ward neighborhood. His grandmother Bedelia Robinson, a former slave, raised him after both of his parents died tragically in 1884: his father died from chronic heart disease and his mother from unknown natural causes. Details of his early life are known only through legend, much of it perpetuated by Robinson himself. He claimed that he was christened Luther, a name that he did not like. He suggested to his younger brother William that they should exchange names, and they eventually did.
His brother subsequently adopted the name of Percy and achieved recognition as a musician under that name.
Career
Early days
At the age of five, Robinson began dancing for small change, appearing as a "hoofer" or busker in local beer gardens and in front of theaters for tossed pennies. A promoter saw him performing outside the Globe Theater in Richmond and offered him a job as a "pick" in a local minstrel show. At that time, minstrel shows were staged by White performers in blackface. Pickaninnies were cute Black children at the edge of the stage singing, dancing, or telling jokes.
In 1890, at the age of 12, Robinson ran away to Washington, D.C., where he did odd jobs at Benning Race Track and worked briefly as a jockey. He teamed up with a young Al Jolson, with Jolson singing while Robinson danced for pennies or to sell newspapers. In 1891, he was hired by Whallen and Martel, touring with Mayme Remington's troupe in a show titled The South Before the War, performing again as a pickaninny, despite his age. He travelled with the show for over a year before growing too mature to play the role credibly.
In 1898, he returned to Richmond where he joined the United States Army as a rifleman when the Spanish–American War broke out. He received an accidental gunshot wound from a second lieutenant who was cleaning his gun.
Vaudeville
On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous travelling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines).
By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap-dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuel's, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two-coloured rule, which forbade solo Black acts.
When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theatres in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both Black and White units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918.
Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919 to 1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50–52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages.
Tap Dance Style
As mentioned above, the chapter of Stearns' Bill Robinson: Up on the Toes entitled Jazz Dance (1966) describes how Robinson introduced dancing "up on the toes" to tap dance. This was a new addition to King Rastus Brown's popular "flat-footed wizardry". Moving primarily from the waist down, Robinson maintained impressive control of his body. Pete Nugent is said to have remarked, "Robinson was the absolute tops in control." That Robinson infrequently dropped his heels marked a significant change in popular tap technique. Due to his adroit ability to be both light on his feet and distinct in his percussive taps, Robinson was called the "Father of Tapology".
In 1918 at the Palace Theatre in New York, Robinson performed the Stair Dance. Claims regarding the origin of the Stair Dance were highly disputed; however, Robinson was widely credited with the dance because he made it popular. The dance involved "a different rhythm for each step each one reverberating with a different pitch and the fact that he had a special set of portable steps enhanced his claim to originating the dance". The popular sensation of the Stair Dance led Robinson to try to secure a patent on the routine through the U.S. Patent Office in Washington D.C., ultimately to no avail; however the lack of a patent did not diminish Robinson's professional command of the Stair Dance. The entertainment community began to associate the Stair Dance exclusively with Robinson as the routine became a standard part of his performances in 1921. Haskins reports that dancer Fred Stone sent Robinson a check for having performed the routine.
Robinson's talents transcended his famous Stair Dance by far. The steps themselves were not essential to Robinson's performances; rather, Robinson would naturally shift into "a little skating step to stop-time; or a Scoot step, a cross-over tap" or many other tap steps involved in his particular movement quality. Robinson changed rhythmic meters and tap steps and syncopated breaks seamlessly. Often Robinson would talk to his audience, share anecdotes, and act as if he were surprised by the action of his feet. His amusing personality was essential to his performances and popularity. Robinson is said to have consistently performed in split-soled wooden shoes, handcrafted by a Chicago craftsman.
Broadway
In 1928, a White impresario, Lew Leslie, produced Blackbirds of 1928 on Broadway, a Black revue for White audiences starring Adelaide Hall and Bill Robinson along with Aida Ward, Tim Moore and other Black stars. The show originally did not include Robinson; only after three weeks of lukewarm reception did Leslie add Robinson as an "extra attraction". The show then became a huge success on Broadway, where it ran for over one year to sell-out performances. On stage, Adelaide Hall and Robinson danced and sang a duet together, which captivated the audiences. From then on, Robinson's public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the White world, maintaining a connection with the Black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofers Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem. So successful was Adelaide Hall's collaboration with Bojangles, they even appeared together on stage at the prestigious Palace Theatre (Broadway) before they were teamed up together again by Marty Forkins (Robinson's manager) to star in another Broadway musical titled, "Brown Buddies", that opened in 1930 at the Liberty Theatre, where it ran for four months before commencing a road tour of the States.
In 1939, Robinson returned to the stage in The Hot Mikado, a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. The show opened at the Broadhurst Theatre, with Robinson cast in the role of the Emperor. His rendition of My Object All Sublime stopped the show and produced eight encores. After Broadway, the show moved to the 1939 New York World's Fair, and was one of the greatest hits of the fair. August 25, 1939, was named Bill Robinson Day at the fair.
Robinson's next Broadway show, All in Fun (1940), was with an all-White cast. Despite having Imogene Coca, Pert Kelton, and other stars, the show received poor reviews at out-of-town tryouts in New Haven and Boston. When the White stars and co-producers, Phil Baker and Leonard Sillman, withdrew, Robinson became the star, the first time an African-American headlined an otherwise all-White production. Although the reviewers were enthusiastic about Robinson, they panned the show, and it failed to attract audiences. All in Fun closed after four performances.
Robinson's next foray on Broadway was the musical comedy Memphis Bound, which opened in May 1945. This production used an all-Black cast including Robinson (who had top billing), Avon Long, Billy Daniels, Ada Brown, and Sheila Guyse. Robinson played the boat pilot and then Sir Joseph Porter in the play-within-a-play of H.M.S. Pinafore. Critics widely praised Robinson's performance and especially his dancing, with his stair dance cited as a high point of the show.
Film career
After 1932, Black stage revues waned in popularity, but Robinson remained in vogue with White audiences for more than a decade in some fourteen motion pictures produced by such companies as RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. Most of them had musical settings, in which he played old-fashioned roles in nostalgic romances.
Early films
Robinson's film debut was in the RKO Pictures 1930 musical Dixiana. RKO was formed in part by a merger of the Keith and Orpheum theater circuits, with whom Robinson had performed as a headliner for many years. He was cast as a specialty performer in a standalone scene. This practice, customary at the time, permitted Southern theaters to remove scenes containing Black performers from their showings of the film. Dixiana was followed by Robinson's first starring role, in Harlem Is Heaven (1932), which is sometimes cited as the first film with an all-Black cast, even though all-Black silent films preceded it and the cast of Harlem Is Heaven includes a White actor with a speaking part, as well as a few White extras. The movie was produced in New York and did not perform well financially, leading Robinson to focus on Hollywood-produced movies after that.
Shirley Temple
The idea for bringing a Black dancer to Fox to star with Temple in The Little Colonel was actually first proposed by Fox head Winfield Sheehan after a discussion with D. W. Griffith. Sheehan set his sights on Robinson but, unsure of his ability as an actor, arranged for a contract that was void if Robinson failed the dramatic test. Robinson passed the test and was brought in to both star with Temple and to teach her tap dancing. They quickly hit it off, as Temple recounted years later:
Robinson walked a step ahead of us, but when he noticed me hurrying to catch up, he shortened his stride to accommodate mine. I kept reaching up for his hand, but he hadn't looked down and seemed unaware. Fannie called his attention to what I was doing, so he stopped short, bent low over me, his eyes wide and rows of brilliant teeth showing in a wide smile. When he took my hand in his, it felt large and cool. For a few moments, we continued walking in silence. "Can I call you Uncle Billy?" I asked. "Why sure you can", he replied... "But then I get to call you darlin.'" It was a deal. From then on, whenever we walked together it was hand in hand, and I was always his "darlin.'"
Temple had already appeared in five films released in 1934, and had performed a tap routine with James Dunn in Stand Up and Cheer! After Robinson was signed by 20th Century Fox, it was decided that he would perform his famous stair dance with Temple. While Robinson liked the idea, he quickly realized that he could not teach his complex stair dance to a seven-year-old in the few days permitted by the shooting schedule. Instead, he taught Temple to kick the riser (face) of each stairstep with her toe. After watching her practice his choreography, Robinson modified his routine to mimic her movements, so that it appeared on film that she was imitating his steps. The sequence was the highlight of the film.
Robinson and Temple became the first interracial dance partners in Hollywood history. The scene was controversial for its time, and was cut out in the south along with all other scenes showing the two making physical contact. Temple and Robinson appeared in four films together: The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Just Around the Corner.
Robinson and Temple became close friends as a result of his dance coaching and acting with her. Robinson carried pictures of Temple with him wherever he traveled, and Temple considered him a lifelong friend, saying in an interview "Bill Robinson treated me as an equal, which was very important to me. He didn't talk down to me, like to a little girl. And I liked people like that. And Bill Robinson was the best of all."
Other films
Robinson refused to play stereotypical roles imposed by Hollywood studios. In a small vignette in Hooray for Love (1935), he played a mayor of Harlem modeled after his own ceremonial honor; in One Mile from Heaven (1937), he played a romantic lead opposite African-American actress Fredi Washington after Hollywood had relaxed its taboo against such roles for Black people.
Robinson appeared opposite Will Rogers in In Old Kentucky (1935), the last movie Rogers made prior to his death in an airplane crash. Robinson and Rogers were good friends, and after Rogers' death, Robinson refused to fly, instead travelling by train to Hollywood for his film work.
Stormy Weather
Robinson's final film appearance was a starring role in the 1943 Fox musical Stormy Weather. Lena Horne co-starred as Robinson's love interest, and the movie also featured Fats Waller in his final movie appearance before his death, playing with Cab Calloway and his orchestra. The Nicholas Brothers are featured in the film's final dance sequence, performing to Calloway's "Jumpin' Jive", in what Fred Astaire called "the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen".
In 2001, Stormy Weather was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Radio and sound recordings
From 1936 until his death in 1949, Robinson made numerous radio and occasional television appearances. The distinctive sound of Robinson's tap dancing was frequently featured, but Robinson also sang, made sound effects, and told jokes and stories from his vaudeville acts. He also addressed the audience directly, something very rare for a Black radio performer in that era.
Robinson also made several recordings, including one in which he demonstrated each of his tap steps and their corresponding sounds. It was also on the radio and in his recordings that Robinson introduced and popularized a word of his own invention, copasetic, which he had used for years in his vaudeville shows, and which was added to Webster's Dictionary in 1934.
Final appearances
The last theatrical project for Robinson was to have been Two Gentlemen from the South, with James Barton as the master and Robinson as his servant, in which the Black and White roles reverse and eventually the two come together as equals, but the show did not open.
Robinson's final public appearance in 1949, a few weeks before his death, was as a surprise guest on a TV show, Ted Mack's The Original Amateur Hour, in which he emotionally embraced a competitor on the show who had tap-danced for the audience. A friend remarked, "he was handing over his crown, like him saying, 'this is my good-bye. '"
Personal life and death
Little is known of Robinson's first marriage to Lena Chase in 1907. They separated in 1916, and the marriage ended in 1922. His second wife was Fannie S. Clay whom he married shortly after his divorce from Chase. They divorced in 1943. His third marriage was in 1944 to Elaine Plaines in Columbus, Ohio, and they remained together until Robinson's death in 1949. There were no children from any of the marriages.
Political figures and celebrities appointed Robinson an honorary mayor of Harlem, a lifetime member of policemen's associations and fraternal orders, and a mascot of the New York Giants major league baseball team. Robinson reciprocated with open-handed generosity and frequently credited the White dancer James Barton for his contribution to his dancing style.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the first half of the 20th century, earning more than US$2 million during his lifetime, Robinson died penniless on November 25, 1949, at the age of 71, 6 months before his 72nd birthday, from heart failure. His funeral was arranged and paid for by longtime friend and television host Ed Sullivan. Robinson lay in repose at the 369th Infantry Regiment Armory in Harlem, where an estimated 32,000 people filed past his open casket to pay their last respects. The schools in Harlem were closed for a half-day so that children could attend or listen to the funeral, which was broadcast over the radio. Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr. conducted the service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and New York Mayor William O'Dwyer gave the eulogy. Robinson is buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens, Brooklyn, New York.
Legacy
Robinson was successful despite the obstacle of racism. A favorite Robinson anecdote is that he seated himself in a restaurant and a customer objected to his presence. When the manager suggested that it might be better if Robinson leave, he smiled and asked, "Have you got a ten-dollar bill?" Politely asking to borrow the manager's note for a moment, Robinson added six $10 bills from his own wallet and mixed them up, then extended the seven bills together, adding, "Here, let's see you pick out the colored one". The restaurant manager served Robinson without further delay.
Robinson co-founded the New York Black Yankees baseball team in Harlem in 1936 with financier James "Soldier Boy" Semler. The team was a successful member of the Negro National League until it disbanded in 1948, after Major League Baseball was desegregated.
In 1989, a joint U.S. Senate/House resolution declared "National Tap Dance Day" to be May 25, the anniversary of Bill Robinson's birth.
Robinson was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1987.
Popular myths, legends, and misconceptions
There are several commonly cited anecdotes about Robinson that are likely the result of conflicting stories put out by Robinson's second wife Fanny, or his manager, Marty Forkins, or by various show business associates of Robinson. There are also numerous documented instances in which Robinson gave conflicting stories to news reporters at different times.
According to his biographer, Robinson had previously served in the Spanish–American War, where he sustained an accidental gunshot wound, was 40 when the U.S entered World War I, and received a letter of commendation from the War Department for his work during the war in boosting morale at training camps in the United States, not overseas.
It has further been claimed that, along with serving in the trenches in World War I, Robinson was also the drum major for the 369th Hellfighters Band and led the regimental band up Fifth Avenue on the 369th's return from overseas.
While numerous sources repeat the claim of Bill Robinson's appointment as drum major in the 369th Regiment Band, this is not mentioned in either Mr. Bojangles, the Bill Robinson biography by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, or A Life in Ragtime, the biography of James Reese Europe, the leader of the 369th regimental band.
The origin of the nickname "Mr. Bojangles"
Tales about the origin of Robinson's nickname even varied across the color line, a consequence of differing opinions of him by Black and White people. To Whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the Black variety artist Tom Fletcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler". Robinson himself said he got the nickname as a child in Richmond, which is the most commonly-accepted version.
Marriage to Fanny Clay
The date and location of Robinson's second marriage, to Fanny Clay, or even the year they met, is uncertain because the couple gave different dates and locations in interviews, possibly because they were worried about unfavorable publicity about the marriage occurring so soon after Robinson's divorce. Robinson's biographer estimates that they met in late 1920 and were married in early 1922.
First Meeting with Marty Forkins
Robinson's meeting with the man who became his manager, Marty Forkins, is said to have occurred when Robinson, working as a waiter, spilled soup on Forkins. After Robinson's death, Forkins and his wife, Rae Samuel, admitted that Samuels made the introduction after having seen Robinson perform with his partner, George Cooper. Their explanation was that the story was made up in order to obscure Robinson's & Cooper's partnership, and to more effectively promote Robinson as a solo act. The ruse was successful, making Robinson one of the first solo acts to break vaudeville's two-colored rule, which required African-American performers to work in pairs.
Legendary dance contest
A dance contest between Robinson and three other dance legends (typically Ray Bolger, Fred Astaire, and James Barton) in which Robinson emerges the victor is recounted in many places, but no verifiable source can be found describing where and when the contest might have taken place.
Copacetic
Robinson is given credit for having popularized the word copacetic and claimed to have invented it while still living in Richmond. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the origins of the word as unknown and documents the earliest written use of the word in 1919, by the newspaperman and author Irving Bacheller, in his serialized book, A Man for the Ages; this was followed by uses in 1926 by Carl Van Vechten in his novel Nigger Heaven, in 1934 in Webster's New International Dictionary, and by John O'Hara in his novel Appointment in Samarra. Haskins' biography of Robinson includes, "Bill was shelling peas at the Jefferson Market, a New York Daily Mirror reporter asked him how he was, and the reply just popped into his head: 'I'm copasetic. The word was not popularized until Robinson used the term as an opening for his vaudeville and radio performances. The word was used in films Robinson made with Shirley Temple in the 1930s.
World record for running backward
One of Robinson's methods for generating publicity in cities where he was not the headliner was to engage in "freak sprinting" races, such as running backward. In 1922, Robinson set the world record for running backward (100 yards in 13.5 seconds). The record stood until 1977, when Paul Wilson ran the distance in 13.3 seconds. Although Robinson's speed running backwards is undisputed, the circumstances in which this feat was accepted as a world record are unclear, and were likely the result of a staged publicity event rather than a sanctioned athletic contest.
The song "Mr. Bojangles"
Jerry Jeff Walker's 1968 folk song "Mr. Bojangles" has been misinterpreted as a song about Robinson. According to Walker, it was instead inspired by Walker's encounter with a street performer in the New Orleans first precinct jail, a street performer who called himself "Bo Jangles". In the song, the street performer is a heavy drinker and has a dog that died. By Robinson's own account and those of his friends, he neither smoked nor drank (although he was a frequent and avid gambler), and he never had a dog.
Controversies
Uncle Tom roles
Robinson came under heavy criticism for playing stereotyped roles, and took offense at such claims. Once, after being called an "Uncle Tom" in the New York newspaper The Age, Robinson went to its office in Harlem, pistol in hand, demanding to see the editor. In his eulogy at Robinson's funeral, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell argued against the claim that Robinson was an "Uncle Tom" figure, focusing on Robinson's ability as an entertainer and a man who transcended color lines.
In 1973, the film historian Donald Bogle, in his history of African Americans in American film, refers to Robinson's role in The Littlest Rebel and other Shirley Temple movies as the "quintessential Uncle Tom". Other critics noted that such criticism fails to account for the genuine affection and chemistry between Robinson and Temple that came through on the screen, and that the role represented a breakthrough for Hollywood stereotypes in that it was the first time a Black man was made the guardian of a white life. Bogle later moderated his criticism by noting that the reliable, articulate Uncle Billy character in The Littlest Rebel was a cut above the characters portrayed by Lincoln "Stepin Fetchit" Perry.
Haskins explains that critics calling Robinson an "Uncle Tom" often disregarded the discriminatory limitations Robinson endured and combated throughout his career. In addition to the impact of Jim Crow policies and the Depression, Haskins writes, "That Bill traveled, at least professionally, in increasingly white circles was not so much a matter of choice as one of reality." Having overcome numerous policies inhibiting his success to reach an unmatched level of stardom, Robinson had limited venue opportunities for a performer of his caliber.
In 1933, Robinson was named an honorary Mayor of Harlem for his philanthropic contributions to his community, and for his renowned success. He took this role seriously, performing over 3,000 benefits in the course of his career, aiding hundreds of unorganized charities and individuals.
Trial and imprisonment
On March 21, 1908, as a result of a dispute with a tailor over a suit, Robinson was arrested in New York City for armed robbery. On September 30, he was convicted and sentenced to 11–15 years hard labor at Sing Sing prison. Robinson had failed to take the charges and trial seriously and paid little attention to mounting a defense. After his conviction, Robinson's partner, George Cooper, organized his most influential friends to vouch for him, and hired a new attorney who produced evidence that Robinson had been falsely accused. Though he was exonerated at his second trial and his accusers were indicted for perjury, the trial and time spent in the Tombs (Manhattan's prison complex) affected Robinson deeply. After he was released, he made a point of registering his pistol at the local police station of each town where he performed. Robinson's second wife, Fanny, also sent a letter of introduction with complimentary tickets and other gifts to the local police chief's wife in each town ahead of Robinson's engagements.
Jesse Owens
After Jesse Owens returned from the 1936 Olympics, Robinson befriended him. Despite his fame from his four Olympic track wins, undermining Adolf Hitler's claims of Aryan supremacy, Owens found most of the offers that had been made to employ him had been nothing more than publicity stunts that had no substance. Robinson was the one exception, finding work for Owens within a few months of his return to the U.S. Robinson also introduced Owens to his manager, Marty Forkins, who secured a series of demonstration races for Owens which were viewed by many as degrading to the dignity of an Olympic athlete, most notably an event in Cuba in which Owens raced against a horse. As a result, Forkins and Robinson were viewed as having taken advantage of Owens. According to Forkins’ son, Robinson had told Owens that he should start running demonstration races that would both earn money for him and keep him in the public eye. Robinson had done many such races (including a race in which he set the world record for running backwards) and did not view them as undignified. Moreover, the events paid Owens well and provided him with a source of funds when no one else was offering him employment or helping him financially. Owens made a gift to Robinson of one of his four Olympic gold medals, as a gesture of gratitude for the help Robinson had given him.
Café Metropole and Jeni Le Gon
In 1937, Robinson caused a stir in the Harlem community by choosing a white dancer, Geneva Sawyer, as his dance partner over Jeni Le Gon in the Twentieth Century Fox film Café Metropole (1937). Le Gon had danced with him in Hooray for Love (1935) and had received favorable reviews. Sawyer had been Shirley Temple's dance coach during the time Temple and Robinson made movies together, and Sawyer had taken tap lessons from Robinson while he was teaching Temple and choreographing her routines. Robinson suggested to the producers that Sawyer could be cast as his partner if she wore blackface. Le Gon's career suffered as a result, and she never worked with Robinson again. Although the scene was shot with Sawyer in blackface, the studio became convinced that a mixed-race adult couple dancing together would be too controversial: both scenes with Robinson were cut from the final version of the movie and the deleted scenes were only released in 2008 as part of a Fox DVD boxed set of Tyrone Power movies.
In popular culture
Fred Astaire paid tribute to Bill Robinson in the tap routine Bojangles of Harlem from the 1936 film Swing Time. In it, Astaire famously dances to three of his shadows.
Duke Ellington composed "Bojangles (A Portrait of Bill Robinson)", a set of rhythmic variations as a salute to the great dancer.
A biography of Bill Robinson by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (Morrow), was published in 1988.
"Bojangles" the musical, premiered as the centerpiece of Barksdale Theatre's (at Hanover Tavern) 40th anniversary season in 1993. Playwright Doug Jones collaborated with composer Charles Strouse (Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, Applause) and Academy Award-winning lyricist Sammy Cahn.
A made-for-television film entitled Bojangles was released in 2001. The film earned the NAACP Best actor Award for Gregory Hines' performance as Robinson.
Arthur Duncan, an exceptional tap dancer in his own right, frequently paid homage to Bill Robinson with the stair routine on The Lawrence Welk Show.
A 2002 children's book titled Rap a Tap Tap: Here's Bojangles - Think of That! by Leo and Diane Dillon pays homage to Robinson.
A character loosely modeled upon Bojangles and Sammy Davis Jr., called "Bonejangles" appears in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005).
Blues for Bojangles is a song composed by Chuck Darwin, and performed by Anita O'Day with the Paul Jordan Orchestra.
Filmography
Selected discography
1929 Ain’t misbehavin’ / Doing the new low down with Irving Mills & His Hotsy Totsy Gang (released September 4, 1929) Brunswick Records Br4535 Re-issued on Cotton Club stars (released 1990) Milan Records OCLC 858508492
1931
Keep a song in your soul / Bill Robinson blues (released April 3, 1931) Brunswick Records E36441-A-B; also issued on Columbia Records 30183
Keep a song in your soul / Just a crazy song (Hi-hi-hi) Brunswick Records Br 6134, 1168b, A9091
1935 Living in a great big way with Jeni Legon (recorded 1934, re-released in 2000 on Hollywood swing & jazz : hot numbers from classic M-G-M, Warner Bros., and RKO films) Rino Records
1943 Stormy Weather Motion picture soundtrack (recorded January–May 1943, re-released 1993) Fox Records: Distributed by Arista Records, 1993.
See also
Racism in the United States
References
Notes
Bibliography
Some biographical material is from the International Tap Association Newsletter, May/June 1993. The biographical material was extrapolated from The American Dictionary of Biography and Webster's American Biographies.
Haskins, James; Mitgang, N. R., Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (New York: William Morrow, 1988).
Williams, Iain Cameron (2002). Underneath A Harlem Moon
External links
Bojangles at the Evergreens Cemetery
1878 births
1949 deaths
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American singers
369th Infantry Regiment personnel
African-American male actors
African-American male dancers
African-American male singers
American male dancers
American male film actors
American male musical theatre actors
American male singers
American male stage actors
American military personnel of World War I
American tap dancers
Burials at the Cemetery of the Evergreens
Deaths from heart disease
Harlem Renaissance
Male actors from Richmond, Virginia
Military personnel from Richmond, Virginia
Musicians from Richmond, Virginia
Singers from Virginia
United States Army soldiers
Vaudeville performers | false | [
"The No Sound Without Silence Tour is the third arena tour by Irish pop rock band The Script. Launched in support of their fourth studio album No Sound Without Silence (2014), the tour began in Tokyo on 16 January 2015 and visited Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and Oceania. The opening acts were American singer Phillip Phillips for the South African dates, and English singer Tinie Tempah for the European dates. Pharrell Williams served as a co-headliner for the Croke Park concert on 20 June 2015.\n\nOpening acts\nColton Avery (Europe, North America, Australia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia)\nMary Lambert (North America)\nPhillip Phillips (South Africa)\nSilent Sanctuary (Philippines)\nTinie Tempah (Europe)\nPharrell Williams (Dublin)\nThe Wailers (Dublin)\nThe Sam Willows (Singapore)\nKensington (Band) (Europe)\n\nSetlist\nThis setlist is based on previous performances of the tour.\n\n \"Paint the Town Green\"\n \"Hail Rain or Sunshine\"\n \"Breakeven\"\n \"Before the Worst\"\n \"Superheroes\"\n \"We Cry\"\n \"If You Could See Me Now\"\n \"Man on a Wire\"\n \"Nothing\"\n \"Good Ol' Days\"\n \"Never Seen Anything (Quite Like You)\"\n \"The Man Who Can't Be Moved\"\n \"You Won't Feel A Thing\"\n \"It's Not Right For You\"\n \"Six Degrees of Separation\"\n \"The Energy Never Dies\"\n \"For the First Time\"\n \"No Good in Goodbye\"\n \"Hall of Fame\"\n\nAdditional information\nDuring the performance in Sheffield, The Script didn't perform \"We Cry\" due to a fan collapsing. Danny called for Paramedic to check on her, she was fine and they carried on.\n\nDuring the performance in Barcelona, The Script didn't perform \"The End Where I Begin\" or \"Nothing\". They also did not perform \"Six Degrees Of Separation\" and \"It's Not Right For You\".\n\nDuring the performance in Oakland, The Script didn't perform \"The End Where I Begin\", \"We Cry\", or \"Six Degrees of Separation\".\n\nDuring the performance in Toronto, The Script did not perform \"The End Where I Begin\" and \"Six Degrees of Separation\".\n\nDuring the performance im Hamburg, The Script did not perform \"Nothing\" and \"Never Seen Anything (Quite Like You)\".\n\nTour dates\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\n2015 concert tours\nThe Script concert tours",
"The Internal Troops of Mongolia () are the paramilitary gendarmerie who perform special guard and reserve duties in the Mongolian Armed Forces. It protects buildings for institutions and areas such as the Mongolian National Broadcaster and Altan-Ölgii National Cemetery.\n\nThey are led by a chief of staff who reports directly to the minister of justice and internal affairs.\n\nHistory\nIt is the successor to the Internal Troops of the Mongolian People's Army (officially known as the Border and Internal Troops Administration). During the Cold War, it was responsible for border patrol, for guard duties, and immigration control. By the end of the 1980s, it numbered around 15,000 troops. The Internal Troops were originally formed in 1922 by the Military \nCouncil with over ten divisions, serving under the name of Special Unit for Internal Security Affairs.\n\nThe Internal Troops in their current form were adopted in 1995, serving for 18 years until its governing law was repealed on 16 March 2013 by the State Great Khural with the backing of the Altankhuyag government. After its repealment, its functions were transferred to the National Police Agency and the border guard by 1 April 2014. After a thorough look into the matter and the victory of the MPP in the 2016 Mongolian legislative election, the recreation of the Internal Troops was reconsidered.\n\nIn February 2017, the parliament formally passed a law to recreate the Internal Troops.\n\nUnits \n\n Damdin Sükhbaatar 5th Military Unit\n\nSee also \n\n Ministry of Justice and Internal Affairs (Mongolia)\n\nReferences\n\nMilitary of Mongolia\nGendarmerie\nLaw enforcement in Mongolia\nMilitary units and formations established in 1995\nMilitary units and formations disestablished in 2013"
] |
[
"Bill Robinson",
"Vaudeville",
"What was Vaudeville?",
"vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager",
"What was Robinson's role?",
"By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo,",
"Did they see any success?",
"working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week.",
"How long did he perform solo?",
"Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act,",
"What was his act about?",
"primarily a tap dancing act,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops,",
"Where did he perform for the troops?",
"Liberty Theaters in the training camps."
] | C_cc55017ed7b34895b46dda0b68d5fec4_1 | Did he do anything else with Vaudeville? | 8 | In addition to Liberty Theaters, did Robinson do anything else with Vaudeville? | Bill Robinson | On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theater in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous traveling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines). By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two colored rule, which forbade solo black acts. When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theaters in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both black and white units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918. Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919-1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit, and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50-52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages. CANNOTANSWER | making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two colored rule, which forbade solo black acts. | Bill Robinson, nicknamed Bojangles (born Luther Robinson; May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949), was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer, the best known and the most highly paid African-American entertainer in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. His career began in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway theatre, the recording industry, Hollywood films, radio, and television.
According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, "Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging", adding a "hitherto-unknown lightness and presence". His signature routine was the Stair Dance, in which he would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. He is also credited with having popularized the word copacetic through his repeated use of it in vaudeville and radio appearances.
He is best known today for his dancing with Shirley Temple in a series of films during the 1930s, and for starring in the musical Stormy Weather (1943), loosely based on his own life and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. He used his popularity to challenge and overcome numerous racial barriers. Robinson was one of the first minstrel and vaudeville performers to appear as Black without the use of blackface makeup, as well as one of the earliest Black performers to perform solo, overcoming vaudeville's two-colored rule. Additionally, he was an early Black headliner in Broadway shows. Robinson was the first Black performer to appear in a Hollywood film in an interracial dance team (with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel, 1935), and the first Black performer to headline a mixed-race Broadway production.
Robinson came under heavy criticism for his apparent tacit acceptance of racial stereotypes of the era, with some critics calling him an Uncle Tom. He strongly resented this, and his biographers suggested that critics were underestimating the difficulties faced by Black performers engaging with mainstream White culture at the time, and ignoring his many efforts to overcome racial prejudice. In his public life, Robinson led efforts to persuade the Dallas Police Department to hire its first Black policeman; lobby President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II for more equal treatment of Black soldiers; and stage the first integrated public event in Miami, a fundraiser which was attended by both Black and White city residents.
Robinson was a popular figure in both the Black and White entertainment worlds of his era, and is remembered for the support that he gave to fellow performers, including Fred Astaire, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens and the Nicholas Brothers. Sammy Davis Jr. and Ann Miller credited him as a teacher and mentor, Miller saying that he "changed the course of my life". Gregory Hines produced and starred in a biographical movie about Robinson for which he won the NAACP Best Actor Award.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the time, Robinson died penniless in 1949, his funeral paid for by longtime friend Ed Sullivan. In 1989, Congress designated Robinson's birthday of May 25 as National Tap Dance Day.
Early life
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was born Luther Robinson in Richmond, Virginia, on May 25, 1878, to Maxwell, a machinist, and Maria Robinson, a church choir director. He and his younger brother William were raised in Richmond's Jackson Ward neighborhood. His grandmother Bedelia Robinson, a former slave, raised him after both of his parents died tragically in 1884: his father died from chronic heart disease and his mother from unknown natural causes. Details of his early life are known only through legend, much of it perpetuated by Robinson himself. He claimed that he was christened Luther, a name that he did not like. He suggested to his younger brother William that they should exchange names, and they eventually did.
His brother subsequently adopted the name of Percy and achieved recognition as a musician under that name.
Career
Early days
At the age of five, Robinson began dancing for small change, appearing as a "hoofer" or busker in local beer gardens and in front of theaters for tossed pennies. A promoter saw him performing outside the Globe Theater in Richmond and offered him a job as a "pick" in a local minstrel show. At that time, minstrel shows were staged by White performers in blackface. Pickaninnies were cute Black children at the edge of the stage singing, dancing, or telling jokes.
In 1890, at the age of 12, Robinson ran away to Washington, D.C., where he did odd jobs at Benning Race Track and worked briefly as a jockey. He teamed up with a young Al Jolson, with Jolson singing while Robinson danced for pennies or to sell newspapers. In 1891, he was hired by Whallen and Martel, touring with Mayme Remington's troupe in a show titled The South Before the War, performing again as a pickaninny, despite his age. He travelled with the show for over a year before growing too mature to play the role credibly.
In 1898, he returned to Richmond where he joined the United States Army as a rifleman when the Spanish–American War broke out. He received an accidental gunshot wound from a second lieutenant who was cleaning his gun.
Vaudeville
On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous travelling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines).
By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap-dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuel's, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two-coloured rule, which forbade solo Black acts.
When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theatres in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both Black and White units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918.
Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919 to 1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50–52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages.
Tap Dance Style
As mentioned above, the chapter of Stearns' Bill Robinson: Up on the Toes entitled Jazz Dance (1966) describes how Robinson introduced dancing "up on the toes" to tap dance. This was a new addition to King Rastus Brown's popular "flat-footed wizardry". Moving primarily from the waist down, Robinson maintained impressive control of his body. Pete Nugent is said to have remarked, "Robinson was the absolute tops in control." That Robinson infrequently dropped his heels marked a significant change in popular tap technique. Due to his adroit ability to be both light on his feet and distinct in his percussive taps, Robinson was called the "Father of Tapology".
In 1918 at the Palace Theatre in New York, Robinson performed the Stair Dance. Claims regarding the origin of the Stair Dance were highly disputed; however, Robinson was widely credited with the dance because he made it popular. The dance involved "a different rhythm for each step each one reverberating with a different pitch and the fact that he had a special set of portable steps enhanced his claim to originating the dance". The popular sensation of the Stair Dance led Robinson to try to secure a patent on the routine through the U.S. Patent Office in Washington D.C., ultimately to no avail; however the lack of a patent did not diminish Robinson's professional command of the Stair Dance. The entertainment community began to associate the Stair Dance exclusively with Robinson as the routine became a standard part of his performances in 1921. Haskins reports that dancer Fred Stone sent Robinson a check for having performed the routine.
Robinson's talents transcended his famous Stair Dance by far. The steps themselves were not essential to Robinson's performances; rather, Robinson would naturally shift into "a little skating step to stop-time; or a Scoot step, a cross-over tap" or many other tap steps involved in his particular movement quality. Robinson changed rhythmic meters and tap steps and syncopated breaks seamlessly. Often Robinson would talk to his audience, share anecdotes, and act as if he were surprised by the action of his feet. His amusing personality was essential to his performances and popularity. Robinson is said to have consistently performed in split-soled wooden shoes, handcrafted by a Chicago craftsman.
Broadway
In 1928, a White impresario, Lew Leslie, produced Blackbirds of 1928 on Broadway, a Black revue for White audiences starring Adelaide Hall and Bill Robinson along with Aida Ward, Tim Moore and other Black stars. The show originally did not include Robinson; only after three weeks of lukewarm reception did Leslie add Robinson as an "extra attraction". The show then became a huge success on Broadway, where it ran for over one year to sell-out performances. On stage, Adelaide Hall and Robinson danced and sang a duet together, which captivated the audiences. From then on, Robinson's public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the White world, maintaining a connection with the Black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofers Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem. So successful was Adelaide Hall's collaboration with Bojangles, they even appeared together on stage at the prestigious Palace Theatre (Broadway) before they were teamed up together again by Marty Forkins (Robinson's manager) to star in another Broadway musical titled, "Brown Buddies", that opened in 1930 at the Liberty Theatre, where it ran for four months before commencing a road tour of the States.
In 1939, Robinson returned to the stage in The Hot Mikado, a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. The show opened at the Broadhurst Theatre, with Robinson cast in the role of the Emperor. His rendition of My Object All Sublime stopped the show and produced eight encores. After Broadway, the show moved to the 1939 New York World's Fair, and was one of the greatest hits of the fair. August 25, 1939, was named Bill Robinson Day at the fair.
Robinson's next Broadway show, All in Fun (1940), was with an all-White cast. Despite having Imogene Coca, Pert Kelton, and other stars, the show received poor reviews at out-of-town tryouts in New Haven and Boston. When the White stars and co-producers, Phil Baker and Leonard Sillman, withdrew, Robinson became the star, the first time an African-American headlined an otherwise all-White production. Although the reviewers were enthusiastic about Robinson, they panned the show, and it failed to attract audiences. All in Fun closed after four performances.
Robinson's next foray on Broadway was the musical comedy Memphis Bound, which opened in May 1945. This production used an all-Black cast including Robinson (who had top billing), Avon Long, Billy Daniels, Ada Brown, and Sheila Guyse. Robinson played the boat pilot and then Sir Joseph Porter in the play-within-a-play of H.M.S. Pinafore. Critics widely praised Robinson's performance and especially his dancing, with his stair dance cited as a high point of the show.
Film career
After 1932, Black stage revues waned in popularity, but Robinson remained in vogue with White audiences for more than a decade in some fourteen motion pictures produced by such companies as RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. Most of them had musical settings, in which he played old-fashioned roles in nostalgic romances.
Early films
Robinson's film debut was in the RKO Pictures 1930 musical Dixiana. RKO was formed in part by a merger of the Keith and Orpheum theater circuits, with whom Robinson had performed as a headliner for many years. He was cast as a specialty performer in a standalone scene. This practice, customary at the time, permitted Southern theaters to remove scenes containing Black performers from their showings of the film. Dixiana was followed by Robinson's first starring role, in Harlem Is Heaven (1932), which is sometimes cited as the first film with an all-Black cast, even though all-Black silent films preceded it and the cast of Harlem Is Heaven includes a White actor with a speaking part, as well as a few White extras. The movie was produced in New York and did not perform well financially, leading Robinson to focus on Hollywood-produced movies after that.
Shirley Temple
The idea for bringing a Black dancer to Fox to star with Temple in The Little Colonel was actually first proposed by Fox head Winfield Sheehan after a discussion with D. W. Griffith. Sheehan set his sights on Robinson but, unsure of his ability as an actor, arranged for a contract that was void if Robinson failed the dramatic test. Robinson passed the test and was brought in to both star with Temple and to teach her tap dancing. They quickly hit it off, as Temple recounted years later:
Robinson walked a step ahead of us, but when he noticed me hurrying to catch up, he shortened his stride to accommodate mine. I kept reaching up for his hand, but he hadn't looked down and seemed unaware. Fannie called his attention to what I was doing, so he stopped short, bent low over me, his eyes wide and rows of brilliant teeth showing in a wide smile. When he took my hand in his, it felt large and cool. For a few moments, we continued walking in silence. "Can I call you Uncle Billy?" I asked. "Why sure you can", he replied... "But then I get to call you darlin.'" It was a deal. From then on, whenever we walked together it was hand in hand, and I was always his "darlin.'"
Temple had already appeared in five films released in 1934, and had performed a tap routine with James Dunn in Stand Up and Cheer! After Robinson was signed by 20th Century Fox, it was decided that he would perform his famous stair dance with Temple. While Robinson liked the idea, he quickly realized that he could not teach his complex stair dance to a seven-year-old in the few days permitted by the shooting schedule. Instead, he taught Temple to kick the riser (face) of each stairstep with her toe. After watching her practice his choreography, Robinson modified his routine to mimic her movements, so that it appeared on film that she was imitating his steps. The sequence was the highlight of the film.
Robinson and Temple became the first interracial dance partners in Hollywood history. The scene was controversial for its time, and was cut out in the south along with all other scenes showing the two making physical contact. Temple and Robinson appeared in four films together: The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Just Around the Corner.
Robinson and Temple became close friends as a result of his dance coaching and acting with her. Robinson carried pictures of Temple with him wherever he traveled, and Temple considered him a lifelong friend, saying in an interview "Bill Robinson treated me as an equal, which was very important to me. He didn't talk down to me, like to a little girl. And I liked people like that. And Bill Robinson was the best of all."
Other films
Robinson refused to play stereotypical roles imposed by Hollywood studios. In a small vignette in Hooray for Love (1935), he played a mayor of Harlem modeled after his own ceremonial honor; in One Mile from Heaven (1937), he played a romantic lead opposite African-American actress Fredi Washington after Hollywood had relaxed its taboo against such roles for Black people.
Robinson appeared opposite Will Rogers in In Old Kentucky (1935), the last movie Rogers made prior to his death in an airplane crash. Robinson and Rogers were good friends, and after Rogers' death, Robinson refused to fly, instead travelling by train to Hollywood for his film work.
Stormy Weather
Robinson's final film appearance was a starring role in the 1943 Fox musical Stormy Weather. Lena Horne co-starred as Robinson's love interest, and the movie also featured Fats Waller in his final movie appearance before his death, playing with Cab Calloway and his orchestra. The Nicholas Brothers are featured in the film's final dance sequence, performing to Calloway's "Jumpin' Jive", in what Fred Astaire called "the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen".
In 2001, Stormy Weather was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Radio and sound recordings
From 1936 until his death in 1949, Robinson made numerous radio and occasional television appearances. The distinctive sound of Robinson's tap dancing was frequently featured, but Robinson also sang, made sound effects, and told jokes and stories from his vaudeville acts. He also addressed the audience directly, something very rare for a Black radio performer in that era.
Robinson also made several recordings, including one in which he demonstrated each of his tap steps and their corresponding sounds. It was also on the radio and in his recordings that Robinson introduced and popularized a word of his own invention, copasetic, which he had used for years in his vaudeville shows, and which was added to Webster's Dictionary in 1934.
Final appearances
The last theatrical project for Robinson was to have been Two Gentlemen from the South, with James Barton as the master and Robinson as his servant, in which the Black and White roles reverse and eventually the two come together as equals, but the show did not open.
Robinson's final public appearance in 1949, a few weeks before his death, was as a surprise guest on a TV show, Ted Mack's The Original Amateur Hour, in which he emotionally embraced a competitor on the show who had tap-danced for the audience. A friend remarked, "he was handing over his crown, like him saying, 'this is my good-bye. '"
Personal life and death
Little is known of Robinson's first marriage to Lena Chase in 1907. They separated in 1916, and the marriage ended in 1922. His second wife was Fannie S. Clay whom he married shortly after his divorce from Chase. They divorced in 1943. His third marriage was in 1944 to Elaine Plaines in Columbus, Ohio, and they remained together until Robinson's death in 1949. There were no children from any of the marriages.
Political figures and celebrities appointed Robinson an honorary mayor of Harlem, a lifetime member of policemen's associations and fraternal orders, and a mascot of the New York Giants major league baseball team. Robinson reciprocated with open-handed generosity and frequently credited the White dancer James Barton for his contribution to his dancing style.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the first half of the 20th century, earning more than US$2 million during his lifetime, Robinson died penniless on November 25, 1949, at the age of 71, 6 months before his 72nd birthday, from heart failure. His funeral was arranged and paid for by longtime friend and television host Ed Sullivan. Robinson lay in repose at the 369th Infantry Regiment Armory in Harlem, where an estimated 32,000 people filed past his open casket to pay their last respects. The schools in Harlem were closed for a half-day so that children could attend or listen to the funeral, which was broadcast over the radio. Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr. conducted the service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and New York Mayor William O'Dwyer gave the eulogy. Robinson is buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens, Brooklyn, New York.
Legacy
Robinson was successful despite the obstacle of racism. A favorite Robinson anecdote is that he seated himself in a restaurant and a customer objected to his presence. When the manager suggested that it might be better if Robinson leave, he smiled and asked, "Have you got a ten-dollar bill?" Politely asking to borrow the manager's note for a moment, Robinson added six $10 bills from his own wallet and mixed them up, then extended the seven bills together, adding, "Here, let's see you pick out the colored one". The restaurant manager served Robinson without further delay.
Robinson co-founded the New York Black Yankees baseball team in Harlem in 1936 with financier James "Soldier Boy" Semler. The team was a successful member of the Negro National League until it disbanded in 1948, after Major League Baseball was desegregated.
In 1989, a joint U.S. Senate/House resolution declared "National Tap Dance Day" to be May 25, the anniversary of Bill Robinson's birth.
Robinson was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1987.
Popular myths, legends, and misconceptions
There are several commonly cited anecdotes about Robinson that are likely the result of conflicting stories put out by Robinson's second wife Fanny, or his manager, Marty Forkins, or by various show business associates of Robinson. There are also numerous documented instances in which Robinson gave conflicting stories to news reporters at different times.
According to his biographer, Robinson had previously served in the Spanish–American War, where he sustained an accidental gunshot wound, was 40 when the U.S entered World War I, and received a letter of commendation from the War Department for his work during the war in boosting morale at training camps in the United States, not overseas.
It has further been claimed that, along with serving in the trenches in World War I, Robinson was also the drum major for the 369th Hellfighters Band and led the regimental band up Fifth Avenue on the 369th's return from overseas.
While numerous sources repeat the claim of Bill Robinson's appointment as drum major in the 369th Regiment Band, this is not mentioned in either Mr. Bojangles, the Bill Robinson biography by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, or A Life in Ragtime, the biography of James Reese Europe, the leader of the 369th regimental band.
The origin of the nickname "Mr. Bojangles"
Tales about the origin of Robinson's nickname even varied across the color line, a consequence of differing opinions of him by Black and White people. To Whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the Black variety artist Tom Fletcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler". Robinson himself said he got the nickname as a child in Richmond, which is the most commonly-accepted version.
Marriage to Fanny Clay
The date and location of Robinson's second marriage, to Fanny Clay, or even the year they met, is uncertain because the couple gave different dates and locations in interviews, possibly because they were worried about unfavorable publicity about the marriage occurring so soon after Robinson's divorce. Robinson's biographer estimates that they met in late 1920 and were married in early 1922.
First Meeting with Marty Forkins
Robinson's meeting with the man who became his manager, Marty Forkins, is said to have occurred when Robinson, working as a waiter, spilled soup on Forkins. After Robinson's death, Forkins and his wife, Rae Samuel, admitted that Samuels made the introduction after having seen Robinson perform with his partner, George Cooper. Their explanation was that the story was made up in order to obscure Robinson's & Cooper's partnership, and to more effectively promote Robinson as a solo act. The ruse was successful, making Robinson one of the first solo acts to break vaudeville's two-colored rule, which required African-American performers to work in pairs.
Legendary dance contest
A dance contest between Robinson and three other dance legends (typically Ray Bolger, Fred Astaire, and James Barton) in which Robinson emerges the victor is recounted in many places, but no verifiable source can be found describing where and when the contest might have taken place.
Copacetic
Robinson is given credit for having popularized the word copacetic and claimed to have invented it while still living in Richmond. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the origins of the word as unknown and documents the earliest written use of the word in 1919, by the newspaperman and author Irving Bacheller, in his serialized book, A Man for the Ages; this was followed by uses in 1926 by Carl Van Vechten in his novel Nigger Heaven, in 1934 in Webster's New International Dictionary, and by John O'Hara in his novel Appointment in Samarra. Haskins' biography of Robinson includes, "Bill was shelling peas at the Jefferson Market, a New York Daily Mirror reporter asked him how he was, and the reply just popped into his head: 'I'm copasetic. The word was not popularized until Robinson used the term as an opening for his vaudeville and radio performances. The word was used in films Robinson made with Shirley Temple in the 1930s.
World record for running backward
One of Robinson's methods for generating publicity in cities where he was not the headliner was to engage in "freak sprinting" races, such as running backward. In 1922, Robinson set the world record for running backward (100 yards in 13.5 seconds). The record stood until 1977, when Paul Wilson ran the distance in 13.3 seconds. Although Robinson's speed running backwards is undisputed, the circumstances in which this feat was accepted as a world record are unclear, and were likely the result of a staged publicity event rather than a sanctioned athletic contest.
The song "Mr. Bojangles"
Jerry Jeff Walker's 1968 folk song "Mr. Bojangles" has been misinterpreted as a song about Robinson. According to Walker, it was instead inspired by Walker's encounter with a street performer in the New Orleans first precinct jail, a street performer who called himself "Bo Jangles". In the song, the street performer is a heavy drinker and has a dog that died. By Robinson's own account and those of his friends, he neither smoked nor drank (although he was a frequent and avid gambler), and he never had a dog.
Controversies
Uncle Tom roles
Robinson came under heavy criticism for playing stereotyped roles, and took offense at such claims. Once, after being called an "Uncle Tom" in the New York newspaper The Age, Robinson went to its office in Harlem, pistol in hand, demanding to see the editor. In his eulogy at Robinson's funeral, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell argued against the claim that Robinson was an "Uncle Tom" figure, focusing on Robinson's ability as an entertainer and a man who transcended color lines.
In 1973, the film historian Donald Bogle, in his history of African Americans in American film, refers to Robinson's role in The Littlest Rebel and other Shirley Temple movies as the "quintessential Uncle Tom". Other critics noted that such criticism fails to account for the genuine affection and chemistry between Robinson and Temple that came through on the screen, and that the role represented a breakthrough for Hollywood stereotypes in that it was the first time a Black man was made the guardian of a white life. Bogle later moderated his criticism by noting that the reliable, articulate Uncle Billy character in The Littlest Rebel was a cut above the characters portrayed by Lincoln "Stepin Fetchit" Perry.
Haskins explains that critics calling Robinson an "Uncle Tom" often disregarded the discriminatory limitations Robinson endured and combated throughout his career. In addition to the impact of Jim Crow policies and the Depression, Haskins writes, "That Bill traveled, at least professionally, in increasingly white circles was not so much a matter of choice as one of reality." Having overcome numerous policies inhibiting his success to reach an unmatched level of stardom, Robinson had limited venue opportunities for a performer of his caliber.
In 1933, Robinson was named an honorary Mayor of Harlem for his philanthropic contributions to his community, and for his renowned success. He took this role seriously, performing over 3,000 benefits in the course of his career, aiding hundreds of unorganized charities and individuals.
Trial and imprisonment
On March 21, 1908, as a result of a dispute with a tailor over a suit, Robinson was arrested in New York City for armed robbery. On September 30, he was convicted and sentenced to 11–15 years hard labor at Sing Sing prison. Robinson had failed to take the charges and trial seriously and paid little attention to mounting a defense. After his conviction, Robinson's partner, George Cooper, organized his most influential friends to vouch for him, and hired a new attorney who produced evidence that Robinson had been falsely accused. Though he was exonerated at his second trial and his accusers were indicted for perjury, the trial and time spent in the Tombs (Manhattan's prison complex) affected Robinson deeply. After he was released, he made a point of registering his pistol at the local police station of each town where he performed. Robinson's second wife, Fanny, also sent a letter of introduction with complimentary tickets and other gifts to the local police chief's wife in each town ahead of Robinson's engagements.
Jesse Owens
After Jesse Owens returned from the 1936 Olympics, Robinson befriended him. Despite his fame from his four Olympic track wins, undermining Adolf Hitler's claims of Aryan supremacy, Owens found most of the offers that had been made to employ him had been nothing more than publicity stunts that had no substance. Robinson was the one exception, finding work for Owens within a few months of his return to the U.S. Robinson also introduced Owens to his manager, Marty Forkins, who secured a series of demonstration races for Owens which were viewed by many as degrading to the dignity of an Olympic athlete, most notably an event in Cuba in which Owens raced against a horse. As a result, Forkins and Robinson were viewed as having taken advantage of Owens. According to Forkins’ son, Robinson had told Owens that he should start running demonstration races that would both earn money for him and keep him in the public eye. Robinson had done many such races (including a race in which he set the world record for running backwards) and did not view them as undignified. Moreover, the events paid Owens well and provided him with a source of funds when no one else was offering him employment or helping him financially. Owens made a gift to Robinson of one of his four Olympic gold medals, as a gesture of gratitude for the help Robinson had given him.
Café Metropole and Jeni Le Gon
In 1937, Robinson caused a stir in the Harlem community by choosing a white dancer, Geneva Sawyer, as his dance partner over Jeni Le Gon in the Twentieth Century Fox film Café Metropole (1937). Le Gon had danced with him in Hooray for Love (1935) and had received favorable reviews. Sawyer had been Shirley Temple's dance coach during the time Temple and Robinson made movies together, and Sawyer had taken tap lessons from Robinson while he was teaching Temple and choreographing her routines. Robinson suggested to the producers that Sawyer could be cast as his partner if she wore blackface. Le Gon's career suffered as a result, and she never worked with Robinson again. Although the scene was shot with Sawyer in blackface, the studio became convinced that a mixed-race adult couple dancing together would be too controversial: both scenes with Robinson were cut from the final version of the movie and the deleted scenes were only released in 2008 as part of a Fox DVD boxed set of Tyrone Power movies.
In popular culture
Fred Astaire paid tribute to Bill Robinson in the tap routine Bojangles of Harlem from the 1936 film Swing Time. In it, Astaire famously dances to three of his shadows.
Duke Ellington composed "Bojangles (A Portrait of Bill Robinson)", a set of rhythmic variations as a salute to the great dancer.
A biography of Bill Robinson by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (Morrow), was published in 1988.
"Bojangles" the musical, premiered as the centerpiece of Barksdale Theatre's (at Hanover Tavern) 40th anniversary season in 1993. Playwright Doug Jones collaborated with composer Charles Strouse (Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, Applause) and Academy Award-winning lyricist Sammy Cahn.
A made-for-television film entitled Bojangles was released in 2001. The film earned the NAACP Best actor Award for Gregory Hines' performance as Robinson.
Arthur Duncan, an exceptional tap dancer in his own right, frequently paid homage to Bill Robinson with the stair routine on The Lawrence Welk Show.
A 2002 children's book titled Rap a Tap Tap: Here's Bojangles - Think of That! by Leo and Diane Dillon pays homage to Robinson.
A character loosely modeled upon Bojangles and Sammy Davis Jr., called "Bonejangles" appears in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005).
Blues for Bojangles is a song composed by Chuck Darwin, and performed by Anita O'Day with the Paul Jordan Orchestra.
Filmography
Selected discography
1929 Ain’t misbehavin’ / Doing the new low down with Irving Mills & His Hotsy Totsy Gang (released September 4, 1929) Brunswick Records Br4535 Re-issued on Cotton Club stars (released 1990) Milan Records OCLC 858508492
1931
Keep a song in your soul / Bill Robinson blues (released April 3, 1931) Brunswick Records E36441-A-B; also issued on Columbia Records 30183
Keep a song in your soul / Just a crazy song (Hi-hi-hi) Brunswick Records Br 6134, 1168b, A9091
1935 Living in a great big way with Jeni Legon (recorded 1934, re-released in 2000 on Hollywood swing & jazz : hot numbers from classic M-G-M, Warner Bros., and RKO films) Rino Records
1943 Stormy Weather Motion picture soundtrack (recorded January–May 1943, re-released 1993) Fox Records: Distributed by Arista Records, 1993.
See also
Racism in the United States
References
Notes
Bibliography
Some biographical material is from the International Tap Association Newsletter, May/June 1993. The biographical material was extrapolated from The American Dictionary of Biography and Webster's American Biographies.
Haskins, James; Mitgang, N. R., Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (New York: William Morrow, 1988).
Williams, Iain Cameron (2002). Underneath A Harlem Moon
External links
Bojangles at the Evergreens Cemetery
1878 births
1949 deaths
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American singers
369th Infantry Regiment personnel
African-American male actors
African-American male dancers
African-American male singers
American male dancers
American male film actors
American male musical theatre actors
American male singers
American male stage actors
American military personnel of World War I
American tap dancers
Burials at the Cemetery of the Evergreens
Deaths from heart disease
Harlem Renaissance
Male actors from Richmond, Virginia
Military personnel from Richmond, Virginia
Musicians from Richmond, Virginia
Singers from Virginia
United States Army soldiers
Vaudeville performers | false | [
"\"If You Can Do Anything Else\" is a song written by Billy Livsey and Don Schlitz, and recorded by American country music artist George Strait. It was released in February 2001 as the third and final single from his self-titled album. The song reached number 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart in July 2001. It also peaked at number 51 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.\n\nContent\nThe song is about man who is giving his woman the option to leave him. He gives her many different options for all the things she can do. At the end he gives her the option to stay with him if she really can’t find anything else to do. He says he will be alright if she leaves, but really it seems he wants her to stay.\n\nChart performance\n\"If You Can Do Anything Else\" debuted at number 60 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks for the week of March 3, 2001.\n\nYear-end charts\n\nReferences\n\n2001 singles\n2000 songs\nGeorge Strait songs\nSongs written by Billy Livsey\nSongs written by Don Schlitz\nSong recordings produced by Tony Brown (record producer)\nMCA Nashville Records singles",
"Félix-Auguste Duvert (12 January 1795 – 19 October 1876) was a 19th-century French playwright and vaudevillist.\n\nBiography \nFélix-Auguste Duvert was first a soldier. A volunteer in 1811 among the riflemen of the young guard, he then was part of a regiment of dragoons that he left only after the dismissal of the Armée de la Loire.\n\nIn 1823, he made his debut as a playwright at the Théâtre du Gymnase dramatique with Les Frères de lait, a one-act comédie en vaudeville cowritten with Édouard Nicole. He would afterwards collaborate primarily with Paul Duport, Saintine, Étienne Arago, Charles Dupeuty and Charles Varin. But from 1830, his name was inseparably linked to that of his son in law, Augustin de Lauzanne. The latter's share in the development of their works was the backbone of the plot, the outlining of the characters and imagination of the quiproquos. The duo would produce a very great number of successful \"follies\" for over forty years.\n\nDuvert also wrote the lyrics of many songs. He is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery (54th division).\n\nWorks\n\nTheatre \n\n1823: Les Frères de lait, one-act comédie en vaudeville, with Nicole and Dubay, Gymnase-Dramatique (8 February)\n1823: Le Mort vivant ou les Suites d'un cartel, one-act comédie en vaudevillewith Nicole, Théâtre du Vaudeville (6 December)\n1824: Une visite en prison, one-act comédie en vaudeville with Nicole, Vaudeville (24 July)\n1824: Le Jour des noces ou la Lettre initiale, one-act comédie en vaudeville with Nicole, Vaudeville (14 October)\n1824: Le Dernier des Romains, prologue, Vaudeville (4 November)\n1824: Les Habits d'emprunt, one-act vaudeville with Nicole, Vaudeville (4 November)\n1824: Ma femme se marie, one-act vaudeville with Vianadt, Vaudeville (11 December)\n1825: Kettly ou le Retour en Suisse one-act vaudeville with Paulin, Vaudeville (28 January)\n1825: L'Homme de confiance, one-act vaudeville with Bernard, Vaudeville (13 June)\n1825: La Comédie à la campagne, two-act opéra comique after L'impresario in angustie (1786) by Cimarosa, Théâtre de l'Odéon (16 August)\n1825: La Dernière Heure de liberté, one-act comédie en vaudeville, with Paulin, Théâtre de Madame (20 August)\n1826: Joseph II ou l'Inconnu au cabaret, comédie en vaudeville, with W. Lafontaine and Leroy, Vaudeville (25 February)\n1826: La Sourde-muette ou la Dame au voile vert, one-act comédie en vaudeville with Xavier, Vaudeville (20 April)\n1826: Oréno ou le Bon Nègre, one-act vaudeville, with Xavier and Paulin, Vaudeville (7 June)\n1827: Odéina ou la Canadienne, one-act comédie en vaudeville with Xavier, Vaudeville (1 February)\n1827: Le Jeune Maire, two-act comédie en vaudeville, with Xavier and Dupeuty, Théâtre de Madame (21 May)\n1827: L'Eau de jouvence, one-act opéra comique imitated from the German, with Xavier, Odéon (13 October)\n1828: Les Enfans trouvés, two-act comédie en vaudeville, with Xavier and Dupeuty, Vaudeville (30 January)\n1828: Le Page de Woodstock, one-act comédie en vaudeville, with Xavier and Dupeuty, Vaudeville (8 March)\n1828: M. Rossignol ou le Prétendu de province, one-act folie-vaudeville, with de Tully and W.Lafontaine, Théâtre des Variétés (21 April)\n1828: La Matinée aux contre-temps, one-act comédie en vaudeville, with Desvergers and Victor, Théâtre des Nouveautés (16 July)\n1828: Dix ans de constance, one-act comédie en vaudeville, with Xavier, Nouveautés (11 August)\n1828: La Saint-Valentin ou le Collier de perles, comédie-vaudeville en un acte with Paulin, théâtre de Madame (3 October)\n1829: La Couturière, three-act comedy, mingled with couplets, with Desvergers and Varin, Nouveautés (28 October)\n1829: Sir Jack ou qui est-ce qui veut se faire pendre ?, histoire burlesque in three episodes, with Desvergers and Varin, Nouveautés (9 June)\n1830: Harnali ou la Contrainte par cor, parody in five scenes of Hernani, with Lauzanne, Vaudeville (30 March)\n1830: La Famille de l'apothicaire ou la Petite Prude, one-act vaudeville, with Desvergers and Varin, Vaudeville (12 July)\n1830: 27, 28 et 29 juillet, tableau épisodique des trois journées with Étienne Arago, Vaudeville (17 August)\n1830: Bonaparte, lieutenant d'artillerie, ou 1789 et 1800, two-act historical comedy, mingled with couplets, with Xavier and Saint-Laurent, Vaudeville (9 October)\n1830: La Ligue des femmes, ou le Bal et la Faction, « tableau civil et militaire » in one act, with Xavier, Vaudeville (4 December)\n1830: Cagotisme et Liberté, ou les Deux Semestres, revue in two parts, with Ernest and Étienne, Vaudeville (31 December)\n1831: Heur et Malheur, vaudeville, with Basset and Lauzanne, Vaudeville (19 April)\n1831: M. Chapolard ou le Lovelace dans un grand embarras, one-act comédie en vaudeville, with Lauzanne and Paulin, Variétés (25 June)\n1831: La Famille improvisée, « scènes épisodiques », with Dupeuty and Brazier, Vaudeville (5 July)\n1831: Marionnette, parody in 5 acts and in verse of Marion Delorme, with de Dupeuty, Vaudeville (29 August)\n1831: Le Fils du colonel, one-act drama, mingled with couplets, with Henry, Vaudeville (31 October)\n1832: Mademoiselle Marguerite, one-act vaudeville, with Xavier, Vaudeville (2 February)\n1832: Perruque et Chandelles, one-act vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Vaudeville (26 April)\n1832: La Moustache de Jean-Bart, one-act vaudeville-anecdote, with Desvergers and Vanderburch, Théâtre du Palais-Royal (15 August)\n1832: Le Marchand de peaux de lapin ou le Rêve, « invraisemblance » in 3 parts, with Lauzanne, Variétés (16 October)\n1832: Les Cabinets particuliers, one-act folie-vaudeville, with Xavier, Vaudeville (23 October)\n1833: Le Singe et l'Adjoint, one-act folie-vaudeville, with Henry, Palais-Royal (7 February)\n1833: Prosper et Vincent, two-act vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Variétés (7 November)\n1834: Un scandale, one-act folie-vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Palais-Royal (18 January)\n1834: Le Huron ou les Trois Merlettes, one-act folie philosophique, with Xavier and Lauzanne after Voltaire, Variétés (4 February)\n1834: Pécherel l'empailleur, one-act vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Vaudeville (28 April)\n1834: Jacquemin, roi de France, comedy mingled with songs in two acts, with Lauzanne, Vaudeville (8 September)\n1834: La Filature, three-act comédie en vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Palais-Royal (28 October)\n1834: La Vie de Napoléon racontée dans une fête de village, scène épisodique, with Tousez, Palais-Royal (9 November)\n1835: Cornaro, tyran pas doux, translation in four acts and in verse of 'Angelo, Tyrant of Padua with Dupeuty, Vaudeville (18 May)\n1835: Le Jugement de Salomon, one-act vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Variétés (3 November)\n1836: Elle n'est plus ! (sequel of Simple histoire), one-act comédie en vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Théâtre de la Gaîté (22 January)\n1836: Le Hottentot, three-part folie-vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Antoine (2 February)\n1836: Monsieur et Madame Galochard, one-act vaudeville, with Xavier and Lauzanne, Vaudeville (6 February)\n1836: La Fille de la favorite, three-act historical comedy, with Lauzanne, Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin (11 February)\n1836: Actéon et le Centaure Chiron, farce, with Théaulon andt de Leuven, Palais-Royal (19 March)\n1836: Renaudin de Caen, ctwo-act comédie en vaudeville, with Lauzanne imitated from Calderón, Vaudeville (24 March)\n1836: Capitaine de voleurs, two-act comédie en vaudeville, with Xavier and Lauzanne, Vaudeville (14 November)\n1836: Le Mari de la dame de chœurs, two-act vaudeville, with Bayard, Vaudeville (12 December)\n1837: La Laitière et les Deux Chasseurs, ou l'Ours, le Ballon, la Grenouille et le Pot au lait, « chose fort ancienne, imitée de défunt Duni et de ci-devant Anseaume », with Xavier and Lauzanne, Palais-Royal (6 February)\n1837: Michel, ou Amour et Menuiserie, four-act comédie en vaudeville, with Lauzanne and Jaime, Variétés (16 February)\n1837: Paul et Pauline, two-act comédie en vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Palais-Royal (5 June)\n1837: Mina ou la Fille du bourgmestre, two-act comédie en vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Vaudeville (4 July)\n1838: Bijou ou l'Enfant de Paris, four-act féerie mingled with comédie en vaudevilles, with Pixérécourt and Brazier, Cirque-Olympique (31 January)\n1838: Impressions de voyage, two-act vaudeville, with Xavier and Lauzanne, Vaudeville (13 June)\n1838: Les Étrennes de ma barbe, à-propos vaudeville in one act, with Lauzanne, Palais-Royal (31 December)\n1839: La Femme de ménage, one-act folie, with Xavier and Lauzanne, Palais-Royal (7 March)\n1839: Le Plastron, two-act comedy mingled with spong, with Xavier and Lauzanne, Vaudeville (27 April)\n1841: Un monsieur et une dame, comédie en vaudeville, with Xavier and Lauzanne, Vaudeville (27 February)\n1841: La Sœur de Jocrisse, one-act vaudeville, with Varner, Palais-Royal (17 July)\n1841: Un monstre de femme, one-act comédie en vaudeville, with Varner and Lauzanne, Vaudeville (10 September)\n1842: Le Grand Palatin, three-act comédie en vaudeville, with Lauzanne and Le Roux, Vaudeville (22 January)\n1842: Carabins et carabines, two-act vaudeville, with Xavier and Lauzanne, Variétés (23 April 1842)\n1842: L'Omelette fantastique, one-act vaudeville, with Boyer, Palais-Royal (22 August 1842)\n1842: Les Informations conjugales, one-act vaudeville, with Lauzanne and Jaime, Variétés (7 November 1842)\n1843: Les Égarements d'une canne et d'un parapluie, folie-vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Palais-Royal (28 January)\n1843: Les Soupers de carnaval, folie mingled with couplets, with Varin and de Kock, Théâtre du Palais-Royal (26 February).\n1843: Entre ciel et terre, pochade-vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Palais-Royal (25 April)\n1843: Jocrisse en famille, one-act folie-vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Palais-Royal (28 June)\n1843: L'Homme blasé, two-act vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Vaudeville (18 November)\n1844: La Bonbonnière ou Comme les femmes se vengent, one-act vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Palais-Royal (1 February)\n1844: Trim ou la Maîtresse du roi, two-act vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Variétés (16 March)\n1845: Le Pot aux roses, one-act comédie en vaudeville, with Boyer, Palais-Royal (31 October)\n1845: L'Île de Robinson, one-act vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Vaudeville (3 November)\n1845: Riche d'amour, one-act comédie en vaudeville, with Xavier and Lauzanne, Vaudeville (20 November)\n1845: Le Marchand de marrons, two-act comédie en vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Gymnase-Dramatique (22 December)\n1846: Beaugaillard ou le Lion amoureux, one-act vaudeville imitated from a fable by La Fontaine, with Xavier and Lauzanne, Vaudeville (5 February)\n1846: La Planète à Paris, revue in three acts and 4 tableaux, with J. Gabriel and Dupeuty, Vaudeville (12 December)\n1847: Le Docteur en herbe, two-act comédie en vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Palais-Royal (1 April)\n1847: Ce que femme veut..., two-act comédie vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Vaudeville (14 April)\n1848: La Clef dans le dos, one-act comédie en vaudeville, with Lauzanne and Duport, Gymnase-Dramatique (12 February)\n1848: Hercule Belhomme, one-act comédie en vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Gymnase-Dramatique (30 March)\n1849: La Poésie des amours et..., two-act comédie en vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Vaudeville (1 March)\n1849: Un cheveu pour deux têtes, one-act comedy mingled with couplets, with de Varner and Lauzanne, Théâtre Montansier (11 May)\n1849: Malbranchu, greffier au plumitif, two-act comédie en vaudeville, with Xavier and Lauzanne, Vaudeville (26 November)\n1849: La Fin d'une république ou Haïti en 1849, à-propos-vaudeville in one act, with Lauzanne, Vaudeville (18 December)\n1850: À la Bastille, one-act vaudeville, with Xavier and Lauzanne, Variétés (6 May)\n1850: Le Pont cassé, one-act comédie en vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Variétés (10 October)\n1850: Supplice de Tantale, one-act comédie-vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Variétés (31 October)\n1851: Les Malheurs heureux, one-act comédie-vaudeville, with Lauzanne and La Rounat, Variétés (3 May)\n1852: Une queue rouge, comédie en vaudeville, two acts in 3 parts, with Lauzanne, Variétés (17 January)\n1852: Le Puits mitoyen, one-act folie-vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Variétés (25 January)\n1852: Le Roi des drôles, three-act comedy mingled with song, with Lauzanne, music by Nargeot, Variétés (3 August)\n1853: Une jolie jambe, one-act vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Vaudeville (13 March)\n1854: Un père de famille, one-act comédie en vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Gymnase-Dramatique (22 February)\n1855: Le Diable, two-act vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Variétés (12 January)\n1856: Riche de cœur, one-act comédie en vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Gymnase-Dramatique(26 September)\n1858: Le Hanneton du Japon, one-act comédie en vaudeville, with Lauzanne, Palais-Royal (27 March)\n1858: Macaroni d'Italie, one-act vaudeville, with Lauzanne and H. L***, Variétés (12 April)\n1858: En revenant de Pondichéry, two-act comedy, mingled with couplets, with Lauzanne, Palais-Royal (2 December)\n1859: Voyage autour de ma chambre, one-act opéra comique, with Xavier and Lauzanne, music by Albert Grisar, Opéra-Comique (12 August)\n\nOther \n 1830 : Les Havrais, cantate adressée aux habitans du Havre, paroles de Duvert\n 1830 : La Parisienne, chant national d’É. Arago, Duvert et Varin, « au profit des blessés et des familles des citoyens morts en combattant pour la liberté les 27, 28 et 29 juillet »\n\nReferences\n\nBibliography \n Édouard Noël et Edmond Stoullig, « Félix-Auguste Duvert », Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique, year 1876, Paul Ollendorff, Paris, 1877, , at Gallica.\n\n19th-century French dramatists and playwrights\nFrench lyricists\n1795 births\nWriters from Paris\n1876 deaths\nBurials at Père Lachaise Cemetery"
] |
[
"Bill Robinson",
"Vaudeville",
"What was Vaudeville?",
"vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager",
"What was Robinson's role?",
"By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo,",
"Did they see any success?",
"working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week.",
"How long did he perform solo?",
"Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act,",
"What was his act about?",
"primarily a tap dancing act,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops,",
"Where did he perform for the troops?",
"Liberty Theaters in the training camps.",
"Did he do anything else with Vaudeville?",
"making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two colored rule, which forbade solo black acts."
] | C_cc55017ed7b34895b46dda0b68d5fec4_1 | How many solo performances did he have? | 9 | How many solo performances did Robinson have? | Bill Robinson | On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theater in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous traveling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines). By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two colored rule, which forbade solo black acts. When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theaters in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both black and white units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918. Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919-1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit, and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50-52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages. CANNOTANSWER | was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50-52 weeks | Bill Robinson, nicknamed Bojangles (born Luther Robinson; May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949), was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer, the best known and the most highly paid African-American entertainer in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. His career began in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway theatre, the recording industry, Hollywood films, radio, and television.
According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, "Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging", adding a "hitherto-unknown lightness and presence". His signature routine was the Stair Dance, in which he would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. He is also credited with having popularized the word copacetic through his repeated use of it in vaudeville and radio appearances.
He is best known today for his dancing with Shirley Temple in a series of films during the 1930s, and for starring in the musical Stormy Weather (1943), loosely based on his own life and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. He used his popularity to challenge and overcome numerous racial barriers. Robinson was one of the first minstrel and vaudeville performers to appear as Black without the use of blackface makeup, as well as one of the earliest Black performers to perform solo, overcoming vaudeville's two-colored rule. Additionally, he was an early Black headliner in Broadway shows. Robinson was the first Black performer to appear in a Hollywood film in an interracial dance team (with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel, 1935), and the first Black performer to headline a mixed-race Broadway production.
Robinson came under heavy criticism for his apparent tacit acceptance of racial stereotypes of the era, with some critics calling him an Uncle Tom. He strongly resented this, and his biographers suggested that critics were underestimating the difficulties faced by Black performers engaging with mainstream White culture at the time, and ignoring his many efforts to overcome racial prejudice. In his public life, Robinson led efforts to persuade the Dallas Police Department to hire its first Black policeman; lobby President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II for more equal treatment of Black soldiers; and stage the first integrated public event in Miami, a fundraiser which was attended by both Black and White city residents.
Robinson was a popular figure in both the Black and White entertainment worlds of his era, and is remembered for the support that he gave to fellow performers, including Fred Astaire, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens and the Nicholas Brothers. Sammy Davis Jr. and Ann Miller credited him as a teacher and mentor, Miller saying that he "changed the course of my life". Gregory Hines produced and starred in a biographical movie about Robinson for which he won the NAACP Best Actor Award.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the time, Robinson died penniless in 1949, his funeral paid for by longtime friend Ed Sullivan. In 1989, Congress designated Robinson's birthday of May 25 as National Tap Dance Day.
Early life
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was born Luther Robinson in Richmond, Virginia, on May 25, 1878, to Maxwell, a machinist, and Maria Robinson, a church choir director. He and his younger brother William were raised in Richmond's Jackson Ward neighborhood. His grandmother Bedelia Robinson, a former slave, raised him after both of his parents died tragically in 1884: his father died from chronic heart disease and his mother from unknown natural causes. Details of his early life are known only through legend, much of it perpetuated by Robinson himself. He claimed that he was christened Luther, a name that he did not like. He suggested to his younger brother William that they should exchange names, and they eventually did.
His brother subsequently adopted the name of Percy and achieved recognition as a musician under that name.
Career
Early days
At the age of five, Robinson began dancing for small change, appearing as a "hoofer" or busker in local beer gardens and in front of theaters for tossed pennies. A promoter saw him performing outside the Globe Theater in Richmond and offered him a job as a "pick" in a local minstrel show. At that time, minstrel shows were staged by White performers in blackface. Pickaninnies were cute Black children at the edge of the stage singing, dancing, or telling jokes.
In 1890, at the age of 12, Robinson ran away to Washington, D.C., where he did odd jobs at Benning Race Track and worked briefly as a jockey. He teamed up with a young Al Jolson, with Jolson singing while Robinson danced for pennies or to sell newspapers. In 1891, he was hired by Whallen and Martel, touring with Mayme Remington's troupe in a show titled The South Before the War, performing again as a pickaninny, despite his age. He travelled with the show for over a year before growing too mature to play the role credibly.
In 1898, he returned to Richmond where he joined the United States Army as a rifleman when the Spanish–American War broke out. He received an accidental gunshot wound from a second lieutenant who was cleaning his gun.
Vaudeville
On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous travelling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines).
By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap-dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuel's, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two-coloured rule, which forbade solo Black acts.
When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theatres in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both Black and White units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918.
Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919 to 1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50–52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages.
Tap Dance Style
As mentioned above, the chapter of Stearns' Bill Robinson: Up on the Toes entitled Jazz Dance (1966) describes how Robinson introduced dancing "up on the toes" to tap dance. This was a new addition to King Rastus Brown's popular "flat-footed wizardry". Moving primarily from the waist down, Robinson maintained impressive control of his body. Pete Nugent is said to have remarked, "Robinson was the absolute tops in control." That Robinson infrequently dropped his heels marked a significant change in popular tap technique. Due to his adroit ability to be both light on his feet and distinct in his percussive taps, Robinson was called the "Father of Tapology".
In 1918 at the Palace Theatre in New York, Robinson performed the Stair Dance. Claims regarding the origin of the Stair Dance were highly disputed; however, Robinson was widely credited with the dance because he made it popular. The dance involved "a different rhythm for each step each one reverberating with a different pitch and the fact that he had a special set of portable steps enhanced his claim to originating the dance". The popular sensation of the Stair Dance led Robinson to try to secure a patent on the routine through the U.S. Patent Office in Washington D.C., ultimately to no avail; however the lack of a patent did not diminish Robinson's professional command of the Stair Dance. The entertainment community began to associate the Stair Dance exclusively with Robinson as the routine became a standard part of his performances in 1921. Haskins reports that dancer Fred Stone sent Robinson a check for having performed the routine.
Robinson's talents transcended his famous Stair Dance by far. The steps themselves were not essential to Robinson's performances; rather, Robinson would naturally shift into "a little skating step to stop-time; or a Scoot step, a cross-over tap" or many other tap steps involved in his particular movement quality. Robinson changed rhythmic meters and tap steps and syncopated breaks seamlessly. Often Robinson would talk to his audience, share anecdotes, and act as if he were surprised by the action of his feet. His amusing personality was essential to his performances and popularity. Robinson is said to have consistently performed in split-soled wooden shoes, handcrafted by a Chicago craftsman.
Broadway
In 1928, a White impresario, Lew Leslie, produced Blackbirds of 1928 on Broadway, a Black revue for White audiences starring Adelaide Hall and Bill Robinson along with Aida Ward, Tim Moore and other Black stars. The show originally did not include Robinson; only after three weeks of lukewarm reception did Leslie add Robinson as an "extra attraction". The show then became a huge success on Broadway, where it ran for over one year to sell-out performances. On stage, Adelaide Hall and Robinson danced and sang a duet together, which captivated the audiences. From then on, Robinson's public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the White world, maintaining a connection with the Black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofers Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem. So successful was Adelaide Hall's collaboration with Bojangles, they even appeared together on stage at the prestigious Palace Theatre (Broadway) before they were teamed up together again by Marty Forkins (Robinson's manager) to star in another Broadway musical titled, "Brown Buddies", that opened in 1930 at the Liberty Theatre, where it ran for four months before commencing a road tour of the States.
In 1939, Robinson returned to the stage in The Hot Mikado, a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. The show opened at the Broadhurst Theatre, with Robinson cast in the role of the Emperor. His rendition of My Object All Sublime stopped the show and produced eight encores. After Broadway, the show moved to the 1939 New York World's Fair, and was one of the greatest hits of the fair. August 25, 1939, was named Bill Robinson Day at the fair.
Robinson's next Broadway show, All in Fun (1940), was with an all-White cast. Despite having Imogene Coca, Pert Kelton, and other stars, the show received poor reviews at out-of-town tryouts in New Haven and Boston. When the White stars and co-producers, Phil Baker and Leonard Sillman, withdrew, Robinson became the star, the first time an African-American headlined an otherwise all-White production. Although the reviewers were enthusiastic about Robinson, they panned the show, and it failed to attract audiences. All in Fun closed after four performances.
Robinson's next foray on Broadway was the musical comedy Memphis Bound, which opened in May 1945. This production used an all-Black cast including Robinson (who had top billing), Avon Long, Billy Daniels, Ada Brown, and Sheila Guyse. Robinson played the boat pilot and then Sir Joseph Porter in the play-within-a-play of H.M.S. Pinafore. Critics widely praised Robinson's performance and especially his dancing, with his stair dance cited as a high point of the show.
Film career
After 1932, Black stage revues waned in popularity, but Robinson remained in vogue with White audiences for more than a decade in some fourteen motion pictures produced by such companies as RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. Most of them had musical settings, in which he played old-fashioned roles in nostalgic romances.
Early films
Robinson's film debut was in the RKO Pictures 1930 musical Dixiana. RKO was formed in part by a merger of the Keith and Orpheum theater circuits, with whom Robinson had performed as a headliner for many years. He was cast as a specialty performer in a standalone scene. This practice, customary at the time, permitted Southern theaters to remove scenes containing Black performers from their showings of the film. Dixiana was followed by Robinson's first starring role, in Harlem Is Heaven (1932), which is sometimes cited as the first film with an all-Black cast, even though all-Black silent films preceded it and the cast of Harlem Is Heaven includes a White actor with a speaking part, as well as a few White extras. The movie was produced in New York and did not perform well financially, leading Robinson to focus on Hollywood-produced movies after that.
Shirley Temple
The idea for bringing a Black dancer to Fox to star with Temple in The Little Colonel was actually first proposed by Fox head Winfield Sheehan after a discussion with D. W. Griffith. Sheehan set his sights on Robinson but, unsure of his ability as an actor, arranged for a contract that was void if Robinson failed the dramatic test. Robinson passed the test and was brought in to both star with Temple and to teach her tap dancing. They quickly hit it off, as Temple recounted years later:
Robinson walked a step ahead of us, but when he noticed me hurrying to catch up, he shortened his stride to accommodate mine. I kept reaching up for his hand, but he hadn't looked down and seemed unaware. Fannie called his attention to what I was doing, so he stopped short, bent low over me, his eyes wide and rows of brilliant teeth showing in a wide smile. When he took my hand in his, it felt large and cool. For a few moments, we continued walking in silence. "Can I call you Uncle Billy?" I asked. "Why sure you can", he replied... "But then I get to call you darlin.'" It was a deal. From then on, whenever we walked together it was hand in hand, and I was always his "darlin.'"
Temple had already appeared in five films released in 1934, and had performed a tap routine with James Dunn in Stand Up and Cheer! After Robinson was signed by 20th Century Fox, it was decided that he would perform his famous stair dance with Temple. While Robinson liked the idea, he quickly realized that he could not teach his complex stair dance to a seven-year-old in the few days permitted by the shooting schedule. Instead, he taught Temple to kick the riser (face) of each stairstep with her toe. After watching her practice his choreography, Robinson modified his routine to mimic her movements, so that it appeared on film that she was imitating his steps. The sequence was the highlight of the film.
Robinson and Temple became the first interracial dance partners in Hollywood history. The scene was controversial for its time, and was cut out in the south along with all other scenes showing the two making physical contact. Temple and Robinson appeared in four films together: The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Just Around the Corner.
Robinson and Temple became close friends as a result of his dance coaching and acting with her. Robinson carried pictures of Temple with him wherever he traveled, and Temple considered him a lifelong friend, saying in an interview "Bill Robinson treated me as an equal, which was very important to me. He didn't talk down to me, like to a little girl. And I liked people like that. And Bill Robinson was the best of all."
Other films
Robinson refused to play stereotypical roles imposed by Hollywood studios. In a small vignette in Hooray for Love (1935), he played a mayor of Harlem modeled after his own ceremonial honor; in One Mile from Heaven (1937), he played a romantic lead opposite African-American actress Fredi Washington after Hollywood had relaxed its taboo against such roles for Black people.
Robinson appeared opposite Will Rogers in In Old Kentucky (1935), the last movie Rogers made prior to his death in an airplane crash. Robinson and Rogers were good friends, and after Rogers' death, Robinson refused to fly, instead travelling by train to Hollywood for his film work.
Stormy Weather
Robinson's final film appearance was a starring role in the 1943 Fox musical Stormy Weather. Lena Horne co-starred as Robinson's love interest, and the movie also featured Fats Waller in his final movie appearance before his death, playing with Cab Calloway and his orchestra. The Nicholas Brothers are featured in the film's final dance sequence, performing to Calloway's "Jumpin' Jive", in what Fred Astaire called "the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen".
In 2001, Stormy Weather was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Radio and sound recordings
From 1936 until his death in 1949, Robinson made numerous radio and occasional television appearances. The distinctive sound of Robinson's tap dancing was frequently featured, but Robinson also sang, made sound effects, and told jokes and stories from his vaudeville acts. He also addressed the audience directly, something very rare for a Black radio performer in that era.
Robinson also made several recordings, including one in which he demonstrated each of his tap steps and their corresponding sounds. It was also on the radio and in his recordings that Robinson introduced and popularized a word of his own invention, copasetic, which he had used for years in his vaudeville shows, and which was added to Webster's Dictionary in 1934.
Final appearances
The last theatrical project for Robinson was to have been Two Gentlemen from the South, with James Barton as the master and Robinson as his servant, in which the Black and White roles reverse and eventually the two come together as equals, but the show did not open.
Robinson's final public appearance in 1949, a few weeks before his death, was as a surprise guest on a TV show, Ted Mack's The Original Amateur Hour, in which he emotionally embraced a competitor on the show who had tap-danced for the audience. A friend remarked, "he was handing over his crown, like him saying, 'this is my good-bye. '"
Personal life and death
Little is known of Robinson's first marriage to Lena Chase in 1907. They separated in 1916, and the marriage ended in 1922. His second wife was Fannie S. Clay whom he married shortly after his divorce from Chase. They divorced in 1943. His third marriage was in 1944 to Elaine Plaines in Columbus, Ohio, and they remained together until Robinson's death in 1949. There were no children from any of the marriages.
Political figures and celebrities appointed Robinson an honorary mayor of Harlem, a lifetime member of policemen's associations and fraternal orders, and a mascot of the New York Giants major league baseball team. Robinson reciprocated with open-handed generosity and frequently credited the White dancer James Barton for his contribution to his dancing style.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the first half of the 20th century, earning more than US$2 million during his lifetime, Robinson died penniless on November 25, 1949, at the age of 71, 6 months before his 72nd birthday, from heart failure. His funeral was arranged and paid for by longtime friend and television host Ed Sullivan. Robinson lay in repose at the 369th Infantry Regiment Armory in Harlem, where an estimated 32,000 people filed past his open casket to pay their last respects. The schools in Harlem were closed for a half-day so that children could attend or listen to the funeral, which was broadcast over the radio. Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr. conducted the service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and New York Mayor William O'Dwyer gave the eulogy. Robinson is buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens, Brooklyn, New York.
Legacy
Robinson was successful despite the obstacle of racism. A favorite Robinson anecdote is that he seated himself in a restaurant and a customer objected to his presence. When the manager suggested that it might be better if Robinson leave, he smiled and asked, "Have you got a ten-dollar bill?" Politely asking to borrow the manager's note for a moment, Robinson added six $10 bills from his own wallet and mixed them up, then extended the seven bills together, adding, "Here, let's see you pick out the colored one". The restaurant manager served Robinson without further delay.
Robinson co-founded the New York Black Yankees baseball team in Harlem in 1936 with financier James "Soldier Boy" Semler. The team was a successful member of the Negro National League until it disbanded in 1948, after Major League Baseball was desegregated.
In 1989, a joint U.S. Senate/House resolution declared "National Tap Dance Day" to be May 25, the anniversary of Bill Robinson's birth.
Robinson was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1987.
Popular myths, legends, and misconceptions
There are several commonly cited anecdotes about Robinson that are likely the result of conflicting stories put out by Robinson's second wife Fanny, or his manager, Marty Forkins, or by various show business associates of Robinson. There are also numerous documented instances in which Robinson gave conflicting stories to news reporters at different times.
According to his biographer, Robinson had previously served in the Spanish–American War, where he sustained an accidental gunshot wound, was 40 when the U.S entered World War I, and received a letter of commendation from the War Department for his work during the war in boosting morale at training camps in the United States, not overseas.
It has further been claimed that, along with serving in the trenches in World War I, Robinson was also the drum major for the 369th Hellfighters Band and led the regimental band up Fifth Avenue on the 369th's return from overseas.
While numerous sources repeat the claim of Bill Robinson's appointment as drum major in the 369th Regiment Band, this is not mentioned in either Mr. Bojangles, the Bill Robinson biography by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, or A Life in Ragtime, the biography of James Reese Europe, the leader of the 369th regimental band.
The origin of the nickname "Mr. Bojangles"
Tales about the origin of Robinson's nickname even varied across the color line, a consequence of differing opinions of him by Black and White people. To Whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the Black variety artist Tom Fletcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler". Robinson himself said he got the nickname as a child in Richmond, which is the most commonly-accepted version.
Marriage to Fanny Clay
The date and location of Robinson's second marriage, to Fanny Clay, or even the year they met, is uncertain because the couple gave different dates and locations in interviews, possibly because they were worried about unfavorable publicity about the marriage occurring so soon after Robinson's divorce. Robinson's biographer estimates that they met in late 1920 and were married in early 1922.
First Meeting with Marty Forkins
Robinson's meeting with the man who became his manager, Marty Forkins, is said to have occurred when Robinson, working as a waiter, spilled soup on Forkins. After Robinson's death, Forkins and his wife, Rae Samuel, admitted that Samuels made the introduction after having seen Robinson perform with his partner, George Cooper. Their explanation was that the story was made up in order to obscure Robinson's & Cooper's partnership, and to more effectively promote Robinson as a solo act. The ruse was successful, making Robinson one of the first solo acts to break vaudeville's two-colored rule, which required African-American performers to work in pairs.
Legendary dance contest
A dance contest between Robinson and three other dance legends (typically Ray Bolger, Fred Astaire, and James Barton) in which Robinson emerges the victor is recounted in many places, but no verifiable source can be found describing where and when the contest might have taken place.
Copacetic
Robinson is given credit for having popularized the word copacetic and claimed to have invented it while still living in Richmond. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the origins of the word as unknown and documents the earliest written use of the word in 1919, by the newspaperman and author Irving Bacheller, in his serialized book, A Man for the Ages; this was followed by uses in 1926 by Carl Van Vechten in his novel Nigger Heaven, in 1934 in Webster's New International Dictionary, and by John O'Hara in his novel Appointment in Samarra. Haskins' biography of Robinson includes, "Bill was shelling peas at the Jefferson Market, a New York Daily Mirror reporter asked him how he was, and the reply just popped into his head: 'I'm copasetic. The word was not popularized until Robinson used the term as an opening for his vaudeville and radio performances. The word was used in films Robinson made with Shirley Temple in the 1930s.
World record for running backward
One of Robinson's methods for generating publicity in cities where he was not the headliner was to engage in "freak sprinting" races, such as running backward. In 1922, Robinson set the world record for running backward (100 yards in 13.5 seconds). The record stood until 1977, when Paul Wilson ran the distance in 13.3 seconds. Although Robinson's speed running backwards is undisputed, the circumstances in which this feat was accepted as a world record are unclear, and were likely the result of a staged publicity event rather than a sanctioned athletic contest.
The song "Mr. Bojangles"
Jerry Jeff Walker's 1968 folk song "Mr. Bojangles" has been misinterpreted as a song about Robinson. According to Walker, it was instead inspired by Walker's encounter with a street performer in the New Orleans first precinct jail, a street performer who called himself "Bo Jangles". In the song, the street performer is a heavy drinker and has a dog that died. By Robinson's own account and those of his friends, he neither smoked nor drank (although he was a frequent and avid gambler), and he never had a dog.
Controversies
Uncle Tom roles
Robinson came under heavy criticism for playing stereotyped roles, and took offense at such claims. Once, after being called an "Uncle Tom" in the New York newspaper The Age, Robinson went to its office in Harlem, pistol in hand, demanding to see the editor. In his eulogy at Robinson's funeral, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell argued against the claim that Robinson was an "Uncle Tom" figure, focusing on Robinson's ability as an entertainer and a man who transcended color lines.
In 1973, the film historian Donald Bogle, in his history of African Americans in American film, refers to Robinson's role in The Littlest Rebel and other Shirley Temple movies as the "quintessential Uncle Tom". Other critics noted that such criticism fails to account for the genuine affection and chemistry between Robinson and Temple that came through on the screen, and that the role represented a breakthrough for Hollywood stereotypes in that it was the first time a Black man was made the guardian of a white life. Bogle later moderated his criticism by noting that the reliable, articulate Uncle Billy character in The Littlest Rebel was a cut above the characters portrayed by Lincoln "Stepin Fetchit" Perry.
Haskins explains that critics calling Robinson an "Uncle Tom" often disregarded the discriminatory limitations Robinson endured and combated throughout his career. In addition to the impact of Jim Crow policies and the Depression, Haskins writes, "That Bill traveled, at least professionally, in increasingly white circles was not so much a matter of choice as one of reality." Having overcome numerous policies inhibiting his success to reach an unmatched level of stardom, Robinson had limited venue opportunities for a performer of his caliber.
In 1933, Robinson was named an honorary Mayor of Harlem for his philanthropic contributions to his community, and for his renowned success. He took this role seriously, performing over 3,000 benefits in the course of his career, aiding hundreds of unorganized charities and individuals.
Trial and imprisonment
On March 21, 1908, as a result of a dispute with a tailor over a suit, Robinson was arrested in New York City for armed robbery. On September 30, he was convicted and sentenced to 11–15 years hard labor at Sing Sing prison. Robinson had failed to take the charges and trial seriously and paid little attention to mounting a defense. After his conviction, Robinson's partner, George Cooper, organized his most influential friends to vouch for him, and hired a new attorney who produced evidence that Robinson had been falsely accused. Though he was exonerated at his second trial and his accusers were indicted for perjury, the trial and time spent in the Tombs (Manhattan's prison complex) affected Robinson deeply. After he was released, he made a point of registering his pistol at the local police station of each town where he performed. Robinson's second wife, Fanny, also sent a letter of introduction with complimentary tickets and other gifts to the local police chief's wife in each town ahead of Robinson's engagements.
Jesse Owens
After Jesse Owens returned from the 1936 Olympics, Robinson befriended him. Despite his fame from his four Olympic track wins, undermining Adolf Hitler's claims of Aryan supremacy, Owens found most of the offers that had been made to employ him had been nothing more than publicity stunts that had no substance. Robinson was the one exception, finding work for Owens within a few months of his return to the U.S. Robinson also introduced Owens to his manager, Marty Forkins, who secured a series of demonstration races for Owens which were viewed by many as degrading to the dignity of an Olympic athlete, most notably an event in Cuba in which Owens raced against a horse. As a result, Forkins and Robinson were viewed as having taken advantage of Owens. According to Forkins’ son, Robinson had told Owens that he should start running demonstration races that would both earn money for him and keep him in the public eye. Robinson had done many such races (including a race in which he set the world record for running backwards) and did not view them as undignified. Moreover, the events paid Owens well and provided him with a source of funds when no one else was offering him employment or helping him financially. Owens made a gift to Robinson of one of his four Olympic gold medals, as a gesture of gratitude for the help Robinson had given him.
Café Metropole and Jeni Le Gon
In 1937, Robinson caused a stir in the Harlem community by choosing a white dancer, Geneva Sawyer, as his dance partner over Jeni Le Gon in the Twentieth Century Fox film Café Metropole (1937). Le Gon had danced with him in Hooray for Love (1935) and had received favorable reviews. Sawyer had been Shirley Temple's dance coach during the time Temple and Robinson made movies together, and Sawyer had taken tap lessons from Robinson while he was teaching Temple and choreographing her routines. Robinson suggested to the producers that Sawyer could be cast as his partner if she wore blackface. Le Gon's career suffered as a result, and she never worked with Robinson again. Although the scene was shot with Sawyer in blackface, the studio became convinced that a mixed-race adult couple dancing together would be too controversial: both scenes with Robinson were cut from the final version of the movie and the deleted scenes were only released in 2008 as part of a Fox DVD boxed set of Tyrone Power movies.
In popular culture
Fred Astaire paid tribute to Bill Robinson in the tap routine Bojangles of Harlem from the 1936 film Swing Time. In it, Astaire famously dances to three of his shadows.
Duke Ellington composed "Bojangles (A Portrait of Bill Robinson)", a set of rhythmic variations as a salute to the great dancer.
A biography of Bill Robinson by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (Morrow), was published in 1988.
"Bojangles" the musical, premiered as the centerpiece of Barksdale Theatre's (at Hanover Tavern) 40th anniversary season in 1993. Playwright Doug Jones collaborated with composer Charles Strouse (Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, Applause) and Academy Award-winning lyricist Sammy Cahn.
A made-for-television film entitled Bojangles was released in 2001. The film earned the NAACP Best actor Award for Gregory Hines' performance as Robinson.
Arthur Duncan, an exceptional tap dancer in his own right, frequently paid homage to Bill Robinson with the stair routine on The Lawrence Welk Show.
A 2002 children's book titled Rap a Tap Tap: Here's Bojangles - Think of That! by Leo and Diane Dillon pays homage to Robinson.
A character loosely modeled upon Bojangles and Sammy Davis Jr., called "Bonejangles" appears in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005).
Blues for Bojangles is a song composed by Chuck Darwin, and performed by Anita O'Day with the Paul Jordan Orchestra.
Filmography
Selected discography
1929 Ain’t misbehavin’ / Doing the new low down with Irving Mills & His Hotsy Totsy Gang (released September 4, 1929) Brunswick Records Br4535 Re-issued on Cotton Club stars (released 1990) Milan Records OCLC 858508492
1931
Keep a song in your soul / Bill Robinson blues (released April 3, 1931) Brunswick Records E36441-A-B; also issued on Columbia Records 30183
Keep a song in your soul / Just a crazy song (Hi-hi-hi) Brunswick Records Br 6134, 1168b, A9091
1935 Living in a great big way with Jeni Legon (recorded 1934, re-released in 2000 on Hollywood swing & jazz : hot numbers from classic M-G-M, Warner Bros., and RKO films) Rino Records
1943 Stormy Weather Motion picture soundtrack (recorded January–May 1943, re-released 1993) Fox Records: Distributed by Arista Records, 1993.
See also
Racism in the United States
References
Notes
Bibliography
Some biographical material is from the International Tap Association Newsletter, May/June 1993. The biographical material was extrapolated from The American Dictionary of Biography and Webster's American Biographies.
Haskins, James; Mitgang, N. R., Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (New York: William Morrow, 1988).
Williams, Iain Cameron (2002). Underneath A Harlem Moon
External links
Bojangles at the Evergreens Cemetery
1878 births
1949 deaths
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American singers
369th Infantry Regiment personnel
African-American male actors
African-American male dancers
African-American male singers
American male dancers
American male film actors
American male musical theatre actors
American male singers
American male stage actors
American military personnel of World War I
American tap dancers
Burials at the Cemetery of the Evergreens
Deaths from heart disease
Harlem Renaissance
Male actors from Richmond, Virginia
Military personnel from Richmond, Virginia
Musicians from Richmond, Virginia
Singers from Virginia
United States Army soldiers
Vaudeville performers | false | [
"Solo Saxophone Concerts is an album by American jazz saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell composed of solo concert performances from 1973 and 1974 and released on the Canadian Sackville label. It was reissued in 2009 by AECO/Katalyst under the title The Solo Concert.\n\nReception\n\nIn his review for AllMusic, Michael G. Nastos states \"This is the first, greatest, and premier solo recording by Roscoe Mitchell that has to go down as one of his all-time best, and a prime example of how to stand alone, unafraid of any preconceived notions in how modern jazz should sound or be performed.\"\n\nTrack listing\nAll compositions by Roscoe Mitchell except as indicated\n \"Nonaah\" - 1:20 \n \"Tutankamen\" (Malachi Favors) - 7:00\n \"Enlorfe\" - 2:54\n \"Jibbana\" - 4:51\n \"Eeltwo (Part One)\" - 2:53\n \"Eeltwo (Part Two)\" - 6:23\n \"Oobina (Little Big Horn)\" - 4:38\n \"Ttum\" - 8:56\n \"Nonaah\" - 1:28\n\nPersonnel\nRoscoe Mitchell - soprano sax, alto sax, tenor sax, bass sax\n\nReferences\n\n1974 live albums\nRoscoe Mitchell live albums\nSackville Records live albums",
"Hilliard Gerald Adler (October 30, 1918 – March 13, 2010) was an American harmonica player whose performances have been used in numerous film soundtracks.\n\nAdler was born in Baltimore, and early in his childhood mastered the harmonica, winning a local talent contest sponsored by the Baltimore Evening Sun at age 13. His older brother Larry Adler, four years his senior, had won the same contest five years earlier, performing the same piece, Beethoven's Minuet in G.\n\nLater, Adler found work with Paul Whiteman and performed regularly with his orchestra. After starting his solo career, he joined the Army Air Corps, where he did theater and film work in the entertainment division.\n\nAdler focused on popular music as his career developed, and he soloed in numerous film soundtracks from the 1940s to the 1960s, including Shane, High Noon, Mary Poppins, and My Fair Lady. He also taught actors how to pretend to play the instrument convincingly where their on-screen performances required.\n\nHe published an autobiography, Living from Hand to Mouth, in 2005.\n\nJerry Adler died of prostate cancer in 2010, aged 91.\n\nReferences\n\n1918 births\n2010 deaths\nAmerican harmonica players\nJewish American musicians\nDeaths from prostate cancer\nMusicians from Baltimore\nUnited States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II\nUnited States Army Air Forces soldiers\nDeaths from cancer in the United States\n21st-century American Jews"
] |
[
"Bill Robinson",
"Vaudeville",
"What was Vaudeville?",
"vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager",
"What was Robinson's role?",
"By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo,",
"Did they see any success?",
"working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week.",
"How long did he perform solo?",
"Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act,",
"What was his act about?",
"primarily a tap dancing act,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops,",
"Where did he perform for the troops?",
"Liberty Theaters in the training camps.",
"Did he do anything else with Vaudeville?",
"making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two colored rule, which forbade solo black acts.",
"How many solo performances did he have?",
"was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50-52 weeks"
] | C_cc55017ed7b34895b46dda0b68d5fec4_1 | Were his shows well received? | 10 | Were Robinson's shows well received? | Bill Robinson | On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theater in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous traveling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines). By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two colored rule, which forbade solo black acts. When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theaters in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both black and white units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918. Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919-1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit, and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50-52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages. CANNOTANSWER | Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages. | Bill Robinson, nicknamed Bojangles (born Luther Robinson; May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949), was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer, the best known and the most highly paid African-American entertainer in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. His career began in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway theatre, the recording industry, Hollywood films, radio, and television.
According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, "Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging", adding a "hitherto-unknown lightness and presence". His signature routine was the Stair Dance, in which he would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. He is also credited with having popularized the word copacetic through his repeated use of it in vaudeville and radio appearances.
He is best known today for his dancing with Shirley Temple in a series of films during the 1930s, and for starring in the musical Stormy Weather (1943), loosely based on his own life and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. He used his popularity to challenge and overcome numerous racial barriers. Robinson was one of the first minstrel and vaudeville performers to appear as Black without the use of blackface makeup, as well as one of the earliest Black performers to perform solo, overcoming vaudeville's two-colored rule. Additionally, he was an early Black headliner in Broadway shows. Robinson was the first Black performer to appear in a Hollywood film in an interracial dance team (with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel, 1935), and the first Black performer to headline a mixed-race Broadway production.
Robinson came under heavy criticism for his apparent tacit acceptance of racial stereotypes of the era, with some critics calling him an Uncle Tom. He strongly resented this, and his biographers suggested that critics were underestimating the difficulties faced by Black performers engaging with mainstream White culture at the time, and ignoring his many efforts to overcome racial prejudice. In his public life, Robinson led efforts to persuade the Dallas Police Department to hire its first Black policeman; lobby President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II for more equal treatment of Black soldiers; and stage the first integrated public event in Miami, a fundraiser which was attended by both Black and White city residents.
Robinson was a popular figure in both the Black and White entertainment worlds of his era, and is remembered for the support that he gave to fellow performers, including Fred Astaire, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens and the Nicholas Brothers. Sammy Davis Jr. and Ann Miller credited him as a teacher and mentor, Miller saying that he "changed the course of my life". Gregory Hines produced and starred in a biographical movie about Robinson for which he won the NAACP Best Actor Award.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the time, Robinson died penniless in 1949, his funeral paid for by longtime friend Ed Sullivan. In 1989, Congress designated Robinson's birthday of May 25 as National Tap Dance Day.
Early life
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was born Luther Robinson in Richmond, Virginia, on May 25, 1878, to Maxwell, a machinist, and Maria Robinson, a church choir director. He and his younger brother William were raised in Richmond's Jackson Ward neighborhood. His grandmother Bedelia Robinson, a former slave, raised him after both of his parents died tragically in 1884: his father died from chronic heart disease and his mother from unknown natural causes. Details of his early life are known only through legend, much of it perpetuated by Robinson himself. He claimed that he was christened Luther, a name that he did not like. He suggested to his younger brother William that they should exchange names, and they eventually did.
His brother subsequently adopted the name of Percy and achieved recognition as a musician under that name.
Career
Early days
At the age of five, Robinson began dancing for small change, appearing as a "hoofer" or busker in local beer gardens and in front of theaters for tossed pennies. A promoter saw him performing outside the Globe Theater in Richmond and offered him a job as a "pick" in a local minstrel show. At that time, minstrel shows were staged by White performers in blackface. Pickaninnies were cute Black children at the edge of the stage singing, dancing, or telling jokes.
In 1890, at the age of 12, Robinson ran away to Washington, D.C., where he did odd jobs at Benning Race Track and worked briefly as a jockey. He teamed up with a young Al Jolson, with Jolson singing while Robinson danced for pennies or to sell newspapers. In 1891, he was hired by Whallen and Martel, touring with Mayme Remington's troupe in a show titled The South Before the War, performing again as a pickaninny, despite his age. He travelled with the show for over a year before growing too mature to play the role credibly.
In 1898, he returned to Richmond where he joined the United States Army as a rifleman when the Spanish–American War broke out. He received an accidental gunshot wound from a second lieutenant who was cleaning his gun.
Vaudeville
On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous travelling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines).
By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap-dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuel's, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two-coloured rule, which forbade solo Black acts.
When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theatres in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both Black and White units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918.
Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919 to 1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50–52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages.
Tap Dance Style
As mentioned above, the chapter of Stearns' Bill Robinson: Up on the Toes entitled Jazz Dance (1966) describes how Robinson introduced dancing "up on the toes" to tap dance. This was a new addition to King Rastus Brown's popular "flat-footed wizardry". Moving primarily from the waist down, Robinson maintained impressive control of his body. Pete Nugent is said to have remarked, "Robinson was the absolute tops in control." That Robinson infrequently dropped his heels marked a significant change in popular tap technique. Due to his adroit ability to be both light on his feet and distinct in his percussive taps, Robinson was called the "Father of Tapology".
In 1918 at the Palace Theatre in New York, Robinson performed the Stair Dance. Claims regarding the origin of the Stair Dance were highly disputed; however, Robinson was widely credited with the dance because he made it popular. The dance involved "a different rhythm for each step each one reverberating with a different pitch and the fact that he had a special set of portable steps enhanced his claim to originating the dance". The popular sensation of the Stair Dance led Robinson to try to secure a patent on the routine through the U.S. Patent Office in Washington D.C., ultimately to no avail; however the lack of a patent did not diminish Robinson's professional command of the Stair Dance. The entertainment community began to associate the Stair Dance exclusively with Robinson as the routine became a standard part of his performances in 1921. Haskins reports that dancer Fred Stone sent Robinson a check for having performed the routine.
Robinson's talents transcended his famous Stair Dance by far. The steps themselves were not essential to Robinson's performances; rather, Robinson would naturally shift into "a little skating step to stop-time; or a Scoot step, a cross-over tap" or many other tap steps involved in his particular movement quality. Robinson changed rhythmic meters and tap steps and syncopated breaks seamlessly. Often Robinson would talk to his audience, share anecdotes, and act as if he were surprised by the action of his feet. His amusing personality was essential to his performances and popularity. Robinson is said to have consistently performed in split-soled wooden shoes, handcrafted by a Chicago craftsman.
Broadway
In 1928, a White impresario, Lew Leslie, produced Blackbirds of 1928 on Broadway, a Black revue for White audiences starring Adelaide Hall and Bill Robinson along with Aida Ward, Tim Moore and other Black stars. The show originally did not include Robinson; only after three weeks of lukewarm reception did Leslie add Robinson as an "extra attraction". The show then became a huge success on Broadway, where it ran for over one year to sell-out performances. On stage, Adelaide Hall and Robinson danced and sang a duet together, which captivated the audiences. From then on, Robinson's public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the White world, maintaining a connection with the Black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofers Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem. So successful was Adelaide Hall's collaboration with Bojangles, they even appeared together on stage at the prestigious Palace Theatre (Broadway) before they were teamed up together again by Marty Forkins (Robinson's manager) to star in another Broadway musical titled, "Brown Buddies", that opened in 1930 at the Liberty Theatre, where it ran for four months before commencing a road tour of the States.
In 1939, Robinson returned to the stage in The Hot Mikado, a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. The show opened at the Broadhurst Theatre, with Robinson cast in the role of the Emperor. His rendition of My Object All Sublime stopped the show and produced eight encores. After Broadway, the show moved to the 1939 New York World's Fair, and was one of the greatest hits of the fair. August 25, 1939, was named Bill Robinson Day at the fair.
Robinson's next Broadway show, All in Fun (1940), was with an all-White cast. Despite having Imogene Coca, Pert Kelton, and other stars, the show received poor reviews at out-of-town tryouts in New Haven and Boston. When the White stars and co-producers, Phil Baker and Leonard Sillman, withdrew, Robinson became the star, the first time an African-American headlined an otherwise all-White production. Although the reviewers were enthusiastic about Robinson, they panned the show, and it failed to attract audiences. All in Fun closed after four performances.
Robinson's next foray on Broadway was the musical comedy Memphis Bound, which opened in May 1945. This production used an all-Black cast including Robinson (who had top billing), Avon Long, Billy Daniels, Ada Brown, and Sheila Guyse. Robinson played the boat pilot and then Sir Joseph Porter in the play-within-a-play of H.M.S. Pinafore. Critics widely praised Robinson's performance and especially his dancing, with his stair dance cited as a high point of the show.
Film career
After 1932, Black stage revues waned in popularity, but Robinson remained in vogue with White audiences for more than a decade in some fourteen motion pictures produced by such companies as RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. Most of them had musical settings, in which he played old-fashioned roles in nostalgic romances.
Early films
Robinson's film debut was in the RKO Pictures 1930 musical Dixiana. RKO was formed in part by a merger of the Keith and Orpheum theater circuits, with whom Robinson had performed as a headliner for many years. He was cast as a specialty performer in a standalone scene. This practice, customary at the time, permitted Southern theaters to remove scenes containing Black performers from their showings of the film. Dixiana was followed by Robinson's first starring role, in Harlem Is Heaven (1932), which is sometimes cited as the first film with an all-Black cast, even though all-Black silent films preceded it and the cast of Harlem Is Heaven includes a White actor with a speaking part, as well as a few White extras. The movie was produced in New York and did not perform well financially, leading Robinson to focus on Hollywood-produced movies after that.
Shirley Temple
The idea for bringing a Black dancer to Fox to star with Temple in The Little Colonel was actually first proposed by Fox head Winfield Sheehan after a discussion with D. W. Griffith. Sheehan set his sights on Robinson but, unsure of his ability as an actor, arranged for a contract that was void if Robinson failed the dramatic test. Robinson passed the test and was brought in to both star with Temple and to teach her tap dancing. They quickly hit it off, as Temple recounted years later:
Robinson walked a step ahead of us, but when he noticed me hurrying to catch up, he shortened his stride to accommodate mine. I kept reaching up for his hand, but he hadn't looked down and seemed unaware. Fannie called his attention to what I was doing, so he stopped short, bent low over me, his eyes wide and rows of brilliant teeth showing in a wide smile. When he took my hand in his, it felt large and cool. For a few moments, we continued walking in silence. "Can I call you Uncle Billy?" I asked. "Why sure you can", he replied... "But then I get to call you darlin.'" It was a deal. From then on, whenever we walked together it was hand in hand, and I was always his "darlin.'"
Temple had already appeared in five films released in 1934, and had performed a tap routine with James Dunn in Stand Up and Cheer! After Robinson was signed by 20th Century Fox, it was decided that he would perform his famous stair dance with Temple. While Robinson liked the idea, he quickly realized that he could not teach his complex stair dance to a seven-year-old in the few days permitted by the shooting schedule. Instead, he taught Temple to kick the riser (face) of each stairstep with her toe. After watching her practice his choreography, Robinson modified his routine to mimic her movements, so that it appeared on film that she was imitating his steps. The sequence was the highlight of the film.
Robinson and Temple became the first interracial dance partners in Hollywood history. The scene was controversial for its time, and was cut out in the south along with all other scenes showing the two making physical contact. Temple and Robinson appeared in four films together: The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Just Around the Corner.
Robinson and Temple became close friends as a result of his dance coaching and acting with her. Robinson carried pictures of Temple with him wherever he traveled, and Temple considered him a lifelong friend, saying in an interview "Bill Robinson treated me as an equal, which was very important to me. He didn't talk down to me, like to a little girl. And I liked people like that. And Bill Robinson was the best of all."
Other films
Robinson refused to play stereotypical roles imposed by Hollywood studios. In a small vignette in Hooray for Love (1935), he played a mayor of Harlem modeled after his own ceremonial honor; in One Mile from Heaven (1937), he played a romantic lead opposite African-American actress Fredi Washington after Hollywood had relaxed its taboo against such roles for Black people.
Robinson appeared opposite Will Rogers in In Old Kentucky (1935), the last movie Rogers made prior to his death in an airplane crash. Robinson and Rogers were good friends, and after Rogers' death, Robinson refused to fly, instead travelling by train to Hollywood for his film work.
Stormy Weather
Robinson's final film appearance was a starring role in the 1943 Fox musical Stormy Weather. Lena Horne co-starred as Robinson's love interest, and the movie also featured Fats Waller in his final movie appearance before his death, playing with Cab Calloway and his orchestra. The Nicholas Brothers are featured in the film's final dance sequence, performing to Calloway's "Jumpin' Jive", in what Fred Astaire called "the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen".
In 2001, Stormy Weather was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Radio and sound recordings
From 1936 until his death in 1949, Robinson made numerous radio and occasional television appearances. The distinctive sound of Robinson's tap dancing was frequently featured, but Robinson also sang, made sound effects, and told jokes and stories from his vaudeville acts. He also addressed the audience directly, something very rare for a Black radio performer in that era.
Robinson also made several recordings, including one in which he demonstrated each of his tap steps and their corresponding sounds. It was also on the radio and in his recordings that Robinson introduced and popularized a word of his own invention, copasetic, which he had used for years in his vaudeville shows, and which was added to Webster's Dictionary in 1934.
Final appearances
The last theatrical project for Robinson was to have been Two Gentlemen from the South, with James Barton as the master and Robinson as his servant, in which the Black and White roles reverse and eventually the two come together as equals, but the show did not open.
Robinson's final public appearance in 1949, a few weeks before his death, was as a surprise guest on a TV show, Ted Mack's The Original Amateur Hour, in which he emotionally embraced a competitor on the show who had tap-danced for the audience. A friend remarked, "he was handing over his crown, like him saying, 'this is my good-bye. '"
Personal life and death
Little is known of Robinson's first marriage to Lena Chase in 1907. They separated in 1916, and the marriage ended in 1922. His second wife was Fannie S. Clay whom he married shortly after his divorce from Chase. They divorced in 1943. His third marriage was in 1944 to Elaine Plaines in Columbus, Ohio, and they remained together until Robinson's death in 1949. There were no children from any of the marriages.
Political figures and celebrities appointed Robinson an honorary mayor of Harlem, a lifetime member of policemen's associations and fraternal orders, and a mascot of the New York Giants major league baseball team. Robinson reciprocated with open-handed generosity and frequently credited the White dancer James Barton for his contribution to his dancing style.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the first half of the 20th century, earning more than US$2 million during his lifetime, Robinson died penniless on November 25, 1949, at the age of 71, 6 months before his 72nd birthday, from heart failure. His funeral was arranged and paid for by longtime friend and television host Ed Sullivan. Robinson lay in repose at the 369th Infantry Regiment Armory in Harlem, where an estimated 32,000 people filed past his open casket to pay their last respects. The schools in Harlem were closed for a half-day so that children could attend or listen to the funeral, which was broadcast over the radio. Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr. conducted the service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and New York Mayor William O'Dwyer gave the eulogy. Robinson is buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens, Brooklyn, New York.
Legacy
Robinson was successful despite the obstacle of racism. A favorite Robinson anecdote is that he seated himself in a restaurant and a customer objected to his presence. When the manager suggested that it might be better if Robinson leave, he smiled and asked, "Have you got a ten-dollar bill?" Politely asking to borrow the manager's note for a moment, Robinson added six $10 bills from his own wallet and mixed them up, then extended the seven bills together, adding, "Here, let's see you pick out the colored one". The restaurant manager served Robinson without further delay.
Robinson co-founded the New York Black Yankees baseball team in Harlem in 1936 with financier James "Soldier Boy" Semler. The team was a successful member of the Negro National League until it disbanded in 1948, after Major League Baseball was desegregated.
In 1989, a joint U.S. Senate/House resolution declared "National Tap Dance Day" to be May 25, the anniversary of Bill Robinson's birth.
Robinson was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1987.
Popular myths, legends, and misconceptions
There are several commonly cited anecdotes about Robinson that are likely the result of conflicting stories put out by Robinson's second wife Fanny, or his manager, Marty Forkins, or by various show business associates of Robinson. There are also numerous documented instances in which Robinson gave conflicting stories to news reporters at different times.
According to his biographer, Robinson had previously served in the Spanish–American War, where he sustained an accidental gunshot wound, was 40 when the U.S entered World War I, and received a letter of commendation from the War Department for his work during the war in boosting morale at training camps in the United States, not overseas.
It has further been claimed that, along with serving in the trenches in World War I, Robinson was also the drum major for the 369th Hellfighters Band and led the regimental band up Fifth Avenue on the 369th's return from overseas.
While numerous sources repeat the claim of Bill Robinson's appointment as drum major in the 369th Regiment Band, this is not mentioned in either Mr. Bojangles, the Bill Robinson biography by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, or A Life in Ragtime, the biography of James Reese Europe, the leader of the 369th regimental band.
The origin of the nickname "Mr. Bojangles"
Tales about the origin of Robinson's nickname even varied across the color line, a consequence of differing opinions of him by Black and White people. To Whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the Black variety artist Tom Fletcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler". Robinson himself said he got the nickname as a child in Richmond, which is the most commonly-accepted version.
Marriage to Fanny Clay
The date and location of Robinson's second marriage, to Fanny Clay, or even the year they met, is uncertain because the couple gave different dates and locations in interviews, possibly because they were worried about unfavorable publicity about the marriage occurring so soon after Robinson's divorce. Robinson's biographer estimates that they met in late 1920 and were married in early 1922.
First Meeting with Marty Forkins
Robinson's meeting with the man who became his manager, Marty Forkins, is said to have occurred when Robinson, working as a waiter, spilled soup on Forkins. After Robinson's death, Forkins and his wife, Rae Samuel, admitted that Samuels made the introduction after having seen Robinson perform with his partner, George Cooper. Their explanation was that the story was made up in order to obscure Robinson's & Cooper's partnership, and to more effectively promote Robinson as a solo act. The ruse was successful, making Robinson one of the first solo acts to break vaudeville's two-colored rule, which required African-American performers to work in pairs.
Legendary dance contest
A dance contest between Robinson and three other dance legends (typically Ray Bolger, Fred Astaire, and James Barton) in which Robinson emerges the victor is recounted in many places, but no verifiable source can be found describing where and when the contest might have taken place.
Copacetic
Robinson is given credit for having popularized the word copacetic and claimed to have invented it while still living in Richmond. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the origins of the word as unknown and documents the earliest written use of the word in 1919, by the newspaperman and author Irving Bacheller, in his serialized book, A Man for the Ages; this was followed by uses in 1926 by Carl Van Vechten in his novel Nigger Heaven, in 1934 in Webster's New International Dictionary, and by John O'Hara in his novel Appointment in Samarra. Haskins' biography of Robinson includes, "Bill was shelling peas at the Jefferson Market, a New York Daily Mirror reporter asked him how he was, and the reply just popped into his head: 'I'm copasetic. The word was not popularized until Robinson used the term as an opening for his vaudeville and radio performances. The word was used in films Robinson made with Shirley Temple in the 1930s.
World record for running backward
One of Robinson's methods for generating publicity in cities where he was not the headliner was to engage in "freak sprinting" races, such as running backward. In 1922, Robinson set the world record for running backward (100 yards in 13.5 seconds). The record stood until 1977, when Paul Wilson ran the distance in 13.3 seconds. Although Robinson's speed running backwards is undisputed, the circumstances in which this feat was accepted as a world record are unclear, and were likely the result of a staged publicity event rather than a sanctioned athletic contest.
The song "Mr. Bojangles"
Jerry Jeff Walker's 1968 folk song "Mr. Bojangles" has been misinterpreted as a song about Robinson. According to Walker, it was instead inspired by Walker's encounter with a street performer in the New Orleans first precinct jail, a street performer who called himself "Bo Jangles". In the song, the street performer is a heavy drinker and has a dog that died. By Robinson's own account and those of his friends, he neither smoked nor drank (although he was a frequent and avid gambler), and he never had a dog.
Controversies
Uncle Tom roles
Robinson came under heavy criticism for playing stereotyped roles, and took offense at such claims. Once, after being called an "Uncle Tom" in the New York newspaper The Age, Robinson went to its office in Harlem, pistol in hand, demanding to see the editor. In his eulogy at Robinson's funeral, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell argued against the claim that Robinson was an "Uncle Tom" figure, focusing on Robinson's ability as an entertainer and a man who transcended color lines.
In 1973, the film historian Donald Bogle, in his history of African Americans in American film, refers to Robinson's role in The Littlest Rebel and other Shirley Temple movies as the "quintessential Uncle Tom". Other critics noted that such criticism fails to account for the genuine affection and chemistry between Robinson and Temple that came through on the screen, and that the role represented a breakthrough for Hollywood stereotypes in that it was the first time a Black man was made the guardian of a white life. Bogle later moderated his criticism by noting that the reliable, articulate Uncle Billy character in The Littlest Rebel was a cut above the characters portrayed by Lincoln "Stepin Fetchit" Perry.
Haskins explains that critics calling Robinson an "Uncle Tom" often disregarded the discriminatory limitations Robinson endured and combated throughout his career. In addition to the impact of Jim Crow policies and the Depression, Haskins writes, "That Bill traveled, at least professionally, in increasingly white circles was not so much a matter of choice as one of reality." Having overcome numerous policies inhibiting his success to reach an unmatched level of stardom, Robinson had limited venue opportunities for a performer of his caliber.
In 1933, Robinson was named an honorary Mayor of Harlem for his philanthropic contributions to his community, and for his renowned success. He took this role seriously, performing over 3,000 benefits in the course of his career, aiding hundreds of unorganized charities and individuals.
Trial and imprisonment
On March 21, 1908, as a result of a dispute with a tailor over a suit, Robinson was arrested in New York City for armed robbery. On September 30, he was convicted and sentenced to 11–15 years hard labor at Sing Sing prison. Robinson had failed to take the charges and trial seriously and paid little attention to mounting a defense. After his conviction, Robinson's partner, George Cooper, organized his most influential friends to vouch for him, and hired a new attorney who produced evidence that Robinson had been falsely accused. Though he was exonerated at his second trial and his accusers were indicted for perjury, the trial and time spent in the Tombs (Manhattan's prison complex) affected Robinson deeply. After he was released, he made a point of registering his pistol at the local police station of each town where he performed. Robinson's second wife, Fanny, also sent a letter of introduction with complimentary tickets and other gifts to the local police chief's wife in each town ahead of Robinson's engagements.
Jesse Owens
After Jesse Owens returned from the 1936 Olympics, Robinson befriended him. Despite his fame from his four Olympic track wins, undermining Adolf Hitler's claims of Aryan supremacy, Owens found most of the offers that had been made to employ him had been nothing more than publicity stunts that had no substance. Robinson was the one exception, finding work for Owens within a few months of his return to the U.S. Robinson also introduced Owens to his manager, Marty Forkins, who secured a series of demonstration races for Owens which were viewed by many as degrading to the dignity of an Olympic athlete, most notably an event in Cuba in which Owens raced against a horse. As a result, Forkins and Robinson were viewed as having taken advantage of Owens. According to Forkins’ son, Robinson had told Owens that he should start running demonstration races that would both earn money for him and keep him in the public eye. Robinson had done many such races (including a race in which he set the world record for running backwards) and did not view them as undignified. Moreover, the events paid Owens well and provided him with a source of funds when no one else was offering him employment or helping him financially. Owens made a gift to Robinson of one of his four Olympic gold medals, as a gesture of gratitude for the help Robinson had given him.
Café Metropole and Jeni Le Gon
In 1937, Robinson caused a stir in the Harlem community by choosing a white dancer, Geneva Sawyer, as his dance partner over Jeni Le Gon in the Twentieth Century Fox film Café Metropole (1937). Le Gon had danced with him in Hooray for Love (1935) and had received favorable reviews. Sawyer had been Shirley Temple's dance coach during the time Temple and Robinson made movies together, and Sawyer had taken tap lessons from Robinson while he was teaching Temple and choreographing her routines. Robinson suggested to the producers that Sawyer could be cast as his partner if she wore blackface. Le Gon's career suffered as a result, and she never worked with Robinson again. Although the scene was shot with Sawyer in blackface, the studio became convinced that a mixed-race adult couple dancing together would be too controversial: both scenes with Robinson were cut from the final version of the movie and the deleted scenes were only released in 2008 as part of a Fox DVD boxed set of Tyrone Power movies.
In popular culture
Fred Astaire paid tribute to Bill Robinson in the tap routine Bojangles of Harlem from the 1936 film Swing Time. In it, Astaire famously dances to three of his shadows.
Duke Ellington composed "Bojangles (A Portrait of Bill Robinson)", a set of rhythmic variations as a salute to the great dancer.
A biography of Bill Robinson by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (Morrow), was published in 1988.
"Bojangles" the musical, premiered as the centerpiece of Barksdale Theatre's (at Hanover Tavern) 40th anniversary season in 1993. Playwright Doug Jones collaborated with composer Charles Strouse (Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, Applause) and Academy Award-winning lyricist Sammy Cahn.
A made-for-television film entitled Bojangles was released in 2001. The film earned the NAACP Best actor Award for Gregory Hines' performance as Robinson.
Arthur Duncan, an exceptional tap dancer in his own right, frequently paid homage to Bill Robinson with the stair routine on The Lawrence Welk Show.
A 2002 children's book titled Rap a Tap Tap: Here's Bojangles - Think of That! by Leo and Diane Dillon pays homage to Robinson.
A character loosely modeled upon Bojangles and Sammy Davis Jr., called "Bonejangles" appears in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005).
Blues for Bojangles is a song composed by Chuck Darwin, and performed by Anita O'Day with the Paul Jordan Orchestra.
Filmography
Selected discography
1929 Ain’t misbehavin’ / Doing the new low down with Irving Mills & His Hotsy Totsy Gang (released September 4, 1929) Brunswick Records Br4535 Re-issued on Cotton Club stars (released 1990) Milan Records OCLC 858508492
1931
Keep a song in your soul / Bill Robinson blues (released April 3, 1931) Brunswick Records E36441-A-B; also issued on Columbia Records 30183
Keep a song in your soul / Just a crazy song (Hi-hi-hi) Brunswick Records Br 6134, 1168b, A9091
1935 Living in a great big way with Jeni Legon (recorded 1934, re-released in 2000 on Hollywood swing & jazz : hot numbers from classic M-G-M, Warner Bros., and RKO films) Rino Records
1943 Stormy Weather Motion picture soundtrack (recorded January–May 1943, re-released 1993) Fox Records: Distributed by Arista Records, 1993.
See also
Racism in the United States
References
Notes
Bibliography
Some biographical material is from the International Tap Association Newsletter, May/June 1993. The biographical material was extrapolated from The American Dictionary of Biography and Webster's American Biographies.
Haskins, James; Mitgang, N. R., Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (New York: William Morrow, 1988).
Williams, Iain Cameron (2002). Underneath A Harlem Moon
External links
Bojangles at the Evergreens Cemetery
1878 births
1949 deaths
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American singers
369th Infantry Regiment personnel
African-American male actors
African-American male dancers
African-American male singers
American male dancers
American male film actors
American male musical theatre actors
American male singers
American male stage actors
American military personnel of World War I
American tap dancers
Burials at the Cemetery of the Evergreens
Deaths from heart disease
Harlem Renaissance
Male actors from Richmond, Virginia
Military personnel from Richmond, Virginia
Musicians from Richmond, Virginia
Singers from Virginia
United States Army soldiers
Vaudeville performers | true | [
"The 36th TCA Awards were announced on September 14, 2020, via an online event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The nominees were announced by the Television Critics Association on July 9, 2020.\n\nWinners and nominees\n\nShows with multiple nominations\n\nThe following shows received multiple nominations:\n\nShows with multiple wins\n\nThe following shows received multiple wins:\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Official website\n\n2020 television awards\n2020 in American television\nTCA Awards ceremonies",
"The 31st TCA Awards were held on August 8, 2015, in a ceremony hosted by James Corden at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California. The nominees were announced by the Television Critics Association on June 4, 2015.\n\nWinners and nominees\n\nMultiple wins \nThe following shows received multiple wins:\n\nShows with multiple nominations \n\nThe following shows received multiple nominations:\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nOfficial website\n\n2015 television awards\n2015 in American television\nTCA Awards ceremonies"
] |
[
"Bill Robinson",
"Vaudeville",
"What was Vaudeville?",
"vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager",
"What was Robinson's role?",
"By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo,",
"Did they see any success?",
"working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week.",
"How long did he perform solo?",
"Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act,",
"What was his act about?",
"primarily a tap dancing act,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops,",
"Where did he perform for the troops?",
"Liberty Theaters in the training camps.",
"Did he do anything else with Vaudeville?",
"making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two colored rule, which forbade solo black acts.",
"How many solo performances did he have?",
"was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50-52 weeks",
"Were his shows well received?",
"Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages."
] | C_cc55017ed7b34895b46dda0b68d5fec4_1 | Where did he perform? | 11 | Where did Robinson perform? | Bill Robinson | On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theater in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous traveling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines). By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two colored rule, which forbade solo black acts. When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theaters in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both black and white units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918. Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919-1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit, and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50-52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages. CANNOTANSWER | From 1919-1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit, | Bill Robinson, nicknamed Bojangles (born Luther Robinson; May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949), was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer, the best known and the most highly paid African-American entertainer in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. His career began in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway theatre, the recording industry, Hollywood films, radio, and television.
According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, "Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging", adding a "hitherto-unknown lightness and presence". His signature routine was the Stair Dance, in which he would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. He is also credited with having popularized the word copacetic through his repeated use of it in vaudeville and radio appearances.
He is best known today for his dancing with Shirley Temple in a series of films during the 1930s, and for starring in the musical Stormy Weather (1943), loosely based on his own life and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. He used his popularity to challenge and overcome numerous racial barriers. Robinson was one of the first minstrel and vaudeville performers to appear as Black without the use of blackface makeup, as well as one of the earliest Black performers to perform solo, overcoming vaudeville's two-colored rule. Additionally, he was an early Black headliner in Broadway shows. Robinson was the first Black performer to appear in a Hollywood film in an interracial dance team (with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel, 1935), and the first Black performer to headline a mixed-race Broadway production.
Robinson came under heavy criticism for his apparent tacit acceptance of racial stereotypes of the era, with some critics calling him an Uncle Tom. He strongly resented this, and his biographers suggested that critics were underestimating the difficulties faced by Black performers engaging with mainstream White culture at the time, and ignoring his many efforts to overcome racial prejudice. In his public life, Robinson led efforts to persuade the Dallas Police Department to hire its first Black policeman; lobby President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II for more equal treatment of Black soldiers; and stage the first integrated public event in Miami, a fundraiser which was attended by both Black and White city residents.
Robinson was a popular figure in both the Black and White entertainment worlds of his era, and is remembered for the support that he gave to fellow performers, including Fred Astaire, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens and the Nicholas Brothers. Sammy Davis Jr. and Ann Miller credited him as a teacher and mentor, Miller saying that he "changed the course of my life". Gregory Hines produced and starred in a biographical movie about Robinson for which he won the NAACP Best Actor Award.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the time, Robinson died penniless in 1949, his funeral paid for by longtime friend Ed Sullivan. In 1989, Congress designated Robinson's birthday of May 25 as National Tap Dance Day.
Early life
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was born Luther Robinson in Richmond, Virginia, on May 25, 1878, to Maxwell, a machinist, and Maria Robinson, a church choir director. He and his younger brother William were raised in Richmond's Jackson Ward neighborhood. His grandmother Bedelia Robinson, a former slave, raised him after both of his parents died tragically in 1884: his father died from chronic heart disease and his mother from unknown natural causes. Details of his early life are known only through legend, much of it perpetuated by Robinson himself. He claimed that he was christened Luther, a name that he did not like. He suggested to his younger brother William that they should exchange names, and they eventually did.
His brother subsequently adopted the name of Percy and achieved recognition as a musician under that name.
Career
Early days
At the age of five, Robinson began dancing for small change, appearing as a "hoofer" or busker in local beer gardens and in front of theaters for tossed pennies. A promoter saw him performing outside the Globe Theater in Richmond and offered him a job as a "pick" in a local minstrel show. At that time, minstrel shows were staged by White performers in blackface. Pickaninnies were cute Black children at the edge of the stage singing, dancing, or telling jokes.
In 1890, at the age of 12, Robinson ran away to Washington, D.C., where he did odd jobs at Benning Race Track and worked briefly as a jockey. He teamed up with a young Al Jolson, with Jolson singing while Robinson danced for pennies or to sell newspapers. In 1891, he was hired by Whallen and Martel, touring with Mayme Remington's troupe in a show titled The South Before the War, performing again as a pickaninny, despite his age. He travelled with the show for over a year before growing too mature to play the role credibly.
In 1898, he returned to Richmond where he joined the United States Army as a rifleman when the Spanish–American War broke out. He received an accidental gunshot wound from a second lieutenant who was cleaning his gun.
Vaudeville
On March 30, 1900, Robinson entered a buck-and-wing dance contest at the Bijou Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, winning a gold medal and defeating Harry Swinton, star of the show In Old Kentucky and considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous travelling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines).
By 1912, Robinson was a full partner in the duo, which had become primarily a tap-dancing act, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuits. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuel's, who had performed in shows with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two-coloured rule, which forbade solo Black acts.
When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department set up a series of Liberty Theatres in the training camps. The Keith and Orpheum Circuits underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, in both Black and White units of the Expeditionary Forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918.
Throughout the early 1920s, Robinson continued his career on the road as a solo vaudeville act, touring throughout the country and most frequently visiting Chicago, where Marty Forkins, his manager, lived. From 1919 to 1923 he was fully booked on the Orpheum Circuit and was signed full-time by the Keith in 1924 and 1925. In addition to being booked for 50–52 weeks (an avid baseball fan, he took a week off for the World Series), Robinson did multiple shows per night, frequently on two different stages.
Tap Dance Style
As mentioned above, the chapter of Stearns' Bill Robinson: Up on the Toes entitled Jazz Dance (1966) describes how Robinson introduced dancing "up on the toes" to tap dance. This was a new addition to King Rastus Brown's popular "flat-footed wizardry". Moving primarily from the waist down, Robinson maintained impressive control of his body. Pete Nugent is said to have remarked, "Robinson was the absolute tops in control." That Robinson infrequently dropped his heels marked a significant change in popular tap technique. Due to his adroit ability to be both light on his feet and distinct in his percussive taps, Robinson was called the "Father of Tapology".
In 1918 at the Palace Theatre in New York, Robinson performed the Stair Dance. Claims regarding the origin of the Stair Dance were highly disputed; however, Robinson was widely credited with the dance because he made it popular. The dance involved "a different rhythm for each step each one reverberating with a different pitch and the fact that he had a special set of portable steps enhanced his claim to originating the dance". The popular sensation of the Stair Dance led Robinson to try to secure a patent on the routine through the U.S. Patent Office in Washington D.C., ultimately to no avail; however the lack of a patent did not diminish Robinson's professional command of the Stair Dance. The entertainment community began to associate the Stair Dance exclusively with Robinson as the routine became a standard part of his performances in 1921. Haskins reports that dancer Fred Stone sent Robinson a check for having performed the routine.
Robinson's talents transcended his famous Stair Dance by far. The steps themselves were not essential to Robinson's performances; rather, Robinson would naturally shift into "a little skating step to stop-time; or a Scoot step, a cross-over tap" or many other tap steps involved in his particular movement quality. Robinson changed rhythmic meters and tap steps and syncopated breaks seamlessly. Often Robinson would talk to his audience, share anecdotes, and act as if he were surprised by the action of his feet. His amusing personality was essential to his performances and popularity. Robinson is said to have consistently performed in split-soled wooden shoes, handcrafted by a Chicago craftsman.
Broadway
In 1928, a White impresario, Lew Leslie, produced Blackbirds of 1928 on Broadway, a Black revue for White audiences starring Adelaide Hall and Bill Robinson along with Aida Ward, Tim Moore and other Black stars. The show originally did not include Robinson; only after three weeks of lukewarm reception did Leslie add Robinson as an "extra attraction". The show then became a huge success on Broadway, where it ran for over one year to sell-out performances. On stage, Adelaide Hall and Robinson danced and sang a duet together, which captivated the audiences. From then on, Robinson's public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the White world, maintaining a connection with the Black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofers Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem. So successful was Adelaide Hall's collaboration with Bojangles, they even appeared together on stage at the prestigious Palace Theatre (Broadway) before they were teamed up together again by Marty Forkins (Robinson's manager) to star in another Broadway musical titled, "Brown Buddies", that opened in 1930 at the Liberty Theatre, where it ran for four months before commencing a road tour of the States.
In 1939, Robinson returned to the stage in The Hot Mikado, a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. The show opened at the Broadhurst Theatre, with Robinson cast in the role of the Emperor. His rendition of My Object All Sublime stopped the show and produced eight encores. After Broadway, the show moved to the 1939 New York World's Fair, and was one of the greatest hits of the fair. August 25, 1939, was named Bill Robinson Day at the fair.
Robinson's next Broadway show, All in Fun (1940), was with an all-White cast. Despite having Imogene Coca, Pert Kelton, and other stars, the show received poor reviews at out-of-town tryouts in New Haven and Boston. When the White stars and co-producers, Phil Baker and Leonard Sillman, withdrew, Robinson became the star, the first time an African-American headlined an otherwise all-White production. Although the reviewers were enthusiastic about Robinson, they panned the show, and it failed to attract audiences. All in Fun closed after four performances.
Robinson's next foray on Broadway was the musical comedy Memphis Bound, which opened in May 1945. This production used an all-Black cast including Robinson (who had top billing), Avon Long, Billy Daniels, Ada Brown, and Sheila Guyse. Robinson played the boat pilot and then Sir Joseph Porter in the play-within-a-play of H.M.S. Pinafore. Critics widely praised Robinson's performance and especially his dancing, with his stair dance cited as a high point of the show.
Film career
After 1932, Black stage revues waned in popularity, but Robinson remained in vogue with White audiences for more than a decade in some fourteen motion pictures produced by such companies as RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. Most of them had musical settings, in which he played old-fashioned roles in nostalgic romances.
Early films
Robinson's film debut was in the RKO Pictures 1930 musical Dixiana. RKO was formed in part by a merger of the Keith and Orpheum theater circuits, with whom Robinson had performed as a headliner for many years. He was cast as a specialty performer in a standalone scene. This practice, customary at the time, permitted Southern theaters to remove scenes containing Black performers from their showings of the film. Dixiana was followed by Robinson's first starring role, in Harlem Is Heaven (1932), which is sometimes cited as the first film with an all-Black cast, even though all-Black silent films preceded it and the cast of Harlem Is Heaven includes a White actor with a speaking part, as well as a few White extras. The movie was produced in New York and did not perform well financially, leading Robinson to focus on Hollywood-produced movies after that.
Shirley Temple
The idea for bringing a Black dancer to Fox to star with Temple in The Little Colonel was actually first proposed by Fox head Winfield Sheehan after a discussion with D. W. Griffith. Sheehan set his sights on Robinson but, unsure of his ability as an actor, arranged for a contract that was void if Robinson failed the dramatic test. Robinson passed the test and was brought in to both star with Temple and to teach her tap dancing. They quickly hit it off, as Temple recounted years later:
Robinson walked a step ahead of us, but when he noticed me hurrying to catch up, he shortened his stride to accommodate mine. I kept reaching up for his hand, but he hadn't looked down and seemed unaware. Fannie called his attention to what I was doing, so he stopped short, bent low over me, his eyes wide and rows of brilliant teeth showing in a wide smile. When he took my hand in his, it felt large and cool. For a few moments, we continued walking in silence. "Can I call you Uncle Billy?" I asked. "Why sure you can", he replied... "But then I get to call you darlin.'" It was a deal. From then on, whenever we walked together it was hand in hand, and I was always his "darlin.'"
Temple had already appeared in five films released in 1934, and had performed a tap routine with James Dunn in Stand Up and Cheer! After Robinson was signed by 20th Century Fox, it was decided that he would perform his famous stair dance with Temple. While Robinson liked the idea, he quickly realized that he could not teach his complex stair dance to a seven-year-old in the few days permitted by the shooting schedule. Instead, he taught Temple to kick the riser (face) of each stairstep with her toe. After watching her practice his choreography, Robinson modified his routine to mimic her movements, so that it appeared on film that she was imitating his steps. The sequence was the highlight of the film.
Robinson and Temple became the first interracial dance partners in Hollywood history. The scene was controversial for its time, and was cut out in the south along with all other scenes showing the two making physical contact. Temple and Robinson appeared in four films together: The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Just Around the Corner.
Robinson and Temple became close friends as a result of his dance coaching and acting with her. Robinson carried pictures of Temple with him wherever he traveled, and Temple considered him a lifelong friend, saying in an interview "Bill Robinson treated me as an equal, which was very important to me. He didn't talk down to me, like to a little girl. And I liked people like that. And Bill Robinson was the best of all."
Other films
Robinson refused to play stereotypical roles imposed by Hollywood studios. In a small vignette in Hooray for Love (1935), he played a mayor of Harlem modeled after his own ceremonial honor; in One Mile from Heaven (1937), he played a romantic lead opposite African-American actress Fredi Washington after Hollywood had relaxed its taboo against such roles for Black people.
Robinson appeared opposite Will Rogers in In Old Kentucky (1935), the last movie Rogers made prior to his death in an airplane crash. Robinson and Rogers were good friends, and after Rogers' death, Robinson refused to fly, instead travelling by train to Hollywood for his film work.
Stormy Weather
Robinson's final film appearance was a starring role in the 1943 Fox musical Stormy Weather. Lena Horne co-starred as Robinson's love interest, and the movie also featured Fats Waller in his final movie appearance before his death, playing with Cab Calloway and his orchestra. The Nicholas Brothers are featured in the film's final dance sequence, performing to Calloway's "Jumpin' Jive", in what Fred Astaire called "the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen".
In 2001, Stormy Weather was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Radio and sound recordings
From 1936 until his death in 1949, Robinson made numerous radio and occasional television appearances. The distinctive sound of Robinson's tap dancing was frequently featured, but Robinson also sang, made sound effects, and told jokes and stories from his vaudeville acts. He also addressed the audience directly, something very rare for a Black radio performer in that era.
Robinson also made several recordings, including one in which he demonstrated each of his tap steps and their corresponding sounds. It was also on the radio and in his recordings that Robinson introduced and popularized a word of his own invention, copasetic, which he had used for years in his vaudeville shows, and which was added to Webster's Dictionary in 1934.
Final appearances
The last theatrical project for Robinson was to have been Two Gentlemen from the South, with James Barton as the master and Robinson as his servant, in which the Black and White roles reverse and eventually the two come together as equals, but the show did not open.
Robinson's final public appearance in 1949, a few weeks before his death, was as a surprise guest on a TV show, Ted Mack's The Original Amateur Hour, in which he emotionally embraced a competitor on the show who had tap-danced for the audience. A friend remarked, "he was handing over his crown, like him saying, 'this is my good-bye. '"
Personal life and death
Little is known of Robinson's first marriage to Lena Chase in 1907. They separated in 1916, and the marriage ended in 1922. His second wife was Fannie S. Clay whom he married shortly after his divorce from Chase. They divorced in 1943. His third marriage was in 1944 to Elaine Plaines in Columbus, Ohio, and they remained together until Robinson's death in 1949. There were no children from any of the marriages.
Political figures and celebrities appointed Robinson an honorary mayor of Harlem, a lifetime member of policemen's associations and fraternal orders, and a mascot of the New York Giants major league baseball team. Robinson reciprocated with open-handed generosity and frequently credited the White dancer James Barton for his contribution to his dancing style.
Despite being the highest-paid Black performer of the first half of the 20th century, earning more than US$2 million during his lifetime, Robinson died penniless on November 25, 1949, at the age of 71, 6 months before his 72nd birthday, from heart failure. His funeral was arranged and paid for by longtime friend and television host Ed Sullivan. Robinson lay in repose at the 369th Infantry Regiment Armory in Harlem, where an estimated 32,000 people filed past his open casket to pay their last respects. The schools in Harlem were closed for a half-day so that children could attend or listen to the funeral, which was broadcast over the radio. Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr. conducted the service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and New York Mayor William O'Dwyer gave the eulogy. Robinson is buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens, Brooklyn, New York.
Legacy
Robinson was successful despite the obstacle of racism. A favorite Robinson anecdote is that he seated himself in a restaurant and a customer objected to his presence. When the manager suggested that it might be better if Robinson leave, he smiled and asked, "Have you got a ten-dollar bill?" Politely asking to borrow the manager's note for a moment, Robinson added six $10 bills from his own wallet and mixed them up, then extended the seven bills together, adding, "Here, let's see you pick out the colored one". The restaurant manager served Robinson without further delay.
Robinson co-founded the New York Black Yankees baseball team in Harlem in 1936 with financier James "Soldier Boy" Semler. The team was a successful member of the Negro National League until it disbanded in 1948, after Major League Baseball was desegregated.
In 1989, a joint U.S. Senate/House resolution declared "National Tap Dance Day" to be May 25, the anniversary of Bill Robinson's birth.
Robinson was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1987.
Popular myths, legends, and misconceptions
There are several commonly cited anecdotes about Robinson that are likely the result of conflicting stories put out by Robinson's second wife Fanny, or his manager, Marty Forkins, or by various show business associates of Robinson. There are also numerous documented instances in which Robinson gave conflicting stories to news reporters at different times.
According to his biographer, Robinson had previously served in the Spanish–American War, where he sustained an accidental gunshot wound, was 40 when the U.S entered World War I, and received a letter of commendation from the War Department for his work during the war in boosting morale at training camps in the United States, not overseas.
It has further been claimed that, along with serving in the trenches in World War I, Robinson was also the drum major for the 369th Hellfighters Band and led the regimental band up Fifth Avenue on the 369th's return from overseas.
While numerous sources repeat the claim of Bill Robinson's appointment as drum major in the 369th Regiment Band, this is not mentioned in either Mr. Bojangles, the Bill Robinson biography by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, or A Life in Ragtime, the biography of James Reese Europe, the leader of the 369th regimental band.
The origin of the nickname "Mr. Bojangles"
Tales about the origin of Robinson's nickname even varied across the color line, a consequence of differing opinions of him by Black and White people. To Whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the Black variety artist Tom Fletcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler". Robinson himself said he got the nickname as a child in Richmond, which is the most commonly-accepted version.
Marriage to Fanny Clay
The date and location of Robinson's second marriage, to Fanny Clay, or even the year they met, is uncertain because the couple gave different dates and locations in interviews, possibly because they were worried about unfavorable publicity about the marriage occurring so soon after Robinson's divorce. Robinson's biographer estimates that they met in late 1920 and were married in early 1922.
First Meeting with Marty Forkins
Robinson's meeting with the man who became his manager, Marty Forkins, is said to have occurred when Robinson, working as a waiter, spilled soup on Forkins. After Robinson's death, Forkins and his wife, Rae Samuel, admitted that Samuels made the introduction after having seen Robinson perform with his partner, George Cooper. Their explanation was that the story was made up in order to obscure Robinson's & Cooper's partnership, and to more effectively promote Robinson as a solo act. The ruse was successful, making Robinson one of the first solo acts to break vaudeville's two-colored rule, which required African-American performers to work in pairs.
Legendary dance contest
A dance contest between Robinson and three other dance legends (typically Ray Bolger, Fred Astaire, and James Barton) in which Robinson emerges the victor is recounted in many places, but no verifiable source can be found describing where and when the contest might have taken place.
Copacetic
Robinson is given credit for having popularized the word copacetic and claimed to have invented it while still living in Richmond. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the origins of the word as unknown and documents the earliest written use of the word in 1919, by the newspaperman and author Irving Bacheller, in his serialized book, A Man for the Ages; this was followed by uses in 1926 by Carl Van Vechten in his novel Nigger Heaven, in 1934 in Webster's New International Dictionary, and by John O'Hara in his novel Appointment in Samarra. Haskins' biography of Robinson includes, "Bill was shelling peas at the Jefferson Market, a New York Daily Mirror reporter asked him how he was, and the reply just popped into his head: 'I'm copasetic. The word was not popularized until Robinson used the term as an opening for his vaudeville and radio performances. The word was used in films Robinson made with Shirley Temple in the 1930s.
World record for running backward
One of Robinson's methods for generating publicity in cities where he was not the headliner was to engage in "freak sprinting" races, such as running backward. In 1922, Robinson set the world record for running backward (100 yards in 13.5 seconds). The record stood until 1977, when Paul Wilson ran the distance in 13.3 seconds. Although Robinson's speed running backwards is undisputed, the circumstances in which this feat was accepted as a world record are unclear, and were likely the result of a staged publicity event rather than a sanctioned athletic contest.
The song "Mr. Bojangles"
Jerry Jeff Walker's 1968 folk song "Mr. Bojangles" has been misinterpreted as a song about Robinson. According to Walker, it was instead inspired by Walker's encounter with a street performer in the New Orleans first precinct jail, a street performer who called himself "Bo Jangles". In the song, the street performer is a heavy drinker and has a dog that died. By Robinson's own account and those of his friends, he neither smoked nor drank (although he was a frequent and avid gambler), and he never had a dog.
Controversies
Uncle Tom roles
Robinson came under heavy criticism for playing stereotyped roles, and took offense at such claims. Once, after being called an "Uncle Tom" in the New York newspaper The Age, Robinson went to its office in Harlem, pistol in hand, demanding to see the editor. In his eulogy at Robinson's funeral, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell argued against the claim that Robinson was an "Uncle Tom" figure, focusing on Robinson's ability as an entertainer and a man who transcended color lines.
In 1973, the film historian Donald Bogle, in his history of African Americans in American film, refers to Robinson's role in The Littlest Rebel and other Shirley Temple movies as the "quintessential Uncle Tom". Other critics noted that such criticism fails to account for the genuine affection and chemistry between Robinson and Temple that came through on the screen, and that the role represented a breakthrough for Hollywood stereotypes in that it was the first time a Black man was made the guardian of a white life. Bogle later moderated his criticism by noting that the reliable, articulate Uncle Billy character in The Littlest Rebel was a cut above the characters portrayed by Lincoln "Stepin Fetchit" Perry.
Haskins explains that critics calling Robinson an "Uncle Tom" often disregarded the discriminatory limitations Robinson endured and combated throughout his career. In addition to the impact of Jim Crow policies and the Depression, Haskins writes, "That Bill traveled, at least professionally, in increasingly white circles was not so much a matter of choice as one of reality." Having overcome numerous policies inhibiting his success to reach an unmatched level of stardom, Robinson had limited venue opportunities for a performer of his caliber.
In 1933, Robinson was named an honorary Mayor of Harlem for his philanthropic contributions to his community, and for his renowned success. He took this role seriously, performing over 3,000 benefits in the course of his career, aiding hundreds of unorganized charities and individuals.
Trial and imprisonment
On March 21, 1908, as a result of a dispute with a tailor over a suit, Robinson was arrested in New York City for armed robbery. On September 30, he was convicted and sentenced to 11–15 years hard labor at Sing Sing prison. Robinson had failed to take the charges and trial seriously and paid little attention to mounting a defense. After his conviction, Robinson's partner, George Cooper, organized his most influential friends to vouch for him, and hired a new attorney who produced evidence that Robinson had been falsely accused. Though he was exonerated at his second trial and his accusers were indicted for perjury, the trial and time spent in the Tombs (Manhattan's prison complex) affected Robinson deeply. After he was released, he made a point of registering his pistol at the local police station of each town where he performed. Robinson's second wife, Fanny, also sent a letter of introduction with complimentary tickets and other gifts to the local police chief's wife in each town ahead of Robinson's engagements.
Jesse Owens
After Jesse Owens returned from the 1936 Olympics, Robinson befriended him. Despite his fame from his four Olympic track wins, undermining Adolf Hitler's claims of Aryan supremacy, Owens found most of the offers that had been made to employ him had been nothing more than publicity stunts that had no substance. Robinson was the one exception, finding work for Owens within a few months of his return to the U.S. Robinson also introduced Owens to his manager, Marty Forkins, who secured a series of demonstration races for Owens which were viewed by many as degrading to the dignity of an Olympic athlete, most notably an event in Cuba in which Owens raced against a horse. As a result, Forkins and Robinson were viewed as having taken advantage of Owens. According to Forkins’ son, Robinson had told Owens that he should start running demonstration races that would both earn money for him and keep him in the public eye. Robinson had done many such races (including a race in which he set the world record for running backwards) and did not view them as undignified. Moreover, the events paid Owens well and provided him with a source of funds when no one else was offering him employment or helping him financially. Owens made a gift to Robinson of one of his four Olympic gold medals, as a gesture of gratitude for the help Robinson had given him.
Café Metropole and Jeni Le Gon
In 1937, Robinson caused a stir in the Harlem community by choosing a white dancer, Geneva Sawyer, as his dance partner over Jeni Le Gon in the Twentieth Century Fox film Café Metropole (1937). Le Gon had danced with him in Hooray for Love (1935) and had received favorable reviews. Sawyer had been Shirley Temple's dance coach during the time Temple and Robinson made movies together, and Sawyer had taken tap lessons from Robinson while he was teaching Temple and choreographing her routines. Robinson suggested to the producers that Sawyer could be cast as his partner if she wore blackface. Le Gon's career suffered as a result, and she never worked with Robinson again. Although the scene was shot with Sawyer in blackface, the studio became convinced that a mixed-race adult couple dancing together would be too controversial: both scenes with Robinson were cut from the final version of the movie and the deleted scenes were only released in 2008 as part of a Fox DVD boxed set of Tyrone Power movies.
In popular culture
Fred Astaire paid tribute to Bill Robinson in the tap routine Bojangles of Harlem from the 1936 film Swing Time. In it, Astaire famously dances to three of his shadows.
Duke Ellington composed "Bojangles (A Portrait of Bill Robinson)", a set of rhythmic variations as a salute to the great dancer.
A biography of Bill Robinson by Jim Haskins and N. R. Mitgang, Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (Morrow), was published in 1988.
"Bojangles" the musical, premiered as the centerpiece of Barksdale Theatre's (at Hanover Tavern) 40th anniversary season in 1993. Playwright Doug Jones collaborated with composer Charles Strouse (Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, Applause) and Academy Award-winning lyricist Sammy Cahn.
A made-for-television film entitled Bojangles was released in 2001. The film earned the NAACP Best actor Award for Gregory Hines' performance as Robinson.
Arthur Duncan, an exceptional tap dancer in his own right, frequently paid homage to Bill Robinson with the stair routine on The Lawrence Welk Show.
A 2002 children's book titled Rap a Tap Tap: Here's Bojangles - Think of That! by Leo and Diane Dillon pays homage to Robinson.
A character loosely modeled upon Bojangles and Sammy Davis Jr., called "Bonejangles" appears in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005).
Blues for Bojangles is a song composed by Chuck Darwin, and performed by Anita O'Day with the Paul Jordan Orchestra.
Filmography
Selected discography
1929 Ain’t misbehavin’ / Doing the new low down with Irving Mills & His Hotsy Totsy Gang (released September 4, 1929) Brunswick Records Br4535 Re-issued on Cotton Club stars (released 1990) Milan Records OCLC 858508492
1931
Keep a song in your soul / Bill Robinson blues (released April 3, 1931) Brunswick Records E36441-A-B; also issued on Columbia Records 30183
Keep a song in your soul / Just a crazy song (Hi-hi-hi) Brunswick Records Br 6134, 1168b, A9091
1935 Living in a great big way with Jeni Legon (recorded 1934, re-released in 2000 on Hollywood swing & jazz : hot numbers from classic M-G-M, Warner Bros., and RKO films) Rino Records
1943 Stormy Weather Motion picture soundtrack (recorded January–May 1943, re-released 1993) Fox Records: Distributed by Arista Records, 1993.
See also
Racism in the United States
References
Notes
Bibliography
Some biographical material is from the International Tap Association Newsletter, May/June 1993. The biographical material was extrapolated from The American Dictionary of Biography and Webster's American Biographies.
Haskins, James; Mitgang, N. R., Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson (New York: William Morrow, 1988).
Williams, Iain Cameron (2002). Underneath A Harlem Moon
External links
Bojangles at the Evergreens Cemetery
1878 births
1949 deaths
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American singers
369th Infantry Regiment personnel
African-American male actors
African-American male dancers
African-American male singers
American male dancers
American male film actors
American male musical theatre actors
American male singers
American male stage actors
American military personnel of World War I
American tap dancers
Burials at the Cemetery of the Evergreens
Deaths from heart disease
Harlem Renaissance
Male actors from Richmond, Virginia
Military personnel from Richmond, Virginia
Musicians from Richmond, Virginia
Singers from Virginia
United States Army soldiers
Vaudeville performers | false | [
"Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival is a rock festival currently held in Columbus, Ohio, United States and is produced by Danny Wimmer Presents.\n\nHistory\n\nIn 2018 it was announced that Rock on the Range would be replaced by Danny Wimmer Presents as the Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival. The inaugural festival was held in May 2019 with sold-out crowds of 120,000.\n\nIn December 2019, the full lineup for Sonic Temple 2020 was revealed. Metallica were to headline both Friday and Saturday night, with Slipknot headlining on Saturday. Other performers were to include Deftones, Bring Me the Horizon, Evanescence, Sublime with Rome, Rancid, Dropkick Murphys, Cypress Hill, Pennywise, Royal Blood, The Pretty Reckless, Alter Bridge, Anthrax, Flatbush Zombies, Pop Evil, Hellyeah, Ghostemane, Suicidal Tendencies, Testament, Dance Gavin Dance, Ice Nine Kills, Sleeping with Sirens, The Darkness, Knocked Loose, Code Orange, Power Trip, Saint Asonia, Dirty Honey, Jinjer, City Morgue, Bones UK, Airbourne, Fire from the Gods, Dinosaur Pile-Up, Des Rocs, Counterfeit, Crobot, Cherry Bomb, DED, Goodbye June, Brutus, 3Teeth, BRKN Love, Killstation, Brass Against, Crown Lands, Ego Kill Talent, Dregg, Bloodywood, and Zero 9:36, with more to have been announced.\n\nIn February 2020, it was announced that Metallica would be replaced as headliners by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Tool, following frontman James Hetfield's entrance into a rehabilitation program for substance abuse. The following month, the festival was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In February 2021, it was announced it would once again be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with plans to return in 2022.\n\nEvents\n\n2019 \n\nMonster Energy Stadium Stage:\n System of a Down\n Ghost\n Halestorm\n Parkway Drive\n Beartooth\n Avatar\n Badflower\n\nEcho Stage:\n Meshuggah\n Black Label Society\n Bad Wolves\n Zeal & Ardor\n Wage War\n SHVPES\n The Jacks\n\nWave Stage:\n Tom Morello\n Pussy Riot\n Ho99o99\n Cleopatrick\n Hands Like Houses\n Radattack\n\nSiriusXM Comedy & Spoken Word Tent:\n Henry Rollins\n Tom Morello\n Shapel Lacy\n Nadya\n\nMonster Energy Stadium Stage:\n Disturbed\n Papa Roach\n Lamb of God\n In This Moment\n Gojira\n Fever 333\n Black Coffee\n\nEcho Stage:\n The Cult\n Killswitch Engage\n Architects\n The Black Dahlia Murder\n While She Sleeps\n Evan Konrad\n The Plot in You\n\nWave Stage:\n Action Bronson (did not perform due to an \"unforeseen knee injury\")\n Mark Lanegan Band\n Don Broco\n Movements\n Boston Manor\n No1Cares\n\nSiriusXM Comedy & Spoken Word Tent:\n Andrew Dice Clay\n Eleanor Kerrigan\n Mark Normand\n Craig Grass\n\nMonster Energy Stadium Stage:\n Foo Fighters\n Bring Me the Horizon (did not perform due to high winds)\n Chevelle (did not perform due to high winds)\n The Distillers (did not perform due to high winds)\n The Struts\n The Glorious Sons\n Amigo the Devil\n\nEcho Stage:\n Joan Jett and the Blackhearts\n The Hives (performance ended early due to high winds)\n The Interrupters\n Yungblud\n Palaye Royale\n Dirty Honey\n Teenage Wrist\n\nWave Stage:\n Scars on Broadway (did not perform due to high winds)\n Refused (did not perform due to high winds)\n Black Pistol Fire (did not perform due to high winds)\n Basement (did not perform due to high winds)\n Scarlxrd (did not perform due to high winds)\n Demob Happy (did not perform due to high winds)\n\nSiriusXM Comedy & Spoken Word Tent:\n Pauly Shore (did not perform due to high winds)\n Carmen Lynch (did not perform due to high winds)\n Joe Deuce (did not perform due to high winds)\n Bill Squire (did not perform due to high winds)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\nHeavy metal festivals in the United States\nMusic festivals established in 2019\nMusic festivals in Ohio\nRock festivals in the United States",
"The No Sound Without Silence Tour is the third arena tour by Irish pop rock band The Script. Launched in support of their fourth studio album No Sound Without Silence (2014), the tour began in Tokyo on 16 January 2015 and visited Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and Oceania. The opening acts were American singer Phillip Phillips for the South African dates, and English singer Tinie Tempah for the European dates. Pharrell Williams served as a co-headliner for the Croke Park concert on 20 June 2015.\n\nOpening acts\nColton Avery (Europe, North America, Australia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia)\nMary Lambert (North America)\nPhillip Phillips (South Africa)\nSilent Sanctuary (Philippines)\nTinie Tempah (Europe)\nPharrell Williams (Dublin)\nThe Wailers (Dublin)\nThe Sam Willows (Singapore)\nKensington (Band) (Europe)\n\nSetlist\nThis setlist is based on previous performances of the tour.\n\n \"Paint the Town Green\"\n \"Hail Rain or Sunshine\"\n \"Breakeven\"\n \"Before the Worst\"\n \"Superheroes\"\n \"We Cry\"\n \"If You Could See Me Now\"\n \"Man on a Wire\"\n \"Nothing\"\n \"Good Ol' Days\"\n \"Never Seen Anything (Quite Like You)\"\n \"The Man Who Can't Be Moved\"\n \"You Won't Feel A Thing\"\n \"It's Not Right For You\"\n \"Six Degrees of Separation\"\n \"The Energy Never Dies\"\n \"For the First Time\"\n \"No Good in Goodbye\"\n \"Hall of Fame\"\n\nAdditional information\nDuring the performance in Sheffield, The Script didn't perform \"We Cry\" due to a fan collapsing. Danny called for Paramedic to check on her, she was fine and they carried on.\n\nDuring the performance in Barcelona, The Script didn't perform \"The End Where I Begin\" or \"Nothing\". They also did not perform \"Six Degrees Of Separation\" and \"It's Not Right For You\".\n\nDuring the performance in Oakland, The Script didn't perform \"The End Where I Begin\", \"We Cry\", or \"Six Degrees of Separation\".\n\nDuring the performance in Toronto, The Script did not perform \"The End Where I Begin\" and \"Six Degrees of Separation\".\n\nDuring the performance im Hamburg, The Script did not perform \"Nothing\" and \"Never Seen Anything (Quite Like You)\".\n\nTour dates\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\n2015 concert tours\nThe Script concert tours"
] |
[
"Immanuel Kant",
"Biography"
] | C_8ddf971bb06941f8a8f1b934b838550b_1 | when was he born? | 1 | when was Immanuel Kant born? | Immanuel Kant | Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724 in Konigsberg, Prussia (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia). His mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697-1737), was also born in Konigsberg to a father from Nuremberg. (Her name is sometimes erroneously given as Anna Regina Porter.) His father, Johann Georg Kant (1682-1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipeda, Lithuania). Immanuel Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. While scholars of Kant's life long accepted the claim, there is no evidence that Kant's paternal line was Scottish; it is more likely that the Kants got their name from the village of Kantwaggen (today part of Priekule) and were of Curonian origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children (four of them reached adulthood). Baptized 'Emanuel', he changed his name to 'Immanuel' after learning Hebrew. Young Kant was a solid, albeit unspectacular, student. Kant was born into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in East Prussia. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. Kant maintained a belief in Christianity, in his work Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals he reveals a belief in human immortality as the necessary condition of our continued approach to the highest good possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of Theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic. Common myths about Kant's personal mannerisms are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. It is often held that Kant lived a very strict and disciplined life, leading to an oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but seemed to have a rewarding social life -- he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends whom he frequently met, among them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Konigsberg. A common myth is that Kant never traveled more than 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from Konigsberg his whole life. In fact, between 1750 and 1754 he worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Gross-Arnsdorf (now Jarnoltowo near Morag (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km). CANNOTANSWER | April 22, 1724 | Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him an influential figure in modern Western philosophy.
In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued that space and time are mere "forms of intuition" which structure all experience, and therefore that while "things-in-themselves" exist and contribute to experience, they are nonetheless distinct from the objects of experience. From this it follows that the objects of experience are mere "appearances", and that the nature of things as they are in themselves is consequently unknowable to us. In an attempt to counter the skepticism he found in the writings of philosopher David Hume, he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), one of his most well-known works. In it, he developed his theory of experience to answer the question of whether synthetic a priori knowledge is possible, which would in turn make it possible to determine the limits of metaphysical inquiry. Kant drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that the objects of the senses must conform to our spatial and temporal forms of intuition, and that we can consequently have a priori cognition of the objects of the senses.
Kant believed that reason is also the source of morality, and that aesthetics arise from a faculty of disinterested judgment. Kant's views continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of epistemology, ethics, political theory, and post-modern aesthetics. He attempted to explain the relationship between reason and human experience and to move beyond what he believed to be the failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He wanted to put an end to what he saw as an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience, while resisting the skepticism of thinkers such as Hume. He regarded himself as showing the way past the impasse between rationalists and empiricists, and is widely held to have synthesized both traditions in his thought.
Kant was an exponent of the idea that perpetual peace could be secured through universal democracy and international cooperation, and that perhaps this could be the culminating stage of world history. The nature of Kant's religious views continues to be the subject of scholarly dispute, with viewpoints ranging from the impression that he shifted from an early defense of an ontological argument for the existence of God to a principled agnosticism, to more critical treatments epitomized by Schopenhauer, who criticized the imperative form of Kantian ethics as "theological morals" and the "Mosaic Decalogue in disguise", and Nietzsche, who claimed that Kant had "theologian blood" and was merely a sophisticated apologist for traditional Christian faith. Beyond his religious views, Kant has also been criticized for the racism presented in some of his lesser-known papers, such as "On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy" and "On the Different Races of Man". Although he was a proponent of scientific racism for much of his career, Kant's views on race changed significantly in the last decade of his life, and he ultimately rejected racial hierarchies and European colonialism in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795).
Kant published other important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history during his lifetime. These include the Universal Natural History (1755), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), the Critique of Judgment (1790), Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (1793), and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
Biography
Kant's mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697–1737), was born in Königsberg (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia) to a father from Nuremberg. Her surname is sometimes erroneously given as Porter. Kant's father, Johann Georg Kant (1682–1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipėda, Lithuania). Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. While scholars of Kant's life long accepted the claim, there is no evidence that Kant's paternal line was Scottish and it is more likely that the Kants got their name from the village of Kantwaggen (today part of Priekulė) and were of Curonian origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children (six of whom reached adulthood).
Kant was born on 22 April 1724 into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in Königsberg, East Prussia. Baptized Emanuel, he later changed the spelling of his name to Immanuel after learning Hebrew. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. In his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, he reveals a belief in immortality as the necessary condition of humanity's approach to the highest morality possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic, even though it has also been suggested that Kant intends other people to think of him as a "pure rationalist", who is defined by Kant himself as someone who recognizes revelation but asserts that to know and accept it as real is not a necessary requisite to religion.
Kant apparently lived a very strict and disciplined life; it was said that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but seemed to have a rewarding social life — he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends with whom he frequently met, among them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Königsberg.
Between 1750 and 1754 Kant worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Groß-Arnsdorf (now Jarnołtowo near Morąg (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km).
Many myths grew up about Kant's personal mannerisms; these are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime.
Young scholar
Kant showed a great aptitude for study at an early age. He first attended the Collegium Fridericianum from which he graduated at the end of the summer of 1740. In 1740, aged 16, he enrolled at the University of Königsberg, where he spent his whole career. He studied the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and Christian Wolff under Martin Knutzen (Associate Professor of Logic and Metaphysics from 1734 until his death in 1751), a rationalist who was also familiar with developments in British philosophy and science and introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Isaac Newton. Knutzen dissuaded Kant from the theory of pre-established harmony, which he regarded as "the pillow for the lazy mind". He also dissuaded Kant from idealism, the idea that reality is purely mental, which most philosophers in the 18th century regarded in a negative light. The theory of transcendental idealism that Kant later included in the Critique of Pure Reason was developed partially in opposition to traditional idealism.
His father's stroke and subsequent death in 1746 interrupted his studies. Kant left Königsberg shortly after August 1748—he would return there in August 1754. He became a private tutor in the towns surrounding Königsberg, but continued his scholarly research. In 1749, he published his first philosophical work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (written in 1745–47).
Early work
Kant is best known for his work in the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics, but he made significant contributions to other disciplines. In 1754, while contemplating on a prize question by the Berlin Academy about the problem of Earth's rotation, he argued that the Moon's gravity would slow down Earth's spin and he also put forth the argument that gravity would eventually cause the Moon's tidal locking to coincide with the Earth's rotation. The next year, he expanded this reasoning to the formation and evolution of the Solar System in his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. In 1755, Kant received a license to lecture in the University of Königsberg and began lecturing on a variety of topics including mathematics, physics, logic and metaphysics. In his 1756 essay on the theory of winds, Kant laid out an original insight into the Coriolis force. In 1757, Kant began lecturing on geography making him one of the first lecturers to explicitly teach geography as its own subject. Geography was one of Kant's most popular lecturing topics and in 1802 a compilation by Friedrich Theodor Rink of Kant's lecturing notes, Physical Geography, was released. After Kant became a professor in 1770, he expanded the topics of his lectures to include lectures on natural law, ethics and anthropology along with other topics.
In the Universal Natural History, Kant laid out the Nebular hypothesis, in which he deduced that the Solar System had formed from a large cloud of gas, a nebula. Kant also correctly deduced (though through usually false premises and fallacious reasoning, according to Bertrand Russell) that the Milky Way was a large disk of stars, which he theorized formed from a much larger spinning gas cloud. He further suggested that other distant "nebulae" might be other galaxies. These postulations opened new horizons for astronomy, for the first time extending it beyond the Solar System to galactic and intergalactic realms. According to Thomas Huxley (1867), Kant also made contributions to geology in his Universal Natural History.
From then on, Kant turned increasingly to philosophical issues, although he continued to write on the sciences throughout his life. In the early 1760s, Kant produced a series of important works in philosophy. The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, a work in logic, was published in 1762. Two more works appeared the following year: Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy and The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. By 1764, Kant had become a notable popular author, and wrote Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime; he was second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy prize competition with his Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (often referred to as "The Prize Essay"). In 1766 Kant wrote Dreams of a Spirit-Seer which dealt with the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. The exact influence of Swedenborg on Kant, as well as the extent of Kant's belief in mysticism according to Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, remain controversial. On 31 March 1770, aged 45, Kant was finally appointed Full Professor of Logic and Metaphysics (Professor Ordinarius der Logic und Metaphysic) at the University of Königsberg. In defense of this appointment, Kant wrote his inaugural dissertation (Inaugural-Dissertation) De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis (On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World). This work saw the emergence of several central themes of his mature work, including the distinction between the faculties of intellectual thought and sensible receptivity. To miss this distinction would mean to commit the error of subreption, and, as he says in the last chapter of the dissertation, only in avoiding this error does metaphysics flourish.
The issue that vexed Kant was central to what 20th-century scholars called "the philosophy of mind". The flowering of the natural sciences had led to an understanding of how data reaches the brain. Sunlight falling on an object is reflected from its surface in a way that maps the surface features (color, texture, etc.). The reflected light reaches the human eye, passes through the cornea, is focused by the lens onto the retina where it forms an image similar to that formed by light passing through a pinhole into a camera obscura. The retinal cells send impulses through the optic nerve and then they form a mapping in the brain of the visual features of the object. The interior mapping is not the exterior object, and our belief that there is a meaningful relationship between the object and the mapping in the brain depends on a chain of reasoning that is not fully grounded. But the uncertainty aroused by these considerations, by optical illusions, misperceptions, delusions, etc., are not the end of the problems.
Kant saw that the mind could not function as an empty container that simply receives data from outside. Something must be giving order to the incoming data. Images of external objects must be kept in the same sequence in which they were received. This ordering occurs through the mind's intuition of time. The same considerations apply to the mind's function of constituting space for ordering mappings of visual and tactile signals arriving via the already described chains of physical causation.
It is often claimed that Kant was a late developer, that he only became an important philosopher in his mid-50s after rejecting his earlier views. While it is true that Kant wrote his greatest works relatively late in life, there is a tendency to underestimate the value of his earlier works. Recent Kant scholarship has devoted more attention to these "pre-critical" writings and has recognized a degree of continuity with his mature work.
Critique of Pure Reason
At age 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher, and much was expected of him. In correspondence with his ex-student and friend Markus Herz, Kant admitted that, in the inaugural dissertation, he had failed to account for the relation between our sensible and intellectual faculties. He needed to explain how we combine what is known as sensory knowledge with the other type of knowledgei.e. reasoned knowledgethese two being related but having very different processes.
Kant also credited David Hume with awakening him from a "dogmatic slumber" in which he had unquestioningly accepted the tenets of both religion and natural philosophy. Hume in his 1739 Treatise on Human Nature had argued that we only know the mind through a subjectiveessentially illusoryseries of perceptions. Ideas such as causality, morality, and objects are not evident in experience, so their reality may be questioned. Kant felt that reason could remove this skepticism, and he set himself to solving these problems. Although fond of company and conversation with others, Kant isolated himself, and resisted friends' attempts to bring him out of his isolation. When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant countered Hume's empiricism by claiming that some knowledge exists inherently in the mind, independent of experience. He drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that worldly objects can be intuited a priori ('beforehand'), and that intuition is consequently distinct from objective reality. He acquiesced to Hume somewhat by defining causality as a "regular, constant sequence of events in time, and nothing more."
Although now uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, this Critique disappointed Kant's readers upon its initial publication. The book was long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in a convoluted style. It received few reviews, and these granted it no significance. Kant's former student, Johann Gottfried Herder criticized it for placing reason as an entity worthy of criticism instead of considering the process of reasoning within the context of language and one's entire personality. Similar to Christian Garve and Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, he rejected Kant's position that space and time possessed a form that could be analyzed. Additionally, Garve and Feder also faulted Kant's Critique for not explaining differences in perception of sensations. Its density made it, as Herder said in a letter to Johann Georg Hamann, a "tough nut to crack", obscured by "all this heavy gossamer". Its reception stood in stark contrast to the praise Kant had received for earlier works, such as his Prize Essay and shorter works that preceded the first Critique. These well-received and readable tracts include one on the earthquake in Lisbon that was so popular that it was sold by the page. Prior to the change in course documented in the first Critique, his books had sold well. Kant was disappointed with the first Critique's reception. Recognizing the need to clarify the original treatise, Kant wrote the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics in 1783 as a summary of its main views. Shortly thereafter, Kant's friend Johann Friedrich Schultz (1739–1805) (professor of mathematics) published Erläuterungen über des Herrn Professor Kant Critik der reinen Vernunft (Königsberg, 1784), which was a brief but very accurate commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
Kant's reputation gradually rose through the latter portion of the 1780s, sparked by a series of important works: the 1784 essay, "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?"; 1785's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (his first work on moral philosophy); and, from 1786, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. But Kant's fame ultimately arrived from an unexpected source. In 1786, Karl Leonhard Reinhold published a series of public letters on Kantian philosophy. In these letters, Reinhold framed Kant's philosophy as a response to the central intellectual controversy of the era: the pantheism controversy. Friedrich Jacobi had accused the recently deceased Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (a distinguished dramatist and philosophical essayist) of Spinozism. Such a charge, tantamount to atheism, was vigorously denied by Lessing's friend Moses Mendelssohn, leading to a bitter public dispute among partisans. The controversy gradually escalated into a debate about the values of the Enlightenment and the value of reason.
Reinhold maintained in his letters that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason could settle this dispute by defending the authority and bounds of reason. Reinhold's letters were widely read and made Kant the most famous philosopher of his era.
Later work
Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book. Most of his subsequent work focused on other areas of philosophy. He continued to develop his moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason (known as the second Critique) and 1797's Metaphysics of Morals. The 1790 Critique of Judgment (the third Critique) applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology.
In 1792, Kant's attempt to publish the Second of the four Pieces of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, in the journal Berlinische Monatsschrift, met with opposition from the King's censorship commission, which had been established that same year in the context of the French Revolution. Kant then arranged to have all four pieces published as a book, routing it through the philosophy department at the University of Jena to avoid the need for theological censorship. This insubordination earned him a now famous reprimand from the King. When he nevertheless published a second edition in 1794, the censor was so irate that he arranged for a royal order that required Kant never to publish or even speak publicly about religion. Kant then published his response to the King's reprimand and explained himself, in the preface of The Conflict of the Faculties.
He also wrote a number of semi-popular essays on history, religion, politics and other topics. These works were well received by Kant's contemporaries and confirmed his preeminent status in 18th-century philosophy. There were several journals devoted solely to defending and criticizing Kantian philosophy. Despite his success, philosophical trends were moving in another direction. Many of Kant's most important disciples and followers (including Reinhold, Beck and Fichte) transformed the Kantian position into increasingly radical forms of idealism. The progressive stages of revision of Kant's teachings marked the emergence of German idealism. Kant opposed these developments and publicly denounced Fichte in an open letter in 1799. It was one of his final acts expounding a stance on philosophical questions. In 1800, a student of Kant named Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche (1762–1842) published a manual of logic for teachers called Logik, which he had prepared at Kant's request. Jäsche prepared the Logik using a copy of a textbook in logic by Georg Friedrich Meier entitled Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre, in which Kant had written copious notes and annotations. The Logik has been considered of fundamental importance to Kant's philosophy, and the understanding of it. The great 19th-century logician Charles Sanders Peirce remarked, in an incomplete review of Thomas Kingsmill Abbott's English translation of the introduction to Logik, that "Kant's whole philosophy turns upon his logic." Also, Robert Schirokauer Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz, wrote in the translators' introduction to their English translation of the Logik, "Its importance lies not only in its significance for the Critique of Pure Reason, the second part of which is a restatement of fundamental tenets of the Logic, but in its position within the whole of Kant's work."
Death and burial
Kant's health, long poor, worsened and he died at Königsberg on 12 February 1804, uttering "Es ist gut (It is good)" before expiring. His unfinished final work was published as Opus Postumum. Kant always cut a curious figure in his lifetime for his modest, rigorously scheduled habits, which have been referred to as clocklike. However, Heinrich Heine noted the magnitude of "his destructive, world-crushing thoughts" and considered him a sort of philosophical "executioner", comparing him to Robespierre with the observation that both men "represented in the highest the type of provincial bourgeois. Nature had destined them to weigh coffee and sugar, but Fate determined that they should weigh other things and placed on the scales of the one a king, on the scales of the other a god."
When his body was transferred to a new burial spot, his skull was measured during the exhumation and found to be larger than the average German male's with a "high and broad" forehead. His forehead has been an object of interest ever since it became well-known through his portraits: "In Döbler's portrait and in Kiefer's faithful if expressionistic reproduction of it — as well as in many of the other late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century portraits of Kant — the forehead is remarkably large and decidedly retreating. Was Kant's forehead shaped this way in these images because he was a philosopher, or, to follow the implications of Lavater's system, was he a philosopher because of the intellectual acuity manifested by his forehead? Kant and Johann Kaspar Lavater were correspondents on theological matters, and Lavater refers to Kant in his work "Physiognomic Fragments, for the Education of Human Knowledge and Love of People" (Leipzig & Winterthur, 1775–1778).
Kant's mausoleum adjoins the northeast corner of Königsberg Cathedral in Kaliningrad, Russia. The mausoleum was constructed by the architect Friedrich Lahrs and was finished in 1924 in time for the bicentenary of Kant's birth. Originally, Kant was buried inside the cathedral, but in 1880 his remains were moved to a neo-Gothic chapel adjoining the northeast corner of the cathedral. Over the years, the chapel became dilapidated and was demolished to make way for the mausoleum, which was built on the same location.
The tomb and its mausoleum are among the few artifacts of German times preserved by the Soviets after they conquered and annexed the city. Today, many newlyweds bring flowers to the mausoleum. Artifacts previously owned by Kant, known as Kantiana, were included in the Königsberg City Museum. However, the museum was destroyed during World War II. A replica of the statue of Kant that stood in German times in front of the main University of Königsberg building was donated by a German entity in the early 1990s and placed in the same grounds.
After the expulsion of Königsberg's German population at the end of World War II, the University of Königsberg where Kant taught was replaced by the Russian-language Kaliningrad State University, which appropriated the campus and surviving buildings. In 2005, the university was renamed Immanuel Kant State University of Russia. The name change was announced at a ceremony attended by President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, and the university formed a Kant Society, dedicated to the study of Kantianism. The university was again renamed in the 2010s, to Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University.
In late November 2018, his tomb and statue were vandalized with paint by unknown assailants, who also scattered leaflets glorifying Rus' and denouncing Kant as a "traitor". The incident is apparently connected with a recent vote to rename Khrabrovo Airport, where Kant was in the lead for a while, prompting Russian nationalist resentment.
Philosophy
In Kant's essay "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?", he defined the Enlightenment as an age shaped by the Latin motto Sapere aude ("Dare to be wise"). Kant maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority. His work reconciled many of the differences between the rationalist and empiricist traditions of the 18th century. He had a decisive impact on the Romantic and German Idealist philosophies of the 19th century. His work has also been a starting point for many 20th century philosophers.
Kant asserted that, because of the limitations of argumentation in the absence of irrefutable evidence, no one could really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not. For the sake of morality and as a ground for reason, Kant asserted, people are justified in believing in God, even though they could never know God's presence empirically.
The sense of an enlightened approach and the critical method required that "If one cannot prove that a thing is, he may try to prove that it is not. If he fails to do either (as often occurs), he may still ask whether it is in his interest to accept one or the other of the alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical point of view. Hence the question no longer is as to whether perpetual peace is a real thing or not a real thing, or as to whether we may not be deceiving ourselves when we adopt the former alternative, but we must act on the supposition of its being real." The presupposition of God, soul, and freedom was then a practical concern, for
Kant drew a parallel between the Copernican revolution and the epistemology of his new transcendental philosophy, involving two interconnected foundations of his "critical philosophy":
the epistemology of transcendental idealism and
the moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason.
These teachings placed the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral worlds. Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science was not just the accidental accumulation of sense perceptions.
Conceptual unification and integration is carried out by the mind through concepts or the "categories of the understanding" operating on the perceptual manifold within space and time. The latter are not concepts, but are forms of sensibility that are a priori necessary conditions for any possible experience. Thus the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that operates within it depend on the mind's processes, the product of the rule-based activity that Kant called "synthesis". There is much discussion among Kant scholars about the correct interpretation of this train of thought.
The 'two-world' interpretation regards Kant's position as a statement of epistemological limitation, that we are not able to transcend the bounds of our own mind, meaning that we cannot access the "thing-in-itself". However, Kant also speaks of the thing in itself or transcendental object as a product of the (human) understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of sensibility. Following this line of thought, some interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological domain but simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding alonethis is known as the two-aspect view.
The notion of the "thing in itself" was much discussed by philosophers after Kant. It was argued that, because the "thing in itself" was unknowable, its existence must not be assumed. Rather than arbitrarily switching to an account that was ungrounded in anything supposed to be the "real", as did the German Idealists, another group arose who asked how our (presumably reliable) accounts of a coherent and rule-abiding universe were actually grounded. This new kind of philosophy became known as Phenomenology, and its founder was Edmund Husserl.
With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather is only the good will itself. A good will is one that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. This law obliges one to treat humanityunderstood as rational agency, and represented through oneself as well as othersas an end in itself rather than (merely) as means to other ends the individual might hold. This necessitates practical self-reflection in which we universalize our reasons.
These ideas have largely framed or influenced all subsequent philosophical discussion and analysis. The specifics of Kant's account generated immediate and lasting controversy. Nevertheless, his thesesthat the mind itself necessarily makes a constitutive contribution to its knowledge, that this contribution is transcendental rather than psychological, that philosophy involves self-critical activity, that morality is rooted in human freedom, and that to act autonomously is to act according to rational moral principleshave all had a lasting effect on subsequent philosophy.
Epistemology
Theory of perception
Kant defines his theory of perception in his influential 1781 work the Critique of Pure Reason, which has often been cited as the most significant volume of metaphysics and epistemology in modern philosophy. Kant maintains that understanding of the external world had its foundations not merely in experience, but in both experience and a priori concepts, thus offering a non-empiricist critique of rationalist philosophy, which is what has been referred to as his Copernican revolution.
Firstly, Kant distinguishes between analytic and synthetic propositions:
Analytic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is contained in its subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are unmarried," or, "All bodies take up space."
Synthetic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is not contained in its subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are alone," or, "All bodies have weight."
An analytic proposition is true by nature of the meaning of the words in the sentence — we require no further knowledge than a grasp of the language to understand this proposition. On the other hand, a synthetic statement is one that tells us something about the world. The truth or falsehood of synthetic statements derives from something outside their linguistic content. In this instance, weight is not a necessary predicate of the body; until we are told the heaviness of the body we do not know that it has weight. In this case, experience of the body is required before its heaviness becomes clear. Before Kant's first Critique, empiricists (cf. Hume) and rationalists (cf. Leibniz) assumed that all synthetic statements required experience to be known.
Kant contests this assumption by claiming that elementary mathematics, like arithmetic, is synthetic a priori, in that its statements provide new knowledge not derived from experience. This becomes part of his over-all argument for transcendental idealism. That is, he argues that the possibility of experience depends on certain necessary conditions — which he calls a priori forms — and that these conditions structure and hold true of the world of experience. His main claims in the "Transcendental Aesthetic" are that mathematic judgments are synthetic a priori and that space and time are not derived from experience but rather are its preconditions.
Once we have grasped the functions of basic arithmetic, we do not need empirical experience to know that 100 + 100 = 200, and so it appears that arithmetic is analytic. However, that it is analytic can be disproved by considering the calculation 5 + 7 = 12: there is nothing in the numbers 5 and 7 by which the number 12 can be inferred. Thus "5 + 7" and "the cube root of 1,728" or "12" are not analytic because their reference is the same but their sense is not — the statement "5 + 7 = 12" tells us something new about the world. It is self-evident, and undeniably a priori, but at the same time it is synthetic. Thus Kant argued that a proposition can be synthetic and a priori.
Kant asserts that experience is based on the perception of external objects and a priori knowledge. The external world, he writes, provides those things that we sense. But our mind processes this information and gives it order, allowing us to comprehend it. Our mind supplies the conditions of space and time to experience objects. According to the "transcendental unity of apperception", the concepts of the mind (Understanding) and perceptions or intuitions that garner information from phenomena (Sensibility) are synthesized by comprehension. Without concepts, perceptions are nondescript; without perceptions, concepts are meaningless. Thus the famous statement: "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions [perceptions] without concepts are blind."
Kant also claims that an external environment is necessary for the establishment of the self. Although Kant would want to argue that there is no empirical way of observing the self, we can see the logical necessity of the self when we observe that we can have different perceptions of the external environment over time. By uniting these general representations into one global representation, we can see how a transcendental self emerges. "I am therefore conscious of the identical self in regard to the manifold of the representations that are given to me in an intuition because I call them all together my representations, which constitute one."
Categories of the Faculty of Understanding
Kant deemed it obvious that we have some objective knowledge of the world, such as, say, Newtonian physics. But this knowledge relies on synthetic, a priori laws of nature, like causality and substance. How is this possible? Kant's solution was that the subject must supply laws that make experience of objects possible, and that these laws are synthetic, a priori laws of nature that apply to all objects before we experience them. To deduce all these laws, Kant examined experience in general, dissecting in it what is supplied by the mind from what is supplied by the given intuitions. This is commonly called a transcendental deduction.
To begin with, Kant's distinction between the a posteriori being contingent and particular knowledge, and the a priori being universal and necessary knowledge, must be kept in mind. If we merely connect two intuitions together in a perceiving subject, the knowledge is always subjective because it is derived a posteriori, when what is desired is for the knowledge to be objective, that is, for the two intuitions to refer to the object and hold good of it for anyone at any time, not just the perceiving subject in its current condition. What else is equivalent to objective knowledge besides the a priori (universal and necessary knowledge)? Before knowledge can be objective, it must be incorporated under an a priori category of understanding.
For example, if a subject says, "The sun shines on the stone; the stone grows warm," all he perceives are phenomena. His judgment is contingent and holds no necessity. But if he says, "The sunshine causes the stone to warm," he subsumes the perception under the category of causality, which is not found in the perception, and necessarily synthesizes the concept sunshine with the concept heat, producing a necessarily universally true judgment.
To explain the categories in more detail, they are the preconditions of the construction of objects in the mind. Indeed, to even think of the sun and stone presupposes the category of subsistence, that is, substance. For the categories synthesize the random data of the sensory manifold into intelligible objects. This means that the categories are also the most abstract things one can say of any object whatsoever, and hence one can have an a priori cognition of the totality of all objects of experience if one can list all of them. To do so, Kant formulates another transcendental deduction.
Judgments are, for Kant, the preconditions of any thought. Man thinks via judgments, so all possible judgments must be listed and the perceptions connected within them put aside, so as to make it possible to examine the moments when the understanding is engaged in constructing judgments. For the categories are equivalent to these moments, in that they are concepts of intuitions in general, so far as they are determined by these moments universally and necessarily. Thus by listing all the moments, one can deduce from them all of the categories.
One may now ask: How many possible judgments are there? Kant believed that all the possible propositions within Aristotle's syllogistic logic are equivalent to all possible judgments, and that all the logical operators within the propositions are equivalent to the moments of the understanding within judgments. Thus he listed Aristotle's system in four groups of three: quantity (universal, particular, singular), quality (affirmative, negative, infinite), relation (categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive) and modality (problematic, assertoric, apodeictic). The parallelism with Kant's categories is obvious: quantity (unity, plurality, totality), quality (reality, negation, limitation), relation (substance, cause, community) and modality (possibility, existence, necessity).
The fundamental building blocks of experience, i.e. objective knowledge, are now in place. First there is the sensibility, which supplies the mind with intuitions, and then there is the understanding, which produces judgments of these intuitions and can subsume them under categories. These categories lift the intuitions up out of the subject's current state of consciousness and place them within consciousness in general, producing universally necessary knowledge. For the categories are innate in any rational being, so any intuition thought within a category in one mind is necessarily subsumed and understood identically in any mind. In other words, we filter what we see and hear.
Transcendental schema doctrine
Kant ran into a problem with his theory that the mind plays a part in producing objective knowledge. Intuitions and categories are entirely disparate, so how can they interact? Kant's solution is the (transcendental) schema: a priori principles by which the transcendental imagination connects concepts with intuitions through time. All the principles are temporally bound, for if a concept is purely a priori, as the categories are, then they must apply for all times. Hence there are principles such as substance is that which endures through time, and the cause must always be prior to the effect. In the context of transcendental schema the concept of transcendental reflection is of a great importance.
Ethics
Kant developed his ethics, or moral philosophy, in three works: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
In Groundwork, Kant tries to convert our everyday, obvious, rational knowledge of morality into philosophical knowledge. The latter two works used "practical reason", which is based only on things about which reason can tell us, and not deriving any principles from experience, to reach conclusions which can be applied to the world of experience (in the second part of The Metaphysics of Morals).
Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the "Categorical Imperative", and is derived from the concept of duty. Kant defines the demands of moral law as "categorical imperatives". Categorical imperatives are principles that are intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed in all situations and circumstances, if our behavior is to observe the moral law. The Categorical Imperative provides a test against which moral statements can be assessed. Kant also stated that the moral means and ends can be applied to the categorical imperative, that rational beings can pursue certain "ends" using the appropriate "means". Ends based on physical needs or wants create hypothetical imperatives. The categorical imperative can only be based on something that is an "end in itself", that is, an end that is not a means to some other need, desire, or purpose. Kant believed that the moral law is a principle of reason itself, and is not based on contingent facts about the world, such as what would make us happy, but to act on the moral law which has no other motive than "worthiness to be happy". Accordingly, he believed that moral obligation applies only to rational agents.
Unlike a hypothetical imperative, a categorical imperative is an unconditional obligation; it has the force of an obligation regardless of our will or desires In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785) Kant enumerated three formulations of the categorical imperative that he believed to be roughly equivalent. In the same book, Kant stated:
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.
According to Kant, one cannot make exceptions for oneself. The philosophical maxim on which one acts should always be considered to be a universal law without exception. One cannot allow oneself to do a particular action unless one thinks it appropriate that the reason for the action should become a universal law. For example, one should not steal, however dire the circumstancesbecause, by permitting oneself to steal, one makes stealing a universally acceptable act. This is the first formulation of the categorical imperative, often known as the universalizability principle.
Kant believed that, if an action is not done with the motive of duty, then it is without moral value. He thought that every action should have pure intention behind it; otherwise, it is meaningless. The final result is not the most important aspect of an action; rather, how the person feels while carrying out the action is the time when value is attached to the result.
In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant also posited the "counter-utilitarian idea that there is a difference between preferences and values, and that considerations of individual rights temper calculations of aggregate utility", a concept that is an axiom in economics:
Everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. But that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself does not have mere relative worth, i.e., price, but an intrinsic worth, i.e., a dignity. (p. 53, italics in original).
A phrase quoted by Kant, which is used to summarize the counter-utilitarian nature of his moral philosophy, is Fiat justitia, pereat mundus ("Let justice be done, though the world perish"), which he translates loosely as "Let justice reign even if all the rascals in the world should perish from it". This appears in his 1795 Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch ("Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf"), Appendix 1.
First formulation
The first formulation (Formula of Universal Law) of the moral imperative "requires that the maxims be chosen as though they should hold as universal laws of nature". This formulation in principle has as its supreme law the creed "Always act according to that maxim whose universality as a law you can at the same time will" and is the "only condition under which a will can never come into conflict with itself [....]"
One interpretation of the first formulation is called the "universalizability test". An agent's maxim, according to Kant, is his "subjective principle of human actions": that is, what the agent believes is his reason to act. The universalisability test has five steps:
Find the agent's maxim (i.e., an action paired with its motivation). Take, for example, the declaration "I will lie for personal benefit". Lying is the action; the motivation is to fulfill some sort of desire. Together, they form the maxim.
Imagine a possible world in which everyone in a similar position to the real-world agent followed that maxim.
Decide if contradictions or irrationalities would arise in the possible world as a result of following the maxim.
If a contradiction or irrationality would arise, acting on that maxim is not allowed in the real world.
If there is no contradiction, then acting on that maxim is permissible, and is sometimes required.
(For a modern parallel, see John Rawls' hypothetical situation, the original position.)
Second formulation
The second formulation (or Formula of the End in Itself) holds that "the rational being, as by its nature an end and thus as an end in itself, must serve in every maxim as the condition restricting all merely relative and arbitrary ends". The principle dictates that you "[a]ct with reference to every rational being (whether yourself or another) so that it is an end in itself in your maxim", meaning that the rational being is "the basis of all maxims of action" and "must be treated never as a mere means but as the supreme limiting condition in the use of all means, i.e., as an end at the same time".
Third formulation
The third formulation (i.e. Formula of Autonomy) is a synthesis of the first two and is the basis for the "complete determination of all maxims". It states "that all maxims which stem from autonomous legislation ought to harmonize with a possible realm of ends as with a realm of nature".
In principle, "So act as if your maxims should serve at the same time as the universal law (of all rational beings)", meaning that we should so act that we may think of ourselves as "a member in the universal realm of ends", legislating universal laws through our maxims (that is, a universal code of conduct), in a "possible realm of ends". No one may elevate themselves above the universal law, therefore it is one's duty to follow the maxim(s).
Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason
Commentators, starting in the 20th century, have tended to see Kant as having a strained relationship with religion, though this was not the prevalent view in the 19th century. Karl Leonhard Reinhold, whose letters first made Kant famous, wrote "I believe that I may infer without reservation that the interest of religion, and of Christianity in particular, accords completely with the result of the Critique of Reason." Johann Schultz, who wrote one of the first Kant commentaries, wrote "And does not this system itself cohere most splendidly with the Christian religion? Do not the divinity and beneficence of the latter become all the more evident?" This view continued throughout the 19th century, as noted by Friedrich Nietzsche, who said "Kant's success is merely a theologian's success." The reason for these views was Kant's moral theology, and the widespread belief that his philosophy was the great antithesis to Spinozism, which had been convulsing the European academy for much of the 18th century. Spinozism was widely seen as the cause of the Pantheism controversy, and as a form of sophisticated pantheism or even atheism. As Kant's philosophy disregarded the possibility of arguing for God through pure reason alone, for the same reasons it also disregarded the possibility of arguing against God through pure reason alone. This, coupled with his moral philosophy (his argument that the existence of morality is a rational reason why God and an afterlife do and must exist), was the reason he was seen by many, at least through the end of the 19th century, as a great defender of religion in general and Christianity in particular.
Kant articulates his strongest criticisms of the organization and practices of religious organizations to those that encourage what he sees as a religion of counterfeit service to God. Among the major targets of his criticism are external ritual, superstition and a hierarchical church order. He sees these as efforts to make oneself pleasing to God in ways other than conscientious adherence to the principle of moral rightness in choosing and acting upon one's maxims. Kant's criticisms on these matters, along with his rejection of certain theoretical proofs grounded in pure reason (particularly the ontological argument) for the existence of God and his philosophical commentary on some Christian doctrines, have resulted in interpretations that see Kant as hostile to religion in general and Christianity in particular (e.g., Walsh 1967). Nevertheless, other interpreters consider that Kant was trying to mark off defensible from indefensible Christian belief. Kant sees in Jesus Christ the affirmation of a "pure moral disposition of the heart" that "can make man well-pleasing to God". Regarding Kant's conception of religion, some critics have argued that he was sympathetic to deism. Other critics have argued that Kant's moral conception moves from deism to theism (as moral theism), for example Allen W. Wood and Merold Westphal. As for Kant's book Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, it was emphasized that Kant reduced religiosity to rationality, religion to morality and Christianity to ethics. However, many interpreters, including Allen W. Wood and Lawrence Pasternack, now agree with Stephen Palmquist's claim that a better way of reading Kant's Religion is to see him as raising morality to the status of religion.
Idea of freedom
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes between the transcendental idea of freedom, which as a psychological concept is "mainly empirical" and refers to "whether a faculty of beginning a series of successive things or states from itself is to be assumed" and the practical concept of freedom as the independence of our will from the "coercion" or "necessitation through sensuous impulses". Kant finds it a source of difficulty that the practical idea of freedom is founded on the transcendental idea of freedom, but for the sake of practical interests uses the practical meaning, taking "no account of... its transcendental meaning," which he feels was properly "disposed of" in the Third Antinomy, and as an element in the question of the freedom of the will is for philosophy "a real stumbling block" that has embarrassed speculative reason.
Kant calls practical "everything that is possible through freedom", and the pure practical laws that are never given through sensuous conditions but are held analogously with the universal law of causality are moral laws. Reason can give us only the "pragmatic laws of free action through the senses", but pure practical laws given by reason a priori dictate "what is to be done". (The same distinction of transcendental and practical meaning can be applied to the idea of God, with the proviso that the practical concept of freedom can be experienced.)
Categories of freedom
In the Critique of Practical Reason, at the end of the second Main Part of the Analytics, Kant introduces the categories of freedom, in analogy with the categories of understanding their practical counterparts. Kant's categories of freedom apparently function primarily as conditions for the possibility for actions (i) to be free, (ii) to be understood as free and (iii) to be morally evaluated. For Kant, although actions as theoretical objects are constituted by means of the theoretical categories, actions as practical objects (objects of practical use of reason, and which can be good or bad) are constituted by means of the categories of freedom. Only in this way can actions, as phenomena, be a consequence of freedom, and be understood and evaluated as such.
Aesthetic philosophy
Kant discusses the subjective nature of aesthetic qualities and experiences in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764). Kant's contribution to aesthetic theory is developed in the Critique of Judgment (1790) where he investigates the possibility and logical status of "judgments of taste." In the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment," the first major division of the Critique of Judgment, Kant used the term "aesthetic" in a manner that, according to Kant scholar W.H. Walsh, differs from its modern sense. In the Critique of Pure Reason, to note essential differences between judgments of taste, moral judgments, and scientific judgments, Kant abandoned the term "aesthetic" as "designating the critique of taste," noting that judgments of taste could never be "directed" by "laws a priori." After A. G. Baumgarten, who wrote Aesthetica (1750–58), Kant was one of the first philosophers to develop and integrate aesthetic theory into a unified and comprehensive philosophical system, utilizing ideas that played an integral role throughout his philosophy.
In the chapter "Analytic of the Beautiful" in the Critique of Judgment, Kant states that beauty is not a property of an artwork or natural phenomenon, but is instead consciousness of the pleasure that attends the 'free play' of the imagination and the understanding. Even though it appears that we are using reason to decide what is beautiful, the judgment is not a cognitive judgment, "and is consequently not logical, but aesthetical" (§ 1). A pure judgement of taste is subjective since it refers to the emotional response of the subject and is based upon nothing but esteem for an object itself: it is a disinterested pleasure, and we feel that pure judgements of taste (i.e. judgements of beauty), lay claim to universal validity (§§ 20–22). It is important to note that this universal validity is not derived from a determinate concept of beauty but from common sense (§40). Kant also believed that a judgement of taste shares characteristics engaged in a moral judgement: both are disinterested, and we hold them to be universal. In the chapter "Analytic of the Sublime" Kant identifies the sublime as an aesthetic quality that, like beauty, is subjective, but unlike beauty refers to an indeterminate relationship between the faculties of the imagination and of reason, and shares the character of moral judgments in the use of reason. The feeling of the sublime, divided into two distinct modes (the mathematical and the dynamical sublime), describes two subjective moments that concern the relationship of the faculty of the imagination to reason. Some commentators argue that Kant's critical philosophy contains a third kind of the sublime, the moral sublime, which is the aesthetic response to the moral law or a representation, and a development of the "noble" sublime in Kant's theory of 1764. The mathematical sublime results from the failure of the imagination to comprehend natural objects that appear boundless and formless, or appear "absolutely great" (§§ 23–25). This imaginative failure is then recuperated through the pleasure taken in reason's assertion of the concept of infinity. In this move the faculty of reason proves itself superior to our fallible sensible self (§§ 25–26). In the dynamical sublime there is the sense of annihilation of the sensible self as the imagination tries to comprehend a vast might. This power of nature threatens us but through the resistance of reason to such sensible annihilation, the subject feels a pleasure and a sense of the human moral vocation. This appreciation of moral feeling through exposure to the sublime helps to develop moral character.
Kant developed a theory of humor (§ 54) that has been interpreted as an "incongruity" theory. He illustrated his theory of humor by telling three narrative jokes in the Critique of Judgment. He thought that the physiological impact of humor is akin to that of music. His knowledge of music, however, has been reported to be much weaker than his sense of humor: He told many more jokes throughout his lectures and writings.
Kant developed a distinction between an object of art as a material value subject to the conventions of society and the transcendental condition of the judgment of taste as a "refined" value in his Idea of A Universal History (1784). In the Fourth and Fifth Theses of that work he identified all art as the "fruits of unsociableness" due to men's "antagonism in society" and, in the Seventh Thesis, asserted that while such material property is indicative of a civilized state, only the ideal of morality and the universalization of refined value through the improvement of the mind "belongs to culture".
Political philosophy
In Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant listed several conditions that he thought necessary for ending wars and creating a lasting peace. They included a world of constitutional republics. His classical republican theory was extended in the Science of Right, the first part of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). Kant believed that universal history leads to the ultimate world of republican states at peace, but his theory was not pragmatic. The process was described in "Perpetual Peace" as natural rather than rational:
Kant's political thought can be summarized as republican government and international organization. "In more characteristically Kantian terms, it is doctrine of the state based upon the law (Rechtsstaat) and of eternal peace. Indeed, in each of these formulations, both terms express the same idea: that of legal constitution or of 'peace through law'. Kant's political philosophy, being essentially a legal doctrine, rejects by definition the opposition between moral education and the play of passions as alternate foundations for social life. The state is defined as the union of men under law. The state is constituted by laws which are necessary a priori because they flow from the very concept of law. "A regime can be judged by no other criteria nor be assigned any other functions, than those proper to the lawful order as such."
He opposed "democracy," which at his time meant direct democracy, believing that majority rule posed a threat to individual liberty. He stated, "...democracy is, properly speaking, necessarily a despotism, because it establishes an executive power in which 'all' decide for or even against one who does not agree; that is, 'all,' who are not quite all, decide, and this is a contradiction of the general will with itself and with freedom." As with most writers at the time, he distinguished three forms of government i.e. democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy with mixed government as the most ideal form of it.
Anthropology
Kant lectured on anthropology, the study of human nature, for twenty-three and a half years. His Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View was published in 1798. (This was the subject of Michel Foucault's secondary dissertation for his State doctorate, Introduction to Kant's Anthropology.) Kant's Lectures on Anthropology were published for the first time in 1997 in German. Introduction to Kant's Anthropology was translated into English and published by the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy series in 2006.
Kant was among the first people of his time to introduce anthropology as an intellectual area of study, long before the field gained popularity, and his texts are considered to have advanced the field. His point of view was to influence the works of later philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur.
Kant was also the first to suggest using a dimensionality approach to human diversity. He analyzed the nature of the Hippocrates-Galen four temperaments and plotted them in two dimensions: (1) "activation", or energetic aspect of behaviour, and (2) "orientation on emotionality". Cholerics were described as emotional and energetic; Phlegmatics as balanced and weak; Sanguines as balanced and energetic, and Melancholics as emotional and weak. These two dimensions reappeared in all subsequent models of temperament and personality traits.
Kant viewed anthropology in two broad categories: (1) the physiological approach, which he referred to as "what nature makes of the human being"; and (2) the pragmatic approach, which explored the things that a human "can and should make of himself."
Racism
Kant was one of the most notable Enlightenment thinkers to defend racism, and some have claimed that he was one of the central figures in the birth of modern scientific racism. Where figures such as Carl Linnaeus and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach had supposed only "empirical" observation for racism, Kant produced a full-blown theory of race. Using the Four Temperaments of ancient Greece, he proposed a hierarchy of four racial categories: white Europeans, yellow Asians, black Africans, and red Amerindians.
Kant wrote that "[Whites] contain all the impulses of nature in affects and passions, all talents, all dispositions to culture and civilization and can as readily obey as govern. They are the only ones who always advance to perfection.” He describes South Asians as "educated to the highest degree but only in the arts and not in the sciences". He goes on that Hindustanis can never reach the level of abstract concepts and that a "great hindustani man" is one who has "gone far in the art of deception and has much money". He stated that the Hindus always stay the way they are and can never advance. About black Africans, Kant wrote that "they can be educated but only as servants, that is they allow themselves to be trained". He quotes David Hume as challenging anyone to "cite a [single] example in which a Negro has shown talents" and asserts that, among the "hundreds of thousands" of blacks transported during the Atlantic slave trade, even among the freed "still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality". To Kant, "the Negro can be disciplined and cultivated, but is never genuinely civilized. He falls of his own accord into savagery." Native Americans, Kant opined, "cannot be educated". He calls them unmotivated, lacking affect, passion and love, describing them as too weak for labor, unfit for any culture, and too phlegmatic for diligence. He said the Native Americans are "far below the Negro, who undoubtedly holds the lowest of all remaining levels by which we designate the different races". Kant stated that "Americans and Blacks cannot govern themselves. They thus serve only for slaves."
Kant was an opponent of miscegenation, believing that whites would be "degraded" and the "fusing of races" is undesireable, for "not every race adopts the morals and customs of the Europeans". He stated that "instead of assimilation, which was intended by the melting together of the various races, Nature has here made a law of just the opposite". He believed that in the future all races would be extinguished, except that of the whites.
Charles W. Mills wrote that Kant has been "sanitized for public consumption", his racist works conveniently ignored. Robert Bernasconi stated that Kant "supplied the first scientific definition of race". Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze is credited with bringing Kant's contributions to racism to light in the 1990s among Western philosophers, who often gloss over this part of his life and works. He wrote about Kant's ideas of race:
Pauline Kleingeld argues that while Kant was indeed a staunch advocate of scientific racism for much of his career, his views on race changed significantly in works published in the last decade of his life. In particular, she argues that Kant unambiguously rejected past views related to racial hierarchies and the diminished rights or moral status of non-whites in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795). This work also saw him providing extended arguments against European colonialism, which he claimed was morally unjust and incompatible with the equal rights held by indigenous populations. Kleingeld argues that this shift in Kant's views later in life has often been forgotten or ignored in the literature on Kant's racist anthropology, and that the shift suggests a belated recognition of the fact that racial hierarchy was incompatible with a universalized moral framework. While Kant's perspective on the topic of European colonialism became more balanced, he still considered Europeans "civilized" to the exception of others:
Influence and legacy
Kant's influence on Western thought has been profound. Although the basic tenets of Kant's transcendental idealism (i.e. that space and time are a priori forms of human perception rather than real properties and the claim that formal logic and transcendental logic coincide) have been claimed to be falsified by modern science and logic, and no longer set the intellectual agenda of contemporary philosophers, Kant is credited with having innovated the way philosophical inquiry has been carried at least up to the early nineteenth century. This shift consisted in several closely related innovations that, although highly contentious in themselves, have become important in postmodern philosophy and in the social sciences broadly construed:
The human subject seen as the centre of inquiry into human knowledge, such that it is impossible to philosophize about things as they exist independently of human perception or of how they are for us;
The notion that is possible to discover and systematically explore the inherent limits to our ability to know entirely a priori;
The notion of the "categorical imperative", an assertion that people are naturally endowed with the ability and obligation toward right reason and acting. Perhaps his most famous quote is drawn from the Critique of Practical Reason: "Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe . . . : the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."
The concept of "conditions of possibility", as in his notion of "the conditions of possible experience"that is that things, knowledge, and forms of consciousness rest on prior conditions that make them possible, so that, to understand or to know them, we must first understand these conditions;
The theory that objective experience is actively constituted or constructed by the functioning of the human mind;
His notion of moral autonomy as central to humanity;
His assertion of the principle that human beings should be treated as ends rather than as means.
Kant's ideas have been incorporated into a variety of schools of thought. These include German idealism, Marxism, positivism, phenomenology, existentialism, critical theory, linguistic philosophy, structuralism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism.
Historical influence
During his own life, much critical attention was paid to his thought. He influenced Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Novalis during the 1780s and 1790s. The school of thinking known as German idealism developed from his writings. The German idealists Fichte and Schelling, for example, tried to bring traditional "metaphysically" laden notions like "the Absolute", "God", and "Being" into the scope of Kant's critical thought. In so doing, the German idealists tried to reverse Kant's view that we cannot know what we cannot observe.
The influential English Romantic poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge was greatly influenced by Kant and helped to spread awareness of him, and of German idealism generally, in the UK and the USA. In his Biographia Literaria (1817), he credits Kant's ideas in coming to believe that the mind is not a passive but an active agent in the apprehension of reality.
Hegel was one of Kant's first major critics. The main accusations Hegel charged Kant's philosophy with were formalism (or "abstractism") and irrationality. In Hegel's view the entire project of setting a "transcendental subject" (i.e human consciousness) apart from nature, history, and society was fundamentally flawed, although parts of that very project could be put to good use in a new direction, that Hegel called the "absolute idealism". Similar concerns moved Hegel's criticisms to Kant's concept of moral autonomy, to which Hegel opposed an ethic focused on the "ethical life" of the community. In a sense, Hegel's notion of "ethical life" is meant to subsume, rather than replace, Kantian ethics. And Hegel can be seen as trying to defend Kant's idea of freedom as going beyond finite "desires", by means of reason. Thus, in contrast to later critics like Nietzsche or Russell, Hegel shares some of Kant's concerns.
Kant's thinking on religion was used in Britain to challenge the decline in religious faith in the nineteenth century. British Catholic writers, notably G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, followed this approach. Ronald Englefield debated this movement, and Kant's use of language. Criticisms of Kant were common in the realist views of the new positivism at that time.
Arthur Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism. He, like G. E. Schulze, Jacobi and Fichte before him, was critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Things in themselves, they argued, are neither the cause of what we observe nor are they completely beyond our access. Ever since the first Critique of Pure Reason philosophers have been critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Many have argued, if such a thing exists beyond experience then one cannot posit that it affects us causally, since that would entail stretching the category "causality" beyond the realm of experience. For Schopenhauer things in themselves do not exist outside the non-rational will. The world, as Schopenhauer would have it, is the striving and largely unconscious will. Michael Kelly, in the preface to his 1910 book Kant's Ethics and Schopenhauer's Criticism, stated: "Of Kant it may be said that what is good and true in his philosophy would have been buried with him, were it not for Schopenhauer...."
With the success and wide influence of Hegel's writings, Kant's influence began to wane, though there was in Germany a movement that hailed a return to Kant in the 1860s, beginning with the publication of Kant und die Epigonen in 1865 by Otto Liebmann. His motto was "Back to Kant", and a re-examination of his ideas began (see Neo-Kantianism). During the turn of the 20th century there was an important revival of Kant's theoretical philosophy, known as the Marburg School, represented in the work of Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, Ernst Cassirer, and anti-Neo-Kantian Nicolai Hartmann.
Kant's notion of "Critique" has been quite influential. The early German Romantics, especially Friedrich Schlegel in his "Athenaeum Fragments", used Kant's self-reflexive conception of criticism in their Romantic theory of poetry. Also in aesthetics, Clement Greenberg, in his classic essay "Modernist Painting", uses Kantian criticism, what Greenberg refers to as "immanent criticism", to justify the aims of abstract painting, a movement Greenberg saw as aware of the key limitiaton—flatness—that makes up the medium of painting. French philosopher Michel Foucault was also greatly influenced by Kant's notion of "Critique" and wrote several pieces on Kant for a re-thinking of the Enlightenment as a form of "critical thought". He went so far as to classify his own philosophy as a "critical history of modernity, rooted in Kant".
Kant believed that mathematical truths were forms of synthetic a priori knowledge, which means they are necessary and universal, yet known through intuition. Kant's often brief remarks about mathematics influenced the mathematical school known as intuitionism, a movement in philosophy of mathematics opposed to Hilbert's formalism, and Frege and Bertrand Russell's logicism.
Influence on modern thinkers
With his Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant is considered to have foreshadowed many of the ideas that have come to form the democratic peace theory, one of the main controversies in political science.
Prominent recent Kantians include the British philosophers P. F. Strawson, Onora O'Neill and Quassim Cassam, and the American philosophers Wilfrid Sellars and Christine Korsgaard. Due to the influence of Strawson and Sellars, among others, there has been a renewed interest in Kant's view of the mind. Central to many debates in philosophy of psychology and cognitive science is Kant's conception of the unity of consciousness.
Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls are two significant political and moral philosophers whose work is strongly influenced by Kant's moral philosophy. They argued against relativism, supporting the Kantian view that universality is essential to any viable moral philosophy. Jean-François Lyotard, however, emphasized the indeterminacy in the nature of thought and language and has engaged in debates with Habermas based on the effects this indeterminacy has on philosophical and political debates.
Mou Zongsan's study of Kant has been cited as a highly crucial part in the development of Mou's personal philosophy, namely New Confucianism. Widely regarded as the most influential Kant scholar in China, Mou's rigorous critique of Kant's philosophy—having translated all three of Kant's critiques—served as an ardent attempt to reconcile Chinese and Western philosophy whilst increasing pressure to westernize in China.
Kant's influence also has extended to the social, behavioral, and physical sciences, as in the sociology of Max Weber, the psychology of Jean Piaget and Carl Gustav Jung, and the linguistics of Noam Chomsky. Kant's work on mathematics and synthetic a priori knowledge is also cited by theoretical physicist Albert Einstein as an early influence on his intellectual development, but which he later criticised heavily and rejected. He held the view that "[I]f one does not want to assert that relativity theory goes against reason, one cannot retain the a priori concepts and norms of Kant's system". However, Kant scholar Stephen Palmquist has argued that Einstein's rejection of Kant's influence was primarily "a response to mistaken interpretations of Kant being adopted by contemporary philosophers", when in fact Kant's transcendental perspective informed Einstein's early worldview and led to his insights regarding simultaneity, and eventually to his proposal of the theory of relativity. Because of the thoroughness of the Kantian paradigm shift, his influence extends to thinkers who neither specifically refer to his work nor use his terminology.
In recent years, there has been renewed interest in Kant's theory of mind from the point of view of formal logic and computer science.
Film/television
Kant and his work was heavily referenced in the comedy television show The Good Place, as the show deals with the subject of ethics and moral philosophy.
Bibliography
List of major works
(1749) Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte)
(March 1755) Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels)
(April 1755) Brief Outline of Certain Meditations on Fire (Meditationum quarundam de igne succinta delineatio (master's thesis under Johann Gottfried Teske))
(September 1755) A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio (doctoral thesis))
(1756) The Use in Natural Philosophy of Metaphysics Combined with Geometry, Part I: Physical Monadology (Metaphysicae cum geometrica iunctae usus in philosophin naturali, cuius specimen I. continet monadologiam physicam, abbreviated as Monadologia Physica (thesis as a prerequisite of associate professorship))
(1762) The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures (Die falsche Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figuren)
(1763) The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes)
(1763) Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy (Versuch den Begriff der negativen Größen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen)
(1764) Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen)
(1764) Essay on the Illness of the Head (Über die Krankheit des Kopfes)
(1764) Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (the Prize Essay) (Untersuchungen über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral)
(1766) Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (Träume eines Geistersehers)
(1768) On the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Regions in Space (Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume)
(August 1770) Dissertation on the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World (De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis (doctoral thesis))
(1775) On the Different Races of Man (Über die verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen)
(1781) First edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
(1783) Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik)
(1784) "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" ("Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?")
(1784) "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" ("Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht")
(1785) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten)
(1786) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft)
(1786) "What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?" ("Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren?")
(1786) Conjectural Beginning of Human History (Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte)
(1787) Second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
(1788) Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft)
(1790) Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft)
(1793) Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft)
(1793) On the Old Saw: That May be Right in Theory But It Won't Work in Practice (Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis)
(1795) Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch ("Zum ewigen Frieden")
(1797) Metaphysics of Morals (Metaphysik der Sitten). First part is The Doctrine of Right, which has often been published separately as The Science of Right.
(1798) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht)
(1798) The Contest of Faculties (Der Streit der Fakultäten)
(1800) Logic (Logik)
(1803) On Pedagogy (Über Pädagogik)
(1804) Opus Postumum
(1817) Lectures on Philosophical Theology (Immanuel Kants Vorlesungen über die philosophische Religionslehre edited by K.H.L. Pölitz) [The English edition of A.W. Wood & G.M. Clark (Cornell, 1978) is based on Pölitz' second edition, 1830, of these lectures.]
Collected works in German
Printed version
Wilhelm Dilthey inaugurated the Academy edition (the Akademie-Ausgabe abbreviated as AA or Ak) of Kant's writings (Gesammelte Schriften, Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1902–38) in 1895, and served as its first editor. The volumes are grouped into four sections:
I. Kant's published writings (vols. 1–9),
II. Kant's correspondence (vols. 10–13),
III. Kant's literary remains, or Nachlass (vols. 14–23), and
IV. Student notes from Kant's lectures (vols. 24–29).
Electronic version
Elektronische Edition der Gesammelten Werke Immanuel Kants (vols. 1–23).
See also
Notes
References
Works cited
Kant, Immanuel. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Lewis White Beck, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1969. Page numbers citing this work are Beck's marginal numbers that refer to the page numbers of the standard edition of Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1902–38).
Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: a Biography. Cambridge University Press, 2001. .
Further reading
In Germany, one important contemporary interpreter of Kant and the movement of German Idealism he began is Dieter Henrich, who has some work available in English. P. F. Strawson's The Bounds of Sense (1966) played a significant role in determining the contemporary reception of Kant in England and America. More recent interpreters of note in the English-speaking world include Lewis White Beck, Jonathan Bennett, Henry Allison, Paul Guyer, Christine Korsgaard, Stephen Palmquist, Robert B. Pippin, Roger Scruton, Rudolf Makkreel, and Béatrice Longuenesse.
General introductions to his thought
Broad, C.D. Kant: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Gardner, Sebastian. Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1999.
Martin, Gottfried. Kant's Metaphysics and Theory of Science. Greenwood Press, 1955 (elucidates Kant's most fundamental concepts in their historical context)
Palmquist, Stephen. Kant's System of Perspectives : an architectonic interpretation of the Critical philosophy. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993.
Seung, T.K. 2007. Kant: a Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum.
Satyananda Giri. Kant. Durham, CT: Strategic Publishing Group, 2010.
Scruton, Roger. Kant: a Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2001. (provides a brief account of his life, and a lucid introduction to the three major critiques)
Uleman, Jennifer. An Introduction to Kant's Moral Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Luchte, James. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant's Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties. The Athlone Press, 1983.
Biography and historical context
Beck, Lewis White. Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors. Harvard University Press, 1969. (a survey of Kant's intellectual background)
Beiser, Frederick C. The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte. Harvard University Press, 1987.
Beiser, Frederick C. German Idealism: the Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781–1801. Harvard University Press, 2002
Cassirer, Ernst. Kant's Life and Thought. Translation of Kants Leben und Lehre. Trans., Jame S. Haden, intr. Stephan Körner. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart. Immanuel Kanta study and a comparison with Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruno, Plato and Descartes, the authorised translation from the German by Lord Redesdale, with his 'Introduction', The Bodley Head, London, 1914, (2 volumes).
Gulyga, Arsenij. Immanuel Kant: His Life and Thought. Trans., Marijan Despaltović. Boston: Birkhäuser, 1987.
Johnson, G.R. (ed.). Kant on Swedenborg. Dreams of a Spirit-Seer and Other Writings. Swedenborg Foundation, 2002. (new translation and analysis, many supplementary texts)
Lehner, Ulrich L., Kants Vorsehungskonzept auf dem Hintergrund der deutschen Schulphilosophie und –theologie (Leiden: 2007) (Kant's concept of Providence and its background in German school philosophy and theology)
Pinkard, Terry. German Philosophy, 1760–1860: the Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge, 2002.
Pippin, Robert. Idealism as Modernism. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Sassen, Brigitte (ed.). Kant's Early Critics: the Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy, Cambridge, 2000.
Schabert, Joseph A. "Kant's Influence on his Successors", The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. XLVII, January 1922.
Collections of essays
Firestone, Chris L. and Palmquist, Stephen (eds.). Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion. Notre Dame: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Förster, Eckart (ed.). Kant's Transcendental Deductions:. The Three 'Critiques' and the 'Opus Postumum' Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. Includes an important essay by Dieter Henrich.
Guyer, Paul (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Excellent collection of papers that covers most areas of Kant's thought.
Mohanty, J.N. and Shahan, Robert W. (eds.). Essays on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.
Phillips, Dewi et al. (eds.). Kant and Kierkegaard on Religion. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000, Collection of essays about Kantian religion and its influence on Kierkegaardian and contemporary philosophy of religion.
Proceedings of the International Kant Congresses. Several Congresses (numbered) edited by various publishers.
Theoretical philosophy
Allison, Henry. Kant's Transcendental Idealism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983, 2004. (a very influential defense of Kant's idealism, recently revised).
Ameriks, Karl. Kant's Theory of Mind: An Analysis of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982 (one of the first detailed studies of the Dialectic in English).
Banham, Gary. Kant's Transcendental Imagination. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant's Critical Philosophy. Trans., Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Gram, Moltke S. The Transcendental Turn: The Foundation of Kant's Idealism. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1984.
Greenberg, Robert. Kant's Theory of A Priori Knowledge. Penn State Press, 2001
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987 (modern defense of the view that Kant's theoretical philosophy is a "patchwork" of ill-fitting arguments).
Heidegger, Martin. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Trans., Richard Taft. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
Henrich, Dieter. The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant's Philosophy. Ed. with introduction by Richard L. Velkley; trans. Jeffrey Edwards et al. Harvard University Press, 1994.
Kemp Smith, Norman. A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason. London: Macmillan, 1930 (influential commentary on the first Critique, recently reprinted).
Kitcher, Patricia. Kant's Transcendental Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Longuenesse, Béatrice. Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Princeton University Press, 1998. . (argues that the notion of judgment provides the key to understanding the overall argument of the first Critique)
Melnick, Arthur. Kant's Analogies of Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. (important study of Kant's Analogies, including his defense of the principle of causality)
Paton, H.J. Kant's Metaphysic of Experience: a Commentary on the First Half of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Two volumes. London: Macmillan, 1936. (extensive study of Kant's theoretical philosophy)
Pippin, Robert B. Kant's Theory of Form: An Essay on the Critique of Pure Reason. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. (influential examination of the formal character of Kant's work)
Schopenhauer, Arthur. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Erster Band. Anhang. Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie. F.A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1859 (In English: Arthur Schopenhauer, New York: Dover Press, Volume I, Appendix, "Critique of the Kantian Philosophy", )
Seung, T.K. Kant's Transcendental Logic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969.
Strawson, P.F. The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1989 (the work that revitalized the interest of contemporary analytic philosophers in Kant).
Sturm, Thomas, Kant und die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. Paderborn: Mentis Verlag, 2009. . review (Treats Kant's anthropology and his views on psychology and history in relation to his philosophy of science.)
Tonelli, Giorgio. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason within the Tradition of Modern Logic. A Commentary on its History. Hildesheim, Olms 1994
Werkmeister, W.H., Kant: The Architectonic and Development of His Philosophy, Open Court Publishing Co., La Salle, Ill.; 1980 (it treats, as a whole, the architectonic and development of Kant's philosophy from 1755 through the Opus postumum.)
Wolff, Robert Paul. Kant's Theory of Mental Activity: A Commentary on the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1963. (detailed and influential commentary on the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason)
Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Kant and the Philosophy of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. (review )
Practical philosophy
Allison, Henry. Kant's Theory of Freedom. Cambridge University Press 1990.
Banham, Gary. Kant's Practical Philosophy: From Critique to Doctrine. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Dorschel, Andreas. Die idealistische Kritik des Willens: Versuch über die Theorie der praktischen Subjektivität bei Kant und Hegel. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1992 (Schriften zur Transzendentalphilosophie 10) .
Korsgaard, Christine M. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Michalson, Gordon E. Fallen Freedom: Kant on Radical Evil and Moral Regeneration. Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Michalson, Gordon E. Kant and the Problem of God. Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
Paton, H.J. The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant's Moral Philosophy. University of Pennsylvania Press 1971.
Rawls, John. Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, 2000.
Seung, T.K. Kant's Platonic Revolution in Moral and Political Philosophy. Johns Hopkins, 1994.
Wolff, Robert Paul. The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. New York: HarperCollins, 1974. .
Wood, Allen. Kant's Ethical Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Aesthetics
Allison, Henry. Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Banham, Gary. Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics. London and New York: Macmillan Press, 2000.
Clewis, Robert. The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Crawford, Donald. Kant's Aesthetic Theory. Wisconsin, 1974.
Doran, Robert. The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Taste. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1979.
Hammermeister, Kai. The German Aesthetic Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Immanuel Kant entry in Kelly, Michael (Editor in Chief) (1998) Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Kaplama, Erman. Cosmological Aesthetics through the Kantian Sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian. Lanham: UPA, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
Makkreel, Rudolf, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant. Chicago, 1990.
McCloskey, Mary. Kant's Aesthetic. SUNY, 1987.
Schaper, Eva. Studies in Kant's Aesthetics. Edinburgh, 1979.
Zammito, John H. The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1992.
Zupancic, Alenka. Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan. Verso, 2000.
Philosophy of religion
Palmquist, Stephen. Kant's Critical Religion : Volume Two of Kant's System of Perspectives. Ashgate, 2000.
Perez, Daniel Omar. "Religión, Política y Medicina en Kant: El Conflicto de las Proposiciones". Cinta de Moebio. Revista de Epistemologia de Ciencias Sociales, v. 28, p. 91–103, 2007. Uchile.cl (Spanish)
Perpetual peace and international relations
Sir Harry Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace, Cambridge University Press, 1962.
Martin Wight, Four Seminal Thinkers in International Theory: Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant and Mazzini ed. Gabriele Wight & Brian Porter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Other works
Botul, Jean-Baptiste. La vie sexuelle d'Emmanuel Kant. Paris, Éd. Mille et une Nuits, 2008.
Caygill, Howard. A Kant Dictionary. Oxford; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Reference, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques. Mochlos; or, The Conflict of the Faculties. Columbia University, 1980.
Kelly, Michael. Kant's Ethics and Schopenhauer's Criticism, London: Swan Sonnenschein 1910. [Reprinted 2010 Nabu Press, ]
Mosser, Kurt. Necessity and Possibility; The Logical Strategy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Catholic University of America Press, 2008.
White, Mark D. Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autonomy, Dignity, and Character . Stanford University Press, 2011. . (Reviewed in The Montreal Review )
Contemporary philosophy with a Kantian influence
Guyer, Paul. Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant's Response to Hume. Princeton University Press, 2008.
Hanna, Robert, Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy. Clarendon Press, 2004.
Hanna, Robert, Kant, Science, and Human Nature. Clarendon Press, 2006.
Herman, Barbara. The Practice of Moral Judgement. Harvard University Press, 1993.
(A Kantian approach to the issue of pornography and degradation.)
Korsgaard, Christine. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (not a commentary, but a defense of a broadly Kantian approach to ethics)
McDowell, John. Mind and World. Harvard University Press, 1994. . (offers a Kantian solution to a dilemma in contemporary epistemology regarding the relation between mind and world)
Parfit, Derek. On What Matters (2 vols.). New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Pinker, Steven. The Stuff of Thought. Viking Press, 2007. . (Chapter 4 "Cleaving the Air" discusses Kant's anticipation of modern cognitive science)
Wood, Allen W. Kant's Ethical Thought. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. . (comprehensive, in-depth study of Kant's ethics, with emphasis on formula of humanity as most accurate formulation of the categorical imperative)
External links
KantPapers, authors and papers database powered by PhilPapers, focused on Kant, and located at Cornell University
Immanuel Kant at the Encyclopædia Britannica
Immanuel Kant in the Christian Cyclopedia
Works by Immanuel Kant at Duisburg-Essen University
Stephen Palmquist's Glossary of Kantian Terminology
Kant's Ethical Theory – Kantian ethics explained, applied and evaluated
Notes on Utilitarianism – A conveniently brief survey of Kant's Utilitarianism
"Immanuel Kant", An overview of his work, times, and influence on biology, plantspeopleplanet.org.au
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: An Overview
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Aesthetics
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Logic
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Mind
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Radical Evil
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Religion
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant
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Writers about religion and science | false | [
"Since the first human spaceflight by the Soviet Union, citizens of 42 countries have flown in space. For each nationality, the launch date of the first mission is listed. The list is based on the nationality of the person at the time of the launch. Only 3 of the 42 \"first flyers\" have been women (Helen Sharman for the United Kingdom in 1991, Anousheh Ansari for Iran in 2006, and Yi So-yeon for South Korea in 2008). Only three nations (Soviet Union/Russia, U.S., China) have launched their own crewed spacecraft, with the Soviets/Russians and the American programs providing rides to other nations' astronauts. Twenty-seven \"first flights\" occurred on Soviet or Russian flights while the United States carried fourteen.\n\nTimeline\nNote: All dates given are UTC. Countries indicated in bold have achieved independent human spaceflight capability.\n\nNotes\n\nOther claims\nThe above list uses the nationality at the time of launch. Lists with differing criteria might include the following people:\n Pavel Popovich, first launched 12 August 1962, was the first Ukrainian-born man in space. At the time, Ukraine was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\n Michael Collins, first launched 18 July 1966 was born in Italy to American parents and was an American citizen when he went into space.\n William Anders, American citizen, first launched 21 December 1968, was the first Hong Kong-born man in space.\n Vladimir Shatalov, first launched 14 January 1969, was the first Kazakh-born man in space. At the time, Kazakhstan was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\n Bill Pogue, first launched 16 November 1973, as an inductee to the 5 Civilized Tribes Hall of Fame can lay claim to being the first Native American in space. See John Herrington below regarding technicality of tribal registration.\n Pyotr Klimuk, first launched 18 December 1973, was the first Belorussian-born man in space. At the time, Belarus was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\n Vladimir Dzhanibekov, first launched 16 March 1978, was the first Uzbek-born man in space. At the time, Uzbekistan was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\n Paul D. Scully-Power, first launched 5 October 1984, was born in Australia, but was an American citizen when he went into space; Australian law at the time forbade dual-citizenship.\n Taylor Gun-Jin Wang, first launched 29 April 1985, was born in China to Chinese parents, but was an American citizen when he went into space.\n Lodewijk van den Berg, launched 29 April 1985, was born in the Netherlands, but was an American citizen when he went into space.\n Patrick Baudry, first launched 17 June 1985, was born in French Cameroun (now part of Cameroon), but was a French citizen when he went into space.\n Shannon Lucid, first launched 17 June 1985, was born in China to American parents of European descent, and was an American citizen when she went into space.\n Franklin Chang-Diaz, first launched 12 January 1986, was born in Costa Rica, but was an American citizen when he went into space\n Musa Manarov, first launched 21 December 1987, was the first Azerbaijan-born man in space. At the time, Azerbaijan was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\n Anatoly Solovyev, first launched 7 June 1988, was the first Latvian-born man in space. At the time, Latvia was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.\n Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev and Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Volkov became Russian rather than Soviet citizens while still in orbit aboard Mir, making them the first purely Russian citizens in space.\n James H. Newman, American citizen, first launched 12 September 1993, was born in the portion of the United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands that is now the Federated States of Micronesia.\n Talgat Musabayev, first launched 1 July 1994, was born in the Kazakh SSR and is known in Kazakhstan as the \"first cosmonaut of independent Kazakhstan\", but was a Russian citizen when he went into space.\n Frederick W. Leslie, American citizen, launched 20 October 1995, was born in Panama Canal Zone (now Panama).\n Andy Thomas, first launched 19 May 1996, was born in Australia but like Paul D. Scully-Power was an American citizen when he went to space; Australian law at the time forbade dual-citizenship.\n Carlos I. Noriega, first launched 15 May 1997, was born in Peru, but was an American citizen when he went into space.\n Bjarni Tryggvason, launched 7 August 1997, was born in Iceland, but was a Canadian citizen when he went into space.\n Salizhan Sharipov, first launched 22 January 1998, was born in Kyrgyzstan (then the Kirghiz SSR), but was a Russian citizen when he went into space. Sharipov is of Uzbek ancestry.\n Philippe Perrin, first launched 5 June 2002, was born in Morocco, but was a French citizen when he went into space.\n John Herrington, an American citizen first launched 24 November 2002, is the first tribal registered Native American in space (Chickasaw). See also Bill Pogue above.\n Fyodor Yurchikhin, first launched 7 October 2002, was born in Georgia (then the Georgian SSR). He was a Russian citizen at the time he went into space and is of Pontian Greek descent.\n Joseph M. Acaba, first launched 15 March 2009, was born in the U.S. state of California to American parents of Puerto Rican descent.\n\nGallery\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nCurrent Space Demographics, compiled by William Harwood, CBS News Space Consultant, and Rob Navias, NASA.\n\nLists of firsts in space\nSpaceflight timelines",
"This is a list of notable books by young authors and of books written by notable writers in their early years. These books were written, or substantially completed, before the author's twentieth birthday. \n\nAlexandra Adornetto (born 18 April 1994) wrote her debut novel, The Shadow Thief, when she was 13. It was published in 2007. Other books written by her as a teenager are: The Lampo Circus (2008), Von Gobstopper's Arcade (2009), Halo (2010) and Hades (2011).\nMargery Allingham (1904–1966) had her first novel, Blackkerchief Dick, about smugglers in 17th century Essex, published in 1923, when she was 19.\nJorge Amado (1912–2001) had his debut novel, The Country of Carnival, published in 1931, when he was 18.\nPrateek Arora wrote his debut novel Village 1104 at the age of 16. It was published in 2010.\nDaisy Ashford (1881–1972) wrote The Young Visiters while aged nine. This novella was first published in 1919, preserving her juvenile punctuation and spelling. An earlier work, The Life of Father McSwiney, was dictated to her father when she was four. It was published almost a century later in 1983.\nAmelia Atwater-Rhodes (born 1984) had her first novel, In the Forests of the Night, published in 1999. Subsequent novels include Demon in My View (2000), Shattered Mirror (2001), Midnight Predator (2002), Hawksong (2003) and Snakecharm (2004).\nJane Austen (1775–1817) wrote Lady Susan, a short epistolary novel, between 1793 and 1795 when she was aged 18-20.\nRuskin Bond (born 1934) wrote his semi-autobiographical novel The Room on the Roof when he was 17. It was published in 1955.\nMarjorie Bowen (1885–1952) wrote the historical novel The Viper of Milan when she was 16. Published in 1906 after several rejections, it became a bestseller.\nOliver Madox Brown (1855–1874) finished his novel Gabriel Denver in early 1872, when he was 17. It was published the following year.\nPamela Brown (1924–1989) finished her children's novel about an amateur theatre company, The Swish of the Curtain (1941), when she was 16 and later wrote other books about the stage.\nCeleste and Carmel Buckingham wrote The Lost Princess when they were 11 and 9.\nFlavia Bujor (born 8 August 1988) wrote The Prophecy of the Stones (2002) when she was 13.\nLord Byron (1788–1824) published two volumes of poetry in his teens, Fugitive Pieces and Hours of Idleness.\nTaylor Caldwell's The Romance of Atlantis was written when she was 12.\n (1956–1976), Le Don de Vorace, was published in 1974.\nHilda Conkling (1910–1986) had her poems published in Poems by a Little Girl (1920), Shoes of the Wind (1922) and Silverhorn (1924).\nAbraham Cowley (1618–1667), Tragicall History of Piramus and Thisbe (1628), Poetical Blossoms (published 1633).\nMaureen Daly (1921–2006) completed Seventeenth Summer before she was 20. It was published in 1942.\nJuliette Davies (born 2000) wrote the first book in the JJ Halo series when she was eight years old. The series was published the following year.\nSamuel R. Delany (born 1 April 1942) published his The Jewels of Aptor in 1962.\nPatricia Finney's A Shadow of Gulls was published in 1977 when she was 18. Its sequel, The Crow Goddess, was published in 1978.\nBarbara Newhall Follett (1914–1939) wrote her first novel The House Without Windows at the age of eight. The manuscript was destroyed in a house fire and she later retyped her manuscript at the age of 12. The novel was published by Knopf publishing house in January 1927.\nFord Madox Ford (né Hueffer) (1873–1939) published in 1892 two children's stories, The Brown Owl and The Feather, and a novel, The Shifting of the Fire.\nAnne Frank (1929–1945) wrote her diary for two-and-a-half years starting on her 13th birthday. It was published posthumously as Het Achterhuis in 1947 and then in English translation in 1952 as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. An unabridged translation followed in 1996.\nMiles Franklin wrote My Brilliant Career (1901) when she was a teenager.\nAlec Greven's How to Talk to Girls was published in 2008 when he was nine years old. Subsequently he has published How to Talk to Moms, How to Talk to Dads and How to Talk to Santa.\nFaïza Guène (born 1985) had Kiffe kiffe demain published in 2004, when she was 19. It has since been translated into 22 languages, including English (as Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow).\nSonya Hartnett (born 1968) was thirteen years old when she wrote her first novel, Trouble All the Way, which was published in Australia in 1984.\nAlex and Brett Harris wrote the best-selling book Do Hard Things (2008), a non-fiction book challenging teenagers to \"rebel against low expectations\", at age 19. Two years later came a follow-up book called Start Here (2010).\nGeorgette Heyer (1902–1974) wrote The Black Moth when she was 17 and received a publishing contract when she was 18. It was published just after she turned 19.\nSusan Hill (born 1942), The Enclosure, published in 1961.\nS. E. Hinton (born 1948), The Outsiders, first published in 1967.\nPalle Huld (1912–2010) wrote A Boy Scout Around the World (Jorden Rundt i 44 dage) when he was 15, following a sponsored journey around the world.\nGeorge Vernon Hudson (1867–1946) completed An Elementary Manual of New Zealand Entomology at the end of 1886, when he was 19, but not published until 1892.\nKatharine Hull (1921–1977) and Pamela Whitlock (1920–1982) wrote the children's outdoor adventure novel The Far-Distant Oxus in 1937. It was followed in 1938 by Escape to Persia and in 1939 by Oxus in Summer.\nLeigh Hunt (1784–1859) published Juvenilia; or, a Collection of Poems Written between the ages of Twelve and Sixteen by J. H. L. Hunt, Late of the Grammar School of Christ's Hospital in March 1801.\nKody Keplinger (born 1991) wrote her debut novel The DUFF when she was 17.\nGordon Korman (born 1963), This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall (1978), three sequels, and I Want to Go Home (1981).\nMatthew Gregory Lewis (1775–1818) wrote the Gothic novel The Monk, now regarded as a classic of the genre, before he was twenty. It was published in 1796.\nNina Lugovskaya (1918–1993), a painter, theater director and Gulag survivor, kept a diary in 1932–37, which shows strong social sensitivities. It was found in the Russian State Archives and published 2003. It appeared in English in the same year.\nJoyce Maynard (born 1953) completed Looking Back while she was 19. It was first published in 1973.\nMargaret Mitchell (1900–1949) wrote her novella Lost Laysen at the age of fifteen and gave the two notebooks containing the manuscript to her boyfriend, Henry Love Angel. The novel was published posthumously in 1996.\nBen Okri, the Nigerian poet and novelist, (born 1959) wrote his first book Flowers and Shadows while he was 19.\nAlice Oseman(born 1994) wrote the novel Solitaire when she was 17 and it was published in 2014.\nHelen Oyeyemi (born 1984) completed The Icarus Girl while still 18. First published in 2005.\nChristopher Paolini (born 1983) had Eragon, the first novel of the Inheritance Cycle, first published 2002.\nEmily Pepys (1833–1877), daughter of a bishop, wrote a vivid private journal over six months of 1844–45, aged ten. It was discovered much later and published in 1984.\nAnya Reiss (born 1991) wrote her play Spur of the Moment when she was 17. It was both performed and published in 2010, when she was 18.\nArthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) wrote almost all his prose and poetry while still a teenager, for example Le Soleil était encore chaud (1866), Le Bateau ivre (1871) and Une Saison en Enfer (1873).\nJohn Thomas Romney Robinson (1792–1882) saw his juvenile poems published in 1806, when he was 13.\nFrançoise Sagan (1935–2004) had Bonjour tristesse published in 1954, when she was 18.\nMary Shelley (1797–1851) completed Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus during May 1817, when she was 19. It was first published in the following year.\nMattie Stepanek (1990–2004), an American poet, published seven best-selling books of poetry.\nJohn Steptoe (1950–1989), author and illustrator, began his picture book Stevie at 16. It was published in 1969 in Life.\nAnna Stothard (born 1983) saw her Isabel and Rocco published when she was 19.\nDorothy Straight (born 1958) in 1962 wrote How the World Began, which was published by Pantheon Books in 1964. She holds the Guinness world record for the youngest female published author.\nJalaluddin Al-Suyuti (c. 1445–1505) wrote his first book, Sharh Al-Isti'aadha wal-Basmalah, at the age of 17.\nF. J. Thwaites (1908–1979) wrote his bestselling novel The Broken Melody when he was 19.\nJohn Kennedy Toole (1937–1969) wrote The Neon Bible in 1954 when he was 16. It was not published until 1989.\nAlec Waugh (1898–1981) wrote his novel about school life, The Loom of Youth, after leaving school. It was published in 1917.\nCatherine Webb (born 1986) had five young adult books published before she was 20: Mirror Dreams (2002), Mirror Wakes (2003), Waywalkers (2003), Timekeepers (2004) and The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle (February 2006).\nNancy Yi Fan (born 1993) published her debut Swordbird when she was 12. Other books she published as a teenager include Sword Quest (2008) and Sword Mountain (2012).\nKat Zhang (born 1991) was 20 when she sold, in a three-book deal, her entire Hybrid Chronicles trilogy. The first book, What's Left of Me, was published 2012.\n\nSee also \nLists of books\n\nReferences \n\nBooks Written By Children and Teenagers\nbooks\nChildren And Teenagers, Written By\nChi"
] |
[
"Immanuel Kant",
"Biography",
"when was he born?",
"April 22, 1724"
] | C_8ddf971bb06941f8a8f1b934b838550b_1 | where was he born? | 2 | where was Immanuel Kant born? | Immanuel Kant | Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724 in Konigsberg, Prussia (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia). His mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697-1737), was also born in Konigsberg to a father from Nuremberg. (Her name is sometimes erroneously given as Anna Regina Porter.) His father, Johann Georg Kant (1682-1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipeda, Lithuania). Immanuel Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. While scholars of Kant's life long accepted the claim, there is no evidence that Kant's paternal line was Scottish; it is more likely that the Kants got their name from the village of Kantwaggen (today part of Priekule) and were of Curonian origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children (four of them reached adulthood). Baptized 'Emanuel', he changed his name to 'Immanuel' after learning Hebrew. Young Kant was a solid, albeit unspectacular, student. Kant was born into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in East Prussia. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. Kant maintained a belief in Christianity, in his work Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals he reveals a belief in human immortality as the necessary condition of our continued approach to the highest good possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of Theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic. Common myths about Kant's personal mannerisms are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. It is often held that Kant lived a very strict and disciplined life, leading to an oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but seemed to have a rewarding social life -- he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends whom he frequently met, among them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Konigsberg. A common myth is that Kant never traveled more than 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from Konigsberg his whole life. In fact, between 1750 and 1754 he worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Gross-Arnsdorf (now Jarnoltowo near Morag (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km). CANNOTANSWER | Konigsberg, Prussia | Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him an influential figure in modern Western philosophy.
In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued that space and time are mere "forms of intuition" which structure all experience, and therefore that while "things-in-themselves" exist and contribute to experience, they are nonetheless distinct from the objects of experience. From this it follows that the objects of experience are mere "appearances", and that the nature of things as they are in themselves is consequently unknowable to us. In an attempt to counter the skepticism he found in the writings of philosopher David Hume, he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), one of his most well-known works. In it, he developed his theory of experience to answer the question of whether synthetic a priori knowledge is possible, which would in turn make it possible to determine the limits of metaphysical inquiry. Kant drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that the objects of the senses must conform to our spatial and temporal forms of intuition, and that we can consequently have a priori cognition of the objects of the senses.
Kant believed that reason is also the source of morality, and that aesthetics arise from a faculty of disinterested judgment. Kant's views continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of epistemology, ethics, political theory, and post-modern aesthetics. He attempted to explain the relationship between reason and human experience and to move beyond what he believed to be the failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He wanted to put an end to what he saw as an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience, while resisting the skepticism of thinkers such as Hume. He regarded himself as showing the way past the impasse between rationalists and empiricists, and is widely held to have synthesized both traditions in his thought.
Kant was an exponent of the idea that perpetual peace could be secured through universal democracy and international cooperation, and that perhaps this could be the culminating stage of world history. The nature of Kant's religious views continues to be the subject of scholarly dispute, with viewpoints ranging from the impression that he shifted from an early defense of an ontological argument for the existence of God to a principled agnosticism, to more critical treatments epitomized by Schopenhauer, who criticized the imperative form of Kantian ethics as "theological morals" and the "Mosaic Decalogue in disguise", and Nietzsche, who claimed that Kant had "theologian blood" and was merely a sophisticated apologist for traditional Christian faith. Beyond his religious views, Kant has also been criticized for the racism presented in some of his lesser-known papers, such as "On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy" and "On the Different Races of Man". Although he was a proponent of scientific racism for much of his career, Kant's views on race changed significantly in the last decade of his life, and he ultimately rejected racial hierarchies and European colonialism in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795).
Kant published other important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history during his lifetime. These include the Universal Natural History (1755), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), the Critique of Judgment (1790), Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (1793), and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
Biography
Kant's mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697–1737), was born in Königsberg (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia) to a father from Nuremberg. Her surname is sometimes erroneously given as Porter. Kant's father, Johann Georg Kant (1682–1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipėda, Lithuania). Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. While scholars of Kant's life long accepted the claim, there is no evidence that Kant's paternal line was Scottish and it is more likely that the Kants got their name from the village of Kantwaggen (today part of Priekulė) and were of Curonian origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children (six of whom reached adulthood).
Kant was born on 22 April 1724 into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in Königsberg, East Prussia. Baptized Emanuel, he later changed the spelling of his name to Immanuel after learning Hebrew. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. In his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, he reveals a belief in immortality as the necessary condition of humanity's approach to the highest morality possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic, even though it has also been suggested that Kant intends other people to think of him as a "pure rationalist", who is defined by Kant himself as someone who recognizes revelation but asserts that to know and accept it as real is not a necessary requisite to religion.
Kant apparently lived a very strict and disciplined life; it was said that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but seemed to have a rewarding social life — he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends with whom he frequently met, among them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Königsberg.
Between 1750 and 1754 Kant worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Groß-Arnsdorf (now Jarnołtowo near Morąg (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km).
Many myths grew up about Kant's personal mannerisms; these are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime.
Young scholar
Kant showed a great aptitude for study at an early age. He first attended the Collegium Fridericianum from which he graduated at the end of the summer of 1740. In 1740, aged 16, he enrolled at the University of Königsberg, where he spent his whole career. He studied the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and Christian Wolff under Martin Knutzen (Associate Professor of Logic and Metaphysics from 1734 until his death in 1751), a rationalist who was also familiar with developments in British philosophy and science and introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Isaac Newton. Knutzen dissuaded Kant from the theory of pre-established harmony, which he regarded as "the pillow for the lazy mind". He also dissuaded Kant from idealism, the idea that reality is purely mental, which most philosophers in the 18th century regarded in a negative light. The theory of transcendental idealism that Kant later included in the Critique of Pure Reason was developed partially in opposition to traditional idealism.
His father's stroke and subsequent death in 1746 interrupted his studies. Kant left Königsberg shortly after August 1748—he would return there in August 1754. He became a private tutor in the towns surrounding Königsberg, but continued his scholarly research. In 1749, he published his first philosophical work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (written in 1745–47).
Early work
Kant is best known for his work in the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics, but he made significant contributions to other disciplines. In 1754, while contemplating on a prize question by the Berlin Academy about the problem of Earth's rotation, he argued that the Moon's gravity would slow down Earth's spin and he also put forth the argument that gravity would eventually cause the Moon's tidal locking to coincide with the Earth's rotation. The next year, he expanded this reasoning to the formation and evolution of the Solar System in his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. In 1755, Kant received a license to lecture in the University of Königsberg and began lecturing on a variety of topics including mathematics, physics, logic and metaphysics. In his 1756 essay on the theory of winds, Kant laid out an original insight into the Coriolis force. In 1757, Kant began lecturing on geography making him one of the first lecturers to explicitly teach geography as its own subject. Geography was one of Kant's most popular lecturing topics and in 1802 a compilation by Friedrich Theodor Rink of Kant's lecturing notes, Physical Geography, was released. After Kant became a professor in 1770, he expanded the topics of his lectures to include lectures on natural law, ethics and anthropology along with other topics.
In the Universal Natural History, Kant laid out the Nebular hypothesis, in which he deduced that the Solar System had formed from a large cloud of gas, a nebula. Kant also correctly deduced (though through usually false premises and fallacious reasoning, according to Bertrand Russell) that the Milky Way was a large disk of stars, which he theorized formed from a much larger spinning gas cloud. He further suggested that other distant "nebulae" might be other galaxies. These postulations opened new horizons for astronomy, for the first time extending it beyond the Solar System to galactic and intergalactic realms. According to Thomas Huxley (1867), Kant also made contributions to geology in his Universal Natural History.
From then on, Kant turned increasingly to philosophical issues, although he continued to write on the sciences throughout his life. In the early 1760s, Kant produced a series of important works in philosophy. The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, a work in logic, was published in 1762. Two more works appeared the following year: Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy and The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. By 1764, Kant had become a notable popular author, and wrote Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime; he was second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy prize competition with his Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (often referred to as "The Prize Essay"). In 1766 Kant wrote Dreams of a Spirit-Seer which dealt with the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. The exact influence of Swedenborg on Kant, as well as the extent of Kant's belief in mysticism according to Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, remain controversial. On 31 March 1770, aged 45, Kant was finally appointed Full Professor of Logic and Metaphysics (Professor Ordinarius der Logic und Metaphysic) at the University of Königsberg. In defense of this appointment, Kant wrote his inaugural dissertation (Inaugural-Dissertation) De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis (On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World). This work saw the emergence of several central themes of his mature work, including the distinction between the faculties of intellectual thought and sensible receptivity. To miss this distinction would mean to commit the error of subreption, and, as he says in the last chapter of the dissertation, only in avoiding this error does metaphysics flourish.
The issue that vexed Kant was central to what 20th-century scholars called "the philosophy of mind". The flowering of the natural sciences had led to an understanding of how data reaches the brain. Sunlight falling on an object is reflected from its surface in a way that maps the surface features (color, texture, etc.). The reflected light reaches the human eye, passes through the cornea, is focused by the lens onto the retina where it forms an image similar to that formed by light passing through a pinhole into a camera obscura. The retinal cells send impulses through the optic nerve and then they form a mapping in the brain of the visual features of the object. The interior mapping is not the exterior object, and our belief that there is a meaningful relationship between the object and the mapping in the brain depends on a chain of reasoning that is not fully grounded. But the uncertainty aroused by these considerations, by optical illusions, misperceptions, delusions, etc., are not the end of the problems.
Kant saw that the mind could not function as an empty container that simply receives data from outside. Something must be giving order to the incoming data. Images of external objects must be kept in the same sequence in which they were received. This ordering occurs through the mind's intuition of time. The same considerations apply to the mind's function of constituting space for ordering mappings of visual and tactile signals arriving via the already described chains of physical causation.
It is often claimed that Kant was a late developer, that he only became an important philosopher in his mid-50s after rejecting his earlier views. While it is true that Kant wrote his greatest works relatively late in life, there is a tendency to underestimate the value of his earlier works. Recent Kant scholarship has devoted more attention to these "pre-critical" writings and has recognized a degree of continuity with his mature work.
Critique of Pure Reason
At age 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher, and much was expected of him. In correspondence with his ex-student and friend Markus Herz, Kant admitted that, in the inaugural dissertation, he had failed to account for the relation between our sensible and intellectual faculties. He needed to explain how we combine what is known as sensory knowledge with the other type of knowledgei.e. reasoned knowledgethese two being related but having very different processes.
Kant also credited David Hume with awakening him from a "dogmatic slumber" in which he had unquestioningly accepted the tenets of both religion and natural philosophy. Hume in his 1739 Treatise on Human Nature had argued that we only know the mind through a subjectiveessentially illusoryseries of perceptions. Ideas such as causality, morality, and objects are not evident in experience, so their reality may be questioned. Kant felt that reason could remove this skepticism, and he set himself to solving these problems. Although fond of company and conversation with others, Kant isolated himself, and resisted friends' attempts to bring him out of his isolation. When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant countered Hume's empiricism by claiming that some knowledge exists inherently in the mind, independent of experience. He drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that worldly objects can be intuited a priori ('beforehand'), and that intuition is consequently distinct from objective reality. He acquiesced to Hume somewhat by defining causality as a "regular, constant sequence of events in time, and nothing more."
Although now uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, this Critique disappointed Kant's readers upon its initial publication. The book was long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in a convoluted style. It received few reviews, and these granted it no significance. Kant's former student, Johann Gottfried Herder criticized it for placing reason as an entity worthy of criticism instead of considering the process of reasoning within the context of language and one's entire personality. Similar to Christian Garve and Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, he rejected Kant's position that space and time possessed a form that could be analyzed. Additionally, Garve and Feder also faulted Kant's Critique for not explaining differences in perception of sensations. Its density made it, as Herder said in a letter to Johann Georg Hamann, a "tough nut to crack", obscured by "all this heavy gossamer". Its reception stood in stark contrast to the praise Kant had received for earlier works, such as his Prize Essay and shorter works that preceded the first Critique. These well-received and readable tracts include one on the earthquake in Lisbon that was so popular that it was sold by the page. Prior to the change in course documented in the first Critique, his books had sold well. Kant was disappointed with the first Critique's reception. Recognizing the need to clarify the original treatise, Kant wrote the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics in 1783 as a summary of its main views. Shortly thereafter, Kant's friend Johann Friedrich Schultz (1739–1805) (professor of mathematics) published Erläuterungen über des Herrn Professor Kant Critik der reinen Vernunft (Königsberg, 1784), which was a brief but very accurate commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
Kant's reputation gradually rose through the latter portion of the 1780s, sparked by a series of important works: the 1784 essay, "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?"; 1785's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (his first work on moral philosophy); and, from 1786, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. But Kant's fame ultimately arrived from an unexpected source. In 1786, Karl Leonhard Reinhold published a series of public letters on Kantian philosophy. In these letters, Reinhold framed Kant's philosophy as a response to the central intellectual controversy of the era: the pantheism controversy. Friedrich Jacobi had accused the recently deceased Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (a distinguished dramatist and philosophical essayist) of Spinozism. Such a charge, tantamount to atheism, was vigorously denied by Lessing's friend Moses Mendelssohn, leading to a bitter public dispute among partisans. The controversy gradually escalated into a debate about the values of the Enlightenment and the value of reason.
Reinhold maintained in his letters that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason could settle this dispute by defending the authority and bounds of reason. Reinhold's letters were widely read and made Kant the most famous philosopher of his era.
Later work
Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book. Most of his subsequent work focused on other areas of philosophy. He continued to develop his moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason (known as the second Critique) and 1797's Metaphysics of Morals. The 1790 Critique of Judgment (the third Critique) applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology.
In 1792, Kant's attempt to publish the Second of the four Pieces of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, in the journal Berlinische Monatsschrift, met with opposition from the King's censorship commission, which had been established that same year in the context of the French Revolution. Kant then arranged to have all four pieces published as a book, routing it through the philosophy department at the University of Jena to avoid the need for theological censorship. This insubordination earned him a now famous reprimand from the King. When he nevertheless published a second edition in 1794, the censor was so irate that he arranged for a royal order that required Kant never to publish or even speak publicly about religion. Kant then published his response to the King's reprimand and explained himself, in the preface of The Conflict of the Faculties.
He also wrote a number of semi-popular essays on history, religion, politics and other topics. These works were well received by Kant's contemporaries and confirmed his preeminent status in 18th-century philosophy. There were several journals devoted solely to defending and criticizing Kantian philosophy. Despite his success, philosophical trends were moving in another direction. Many of Kant's most important disciples and followers (including Reinhold, Beck and Fichte) transformed the Kantian position into increasingly radical forms of idealism. The progressive stages of revision of Kant's teachings marked the emergence of German idealism. Kant opposed these developments and publicly denounced Fichte in an open letter in 1799. It was one of his final acts expounding a stance on philosophical questions. In 1800, a student of Kant named Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche (1762–1842) published a manual of logic for teachers called Logik, which he had prepared at Kant's request. Jäsche prepared the Logik using a copy of a textbook in logic by Georg Friedrich Meier entitled Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre, in which Kant had written copious notes and annotations. The Logik has been considered of fundamental importance to Kant's philosophy, and the understanding of it. The great 19th-century logician Charles Sanders Peirce remarked, in an incomplete review of Thomas Kingsmill Abbott's English translation of the introduction to Logik, that "Kant's whole philosophy turns upon his logic." Also, Robert Schirokauer Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz, wrote in the translators' introduction to their English translation of the Logik, "Its importance lies not only in its significance for the Critique of Pure Reason, the second part of which is a restatement of fundamental tenets of the Logic, but in its position within the whole of Kant's work."
Death and burial
Kant's health, long poor, worsened and he died at Königsberg on 12 February 1804, uttering "Es ist gut (It is good)" before expiring. His unfinished final work was published as Opus Postumum. Kant always cut a curious figure in his lifetime for his modest, rigorously scheduled habits, which have been referred to as clocklike. However, Heinrich Heine noted the magnitude of "his destructive, world-crushing thoughts" and considered him a sort of philosophical "executioner", comparing him to Robespierre with the observation that both men "represented in the highest the type of provincial bourgeois. Nature had destined them to weigh coffee and sugar, but Fate determined that they should weigh other things and placed on the scales of the one a king, on the scales of the other a god."
When his body was transferred to a new burial spot, his skull was measured during the exhumation and found to be larger than the average German male's with a "high and broad" forehead. His forehead has been an object of interest ever since it became well-known through his portraits: "In Döbler's portrait and in Kiefer's faithful if expressionistic reproduction of it — as well as in many of the other late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century portraits of Kant — the forehead is remarkably large and decidedly retreating. Was Kant's forehead shaped this way in these images because he was a philosopher, or, to follow the implications of Lavater's system, was he a philosopher because of the intellectual acuity manifested by his forehead? Kant and Johann Kaspar Lavater were correspondents on theological matters, and Lavater refers to Kant in his work "Physiognomic Fragments, for the Education of Human Knowledge and Love of People" (Leipzig & Winterthur, 1775–1778).
Kant's mausoleum adjoins the northeast corner of Königsberg Cathedral in Kaliningrad, Russia. The mausoleum was constructed by the architect Friedrich Lahrs and was finished in 1924 in time for the bicentenary of Kant's birth. Originally, Kant was buried inside the cathedral, but in 1880 his remains were moved to a neo-Gothic chapel adjoining the northeast corner of the cathedral. Over the years, the chapel became dilapidated and was demolished to make way for the mausoleum, which was built on the same location.
The tomb and its mausoleum are among the few artifacts of German times preserved by the Soviets after they conquered and annexed the city. Today, many newlyweds bring flowers to the mausoleum. Artifacts previously owned by Kant, known as Kantiana, were included in the Königsberg City Museum. However, the museum was destroyed during World War II. A replica of the statue of Kant that stood in German times in front of the main University of Königsberg building was donated by a German entity in the early 1990s and placed in the same grounds.
After the expulsion of Königsberg's German population at the end of World War II, the University of Königsberg where Kant taught was replaced by the Russian-language Kaliningrad State University, which appropriated the campus and surviving buildings. In 2005, the university was renamed Immanuel Kant State University of Russia. The name change was announced at a ceremony attended by President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, and the university formed a Kant Society, dedicated to the study of Kantianism. The university was again renamed in the 2010s, to Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University.
In late November 2018, his tomb and statue were vandalized with paint by unknown assailants, who also scattered leaflets glorifying Rus' and denouncing Kant as a "traitor". The incident is apparently connected with a recent vote to rename Khrabrovo Airport, where Kant was in the lead for a while, prompting Russian nationalist resentment.
Philosophy
In Kant's essay "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?", he defined the Enlightenment as an age shaped by the Latin motto Sapere aude ("Dare to be wise"). Kant maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority. His work reconciled many of the differences between the rationalist and empiricist traditions of the 18th century. He had a decisive impact on the Romantic and German Idealist philosophies of the 19th century. His work has also been a starting point for many 20th century philosophers.
Kant asserted that, because of the limitations of argumentation in the absence of irrefutable evidence, no one could really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not. For the sake of morality and as a ground for reason, Kant asserted, people are justified in believing in God, even though they could never know God's presence empirically.
The sense of an enlightened approach and the critical method required that "If one cannot prove that a thing is, he may try to prove that it is not. If he fails to do either (as often occurs), he may still ask whether it is in his interest to accept one or the other of the alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical point of view. Hence the question no longer is as to whether perpetual peace is a real thing or not a real thing, or as to whether we may not be deceiving ourselves when we adopt the former alternative, but we must act on the supposition of its being real." The presupposition of God, soul, and freedom was then a practical concern, for
Kant drew a parallel between the Copernican revolution and the epistemology of his new transcendental philosophy, involving two interconnected foundations of his "critical philosophy":
the epistemology of transcendental idealism and
the moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason.
These teachings placed the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral worlds. Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science was not just the accidental accumulation of sense perceptions.
Conceptual unification and integration is carried out by the mind through concepts or the "categories of the understanding" operating on the perceptual manifold within space and time. The latter are not concepts, but are forms of sensibility that are a priori necessary conditions for any possible experience. Thus the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that operates within it depend on the mind's processes, the product of the rule-based activity that Kant called "synthesis". There is much discussion among Kant scholars about the correct interpretation of this train of thought.
The 'two-world' interpretation regards Kant's position as a statement of epistemological limitation, that we are not able to transcend the bounds of our own mind, meaning that we cannot access the "thing-in-itself". However, Kant also speaks of the thing in itself or transcendental object as a product of the (human) understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of sensibility. Following this line of thought, some interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological domain but simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding alonethis is known as the two-aspect view.
The notion of the "thing in itself" was much discussed by philosophers after Kant. It was argued that, because the "thing in itself" was unknowable, its existence must not be assumed. Rather than arbitrarily switching to an account that was ungrounded in anything supposed to be the "real", as did the German Idealists, another group arose who asked how our (presumably reliable) accounts of a coherent and rule-abiding universe were actually grounded. This new kind of philosophy became known as Phenomenology, and its founder was Edmund Husserl.
With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather is only the good will itself. A good will is one that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. This law obliges one to treat humanityunderstood as rational agency, and represented through oneself as well as othersas an end in itself rather than (merely) as means to other ends the individual might hold. This necessitates practical self-reflection in which we universalize our reasons.
These ideas have largely framed or influenced all subsequent philosophical discussion and analysis. The specifics of Kant's account generated immediate and lasting controversy. Nevertheless, his thesesthat the mind itself necessarily makes a constitutive contribution to its knowledge, that this contribution is transcendental rather than psychological, that philosophy involves self-critical activity, that morality is rooted in human freedom, and that to act autonomously is to act according to rational moral principleshave all had a lasting effect on subsequent philosophy.
Epistemology
Theory of perception
Kant defines his theory of perception in his influential 1781 work the Critique of Pure Reason, which has often been cited as the most significant volume of metaphysics and epistemology in modern philosophy. Kant maintains that understanding of the external world had its foundations not merely in experience, but in both experience and a priori concepts, thus offering a non-empiricist critique of rationalist philosophy, which is what has been referred to as his Copernican revolution.
Firstly, Kant distinguishes between analytic and synthetic propositions:
Analytic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is contained in its subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are unmarried," or, "All bodies take up space."
Synthetic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is not contained in its subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are alone," or, "All bodies have weight."
An analytic proposition is true by nature of the meaning of the words in the sentence — we require no further knowledge than a grasp of the language to understand this proposition. On the other hand, a synthetic statement is one that tells us something about the world. The truth or falsehood of synthetic statements derives from something outside their linguistic content. In this instance, weight is not a necessary predicate of the body; until we are told the heaviness of the body we do not know that it has weight. In this case, experience of the body is required before its heaviness becomes clear. Before Kant's first Critique, empiricists (cf. Hume) and rationalists (cf. Leibniz) assumed that all synthetic statements required experience to be known.
Kant contests this assumption by claiming that elementary mathematics, like arithmetic, is synthetic a priori, in that its statements provide new knowledge not derived from experience. This becomes part of his over-all argument for transcendental idealism. That is, he argues that the possibility of experience depends on certain necessary conditions — which he calls a priori forms — and that these conditions structure and hold true of the world of experience. His main claims in the "Transcendental Aesthetic" are that mathematic judgments are synthetic a priori and that space and time are not derived from experience but rather are its preconditions.
Once we have grasped the functions of basic arithmetic, we do not need empirical experience to know that 100 + 100 = 200, and so it appears that arithmetic is analytic. However, that it is analytic can be disproved by considering the calculation 5 + 7 = 12: there is nothing in the numbers 5 and 7 by which the number 12 can be inferred. Thus "5 + 7" and "the cube root of 1,728" or "12" are not analytic because their reference is the same but their sense is not — the statement "5 + 7 = 12" tells us something new about the world. It is self-evident, and undeniably a priori, but at the same time it is synthetic. Thus Kant argued that a proposition can be synthetic and a priori.
Kant asserts that experience is based on the perception of external objects and a priori knowledge. The external world, he writes, provides those things that we sense. But our mind processes this information and gives it order, allowing us to comprehend it. Our mind supplies the conditions of space and time to experience objects. According to the "transcendental unity of apperception", the concepts of the mind (Understanding) and perceptions or intuitions that garner information from phenomena (Sensibility) are synthesized by comprehension. Without concepts, perceptions are nondescript; without perceptions, concepts are meaningless. Thus the famous statement: "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions [perceptions] without concepts are blind."
Kant also claims that an external environment is necessary for the establishment of the self. Although Kant would want to argue that there is no empirical way of observing the self, we can see the logical necessity of the self when we observe that we can have different perceptions of the external environment over time. By uniting these general representations into one global representation, we can see how a transcendental self emerges. "I am therefore conscious of the identical self in regard to the manifold of the representations that are given to me in an intuition because I call them all together my representations, which constitute one."
Categories of the Faculty of Understanding
Kant deemed it obvious that we have some objective knowledge of the world, such as, say, Newtonian physics. But this knowledge relies on synthetic, a priori laws of nature, like causality and substance. How is this possible? Kant's solution was that the subject must supply laws that make experience of objects possible, and that these laws are synthetic, a priori laws of nature that apply to all objects before we experience them. To deduce all these laws, Kant examined experience in general, dissecting in it what is supplied by the mind from what is supplied by the given intuitions. This is commonly called a transcendental deduction.
To begin with, Kant's distinction between the a posteriori being contingent and particular knowledge, and the a priori being universal and necessary knowledge, must be kept in mind. If we merely connect two intuitions together in a perceiving subject, the knowledge is always subjective because it is derived a posteriori, when what is desired is for the knowledge to be objective, that is, for the two intuitions to refer to the object and hold good of it for anyone at any time, not just the perceiving subject in its current condition. What else is equivalent to objective knowledge besides the a priori (universal and necessary knowledge)? Before knowledge can be objective, it must be incorporated under an a priori category of understanding.
For example, if a subject says, "The sun shines on the stone; the stone grows warm," all he perceives are phenomena. His judgment is contingent and holds no necessity. But if he says, "The sunshine causes the stone to warm," he subsumes the perception under the category of causality, which is not found in the perception, and necessarily synthesizes the concept sunshine with the concept heat, producing a necessarily universally true judgment.
To explain the categories in more detail, they are the preconditions of the construction of objects in the mind. Indeed, to even think of the sun and stone presupposes the category of subsistence, that is, substance. For the categories synthesize the random data of the sensory manifold into intelligible objects. This means that the categories are also the most abstract things one can say of any object whatsoever, and hence one can have an a priori cognition of the totality of all objects of experience if one can list all of them. To do so, Kant formulates another transcendental deduction.
Judgments are, for Kant, the preconditions of any thought. Man thinks via judgments, so all possible judgments must be listed and the perceptions connected within them put aside, so as to make it possible to examine the moments when the understanding is engaged in constructing judgments. For the categories are equivalent to these moments, in that they are concepts of intuitions in general, so far as they are determined by these moments universally and necessarily. Thus by listing all the moments, one can deduce from them all of the categories.
One may now ask: How many possible judgments are there? Kant believed that all the possible propositions within Aristotle's syllogistic logic are equivalent to all possible judgments, and that all the logical operators within the propositions are equivalent to the moments of the understanding within judgments. Thus he listed Aristotle's system in four groups of three: quantity (universal, particular, singular), quality (affirmative, negative, infinite), relation (categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive) and modality (problematic, assertoric, apodeictic). The parallelism with Kant's categories is obvious: quantity (unity, plurality, totality), quality (reality, negation, limitation), relation (substance, cause, community) and modality (possibility, existence, necessity).
The fundamental building blocks of experience, i.e. objective knowledge, are now in place. First there is the sensibility, which supplies the mind with intuitions, and then there is the understanding, which produces judgments of these intuitions and can subsume them under categories. These categories lift the intuitions up out of the subject's current state of consciousness and place them within consciousness in general, producing universally necessary knowledge. For the categories are innate in any rational being, so any intuition thought within a category in one mind is necessarily subsumed and understood identically in any mind. In other words, we filter what we see and hear.
Transcendental schema doctrine
Kant ran into a problem with his theory that the mind plays a part in producing objective knowledge. Intuitions and categories are entirely disparate, so how can they interact? Kant's solution is the (transcendental) schema: a priori principles by which the transcendental imagination connects concepts with intuitions through time. All the principles are temporally bound, for if a concept is purely a priori, as the categories are, then they must apply for all times. Hence there are principles such as substance is that which endures through time, and the cause must always be prior to the effect. In the context of transcendental schema the concept of transcendental reflection is of a great importance.
Ethics
Kant developed his ethics, or moral philosophy, in three works: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
In Groundwork, Kant tries to convert our everyday, obvious, rational knowledge of morality into philosophical knowledge. The latter two works used "practical reason", which is based only on things about which reason can tell us, and not deriving any principles from experience, to reach conclusions which can be applied to the world of experience (in the second part of The Metaphysics of Morals).
Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the "Categorical Imperative", and is derived from the concept of duty. Kant defines the demands of moral law as "categorical imperatives". Categorical imperatives are principles that are intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed in all situations and circumstances, if our behavior is to observe the moral law. The Categorical Imperative provides a test against which moral statements can be assessed. Kant also stated that the moral means and ends can be applied to the categorical imperative, that rational beings can pursue certain "ends" using the appropriate "means". Ends based on physical needs or wants create hypothetical imperatives. The categorical imperative can only be based on something that is an "end in itself", that is, an end that is not a means to some other need, desire, or purpose. Kant believed that the moral law is a principle of reason itself, and is not based on contingent facts about the world, such as what would make us happy, but to act on the moral law which has no other motive than "worthiness to be happy". Accordingly, he believed that moral obligation applies only to rational agents.
Unlike a hypothetical imperative, a categorical imperative is an unconditional obligation; it has the force of an obligation regardless of our will or desires In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785) Kant enumerated three formulations of the categorical imperative that he believed to be roughly equivalent. In the same book, Kant stated:
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.
According to Kant, one cannot make exceptions for oneself. The philosophical maxim on which one acts should always be considered to be a universal law without exception. One cannot allow oneself to do a particular action unless one thinks it appropriate that the reason for the action should become a universal law. For example, one should not steal, however dire the circumstancesbecause, by permitting oneself to steal, one makes stealing a universally acceptable act. This is the first formulation of the categorical imperative, often known as the universalizability principle.
Kant believed that, if an action is not done with the motive of duty, then it is without moral value. He thought that every action should have pure intention behind it; otherwise, it is meaningless. The final result is not the most important aspect of an action; rather, how the person feels while carrying out the action is the time when value is attached to the result.
In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant also posited the "counter-utilitarian idea that there is a difference between preferences and values, and that considerations of individual rights temper calculations of aggregate utility", a concept that is an axiom in economics:
Everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. But that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself does not have mere relative worth, i.e., price, but an intrinsic worth, i.e., a dignity. (p. 53, italics in original).
A phrase quoted by Kant, which is used to summarize the counter-utilitarian nature of his moral philosophy, is Fiat justitia, pereat mundus ("Let justice be done, though the world perish"), which he translates loosely as "Let justice reign even if all the rascals in the world should perish from it". This appears in his 1795 Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch ("Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf"), Appendix 1.
First formulation
The first formulation (Formula of Universal Law) of the moral imperative "requires that the maxims be chosen as though they should hold as universal laws of nature". This formulation in principle has as its supreme law the creed "Always act according to that maxim whose universality as a law you can at the same time will" and is the "only condition under which a will can never come into conflict with itself [....]"
One interpretation of the first formulation is called the "universalizability test". An agent's maxim, according to Kant, is his "subjective principle of human actions": that is, what the agent believes is his reason to act. The universalisability test has five steps:
Find the agent's maxim (i.e., an action paired with its motivation). Take, for example, the declaration "I will lie for personal benefit". Lying is the action; the motivation is to fulfill some sort of desire. Together, they form the maxim.
Imagine a possible world in which everyone in a similar position to the real-world agent followed that maxim.
Decide if contradictions or irrationalities would arise in the possible world as a result of following the maxim.
If a contradiction or irrationality would arise, acting on that maxim is not allowed in the real world.
If there is no contradiction, then acting on that maxim is permissible, and is sometimes required.
(For a modern parallel, see John Rawls' hypothetical situation, the original position.)
Second formulation
The second formulation (or Formula of the End in Itself) holds that "the rational being, as by its nature an end and thus as an end in itself, must serve in every maxim as the condition restricting all merely relative and arbitrary ends". The principle dictates that you "[a]ct with reference to every rational being (whether yourself or another) so that it is an end in itself in your maxim", meaning that the rational being is "the basis of all maxims of action" and "must be treated never as a mere means but as the supreme limiting condition in the use of all means, i.e., as an end at the same time".
Third formulation
The third formulation (i.e. Formula of Autonomy) is a synthesis of the first two and is the basis for the "complete determination of all maxims". It states "that all maxims which stem from autonomous legislation ought to harmonize with a possible realm of ends as with a realm of nature".
In principle, "So act as if your maxims should serve at the same time as the universal law (of all rational beings)", meaning that we should so act that we may think of ourselves as "a member in the universal realm of ends", legislating universal laws through our maxims (that is, a universal code of conduct), in a "possible realm of ends". No one may elevate themselves above the universal law, therefore it is one's duty to follow the maxim(s).
Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason
Commentators, starting in the 20th century, have tended to see Kant as having a strained relationship with religion, though this was not the prevalent view in the 19th century. Karl Leonhard Reinhold, whose letters first made Kant famous, wrote "I believe that I may infer without reservation that the interest of religion, and of Christianity in particular, accords completely with the result of the Critique of Reason." Johann Schultz, who wrote one of the first Kant commentaries, wrote "And does not this system itself cohere most splendidly with the Christian religion? Do not the divinity and beneficence of the latter become all the more evident?" This view continued throughout the 19th century, as noted by Friedrich Nietzsche, who said "Kant's success is merely a theologian's success." The reason for these views was Kant's moral theology, and the widespread belief that his philosophy was the great antithesis to Spinozism, which had been convulsing the European academy for much of the 18th century. Spinozism was widely seen as the cause of the Pantheism controversy, and as a form of sophisticated pantheism or even atheism. As Kant's philosophy disregarded the possibility of arguing for God through pure reason alone, for the same reasons it also disregarded the possibility of arguing against God through pure reason alone. This, coupled with his moral philosophy (his argument that the existence of morality is a rational reason why God and an afterlife do and must exist), was the reason he was seen by many, at least through the end of the 19th century, as a great defender of religion in general and Christianity in particular.
Kant articulates his strongest criticisms of the organization and practices of religious organizations to those that encourage what he sees as a religion of counterfeit service to God. Among the major targets of his criticism are external ritual, superstition and a hierarchical church order. He sees these as efforts to make oneself pleasing to God in ways other than conscientious adherence to the principle of moral rightness in choosing and acting upon one's maxims. Kant's criticisms on these matters, along with his rejection of certain theoretical proofs grounded in pure reason (particularly the ontological argument) for the existence of God and his philosophical commentary on some Christian doctrines, have resulted in interpretations that see Kant as hostile to religion in general and Christianity in particular (e.g., Walsh 1967). Nevertheless, other interpreters consider that Kant was trying to mark off defensible from indefensible Christian belief. Kant sees in Jesus Christ the affirmation of a "pure moral disposition of the heart" that "can make man well-pleasing to God". Regarding Kant's conception of religion, some critics have argued that he was sympathetic to deism. Other critics have argued that Kant's moral conception moves from deism to theism (as moral theism), for example Allen W. Wood and Merold Westphal. As for Kant's book Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, it was emphasized that Kant reduced religiosity to rationality, religion to morality and Christianity to ethics. However, many interpreters, including Allen W. Wood and Lawrence Pasternack, now agree with Stephen Palmquist's claim that a better way of reading Kant's Religion is to see him as raising morality to the status of religion.
Idea of freedom
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes between the transcendental idea of freedom, which as a psychological concept is "mainly empirical" and refers to "whether a faculty of beginning a series of successive things or states from itself is to be assumed" and the practical concept of freedom as the independence of our will from the "coercion" or "necessitation through sensuous impulses". Kant finds it a source of difficulty that the practical idea of freedom is founded on the transcendental idea of freedom, but for the sake of practical interests uses the practical meaning, taking "no account of... its transcendental meaning," which he feels was properly "disposed of" in the Third Antinomy, and as an element in the question of the freedom of the will is for philosophy "a real stumbling block" that has embarrassed speculative reason.
Kant calls practical "everything that is possible through freedom", and the pure practical laws that are never given through sensuous conditions but are held analogously with the universal law of causality are moral laws. Reason can give us only the "pragmatic laws of free action through the senses", but pure practical laws given by reason a priori dictate "what is to be done". (The same distinction of transcendental and practical meaning can be applied to the idea of God, with the proviso that the practical concept of freedom can be experienced.)
Categories of freedom
In the Critique of Practical Reason, at the end of the second Main Part of the Analytics, Kant introduces the categories of freedom, in analogy with the categories of understanding their practical counterparts. Kant's categories of freedom apparently function primarily as conditions for the possibility for actions (i) to be free, (ii) to be understood as free and (iii) to be morally evaluated. For Kant, although actions as theoretical objects are constituted by means of the theoretical categories, actions as practical objects (objects of practical use of reason, and which can be good or bad) are constituted by means of the categories of freedom. Only in this way can actions, as phenomena, be a consequence of freedom, and be understood and evaluated as such.
Aesthetic philosophy
Kant discusses the subjective nature of aesthetic qualities and experiences in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764). Kant's contribution to aesthetic theory is developed in the Critique of Judgment (1790) where he investigates the possibility and logical status of "judgments of taste." In the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment," the first major division of the Critique of Judgment, Kant used the term "aesthetic" in a manner that, according to Kant scholar W.H. Walsh, differs from its modern sense. In the Critique of Pure Reason, to note essential differences between judgments of taste, moral judgments, and scientific judgments, Kant abandoned the term "aesthetic" as "designating the critique of taste," noting that judgments of taste could never be "directed" by "laws a priori." After A. G. Baumgarten, who wrote Aesthetica (1750–58), Kant was one of the first philosophers to develop and integrate aesthetic theory into a unified and comprehensive philosophical system, utilizing ideas that played an integral role throughout his philosophy.
In the chapter "Analytic of the Beautiful" in the Critique of Judgment, Kant states that beauty is not a property of an artwork or natural phenomenon, but is instead consciousness of the pleasure that attends the 'free play' of the imagination and the understanding. Even though it appears that we are using reason to decide what is beautiful, the judgment is not a cognitive judgment, "and is consequently not logical, but aesthetical" (§ 1). A pure judgement of taste is subjective since it refers to the emotional response of the subject and is based upon nothing but esteem for an object itself: it is a disinterested pleasure, and we feel that pure judgements of taste (i.e. judgements of beauty), lay claim to universal validity (§§ 20–22). It is important to note that this universal validity is not derived from a determinate concept of beauty but from common sense (§40). Kant also believed that a judgement of taste shares characteristics engaged in a moral judgement: both are disinterested, and we hold them to be universal. In the chapter "Analytic of the Sublime" Kant identifies the sublime as an aesthetic quality that, like beauty, is subjective, but unlike beauty refers to an indeterminate relationship between the faculties of the imagination and of reason, and shares the character of moral judgments in the use of reason. The feeling of the sublime, divided into two distinct modes (the mathematical and the dynamical sublime), describes two subjective moments that concern the relationship of the faculty of the imagination to reason. Some commentators argue that Kant's critical philosophy contains a third kind of the sublime, the moral sublime, which is the aesthetic response to the moral law or a representation, and a development of the "noble" sublime in Kant's theory of 1764. The mathematical sublime results from the failure of the imagination to comprehend natural objects that appear boundless and formless, or appear "absolutely great" (§§ 23–25). This imaginative failure is then recuperated through the pleasure taken in reason's assertion of the concept of infinity. In this move the faculty of reason proves itself superior to our fallible sensible self (§§ 25–26). In the dynamical sublime there is the sense of annihilation of the sensible self as the imagination tries to comprehend a vast might. This power of nature threatens us but through the resistance of reason to such sensible annihilation, the subject feels a pleasure and a sense of the human moral vocation. This appreciation of moral feeling through exposure to the sublime helps to develop moral character.
Kant developed a theory of humor (§ 54) that has been interpreted as an "incongruity" theory. He illustrated his theory of humor by telling three narrative jokes in the Critique of Judgment. He thought that the physiological impact of humor is akin to that of music. His knowledge of music, however, has been reported to be much weaker than his sense of humor: He told many more jokes throughout his lectures and writings.
Kant developed a distinction between an object of art as a material value subject to the conventions of society and the transcendental condition of the judgment of taste as a "refined" value in his Idea of A Universal History (1784). In the Fourth and Fifth Theses of that work he identified all art as the "fruits of unsociableness" due to men's "antagonism in society" and, in the Seventh Thesis, asserted that while such material property is indicative of a civilized state, only the ideal of morality and the universalization of refined value through the improvement of the mind "belongs to culture".
Political philosophy
In Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant listed several conditions that he thought necessary for ending wars and creating a lasting peace. They included a world of constitutional republics. His classical republican theory was extended in the Science of Right, the first part of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). Kant believed that universal history leads to the ultimate world of republican states at peace, but his theory was not pragmatic. The process was described in "Perpetual Peace" as natural rather than rational:
Kant's political thought can be summarized as republican government and international organization. "In more characteristically Kantian terms, it is doctrine of the state based upon the law (Rechtsstaat) and of eternal peace. Indeed, in each of these formulations, both terms express the same idea: that of legal constitution or of 'peace through law'. Kant's political philosophy, being essentially a legal doctrine, rejects by definition the opposition between moral education and the play of passions as alternate foundations for social life. The state is defined as the union of men under law. The state is constituted by laws which are necessary a priori because they flow from the very concept of law. "A regime can be judged by no other criteria nor be assigned any other functions, than those proper to the lawful order as such."
He opposed "democracy," which at his time meant direct democracy, believing that majority rule posed a threat to individual liberty. He stated, "...democracy is, properly speaking, necessarily a despotism, because it establishes an executive power in which 'all' decide for or even against one who does not agree; that is, 'all,' who are not quite all, decide, and this is a contradiction of the general will with itself and with freedom." As with most writers at the time, he distinguished three forms of government i.e. democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy with mixed government as the most ideal form of it.
Anthropology
Kant lectured on anthropology, the study of human nature, for twenty-three and a half years. His Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View was published in 1798. (This was the subject of Michel Foucault's secondary dissertation for his State doctorate, Introduction to Kant's Anthropology.) Kant's Lectures on Anthropology were published for the first time in 1997 in German. Introduction to Kant's Anthropology was translated into English and published by the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy series in 2006.
Kant was among the first people of his time to introduce anthropology as an intellectual area of study, long before the field gained popularity, and his texts are considered to have advanced the field. His point of view was to influence the works of later philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur.
Kant was also the first to suggest using a dimensionality approach to human diversity. He analyzed the nature of the Hippocrates-Galen four temperaments and plotted them in two dimensions: (1) "activation", or energetic aspect of behaviour, and (2) "orientation on emotionality". Cholerics were described as emotional and energetic; Phlegmatics as balanced and weak; Sanguines as balanced and energetic, and Melancholics as emotional and weak. These two dimensions reappeared in all subsequent models of temperament and personality traits.
Kant viewed anthropology in two broad categories: (1) the physiological approach, which he referred to as "what nature makes of the human being"; and (2) the pragmatic approach, which explored the things that a human "can and should make of himself."
Racism
Kant was one of the most notable Enlightenment thinkers to defend racism, and some have claimed that he was one of the central figures in the birth of modern scientific racism. Where figures such as Carl Linnaeus and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach had supposed only "empirical" observation for racism, Kant produced a full-blown theory of race. Using the Four Temperaments of ancient Greece, he proposed a hierarchy of four racial categories: white Europeans, yellow Asians, black Africans, and red Amerindians.
Kant wrote that "[Whites] contain all the impulses of nature in affects and passions, all talents, all dispositions to culture and civilization and can as readily obey as govern. They are the only ones who always advance to perfection.” He describes South Asians as "educated to the highest degree but only in the arts and not in the sciences". He goes on that Hindustanis can never reach the level of abstract concepts and that a "great hindustani man" is one who has "gone far in the art of deception and has much money". He stated that the Hindus always stay the way they are and can never advance. About black Africans, Kant wrote that "they can be educated but only as servants, that is they allow themselves to be trained". He quotes David Hume as challenging anyone to "cite a [single] example in which a Negro has shown talents" and asserts that, among the "hundreds of thousands" of blacks transported during the Atlantic slave trade, even among the freed "still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality". To Kant, "the Negro can be disciplined and cultivated, but is never genuinely civilized. He falls of his own accord into savagery." Native Americans, Kant opined, "cannot be educated". He calls them unmotivated, lacking affect, passion and love, describing them as too weak for labor, unfit for any culture, and too phlegmatic for diligence. He said the Native Americans are "far below the Negro, who undoubtedly holds the lowest of all remaining levels by which we designate the different races". Kant stated that "Americans and Blacks cannot govern themselves. They thus serve only for slaves."
Kant was an opponent of miscegenation, believing that whites would be "degraded" and the "fusing of races" is undesireable, for "not every race adopts the morals and customs of the Europeans". He stated that "instead of assimilation, which was intended by the melting together of the various races, Nature has here made a law of just the opposite". He believed that in the future all races would be extinguished, except that of the whites.
Charles W. Mills wrote that Kant has been "sanitized for public consumption", his racist works conveniently ignored. Robert Bernasconi stated that Kant "supplied the first scientific definition of race". Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze is credited with bringing Kant's contributions to racism to light in the 1990s among Western philosophers, who often gloss over this part of his life and works. He wrote about Kant's ideas of race:
Pauline Kleingeld argues that while Kant was indeed a staunch advocate of scientific racism for much of his career, his views on race changed significantly in works published in the last decade of his life. In particular, she argues that Kant unambiguously rejected past views related to racial hierarchies and the diminished rights or moral status of non-whites in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795). This work also saw him providing extended arguments against European colonialism, which he claimed was morally unjust and incompatible with the equal rights held by indigenous populations. Kleingeld argues that this shift in Kant's views later in life has often been forgotten or ignored in the literature on Kant's racist anthropology, and that the shift suggests a belated recognition of the fact that racial hierarchy was incompatible with a universalized moral framework. While Kant's perspective on the topic of European colonialism became more balanced, he still considered Europeans "civilized" to the exception of others:
Influence and legacy
Kant's influence on Western thought has been profound. Although the basic tenets of Kant's transcendental idealism (i.e. that space and time are a priori forms of human perception rather than real properties and the claim that formal logic and transcendental logic coincide) have been claimed to be falsified by modern science and logic, and no longer set the intellectual agenda of contemporary philosophers, Kant is credited with having innovated the way philosophical inquiry has been carried at least up to the early nineteenth century. This shift consisted in several closely related innovations that, although highly contentious in themselves, have become important in postmodern philosophy and in the social sciences broadly construed:
The human subject seen as the centre of inquiry into human knowledge, such that it is impossible to philosophize about things as they exist independently of human perception or of how they are for us;
The notion that is possible to discover and systematically explore the inherent limits to our ability to know entirely a priori;
The notion of the "categorical imperative", an assertion that people are naturally endowed with the ability and obligation toward right reason and acting. Perhaps his most famous quote is drawn from the Critique of Practical Reason: "Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe . . . : the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."
The concept of "conditions of possibility", as in his notion of "the conditions of possible experience"that is that things, knowledge, and forms of consciousness rest on prior conditions that make them possible, so that, to understand or to know them, we must first understand these conditions;
The theory that objective experience is actively constituted or constructed by the functioning of the human mind;
His notion of moral autonomy as central to humanity;
His assertion of the principle that human beings should be treated as ends rather than as means.
Kant's ideas have been incorporated into a variety of schools of thought. These include German idealism, Marxism, positivism, phenomenology, existentialism, critical theory, linguistic philosophy, structuralism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism.
Historical influence
During his own life, much critical attention was paid to his thought. He influenced Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Novalis during the 1780s and 1790s. The school of thinking known as German idealism developed from his writings. The German idealists Fichte and Schelling, for example, tried to bring traditional "metaphysically" laden notions like "the Absolute", "God", and "Being" into the scope of Kant's critical thought. In so doing, the German idealists tried to reverse Kant's view that we cannot know what we cannot observe.
The influential English Romantic poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge was greatly influenced by Kant and helped to spread awareness of him, and of German idealism generally, in the UK and the USA. In his Biographia Literaria (1817), he credits Kant's ideas in coming to believe that the mind is not a passive but an active agent in the apprehension of reality.
Hegel was one of Kant's first major critics. The main accusations Hegel charged Kant's philosophy with were formalism (or "abstractism") and irrationality. In Hegel's view the entire project of setting a "transcendental subject" (i.e human consciousness) apart from nature, history, and society was fundamentally flawed, although parts of that very project could be put to good use in a new direction, that Hegel called the "absolute idealism". Similar concerns moved Hegel's criticisms to Kant's concept of moral autonomy, to which Hegel opposed an ethic focused on the "ethical life" of the community. In a sense, Hegel's notion of "ethical life" is meant to subsume, rather than replace, Kantian ethics. And Hegel can be seen as trying to defend Kant's idea of freedom as going beyond finite "desires", by means of reason. Thus, in contrast to later critics like Nietzsche or Russell, Hegel shares some of Kant's concerns.
Kant's thinking on religion was used in Britain to challenge the decline in religious faith in the nineteenth century. British Catholic writers, notably G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, followed this approach. Ronald Englefield debated this movement, and Kant's use of language. Criticisms of Kant were common in the realist views of the new positivism at that time.
Arthur Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism. He, like G. E. Schulze, Jacobi and Fichte before him, was critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Things in themselves, they argued, are neither the cause of what we observe nor are they completely beyond our access. Ever since the first Critique of Pure Reason philosophers have been critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Many have argued, if such a thing exists beyond experience then one cannot posit that it affects us causally, since that would entail stretching the category "causality" beyond the realm of experience. For Schopenhauer things in themselves do not exist outside the non-rational will. The world, as Schopenhauer would have it, is the striving and largely unconscious will. Michael Kelly, in the preface to his 1910 book Kant's Ethics and Schopenhauer's Criticism, stated: "Of Kant it may be said that what is good and true in his philosophy would have been buried with him, were it not for Schopenhauer...."
With the success and wide influence of Hegel's writings, Kant's influence began to wane, though there was in Germany a movement that hailed a return to Kant in the 1860s, beginning with the publication of Kant und die Epigonen in 1865 by Otto Liebmann. His motto was "Back to Kant", and a re-examination of his ideas began (see Neo-Kantianism). During the turn of the 20th century there was an important revival of Kant's theoretical philosophy, known as the Marburg School, represented in the work of Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, Ernst Cassirer, and anti-Neo-Kantian Nicolai Hartmann.
Kant's notion of "Critique" has been quite influential. The early German Romantics, especially Friedrich Schlegel in his "Athenaeum Fragments", used Kant's self-reflexive conception of criticism in their Romantic theory of poetry. Also in aesthetics, Clement Greenberg, in his classic essay "Modernist Painting", uses Kantian criticism, what Greenberg refers to as "immanent criticism", to justify the aims of abstract painting, a movement Greenberg saw as aware of the key limitiaton—flatness—that makes up the medium of painting. French philosopher Michel Foucault was also greatly influenced by Kant's notion of "Critique" and wrote several pieces on Kant for a re-thinking of the Enlightenment as a form of "critical thought". He went so far as to classify his own philosophy as a "critical history of modernity, rooted in Kant".
Kant believed that mathematical truths were forms of synthetic a priori knowledge, which means they are necessary and universal, yet known through intuition. Kant's often brief remarks about mathematics influenced the mathematical school known as intuitionism, a movement in philosophy of mathematics opposed to Hilbert's formalism, and Frege and Bertrand Russell's logicism.
Influence on modern thinkers
With his Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant is considered to have foreshadowed many of the ideas that have come to form the democratic peace theory, one of the main controversies in political science.
Prominent recent Kantians include the British philosophers P. F. Strawson, Onora O'Neill and Quassim Cassam, and the American philosophers Wilfrid Sellars and Christine Korsgaard. Due to the influence of Strawson and Sellars, among others, there has been a renewed interest in Kant's view of the mind. Central to many debates in philosophy of psychology and cognitive science is Kant's conception of the unity of consciousness.
Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls are two significant political and moral philosophers whose work is strongly influenced by Kant's moral philosophy. They argued against relativism, supporting the Kantian view that universality is essential to any viable moral philosophy. Jean-François Lyotard, however, emphasized the indeterminacy in the nature of thought and language and has engaged in debates with Habermas based on the effects this indeterminacy has on philosophical and political debates.
Mou Zongsan's study of Kant has been cited as a highly crucial part in the development of Mou's personal philosophy, namely New Confucianism. Widely regarded as the most influential Kant scholar in China, Mou's rigorous critique of Kant's philosophy—having translated all three of Kant's critiques—served as an ardent attempt to reconcile Chinese and Western philosophy whilst increasing pressure to westernize in China.
Kant's influence also has extended to the social, behavioral, and physical sciences, as in the sociology of Max Weber, the psychology of Jean Piaget and Carl Gustav Jung, and the linguistics of Noam Chomsky. Kant's work on mathematics and synthetic a priori knowledge is also cited by theoretical physicist Albert Einstein as an early influence on his intellectual development, but which he later criticised heavily and rejected. He held the view that "[I]f one does not want to assert that relativity theory goes against reason, one cannot retain the a priori concepts and norms of Kant's system". However, Kant scholar Stephen Palmquist has argued that Einstein's rejection of Kant's influence was primarily "a response to mistaken interpretations of Kant being adopted by contemporary philosophers", when in fact Kant's transcendental perspective informed Einstein's early worldview and led to his insights regarding simultaneity, and eventually to his proposal of the theory of relativity. Because of the thoroughness of the Kantian paradigm shift, his influence extends to thinkers who neither specifically refer to his work nor use his terminology.
In recent years, there has been renewed interest in Kant's theory of mind from the point of view of formal logic and computer science.
Film/television
Kant and his work was heavily referenced in the comedy television show The Good Place, as the show deals with the subject of ethics and moral philosophy.
Bibliography
List of major works
(1749) Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte)
(March 1755) Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels)
(April 1755) Brief Outline of Certain Meditations on Fire (Meditationum quarundam de igne succinta delineatio (master's thesis under Johann Gottfried Teske))
(September 1755) A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio (doctoral thesis))
(1756) The Use in Natural Philosophy of Metaphysics Combined with Geometry, Part I: Physical Monadology (Metaphysicae cum geometrica iunctae usus in philosophin naturali, cuius specimen I. continet monadologiam physicam, abbreviated as Monadologia Physica (thesis as a prerequisite of associate professorship))
(1762) The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures (Die falsche Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figuren)
(1763) The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes)
(1763) Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy (Versuch den Begriff der negativen Größen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen)
(1764) Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen)
(1764) Essay on the Illness of the Head (Über die Krankheit des Kopfes)
(1764) Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (the Prize Essay) (Untersuchungen über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral)
(1766) Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (Träume eines Geistersehers)
(1768) On the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Regions in Space (Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume)
(August 1770) Dissertation on the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World (De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis (doctoral thesis))
(1775) On the Different Races of Man (Über die verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen)
(1781) First edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
(1783) Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik)
(1784) "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" ("Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?")
(1784) "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" ("Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht")
(1785) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten)
(1786) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft)
(1786) "What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?" ("Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren?")
(1786) Conjectural Beginning of Human History (Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte)
(1787) Second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
(1788) Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft)
(1790) Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft)
(1793) Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft)
(1793) On the Old Saw: That May be Right in Theory But It Won't Work in Practice (Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis)
(1795) Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch ("Zum ewigen Frieden")
(1797) Metaphysics of Morals (Metaphysik der Sitten). First part is The Doctrine of Right, which has often been published separately as The Science of Right.
(1798) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht)
(1798) The Contest of Faculties (Der Streit der Fakultäten)
(1800) Logic (Logik)
(1803) On Pedagogy (Über Pädagogik)
(1804) Opus Postumum
(1817) Lectures on Philosophical Theology (Immanuel Kants Vorlesungen über die philosophische Religionslehre edited by K.H.L. Pölitz) [The English edition of A.W. Wood & G.M. Clark (Cornell, 1978) is based on Pölitz' second edition, 1830, of these lectures.]
Collected works in German
Printed version
Wilhelm Dilthey inaugurated the Academy edition (the Akademie-Ausgabe abbreviated as AA or Ak) of Kant's writings (Gesammelte Schriften, Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1902–38) in 1895, and served as its first editor. The volumes are grouped into four sections:
I. Kant's published writings (vols. 1–9),
II. Kant's correspondence (vols. 10–13),
III. Kant's literary remains, or Nachlass (vols. 14–23), and
IV. Student notes from Kant's lectures (vols. 24–29).
Electronic version
Elektronische Edition der Gesammelten Werke Immanuel Kants (vols. 1–23).
See also
Notes
References
Works cited
Kant, Immanuel. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Lewis White Beck, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1969. Page numbers citing this work are Beck's marginal numbers that refer to the page numbers of the standard edition of Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1902–38).
Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: a Biography. Cambridge University Press, 2001. .
Further reading
In Germany, one important contemporary interpreter of Kant and the movement of German Idealism he began is Dieter Henrich, who has some work available in English. P. F. Strawson's The Bounds of Sense (1966) played a significant role in determining the contemporary reception of Kant in England and America. More recent interpreters of note in the English-speaking world include Lewis White Beck, Jonathan Bennett, Henry Allison, Paul Guyer, Christine Korsgaard, Stephen Palmquist, Robert B. Pippin, Roger Scruton, Rudolf Makkreel, and Béatrice Longuenesse.
General introductions to his thought
Broad, C.D. Kant: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Gardner, Sebastian. Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1999.
Martin, Gottfried. Kant's Metaphysics and Theory of Science. Greenwood Press, 1955 (elucidates Kant's most fundamental concepts in their historical context)
Palmquist, Stephen. Kant's System of Perspectives : an architectonic interpretation of the Critical philosophy. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993.
Seung, T.K. 2007. Kant: a Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum.
Satyananda Giri. Kant. Durham, CT: Strategic Publishing Group, 2010.
Scruton, Roger. Kant: a Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2001. (provides a brief account of his life, and a lucid introduction to the three major critiques)
Uleman, Jennifer. An Introduction to Kant's Moral Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Luchte, James. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant's Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties. The Athlone Press, 1983.
Biography and historical context
Beck, Lewis White. Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors. Harvard University Press, 1969. (a survey of Kant's intellectual background)
Beiser, Frederick C. The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte. Harvard University Press, 1987.
Beiser, Frederick C. German Idealism: the Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781–1801. Harvard University Press, 2002
Cassirer, Ernst. Kant's Life and Thought. Translation of Kants Leben und Lehre. Trans., Jame S. Haden, intr. Stephan Körner. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart. Immanuel Kanta study and a comparison with Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruno, Plato and Descartes, the authorised translation from the German by Lord Redesdale, with his 'Introduction', The Bodley Head, London, 1914, (2 volumes).
Gulyga, Arsenij. Immanuel Kant: His Life and Thought. Trans., Marijan Despaltović. Boston: Birkhäuser, 1987.
Johnson, G.R. (ed.). Kant on Swedenborg. Dreams of a Spirit-Seer and Other Writings. Swedenborg Foundation, 2002. (new translation and analysis, many supplementary texts)
Lehner, Ulrich L., Kants Vorsehungskonzept auf dem Hintergrund der deutschen Schulphilosophie und –theologie (Leiden: 2007) (Kant's concept of Providence and its background in German school philosophy and theology)
Pinkard, Terry. German Philosophy, 1760–1860: the Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge, 2002.
Pippin, Robert. Idealism as Modernism. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Sassen, Brigitte (ed.). Kant's Early Critics: the Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy, Cambridge, 2000.
Schabert, Joseph A. "Kant's Influence on his Successors", The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. XLVII, January 1922.
Collections of essays
Firestone, Chris L. and Palmquist, Stephen (eds.). Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion. Notre Dame: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Förster, Eckart (ed.). Kant's Transcendental Deductions:. The Three 'Critiques' and the 'Opus Postumum' Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. Includes an important essay by Dieter Henrich.
Guyer, Paul (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Excellent collection of papers that covers most areas of Kant's thought.
Mohanty, J.N. and Shahan, Robert W. (eds.). Essays on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.
Phillips, Dewi et al. (eds.). Kant and Kierkegaard on Religion. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000, Collection of essays about Kantian religion and its influence on Kierkegaardian and contemporary philosophy of religion.
Proceedings of the International Kant Congresses. Several Congresses (numbered) edited by various publishers.
Theoretical philosophy
Allison, Henry. Kant's Transcendental Idealism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983, 2004. (a very influential defense of Kant's idealism, recently revised).
Ameriks, Karl. Kant's Theory of Mind: An Analysis of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982 (one of the first detailed studies of the Dialectic in English).
Banham, Gary. Kant's Transcendental Imagination. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant's Critical Philosophy. Trans., Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Gram, Moltke S. The Transcendental Turn: The Foundation of Kant's Idealism. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1984.
Greenberg, Robert. Kant's Theory of A Priori Knowledge. Penn State Press, 2001
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987 (modern defense of the view that Kant's theoretical philosophy is a "patchwork" of ill-fitting arguments).
Heidegger, Martin. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Trans., Richard Taft. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
Henrich, Dieter. The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant's Philosophy. Ed. with introduction by Richard L. Velkley; trans. Jeffrey Edwards et al. Harvard University Press, 1994.
Kemp Smith, Norman. A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason. London: Macmillan, 1930 (influential commentary on the first Critique, recently reprinted).
Kitcher, Patricia. Kant's Transcendental Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Longuenesse, Béatrice. Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Princeton University Press, 1998. . (argues that the notion of judgment provides the key to understanding the overall argument of the first Critique)
Melnick, Arthur. Kant's Analogies of Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. (important study of Kant's Analogies, including his defense of the principle of causality)
Paton, H.J. Kant's Metaphysic of Experience: a Commentary on the First Half of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Two volumes. London: Macmillan, 1936. (extensive study of Kant's theoretical philosophy)
Pippin, Robert B. Kant's Theory of Form: An Essay on the Critique of Pure Reason. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. (influential examination of the formal character of Kant's work)
Schopenhauer, Arthur. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Erster Band. Anhang. Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie. F.A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1859 (In English: Arthur Schopenhauer, New York: Dover Press, Volume I, Appendix, "Critique of the Kantian Philosophy", )
Seung, T.K. Kant's Transcendental Logic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969.
Strawson, P.F. The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1989 (the work that revitalized the interest of contemporary analytic philosophers in Kant).
Sturm, Thomas, Kant und die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. Paderborn: Mentis Verlag, 2009. . review (Treats Kant's anthropology and his views on psychology and history in relation to his philosophy of science.)
Tonelli, Giorgio. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason within the Tradition of Modern Logic. A Commentary on its History. Hildesheim, Olms 1994
Werkmeister, W.H., Kant: The Architectonic and Development of His Philosophy, Open Court Publishing Co., La Salle, Ill.; 1980 (it treats, as a whole, the architectonic and development of Kant's philosophy from 1755 through the Opus postumum.)
Wolff, Robert Paul. Kant's Theory of Mental Activity: A Commentary on the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1963. (detailed and influential commentary on the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason)
Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Kant and the Philosophy of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. (review )
Practical philosophy
Allison, Henry. Kant's Theory of Freedom. Cambridge University Press 1990.
Banham, Gary. Kant's Practical Philosophy: From Critique to Doctrine. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Dorschel, Andreas. Die idealistische Kritik des Willens: Versuch über die Theorie der praktischen Subjektivität bei Kant und Hegel. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1992 (Schriften zur Transzendentalphilosophie 10) .
Korsgaard, Christine M. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Michalson, Gordon E. Fallen Freedom: Kant on Radical Evil and Moral Regeneration. Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Michalson, Gordon E. Kant and the Problem of God. Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
Paton, H.J. The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant's Moral Philosophy. University of Pennsylvania Press 1971.
Rawls, John. Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, 2000.
Seung, T.K. Kant's Platonic Revolution in Moral and Political Philosophy. Johns Hopkins, 1994.
Wolff, Robert Paul. The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. New York: HarperCollins, 1974. .
Wood, Allen. Kant's Ethical Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Aesthetics
Allison, Henry. Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Banham, Gary. Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics. London and New York: Macmillan Press, 2000.
Clewis, Robert. The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Crawford, Donald. Kant's Aesthetic Theory. Wisconsin, 1974.
Doran, Robert. The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Taste. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1979.
Hammermeister, Kai. The German Aesthetic Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Immanuel Kant entry in Kelly, Michael (Editor in Chief) (1998) Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Kaplama, Erman. Cosmological Aesthetics through the Kantian Sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian. Lanham: UPA, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
Makkreel, Rudolf, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant. Chicago, 1990.
McCloskey, Mary. Kant's Aesthetic. SUNY, 1987.
Schaper, Eva. Studies in Kant's Aesthetics. Edinburgh, 1979.
Zammito, John H. The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1992.
Zupancic, Alenka. Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan. Verso, 2000.
Philosophy of religion
Palmquist, Stephen. Kant's Critical Religion : Volume Two of Kant's System of Perspectives. Ashgate, 2000.
Perez, Daniel Omar. "Religión, Política y Medicina en Kant: El Conflicto de las Proposiciones". Cinta de Moebio. Revista de Epistemologia de Ciencias Sociales, v. 28, p. 91–103, 2007. Uchile.cl (Spanish)
Perpetual peace and international relations
Sir Harry Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace, Cambridge University Press, 1962.
Martin Wight, Four Seminal Thinkers in International Theory: Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant and Mazzini ed. Gabriele Wight & Brian Porter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Other works
Botul, Jean-Baptiste. La vie sexuelle d'Emmanuel Kant. Paris, Éd. Mille et une Nuits, 2008.
Caygill, Howard. A Kant Dictionary. Oxford; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Reference, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques. Mochlos; or, The Conflict of the Faculties. Columbia University, 1980.
Kelly, Michael. Kant's Ethics and Schopenhauer's Criticism, London: Swan Sonnenschein 1910. [Reprinted 2010 Nabu Press, ]
Mosser, Kurt. Necessity and Possibility; The Logical Strategy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Catholic University of America Press, 2008.
White, Mark D. Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autonomy, Dignity, and Character . Stanford University Press, 2011. . (Reviewed in The Montreal Review )
Contemporary philosophy with a Kantian influence
Guyer, Paul. Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant's Response to Hume. Princeton University Press, 2008.
Hanna, Robert, Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy. Clarendon Press, 2004.
Hanna, Robert, Kant, Science, and Human Nature. Clarendon Press, 2006.
Herman, Barbara. The Practice of Moral Judgement. Harvard University Press, 1993.
(A Kantian approach to the issue of pornography and degradation.)
Korsgaard, Christine. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (not a commentary, but a defense of a broadly Kantian approach to ethics)
McDowell, John. Mind and World. Harvard University Press, 1994. . (offers a Kantian solution to a dilemma in contemporary epistemology regarding the relation between mind and world)
Parfit, Derek. On What Matters (2 vols.). New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Pinker, Steven. The Stuff of Thought. Viking Press, 2007. . (Chapter 4 "Cleaving the Air" discusses Kant's anticipation of modern cognitive science)
Wood, Allen W. Kant's Ethical Thought. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. . (comprehensive, in-depth study of Kant's ethics, with emphasis on formula of humanity as most accurate formulation of the categorical imperative)
External links
KantPapers, authors and papers database powered by PhilPapers, focused on Kant, and located at Cornell University
Immanuel Kant at the Encyclopædia Britannica
Immanuel Kant in the Christian Cyclopedia
Works by Immanuel Kant at Duisburg-Essen University
Stephen Palmquist's Glossary of Kantian Terminology
Kant's Ethical Theory – Kantian ethics explained, applied and evaluated
Notes on Utilitarianism – A conveniently brief survey of Kant's Utilitarianism
"Immanuel Kant", An overview of his work, times, and influence on biology, plantspeopleplanet.org.au
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: An Overview
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Aesthetics
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Logic
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Mind
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Radical Evil
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Religion
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant
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Writers about religion and science | false | [
"Miguel Skrobot (Warsaw, 1873 – Curitiba, February 20, 1912) was a businessman Brazilian of Polish origin.\n\nMiguel Skrobot was born in 1873, in Warsaw, Poland, to José Skrobot and Rosa Skrobot. When he was 18 he migrated to Brazil and settled in Curitiba as a merchant.\n\nHe married Maria Pansardi, who was born in Tibagi, Paraná, to Italian immigrants, and she bore him three children. He kept a steam-powered factory where he worked on grinding and toasting coffee beans under the \"Rio Branco\" brand, located on the spot where today stands the square called Praça Zacarias (square located in the center of Curitiba). He also owned a grocery store near Praça Tiradentes (also a square in the center of Curitiba, where the city was born). He died an early death, when he was 39, on February 20, 1912.\n\nReferences\n\n1873 births\n1912 deaths\nBrazilian businesspeople\nPeople from Curitiba\nPolish emigrants to Brazil",
"Adolf von Rauch (22 April 1798 - 12 December 1882) was a German paper manufacturer in Heilbronn, where he was born and died and where he was a major builder of social housing.\n\nPapermakers\n1798 births\n1882 deaths\nPeople from Heilbronn"
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] | C_8ddf971bb06941f8a8f1b934b838550b_1 | who were his parents? | 3 | who were Immanuel Kant's parents? | Immanuel Kant | Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724 in Konigsberg, Prussia (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia). His mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697-1737), was also born in Konigsberg to a father from Nuremberg. (Her name is sometimes erroneously given as Anna Regina Porter.) His father, Johann Georg Kant (1682-1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipeda, Lithuania). Immanuel Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. While scholars of Kant's life long accepted the claim, there is no evidence that Kant's paternal line was Scottish; it is more likely that the Kants got their name from the village of Kantwaggen (today part of Priekule) and were of Curonian origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children (four of them reached adulthood). Baptized 'Emanuel', he changed his name to 'Immanuel' after learning Hebrew. Young Kant was a solid, albeit unspectacular, student. Kant was born into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in East Prussia. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. Kant maintained a belief in Christianity, in his work Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals he reveals a belief in human immortality as the necessary condition of our continued approach to the highest good possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of Theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic. Common myths about Kant's personal mannerisms are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. It is often held that Kant lived a very strict and disciplined life, leading to an oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but seemed to have a rewarding social life -- he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends whom he frequently met, among them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Konigsberg. A common myth is that Kant never traveled more than 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from Konigsberg his whole life. In fact, between 1750 and 1754 he worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Gross-Arnsdorf (now Jarnoltowo near Morag (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km). CANNOTANSWER | His mother, Anna Regina Reuter | Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him an influential figure in modern Western philosophy.
In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued that space and time are mere "forms of intuition" which structure all experience, and therefore that while "things-in-themselves" exist and contribute to experience, they are nonetheless distinct from the objects of experience. From this it follows that the objects of experience are mere "appearances", and that the nature of things as they are in themselves is consequently unknowable to us. In an attempt to counter the skepticism he found in the writings of philosopher David Hume, he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), one of his most well-known works. In it, he developed his theory of experience to answer the question of whether synthetic a priori knowledge is possible, which would in turn make it possible to determine the limits of metaphysical inquiry. Kant drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that the objects of the senses must conform to our spatial and temporal forms of intuition, and that we can consequently have a priori cognition of the objects of the senses.
Kant believed that reason is also the source of morality, and that aesthetics arise from a faculty of disinterested judgment. Kant's views continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of epistemology, ethics, political theory, and post-modern aesthetics. He attempted to explain the relationship between reason and human experience and to move beyond what he believed to be the failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He wanted to put an end to what he saw as an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience, while resisting the skepticism of thinkers such as Hume. He regarded himself as showing the way past the impasse between rationalists and empiricists, and is widely held to have synthesized both traditions in his thought.
Kant was an exponent of the idea that perpetual peace could be secured through universal democracy and international cooperation, and that perhaps this could be the culminating stage of world history. The nature of Kant's religious views continues to be the subject of scholarly dispute, with viewpoints ranging from the impression that he shifted from an early defense of an ontological argument for the existence of God to a principled agnosticism, to more critical treatments epitomized by Schopenhauer, who criticized the imperative form of Kantian ethics as "theological morals" and the "Mosaic Decalogue in disguise", and Nietzsche, who claimed that Kant had "theologian blood" and was merely a sophisticated apologist for traditional Christian faith. Beyond his religious views, Kant has also been criticized for the racism presented in some of his lesser-known papers, such as "On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy" and "On the Different Races of Man". Although he was a proponent of scientific racism for much of his career, Kant's views on race changed significantly in the last decade of his life, and he ultimately rejected racial hierarchies and European colonialism in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795).
Kant published other important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history during his lifetime. These include the Universal Natural History (1755), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), the Critique of Judgment (1790), Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (1793), and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
Biography
Kant's mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697–1737), was born in Königsberg (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia) to a father from Nuremberg. Her surname is sometimes erroneously given as Porter. Kant's father, Johann Georg Kant (1682–1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipėda, Lithuania). Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. While scholars of Kant's life long accepted the claim, there is no evidence that Kant's paternal line was Scottish and it is more likely that the Kants got their name from the village of Kantwaggen (today part of Priekulė) and were of Curonian origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children (six of whom reached adulthood).
Kant was born on 22 April 1724 into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in Königsberg, East Prussia. Baptized Emanuel, he later changed the spelling of his name to Immanuel after learning Hebrew. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. In his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, he reveals a belief in immortality as the necessary condition of humanity's approach to the highest morality possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic, even though it has also been suggested that Kant intends other people to think of him as a "pure rationalist", who is defined by Kant himself as someone who recognizes revelation but asserts that to know and accept it as real is not a necessary requisite to religion.
Kant apparently lived a very strict and disciplined life; it was said that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but seemed to have a rewarding social life — he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends with whom he frequently met, among them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Königsberg.
Between 1750 and 1754 Kant worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Groß-Arnsdorf (now Jarnołtowo near Morąg (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km).
Many myths grew up about Kant's personal mannerisms; these are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime.
Young scholar
Kant showed a great aptitude for study at an early age. He first attended the Collegium Fridericianum from which he graduated at the end of the summer of 1740. In 1740, aged 16, he enrolled at the University of Königsberg, where he spent his whole career. He studied the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and Christian Wolff under Martin Knutzen (Associate Professor of Logic and Metaphysics from 1734 until his death in 1751), a rationalist who was also familiar with developments in British philosophy and science and introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Isaac Newton. Knutzen dissuaded Kant from the theory of pre-established harmony, which he regarded as "the pillow for the lazy mind". He also dissuaded Kant from idealism, the idea that reality is purely mental, which most philosophers in the 18th century regarded in a negative light. The theory of transcendental idealism that Kant later included in the Critique of Pure Reason was developed partially in opposition to traditional idealism.
His father's stroke and subsequent death in 1746 interrupted his studies. Kant left Königsberg shortly after August 1748—he would return there in August 1754. He became a private tutor in the towns surrounding Königsberg, but continued his scholarly research. In 1749, he published his first philosophical work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (written in 1745–47).
Early work
Kant is best known for his work in the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics, but he made significant contributions to other disciplines. In 1754, while contemplating on a prize question by the Berlin Academy about the problem of Earth's rotation, he argued that the Moon's gravity would slow down Earth's spin and he also put forth the argument that gravity would eventually cause the Moon's tidal locking to coincide with the Earth's rotation. The next year, he expanded this reasoning to the formation and evolution of the Solar System in his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. In 1755, Kant received a license to lecture in the University of Königsberg and began lecturing on a variety of topics including mathematics, physics, logic and metaphysics. In his 1756 essay on the theory of winds, Kant laid out an original insight into the Coriolis force. In 1757, Kant began lecturing on geography making him one of the first lecturers to explicitly teach geography as its own subject. Geography was one of Kant's most popular lecturing topics and in 1802 a compilation by Friedrich Theodor Rink of Kant's lecturing notes, Physical Geography, was released. After Kant became a professor in 1770, he expanded the topics of his lectures to include lectures on natural law, ethics and anthropology along with other topics.
In the Universal Natural History, Kant laid out the Nebular hypothesis, in which he deduced that the Solar System had formed from a large cloud of gas, a nebula. Kant also correctly deduced (though through usually false premises and fallacious reasoning, according to Bertrand Russell) that the Milky Way was a large disk of stars, which he theorized formed from a much larger spinning gas cloud. He further suggested that other distant "nebulae" might be other galaxies. These postulations opened new horizons for astronomy, for the first time extending it beyond the Solar System to galactic and intergalactic realms. According to Thomas Huxley (1867), Kant also made contributions to geology in his Universal Natural History.
From then on, Kant turned increasingly to philosophical issues, although he continued to write on the sciences throughout his life. In the early 1760s, Kant produced a series of important works in philosophy. The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, a work in logic, was published in 1762. Two more works appeared the following year: Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy and The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. By 1764, Kant had become a notable popular author, and wrote Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime; he was second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy prize competition with his Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (often referred to as "The Prize Essay"). In 1766 Kant wrote Dreams of a Spirit-Seer which dealt with the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. The exact influence of Swedenborg on Kant, as well as the extent of Kant's belief in mysticism according to Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, remain controversial. On 31 March 1770, aged 45, Kant was finally appointed Full Professor of Logic and Metaphysics (Professor Ordinarius der Logic und Metaphysic) at the University of Königsberg. In defense of this appointment, Kant wrote his inaugural dissertation (Inaugural-Dissertation) De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis (On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World). This work saw the emergence of several central themes of his mature work, including the distinction between the faculties of intellectual thought and sensible receptivity. To miss this distinction would mean to commit the error of subreption, and, as he says in the last chapter of the dissertation, only in avoiding this error does metaphysics flourish.
The issue that vexed Kant was central to what 20th-century scholars called "the philosophy of mind". The flowering of the natural sciences had led to an understanding of how data reaches the brain. Sunlight falling on an object is reflected from its surface in a way that maps the surface features (color, texture, etc.). The reflected light reaches the human eye, passes through the cornea, is focused by the lens onto the retina where it forms an image similar to that formed by light passing through a pinhole into a camera obscura. The retinal cells send impulses through the optic nerve and then they form a mapping in the brain of the visual features of the object. The interior mapping is not the exterior object, and our belief that there is a meaningful relationship between the object and the mapping in the brain depends on a chain of reasoning that is not fully grounded. But the uncertainty aroused by these considerations, by optical illusions, misperceptions, delusions, etc., are not the end of the problems.
Kant saw that the mind could not function as an empty container that simply receives data from outside. Something must be giving order to the incoming data. Images of external objects must be kept in the same sequence in which they were received. This ordering occurs through the mind's intuition of time. The same considerations apply to the mind's function of constituting space for ordering mappings of visual and tactile signals arriving via the already described chains of physical causation.
It is often claimed that Kant was a late developer, that he only became an important philosopher in his mid-50s after rejecting his earlier views. While it is true that Kant wrote his greatest works relatively late in life, there is a tendency to underestimate the value of his earlier works. Recent Kant scholarship has devoted more attention to these "pre-critical" writings and has recognized a degree of continuity with his mature work.
Critique of Pure Reason
At age 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher, and much was expected of him. In correspondence with his ex-student and friend Markus Herz, Kant admitted that, in the inaugural dissertation, he had failed to account for the relation between our sensible and intellectual faculties. He needed to explain how we combine what is known as sensory knowledge with the other type of knowledgei.e. reasoned knowledgethese two being related but having very different processes.
Kant also credited David Hume with awakening him from a "dogmatic slumber" in which he had unquestioningly accepted the tenets of both religion and natural philosophy. Hume in his 1739 Treatise on Human Nature had argued that we only know the mind through a subjectiveessentially illusoryseries of perceptions. Ideas such as causality, morality, and objects are not evident in experience, so their reality may be questioned. Kant felt that reason could remove this skepticism, and he set himself to solving these problems. Although fond of company and conversation with others, Kant isolated himself, and resisted friends' attempts to bring him out of his isolation. When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant countered Hume's empiricism by claiming that some knowledge exists inherently in the mind, independent of experience. He drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that worldly objects can be intuited a priori ('beforehand'), and that intuition is consequently distinct from objective reality. He acquiesced to Hume somewhat by defining causality as a "regular, constant sequence of events in time, and nothing more."
Although now uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, this Critique disappointed Kant's readers upon its initial publication. The book was long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in a convoluted style. It received few reviews, and these granted it no significance. Kant's former student, Johann Gottfried Herder criticized it for placing reason as an entity worthy of criticism instead of considering the process of reasoning within the context of language and one's entire personality. Similar to Christian Garve and Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, he rejected Kant's position that space and time possessed a form that could be analyzed. Additionally, Garve and Feder also faulted Kant's Critique for not explaining differences in perception of sensations. Its density made it, as Herder said in a letter to Johann Georg Hamann, a "tough nut to crack", obscured by "all this heavy gossamer". Its reception stood in stark contrast to the praise Kant had received for earlier works, such as his Prize Essay and shorter works that preceded the first Critique. These well-received and readable tracts include one on the earthquake in Lisbon that was so popular that it was sold by the page. Prior to the change in course documented in the first Critique, his books had sold well. Kant was disappointed with the first Critique's reception. Recognizing the need to clarify the original treatise, Kant wrote the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics in 1783 as a summary of its main views. Shortly thereafter, Kant's friend Johann Friedrich Schultz (1739–1805) (professor of mathematics) published Erläuterungen über des Herrn Professor Kant Critik der reinen Vernunft (Königsberg, 1784), which was a brief but very accurate commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
Kant's reputation gradually rose through the latter portion of the 1780s, sparked by a series of important works: the 1784 essay, "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?"; 1785's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (his first work on moral philosophy); and, from 1786, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. But Kant's fame ultimately arrived from an unexpected source. In 1786, Karl Leonhard Reinhold published a series of public letters on Kantian philosophy. In these letters, Reinhold framed Kant's philosophy as a response to the central intellectual controversy of the era: the pantheism controversy. Friedrich Jacobi had accused the recently deceased Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (a distinguished dramatist and philosophical essayist) of Spinozism. Such a charge, tantamount to atheism, was vigorously denied by Lessing's friend Moses Mendelssohn, leading to a bitter public dispute among partisans. The controversy gradually escalated into a debate about the values of the Enlightenment and the value of reason.
Reinhold maintained in his letters that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason could settle this dispute by defending the authority and bounds of reason. Reinhold's letters were widely read and made Kant the most famous philosopher of his era.
Later work
Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book. Most of his subsequent work focused on other areas of philosophy. He continued to develop his moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason (known as the second Critique) and 1797's Metaphysics of Morals. The 1790 Critique of Judgment (the third Critique) applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology.
In 1792, Kant's attempt to publish the Second of the four Pieces of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, in the journal Berlinische Monatsschrift, met with opposition from the King's censorship commission, which had been established that same year in the context of the French Revolution. Kant then arranged to have all four pieces published as a book, routing it through the philosophy department at the University of Jena to avoid the need for theological censorship. This insubordination earned him a now famous reprimand from the King. When he nevertheless published a second edition in 1794, the censor was so irate that he arranged for a royal order that required Kant never to publish or even speak publicly about religion. Kant then published his response to the King's reprimand and explained himself, in the preface of The Conflict of the Faculties.
He also wrote a number of semi-popular essays on history, religion, politics and other topics. These works were well received by Kant's contemporaries and confirmed his preeminent status in 18th-century philosophy. There were several journals devoted solely to defending and criticizing Kantian philosophy. Despite his success, philosophical trends were moving in another direction. Many of Kant's most important disciples and followers (including Reinhold, Beck and Fichte) transformed the Kantian position into increasingly radical forms of idealism. The progressive stages of revision of Kant's teachings marked the emergence of German idealism. Kant opposed these developments and publicly denounced Fichte in an open letter in 1799. It was one of his final acts expounding a stance on philosophical questions. In 1800, a student of Kant named Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche (1762–1842) published a manual of logic for teachers called Logik, which he had prepared at Kant's request. Jäsche prepared the Logik using a copy of a textbook in logic by Georg Friedrich Meier entitled Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre, in which Kant had written copious notes and annotations. The Logik has been considered of fundamental importance to Kant's philosophy, and the understanding of it. The great 19th-century logician Charles Sanders Peirce remarked, in an incomplete review of Thomas Kingsmill Abbott's English translation of the introduction to Logik, that "Kant's whole philosophy turns upon his logic." Also, Robert Schirokauer Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz, wrote in the translators' introduction to their English translation of the Logik, "Its importance lies not only in its significance for the Critique of Pure Reason, the second part of which is a restatement of fundamental tenets of the Logic, but in its position within the whole of Kant's work."
Death and burial
Kant's health, long poor, worsened and he died at Königsberg on 12 February 1804, uttering "Es ist gut (It is good)" before expiring. His unfinished final work was published as Opus Postumum. Kant always cut a curious figure in his lifetime for his modest, rigorously scheduled habits, which have been referred to as clocklike. However, Heinrich Heine noted the magnitude of "his destructive, world-crushing thoughts" and considered him a sort of philosophical "executioner", comparing him to Robespierre with the observation that both men "represented in the highest the type of provincial bourgeois. Nature had destined them to weigh coffee and sugar, but Fate determined that they should weigh other things and placed on the scales of the one a king, on the scales of the other a god."
When his body was transferred to a new burial spot, his skull was measured during the exhumation and found to be larger than the average German male's with a "high and broad" forehead. His forehead has been an object of interest ever since it became well-known through his portraits: "In Döbler's portrait and in Kiefer's faithful if expressionistic reproduction of it — as well as in many of the other late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century portraits of Kant — the forehead is remarkably large and decidedly retreating. Was Kant's forehead shaped this way in these images because he was a philosopher, or, to follow the implications of Lavater's system, was he a philosopher because of the intellectual acuity manifested by his forehead? Kant and Johann Kaspar Lavater were correspondents on theological matters, and Lavater refers to Kant in his work "Physiognomic Fragments, for the Education of Human Knowledge and Love of People" (Leipzig & Winterthur, 1775–1778).
Kant's mausoleum adjoins the northeast corner of Königsberg Cathedral in Kaliningrad, Russia. The mausoleum was constructed by the architect Friedrich Lahrs and was finished in 1924 in time for the bicentenary of Kant's birth. Originally, Kant was buried inside the cathedral, but in 1880 his remains were moved to a neo-Gothic chapel adjoining the northeast corner of the cathedral. Over the years, the chapel became dilapidated and was demolished to make way for the mausoleum, which was built on the same location.
The tomb and its mausoleum are among the few artifacts of German times preserved by the Soviets after they conquered and annexed the city. Today, many newlyweds bring flowers to the mausoleum. Artifacts previously owned by Kant, known as Kantiana, were included in the Königsberg City Museum. However, the museum was destroyed during World War II. A replica of the statue of Kant that stood in German times in front of the main University of Königsberg building was donated by a German entity in the early 1990s and placed in the same grounds.
After the expulsion of Königsberg's German population at the end of World War II, the University of Königsberg where Kant taught was replaced by the Russian-language Kaliningrad State University, which appropriated the campus and surviving buildings. In 2005, the university was renamed Immanuel Kant State University of Russia. The name change was announced at a ceremony attended by President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, and the university formed a Kant Society, dedicated to the study of Kantianism. The university was again renamed in the 2010s, to Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University.
In late November 2018, his tomb and statue were vandalized with paint by unknown assailants, who also scattered leaflets glorifying Rus' and denouncing Kant as a "traitor". The incident is apparently connected with a recent vote to rename Khrabrovo Airport, where Kant was in the lead for a while, prompting Russian nationalist resentment.
Philosophy
In Kant's essay "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?", he defined the Enlightenment as an age shaped by the Latin motto Sapere aude ("Dare to be wise"). Kant maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority. His work reconciled many of the differences between the rationalist and empiricist traditions of the 18th century. He had a decisive impact on the Romantic and German Idealist philosophies of the 19th century. His work has also been a starting point for many 20th century philosophers.
Kant asserted that, because of the limitations of argumentation in the absence of irrefutable evidence, no one could really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not. For the sake of morality and as a ground for reason, Kant asserted, people are justified in believing in God, even though they could never know God's presence empirically.
The sense of an enlightened approach and the critical method required that "If one cannot prove that a thing is, he may try to prove that it is not. If he fails to do either (as often occurs), he may still ask whether it is in his interest to accept one or the other of the alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical point of view. Hence the question no longer is as to whether perpetual peace is a real thing or not a real thing, or as to whether we may not be deceiving ourselves when we adopt the former alternative, but we must act on the supposition of its being real." The presupposition of God, soul, and freedom was then a practical concern, for
Kant drew a parallel between the Copernican revolution and the epistemology of his new transcendental philosophy, involving two interconnected foundations of his "critical philosophy":
the epistemology of transcendental idealism and
the moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason.
These teachings placed the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral worlds. Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science was not just the accidental accumulation of sense perceptions.
Conceptual unification and integration is carried out by the mind through concepts or the "categories of the understanding" operating on the perceptual manifold within space and time. The latter are not concepts, but are forms of sensibility that are a priori necessary conditions for any possible experience. Thus the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that operates within it depend on the mind's processes, the product of the rule-based activity that Kant called "synthesis". There is much discussion among Kant scholars about the correct interpretation of this train of thought.
The 'two-world' interpretation regards Kant's position as a statement of epistemological limitation, that we are not able to transcend the bounds of our own mind, meaning that we cannot access the "thing-in-itself". However, Kant also speaks of the thing in itself or transcendental object as a product of the (human) understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of sensibility. Following this line of thought, some interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological domain but simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding alonethis is known as the two-aspect view.
The notion of the "thing in itself" was much discussed by philosophers after Kant. It was argued that, because the "thing in itself" was unknowable, its existence must not be assumed. Rather than arbitrarily switching to an account that was ungrounded in anything supposed to be the "real", as did the German Idealists, another group arose who asked how our (presumably reliable) accounts of a coherent and rule-abiding universe were actually grounded. This new kind of philosophy became known as Phenomenology, and its founder was Edmund Husserl.
With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather is only the good will itself. A good will is one that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. This law obliges one to treat humanityunderstood as rational agency, and represented through oneself as well as othersas an end in itself rather than (merely) as means to other ends the individual might hold. This necessitates practical self-reflection in which we universalize our reasons.
These ideas have largely framed or influenced all subsequent philosophical discussion and analysis. The specifics of Kant's account generated immediate and lasting controversy. Nevertheless, his thesesthat the mind itself necessarily makes a constitutive contribution to its knowledge, that this contribution is transcendental rather than psychological, that philosophy involves self-critical activity, that morality is rooted in human freedom, and that to act autonomously is to act according to rational moral principleshave all had a lasting effect on subsequent philosophy.
Epistemology
Theory of perception
Kant defines his theory of perception in his influential 1781 work the Critique of Pure Reason, which has often been cited as the most significant volume of metaphysics and epistemology in modern philosophy. Kant maintains that understanding of the external world had its foundations not merely in experience, but in both experience and a priori concepts, thus offering a non-empiricist critique of rationalist philosophy, which is what has been referred to as his Copernican revolution.
Firstly, Kant distinguishes between analytic and synthetic propositions:
Analytic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is contained in its subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are unmarried," or, "All bodies take up space."
Synthetic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is not contained in its subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are alone," or, "All bodies have weight."
An analytic proposition is true by nature of the meaning of the words in the sentence — we require no further knowledge than a grasp of the language to understand this proposition. On the other hand, a synthetic statement is one that tells us something about the world. The truth or falsehood of synthetic statements derives from something outside their linguistic content. In this instance, weight is not a necessary predicate of the body; until we are told the heaviness of the body we do not know that it has weight. In this case, experience of the body is required before its heaviness becomes clear. Before Kant's first Critique, empiricists (cf. Hume) and rationalists (cf. Leibniz) assumed that all synthetic statements required experience to be known.
Kant contests this assumption by claiming that elementary mathematics, like arithmetic, is synthetic a priori, in that its statements provide new knowledge not derived from experience. This becomes part of his over-all argument for transcendental idealism. That is, he argues that the possibility of experience depends on certain necessary conditions — which he calls a priori forms — and that these conditions structure and hold true of the world of experience. His main claims in the "Transcendental Aesthetic" are that mathematic judgments are synthetic a priori and that space and time are not derived from experience but rather are its preconditions.
Once we have grasped the functions of basic arithmetic, we do not need empirical experience to know that 100 + 100 = 200, and so it appears that arithmetic is analytic. However, that it is analytic can be disproved by considering the calculation 5 + 7 = 12: there is nothing in the numbers 5 and 7 by which the number 12 can be inferred. Thus "5 + 7" and "the cube root of 1,728" or "12" are not analytic because their reference is the same but their sense is not — the statement "5 + 7 = 12" tells us something new about the world. It is self-evident, and undeniably a priori, but at the same time it is synthetic. Thus Kant argued that a proposition can be synthetic and a priori.
Kant asserts that experience is based on the perception of external objects and a priori knowledge. The external world, he writes, provides those things that we sense. But our mind processes this information and gives it order, allowing us to comprehend it. Our mind supplies the conditions of space and time to experience objects. According to the "transcendental unity of apperception", the concepts of the mind (Understanding) and perceptions or intuitions that garner information from phenomena (Sensibility) are synthesized by comprehension. Without concepts, perceptions are nondescript; without perceptions, concepts are meaningless. Thus the famous statement: "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions [perceptions] without concepts are blind."
Kant also claims that an external environment is necessary for the establishment of the self. Although Kant would want to argue that there is no empirical way of observing the self, we can see the logical necessity of the self when we observe that we can have different perceptions of the external environment over time. By uniting these general representations into one global representation, we can see how a transcendental self emerges. "I am therefore conscious of the identical self in regard to the manifold of the representations that are given to me in an intuition because I call them all together my representations, which constitute one."
Categories of the Faculty of Understanding
Kant deemed it obvious that we have some objective knowledge of the world, such as, say, Newtonian physics. But this knowledge relies on synthetic, a priori laws of nature, like causality and substance. How is this possible? Kant's solution was that the subject must supply laws that make experience of objects possible, and that these laws are synthetic, a priori laws of nature that apply to all objects before we experience them. To deduce all these laws, Kant examined experience in general, dissecting in it what is supplied by the mind from what is supplied by the given intuitions. This is commonly called a transcendental deduction.
To begin with, Kant's distinction between the a posteriori being contingent and particular knowledge, and the a priori being universal and necessary knowledge, must be kept in mind. If we merely connect two intuitions together in a perceiving subject, the knowledge is always subjective because it is derived a posteriori, when what is desired is for the knowledge to be objective, that is, for the two intuitions to refer to the object and hold good of it for anyone at any time, not just the perceiving subject in its current condition. What else is equivalent to objective knowledge besides the a priori (universal and necessary knowledge)? Before knowledge can be objective, it must be incorporated under an a priori category of understanding.
For example, if a subject says, "The sun shines on the stone; the stone grows warm," all he perceives are phenomena. His judgment is contingent and holds no necessity. But if he says, "The sunshine causes the stone to warm," he subsumes the perception under the category of causality, which is not found in the perception, and necessarily synthesizes the concept sunshine with the concept heat, producing a necessarily universally true judgment.
To explain the categories in more detail, they are the preconditions of the construction of objects in the mind. Indeed, to even think of the sun and stone presupposes the category of subsistence, that is, substance. For the categories synthesize the random data of the sensory manifold into intelligible objects. This means that the categories are also the most abstract things one can say of any object whatsoever, and hence one can have an a priori cognition of the totality of all objects of experience if one can list all of them. To do so, Kant formulates another transcendental deduction.
Judgments are, for Kant, the preconditions of any thought. Man thinks via judgments, so all possible judgments must be listed and the perceptions connected within them put aside, so as to make it possible to examine the moments when the understanding is engaged in constructing judgments. For the categories are equivalent to these moments, in that they are concepts of intuitions in general, so far as they are determined by these moments universally and necessarily. Thus by listing all the moments, one can deduce from them all of the categories.
One may now ask: How many possible judgments are there? Kant believed that all the possible propositions within Aristotle's syllogistic logic are equivalent to all possible judgments, and that all the logical operators within the propositions are equivalent to the moments of the understanding within judgments. Thus he listed Aristotle's system in four groups of three: quantity (universal, particular, singular), quality (affirmative, negative, infinite), relation (categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive) and modality (problematic, assertoric, apodeictic). The parallelism with Kant's categories is obvious: quantity (unity, plurality, totality), quality (reality, negation, limitation), relation (substance, cause, community) and modality (possibility, existence, necessity).
The fundamental building blocks of experience, i.e. objective knowledge, are now in place. First there is the sensibility, which supplies the mind with intuitions, and then there is the understanding, which produces judgments of these intuitions and can subsume them under categories. These categories lift the intuitions up out of the subject's current state of consciousness and place them within consciousness in general, producing universally necessary knowledge. For the categories are innate in any rational being, so any intuition thought within a category in one mind is necessarily subsumed and understood identically in any mind. In other words, we filter what we see and hear.
Transcendental schema doctrine
Kant ran into a problem with his theory that the mind plays a part in producing objective knowledge. Intuitions and categories are entirely disparate, so how can they interact? Kant's solution is the (transcendental) schema: a priori principles by which the transcendental imagination connects concepts with intuitions through time. All the principles are temporally bound, for if a concept is purely a priori, as the categories are, then they must apply for all times. Hence there are principles such as substance is that which endures through time, and the cause must always be prior to the effect. In the context of transcendental schema the concept of transcendental reflection is of a great importance.
Ethics
Kant developed his ethics, or moral philosophy, in three works: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
In Groundwork, Kant tries to convert our everyday, obvious, rational knowledge of morality into philosophical knowledge. The latter two works used "practical reason", which is based only on things about which reason can tell us, and not deriving any principles from experience, to reach conclusions which can be applied to the world of experience (in the second part of The Metaphysics of Morals).
Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the "Categorical Imperative", and is derived from the concept of duty. Kant defines the demands of moral law as "categorical imperatives". Categorical imperatives are principles that are intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed in all situations and circumstances, if our behavior is to observe the moral law. The Categorical Imperative provides a test against which moral statements can be assessed. Kant also stated that the moral means and ends can be applied to the categorical imperative, that rational beings can pursue certain "ends" using the appropriate "means". Ends based on physical needs or wants create hypothetical imperatives. The categorical imperative can only be based on something that is an "end in itself", that is, an end that is not a means to some other need, desire, or purpose. Kant believed that the moral law is a principle of reason itself, and is not based on contingent facts about the world, such as what would make us happy, but to act on the moral law which has no other motive than "worthiness to be happy". Accordingly, he believed that moral obligation applies only to rational agents.
Unlike a hypothetical imperative, a categorical imperative is an unconditional obligation; it has the force of an obligation regardless of our will or desires In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785) Kant enumerated three formulations of the categorical imperative that he believed to be roughly equivalent. In the same book, Kant stated:
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.
According to Kant, one cannot make exceptions for oneself. The philosophical maxim on which one acts should always be considered to be a universal law without exception. One cannot allow oneself to do a particular action unless one thinks it appropriate that the reason for the action should become a universal law. For example, one should not steal, however dire the circumstancesbecause, by permitting oneself to steal, one makes stealing a universally acceptable act. This is the first formulation of the categorical imperative, often known as the universalizability principle.
Kant believed that, if an action is not done with the motive of duty, then it is without moral value. He thought that every action should have pure intention behind it; otherwise, it is meaningless. The final result is not the most important aspect of an action; rather, how the person feels while carrying out the action is the time when value is attached to the result.
In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant also posited the "counter-utilitarian idea that there is a difference between preferences and values, and that considerations of individual rights temper calculations of aggregate utility", a concept that is an axiom in economics:
Everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. But that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself does not have mere relative worth, i.e., price, but an intrinsic worth, i.e., a dignity. (p. 53, italics in original).
A phrase quoted by Kant, which is used to summarize the counter-utilitarian nature of his moral philosophy, is Fiat justitia, pereat mundus ("Let justice be done, though the world perish"), which he translates loosely as "Let justice reign even if all the rascals in the world should perish from it". This appears in his 1795 Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch ("Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf"), Appendix 1.
First formulation
The first formulation (Formula of Universal Law) of the moral imperative "requires that the maxims be chosen as though they should hold as universal laws of nature". This formulation in principle has as its supreme law the creed "Always act according to that maxim whose universality as a law you can at the same time will" and is the "only condition under which a will can never come into conflict with itself [....]"
One interpretation of the first formulation is called the "universalizability test". An agent's maxim, according to Kant, is his "subjective principle of human actions": that is, what the agent believes is his reason to act. The universalisability test has five steps:
Find the agent's maxim (i.e., an action paired with its motivation). Take, for example, the declaration "I will lie for personal benefit". Lying is the action; the motivation is to fulfill some sort of desire. Together, they form the maxim.
Imagine a possible world in which everyone in a similar position to the real-world agent followed that maxim.
Decide if contradictions or irrationalities would arise in the possible world as a result of following the maxim.
If a contradiction or irrationality would arise, acting on that maxim is not allowed in the real world.
If there is no contradiction, then acting on that maxim is permissible, and is sometimes required.
(For a modern parallel, see John Rawls' hypothetical situation, the original position.)
Second formulation
The second formulation (or Formula of the End in Itself) holds that "the rational being, as by its nature an end and thus as an end in itself, must serve in every maxim as the condition restricting all merely relative and arbitrary ends". The principle dictates that you "[a]ct with reference to every rational being (whether yourself or another) so that it is an end in itself in your maxim", meaning that the rational being is "the basis of all maxims of action" and "must be treated never as a mere means but as the supreme limiting condition in the use of all means, i.e., as an end at the same time".
Third formulation
The third formulation (i.e. Formula of Autonomy) is a synthesis of the first two and is the basis for the "complete determination of all maxims". It states "that all maxims which stem from autonomous legislation ought to harmonize with a possible realm of ends as with a realm of nature".
In principle, "So act as if your maxims should serve at the same time as the universal law (of all rational beings)", meaning that we should so act that we may think of ourselves as "a member in the universal realm of ends", legislating universal laws through our maxims (that is, a universal code of conduct), in a "possible realm of ends". No one may elevate themselves above the universal law, therefore it is one's duty to follow the maxim(s).
Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason
Commentators, starting in the 20th century, have tended to see Kant as having a strained relationship with religion, though this was not the prevalent view in the 19th century. Karl Leonhard Reinhold, whose letters first made Kant famous, wrote "I believe that I may infer without reservation that the interest of religion, and of Christianity in particular, accords completely with the result of the Critique of Reason." Johann Schultz, who wrote one of the first Kant commentaries, wrote "And does not this system itself cohere most splendidly with the Christian religion? Do not the divinity and beneficence of the latter become all the more evident?" This view continued throughout the 19th century, as noted by Friedrich Nietzsche, who said "Kant's success is merely a theologian's success." The reason for these views was Kant's moral theology, and the widespread belief that his philosophy was the great antithesis to Spinozism, which had been convulsing the European academy for much of the 18th century. Spinozism was widely seen as the cause of the Pantheism controversy, and as a form of sophisticated pantheism or even atheism. As Kant's philosophy disregarded the possibility of arguing for God through pure reason alone, for the same reasons it also disregarded the possibility of arguing against God through pure reason alone. This, coupled with his moral philosophy (his argument that the existence of morality is a rational reason why God and an afterlife do and must exist), was the reason he was seen by many, at least through the end of the 19th century, as a great defender of religion in general and Christianity in particular.
Kant articulates his strongest criticisms of the organization and practices of religious organizations to those that encourage what he sees as a religion of counterfeit service to God. Among the major targets of his criticism are external ritual, superstition and a hierarchical church order. He sees these as efforts to make oneself pleasing to God in ways other than conscientious adherence to the principle of moral rightness in choosing and acting upon one's maxims. Kant's criticisms on these matters, along with his rejection of certain theoretical proofs grounded in pure reason (particularly the ontological argument) for the existence of God and his philosophical commentary on some Christian doctrines, have resulted in interpretations that see Kant as hostile to religion in general and Christianity in particular (e.g., Walsh 1967). Nevertheless, other interpreters consider that Kant was trying to mark off defensible from indefensible Christian belief. Kant sees in Jesus Christ the affirmation of a "pure moral disposition of the heart" that "can make man well-pleasing to God". Regarding Kant's conception of religion, some critics have argued that he was sympathetic to deism. Other critics have argued that Kant's moral conception moves from deism to theism (as moral theism), for example Allen W. Wood and Merold Westphal. As for Kant's book Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, it was emphasized that Kant reduced religiosity to rationality, religion to morality and Christianity to ethics. However, many interpreters, including Allen W. Wood and Lawrence Pasternack, now agree with Stephen Palmquist's claim that a better way of reading Kant's Religion is to see him as raising morality to the status of religion.
Idea of freedom
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes between the transcendental idea of freedom, which as a psychological concept is "mainly empirical" and refers to "whether a faculty of beginning a series of successive things or states from itself is to be assumed" and the practical concept of freedom as the independence of our will from the "coercion" or "necessitation through sensuous impulses". Kant finds it a source of difficulty that the practical idea of freedom is founded on the transcendental idea of freedom, but for the sake of practical interests uses the practical meaning, taking "no account of... its transcendental meaning," which he feels was properly "disposed of" in the Third Antinomy, and as an element in the question of the freedom of the will is for philosophy "a real stumbling block" that has embarrassed speculative reason.
Kant calls practical "everything that is possible through freedom", and the pure practical laws that are never given through sensuous conditions but are held analogously with the universal law of causality are moral laws. Reason can give us only the "pragmatic laws of free action through the senses", but pure practical laws given by reason a priori dictate "what is to be done". (The same distinction of transcendental and practical meaning can be applied to the idea of God, with the proviso that the practical concept of freedom can be experienced.)
Categories of freedom
In the Critique of Practical Reason, at the end of the second Main Part of the Analytics, Kant introduces the categories of freedom, in analogy with the categories of understanding their practical counterparts. Kant's categories of freedom apparently function primarily as conditions for the possibility for actions (i) to be free, (ii) to be understood as free and (iii) to be morally evaluated. For Kant, although actions as theoretical objects are constituted by means of the theoretical categories, actions as practical objects (objects of practical use of reason, and which can be good or bad) are constituted by means of the categories of freedom. Only in this way can actions, as phenomena, be a consequence of freedom, and be understood and evaluated as such.
Aesthetic philosophy
Kant discusses the subjective nature of aesthetic qualities and experiences in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764). Kant's contribution to aesthetic theory is developed in the Critique of Judgment (1790) where he investigates the possibility and logical status of "judgments of taste." In the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment," the first major division of the Critique of Judgment, Kant used the term "aesthetic" in a manner that, according to Kant scholar W.H. Walsh, differs from its modern sense. In the Critique of Pure Reason, to note essential differences between judgments of taste, moral judgments, and scientific judgments, Kant abandoned the term "aesthetic" as "designating the critique of taste," noting that judgments of taste could never be "directed" by "laws a priori." After A. G. Baumgarten, who wrote Aesthetica (1750–58), Kant was one of the first philosophers to develop and integrate aesthetic theory into a unified and comprehensive philosophical system, utilizing ideas that played an integral role throughout his philosophy.
In the chapter "Analytic of the Beautiful" in the Critique of Judgment, Kant states that beauty is not a property of an artwork or natural phenomenon, but is instead consciousness of the pleasure that attends the 'free play' of the imagination and the understanding. Even though it appears that we are using reason to decide what is beautiful, the judgment is not a cognitive judgment, "and is consequently not logical, but aesthetical" (§ 1). A pure judgement of taste is subjective since it refers to the emotional response of the subject and is based upon nothing but esteem for an object itself: it is a disinterested pleasure, and we feel that pure judgements of taste (i.e. judgements of beauty), lay claim to universal validity (§§ 20–22). It is important to note that this universal validity is not derived from a determinate concept of beauty but from common sense (§40). Kant also believed that a judgement of taste shares characteristics engaged in a moral judgement: both are disinterested, and we hold them to be universal. In the chapter "Analytic of the Sublime" Kant identifies the sublime as an aesthetic quality that, like beauty, is subjective, but unlike beauty refers to an indeterminate relationship between the faculties of the imagination and of reason, and shares the character of moral judgments in the use of reason. The feeling of the sublime, divided into two distinct modes (the mathematical and the dynamical sublime), describes two subjective moments that concern the relationship of the faculty of the imagination to reason. Some commentators argue that Kant's critical philosophy contains a third kind of the sublime, the moral sublime, which is the aesthetic response to the moral law or a representation, and a development of the "noble" sublime in Kant's theory of 1764. The mathematical sublime results from the failure of the imagination to comprehend natural objects that appear boundless and formless, or appear "absolutely great" (§§ 23–25). This imaginative failure is then recuperated through the pleasure taken in reason's assertion of the concept of infinity. In this move the faculty of reason proves itself superior to our fallible sensible self (§§ 25–26). In the dynamical sublime there is the sense of annihilation of the sensible self as the imagination tries to comprehend a vast might. This power of nature threatens us but through the resistance of reason to such sensible annihilation, the subject feels a pleasure and a sense of the human moral vocation. This appreciation of moral feeling through exposure to the sublime helps to develop moral character.
Kant developed a theory of humor (§ 54) that has been interpreted as an "incongruity" theory. He illustrated his theory of humor by telling three narrative jokes in the Critique of Judgment. He thought that the physiological impact of humor is akin to that of music. His knowledge of music, however, has been reported to be much weaker than his sense of humor: He told many more jokes throughout his lectures and writings.
Kant developed a distinction between an object of art as a material value subject to the conventions of society and the transcendental condition of the judgment of taste as a "refined" value in his Idea of A Universal History (1784). In the Fourth and Fifth Theses of that work he identified all art as the "fruits of unsociableness" due to men's "antagonism in society" and, in the Seventh Thesis, asserted that while such material property is indicative of a civilized state, only the ideal of morality and the universalization of refined value through the improvement of the mind "belongs to culture".
Political philosophy
In Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant listed several conditions that he thought necessary for ending wars and creating a lasting peace. They included a world of constitutional republics. His classical republican theory was extended in the Science of Right, the first part of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). Kant believed that universal history leads to the ultimate world of republican states at peace, but his theory was not pragmatic. The process was described in "Perpetual Peace" as natural rather than rational:
Kant's political thought can be summarized as republican government and international organization. "In more characteristically Kantian terms, it is doctrine of the state based upon the law (Rechtsstaat) and of eternal peace. Indeed, in each of these formulations, both terms express the same idea: that of legal constitution or of 'peace through law'. Kant's political philosophy, being essentially a legal doctrine, rejects by definition the opposition between moral education and the play of passions as alternate foundations for social life. The state is defined as the union of men under law. The state is constituted by laws which are necessary a priori because they flow from the very concept of law. "A regime can be judged by no other criteria nor be assigned any other functions, than those proper to the lawful order as such."
He opposed "democracy," which at his time meant direct democracy, believing that majority rule posed a threat to individual liberty. He stated, "...democracy is, properly speaking, necessarily a despotism, because it establishes an executive power in which 'all' decide for or even against one who does not agree; that is, 'all,' who are not quite all, decide, and this is a contradiction of the general will with itself and with freedom." As with most writers at the time, he distinguished three forms of government i.e. democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy with mixed government as the most ideal form of it.
Anthropology
Kant lectured on anthropology, the study of human nature, for twenty-three and a half years. His Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View was published in 1798. (This was the subject of Michel Foucault's secondary dissertation for his State doctorate, Introduction to Kant's Anthropology.) Kant's Lectures on Anthropology were published for the first time in 1997 in German. Introduction to Kant's Anthropology was translated into English and published by the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy series in 2006.
Kant was among the first people of his time to introduce anthropology as an intellectual area of study, long before the field gained popularity, and his texts are considered to have advanced the field. His point of view was to influence the works of later philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur.
Kant was also the first to suggest using a dimensionality approach to human diversity. He analyzed the nature of the Hippocrates-Galen four temperaments and plotted them in two dimensions: (1) "activation", or energetic aspect of behaviour, and (2) "orientation on emotionality". Cholerics were described as emotional and energetic; Phlegmatics as balanced and weak; Sanguines as balanced and energetic, and Melancholics as emotional and weak. These two dimensions reappeared in all subsequent models of temperament and personality traits.
Kant viewed anthropology in two broad categories: (1) the physiological approach, which he referred to as "what nature makes of the human being"; and (2) the pragmatic approach, which explored the things that a human "can and should make of himself."
Racism
Kant was one of the most notable Enlightenment thinkers to defend racism, and some have claimed that he was one of the central figures in the birth of modern scientific racism. Where figures such as Carl Linnaeus and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach had supposed only "empirical" observation for racism, Kant produced a full-blown theory of race. Using the Four Temperaments of ancient Greece, he proposed a hierarchy of four racial categories: white Europeans, yellow Asians, black Africans, and red Amerindians.
Kant wrote that "[Whites] contain all the impulses of nature in affects and passions, all talents, all dispositions to culture and civilization and can as readily obey as govern. They are the only ones who always advance to perfection.” He describes South Asians as "educated to the highest degree but only in the arts and not in the sciences". He goes on that Hindustanis can never reach the level of abstract concepts and that a "great hindustani man" is one who has "gone far in the art of deception and has much money". He stated that the Hindus always stay the way they are and can never advance. About black Africans, Kant wrote that "they can be educated but only as servants, that is they allow themselves to be trained". He quotes David Hume as challenging anyone to "cite a [single] example in which a Negro has shown talents" and asserts that, among the "hundreds of thousands" of blacks transported during the Atlantic slave trade, even among the freed "still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality". To Kant, "the Negro can be disciplined and cultivated, but is never genuinely civilized. He falls of his own accord into savagery." Native Americans, Kant opined, "cannot be educated". He calls them unmotivated, lacking affect, passion and love, describing them as too weak for labor, unfit for any culture, and too phlegmatic for diligence. He said the Native Americans are "far below the Negro, who undoubtedly holds the lowest of all remaining levels by which we designate the different races". Kant stated that "Americans and Blacks cannot govern themselves. They thus serve only for slaves."
Kant was an opponent of miscegenation, believing that whites would be "degraded" and the "fusing of races" is undesireable, for "not every race adopts the morals and customs of the Europeans". He stated that "instead of assimilation, which was intended by the melting together of the various races, Nature has here made a law of just the opposite". He believed that in the future all races would be extinguished, except that of the whites.
Charles W. Mills wrote that Kant has been "sanitized for public consumption", his racist works conveniently ignored. Robert Bernasconi stated that Kant "supplied the first scientific definition of race". Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze is credited with bringing Kant's contributions to racism to light in the 1990s among Western philosophers, who often gloss over this part of his life and works. He wrote about Kant's ideas of race:
Pauline Kleingeld argues that while Kant was indeed a staunch advocate of scientific racism for much of his career, his views on race changed significantly in works published in the last decade of his life. In particular, she argues that Kant unambiguously rejected past views related to racial hierarchies and the diminished rights or moral status of non-whites in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795). This work also saw him providing extended arguments against European colonialism, which he claimed was morally unjust and incompatible with the equal rights held by indigenous populations. Kleingeld argues that this shift in Kant's views later in life has often been forgotten or ignored in the literature on Kant's racist anthropology, and that the shift suggests a belated recognition of the fact that racial hierarchy was incompatible with a universalized moral framework. While Kant's perspective on the topic of European colonialism became more balanced, he still considered Europeans "civilized" to the exception of others:
Influence and legacy
Kant's influence on Western thought has been profound. Although the basic tenets of Kant's transcendental idealism (i.e. that space and time are a priori forms of human perception rather than real properties and the claim that formal logic and transcendental logic coincide) have been claimed to be falsified by modern science and logic, and no longer set the intellectual agenda of contemporary philosophers, Kant is credited with having innovated the way philosophical inquiry has been carried at least up to the early nineteenth century. This shift consisted in several closely related innovations that, although highly contentious in themselves, have become important in postmodern philosophy and in the social sciences broadly construed:
The human subject seen as the centre of inquiry into human knowledge, such that it is impossible to philosophize about things as they exist independently of human perception or of how they are for us;
The notion that is possible to discover and systematically explore the inherent limits to our ability to know entirely a priori;
The notion of the "categorical imperative", an assertion that people are naturally endowed with the ability and obligation toward right reason and acting. Perhaps his most famous quote is drawn from the Critique of Practical Reason: "Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe . . . : the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."
The concept of "conditions of possibility", as in his notion of "the conditions of possible experience"that is that things, knowledge, and forms of consciousness rest on prior conditions that make them possible, so that, to understand or to know them, we must first understand these conditions;
The theory that objective experience is actively constituted or constructed by the functioning of the human mind;
His notion of moral autonomy as central to humanity;
His assertion of the principle that human beings should be treated as ends rather than as means.
Kant's ideas have been incorporated into a variety of schools of thought. These include German idealism, Marxism, positivism, phenomenology, existentialism, critical theory, linguistic philosophy, structuralism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism.
Historical influence
During his own life, much critical attention was paid to his thought. He influenced Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Novalis during the 1780s and 1790s. The school of thinking known as German idealism developed from his writings. The German idealists Fichte and Schelling, for example, tried to bring traditional "metaphysically" laden notions like "the Absolute", "God", and "Being" into the scope of Kant's critical thought. In so doing, the German idealists tried to reverse Kant's view that we cannot know what we cannot observe.
The influential English Romantic poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge was greatly influenced by Kant and helped to spread awareness of him, and of German idealism generally, in the UK and the USA. In his Biographia Literaria (1817), he credits Kant's ideas in coming to believe that the mind is not a passive but an active agent in the apprehension of reality.
Hegel was one of Kant's first major critics. The main accusations Hegel charged Kant's philosophy with were formalism (or "abstractism") and irrationality. In Hegel's view the entire project of setting a "transcendental subject" (i.e human consciousness) apart from nature, history, and society was fundamentally flawed, although parts of that very project could be put to good use in a new direction, that Hegel called the "absolute idealism". Similar concerns moved Hegel's criticisms to Kant's concept of moral autonomy, to which Hegel opposed an ethic focused on the "ethical life" of the community. In a sense, Hegel's notion of "ethical life" is meant to subsume, rather than replace, Kantian ethics. And Hegel can be seen as trying to defend Kant's idea of freedom as going beyond finite "desires", by means of reason. Thus, in contrast to later critics like Nietzsche or Russell, Hegel shares some of Kant's concerns.
Kant's thinking on religion was used in Britain to challenge the decline in religious faith in the nineteenth century. British Catholic writers, notably G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, followed this approach. Ronald Englefield debated this movement, and Kant's use of language. Criticisms of Kant were common in the realist views of the new positivism at that time.
Arthur Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism. He, like G. E. Schulze, Jacobi and Fichte before him, was critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Things in themselves, they argued, are neither the cause of what we observe nor are they completely beyond our access. Ever since the first Critique of Pure Reason philosophers have been critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Many have argued, if such a thing exists beyond experience then one cannot posit that it affects us causally, since that would entail stretching the category "causality" beyond the realm of experience. For Schopenhauer things in themselves do not exist outside the non-rational will. The world, as Schopenhauer would have it, is the striving and largely unconscious will. Michael Kelly, in the preface to his 1910 book Kant's Ethics and Schopenhauer's Criticism, stated: "Of Kant it may be said that what is good and true in his philosophy would have been buried with him, were it not for Schopenhauer...."
With the success and wide influence of Hegel's writings, Kant's influence began to wane, though there was in Germany a movement that hailed a return to Kant in the 1860s, beginning with the publication of Kant und die Epigonen in 1865 by Otto Liebmann. His motto was "Back to Kant", and a re-examination of his ideas began (see Neo-Kantianism). During the turn of the 20th century there was an important revival of Kant's theoretical philosophy, known as the Marburg School, represented in the work of Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, Ernst Cassirer, and anti-Neo-Kantian Nicolai Hartmann.
Kant's notion of "Critique" has been quite influential. The early German Romantics, especially Friedrich Schlegel in his "Athenaeum Fragments", used Kant's self-reflexive conception of criticism in their Romantic theory of poetry. Also in aesthetics, Clement Greenberg, in his classic essay "Modernist Painting", uses Kantian criticism, what Greenberg refers to as "immanent criticism", to justify the aims of abstract painting, a movement Greenberg saw as aware of the key limitiaton—flatness—that makes up the medium of painting. French philosopher Michel Foucault was also greatly influenced by Kant's notion of "Critique" and wrote several pieces on Kant for a re-thinking of the Enlightenment as a form of "critical thought". He went so far as to classify his own philosophy as a "critical history of modernity, rooted in Kant".
Kant believed that mathematical truths were forms of synthetic a priori knowledge, which means they are necessary and universal, yet known through intuition. Kant's often brief remarks about mathematics influenced the mathematical school known as intuitionism, a movement in philosophy of mathematics opposed to Hilbert's formalism, and Frege and Bertrand Russell's logicism.
Influence on modern thinkers
With his Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant is considered to have foreshadowed many of the ideas that have come to form the democratic peace theory, one of the main controversies in political science.
Prominent recent Kantians include the British philosophers P. F. Strawson, Onora O'Neill and Quassim Cassam, and the American philosophers Wilfrid Sellars and Christine Korsgaard. Due to the influence of Strawson and Sellars, among others, there has been a renewed interest in Kant's view of the mind. Central to many debates in philosophy of psychology and cognitive science is Kant's conception of the unity of consciousness.
Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls are two significant political and moral philosophers whose work is strongly influenced by Kant's moral philosophy. They argued against relativism, supporting the Kantian view that universality is essential to any viable moral philosophy. Jean-François Lyotard, however, emphasized the indeterminacy in the nature of thought and language and has engaged in debates with Habermas based on the effects this indeterminacy has on philosophical and political debates.
Mou Zongsan's study of Kant has been cited as a highly crucial part in the development of Mou's personal philosophy, namely New Confucianism. Widely regarded as the most influential Kant scholar in China, Mou's rigorous critique of Kant's philosophy—having translated all three of Kant's critiques—served as an ardent attempt to reconcile Chinese and Western philosophy whilst increasing pressure to westernize in China.
Kant's influence also has extended to the social, behavioral, and physical sciences, as in the sociology of Max Weber, the psychology of Jean Piaget and Carl Gustav Jung, and the linguistics of Noam Chomsky. Kant's work on mathematics and synthetic a priori knowledge is also cited by theoretical physicist Albert Einstein as an early influence on his intellectual development, but which he later criticised heavily and rejected. He held the view that "[I]f one does not want to assert that relativity theory goes against reason, one cannot retain the a priori concepts and norms of Kant's system". However, Kant scholar Stephen Palmquist has argued that Einstein's rejection of Kant's influence was primarily "a response to mistaken interpretations of Kant being adopted by contemporary philosophers", when in fact Kant's transcendental perspective informed Einstein's early worldview and led to his insights regarding simultaneity, and eventually to his proposal of the theory of relativity. Because of the thoroughness of the Kantian paradigm shift, his influence extends to thinkers who neither specifically refer to his work nor use his terminology.
In recent years, there has been renewed interest in Kant's theory of mind from the point of view of formal logic and computer science.
Film/television
Kant and his work was heavily referenced in the comedy television show The Good Place, as the show deals with the subject of ethics and moral philosophy.
Bibliography
List of major works
(1749) Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte)
(March 1755) Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels)
(April 1755) Brief Outline of Certain Meditations on Fire (Meditationum quarundam de igne succinta delineatio (master's thesis under Johann Gottfried Teske))
(September 1755) A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio (doctoral thesis))
(1756) The Use in Natural Philosophy of Metaphysics Combined with Geometry, Part I: Physical Monadology (Metaphysicae cum geometrica iunctae usus in philosophin naturali, cuius specimen I. continet monadologiam physicam, abbreviated as Monadologia Physica (thesis as a prerequisite of associate professorship))
(1762) The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures (Die falsche Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figuren)
(1763) The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes)
(1763) Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy (Versuch den Begriff der negativen Größen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen)
(1764) Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen)
(1764) Essay on the Illness of the Head (Über die Krankheit des Kopfes)
(1764) Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (the Prize Essay) (Untersuchungen über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral)
(1766) Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (Träume eines Geistersehers)
(1768) On the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Regions in Space (Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume)
(August 1770) Dissertation on the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World (De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis (doctoral thesis))
(1775) On the Different Races of Man (Über die verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen)
(1781) First edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
(1783) Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik)
(1784) "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" ("Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?")
(1784) "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" ("Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht")
(1785) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten)
(1786) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft)
(1786) "What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?" ("Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren?")
(1786) Conjectural Beginning of Human History (Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte)
(1787) Second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
(1788) Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft)
(1790) Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft)
(1793) Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft)
(1793) On the Old Saw: That May be Right in Theory But It Won't Work in Practice (Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis)
(1795) Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch ("Zum ewigen Frieden")
(1797) Metaphysics of Morals (Metaphysik der Sitten). First part is The Doctrine of Right, which has often been published separately as The Science of Right.
(1798) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht)
(1798) The Contest of Faculties (Der Streit der Fakultäten)
(1800) Logic (Logik)
(1803) On Pedagogy (Über Pädagogik)
(1804) Opus Postumum
(1817) Lectures on Philosophical Theology (Immanuel Kants Vorlesungen über die philosophische Religionslehre edited by K.H.L. Pölitz) [The English edition of A.W. Wood & G.M. Clark (Cornell, 1978) is based on Pölitz' second edition, 1830, of these lectures.]
Collected works in German
Printed version
Wilhelm Dilthey inaugurated the Academy edition (the Akademie-Ausgabe abbreviated as AA or Ak) of Kant's writings (Gesammelte Schriften, Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1902–38) in 1895, and served as its first editor. The volumes are grouped into four sections:
I. Kant's published writings (vols. 1–9),
II. Kant's correspondence (vols. 10–13),
III. Kant's literary remains, or Nachlass (vols. 14–23), and
IV. Student notes from Kant's lectures (vols. 24–29).
Electronic version
Elektronische Edition der Gesammelten Werke Immanuel Kants (vols. 1–23).
See also
Notes
References
Works cited
Kant, Immanuel. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Lewis White Beck, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1969. Page numbers citing this work are Beck's marginal numbers that refer to the page numbers of the standard edition of Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1902–38).
Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: a Biography. Cambridge University Press, 2001. .
Further reading
In Germany, one important contemporary interpreter of Kant and the movement of German Idealism he began is Dieter Henrich, who has some work available in English. P. F. Strawson's The Bounds of Sense (1966) played a significant role in determining the contemporary reception of Kant in England and America. More recent interpreters of note in the English-speaking world include Lewis White Beck, Jonathan Bennett, Henry Allison, Paul Guyer, Christine Korsgaard, Stephen Palmquist, Robert B. Pippin, Roger Scruton, Rudolf Makkreel, and Béatrice Longuenesse.
General introductions to his thought
Broad, C.D. Kant: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Gardner, Sebastian. Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1999.
Martin, Gottfried. Kant's Metaphysics and Theory of Science. Greenwood Press, 1955 (elucidates Kant's most fundamental concepts in their historical context)
Palmquist, Stephen. Kant's System of Perspectives : an architectonic interpretation of the Critical philosophy. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993.
Seung, T.K. 2007. Kant: a Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum.
Satyananda Giri. Kant. Durham, CT: Strategic Publishing Group, 2010.
Scruton, Roger. Kant: a Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2001. (provides a brief account of his life, and a lucid introduction to the three major critiques)
Uleman, Jennifer. An Introduction to Kant's Moral Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Luchte, James. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant's Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties. The Athlone Press, 1983.
Biography and historical context
Beck, Lewis White. Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors. Harvard University Press, 1969. (a survey of Kant's intellectual background)
Beiser, Frederick C. The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte. Harvard University Press, 1987.
Beiser, Frederick C. German Idealism: the Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781–1801. Harvard University Press, 2002
Cassirer, Ernst. Kant's Life and Thought. Translation of Kants Leben und Lehre. Trans., Jame S. Haden, intr. Stephan Körner. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart. Immanuel Kanta study and a comparison with Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruno, Plato and Descartes, the authorised translation from the German by Lord Redesdale, with his 'Introduction', The Bodley Head, London, 1914, (2 volumes).
Gulyga, Arsenij. Immanuel Kant: His Life and Thought. Trans., Marijan Despaltović. Boston: Birkhäuser, 1987.
Johnson, G.R. (ed.). Kant on Swedenborg. Dreams of a Spirit-Seer and Other Writings. Swedenborg Foundation, 2002. (new translation and analysis, many supplementary texts)
Lehner, Ulrich L., Kants Vorsehungskonzept auf dem Hintergrund der deutschen Schulphilosophie und –theologie (Leiden: 2007) (Kant's concept of Providence and its background in German school philosophy and theology)
Pinkard, Terry. German Philosophy, 1760–1860: the Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge, 2002.
Pippin, Robert. Idealism as Modernism. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Sassen, Brigitte (ed.). Kant's Early Critics: the Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy, Cambridge, 2000.
Schabert, Joseph A. "Kant's Influence on his Successors", The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. XLVII, January 1922.
Collections of essays
Firestone, Chris L. and Palmquist, Stephen (eds.). Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion. Notre Dame: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Förster, Eckart (ed.). Kant's Transcendental Deductions:. The Three 'Critiques' and the 'Opus Postumum' Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. Includes an important essay by Dieter Henrich.
Guyer, Paul (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Excellent collection of papers that covers most areas of Kant's thought.
Mohanty, J.N. and Shahan, Robert W. (eds.). Essays on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.
Phillips, Dewi et al. (eds.). Kant and Kierkegaard on Religion. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000, Collection of essays about Kantian religion and its influence on Kierkegaardian and contemporary philosophy of religion.
Proceedings of the International Kant Congresses. Several Congresses (numbered) edited by various publishers.
Theoretical philosophy
Allison, Henry. Kant's Transcendental Idealism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983, 2004. (a very influential defense of Kant's idealism, recently revised).
Ameriks, Karl. Kant's Theory of Mind: An Analysis of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982 (one of the first detailed studies of the Dialectic in English).
Banham, Gary. Kant's Transcendental Imagination. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant's Critical Philosophy. Trans., Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Gram, Moltke S. The Transcendental Turn: The Foundation of Kant's Idealism. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1984.
Greenberg, Robert. Kant's Theory of A Priori Knowledge. Penn State Press, 2001
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987 (modern defense of the view that Kant's theoretical philosophy is a "patchwork" of ill-fitting arguments).
Heidegger, Martin. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Trans., Richard Taft. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
Henrich, Dieter. The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant's Philosophy. Ed. with introduction by Richard L. Velkley; trans. Jeffrey Edwards et al. Harvard University Press, 1994.
Kemp Smith, Norman. A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason. London: Macmillan, 1930 (influential commentary on the first Critique, recently reprinted).
Kitcher, Patricia. Kant's Transcendental Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Longuenesse, Béatrice. Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Princeton University Press, 1998. . (argues that the notion of judgment provides the key to understanding the overall argument of the first Critique)
Melnick, Arthur. Kant's Analogies of Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. (important study of Kant's Analogies, including his defense of the principle of causality)
Paton, H.J. Kant's Metaphysic of Experience: a Commentary on the First Half of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Two volumes. London: Macmillan, 1936. (extensive study of Kant's theoretical philosophy)
Pippin, Robert B. Kant's Theory of Form: An Essay on the Critique of Pure Reason. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. (influential examination of the formal character of Kant's work)
Schopenhauer, Arthur. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Erster Band. Anhang. Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie. F.A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1859 (In English: Arthur Schopenhauer, New York: Dover Press, Volume I, Appendix, "Critique of the Kantian Philosophy", )
Seung, T.K. Kant's Transcendental Logic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969.
Strawson, P.F. The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1989 (the work that revitalized the interest of contemporary analytic philosophers in Kant).
Sturm, Thomas, Kant und die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. Paderborn: Mentis Verlag, 2009. . review (Treats Kant's anthropology and his views on psychology and history in relation to his philosophy of science.)
Tonelli, Giorgio. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason within the Tradition of Modern Logic. A Commentary on its History. Hildesheim, Olms 1994
Werkmeister, W.H., Kant: The Architectonic and Development of His Philosophy, Open Court Publishing Co., La Salle, Ill.; 1980 (it treats, as a whole, the architectonic and development of Kant's philosophy from 1755 through the Opus postumum.)
Wolff, Robert Paul. Kant's Theory of Mental Activity: A Commentary on the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1963. (detailed and influential commentary on the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason)
Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Kant and the Philosophy of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. (review )
Practical philosophy
Allison, Henry. Kant's Theory of Freedom. Cambridge University Press 1990.
Banham, Gary. Kant's Practical Philosophy: From Critique to Doctrine. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Dorschel, Andreas. Die idealistische Kritik des Willens: Versuch über die Theorie der praktischen Subjektivität bei Kant und Hegel. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1992 (Schriften zur Transzendentalphilosophie 10) .
Korsgaard, Christine M. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Michalson, Gordon E. Fallen Freedom: Kant on Radical Evil and Moral Regeneration. Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Michalson, Gordon E. Kant and the Problem of God. Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
Paton, H.J. The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant's Moral Philosophy. University of Pennsylvania Press 1971.
Rawls, John. Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, 2000.
Seung, T.K. Kant's Platonic Revolution in Moral and Political Philosophy. Johns Hopkins, 1994.
Wolff, Robert Paul. The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. New York: HarperCollins, 1974. .
Wood, Allen. Kant's Ethical Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Aesthetics
Allison, Henry. Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Banham, Gary. Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics. London and New York: Macmillan Press, 2000.
Clewis, Robert. The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Crawford, Donald. Kant's Aesthetic Theory. Wisconsin, 1974.
Doran, Robert. The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Taste. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1979.
Hammermeister, Kai. The German Aesthetic Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Immanuel Kant entry in Kelly, Michael (Editor in Chief) (1998) Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Kaplama, Erman. Cosmological Aesthetics through the Kantian Sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian. Lanham: UPA, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
Makkreel, Rudolf, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant. Chicago, 1990.
McCloskey, Mary. Kant's Aesthetic. SUNY, 1987.
Schaper, Eva. Studies in Kant's Aesthetics. Edinburgh, 1979.
Zammito, John H. The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1992.
Zupancic, Alenka. Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan. Verso, 2000.
Philosophy of religion
Palmquist, Stephen. Kant's Critical Religion : Volume Two of Kant's System of Perspectives. Ashgate, 2000.
Perez, Daniel Omar. "Religión, Política y Medicina en Kant: El Conflicto de las Proposiciones". Cinta de Moebio. Revista de Epistemologia de Ciencias Sociales, v. 28, p. 91–103, 2007. Uchile.cl (Spanish)
Perpetual peace and international relations
Sir Harry Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace, Cambridge University Press, 1962.
Martin Wight, Four Seminal Thinkers in International Theory: Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant and Mazzini ed. Gabriele Wight & Brian Porter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Other works
Botul, Jean-Baptiste. La vie sexuelle d'Emmanuel Kant. Paris, Éd. Mille et une Nuits, 2008.
Caygill, Howard. A Kant Dictionary. Oxford; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Reference, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques. Mochlos; or, The Conflict of the Faculties. Columbia University, 1980.
Kelly, Michael. Kant's Ethics and Schopenhauer's Criticism, London: Swan Sonnenschein 1910. [Reprinted 2010 Nabu Press, ]
Mosser, Kurt. Necessity and Possibility; The Logical Strategy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Catholic University of America Press, 2008.
White, Mark D. Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autonomy, Dignity, and Character . Stanford University Press, 2011. . (Reviewed in The Montreal Review )
Contemporary philosophy with a Kantian influence
Guyer, Paul. Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant's Response to Hume. Princeton University Press, 2008.
Hanna, Robert, Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy. Clarendon Press, 2004.
Hanna, Robert, Kant, Science, and Human Nature. Clarendon Press, 2006.
Herman, Barbara. The Practice of Moral Judgement. Harvard University Press, 1993.
(A Kantian approach to the issue of pornography and degradation.)
Korsgaard, Christine. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (not a commentary, but a defense of a broadly Kantian approach to ethics)
McDowell, John. Mind and World. Harvard University Press, 1994. . (offers a Kantian solution to a dilemma in contemporary epistemology regarding the relation between mind and world)
Parfit, Derek. On What Matters (2 vols.). New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Pinker, Steven. The Stuff of Thought. Viking Press, 2007. . (Chapter 4 "Cleaving the Air" discusses Kant's anticipation of modern cognitive science)
Wood, Allen W. Kant's Ethical Thought. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. . (comprehensive, in-depth study of Kant's ethics, with emphasis on formula of humanity as most accurate formulation of the categorical imperative)
External links
KantPapers, authors and papers database powered by PhilPapers, focused on Kant, and located at Cornell University
Immanuel Kant at the Encyclopædia Britannica
Immanuel Kant in the Christian Cyclopedia
Works by Immanuel Kant at Duisburg-Essen University
Stephen Palmquist's Glossary of Kantian Terminology
Kant's Ethical Theory – Kantian ethics explained, applied and evaluated
Notes on Utilitarianism – A conveniently brief survey of Kant's Utilitarianism
"Immanuel Kant", An overview of his work, times, and influence on biology, plantspeopleplanet.org.au
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: An Overview
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Aesthetics
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Logic
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Mind
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Radical Evil
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Religion
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant
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"The Extraordinary Tale of Nicholas Pierce is a 2011 adventure novel written by Alexander DeLuca. It follows the journey of a university teacher Nicholas Pierce, who suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder as he searches for his biological parents, traveling across states in the United States of America. He travels with a friend, who is an eccentric barista in a cafe in upstate New York, named Sergei Tarasov.\n\nPlot\nNicholas Pierce suffers from OCD. He is also missing the memory of the first five years of his life. Raised by adoptive parents, one day he receives a mysterious box from an \"Uncle Nathan\". Curious, he sets off on a journey to find his biological parents with a Russian friend, Sergei Tarasov. On the trip, they meet several people, face money problems and different challenges. They also pick up a hitchhiker, Jessica, who later turns out to be a criminal.\n\nFinally, Nicholas finds his grandparents, who direct him to his biological parents. When he meets them, he finds out that his vaguely registered biological 'parents' were actually neighbors of his real parents who had died in an accident. The mysterious box that he had received is destroyed. He finds out that it contained photographs from his early life.\n\n2011 American novels\nNovels about obsessive–compulsive disorder",
"Bomba and the Jungle Girl is a 1952 adventure film directed by Ford Beebe and starring Johnny Sheffield. It is the eighth film (of 12) in the Bomba, the Jungle Boy film series.\n\nPlot\nBomba decides to find out who his parents were. He starts with Cody Casson's diary and follows the trail to a native village. An ancient blind woman tells him his parents, along the village's true ruler, were murdered by the current chieftain and his daughter. With the aid of an inspector and his daughter, Bomba battles the usurpers in the cave where his parents were buried.\n\nCast\nJohnny Sheffield\nKaren Sharpe\nWalter Sande\nSuzette Harbin\nMartin Wilkins\nMorris Buchanan\nLeonard Mudie\nDon Blackman.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1952 films\nAmerican films\nAmerican adventure films\nFilms directed by Ford Beebe\nFilms produced by Walter Mirisch\nMonogram Pictures films\n1952 adventure films\nAmerican black-and-white films"
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"Immanuel Kant",
"Biography",
"when was he born?",
"April 22, 1724",
"where was he born?",
"Konigsberg, Prussia",
"who were his parents?",
"His mother, Anna Regina Reuter"
] | C_8ddf971bb06941f8a8f1b934b838550b_1 | and his father? | 4 | Who was Immanuel Kant's father? | Immanuel Kant | Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724 in Konigsberg, Prussia (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia). His mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697-1737), was also born in Konigsberg to a father from Nuremberg. (Her name is sometimes erroneously given as Anna Regina Porter.) His father, Johann Georg Kant (1682-1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipeda, Lithuania). Immanuel Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. While scholars of Kant's life long accepted the claim, there is no evidence that Kant's paternal line was Scottish; it is more likely that the Kants got their name from the village of Kantwaggen (today part of Priekule) and were of Curonian origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children (four of them reached adulthood). Baptized 'Emanuel', he changed his name to 'Immanuel' after learning Hebrew. Young Kant was a solid, albeit unspectacular, student. Kant was born into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in East Prussia. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. Kant maintained a belief in Christianity, in his work Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals he reveals a belief in human immortality as the necessary condition of our continued approach to the highest good possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of Theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic. Common myths about Kant's personal mannerisms are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. It is often held that Kant lived a very strict and disciplined life, leading to an oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but seemed to have a rewarding social life -- he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends whom he frequently met, among them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Konigsberg. A common myth is that Kant never traveled more than 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from Konigsberg his whole life. In fact, between 1750 and 1754 he worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Gross-Arnsdorf (now Jarnoltowo near Morag (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km). CANNOTANSWER | His father, Johann Georg Kant (1682-1746), was a German | Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him an influential figure in modern Western philosophy.
In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued that space and time are mere "forms of intuition" which structure all experience, and therefore that while "things-in-themselves" exist and contribute to experience, they are nonetheless distinct from the objects of experience. From this it follows that the objects of experience are mere "appearances", and that the nature of things as they are in themselves is consequently unknowable to us. In an attempt to counter the skepticism he found in the writings of philosopher David Hume, he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), one of his most well-known works. In it, he developed his theory of experience to answer the question of whether synthetic a priori knowledge is possible, which would in turn make it possible to determine the limits of metaphysical inquiry. Kant drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that the objects of the senses must conform to our spatial and temporal forms of intuition, and that we can consequently have a priori cognition of the objects of the senses.
Kant believed that reason is also the source of morality, and that aesthetics arise from a faculty of disinterested judgment. Kant's views continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of epistemology, ethics, political theory, and post-modern aesthetics. He attempted to explain the relationship between reason and human experience and to move beyond what he believed to be the failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He wanted to put an end to what he saw as an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience, while resisting the skepticism of thinkers such as Hume. He regarded himself as showing the way past the impasse between rationalists and empiricists, and is widely held to have synthesized both traditions in his thought.
Kant was an exponent of the idea that perpetual peace could be secured through universal democracy and international cooperation, and that perhaps this could be the culminating stage of world history. The nature of Kant's religious views continues to be the subject of scholarly dispute, with viewpoints ranging from the impression that he shifted from an early defense of an ontological argument for the existence of God to a principled agnosticism, to more critical treatments epitomized by Schopenhauer, who criticized the imperative form of Kantian ethics as "theological morals" and the "Mosaic Decalogue in disguise", and Nietzsche, who claimed that Kant had "theologian blood" and was merely a sophisticated apologist for traditional Christian faith. Beyond his religious views, Kant has also been criticized for the racism presented in some of his lesser-known papers, such as "On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy" and "On the Different Races of Man". Although he was a proponent of scientific racism for much of his career, Kant's views on race changed significantly in the last decade of his life, and he ultimately rejected racial hierarchies and European colonialism in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795).
Kant published other important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history during his lifetime. These include the Universal Natural History (1755), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), the Critique of Judgment (1790), Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (1793), and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
Biography
Kant's mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697–1737), was born in Königsberg (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia) to a father from Nuremberg. Her surname is sometimes erroneously given as Porter. Kant's father, Johann Georg Kant (1682–1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipėda, Lithuania). Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. While scholars of Kant's life long accepted the claim, there is no evidence that Kant's paternal line was Scottish and it is more likely that the Kants got their name from the village of Kantwaggen (today part of Priekulė) and were of Curonian origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children (six of whom reached adulthood).
Kant was born on 22 April 1724 into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in Königsberg, East Prussia. Baptized Emanuel, he later changed the spelling of his name to Immanuel after learning Hebrew. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. In his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, he reveals a belief in immortality as the necessary condition of humanity's approach to the highest morality possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic, even though it has also been suggested that Kant intends other people to think of him as a "pure rationalist", who is defined by Kant himself as someone who recognizes revelation but asserts that to know and accept it as real is not a necessary requisite to religion.
Kant apparently lived a very strict and disciplined life; it was said that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but seemed to have a rewarding social life — he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends with whom he frequently met, among them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Königsberg.
Between 1750 and 1754 Kant worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Groß-Arnsdorf (now Jarnołtowo near Morąg (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km).
Many myths grew up about Kant's personal mannerisms; these are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime.
Young scholar
Kant showed a great aptitude for study at an early age. He first attended the Collegium Fridericianum from which he graduated at the end of the summer of 1740. In 1740, aged 16, he enrolled at the University of Königsberg, where he spent his whole career. He studied the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and Christian Wolff under Martin Knutzen (Associate Professor of Logic and Metaphysics from 1734 until his death in 1751), a rationalist who was also familiar with developments in British philosophy and science and introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Isaac Newton. Knutzen dissuaded Kant from the theory of pre-established harmony, which he regarded as "the pillow for the lazy mind". He also dissuaded Kant from idealism, the idea that reality is purely mental, which most philosophers in the 18th century regarded in a negative light. The theory of transcendental idealism that Kant later included in the Critique of Pure Reason was developed partially in opposition to traditional idealism.
His father's stroke and subsequent death in 1746 interrupted his studies. Kant left Königsberg shortly after August 1748—he would return there in August 1754. He became a private tutor in the towns surrounding Königsberg, but continued his scholarly research. In 1749, he published his first philosophical work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (written in 1745–47).
Early work
Kant is best known for his work in the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics, but he made significant contributions to other disciplines. In 1754, while contemplating on a prize question by the Berlin Academy about the problem of Earth's rotation, he argued that the Moon's gravity would slow down Earth's spin and he also put forth the argument that gravity would eventually cause the Moon's tidal locking to coincide with the Earth's rotation. The next year, he expanded this reasoning to the formation and evolution of the Solar System in his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. In 1755, Kant received a license to lecture in the University of Königsberg and began lecturing on a variety of topics including mathematics, physics, logic and metaphysics. In his 1756 essay on the theory of winds, Kant laid out an original insight into the Coriolis force. In 1757, Kant began lecturing on geography making him one of the first lecturers to explicitly teach geography as its own subject. Geography was one of Kant's most popular lecturing topics and in 1802 a compilation by Friedrich Theodor Rink of Kant's lecturing notes, Physical Geography, was released. After Kant became a professor in 1770, he expanded the topics of his lectures to include lectures on natural law, ethics and anthropology along with other topics.
In the Universal Natural History, Kant laid out the Nebular hypothesis, in which he deduced that the Solar System had formed from a large cloud of gas, a nebula. Kant also correctly deduced (though through usually false premises and fallacious reasoning, according to Bertrand Russell) that the Milky Way was a large disk of stars, which he theorized formed from a much larger spinning gas cloud. He further suggested that other distant "nebulae" might be other galaxies. These postulations opened new horizons for astronomy, for the first time extending it beyond the Solar System to galactic and intergalactic realms. According to Thomas Huxley (1867), Kant also made contributions to geology in his Universal Natural History.
From then on, Kant turned increasingly to philosophical issues, although he continued to write on the sciences throughout his life. In the early 1760s, Kant produced a series of important works in philosophy. The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, a work in logic, was published in 1762. Two more works appeared the following year: Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy and The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. By 1764, Kant had become a notable popular author, and wrote Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime; he was second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy prize competition with his Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (often referred to as "The Prize Essay"). In 1766 Kant wrote Dreams of a Spirit-Seer which dealt with the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. The exact influence of Swedenborg on Kant, as well as the extent of Kant's belief in mysticism according to Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, remain controversial. On 31 March 1770, aged 45, Kant was finally appointed Full Professor of Logic and Metaphysics (Professor Ordinarius der Logic und Metaphysic) at the University of Königsberg. In defense of this appointment, Kant wrote his inaugural dissertation (Inaugural-Dissertation) De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis (On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World). This work saw the emergence of several central themes of his mature work, including the distinction between the faculties of intellectual thought and sensible receptivity. To miss this distinction would mean to commit the error of subreption, and, as he says in the last chapter of the dissertation, only in avoiding this error does metaphysics flourish.
The issue that vexed Kant was central to what 20th-century scholars called "the philosophy of mind". The flowering of the natural sciences had led to an understanding of how data reaches the brain. Sunlight falling on an object is reflected from its surface in a way that maps the surface features (color, texture, etc.). The reflected light reaches the human eye, passes through the cornea, is focused by the lens onto the retina where it forms an image similar to that formed by light passing through a pinhole into a camera obscura. The retinal cells send impulses through the optic nerve and then they form a mapping in the brain of the visual features of the object. The interior mapping is not the exterior object, and our belief that there is a meaningful relationship between the object and the mapping in the brain depends on a chain of reasoning that is not fully grounded. But the uncertainty aroused by these considerations, by optical illusions, misperceptions, delusions, etc., are not the end of the problems.
Kant saw that the mind could not function as an empty container that simply receives data from outside. Something must be giving order to the incoming data. Images of external objects must be kept in the same sequence in which they were received. This ordering occurs through the mind's intuition of time. The same considerations apply to the mind's function of constituting space for ordering mappings of visual and tactile signals arriving via the already described chains of physical causation.
It is often claimed that Kant was a late developer, that he only became an important philosopher in his mid-50s after rejecting his earlier views. While it is true that Kant wrote his greatest works relatively late in life, there is a tendency to underestimate the value of his earlier works. Recent Kant scholarship has devoted more attention to these "pre-critical" writings and has recognized a degree of continuity with his mature work.
Critique of Pure Reason
At age 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher, and much was expected of him. In correspondence with his ex-student and friend Markus Herz, Kant admitted that, in the inaugural dissertation, he had failed to account for the relation between our sensible and intellectual faculties. He needed to explain how we combine what is known as sensory knowledge with the other type of knowledgei.e. reasoned knowledgethese two being related but having very different processes.
Kant also credited David Hume with awakening him from a "dogmatic slumber" in which he had unquestioningly accepted the tenets of both religion and natural philosophy. Hume in his 1739 Treatise on Human Nature had argued that we only know the mind through a subjectiveessentially illusoryseries of perceptions. Ideas such as causality, morality, and objects are not evident in experience, so their reality may be questioned. Kant felt that reason could remove this skepticism, and he set himself to solving these problems. Although fond of company and conversation with others, Kant isolated himself, and resisted friends' attempts to bring him out of his isolation. When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant countered Hume's empiricism by claiming that some knowledge exists inherently in the mind, independent of experience. He drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that worldly objects can be intuited a priori ('beforehand'), and that intuition is consequently distinct from objective reality. He acquiesced to Hume somewhat by defining causality as a "regular, constant sequence of events in time, and nothing more."
Although now uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, this Critique disappointed Kant's readers upon its initial publication. The book was long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in a convoluted style. It received few reviews, and these granted it no significance. Kant's former student, Johann Gottfried Herder criticized it for placing reason as an entity worthy of criticism instead of considering the process of reasoning within the context of language and one's entire personality. Similar to Christian Garve and Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, he rejected Kant's position that space and time possessed a form that could be analyzed. Additionally, Garve and Feder also faulted Kant's Critique for not explaining differences in perception of sensations. Its density made it, as Herder said in a letter to Johann Georg Hamann, a "tough nut to crack", obscured by "all this heavy gossamer". Its reception stood in stark contrast to the praise Kant had received for earlier works, such as his Prize Essay and shorter works that preceded the first Critique. These well-received and readable tracts include one on the earthquake in Lisbon that was so popular that it was sold by the page. Prior to the change in course documented in the first Critique, his books had sold well. Kant was disappointed with the first Critique's reception. Recognizing the need to clarify the original treatise, Kant wrote the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics in 1783 as a summary of its main views. Shortly thereafter, Kant's friend Johann Friedrich Schultz (1739–1805) (professor of mathematics) published Erläuterungen über des Herrn Professor Kant Critik der reinen Vernunft (Königsberg, 1784), which was a brief but very accurate commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
Kant's reputation gradually rose through the latter portion of the 1780s, sparked by a series of important works: the 1784 essay, "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?"; 1785's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (his first work on moral philosophy); and, from 1786, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. But Kant's fame ultimately arrived from an unexpected source. In 1786, Karl Leonhard Reinhold published a series of public letters on Kantian philosophy. In these letters, Reinhold framed Kant's philosophy as a response to the central intellectual controversy of the era: the pantheism controversy. Friedrich Jacobi had accused the recently deceased Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (a distinguished dramatist and philosophical essayist) of Spinozism. Such a charge, tantamount to atheism, was vigorously denied by Lessing's friend Moses Mendelssohn, leading to a bitter public dispute among partisans. The controversy gradually escalated into a debate about the values of the Enlightenment and the value of reason.
Reinhold maintained in his letters that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason could settle this dispute by defending the authority and bounds of reason. Reinhold's letters were widely read and made Kant the most famous philosopher of his era.
Later work
Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book. Most of his subsequent work focused on other areas of philosophy. He continued to develop his moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason (known as the second Critique) and 1797's Metaphysics of Morals. The 1790 Critique of Judgment (the third Critique) applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology.
In 1792, Kant's attempt to publish the Second of the four Pieces of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, in the journal Berlinische Monatsschrift, met with opposition from the King's censorship commission, which had been established that same year in the context of the French Revolution. Kant then arranged to have all four pieces published as a book, routing it through the philosophy department at the University of Jena to avoid the need for theological censorship. This insubordination earned him a now famous reprimand from the King. When he nevertheless published a second edition in 1794, the censor was so irate that he arranged for a royal order that required Kant never to publish or even speak publicly about religion. Kant then published his response to the King's reprimand and explained himself, in the preface of The Conflict of the Faculties.
He also wrote a number of semi-popular essays on history, religion, politics and other topics. These works were well received by Kant's contemporaries and confirmed his preeminent status in 18th-century philosophy. There were several journals devoted solely to defending and criticizing Kantian philosophy. Despite his success, philosophical trends were moving in another direction. Many of Kant's most important disciples and followers (including Reinhold, Beck and Fichte) transformed the Kantian position into increasingly radical forms of idealism. The progressive stages of revision of Kant's teachings marked the emergence of German idealism. Kant opposed these developments and publicly denounced Fichte in an open letter in 1799. It was one of his final acts expounding a stance on philosophical questions. In 1800, a student of Kant named Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche (1762–1842) published a manual of logic for teachers called Logik, which he had prepared at Kant's request. Jäsche prepared the Logik using a copy of a textbook in logic by Georg Friedrich Meier entitled Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre, in which Kant had written copious notes and annotations. The Logik has been considered of fundamental importance to Kant's philosophy, and the understanding of it. The great 19th-century logician Charles Sanders Peirce remarked, in an incomplete review of Thomas Kingsmill Abbott's English translation of the introduction to Logik, that "Kant's whole philosophy turns upon his logic." Also, Robert Schirokauer Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz, wrote in the translators' introduction to their English translation of the Logik, "Its importance lies not only in its significance for the Critique of Pure Reason, the second part of which is a restatement of fundamental tenets of the Logic, but in its position within the whole of Kant's work."
Death and burial
Kant's health, long poor, worsened and he died at Königsberg on 12 February 1804, uttering "Es ist gut (It is good)" before expiring. His unfinished final work was published as Opus Postumum. Kant always cut a curious figure in his lifetime for his modest, rigorously scheduled habits, which have been referred to as clocklike. However, Heinrich Heine noted the magnitude of "his destructive, world-crushing thoughts" and considered him a sort of philosophical "executioner", comparing him to Robespierre with the observation that both men "represented in the highest the type of provincial bourgeois. Nature had destined them to weigh coffee and sugar, but Fate determined that they should weigh other things and placed on the scales of the one a king, on the scales of the other a god."
When his body was transferred to a new burial spot, his skull was measured during the exhumation and found to be larger than the average German male's with a "high and broad" forehead. His forehead has been an object of interest ever since it became well-known through his portraits: "In Döbler's portrait and in Kiefer's faithful if expressionistic reproduction of it — as well as in many of the other late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century portraits of Kant — the forehead is remarkably large and decidedly retreating. Was Kant's forehead shaped this way in these images because he was a philosopher, or, to follow the implications of Lavater's system, was he a philosopher because of the intellectual acuity manifested by his forehead? Kant and Johann Kaspar Lavater were correspondents on theological matters, and Lavater refers to Kant in his work "Physiognomic Fragments, for the Education of Human Knowledge and Love of People" (Leipzig & Winterthur, 1775–1778).
Kant's mausoleum adjoins the northeast corner of Königsberg Cathedral in Kaliningrad, Russia. The mausoleum was constructed by the architect Friedrich Lahrs and was finished in 1924 in time for the bicentenary of Kant's birth. Originally, Kant was buried inside the cathedral, but in 1880 his remains were moved to a neo-Gothic chapel adjoining the northeast corner of the cathedral. Over the years, the chapel became dilapidated and was demolished to make way for the mausoleum, which was built on the same location.
The tomb and its mausoleum are among the few artifacts of German times preserved by the Soviets after they conquered and annexed the city. Today, many newlyweds bring flowers to the mausoleum. Artifacts previously owned by Kant, known as Kantiana, were included in the Königsberg City Museum. However, the museum was destroyed during World War II. A replica of the statue of Kant that stood in German times in front of the main University of Königsberg building was donated by a German entity in the early 1990s and placed in the same grounds.
After the expulsion of Königsberg's German population at the end of World War II, the University of Königsberg where Kant taught was replaced by the Russian-language Kaliningrad State University, which appropriated the campus and surviving buildings. In 2005, the university was renamed Immanuel Kant State University of Russia. The name change was announced at a ceremony attended by President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, and the university formed a Kant Society, dedicated to the study of Kantianism. The university was again renamed in the 2010s, to Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University.
In late November 2018, his tomb and statue were vandalized with paint by unknown assailants, who also scattered leaflets glorifying Rus' and denouncing Kant as a "traitor". The incident is apparently connected with a recent vote to rename Khrabrovo Airport, where Kant was in the lead for a while, prompting Russian nationalist resentment.
Philosophy
In Kant's essay "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?", he defined the Enlightenment as an age shaped by the Latin motto Sapere aude ("Dare to be wise"). Kant maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority. His work reconciled many of the differences between the rationalist and empiricist traditions of the 18th century. He had a decisive impact on the Romantic and German Idealist philosophies of the 19th century. His work has also been a starting point for many 20th century philosophers.
Kant asserted that, because of the limitations of argumentation in the absence of irrefutable evidence, no one could really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not. For the sake of morality and as a ground for reason, Kant asserted, people are justified in believing in God, even though they could never know God's presence empirically.
The sense of an enlightened approach and the critical method required that "If one cannot prove that a thing is, he may try to prove that it is not. If he fails to do either (as often occurs), he may still ask whether it is in his interest to accept one or the other of the alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical point of view. Hence the question no longer is as to whether perpetual peace is a real thing or not a real thing, or as to whether we may not be deceiving ourselves when we adopt the former alternative, but we must act on the supposition of its being real." The presupposition of God, soul, and freedom was then a practical concern, for
Kant drew a parallel between the Copernican revolution and the epistemology of his new transcendental philosophy, involving two interconnected foundations of his "critical philosophy":
the epistemology of transcendental idealism and
the moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason.
These teachings placed the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral worlds. Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science was not just the accidental accumulation of sense perceptions.
Conceptual unification and integration is carried out by the mind through concepts or the "categories of the understanding" operating on the perceptual manifold within space and time. The latter are not concepts, but are forms of sensibility that are a priori necessary conditions for any possible experience. Thus the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that operates within it depend on the mind's processes, the product of the rule-based activity that Kant called "synthesis". There is much discussion among Kant scholars about the correct interpretation of this train of thought.
The 'two-world' interpretation regards Kant's position as a statement of epistemological limitation, that we are not able to transcend the bounds of our own mind, meaning that we cannot access the "thing-in-itself". However, Kant also speaks of the thing in itself or transcendental object as a product of the (human) understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of sensibility. Following this line of thought, some interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological domain but simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding alonethis is known as the two-aspect view.
The notion of the "thing in itself" was much discussed by philosophers after Kant. It was argued that, because the "thing in itself" was unknowable, its existence must not be assumed. Rather than arbitrarily switching to an account that was ungrounded in anything supposed to be the "real", as did the German Idealists, another group arose who asked how our (presumably reliable) accounts of a coherent and rule-abiding universe were actually grounded. This new kind of philosophy became known as Phenomenology, and its founder was Edmund Husserl.
With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather is only the good will itself. A good will is one that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. This law obliges one to treat humanityunderstood as rational agency, and represented through oneself as well as othersas an end in itself rather than (merely) as means to other ends the individual might hold. This necessitates practical self-reflection in which we universalize our reasons.
These ideas have largely framed or influenced all subsequent philosophical discussion and analysis. The specifics of Kant's account generated immediate and lasting controversy. Nevertheless, his thesesthat the mind itself necessarily makes a constitutive contribution to its knowledge, that this contribution is transcendental rather than psychological, that philosophy involves self-critical activity, that morality is rooted in human freedom, and that to act autonomously is to act according to rational moral principleshave all had a lasting effect on subsequent philosophy.
Epistemology
Theory of perception
Kant defines his theory of perception in his influential 1781 work the Critique of Pure Reason, which has often been cited as the most significant volume of metaphysics and epistemology in modern philosophy. Kant maintains that understanding of the external world had its foundations not merely in experience, but in both experience and a priori concepts, thus offering a non-empiricist critique of rationalist philosophy, which is what has been referred to as his Copernican revolution.
Firstly, Kant distinguishes between analytic and synthetic propositions:
Analytic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is contained in its subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are unmarried," or, "All bodies take up space."
Synthetic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is not contained in its subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are alone," or, "All bodies have weight."
An analytic proposition is true by nature of the meaning of the words in the sentence — we require no further knowledge than a grasp of the language to understand this proposition. On the other hand, a synthetic statement is one that tells us something about the world. The truth or falsehood of synthetic statements derives from something outside their linguistic content. In this instance, weight is not a necessary predicate of the body; until we are told the heaviness of the body we do not know that it has weight. In this case, experience of the body is required before its heaviness becomes clear. Before Kant's first Critique, empiricists (cf. Hume) and rationalists (cf. Leibniz) assumed that all synthetic statements required experience to be known.
Kant contests this assumption by claiming that elementary mathematics, like arithmetic, is synthetic a priori, in that its statements provide new knowledge not derived from experience. This becomes part of his over-all argument for transcendental idealism. That is, he argues that the possibility of experience depends on certain necessary conditions — which he calls a priori forms — and that these conditions structure and hold true of the world of experience. His main claims in the "Transcendental Aesthetic" are that mathematic judgments are synthetic a priori and that space and time are not derived from experience but rather are its preconditions.
Once we have grasped the functions of basic arithmetic, we do not need empirical experience to know that 100 + 100 = 200, and so it appears that arithmetic is analytic. However, that it is analytic can be disproved by considering the calculation 5 + 7 = 12: there is nothing in the numbers 5 and 7 by which the number 12 can be inferred. Thus "5 + 7" and "the cube root of 1,728" or "12" are not analytic because their reference is the same but their sense is not — the statement "5 + 7 = 12" tells us something new about the world. It is self-evident, and undeniably a priori, but at the same time it is synthetic. Thus Kant argued that a proposition can be synthetic and a priori.
Kant asserts that experience is based on the perception of external objects and a priori knowledge. The external world, he writes, provides those things that we sense. But our mind processes this information and gives it order, allowing us to comprehend it. Our mind supplies the conditions of space and time to experience objects. According to the "transcendental unity of apperception", the concepts of the mind (Understanding) and perceptions or intuitions that garner information from phenomena (Sensibility) are synthesized by comprehension. Without concepts, perceptions are nondescript; without perceptions, concepts are meaningless. Thus the famous statement: "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions [perceptions] without concepts are blind."
Kant also claims that an external environment is necessary for the establishment of the self. Although Kant would want to argue that there is no empirical way of observing the self, we can see the logical necessity of the self when we observe that we can have different perceptions of the external environment over time. By uniting these general representations into one global representation, we can see how a transcendental self emerges. "I am therefore conscious of the identical self in regard to the manifold of the representations that are given to me in an intuition because I call them all together my representations, which constitute one."
Categories of the Faculty of Understanding
Kant deemed it obvious that we have some objective knowledge of the world, such as, say, Newtonian physics. But this knowledge relies on synthetic, a priori laws of nature, like causality and substance. How is this possible? Kant's solution was that the subject must supply laws that make experience of objects possible, and that these laws are synthetic, a priori laws of nature that apply to all objects before we experience them. To deduce all these laws, Kant examined experience in general, dissecting in it what is supplied by the mind from what is supplied by the given intuitions. This is commonly called a transcendental deduction.
To begin with, Kant's distinction between the a posteriori being contingent and particular knowledge, and the a priori being universal and necessary knowledge, must be kept in mind. If we merely connect two intuitions together in a perceiving subject, the knowledge is always subjective because it is derived a posteriori, when what is desired is for the knowledge to be objective, that is, for the two intuitions to refer to the object and hold good of it for anyone at any time, not just the perceiving subject in its current condition. What else is equivalent to objective knowledge besides the a priori (universal and necessary knowledge)? Before knowledge can be objective, it must be incorporated under an a priori category of understanding.
For example, if a subject says, "The sun shines on the stone; the stone grows warm," all he perceives are phenomena. His judgment is contingent and holds no necessity. But if he says, "The sunshine causes the stone to warm," he subsumes the perception under the category of causality, which is not found in the perception, and necessarily synthesizes the concept sunshine with the concept heat, producing a necessarily universally true judgment.
To explain the categories in more detail, they are the preconditions of the construction of objects in the mind. Indeed, to even think of the sun and stone presupposes the category of subsistence, that is, substance. For the categories synthesize the random data of the sensory manifold into intelligible objects. This means that the categories are also the most abstract things one can say of any object whatsoever, and hence one can have an a priori cognition of the totality of all objects of experience if one can list all of them. To do so, Kant formulates another transcendental deduction.
Judgments are, for Kant, the preconditions of any thought. Man thinks via judgments, so all possible judgments must be listed and the perceptions connected within them put aside, so as to make it possible to examine the moments when the understanding is engaged in constructing judgments. For the categories are equivalent to these moments, in that they are concepts of intuitions in general, so far as they are determined by these moments universally and necessarily. Thus by listing all the moments, one can deduce from them all of the categories.
One may now ask: How many possible judgments are there? Kant believed that all the possible propositions within Aristotle's syllogistic logic are equivalent to all possible judgments, and that all the logical operators within the propositions are equivalent to the moments of the understanding within judgments. Thus he listed Aristotle's system in four groups of three: quantity (universal, particular, singular), quality (affirmative, negative, infinite), relation (categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive) and modality (problematic, assertoric, apodeictic). The parallelism with Kant's categories is obvious: quantity (unity, plurality, totality), quality (reality, negation, limitation), relation (substance, cause, community) and modality (possibility, existence, necessity).
The fundamental building blocks of experience, i.e. objective knowledge, are now in place. First there is the sensibility, which supplies the mind with intuitions, and then there is the understanding, which produces judgments of these intuitions and can subsume them under categories. These categories lift the intuitions up out of the subject's current state of consciousness and place them within consciousness in general, producing universally necessary knowledge. For the categories are innate in any rational being, so any intuition thought within a category in one mind is necessarily subsumed and understood identically in any mind. In other words, we filter what we see and hear.
Transcendental schema doctrine
Kant ran into a problem with his theory that the mind plays a part in producing objective knowledge. Intuitions and categories are entirely disparate, so how can they interact? Kant's solution is the (transcendental) schema: a priori principles by which the transcendental imagination connects concepts with intuitions through time. All the principles are temporally bound, for if a concept is purely a priori, as the categories are, then they must apply for all times. Hence there are principles such as substance is that which endures through time, and the cause must always be prior to the effect. In the context of transcendental schema the concept of transcendental reflection is of a great importance.
Ethics
Kant developed his ethics, or moral philosophy, in three works: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
In Groundwork, Kant tries to convert our everyday, obvious, rational knowledge of morality into philosophical knowledge. The latter two works used "practical reason", which is based only on things about which reason can tell us, and not deriving any principles from experience, to reach conclusions which can be applied to the world of experience (in the second part of The Metaphysics of Morals).
Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the "Categorical Imperative", and is derived from the concept of duty. Kant defines the demands of moral law as "categorical imperatives". Categorical imperatives are principles that are intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed in all situations and circumstances, if our behavior is to observe the moral law. The Categorical Imperative provides a test against which moral statements can be assessed. Kant also stated that the moral means and ends can be applied to the categorical imperative, that rational beings can pursue certain "ends" using the appropriate "means". Ends based on physical needs or wants create hypothetical imperatives. The categorical imperative can only be based on something that is an "end in itself", that is, an end that is not a means to some other need, desire, or purpose. Kant believed that the moral law is a principle of reason itself, and is not based on contingent facts about the world, such as what would make us happy, but to act on the moral law which has no other motive than "worthiness to be happy". Accordingly, he believed that moral obligation applies only to rational agents.
Unlike a hypothetical imperative, a categorical imperative is an unconditional obligation; it has the force of an obligation regardless of our will or desires In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785) Kant enumerated three formulations of the categorical imperative that he believed to be roughly equivalent. In the same book, Kant stated:
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.
According to Kant, one cannot make exceptions for oneself. The philosophical maxim on which one acts should always be considered to be a universal law without exception. One cannot allow oneself to do a particular action unless one thinks it appropriate that the reason for the action should become a universal law. For example, one should not steal, however dire the circumstancesbecause, by permitting oneself to steal, one makes stealing a universally acceptable act. This is the first formulation of the categorical imperative, often known as the universalizability principle.
Kant believed that, if an action is not done with the motive of duty, then it is without moral value. He thought that every action should have pure intention behind it; otherwise, it is meaningless. The final result is not the most important aspect of an action; rather, how the person feels while carrying out the action is the time when value is attached to the result.
In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant also posited the "counter-utilitarian idea that there is a difference between preferences and values, and that considerations of individual rights temper calculations of aggregate utility", a concept that is an axiom in economics:
Everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. But that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself does not have mere relative worth, i.e., price, but an intrinsic worth, i.e., a dignity. (p. 53, italics in original).
A phrase quoted by Kant, which is used to summarize the counter-utilitarian nature of his moral philosophy, is Fiat justitia, pereat mundus ("Let justice be done, though the world perish"), which he translates loosely as "Let justice reign even if all the rascals in the world should perish from it". This appears in his 1795 Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch ("Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf"), Appendix 1.
First formulation
The first formulation (Formula of Universal Law) of the moral imperative "requires that the maxims be chosen as though they should hold as universal laws of nature". This formulation in principle has as its supreme law the creed "Always act according to that maxim whose universality as a law you can at the same time will" and is the "only condition under which a will can never come into conflict with itself [....]"
One interpretation of the first formulation is called the "universalizability test". An agent's maxim, according to Kant, is his "subjective principle of human actions": that is, what the agent believes is his reason to act. The universalisability test has five steps:
Find the agent's maxim (i.e., an action paired with its motivation). Take, for example, the declaration "I will lie for personal benefit". Lying is the action; the motivation is to fulfill some sort of desire. Together, they form the maxim.
Imagine a possible world in which everyone in a similar position to the real-world agent followed that maxim.
Decide if contradictions or irrationalities would arise in the possible world as a result of following the maxim.
If a contradiction or irrationality would arise, acting on that maxim is not allowed in the real world.
If there is no contradiction, then acting on that maxim is permissible, and is sometimes required.
(For a modern parallel, see John Rawls' hypothetical situation, the original position.)
Second formulation
The second formulation (or Formula of the End in Itself) holds that "the rational being, as by its nature an end and thus as an end in itself, must serve in every maxim as the condition restricting all merely relative and arbitrary ends". The principle dictates that you "[a]ct with reference to every rational being (whether yourself or another) so that it is an end in itself in your maxim", meaning that the rational being is "the basis of all maxims of action" and "must be treated never as a mere means but as the supreme limiting condition in the use of all means, i.e., as an end at the same time".
Third formulation
The third formulation (i.e. Formula of Autonomy) is a synthesis of the first two and is the basis for the "complete determination of all maxims". It states "that all maxims which stem from autonomous legislation ought to harmonize with a possible realm of ends as with a realm of nature".
In principle, "So act as if your maxims should serve at the same time as the universal law (of all rational beings)", meaning that we should so act that we may think of ourselves as "a member in the universal realm of ends", legislating universal laws through our maxims (that is, a universal code of conduct), in a "possible realm of ends". No one may elevate themselves above the universal law, therefore it is one's duty to follow the maxim(s).
Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason
Commentators, starting in the 20th century, have tended to see Kant as having a strained relationship with religion, though this was not the prevalent view in the 19th century. Karl Leonhard Reinhold, whose letters first made Kant famous, wrote "I believe that I may infer without reservation that the interest of religion, and of Christianity in particular, accords completely with the result of the Critique of Reason." Johann Schultz, who wrote one of the first Kant commentaries, wrote "And does not this system itself cohere most splendidly with the Christian religion? Do not the divinity and beneficence of the latter become all the more evident?" This view continued throughout the 19th century, as noted by Friedrich Nietzsche, who said "Kant's success is merely a theologian's success." The reason for these views was Kant's moral theology, and the widespread belief that his philosophy was the great antithesis to Spinozism, which had been convulsing the European academy for much of the 18th century. Spinozism was widely seen as the cause of the Pantheism controversy, and as a form of sophisticated pantheism or even atheism. As Kant's philosophy disregarded the possibility of arguing for God through pure reason alone, for the same reasons it also disregarded the possibility of arguing against God through pure reason alone. This, coupled with his moral philosophy (his argument that the existence of morality is a rational reason why God and an afterlife do and must exist), was the reason he was seen by many, at least through the end of the 19th century, as a great defender of religion in general and Christianity in particular.
Kant articulates his strongest criticisms of the organization and practices of religious organizations to those that encourage what he sees as a religion of counterfeit service to God. Among the major targets of his criticism are external ritual, superstition and a hierarchical church order. He sees these as efforts to make oneself pleasing to God in ways other than conscientious adherence to the principle of moral rightness in choosing and acting upon one's maxims. Kant's criticisms on these matters, along with his rejection of certain theoretical proofs grounded in pure reason (particularly the ontological argument) for the existence of God and his philosophical commentary on some Christian doctrines, have resulted in interpretations that see Kant as hostile to religion in general and Christianity in particular (e.g., Walsh 1967). Nevertheless, other interpreters consider that Kant was trying to mark off defensible from indefensible Christian belief. Kant sees in Jesus Christ the affirmation of a "pure moral disposition of the heart" that "can make man well-pleasing to God". Regarding Kant's conception of religion, some critics have argued that he was sympathetic to deism. Other critics have argued that Kant's moral conception moves from deism to theism (as moral theism), for example Allen W. Wood and Merold Westphal. As for Kant's book Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, it was emphasized that Kant reduced religiosity to rationality, religion to morality and Christianity to ethics. However, many interpreters, including Allen W. Wood and Lawrence Pasternack, now agree with Stephen Palmquist's claim that a better way of reading Kant's Religion is to see him as raising morality to the status of religion.
Idea of freedom
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes between the transcendental idea of freedom, which as a psychological concept is "mainly empirical" and refers to "whether a faculty of beginning a series of successive things or states from itself is to be assumed" and the practical concept of freedom as the independence of our will from the "coercion" or "necessitation through sensuous impulses". Kant finds it a source of difficulty that the practical idea of freedom is founded on the transcendental idea of freedom, but for the sake of practical interests uses the practical meaning, taking "no account of... its transcendental meaning," which he feels was properly "disposed of" in the Third Antinomy, and as an element in the question of the freedom of the will is for philosophy "a real stumbling block" that has embarrassed speculative reason.
Kant calls practical "everything that is possible through freedom", and the pure practical laws that are never given through sensuous conditions but are held analogously with the universal law of causality are moral laws. Reason can give us only the "pragmatic laws of free action through the senses", but pure practical laws given by reason a priori dictate "what is to be done". (The same distinction of transcendental and practical meaning can be applied to the idea of God, with the proviso that the practical concept of freedom can be experienced.)
Categories of freedom
In the Critique of Practical Reason, at the end of the second Main Part of the Analytics, Kant introduces the categories of freedom, in analogy with the categories of understanding their practical counterparts. Kant's categories of freedom apparently function primarily as conditions for the possibility for actions (i) to be free, (ii) to be understood as free and (iii) to be morally evaluated. For Kant, although actions as theoretical objects are constituted by means of the theoretical categories, actions as practical objects (objects of practical use of reason, and which can be good or bad) are constituted by means of the categories of freedom. Only in this way can actions, as phenomena, be a consequence of freedom, and be understood and evaluated as such.
Aesthetic philosophy
Kant discusses the subjective nature of aesthetic qualities and experiences in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764). Kant's contribution to aesthetic theory is developed in the Critique of Judgment (1790) where he investigates the possibility and logical status of "judgments of taste." In the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment," the first major division of the Critique of Judgment, Kant used the term "aesthetic" in a manner that, according to Kant scholar W.H. Walsh, differs from its modern sense. In the Critique of Pure Reason, to note essential differences between judgments of taste, moral judgments, and scientific judgments, Kant abandoned the term "aesthetic" as "designating the critique of taste," noting that judgments of taste could never be "directed" by "laws a priori." After A. G. Baumgarten, who wrote Aesthetica (1750–58), Kant was one of the first philosophers to develop and integrate aesthetic theory into a unified and comprehensive philosophical system, utilizing ideas that played an integral role throughout his philosophy.
In the chapter "Analytic of the Beautiful" in the Critique of Judgment, Kant states that beauty is not a property of an artwork or natural phenomenon, but is instead consciousness of the pleasure that attends the 'free play' of the imagination and the understanding. Even though it appears that we are using reason to decide what is beautiful, the judgment is not a cognitive judgment, "and is consequently not logical, but aesthetical" (§ 1). A pure judgement of taste is subjective since it refers to the emotional response of the subject and is based upon nothing but esteem for an object itself: it is a disinterested pleasure, and we feel that pure judgements of taste (i.e. judgements of beauty), lay claim to universal validity (§§ 20–22). It is important to note that this universal validity is not derived from a determinate concept of beauty but from common sense (§40). Kant also believed that a judgement of taste shares characteristics engaged in a moral judgement: both are disinterested, and we hold them to be universal. In the chapter "Analytic of the Sublime" Kant identifies the sublime as an aesthetic quality that, like beauty, is subjective, but unlike beauty refers to an indeterminate relationship between the faculties of the imagination and of reason, and shares the character of moral judgments in the use of reason. The feeling of the sublime, divided into two distinct modes (the mathematical and the dynamical sublime), describes two subjective moments that concern the relationship of the faculty of the imagination to reason. Some commentators argue that Kant's critical philosophy contains a third kind of the sublime, the moral sublime, which is the aesthetic response to the moral law or a representation, and a development of the "noble" sublime in Kant's theory of 1764. The mathematical sublime results from the failure of the imagination to comprehend natural objects that appear boundless and formless, or appear "absolutely great" (§§ 23–25). This imaginative failure is then recuperated through the pleasure taken in reason's assertion of the concept of infinity. In this move the faculty of reason proves itself superior to our fallible sensible self (§§ 25–26). In the dynamical sublime there is the sense of annihilation of the sensible self as the imagination tries to comprehend a vast might. This power of nature threatens us but through the resistance of reason to such sensible annihilation, the subject feels a pleasure and a sense of the human moral vocation. This appreciation of moral feeling through exposure to the sublime helps to develop moral character.
Kant developed a theory of humor (§ 54) that has been interpreted as an "incongruity" theory. He illustrated his theory of humor by telling three narrative jokes in the Critique of Judgment. He thought that the physiological impact of humor is akin to that of music. His knowledge of music, however, has been reported to be much weaker than his sense of humor: He told many more jokes throughout his lectures and writings.
Kant developed a distinction between an object of art as a material value subject to the conventions of society and the transcendental condition of the judgment of taste as a "refined" value in his Idea of A Universal History (1784). In the Fourth and Fifth Theses of that work he identified all art as the "fruits of unsociableness" due to men's "antagonism in society" and, in the Seventh Thesis, asserted that while such material property is indicative of a civilized state, only the ideal of morality and the universalization of refined value through the improvement of the mind "belongs to culture".
Political philosophy
In Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant listed several conditions that he thought necessary for ending wars and creating a lasting peace. They included a world of constitutional republics. His classical republican theory was extended in the Science of Right, the first part of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). Kant believed that universal history leads to the ultimate world of republican states at peace, but his theory was not pragmatic. The process was described in "Perpetual Peace" as natural rather than rational:
Kant's political thought can be summarized as republican government and international organization. "In more characteristically Kantian terms, it is doctrine of the state based upon the law (Rechtsstaat) and of eternal peace. Indeed, in each of these formulations, both terms express the same idea: that of legal constitution or of 'peace through law'. Kant's political philosophy, being essentially a legal doctrine, rejects by definition the opposition between moral education and the play of passions as alternate foundations for social life. The state is defined as the union of men under law. The state is constituted by laws which are necessary a priori because they flow from the very concept of law. "A regime can be judged by no other criteria nor be assigned any other functions, than those proper to the lawful order as such."
He opposed "democracy," which at his time meant direct democracy, believing that majority rule posed a threat to individual liberty. He stated, "...democracy is, properly speaking, necessarily a despotism, because it establishes an executive power in which 'all' decide for or even against one who does not agree; that is, 'all,' who are not quite all, decide, and this is a contradiction of the general will with itself and with freedom." As with most writers at the time, he distinguished three forms of government i.e. democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy with mixed government as the most ideal form of it.
Anthropology
Kant lectured on anthropology, the study of human nature, for twenty-three and a half years. His Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View was published in 1798. (This was the subject of Michel Foucault's secondary dissertation for his State doctorate, Introduction to Kant's Anthropology.) Kant's Lectures on Anthropology were published for the first time in 1997 in German. Introduction to Kant's Anthropology was translated into English and published by the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy series in 2006.
Kant was among the first people of his time to introduce anthropology as an intellectual area of study, long before the field gained popularity, and his texts are considered to have advanced the field. His point of view was to influence the works of later philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur.
Kant was also the first to suggest using a dimensionality approach to human diversity. He analyzed the nature of the Hippocrates-Galen four temperaments and plotted them in two dimensions: (1) "activation", or energetic aspect of behaviour, and (2) "orientation on emotionality". Cholerics were described as emotional and energetic; Phlegmatics as balanced and weak; Sanguines as balanced and energetic, and Melancholics as emotional and weak. These two dimensions reappeared in all subsequent models of temperament and personality traits.
Kant viewed anthropology in two broad categories: (1) the physiological approach, which he referred to as "what nature makes of the human being"; and (2) the pragmatic approach, which explored the things that a human "can and should make of himself."
Racism
Kant was one of the most notable Enlightenment thinkers to defend racism, and some have claimed that he was one of the central figures in the birth of modern scientific racism. Where figures such as Carl Linnaeus and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach had supposed only "empirical" observation for racism, Kant produced a full-blown theory of race. Using the Four Temperaments of ancient Greece, he proposed a hierarchy of four racial categories: white Europeans, yellow Asians, black Africans, and red Amerindians.
Kant wrote that "[Whites] contain all the impulses of nature in affects and passions, all talents, all dispositions to culture and civilization and can as readily obey as govern. They are the only ones who always advance to perfection.” He describes South Asians as "educated to the highest degree but only in the arts and not in the sciences". He goes on that Hindustanis can never reach the level of abstract concepts and that a "great hindustani man" is one who has "gone far in the art of deception and has much money". He stated that the Hindus always stay the way they are and can never advance. About black Africans, Kant wrote that "they can be educated but only as servants, that is they allow themselves to be trained". He quotes David Hume as challenging anyone to "cite a [single] example in which a Negro has shown talents" and asserts that, among the "hundreds of thousands" of blacks transported during the Atlantic slave trade, even among the freed "still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality". To Kant, "the Negro can be disciplined and cultivated, but is never genuinely civilized. He falls of his own accord into savagery." Native Americans, Kant opined, "cannot be educated". He calls them unmotivated, lacking affect, passion and love, describing them as too weak for labor, unfit for any culture, and too phlegmatic for diligence. He said the Native Americans are "far below the Negro, who undoubtedly holds the lowest of all remaining levels by which we designate the different races". Kant stated that "Americans and Blacks cannot govern themselves. They thus serve only for slaves."
Kant was an opponent of miscegenation, believing that whites would be "degraded" and the "fusing of races" is undesireable, for "not every race adopts the morals and customs of the Europeans". He stated that "instead of assimilation, which was intended by the melting together of the various races, Nature has here made a law of just the opposite". He believed that in the future all races would be extinguished, except that of the whites.
Charles W. Mills wrote that Kant has been "sanitized for public consumption", his racist works conveniently ignored. Robert Bernasconi stated that Kant "supplied the first scientific definition of race". Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze is credited with bringing Kant's contributions to racism to light in the 1990s among Western philosophers, who often gloss over this part of his life and works. He wrote about Kant's ideas of race:
Pauline Kleingeld argues that while Kant was indeed a staunch advocate of scientific racism for much of his career, his views on race changed significantly in works published in the last decade of his life. In particular, she argues that Kant unambiguously rejected past views related to racial hierarchies and the diminished rights or moral status of non-whites in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795). This work also saw him providing extended arguments against European colonialism, which he claimed was morally unjust and incompatible with the equal rights held by indigenous populations. Kleingeld argues that this shift in Kant's views later in life has often been forgotten or ignored in the literature on Kant's racist anthropology, and that the shift suggests a belated recognition of the fact that racial hierarchy was incompatible with a universalized moral framework. While Kant's perspective on the topic of European colonialism became more balanced, he still considered Europeans "civilized" to the exception of others:
Influence and legacy
Kant's influence on Western thought has been profound. Although the basic tenets of Kant's transcendental idealism (i.e. that space and time are a priori forms of human perception rather than real properties and the claim that formal logic and transcendental logic coincide) have been claimed to be falsified by modern science and logic, and no longer set the intellectual agenda of contemporary philosophers, Kant is credited with having innovated the way philosophical inquiry has been carried at least up to the early nineteenth century. This shift consisted in several closely related innovations that, although highly contentious in themselves, have become important in postmodern philosophy and in the social sciences broadly construed:
The human subject seen as the centre of inquiry into human knowledge, such that it is impossible to philosophize about things as they exist independently of human perception or of how they are for us;
The notion that is possible to discover and systematically explore the inherent limits to our ability to know entirely a priori;
The notion of the "categorical imperative", an assertion that people are naturally endowed with the ability and obligation toward right reason and acting. Perhaps his most famous quote is drawn from the Critique of Practical Reason: "Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe . . . : the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."
The concept of "conditions of possibility", as in his notion of "the conditions of possible experience"that is that things, knowledge, and forms of consciousness rest on prior conditions that make them possible, so that, to understand or to know them, we must first understand these conditions;
The theory that objective experience is actively constituted or constructed by the functioning of the human mind;
His notion of moral autonomy as central to humanity;
His assertion of the principle that human beings should be treated as ends rather than as means.
Kant's ideas have been incorporated into a variety of schools of thought. These include German idealism, Marxism, positivism, phenomenology, existentialism, critical theory, linguistic philosophy, structuralism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism.
Historical influence
During his own life, much critical attention was paid to his thought. He influenced Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Novalis during the 1780s and 1790s. The school of thinking known as German idealism developed from his writings. The German idealists Fichte and Schelling, for example, tried to bring traditional "metaphysically" laden notions like "the Absolute", "God", and "Being" into the scope of Kant's critical thought. In so doing, the German idealists tried to reverse Kant's view that we cannot know what we cannot observe.
The influential English Romantic poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge was greatly influenced by Kant and helped to spread awareness of him, and of German idealism generally, in the UK and the USA. In his Biographia Literaria (1817), he credits Kant's ideas in coming to believe that the mind is not a passive but an active agent in the apprehension of reality.
Hegel was one of Kant's first major critics. The main accusations Hegel charged Kant's philosophy with were formalism (or "abstractism") and irrationality. In Hegel's view the entire project of setting a "transcendental subject" (i.e human consciousness) apart from nature, history, and society was fundamentally flawed, although parts of that very project could be put to good use in a new direction, that Hegel called the "absolute idealism". Similar concerns moved Hegel's criticisms to Kant's concept of moral autonomy, to which Hegel opposed an ethic focused on the "ethical life" of the community. In a sense, Hegel's notion of "ethical life" is meant to subsume, rather than replace, Kantian ethics. And Hegel can be seen as trying to defend Kant's idea of freedom as going beyond finite "desires", by means of reason. Thus, in contrast to later critics like Nietzsche or Russell, Hegel shares some of Kant's concerns.
Kant's thinking on religion was used in Britain to challenge the decline in religious faith in the nineteenth century. British Catholic writers, notably G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, followed this approach. Ronald Englefield debated this movement, and Kant's use of language. Criticisms of Kant were common in the realist views of the new positivism at that time.
Arthur Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism. He, like G. E. Schulze, Jacobi and Fichte before him, was critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Things in themselves, they argued, are neither the cause of what we observe nor are they completely beyond our access. Ever since the first Critique of Pure Reason philosophers have been critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Many have argued, if such a thing exists beyond experience then one cannot posit that it affects us causally, since that would entail stretching the category "causality" beyond the realm of experience. For Schopenhauer things in themselves do not exist outside the non-rational will. The world, as Schopenhauer would have it, is the striving and largely unconscious will. Michael Kelly, in the preface to his 1910 book Kant's Ethics and Schopenhauer's Criticism, stated: "Of Kant it may be said that what is good and true in his philosophy would have been buried with him, were it not for Schopenhauer...."
With the success and wide influence of Hegel's writings, Kant's influence began to wane, though there was in Germany a movement that hailed a return to Kant in the 1860s, beginning with the publication of Kant und die Epigonen in 1865 by Otto Liebmann. His motto was "Back to Kant", and a re-examination of his ideas began (see Neo-Kantianism). During the turn of the 20th century there was an important revival of Kant's theoretical philosophy, known as the Marburg School, represented in the work of Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, Ernst Cassirer, and anti-Neo-Kantian Nicolai Hartmann.
Kant's notion of "Critique" has been quite influential. The early German Romantics, especially Friedrich Schlegel in his "Athenaeum Fragments", used Kant's self-reflexive conception of criticism in their Romantic theory of poetry. Also in aesthetics, Clement Greenberg, in his classic essay "Modernist Painting", uses Kantian criticism, what Greenberg refers to as "immanent criticism", to justify the aims of abstract painting, a movement Greenberg saw as aware of the key limitiaton—flatness—that makes up the medium of painting. French philosopher Michel Foucault was also greatly influenced by Kant's notion of "Critique" and wrote several pieces on Kant for a re-thinking of the Enlightenment as a form of "critical thought". He went so far as to classify his own philosophy as a "critical history of modernity, rooted in Kant".
Kant believed that mathematical truths were forms of synthetic a priori knowledge, which means they are necessary and universal, yet known through intuition. Kant's often brief remarks about mathematics influenced the mathematical school known as intuitionism, a movement in philosophy of mathematics opposed to Hilbert's formalism, and Frege and Bertrand Russell's logicism.
Influence on modern thinkers
With his Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant is considered to have foreshadowed many of the ideas that have come to form the democratic peace theory, one of the main controversies in political science.
Prominent recent Kantians include the British philosophers P. F. Strawson, Onora O'Neill and Quassim Cassam, and the American philosophers Wilfrid Sellars and Christine Korsgaard. Due to the influence of Strawson and Sellars, among others, there has been a renewed interest in Kant's view of the mind. Central to many debates in philosophy of psychology and cognitive science is Kant's conception of the unity of consciousness.
Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls are two significant political and moral philosophers whose work is strongly influenced by Kant's moral philosophy. They argued against relativism, supporting the Kantian view that universality is essential to any viable moral philosophy. Jean-François Lyotard, however, emphasized the indeterminacy in the nature of thought and language and has engaged in debates with Habermas based on the effects this indeterminacy has on philosophical and political debates.
Mou Zongsan's study of Kant has been cited as a highly crucial part in the development of Mou's personal philosophy, namely New Confucianism. Widely regarded as the most influential Kant scholar in China, Mou's rigorous critique of Kant's philosophy—having translated all three of Kant's critiques—served as an ardent attempt to reconcile Chinese and Western philosophy whilst increasing pressure to westernize in China.
Kant's influence also has extended to the social, behavioral, and physical sciences, as in the sociology of Max Weber, the psychology of Jean Piaget and Carl Gustav Jung, and the linguistics of Noam Chomsky. Kant's work on mathematics and synthetic a priori knowledge is also cited by theoretical physicist Albert Einstein as an early influence on his intellectual development, but which he later criticised heavily and rejected. He held the view that "[I]f one does not want to assert that relativity theory goes against reason, one cannot retain the a priori concepts and norms of Kant's system". However, Kant scholar Stephen Palmquist has argued that Einstein's rejection of Kant's influence was primarily "a response to mistaken interpretations of Kant being adopted by contemporary philosophers", when in fact Kant's transcendental perspective informed Einstein's early worldview and led to his insights regarding simultaneity, and eventually to his proposal of the theory of relativity. Because of the thoroughness of the Kantian paradigm shift, his influence extends to thinkers who neither specifically refer to his work nor use his terminology.
In recent years, there has been renewed interest in Kant's theory of mind from the point of view of formal logic and computer science.
Film/television
Kant and his work was heavily referenced in the comedy television show The Good Place, as the show deals with the subject of ethics and moral philosophy.
Bibliography
List of major works
(1749) Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte)
(March 1755) Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels)
(April 1755) Brief Outline of Certain Meditations on Fire (Meditationum quarundam de igne succinta delineatio (master's thesis under Johann Gottfried Teske))
(September 1755) A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio (doctoral thesis))
(1756) The Use in Natural Philosophy of Metaphysics Combined with Geometry, Part I: Physical Monadology (Metaphysicae cum geometrica iunctae usus in philosophin naturali, cuius specimen I. continet monadologiam physicam, abbreviated as Monadologia Physica (thesis as a prerequisite of associate professorship))
(1762) The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures (Die falsche Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figuren)
(1763) The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes)
(1763) Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy (Versuch den Begriff der negativen Größen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen)
(1764) Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen)
(1764) Essay on the Illness of the Head (Über die Krankheit des Kopfes)
(1764) Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (the Prize Essay) (Untersuchungen über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral)
(1766) Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (Träume eines Geistersehers)
(1768) On the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Regions in Space (Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume)
(August 1770) Dissertation on the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World (De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis (doctoral thesis))
(1775) On the Different Races of Man (Über die verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen)
(1781) First edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
(1783) Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik)
(1784) "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" ("Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?")
(1784) "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" ("Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht")
(1785) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten)
(1786) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft)
(1786) "What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?" ("Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren?")
(1786) Conjectural Beginning of Human History (Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte)
(1787) Second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
(1788) Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft)
(1790) Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft)
(1793) Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft)
(1793) On the Old Saw: That May be Right in Theory But It Won't Work in Practice (Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis)
(1795) Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch ("Zum ewigen Frieden")
(1797) Metaphysics of Morals (Metaphysik der Sitten). First part is The Doctrine of Right, which has often been published separately as The Science of Right.
(1798) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht)
(1798) The Contest of Faculties (Der Streit der Fakultäten)
(1800) Logic (Logik)
(1803) On Pedagogy (Über Pädagogik)
(1804) Opus Postumum
(1817) Lectures on Philosophical Theology (Immanuel Kants Vorlesungen über die philosophische Religionslehre edited by K.H.L. Pölitz) [The English edition of A.W. Wood & G.M. Clark (Cornell, 1978) is based on Pölitz' second edition, 1830, of these lectures.]
Collected works in German
Printed version
Wilhelm Dilthey inaugurated the Academy edition (the Akademie-Ausgabe abbreviated as AA or Ak) of Kant's writings (Gesammelte Schriften, Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1902–38) in 1895, and served as its first editor. The volumes are grouped into four sections:
I. Kant's published writings (vols. 1–9),
II. Kant's correspondence (vols. 10–13),
III. Kant's literary remains, or Nachlass (vols. 14–23), and
IV. Student notes from Kant's lectures (vols. 24–29).
Electronic version
Elektronische Edition der Gesammelten Werke Immanuel Kants (vols. 1–23).
See also
Notes
References
Works cited
Kant, Immanuel. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Lewis White Beck, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1969. Page numbers citing this work are Beck's marginal numbers that refer to the page numbers of the standard edition of Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1902–38).
Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: a Biography. Cambridge University Press, 2001. .
Further reading
In Germany, one important contemporary interpreter of Kant and the movement of German Idealism he began is Dieter Henrich, who has some work available in English. P. F. Strawson's The Bounds of Sense (1966) played a significant role in determining the contemporary reception of Kant in England and America. More recent interpreters of note in the English-speaking world include Lewis White Beck, Jonathan Bennett, Henry Allison, Paul Guyer, Christine Korsgaard, Stephen Palmquist, Robert B. Pippin, Roger Scruton, Rudolf Makkreel, and Béatrice Longuenesse.
General introductions to his thought
Broad, C.D. Kant: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Gardner, Sebastian. Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1999.
Martin, Gottfried. Kant's Metaphysics and Theory of Science. Greenwood Press, 1955 (elucidates Kant's most fundamental concepts in their historical context)
Palmquist, Stephen. Kant's System of Perspectives : an architectonic interpretation of the Critical philosophy. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993.
Seung, T.K. 2007. Kant: a Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum.
Satyananda Giri. Kant. Durham, CT: Strategic Publishing Group, 2010.
Scruton, Roger. Kant: a Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2001. (provides a brief account of his life, and a lucid introduction to the three major critiques)
Uleman, Jennifer. An Introduction to Kant's Moral Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Luchte, James. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant's Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties. The Athlone Press, 1983.
Biography and historical context
Beck, Lewis White. Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors. Harvard University Press, 1969. (a survey of Kant's intellectual background)
Beiser, Frederick C. The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte. Harvard University Press, 1987.
Beiser, Frederick C. German Idealism: the Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781–1801. Harvard University Press, 2002
Cassirer, Ernst. Kant's Life and Thought. Translation of Kants Leben und Lehre. Trans., Jame S. Haden, intr. Stephan Körner. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart. Immanuel Kanta study and a comparison with Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruno, Plato and Descartes, the authorised translation from the German by Lord Redesdale, with his 'Introduction', The Bodley Head, London, 1914, (2 volumes).
Gulyga, Arsenij. Immanuel Kant: His Life and Thought. Trans., Marijan Despaltović. Boston: Birkhäuser, 1987.
Johnson, G.R. (ed.). Kant on Swedenborg. Dreams of a Spirit-Seer and Other Writings. Swedenborg Foundation, 2002. (new translation and analysis, many supplementary texts)
Lehner, Ulrich L., Kants Vorsehungskonzept auf dem Hintergrund der deutschen Schulphilosophie und –theologie (Leiden: 2007) (Kant's concept of Providence and its background in German school philosophy and theology)
Pinkard, Terry. German Philosophy, 1760–1860: the Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge, 2002.
Pippin, Robert. Idealism as Modernism. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Sassen, Brigitte (ed.). Kant's Early Critics: the Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy, Cambridge, 2000.
Schabert, Joseph A. "Kant's Influence on his Successors", The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. XLVII, January 1922.
Collections of essays
Firestone, Chris L. and Palmquist, Stephen (eds.). Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion. Notre Dame: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Förster, Eckart (ed.). Kant's Transcendental Deductions:. The Three 'Critiques' and the 'Opus Postumum' Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. Includes an important essay by Dieter Henrich.
Guyer, Paul (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Excellent collection of papers that covers most areas of Kant's thought.
Mohanty, J.N. and Shahan, Robert W. (eds.). Essays on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.
Phillips, Dewi et al. (eds.). Kant and Kierkegaard on Religion. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000, Collection of essays about Kantian religion and its influence on Kierkegaardian and contemporary philosophy of religion.
Proceedings of the International Kant Congresses. Several Congresses (numbered) edited by various publishers.
Theoretical philosophy
Allison, Henry. Kant's Transcendental Idealism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983, 2004. (a very influential defense of Kant's idealism, recently revised).
Ameriks, Karl. Kant's Theory of Mind: An Analysis of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982 (one of the first detailed studies of the Dialectic in English).
Banham, Gary. Kant's Transcendental Imagination. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant's Critical Philosophy. Trans., Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Gram, Moltke S. The Transcendental Turn: The Foundation of Kant's Idealism. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1984.
Greenberg, Robert. Kant's Theory of A Priori Knowledge. Penn State Press, 2001
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987 (modern defense of the view that Kant's theoretical philosophy is a "patchwork" of ill-fitting arguments).
Heidegger, Martin. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Trans., Richard Taft. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
Henrich, Dieter. The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant's Philosophy. Ed. with introduction by Richard L. Velkley; trans. Jeffrey Edwards et al. Harvard University Press, 1994.
Kemp Smith, Norman. A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason. London: Macmillan, 1930 (influential commentary on the first Critique, recently reprinted).
Kitcher, Patricia. Kant's Transcendental Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Longuenesse, Béatrice. Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Princeton University Press, 1998. . (argues that the notion of judgment provides the key to understanding the overall argument of the first Critique)
Melnick, Arthur. Kant's Analogies of Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. (important study of Kant's Analogies, including his defense of the principle of causality)
Paton, H.J. Kant's Metaphysic of Experience: a Commentary on the First Half of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Two volumes. London: Macmillan, 1936. (extensive study of Kant's theoretical philosophy)
Pippin, Robert B. Kant's Theory of Form: An Essay on the Critique of Pure Reason. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. (influential examination of the formal character of Kant's work)
Schopenhauer, Arthur. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Erster Band. Anhang. Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie. F.A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1859 (In English: Arthur Schopenhauer, New York: Dover Press, Volume I, Appendix, "Critique of the Kantian Philosophy", )
Seung, T.K. Kant's Transcendental Logic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969.
Strawson, P.F. The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1989 (the work that revitalized the interest of contemporary analytic philosophers in Kant).
Sturm, Thomas, Kant und die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. Paderborn: Mentis Verlag, 2009. . review (Treats Kant's anthropology and his views on psychology and history in relation to his philosophy of science.)
Tonelli, Giorgio. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason within the Tradition of Modern Logic. A Commentary on its History. Hildesheim, Olms 1994
Werkmeister, W.H., Kant: The Architectonic and Development of His Philosophy, Open Court Publishing Co., La Salle, Ill.; 1980 (it treats, as a whole, the architectonic and development of Kant's philosophy from 1755 through the Opus postumum.)
Wolff, Robert Paul. Kant's Theory of Mental Activity: A Commentary on the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1963. (detailed and influential commentary on the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason)
Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Kant and the Philosophy of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. (review )
Practical philosophy
Allison, Henry. Kant's Theory of Freedom. Cambridge University Press 1990.
Banham, Gary. Kant's Practical Philosophy: From Critique to Doctrine. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Dorschel, Andreas. Die idealistische Kritik des Willens: Versuch über die Theorie der praktischen Subjektivität bei Kant und Hegel. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1992 (Schriften zur Transzendentalphilosophie 10) .
Korsgaard, Christine M. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Michalson, Gordon E. Fallen Freedom: Kant on Radical Evil and Moral Regeneration. Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Michalson, Gordon E. Kant and the Problem of God. Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
Paton, H.J. The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant's Moral Philosophy. University of Pennsylvania Press 1971.
Rawls, John. Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, 2000.
Seung, T.K. Kant's Platonic Revolution in Moral and Political Philosophy. Johns Hopkins, 1994.
Wolff, Robert Paul. The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. New York: HarperCollins, 1974. .
Wood, Allen. Kant's Ethical Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Aesthetics
Allison, Henry. Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Banham, Gary. Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics. London and New York: Macmillan Press, 2000.
Clewis, Robert. The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Crawford, Donald. Kant's Aesthetic Theory. Wisconsin, 1974.
Doran, Robert. The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Taste. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1979.
Hammermeister, Kai. The German Aesthetic Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Immanuel Kant entry in Kelly, Michael (Editor in Chief) (1998) Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Kaplama, Erman. Cosmological Aesthetics through the Kantian Sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian. Lanham: UPA, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
Makkreel, Rudolf, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant. Chicago, 1990.
McCloskey, Mary. Kant's Aesthetic. SUNY, 1987.
Schaper, Eva. Studies in Kant's Aesthetics. Edinburgh, 1979.
Zammito, John H. The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1992.
Zupancic, Alenka. Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan. Verso, 2000.
Philosophy of religion
Palmquist, Stephen. Kant's Critical Religion : Volume Two of Kant's System of Perspectives. Ashgate, 2000.
Perez, Daniel Omar. "Religión, Política y Medicina en Kant: El Conflicto de las Proposiciones". Cinta de Moebio. Revista de Epistemologia de Ciencias Sociales, v. 28, p. 91–103, 2007. Uchile.cl (Spanish)
Perpetual peace and international relations
Sir Harry Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace, Cambridge University Press, 1962.
Martin Wight, Four Seminal Thinkers in International Theory: Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant and Mazzini ed. Gabriele Wight & Brian Porter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Other works
Botul, Jean-Baptiste. La vie sexuelle d'Emmanuel Kant. Paris, Éd. Mille et une Nuits, 2008.
Caygill, Howard. A Kant Dictionary. Oxford; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Reference, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques. Mochlos; or, The Conflict of the Faculties. Columbia University, 1980.
Kelly, Michael. Kant's Ethics and Schopenhauer's Criticism, London: Swan Sonnenschein 1910. [Reprinted 2010 Nabu Press, ]
Mosser, Kurt. Necessity and Possibility; The Logical Strategy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Catholic University of America Press, 2008.
White, Mark D. Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autonomy, Dignity, and Character . Stanford University Press, 2011. . (Reviewed in The Montreal Review )
Contemporary philosophy with a Kantian influence
Guyer, Paul. Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant's Response to Hume. Princeton University Press, 2008.
Hanna, Robert, Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy. Clarendon Press, 2004.
Hanna, Robert, Kant, Science, and Human Nature. Clarendon Press, 2006.
Herman, Barbara. The Practice of Moral Judgement. Harvard University Press, 1993.
(A Kantian approach to the issue of pornography and degradation.)
Korsgaard, Christine. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (not a commentary, but a defense of a broadly Kantian approach to ethics)
McDowell, John. Mind and World. Harvard University Press, 1994. . (offers a Kantian solution to a dilemma in contemporary epistemology regarding the relation between mind and world)
Parfit, Derek. On What Matters (2 vols.). New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Pinker, Steven. The Stuff of Thought. Viking Press, 2007. . (Chapter 4 "Cleaving the Air" discusses Kant's anticipation of modern cognitive science)
Wood, Allen W. Kant's Ethical Thought. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. . (comprehensive, in-depth study of Kant's ethics, with emphasis on formula of humanity as most accurate formulation of the categorical imperative)
External links
KantPapers, authors and papers database powered by PhilPapers, focused on Kant, and located at Cornell University
Immanuel Kant at the Encyclopædia Britannica
Immanuel Kant in the Christian Cyclopedia
Works by Immanuel Kant at Duisburg-Essen University
Stephen Palmquist's Glossary of Kantian Terminology
Kant's Ethical Theory – Kantian ethics explained, applied and evaluated
Notes on Utilitarianism – A conveniently brief survey of Kant's Utilitarianism
"Immanuel Kant", An overview of his work, times, and influence on biology, plantspeopleplanet.org.au
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: An Overview
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Aesthetics
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Logic
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Mind
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Radical Evil
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Religion
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant
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"Listed below are Maghrebis of note.\n\nModern\n\nActors\n\nArchitects\n\nArtists\n\nMusicians\n\nPhilosophers\n\nPoliticians\n\nRoyalty\n\nSportspersons\n\nWriters\n\nOther notables\n\nAncient\n Shoshenq I, Egyptian Pharaoh of Libyan origin, founder of the Twenty-second dynasty of Egypt.\n Tefnakht, Pharaoh of Libyan origin, who reigned 732–725 BC\n Masinissa, King of Numidia, North Africa, present day Algeria and Tunisia\n Jugurtha, King of Numidia\n Juba II, King of Numidia\n Macrinus, Roman emperor for 14 months in 217 and 218\n Lusius Quietus, governor of Judaea under the emperor Trajan\n Quintus Lollius Urbicus, governor of Britannia from 138 to 144\nTerence, (Publius Terentius Afer), Roman writer\nApuleius, Roman writer (\"half-Numidian, half-Gaetulian\")<ref name=Americana>\"Berbers : [...] The best known of them were the Roman author Apuleius, the Roman emperor Septimius Severus, and Augustine of Hippo, whose mother was a berber\", Encyclopedia Americana, Scholastic Library Publishing, 2005, v.3, p. 569</ref>\nMarcus Cornelius Fronto, Roman grammarian, rhetorician and advocate, was born at Cirta in modern Algeria\nTertullian, an early Christian theologian (born in the highly multiethnic, Phoenician-founded city of Carthage)\nSaint Monica of Hippo, Saint Augustine's mother\nArius, who proposed the doctrine of Arianism\nDonatus Magnus, leader of the Donatist schism\nGelasius I between 492 and 496\nVictor I between 186 and 201\nMiltiades between 311 and 314\nTacfarinas, who fought the Romans in the Aures Mountains,\nFirmus, who fought the Romans Between 372 and 375\nGildo, who fought the Romans in 398\n Abd ar-Rahman I (731–788), his mother was a Berber.\n Al-Mansur (712–775), his mother was a Berber. Generally regarded as the real founder of the Abbasid Caliphate, his descendants Al-Mahdi, Harun al-Rashid etc. were therefore also partially Berber.\nTariq ibn Ziyad, one of the leaders of the Moorish conquest of Iberia in 711.\nAdrian of Canterbury, Abbot of St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury\nDihya or al-Kahina\nAksil or Kusayla\nSalih ibn Tarif of the Berghouata\nAbbas Ibn Firnas, inventor and aviator who made the first attempt at controlled flight\nIbn Tumart, founder of the Almohad dynasty\nYusuf ibn Tashfin, founder of the Almoravid dynasty\n Ibn Battuta (1304–1377), Moroccan traveller and explorer\nAbu Yaqub Yusuf I, who had the Giralda in Seville built.\nAbu Yaqub Yusuf II, who had the Torre del Oro in Seville built.\nZiri ibn Manad founder of the Zirid dynasty\nMuhammad Awzal (ca. 1680–1749), prolific Sous Berber poet (see also Ocean of Tears)\n Muhammad al-Jazuli, author of the Dala'il al-Khairat, Sufi\n Abu Ali al-Hassan al-Yusi\n Imam al-Busiri, poet and author of the famous poem Qasida Burda – lived in Alexandria\n\nPeople of mixed Maghrebi and European ancestry\nModern\nCédric Ben Abdallah (Ben) – French humorist, Algerian father and French mother\nYasmine golotchoglova – French youtubeuse, Russian father and algérian mother\nRobert Abdesselam – French politician and tennis player, Algerian father and French mother\nRamzi Abid – Canadian professional ice hockey player, Tunisian father and Scottish mother\nKarima Adebibe – English model and actress, Moroccan father and Greek-Irish mother\nDamien Saez – French musicien, Spanish father and algérian mother\nFu'ad Aït Aattou – French Actor, Moroccan Berber father and French mother\nIsabelle Adjani – French actress, Algerian father and German mother\nAlejandro Agag – Spanish businessman and former politician, Algerian father and Spanish mother\nLaurent Agouazi – Soccer player, Algerian father and French mother\nNatacha Amal – Belgian Actress, Moroccan father and Russian mother\nAmina Allam – Moroccan model, Moroccan father and Finnish mother\nAure Atika – French actress, French father and Moroccan mother\nMalika Ayane – Italian singer, Moroccan father and Italian mother\nMalika zouhali–worrall – English documentary filmmaker, English father and Moroccan mother\nSamir Barris – Belgian singer, Algerian father and Flemish Belgian mother\nAlain Bashung – French singer, songwriter and actor, Algerian father and French mother\n Kader Belarbi – French choreographer, Algerian father and French mother\nMehdi Belhaj Kacem – French-Tunisian actor, philosopher, and writer, Tunisia father and French mother\nCatherine Belkhodja – French artist, actress and film director. Algerian father and a French mother\nJeanne Benameur – French writer, Tunisian father and Italian mother\nDjemila Benhabib – Canadian opponent of Muslim fundamentalism, Algerian father and Cypriot mother\n Malik Bendjelloul – was a Swedish documentary filmmaker, journalist and former child actor. He directed the 2012 documentary Searching for Sugar Man'', which won an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award, Algerian father and Swedish mother\nFarouk Bermouga – French actor, Algerian father and French mother\nBig flo et oli – French band, Argentine father and Algerian mother\nDany Boon – French actor, Algerian father and French mother. Best-paid actor in European film history\nAssaad Bouab – Moroccan actor, Moroccan father and French mother.\nTarik O'Regan – English musician, Irish father and Algerian mother\nAli Boulala – Swedish professional skateboarder, Algerian father and Swedish mother\nJosef Boumedienne – Swedish professional hockey defenceman, Algerian father and Finnish mother\nNina Bouraoui – French writer, Algerian father and French mother\nDaniel Brückner – Soccer player, Algerian father and German mother\nBushido – German Rapper, Tunisian father and German mother\nMehdi Carcela-González – Moroccan Soccer player, Spanish father and Moroccan mother\nSamir Carruthers – English Soccer player, Irish-Italian father and Moroccan mother\nNicolas Cazalé – French actor, French father and Algerian mother\nLiassine cadamuro – French footballer, Italian father and Algerian mother\nSara Chafak – Finnish beauty pageant titleholder, Moroccan father and Finnish mother\nManuel da Costa – Soccer player, Portuguese father and Moroccan mother\nMarion Cotillard – French actress, French father and Algerian berbère grandmother\nGérald Darmanin – Mayor of Tourcoing, Algerian grandfather\nSofia Essaidi – Moroccan French singer, Moroccan father and French mother\nMichaël Fabre – French Soccer player, Algerian father and French mother\nAdrien Gallo – French musician and actor, French father and Algerian mother\nJulien Gerbi – French race car driver, Algerian father and French mother\nMehdi El Glaoui – French actor, Moroccan father and French mother\nBrice Guilbert – French singer, French father and Moroccan mother\nTouriya Haoud – Dutch actress, Moroccan father and Macedonian mother\nKarim Hendou – Algerian Soccer player, Algerian father and Ukrainian mother\nHédi Kaddour – French writer, Tunisian father and French mother\nHakim El Karoui – French politician, Tunisian father and French mother\nSaïd El Khadraoui – Belgian politician, Moroccan father and Flemish Belgian mother\nSami Khedira – German football player, Tunisian father and German mother\nRani Khedira – German football player, Tunisian father and German mother\nJonas Hassen Khemiri – Swedish novelist, Tunisian father and Swedish mother\nMarina Kaye – French singer, French father and Algerian mother\nReem Kherici – French actress, Tunisian father and Italian mother\nMyriam El Khomri – current French Minister of Labour (2016), Moroccan father and French mother\nTaïg Khris – French inline skater, Algerian father and Greek mother\nSimone Lahbib – Scottish actress, Algerian father and Scottish mother\nMehdi Lacen – French Soccer player, Algerian father and Italian mother\nHind Laroussi Tahiri – Dutch singer, Moroccan father and Dutch mother\nMaïwenn Le Besco and Isild Le Besco – French actress, Algerian grandfather\nAmine Lecomte – Soccer player, French father and Moroccan mother\nJalil Lespert – French actor, French father and Algerian mother\nSheryfa Luna – French singer, Algerian father and French mother\nAli Magoudi – French psychanalyst and writer, Algerian father and Polish mother \nYannis Marshall – French dancer, English father and Algerian mother\nFlorian Makhedjouf – Soccer player, Algerian father and Italian mother\nElyas M’Barek – German Actor, Tunisian father and German mother\nCarl Medjani – French Soccer player, Algerian father and French mother\nMourad Meghni – French footballer, Algerian father and Portuguese mother\nKad Merad – French actor, Algerian father and French mother\nMaxime Mermoz – French Rugby player, French father and Algerian mother\nMC Rene – German rapper, Moroccan father and German mother\nArnaud Montebourg – French politician, Algerian grandfather, France's Minister of Industrial Renewal\nMehdi Mostefa – French Soccer player, Algerian father and French mother\nMarcel Mouloudji – French singer and actor, Algerian father and French mother\nCyril Mourali – French actor, Tunisian father and French mother\nChazia Mourali – Dutch TV presenter, Tunisian father and Dutch mother\nKerim Mrabti – Swedish Soccer player, Tunisian father and Swedish-Finnish mother\nLee Lamrani Ibrahim \"Lightning\" Murray – British-Moroccan cage fighter turned gangster, Moroccan father and English mother\nSamy Naceri – French actor, Algerian father and French mother\n Mehdi Nebbou – French actor, Algerian father and German mother\nMarie-José Nat – French actress, Algerian father and French mother\nMalika Nedir – Swiss TV presenter, Algerian father and Swiss mother\nJuliette Noureddine – French singer, Algerian grandfather\nLaurette Onkelinx – Belgian politician, Belgian father and Algerian mother\nArtur Partyka – Polish high jumper, Algerian father and Polish mother\nPnl – French band, Corsica father and Algerian mother\nÉdith Piaf – French singer, Moroccan great-grandfather\nJérome Polenz – Soccer player, Algerian father and German mother\nDaniel Prévost – French comedian, Algerian father and French mother\nKarim Rekik – Dutch football player, Tunisian father and Dutch mother\nDamien Saez – French singer, Spanish father and Algerian mother\nLeila Sebbar – French writer, Algerian father and French mother\nAdam Sioui – Canadian college and international swimmer, Algerian father and Canadian mother\nMyriam Sif – Moroccan singer, Moroccan father and Hungarian mother\n Hedi Slimane – French fashion designer, Tunisian father and Italian mother\nBenjamin Stambouli – Soccer player, Algerian father and French mother\nJacques Villeret – French actor, Algerian father and French mother\nNajat Vallaud-Belkacem – first French woman to be appointed Minister of Education, Higher Education, and Research on 25 August 2014, Moroccan father and Spanish grandmother\nKarim Ziani – French footballer, Algerian Algerian father and French mother\nMalik Zidi – French actor, Algerian father and French mother\nKenza Zouiten – Swedish fashion blogger, Moroccan father and Swedish mother\nAladdin Meier – Swiss radio presenter, Swiss Father and Moroccan Mother\nMaxime Mermoz- French father and algérian mother\n\nAncient\nSeptimius Severus, Roman Emperor who reigned from 14 April 193 until his death in 211\n Augustine of Hippo, Latin Church Father, one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity\n Abd-ar-Rahman III, Emir and Caliph of Córdoba (912–961) of the Umayyad dynasty in al-Andalus\n\nPeople of mixed Maghrebi and Asian ancestry\nErika Sawajiri – Japan-based actress, model, and musician. Japanese father and an Algerian Berber mother\nMaïwenn Le Besco and Isild Le Besco – French actress, Algerian grandfather, Vietnamese grandfather\n\nSee also\n Maghrebis\n\nNotes\n\nMaghrebi",
"The Dead Father is a Canadian film directed by Guy Maddin, and his debut film. The short film tells a surrealist story of a Son's feelings of anger, sadness, and inadequacy after the return of his Dead Father. The Dead Father is shot in black and white on 16mm film and features Maddin's usual use on the stylistic conventions of silent-era cinema.\n\nPlot\nThe narrating \"Son\" presents the audience with three photo albums' worth of memories, recovered from the attic. One recounts the mania of his cleanliness-obsessed neighbour and another concerns his \"inexplicable loathing\" for bushes. But the Son wants to focus on the episode of his Dead Father who, immediately after death, returned to haunt his family. \n\nThis development seems promising at first (the Dead Father lies motionless on the kitchen table and in his widow's bed) but it soon becomes clear, as the Son puts it, that the Dead Father does not seem to be \"dead in the traditional sense,\" with brief recoveries during which he makes \"various vague requests.\" The Son resists at first, but then gives up and attempts to make small talk with his Dead Father and even share a meal. The Dead Father enlists the Son in errands but is disappointed at the Son's inability to fulfill his simple requests for fish. The haunting continues in this lackadaisical manner, and it becomes clear that the Dead Father is mostly spending his days at the home of a new and better family down the street. \n\nThe Son is soon distressed to find that his Dead Father has fallen sick, and the Dead Father appears driven to death by this illness (film scholar William Beard has suggested that this section of the film is a flashback sequence).\n\nThe Dead Father sends the Son on another errand, to take his little sister to school, but in his habitual forgetfulness he doesn't and she runs off, getting lost. Finally, the Son returns home to find his mother coddling his frightened sister and is struck by the Dead Father for his irresponsibility. Angered at his sister for getting him into trouble, the Son assaults her teddy bears. The family continues to mourn and the Son discovers that his older sister's boyfriend, Cesar, has been sneaking in at night to sleep with her (due, perhaps, to the absence of the Dead Father). The Son is spurred to \"reclaim [his Dead Father] once and for all\" and sets out at night in search of the Dead Father. \n\nThe Son discovers that the bushes and yards in the neighbourhood are thick with corpses at night, and finally discovers his own Dead Father amongst these corpses. Taking out a spoon, the Son eats his Dead Father, digging into the flesh of his belly, until the Dead Father wakes and fixes the Son with a reproachful stare. The Son then helps his Dead Father recover from the ordeal. The Dead Father, seeing the problems he has caused for the family by his return, leads the Son to the attic. There, the two reminisce over photo albums and the Dead Father gets the Son to help pack the Dead Father away in a storage trunk as if in a coffin. The reluctant Son closes the lid.\n\nCast\n Dr. D.P. Snidal as The Dead Father\n Margaret Ann MacLeod as The Widow\n John Harvie as The Son\n Angela Heck as The Daughter\n Rachel Toles as Little Girl I\n Jill Maddin as Little Girl II\n W. Steve Snyder as Cesar\n\nRelease\nThe Dead Father was produced with funding from the Winnipeg Arts Council and the Manitoba Arts Council with a budget of about $5000. It was accepted into the 1985 Toronto International Film Festival.\n\nThe Dead Father was released to home video as a bonus feature on the Tales from the Gimli Hospital DVD and as one of four films featured on Isolation in the 1980s, a collection of historically significant films from the Winnipeg Film Group.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\nCanadian films\nEnglish-language films\nFilms directed by Guy Maddin\nFilms shot in Winnipeg\n1985 films"
] |
[
"Immanuel Kant",
"Biography",
"when was he born?",
"April 22, 1724",
"where was he born?",
"Konigsberg, Prussia",
"who were his parents?",
"His mother, Anna Regina Reuter",
"and his father?",
"His father, Johann Georg Kant (1682-1746), was a German"
] | C_8ddf971bb06941f8a8f1b934b838550b_1 | did he have any siblings? | 5 | did Immanuel Kant have any siblings? | Immanuel Kant | Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724 in Konigsberg, Prussia (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia). His mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697-1737), was also born in Konigsberg to a father from Nuremberg. (Her name is sometimes erroneously given as Anna Regina Porter.) His father, Johann Georg Kant (1682-1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipeda, Lithuania). Immanuel Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. While scholars of Kant's life long accepted the claim, there is no evidence that Kant's paternal line was Scottish; it is more likely that the Kants got their name from the village of Kantwaggen (today part of Priekule) and were of Curonian origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children (four of them reached adulthood). Baptized 'Emanuel', he changed his name to 'Immanuel' after learning Hebrew. Young Kant was a solid, albeit unspectacular, student. Kant was born into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in East Prussia. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. Kant maintained a belief in Christianity, in his work Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals he reveals a belief in human immortality as the necessary condition of our continued approach to the highest good possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of Theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic. Common myths about Kant's personal mannerisms are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. It is often held that Kant lived a very strict and disciplined life, leading to an oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but seemed to have a rewarding social life -- he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends whom he frequently met, among them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Konigsberg. A common myth is that Kant never traveled more than 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from Konigsberg his whole life. In fact, between 1750 and 1754 he worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Gross-Arnsdorf (now Jarnoltowo near Morag (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km). CANNOTANSWER | Kant was the fourth of nine children (four of them reached adulthood). | Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him an influential figure in modern Western philosophy.
In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued that space and time are mere "forms of intuition" which structure all experience, and therefore that while "things-in-themselves" exist and contribute to experience, they are nonetheless distinct from the objects of experience. From this it follows that the objects of experience are mere "appearances", and that the nature of things as they are in themselves is consequently unknowable to us. In an attempt to counter the skepticism he found in the writings of philosopher David Hume, he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), one of his most well-known works. In it, he developed his theory of experience to answer the question of whether synthetic a priori knowledge is possible, which would in turn make it possible to determine the limits of metaphysical inquiry. Kant drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that the objects of the senses must conform to our spatial and temporal forms of intuition, and that we can consequently have a priori cognition of the objects of the senses.
Kant believed that reason is also the source of morality, and that aesthetics arise from a faculty of disinterested judgment. Kant's views continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of epistemology, ethics, political theory, and post-modern aesthetics. He attempted to explain the relationship between reason and human experience and to move beyond what he believed to be the failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He wanted to put an end to what he saw as an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience, while resisting the skepticism of thinkers such as Hume. He regarded himself as showing the way past the impasse between rationalists and empiricists, and is widely held to have synthesized both traditions in his thought.
Kant was an exponent of the idea that perpetual peace could be secured through universal democracy and international cooperation, and that perhaps this could be the culminating stage of world history. The nature of Kant's religious views continues to be the subject of scholarly dispute, with viewpoints ranging from the impression that he shifted from an early defense of an ontological argument for the existence of God to a principled agnosticism, to more critical treatments epitomized by Schopenhauer, who criticized the imperative form of Kantian ethics as "theological morals" and the "Mosaic Decalogue in disguise", and Nietzsche, who claimed that Kant had "theologian blood" and was merely a sophisticated apologist for traditional Christian faith. Beyond his religious views, Kant has also been criticized for the racism presented in some of his lesser-known papers, such as "On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy" and "On the Different Races of Man". Although he was a proponent of scientific racism for much of his career, Kant's views on race changed significantly in the last decade of his life, and he ultimately rejected racial hierarchies and European colonialism in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795).
Kant published other important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history during his lifetime. These include the Universal Natural History (1755), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), the Critique of Judgment (1790), Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (1793), and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
Biography
Kant's mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697–1737), was born in Königsberg (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia) to a father from Nuremberg. Her surname is sometimes erroneously given as Porter. Kant's father, Johann Georg Kant (1682–1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipėda, Lithuania). Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. While scholars of Kant's life long accepted the claim, there is no evidence that Kant's paternal line was Scottish and it is more likely that the Kants got their name from the village of Kantwaggen (today part of Priekulė) and were of Curonian origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children (six of whom reached adulthood).
Kant was born on 22 April 1724 into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in Königsberg, East Prussia. Baptized Emanuel, he later changed the spelling of his name to Immanuel after learning Hebrew. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. In his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, he reveals a belief in immortality as the necessary condition of humanity's approach to the highest morality possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic, even though it has also been suggested that Kant intends other people to think of him as a "pure rationalist", who is defined by Kant himself as someone who recognizes revelation but asserts that to know and accept it as real is not a necessary requisite to religion.
Kant apparently lived a very strict and disciplined life; it was said that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but seemed to have a rewarding social life — he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends with whom he frequently met, among them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Königsberg.
Between 1750 and 1754 Kant worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Groß-Arnsdorf (now Jarnołtowo near Morąg (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km).
Many myths grew up about Kant's personal mannerisms; these are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime.
Young scholar
Kant showed a great aptitude for study at an early age. He first attended the Collegium Fridericianum from which he graduated at the end of the summer of 1740. In 1740, aged 16, he enrolled at the University of Königsberg, where he spent his whole career. He studied the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and Christian Wolff under Martin Knutzen (Associate Professor of Logic and Metaphysics from 1734 until his death in 1751), a rationalist who was also familiar with developments in British philosophy and science and introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Isaac Newton. Knutzen dissuaded Kant from the theory of pre-established harmony, which he regarded as "the pillow for the lazy mind". He also dissuaded Kant from idealism, the idea that reality is purely mental, which most philosophers in the 18th century regarded in a negative light. The theory of transcendental idealism that Kant later included in the Critique of Pure Reason was developed partially in opposition to traditional idealism.
His father's stroke and subsequent death in 1746 interrupted his studies. Kant left Königsberg shortly after August 1748—he would return there in August 1754. He became a private tutor in the towns surrounding Königsberg, but continued his scholarly research. In 1749, he published his first philosophical work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (written in 1745–47).
Early work
Kant is best known for his work in the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics, but he made significant contributions to other disciplines. In 1754, while contemplating on a prize question by the Berlin Academy about the problem of Earth's rotation, he argued that the Moon's gravity would slow down Earth's spin and he also put forth the argument that gravity would eventually cause the Moon's tidal locking to coincide with the Earth's rotation. The next year, he expanded this reasoning to the formation and evolution of the Solar System in his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. In 1755, Kant received a license to lecture in the University of Königsberg and began lecturing on a variety of topics including mathematics, physics, logic and metaphysics. In his 1756 essay on the theory of winds, Kant laid out an original insight into the Coriolis force. In 1757, Kant began lecturing on geography making him one of the first lecturers to explicitly teach geography as its own subject. Geography was one of Kant's most popular lecturing topics and in 1802 a compilation by Friedrich Theodor Rink of Kant's lecturing notes, Physical Geography, was released. After Kant became a professor in 1770, he expanded the topics of his lectures to include lectures on natural law, ethics and anthropology along with other topics.
In the Universal Natural History, Kant laid out the Nebular hypothesis, in which he deduced that the Solar System had formed from a large cloud of gas, a nebula. Kant also correctly deduced (though through usually false premises and fallacious reasoning, according to Bertrand Russell) that the Milky Way was a large disk of stars, which he theorized formed from a much larger spinning gas cloud. He further suggested that other distant "nebulae" might be other galaxies. These postulations opened new horizons for astronomy, for the first time extending it beyond the Solar System to galactic and intergalactic realms. According to Thomas Huxley (1867), Kant also made contributions to geology in his Universal Natural History.
From then on, Kant turned increasingly to philosophical issues, although he continued to write on the sciences throughout his life. In the early 1760s, Kant produced a series of important works in philosophy. The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, a work in logic, was published in 1762. Two more works appeared the following year: Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy and The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. By 1764, Kant had become a notable popular author, and wrote Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime; he was second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy prize competition with his Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (often referred to as "The Prize Essay"). In 1766 Kant wrote Dreams of a Spirit-Seer which dealt with the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. The exact influence of Swedenborg on Kant, as well as the extent of Kant's belief in mysticism according to Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, remain controversial. On 31 March 1770, aged 45, Kant was finally appointed Full Professor of Logic and Metaphysics (Professor Ordinarius der Logic und Metaphysic) at the University of Königsberg. In defense of this appointment, Kant wrote his inaugural dissertation (Inaugural-Dissertation) De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis (On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World). This work saw the emergence of several central themes of his mature work, including the distinction between the faculties of intellectual thought and sensible receptivity. To miss this distinction would mean to commit the error of subreption, and, as he says in the last chapter of the dissertation, only in avoiding this error does metaphysics flourish.
The issue that vexed Kant was central to what 20th-century scholars called "the philosophy of mind". The flowering of the natural sciences had led to an understanding of how data reaches the brain. Sunlight falling on an object is reflected from its surface in a way that maps the surface features (color, texture, etc.). The reflected light reaches the human eye, passes through the cornea, is focused by the lens onto the retina where it forms an image similar to that formed by light passing through a pinhole into a camera obscura. The retinal cells send impulses through the optic nerve and then they form a mapping in the brain of the visual features of the object. The interior mapping is not the exterior object, and our belief that there is a meaningful relationship between the object and the mapping in the brain depends on a chain of reasoning that is not fully grounded. But the uncertainty aroused by these considerations, by optical illusions, misperceptions, delusions, etc., are not the end of the problems.
Kant saw that the mind could not function as an empty container that simply receives data from outside. Something must be giving order to the incoming data. Images of external objects must be kept in the same sequence in which they were received. This ordering occurs through the mind's intuition of time. The same considerations apply to the mind's function of constituting space for ordering mappings of visual and tactile signals arriving via the already described chains of physical causation.
It is often claimed that Kant was a late developer, that he only became an important philosopher in his mid-50s after rejecting his earlier views. While it is true that Kant wrote his greatest works relatively late in life, there is a tendency to underestimate the value of his earlier works. Recent Kant scholarship has devoted more attention to these "pre-critical" writings and has recognized a degree of continuity with his mature work.
Critique of Pure Reason
At age 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher, and much was expected of him. In correspondence with his ex-student and friend Markus Herz, Kant admitted that, in the inaugural dissertation, he had failed to account for the relation between our sensible and intellectual faculties. He needed to explain how we combine what is known as sensory knowledge with the other type of knowledgei.e. reasoned knowledgethese two being related but having very different processes.
Kant also credited David Hume with awakening him from a "dogmatic slumber" in which he had unquestioningly accepted the tenets of both religion and natural philosophy. Hume in his 1739 Treatise on Human Nature had argued that we only know the mind through a subjectiveessentially illusoryseries of perceptions. Ideas such as causality, morality, and objects are not evident in experience, so their reality may be questioned. Kant felt that reason could remove this skepticism, and he set himself to solving these problems. Although fond of company and conversation with others, Kant isolated himself, and resisted friends' attempts to bring him out of his isolation. When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant countered Hume's empiricism by claiming that some knowledge exists inherently in the mind, independent of experience. He drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that worldly objects can be intuited a priori ('beforehand'), and that intuition is consequently distinct from objective reality. He acquiesced to Hume somewhat by defining causality as a "regular, constant sequence of events in time, and nothing more."
Although now uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, this Critique disappointed Kant's readers upon its initial publication. The book was long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in a convoluted style. It received few reviews, and these granted it no significance. Kant's former student, Johann Gottfried Herder criticized it for placing reason as an entity worthy of criticism instead of considering the process of reasoning within the context of language and one's entire personality. Similar to Christian Garve and Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, he rejected Kant's position that space and time possessed a form that could be analyzed. Additionally, Garve and Feder also faulted Kant's Critique for not explaining differences in perception of sensations. Its density made it, as Herder said in a letter to Johann Georg Hamann, a "tough nut to crack", obscured by "all this heavy gossamer". Its reception stood in stark contrast to the praise Kant had received for earlier works, such as his Prize Essay and shorter works that preceded the first Critique. These well-received and readable tracts include one on the earthquake in Lisbon that was so popular that it was sold by the page. Prior to the change in course documented in the first Critique, his books had sold well. Kant was disappointed with the first Critique's reception. Recognizing the need to clarify the original treatise, Kant wrote the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics in 1783 as a summary of its main views. Shortly thereafter, Kant's friend Johann Friedrich Schultz (1739–1805) (professor of mathematics) published Erläuterungen über des Herrn Professor Kant Critik der reinen Vernunft (Königsberg, 1784), which was a brief but very accurate commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
Kant's reputation gradually rose through the latter portion of the 1780s, sparked by a series of important works: the 1784 essay, "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?"; 1785's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (his first work on moral philosophy); and, from 1786, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. But Kant's fame ultimately arrived from an unexpected source. In 1786, Karl Leonhard Reinhold published a series of public letters on Kantian philosophy. In these letters, Reinhold framed Kant's philosophy as a response to the central intellectual controversy of the era: the pantheism controversy. Friedrich Jacobi had accused the recently deceased Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (a distinguished dramatist and philosophical essayist) of Spinozism. Such a charge, tantamount to atheism, was vigorously denied by Lessing's friend Moses Mendelssohn, leading to a bitter public dispute among partisans. The controversy gradually escalated into a debate about the values of the Enlightenment and the value of reason.
Reinhold maintained in his letters that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason could settle this dispute by defending the authority and bounds of reason. Reinhold's letters were widely read and made Kant the most famous philosopher of his era.
Later work
Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book. Most of his subsequent work focused on other areas of philosophy. He continued to develop his moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason (known as the second Critique) and 1797's Metaphysics of Morals. The 1790 Critique of Judgment (the third Critique) applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology.
In 1792, Kant's attempt to publish the Second of the four Pieces of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, in the journal Berlinische Monatsschrift, met with opposition from the King's censorship commission, which had been established that same year in the context of the French Revolution. Kant then arranged to have all four pieces published as a book, routing it through the philosophy department at the University of Jena to avoid the need for theological censorship. This insubordination earned him a now famous reprimand from the King. When he nevertheless published a second edition in 1794, the censor was so irate that he arranged for a royal order that required Kant never to publish or even speak publicly about religion. Kant then published his response to the King's reprimand and explained himself, in the preface of The Conflict of the Faculties.
He also wrote a number of semi-popular essays on history, religion, politics and other topics. These works were well received by Kant's contemporaries and confirmed his preeminent status in 18th-century philosophy. There were several journals devoted solely to defending and criticizing Kantian philosophy. Despite his success, philosophical trends were moving in another direction. Many of Kant's most important disciples and followers (including Reinhold, Beck and Fichte) transformed the Kantian position into increasingly radical forms of idealism. The progressive stages of revision of Kant's teachings marked the emergence of German idealism. Kant opposed these developments and publicly denounced Fichte in an open letter in 1799. It was one of his final acts expounding a stance on philosophical questions. In 1800, a student of Kant named Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche (1762–1842) published a manual of logic for teachers called Logik, which he had prepared at Kant's request. Jäsche prepared the Logik using a copy of a textbook in logic by Georg Friedrich Meier entitled Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre, in which Kant had written copious notes and annotations. The Logik has been considered of fundamental importance to Kant's philosophy, and the understanding of it. The great 19th-century logician Charles Sanders Peirce remarked, in an incomplete review of Thomas Kingsmill Abbott's English translation of the introduction to Logik, that "Kant's whole philosophy turns upon his logic." Also, Robert Schirokauer Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz, wrote in the translators' introduction to their English translation of the Logik, "Its importance lies not only in its significance for the Critique of Pure Reason, the second part of which is a restatement of fundamental tenets of the Logic, but in its position within the whole of Kant's work."
Death and burial
Kant's health, long poor, worsened and he died at Königsberg on 12 February 1804, uttering "Es ist gut (It is good)" before expiring. His unfinished final work was published as Opus Postumum. Kant always cut a curious figure in his lifetime for his modest, rigorously scheduled habits, which have been referred to as clocklike. However, Heinrich Heine noted the magnitude of "his destructive, world-crushing thoughts" and considered him a sort of philosophical "executioner", comparing him to Robespierre with the observation that both men "represented in the highest the type of provincial bourgeois. Nature had destined them to weigh coffee and sugar, but Fate determined that they should weigh other things and placed on the scales of the one a king, on the scales of the other a god."
When his body was transferred to a new burial spot, his skull was measured during the exhumation and found to be larger than the average German male's with a "high and broad" forehead. His forehead has been an object of interest ever since it became well-known through his portraits: "In Döbler's portrait and in Kiefer's faithful if expressionistic reproduction of it — as well as in many of the other late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century portraits of Kant — the forehead is remarkably large and decidedly retreating. Was Kant's forehead shaped this way in these images because he was a philosopher, or, to follow the implications of Lavater's system, was he a philosopher because of the intellectual acuity manifested by his forehead? Kant and Johann Kaspar Lavater were correspondents on theological matters, and Lavater refers to Kant in his work "Physiognomic Fragments, for the Education of Human Knowledge and Love of People" (Leipzig & Winterthur, 1775–1778).
Kant's mausoleum adjoins the northeast corner of Königsberg Cathedral in Kaliningrad, Russia. The mausoleum was constructed by the architect Friedrich Lahrs and was finished in 1924 in time for the bicentenary of Kant's birth. Originally, Kant was buried inside the cathedral, but in 1880 his remains were moved to a neo-Gothic chapel adjoining the northeast corner of the cathedral. Over the years, the chapel became dilapidated and was demolished to make way for the mausoleum, which was built on the same location.
The tomb and its mausoleum are among the few artifacts of German times preserved by the Soviets after they conquered and annexed the city. Today, many newlyweds bring flowers to the mausoleum. Artifacts previously owned by Kant, known as Kantiana, were included in the Königsberg City Museum. However, the museum was destroyed during World War II. A replica of the statue of Kant that stood in German times in front of the main University of Königsberg building was donated by a German entity in the early 1990s and placed in the same grounds.
After the expulsion of Königsberg's German population at the end of World War II, the University of Königsberg where Kant taught was replaced by the Russian-language Kaliningrad State University, which appropriated the campus and surviving buildings. In 2005, the university was renamed Immanuel Kant State University of Russia. The name change was announced at a ceremony attended by President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, and the university formed a Kant Society, dedicated to the study of Kantianism. The university was again renamed in the 2010s, to Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University.
In late November 2018, his tomb and statue were vandalized with paint by unknown assailants, who also scattered leaflets glorifying Rus' and denouncing Kant as a "traitor". The incident is apparently connected with a recent vote to rename Khrabrovo Airport, where Kant was in the lead for a while, prompting Russian nationalist resentment.
Philosophy
In Kant's essay "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?", he defined the Enlightenment as an age shaped by the Latin motto Sapere aude ("Dare to be wise"). Kant maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority. His work reconciled many of the differences between the rationalist and empiricist traditions of the 18th century. He had a decisive impact on the Romantic and German Idealist philosophies of the 19th century. His work has also been a starting point for many 20th century philosophers.
Kant asserted that, because of the limitations of argumentation in the absence of irrefutable evidence, no one could really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not. For the sake of morality and as a ground for reason, Kant asserted, people are justified in believing in God, even though they could never know God's presence empirically.
The sense of an enlightened approach and the critical method required that "If one cannot prove that a thing is, he may try to prove that it is not. If he fails to do either (as often occurs), he may still ask whether it is in his interest to accept one or the other of the alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical point of view. Hence the question no longer is as to whether perpetual peace is a real thing or not a real thing, or as to whether we may not be deceiving ourselves when we adopt the former alternative, but we must act on the supposition of its being real." The presupposition of God, soul, and freedom was then a practical concern, for
Kant drew a parallel between the Copernican revolution and the epistemology of his new transcendental philosophy, involving two interconnected foundations of his "critical philosophy":
the epistemology of transcendental idealism and
the moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason.
These teachings placed the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral worlds. Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science was not just the accidental accumulation of sense perceptions.
Conceptual unification and integration is carried out by the mind through concepts or the "categories of the understanding" operating on the perceptual manifold within space and time. The latter are not concepts, but are forms of sensibility that are a priori necessary conditions for any possible experience. Thus the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that operates within it depend on the mind's processes, the product of the rule-based activity that Kant called "synthesis". There is much discussion among Kant scholars about the correct interpretation of this train of thought.
The 'two-world' interpretation regards Kant's position as a statement of epistemological limitation, that we are not able to transcend the bounds of our own mind, meaning that we cannot access the "thing-in-itself". However, Kant also speaks of the thing in itself or transcendental object as a product of the (human) understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of sensibility. Following this line of thought, some interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological domain but simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding alonethis is known as the two-aspect view.
The notion of the "thing in itself" was much discussed by philosophers after Kant. It was argued that, because the "thing in itself" was unknowable, its existence must not be assumed. Rather than arbitrarily switching to an account that was ungrounded in anything supposed to be the "real", as did the German Idealists, another group arose who asked how our (presumably reliable) accounts of a coherent and rule-abiding universe were actually grounded. This new kind of philosophy became known as Phenomenology, and its founder was Edmund Husserl.
With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather is only the good will itself. A good will is one that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. This law obliges one to treat humanityunderstood as rational agency, and represented through oneself as well as othersas an end in itself rather than (merely) as means to other ends the individual might hold. This necessitates practical self-reflection in which we universalize our reasons.
These ideas have largely framed or influenced all subsequent philosophical discussion and analysis. The specifics of Kant's account generated immediate and lasting controversy. Nevertheless, his thesesthat the mind itself necessarily makes a constitutive contribution to its knowledge, that this contribution is transcendental rather than psychological, that philosophy involves self-critical activity, that morality is rooted in human freedom, and that to act autonomously is to act according to rational moral principleshave all had a lasting effect on subsequent philosophy.
Epistemology
Theory of perception
Kant defines his theory of perception in his influential 1781 work the Critique of Pure Reason, which has often been cited as the most significant volume of metaphysics and epistemology in modern philosophy. Kant maintains that understanding of the external world had its foundations not merely in experience, but in both experience and a priori concepts, thus offering a non-empiricist critique of rationalist philosophy, which is what has been referred to as his Copernican revolution.
Firstly, Kant distinguishes between analytic and synthetic propositions:
Analytic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is contained in its subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are unmarried," or, "All bodies take up space."
Synthetic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is not contained in its subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are alone," or, "All bodies have weight."
An analytic proposition is true by nature of the meaning of the words in the sentence — we require no further knowledge than a grasp of the language to understand this proposition. On the other hand, a synthetic statement is one that tells us something about the world. The truth or falsehood of synthetic statements derives from something outside their linguistic content. In this instance, weight is not a necessary predicate of the body; until we are told the heaviness of the body we do not know that it has weight. In this case, experience of the body is required before its heaviness becomes clear. Before Kant's first Critique, empiricists (cf. Hume) and rationalists (cf. Leibniz) assumed that all synthetic statements required experience to be known.
Kant contests this assumption by claiming that elementary mathematics, like arithmetic, is synthetic a priori, in that its statements provide new knowledge not derived from experience. This becomes part of his over-all argument for transcendental idealism. That is, he argues that the possibility of experience depends on certain necessary conditions — which he calls a priori forms — and that these conditions structure and hold true of the world of experience. His main claims in the "Transcendental Aesthetic" are that mathematic judgments are synthetic a priori and that space and time are not derived from experience but rather are its preconditions.
Once we have grasped the functions of basic arithmetic, we do not need empirical experience to know that 100 + 100 = 200, and so it appears that arithmetic is analytic. However, that it is analytic can be disproved by considering the calculation 5 + 7 = 12: there is nothing in the numbers 5 and 7 by which the number 12 can be inferred. Thus "5 + 7" and "the cube root of 1,728" or "12" are not analytic because their reference is the same but their sense is not — the statement "5 + 7 = 12" tells us something new about the world. It is self-evident, and undeniably a priori, but at the same time it is synthetic. Thus Kant argued that a proposition can be synthetic and a priori.
Kant asserts that experience is based on the perception of external objects and a priori knowledge. The external world, he writes, provides those things that we sense. But our mind processes this information and gives it order, allowing us to comprehend it. Our mind supplies the conditions of space and time to experience objects. According to the "transcendental unity of apperception", the concepts of the mind (Understanding) and perceptions or intuitions that garner information from phenomena (Sensibility) are synthesized by comprehension. Without concepts, perceptions are nondescript; without perceptions, concepts are meaningless. Thus the famous statement: "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions [perceptions] without concepts are blind."
Kant also claims that an external environment is necessary for the establishment of the self. Although Kant would want to argue that there is no empirical way of observing the self, we can see the logical necessity of the self when we observe that we can have different perceptions of the external environment over time. By uniting these general representations into one global representation, we can see how a transcendental self emerges. "I am therefore conscious of the identical self in regard to the manifold of the representations that are given to me in an intuition because I call them all together my representations, which constitute one."
Categories of the Faculty of Understanding
Kant deemed it obvious that we have some objective knowledge of the world, such as, say, Newtonian physics. But this knowledge relies on synthetic, a priori laws of nature, like causality and substance. How is this possible? Kant's solution was that the subject must supply laws that make experience of objects possible, and that these laws are synthetic, a priori laws of nature that apply to all objects before we experience them. To deduce all these laws, Kant examined experience in general, dissecting in it what is supplied by the mind from what is supplied by the given intuitions. This is commonly called a transcendental deduction.
To begin with, Kant's distinction between the a posteriori being contingent and particular knowledge, and the a priori being universal and necessary knowledge, must be kept in mind. If we merely connect two intuitions together in a perceiving subject, the knowledge is always subjective because it is derived a posteriori, when what is desired is for the knowledge to be objective, that is, for the two intuitions to refer to the object and hold good of it for anyone at any time, not just the perceiving subject in its current condition. What else is equivalent to objective knowledge besides the a priori (universal and necessary knowledge)? Before knowledge can be objective, it must be incorporated under an a priori category of understanding.
For example, if a subject says, "The sun shines on the stone; the stone grows warm," all he perceives are phenomena. His judgment is contingent and holds no necessity. But if he says, "The sunshine causes the stone to warm," he subsumes the perception under the category of causality, which is not found in the perception, and necessarily synthesizes the concept sunshine with the concept heat, producing a necessarily universally true judgment.
To explain the categories in more detail, they are the preconditions of the construction of objects in the mind. Indeed, to even think of the sun and stone presupposes the category of subsistence, that is, substance. For the categories synthesize the random data of the sensory manifold into intelligible objects. This means that the categories are also the most abstract things one can say of any object whatsoever, and hence one can have an a priori cognition of the totality of all objects of experience if one can list all of them. To do so, Kant formulates another transcendental deduction.
Judgments are, for Kant, the preconditions of any thought. Man thinks via judgments, so all possible judgments must be listed and the perceptions connected within them put aside, so as to make it possible to examine the moments when the understanding is engaged in constructing judgments. For the categories are equivalent to these moments, in that they are concepts of intuitions in general, so far as they are determined by these moments universally and necessarily. Thus by listing all the moments, one can deduce from them all of the categories.
One may now ask: How many possible judgments are there? Kant believed that all the possible propositions within Aristotle's syllogistic logic are equivalent to all possible judgments, and that all the logical operators within the propositions are equivalent to the moments of the understanding within judgments. Thus he listed Aristotle's system in four groups of three: quantity (universal, particular, singular), quality (affirmative, negative, infinite), relation (categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive) and modality (problematic, assertoric, apodeictic). The parallelism with Kant's categories is obvious: quantity (unity, plurality, totality), quality (reality, negation, limitation), relation (substance, cause, community) and modality (possibility, existence, necessity).
The fundamental building blocks of experience, i.e. objective knowledge, are now in place. First there is the sensibility, which supplies the mind with intuitions, and then there is the understanding, which produces judgments of these intuitions and can subsume them under categories. These categories lift the intuitions up out of the subject's current state of consciousness and place them within consciousness in general, producing universally necessary knowledge. For the categories are innate in any rational being, so any intuition thought within a category in one mind is necessarily subsumed and understood identically in any mind. In other words, we filter what we see and hear.
Transcendental schema doctrine
Kant ran into a problem with his theory that the mind plays a part in producing objective knowledge. Intuitions and categories are entirely disparate, so how can they interact? Kant's solution is the (transcendental) schema: a priori principles by which the transcendental imagination connects concepts with intuitions through time. All the principles are temporally bound, for if a concept is purely a priori, as the categories are, then they must apply for all times. Hence there are principles such as substance is that which endures through time, and the cause must always be prior to the effect. In the context of transcendental schema the concept of transcendental reflection is of a great importance.
Ethics
Kant developed his ethics, or moral philosophy, in three works: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
In Groundwork, Kant tries to convert our everyday, obvious, rational knowledge of morality into philosophical knowledge. The latter two works used "practical reason", which is based only on things about which reason can tell us, and not deriving any principles from experience, to reach conclusions which can be applied to the world of experience (in the second part of The Metaphysics of Morals).
Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the "Categorical Imperative", and is derived from the concept of duty. Kant defines the demands of moral law as "categorical imperatives". Categorical imperatives are principles that are intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed in all situations and circumstances, if our behavior is to observe the moral law. The Categorical Imperative provides a test against which moral statements can be assessed. Kant also stated that the moral means and ends can be applied to the categorical imperative, that rational beings can pursue certain "ends" using the appropriate "means". Ends based on physical needs or wants create hypothetical imperatives. The categorical imperative can only be based on something that is an "end in itself", that is, an end that is not a means to some other need, desire, or purpose. Kant believed that the moral law is a principle of reason itself, and is not based on contingent facts about the world, such as what would make us happy, but to act on the moral law which has no other motive than "worthiness to be happy". Accordingly, he believed that moral obligation applies only to rational agents.
Unlike a hypothetical imperative, a categorical imperative is an unconditional obligation; it has the force of an obligation regardless of our will or desires In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785) Kant enumerated three formulations of the categorical imperative that he believed to be roughly equivalent. In the same book, Kant stated:
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.
According to Kant, one cannot make exceptions for oneself. The philosophical maxim on which one acts should always be considered to be a universal law without exception. One cannot allow oneself to do a particular action unless one thinks it appropriate that the reason for the action should become a universal law. For example, one should not steal, however dire the circumstancesbecause, by permitting oneself to steal, one makes stealing a universally acceptable act. This is the first formulation of the categorical imperative, often known as the universalizability principle.
Kant believed that, if an action is not done with the motive of duty, then it is without moral value. He thought that every action should have pure intention behind it; otherwise, it is meaningless. The final result is not the most important aspect of an action; rather, how the person feels while carrying out the action is the time when value is attached to the result.
In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant also posited the "counter-utilitarian idea that there is a difference between preferences and values, and that considerations of individual rights temper calculations of aggregate utility", a concept that is an axiom in economics:
Everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. But that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself does not have mere relative worth, i.e., price, but an intrinsic worth, i.e., a dignity. (p. 53, italics in original).
A phrase quoted by Kant, which is used to summarize the counter-utilitarian nature of his moral philosophy, is Fiat justitia, pereat mundus ("Let justice be done, though the world perish"), which he translates loosely as "Let justice reign even if all the rascals in the world should perish from it". This appears in his 1795 Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch ("Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf"), Appendix 1.
First formulation
The first formulation (Formula of Universal Law) of the moral imperative "requires that the maxims be chosen as though they should hold as universal laws of nature". This formulation in principle has as its supreme law the creed "Always act according to that maxim whose universality as a law you can at the same time will" and is the "only condition under which a will can never come into conflict with itself [....]"
One interpretation of the first formulation is called the "universalizability test". An agent's maxim, according to Kant, is his "subjective principle of human actions": that is, what the agent believes is his reason to act. The universalisability test has five steps:
Find the agent's maxim (i.e., an action paired with its motivation). Take, for example, the declaration "I will lie for personal benefit". Lying is the action; the motivation is to fulfill some sort of desire. Together, they form the maxim.
Imagine a possible world in which everyone in a similar position to the real-world agent followed that maxim.
Decide if contradictions or irrationalities would arise in the possible world as a result of following the maxim.
If a contradiction or irrationality would arise, acting on that maxim is not allowed in the real world.
If there is no contradiction, then acting on that maxim is permissible, and is sometimes required.
(For a modern parallel, see John Rawls' hypothetical situation, the original position.)
Second formulation
The second formulation (or Formula of the End in Itself) holds that "the rational being, as by its nature an end and thus as an end in itself, must serve in every maxim as the condition restricting all merely relative and arbitrary ends". The principle dictates that you "[a]ct with reference to every rational being (whether yourself or another) so that it is an end in itself in your maxim", meaning that the rational being is "the basis of all maxims of action" and "must be treated never as a mere means but as the supreme limiting condition in the use of all means, i.e., as an end at the same time".
Third formulation
The third formulation (i.e. Formula of Autonomy) is a synthesis of the first two and is the basis for the "complete determination of all maxims". It states "that all maxims which stem from autonomous legislation ought to harmonize with a possible realm of ends as with a realm of nature".
In principle, "So act as if your maxims should serve at the same time as the universal law (of all rational beings)", meaning that we should so act that we may think of ourselves as "a member in the universal realm of ends", legislating universal laws through our maxims (that is, a universal code of conduct), in a "possible realm of ends". No one may elevate themselves above the universal law, therefore it is one's duty to follow the maxim(s).
Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason
Commentators, starting in the 20th century, have tended to see Kant as having a strained relationship with religion, though this was not the prevalent view in the 19th century. Karl Leonhard Reinhold, whose letters first made Kant famous, wrote "I believe that I may infer without reservation that the interest of religion, and of Christianity in particular, accords completely with the result of the Critique of Reason." Johann Schultz, who wrote one of the first Kant commentaries, wrote "And does not this system itself cohere most splendidly with the Christian religion? Do not the divinity and beneficence of the latter become all the more evident?" This view continued throughout the 19th century, as noted by Friedrich Nietzsche, who said "Kant's success is merely a theologian's success." The reason for these views was Kant's moral theology, and the widespread belief that his philosophy was the great antithesis to Spinozism, which had been convulsing the European academy for much of the 18th century. Spinozism was widely seen as the cause of the Pantheism controversy, and as a form of sophisticated pantheism or even atheism. As Kant's philosophy disregarded the possibility of arguing for God through pure reason alone, for the same reasons it also disregarded the possibility of arguing against God through pure reason alone. This, coupled with his moral philosophy (his argument that the existence of morality is a rational reason why God and an afterlife do and must exist), was the reason he was seen by many, at least through the end of the 19th century, as a great defender of religion in general and Christianity in particular.
Kant articulates his strongest criticisms of the organization and practices of religious organizations to those that encourage what he sees as a religion of counterfeit service to God. Among the major targets of his criticism are external ritual, superstition and a hierarchical church order. He sees these as efforts to make oneself pleasing to God in ways other than conscientious adherence to the principle of moral rightness in choosing and acting upon one's maxims. Kant's criticisms on these matters, along with his rejection of certain theoretical proofs grounded in pure reason (particularly the ontological argument) for the existence of God and his philosophical commentary on some Christian doctrines, have resulted in interpretations that see Kant as hostile to religion in general and Christianity in particular (e.g., Walsh 1967). Nevertheless, other interpreters consider that Kant was trying to mark off defensible from indefensible Christian belief. Kant sees in Jesus Christ the affirmation of a "pure moral disposition of the heart" that "can make man well-pleasing to God". Regarding Kant's conception of religion, some critics have argued that he was sympathetic to deism. Other critics have argued that Kant's moral conception moves from deism to theism (as moral theism), for example Allen W. Wood and Merold Westphal. As for Kant's book Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, it was emphasized that Kant reduced religiosity to rationality, religion to morality and Christianity to ethics. However, many interpreters, including Allen W. Wood and Lawrence Pasternack, now agree with Stephen Palmquist's claim that a better way of reading Kant's Religion is to see him as raising morality to the status of religion.
Idea of freedom
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes between the transcendental idea of freedom, which as a psychological concept is "mainly empirical" and refers to "whether a faculty of beginning a series of successive things or states from itself is to be assumed" and the practical concept of freedom as the independence of our will from the "coercion" or "necessitation through sensuous impulses". Kant finds it a source of difficulty that the practical idea of freedom is founded on the transcendental idea of freedom, but for the sake of practical interests uses the practical meaning, taking "no account of... its transcendental meaning," which he feels was properly "disposed of" in the Third Antinomy, and as an element in the question of the freedom of the will is for philosophy "a real stumbling block" that has embarrassed speculative reason.
Kant calls practical "everything that is possible through freedom", and the pure practical laws that are never given through sensuous conditions but are held analogously with the universal law of causality are moral laws. Reason can give us only the "pragmatic laws of free action through the senses", but pure practical laws given by reason a priori dictate "what is to be done". (The same distinction of transcendental and practical meaning can be applied to the idea of God, with the proviso that the practical concept of freedom can be experienced.)
Categories of freedom
In the Critique of Practical Reason, at the end of the second Main Part of the Analytics, Kant introduces the categories of freedom, in analogy with the categories of understanding their practical counterparts. Kant's categories of freedom apparently function primarily as conditions for the possibility for actions (i) to be free, (ii) to be understood as free and (iii) to be morally evaluated. For Kant, although actions as theoretical objects are constituted by means of the theoretical categories, actions as practical objects (objects of practical use of reason, and which can be good or bad) are constituted by means of the categories of freedom. Only in this way can actions, as phenomena, be a consequence of freedom, and be understood and evaluated as such.
Aesthetic philosophy
Kant discusses the subjective nature of aesthetic qualities and experiences in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764). Kant's contribution to aesthetic theory is developed in the Critique of Judgment (1790) where he investigates the possibility and logical status of "judgments of taste." In the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment," the first major division of the Critique of Judgment, Kant used the term "aesthetic" in a manner that, according to Kant scholar W.H. Walsh, differs from its modern sense. In the Critique of Pure Reason, to note essential differences between judgments of taste, moral judgments, and scientific judgments, Kant abandoned the term "aesthetic" as "designating the critique of taste," noting that judgments of taste could never be "directed" by "laws a priori." After A. G. Baumgarten, who wrote Aesthetica (1750–58), Kant was one of the first philosophers to develop and integrate aesthetic theory into a unified and comprehensive philosophical system, utilizing ideas that played an integral role throughout his philosophy.
In the chapter "Analytic of the Beautiful" in the Critique of Judgment, Kant states that beauty is not a property of an artwork or natural phenomenon, but is instead consciousness of the pleasure that attends the 'free play' of the imagination and the understanding. Even though it appears that we are using reason to decide what is beautiful, the judgment is not a cognitive judgment, "and is consequently not logical, but aesthetical" (§ 1). A pure judgement of taste is subjective since it refers to the emotional response of the subject and is based upon nothing but esteem for an object itself: it is a disinterested pleasure, and we feel that pure judgements of taste (i.e. judgements of beauty), lay claim to universal validity (§§ 20–22). It is important to note that this universal validity is not derived from a determinate concept of beauty but from common sense (§40). Kant also believed that a judgement of taste shares characteristics engaged in a moral judgement: both are disinterested, and we hold them to be universal. In the chapter "Analytic of the Sublime" Kant identifies the sublime as an aesthetic quality that, like beauty, is subjective, but unlike beauty refers to an indeterminate relationship between the faculties of the imagination and of reason, and shares the character of moral judgments in the use of reason. The feeling of the sublime, divided into two distinct modes (the mathematical and the dynamical sublime), describes two subjective moments that concern the relationship of the faculty of the imagination to reason. Some commentators argue that Kant's critical philosophy contains a third kind of the sublime, the moral sublime, which is the aesthetic response to the moral law or a representation, and a development of the "noble" sublime in Kant's theory of 1764. The mathematical sublime results from the failure of the imagination to comprehend natural objects that appear boundless and formless, or appear "absolutely great" (§§ 23–25). This imaginative failure is then recuperated through the pleasure taken in reason's assertion of the concept of infinity. In this move the faculty of reason proves itself superior to our fallible sensible self (§§ 25–26). In the dynamical sublime there is the sense of annihilation of the sensible self as the imagination tries to comprehend a vast might. This power of nature threatens us but through the resistance of reason to such sensible annihilation, the subject feels a pleasure and a sense of the human moral vocation. This appreciation of moral feeling through exposure to the sublime helps to develop moral character.
Kant developed a theory of humor (§ 54) that has been interpreted as an "incongruity" theory. He illustrated his theory of humor by telling three narrative jokes in the Critique of Judgment. He thought that the physiological impact of humor is akin to that of music. His knowledge of music, however, has been reported to be much weaker than his sense of humor: He told many more jokes throughout his lectures and writings.
Kant developed a distinction between an object of art as a material value subject to the conventions of society and the transcendental condition of the judgment of taste as a "refined" value in his Idea of A Universal History (1784). In the Fourth and Fifth Theses of that work he identified all art as the "fruits of unsociableness" due to men's "antagonism in society" and, in the Seventh Thesis, asserted that while such material property is indicative of a civilized state, only the ideal of morality and the universalization of refined value through the improvement of the mind "belongs to culture".
Political philosophy
In Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant listed several conditions that he thought necessary for ending wars and creating a lasting peace. They included a world of constitutional republics. His classical republican theory was extended in the Science of Right, the first part of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). Kant believed that universal history leads to the ultimate world of republican states at peace, but his theory was not pragmatic. The process was described in "Perpetual Peace" as natural rather than rational:
Kant's political thought can be summarized as republican government and international organization. "In more characteristically Kantian terms, it is doctrine of the state based upon the law (Rechtsstaat) and of eternal peace. Indeed, in each of these formulations, both terms express the same idea: that of legal constitution or of 'peace through law'. Kant's political philosophy, being essentially a legal doctrine, rejects by definition the opposition between moral education and the play of passions as alternate foundations for social life. The state is defined as the union of men under law. The state is constituted by laws which are necessary a priori because they flow from the very concept of law. "A regime can be judged by no other criteria nor be assigned any other functions, than those proper to the lawful order as such."
He opposed "democracy," which at his time meant direct democracy, believing that majority rule posed a threat to individual liberty. He stated, "...democracy is, properly speaking, necessarily a despotism, because it establishes an executive power in which 'all' decide for or even against one who does not agree; that is, 'all,' who are not quite all, decide, and this is a contradiction of the general will with itself and with freedom." As with most writers at the time, he distinguished three forms of government i.e. democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy with mixed government as the most ideal form of it.
Anthropology
Kant lectured on anthropology, the study of human nature, for twenty-three and a half years. His Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View was published in 1798. (This was the subject of Michel Foucault's secondary dissertation for his State doctorate, Introduction to Kant's Anthropology.) Kant's Lectures on Anthropology were published for the first time in 1997 in German. Introduction to Kant's Anthropology was translated into English and published by the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy series in 2006.
Kant was among the first people of his time to introduce anthropology as an intellectual area of study, long before the field gained popularity, and his texts are considered to have advanced the field. His point of view was to influence the works of later philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur.
Kant was also the first to suggest using a dimensionality approach to human diversity. He analyzed the nature of the Hippocrates-Galen four temperaments and plotted them in two dimensions: (1) "activation", or energetic aspect of behaviour, and (2) "orientation on emotionality". Cholerics were described as emotional and energetic; Phlegmatics as balanced and weak; Sanguines as balanced and energetic, and Melancholics as emotional and weak. These two dimensions reappeared in all subsequent models of temperament and personality traits.
Kant viewed anthropology in two broad categories: (1) the physiological approach, which he referred to as "what nature makes of the human being"; and (2) the pragmatic approach, which explored the things that a human "can and should make of himself."
Racism
Kant was one of the most notable Enlightenment thinkers to defend racism, and some have claimed that he was one of the central figures in the birth of modern scientific racism. Where figures such as Carl Linnaeus and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach had supposed only "empirical" observation for racism, Kant produced a full-blown theory of race. Using the Four Temperaments of ancient Greece, he proposed a hierarchy of four racial categories: white Europeans, yellow Asians, black Africans, and red Amerindians.
Kant wrote that "[Whites] contain all the impulses of nature in affects and passions, all talents, all dispositions to culture and civilization and can as readily obey as govern. They are the only ones who always advance to perfection.” He describes South Asians as "educated to the highest degree but only in the arts and not in the sciences". He goes on that Hindustanis can never reach the level of abstract concepts and that a "great hindustani man" is one who has "gone far in the art of deception and has much money". He stated that the Hindus always stay the way they are and can never advance. About black Africans, Kant wrote that "they can be educated but only as servants, that is they allow themselves to be trained". He quotes David Hume as challenging anyone to "cite a [single] example in which a Negro has shown talents" and asserts that, among the "hundreds of thousands" of blacks transported during the Atlantic slave trade, even among the freed "still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality". To Kant, "the Negro can be disciplined and cultivated, but is never genuinely civilized. He falls of his own accord into savagery." Native Americans, Kant opined, "cannot be educated". He calls them unmotivated, lacking affect, passion and love, describing them as too weak for labor, unfit for any culture, and too phlegmatic for diligence. He said the Native Americans are "far below the Negro, who undoubtedly holds the lowest of all remaining levels by which we designate the different races". Kant stated that "Americans and Blacks cannot govern themselves. They thus serve only for slaves."
Kant was an opponent of miscegenation, believing that whites would be "degraded" and the "fusing of races" is undesireable, for "not every race adopts the morals and customs of the Europeans". He stated that "instead of assimilation, which was intended by the melting together of the various races, Nature has here made a law of just the opposite". He believed that in the future all races would be extinguished, except that of the whites.
Charles W. Mills wrote that Kant has been "sanitized for public consumption", his racist works conveniently ignored. Robert Bernasconi stated that Kant "supplied the first scientific definition of race". Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze is credited with bringing Kant's contributions to racism to light in the 1990s among Western philosophers, who often gloss over this part of his life and works. He wrote about Kant's ideas of race:
Pauline Kleingeld argues that while Kant was indeed a staunch advocate of scientific racism for much of his career, his views on race changed significantly in works published in the last decade of his life. In particular, she argues that Kant unambiguously rejected past views related to racial hierarchies and the diminished rights or moral status of non-whites in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795). This work also saw him providing extended arguments against European colonialism, which he claimed was morally unjust and incompatible with the equal rights held by indigenous populations. Kleingeld argues that this shift in Kant's views later in life has often been forgotten or ignored in the literature on Kant's racist anthropology, and that the shift suggests a belated recognition of the fact that racial hierarchy was incompatible with a universalized moral framework. While Kant's perspective on the topic of European colonialism became more balanced, he still considered Europeans "civilized" to the exception of others:
Influence and legacy
Kant's influence on Western thought has been profound. Although the basic tenets of Kant's transcendental idealism (i.e. that space and time are a priori forms of human perception rather than real properties and the claim that formal logic and transcendental logic coincide) have been claimed to be falsified by modern science and logic, and no longer set the intellectual agenda of contemporary philosophers, Kant is credited with having innovated the way philosophical inquiry has been carried at least up to the early nineteenth century. This shift consisted in several closely related innovations that, although highly contentious in themselves, have become important in postmodern philosophy and in the social sciences broadly construed:
The human subject seen as the centre of inquiry into human knowledge, such that it is impossible to philosophize about things as they exist independently of human perception or of how they are for us;
The notion that is possible to discover and systematically explore the inherent limits to our ability to know entirely a priori;
The notion of the "categorical imperative", an assertion that people are naturally endowed with the ability and obligation toward right reason and acting. Perhaps his most famous quote is drawn from the Critique of Practical Reason: "Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe . . . : the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."
The concept of "conditions of possibility", as in his notion of "the conditions of possible experience"that is that things, knowledge, and forms of consciousness rest on prior conditions that make them possible, so that, to understand or to know them, we must first understand these conditions;
The theory that objective experience is actively constituted or constructed by the functioning of the human mind;
His notion of moral autonomy as central to humanity;
His assertion of the principle that human beings should be treated as ends rather than as means.
Kant's ideas have been incorporated into a variety of schools of thought. These include German idealism, Marxism, positivism, phenomenology, existentialism, critical theory, linguistic philosophy, structuralism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism.
Historical influence
During his own life, much critical attention was paid to his thought. He influenced Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Novalis during the 1780s and 1790s. The school of thinking known as German idealism developed from his writings. The German idealists Fichte and Schelling, for example, tried to bring traditional "metaphysically" laden notions like "the Absolute", "God", and "Being" into the scope of Kant's critical thought. In so doing, the German idealists tried to reverse Kant's view that we cannot know what we cannot observe.
The influential English Romantic poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge was greatly influenced by Kant and helped to spread awareness of him, and of German idealism generally, in the UK and the USA. In his Biographia Literaria (1817), he credits Kant's ideas in coming to believe that the mind is not a passive but an active agent in the apprehension of reality.
Hegel was one of Kant's first major critics. The main accusations Hegel charged Kant's philosophy with were formalism (or "abstractism") and irrationality. In Hegel's view the entire project of setting a "transcendental subject" (i.e human consciousness) apart from nature, history, and society was fundamentally flawed, although parts of that very project could be put to good use in a new direction, that Hegel called the "absolute idealism". Similar concerns moved Hegel's criticisms to Kant's concept of moral autonomy, to which Hegel opposed an ethic focused on the "ethical life" of the community. In a sense, Hegel's notion of "ethical life" is meant to subsume, rather than replace, Kantian ethics. And Hegel can be seen as trying to defend Kant's idea of freedom as going beyond finite "desires", by means of reason. Thus, in contrast to later critics like Nietzsche or Russell, Hegel shares some of Kant's concerns.
Kant's thinking on religion was used in Britain to challenge the decline in religious faith in the nineteenth century. British Catholic writers, notably G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, followed this approach. Ronald Englefield debated this movement, and Kant's use of language. Criticisms of Kant were common in the realist views of the new positivism at that time.
Arthur Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism. He, like G. E. Schulze, Jacobi and Fichte before him, was critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Things in themselves, they argued, are neither the cause of what we observe nor are they completely beyond our access. Ever since the first Critique of Pure Reason philosophers have been critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Many have argued, if such a thing exists beyond experience then one cannot posit that it affects us causally, since that would entail stretching the category "causality" beyond the realm of experience. For Schopenhauer things in themselves do not exist outside the non-rational will. The world, as Schopenhauer would have it, is the striving and largely unconscious will. Michael Kelly, in the preface to his 1910 book Kant's Ethics and Schopenhauer's Criticism, stated: "Of Kant it may be said that what is good and true in his philosophy would have been buried with him, were it not for Schopenhauer...."
With the success and wide influence of Hegel's writings, Kant's influence began to wane, though there was in Germany a movement that hailed a return to Kant in the 1860s, beginning with the publication of Kant und die Epigonen in 1865 by Otto Liebmann. His motto was "Back to Kant", and a re-examination of his ideas began (see Neo-Kantianism). During the turn of the 20th century there was an important revival of Kant's theoretical philosophy, known as the Marburg School, represented in the work of Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, Ernst Cassirer, and anti-Neo-Kantian Nicolai Hartmann.
Kant's notion of "Critique" has been quite influential. The early German Romantics, especially Friedrich Schlegel in his "Athenaeum Fragments", used Kant's self-reflexive conception of criticism in their Romantic theory of poetry. Also in aesthetics, Clement Greenberg, in his classic essay "Modernist Painting", uses Kantian criticism, what Greenberg refers to as "immanent criticism", to justify the aims of abstract painting, a movement Greenberg saw as aware of the key limitiaton—flatness—that makes up the medium of painting. French philosopher Michel Foucault was also greatly influenced by Kant's notion of "Critique" and wrote several pieces on Kant for a re-thinking of the Enlightenment as a form of "critical thought". He went so far as to classify his own philosophy as a "critical history of modernity, rooted in Kant".
Kant believed that mathematical truths were forms of synthetic a priori knowledge, which means they are necessary and universal, yet known through intuition. Kant's often brief remarks about mathematics influenced the mathematical school known as intuitionism, a movement in philosophy of mathematics opposed to Hilbert's formalism, and Frege and Bertrand Russell's logicism.
Influence on modern thinkers
With his Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant is considered to have foreshadowed many of the ideas that have come to form the democratic peace theory, one of the main controversies in political science.
Prominent recent Kantians include the British philosophers P. F. Strawson, Onora O'Neill and Quassim Cassam, and the American philosophers Wilfrid Sellars and Christine Korsgaard. Due to the influence of Strawson and Sellars, among others, there has been a renewed interest in Kant's view of the mind. Central to many debates in philosophy of psychology and cognitive science is Kant's conception of the unity of consciousness.
Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls are two significant political and moral philosophers whose work is strongly influenced by Kant's moral philosophy. They argued against relativism, supporting the Kantian view that universality is essential to any viable moral philosophy. Jean-François Lyotard, however, emphasized the indeterminacy in the nature of thought and language and has engaged in debates with Habermas based on the effects this indeterminacy has on philosophical and political debates.
Mou Zongsan's study of Kant has been cited as a highly crucial part in the development of Mou's personal philosophy, namely New Confucianism. Widely regarded as the most influential Kant scholar in China, Mou's rigorous critique of Kant's philosophy—having translated all three of Kant's critiques—served as an ardent attempt to reconcile Chinese and Western philosophy whilst increasing pressure to westernize in China.
Kant's influence also has extended to the social, behavioral, and physical sciences, as in the sociology of Max Weber, the psychology of Jean Piaget and Carl Gustav Jung, and the linguistics of Noam Chomsky. Kant's work on mathematics and synthetic a priori knowledge is also cited by theoretical physicist Albert Einstein as an early influence on his intellectual development, but which he later criticised heavily and rejected. He held the view that "[I]f one does not want to assert that relativity theory goes against reason, one cannot retain the a priori concepts and norms of Kant's system". However, Kant scholar Stephen Palmquist has argued that Einstein's rejection of Kant's influence was primarily "a response to mistaken interpretations of Kant being adopted by contemporary philosophers", when in fact Kant's transcendental perspective informed Einstein's early worldview and led to his insights regarding simultaneity, and eventually to his proposal of the theory of relativity. Because of the thoroughness of the Kantian paradigm shift, his influence extends to thinkers who neither specifically refer to his work nor use his terminology.
In recent years, there has been renewed interest in Kant's theory of mind from the point of view of formal logic and computer science.
Film/television
Kant and his work was heavily referenced in the comedy television show The Good Place, as the show deals with the subject of ethics and moral philosophy.
Bibliography
List of major works
(1749) Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte)
(March 1755) Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels)
(April 1755) Brief Outline of Certain Meditations on Fire (Meditationum quarundam de igne succinta delineatio (master's thesis under Johann Gottfried Teske))
(September 1755) A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio (doctoral thesis))
(1756) The Use in Natural Philosophy of Metaphysics Combined with Geometry, Part I: Physical Monadology (Metaphysicae cum geometrica iunctae usus in philosophin naturali, cuius specimen I. continet monadologiam physicam, abbreviated as Monadologia Physica (thesis as a prerequisite of associate professorship))
(1762) The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures (Die falsche Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figuren)
(1763) The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes)
(1763) Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy (Versuch den Begriff der negativen Größen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen)
(1764) Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen)
(1764) Essay on the Illness of the Head (Über die Krankheit des Kopfes)
(1764) Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (the Prize Essay) (Untersuchungen über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral)
(1766) Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (Träume eines Geistersehers)
(1768) On the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Regions in Space (Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume)
(August 1770) Dissertation on the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World (De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis (doctoral thesis))
(1775) On the Different Races of Man (Über die verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen)
(1781) First edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
(1783) Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik)
(1784) "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" ("Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?")
(1784) "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" ("Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht")
(1785) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten)
(1786) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft)
(1786) "What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?" ("Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren?")
(1786) Conjectural Beginning of Human History (Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte)
(1787) Second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
(1788) Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft)
(1790) Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft)
(1793) Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft)
(1793) On the Old Saw: That May be Right in Theory But It Won't Work in Practice (Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis)
(1795) Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch ("Zum ewigen Frieden")
(1797) Metaphysics of Morals (Metaphysik der Sitten). First part is The Doctrine of Right, which has often been published separately as The Science of Right.
(1798) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht)
(1798) The Contest of Faculties (Der Streit der Fakultäten)
(1800) Logic (Logik)
(1803) On Pedagogy (Über Pädagogik)
(1804) Opus Postumum
(1817) Lectures on Philosophical Theology (Immanuel Kants Vorlesungen über die philosophische Religionslehre edited by K.H.L. Pölitz) [The English edition of A.W. Wood & G.M. Clark (Cornell, 1978) is based on Pölitz' second edition, 1830, of these lectures.]
Collected works in German
Printed version
Wilhelm Dilthey inaugurated the Academy edition (the Akademie-Ausgabe abbreviated as AA or Ak) of Kant's writings (Gesammelte Schriften, Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1902–38) in 1895, and served as its first editor. The volumes are grouped into four sections:
I. Kant's published writings (vols. 1–9),
II. Kant's correspondence (vols. 10–13),
III. Kant's literary remains, or Nachlass (vols. 14–23), and
IV. Student notes from Kant's lectures (vols. 24–29).
Electronic version
Elektronische Edition der Gesammelten Werke Immanuel Kants (vols. 1–23).
See also
Notes
References
Works cited
Kant, Immanuel. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Lewis White Beck, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1969. Page numbers citing this work are Beck's marginal numbers that refer to the page numbers of the standard edition of Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1902–38).
Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: a Biography. Cambridge University Press, 2001. .
Further reading
In Germany, one important contemporary interpreter of Kant and the movement of German Idealism he began is Dieter Henrich, who has some work available in English. P. F. Strawson's The Bounds of Sense (1966) played a significant role in determining the contemporary reception of Kant in England and America. More recent interpreters of note in the English-speaking world include Lewis White Beck, Jonathan Bennett, Henry Allison, Paul Guyer, Christine Korsgaard, Stephen Palmquist, Robert B. Pippin, Roger Scruton, Rudolf Makkreel, and Béatrice Longuenesse.
General introductions to his thought
Broad, C.D. Kant: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Gardner, Sebastian. Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1999.
Martin, Gottfried. Kant's Metaphysics and Theory of Science. Greenwood Press, 1955 (elucidates Kant's most fundamental concepts in their historical context)
Palmquist, Stephen. Kant's System of Perspectives : an architectonic interpretation of the Critical philosophy. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993.
Seung, T.K. 2007. Kant: a Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum.
Satyananda Giri. Kant. Durham, CT: Strategic Publishing Group, 2010.
Scruton, Roger. Kant: a Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2001. (provides a brief account of his life, and a lucid introduction to the three major critiques)
Uleman, Jennifer. An Introduction to Kant's Moral Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Luchte, James. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant's Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties. The Athlone Press, 1983.
Biography and historical context
Beck, Lewis White. Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors. Harvard University Press, 1969. (a survey of Kant's intellectual background)
Beiser, Frederick C. The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte. Harvard University Press, 1987.
Beiser, Frederick C. German Idealism: the Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781–1801. Harvard University Press, 2002
Cassirer, Ernst. Kant's Life and Thought. Translation of Kants Leben und Lehre. Trans., Jame S. Haden, intr. Stephan Körner. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart. Immanuel Kanta study and a comparison with Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruno, Plato and Descartes, the authorised translation from the German by Lord Redesdale, with his 'Introduction', The Bodley Head, London, 1914, (2 volumes).
Gulyga, Arsenij. Immanuel Kant: His Life and Thought. Trans., Marijan Despaltović. Boston: Birkhäuser, 1987.
Johnson, G.R. (ed.). Kant on Swedenborg. Dreams of a Spirit-Seer and Other Writings. Swedenborg Foundation, 2002. (new translation and analysis, many supplementary texts)
Lehner, Ulrich L., Kants Vorsehungskonzept auf dem Hintergrund der deutschen Schulphilosophie und –theologie (Leiden: 2007) (Kant's concept of Providence and its background in German school philosophy and theology)
Pinkard, Terry. German Philosophy, 1760–1860: the Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge, 2002.
Pippin, Robert. Idealism as Modernism. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Sassen, Brigitte (ed.). Kant's Early Critics: the Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy, Cambridge, 2000.
Schabert, Joseph A. "Kant's Influence on his Successors", The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. XLVII, January 1922.
Collections of essays
Firestone, Chris L. and Palmquist, Stephen (eds.). Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion. Notre Dame: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Förster, Eckart (ed.). Kant's Transcendental Deductions:. The Three 'Critiques' and the 'Opus Postumum' Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. Includes an important essay by Dieter Henrich.
Guyer, Paul (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Excellent collection of papers that covers most areas of Kant's thought.
Mohanty, J.N. and Shahan, Robert W. (eds.). Essays on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.
Phillips, Dewi et al. (eds.). Kant and Kierkegaard on Religion. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000, Collection of essays about Kantian religion and its influence on Kierkegaardian and contemporary philosophy of religion.
Proceedings of the International Kant Congresses. Several Congresses (numbered) edited by various publishers.
Theoretical philosophy
Allison, Henry. Kant's Transcendental Idealism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983, 2004. (a very influential defense of Kant's idealism, recently revised).
Ameriks, Karl. Kant's Theory of Mind: An Analysis of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982 (one of the first detailed studies of the Dialectic in English).
Banham, Gary. Kant's Transcendental Imagination. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant's Critical Philosophy. Trans., Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Gram, Moltke S. The Transcendental Turn: The Foundation of Kant's Idealism. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1984.
Greenberg, Robert. Kant's Theory of A Priori Knowledge. Penn State Press, 2001
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987 (modern defense of the view that Kant's theoretical philosophy is a "patchwork" of ill-fitting arguments).
Heidegger, Martin. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Trans., Richard Taft. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
Henrich, Dieter. The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant's Philosophy. Ed. with introduction by Richard L. Velkley; trans. Jeffrey Edwards et al. Harvard University Press, 1994.
Kemp Smith, Norman. A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason. London: Macmillan, 1930 (influential commentary on the first Critique, recently reprinted).
Kitcher, Patricia. Kant's Transcendental Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Longuenesse, Béatrice. Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Princeton University Press, 1998. . (argues that the notion of judgment provides the key to understanding the overall argument of the first Critique)
Melnick, Arthur. Kant's Analogies of Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. (important study of Kant's Analogies, including his defense of the principle of causality)
Paton, H.J. Kant's Metaphysic of Experience: a Commentary on the First Half of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Two volumes. London: Macmillan, 1936. (extensive study of Kant's theoretical philosophy)
Pippin, Robert B. Kant's Theory of Form: An Essay on the Critique of Pure Reason. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. (influential examination of the formal character of Kant's work)
Schopenhauer, Arthur. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Erster Band. Anhang. Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie. F.A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1859 (In English: Arthur Schopenhauer, New York: Dover Press, Volume I, Appendix, "Critique of the Kantian Philosophy", )
Seung, T.K. Kant's Transcendental Logic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969.
Strawson, P.F. The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1989 (the work that revitalized the interest of contemporary analytic philosophers in Kant).
Sturm, Thomas, Kant und die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. Paderborn: Mentis Verlag, 2009. . review (Treats Kant's anthropology and his views on psychology and history in relation to his philosophy of science.)
Tonelli, Giorgio. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason within the Tradition of Modern Logic. A Commentary on its History. Hildesheim, Olms 1994
Werkmeister, W.H., Kant: The Architectonic and Development of His Philosophy, Open Court Publishing Co., La Salle, Ill.; 1980 (it treats, as a whole, the architectonic and development of Kant's philosophy from 1755 through the Opus postumum.)
Wolff, Robert Paul. Kant's Theory of Mental Activity: A Commentary on the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1963. (detailed and influential commentary on the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason)
Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Kant and the Philosophy of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. (review )
Practical philosophy
Allison, Henry. Kant's Theory of Freedom. Cambridge University Press 1990.
Banham, Gary. Kant's Practical Philosophy: From Critique to Doctrine. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Dorschel, Andreas. Die idealistische Kritik des Willens: Versuch über die Theorie der praktischen Subjektivität bei Kant und Hegel. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1992 (Schriften zur Transzendentalphilosophie 10) .
Korsgaard, Christine M. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Michalson, Gordon E. Fallen Freedom: Kant on Radical Evil and Moral Regeneration. Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Michalson, Gordon E. Kant and the Problem of God. Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
Paton, H.J. The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant's Moral Philosophy. University of Pennsylvania Press 1971.
Rawls, John. Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, 2000.
Seung, T.K. Kant's Platonic Revolution in Moral and Political Philosophy. Johns Hopkins, 1994.
Wolff, Robert Paul. The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. New York: HarperCollins, 1974. .
Wood, Allen. Kant's Ethical Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Aesthetics
Allison, Henry. Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Banham, Gary. Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics. London and New York: Macmillan Press, 2000.
Clewis, Robert. The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Crawford, Donald. Kant's Aesthetic Theory. Wisconsin, 1974.
Doran, Robert. The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Taste. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1979.
Hammermeister, Kai. The German Aesthetic Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Immanuel Kant entry in Kelly, Michael (Editor in Chief) (1998) Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Kaplama, Erman. Cosmological Aesthetics through the Kantian Sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian. Lanham: UPA, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
Makkreel, Rudolf, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant. Chicago, 1990.
McCloskey, Mary. Kant's Aesthetic. SUNY, 1987.
Schaper, Eva. Studies in Kant's Aesthetics. Edinburgh, 1979.
Zammito, John H. The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1992.
Zupancic, Alenka. Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan. Verso, 2000.
Philosophy of religion
Palmquist, Stephen. Kant's Critical Religion : Volume Two of Kant's System of Perspectives. Ashgate, 2000.
Perez, Daniel Omar. "Religión, Política y Medicina en Kant: El Conflicto de las Proposiciones". Cinta de Moebio. Revista de Epistemologia de Ciencias Sociales, v. 28, p. 91–103, 2007. Uchile.cl (Spanish)
Perpetual peace and international relations
Sir Harry Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace, Cambridge University Press, 1962.
Martin Wight, Four Seminal Thinkers in International Theory: Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant and Mazzini ed. Gabriele Wight & Brian Porter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Other works
Botul, Jean-Baptiste. La vie sexuelle d'Emmanuel Kant. Paris, Éd. Mille et une Nuits, 2008.
Caygill, Howard. A Kant Dictionary. Oxford; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Reference, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques. Mochlos; or, The Conflict of the Faculties. Columbia University, 1980.
Kelly, Michael. Kant's Ethics and Schopenhauer's Criticism, London: Swan Sonnenschein 1910. [Reprinted 2010 Nabu Press, ]
Mosser, Kurt. Necessity and Possibility; The Logical Strategy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Catholic University of America Press, 2008.
White, Mark D. Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autonomy, Dignity, and Character . Stanford University Press, 2011. . (Reviewed in The Montreal Review )
Contemporary philosophy with a Kantian influence
Guyer, Paul. Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant's Response to Hume. Princeton University Press, 2008.
Hanna, Robert, Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy. Clarendon Press, 2004.
Hanna, Robert, Kant, Science, and Human Nature. Clarendon Press, 2006.
Herman, Barbara. The Practice of Moral Judgement. Harvard University Press, 1993.
(A Kantian approach to the issue of pornography and degradation.)
Korsgaard, Christine. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (not a commentary, but a defense of a broadly Kantian approach to ethics)
McDowell, John. Mind and World. Harvard University Press, 1994. . (offers a Kantian solution to a dilemma in contemporary epistemology regarding the relation between mind and world)
Parfit, Derek. On What Matters (2 vols.). New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Pinker, Steven. The Stuff of Thought. Viking Press, 2007. . (Chapter 4 "Cleaving the Air" discusses Kant's anticipation of modern cognitive science)
Wood, Allen W. Kant's Ethical Thought. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. . (comprehensive, in-depth study of Kant's ethics, with emphasis on formula of humanity as most accurate formulation of the categorical imperative)
External links
KantPapers, authors and papers database powered by PhilPapers, focused on Kant, and located at Cornell University
Immanuel Kant at the Encyclopædia Britannica
Immanuel Kant in the Christian Cyclopedia
Works by Immanuel Kant at Duisburg-Essen University
Stephen Palmquist's Glossary of Kantian Terminology
Kant's Ethical Theory – Kantian ethics explained, applied and evaluated
Notes on Utilitarianism – A conveniently brief survey of Kant's Utilitarianism
"Immanuel Kant", An overview of his work, times, and influence on biology, plantspeopleplanet.org.au
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: An Overview
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Aesthetics
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Logic
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Mind
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Radical Evil
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Religion
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant
1724 births
1804 deaths
18th-century anthropologists
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18th-century German male writers
18th-century German philosophers
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18th-century non-fiction writers
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19th-century German male writers
19th-century German non-fiction writers
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Writers about religion and science | false | [
"An only child is a person who does not have any siblings, neither biological nor adopted.\n\nOnly Child may also refer to:\n\n Only Child (novel), a novel by Jack Ketchum\n Only Child, a 2020 album by Sasha Sloan",
"John August Kusche (1869 – 1934) was a renowned botanist and entomologist, and he discovered many new species of moths and butterflies. The plant of the aster family, Erigeron kuschei is named in his honor.\n\nNotable discoveries \n\nIn 1928, Kusche donated to the Bishop Museum 164 species of Lepidoptera he collected on Kauai between 1919 and 1920. Of those, 55 species had not previously been recorded on Kauai and 6 were new to science, namely Agrotis stenospila, Euxoa charmocrita, Plusia violacea, Nesamiptis senicula, Nesamiptis proterortha and Scotorythra crocorrhoa.\n\nThe Essig Museum of Entomology lists 26 species collected by Kusche from California, Baja California, Arizona, Alaska and on the Solomon Islands.\n\nEarly life \nHis father's name was Johann Karl Wilhelm Kusche, he remarried in 1883 to Johanna Susanna Niesar. He had three siblings from his father (Herman, Ernst and Pauline) and four half siblings from her second marriage (Bertha, Wilhelm, Heinrich and Reinhold. There were two other children from this marriage, which died young and whom were not recorded). His family were farmers, while he lived with them, in Kreuzburg, Germany.\n\nHis siblings quickly accustomed themselves to their new mother, however August, the eldest, did not get on easily with her. He attended a gardening school there in Kreuzburg. He left at a relatively young age after unintentionally setting a forest fire. \"One day on a walk through Kreuzburg forest, he unintentionally caused a huge forest fire. Fearing jail, he fled from home and somehow made it to America.\"\n\nHe wrote letters back to his family, urging them to come to America. His father eventually did, sometime shortly after February 1893. His father started a homestead in Brownsville, Texas. Yellow fever broke out and his father caught it. He managed to survive, while many did not, leaving him a sick old man in his mid-fifties. He wrote to August, who was then living it Prescott, Arizona, asking for money. August wrote back, saying \"Dear father, if you are out of money, see to it that you go back to Germany as soon as possible. Without any money here, you are lost,\" \n\nAugust didn't have any money either, and had been hoping to borrow money from his father. If he had wanted to visit him, then he would have had to make the trip on foot.\n\nWhen August arrived in America, he got a job as a gardener on a Pennsylvania farm. He had an affair with a Swiss woman, which resulted in a child. August denied being the child's father, but married her anyway. He went west, on horseback, and had his horse stolen by Native Americans. He ended up in San Francisco. His family joined him there. By this time he had three sons and a daughter.\n\nAfter his children grew up, he began traveling and collecting moths and butterflies.\n\nLater life \nHe traveled to the South Seas where he collected moths and butterflies. There he caught a terrible fever that very nearly killed him. He was picked up by a government ship in New Guinea, and was unconscious until he awoke in a San Francisco hospital. After that time he had hearing loss and lost all of his teeth. His doctor told him not to take any more trips to Alaska, and this apparently helped his condition.\n\nIn 1924 he lived in San Diego. He had taken a trip to Alaska just before this date. He worked as a gardener in California for nine years (1915–1924) where he died of stomach cancer.\n\nReferences \n\n19th-century German botanists\n1869 births\n1934 deaths\n20th-century American botanists\nGerman emigrants to the United States"
] |
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"Immanuel Kant",
"Biography",
"when was he born?",
"April 22, 1724",
"where was he born?",
"Konigsberg, Prussia",
"who were his parents?",
"His mother, Anna Regina Reuter",
"and his father?",
"His father, Johann Georg Kant (1682-1746), was a German",
"did he have any siblings?",
"Kant was the fourth of nine children (four of them reached adulthood)."
] | C_8ddf971bb06941f8a8f1b934b838550b_1 | where did he go to school? | 6 | where did Immanuel Kant go to school? | Immanuel Kant | Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724 in Konigsberg, Prussia (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia). His mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697-1737), was also born in Konigsberg to a father from Nuremberg. (Her name is sometimes erroneously given as Anna Regina Porter.) His father, Johann Georg Kant (1682-1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipeda, Lithuania). Immanuel Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. While scholars of Kant's life long accepted the claim, there is no evidence that Kant's paternal line was Scottish; it is more likely that the Kants got their name from the village of Kantwaggen (today part of Priekule) and were of Curonian origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children (four of them reached adulthood). Baptized 'Emanuel', he changed his name to 'Immanuel' after learning Hebrew. Young Kant was a solid, albeit unspectacular, student. Kant was born into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in East Prussia. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. Kant maintained a belief in Christianity, in his work Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals he reveals a belief in human immortality as the necessary condition of our continued approach to the highest good possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of Theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic. Common myths about Kant's personal mannerisms are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. It is often held that Kant lived a very strict and disciplined life, leading to an oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but seemed to have a rewarding social life -- he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends whom he frequently met, among them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Konigsberg. A common myth is that Kant never traveled more than 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from Konigsberg his whole life. In fact, between 1750 and 1754 he worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Gross-Arnsdorf (now Jarnoltowo near Morag (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km). CANNOTANSWER | Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. | Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him an influential figure in modern Western philosophy.
In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued that space and time are mere "forms of intuition" which structure all experience, and therefore that while "things-in-themselves" exist and contribute to experience, they are nonetheless distinct from the objects of experience. From this it follows that the objects of experience are mere "appearances", and that the nature of things as they are in themselves is consequently unknowable to us. In an attempt to counter the skepticism he found in the writings of philosopher David Hume, he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), one of his most well-known works. In it, he developed his theory of experience to answer the question of whether synthetic a priori knowledge is possible, which would in turn make it possible to determine the limits of metaphysical inquiry. Kant drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that the objects of the senses must conform to our spatial and temporal forms of intuition, and that we can consequently have a priori cognition of the objects of the senses.
Kant believed that reason is also the source of morality, and that aesthetics arise from a faculty of disinterested judgment. Kant's views continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of epistemology, ethics, political theory, and post-modern aesthetics. He attempted to explain the relationship between reason and human experience and to move beyond what he believed to be the failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He wanted to put an end to what he saw as an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience, while resisting the skepticism of thinkers such as Hume. He regarded himself as showing the way past the impasse between rationalists and empiricists, and is widely held to have synthesized both traditions in his thought.
Kant was an exponent of the idea that perpetual peace could be secured through universal democracy and international cooperation, and that perhaps this could be the culminating stage of world history. The nature of Kant's religious views continues to be the subject of scholarly dispute, with viewpoints ranging from the impression that he shifted from an early defense of an ontological argument for the existence of God to a principled agnosticism, to more critical treatments epitomized by Schopenhauer, who criticized the imperative form of Kantian ethics as "theological morals" and the "Mosaic Decalogue in disguise", and Nietzsche, who claimed that Kant had "theologian blood" and was merely a sophisticated apologist for traditional Christian faith. Beyond his religious views, Kant has also been criticized for the racism presented in some of his lesser-known papers, such as "On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy" and "On the Different Races of Man". Although he was a proponent of scientific racism for much of his career, Kant's views on race changed significantly in the last decade of his life, and he ultimately rejected racial hierarchies and European colonialism in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795).
Kant published other important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history during his lifetime. These include the Universal Natural History (1755), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), the Critique of Judgment (1790), Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (1793), and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
Biography
Kant's mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697–1737), was born in Königsberg (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia) to a father from Nuremberg. Her surname is sometimes erroneously given as Porter. Kant's father, Johann Georg Kant (1682–1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipėda, Lithuania). Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. While scholars of Kant's life long accepted the claim, there is no evidence that Kant's paternal line was Scottish and it is more likely that the Kants got their name from the village of Kantwaggen (today part of Priekulė) and were of Curonian origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children (six of whom reached adulthood).
Kant was born on 22 April 1724 into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in Königsberg, East Prussia. Baptized Emanuel, he later changed the spelling of his name to Immanuel after learning Hebrew. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. In his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, he reveals a belief in immortality as the necessary condition of humanity's approach to the highest morality possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic, even though it has also been suggested that Kant intends other people to think of him as a "pure rationalist", who is defined by Kant himself as someone who recognizes revelation but asserts that to know and accept it as real is not a necessary requisite to religion.
Kant apparently lived a very strict and disciplined life; it was said that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but seemed to have a rewarding social life — he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends with whom he frequently met, among them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Königsberg.
Between 1750 and 1754 Kant worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Groß-Arnsdorf (now Jarnołtowo near Morąg (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km).
Many myths grew up about Kant's personal mannerisms; these are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime.
Young scholar
Kant showed a great aptitude for study at an early age. He first attended the Collegium Fridericianum from which he graduated at the end of the summer of 1740. In 1740, aged 16, he enrolled at the University of Königsberg, where he spent his whole career. He studied the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and Christian Wolff under Martin Knutzen (Associate Professor of Logic and Metaphysics from 1734 until his death in 1751), a rationalist who was also familiar with developments in British philosophy and science and introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Isaac Newton. Knutzen dissuaded Kant from the theory of pre-established harmony, which he regarded as "the pillow for the lazy mind". He also dissuaded Kant from idealism, the idea that reality is purely mental, which most philosophers in the 18th century regarded in a negative light. The theory of transcendental idealism that Kant later included in the Critique of Pure Reason was developed partially in opposition to traditional idealism.
His father's stroke and subsequent death in 1746 interrupted his studies. Kant left Königsberg shortly after August 1748—he would return there in August 1754. He became a private tutor in the towns surrounding Königsberg, but continued his scholarly research. In 1749, he published his first philosophical work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (written in 1745–47).
Early work
Kant is best known for his work in the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics, but he made significant contributions to other disciplines. In 1754, while contemplating on a prize question by the Berlin Academy about the problem of Earth's rotation, he argued that the Moon's gravity would slow down Earth's spin and he also put forth the argument that gravity would eventually cause the Moon's tidal locking to coincide with the Earth's rotation. The next year, he expanded this reasoning to the formation and evolution of the Solar System in his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. In 1755, Kant received a license to lecture in the University of Königsberg and began lecturing on a variety of topics including mathematics, physics, logic and metaphysics. In his 1756 essay on the theory of winds, Kant laid out an original insight into the Coriolis force. In 1757, Kant began lecturing on geography making him one of the first lecturers to explicitly teach geography as its own subject. Geography was one of Kant's most popular lecturing topics and in 1802 a compilation by Friedrich Theodor Rink of Kant's lecturing notes, Physical Geography, was released. After Kant became a professor in 1770, he expanded the topics of his lectures to include lectures on natural law, ethics and anthropology along with other topics.
In the Universal Natural History, Kant laid out the Nebular hypothesis, in which he deduced that the Solar System had formed from a large cloud of gas, a nebula. Kant also correctly deduced (though through usually false premises and fallacious reasoning, according to Bertrand Russell) that the Milky Way was a large disk of stars, which he theorized formed from a much larger spinning gas cloud. He further suggested that other distant "nebulae" might be other galaxies. These postulations opened new horizons for astronomy, for the first time extending it beyond the Solar System to galactic and intergalactic realms. According to Thomas Huxley (1867), Kant also made contributions to geology in his Universal Natural History.
From then on, Kant turned increasingly to philosophical issues, although he continued to write on the sciences throughout his life. In the early 1760s, Kant produced a series of important works in philosophy. The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, a work in logic, was published in 1762. Two more works appeared the following year: Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy and The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. By 1764, Kant had become a notable popular author, and wrote Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime; he was second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy prize competition with his Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (often referred to as "The Prize Essay"). In 1766 Kant wrote Dreams of a Spirit-Seer which dealt with the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. The exact influence of Swedenborg on Kant, as well as the extent of Kant's belief in mysticism according to Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, remain controversial. On 31 March 1770, aged 45, Kant was finally appointed Full Professor of Logic and Metaphysics (Professor Ordinarius der Logic und Metaphysic) at the University of Königsberg. In defense of this appointment, Kant wrote his inaugural dissertation (Inaugural-Dissertation) De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis (On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World). This work saw the emergence of several central themes of his mature work, including the distinction between the faculties of intellectual thought and sensible receptivity. To miss this distinction would mean to commit the error of subreption, and, as he says in the last chapter of the dissertation, only in avoiding this error does metaphysics flourish.
The issue that vexed Kant was central to what 20th-century scholars called "the philosophy of mind". The flowering of the natural sciences had led to an understanding of how data reaches the brain. Sunlight falling on an object is reflected from its surface in a way that maps the surface features (color, texture, etc.). The reflected light reaches the human eye, passes through the cornea, is focused by the lens onto the retina where it forms an image similar to that formed by light passing through a pinhole into a camera obscura. The retinal cells send impulses through the optic nerve and then they form a mapping in the brain of the visual features of the object. The interior mapping is not the exterior object, and our belief that there is a meaningful relationship between the object and the mapping in the brain depends on a chain of reasoning that is not fully grounded. But the uncertainty aroused by these considerations, by optical illusions, misperceptions, delusions, etc., are not the end of the problems.
Kant saw that the mind could not function as an empty container that simply receives data from outside. Something must be giving order to the incoming data. Images of external objects must be kept in the same sequence in which they were received. This ordering occurs through the mind's intuition of time. The same considerations apply to the mind's function of constituting space for ordering mappings of visual and tactile signals arriving via the already described chains of physical causation.
It is often claimed that Kant was a late developer, that he only became an important philosopher in his mid-50s after rejecting his earlier views. While it is true that Kant wrote his greatest works relatively late in life, there is a tendency to underestimate the value of his earlier works. Recent Kant scholarship has devoted more attention to these "pre-critical" writings and has recognized a degree of continuity with his mature work.
Critique of Pure Reason
At age 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher, and much was expected of him. In correspondence with his ex-student and friend Markus Herz, Kant admitted that, in the inaugural dissertation, he had failed to account for the relation between our sensible and intellectual faculties. He needed to explain how we combine what is known as sensory knowledge with the other type of knowledgei.e. reasoned knowledgethese two being related but having very different processes.
Kant also credited David Hume with awakening him from a "dogmatic slumber" in which he had unquestioningly accepted the tenets of both religion and natural philosophy. Hume in his 1739 Treatise on Human Nature had argued that we only know the mind through a subjectiveessentially illusoryseries of perceptions. Ideas such as causality, morality, and objects are not evident in experience, so their reality may be questioned. Kant felt that reason could remove this skepticism, and he set himself to solving these problems. Although fond of company and conversation with others, Kant isolated himself, and resisted friends' attempts to bring him out of his isolation. When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant countered Hume's empiricism by claiming that some knowledge exists inherently in the mind, independent of experience. He drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that worldly objects can be intuited a priori ('beforehand'), and that intuition is consequently distinct from objective reality. He acquiesced to Hume somewhat by defining causality as a "regular, constant sequence of events in time, and nothing more."
Although now uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, this Critique disappointed Kant's readers upon its initial publication. The book was long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in a convoluted style. It received few reviews, and these granted it no significance. Kant's former student, Johann Gottfried Herder criticized it for placing reason as an entity worthy of criticism instead of considering the process of reasoning within the context of language and one's entire personality. Similar to Christian Garve and Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, he rejected Kant's position that space and time possessed a form that could be analyzed. Additionally, Garve and Feder also faulted Kant's Critique for not explaining differences in perception of sensations. Its density made it, as Herder said in a letter to Johann Georg Hamann, a "tough nut to crack", obscured by "all this heavy gossamer". Its reception stood in stark contrast to the praise Kant had received for earlier works, such as his Prize Essay and shorter works that preceded the first Critique. These well-received and readable tracts include one on the earthquake in Lisbon that was so popular that it was sold by the page. Prior to the change in course documented in the first Critique, his books had sold well. Kant was disappointed with the first Critique's reception. Recognizing the need to clarify the original treatise, Kant wrote the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics in 1783 as a summary of its main views. Shortly thereafter, Kant's friend Johann Friedrich Schultz (1739–1805) (professor of mathematics) published Erläuterungen über des Herrn Professor Kant Critik der reinen Vernunft (Königsberg, 1784), which was a brief but very accurate commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
Kant's reputation gradually rose through the latter portion of the 1780s, sparked by a series of important works: the 1784 essay, "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?"; 1785's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (his first work on moral philosophy); and, from 1786, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. But Kant's fame ultimately arrived from an unexpected source. In 1786, Karl Leonhard Reinhold published a series of public letters on Kantian philosophy. In these letters, Reinhold framed Kant's philosophy as a response to the central intellectual controversy of the era: the pantheism controversy. Friedrich Jacobi had accused the recently deceased Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (a distinguished dramatist and philosophical essayist) of Spinozism. Such a charge, tantamount to atheism, was vigorously denied by Lessing's friend Moses Mendelssohn, leading to a bitter public dispute among partisans. The controversy gradually escalated into a debate about the values of the Enlightenment and the value of reason.
Reinhold maintained in his letters that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason could settle this dispute by defending the authority and bounds of reason. Reinhold's letters were widely read and made Kant the most famous philosopher of his era.
Later work
Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book. Most of his subsequent work focused on other areas of philosophy. He continued to develop his moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason (known as the second Critique) and 1797's Metaphysics of Morals. The 1790 Critique of Judgment (the third Critique) applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology.
In 1792, Kant's attempt to publish the Second of the four Pieces of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, in the journal Berlinische Monatsschrift, met with opposition from the King's censorship commission, which had been established that same year in the context of the French Revolution. Kant then arranged to have all four pieces published as a book, routing it through the philosophy department at the University of Jena to avoid the need for theological censorship. This insubordination earned him a now famous reprimand from the King. When he nevertheless published a second edition in 1794, the censor was so irate that he arranged for a royal order that required Kant never to publish or even speak publicly about religion. Kant then published his response to the King's reprimand and explained himself, in the preface of The Conflict of the Faculties.
He also wrote a number of semi-popular essays on history, religion, politics and other topics. These works were well received by Kant's contemporaries and confirmed his preeminent status in 18th-century philosophy. There were several journals devoted solely to defending and criticizing Kantian philosophy. Despite his success, philosophical trends were moving in another direction. Many of Kant's most important disciples and followers (including Reinhold, Beck and Fichte) transformed the Kantian position into increasingly radical forms of idealism. The progressive stages of revision of Kant's teachings marked the emergence of German idealism. Kant opposed these developments and publicly denounced Fichte in an open letter in 1799. It was one of his final acts expounding a stance on philosophical questions. In 1800, a student of Kant named Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche (1762–1842) published a manual of logic for teachers called Logik, which he had prepared at Kant's request. Jäsche prepared the Logik using a copy of a textbook in logic by Georg Friedrich Meier entitled Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre, in which Kant had written copious notes and annotations. The Logik has been considered of fundamental importance to Kant's philosophy, and the understanding of it. The great 19th-century logician Charles Sanders Peirce remarked, in an incomplete review of Thomas Kingsmill Abbott's English translation of the introduction to Logik, that "Kant's whole philosophy turns upon his logic." Also, Robert Schirokauer Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz, wrote in the translators' introduction to their English translation of the Logik, "Its importance lies not only in its significance for the Critique of Pure Reason, the second part of which is a restatement of fundamental tenets of the Logic, but in its position within the whole of Kant's work."
Death and burial
Kant's health, long poor, worsened and he died at Königsberg on 12 February 1804, uttering "Es ist gut (It is good)" before expiring. His unfinished final work was published as Opus Postumum. Kant always cut a curious figure in his lifetime for his modest, rigorously scheduled habits, which have been referred to as clocklike. However, Heinrich Heine noted the magnitude of "his destructive, world-crushing thoughts" and considered him a sort of philosophical "executioner", comparing him to Robespierre with the observation that both men "represented in the highest the type of provincial bourgeois. Nature had destined them to weigh coffee and sugar, but Fate determined that they should weigh other things and placed on the scales of the one a king, on the scales of the other a god."
When his body was transferred to a new burial spot, his skull was measured during the exhumation and found to be larger than the average German male's with a "high and broad" forehead. His forehead has been an object of interest ever since it became well-known through his portraits: "In Döbler's portrait and in Kiefer's faithful if expressionistic reproduction of it — as well as in many of the other late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century portraits of Kant — the forehead is remarkably large and decidedly retreating. Was Kant's forehead shaped this way in these images because he was a philosopher, or, to follow the implications of Lavater's system, was he a philosopher because of the intellectual acuity manifested by his forehead? Kant and Johann Kaspar Lavater were correspondents on theological matters, and Lavater refers to Kant in his work "Physiognomic Fragments, for the Education of Human Knowledge and Love of People" (Leipzig & Winterthur, 1775–1778).
Kant's mausoleum adjoins the northeast corner of Königsberg Cathedral in Kaliningrad, Russia. The mausoleum was constructed by the architect Friedrich Lahrs and was finished in 1924 in time for the bicentenary of Kant's birth. Originally, Kant was buried inside the cathedral, but in 1880 his remains were moved to a neo-Gothic chapel adjoining the northeast corner of the cathedral. Over the years, the chapel became dilapidated and was demolished to make way for the mausoleum, which was built on the same location.
The tomb and its mausoleum are among the few artifacts of German times preserved by the Soviets after they conquered and annexed the city. Today, many newlyweds bring flowers to the mausoleum. Artifacts previously owned by Kant, known as Kantiana, were included in the Königsberg City Museum. However, the museum was destroyed during World War II. A replica of the statue of Kant that stood in German times in front of the main University of Königsberg building was donated by a German entity in the early 1990s and placed in the same grounds.
After the expulsion of Königsberg's German population at the end of World War II, the University of Königsberg where Kant taught was replaced by the Russian-language Kaliningrad State University, which appropriated the campus and surviving buildings. In 2005, the university was renamed Immanuel Kant State University of Russia. The name change was announced at a ceremony attended by President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, and the university formed a Kant Society, dedicated to the study of Kantianism. The university was again renamed in the 2010s, to Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University.
In late November 2018, his tomb and statue were vandalized with paint by unknown assailants, who also scattered leaflets glorifying Rus' and denouncing Kant as a "traitor". The incident is apparently connected with a recent vote to rename Khrabrovo Airport, where Kant was in the lead for a while, prompting Russian nationalist resentment.
Philosophy
In Kant's essay "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?", he defined the Enlightenment as an age shaped by the Latin motto Sapere aude ("Dare to be wise"). Kant maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority. His work reconciled many of the differences between the rationalist and empiricist traditions of the 18th century. He had a decisive impact on the Romantic and German Idealist philosophies of the 19th century. His work has also been a starting point for many 20th century philosophers.
Kant asserted that, because of the limitations of argumentation in the absence of irrefutable evidence, no one could really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not. For the sake of morality and as a ground for reason, Kant asserted, people are justified in believing in God, even though they could never know God's presence empirically.
The sense of an enlightened approach and the critical method required that "If one cannot prove that a thing is, he may try to prove that it is not. If he fails to do either (as often occurs), he may still ask whether it is in his interest to accept one or the other of the alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical point of view. Hence the question no longer is as to whether perpetual peace is a real thing or not a real thing, or as to whether we may not be deceiving ourselves when we adopt the former alternative, but we must act on the supposition of its being real." The presupposition of God, soul, and freedom was then a practical concern, for
Kant drew a parallel between the Copernican revolution and the epistemology of his new transcendental philosophy, involving two interconnected foundations of his "critical philosophy":
the epistemology of transcendental idealism and
the moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason.
These teachings placed the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral worlds. Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science was not just the accidental accumulation of sense perceptions.
Conceptual unification and integration is carried out by the mind through concepts or the "categories of the understanding" operating on the perceptual manifold within space and time. The latter are not concepts, but are forms of sensibility that are a priori necessary conditions for any possible experience. Thus the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that operates within it depend on the mind's processes, the product of the rule-based activity that Kant called "synthesis". There is much discussion among Kant scholars about the correct interpretation of this train of thought.
The 'two-world' interpretation regards Kant's position as a statement of epistemological limitation, that we are not able to transcend the bounds of our own mind, meaning that we cannot access the "thing-in-itself". However, Kant also speaks of the thing in itself or transcendental object as a product of the (human) understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of sensibility. Following this line of thought, some interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological domain but simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding alonethis is known as the two-aspect view.
The notion of the "thing in itself" was much discussed by philosophers after Kant. It was argued that, because the "thing in itself" was unknowable, its existence must not be assumed. Rather than arbitrarily switching to an account that was ungrounded in anything supposed to be the "real", as did the German Idealists, another group arose who asked how our (presumably reliable) accounts of a coherent and rule-abiding universe were actually grounded. This new kind of philosophy became known as Phenomenology, and its founder was Edmund Husserl.
With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather is only the good will itself. A good will is one that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. This law obliges one to treat humanityunderstood as rational agency, and represented through oneself as well as othersas an end in itself rather than (merely) as means to other ends the individual might hold. This necessitates practical self-reflection in which we universalize our reasons.
These ideas have largely framed or influenced all subsequent philosophical discussion and analysis. The specifics of Kant's account generated immediate and lasting controversy. Nevertheless, his thesesthat the mind itself necessarily makes a constitutive contribution to its knowledge, that this contribution is transcendental rather than psychological, that philosophy involves self-critical activity, that morality is rooted in human freedom, and that to act autonomously is to act according to rational moral principleshave all had a lasting effect on subsequent philosophy.
Epistemology
Theory of perception
Kant defines his theory of perception in his influential 1781 work the Critique of Pure Reason, which has often been cited as the most significant volume of metaphysics and epistemology in modern philosophy. Kant maintains that understanding of the external world had its foundations not merely in experience, but in both experience and a priori concepts, thus offering a non-empiricist critique of rationalist philosophy, which is what has been referred to as his Copernican revolution.
Firstly, Kant distinguishes between analytic and synthetic propositions:
Analytic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is contained in its subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are unmarried," or, "All bodies take up space."
Synthetic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is not contained in its subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are alone," or, "All bodies have weight."
An analytic proposition is true by nature of the meaning of the words in the sentence — we require no further knowledge than a grasp of the language to understand this proposition. On the other hand, a synthetic statement is one that tells us something about the world. The truth or falsehood of synthetic statements derives from something outside their linguistic content. In this instance, weight is not a necessary predicate of the body; until we are told the heaviness of the body we do not know that it has weight. In this case, experience of the body is required before its heaviness becomes clear. Before Kant's first Critique, empiricists (cf. Hume) and rationalists (cf. Leibniz) assumed that all synthetic statements required experience to be known.
Kant contests this assumption by claiming that elementary mathematics, like arithmetic, is synthetic a priori, in that its statements provide new knowledge not derived from experience. This becomes part of his over-all argument for transcendental idealism. That is, he argues that the possibility of experience depends on certain necessary conditions — which he calls a priori forms — and that these conditions structure and hold true of the world of experience. His main claims in the "Transcendental Aesthetic" are that mathematic judgments are synthetic a priori and that space and time are not derived from experience but rather are its preconditions.
Once we have grasped the functions of basic arithmetic, we do not need empirical experience to know that 100 + 100 = 200, and so it appears that arithmetic is analytic. However, that it is analytic can be disproved by considering the calculation 5 + 7 = 12: there is nothing in the numbers 5 and 7 by which the number 12 can be inferred. Thus "5 + 7" and "the cube root of 1,728" or "12" are not analytic because their reference is the same but their sense is not — the statement "5 + 7 = 12" tells us something new about the world. It is self-evident, and undeniably a priori, but at the same time it is synthetic. Thus Kant argued that a proposition can be synthetic and a priori.
Kant asserts that experience is based on the perception of external objects and a priori knowledge. The external world, he writes, provides those things that we sense. But our mind processes this information and gives it order, allowing us to comprehend it. Our mind supplies the conditions of space and time to experience objects. According to the "transcendental unity of apperception", the concepts of the mind (Understanding) and perceptions or intuitions that garner information from phenomena (Sensibility) are synthesized by comprehension. Without concepts, perceptions are nondescript; without perceptions, concepts are meaningless. Thus the famous statement: "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions [perceptions] without concepts are blind."
Kant also claims that an external environment is necessary for the establishment of the self. Although Kant would want to argue that there is no empirical way of observing the self, we can see the logical necessity of the self when we observe that we can have different perceptions of the external environment over time. By uniting these general representations into one global representation, we can see how a transcendental self emerges. "I am therefore conscious of the identical self in regard to the manifold of the representations that are given to me in an intuition because I call them all together my representations, which constitute one."
Categories of the Faculty of Understanding
Kant deemed it obvious that we have some objective knowledge of the world, such as, say, Newtonian physics. But this knowledge relies on synthetic, a priori laws of nature, like causality and substance. How is this possible? Kant's solution was that the subject must supply laws that make experience of objects possible, and that these laws are synthetic, a priori laws of nature that apply to all objects before we experience them. To deduce all these laws, Kant examined experience in general, dissecting in it what is supplied by the mind from what is supplied by the given intuitions. This is commonly called a transcendental deduction.
To begin with, Kant's distinction between the a posteriori being contingent and particular knowledge, and the a priori being universal and necessary knowledge, must be kept in mind. If we merely connect two intuitions together in a perceiving subject, the knowledge is always subjective because it is derived a posteriori, when what is desired is for the knowledge to be objective, that is, for the two intuitions to refer to the object and hold good of it for anyone at any time, not just the perceiving subject in its current condition. What else is equivalent to objective knowledge besides the a priori (universal and necessary knowledge)? Before knowledge can be objective, it must be incorporated under an a priori category of understanding.
For example, if a subject says, "The sun shines on the stone; the stone grows warm," all he perceives are phenomena. His judgment is contingent and holds no necessity. But if he says, "The sunshine causes the stone to warm," he subsumes the perception under the category of causality, which is not found in the perception, and necessarily synthesizes the concept sunshine with the concept heat, producing a necessarily universally true judgment.
To explain the categories in more detail, they are the preconditions of the construction of objects in the mind. Indeed, to even think of the sun and stone presupposes the category of subsistence, that is, substance. For the categories synthesize the random data of the sensory manifold into intelligible objects. This means that the categories are also the most abstract things one can say of any object whatsoever, and hence one can have an a priori cognition of the totality of all objects of experience if one can list all of them. To do so, Kant formulates another transcendental deduction.
Judgments are, for Kant, the preconditions of any thought. Man thinks via judgments, so all possible judgments must be listed and the perceptions connected within them put aside, so as to make it possible to examine the moments when the understanding is engaged in constructing judgments. For the categories are equivalent to these moments, in that they are concepts of intuitions in general, so far as they are determined by these moments universally and necessarily. Thus by listing all the moments, one can deduce from them all of the categories.
One may now ask: How many possible judgments are there? Kant believed that all the possible propositions within Aristotle's syllogistic logic are equivalent to all possible judgments, and that all the logical operators within the propositions are equivalent to the moments of the understanding within judgments. Thus he listed Aristotle's system in four groups of three: quantity (universal, particular, singular), quality (affirmative, negative, infinite), relation (categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive) and modality (problematic, assertoric, apodeictic). The parallelism with Kant's categories is obvious: quantity (unity, plurality, totality), quality (reality, negation, limitation), relation (substance, cause, community) and modality (possibility, existence, necessity).
The fundamental building blocks of experience, i.e. objective knowledge, are now in place. First there is the sensibility, which supplies the mind with intuitions, and then there is the understanding, which produces judgments of these intuitions and can subsume them under categories. These categories lift the intuitions up out of the subject's current state of consciousness and place them within consciousness in general, producing universally necessary knowledge. For the categories are innate in any rational being, so any intuition thought within a category in one mind is necessarily subsumed and understood identically in any mind. In other words, we filter what we see and hear.
Transcendental schema doctrine
Kant ran into a problem with his theory that the mind plays a part in producing objective knowledge. Intuitions and categories are entirely disparate, so how can they interact? Kant's solution is the (transcendental) schema: a priori principles by which the transcendental imagination connects concepts with intuitions through time. All the principles are temporally bound, for if a concept is purely a priori, as the categories are, then they must apply for all times. Hence there are principles such as substance is that which endures through time, and the cause must always be prior to the effect. In the context of transcendental schema the concept of transcendental reflection is of a great importance.
Ethics
Kant developed his ethics, or moral philosophy, in three works: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
In Groundwork, Kant tries to convert our everyday, obvious, rational knowledge of morality into philosophical knowledge. The latter two works used "practical reason", which is based only on things about which reason can tell us, and not deriving any principles from experience, to reach conclusions which can be applied to the world of experience (in the second part of The Metaphysics of Morals).
Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the "Categorical Imperative", and is derived from the concept of duty. Kant defines the demands of moral law as "categorical imperatives". Categorical imperatives are principles that are intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed in all situations and circumstances, if our behavior is to observe the moral law. The Categorical Imperative provides a test against which moral statements can be assessed. Kant also stated that the moral means and ends can be applied to the categorical imperative, that rational beings can pursue certain "ends" using the appropriate "means". Ends based on physical needs or wants create hypothetical imperatives. The categorical imperative can only be based on something that is an "end in itself", that is, an end that is not a means to some other need, desire, or purpose. Kant believed that the moral law is a principle of reason itself, and is not based on contingent facts about the world, such as what would make us happy, but to act on the moral law which has no other motive than "worthiness to be happy". Accordingly, he believed that moral obligation applies only to rational agents.
Unlike a hypothetical imperative, a categorical imperative is an unconditional obligation; it has the force of an obligation regardless of our will or desires In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785) Kant enumerated three formulations of the categorical imperative that he believed to be roughly equivalent. In the same book, Kant stated:
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.
According to Kant, one cannot make exceptions for oneself. The philosophical maxim on which one acts should always be considered to be a universal law without exception. One cannot allow oneself to do a particular action unless one thinks it appropriate that the reason for the action should become a universal law. For example, one should not steal, however dire the circumstancesbecause, by permitting oneself to steal, one makes stealing a universally acceptable act. This is the first formulation of the categorical imperative, often known as the universalizability principle.
Kant believed that, if an action is not done with the motive of duty, then it is without moral value. He thought that every action should have pure intention behind it; otherwise, it is meaningless. The final result is not the most important aspect of an action; rather, how the person feels while carrying out the action is the time when value is attached to the result.
In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant also posited the "counter-utilitarian idea that there is a difference between preferences and values, and that considerations of individual rights temper calculations of aggregate utility", a concept that is an axiom in economics:
Everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. But that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself does not have mere relative worth, i.e., price, but an intrinsic worth, i.e., a dignity. (p. 53, italics in original).
A phrase quoted by Kant, which is used to summarize the counter-utilitarian nature of his moral philosophy, is Fiat justitia, pereat mundus ("Let justice be done, though the world perish"), which he translates loosely as "Let justice reign even if all the rascals in the world should perish from it". This appears in his 1795 Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch ("Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf"), Appendix 1.
First formulation
The first formulation (Formula of Universal Law) of the moral imperative "requires that the maxims be chosen as though they should hold as universal laws of nature". This formulation in principle has as its supreme law the creed "Always act according to that maxim whose universality as a law you can at the same time will" and is the "only condition under which a will can never come into conflict with itself [....]"
One interpretation of the first formulation is called the "universalizability test". An agent's maxim, according to Kant, is his "subjective principle of human actions": that is, what the agent believes is his reason to act. The universalisability test has five steps:
Find the agent's maxim (i.e., an action paired with its motivation). Take, for example, the declaration "I will lie for personal benefit". Lying is the action; the motivation is to fulfill some sort of desire. Together, they form the maxim.
Imagine a possible world in which everyone in a similar position to the real-world agent followed that maxim.
Decide if contradictions or irrationalities would arise in the possible world as a result of following the maxim.
If a contradiction or irrationality would arise, acting on that maxim is not allowed in the real world.
If there is no contradiction, then acting on that maxim is permissible, and is sometimes required.
(For a modern parallel, see John Rawls' hypothetical situation, the original position.)
Second formulation
The second formulation (or Formula of the End in Itself) holds that "the rational being, as by its nature an end and thus as an end in itself, must serve in every maxim as the condition restricting all merely relative and arbitrary ends". The principle dictates that you "[a]ct with reference to every rational being (whether yourself or another) so that it is an end in itself in your maxim", meaning that the rational being is "the basis of all maxims of action" and "must be treated never as a mere means but as the supreme limiting condition in the use of all means, i.e., as an end at the same time".
Third formulation
The third formulation (i.e. Formula of Autonomy) is a synthesis of the first two and is the basis for the "complete determination of all maxims". It states "that all maxims which stem from autonomous legislation ought to harmonize with a possible realm of ends as with a realm of nature".
In principle, "So act as if your maxims should serve at the same time as the universal law (of all rational beings)", meaning that we should so act that we may think of ourselves as "a member in the universal realm of ends", legislating universal laws through our maxims (that is, a universal code of conduct), in a "possible realm of ends". No one may elevate themselves above the universal law, therefore it is one's duty to follow the maxim(s).
Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason
Commentators, starting in the 20th century, have tended to see Kant as having a strained relationship with religion, though this was not the prevalent view in the 19th century. Karl Leonhard Reinhold, whose letters first made Kant famous, wrote "I believe that I may infer without reservation that the interest of religion, and of Christianity in particular, accords completely with the result of the Critique of Reason." Johann Schultz, who wrote one of the first Kant commentaries, wrote "And does not this system itself cohere most splendidly with the Christian religion? Do not the divinity and beneficence of the latter become all the more evident?" This view continued throughout the 19th century, as noted by Friedrich Nietzsche, who said "Kant's success is merely a theologian's success." The reason for these views was Kant's moral theology, and the widespread belief that his philosophy was the great antithesis to Spinozism, which had been convulsing the European academy for much of the 18th century. Spinozism was widely seen as the cause of the Pantheism controversy, and as a form of sophisticated pantheism or even atheism. As Kant's philosophy disregarded the possibility of arguing for God through pure reason alone, for the same reasons it also disregarded the possibility of arguing against God through pure reason alone. This, coupled with his moral philosophy (his argument that the existence of morality is a rational reason why God and an afterlife do and must exist), was the reason he was seen by many, at least through the end of the 19th century, as a great defender of religion in general and Christianity in particular.
Kant articulates his strongest criticisms of the organization and practices of religious organizations to those that encourage what he sees as a religion of counterfeit service to God. Among the major targets of his criticism are external ritual, superstition and a hierarchical church order. He sees these as efforts to make oneself pleasing to God in ways other than conscientious adherence to the principle of moral rightness in choosing and acting upon one's maxims. Kant's criticisms on these matters, along with his rejection of certain theoretical proofs grounded in pure reason (particularly the ontological argument) for the existence of God and his philosophical commentary on some Christian doctrines, have resulted in interpretations that see Kant as hostile to religion in general and Christianity in particular (e.g., Walsh 1967). Nevertheless, other interpreters consider that Kant was trying to mark off defensible from indefensible Christian belief. Kant sees in Jesus Christ the affirmation of a "pure moral disposition of the heart" that "can make man well-pleasing to God". Regarding Kant's conception of religion, some critics have argued that he was sympathetic to deism. Other critics have argued that Kant's moral conception moves from deism to theism (as moral theism), for example Allen W. Wood and Merold Westphal. As for Kant's book Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, it was emphasized that Kant reduced religiosity to rationality, religion to morality and Christianity to ethics. However, many interpreters, including Allen W. Wood and Lawrence Pasternack, now agree with Stephen Palmquist's claim that a better way of reading Kant's Religion is to see him as raising morality to the status of religion.
Idea of freedom
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes between the transcendental idea of freedom, which as a psychological concept is "mainly empirical" and refers to "whether a faculty of beginning a series of successive things or states from itself is to be assumed" and the practical concept of freedom as the independence of our will from the "coercion" or "necessitation through sensuous impulses". Kant finds it a source of difficulty that the practical idea of freedom is founded on the transcendental idea of freedom, but for the sake of practical interests uses the practical meaning, taking "no account of... its transcendental meaning," which he feels was properly "disposed of" in the Third Antinomy, and as an element in the question of the freedom of the will is for philosophy "a real stumbling block" that has embarrassed speculative reason.
Kant calls practical "everything that is possible through freedom", and the pure practical laws that are never given through sensuous conditions but are held analogously with the universal law of causality are moral laws. Reason can give us only the "pragmatic laws of free action through the senses", but pure practical laws given by reason a priori dictate "what is to be done". (The same distinction of transcendental and practical meaning can be applied to the idea of God, with the proviso that the practical concept of freedom can be experienced.)
Categories of freedom
In the Critique of Practical Reason, at the end of the second Main Part of the Analytics, Kant introduces the categories of freedom, in analogy with the categories of understanding their practical counterparts. Kant's categories of freedom apparently function primarily as conditions for the possibility for actions (i) to be free, (ii) to be understood as free and (iii) to be morally evaluated. For Kant, although actions as theoretical objects are constituted by means of the theoretical categories, actions as practical objects (objects of practical use of reason, and which can be good or bad) are constituted by means of the categories of freedom. Only in this way can actions, as phenomena, be a consequence of freedom, and be understood and evaluated as such.
Aesthetic philosophy
Kant discusses the subjective nature of aesthetic qualities and experiences in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764). Kant's contribution to aesthetic theory is developed in the Critique of Judgment (1790) where he investigates the possibility and logical status of "judgments of taste." In the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment," the first major division of the Critique of Judgment, Kant used the term "aesthetic" in a manner that, according to Kant scholar W.H. Walsh, differs from its modern sense. In the Critique of Pure Reason, to note essential differences between judgments of taste, moral judgments, and scientific judgments, Kant abandoned the term "aesthetic" as "designating the critique of taste," noting that judgments of taste could never be "directed" by "laws a priori." After A. G. Baumgarten, who wrote Aesthetica (1750–58), Kant was one of the first philosophers to develop and integrate aesthetic theory into a unified and comprehensive philosophical system, utilizing ideas that played an integral role throughout his philosophy.
In the chapter "Analytic of the Beautiful" in the Critique of Judgment, Kant states that beauty is not a property of an artwork or natural phenomenon, but is instead consciousness of the pleasure that attends the 'free play' of the imagination and the understanding. Even though it appears that we are using reason to decide what is beautiful, the judgment is not a cognitive judgment, "and is consequently not logical, but aesthetical" (§ 1). A pure judgement of taste is subjective since it refers to the emotional response of the subject and is based upon nothing but esteem for an object itself: it is a disinterested pleasure, and we feel that pure judgements of taste (i.e. judgements of beauty), lay claim to universal validity (§§ 20–22). It is important to note that this universal validity is not derived from a determinate concept of beauty but from common sense (§40). Kant also believed that a judgement of taste shares characteristics engaged in a moral judgement: both are disinterested, and we hold them to be universal. In the chapter "Analytic of the Sublime" Kant identifies the sublime as an aesthetic quality that, like beauty, is subjective, but unlike beauty refers to an indeterminate relationship between the faculties of the imagination and of reason, and shares the character of moral judgments in the use of reason. The feeling of the sublime, divided into two distinct modes (the mathematical and the dynamical sublime), describes two subjective moments that concern the relationship of the faculty of the imagination to reason. Some commentators argue that Kant's critical philosophy contains a third kind of the sublime, the moral sublime, which is the aesthetic response to the moral law or a representation, and a development of the "noble" sublime in Kant's theory of 1764. The mathematical sublime results from the failure of the imagination to comprehend natural objects that appear boundless and formless, or appear "absolutely great" (§§ 23–25). This imaginative failure is then recuperated through the pleasure taken in reason's assertion of the concept of infinity. In this move the faculty of reason proves itself superior to our fallible sensible self (§§ 25–26). In the dynamical sublime there is the sense of annihilation of the sensible self as the imagination tries to comprehend a vast might. This power of nature threatens us but through the resistance of reason to such sensible annihilation, the subject feels a pleasure and a sense of the human moral vocation. This appreciation of moral feeling through exposure to the sublime helps to develop moral character.
Kant developed a theory of humor (§ 54) that has been interpreted as an "incongruity" theory. He illustrated his theory of humor by telling three narrative jokes in the Critique of Judgment. He thought that the physiological impact of humor is akin to that of music. His knowledge of music, however, has been reported to be much weaker than his sense of humor: He told many more jokes throughout his lectures and writings.
Kant developed a distinction between an object of art as a material value subject to the conventions of society and the transcendental condition of the judgment of taste as a "refined" value in his Idea of A Universal History (1784). In the Fourth and Fifth Theses of that work he identified all art as the "fruits of unsociableness" due to men's "antagonism in society" and, in the Seventh Thesis, asserted that while such material property is indicative of a civilized state, only the ideal of morality and the universalization of refined value through the improvement of the mind "belongs to culture".
Political philosophy
In Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant listed several conditions that he thought necessary for ending wars and creating a lasting peace. They included a world of constitutional republics. His classical republican theory was extended in the Science of Right, the first part of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). Kant believed that universal history leads to the ultimate world of republican states at peace, but his theory was not pragmatic. The process was described in "Perpetual Peace" as natural rather than rational:
Kant's political thought can be summarized as republican government and international organization. "In more characteristically Kantian terms, it is doctrine of the state based upon the law (Rechtsstaat) and of eternal peace. Indeed, in each of these formulations, both terms express the same idea: that of legal constitution or of 'peace through law'. Kant's political philosophy, being essentially a legal doctrine, rejects by definition the opposition between moral education and the play of passions as alternate foundations for social life. The state is defined as the union of men under law. The state is constituted by laws which are necessary a priori because they flow from the very concept of law. "A regime can be judged by no other criteria nor be assigned any other functions, than those proper to the lawful order as such."
He opposed "democracy," which at his time meant direct democracy, believing that majority rule posed a threat to individual liberty. He stated, "...democracy is, properly speaking, necessarily a despotism, because it establishes an executive power in which 'all' decide for or even against one who does not agree; that is, 'all,' who are not quite all, decide, and this is a contradiction of the general will with itself and with freedom." As with most writers at the time, he distinguished three forms of government i.e. democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy with mixed government as the most ideal form of it.
Anthropology
Kant lectured on anthropology, the study of human nature, for twenty-three and a half years. His Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View was published in 1798. (This was the subject of Michel Foucault's secondary dissertation for his State doctorate, Introduction to Kant's Anthropology.) Kant's Lectures on Anthropology were published for the first time in 1997 in German. Introduction to Kant's Anthropology was translated into English and published by the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy series in 2006.
Kant was among the first people of his time to introduce anthropology as an intellectual area of study, long before the field gained popularity, and his texts are considered to have advanced the field. His point of view was to influence the works of later philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur.
Kant was also the first to suggest using a dimensionality approach to human diversity. He analyzed the nature of the Hippocrates-Galen four temperaments and plotted them in two dimensions: (1) "activation", or energetic aspect of behaviour, and (2) "orientation on emotionality". Cholerics were described as emotional and energetic; Phlegmatics as balanced and weak; Sanguines as balanced and energetic, and Melancholics as emotional and weak. These two dimensions reappeared in all subsequent models of temperament and personality traits.
Kant viewed anthropology in two broad categories: (1) the physiological approach, which he referred to as "what nature makes of the human being"; and (2) the pragmatic approach, which explored the things that a human "can and should make of himself."
Racism
Kant was one of the most notable Enlightenment thinkers to defend racism, and some have claimed that he was one of the central figures in the birth of modern scientific racism. Where figures such as Carl Linnaeus and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach had supposed only "empirical" observation for racism, Kant produced a full-blown theory of race. Using the Four Temperaments of ancient Greece, he proposed a hierarchy of four racial categories: white Europeans, yellow Asians, black Africans, and red Amerindians.
Kant wrote that "[Whites] contain all the impulses of nature in affects and passions, all talents, all dispositions to culture and civilization and can as readily obey as govern. They are the only ones who always advance to perfection.” He describes South Asians as "educated to the highest degree but only in the arts and not in the sciences". He goes on that Hindustanis can never reach the level of abstract concepts and that a "great hindustani man" is one who has "gone far in the art of deception and has much money". He stated that the Hindus always stay the way they are and can never advance. About black Africans, Kant wrote that "they can be educated but only as servants, that is they allow themselves to be trained". He quotes David Hume as challenging anyone to "cite a [single] example in which a Negro has shown talents" and asserts that, among the "hundreds of thousands" of blacks transported during the Atlantic slave trade, even among the freed "still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality". To Kant, "the Negro can be disciplined and cultivated, but is never genuinely civilized. He falls of his own accord into savagery." Native Americans, Kant opined, "cannot be educated". He calls them unmotivated, lacking affect, passion and love, describing them as too weak for labor, unfit for any culture, and too phlegmatic for diligence. He said the Native Americans are "far below the Negro, who undoubtedly holds the lowest of all remaining levels by which we designate the different races". Kant stated that "Americans and Blacks cannot govern themselves. They thus serve only for slaves."
Kant was an opponent of miscegenation, believing that whites would be "degraded" and the "fusing of races" is undesireable, for "not every race adopts the morals and customs of the Europeans". He stated that "instead of assimilation, which was intended by the melting together of the various races, Nature has here made a law of just the opposite". He believed that in the future all races would be extinguished, except that of the whites.
Charles W. Mills wrote that Kant has been "sanitized for public consumption", his racist works conveniently ignored. Robert Bernasconi stated that Kant "supplied the first scientific definition of race". Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze is credited with bringing Kant's contributions to racism to light in the 1990s among Western philosophers, who often gloss over this part of his life and works. He wrote about Kant's ideas of race:
Pauline Kleingeld argues that while Kant was indeed a staunch advocate of scientific racism for much of his career, his views on race changed significantly in works published in the last decade of his life. In particular, she argues that Kant unambiguously rejected past views related to racial hierarchies and the diminished rights or moral status of non-whites in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795). This work also saw him providing extended arguments against European colonialism, which he claimed was morally unjust and incompatible with the equal rights held by indigenous populations. Kleingeld argues that this shift in Kant's views later in life has often been forgotten or ignored in the literature on Kant's racist anthropology, and that the shift suggests a belated recognition of the fact that racial hierarchy was incompatible with a universalized moral framework. While Kant's perspective on the topic of European colonialism became more balanced, he still considered Europeans "civilized" to the exception of others:
Influence and legacy
Kant's influence on Western thought has been profound. Although the basic tenets of Kant's transcendental idealism (i.e. that space and time are a priori forms of human perception rather than real properties and the claim that formal logic and transcendental logic coincide) have been claimed to be falsified by modern science and logic, and no longer set the intellectual agenda of contemporary philosophers, Kant is credited with having innovated the way philosophical inquiry has been carried at least up to the early nineteenth century. This shift consisted in several closely related innovations that, although highly contentious in themselves, have become important in postmodern philosophy and in the social sciences broadly construed:
The human subject seen as the centre of inquiry into human knowledge, such that it is impossible to philosophize about things as they exist independently of human perception or of how they are for us;
The notion that is possible to discover and systematically explore the inherent limits to our ability to know entirely a priori;
The notion of the "categorical imperative", an assertion that people are naturally endowed with the ability and obligation toward right reason and acting. Perhaps his most famous quote is drawn from the Critique of Practical Reason: "Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe . . . : the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."
The concept of "conditions of possibility", as in his notion of "the conditions of possible experience"that is that things, knowledge, and forms of consciousness rest on prior conditions that make them possible, so that, to understand or to know them, we must first understand these conditions;
The theory that objective experience is actively constituted or constructed by the functioning of the human mind;
His notion of moral autonomy as central to humanity;
His assertion of the principle that human beings should be treated as ends rather than as means.
Kant's ideas have been incorporated into a variety of schools of thought. These include German idealism, Marxism, positivism, phenomenology, existentialism, critical theory, linguistic philosophy, structuralism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism.
Historical influence
During his own life, much critical attention was paid to his thought. He influenced Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Novalis during the 1780s and 1790s. The school of thinking known as German idealism developed from his writings. The German idealists Fichte and Schelling, for example, tried to bring traditional "metaphysically" laden notions like "the Absolute", "God", and "Being" into the scope of Kant's critical thought. In so doing, the German idealists tried to reverse Kant's view that we cannot know what we cannot observe.
The influential English Romantic poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge was greatly influenced by Kant and helped to spread awareness of him, and of German idealism generally, in the UK and the USA. In his Biographia Literaria (1817), he credits Kant's ideas in coming to believe that the mind is not a passive but an active agent in the apprehension of reality.
Hegel was one of Kant's first major critics. The main accusations Hegel charged Kant's philosophy with were formalism (or "abstractism") and irrationality. In Hegel's view the entire project of setting a "transcendental subject" (i.e human consciousness) apart from nature, history, and society was fundamentally flawed, although parts of that very project could be put to good use in a new direction, that Hegel called the "absolute idealism". Similar concerns moved Hegel's criticisms to Kant's concept of moral autonomy, to which Hegel opposed an ethic focused on the "ethical life" of the community. In a sense, Hegel's notion of "ethical life" is meant to subsume, rather than replace, Kantian ethics. And Hegel can be seen as trying to defend Kant's idea of freedom as going beyond finite "desires", by means of reason. Thus, in contrast to later critics like Nietzsche or Russell, Hegel shares some of Kant's concerns.
Kant's thinking on religion was used in Britain to challenge the decline in religious faith in the nineteenth century. British Catholic writers, notably G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, followed this approach. Ronald Englefield debated this movement, and Kant's use of language. Criticisms of Kant were common in the realist views of the new positivism at that time.
Arthur Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism. He, like G. E. Schulze, Jacobi and Fichte before him, was critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Things in themselves, they argued, are neither the cause of what we observe nor are they completely beyond our access. Ever since the first Critique of Pure Reason philosophers have been critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Many have argued, if such a thing exists beyond experience then one cannot posit that it affects us causally, since that would entail stretching the category "causality" beyond the realm of experience. For Schopenhauer things in themselves do not exist outside the non-rational will. The world, as Schopenhauer would have it, is the striving and largely unconscious will. Michael Kelly, in the preface to his 1910 book Kant's Ethics and Schopenhauer's Criticism, stated: "Of Kant it may be said that what is good and true in his philosophy would have been buried with him, were it not for Schopenhauer...."
With the success and wide influence of Hegel's writings, Kant's influence began to wane, though there was in Germany a movement that hailed a return to Kant in the 1860s, beginning with the publication of Kant und die Epigonen in 1865 by Otto Liebmann. His motto was "Back to Kant", and a re-examination of his ideas began (see Neo-Kantianism). During the turn of the 20th century there was an important revival of Kant's theoretical philosophy, known as the Marburg School, represented in the work of Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, Ernst Cassirer, and anti-Neo-Kantian Nicolai Hartmann.
Kant's notion of "Critique" has been quite influential. The early German Romantics, especially Friedrich Schlegel in his "Athenaeum Fragments", used Kant's self-reflexive conception of criticism in their Romantic theory of poetry. Also in aesthetics, Clement Greenberg, in his classic essay "Modernist Painting", uses Kantian criticism, what Greenberg refers to as "immanent criticism", to justify the aims of abstract painting, a movement Greenberg saw as aware of the key limitiaton—flatness—that makes up the medium of painting. French philosopher Michel Foucault was also greatly influenced by Kant's notion of "Critique" and wrote several pieces on Kant for a re-thinking of the Enlightenment as a form of "critical thought". He went so far as to classify his own philosophy as a "critical history of modernity, rooted in Kant".
Kant believed that mathematical truths were forms of synthetic a priori knowledge, which means they are necessary and universal, yet known through intuition. Kant's often brief remarks about mathematics influenced the mathematical school known as intuitionism, a movement in philosophy of mathematics opposed to Hilbert's formalism, and Frege and Bertrand Russell's logicism.
Influence on modern thinkers
With his Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant is considered to have foreshadowed many of the ideas that have come to form the democratic peace theory, one of the main controversies in political science.
Prominent recent Kantians include the British philosophers P. F. Strawson, Onora O'Neill and Quassim Cassam, and the American philosophers Wilfrid Sellars and Christine Korsgaard. Due to the influence of Strawson and Sellars, among others, there has been a renewed interest in Kant's view of the mind. Central to many debates in philosophy of psychology and cognitive science is Kant's conception of the unity of consciousness.
Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls are two significant political and moral philosophers whose work is strongly influenced by Kant's moral philosophy. They argued against relativism, supporting the Kantian view that universality is essential to any viable moral philosophy. Jean-François Lyotard, however, emphasized the indeterminacy in the nature of thought and language and has engaged in debates with Habermas based on the effects this indeterminacy has on philosophical and political debates.
Mou Zongsan's study of Kant has been cited as a highly crucial part in the development of Mou's personal philosophy, namely New Confucianism. Widely regarded as the most influential Kant scholar in China, Mou's rigorous critique of Kant's philosophy—having translated all three of Kant's critiques—served as an ardent attempt to reconcile Chinese and Western philosophy whilst increasing pressure to westernize in China.
Kant's influence also has extended to the social, behavioral, and physical sciences, as in the sociology of Max Weber, the psychology of Jean Piaget and Carl Gustav Jung, and the linguistics of Noam Chomsky. Kant's work on mathematics and synthetic a priori knowledge is also cited by theoretical physicist Albert Einstein as an early influence on his intellectual development, but which he later criticised heavily and rejected. He held the view that "[I]f one does not want to assert that relativity theory goes against reason, one cannot retain the a priori concepts and norms of Kant's system". However, Kant scholar Stephen Palmquist has argued that Einstein's rejection of Kant's influence was primarily "a response to mistaken interpretations of Kant being adopted by contemporary philosophers", when in fact Kant's transcendental perspective informed Einstein's early worldview and led to his insights regarding simultaneity, and eventually to his proposal of the theory of relativity. Because of the thoroughness of the Kantian paradigm shift, his influence extends to thinkers who neither specifically refer to his work nor use his terminology.
In recent years, there has been renewed interest in Kant's theory of mind from the point of view of formal logic and computer science.
Film/television
Kant and his work was heavily referenced in the comedy television show The Good Place, as the show deals with the subject of ethics and moral philosophy.
Bibliography
List of major works
(1749) Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte)
(March 1755) Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels)
(April 1755) Brief Outline of Certain Meditations on Fire (Meditationum quarundam de igne succinta delineatio (master's thesis under Johann Gottfried Teske))
(September 1755) A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio (doctoral thesis))
(1756) The Use in Natural Philosophy of Metaphysics Combined with Geometry, Part I: Physical Monadology (Metaphysicae cum geometrica iunctae usus in philosophin naturali, cuius specimen I. continet monadologiam physicam, abbreviated as Monadologia Physica (thesis as a prerequisite of associate professorship))
(1762) The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures (Die falsche Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figuren)
(1763) The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes)
(1763) Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy (Versuch den Begriff der negativen Größen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen)
(1764) Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen)
(1764) Essay on the Illness of the Head (Über die Krankheit des Kopfes)
(1764) Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (the Prize Essay) (Untersuchungen über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral)
(1766) Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (Träume eines Geistersehers)
(1768) On the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Regions in Space (Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume)
(August 1770) Dissertation on the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World (De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis (doctoral thesis))
(1775) On the Different Races of Man (Über die verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen)
(1781) First edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
(1783) Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik)
(1784) "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" ("Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?")
(1784) "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" ("Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht")
(1785) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten)
(1786) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft)
(1786) "What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?" ("Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren?")
(1786) Conjectural Beginning of Human History (Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte)
(1787) Second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
(1788) Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft)
(1790) Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft)
(1793) Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft)
(1793) On the Old Saw: That May be Right in Theory But It Won't Work in Practice (Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis)
(1795) Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch ("Zum ewigen Frieden")
(1797) Metaphysics of Morals (Metaphysik der Sitten). First part is The Doctrine of Right, which has often been published separately as The Science of Right.
(1798) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht)
(1798) The Contest of Faculties (Der Streit der Fakultäten)
(1800) Logic (Logik)
(1803) On Pedagogy (Über Pädagogik)
(1804) Opus Postumum
(1817) Lectures on Philosophical Theology (Immanuel Kants Vorlesungen über die philosophische Religionslehre edited by K.H.L. Pölitz) [The English edition of A.W. Wood & G.M. Clark (Cornell, 1978) is based on Pölitz' second edition, 1830, of these lectures.]
Collected works in German
Printed version
Wilhelm Dilthey inaugurated the Academy edition (the Akademie-Ausgabe abbreviated as AA or Ak) of Kant's writings (Gesammelte Schriften, Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1902–38) in 1895, and served as its first editor. The volumes are grouped into four sections:
I. Kant's published writings (vols. 1–9),
II. Kant's correspondence (vols. 10–13),
III. Kant's literary remains, or Nachlass (vols. 14–23), and
IV. Student notes from Kant's lectures (vols. 24–29).
Electronic version
Elektronische Edition der Gesammelten Werke Immanuel Kants (vols. 1–23).
See also
Notes
References
Works cited
Kant, Immanuel. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Lewis White Beck, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1969. Page numbers citing this work are Beck's marginal numbers that refer to the page numbers of the standard edition of Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1902–38).
Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: a Biography. Cambridge University Press, 2001. .
Further reading
In Germany, one important contemporary interpreter of Kant and the movement of German Idealism he began is Dieter Henrich, who has some work available in English. P. F. Strawson's The Bounds of Sense (1966) played a significant role in determining the contemporary reception of Kant in England and America. More recent interpreters of note in the English-speaking world include Lewis White Beck, Jonathan Bennett, Henry Allison, Paul Guyer, Christine Korsgaard, Stephen Palmquist, Robert B. Pippin, Roger Scruton, Rudolf Makkreel, and Béatrice Longuenesse.
General introductions to his thought
Broad, C.D. Kant: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Gardner, Sebastian. Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1999.
Martin, Gottfried. Kant's Metaphysics and Theory of Science. Greenwood Press, 1955 (elucidates Kant's most fundamental concepts in their historical context)
Palmquist, Stephen. Kant's System of Perspectives : an architectonic interpretation of the Critical philosophy. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993.
Seung, T.K. 2007. Kant: a Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum.
Satyananda Giri. Kant. Durham, CT: Strategic Publishing Group, 2010.
Scruton, Roger. Kant: a Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2001. (provides a brief account of his life, and a lucid introduction to the three major critiques)
Uleman, Jennifer. An Introduction to Kant's Moral Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Luchte, James. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant's Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties. The Athlone Press, 1983.
Biography and historical context
Beck, Lewis White. Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors. Harvard University Press, 1969. (a survey of Kant's intellectual background)
Beiser, Frederick C. The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte. Harvard University Press, 1987.
Beiser, Frederick C. German Idealism: the Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781–1801. Harvard University Press, 2002
Cassirer, Ernst. Kant's Life and Thought. Translation of Kants Leben und Lehre. Trans., Jame S. Haden, intr. Stephan Körner. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart. Immanuel Kanta study and a comparison with Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruno, Plato and Descartes, the authorised translation from the German by Lord Redesdale, with his 'Introduction', The Bodley Head, London, 1914, (2 volumes).
Gulyga, Arsenij. Immanuel Kant: His Life and Thought. Trans., Marijan Despaltović. Boston: Birkhäuser, 1987.
Johnson, G.R. (ed.). Kant on Swedenborg. Dreams of a Spirit-Seer and Other Writings. Swedenborg Foundation, 2002. (new translation and analysis, many supplementary texts)
Lehner, Ulrich L., Kants Vorsehungskonzept auf dem Hintergrund der deutschen Schulphilosophie und –theologie (Leiden: 2007) (Kant's concept of Providence and its background in German school philosophy and theology)
Pinkard, Terry. German Philosophy, 1760–1860: the Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge, 2002.
Pippin, Robert. Idealism as Modernism. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Sassen, Brigitte (ed.). Kant's Early Critics: the Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy, Cambridge, 2000.
Schabert, Joseph A. "Kant's Influence on his Successors", The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. XLVII, January 1922.
Collections of essays
Firestone, Chris L. and Palmquist, Stephen (eds.). Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion. Notre Dame: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Förster, Eckart (ed.). Kant's Transcendental Deductions:. The Three 'Critiques' and the 'Opus Postumum' Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. Includes an important essay by Dieter Henrich.
Guyer, Paul (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Excellent collection of papers that covers most areas of Kant's thought.
Mohanty, J.N. and Shahan, Robert W. (eds.). Essays on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.
Phillips, Dewi et al. (eds.). Kant and Kierkegaard on Religion. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000, Collection of essays about Kantian religion and its influence on Kierkegaardian and contemporary philosophy of religion.
Proceedings of the International Kant Congresses. Several Congresses (numbered) edited by various publishers.
Theoretical philosophy
Allison, Henry. Kant's Transcendental Idealism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983, 2004. (a very influential defense of Kant's idealism, recently revised).
Ameriks, Karl. Kant's Theory of Mind: An Analysis of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982 (one of the first detailed studies of the Dialectic in English).
Banham, Gary. Kant's Transcendental Imagination. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant's Critical Philosophy. Trans., Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Gram, Moltke S. The Transcendental Turn: The Foundation of Kant's Idealism. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1984.
Greenberg, Robert. Kant's Theory of A Priori Knowledge. Penn State Press, 2001
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987 (modern defense of the view that Kant's theoretical philosophy is a "patchwork" of ill-fitting arguments).
Heidegger, Martin. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Trans., Richard Taft. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
Henrich, Dieter. The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant's Philosophy. Ed. with introduction by Richard L. Velkley; trans. Jeffrey Edwards et al. Harvard University Press, 1994.
Kemp Smith, Norman. A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason. London: Macmillan, 1930 (influential commentary on the first Critique, recently reprinted).
Kitcher, Patricia. Kant's Transcendental Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Longuenesse, Béatrice. Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Princeton University Press, 1998. . (argues that the notion of judgment provides the key to understanding the overall argument of the first Critique)
Melnick, Arthur. Kant's Analogies of Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. (important study of Kant's Analogies, including his defense of the principle of causality)
Paton, H.J. Kant's Metaphysic of Experience: a Commentary on the First Half of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Two volumes. London: Macmillan, 1936. (extensive study of Kant's theoretical philosophy)
Pippin, Robert B. Kant's Theory of Form: An Essay on the Critique of Pure Reason. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. (influential examination of the formal character of Kant's work)
Schopenhauer, Arthur. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Erster Band. Anhang. Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie. F.A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1859 (In English: Arthur Schopenhauer, New York: Dover Press, Volume I, Appendix, "Critique of the Kantian Philosophy", )
Seung, T.K. Kant's Transcendental Logic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969.
Strawson, P.F. The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1989 (the work that revitalized the interest of contemporary analytic philosophers in Kant).
Sturm, Thomas, Kant und die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. Paderborn: Mentis Verlag, 2009. . review (Treats Kant's anthropology and his views on psychology and history in relation to his philosophy of science.)
Tonelli, Giorgio. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason within the Tradition of Modern Logic. A Commentary on its History. Hildesheim, Olms 1994
Werkmeister, W.H., Kant: The Architectonic and Development of His Philosophy, Open Court Publishing Co., La Salle, Ill.; 1980 (it treats, as a whole, the architectonic and development of Kant's philosophy from 1755 through the Opus postumum.)
Wolff, Robert Paul. Kant's Theory of Mental Activity: A Commentary on the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1963. (detailed and influential commentary on the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason)
Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Kant and the Philosophy of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. (review )
Practical philosophy
Allison, Henry. Kant's Theory of Freedom. Cambridge University Press 1990.
Banham, Gary. Kant's Practical Philosophy: From Critique to Doctrine. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Dorschel, Andreas. Die idealistische Kritik des Willens: Versuch über die Theorie der praktischen Subjektivität bei Kant und Hegel. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1992 (Schriften zur Transzendentalphilosophie 10) .
Korsgaard, Christine M. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Michalson, Gordon E. Fallen Freedom: Kant on Radical Evil and Moral Regeneration. Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Michalson, Gordon E. Kant and the Problem of God. Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
Paton, H.J. The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant's Moral Philosophy. University of Pennsylvania Press 1971.
Rawls, John. Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, 2000.
Seung, T.K. Kant's Platonic Revolution in Moral and Political Philosophy. Johns Hopkins, 1994.
Wolff, Robert Paul. The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. New York: HarperCollins, 1974. .
Wood, Allen. Kant's Ethical Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Aesthetics
Allison, Henry. Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Banham, Gary. Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics. London and New York: Macmillan Press, 2000.
Clewis, Robert. The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Crawford, Donald. Kant's Aesthetic Theory. Wisconsin, 1974.
Doran, Robert. The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Taste. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1979.
Hammermeister, Kai. The German Aesthetic Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Immanuel Kant entry in Kelly, Michael (Editor in Chief) (1998) Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Kaplama, Erman. Cosmological Aesthetics through the Kantian Sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian. Lanham: UPA, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
Makkreel, Rudolf, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant. Chicago, 1990.
McCloskey, Mary. Kant's Aesthetic. SUNY, 1987.
Schaper, Eva. Studies in Kant's Aesthetics. Edinburgh, 1979.
Zammito, John H. The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1992.
Zupancic, Alenka. Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan. Verso, 2000.
Philosophy of religion
Palmquist, Stephen. Kant's Critical Religion : Volume Two of Kant's System of Perspectives. Ashgate, 2000.
Perez, Daniel Omar. "Religión, Política y Medicina en Kant: El Conflicto de las Proposiciones". Cinta de Moebio. Revista de Epistemologia de Ciencias Sociales, v. 28, p. 91–103, 2007. Uchile.cl (Spanish)
Perpetual peace and international relations
Sir Harry Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace, Cambridge University Press, 1962.
Martin Wight, Four Seminal Thinkers in International Theory: Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant and Mazzini ed. Gabriele Wight & Brian Porter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Other works
Botul, Jean-Baptiste. La vie sexuelle d'Emmanuel Kant. Paris, Éd. Mille et une Nuits, 2008.
Caygill, Howard. A Kant Dictionary. Oxford; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Reference, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques. Mochlos; or, The Conflict of the Faculties. Columbia University, 1980.
Kelly, Michael. Kant's Ethics and Schopenhauer's Criticism, London: Swan Sonnenschein 1910. [Reprinted 2010 Nabu Press, ]
Mosser, Kurt. Necessity and Possibility; The Logical Strategy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Catholic University of America Press, 2008.
White, Mark D. Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autonomy, Dignity, and Character . Stanford University Press, 2011. . (Reviewed in The Montreal Review )
Contemporary philosophy with a Kantian influence
Guyer, Paul. Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant's Response to Hume. Princeton University Press, 2008.
Hanna, Robert, Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy. Clarendon Press, 2004.
Hanna, Robert, Kant, Science, and Human Nature. Clarendon Press, 2006.
Herman, Barbara. The Practice of Moral Judgement. Harvard University Press, 1993.
(A Kantian approach to the issue of pornography and degradation.)
Korsgaard, Christine. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (not a commentary, but a defense of a broadly Kantian approach to ethics)
McDowell, John. Mind and World. Harvard University Press, 1994. . (offers a Kantian solution to a dilemma in contemporary epistemology regarding the relation between mind and world)
Parfit, Derek. On What Matters (2 vols.). New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Pinker, Steven. The Stuff of Thought. Viking Press, 2007. . (Chapter 4 "Cleaving the Air" discusses Kant's anticipation of modern cognitive science)
Wood, Allen W. Kant's Ethical Thought. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. . (comprehensive, in-depth study of Kant's ethics, with emphasis on formula of humanity as most accurate formulation of the categorical imperative)
External links
KantPapers, authors and papers database powered by PhilPapers, focused on Kant, and located at Cornell University
Immanuel Kant at the Encyclopædia Britannica
Immanuel Kant in the Christian Cyclopedia
Works by Immanuel Kant at Duisburg-Essen University
Stephen Palmquist's Glossary of Kantian Terminology
Kant's Ethical Theory – Kantian ethics explained, applied and evaluated
Notes on Utilitarianism – A conveniently brief survey of Kant's Utilitarianism
"Immanuel Kant", An overview of his work, times, and influence on biology, plantspeopleplanet.org.au
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: An Overview
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Aesthetics
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Logic
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Mind
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Radical Evil
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Religion
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant
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Writers about religion and science | true | [
"Where Did We Go Wrong may refer to:\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\" (Dondria song), 2010\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\" (Toni Braxton and Babyface song), 2013\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\", a song by Petula Clark from the album My Love\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\", a song by Diana Ross from the album Ross\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\", a 1980 song by Frankie Valli",
"California Concordia College existed in Oakland, California, United States from 1906 until 1973.\n\nAmong the presidents of California Concordia College was Johann Theodore Gotthold Brohm Jr.\n\nCalifornia Concordia College and the Academy of California College were located at 2365 Camden Street, Oakland, California. Some of the school buildings still exist at this location, but older buildings that housed the earlier classrooms and later the dormitories are gone. The site is now the location of the Spectrum Center Camden Campus, a provider of special education services.\n\nThe \"Academy\" was the official name for the high school. California Concordia was a six-year institution patterned after the German gymnasium. This provided four years of high school, plus two years of junior college. Years in the school took their names from Latin numbers and referred to the years to go before graduation. The classes were named:\n\n Sexta - 6 years to go; high school freshman\n Qunita - 5 years to go; high school sophomore\n Quarta - 4 years to go; high school junior\n Tertia - 3 years to go; high school senior\n Secunda - 2 years to go; college freshman\n Prima - 1 year to go; college sophomore\n\nThose in Sexta were usually hazed in a mild way by upperclassmen. In addition, those in Sexta were required to do a certain amount of clean-up work around the school, such as picking up trash.\n\nMost students, even high school freshmen, lived in dormitories. High school students were supervised by \"proctors\" (selected high school seniors in Tertia). High school students were required to study for two hours each night in their study rooms from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. Students could not leave their rooms for any reason without permission. This requirement came as quite a shock to those in Sexta (freshmen) on their first night, when they were caught and scolded by a proctor when they left their study room to go to the bathroom without permission. Seniors (those in Tertia) were allowed one night off where they did not need to be in their study hall.\n\nFrom 9:00 to 9:30 pm all students gathered for a chapel service. From 9:30 to 10 pm, high school students were free to roam, and sometimes went to the local Lucky Supermarket to purchase snacks. All high school students were required to be in bed with lights out by 10:00 pm. There were generally five students in each dormitory room. The room had two sections: a bedroom area and (across the hallway) another room for studying. Four beds, including at least one bunk bed, were in the bedroom, and four or five desks were in the study room\n\nA few interesting words used by Concordia students were \"fink\" and \"rack.\" To \"fink\" meant to \"sing like a canary\" or \"squeal.\" A student who finked told everything he knew about a misbehavior committed by another student. \"Rack\" was actually an official term used by proctors and administrators who lived on campus in the dormitories with students. When students misbehaved they were racked (punished). Proctors held a meeting once a week and decided which students, if any, deserved to be racked. If a student were racked, he might be forbidden from leaving the campus grounds, even during normal free time School hours were from 7:30 am to 3:30 pm. After 3:30 pm and until 7:00 pm, students could normally explore the local area surrounding the school, for example, to go to a local store to buy a snack. However, if a student were racked for the week, he could not do so.\n\nProctors made their rounds in the morning to make sure beds were made and inspected rooms in the evening to ensure that students were in bed by 10:00 pm. Often after the proctors left a room at night, the room lights would go back on and students enjoyed studying their National Geographic magazines. Student might be racked if they failed to make their beds or did not make them neatly enough.\n\nAlthough California Concordia College no longer exists, it does receive some recognition by Concordia University Irvine. This is also the location of its old academic records.\n\nSources\n\nExternal links \n Photos of old campus\n\nEducational institutions disestablished in 1973\nDefunct private universities and colleges in California\nEducational institutions established in 1906\n1906 establishments in California\n1973 disestablishments in California\nUniversities and colleges affiliated with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod"
] |
[
"Immanuel Kant",
"Biography",
"when was he born?",
"April 22, 1724",
"where was he born?",
"Konigsberg, Prussia",
"who were his parents?",
"His mother, Anna Regina Reuter",
"and his father?",
"His father, Johann Georg Kant (1682-1746), was a German",
"did he have any siblings?",
"Kant was the fourth of nine children (four of them reached adulthood).",
"where did he go to school?",
"Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science."
] | C_8ddf971bb06941f8a8f1b934b838550b_1 | did he go to college? | 7 | did Immanuel Kant go to college? | Immanuel Kant | Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724 in Konigsberg, Prussia (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia). His mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697-1737), was also born in Konigsberg to a father from Nuremberg. (Her name is sometimes erroneously given as Anna Regina Porter.) His father, Johann Georg Kant (1682-1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipeda, Lithuania). Immanuel Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. While scholars of Kant's life long accepted the claim, there is no evidence that Kant's paternal line was Scottish; it is more likely that the Kants got their name from the village of Kantwaggen (today part of Priekule) and were of Curonian origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children (four of them reached adulthood). Baptized 'Emanuel', he changed his name to 'Immanuel' after learning Hebrew. Young Kant was a solid, albeit unspectacular, student. Kant was born into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in East Prussia. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. Kant maintained a belief in Christianity, in his work Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals he reveals a belief in human immortality as the necessary condition of our continued approach to the highest good possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of Theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic. Common myths about Kant's personal mannerisms are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. It is often held that Kant lived a very strict and disciplined life, leading to an oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but seemed to have a rewarding social life -- he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends whom he frequently met, among them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Konigsberg. A common myth is that Kant never traveled more than 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from Konigsberg his whole life. In fact, between 1750 and 1754 he worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Gross-Arnsdorf (now Jarnoltowo near Morag (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km). CANNOTANSWER | CANNOTANSWER | Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him an influential figure in modern Western philosophy.
In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued that space and time are mere "forms of intuition" which structure all experience, and therefore that while "things-in-themselves" exist and contribute to experience, they are nonetheless distinct from the objects of experience. From this it follows that the objects of experience are mere "appearances", and that the nature of things as they are in themselves is consequently unknowable to us. In an attempt to counter the skepticism he found in the writings of philosopher David Hume, he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), one of his most well-known works. In it, he developed his theory of experience to answer the question of whether synthetic a priori knowledge is possible, which would in turn make it possible to determine the limits of metaphysical inquiry. Kant drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that the objects of the senses must conform to our spatial and temporal forms of intuition, and that we can consequently have a priori cognition of the objects of the senses.
Kant believed that reason is also the source of morality, and that aesthetics arise from a faculty of disinterested judgment. Kant's views continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of epistemology, ethics, political theory, and post-modern aesthetics. He attempted to explain the relationship between reason and human experience and to move beyond what he believed to be the failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He wanted to put an end to what he saw as an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience, while resisting the skepticism of thinkers such as Hume. He regarded himself as showing the way past the impasse between rationalists and empiricists, and is widely held to have synthesized both traditions in his thought.
Kant was an exponent of the idea that perpetual peace could be secured through universal democracy and international cooperation, and that perhaps this could be the culminating stage of world history. The nature of Kant's religious views continues to be the subject of scholarly dispute, with viewpoints ranging from the impression that he shifted from an early defense of an ontological argument for the existence of God to a principled agnosticism, to more critical treatments epitomized by Schopenhauer, who criticized the imperative form of Kantian ethics as "theological morals" and the "Mosaic Decalogue in disguise", and Nietzsche, who claimed that Kant had "theologian blood" and was merely a sophisticated apologist for traditional Christian faith. Beyond his religious views, Kant has also been criticized for the racism presented in some of his lesser-known papers, such as "On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy" and "On the Different Races of Man". Although he was a proponent of scientific racism for much of his career, Kant's views on race changed significantly in the last decade of his life, and he ultimately rejected racial hierarchies and European colonialism in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795).
Kant published other important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history during his lifetime. These include the Universal Natural History (1755), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), the Critique of Judgment (1790), Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (1793), and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
Biography
Kant's mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697–1737), was born in Königsberg (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia) to a father from Nuremberg. Her surname is sometimes erroneously given as Porter. Kant's father, Johann Georg Kant (1682–1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipėda, Lithuania). Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. While scholars of Kant's life long accepted the claim, there is no evidence that Kant's paternal line was Scottish and it is more likely that the Kants got their name from the village of Kantwaggen (today part of Priekulė) and were of Curonian origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children (six of whom reached adulthood).
Kant was born on 22 April 1724 into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in Königsberg, East Prussia. Baptized Emanuel, he later changed the spelling of his name to Immanuel after learning Hebrew. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. In his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, he reveals a belief in immortality as the necessary condition of humanity's approach to the highest morality possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic, even though it has also been suggested that Kant intends other people to think of him as a "pure rationalist", who is defined by Kant himself as someone who recognizes revelation but asserts that to know and accept it as real is not a necessary requisite to religion.
Kant apparently lived a very strict and disciplined life; it was said that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but seemed to have a rewarding social life — he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends with whom he frequently met, among them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Königsberg.
Between 1750 and 1754 Kant worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Groß-Arnsdorf (now Jarnołtowo near Morąg (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km).
Many myths grew up about Kant's personal mannerisms; these are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime.
Young scholar
Kant showed a great aptitude for study at an early age. He first attended the Collegium Fridericianum from which he graduated at the end of the summer of 1740. In 1740, aged 16, he enrolled at the University of Königsberg, where he spent his whole career. He studied the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and Christian Wolff under Martin Knutzen (Associate Professor of Logic and Metaphysics from 1734 until his death in 1751), a rationalist who was also familiar with developments in British philosophy and science and introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Isaac Newton. Knutzen dissuaded Kant from the theory of pre-established harmony, which he regarded as "the pillow for the lazy mind". He also dissuaded Kant from idealism, the idea that reality is purely mental, which most philosophers in the 18th century regarded in a negative light. The theory of transcendental idealism that Kant later included in the Critique of Pure Reason was developed partially in opposition to traditional idealism.
His father's stroke and subsequent death in 1746 interrupted his studies. Kant left Königsberg shortly after August 1748—he would return there in August 1754. He became a private tutor in the towns surrounding Königsberg, but continued his scholarly research. In 1749, he published his first philosophical work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (written in 1745–47).
Early work
Kant is best known for his work in the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics, but he made significant contributions to other disciplines. In 1754, while contemplating on a prize question by the Berlin Academy about the problem of Earth's rotation, he argued that the Moon's gravity would slow down Earth's spin and he also put forth the argument that gravity would eventually cause the Moon's tidal locking to coincide with the Earth's rotation. The next year, he expanded this reasoning to the formation and evolution of the Solar System in his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. In 1755, Kant received a license to lecture in the University of Königsberg and began lecturing on a variety of topics including mathematics, physics, logic and metaphysics. In his 1756 essay on the theory of winds, Kant laid out an original insight into the Coriolis force. In 1757, Kant began lecturing on geography making him one of the first lecturers to explicitly teach geography as its own subject. Geography was one of Kant's most popular lecturing topics and in 1802 a compilation by Friedrich Theodor Rink of Kant's lecturing notes, Physical Geography, was released. After Kant became a professor in 1770, he expanded the topics of his lectures to include lectures on natural law, ethics and anthropology along with other topics.
In the Universal Natural History, Kant laid out the Nebular hypothesis, in which he deduced that the Solar System had formed from a large cloud of gas, a nebula. Kant also correctly deduced (though through usually false premises and fallacious reasoning, according to Bertrand Russell) that the Milky Way was a large disk of stars, which he theorized formed from a much larger spinning gas cloud. He further suggested that other distant "nebulae" might be other galaxies. These postulations opened new horizons for astronomy, for the first time extending it beyond the Solar System to galactic and intergalactic realms. According to Thomas Huxley (1867), Kant also made contributions to geology in his Universal Natural History.
From then on, Kant turned increasingly to philosophical issues, although he continued to write on the sciences throughout his life. In the early 1760s, Kant produced a series of important works in philosophy. The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, a work in logic, was published in 1762. Two more works appeared the following year: Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy and The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. By 1764, Kant had become a notable popular author, and wrote Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime; he was second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy prize competition with his Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (often referred to as "The Prize Essay"). In 1766 Kant wrote Dreams of a Spirit-Seer which dealt with the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. The exact influence of Swedenborg on Kant, as well as the extent of Kant's belief in mysticism according to Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, remain controversial. On 31 March 1770, aged 45, Kant was finally appointed Full Professor of Logic and Metaphysics (Professor Ordinarius der Logic und Metaphysic) at the University of Königsberg. In defense of this appointment, Kant wrote his inaugural dissertation (Inaugural-Dissertation) De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis (On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World). This work saw the emergence of several central themes of his mature work, including the distinction between the faculties of intellectual thought and sensible receptivity. To miss this distinction would mean to commit the error of subreption, and, as he says in the last chapter of the dissertation, only in avoiding this error does metaphysics flourish.
The issue that vexed Kant was central to what 20th-century scholars called "the philosophy of mind". The flowering of the natural sciences had led to an understanding of how data reaches the brain. Sunlight falling on an object is reflected from its surface in a way that maps the surface features (color, texture, etc.). The reflected light reaches the human eye, passes through the cornea, is focused by the lens onto the retina where it forms an image similar to that formed by light passing through a pinhole into a camera obscura. The retinal cells send impulses through the optic nerve and then they form a mapping in the brain of the visual features of the object. The interior mapping is not the exterior object, and our belief that there is a meaningful relationship between the object and the mapping in the brain depends on a chain of reasoning that is not fully grounded. But the uncertainty aroused by these considerations, by optical illusions, misperceptions, delusions, etc., are not the end of the problems.
Kant saw that the mind could not function as an empty container that simply receives data from outside. Something must be giving order to the incoming data. Images of external objects must be kept in the same sequence in which they were received. This ordering occurs through the mind's intuition of time. The same considerations apply to the mind's function of constituting space for ordering mappings of visual and tactile signals arriving via the already described chains of physical causation.
It is often claimed that Kant was a late developer, that he only became an important philosopher in his mid-50s after rejecting his earlier views. While it is true that Kant wrote his greatest works relatively late in life, there is a tendency to underestimate the value of his earlier works. Recent Kant scholarship has devoted more attention to these "pre-critical" writings and has recognized a degree of continuity with his mature work.
Critique of Pure Reason
At age 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher, and much was expected of him. In correspondence with his ex-student and friend Markus Herz, Kant admitted that, in the inaugural dissertation, he had failed to account for the relation between our sensible and intellectual faculties. He needed to explain how we combine what is known as sensory knowledge with the other type of knowledgei.e. reasoned knowledgethese two being related but having very different processes.
Kant also credited David Hume with awakening him from a "dogmatic slumber" in which he had unquestioningly accepted the tenets of both religion and natural philosophy. Hume in his 1739 Treatise on Human Nature had argued that we only know the mind through a subjectiveessentially illusoryseries of perceptions. Ideas such as causality, morality, and objects are not evident in experience, so their reality may be questioned. Kant felt that reason could remove this skepticism, and he set himself to solving these problems. Although fond of company and conversation with others, Kant isolated himself, and resisted friends' attempts to bring him out of his isolation. When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant countered Hume's empiricism by claiming that some knowledge exists inherently in the mind, independent of experience. He drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that worldly objects can be intuited a priori ('beforehand'), and that intuition is consequently distinct from objective reality. He acquiesced to Hume somewhat by defining causality as a "regular, constant sequence of events in time, and nothing more."
Although now uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, this Critique disappointed Kant's readers upon its initial publication. The book was long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in a convoluted style. It received few reviews, and these granted it no significance. Kant's former student, Johann Gottfried Herder criticized it for placing reason as an entity worthy of criticism instead of considering the process of reasoning within the context of language and one's entire personality. Similar to Christian Garve and Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, he rejected Kant's position that space and time possessed a form that could be analyzed. Additionally, Garve and Feder also faulted Kant's Critique for not explaining differences in perception of sensations. Its density made it, as Herder said in a letter to Johann Georg Hamann, a "tough nut to crack", obscured by "all this heavy gossamer". Its reception stood in stark contrast to the praise Kant had received for earlier works, such as his Prize Essay and shorter works that preceded the first Critique. These well-received and readable tracts include one on the earthquake in Lisbon that was so popular that it was sold by the page. Prior to the change in course documented in the first Critique, his books had sold well. Kant was disappointed with the first Critique's reception. Recognizing the need to clarify the original treatise, Kant wrote the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics in 1783 as a summary of its main views. Shortly thereafter, Kant's friend Johann Friedrich Schultz (1739–1805) (professor of mathematics) published Erläuterungen über des Herrn Professor Kant Critik der reinen Vernunft (Königsberg, 1784), which was a brief but very accurate commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
Kant's reputation gradually rose through the latter portion of the 1780s, sparked by a series of important works: the 1784 essay, "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?"; 1785's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (his first work on moral philosophy); and, from 1786, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. But Kant's fame ultimately arrived from an unexpected source. In 1786, Karl Leonhard Reinhold published a series of public letters on Kantian philosophy. In these letters, Reinhold framed Kant's philosophy as a response to the central intellectual controversy of the era: the pantheism controversy. Friedrich Jacobi had accused the recently deceased Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (a distinguished dramatist and philosophical essayist) of Spinozism. Such a charge, tantamount to atheism, was vigorously denied by Lessing's friend Moses Mendelssohn, leading to a bitter public dispute among partisans. The controversy gradually escalated into a debate about the values of the Enlightenment and the value of reason.
Reinhold maintained in his letters that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason could settle this dispute by defending the authority and bounds of reason. Reinhold's letters were widely read and made Kant the most famous philosopher of his era.
Later work
Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book. Most of his subsequent work focused on other areas of philosophy. He continued to develop his moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason (known as the second Critique) and 1797's Metaphysics of Morals. The 1790 Critique of Judgment (the third Critique) applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology.
In 1792, Kant's attempt to publish the Second of the four Pieces of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, in the journal Berlinische Monatsschrift, met with opposition from the King's censorship commission, which had been established that same year in the context of the French Revolution. Kant then arranged to have all four pieces published as a book, routing it through the philosophy department at the University of Jena to avoid the need for theological censorship. This insubordination earned him a now famous reprimand from the King. When he nevertheless published a second edition in 1794, the censor was so irate that he arranged for a royal order that required Kant never to publish or even speak publicly about religion. Kant then published his response to the King's reprimand and explained himself, in the preface of The Conflict of the Faculties.
He also wrote a number of semi-popular essays on history, religion, politics and other topics. These works were well received by Kant's contemporaries and confirmed his preeminent status in 18th-century philosophy. There were several journals devoted solely to defending and criticizing Kantian philosophy. Despite his success, philosophical trends were moving in another direction. Many of Kant's most important disciples and followers (including Reinhold, Beck and Fichte) transformed the Kantian position into increasingly radical forms of idealism. The progressive stages of revision of Kant's teachings marked the emergence of German idealism. Kant opposed these developments and publicly denounced Fichte in an open letter in 1799. It was one of his final acts expounding a stance on philosophical questions. In 1800, a student of Kant named Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche (1762–1842) published a manual of logic for teachers called Logik, which he had prepared at Kant's request. Jäsche prepared the Logik using a copy of a textbook in logic by Georg Friedrich Meier entitled Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre, in which Kant had written copious notes and annotations. The Logik has been considered of fundamental importance to Kant's philosophy, and the understanding of it. The great 19th-century logician Charles Sanders Peirce remarked, in an incomplete review of Thomas Kingsmill Abbott's English translation of the introduction to Logik, that "Kant's whole philosophy turns upon his logic." Also, Robert Schirokauer Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz, wrote in the translators' introduction to their English translation of the Logik, "Its importance lies not only in its significance for the Critique of Pure Reason, the second part of which is a restatement of fundamental tenets of the Logic, but in its position within the whole of Kant's work."
Death and burial
Kant's health, long poor, worsened and he died at Königsberg on 12 February 1804, uttering "Es ist gut (It is good)" before expiring. His unfinished final work was published as Opus Postumum. Kant always cut a curious figure in his lifetime for his modest, rigorously scheduled habits, which have been referred to as clocklike. However, Heinrich Heine noted the magnitude of "his destructive, world-crushing thoughts" and considered him a sort of philosophical "executioner", comparing him to Robespierre with the observation that both men "represented in the highest the type of provincial bourgeois. Nature had destined them to weigh coffee and sugar, but Fate determined that they should weigh other things and placed on the scales of the one a king, on the scales of the other a god."
When his body was transferred to a new burial spot, his skull was measured during the exhumation and found to be larger than the average German male's with a "high and broad" forehead. His forehead has been an object of interest ever since it became well-known through his portraits: "In Döbler's portrait and in Kiefer's faithful if expressionistic reproduction of it — as well as in many of the other late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century portraits of Kant — the forehead is remarkably large and decidedly retreating. Was Kant's forehead shaped this way in these images because he was a philosopher, or, to follow the implications of Lavater's system, was he a philosopher because of the intellectual acuity manifested by his forehead? Kant and Johann Kaspar Lavater were correspondents on theological matters, and Lavater refers to Kant in his work "Physiognomic Fragments, for the Education of Human Knowledge and Love of People" (Leipzig & Winterthur, 1775–1778).
Kant's mausoleum adjoins the northeast corner of Königsberg Cathedral in Kaliningrad, Russia. The mausoleum was constructed by the architect Friedrich Lahrs and was finished in 1924 in time for the bicentenary of Kant's birth. Originally, Kant was buried inside the cathedral, but in 1880 his remains were moved to a neo-Gothic chapel adjoining the northeast corner of the cathedral. Over the years, the chapel became dilapidated and was demolished to make way for the mausoleum, which was built on the same location.
The tomb and its mausoleum are among the few artifacts of German times preserved by the Soviets after they conquered and annexed the city. Today, many newlyweds bring flowers to the mausoleum. Artifacts previously owned by Kant, known as Kantiana, were included in the Königsberg City Museum. However, the museum was destroyed during World War II. A replica of the statue of Kant that stood in German times in front of the main University of Königsberg building was donated by a German entity in the early 1990s and placed in the same grounds.
After the expulsion of Königsberg's German population at the end of World War II, the University of Königsberg where Kant taught was replaced by the Russian-language Kaliningrad State University, which appropriated the campus and surviving buildings. In 2005, the university was renamed Immanuel Kant State University of Russia. The name change was announced at a ceremony attended by President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, and the university formed a Kant Society, dedicated to the study of Kantianism. The university was again renamed in the 2010s, to Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University.
In late November 2018, his tomb and statue were vandalized with paint by unknown assailants, who also scattered leaflets glorifying Rus' and denouncing Kant as a "traitor". The incident is apparently connected with a recent vote to rename Khrabrovo Airport, where Kant was in the lead for a while, prompting Russian nationalist resentment.
Philosophy
In Kant's essay "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?", he defined the Enlightenment as an age shaped by the Latin motto Sapere aude ("Dare to be wise"). Kant maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority. His work reconciled many of the differences between the rationalist and empiricist traditions of the 18th century. He had a decisive impact on the Romantic and German Idealist philosophies of the 19th century. His work has also been a starting point for many 20th century philosophers.
Kant asserted that, because of the limitations of argumentation in the absence of irrefutable evidence, no one could really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not. For the sake of morality and as a ground for reason, Kant asserted, people are justified in believing in God, even though they could never know God's presence empirically.
The sense of an enlightened approach and the critical method required that "If one cannot prove that a thing is, he may try to prove that it is not. If he fails to do either (as often occurs), he may still ask whether it is in his interest to accept one or the other of the alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical point of view. Hence the question no longer is as to whether perpetual peace is a real thing or not a real thing, or as to whether we may not be deceiving ourselves when we adopt the former alternative, but we must act on the supposition of its being real." The presupposition of God, soul, and freedom was then a practical concern, for
Kant drew a parallel between the Copernican revolution and the epistemology of his new transcendental philosophy, involving two interconnected foundations of his "critical philosophy":
the epistemology of transcendental idealism and
the moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason.
These teachings placed the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral worlds. Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science was not just the accidental accumulation of sense perceptions.
Conceptual unification and integration is carried out by the mind through concepts or the "categories of the understanding" operating on the perceptual manifold within space and time. The latter are not concepts, but are forms of sensibility that are a priori necessary conditions for any possible experience. Thus the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that operates within it depend on the mind's processes, the product of the rule-based activity that Kant called "synthesis". There is much discussion among Kant scholars about the correct interpretation of this train of thought.
The 'two-world' interpretation regards Kant's position as a statement of epistemological limitation, that we are not able to transcend the bounds of our own mind, meaning that we cannot access the "thing-in-itself". However, Kant also speaks of the thing in itself or transcendental object as a product of the (human) understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of sensibility. Following this line of thought, some interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological domain but simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding alonethis is known as the two-aspect view.
The notion of the "thing in itself" was much discussed by philosophers after Kant. It was argued that, because the "thing in itself" was unknowable, its existence must not be assumed. Rather than arbitrarily switching to an account that was ungrounded in anything supposed to be the "real", as did the German Idealists, another group arose who asked how our (presumably reliable) accounts of a coherent and rule-abiding universe were actually grounded. This new kind of philosophy became known as Phenomenology, and its founder was Edmund Husserl.
With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather is only the good will itself. A good will is one that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. This law obliges one to treat humanityunderstood as rational agency, and represented through oneself as well as othersas an end in itself rather than (merely) as means to other ends the individual might hold. This necessitates practical self-reflection in which we universalize our reasons.
These ideas have largely framed or influenced all subsequent philosophical discussion and analysis. The specifics of Kant's account generated immediate and lasting controversy. Nevertheless, his thesesthat the mind itself necessarily makes a constitutive contribution to its knowledge, that this contribution is transcendental rather than psychological, that philosophy involves self-critical activity, that morality is rooted in human freedom, and that to act autonomously is to act according to rational moral principleshave all had a lasting effect on subsequent philosophy.
Epistemology
Theory of perception
Kant defines his theory of perception in his influential 1781 work the Critique of Pure Reason, which has often been cited as the most significant volume of metaphysics and epistemology in modern philosophy. Kant maintains that understanding of the external world had its foundations not merely in experience, but in both experience and a priori concepts, thus offering a non-empiricist critique of rationalist philosophy, which is what has been referred to as his Copernican revolution.
Firstly, Kant distinguishes between analytic and synthetic propositions:
Analytic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is contained in its subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are unmarried," or, "All bodies take up space."
Synthetic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is not contained in its subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are alone," or, "All bodies have weight."
An analytic proposition is true by nature of the meaning of the words in the sentence — we require no further knowledge than a grasp of the language to understand this proposition. On the other hand, a synthetic statement is one that tells us something about the world. The truth or falsehood of synthetic statements derives from something outside their linguistic content. In this instance, weight is not a necessary predicate of the body; until we are told the heaviness of the body we do not know that it has weight. In this case, experience of the body is required before its heaviness becomes clear. Before Kant's first Critique, empiricists (cf. Hume) and rationalists (cf. Leibniz) assumed that all synthetic statements required experience to be known.
Kant contests this assumption by claiming that elementary mathematics, like arithmetic, is synthetic a priori, in that its statements provide new knowledge not derived from experience. This becomes part of his over-all argument for transcendental idealism. That is, he argues that the possibility of experience depends on certain necessary conditions — which he calls a priori forms — and that these conditions structure and hold true of the world of experience. His main claims in the "Transcendental Aesthetic" are that mathematic judgments are synthetic a priori and that space and time are not derived from experience but rather are its preconditions.
Once we have grasped the functions of basic arithmetic, we do not need empirical experience to know that 100 + 100 = 200, and so it appears that arithmetic is analytic. However, that it is analytic can be disproved by considering the calculation 5 + 7 = 12: there is nothing in the numbers 5 and 7 by which the number 12 can be inferred. Thus "5 + 7" and "the cube root of 1,728" or "12" are not analytic because their reference is the same but their sense is not — the statement "5 + 7 = 12" tells us something new about the world. It is self-evident, and undeniably a priori, but at the same time it is synthetic. Thus Kant argued that a proposition can be synthetic and a priori.
Kant asserts that experience is based on the perception of external objects and a priori knowledge. The external world, he writes, provides those things that we sense. But our mind processes this information and gives it order, allowing us to comprehend it. Our mind supplies the conditions of space and time to experience objects. According to the "transcendental unity of apperception", the concepts of the mind (Understanding) and perceptions or intuitions that garner information from phenomena (Sensibility) are synthesized by comprehension. Without concepts, perceptions are nondescript; without perceptions, concepts are meaningless. Thus the famous statement: "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions [perceptions] without concepts are blind."
Kant also claims that an external environment is necessary for the establishment of the self. Although Kant would want to argue that there is no empirical way of observing the self, we can see the logical necessity of the self when we observe that we can have different perceptions of the external environment over time. By uniting these general representations into one global representation, we can see how a transcendental self emerges. "I am therefore conscious of the identical self in regard to the manifold of the representations that are given to me in an intuition because I call them all together my representations, which constitute one."
Categories of the Faculty of Understanding
Kant deemed it obvious that we have some objective knowledge of the world, such as, say, Newtonian physics. But this knowledge relies on synthetic, a priori laws of nature, like causality and substance. How is this possible? Kant's solution was that the subject must supply laws that make experience of objects possible, and that these laws are synthetic, a priori laws of nature that apply to all objects before we experience them. To deduce all these laws, Kant examined experience in general, dissecting in it what is supplied by the mind from what is supplied by the given intuitions. This is commonly called a transcendental deduction.
To begin with, Kant's distinction between the a posteriori being contingent and particular knowledge, and the a priori being universal and necessary knowledge, must be kept in mind. If we merely connect two intuitions together in a perceiving subject, the knowledge is always subjective because it is derived a posteriori, when what is desired is for the knowledge to be objective, that is, for the two intuitions to refer to the object and hold good of it for anyone at any time, not just the perceiving subject in its current condition. What else is equivalent to objective knowledge besides the a priori (universal and necessary knowledge)? Before knowledge can be objective, it must be incorporated under an a priori category of understanding.
For example, if a subject says, "The sun shines on the stone; the stone grows warm," all he perceives are phenomena. His judgment is contingent and holds no necessity. But if he says, "The sunshine causes the stone to warm," he subsumes the perception under the category of causality, which is not found in the perception, and necessarily synthesizes the concept sunshine with the concept heat, producing a necessarily universally true judgment.
To explain the categories in more detail, they are the preconditions of the construction of objects in the mind. Indeed, to even think of the sun and stone presupposes the category of subsistence, that is, substance. For the categories synthesize the random data of the sensory manifold into intelligible objects. This means that the categories are also the most abstract things one can say of any object whatsoever, and hence one can have an a priori cognition of the totality of all objects of experience if one can list all of them. To do so, Kant formulates another transcendental deduction.
Judgments are, for Kant, the preconditions of any thought. Man thinks via judgments, so all possible judgments must be listed and the perceptions connected within them put aside, so as to make it possible to examine the moments when the understanding is engaged in constructing judgments. For the categories are equivalent to these moments, in that they are concepts of intuitions in general, so far as they are determined by these moments universally and necessarily. Thus by listing all the moments, one can deduce from them all of the categories.
One may now ask: How many possible judgments are there? Kant believed that all the possible propositions within Aristotle's syllogistic logic are equivalent to all possible judgments, and that all the logical operators within the propositions are equivalent to the moments of the understanding within judgments. Thus he listed Aristotle's system in four groups of three: quantity (universal, particular, singular), quality (affirmative, negative, infinite), relation (categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive) and modality (problematic, assertoric, apodeictic). The parallelism with Kant's categories is obvious: quantity (unity, plurality, totality), quality (reality, negation, limitation), relation (substance, cause, community) and modality (possibility, existence, necessity).
The fundamental building blocks of experience, i.e. objective knowledge, are now in place. First there is the sensibility, which supplies the mind with intuitions, and then there is the understanding, which produces judgments of these intuitions and can subsume them under categories. These categories lift the intuitions up out of the subject's current state of consciousness and place them within consciousness in general, producing universally necessary knowledge. For the categories are innate in any rational being, so any intuition thought within a category in one mind is necessarily subsumed and understood identically in any mind. In other words, we filter what we see and hear.
Transcendental schema doctrine
Kant ran into a problem with his theory that the mind plays a part in producing objective knowledge. Intuitions and categories are entirely disparate, so how can they interact? Kant's solution is the (transcendental) schema: a priori principles by which the transcendental imagination connects concepts with intuitions through time. All the principles are temporally bound, for if a concept is purely a priori, as the categories are, then they must apply for all times. Hence there are principles such as substance is that which endures through time, and the cause must always be prior to the effect. In the context of transcendental schema the concept of transcendental reflection is of a great importance.
Ethics
Kant developed his ethics, or moral philosophy, in three works: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
In Groundwork, Kant tries to convert our everyday, obvious, rational knowledge of morality into philosophical knowledge. The latter two works used "practical reason", which is based only on things about which reason can tell us, and not deriving any principles from experience, to reach conclusions which can be applied to the world of experience (in the second part of The Metaphysics of Morals).
Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the "Categorical Imperative", and is derived from the concept of duty. Kant defines the demands of moral law as "categorical imperatives". Categorical imperatives are principles that are intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed in all situations and circumstances, if our behavior is to observe the moral law. The Categorical Imperative provides a test against which moral statements can be assessed. Kant also stated that the moral means and ends can be applied to the categorical imperative, that rational beings can pursue certain "ends" using the appropriate "means". Ends based on physical needs or wants create hypothetical imperatives. The categorical imperative can only be based on something that is an "end in itself", that is, an end that is not a means to some other need, desire, or purpose. Kant believed that the moral law is a principle of reason itself, and is not based on contingent facts about the world, such as what would make us happy, but to act on the moral law which has no other motive than "worthiness to be happy". Accordingly, he believed that moral obligation applies only to rational agents.
Unlike a hypothetical imperative, a categorical imperative is an unconditional obligation; it has the force of an obligation regardless of our will or desires In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785) Kant enumerated three formulations of the categorical imperative that he believed to be roughly equivalent. In the same book, Kant stated:
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.
According to Kant, one cannot make exceptions for oneself. The philosophical maxim on which one acts should always be considered to be a universal law without exception. One cannot allow oneself to do a particular action unless one thinks it appropriate that the reason for the action should become a universal law. For example, one should not steal, however dire the circumstancesbecause, by permitting oneself to steal, one makes stealing a universally acceptable act. This is the first formulation of the categorical imperative, often known as the universalizability principle.
Kant believed that, if an action is not done with the motive of duty, then it is without moral value. He thought that every action should have pure intention behind it; otherwise, it is meaningless. The final result is not the most important aspect of an action; rather, how the person feels while carrying out the action is the time when value is attached to the result.
In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant also posited the "counter-utilitarian idea that there is a difference between preferences and values, and that considerations of individual rights temper calculations of aggregate utility", a concept that is an axiom in economics:
Everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. But that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself does not have mere relative worth, i.e., price, but an intrinsic worth, i.e., a dignity. (p. 53, italics in original).
A phrase quoted by Kant, which is used to summarize the counter-utilitarian nature of his moral philosophy, is Fiat justitia, pereat mundus ("Let justice be done, though the world perish"), which he translates loosely as "Let justice reign even if all the rascals in the world should perish from it". This appears in his 1795 Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch ("Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf"), Appendix 1.
First formulation
The first formulation (Formula of Universal Law) of the moral imperative "requires that the maxims be chosen as though they should hold as universal laws of nature". This formulation in principle has as its supreme law the creed "Always act according to that maxim whose universality as a law you can at the same time will" and is the "only condition under which a will can never come into conflict with itself [....]"
One interpretation of the first formulation is called the "universalizability test". An agent's maxim, according to Kant, is his "subjective principle of human actions": that is, what the agent believes is his reason to act. The universalisability test has five steps:
Find the agent's maxim (i.e., an action paired with its motivation). Take, for example, the declaration "I will lie for personal benefit". Lying is the action; the motivation is to fulfill some sort of desire. Together, they form the maxim.
Imagine a possible world in which everyone in a similar position to the real-world agent followed that maxim.
Decide if contradictions or irrationalities would arise in the possible world as a result of following the maxim.
If a contradiction or irrationality would arise, acting on that maxim is not allowed in the real world.
If there is no contradiction, then acting on that maxim is permissible, and is sometimes required.
(For a modern parallel, see John Rawls' hypothetical situation, the original position.)
Second formulation
The second formulation (or Formula of the End in Itself) holds that "the rational being, as by its nature an end and thus as an end in itself, must serve in every maxim as the condition restricting all merely relative and arbitrary ends". The principle dictates that you "[a]ct with reference to every rational being (whether yourself or another) so that it is an end in itself in your maxim", meaning that the rational being is "the basis of all maxims of action" and "must be treated never as a mere means but as the supreme limiting condition in the use of all means, i.e., as an end at the same time".
Third formulation
The third formulation (i.e. Formula of Autonomy) is a synthesis of the first two and is the basis for the "complete determination of all maxims". It states "that all maxims which stem from autonomous legislation ought to harmonize with a possible realm of ends as with a realm of nature".
In principle, "So act as if your maxims should serve at the same time as the universal law (of all rational beings)", meaning that we should so act that we may think of ourselves as "a member in the universal realm of ends", legislating universal laws through our maxims (that is, a universal code of conduct), in a "possible realm of ends". No one may elevate themselves above the universal law, therefore it is one's duty to follow the maxim(s).
Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason
Commentators, starting in the 20th century, have tended to see Kant as having a strained relationship with religion, though this was not the prevalent view in the 19th century. Karl Leonhard Reinhold, whose letters first made Kant famous, wrote "I believe that I may infer without reservation that the interest of religion, and of Christianity in particular, accords completely with the result of the Critique of Reason." Johann Schultz, who wrote one of the first Kant commentaries, wrote "And does not this system itself cohere most splendidly with the Christian religion? Do not the divinity and beneficence of the latter become all the more evident?" This view continued throughout the 19th century, as noted by Friedrich Nietzsche, who said "Kant's success is merely a theologian's success." The reason for these views was Kant's moral theology, and the widespread belief that his philosophy was the great antithesis to Spinozism, which had been convulsing the European academy for much of the 18th century. Spinozism was widely seen as the cause of the Pantheism controversy, and as a form of sophisticated pantheism or even atheism. As Kant's philosophy disregarded the possibility of arguing for God through pure reason alone, for the same reasons it also disregarded the possibility of arguing against God through pure reason alone. This, coupled with his moral philosophy (his argument that the existence of morality is a rational reason why God and an afterlife do and must exist), was the reason he was seen by many, at least through the end of the 19th century, as a great defender of religion in general and Christianity in particular.
Kant articulates his strongest criticisms of the organization and practices of religious organizations to those that encourage what he sees as a religion of counterfeit service to God. Among the major targets of his criticism are external ritual, superstition and a hierarchical church order. He sees these as efforts to make oneself pleasing to God in ways other than conscientious adherence to the principle of moral rightness in choosing and acting upon one's maxims. Kant's criticisms on these matters, along with his rejection of certain theoretical proofs grounded in pure reason (particularly the ontological argument) for the existence of God and his philosophical commentary on some Christian doctrines, have resulted in interpretations that see Kant as hostile to religion in general and Christianity in particular (e.g., Walsh 1967). Nevertheless, other interpreters consider that Kant was trying to mark off defensible from indefensible Christian belief. Kant sees in Jesus Christ the affirmation of a "pure moral disposition of the heart" that "can make man well-pleasing to God". Regarding Kant's conception of religion, some critics have argued that he was sympathetic to deism. Other critics have argued that Kant's moral conception moves from deism to theism (as moral theism), for example Allen W. Wood and Merold Westphal. As for Kant's book Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, it was emphasized that Kant reduced religiosity to rationality, religion to morality and Christianity to ethics. However, many interpreters, including Allen W. Wood and Lawrence Pasternack, now agree with Stephen Palmquist's claim that a better way of reading Kant's Religion is to see him as raising morality to the status of religion.
Idea of freedom
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes between the transcendental idea of freedom, which as a psychological concept is "mainly empirical" and refers to "whether a faculty of beginning a series of successive things or states from itself is to be assumed" and the practical concept of freedom as the independence of our will from the "coercion" or "necessitation through sensuous impulses". Kant finds it a source of difficulty that the practical idea of freedom is founded on the transcendental idea of freedom, but for the sake of practical interests uses the practical meaning, taking "no account of... its transcendental meaning," which he feels was properly "disposed of" in the Third Antinomy, and as an element in the question of the freedom of the will is for philosophy "a real stumbling block" that has embarrassed speculative reason.
Kant calls practical "everything that is possible through freedom", and the pure practical laws that are never given through sensuous conditions but are held analogously with the universal law of causality are moral laws. Reason can give us only the "pragmatic laws of free action through the senses", but pure practical laws given by reason a priori dictate "what is to be done". (The same distinction of transcendental and practical meaning can be applied to the idea of God, with the proviso that the practical concept of freedom can be experienced.)
Categories of freedom
In the Critique of Practical Reason, at the end of the second Main Part of the Analytics, Kant introduces the categories of freedom, in analogy with the categories of understanding their practical counterparts. Kant's categories of freedom apparently function primarily as conditions for the possibility for actions (i) to be free, (ii) to be understood as free and (iii) to be morally evaluated. For Kant, although actions as theoretical objects are constituted by means of the theoretical categories, actions as practical objects (objects of practical use of reason, and which can be good or bad) are constituted by means of the categories of freedom. Only in this way can actions, as phenomena, be a consequence of freedom, and be understood and evaluated as such.
Aesthetic philosophy
Kant discusses the subjective nature of aesthetic qualities and experiences in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764). Kant's contribution to aesthetic theory is developed in the Critique of Judgment (1790) where he investigates the possibility and logical status of "judgments of taste." In the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment," the first major division of the Critique of Judgment, Kant used the term "aesthetic" in a manner that, according to Kant scholar W.H. Walsh, differs from its modern sense. In the Critique of Pure Reason, to note essential differences between judgments of taste, moral judgments, and scientific judgments, Kant abandoned the term "aesthetic" as "designating the critique of taste," noting that judgments of taste could never be "directed" by "laws a priori." After A. G. Baumgarten, who wrote Aesthetica (1750–58), Kant was one of the first philosophers to develop and integrate aesthetic theory into a unified and comprehensive philosophical system, utilizing ideas that played an integral role throughout his philosophy.
In the chapter "Analytic of the Beautiful" in the Critique of Judgment, Kant states that beauty is not a property of an artwork or natural phenomenon, but is instead consciousness of the pleasure that attends the 'free play' of the imagination and the understanding. Even though it appears that we are using reason to decide what is beautiful, the judgment is not a cognitive judgment, "and is consequently not logical, but aesthetical" (§ 1). A pure judgement of taste is subjective since it refers to the emotional response of the subject and is based upon nothing but esteem for an object itself: it is a disinterested pleasure, and we feel that pure judgements of taste (i.e. judgements of beauty), lay claim to universal validity (§§ 20–22). It is important to note that this universal validity is not derived from a determinate concept of beauty but from common sense (§40). Kant also believed that a judgement of taste shares characteristics engaged in a moral judgement: both are disinterested, and we hold them to be universal. In the chapter "Analytic of the Sublime" Kant identifies the sublime as an aesthetic quality that, like beauty, is subjective, but unlike beauty refers to an indeterminate relationship between the faculties of the imagination and of reason, and shares the character of moral judgments in the use of reason. The feeling of the sublime, divided into two distinct modes (the mathematical and the dynamical sublime), describes two subjective moments that concern the relationship of the faculty of the imagination to reason. Some commentators argue that Kant's critical philosophy contains a third kind of the sublime, the moral sublime, which is the aesthetic response to the moral law or a representation, and a development of the "noble" sublime in Kant's theory of 1764. The mathematical sublime results from the failure of the imagination to comprehend natural objects that appear boundless and formless, or appear "absolutely great" (§§ 23–25). This imaginative failure is then recuperated through the pleasure taken in reason's assertion of the concept of infinity. In this move the faculty of reason proves itself superior to our fallible sensible self (§§ 25–26). In the dynamical sublime there is the sense of annihilation of the sensible self as the imagination tries to comprehend a vast might. This power of nature threatens us but through the resistance of reason to such sensible annihilation, the subject feels a pleasure and a sense of the human moral vocation. This appreciation of moral feeling through exposure to the sublime helps to develop moral character.
Kant developed a theory of humor (§ 54) that has been interpreted as an "incongruity" theory. He illustrated his theory of humor by telling three narrative jokes in the Critique of Judgment. He thought that the physiological impact of humor is akin to that of music. His knowledge of music, however, has been reported to be much weaker than his sense of humor: He told many more jokes throughout his lectures and writings.
Kant developed a distinction between an object of art as a material value subject to the conventions of society and the transcendental condition of the judgment of taste as a "refined" value in his Idea of A Universal History (1784). In the Fourth and Fifth Theses of that work he identified all art as the "fruits of unsociableness" due to men's "antagonism in society" and, in the Seventh Thesis, asserted that while such material property is indicative of a civilized state, only the ideal of morality and the universalization of refined value through the improvement of the mind "belongs to culture".
Political philosophy
In Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant listed several conditions that he thought necessary for ending wars and creating a lasting peace. They included a world of constitutional republics. His classical republican theory was extended in the Science of Right, the first part of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). Kant believed that universal history leads to the ultimate world of republican states at peace, but his theory was not pragmatic. The process was described in "Perpetual Peace" as natural rather than rational:
Kant's political thought can be summarized as republican government and international organization. "In more characteristically Kantian terms, it is doctrine of the state based upon the law (Rechtsstaat) and of eternal peace. Indeed, in each of these formulations, both terms express the same idea: that of legal constitution or of 'peace through law'. Kant's political philosophy, being essentially a legal doctrine, rejects by definition the opposition between moral education and the play of passions as alternate foundations for social life. The state is defined as the union of men under law. The state is constituted by laws which are necessary a priori because they flow from the very concept of law. "A regime can be judged by no other criteria nor be assigned any other functions, than those proper to the lawful order as such."
He opposed "democracy," which at his time meant direct democracy, believing that majority rule posed a threat to individual liberty. He stated, "...democracy is, properly speaking, necessarily a despotism, because it establishes an executive power in which 'all' decide for or even against one who does not agree; that is, 'all,' who are not quite all, decide, and this is a contradiction of the general will with itself and with freedom." As with most writers at the time, he distinguished three forms of government i.e. democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy with mixed government as the most ideal form of it.
Anthropology
Kant lectured on anthropology, the study of human nature, for twenty-three and a half years. His Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View was published in 1798. (This was the subject of Michel Foucault's secondary dissertation for his State doctorate, Introduction to Kant's Anthropology.) Kant's Lectures on Anthropology were published for the first time in 1997 in German. Introduction to Kant's Anthropology was translated into English and published by the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy series in 2006.
Kant was among the first people of his time to introduce anthropology as an intellectual area of study, long before the field gained popularity, and his texts are considered to have advanced the field. His point of view was to influence the works of later philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur.
Kant was also the first to suggest using a dimensionality approach to human diversity. He analyzed the nature of the Hippocrates-Galen four temperaments and plotted them in two dimensions: (1) "activation", or energetic aspect of behaviour, and (2) "orientation on emotionality". Cholerics were described as emotional and energetic; Phlegmatics as balanced and weak; Sanguines as balanced and energetic, and Melancholics as emotional and weak. These two dimensions reappeared in all subsequent models of temperament and personality traits.
Kant viewed anthropology in two broad categories: (1) the physiological approach, which he referred to as "what nature makes of the human being"; and (2) the pragmatic approach, which explored the things that a human "can and should make of himself."
Racism
Kant was one of the most notable Enlightenment thinkers to defend racism, and some have claimed that he was one of the central figures in the birth of modern scientific racism. Where figures such as Carl Linnaeus and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach had supposed only "empirical" observation for racism, Kant produced a full-blown theory of race. Using the Four Temperaments of ancient Greece, he proposed a hierarchy of four racial categories: white Europeans, yellow Asians, black Africans, and red Amerindians.
Kant wrote that "[Whites] contain all the impulses of nature in affects and passions, all talents, all dispositions to culture and civilization and can as readily obey as govern. They are the only ones who always advance to perfection.” He describes South Asians as "educated to the highest degree but only in the arts and not in the sciences". He goes on that Hindustanis can never reach the level of abstract concepts and that a "great hindustani man" is one who has "gone far in the art of deception and has much money". He stated that the Hindus always stay the way they are and can never advance. About black Africans, Kant wrote that "they can be educated but only as servants, that is they allow themselves to be trained". He quotes David Hume as challenging anyone to "cite a [single] example in which a Negro has shown talents" and asserts that, among the "hundreds of thousands" of blacks transported during the Atlantic slave trade, even among the freed "still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality". To Kant, "the Negro can be disciplined and cultivated, but is never genuinely civilized. He falls of his own accord into savagery." Native Americans, Kant opined, "cannot be educated". He calls them unmotivated, lacking affect, passion and love, describing them as too weak for labor, unfit for any culture, and too phlegmatic for diligence. He said the Native Americans are "far below the Negro, who undoubtedly holds the lowest of all remaining levels by which we designate the different races". Kant stated that "Americans and Blacks cannot govern themselves. They thus serve only for slaves."
Kant was an opponent of miscegenation, believing that whites would be "degraded" and the "fusing of races" is undesireable, for "not every race adopts the morals and customs of the Europeans". He stated that "instead of assimilation, which was intended by the melting together of the various races, Nature has here made a law of just the opposite". He believed that in the future all races would be extinguished, except that of the whites.
Charles W. Mills wrote that Kant has been "sanitized for public consumption", his racist works conveniently ignored. Robert Bernasconi stated that Kant "supplied the first scientific definition of race". Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze is credited with bringing Kant's contributions to racism to light in the 1990s among Western philosophers, who often gloss over this part of his life and works. He wrote about Kant's ideas of race:
Pauline Kleingeld argues that while Kant was indeed a staunch advocate of scientific racism for much of his career, his views on race changed significantly in works published in the last decade of his life. In particular, she argues that Kant unambiguously rejected past views related to racial hierarchies and the diminished rights or moral status of non-whites in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795). This work also saw him providing extended arguments against European colonialism, which he claimed was morally unjust and incompatible with the equal rights held by indigenous populations. Kleingeld argues that this shift in Kant's views later in life has often been forgotten or ignored in the literature on Kant's racist anthropology, and that the shift suggests a belated recognition of the fact that racial hierarchy was incompatible with a universalized moral framework. While Kant's perspective on the topic of European colonialism became more balanced, he still considered Europeans "civilized" to the exception of others:
Influence and legacy
Kant's influence on Western thought has been profound. Although the basic tenets of Kant's transcendental idealism (i.e. that space and time are a priori forms of human perception rather than real properties and the claim that formal logic and transcendental logic coincide) have been claimed to be falsified by modern science and logic, and no longer set the intellectual agenda of contemporary philosophers, Kant is credited with having innovated the way philosophical inquiry has been carried at least up to the early nineteenth century. This shift consisted in several closely related innovations that, although highly contentious in themselves, have become important in postmodern philosophy and in the social sciences broadly construed:
The human subject seen as the centre of inquiry into human knowledge, such that it is impossible to philosophize about things as they exist independently of human perception or of how they are for us;
The notion that is possible to discover and systematically explore the inherent limits to our ability to know entirely a priori;
The notion of the "categorical imperative", an assertion that people are naturally endowed with the ability and obligation toward right reason and acting. Perhaps his most famous quote is drawn from the Critique of Practical Reason: "Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe . . . : the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."
The concept of "conditions of possibility", as in his notion of "the conditions of possible experience"that is that things, knowledge, and forms of consciousness rest on prior conditions that make them possible, so that, to understand or to know them, we must first understand these conditions;
The theory that objective experience is actively constituted or constructed by the functioning of the human mind;
His notion of moral autonomy as central to humanity;
His assertion of the principle that human beings should be treated as ends rather than as means.
Kant's ideas have been incorporated into a variety of schools of thought. These include German idealism, Marxism, positivism, phenomenology, existentialism, critical theory, linguistic philosophy, structuralism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism.
Historical influence
During his own life, much critical attention was paid to his thought. He influenced Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Novalis during the 1780s and 1790s. The school of thinking known as German idealism developed from his writings. The German idealists Fichte and Schelling, for example, tried to bring traditional "metaphysically" laden notions like "the Absolute", "God", and "Being" into the scope of Kant's critical thought. In so doing, the German idealists tried to reverse Kant's view that we cannot know what we cannot observe.
The influential English Romantic poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge was greatly influenced by Kant and helped to spread awareness of him, and of German idealism generally, in the UK and the USA. In his Biographia Literaria (1817), he credits Kant's ideas in coming to believe that the mind is not a passive but an active agent in the apprehension of reality.
Hegel was one of Kant's first major critics. The main accusations Hegel charged Kant's philosophy with were formalism (or "abstractism") and irrationality. In Hegel's view the entire project of setting a "transcendental subject" (i.e human consciousness) apart from nature, history, and society was fundamentally flawed, although parts of that very project could be put to good use in a new direction, that Hegel called the "absolute idealism". Similar concerns moved Hegel's criticisms to Kant's concept of moral autonomy, to which Hegel opposed an ethic focused on the "ethical life" of the community. In a sense, Hegel's notion of "ethical life" is meant to subsume, rather than replace, Kantian ethics. And Hegel can be seen as trying to defend Kant's idea of freedom as going beyond finite "desires", by means of reason. Thus, in contrast to later critics like Nietzsche or Russell, Hegel shares some of Kant's concerns.
Kant's thinking on religion was used in Britain to challenge the decline in religious faith in the nineteenth century. British Catholic writers, notably G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, followed this approach. Ronald Englefield debated this movement, and Kant's use of language. Criticisms of Kant were common in the realist views of the new positivism at that time.
Arthur Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism. He, like G. E. Schulze, Jacobi and Fichte before him, was critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Things in themselves, they argued, are neither the cause of what we observe nor are they completely beyond our access. Ever since the first Critique of Pure Reason philosophers have been critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Many have argued, if such a thing exists beyond experience then one cannot posit that it affects us causally, since that would entail stretching the category "causality" beyond the realm of experience. For Schopenhauer things in themselves do not exist outside the non-rational will. The world, as Schopenhauer would have it, is the striving and largely unconscious will. Michael Kelly, in the preface to his 1910 book Kant's Ethics and Schopenhauer's Criticism, stated: "Of Kant it may be said that what is good and true in his philosophy would have been buried with him, were it not for Schopenhauer...."
With the success and wide influence of Hegel's writings, Kant's influence began to wane, though there was in Germany a movement that hailed a return to Kant in the 1860s, beginning with the publication of Kant und die Epigonen in 1865 by Otto Liebmann. His motto was "Back to Kant", and a re-examination of his ideas began (see Neo-Kantianism). During the turn of the 20th century there was an important revival of Kant's theoretical philosophy, known as the Marburg School, represented in the work of Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, Ernst Cassirer, and anti-Neo-Kantian Nicolai Hartmann.
Kant's notion of "Critique" has been quite influential. The early German Romantics, especially Friedrich Schlegel in his "Athenaeum Fragments", used Kant's self-reflexive conception of criticism in their Romantic theory of poetry. Also in aesthetics, Clement Greenberg, in his classic essay "Modernist Painting", uses Kantian criticism, what Greenberg refers to as "immanent criticism", to justify the aims of abstract painting, a movement Greenberg saw as aware of the key limitiaton—flatness—that makes up the medium of painting. French philosopher Michel Foucault was also greatly influenced by Kant's notion of "Critique" and wrote several pieces on Kant for a re-thinking of the Enlightenment as a form of "critical thought". He went so far as to classify his own philosophy as a "critical history of modernity, rooted in Kant".
Kant believed that mathematical truths were forms of synthetic a priori knowledge, which means they are necessary and universal, yet known through intuition. Kant's often brief remarks about mathematics influenced the mathematical school known as intuitionism, a movement in philosophy of mathematics opposed to Hilbert's formalism, and Frege and Bertrand Russell's logicism.
Influence on modern thinkers
With his Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant is considered to have foreshadowed many of the ideas that have come to form the democratic peace theory, one of the main controversies in political science.
Prominent recent Kantians include the British philosophers P. F. Strawson, Onora O'Neill and Quassim Cassam, and the American philosophers Wilfrid Sellars and Christine Korsgaard. Due to the influence of Strawson and Sellars, among others, there has been a renewed interest in Kant's view of the mind. Central to many debates in philosophy of psychology and cognitive science is Kant's conception of the unity of consciousness.
Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls are two significant political and moral philosophers whose work is strongly influenced by Kant's moral philosophy. They argued against relativism, supporting the Kantian view that universality is essential to any viable moral philosophy. Jean-François Lyotard, however, emphasized the indeterminacy in the nature of thought and language and has engaged in debates with Habermas based on the effects this indeterminacy has on philosophical and political debates.
Mou Zongsan's study of Kant has been cited as a highly crucial part in the development of Mou's personal philosophy, namely New Confucianism. Widely regarded as the most influential Kant scholar in China, Mou's rigorous critique of Kant's philosophy—having translated all three of Kant's critiques—served as an ardent attempt to reconcile Chinese and Western philosophy whilst increasing pressure to westernize in China.
Kant's influence also has extended to the social, behavioral, and physical sciences, as in the sociology of Max Weber, the psychology of Jean Piaget and Carl Gustav Jung, and the linguistics of Noam Chomsky. Kant's work on mathematics and synthetic a priori knowledge is also cited by theoretical physicist Albert Einstein as an early influence on his intellectual development, but which he later criticised heavily and rejected. He held the view that "[I]f one does not want to assert that relativity theory goes against reason, one cannot retain the a priori concepts and norms of Kant's system". However, Kant scholar Stephen Palmquist has argued that Einstein's rejection of Kant's influence was primarily "a response to mistaken interpretations of Kant being adopted by contemporary philosophers", when in fact Kant's transcendental perspective informed Einstein's early worldview and led to his insights regarding simultaneity, and eventually to his proposal of the theory of relativity. Because of the thoroughness of the Kantian paradigm shift, his influence extends to thinkers who neither specifically refer to his work nor use his terminology.
In recent years, there has been renewed interest in Kant's theory of mind from the point of view of formal logic and computer science.
Film/television
Kant and his work was heavily referenced in the comedy television show The Good Place, as the show deals with the subject of ethics and moral philosophy.
Bibliography
List of major works
(1749) Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte)
(March 1755) Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels)
(April 1755) Brief Outline of Certain Meditations on Fire (Meditationum quarundam de igne succinta delineatio (master's thesis under Johann Gottfried Teske))
(September 1755) A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio (doctoral thesis))
(1756) The Use in Natural Philosophy of Metaphysics Combined with Geometry, Part I: Physical Monadology (Metaphysicae cum geometrica iunctae usus in philosophin naturali, cuius specimen I. continet monadologiam physicam, abbreviated as Monadologia Physica (thesis as a prerequisite of associate professorship))
(1762) The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures (Die falsche Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figuren)
(1763) The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes)
(1763) Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy (Versuch den Begriff der negativen Größen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen)
(1764) Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen)
(1764) Essay on the Illness of the Head (Über die Krankheit des Kopfes)
(1764) Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (the Prize Essay) (Untersuchungen über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral)
(1766) Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (Träume eines Geistersehers)
(1768) On the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Regions in Space (Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume)
(August 1770) Dissertation on the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World (De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis (doctoral thesis))
(1775) On the Different Races of Man (Über die verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen)
(1781) First edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
(1783) Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik)
(1784) "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" ("Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?")
(1784) "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" ("Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht")
(1785) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten)
(1786) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft)
(1786) "What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?" ("Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren?")
(1786) Conjectural Beginning of Human History (Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte)
(1787) Second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
(1788) Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft)
(1790) Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft)
(1793) Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft)
(1793) On the Old Saw: That May be Right in Theory But It Won't Work in Practice (Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis)
(1795) Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch ("Zum ewigen Frieden")
(1797) Metaphysics of Morals (Metaphysik der Sitten). First part is The Doctrine of Right, which has often been published separately as The Science of Right.
(1798) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht)
(1798) The Contest of Faculties (Der Streit der Fakultäten)
(1800) Logic (Logik)
(1803) On Pedagogy (Über Pädagogik)
(1804) Opus Postumum
(1817) Lectures on Philosophical Theology (Immanuel Kants Vorlesungen über die philosophische Religionslehre edited by K.H.L. Pölitz) [The English edition of A.W. Wood & G.M. Clark (Cornell, 1978) is based on Pölitz' second edition, 1830, of these lectures.]
Collected works in German
Printed version
Wilhelm Dilthey inaugurated the Academy edition (the Akademie-Ausgabe abbreviated as AA or Ak) of Kant's writings (Gesammelte Schriften, Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1902–38) in 1895, and served as its first editor. The volumes are grouped into four sections:
I. Kant's published writings (vols. 1–9),
II. Kant's correspondence (vols. 10–13),
III. Kant's literary remains, or Nachlass (vols. 14–23), and
IV. Student notes from Kant's lectures (vols. 24–29).
Electronic version
Elektronische Edition der Gesammelten Werke Immanuel Kants (vols. 1–23).
See also
Notes
References
Works cited
Kant, Immanuel. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Lewis White Beck, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1969. Page numbers citing this work are Beck's marginal numbers that refer to the page numbers of the standard edition of Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1902–38).
Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: a Biography. Cambridge University Press, 2001. .
Further reading
In Germany, one important contemporary interpreter of Kant and the movement of German Idealism he began is Dieter Henrich, who has some work available in English. P. F. Strawson's The Bounds of Sense (1966) played a significant role in determining the contemporary reception of Kant in England and America. More recent interpreters of note in the English-speaking world include Lewis White Beck, Jonathan Bennett, Henry Allison, Paul Guyer, Christine Korsgaard, Stephen Palmquist, Robert B. Pippin, Roger Scruton, Rudolf Makkreel, and Béatrice Longuenesse.
General introductions to his thought
Broad, C.D. Kant: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Gardner, Sebastian. Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1999.
Martin, Gottfried. Kant's Metaphysics and Theory of Science. Greenwood Press, 1955 (elucidates Kant's most fundamental concepts in their historical context)
Palmquist, Stephen. Kant's System of Perspectives : an architectonic interpretation of the Critical philosophy. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993.
Seung, T.K. 2007. Kant: a Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum.
Satyananda Giri. Kant. Durham, CT: Strategic Publishing Group, 2010.
Scruton, Roger. Kant: a Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2001. (provides a brief account of his life, and a lucid introduction to the three major critiques)
Uleman, Jennifer. An Introduction to Kant's Moral Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Luchte, James. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant's Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties. The Athlone Press, 1983.
Biography and historical context
Beck, Lewis White. Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors. Harvard University Press, 1969. (a survey of Kant's intellectual background)
Beiser, Frederick C. The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte. Harvard University Press, 1987.
Beiser, Frederick C. German Idealism: the Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781–1801. Harvard University Press, 2002
Cassirer, Ernst. Kant's Life and Thought. Translation of Kants Leben und Lehre. Trans., Jame S. Haden, intr. Stephan Körner. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart. Immanuel Kanta study and a comparison with Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruno, Plato and Descartes, the authorised translation from the German by Lord Redesdale, with his 'Introduction', The Bodley Head, London, 1914, (2 volumes).
Gulyga, Arsenij. Immanuel Kant: His Life and Thought. Trans., Marijan Despaltović. Boston: Birkhäuser, 1987.
Johnson, G.R. (ed.). Kant on Swedenborg. Dreams of a Spirit-Seer and Other Writings. Swedenborg Foundation, 2002. (new translation and analysis, many supplementary texts)
Lehner, Ulrich L., Kants Vorsehungskonzept auf dem Hintergrund der deutschen Schulphilosophie und –theologie (Leiden: 2007) (Kant's concept of Providence and its background in German school philosophy and theology)
Pinkard, Terry. German Philosophy, 1760–1860: the Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge, 2002.
Pippin, Robert. Idealism as Modernism. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Sassen, Brigitte (ed.). Kant's Early Critics: the Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy, Cambridge, 2000.
Schabert, Joseph A. "Kant's Influence on his Successors", The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. XLVII, January 1922.
Collections of essays
Firestone, Chris L. and Palmquist, Stephen (eds.). Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion. Notre Dame: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Förster, Eckart (ed.). Kant's Transcendental Deductions:. The Three 'Critiques' and the 'Opus Postumum' Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. Includes an important essay by Dieter Henrich.
Guyer, Paul (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Excellent collection of papers that covers most areas of Kant's thought.
Mohanty, J.N. and Shahan, Robert W. (eds.). Essays on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.
Phillips, Dewi et al. (eds.). Kant and Kierkegaard on Religion. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000, Collection of essays about Kantian religion and its influence on Kierkegaardian and contemporary philosophy of religion.
Proceedings of the International Kant Congresses. Several Congresses (numbered) edited by various publishers.
Theoretical philosophy
Allison, Henry. Kant's Transcendental Idealism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983, 2004. (a very influential defense of Kant's idealism, recently revised).
Ameriks, Karl. Kant's Theory of Mind: An Analysis of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982 (one of the first detailed studies of the Dialectic in English).
Banham, Gary. Kant's Transcendental Imagination. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant's Critical Philosophy. Trans., Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Gram, Moltke S. The Transcendental Turn: The Foundation of Kant's Idealism. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1984.
Greenberg, Robert. Kant's Theory of A Priori Knowledge. Penn State Press, 2001
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987 (modern defense of the view that Kant's theoretical philosophy is a "patchwork" of ill-fitting arguments).
Heidegger, Martin. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Trans., Richard Taft. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
Henrich, Dieter. The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant's Philosophy. Ed. with introduction by Richard L. Velkley; trans. Jeffrey Edwards et al. Harvard University Press, 1994.
Kemp Smith, Norman. A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason. London: Macmillan, 1930 (influential commentary on the first Critique, recently reprinted).
Kitcher, Patricia. Kant's Transcendental Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Longuenesse, Béatrice. Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Princeton University Press, 1998. . (argues that the notion of judgment provides the key to understanding the overall argument of the first Critique)
Melnick, Arthur. Kant's Analogies of Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. (important study of Kant's Analogies, including his defense of the principle of causality)
Paton, H.J. Kant's Metaphysic of Experience: a Commentary on the First Half of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Two volumes. London: Macmillan, 1936. (extensive study of Kant's theoretical philosophy)
Pippin, Robert B. Kant's Theory of Form: An Essay on the Critique of Pure Reason. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. (influential examination of the formal character of Kant's work)
Schopenhauer, Arthur. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Erster Band. Anhang. Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie. F.A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1859 (In English: Arthur Schopenhauer, New York: Dover Press, Volume I, Appendix, "Critique of the Kantian Philosophy", )
Seung, T.K. Kant's Transcendental Logic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969.
Strawson, P.F. The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1989 (the work that revitalized the interest of contemporary analytic philosophers in Kant).
Sturm, Thomas, Kant und die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. Paderborn: Mentis Verlag, 2009. . review (Treats Kant's anthropology and his views on psychology and history in relation to his philosophy of science.)
Tonelli, Giorgio. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason within the Tradition of Modern Logic. A Commentary on its History. Hildesheim, Olms 1994
Werkmeister, W.H., Kant: The Architectonic and Development of His Philosophy, Open Court Publishing Co., La Salle, Ill.; 1980 (it treats, as a whole, the architectonic and development of Kant's philosophy from 1755 through the Opus postumum.)
Wolff, Robert Paul. Kant's Theory of Mental Activity: A Commentary on the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1963. (detailed and influential commentary on the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason)
Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Kant and the Philosophy of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. (review )
Practical philosophy
Allison, Henry. Kant's Theory of Freedom. Cambridge University Press 1990.
Banham, Gary. Kant's Practical Philosophy: From Critique to Doctrine. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Dorschel, Andreas. Die idealistische Kritik des Willens: Versuch über die Theorie der praktischen Subjektivität bei Kant und Hegel. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1992 (Schriften zur Transzendentalphilosophie 10) .
Korsgaard, Christine M. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Michalson, Gordon E. Fallen Freedom: Kant on Radical Evil and Moral Regeneration. Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Michalson, Gordon E. Kant and the Problem of God. Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
Paton, H.J. The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant's Moral Philosophy. University of Pennsylvania Press 1971.
Rawls, John. Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, 2000.
Seung, T.K. Kant's Platonic Revolution in Moral and Political Philosophy. Johns Hopkins, 1994.
Wolff, Robert Paul. The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. New York: HarperCollins, 1974. .
Wood, Allen. Kant's Ethical Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Aesthetics
Allison, Henry. Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Banham, Gary. Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics. London and New York: Macmillan Press, 2000.
Clewis, Robert. The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Crawford, Donald. Kant's Aesthetic Theory. Wisconsin, 1974.
Doran, Robert. The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Taste. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1979.
Hammermeister, Kai. The German Aesthetic Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Immanuel Kant entry in Kelly, Michael (Editor in Chief) (1998) Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Kaplama, Erman. Cosmological Aesthetics through the Kantian Sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian. Lanham: UPA, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
Makkreel, Rudolf, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant. Chicago, 1990.
McCloskey, Mary. Kant's Aesthetic. SUNY, 1987.
Schaper, Eva. Studies in Kant's Aesthetics. Edinburgh, 1979.
Zammito, John H. The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1992.
Zupancic, Alenka. Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan. Verso, 2000.
Philosophy of religion
Palmquist, Stephen. Kant's Critical Religion : Volume Two of Kant's System of Perspectives. Ashgate, 2000.
Perez, Daniel Omar. "Religión, Política y Medicina en Kant: El Conflicto de las Proposiciones". Cinta de Moebio. Revista de Epistemologia de Ciencias Sociales, v. 28, p. 91–103, 2007. Uchile.cl (Spanish)
Perpetual peace and international relations
Sir Harry Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace, Cambridge University Press, 1962.
Martin Wight, Four Seminal Thinkers in International Theory: Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant and Mazzini ed. Gabriele Wight & Brian Porter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Other works
Botul, Jean-Baptiste. La vie sexuelle d'Emmanuel Kant. Paris, Éd. Mille et une Nuits, 2008.
Caygill, Howard. A Kant Dictionary. Oxford; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Reference, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques. Mochlos; or, The Conflict of the Faculties. Columbia University, 1980.
Kelly, Michael. Kant's Ethics and Schopenhauer's Criticism, London: Swan Sonnenschein 1910. [Reprinted 2010 Nabu Press, ]
Mosser, Kurt. Necessity and Possibility; The Logical Strategy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Catholic University of America Press, 2008.
White, Mark D. Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autonomy, Dignity, and Character . Stanford University Press, 2011. . (Reviewed in The Montreal Review )
Contemporary philosophy with a Kantian influence
Guyer, Paul. Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant's Response to Hume. Princeton University Press, 2008.
Hanna, Robert, Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy. Clarendon Press, 2004.
Hanna, Robert, Kant, Science, and Human Nature. Clarendon Press, 2006.
Herman, Barbara. The Practice of Moral Judgement. Harvard University Press, 1993.
(A Kantian approach to the issue of pornography and degradation.)
Korsgaard, Christine. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (not a commentary, but a defense of a broadly Kantian approach to ethics)
McDowell, John. Mind and World. Harvard University Press, 1994. . (offers a Kantian solution to a dilemma in contemporary epistemology regarding the relation between mind and world)
Parfit, Derek. On What Matters (2 vols.). New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Pinker, Steven. The Stuff of Thought. Viking Press, 2007. . (Chapter 4 "Cleaving the Air" discusses Kant's anticipation of modern cognitive science)
Wood, Allen W. Kant's Ethical Thought. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. . (comprehensive, in-depth study of Kant's ethics, with emphasis on formula of humanity as most accurate formulation of the categorical imperative)
External links
KantPapers, authors and papers database powered by PhilPapers, focused on Kant, and located at Cornell University
Immanuel Kant at the Encyclopædia Britannica
Immanuel Kant in the Christian Cyclopedia
Works by Immanuel Kant at Duisburg-Essen University
Stephen Palmquist's Glossary of Kantian Terminology
Kant's Ethical Theory – Kantian ethics explained, applied and evaluated
Notes on Utilitarianism – A conveniently brief survey of Kant's Utilitarianism
"Immanuel Kant", An overview of his work, times, and influence on biology, plantspeopleplanet.org.au
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: An Overview
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Aesthetics
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Logic
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Mind
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Radical Evil
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Religion
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant
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Writers about religion and science | false | [
"California Concordia College existed in Oakland, California, United States from 1906 until 1973.\n\nAmong the presidents of California Concordia College was Johann Theodore Gotthold Brohm Jr.\n\nCalifornia Concordia College and the Academy of California College were located at 2365 Camden Street, Oakland, California. Some of the school buildings still exist at this location, but older buildings that housed the earlier classrooms and later the dormitories are gone. The site is now the location of the Spectrum Center Camden Campus, a provider of special education services.\n\nThe \"Academy\" was the official name for the high school. California Concordia was a six-year institution patterned after the German gymnasium. This provided four years of high school, plus two years of junior college. Years in the school took their names from Latin numbers and referred to the years to go before graduation. The classes were named:\n\n Sexta - 6 years to go; high school freshman\n Qunita - 5 years to go; high school sophomore\n Quarta - 4 years to go; high school junior\n Tertia - 3 years to go; high school senior\n Secunda - 2 years to go; college freshman\n Prima - 1 year to go; college sophomore\n\nThose in Sexta were usually hazed in a mild way by upperclassmen. In addition, those in Sexta were required to do a certain amount of clean-up work around the school, such as picking up trash.\n\nMost students, even high school freshmen, lived in dormitories. High school students were supervised by \"proctors\" (selected high school seniors in Tertia). High school students were required to study for two hours each night in their study rooms from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. Students could not leave their rooms for any reason without permission. This requirement came as quite a shock to those in Sexta (freshmen) on their first night, when they were caught and scolded by a proctor when they left their study room to go to the bathroom without permission. Seniors (those in Tertia) were allowed one night off where they did not need to be in their study hall.\n\nFrom 9:00 to 9:30 pm all students gathered for a chapel service. From 9:30 to 10 pm, high school students were free to roam, and sometimes went to the local Lucky Supermarket to purchase snacks. All high school students were required to be in bed with lights out by 10:00 pm. There were generally five students in each dormitory room. The room had two sections: a bedroom area and (across the hallway) another room for studying. Four beds, including at least one bunk bed, were in the bedroom, and four or five desks were in the study room\n\nA few interesting words used by Concordia students were \"fink\" and \"rack.\" To \"fink\" meant to \"sing like a canary\" or \"squeal.\" A student who finked told everything he knew about a misbehavior committed by another student. \"Rack\" was actually an official term used by proctors and administrators who lived on campus in the dormitories with students. When students misbehaved they were racked (punished). Proctors held a meeting once a week and decided which students, if any, deserved to be racked. If a student were racked, he might be forbidden from leaving the campus grounds, even during normal free time School hours were from 7:30 am to 3:30 pm. After 3:30 pm and until 7:00 pm, students could normally explore the local area surrounding the school, for example, to go to a local store to buy a snack. However, if a student were racked for the week, he could not do so.\n\nProctors made their rounds in the morning to make sure beds were made and inspected rooms in the evening to ensure that students were in bed by 10:00 pm. Often after the proctors left a room at night, the room lights would go back on and students enjoyed studying their National Geographic magazines. Student might be racked if they failed to make their beds or did not make them neatly enough.\n\nAlthough California Concordia College no longer exists, it does receive some recognition by Concordia University Irvine. This is also the location of its old academic records.\n\nSources\n\nExternal links \n Photos of old campus\n\nEducational institutions disestablished in 1973\nDefunct private universities and colleges in California\nEducational institutions established in 1906\n1906 establishments in California\n1973 disestablishments in California\nUniversities and colleges affiliated with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod",
"Kyree Walker (born November 20, 2000) is an American professional basketball player for the Capital City Go-Go of the NBA G League. At the high school level, he played for Moreau Catholic High School in Hayward, California before transferring to Hillcrest Prep Academy. A former MaxPreps National Freshman of the Year, Walker was a five-star recruit.\n\nEarly life and high school career\nIn eighth grade, Walker drew national attention for his slam dunks in highlight videos. He often faced older competition, including high school seniors, in middle school with his Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) team Oakland Soldiers. As a high school freshman, Walker played basketball for Moreau Catholic High School in Hayward, California, averaging 21.3 points, 6.5 rebounds and four assists per game. After leading his team to a California Interscholastic Federation Division II runner-up finish, he was named MaxPreps National Freshman of the Year. Entering his sophomore season, Walker transferred to Hillcrest Prep, a basketball program in Phoenix, Arizona, with his father, Khari, joining the coaching staff. On October 25, 2019, during his senior year, he left Hillcrest Prep, intending to move to the college or professional level. In December 2019, Walker graduated from high school but did not play high school basketball while weighing his options.\n\nRecruiting\nOn June 30, 2017, Walker committed to play college basketball for Arizona State over several other NCAA Division I offers. At the time, he was considered a five-star recruit and a top five player in the 2020 class by major recruiting services. On October 21, 2018, Walker decommitted from Arizona State. On April 20, 2020, as a four-star recruit, he announced that he would forego college basketball.\n\nProfessional career\n\nCapital City Go-Go (2021–present)\nWalker joined Chameleon BX to prepare for the 2021 NBA draft. For the 2021-22 season, he signed with the Capital City Go-Go of the NBA G League, joining the team after a successful tryout.\n\nPersonal life\nIn 2018, Walker's mother, Barrissa Gardner, was diagnosed with breast cancer but achieved remission in the following months.\n\nReferences\n\n2000 births\nLiving people\n21st-century African-American sportspeople\nAfrican-American basketball players\nAmerican men's basketball players\nBasketball players from Oakland, California\nCapital City Go-Go players\nSmall forwards\nTwitch (service) streamers"
] |
[
"Immanuel Kant",
"Biography",
"when was he born?",
"April 22, 1724",
"where was he born?",
"Konigsberg, Prussia",
"who were his parents?",
"His mother, Anna Regina Reuter",
"and his father?",
"His father, Johann Georg Kant (1682-1746), was a German",
"did he have any siblings?",
"Kant was the fourth of nine children (four of them reached adulthood).",
"where did he go to school?",
"Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science.",
"did he go to college?",
"I don't know."
] | C_8ddf971bb06941f8a8f1b934b838550b_1 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 8 | Besides Immanuel Kant, Biography, are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | Immanuel Kant | Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724 in Konigsberg, Prussia (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia). His mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697-1737), was also born in Konigsberg to a father from Nuremberg. (Her name is sometimes erroneously given as Anna Regina Porter.) His father, Johann Georg Kant (1682-1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipeda, Lithuania). Immanuel Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. While scholars of Kant's life long accepted the claim, there is no evidence that Kant's paternal line was Scottish; it is more likely that the Kants got their name from the village of Kantwaggen (today part of Priekule) and were of Curonian origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children (four of them reached adulthood). Baptized 'Emanuel', he changed his name to 'Immanuel' after learning Hebrew. Young Kant was a solid, albeit unspectacular, student. Kant was born into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in East Prussia. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. Kant maintained a belief in Christianity, in his work Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals he reveals a belief in human immortality as the necessary condition of our continued approach to the highest good possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of Theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic. Common myths about Kant's personal mannerisms are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. It is often held that Kant lived a very strict and disciplined life, leading to an oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but seemed to have a rewarding social life -- he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends whom he frequently met, among them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Konigsberg. A common myth is that Kant never traveled more than 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from Konigsberg his whole life. In fact, between 1750 and 1754 he worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Gross-Arnsdorf (now Jarnoltowo near Morag (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km). CANNOTANSWER | A common myth is that Kant never traveled more than 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from Konigsberg his whole life. | Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him an influential figure in modern Western philosophy.
In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued that space and time are mere "forms of intuition" which structure all experience, and therefore that while "things-in-themselves" exist and contribute to experience, they are nonetheless distinct from the objects of experience. From this it follows that the objects of experience are mere "appearances", and that the nature of things as they are in themselves is consequently unknowable to us. In an attempt to counter the skepticism he found in the writings of philosopher David Hume, he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), one of his most well-known works. In it, he developed his theory of experience to answer the question of whether synthetic a priori knowledge is possible, which would in turn make it possible to determine the limits of metaphysical inquiry. Kant drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that the objects of the senses must conform to our spatial and temporal forms of intuition, and that we can consequently have a priori cognition of the objects of the senses.
Kant believed that reason is also the source of morality, and that aesthetics arise from a faculty of disinterested judgment. Kant's views continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of epistemology, ethics, political theory, and post-modern aesthetics. He attempted to explain the relationship between reason and human experience and to move beyond what he believed to be the failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He wanted to put an end to what he saw as an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience, while resisting the skepticism of thinkers such as Hume. He regarded himself as showing the way past the impasse between rationalists and empiricists, and is widely held to have synthesized both traditions in his thought.
Kant was an exponent of the idea that perpetual peace could be secured through universal democracy and international cooperation, and that perhaps this could be the culminating stage of world history. The nature of Kant's religious views continues to be the subject of scholarly dispute, with viewpoints ranging from the impression that he shifted from an early defense of an ontological argument for the existence of God to a principled agnosticism, to more critical treatments epitomized by Schopenhauer, who criticized the imperative form of Kantian ethics as "theological morals" and the "Mosaic Decalogue in disguise", and Nietzsche, who claimed that Kant had "theologian blood" and was merely a sophisticated apologist for traditional Christian faith. Beyond his religious views, Kant has also been criticized for the racism presented in some of his lesser-known papers, such as "On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy" and "On the Different Races of Man". Although he was a proponent of scientific racism for much of his career, Kant's views on race changed significantly in the last decade of his life, and he ultimately rejected racial hierarchies and European colonialism in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795).
Kant published other important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history during his lifetime. These include the Universal Natural History (1755), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), the Critique of Judgment (1790), Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (1793), and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
Biography
Kant's mother, Anna Regina Reuter (1697–1737), was born in Königsberg (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia) to a father from Nuremberg. Her surname is sometimes erroneously given as Porter. Kant's father, Johann Georg Kant (1682–1746), was a German harness maker from Memel, at the time Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipėda, Lithuania). Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. While scholars of Kant's life long accepted the claim, there is no evidence that Kant's paternal line was Scottish and it is more likely that the Kants got their name from the village of Kantwaggen (today part of Priekulė) and were of Curonian origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children (six of whom reached adulthood).
Kant was born on 22 April 1724 into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in Königsberg, East Prussia. Baptized Emanuel, he later changed the spelling of his name to Immanuel after learning Hebrew. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. In his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, he reveals a belief in immortality as the necessary condition of humanity's approach to the highest morality possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic, even though it has also been suggested that Kant intends other people to think of him as a "pure rationalist", who is defined by Kant himself as someone who recognizes revelation but asserts that to know and accept it as real is not a necessary requisite to religion.
Kant apparently lived a very strict and disciplined life; it was said that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but seemed to have a rewarding social life — he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. He had a circle of friends with whom he frequently met, among them Joseph Green, an English merchant in Königsberg.
Between 1750 and 1754 Kant worked as a tutor (Hauslehrer) in Judtschen (now Veselovka, Russia, approximately 20 km) and in Groß-Arnsdorf (now Jarnołtowo near Morąg (German: Mohrungen), Poland, approximately 145 km).
Many myths grew up about Kant's personal mannerisms; these are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime.
Young scholar
Kant showed a great aptitude for study at an early age. He first attended the Collegium Fridericianum from which he graduated at the end of the summer of 1740. In 1740, aged 16, he enrolled at the University of Königsberg, where he spent his whole career. He studied the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and Christian Wolff under Martin Knutzen (Associate Professor of Logic and Metaphysics from 1734 until his death in 1751), a rationalist who was also familiar with developments in British philosophy and science and introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Isaac Newton. Knutzen dissuaded Kant from the theory of pre-established harmony, which he regarded as "the pillow for the lazy mind". He also dissuaded Kant from idealism, the idea that reality is purely mental, which most philosophers in the 18th century regarded in a negative light. The theory of transcendental idealism that Kant later included in the Critique of Pure Reason was developed partially in opposition to traditional idealism.
His father's stroke and subsequent death in 1746 interrupted his studies. Kant left Königsberg shortly after August 1748—he would return there in August 1754. He became a private tutor in the towns surrounding Königsberg, but continued his scholarly research. In 1749, he published his first philosophical work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (written in 1745–47).
Early work
Kant is best known for his work in the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics, but he made significant contributions to other disciplines. In 1754, while contemplating on a prize question by the Berlin Academy about the problem of Earth's rotation, he argued that the Moon's gravity would slow down Earth's spin and he also put forth the argument that gravity would eventually cause the Moon's tidal locking to coincide with the Earth's rotation. The next year, he expanded this reasoning to the formation and evolution of the Solar System in his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. In 1755, Kant received a license to lecture in the University of Königsberg and began lecturing on a variety of topics including mathematics, physics, logic and metaphysics. In his 1756 essay on the theory of winds, Kant laid out an original insight into the Coriolis force. In 1757, Kant began lecturing on geography making him one of the first lecturers to explicitly teach geography as its own subject. Geography was one of Kant's most popular lecturing topics and in 1802 a compilation by Friedrich Theodor Rink of Kant's lecturing notes, Physical Geography, was released. After Kant became a professor in 1770, he expanded the topics of his lectures to include lectures on natural law, ethics and anthropology along with other topics.
In the Universal Natural History, Kant laid out the Nebular hypothesis, in which he deduced that the Solar System had formed from a large cloud of gas, a nebula. Kant also correctly deduced (though through usually false premises and fallacious reasoning, according to Bertrand Russell) that the Milky Way was a large disk of stars, which he theorized formed from a much larger spinning gas cloud. He further suggested that other distant "nebulae" might be other galaxies. These postulations opened new horizons for astronomy, for the first time extending it beyond the Solar System to galactic and intergalactic realms. According to Thomas Huxley (1867), Kant also made contributions to geology in his Universal Natural History.
From then on, Kant turned increasingly to philosophical issues, although he continued to write on the sciences throughout his life. In the early 1760s, Kant produced a series of important works in philosophy. The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, a work in logic, was published in 1762. Two more works appeared the following year: Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy and The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. By 1764, Kant had become a notable popular author, and wrote Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime; he was second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy prize competition with his Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (often referred to as "The Prize Essay"). In 1766 Kant wrote Dreams of a Spirit-Seer which dealt with the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. The exact influence of Swedenborg on Kant, as well as the extent of Kant's belief in mysticism according to Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, remain controversial. On 31 March 1770, aged 45, Kant was finally appointed Full Professor of Logic and Metaphysics (Professor Ordinarius der Logic und Metaphysic) at the University of Königsberg. In defense of this appointment, Kant wrote his inaugural dissertation (Inaugural-Dissertation) De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis (On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World). This work saw the emergence of several central themes of his mature work, including the distinction between the faculties of intellectual thought and sensible receptivity. To miss this distinction would mean to commit the error of subreption, and, as he says in the last chapter of the dissertation, only in avoiding this error does metaphysics flourish.
The issue that vexed Kant was central to what 20th-century scholars called "the philosophy of mind". The flowering of the natural sciences had led to an understanding of how data reaches the brain. Sunlight falling on an object is reflected from its surface in a way that maps the surface features (color, texture, etc.). The reflected light reaches the human eye, passes through the cornea, is focused by the lens onto the retina where it forms an image similar to that formed by light passing through a pinhole into a camera obscura. The retinal cells send impulses through the optic nerve and then they form a mapping in the brain of the visual features of the object. The interior mapping is not the exterior object, and our belief that there is a meaningful relationship between the object and the mapping in the brain depends on a chain of reasoning that is not fully grounded. But the uncertainty aroused by these considerations, by optical illusions, misperceptions, delusions, etc., are not the end of the problems.
Kant saw that the mind could not function as an empty container that simply receives data from outside. Something must be giving order to the incoming data. Images of external objects must be kept in the same sequence in which they were received. This ordering occurs through the mind's intuition of time. The same considerations apply to the mind's function of constituting space for ordering mappings of visual and tactile signals arriving via the already described chains of physical causation.
It is often claimed that Kant was a late developer, that he only became an important philosopher in his mid-50s after rejecting his earlier views. While it is true that Kant wrote his greatest works relatively late in life, there is a tendency to underestimate the value of his earlier works. Recent Kant scholarship has devoted more attention to these "pre-critical" writings and has recognized a degree of continuity with his mature work.
Critique of Pure Reason
At age 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher, and much was expected of him. In correspondence with his ex-student and friend Markus Herz, Kant admitted that, in the inaugural dissertation, he had failed to account for the relation between our sensible and intellectual faculties. He needed to explain how we combine what is known as sensory knowledge with the other type of knowledgei.e. reasoned knowledgethese two being related but having very different processes.
Kant also credited David Hume with awakening him from a "dogmatic slumber" in which he had unquestioningly accepted the tenets of both religion and natural philosophy. Hume in his 1739 Treatise on Human Nature had argued that we only know the mind through a subjectiveessentially illusoryseries of perceptions. Ideas such as causality, morality, and objects are not evident in experience, so their reality may be questioned. Kant felt that reason could remove this skepticism, and he set himself to solving these problems. Although fond of company and conversation with others, Kant isolated himself, and resisted friends' attempts to bring him out of his isolation. When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant countered Hume's empiricism by claiming that some knowledge exists inherently in the mind, independent of experience. He drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that worldly objects can be intuited a priori ('beforehand'), and that intuition is consequently distinct from objective reality. He acquiesced to Hume somewhat by defining causality as a "regular, constant sequence of events in time, and nothing more."
Although now uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, this Critique disappointed Kant's readers upon its initial publication. The book was long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in a convoluted style. It received few reviews, and these granted it no significance. Kant's former student, Johann Gottfried Herder criticized it for placing reason as an entity worthy of criticism instead of considering the process of reasoning within the context of language and one's entire personality. Similar to Christian Garve and Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, he rejected Kant's position that space and time possessed a form that could be analyzed. Additionally, Garve and Feder also faulted Kant's Critique for not explaining differences in perception of sensations. Its density made it, as Herder said in a letter to Johann Georg Hamann, a "tough nut to crack", obscured by "all this heavy gossamer". Its reception stood in stark contrast to the praise Kant had received for earlier works, such as his Prize Essay and shorter works that preceded the first Critique. These well-received and readable tracts include one on the earthquake in Lisbon that was so popular that it was sold by the page. Prior to the change in course documented in the first Critique, his books had sold well. Kant was disappointed with the first Critique's reception. Recognizing the need to clarify the original treatise, Kant wrote the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics in 1783 as a summary of its main views. Shortly thereafter, Kant's friend Johann Friedrich Schultz (1739–1805) (professor of mathematics) published Erläuterungen über des Herrn Professor Kant Critik der reinen Vernunft (Königsberg, 1784), which was a brief but very accurate commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
Kant's reputation gradually rose through the latter portion of the 1780s, sparked by a series of important works: the 1784 essay, "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?"; 1785's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (his first work on moral philosophy); and, from 1786, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. But Kant's fame ultimately arrived from an unexpected source. In 1786, Karl Leonhard Reinhold published a series of public letters on Kantian philosophy. In these letters, Reinhold framed Kant's philosophy as a response to the central intellectual controversy of the era: the pantheism controversy. Friedrich Jacobi had accused the recently deceased Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (a distinguished dramatist and philosophical essayist) of Spinozism. Such a charge, tantamount to atheism, was vigorously denied by Lessing's friend Moses Mendelssohn, leading to a bitter public dispute among partisans. The controversy gradually escalated into a debate about the values of the Enlightenment and the value of reason.
Reinhold maintained in his letters that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason could settle this dispute by defending the authority and bounds of reason. Reinhold's letters were widely read and made Kant the most famous philosopher of his era.
Later work
Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book. Most of his subsequent work focused on other areas of philosophy. He continued to develop his moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason (known as the second Critique) and 1797's Metaphysics of Morals. The 1790 Critique of Judgment (the third Critique) applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology.
In 1792, Kant's attempt to publish the Second of the four Pieces of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, in the journal Berlinische Monatsschrift, met with opposition from the King's censorship commission, which had been established that same year in the context of the French Revolution. Kant then arranged to have all four pieces published as a book, routing it through the philosophy department at the University of Jena to avoid the need for theological censorship. This insubordination earned him a now famous reprimand from the King. When he nevertheless published a second edition in 1794, the censor was so irate that he arranged for a royal order that required Kant never to publish or even speak publicly about religion. Kant then published his response to the King's reprimand and explained himself, in the preface of The Conflict of the Faculties.
He also wrote a number of semi-popular essays on history, religion, politics and other topics. These works were well received by Kant's contemporaries and confirmed his preeminent status in 18th-century philosophy. There were several journals devoted solely to defending and criticizing Kantian philosophy. Despite his success, philosophical trends were moving in another direction. Many of Kant's most important disciples and followers (including Reinhold, Beck and Fichte) transformed the Kantian position into increasingly radical forms of idealism. The progressive stages of revision of Kant's teachings marked the emergence of German idealism. Kant opposed these developments and publicly denounced Fichte in an open letter in 1799. It was one of his final acts expounding a stance on philosophical questions. In 1800, a student of Kant named Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche (1762–1842) published a manual of logic for teachers called Logik, which he had prepared at Kant's request. Jäsche prepared the Logik using a copy of a textbook in logic by Georg Friedrich Meier entitled Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre, in which Kant had written copious notes and annotations. The Logik has been considered of fundamental importance to Kant's philosophy, and the understanding of it. The great 19th-century logician Charles Sanders Peirce remarked, in an incomplete review of Thomas Kingsmill Abbott's English translation of the introduction to Logik, that "Kant's whole philosophy turns upon his logic." Also, Robert Schirokauer Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz, wrote in the translators' introduction to their English translation of the Logik, "Its importance lies not only in its significance for the Critique of Pure Reason, the second part of which is a restatement of fundamental tenets of the Logic, but in its position within the whole of Kant's work."
Death and burial
Kant's health, long poor, worsened and he died at Königsberg on 12 February 1804, uttering "Es ist gut (It is good)" before expiring. His unfinished final work was published as Opus Postumum. Kant always cut a curious figure in his lifetime for his modest, rigorously scheduled habits, which have been referred to as clocklike. However, Heinrich Heine noted the magnitude of "his destructive, world-crushing thoughts" and considered him a sort of philosophical "executioner", comparing him to Robespierre with the observation that both men "represented in the highest the type of provincial bourgeois. Nature had destined them to weigh coffee and sugar, but Fate determined that they should weigh other things and placed on the scales of the one a king, on the scales of the other a god."
When his body was transferred to a new burial spot, his skull was measured during the exhumation and found to be larger than the average German male's with a "high and broad" forehead. His forehead has been an object of interest ever since it became well-known through his portraits: "In Döbler's portrait and in Kiefer's faithful if expressionistic reproduction of it — as well as in many of the other late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century portraits of Kant — the forehead is remarkably large and decidedly retreating. Was Kant's forehead shaped this way in these images because he was a philosopher, or, to follow the implications of Lavater's system, was he a philosopher because of the intellectual acuity manifested by his forehead? Kant and Johann Kaspar Lavater were correspondents on theological matters, and Lavater refers to Kant in his work "Physiognomic Fragments, for the Education of Human Knowledge and Love of People" (Leipzig & Winterthur, 1775–1778).
Kant's mausoleum adjoins the northeast corner of Königsberg Cathedral in Kaliningrad, Russia. The mausoleum was constructed by the architect Friedrich Lahrs and was finished in 1924 in time for the bicentenary of Kant's birth. Originally, Kant was buried inside the cathedral, but in 1880 his remains were moved to a neo-Gothic chapel adjoining the northeast corner of the cathedral. Over the years, the chapel became dilapidated and was demolished to make way for the mausoleum, which was built on the same location.
The tomb and its mausoleum are among the few artifacts of German times preserved by the Soviets after they conquered and annexed the city. Today, many newlyweds bring flowers to the mausoleum. Artifacts previously owned by Kant, known as Kantiana, were included in the Königsberg City Museum. However, the museum was destroyed during World War II. A replica of the statue of Kant that stood in German times in front of the main University of Königsberg building was donated by a German entity in the early 1990s and placed in the same grounds.
After the expulsion of Königsberg's German population at the end of World War II, the University of Königsberg where Kant taught was replaced by the Russian-language Kaliningrad State University, which appropriated the campus and surviving buildings. In 2005, the university was renamed Immanuel Kant State University of Russia. The name change was announced at a ceremony attended by President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, and the university formed a Kant Society, dedicated to the study of Kantianism. The university was again renamed in the 2010s, to Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University.
In late November 2018, his tomb and statue were vandalized with paint by unknown assailants, who also scattered leaflets glorifying Rus' and denouncing Kant as a "traitor". The incident is apparently connected with a recent vote to rename Khrabrovo Airport, where Kant was in the lead for a while, prompting Russian nationalist resentment.
Philosophy
In Kant's essay "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?", he defined the Enlightenment as an age shaped by the Latin motto Sapere aude ("Dare to be wise"). Kant maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority. His work reconciled many of the differences between the rationalist and empiricist traditions of the 18th century. He had a decisive impact on the Romantic and German Idealist philosophies of the 19th century. His work has also been a starting point for many 20th century philosophers.
Kant asserted that, because of the limitations of argumentation in the absence of irrefutable evidence, no one could really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not. For the sake of morality and as a ground for reason, Kant asserted, people are justified in believing in God, even though they could never know God's presence empirically.
The sense of an enlightened approach and the critical method required that "If one cannot prove that a thing is, he may try to prove that it is not. If he fails to do either (as often occurs), he may still ask whether it is in his interest to accept one or the other of the alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical point of view. Hence the question no longer is as to whether perpetual peace is a real thing or not a real thing, or as to whether we may not be deceiving ourselves when we adopt the former alternative, but we must act on the supposition of its being real." The presupposition of God, soul, and freedom was then a practical concern, for
Kant drew a parallel between the Copernican revolution and the epistemology of his new transcendental philosophy, involving two interconnected foundations of his "critical philosophy":
the epistemology of transcendental idealism and
the moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason.
These teachings placed the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral worlds. Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science was not just the accidental accumulation of sense perceptions.
Conceptual unification and integration is carried out by the mind through concepts or the "categories of the understanding" operating on the perceptual manifold within space and time. The latter are not concepts, but are forms of sensibility that are a priori necessary conditions for any possible experience. Thus the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that operates within it depend on the mind's processes, the product of the rule-based activity that Kant called "synthesis". There is much discussion among Kant scholars about the correct interpretation of this train of thought.
The 'two-world' interpretation regards Kant's position as a statement of epistemological limitation, that we are not able to transcend the bounds of our own mind, meaning that we cannot access the "thing-in-itself". However, Kant also speaks of the thing in itself or transcendental object as a product of the (human) understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of sensibility. Following this line of thought, some interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological domain but simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding alonethis is known as the two-aspect view.
The notion of the "thing in itself" was much discussed by philosophers after Kant. It was argued that, because the "thing in itself" was unknowable, its existence must not be assumed. Rather than arbitrarily switching to an account that was ungrounded in anything supposed to be the "real", as did the German Idealists, another group arose who asked how our (presumably reliable) accounts of a coherent and rule-abiding universe were actually grounded. This new kind of philosophy became known as Phenomenology, and its founder was Edmund Husserl.
With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather is only the good will itself. A good will is one that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. This law obliges one to treat humanityunderstood as rational agency, and represented through oneself as well as othersas an end in itself rather than (merely) as means to other ends the individual might hold. This necessitates practical self-reflection in which we universalize our reasons.
These ideas have largely framed or influenced all subsequent philosophical discussion and analysis. The specifics of Kant's account generated immediate and lasting controversy. Nevertheless, his thesesthat the mind itself necessarily makes a constitutive contribution to its knowledge, that this contribution is transcendental rather than psychological, that philosophy involves self-critical activity, that morality is rooted in human freedom, and that to act autonomously is to act according to rational moral principleshave all had a lasting effect on subsequent philosophy.
Epistemology
Theory of perception
Kant defines his theory of perception in his influential 1781 work the Critique of Pure Reason, which has often been cited as the most significant volume of metaphysics and epistemology in modern philosophy. Kant maintains that understanding of the external world had its foundations not merely in experience, but in both experience and a priori concepts, thus offering a non-empiricist critique of rationalist philosophy, which is what has been referred to as his Copernican revolution.
Firstly, Kant distinguishes between analytic and synthetic propositions:
Analytic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is contained in its subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are unmarried," or, "All bodies take up space."
Synthetic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is not contained in its subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are alone," or, "All bodies have weight."
An analytic proposition is true by nature of the meaning of the words in the sentence — we require no further knowledge than a grasp of the language to understand this proposition. On the other hand, a synthetic statement is one that tells us something about the world. The truth or falsehood of synthetic statements derives from something outside their linguistic content. In this instance, weight is not a necessary predicate of the body; until we are told the heaviness of the body we do not know that it has weight. In this case, experience of the body is required before its heaviness becomes clear. Before Kant's first Critique, empiricists (cf. Hume) and rationalists (cf. Leibniz) assumed that all synthetic statements required experience to be known.
Kant contests this assumption by claiming that elementary mathematics, like arithmetic, is synthetic a priori, in that its statements provide new knowledge not derived from experience. This becomes part of his over-all argument for transcendental idealism. That is, he argues that the possibility of experience depends on certain necessary conditions — which he calls a priori forms — and that these conditions structure and hold true of the world of experience. His main claims in the "Transcendental Aesthetic" are that mathematic judgments are synthetic a priori and that space and time are not derived from experience but rather are its preconditions.
Once we have grasped the functions of basic arithmetic, we do not need empirical experience to know that 100 + 100 = 200, and so it appears that arithmetic is analytic. However, that it is analytic can be disproved by considering the calculation 5 + 7 = 12: there is nothing in the numbers 5 and 7 by which the number 12 can be inferred. Thus "5 + 7" and "the cube root of 1,728" or "12" are not analytic because their reference is the same but their sense is not — the statement "5 + 7 = 12" tells us something new about the world. It is self-evident, and undeniably a priori, but at the same time it is synthetic. Thus Kant argued that a proposition can be synthetic and a priori.
Kant asserts that experience is based on the perception of external objects and a priori knowledge. The external world, he writes, provides those things that we sense. But our mind processes this information and gives it order, allowing us to comprehend it. Our mind supplies the conditions of space and time to experience objects. According to the "transcendental unity of apperception", the concepts of the mind (Understanding) and perceptions or intuitions that garner information from phenomena (Sensibility) are synthesized by comprehension. Without concepts, perceptions are nondescript; without perceptions, concepts are meaningless. Thus the famous statement: "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions [perceptions] without concepts are blind."
Kant also claims that an external environment is necessary for the establishment of the self. Although Kant would want to argue that there is no empirical way of observing the self, we can see the logical necessity of the self when we observe that we can have different perceptions of the external environment over time. By uniting these general representations into one global representation, we can see how a transcendental self emerges. "I am therefore conscious of the identical self in regard to the manifold of the representations that are given to me in an intuition because I call them all together my representations, which constitute one."
Categories of the Faculty of Understanding
Kant deemed it obvious that we have some objective knowledge of the world, such as, say, Newtonian physics. But this knowledge relies on synthetic, a priori laws of nature, like causality and substance. How is this possible? Kant's solution was that the subject must supply laws that make experience of objects possible, and that these laws are synthetic, a priori laws of nature that apply to all objects before we experience them. To deduce all these laws, Kant examined experience in general, dissecting in it what is supplied by the mind from what is supplied by the given intuitions. This is commonly called a transcendental deduction.
To begin with, Kant's distinction between the a posteriori being contingent and particular knowledge, and the a priori being universal and necessary knowledge, must be kept in mind. If we merely connect two intuitions together in a perceiving subject, the knowledge is always subjective because it is derived a posteriori, when what is desired is for the knowledge to be objective, that is, for the two intuitions to refer to the object and hold good of it for anyone at any time, not just the perceiving subject in its current condition. What else is equivalent to objective knowledge besides the a priori (universal and necessary knowledge)? Before knowledge can be objective, it must be incorporated under an a priori category of understanding.
For example, if a subject says, "The sun shines on the stone; the stone grows warm," all he perceives are phenomena. His judgment is contingent and holds no necessity. But if he says, "The sunshine causes the stone to warm," he subsumes the perception under the category of causality, which is not found in the perception, and necessarily synthesizes the concept sunshine with the concept heat, producing a necessarily universally true judgment.
To explain the categories in more detail, they are the preconditions of the construction of objects in the mind. Indeed, to even think of the sun and stone presupposes the category of subsistence, that is, substance. For the categories synthesize the random data of the sensory manifold into intelligible objects. This means that the categories are also the most abstract things one can say of any object whatsoever, and hence one can have an a priori cognition of the totality of all objects of experience if one can list all of them. To do so, Kant formulates another transcendental deduction.
Judgments are, for Kant, the preconditions of any thought. Man thinks via judgments, so all possible judgments must be listed and the perceptions connected within them put aside, so as to make it possible to examine the moments when the understanding is engaged in constructing judgments. For the categories are equivalent to these moments, in that they are concepts of intuitions in general, so far as they are determined by these moments universally and necessarily. Thus by listing all the moments, one can deduce from them all of the categories.
One may now ask: How many possible judgments are there? Kant believed that all the possible propositions within Aristotle's syllogistic logic are equivalent to all possible judgments, and that all the logical operators within the propositions are equivalent to the moments of the understanding within judgments. Thus he listed Aristotle's system in four groups of three: quantity (universal, particular, singular), quality (affirmative, negative, infinite), relation (categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive) and modality (problematic, assertoric, apodeictic). The parallelism with Kant's categories is obvious: quantity (unity, plurality, totality), quality (reality, negation, limitation), relation (substance, cause, community) and modality (possibility, existence, necessity).
The fundamental building blocks of experience, i.e. objective knowledge, are now in place. First there is the sensibility, which supplies the mind with intuitions, and then there is the understanding, which produces judgments of these intuitions and can subsume them under categories. These categories lift the intuitions up out of the subject's current state of consciousness and place them within consciousness in general, producing universally necessary knowledge. For the categories are innate in any rational being, so any intuition thought within a category in one mind is necessarily subsumed and understood identically in any mind. In other words, we filter what we see and hear.
Transcendental schema doctrine
Kant ran into a problem with his theory that the mind plays a part in producing objective knowledge. Intuitions and categories are entirely disparate, so how can they interact? Kant's solution is the (transcendental) schema: a priori principles by which the transcendental imagination connects concepts with intuitions through time. All the principles are temporally bound, for if a concept is purely a priori, as the categories are, then they must apply for all times. Hence there are principles such as substance is that which endures through time, and the cause must always be prior to the effect. In the context of transcendental schema the concept of transcendental reflection is of a great importance.
Ethics
Kant developed his ethics, or moral philosophy, in three works: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
In Groundwork, Kant tries to convert our everyday, obvious, rational knowledge of morality into philosophical knowledge. The latter two works used "practical reason", which is based only on things about which reason can tell us, and not deriving any principles from experience, to reach conclusions which can be applied to the world of experience (in the second part of The Metaphysics of Morals).
Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the "Categorical Imperative", and is derived from the concept of duty. Kant defines the demands of moral law as "categorical imperatives". Categorical imperatives are principles that are intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed in all situations and circumstances, if our behavior is to observe the moral law. The Categorical Imperative provides a test against which moral statements can be assessed. Kant also stated that the moral means and ends can be applied to the categorical imperative, that rational beings can pursue certain "ends" using the appropriate "means". Ends based on physical needs or wants create hypothetical imperatives. The categorical imperative can only be based on something that is an "end in itself", that is, an end that is not a means to some other need, desire, or purpose. Kant believed that the moral law is a principle of reason itself, and is not based on contingent facts about the world, such as what would make us happy, but to act on the moral law which has no other motive than "worthiness to be happy". Accordingly, he believed that moral obligation applies only to rational agents.
Unlike a hypothetical imperative, a categorical imperative is an unconditional obligation; it has the force of an obligation regardless of our will or desires In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785) Kant enumerated three formulations of the categorical imperative that he believed to be roughly equivalent. In the same book, Kant stated:
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.
According to Kant, one cannot make exceptions for oneself. The philosophical maxim on which one acts should always be considered to be a universal law without exception. One cannot allow oneself to do a particular action unless one thinks it appropriate that the reason for the action should become a universal law. For example, one should not steal, however dire the circumstancesbecause, by permitting oneself to steal, one makes stealing a universally acceptable act. This is the first formulation of the categorical imperative, often known as the universalizability principle.
Kant believed that, if an action is not done with the motive of duty, then it is without moral value. He thought that every action should have pure intention behind it; otherwise, it is meaningless. The final result is not the most important aspect of an action; rather, how the person feels while carrying out the action is the time when value is attached to the result.
In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant also posited the "counter-utilitarian idea that there is a difference between preferences and values, and that considerations of individual rights temper calculations of aggregate utility", a concept that is an axiom in economics:
Everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. But that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself does not have mere relative worth, i.e., price, but an intrinsic worth, i.e., a dignity. (p. 53, italics in original).
A phrase quoted by Kant, which is used to summarize the counter-utilitarian nature of his moral philosophy, is Fiat justitia, pereat mundus ("Let justice be done, though the world perish"), which he translates loosely as "Let justice reign even if all the rascals in the world should perish from it". This appears in his 1795 Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch ("Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf"), Appendix 1.
First formulation
The first formulation (Formula of Universal Law) of the moral imperative "requires that the maxims be chosen as though they should hold as universal laws of nature". This formulation in principle has as its supreme law the creed "Always act according to that maxim whose universality as a law you can at the same time will" and is the "only condition under which a will can never come into conflict with itself [....]"
One interpretation of the first formulation is called the "universalizability test". An agent's maxim, according to Kant, is his "subjective principle of human actions": that is, what the agent believes is his reason to act. The universalisability test has five steps:
Find the agent's maxim (i.e., an action paired with its motivation). Take, for example, the declaration "I will lie for personal benefit". Lying is the action; the motivation is to fulfill some sort of desire. Together, they form the maxim.
Imagine a possible world in which everyone in a similar position to the real-world agent followed that maxim.
Decide if contradictions or irrationalities would arise in the possible world as a result of following the maxim.
If a contradiction or irrationality would arise, acting on that maxim is not allowed in the real world.
If there is no contradiction, then acting on that maxim is permissible, and is sometimes required.
(For a modern parallel, see John Rawls' hypothetical situation, the original position.)
Second formulation
The second formulation (or Formula of the End in Itself) holds that "the rational being, as by its nature an end and thus as an end in itself, must serve in every maxim as the condition restricting all merely relative and arbitrary ends". The principle dictates that you "[a]ct with reference to every rational being (whether yourself or another) so that it is an end in itself in your maxim", meaning that the rational being is "the basis of all maxims of action" and "must be treated never as a mere means but as the supreme limiting condition in the use of all means, i.e., as an end at the same time".
Third formulation
The third formulation (i.e. Formula of Autonomy) is a synthesis of the first two and is the basis for the "complete determination of all maxims". It states "that all maxims which stem from autonomous legislation ought to harmonize with a possible realm of ends as with a realm of nature".
In principle, "So act as if your maxims should serve at the same time as the universal law (of all rational beings)", meaning that we should so act that we may think of ourselves as "a member in the universal realm of ends", legislating universal laws through our maxims (that is, a universal code of conduct), in a "possible realm of ends". No one may elevate themselves above the universal law, therefore it is one's duty to follow the maxim(s).
Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason
Commentators, starting in the 20th century, have tended to see Kant as having a strained relationship with religion, though this was not the prevalent view in the 19th century. Karl Leonhard Reinhold, whose letters first made Kant famous, wrote "I believe that I may infer without reservation that the interest of religion, and of Christianity in particular, accords completely with the result of the Critique of Reason." Johann Schultz, who wrote one of the first Kant commentaries, wrote "And does not this system itself cohere most splendidly with the Christian religion? Do not the divinity and beneficence of the latter become all the more evident?" This view continued throughout the 19th century, as noted by Friedrich Nietzsche, who said "Kant's success is merely a theologian's success." The reason for these views was Kant's moral theology, and the widespread belief that his philosophy was the great antithesis to Spinozism, which had been convulsing the European academy for much of the 18th century. Spinozism was widely seen as the cause of the Pantheism controversy, and as a form of sophisticated pantheism or even atheism. As Kant's philosophy disregarded the possibility of arguing for God through pure reason alone, for the same reasons it also disregarded the possibility of arguing against God through pure reason alone. This, coupled with his moral philosophy (his argument that the existence of morality is a rational reason why God and an afterlife do and must exist), was the reason he was seen by many, at least through the end of the 19th century, as a great defender of religion in general and Christianity in particular.
Kant articulates his strongest criticisms of the organization and practices of religious organizations to those that encourage what he sees as a religion of counterfeit service to God. Among the major targets of his criticism are external ritual, superstition and a hierarchical church order. He sees these as efforts to make oneself pleasing to God in ways other than conscientious adherence to the principle of moral rightness in choosing and acting upon one's maxims. Kant's criticisms on these matters, along with his rejection of certain theoretical proofs grounded in pure reason (particularly the ontological argument) for the existence of God and his philosophical commentary on some Christian doctrines, have resulted in interpretations that see Kant as hostile to religion in general and Christianity in particular (e.g., Walsh 1967). Nevertheless, other interpreters consider that Kant was trying to mark off defensible from indefensible Christian belief. Kant sees in Jesus Christ the affirmation of a "pure moral disposition of the heart" that "can make man well-pleasing to God". Regarding Kant's conception of religion, some critics have argued that he was sympathetic to deism. Other critics have argued that Kant's moral conception moves from deism to theism (as moral theism), for example Allen W. Wood and Merold Westphal. As for Kant's book Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, it was emphasized that Kant reduced religiosity to rationality, religion to morality and Christianity to ethics. However, many interpreters, including Allen W. Wood and Lawrence Pasternack, now agree with Stephen Palmquist's claim that a better way of reading Kant's Religion is to see him as raising morality to the status of religion.
Idea of freedom
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes between the transcendental idea of freedom, which as a psychological concept is "mainly empirical" and refers to "whether a faculty of beginning a series of successive things or states from itself is to be assumed" and the practical concept of freedom as the independence of our will from the "coercion" or "necessitation through sensuous impulses". Kant finds it a source of difficulty that the practical idea of freedom is founded on the transcendental idea of freedom, but for the sake of practical interests uses the practical meaning, taking "no account of... its transcendental meaning," which he feels was properly "disposed of" in the Third Antinomy, and as an element in the question of the freedom of the will is for philosophy "a real stumbling block" that has embarrassed speculative reason.
Kant calls practical "everything that is possible through freedom", and the pure practical laws that are never given through sensuous conditions but are held analogously with the universal law of causality are moral laws. Reason can give us only the "pragmatic laws of free action through the senses", but pure practical laws given by reason a priori dictate "what is to be done". (The same distinction of transcendental and practical meaning can be applied to the idea of God, with the proviso that the practical concept of freedom can be experienced.)
Categories of freedom
In the Critique of Practical Reason, at the end of the second Main Part of the Analytics, Kant introduces the categories of freedom, in analogy with the categories of understanding their practical counterparts. Kant's categories of freedom apparently function primarily as conditions for the possibility for actions (i) to be free, (ii) to be understood as free and (iii) to be morally evaluated. For Kant, although actions as theoretical objects are constituted by means of the theoretical categories, actions as practical objects (objects of practical use of reason, and which can be good or bad) are constituted by means of the categories of freedom. Only in this way can actions, as phenomena, be a consequence of freedom, and be understood and evaluated as such.
Aesthetic philosophy
Kant discusses the subjective nature of aesthetic qualities and experiences in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764). Kant's contribution to aesthetic theory is developed in the Critique of Judgment (1790) where he investigates the possibility and logical status of "judgments of taste." In the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment," the first major division of the Critique of Judgment, Kant used the term "aesthetic" in a manner that, according to Kant scholar W.H. Walsh, differs from its modern sense. In the Critique of Pure Reason, to note essential differences between judgments of taste, moral judgments, and scientific judgments, Kant abandoned the term "aesthetic" as "designating the critique of taste," noting that judgments of taste could never be "directed" by "laws a priori." After A. G. Baumgarten, who wrote Aesthetica (1750–58), Kant was one of the first philosophers to develop and integrate aesthetic theory into a unified and comprehensive philosophical system, utilizing ideas that played an integral role throughout his philosophy.
In the chapter "Analytic of the Beautiful" in the Critique of Judgment, Kant states that beauty is not a property of an artwork or natural phenomenon, but is instead consciousness of the pleasure that attends the 'free play' of the imagination and the understanding. Even though it appears that we are using reason to decide what is beautiful, the judgment is not a cognitive judgment, "and is consequently not logical, but aesthetical" (§ 1). A pure judgement of taste is subjective since it refers to the emotional response of the subject and is based upon nothing but esteem for an object itself: it is a disinterested pleasure, and we feel that pure judgements of taste (i.e. judgements of beauty), lay claim to universal validity (§§ 20–22). It is important to note that this universal validity is not derived from a determinate concept of beauty but from common sense (§40). Kant also believed that a judgement of taste shares characteristics engaged in a moral judgement: both are disinterested, and we hold them to be universal. In the chapter "Analytic of the Sublime" Kant identifies the sublime as an aesthetic quality that, like beauty, is subjective, but unlike beauty refers to an indeterminate relationship between the faculties of the imagination and of reason, and shares the character of moral judgments in the use of reason. The feeling of the sublime, divided into two distinct modes (the mathematical and the dynamical sublime), describes two subjective moments that concern the relationship of the faculty of the imagination to reason. Some commentators argue that Kant's critical philosophy contains a third kind of the sublime, the moral sublime, which is the aesthetic response to the moral law or a representation, and a development of the "noble" sublime in Kant's theory of 1764. The mathematical sublime results from the failure of the imagination to comprehend natural objects that appear boundless and formless, or appear "absolutely great" (§§ 23–25). This imaginative failure is then recuperated through the pleasure taken in reason's assertion of the concept of infinity. In this move the faculty of reason proves itself superior to our fallible sensible self (§§ 25–26). In the dynamical sublime there is the sense of annihilation of the sensible self as the imagination tries to comprehend a vast might. This power of nature threatens us but through the resistance of reason to such sensible annihilation, the subject feels a pleasure and a sense of the human moral vocation. This appreciation of moral feeling through exposure to the sublime helps to develop moral character.
Kant developed a theory of humor (§ 54) that has been interpreted as an "incongruity" theory. He illustrated his theory of humor by telling three narrative jokes in the Critique of Judgment. He thought that the physiological impact of humor is akin to that of music. His knowledge of music, however, has been reported to be much weaker than his sense of humor: He told many more jokes throughout his lectures and writings.
Kant developed a distinction between an object of art as a material value subject to the conventions of society and the transcendental condition of the judgment of taste as a "refined" value in his Idea of A Universal History (1784). In the Fourth and Fifth Theses of that work he identified all art as the "fruits of unsociableness" due to men's "antagonism in society" and, in the Seventh Thesis, asserted that while such material property is indicative of a civilized state, only the ideal of morality and the universalization of refined value through the improvement of the mind "belongs to culture".
Political philosophy
In Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant listed several conditions that he thought necessary for ending wars and creating a lasting peace. They included a world of constitutional republics. His classical republican theory was extended in the Science of Right, the first part of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). Kant believed that universal history leads to the ultimate world of republican states at peace, but his theory was not pragmatic. The process was described in "Perpetual Peace" as natural rather than rational:
Kant's political thought can be summarized as republican government and international organization. "In more characteristically Kantian terms, it is doctrine of the state based upon the law (Rechtsstaat) and of eternal peace. Indeed, in each of these formulations, both terms express the same idea: that of legal constitution or of 'peace through law'. Kant's political philosophy, being essentially a legal doctrine, rejects by definition the opposition between moral education and the play of passions as alternate foundations for social life. The state is defined as the union of men under law. The state is constituted by laws which are necessary a priori because they flow from the very concept of law. "A regime can be judged by no other criteria nor be assigned any other functions, than those proper to the lawful order as such."
He opposed "democracy," which at his time meant direct democracy, believing that majority rule posed a threat to individual liberty. He stated, "...democracy is, properly speaking, necessarily a despotism, because it establishes an executive power in which 'all' decide for or even against one who does not agree; that is, 'all,' who are not quite all, decide, and this is a contradiction of the general will with itself and with freedom." As with most writers at the time, he distinguished three forms of government i.e. democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy with mixed government as the most ideal form of it.
Anthropology
Kant lectured on anthropology, the study of human nature, for twenty-three and a half years. His Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View was published in 1798. (This was the subject of Michel Foucault's secondary dissertation for his State doctorate, Introduction to Kant's Anthropology.) Kant's Lectures on Anthropology were published for the first time in 1997 in German. Introduction to Kant's Anthropology was translated into English and published by the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy series in 2006.
Kant was among the first people of his time to introduce anthropology as an intellectual area of study, long before the field gained popularity, and his texts are considered to have advanced the field. His point of view was to influence the works of later philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur.
Kant was also the first to suggest using a dimensionality approach to human diversity. He analyzed the nature of the Hippocrates-Galen four temperaments and plotted them in two dimensions: (1) "activation", or energetic aspect of behaviour, and (2) "orientation on emotionality". Cholerics were described as emotional and energetic; Phlegmatics as balanced and weak; Sanguines as balanced and energetic, and Melancholics as emotional and weak. These two dimensions reappeared in all subsequent models of temperament and personality traits.
Kant viewed anthropology in two broad categories: (1) the physiological approach, which he referred to as "what nature makes of the human being"; and (2) the pragmatic approach, which explored the things that a human "can and should make of himself."
Racism
Kant was one of the most notable Enlightenment thinkers to defend racism, and some have claimed that he was one of the central figures in the birth of modern scientific racism. Where figures such as Carl Linnaeus and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach had supposed only "empirical" observation for racism, Kant produced a full-blown theory of race. Using the Four Temperaments of ancient Greece, he proposed a hierarchy of four racial categories: white Europeans, yellow Asians, black Africans, and red Amerindians.
Kant wrote that "[Whites] contain all the impulses of nature in affects and passions, all talents, all dispositions to culture and civilization and can as readily obey as govern. They are the only ones who always advance to perfection.” He describes South Asians as "educated to the highest degree but only in the arts and not in the sciences". He goes on that Hindustanis can never reach the level of abstract concepts and that a "great hindustani man" is one who has "gone far in the art of deception and has much money". He stated that the Hindus always stay the way they are and can never advance. About black Africans, Kant wrote that "they can be educated but only as servants, that is they allow themselves to be trained". He quotes David Hume as challenging anyone to "cite a [single] example in which a Negro has shown talents" and asserts that, among the "hundreds of thousands" of blacks transported during the Atlantic slave trade, even among the freed "still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality". To Kant, "the Negro can be disciplined and cultivated, but is never genuinely civilized. He falls of his own accord into savagery." Native Americans, Kant opined, "cannot be educated". He calls them unmotivated, lacking affect, passion and love, describing them as too weak for labor, unfit for any culture, and too phlegmatic for diligence. He said the Native Americans are "far below the Negro, who undoubtedly holds the lowest of all remaining levels by which we designate the different races". Kant stated that "Americans and Blacks cannot govern themselves. They thus serve only for slaves."
Kant was an opponent of miscegenation, believing that whites would be "degraded" and the "fusing of races" is undesireable, for "not every race adopts the morals and customs of the Europeans". He stated that "instead of assimilation, which was intended by the melting together of the various races, Nature has here made a law of just the opposite". He believed that in the future all races would be extinguished, except that of the whites.
Charles W. Mills wrote that Kant has been "sanitized for public consumption", his racist works conveniently ignored. Robert Bernasconi stated that Kant "supplied the first scientific definition of race". Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze is credited with bringing Kant's contributions to racism to light in the 1990s among Western philosophers, who often gloss over this part of his life and works. He wrote about Kant's ideas of race:
Pauline Kleingeld argues that while Kant was indeed a staunch advocate of scientific racism for much of his career, his views on race changed significantly in works published in the last decade of his life. In particular, she argues that Kant unambiguously rejected past views related to racial hierarchies and the diminished rights or moral status of non-whites in Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795). This work also saw him providing extended arguments against European colonialism, which he claimed was morally unjust and incompatible with the equal rights held by indigenous populations. Kleingeld argues that this shift in Kant's views later in life has often been forgotten or ignored in the literature on Kant's racist anthropology, and that the shift suggests a belated recognition of the fact that racial hierarchy was incompatible with a universalized moral framework. While Kant's perspective on the topic of European colonialism became more balanced, he still considered Europeans "civilized" to the exception of others:
Influence and legacy
Kant's influence on Western thought has been profound. Although the basic tenets of Kant's transcendental idealism (i.e. that space and time are a priori forms of human perception rather than real properties and the claim that formal logic and transcendental logic coincide) have been claimed to be falsified by modern science and logic, and no longer set the intellectual agenda of contemporary philosophers, Kant is credited with having innovated the way philosophical inquiry has been carried at least up to the early nineteenth century. This shift consisted in several closely related innovations that, although highly contentious in themselves, have become important in postmodern philosophy and in the social sciences broadly construed:
The human subject seen as the centre of inquiry into human knowledge, such that it is impossible to philosophize about things as they exist independently of human perception or of how they are for us;
The notion that is possible to discover and systematically explore the inherent limits to our ability to know entirely a priori;
The notion of the "categorical imperative", an assertion that people are naturally endowed with the ability and obligation toward right reason and acting. Perhaps his most famous quote is drawn from the Critique of Practical Reason: "Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe . . . : the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."
The concept of "conditions of possibility", as in his notion of "the conditions of possible experience"that is that things, knowledge, and forms of consciousness rest on prior conditions that make them possible, so that, to understand or to know them, we must first understand these conditions;
The theory that objective experience is actively constituted or constructed by the functioning of the human mind;
His notion of moral autonomy as central to humanity;
His assertion of the principle that human beings should be treated as ends rather than as means.
Kant's ideas have been incorporated into a variety of schools of thought. These include German idealism, Marxism, positivism, phenomenology, existentialism, critical theory, linguistic philosophy, structuralism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism.
Historical influence
During his own life, much critical attention was paid to his thought. He influenced Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Novalis during the 1780s and 1790s. The school of thinking known as German idealism developed from his writings. The German idealists Fichte and Schelling, for example, tried to bring traditional "metaphysically" laden notions like "the Absolute", "God", and "Being" into the scope of Kant's critical thought. In so doing, the German idealists tried to reverse Kant's view that we cannot know what we cannot observe.
The influential English Romantic poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge was greatly influenced by Kant and helped to spread awareness of him, and of German idealism generally, in the UK and the USA. In his Biographia Literaria (1817), he credits Kant's ideas in coming to believe that the mind is not a passive but an active agent in the apprehension of reality.
Hegel was one of Kant's first major critics. The main accusations Hegel charged Kant's philosophy with were formalism (or "abstractism") and irrationality. In Hegel's view the entire project of setting a "transcendental subject" (i.e human consciousness) apart from nature, history, and society was fundamentally flawed, although parts of that very project could be put to good use in a new direction, that Hegel called the "absolute idealism". Similar concerns moved Hegel's criticisms to Kant's concept of moral autonomy, to which Hegel opposed an ethic focused on the "ethical life" of the community. In a sense, Hegel's notion of "ethical life" is meant to subsume, rather than replace, Kantian ethics. And Hegel can be seen as trying to defend Kant's idea of freedom as going beyond finite "desires", by means of reason. Thus, in contrast to later critics like Nietzsche or Russell, Hegel shares some of Kant's concerns.
Kant's thinking on religion was used in Britain to challenge the decline in religious faith in the nineteenth century. British Catholic writers, notably G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, followed this approach. Ronald Englefield debated this movement, and Kant's use of language. Criticisms of Kant were common in the realist views of the new positivism at that time.
Arthur Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism. He, like G. E. Schulze, Jacobi and Fichte before him, was critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Things in themselves, they argued, are neither the cause of what we observe nor are they completely beyond our access. Ever since the first Critique of Pure Reason philosophers have been critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Many have argued, if such a thing exists beyond experience then one cannot posit that it affects us causally, since that would entail stretching the category "causality" beyond the realm of experience. For Schopenhauer things in themselves do not exist outside the non-rational will. The world, as Schopenhauer would have it, is the striving and largely unconscious will. Michael Kelly, in the preface to his 1910 book Kant's Ethics and Schopenhauer's Criticism, stated: "Of Kant it may be said that what is good and true in his philosophy would have been buried with him, were it not for Schopenhauer...."
With the success and wide influence of Hegel's writings, Kant's influence began to wane, though there was in Germany a movement that hailed a return to Kant in the 1860s, beginning with the publication of Kant und die Epigonen in 1865 by Otto Liebmann. His motto was "Back to Kant", and a re-examination of his ideas began (see Neo-Kantianism). During the turn of the 20th century there was an important revival of Kant's theoretical philosophy, known as the Marburg School, represented in the work of Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, Ernst Cassirer, and anti-Neo-Kantian Nicolai Hartmann.
Kant's notion of "Critique" has been quite influential. The early German Romantics, especially Friedrich Schlegel in his "Athenaeum Fragments", used Kant's self-reflexive conception of criticism in their Romantic theory of poetry. Also in aesthetics, Clement Greenberg, in his classic essay "Modernist Painting", uses Kantian criticism, what Greenberg refers to as "immanent criticism", to justify the aims of abstract painting, a movement Greenberg saw as aware of the key limitiaton—flatness—that makes up the medium of painting. French philosopher Michel Foucault was also greatly influenced by Kant's notion of "Critique" and wrote several pieces on Kant for a re-thinking of the Enlightenment as a form of "critical thought". He went so far as to classify his own philosophy as a "critical history of modernity, rooted in Kant".
Kant believed that mathematical truths were forms of synthetic a priori knowledge, which means they are necessary and universal, yet known through intuition. Kant's often brief remarks about mathematics influenced the mathematical school known as intuitionism, a movement in philosophy of mathematics opposed to Hilbert's formalism, and Frege and Bertrand Russell's logicism.
Influence on modern thinkers
With his Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant is considered to have foreshadowed many of the ideas that have come to form the democratic peace theory, one of the main controversies in political science.
Prominent recent Kantians include the British philosophers P. F. Strawson, Onora O'Neill and Quassim Cassam, and the American philosophers Wilfrid Sellars and Christine Korsgaard. Due to the influence of Strawson and Sellars, among others, there has been a renewed interest in Kant's view of the mind. Central to many debates in philosophy of psychology and cognitive science is Kant's conception of the unity of consciousness.
Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls are two significant political and moral philosophers whose work is strongly influenced by Kant's moral philosophy. They argued against relativism, supporting the Kantian view that universality is essential to any viable moral philosophy. Jean-François Lyotard, however, emphasized the indeterminacy in the nature of thought and language and has engaged in debates with Habermas based on the effects this indeterminacy has on philosophical and political debates.
Mou Zongsan's study of Kant has been cited as a highly crucial part in the development of Mou's personal philosophy, namely New Confucianism. Widely regarded as the most influential Kant scholar in China, Mou's rigorous critique of Kant's philosophy—having translated all three of Kant's critiques—served as an ardent attempt to reconcile Chinese and Western philosophy whilst increasing pressure to westernize in China.
Kant's influence also has extended to the social, behavioral, and physical sciences, as in the sociology of Max Weber, the psychology of Jean Piaget and Carl Gustav Jung, and the linguistics of Noam Chomsky. Kant's work on mathematics and synthetic a priori knowledge is also cited by theoretical physicist Albert Einstein as an early influence on his intellectual development, but which he later criticised heavily and rejected. He held the view that "[I]f one does not want to assert that relativity theory goes against reason, one cannot retain the a priori concepts and norms of Kant's system". However, Kant scholar Stephen Palmquist has argued that Einstein's rejection of Kant's influence was primarily "a response to mistaken interpretations of Kant being adopted by contemporary philosophers", when in fact Kant's transcendental perspective informed Einstein's early worldview and led to his insights regarding simultaneity, and eventually to his proposal of the theory of relativity. Because of the thoroughness of the Kantian paradigm shift, his influence extends to thinkers who neither specifically refer to his work nor use his terminology.
In recent years, there has been renewed interest in Kant's theory of mind from the point of view of formal logic and computer science.
Film/television
Kant and his work was heavily referenced in the comedy television show The Good Place, as the show deals with the subject of ethics and moral philosophy.
Bibliography
List of major works
(1749) Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte)
(March 1755) Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels)
(April 1755) Brief Outline of Certain Meditations on Fire (Meditationum quarundam de igne succinta delineatio (master's thesis under Johann Gottfried Teske))
(September 1755) A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio (doctoral thesis))
(1756) The Use in Natural Philosophy of Metaphysics Combined with Geometry, Part I: Physical Monadology (Metaphysicae cum geometrica iunctae usus in philosophin naturali, cuius specimen I. continet monadologiam physicam, abbreviated as Monadologia Physica (thesis as a prerequisite of associate professorship))
(1762) The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures (Die falsche Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figuren)
(1763) The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes)
(1763) Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy (Versuch den Begriff der negativen Größen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen)
(1764) Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen)
(1764) Essay on the Illness of the Head (Über die Krankheit des Kopfes)
(1764) Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (the Prize Essay) (Untersuchungen über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral)
(1766) Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (Träume eines Geistersehers)
(1768) On the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Regions in Space (Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume)
(August 1770) Dissertation on the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World (De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis (doctoral thesis))
(1775) On the Different Races of Man (Über die verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen)
(1781) First edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
(1783) Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik)
(1784) "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" ("Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?")
(1784) "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" ("Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht")
(1785) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten)
(1786) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft)
(1786) "What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?" ("Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren?")
(1786) Conjectural Beginning of Human History (Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte)
(1787) Second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft)
(1788) Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft)
(1790) Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft)
(1793) Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft)
(1793) On the Old Saw: That May be Right in Theory But It Won't Work in Practice (Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis)
(1795) Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch ("Zum ewigen Frieden")
(1797) Metaphysics of Morals (Metaphysik der Sitten). First part is The Doctrine of Right, which has often been published separately as The Science of Right.
(1798) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht)
(1798) The Contest of Faculties (Der Streit der Fakultäten)
(1800) Logic (Logik)
(1803) On Pedagogy (Über Pädagogik)
(1804) Opus Postumum
(1817) Lectures on Philosophical Theology (Immanuel Kants Vorlesungen über die philosophische Religionslehre edited by K.H.L. Pölitz) [The English edition of A.W. Wood & G.M. Clark (Cornell, 1978) is based on Pölitz' second edition, 1830, of these lectures.]
Collected works in German
Printed version
Wilhelm Dilthey inaugurated the Academy edition (the Akademie-Ausgabe abbreviated as AA or Ak) of Kant's writings (Gesammelte Schriften, Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1902–38) in 1895, and served as its first editor. The volumes are grouped into four sections:
I. Kant's published writings (vols. 1–9),
II. Kant's correspondence (vols. 10–13),
III. Kant's literary remains, or Nachlass (vols. 14–23), and
IV. Student notes from Kant's lectures (vols. 24–29).
Electronic version
Elektronische Edition der Gesammelten Werke Immanuel Kants (vols. 1–23).
See also
Notes
References
Works cited
Kant, Immanuel. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Lewis White Beck, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1969. Page numbers citing this work are Beck's marginal numbers that refer to the page numbers of the standard edition of Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1902–38).
Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: a Biography. Cambridge University Press, 2001. .
Further reading
In Germany, one important contemporary interpreter of Kant and the movement of German Idealism he began is Dieter Henrich, who has some work available in English. P. F. Strawson's The Bounds of Sense (1966) played a significant role in determining the contemporary reception of Kant in England and America. More recent interpreters of note in the English-speaking world include Lewis White Beck, Jonathan Bennett, Henry Allison, Paul Guyer, Christine Korsgaard, Stephen Palmquist, Robert B. Pippin, Roger Scruton, Rudolf Makkreel, and Béatrice Longuenesse.
General introductions to his thought
Broad, C.D. Kant: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Gardner, Sebastian. Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1999.
Martin, Gottfried. Kant's Metaphysics and Theory of Science. Greenwood Press, 1955 (elucidates Kant's most fundamental concepts in their historical context)
Palmquist, Stephen. Kant's System of Perspectives : an architectonic interpretation of the Critical philosophy. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993.
Seung, T.K. 2007. Kant: a Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum.
Satyananda Giri. Kant. Durham, CT: Strategic Publishing Group, 2010.
Scruton, Roger. Kant: a Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2001. (provides a brief account of his life, and a lucid introduction to the three major critiques)
Uleman, Jennifer. An Introduction to Kant's Moral Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Luchte, James. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant's Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties. The Athlone Press, 1983.
Biography and historical context
Beck, Lewis White. Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors. Harvard University Press, 1969. (a survey of Kant's intellectual background)
Beiser, Frederick C. The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte. Harvard University Press, 1987.
Beiser, Frederick C. German Idealism: the Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781–1801. Harvard University Press, 2002
Cassirer, Ernst. Kant's Life and Thought. Translation of Kants Leben und Lehre. Trans., Jame S. Haden, intr. Stephan Körner. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart. Immanuel Kanta study and a comparison with Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruno, Plato and Descartes, the authorised translation from the German by Lord Redesdale, with his 'Introduction', The Bodley Head, London, 1914, (2 volumes).
Gulyga, Arsenij. Immanuel Kant: His Life and Thought. Trans., Marijan Despaltović. Boston: Birkhäuser, 1987.
Johnson, G.R. (ed.). Kant on Swedenborg. Dreams of a Spirit-Seer and Other Writings. Swedenborg Foundation, 2002. (new translation and analysis, many supplementary texts)
Lehner, Ulrich L., Kants Vorsehungskonzept auf dem Hintergrund der deutschen Schulphilosophie und –theologie (Leiden: 2007) (Kant's concept of Providence and its background in German school philosophy and theology)
Pinkard, Terry. German Philosophy, 1760–1860: the Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge, 2002.
Pippin, Robert. Idealism as Modernism. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Sassen, Brigitte (ed.). Kant's Early Critics: the Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy, Cambridge, 2000.
Schabert, Joseph A. "Kant's Influence on his Successors", The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. XLVII, January 1922.
Collections of essays
Firestone, Chris L. and Palmquist, Stephen (eds.). Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion. Notre Dame: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Förster, Eckart (ed.). Kant's Transcendental Deductions:. The Three 'Critiques' and the 'Opus Postumum' Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. Includes an important essay by Dieter Henrich.
Guyer, Paul (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Excellent collection of papers that covers most areas of Kant's thought.
Mohanty, J.N. and Shahan, Robert W. (eds.). Essays on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.
Phillips, Dewi et al. (eds.). Kant and Kierkegaard on Religion. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000, Collection of essays about Kantian religion and its influence on Kierkegaardian and contemporary philosophy of religion.
Proceedings of the International Kant Congresses. Several Congresses (numbered) edited by various publishers.
Theoretical philosophy
Allison, Henry. Kant's Transcendental Idealism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983, 2004. (a very influential defense of Kant's idealism, recently revised).
Ameriks, Karl. Kant's Theory of Mind: An Analysis of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982 (one of the first detailed studies of the Dialectic in English).
Banham, Gary. Kant's Transcendental Imagination. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant's Critical Philosophy. Trans., Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Gram, Moltke S. The Transcendental Turn: The Foundation of Kant's Idealism. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1984.
Greenberg, Robert. Kant's Theory of A Priori Knowledge. Penn State Press, 2001
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987 (modern defense of the view that Kant's theoretical philosophy is a "patchwork" of ill-fitting arguments).
Heidegger, Martin. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Trans., Richard Taft. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
Henrich, Dieter. The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant's Philosophy. Ed. with introduction by Richard L. Velkley; trans. Jeffrey Edwards et al. Harvard University Press, 1994.
Kemp Smith, Norman. A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason. London: Macmillan, 1930 (influential commentary on the first Critique, recently reprinted).
Kitcher, Patricia. Kant's Transcendental Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Longuenesse, Béatrice. Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Princeton University Press, 1998. . (argues that the notion of judgment provides the key to understanding the overall argument of the first Critique)
Melnick, Arthur. Kant's Analogies of Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. (important study of Kant's Analogies, including his defense of the principle of causality)
Paton, H.J. Kant's Metaphysic of Experience: a Commentary on the First Half of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Two volumes. London: Macmillan, 1936. (extensive study of Kant's theoretical philosophy)
Pippin, Robert B. Kant's Theory of Form: An Essay on the Critique of Pure Reason. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. (influential examination of the formal character of Kant's work)
Schopenhauer, Arthur. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Erster Band. Anhang. Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie. F.A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1859 (In English: Arthur Schopenhauer, New York: Dover Press, Volume I, Appendix, "Critique of the Kantian Philosophy", )
Seung, T.K. Kant's Transcendental Logic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969.
Strawson, P.F. The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1989 (the work that revitalized the interest of contemporary analytic philosophers in Kant).
Sturm, Thomas, Kant und die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. Paderborn: Mentis Verlag, 2009. . review (Treats Kant's anthropology and his views on psychology and history in relation to his philosophy of science.)
Tonelli, Giorgio. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason within the Tradition of Modern Logic. A Commentary on its History. Hildesheim, Olms 1994
Werkmeister, W.H., Kant: The Architectonic and Development of His Philosophy, Open Court Publishing Co., La Salle, Ill.; 1980 (it treats, as a whole, the architectonic and development of Kant's philosophy from 1755 through the Opus postumum.)
Wolff, Robert Paul. Kant's Theory of Mental Activity: A Commentary on the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1963. (detailed and influential commentary on the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason)
Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Kant and the Philosophy of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. (review )
Practical philosophy
Allison, Henry. Kant's Theory of Freedom. Cambridge University Press 1990.
Banham, Gary. Kant's Practical Philosophy: From Critique to Doctrine. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Dorschel, Andreas. Die idealistische Kritik des Willens: Versuch über die Theorie der praktischen Subjektivität bei Kant und Hegel. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1992 (Schriften zur Transzendentalphilosophie 10) .
Korsgaard, Christine M. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Michalson, Gordon E. Fallen Freedom: Kant on Radical Evil and Moral Regeneration. Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Michalson, Gordon E. Kant and the Problem of God. Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
Paton, H.J. The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant's Moral Philosophy. University of Pennsylvania Press 1971.
Rawls, John. Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, 2000.
Seung, T.K. Kant's Platonic Revolution in Moral and Political Philosophy. Johns Hopkins, 1994.
Wolff, Robert Paul. The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. New York: HarperCollins, 1974. .
Wood, Allen. Kant's Ethical Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Aesthetics
Allison, Henry. Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Banham, Gary. Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics. London and New York: Macmillan Press, 2000.
Clewis, Robert. The Kantian Sublime and the Revelation of Freedom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Crawford, Donald. Kant's Aesthetic Theory. Wisconsin, 1974.
Doran, Robert. The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Taste. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1979.
Hammermeister, Kai. The German Aesthetic Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Immanuel Kant entry in Kelly, Michael (Editor in Chief) (1998) Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Kaplama, Erman. Cosmological Aesthetics through the Kantian Sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian. Lanham: UPA, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
Makkreel, Rudolf, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant. Chicago, 1990.
McCloskey, Mary. Kant's Aesthetic. SUNY, 1987.
Schaper, Eva. Studies in Kant's Aesthetics. Edinburgh, 1979.
Zammito, John H. The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1992.
Zupancic, Alenka. Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan. Verso, 2000.
Philosophy of religion
Palmquist, Stephen. Kant's Critical Religion : Volume Two of Kant's System of Perspectives. Ashgate, 2000.
Perez, Daniel Omar. "Religión, Política y Medicina en Kant: El Conflicto de las Proposiciones". Cinta de Moebio. Revista de Epistemologia de Ciencias Sociales, v. 28, p. 91–103, 2007. Uchile.cl (Spanish)
Perpetual peace and international relations
Sir Harry Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace, Cambridge University Press, 1962.
Martin Wight, Four Seminal Thinkers in International Theory: Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant and Mazzini ed. Gabriele Wight & Brian Porter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Other works
Botul, Jean-Baptiste. La vie sexuelle d'Emmanuel Kant. Paris, Éd. Mille et une Nuits, 2008.
Caygill, Howard. A Kant Dictionary. Oxford; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Reference, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques. Mochlos; or, The Conflict of the Faculties. Columbia University, 1980.
Kelly, Michael. Kant's Ethics and Schopenhauer's Criticism, London: Swan Sonnenschein 1910. [Reprinted 2010 Nabu Press, ]
Mosser, Kurt. Necessity and Possibility; The Logical Strategy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Catholic University of America Press, 2008.
White, Mark D. Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autonomy, Dignity, and Character . Stanford University Press, 2011. . (Reviewed in The Montreal Review )
Contemporary philosophy with a Kantian influence
Guyer, Paul. Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant's Response to Hume. Princeton University Press, 2008.
Hanna, Robert, Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy. Clarendon Press, 2004.
Hanna, Robert, Kant, Science, and Human Nature. Clarendon Press, 2006.
Herman, Barbara. The Practice of Moral Judgement. Harvard University Press, 1993.
(A Kantian approach to the issue of pornography and degradation.)
Korsgaard, Christine. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (not a commentary, but a defense of a broadly Kantian approach to ethics)
McDowell, John. Mind and World. Harvard University Press, 1994. . (offers a Kantian solution to a dilemma in contemporary epistemology regarding the relation between mind and world)
Parfit, Derek. On What Matters (2 vols.). New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Pinker, Steven. The Stuff of Thought. Viking Press, 2007. . (Chapter 4 "Cleaving the Air" discusses Kant's anticipation of modern cognitive science)
Wood, Allen W. Kant's Ethical Thought. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. . (comprehensive, in-depth study of Kant's ethics, with emphasis on formula of humanity as most accurate formulation of the categorical imperative)
External links
KantPapers, authors and papers database powered by PhilPapers, focused on Kant, and located at Cornell University
Immanuel Kant at the Encyclopædia Britannica
Immanuel Kant in the Christian Cyclopedia
Works by Immanuel Kant at Duisburg-Essen University
Stephen Palmquist's Glossary of Kantian Terminology
Kant's Ethical Theory – Kantian ethics explained, applied and evaluated
Notes on Utilitarianism – A conveniently brief survey of Kant's Utilitarianism
"Immanuel Kant", An overview of his work, times, and influence on biology, plantspeopleplanet.org.au
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: An Overview
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Aesthetics
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Logic
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Mind
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Radical Evil
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Religion
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Immanuel Kant
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Writers about religion and science | false | [
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region",
"Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts"
] |
[
"Gary Cooper",
"Silent films, 1925-28"
] | C_84d38f8ca490447a92f516e3616fdb66_1 | what happened in 1925? | 1 | What happened in 1925 with Gary Cooper? | Gary Cooper | In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, including Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt work--which sometimes injured horses and riders--"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name. Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week. Cooper's first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal--finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings, the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada--both films directed by John Waters. In 1928, Paramount paired Cooper with a youthful Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss--advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride. That year, Cooper also made Lilac Time with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928. CANNOTANSWER | In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures | Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper; May 7, 1901 – May 13, 1961) was an American actor known for his strong, silent, and understated acting style. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice and had a further three nominations, as well as receiving an Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements in 1961. He was one of the top 10 film personalities for 23 consecutive years, and one of the top money-making stars for 18 years. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper at No. 11 on its list of the 25 greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Cooper's career spanned 36 years, from 1925 to 1961, and included leading roles in 84 feature films. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era through to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His screen persona appealed strongly to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major film genres. His ability to project his own personality onto the characters he played contributed to his natural and authentic appearance on screen. Throughout his career, he sustained a screen persona that represented the ideal American hero.
Cooper began his career as a film extra and stunt rider, but soon landed acting roles. After establishing himself as a Western hero in his early silent films, he appeared as the Virginian and became a movie star in 1929 with his first sound picture, The Virginian. In the early 1930s, he expanded his heroic image to include more cautious characters in adventure films and dramas such as A Farewell to Arms (1932) and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935). During the height of his career, Cooper portrayed a new type of hero—a champion of the common man—in films such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Meet John Doe (1941), Sergeant York (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). He later portrayed more mature characters at odds with the world in films such as The Fountainhead (1949) and High Noon (1952). In his final films, he played non-violent characters searching for redemption in films such as Friendly Persuasion (1956) and Man of the West (1958).
Early life
Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana, on May 7, 1901, the younger of two sons of English parents Alice (née Brazier; 1873–1967) and Charles Henry Cooper (1865–1946). His brother, Arthur, was six years his senior. Cooper's father came from Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire, and became a prominent lawyer, rancher, and Montana Supreme Court justice. His mother hailed from Gillingham, Kent, and married Charles in Montana. In 1906, Charles purchased the Seven-Bar-Nine cattle ranch, about north of Helena near Craig, Montana. Cooper and Arthur spent their summers at the ranch and learned to ride horses, hunt, and fish. Cooper attended Central Grade School in Helena.
Alice wanted her sons to have an English education, so she took them back to England in 1909 to enroll them in Dunstable Grammar School in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. While there, Cooper and his brother lived with their father's cousins, William and Emily Barton, at their home in Houghton Regis. Cooper studied Latin, French, and English history at Dunstable until 1912. While he adapted to English school discipline and learned the requisite social graces, he never adjusted to the rigid class structure and formal Eton collars he was required to wear. He received his confirmation in the Church of England at the Church of All Saints in Houghton Regis on December 3, 1911. His mother accompanied her sons back to the U.S. in August 1912, and Cooper resumed his education at Johnson Grammar School in Helena.
When Cooper was 15, he injured his hip in a car accident. On his doctor's recommendation, he returned to the Seven-Bar-Nine ranch to recuperate by horseback riding. The misguided therapy left him with his characteristic stiff, off-balanced walk and slightly angled horse-riding style. He left Helena High School after two years in 1918, and returned to the family ranch to work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for him to attend Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana, where English teacher Ida Davis encouraged him to focus on academics and participate in debating and dramatics. Cooper later called Davis "the woman partly responsible for [him] giving up cowboy-ing and going to college".
Cooper was still attending high school in 1920 when he took three art courses at Montana Agricultural College in Bozeman. His interest in art was inspired years earlier by the Western paintings of Charles Marion Russell and Frederic Remington. Cooper especially admired and studied Russell's Lewis and Clark Meeting Indians at Ross' Hole (1910), which still hangs in the state capitol building in Helena. In 1922, to continue his art education, he enrolled in Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. He did well academically in most of his courses, but was not accepted into the school's drama club. His drawings and watercolor paintings were exhibited throughout the dormitory, and he was named art editor for the college yearbook. During the summers of 1922 and 1923, Cooper worked at Yellowstone National Park as a tour guide driving the yellow open-top buses. Despite a promising first 18 months at Grinnell, he left college suddenly in February 1924, spent a month in Chicago looking for work as an artist, and then returned to Helena, where he sold editorial cartoons to the local Independent newspaper.
In autumn 1924, Cooper's father left the Montana Supreme Court bench and moved with his wife to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives, and Cooper joined his parents there in November at his father's request. After briefly working a series of unpromising jobs, he met two friends from Montana who were working as film extras and stunt riders in low-budget Western films for the small movie studios on Poverty Row. They introduced him to another Montana cowboy, rodeo champion Jay "Slim" Talbot, who took him to see a casting director. Wanting money for a professional art course, Cooper worked as a film extra for $5 a day, and as a stunt rider for $10. Cooper and Talbot became close friends and hunting companions, and Talbot later worked as Cooper's stuntman and stand-in for over three decades.
Career
Silent films, 1925–1928
In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, but also the already emergent major studios, Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt workwhich sometimes injured horses and riders"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name.
Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week.
Cooper's first important film role was a supporting part in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) starring Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal—finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings (both 1927), the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada—both films directed by John Waters.
Paramount paired Cooper with Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss (both 1928)—advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride (also both 1928). Around the same time, Cooper made Lilac Time (1928) with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928.
Hollywood stardom, 1929–1935
Cooper became a major movie star in 1929 with the release of his first talking picture, The Virginian (1929), which was directed by Victor Fleming and co-starred Mary Brian and Walter Huston. Based on the popular novel by Owen Wister, The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honor and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western movie genre that persist to the present day. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, the romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero who embodied male freedom, courage, and honor was created in large part by Cooper in the film. Unlike some silent film actors who had trouble adapting to the new sound medium, Cooper transitioned naturally, with his "deep and clear" and "pleasantly drawling" voice, which was perfectly suited for the characters he portrayed on screen, also according to Meyers. Looking to capitalize on Cooper's growing popularity, Paramount cast him in several Westerns and wartime dramas, including Only the Brave, The Texan, Seven Days' Leave, A Man from Wyoming, and The Spoilers (all released in 1930). Norman Rockwell depicted Cooper in his role as The Texan for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 24, 1930.
One of the more important performances in Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's film Morocco (also 1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her introduction to American audiences. During production, von Sternberg focused his energies on Dietrich and treated Cooper dismissively. Tensions came to a head after von Sternberg yelled directions at Cooper in German. The actor approached the director, picked him up by the collar, and said, "If you expect to work in this country you'd better get on to the language we use here." Despite the tensions on the set, Cooper produced "one of his best performances", according to Thornton Delehanty of the New York Evening Post.
After returning to the Western genre in Zane Grey's Fighting Caravans (1931) with French actress Lili Damita, Cooper appeared in the Dashiell Hammett crime film City Streets (also 1931), co-starring Sylvia Sidney and Paul Lukas, playing a westerner who gets involved with big-city gangsters in order to save the woman he loves. Cooper concluded the year with appearances in two unsuccessful films: I Take This Woman (also 1931) with Carole Lombard, and His Woman with Claudette Colbert. The demands and pressures of making ten films in two years left Cooper exhausted and in poor health, suffering from anemia and jaundice. He had lost during that period, and felt lonely, isolated, and depressed by his sudden fame and wealth. In May 1931, Cooper left Hollywood and sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year.
During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso at the Villa Madama in Rome, where she taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. After guiding him through the great art museums and galleries of Italy, she accompanied him on a ten-week big-game hunting safari on the slopes of Mount Kenya in East Africa, where he was credited with over sixty kills, including two lions, a rhinoceros, and various antelopes. His safari experience in Africa had a profound influence on Cooper and intensified his love of the wilderness. After returning to Europe, he and the countess set off on a Mediterranean cruise of the Italian and French Rivieras. Rested and rejuvenated by his year-long exile, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood in April 1932 and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 a week, and director and script approval.
In 1932, after completing Devil and the Deep with Tallulah Bankhead to fulfill his old contract, Cooper appeared in A Farewell to Arms, the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Co-starring Helen Hayes, a leading New York theatre star and Academy Award winner, and Adolphe Menjou, the film presented Cooper with one of his most ambitious and challenging dramatic roles, playing an American ambulance driver wounded in Italy who falls in love with an English nurse during World War I. Critics praised his highly intense and emotional performance, and the film became one of the year's most commercially successful pictures. In 1933, after making Today We Live with Joan Crawford and One Sunday Afternoon with Fay Wray, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy film Design for Living, based on the successful Noël Coward play. Co-starring Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March, the film was a box office success, ranking as one of the top ten highest-grossing films of 1933. All three of the lead actors—March, Cooper, and Hopkins—received attention from this film as they were all at the peak of their careers. Cooper's performance — playing an American artist in Europe competing with his playwright friend for the affections of a beautiful woman — was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy. Cooper changed his name legally to "Gary Cooper" in August 1933.
In 1934, Cooper was loaned out to MGM for the Civil War drama film Operator 13 with Marion Davies, about a beautiful Union spy who falls in love with a Confederate soldier. Despite Richard Boleslawski's imaginative direction and George J. Folsey's lavish cinematography, the film did poorly at the box office.
Back at Paramount, Cooper appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever, with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. In the film, he plays a confidence man who tries to sell his daughter to the relatives who raised her, but is eventually won over by the adorable girl. Impressed by Temple's intelligence and charm, Cooper developed a close rapport with her, both on and off screen. The film was a box-office success.
The following year, Cooper was loaned out to Samuel Goldwyn Productions to appear in King Vidor's romance film The Wedding Night with Anna Sten, who was being groomed as "another Garbo". In the film, Cooper plays an alcoholic novelist who retreats to his family's New England farm where he meets and falls in love with a beautiful Polish neighbor. Cooper delivered a performance of surprising range and depth, according to biographer Larry Swindell. Despite receiving generally favorable reviews, the film was not popular with American audiences, who may have been offended by the film's depiction of an extramarital affair and its tragic ending.
That same year, Cooper appeared in two Henry Hathaway films: the melodrama Peter Ibbetson with Ann Harding, about a man caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the adventure film The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. While the former, championed by the surrealists became more successful in Europe than in the United States, the latter was nominated for seven Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films. Hathaway had the highest respect for Cooper's acting ability, calling him "the best actor of all of them".
American folk hero, 1936–1943
From Mr. Deeds to The Real Glory, 1936–1939
Cooper's career took an important turn in 1936. After making Frank Borzage's romantic comedy film Desire with Marlene Dietrich at Paramount—in which he delivered a performance considered by some contemporary critics as one of his finest—Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. In the film, Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, a quiet, innocent writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont, and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin were able to use Cooper's well-established screen persona as the "quintessential American hero"—a symbol of honesty, courage, and goodness—to create a new type of "folk hero" for the common man. Commenting on Cooper's impact on the character and the film, Capra observed:
Both Desire and Mr. Deeds opened in April 1936 to critical praise and were major box-office successes. In his review in The New York Times, Frank Nugent wrote that Cooper was "proving himself one of the best light comedians in Hollywood". For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Cooper appeared in two other Paramount films in 1936. In Lewis Milestone's adventure film The General Died at Dawn with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success.
In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly fictionalized version of the opening of the American western frontier. The film was an even greater box-office hit than its predecessor, due in large part to Jean Arthur's definitive depiction of Calamity Jane and Cooper's inspired portrayal of Hickock as an enigmatic figure of "deepening mythic substance". That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-three years.
In late 1936, Paramount was preparing a new contract for Cooper that would raise his salary to $8,000 a week when Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn for six films over six years with a minimum guarantee of $150,000 per picture. Paramount brought suit against Goldwyn and Cooper, and the court ruled that Cooper's new Goldwyn contract afforded the actor sufficient time to also honor his Paramount agreement. Cooper continued to make films with both studios, and by 1939 the United States Treasury reported that Cooper was the country's highest wage earner, at $482,819 (equivalent to $ million in ).
In contrast to his output the previous year, Cooper appeared in only one picture in 1937, Henry Hathaway's adventure film Souls at Sea. A critical and box-office failure, Cooper referred to it as his "almost picture", saying, "It was almost exciting, and almost interesting. And I was almost good." In 1938, he appeared in Archie Mayo's biographical film The Adventures of Marco Polo. Plagued by production problems and a weak screenplay, the film became Goldwyn's biggest failure to that date, losing $700,000. During this period, Cooper turned down several important roles, including the role of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Cooper was producer David O. Selznick's first choice for the part. He made several overtures to the actor, but Cooper had doubts about the project, and did not feel suited to the role. Cooper later admitted, "It was one of the best roles ever offered in Hollywood ... But I said no. I didn't see myself as quite that dashing, and later, when I saw Clark Gable play the role to perfection, I knew I was right."
Back at Paramount, Cooper returned to a more comfortable genre in Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert. In the film, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. Despite the clever screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, and solid performances by Cooper and Colbert, American audiences had trouble accepting Cooper in the role of a shallow philanderer. It succeeded only at the European box office market.
In the fall of 1938, Cooper appeared in H. C. Potter's romantic comedy The Cowboy and the Lady with Merle Oberon, about a sweet-natured rodeo cowboy who falls in love with the wealthy daughter of a presidential hopeful, believing her to be a poor, hard-working lady's maid. The efforts of three directors and several eminent screenwriters could not salvage what could have been a fine vehicle for Cooper. While more successful than its predecessor, the film was Cooper's fourth consecutive box-office failure in the American market.
In the next two years, Cooper was more discerning about the roles he accepted and made four successful large-scale adventure and cowboy films. In William A. Wellman's adventure film Beau Geste (1939), he plays one of three daring English brothers who join the French Foreign Legion in the Sahara to fight local tribes. Filmed in the same Mojave Desert locations as the original 1926 version with Ronald Colman, Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona. This was the last film in Cooper's contract with Paramount.
In Henry Hathaway's The Real Glory (1939), he plays a military doctor who accompanies a small group of American Army officers to the Philippines to help the Christian Filipinos defend themselves against Muslim radicals. Many film critics praised Cooper's performance, including author and film critic Graham Greene, who recognized that he "never acted better".
From The Westerner to For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940–1943
Cooper returned to the Western genre in William Wyler's The Westerner (1940) with Walter Brennan and Doris Davenport, about a drifting cowboy who defends homesteaders against Roy Bean, a corrupt judge known as the "law west of the Pecos". Screenwriter Niven Busch relied on Cooper's extensive knowledge of Western history while working on the script. The film received positive reviews and did well at the box-office, with reviewers praising the performances of the two lead actors. That same year, Cooper appeared in his first all-Technicolor feature, Cecil B. DeMille's adventure film North West Mounted Police (1940). In the film, Cooper plays a Texas Ranger who pursues an outlaw into western Canada where he joins forces with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who are after the same man, a leader of the North-West Rebellion. While not as popular with critics as its predecessor, the film was another box-office success—the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1940.
The early 1940s were Cooper's prime years as an actor. In a relatively short period, he appeared in five critically successful and popular films that produced some of his finest performances. When Frank Capra offered him the lead role in Meet John Doe before Robert Riskin even developed the script, Cooper accepted his friend's offer, saying, "It's okay, Frank, I don't need a script." In the film, Cooper plays Long John Willoughby, a down-and-out bush-league pitcher hired by a newspaper to pretend to be a man who promises to commit suicide on Christmas Eve to protest all the hypocrisy and corruption in the country. Considered by some critics to be Capra's best film at the time, Meet John Doe was received as a "national event" with Cooper appearing on the front cover of Time magazine on March 3, 1941. In his review in the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes called Cooper's performance a "splendid and utterly persuasive portrayal" and praised his "utterly realistic acting which comes through with such authority". Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote, "Gary Cooper, of course, is 'John Doe' to the life and in the whole—shy, bewildered, non-aggressive, but a veritable tiger when aroused."
That same year, Cooper made two films with director and good friend Howard Hawks. In the biographical film Sergeant York, Cooper portrays war hero Alvin C. York, one of the most decorated American soldiers in World War I. The film chronicles York's early backwoods days in Tennessee, his religious conversion and subsequent piety, his stand as a conscientious objector, and finally his heroic actions at the Battle of the Argonne Forest, which earned him the Medal of Honor. Initially, Cooper was nervous and uncertain about playing a living hero, so he traveled to Tennessee to visit York at his home, and the two quiet men established an immediate rapport and discovered they had much in common. Inspired by York's encouragement, Cooper delivered a performance that Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune called "one of extraordinary conviction and versatility", and that Archer Winston of the New York Post called "one of his best". After the film's release, Cooper was awarded the Distinguished Citizenship Medal by the Veterans of Foreign Wars for his "powerful contribution to the promotion of patriotism and loyalty". York admired Cooper's performance and helped promote the film for Warner Bros. Sergeant York became the top-grossing film of the year and was nominated for eleven Academy Awards. Accepting his first Academy Award for Best Actor from his friend James Stewart, Cooper said, "It was Sergeant Alvin York who won this award. Shucks, I've been in the business sixteen years and sometimes dreamed I might get one of these. That's all I can say ... Funny when I was dreaming I always made a better speech."
Cooper concluded the year back at Goldwyn with Howard Hawks to make the romantic comedy Ball of Fire with Barbara Stanwyck. In the film, Cooper plays a shy linguistics professor who leads a team of seven scholars who are writing an encyclopedia. While researching slang, he meets Stanwyck's flirtatious burlesque stripper Sugarpuss O'Shea who blows the dust off their staid life of books. The screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder provided Cooper the opportunity to exercise the full range of his light comedy skills. In his review for the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes wrote that Cooper handled the role with "great skill and comic emphasis" and that his performance was "utterly delightful". Though small in scale, Ball of Fire was one of the top-grossing films of the year—Cooper's fourth consecutive picture to make the top twenty.
Cooper's only film appearance in 1942 was also his last under his Goldwyn contract. In Sam Wood's biographical film The Pride of the Yankees, Cooper portrays baseball star Lou Gehrig who established a record with the New York Yankees for playing in 2,130 consecutive games. Cooper was reluctant to play the seven-time All-Star, who only died the previous year from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — now commonly called "Lou Gehrig's disease". Beyond the challenges of effectively portraying such a popular and nationally recognized figure, Cooper knew very little about baseball and was not left-handed like Gehrig.
After Gehrig's widow visited the actor and expressed her desire that he portray her husband, Cooper accepted the role that covered a twenty-year span of Gehrig's life—his early love of baseball, his rise to greatness, his loving marriage, and his struggle with illness, culminating in his farewell speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939 before 62,000 fans. Cooper quickly learned the physical movements of a baseball player and developed a fluid, believable swing. The handedness issue was solved by reversing the print for certain batting scenes. The film was one of the year's top ten pictures and received eleven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's third).
Soon after the publication of Ernest Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, Paramount paid $150,000 for the film rights with the express intent of casting Cooper in the lead role of Robert Jordan, an American explosives expert who fights alongside the Republican loyalists during the Spanish Civil War. The original director, Cecil B. DeMille, was replaced by Sam Wood who brought in Dudley Nichols for the screenplay. After the start of principal photography in the Sierra Nevada in late 1942, Ingrid Bergman was brought in to replace ballerina Vera Zorina as the female lead—a change supported by Cooper and Hemingway. The love scenes between Bergman and Cooper were "rapturous" and passionate. Howard Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune wrote that both actors performed with "the true stature and authority of stars". While the film distorted the novel's original political themes and meaning, For Whom the Bell Tolls was a critical and commercial success and received ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's fourth).
World War II related activities
Due to his age and health, Cooper did not serve in the military during World War II, but like many of his colleagues, he got involved in the war effort by entertaining the troops. In June 1943, he visited military hospitals in San Diego, and often appeared at the Hollywood Canteen serving food to the servicemen. In late 1943, Cooper undertook a tour of the South West Pacific with actresses Una Merkel and Phyllis Brooks, and accordionist Andy Arcari.
Traveling on a B-24A Liberator bomber, the group toured the Cook Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia, Queensland, Brisbane—where General Douglas MacArthur told Cooper he was watching Sergeant York in a Manila theater when Japanese bombs began falling—New Guinea, Jayapura, and throughout the Solomon Islands.
The group often shared the same sparse living conditions and K-rations as the troops. Cooper met with the servicemen and women, visited military hospitals, introduced his attractive colleagues, and participated in occasional skits. The shows concluded with Cooper's moving recitation of Lou Gehrig's farewell speech. When he returned to the United States, he visited military hospitals throughout the country. Cooper later called his time with the troops the "greatest emotional experience" of his life.
Mature roles, 1944–1952
In 1944, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's wartime adventure film The Story of Dr. Wassell with Laraine Day — his third movie with the director. In the film, Cooper plays American doctor and missionary Corydon M. Wassell, who leads a group of wounded sailors through the jungles of Java to safety. Despite receiving poor reviews, Dr. Wassell was one of the top-grossing films of the year. With his Goldwyn and Paramount contracts now concluded, Cooper decided to remain independent and formed his own production company, International Pictures, with Leo Spitz, William Goetz, and Nunnally Johnson. The fledgling studio's first offering was Sam Wood's romantic comedy Casanova Brown with Teresa Wright, about a man who learns his soon-to-be ex-wife is pregnant with his child, just as he is about to marry another woman. The film received poor reviews, with the New York Daily News calling it "delightful nonsense", and Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, criticizing Cooper's "somewhat obvious and ridiculous clowning". The film was barely profitable.
In 1945, Cooper starred in and produced Stuart Heisler's Western comedy Along Came Jones with Loretta Young for International. In this lighthearted parody of his past heroic image, Cooper plays comically inept cowboy Melody Jones who is mistaken for a ruthless killer. Audiences embraced Cooper's character, and the film was one of the top box-office pictures of the year—a testament to Cooper's still vital audience appeal. It was also International's biggest financial success during its brief history before being sold off to Universal Studios in 1946.
Cooper's career during the post-war years drifted in new directions as American society was changing. While he still played conventional heroic roles, his films now relied less on his heroic screen persona and more on novel stories and exotic settings. In November 1945, Cooper appeared in Sam Wood's nineteenth-century period drama Saratoga Trunk with Ingrid Bergman, about a Texas cowboy and his relationship with a beautiful fortune-hunter. Filmed in early 1943, the movie's release was delayed for two years due to the increased demand for war movies. Despite poor reviews, Saratoga Trunk did well at the box office and became one of the top money-makers of the year for Warner Bros. Cooper's only film in 1946 was Fritz Lang's romantic thriller Cloak and Dagger, about a mild-mannered physics professor recruited by the OSS during the last years of World War II to investigate the German atomic bomb program. Playing a part loosely based on physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Cooper was uneasy with the role and unable to convey the "inner sense" of the character. The film received poor reviews and was a box-office failure. In 1947, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's epic adventure film Unconquered with Paulette Goddard, about a Virginia militiaman who defends settlers against an unscrupulous gun trader and hostile Indians on the Western frontier during the eighteenth century. The film received mixed reviews, but even long-time DeMille critic James Agee acknowledged the picture had "some authentic flavor of the period". This last of four films made with DeMille was Cooper's most lucrative, earning the actor over $300,000 (equal to $ today) in salary and percentage of profits. Unconquered would be his last unqualified box-office success for the next five years.
In 1948, after making Leo McCarey's romantic comedy Good Sam, Cooper sold his company to Universal Studios and signed a long-term contract with Warner Bros. that gave him script and director approval and a guaranteed $295,000 (equal to $ today) per picture. His first film under the new contract was King Vidor's drama The Fountainhead (1949) with Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey. In the film, Cooper plays an idealistic and uncompromising architect who struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism in the face of societal pressures to conform to popular standards. Based on the novel by Ayn Rand who also wrote the screenplay, the film reflects her philosophy and attacks the concepts of collectivism while promoting the virtues of individualism. For most critics, Cooper was hopelessly miscast in the role of Howard Roark. In his review for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther concluded he was "Mr. Deeds out of his element". Cooper returned to his element in Delmer Daves' war drama Task Force (1949), about a retiring rear admiral who reminisces about his long career as a naval aviator and his role in the development of aircraft carriers. Cooper's performance and the Technicolor newsreel footage supplied by the United States Navy made the film one of Cooper's most popular during this period. In the next two years, Cooper made four poorly received films: Michael Curtiz' period drama Bright Leaf (1950), Stuart Heisler's Western melodrama Dallas (1950), Henry Hathaway's wartime comedy You're in the Navy Now (1951), and Raoul Walsh's Western action film Distant Drums (1951).
Cooper's most important film during the post-war years was Fred Zinnemann's Western drama High Noon (1952) with Grace Kelly and Katy Jurado for United Artists. In the film, Cooper plays retiring sheriff Will Kane who is preparing to leave town on his honeymoon when he learns that an outlaw he helped put away and his three henchmen are returning to seek their revenge. Unable to gain the support of the frightened townspeople, and abandoned by his young bride, Kane nevertheless stays to face the outlaws alone. During the filming, Cooper was in poor health and in considerable pain from stomach ulcers. His ravaged face and discomfort in some scenes "photographed as self-doubt", according to biographer Hector Arce, and contributed to the effectiveness of his performance. Considered one of the first "adult" Westerns for its theme of moral courage, High Noon received enthusiastic reviews for its artistry, with Time magazine placing it in the ranks of Stagecoach and The Gunfighter. Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote that Cooper was "at the top of his form", and John McCarten, in The New Yorker, wrote that Cooper was never more effective. The film earned $3.75 million in the United States and $18 million worldwide. Following the example of his friend James Stewart, Cooper accepted a lower salary in exchange for a percent of the profits, and ended up making $600,000. Cooper's understated performance was widely praised, and earned him his second Academy Award for Best Actor.
Later films, 1953–1961
After appearing in André de Toth's Civil War drama Springfield Rifle (1952)—a standard Warner Bros. film that was overshadowed by the success of its predecessor—Cooper made four films outside the United States. In Mark Robson's drama Return to Paradise (1953), Cooper plays an American wanderer who liberates the inhabitants of a Polynesian island from the puritanical rule of a misguided pastor. Cooper endured spartan living conditions, long hours, and ill health during the three-month location shoot on the island of Upolu in Western Samoa. Despite its beautiful cinematography, the film received poor reviews. Cooper's next three films were shot in Mexico. In Hugo Fregonese's action adventure film Blowing Wild (1953) with Barbara Stanwyck, he plays a wildcatter in Mexico who gets involved with an oil company executive and his unscrupulous wife with whom he once had an affair.
In 1954, Cooper appeared in Henry Hathaway's Western drama Garden of Evil, with Susan Hayward, about three soldiers of fortune in Mexico hired to rescue a woman's husband. That same year, he appeared in Robert Aldrich's Western adventure Vera Cruz with Burt Lancaster. In the film, Cooper plays an American adventurer hired by Emperor Maximilian I to escort a countess to Vera Cruz during the Mexican Rebellion of 1866. All of these films received poor reviews but did well at the box-office. For his work in Vera Cruz, Cooper earned $1.4 million in salary and percent of the gross.
During this period, Cooper struggled with health problems. As well as his ongoing treatment for ulcers, he suffered a severe shoulder injury during the filming of Blowing Wild when he was hit by metal fragments from a dynamited oil well. During the filming of Vera Cruz, he reinjured his hip falling from a horse, and was burned when Lancaster fired his rifle too close and the wadding from the blank shell pierced his clothing.
In 1955, he appeared in Otto Preminger's biographical war drama The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, about the World War I general who tried to convince government officials of the importance of air power, and was court-martialed after blaming the War Department for a series of air disasters. Some critics felt that Cooper was miscast, and that his dull, tight-lipped performance did not reflect Mitchell's dynamic and caustic personality. In 1956, Cooper was more effective playing a gentle Indiana Quaker in William Wyler's Civil War drama Friendly Persuasion with Dorothy McGuire. Like Sergeant York and High Noon, the film addresses the conflict between religious pacifism and civic duty. For his performance, Cooper received his second Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actor. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, and went on to earn $8 million worldwide.
In 1956, Cooper traveled to France to make Billy Wilder's romantic comedy Love in the Afternoon with Audrey Hepburn and Maurice Chevalier. In the film, Cooper plays a middle-aged American playboy in Paris who pursues and eventually falls in love with a much younger woman. Despite receiving some positive reviews—including from Bosley Crowther who praised the film's "charming performances"—most reviewers concluded that Cooper was simply too old for the part. While audiences may not have welcomed seeing Cooper's heroic screen image tarnished by his playing an aging roué trying to seduce an innocent young girl, the film was still a box-office success. The following year, Cooper appeared in Philip Dunne's romantic drama Ten North Frederick. In the film, which was based on the novel by John O'Hara, Cooper plays an attorney whose life is ruined by a double-crossing politician and his own secret affair with his daughter's young roommate. While Cooper brought "conviction and controlled anguish" to his performance, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, it was not enough to save what Bosley Crowther called a "hapless film".
Despite his ongoing health problems and several operations for ulcers and hernias, Cooper continued to work in action films. In 1958, he appeared in Anthony Mann's Western drama Man of the West (1958) with Julie London and Lee J. Cobb, about a reformed outlaw and killer who is forced to confront his violent past when the train he is riding in is held up by his former gang members. The film has been called Cooper's "most pathological Western", with its themes of impotent rage, sexual humiliation, and sadism. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, Cooper, who struggled with moral conflicts in his personal life, "understood the anguish of a character striving to retain his integrity ... [and] brought authentic feeling to the role of a tempted and tormented, yet essentially decent man". Mostly ignored by critics at the time, the film is now well-regarded by film scholars and is considered Cooper's last great film.
After his Warner Bros. contract ended, Cooper formed his own production company, Baroda Productions, and made three unusual films in 1959 about redemption. In Delmer Daves' Western drama The Hanging Tree, Cooper plays a frontier doctor who saves a criminal from a lynch mob, and later tries to exploit his sordid past. Cooper delivered a "powerful and persuasive" performance of an emotionally scarred man whose need to dominate others is transformed by the love and sacrifice of a woman. In Robert Rossen's historical adventure They Came to Cordura with Rita Hayworth, he plays an army officer who is found guilty of cowardice and assigned the degrading task of recommending soldiers for the Medal of Honor during the Pancho Villa Expedition of 1916.
While Cooper received positive reviews, Variety and Films in Review felt he was too old for the part. In Michael Anderson's action drama The Wreck of the Mary Deare with Charlton Heston, Cooper plays a disgraced merchant marine officer who decides to stay aboard his sinking cargo ship in order to prove the vessel was deliberately scuttled and to redeem his good name. Like its two predecessors, the film was physically demanding. Cooper, who was a trained scuba diver, did most of his own underwater scenes. Biographer Jeffrey Meyers observed that in all three roles, Cooper effectively conveyed the sense of lost honor and desire for redemption—what Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim called the "struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what his moral identity should be".
Personal life
Marriage and family
Cooper was formally introduced to his future wife, 20-year-old New York debutante Veronica Balfe, on Easter Sunday 1933 at a party given by her uncle, art director Cedric Gibbons. Called "Rocky" by her family and friends, she grew up on Park Avenue and attended finishing schools. Her stepfather was Wall Street tycoon Paul Shields. Cooper and Rocky were quietly married at her parents' Park Avenue residence on December 15, 1933. According to his friends, the marriage had a positive impact on Cooper, who turned away from past indiscretions and took control of his life. Athletic and a lover of the outdoors, Rocky shared many of Cooper's interests, including riding, skiing, and skeet-shooting. She organized their social life, and her wealth and social connections provided Cooper access to New York high society. Cooper and his wife owned homes in the Los Angeles area in Encino (1933–36), Brentwood (1936–53), and Holmby Hills (1954–61), and owned a vacation home in Aspen, Colorado (1949–53).
Gary and Veronica Cooper's daughter, Maria Veronica Cooper, was born on September 15, 1937. By all accounts, he was a patient and affectionate father, teaching Maria to ride a bicycle, play tennis, ski, and ride horses. Sharing many of her parents' interests, she accompanied them on their travels and was often photographed with them. Like her father, she developed a love for art and drawing. As a family they vacationed together in Sun Valley, Idaho, spent time at Rocky's parents' country house in Southampton, New York, and took frequent trips to Europe. Cooper and Rocky were legally separated on May 16, 1951, when Cooper moved out of their home. For over two years, they maintained a fragile and uneasy family life with their daughter. Cooper moved back into their home in November 1953, and their formal reconciliation occurred in February 1954.
Romantic relationships
Prior to his marriage, Cooper had a series of romantic relationships with leading actresses, beginning in 1927 with Clara Bow, who advanced his career by helping him get one of his first leading roles in Children of Divorce. Bow was also responsible for getting Cooper a role in Wings, which generated an enormous amount of fan mail for the young actor. In 1928, he had a relationship with another experienced actress, Evelyn Brent, whom he met while filming Beau Sabreur. In 1929, while filming The Wolf Song, Cooper began an intense affair with Lupe Vélez, which was the most important romance of his early life. During their two years together, Cooper also had brief affairs with Marlene Dietrich while filming Morocco in 1930 and with Carole Lombard while making I Take This Woman in 1931. During his year abroad in 1931–32, Cooper had an affair with the married Countess Dorothy di Frasso, while staying at her Villa Madama near Rome.
After he was married in December 1933, Cooper remained faithful to his wife until the summer of 1942, when he began an affair with Ingrid Bergman during the production of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Their relationship lasted through the completion of filming Saratoga Trunk in June 1943. In 1948, after finishing work on The Fountainhead, Cooper began an affair with actress Patricia Neal, his co-star. At first they kept their affair discreet, but eventually it became an open secret in Hollywood, and Cooper's wife confronted him with the rumors, which he admitted were true. He also confessed that he was in love with Neal, and continued to see her. Cooper and his wife were legally separated in May 1951, but he did not seek a divorce. Neal later claimed that Cooper hit her after she went on a date with Kirk Douglas, and that he arranged for her to have an abortion when she became pregnant with Cooper's child. Neal ended their relationship in late December 1951. During his three-year separation from his wife, Cooper was rumored to have had affairs with Grace Kelly, Lorraine Chanel, and Gisèle Pascal.
Cooper biographers have explored his friendship in the late twenties with the actor Anderson Lawler, with whom Cooper shared a house on and off for a year, while at the same time seeing Clara Bow, Evelyn Brent and Lupe Vélez. Lupe Vélez once told Hedda Hopper of Vélez' affair with Cooper; whenever he would come home after seeing Lawler, she would sniff for Lawler's cologne. Vélez' biographer Michelle Vogel has reported that Vélez consented to Cooper's sexual behavior with Lawler, but only as long as she, too, could participate. In later life, he became involved in a relationship with the costume designer Irene, and was, according to Irene, "the only man she ever loved". A year after his death in 1961, Irene committed suicide by jumping from the 11th floor of the Knickerbocker Hotel, after telling Doris Day of her grief over Cooper's death.
Friendships, interests, and character
Cooper's twenty-year friendship with Ernest Hemingway began at Sun Valley in October 1940. The previous year, Hemingway drew upon Cooper's image when he created the character of Robert Jordan for the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. The two shared a passion for the outdoors, and for years they hunted duck and pheasant, and skied together in Sun Valley. Both men admired the work of Rudyard Kipling—Cooper kept a copy of the poem "If—" in his dressing room—and retained as adults Kipling's sense of boyish adventure.
As well as admiring Cooper's hunting skills and knowledge of the outdoors, Hemingway believed his character matched his screen persona, once telling a friend, "If you made up a character like Coop, nobody would believe it. He's just too good to be true." They saw each other often, and their friendship remained strong through the years.
Cooper's social life generally centered on sports, outdoor activities, and dinner parties with his family and friends from the film industry, including directors Henry Hathaway, Howard Hawks, William Wellman, and Fred Zinnemann, and actors Joel McCrea, James Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, and Robert Taylor. As well as hunting, Cooper enjoyed riding, fishing, skiing, and later in life, scuba diving. He never abandoned his early love for art and drawing, and over the years, he and his wife acquired a private collection of modern paintings, including works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Cooper owned several works by Pablo Picasso, whom he met in 1956. Cooper also had a lifelong passion for automobiles, with a collection that included a 1930 Duesenberg.
Cooper was naturally reserved and introspective, and loved the solitude of outdoor activities. Not unlike his screen persona, his communication style frequently consisted of long silences with an occasional "yup" and "shucks". He once said, "If others have more interesting things to say than I have, I keep quiet." According to his friends, Cooper could also be an articulate, well-informed conversationalist on topics ranging from horses, guns, and Western history to film production, sports cars, and modern art. He was modest and unpretentious, frequently downplaying his acting abilities and career accomplishments. His friends and colleagues described him as charming, well-mannered, and thoughtful, with a lively boyish sense of humor. Cooper maintained a sense of propriety throughout his career and never misused his movie star status—never sought special treatment or refused to work with a director or leading lady. His close friend Joel McCrea recalled, "Coop never fought, he never got mad, he never told anybody off that I know of; everybody that worked with him liked him."
Political views
Like his father, Cooper was a conservative Republican; he voted for Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Herbert Hoover in 1928 and 1932, and campaigned for Wendell Willkie in 1940. When Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented fourth presidential term in 1944, Cooper campaigned for Thomas E. Dewey and criticized Roosevelt for being dishonest and adopting "foreign" ideas. In a radio address that he paid for himself just prior to the election, Cooper said, "I disagree with the New Deal belief that the America all of us love is old and worn-out and finished—and has to borrow foreign notions that don't even seem to work any too well where they come from ... Our country is a young country that just has to make up its mind to be itself again." He also attended a Republican rally at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that drew 93,000 Dewey supporters.
Cooper was one of the founding members of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a conservative organization dedicated, according to its statement of principles, to preserving the "American way of life" and opposing communism and fascism. The organization — whose membership included Walter Brennan, Laraine Day, Walt Disney, Clark Gable, Hedda Hopper, Ronald Reagan, Barbara Stanwyck, and John Wayne — advised the United States Congress to investigate communist influence in the motion picture industry. On October 23, 1947, Cooper was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and was asked if he had observed any "communistic influence" in Hollywood.
Cooper recounted statements he'd heard suggesting that the Constitution was out of date and that Congress was an unnecessary institution—comments that Cooper said he found to be "very un-American" and testified that he had rejected several scripts because he thought they were "tinged with communist ideas". Unlike some other witnesses, Cooper did not name any individuals, nor did he name any scripts, during his testimony.
In 1951, while making High Noon, Cooper became friends with the film's screenwriter, Carl Foreman, who had been a member of the Communist Party. When Foreman was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Cooper put his career on the line to defend Foreman. When John Wayne and others threatened Cooper with blacklisting himself and the loss of his passport if he did not walk off the film, Cooper gave a statement to the press in support of Foreman, calling him "the finest kind of American". When producer Stanley Kramer removed Foreman's name as screenwriter, Cooper and director Fred Zinnemann threatened to walk off the film if Foreman's name was not restored. Foreman later said that, of all his friends and allies and colleagues in Hollywood, "Cooper was the only big one who tried to help. The only one." Cooper even offered to testify in Foreman's behalf before the committee, but character witnesses were not allowed. Foreman always sent future scripts to Cooper for first refusal, including The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Key and The Guns of Navarone. Cooper had to turn them down because of his age.
Religion
Cooper was baptized in the Anglican Church in December 1911 in Britain, and was raised in the Episcopal Church in the United States. While he was not an observant Christian for most of his adult life, many of his friends believed he had a deeply spiritual side.
On June 26, 1953, Cooper accompanied his wife and daughter, who were devout Catholics, to Rome, where they had an audience with Pope Pius XII. Cooper and his wife were still separated at the time, but the papal visit marked the beginning of their gradual reconciliation. In the coming years, Cooper contemplated his mortality and his personal behavior, and started discussing Catholicism with his family. He began attending church with them regularly, and met with their parish priest, who offered Cooper spiritual guidance. After several months of study, Cooper was baptized as a Roman Catholic on April 9, 1959, before a small group of family and friends at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.
Final years and death
On April 14, 1960, Cooper underwent surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had metastasized to his colon. He fell ill again on May 31 and underwent further surgery at Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles in early June to remove a malignant tumor from his large intestine. After recuperating over the summer, Cooper took his family on vacation to the south of France before traveling to the UK in the fall to star in The Naked Edge. In December 1960, he worked on the NBC television documentary The Real West, which was part of the company's Project 20 series.
On December 27, his wife learned from their family doctor that Cooper's cancer had spread to his lungs and bones and was inoperable. His family decided not to tell him immediately.
On January 9, 1961, Cooper attended a dinner that was given in his honor and hosted by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin at the Friars Club. The dinner was attended by many of his industry friends and concluded with a brief speech by Cooper who said, "The only achievement I'm proud of is the friends I've made in this community."
In mid-January, Cooper took his family to Sun Valley for their last vacation together. Cooper and Hemingway hiked through the snow together for the last time. On February 27, after returning to Los Angeles, Cooper learned that he was dying. He later told his family, "We'll pray for a miracle; but if not, and that's God's will, that's all right too." On April 17, Cooper watched the Academy Awards ceremony on television and saw his good friend James Stewart, who had presented Cooper with his first Oscar years earlier, accept on Cooper's behalf an honorary award for lifetime achievement—his third Oscar. Holding back tears, Stewart said, "Coop, I'll get this to you right away. And Coop, I want you to know this, that with this goes all the warm friendship and the affection and the admiration and the deep, the deep respect of all of us. We're very, very proud of you, Coop. All of us are tremendously proud." The following day, newspapers around the world announced the news that Cooper was dying. In the coming days he received numerous messages of appreciation and encouragement, including telegrams from Pope John XXIII and Queen Elizabeth II, and a telephone call from President John F. Kennedy.
In his last public statement on May 4, Cooper said, "I know that what is happening is God's will. I am not afraid of the future." He received the last rites on May 12. Cooper died quietly the following day, Saturday, May 13, 1961, at 12:47 P.M.
A requiem mass was held on May 18 at the Church of the Good Shepherd, attended by many of Cooper's friends, including James Stewart, Jack Benny, Henry Hathaway, Joel McCrea, Audrey Hepburn, Jack L. Warner, John Ford, John Wayne, Edward G. Robinson, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Fred Astaire, Randolph Scott, Walter Pidgeon, Bob Hope and Marlene Dietrich. Cooper was buried in the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. In May 1974, after his family relocated to New York, Cooper's remains were exhumed and reburied in Sacred Hearts Cemetery in Southampton. His grave is marked by a three-ton boulder from a Montauk quarry.
Acting style and reputation
Cooper's acting style consisted of three essential characteristics: his ability to project elements of his own personality onto the characters he portrayed, to appear natural and authentic in his roles, and to underplay and deliver restrained performances calibrated for the camera and the screen. Acting teacher Lee Strasberg once observed: "The simplest examples of Stanislavsky's ideas are actors such as Gary Cooper, John Wayne, and Spencer Tracy. They try not to act but to be themselves, to respond or react. They refuse to say or do anything they feel not to be consonant with their own characters." Film director François Truffaut ranked Cooper among "the greatest actors" because of his ability to deliver great performances "without direction". This ability to project elements of his own personality onto his characters produced a continuity across his performances to the extent that critics and audiences were convinced that he was simply "playing himself".
Cooper's ability to project his personality onto his characters played an important part in his appearing natural and authentic on screen. Actor John Barrymore said of Cooper, "This fellow is the world's greatest actor. He does without effort what the rest of us spend our lives trying to learn—namely, to be natural." Charles Laughton, who played opposite Cooper in Devil and the Deep agreed, "In truth, that boy hasn't the least idea how well he acts ... He gets at it from the inside, from his own clear way of looking at life." William Wyler, who directed Cooper in two films, called him a "superb actor, a master of movie acting".
In his review of Cooper's performance in The Real Glory, Graham Greene wrote, "Sometimes his lean photogenic face seems to leave everything to the lens, but there is no question here of his not acting. Watch him inoculate the girl against cholera—the casual jab of the needle, and the dressing slapped on while he talks, as though a thousand arms had taught him where to stab and he doesn't have to think anymore."
Cooper's style of underplaying before the camera surprised many of his directors and fellow actors. Even in his earliest feature films, he recognized the camera's ability to pick up slight gestures and facial movements. Commenting on Cooper's performance in Sergeant York, director Howard Hawks observed, "He worked very hard and yet he didn't seem to be working. He was a strange actor because you'd look at him during a scene and you'd think ... this isn't going to be any good. But when you saw the rushes in the projection room the next day you could read in his face all the things he'd been thinking." Sam Wood, who directed Cooper in four films, had similar observations about Cooper's performance in Pride of the Yankees, noting, "What I thought was underplaying turned out to be just the right approach. On the screen he's perfect, yet on the set you'd swear it's the worst job of acting in the history of motion pictures."
Fellow actors admired his abilities as an actor. Commenting on her two films playing opposite Cooper, actress Ingrid Bergman concluded, "The personality of this man was so enormous, so overpowering—and that expression in his eyes and his face, it was so delicate and so underplayed. You just didn't notice it until you saw it on the screen. I thought he was marvelous; the most underplaying and the most natural actor I ever worked with."
Tom Hanks declared, "In only one scene in the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, we see the future of screen acting in the form of Gary Cooper. He is quiet and natural, somehow different from the other cast members. He does something mysterious with his eyes and shoulders that is much more like 'being' than 'acting'."
Daniel Day-Lewis said, "I don't particularly like westerns as a genre, but I do love certain westerns. 'High Noon' means a lot to me – I love the purity and the honesty, I love Gary Cooper in that film, the idea of the last man standing."
Chris Pratt stated, "I started watching Westerns when I was shooting in London about four or five years ago. I really fell in love with Gary Cooper, and his stuff. That sucked me into the Westerns. Before, I never got engrossed in the story. I'd just dip in, and there were guys in horses in black and white. High Noon's later Gary Cooper, I liked that. But I liked 'The Westerner'. That's my favorite one. I have that poster hung up in my house because I really like that one."
To Al Pacino, "Gary Cooper was a phenomenon—his ability to take some thing and elevate it, give it such dignity. One of the great presences."
Mylène Demongeot first got with Gary Cooper for the opening of the first escalator to be installed in a cinema, at the Rex Theatre in Paris, on June 7, 1957. She declared in a 2015 filmed interview: "Gary Cooper ... il est sublime ! Aaahhh (Mylène pushing a cry of love not to say ecstasy) il est sublime ... Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! Là je dois dire que ça fait partie des stars, y'a Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, ces grands Américains que j'ai rencontrés comme ça, c'est vraiment des mecs incroyables. Y'en a plus des comme ça ! Euh non. (Gary Cooper was sublime, there I have to say, now he, was part of the stars, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, those great americans who I've met really were unbelievable guys, there aren't any like them anymore)."
Career assessment and legacy
Cooper's career spanned thirty-six years, from 1925 to 1961. During that time, he appeared in eighty-four feature films in a leading role. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His natural and authentic acting style appealed powerfully to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major movie genres, including Westerns, war films, adventure films, drama films, crime films, romance films, comedy films, and romantic comedy films. He appeared on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities for twenty-three consecutive years, from 1936 to 1958. According to Quigley's annual poll, Cooper was one of the top money-making stars for eighteen years, appearing in the top ten in 1936–37, 1941–49, and 1951–57. He topped the list in 1953. In Quigley's list of all-time money-making stars, Cooper is listed fourth, after John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Tom Cruise. At the time of his death, it was estimated that his films grossed well over $200 million (equivalent to $ billion in ).
In over half of his feature films, Cooper portrayed Westerners, soldiers, pilots, sailors, and explorers—all men of action. In the rest he played a wide range of characters, included doctors, professors, artists, architects, clerks, and baseball players. Cooper's heroic screen image changed with each period of his career. In his early films, he played the young naive hero sure of his moral position and trusting in the triumph of simple virtues (The Virginian). After becoming a major star, his Western screen persona was replaced by a more cautious hero in adventure films and dramas (A Farewell to Arms). During the height of his career, from 1936 to 1943, he played a new type of hero—a champion of the common man willing to sacrifice himself for others (Mr. Deeds, Meet John Doe, and For Whom the Bell Tolls).
In the post-war years, Cooper attempted broader variations on his screen image, which now reflected a hero increasingly at odds with the world who must face adversity alone (The Fountainhead and High Noon). In his final films, Cooper's hero rejects the violence of the past, and seeks to reclaim lost honor and find redemption (Friendly Persuasion and Man of the West). The screen persona he developed and sustained throughout his career represented the ideal American hero—a tall, handsome, and sincere man of steadfast integrity who emphasized action over intellect, and combined the heroic qualities of the romantic lover, the adventurer, and the common man.
On February 6, 1960, Cooper was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6243 Hollywood Boulevard for his contribution to the film industry. He was awarded a star on the sidewalk outside the Ellen Theater in Bozeman, Montana.
On May 6, 1961, he was awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters in recognition of his significant contribution to the arts. On July 30, 1961, he was posthumously awarded the David di Donatello Special Award in Italy for his career achievements.
In 1966, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. In 2015, he was inducted into the Utah Cowboy and Western Heritage Hall of Fame. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper eleventh on its list of the 25 male stars of classic Hollywood. Three of his characters—Will Kane, Lou Gehrig, and Sergeant York—made AFI's list of the one hundred greatest heroes and villains, all of them as heroes. His Lou Gehrig line, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.", is ranked by AFI as the thirty-eighth greatest movie quote of all time.
More than a half century after his death, Cooper's enduring legacy, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, is his image of the ideal American hero preserved in his film performances. Charlton Heston once observed, "He projected the kind of man Americans would like to be, probably more than any actor that's ever lived."
In the TV series Justified, based on works and characters created by Elmore Leonard, Gary Cooper is used throughout the six seasons as the man whom U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens, played by Timothy Olyphant, aspires to be. When his colleague asks Marshall Givens how he thinks his dangerous plan to bring down a villain can possibly work, he replies: "Why not? Worked for Gary Cooper."
Gary Cooper is referenced several times in the critically acclaimed television series The Sopranos, with protagonist Tony Soprano asking "What ever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type." while complaining about his problems to his therapist.
In the 1930s hit song "Puttin' On the Ritz", Cooper is referenced in the line "dress up like a million dollar trooper/Tryin' hard to look like Gary Cooper, Super duper!" More than two decades after Cooper's death a new version of the song was released in 1983 by Taco; the original lyrics were kept, including the references to Cooper.
In J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Cooper is "spotted" by Holden Caulfield to distract a woman he is dancing with.
Awards and nominations
Filmography
The following is a list of feature films in which Cooper appeared in a leading role.
The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926)
Children of Divorce (1927)
Arizona Bound (1927)
Wings (1927)
Nevada (1927)
It (1927)
The Last Outlaw (1927)
Beau Sabreur (1928)
The Legion of the Condemned (1928)
Doomsday (1928)
Half a Bride (1928)
Lilac Time (1928)
The First Kiss (1928)
The Shopworn Angel (1928)
Wolf Song (1929)
Betrayal (1929)
The Virginian (1929)
Only the Brave (1930)
The Texan (1930)
Seven Days' Leave (1930)
A Man from Wyoming (1930)
The Spoilers (1930)
Morocco (1930)
Fighting Caravans (1931)
City Streets (1931)
I Take This Woman (1931)
His Woman (1931)
Devil and the Deep (1932)
If I Had a Million (1932)
A Farewell to Arms (1932)
Today We Live (1933)
One Sunday Afternoon (1933)
Design for Living (1933)
Alice in Wonderland (1933)
Operator 13 (1934)
Now and Forever (1934)
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
The Wedding Night (1935)
Peter Ibbetson (1935)
Desire (1936)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
The General Died at Dawn (1936)
The Plainsman (1936)
Souls at Sea (1937)
The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938)
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938)
The Cowboy and the Lady (1938)
Beau Geste (1939)
The Real Glory (1939)
The Westerner (1940)
North West Mounted Police (1940)
Meet John Doe (1941)
Sergeant York (1941)
Ball of Fire (1941)
The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944)
Casanova Brown (1944)
Along Came Jones (1945)
Saratoga Trunk (1945)
Cloak and Dagger (1946)
Unconquered (1947)
Good Sam (1948)
The Fountainhead (1949)
Task Force (1949)
Bright Leaf (1950)
Dallas (1950)
You're in the Navy Now (1951)
It's a Big Country (1951)
Distant Drums (1951)
High Noon (1952)
Springfield Rifle (1952)
Return to Paradise (1953)
Blowing Wild (1953)
Garden of Evil (1954)
Vera Cruz (1954)
The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955)
Friendly Persuasion (1956)
Love in the Afternoon (1957)
Ten North Frederick (1958)
Man of the West (1958)
The Hanging Tree (1959)
They Came to Cordura (1959)
The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959)
The Naked Edge (1961)
Radio appearances
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Adrien Le Bihan, Gary Cooper, le prince des acteurs, LettMotif, 2021, 358p.()
External links
1901 births
1961 deaths
20th-century American male actors
Academy Honorary Award recipients
American expatriates in England
American male film actors
American male silent film actors
American male television actors
American people of English descent
Best Actor Academy Award winners
Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners
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Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism
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People from Holmby Hills, Los Angeles | true | [
"Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor, in Spanish Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de Patronio (Book of the Examples of Count Lucanor and of Patronio), also commonly known as El Conde Lucanor, Libro de Patronio, or Libro de los ejemplos (original Old Castilian: Libro de los enxiemplos del Conde Lucanor et de Patronio), is one of the earliest works of prose in Castilian Spanish. It was first written in 1335.\n\nThe book is divided into four parts. The first and most well-known part is a series of 51 short stories (some no more than a page or two) drawn from various sources, such as Aesop and other classical writers, and Arabic folktales.\n\nTales of Count Lucanor was first printed in 1575 when it was published at Seville under the auspices of Argote de Molina. It was again printed at Madrid in 1642, after which it lay forgotten for nearly two centuries.\n\nPurpose and structure\n\nA didactic, moralistic purpose, which would color so much of the Spanish literature to follow (see Novela picaresca), is the mark of this book. Count Lucanor engages in conversation with his advisor Patronio, putting to him a problem (\"Some man has made me a proposition...\" or \"I fear that such and such person intends to...\") and asking for advice. Patronio responds always with the greatest humility, claiming not to wish to offer advice to so illustrious a person as the Count, but offering to tell him a story of which the Count's problem reminds him. (Thus, the stories are \"examples\" [ejemplos] of wise action.) At the end he advises the Count to do as the protagonist of his story did.\n\nEach chapter ends in more or less the same way, with slight variations on: \"And this pleased the Count greatly and he did just so, and found it well. And Don Johán (Juan) saw that this example was very good, and had it written in this book, and composed the following verses.\" A rhymed couplet closes, giving the moral of the story.\n\nOrigin of stories and influence on later literature\nMany of the stories written in the book are the first examples written in a modern European language of various stories, which many other writers would use in the proceeding centuries. Many of the stories he included were themselves derived from other stories, coming from western and Arab sources.\n\nShakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew has the basic elements of Tale 35, \"What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\".\n\nTale 32, \"What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth\" tells the story that Hans Christian Andersen made popular as The Emperor's New Clothes.\n\nStory 7, \"What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana\", a version of Aesop's The Milkmaid and Her Pail, was claimed by Max Müller to originate in the Hindu cycle Panchatantra.\n\nTale 2, \"What happened to a good Man and his Son, leading a beast to market,\" is the familiar fable The miller, his son and the donkey.\n\nIn 2016, Baroque Decay released a game under the name \"The Count Lucanor\". As well as some protagonists' names, certain events from the books inspired past events in the game.\n\nThe stories\n\nThe book opens with a prologue which introduces the characters of the Count and Patronio. The titles in the following list are those given in Keller and Keating's 1977 translation into English. James York's 1868 translation into English gives a significantly different ordering of the stories and omits the fifty-first.\n\n What Happened to a King and His Favorite \n What Happened to a Good Man and His Son \n How King Richard of England Leapt into the Sea against the Moors\n What a Genoese Said to His Soul When He Was about to Die \n What Happened to a Fox and a Crow Who Had a Piece of Cheese in His Beak\n How the Swallow Warned the Other Birds When She Saw Flax Being Sown \n What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana \n What Happened to a Man Whose Liver Had to Be Washed \n What Happened to Two Horses Which Were Thrown to the Lion \n What Happened to a Man Who on Account of Poverty and Lack of Other Food Was Eating Bitter Lentils \n What Happened to a Dean of Santiago de Compostela and Don Yllán, the Grand Master of Toledo\n What Happened to the Fox and the Rooster \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Hunting Partridges \n The Miracle of Saint Dominick When He Preached against the Usurer \n What Happened to Lorenzo Suárez at the Siege of Seville \n The Reply that count Fernán González Gave to His Relative Núño Laynes \n What Happened to a Very Hungry Man Who Was Half-heartedly Invited to Dinner \n What Happened to Pero Meléndez de Valdés When He Broke His Leg \n What Happened to the Crows and the Owls \n What Happened to a King for Whom a Man Promised to Perform Alchemy \n What Happened to a Young King and a Philosopher to Whom his Father Commended Him \n What Happened to the Lion and the Bull \n How the Ants Provide for Themselves \n What Happened to the King Who Wanted to Test His Three Sons \n What Happened to the Count of Provence and How He Was Freed from Prison by the Advice of Saladin\n What Happened to the Tree of Lies \n What Happened to an Emperor and to Don Alvarfáñez Minaya and Their Wives \n What Happened in Granada to Don Lorenzo Suárez Gallinato When He Beheaded the Renegade Chaplain \n What Happened to a Fox Who Lay down in the Street to Play Dead \n What Happened to King Abenabet of Seville and Ramayquía His Wife \n How a Cardinal Judged between the Canons of Paris and the Friars Minor \n What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth \n What Happened to Don Juan Manuel's Saker Falcon and an Eagle and a Heron \n What Happened to a Blind Man Who Was Leading Another \n What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\n What Happened to a Merchant When He Found His Son and His Wife Sleeping Together \n What Happened to Count Fernán González with His Men after He Had Won the Battle of Hacinas \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Loaded down with Precious Stones and Drowned in the River \n What Happened to a Man and a Swallow and a Sparrow \n Why the Seneschal of Carcassonne Lost His Soul \n What Happened to a King of Córdova Named Al-Haquem \n What Happened to a Woman of Sham Piety \n What Happened to Good and Evil and the Wise Man and the Madman \n What Happened to Don Pero Núñez the Loyal, to Don Ruy González de Zavallos, and to Don Gutier Roiz de Blaguiello with Don Rodrigo the Generous \n What Happened to a Man Who Became the Devil's Friend and Vassal \n What Happened to a Philosopher who by Accident Went down a Street Where Prostitutes Lived \n What Befell a Moor and His Sister Who Pretended That She Was Timid \n What Happened to a Man Who Tested His Friends \n What Happened to the Man Whom They Cast out Naked on an Island When They Took away from Him the Kingdom He Ruled \n What Happened to Saladin and a Lady, the Wife of a Knight Who Was His Vassal \n What Happened to a Christian King Who Was Very Powerful and Haughty\n\nReferences\n\nNotes\n\nBibliography\n\n Sturm, Harlan\n\n Wacks, David\n\nExternal links\n\nThe Internet Archive provides free access to the 1868 translation by James York.\nJSTOR has the to the 1977 translation by Keller and Keating.\nSelections in English and Spanish (pedagogical edition) with introduction, notes, and bibliography in Open Iberia/América (open access teaching anthology)\n\n14th-century books\nSpanish literature\n1335 books",
"\"What Happened to Us\" is a song by Australian recording artist Jessica Mauboy, featuring English recording artist Jay Sean. It was written by Sean, Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim and Israel Cruz. \"What Happened to Us\" was leaked online in October 2010, and was released on 10 March 2011, as the third single from Mauboy's second studio album, Get 'Em Girls (2010). The song received positive reviews from critics.\n\nA remix of \"What Happened to Us\" made by production team OFM, was released on 11 April 2011. A different version of the song which features Stan Walker, was released on 29 May 2011. \"What Happened to Us\" charted on the ARIA Singles Chart at number 14 and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). An accompanying music video was directed by Mark Alston, and reminisces on a former relationship between Mauboy and Sean.\n\nProduction and release\n\n\"What Happened to Us\" was written by Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz and Jay Sean. It was produced by Skaller, Cruz, Rohaim and Bobby Bass. The song uses C, D, and B minor chords in the chorus. \"What Happened to Us\" was sent to contemporary hit radio in Australia on 14 February 2011. The cover art for the song was revealed on 22 February on Mauboy's official Facebook page. A CD release was available for purchase via her official website on 10 March, for one week only. It was released digitally the following day.\n\nReception\nMajhid Heath from ABC Online Indigenous called the song a \"Jordin Sparks-esque duet\", and wrote that it \"has a nice innocence to it that rings true to the experience of losing a first love.\" Chris Urankar from Nine to Five wrote that it as a \"mid-tempo duet ballad\" which signifies Mauboy's strength as a global player. On 21 March 2011, \"What Happened to Us\" debuted at number 30 on the ARIA Singles Chart, and peaked at number 14 the following week. The song was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), for selling 70,000 copies. \"What Happened to Us\" spent a total of ten weeks in the ARIA top fifty.\n\nMusic video\n\nBackground\nThe music video for the song was shot in the Elizabeth Bay House in Sydney on 26 November 2010. The video was shot during Sean's visit to Australia for the Summerbeatz tour. During an interview with The Daily Telegraph while on the set of the video, Sean said \"the song is sick! ... Jessica's voice is amazing and we're shooting [the video] in this ridiculously beautiful mansion overlooking the harbour.\" The video was directed by Mark Alston, who had previously directed the video for Mauboy's single \"Let Me Be Me\" (2009). It premiered on YouTube on 10 February 2011.\n\nSynopsis and reception\nThe video begins showing Mauboy who appears to be sitting on a yellow antique couch in a mansion, wearing a purple dress. As the video progresses, scenes of memories are displayed of Mauboy and her love interest, played by Sean, spending time there previously. It then cuts to the scenes where Sean appears in the main entrance room of the mansion. The final scene shows Mauboy outdoors in a gold dress, surrounded by green grass and trees. She is later joined by Sean who appears in a black suit and a white shirt, and together they sing the chorus of the song to each other. David Lim of Feed Limmy wrote that the video is \"easily the best thing our R&B princess has committed to film – ever\" and praised the \"mansion and wondrous interior décor\". He also commended Mauboy for choosing Australian talent to direct the video instead of American directors, which she had used for her previous two music videos. Since its release, the video has received over two million views on Vevo.\n\nLive performances\nMauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" live for the first time during her YouTube Live Sessions program on 4 December 2010. She also appeared on Adam Hills in Gordon Street Tonight on 23 February 2011 for an interview and later performed the song. On 15 March 2011, Mauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Sunrise. She also performed the song with Stan Walker during the Australian leg of Chris Brown's F.A.M.E. Tour in April 2011. Mauboy and Walker later performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Dancing with the Stars Australia on 29 May 2011. From November 2013 to February 2014, \"What Happened to Us\" was part of the set list of the To the End of the Earth Tour, Mauboy's second headlining tour of Australia, with Nathaniel Willemse singing Sean's part.\n\nTrack listing\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Just Witness Remix) – 3:45\n\nCD single\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Album Version) – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:39\n\nDigital download – Remix\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:38\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Stan Walker – 3:20\n\nPersonnel\nSongwriting – Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz, Jay Sean\nProduction – Jeremy Skaller, Bobby Bass\nAdditional production – Israel Cruz, Khaled Rohaim\nLead vocals – Jessica Mauboy, Jay Sean\nMixing – Phil Tan\nAdditional mixing – Damien Lewis\nMastering – Tom Coyne \nSource:\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly chart\n\nYear-end chart\n\nCertification\n\nRadio dates and release history\n\nReferences\n\n2010 songs\n2011 singles\nJessica Mauboy songs\nJay Sean songs\nSongs written by Billy Steinberg\nSongs written by Jay Sean\nSongs written by Josh Alexander\nSongs written by Israel Cruz\nVocal duets\nSony Music Australia singles\nSongs written by Khaled Rohaim"
] |
[
"Gary Cooper",
"Silent films, 1925-28",
"what happened in 1925?",
"In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures"
] | C_84d38f8ca490447a92f516e3616fdb66_1 | what pictures did he do? | 2 | What pictures did Gary Cooper do? | Gary Cooper | In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, including Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt work--which sometimes injured horses and riders--"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name. Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week. Cooper's first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal--finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings, the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada--both films directed by John Waters. In 1928, Paramount paired Cooper with a youthful Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss--advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride. That year, Cooper also made Lilac Time with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928. CANNOTANSWER | The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. | Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper; May 7, 1901 – May 13, 1961) was an American actor known for his strong, silent, and understated acting style. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice and had a further three nominations, as well as receiving an Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements in 1961. He was one of the top 10 film personalities for 23 consecutive years, and one of the top money-making stars for 18 years. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper at No. 11 on its list of the 25 greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Cooper's career spanned 36 years, from 1925 to 1961, and included leading roles in 84 feature films. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era through to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His screen persona appealed strongly to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major film genres. His ability to project his own personality onto the characters he played contributed to his natural and authentic appearance on screen. Throughout his career, he sustained a screen persona that represented the ideal American hero.
Cooper began his career as a film extra and stunt rider, but soon landed acting roles. After establishing himself as a Western hero in his early silent films, he appeared as the Virginian and became a movie star in 1929 with his first sound picture, The Virginian. In the early 1930s, he expanded his heroic image to include more cautious characters in adventure films and dramas such as A Farewell to Arms (1932) and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935). During the height of his career, Cooper portrayed a new type of hero—a champion of the common man—in films such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Meet John Doe (1941), Sergeant York (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). He later portrayed more mature characters at odds with the world in films such as The Fountainhead (1949) and High Noon (1952). In his final films, he played non-violent characters searching for redemption in films such as Friendly Persuasion (1956) and Man of the West (1958).
Early life
Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana, on May 7, 1901, the younger of two sons of English parents Alice (née Brazier; 1873–1967) and Charles Henry Cooper (1865–1946). His brother, Arthur, was six years his senior. Cooper's father came from Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire, and became a prominent lawyer, rancher, and Montana Supreme Court justice. His mother hailed from Gillingham, Kent, and married Charles in Montana. In 1906, Charles purchased the Seven-Bar-Nine cattle ranch, about north of Helena near Craig, Montana. Cooper and Arthur spent their summers at the ranch and learned to ride horses, hunt, and fish. Cooper attended Central Grade School in Helena.
Alice wanted her sons to have an English education, so she took them back to England in 1909 to enroll them in Dunstable Grammar School in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. While there, Cooper and his brother lived with their father's cousins, William and Emily Barton, at their home in Houghton Regis. Cooper studied Latin, French, and English history at Dunstable until 1912. While he adapted to English school discipline and learned the requisite social graces, he never adjusted to the rigid class structure and formal Eton collars he was required to wear. He received his confirmation in the Church of England at the Church of All Saints in Houghton Regis on December 3, 1911. His mother accompanied her sons back to the U.S. in August 1912, and Cooper resumed his education at Johnson Grammar School in Helena.
When Cooper was 15, he injured his hip in a car accident. On his doctor's recommendation, he returned to the Seven-Bar-Nine ranch to recuperate by horseback riding. The misguided therapy left him with his characteristic stiff, off-balanced walk and slightly angled horse-riding style. He left Helena High School after two years in 1918, and returned to the family ranch to work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for him to attend Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana, where English teacher Ida Davis encouraged him to focus on academics and participate in debating and dramatics. Cooper later called Davis "the woman partly responsible for [him] giving up cowboy-ing and going to college".
Cooper was still attending high school in 1920 when he took three art courses at Montana Agricultural College in Bozeman. His interest in art was inspired years earlier by the Western paintings of Charles Marion Russell and Frederic Remington. Cooper especially admired and studied Russell's Lewis and Clark Meeting Indians at Ross' Hole (1910), which still hangs in the state capitol building in Helena. In 1922, to continue his art education, he enrolled in Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. He did well academically in most of his courses, but was not accepted into the school's drama club. His drawings and watercolor paintings were exhibited throughout the dormitory, and he was named art editor for the college yearbook. During the summers of 1922 and 1923, Cooper worked at Yellowstone National Park as a tour guide driving the yellow open-top buses. Despite a promising first 18 months at Grinnell, he left college suddenly in February 1924, spent a month in Chicago looking for work as an artist, and then returned to Helena, where he sold editorial cartoons to the local Independent newspaper.
In autumn 1924, Cooper's father left the Montana Supreme Court bench and moved with his wife to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives, and Cooper joined his parents there in November at his father's request. After briefly working a series of unpromising jobs, he met two friends from Montana who were working as film extras and stunt riders in low-budget Western films for the small movie studios on Poverty Row. They introduced him to another Montana cowboy, rodeo champion Jay "Slim" Talbot, who took him to see a casting director. Wanting money for a professional art course, Cooper worked as a film extra for $5 a day, and as a stunt rider for $10. Cooper and Talbot became close friends and hunting companions, and Talbot later worked as Cooper's stuntman and stand-in for over three decades.
Career
Silent films, 1925–1928
In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, but also the already emergent major studios, Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt workwhich sometimes injured horses and riders"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name.
Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week.
Cooper's first important film role was a supporting part in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) starring Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal—finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings (both 1927), the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada—both films directed by John Waters.
Paramount paired Cooper with Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss (both 1928)—advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride (also both 1928). Around the same time, Cooper made Lilac Time (1928) with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928.
Hollywood stardom, 1929–1935
Cooper became a major movie star in 1929 with the release of his first talking picture, The Virginian (1929), which was directed by Victor Fleming and co-starred Mary Brian and Walter Huston. Based on the popular novel by Owen Wister, The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honor and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western movie genre that persist to the present day. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, the romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero who embodied male freedom, courage, and honor was created in large part by Cooper in the film. Unlike some silent film actors who had trouble adapting to the new sound medium, Cooper transitioned naturally, with his "deep and clear" and "pleasantly drawling" voice, which was perfectly suited for the characters he portrayed on screen, also according to Meyers. Looking to capitalize on Cooper's growing popularity, Paramount cast him in several Westerns and wartime dramas, including Only the Brave, The Texan, Seven Days' Leave, A Man from Wyoming, and The Spoilers (all released in 1930). Norman Rockwell depicted Cooper in his role as The Texan for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 24, 1930.
One of the more important performances in Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's film Morocco (also 1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her introduction to American audiences. During production, von Sternberg focused his energies on Dietrich and treated Cooper dismissively. Tensions came to a head after von Sternberg yelled directions at Cooper in German. The actor approached the director, picked him up by the collar, and said, "If you expect to work in this country you'd better get on to the language we use here." Despite the tensions on the set, Cooper produced "one of his best performances", according to Thornton Delehanty of the New York Evening Post.
After returning to the Western genre in Zane Grey's Fighting Caravans (1931) with French actress Lili Damita, Cooper appeared in the Dashiell Hammett crime film City Streets (also 1931), co-starring Sylvia Sidney and Paul Lukas, playing a westerner who gets involved with big-city gangsters in order to save the woman he loves. Cooper concluded the year with appearances in two unsuccessful films: I Take This Woman (also 1931) with Carole Lombard, and His Woman with Claudette Colbert. The demands and pressures of making ten films in two years left Cooper exhausted and in poor health, suffering from anemia and jaundice. He had lost during that period, and felt lonely, isolated, and depressed by his sudden fame and wealth. In May 1931, Cooper left Hollywood and sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year.
During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso at the Villa Madama in Rome, where she taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. After guiding him through the great art museums and galleries of Italy, she accompanied him on a ten-week big-game hunting safari on the slopes of Mount Kenya in East Africa, where he was credited with over sixty kills, including two lions, a rhinoceros, and various antelopes. His safari experience in Africa had a profound influence on Cooper and intensified his love of the wilderness. After returning to Europe, he and the countess set off on a Mediterranean cruise of the Italian and French Rivieras. Rested and rejuvenated by his year-long exile, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood in April 1932 and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 a week, and director and script approval.
In 1932, after completing Devil and the Deep with Tallulah Bankhead to fulfill his old contract, Cooper appeared in A Farewell to Arms, the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Co-starring Helen Hayes, a leading New York theatre star and Academy Award winner, and Adolphe Menjou, the film presented Cooper with one of his most ambitious and challenging dramatic roles, playing an American ambulance driver wounded in Italy who falls in love with an English nurse during World War I. Critics praised his highly intense and emotional performance, and the film became one of the year's most commercially successful pictures. In 1933, after making Today We Live with Joan Crawford and One Sunday Afternoon with Fay Wray, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy film Design for Living, based on the successful Noël Coward play. Co-starring Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March, the film was a box office success, ranking as one of the top ten highest-grossing films of 1933. All three of the lead actors—March, Cooper, and Hopkins—received attention from this film as they were all at the peak of their careers. Cooper's performance — playing an American artist in Europe competing with his playwright friend for the affections of a beautiful woman — was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy. Cooper changed his name legally to "Gary Cooper" in August 1933.
In 1934, Cooper was loaned out to MGM for the Civil War drama film Operator 13 with Marion Davies, about a beautiful Union spy who falls in love with a Confederate soldier. Despite Richard Boleslawski's imaginative direction and George J. Folsey's lavish cinematography, the film did poorly at the box office.
Back at Paramount, Cooper appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever, with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. In the film, he plays a confidence man who tries to sell his daughter to the relatives who raised her, but is eventually won over by the adorable girl. Impressed by Temple's intelligence and charm, Cooper developed a close rapport with her, both on and off screen. The film was a box-office success.
The following year, Cooper was loaned out to Samuel Goldwyn Productions to appear in King Vidor's romance film The Wedding Night with Anna Sten, who was being groomed as "another Garbo". In the film, Cooper plays an alcoholic novelist who retreats to his family's New England farm where he meets and falls in love with a beautiful Polish neighbor. Cooper delivered a performance of surprising range and depth, according to biographer Larry Swindell. Despite receiving generally favorable reviews, the film was not popular with American audiences, who may have been offended by the film's depiction of an extramarital affair and its tragic ending.
That same year, Cooper appeared in two Henry Hathaway films: the melodrama Peter Ibbetson with Ann Harding, about a man caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the adventure film The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. While the former, championed by the surrealists became more successful in Europe than in the United States, the latter was nominated for seven Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films. Hathaway had the highest respect for Cooper's acting ability, calling him "the best actor of all of them".
American folk hero, 1936–1943
From Mr. Deeds to The Real Glory, 1936–1939
Cooper's career took an important turn in 1936. After making Frank Borzage's romantic comedy film Desire with Marlene Dietrich at Paramount—in which he delivered a performance considered by some contemporary critics as one of his finest—Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. In the film, Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, a quiet, innocent writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont, and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin were able to use Cooper's well-established screen persona as the "quintessential American hero"—a symbol of honesty, courage, and goodness—to create a new type of "folk hero" for the common man. Commenting on Cooper's impact on the character and the film, Capra observed:
Both Desire and Mr. Deeds opened in April 1936 to critical praise and were major box-office successes. In his review in The New York Times, Frank Nugent wrote that Cooper was "proving himself one of the best light comedians in Hollywood". For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Cooper appeared in two other Paramount films in 1936. In Lewis Milestone's adventure film The General Died at Dawn with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success.
In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly fictionalized version of the opening of the American western frontier. The film was an even greater box-office hit than its predecessor, due in large part to Jean Arthur's definitive depiction of Calamity Jane and Cooper's inspired portrayal of Hickock as an enigmatic figure of "deepening mythic substance". That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-three years.
In late 1936, Paramount was preparing a new contract for Cooper that would raise his salary to $8,000 a week when Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn for six films over six years with a minimum guarantee of $150,000 per picture. Paramount brought suit against Goldwyn and Cooper, and the court ruled that Cooper's new Goldwyn contract afforded the actor sufficient time to also honor his Paramount agreement. Cooper continued to make films with both studios, and by 1939 the United States Treasury reported that Cooper was the country's highest wage earner, at $482,819 (equivalent to $ million in ).
In contrast to his output the previous year, Cooper appeared in only one picture in 1937, Henry Hathaway's adventure film Souls at Sea. A critical and box-office failure, Cooper referred to it as his "almost picture", saying, "It was almost exciting, and almost interesting. And I was almost good." In 1938, he appeared in Archie Mayo's biographical film The Adventures of Marco Polo. Plagued by production problems and a weak screenplay, the film became Goldwyn's biggest failure to that date, losing $700,000. During this period, Cooper turned down several important roles, including the role of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Cooper was producer David O. Selznick's first choice for the part. He made several overtures to the actor, but Cooper had doubts about the project, and did not feel suited to the role. Cooper later admitted, "It was one of the best roles ever offered in Hollywood ... But I said no. I didn't see myself as quite that dashing, and later, when I saw Clark Gable play the role to perfection, I knew I was right."
Back at Paramount, Cooper returned to a more comfortable genre in Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert. In the film, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. Despite the clever screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, and solid performances by Cooper and Colbert, American audiences had trouble accepting Cooper in the role of a shallow philanderer. It succeeded only at the European box office market.
In the fall of 1938, Cooper appeared in H. C. Potter's romantic comedy The Cowboy and the Lady with Merle Oberon, about a sweet-natured rodeo cowboy who falls in love with the wealthy daughter of a presidential hopeful, believing her to be a poor, hard-working lady's maid. The efforts of three directors and several eminent screenwriters could not salvage what could have been a fine vehicle for Cooper. While more successful than its predecessor, the film was Cooper's fourth consecutive box-office failure in the American market.
In the next two years, Cooper was more discerning about the roles he accepted and made four successful large-scale adventure and cowboy films. In William A. Wellman's adventure film Beau Geste (1939), he plays one of three daring English brothers who join the French Foreign Legion in the Sahara to fight local tribes. Filmed in the same Mojave Desert locations as the original 1926 version with Ronald Colman, Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona. This was the last film in Cooper's contract with Paramount.
In Henry Hathaway's The Real Glory (1939), he plays a military doctor who accompanies a small group of American Army officers to the Philippines to help the Christian Filipinos defend themselves against Muslim radicals. Many film critics praised Cooper's performance, including author and film critic Graham Greene, who recognized that he "never acted better".
From The Westerner to For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940–1943
Cooper returned to the Western genre in William Wyler's The Westerner (1940) with Walter Brennan and Doris Davenport, about a drifting cowboy who defends homesteaders against Roy Bean, a corrupt judge known as the "law west of the Pecos". Screenwriter Niven Busch relied on Cooper's extensive knowledge of Western history while working on the script. The film received positive reviews and did well at the box-office, with reviewers praising the performances of the two lead actors. That same year, Cooper appeared in his first all-Technicolor feature, Cecil B. DeMille's adventure film North West Mounted Police (1940). In the film, Cooper plays a Texas Ranger who pursues an outlaw into western Canada where he joins forces with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who are after the same man, a leader of the North-West Rebellion. While not as popular with critics as its predecessor, the film was another box-office success—the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1940.
The early 1940s were Cooper's prime years as an actor. In a relatively short period, he appeared in five critically successful and popular films that produced some of his finest performances. When Frank Capra offered him the lead role in Meet John Doe before Robert Riskin even developed the script, Cooper accepted his friend's offer, saying, "It's okay, Frank, I don't need a script." In the film, Cooper plays Long John Willoughby, a down-and-out bush-league pitcher hired by a newspaper to pretend to be a man who promises to commit suicide on Christmas Eve to protest all the hypocrisy and corruption in the country. Considered by some critics to be Capra's best film at the time, Meet John Doe was received as a "national event" with Cooper appearing on the front cover of Time magazine on March 3, 1941. In his review in the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes called Cooper's performance a "splendid and utterly persuasive portrayal" and praised his "utterly realistic acting which comes through with such authority". Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote, "Gary Cooper, of course, is 'John Doe' to the life and in the whole—shy, bewildered, non-aggressive, but a veritable tiger when aroused."
That same year, Cooper made two films with director and good friend Howard Hawks. In the biographical film Sergeant York, Cooper portrays war hero Alvin C. York, one of the most decorated American soldiers in World War I. The film chronicles York's early backwoods days in Tennessee, his religious conversion and subsequent piety, his stand as a conscientious objector, and finally his heroic actions at the Battle of the Argonne Forest, which earned him the Medal of Honor. Initially, Cooper was nervous and uncertain about playing a living hero, so he traveled to Tennessee to visit York at his home, and the two quiet men established an immediate rapport and discovered they had much in common. Inspired by York's encouragement, Cooper delivered a performance that Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune called "one of extraordinary conviction and versatility", and that Archer Winston of the New York Post called "one of his best". After the film's release, Cooper was awarded the Distinguished Citizenship Medal by the Veterans of Foreign Wars for his "powerful contribution to the promotion of patriotism and loyalty". York admired Cooper's performance and helped promote the film for Warner Bros. Sergeant York became the top-grossing film of the year and was nominated for eleven Academy Awards. Accepting his first Academy Award for Best Actor from his friend James Stewart, Cooper said, "It was Sergeant Alvin York who won this award. Shucks, I've been in the business sixteen years and sometimes dreamed I might get one of these. That's all I can say ... Funny when I was dreaming I always made a better speech."
Cooper concluded the year back at Goldwyn with Howard Hawks to make the romantic comedy Ball of Fire with Barbara Stanwyck. In the film, Cooper plays a shy linguistics professor who leads a team of seven scholars who are writing an encyclopedia. While researching slang, he meets Stanwyck's flirtatious burlesque stripper Sugarpuss O'Shea who blows the dust off their staid life of books. The screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder provided Cooper the opportunity to exercise the full range of his light comedy skills. In his review for the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes wrote that Cooper handled the role with "great skill and comic emphasis" and that his performance was "utterly delightful". Though small in scale, Ball of Fire was one of the top-grossing films of the year—Cooper's fourth consecutive picture to make the top twenty.
Cooper's only film appearance in 1942 was also his last under his Goldwyn contract. In Sam Wood's biographical film The Pride of the Yankees, Cooper portrays baseball star Lou Gehrig who established a record with the New York Yankees for playing in 2,130 consecutive games. Cooper was reluctant to play the seven-time All-Star, who only died the previous year from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — now commonly called "Lou Gehrig's disease". Beyond the challenges of effectively portraying such a popular and nationally recognized figure, Cooper knew very little about baseball and was not left-handed like Gehrig.
After Gehrig's widow visited the actor and expressed her desire that he portray her husband, Cooper accepted the role that covered a twenty-year span of Gehrig's life—his early love of baseball, his rise to greatness, his loving marriage, and his struggle with illness, culminating in his farewell speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939 before 62,000 fans. Cooper quickly learned the physical movements of a baseball player and developed a fluid, believable swing. The handedness issue was solved by reversing the print for certain batting scenes. The film was one of the year's top ten pictures and received eleven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's third).
Soon after the publication of Ernest Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, Paramount paid $150,000 for the film rights with the express intent of casting Cooper in the lead role of Robert Jordan, an American explosives expert who fights alongside the Republican loyalists during the Spanish Civil War. The original director, Cecil B. DeMille, was replaced by Sam Wood who brought in Dudley Nichols for the screenplay. After the start of principal photography in the Sierra Nevada in late 1942, Ingrid Bergman was brought in to replace ballerina Vera Zorina as the female lead—a change supported by Cooper and Hemingway. The love scenes between Bergman and Cooper were "rapturous" and passionate. Howard Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune wrote that both actors performed with "the true stature and authority of stars". While the film distorted the novel's original political themes and meaning, For Whom the Bell Tolls was a critical and commercial success and received ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's fourth).
World War II related activities
Due to his age and health, Cooper did not serve in the military during World War II, but like many of his colleagues, he got involved in the war effort by entertaining the troops. In June 1943, he visited military hospitals in San Diego, and often appeared at the Hollywood Canteen serving food to the servicemen. In late 1943, Cooper undertook a tour of the South West Pacific with actresses Una Merkel and Phyllis Brooks, and accordionist Andy Arcari.
Traveling on a B-24A Liberator bomber, the group toured the Cook Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia, Queensland, Brisbane—where General Douglas MacArthur told Cooper he was watching Sergeant York in a Manila theater when Japanese bombs began falling—New Guinea, Jayapura, and throughout the Solomon Islands.
The group often shared the same sparse living conditions and K-rations as the troops. Cooper met with the servicemen and women, visited military hospitals, introduced his attractive colleagues, and participated in occasional skits. The shows concluded with Cooper's moving recitation of Lou Gehrig's farewell speech. When he returned to the United States, he visited military hospitals throughout the country. Cooper later called his time with the troops the "greatest emotional experience" of his life.
Mature roles, 1944–1952
In 1944, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's wartime adventure film The Story of Dr. Wassell with Laraine Day — his third movie with the director. In the film, Cooper plays American doctor and missionary Corydon M. Wassell, who leads a group of wounded sailors through the jungles of Java to safety. Despite receiving poor reviews, Dr. Wassell was one of the top-grossing films of the year. With his Goldwyn and Paramount contracts now concluded, Cooper decided to remain independent and formed his own production company, International Pictures, with Leo Spitz, William Goetz, and Nunnally Johnson. The fledgling studio's first offering was Sam Wood's romantic comedy Casanova Brown with Teresa Wright, about a man who learns his soon-to-be ex-wife is pregnant with his child, just as he is about to marry another woman. The film received poor reviews, with the New York Daily News calling it "delightful nonsense", and Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, criticizing Cooper's "somewhat obvious and ridiculous clowning". The film was barely profitable.
In 1945, Cooper starred in and produced Stuart Heisler's Western comedy Along Came Jones with Loretta Young for International. In this lighthearted parody of his past heroic image, Cooper plays comically inept cowboy Melody Jones who is mistaken for a ruthless killer. Audiences embraced Cooper's character, and the film was one of the top box-office pictures of the year—a testament to Cooper's still vital audience appeal. It was also International's biggest financial success during its brief history before being sold off to Universal Studios in 1946.
Cooper's career during the post-war years drifted in new directions as American society was changing. While he still played conventional heroic roles, his films now relied less on his heroic screen persona and more on novel stories and exotic settings. In November 1945, Cooper appeared in Sam Wood's nineteenth-century period drama Saratoga Trunk with Ingrid Bergman, about a Texas cowboy and his relationship with a beautiful fortune-hunter. Filmed in early 1943, the movie's release was delayed for two years due to the increased demand for war movies. Despite poor reviews, Saratoga Trunk did well at the box office and became one of the top money-makers of the year for Warner Bros. Cooper's only film in 1946 was Fritz Lang's romantic thriller Cloak and Dagger, about a mild-mannered physics professor recruited by the OSS during the last years of World War II to investigate the German atomic bomb program. Playing a part loosely based on physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Cooper was uneasy with the role and unable to convey the "inner sense" of the character. The film received poor reviews and was a box-office failure. In 1947, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's epic adventure film Unconquered with Paulette Goddard, about a Virginia militiaman who defends settlers against an unscrupulous gun trader and hostile Indians on the Western frontier during the eighteenth century. The film received mixed reviews, but even long-time DeMille critic James Agee acknowledged the picture had "some authentic flavor of the period". This last of four films made with DeMille was Cooper's most lucrative, earning the actor over $300,000 (equal to $ today) in salary and percentage of profits. Unconquered would be his last unqualified box-office success for the next five years.
In 1948, after making Leo McCarey's romantic comedy Good Sam, Cooper sold his company to Universal Studios and signed a long-term contract with Warner Bros. that gave him script and director approval and a guaranteed $295,000 (equal to $ today) per picture. His first film under the new contract was King Vidor's drama The Fountainhead (1949) with Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey. In the film, Cooper plays an idealistic and uncompromising architect who struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism in the face of societal pressures to conform to popular standards. Based on the novel by Ayn Rand who also wrote the screenplay, the film reflects her philosophy and attacks the concepts of collectivism while promoting the virtues of individualism. For most critics, Cooper was hopelessly miscast in the role of Howard Roark. In his review for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther concluded he was "Mr. Deeds out of his element". Cooper returned to his element in Delmer Daves' war drama Task Force (1949), about a retiring rear admiral who reminisces about his long career as a naval aviator and his role in the development of aircraft carriers. Cooper's performance and the Technicolor newsreel footage supplied by the United States Navy made the film one of Cooper's most popular during this period. In the next two years, Cooper made four poorly received films: Michael Curtiz' period drama Bright Leaf (1950), Stuart Heisler's Western melodrama Dallas (1950), Henry Hathaway's wartime comedy You're in the Navy Now (1951), and Raoul Walsh's Western action film Distant Drums (1951).
Cooper's most important film during the post-war years was Fred Zinnemann's Western drama High Noon (1952) with Grace Kelly and Katy Jurado for United Artists. In the film, Cooper plays retiring sheriff Will Kane who is preparing to leave town on his honeymoon when he learns that an outlaw he helped put away and his three henchmen are returning to seek their revenge. Unable to gain the support of the frightened townspeople, and abandoned by his young bride, Kane nevertheless stays to face the outlaws alone. During the filming, Cooper was in poor health and in considerable pain from stomach ulcers. His ravaged face and discomfort in some scenes "photographed as self-doubt", according to biographer Hector Arce, and contributed to the effectiveness of his performance. Considered one of the first "adult" Westerns for its theme of moral courage, High Noon received enthusiastic reviews for its artistry, with Time magazine placing it in the ranks of Stagecoach and The Gunfighter. Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote that Cooper was "at the top of his form", and John McCarten, in The New Yorker, wrote that Cooper was never more effective. The film earned $3.75 million in the United States and $18 million worldwide. Following the example of his friend James Stewart, Cooper accepted a lower salary in exchange for a percent of the profits, and ended up making $600,000. Cooper's understated performance was widely praised, and earned him his second Academy Award for Best Actor.
Later films, 1953–1961
After appearing in André de Toth's Civil War drama Springfield Rifle (1952)—a standard Warner Bros. film that was overshadowed by the success of its predecessor—Cooper made four films outside the United States. In Mark Robson's drama Return to Paradise (1953), Cooper plays an American wanderer who liberates the inhabitants of a Polynesian island from the puritanical rule of a misguided pastor. Cooper endured spartan living conditions, long hours, and ill health during the three-month location shoot on the island of Upolu in Western Samoa. Despite its beautiful cinematography, the film received poor reviews. Cooper's next three films were shot in Mexico. In Hugo Fregonese's action adventure film Blowing Wild (1953) with Barbara Stanwyck, he plays a wildcatter in Mexico who gets involved with an oil company executive and his unscrupulous wife with whom he once had an affair.
In 1954, Cooper appeared in Henry Hathaway's Western drama Garden of Evil, with Susan Hayward, about three soldiers of fortune in Mexico hired to rescue a woman's husband. That same year, he appeared in Robert Aldrich's Western adventure Vera Cruz with Burt Lancaster. In the film, Cooper plays an American adventurer hired by Emperor Maximilian I to escort a countess to Vera Cruz during the Mexican Rebellion of 1866. All of these films received poor reviews but did well at the box-office. For his work in Vera Cruz, Cooper earned $1.4 million in salary and percent of the gross.
During this period, Cooper struggled with health problems. As well as his ongoing treatment for ulcers, he suffered a severe shoulder injury during the filming of Blowing Wild when he was hit by metal fragments from a dynamited oil well. During the filming of Vera Cruz, he reinjured his hip falling from a horse, and was burned when Lancaster fired his rifle too close and the wadding from the blank shell pierced his clothing.
In 1955, he appeared in Otto Preminger's biographical war drama The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, about the World War I general who tried to convince government officials of the importance of air power, and was court-martialed after blaming the War Department for a series of air disasters. Some critics felt that Cooper was miscast, and that his dull, tight-lipped performance did not reflect Mitchell's dynamic and caustic personality. In 1956, Cooper was more effective playing a gentle Indiana Quaker in William Wyler's Civil War drama Friendly Persuasion with Dorothy McGuire. Like Sergeant York and High Noon, the film addresses the conflict between religious pacifism and civic duty. For his performance, Cooper received his second Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actor. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, and went on to earn $8 million worldwide.
In 1956, Cooper traveled to France to make Billy Wilder's romantic comedy Love in the Afternoon with Audrey Hepburn and Maurice Chevalier. In the film, Cooper plays a middle-aged American playboy in Paris who pursues and eventually falls in love with a much younger woman. Despite receiving some positive reviews—including from Bosley Crowther who praised the film's "charming performances"—most reviewers concluded that Cooper was simply too old for the part. While audiences may not have welcomed seeing Cooper's heroic screen image tarnished by his playing an aging roué trying to seduce an innocent young girl, the film was still a box-office success. The following year, Cooper appeared in Philip Dunne's romantic drama Ten North Frederick. In the film, which was based on the novel by John O'Hara, Cooper plays an attorney whose life is ruined by a double-crossing politician and his own secret affair with his daughter's young roommate. While Cooper brought "conviction and controlled anguish" to his performance, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, it was not enough to save what Bosley Crowther called a "hapless film".
Despite his ongoing health problems and several operations for ulcers and hernias, Cooper continued to work in action films. In 1958, he appeared in Anthony Mann's Western drama Man of the West (1958) with Julie London and Lee J. Cobb, about a reformed outlaw and killer who is forced to confront his violent past when the train he is riding in is held up by his former gang members. The film has been called Cooper's "most pathological Western", with its themes of impotent rage, sexual humiliation, and sadism. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, Cooper, who struggled with moral conflicts in his personal life, "understood the anguish of a character striving to retain his integrity ... [and] brought authentic feeling to the role of a tempted and tormented, yet essentially decent man". Mostly ignored by critics at the time, the film is now well-regarded by film scholars and is considered Cooper's last great film.
After his Warner Bros. contract ended, Cooper formed his own production company, Baroda Productions, and made three unusual films in 1959 about redemption. In Delmer Daves' Western drama The Hanging Tree, Cooper plays a frontier doctor who saves a criminal from a lynch mob, and later tries to exploit his sordid past. Cooper delivered a "powerful and persuasive" performance of an emotionally scarred man whose need to dominate others is transformed by the love and sacrifice of a woman. In Robert Rossen's historical adventure They Came to Cordura with Rita Hayworth, he plays an army officer who is found guilty of cowardice and assigned the degrading task of recommending soldiers for the Medal of Honor during the Pancho Villa Expedition of 1916.
While Cooper received positive reviews, Variety and Films in Review felt he was too old for the part. In Michael Anderson's action drama The Wreck of the Mary Deare with Charlton Heston, Cooper plays a disgraced merchant marine officer who decides to stay aboard his sinking cargo ship in order to prove the vessel was deliberately scuttled and to redeem his good name. Like its two predecessors, the film was physically demanding. Cooper, who was a trained scuba diver, did most of his own underwater scenes. Biographer Jeffrey Meyers observed that in all three roles, Cooper effectively conveyed the sense of lost honor and desire for redemption—what Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim called the "struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what his moral identity should be".
Personal life
Marriage and family
Cooper was formally introduced to his future wife, 20-year-old New York debutante Veronica Balfe, on Easter Sunday 1933 at a party given by her uncle, art director Cedric Gibbons. Called "Rocky" by her family and friends, she grew up on Park Avenue and attended finishing schools. Her stepfather was Wall Street tycoon Paul Shields. Cooper and Rocky were quietly married at her parents' Park Avenue residence on December 15, 1933. According to his friends, the marriage had a positive impact on Cooper, who turned away from past indiscretions and took control of his life. Athletic and a lover of the outdoors, Rocky shared many of Cooper's interests, including riding, skiing, and skeet-shooting. She organized their social life, and her wealth and social connections provided Cooper access to New York high society. Cooper and his wife owned homes in the Los Angeles area in Encino (1933–36), Brentwood (1936–53), and Holmby Hills (1954–61), and owned a vacation home in Aspen, Colorado (1949–53).
Gary and Veronica Cooper's daughter, Maria Veronica Cooper, was born on September 15, 1937. By all accounts, he was a patient and affectionate father, teaching Maria to ride a bicycle, play tennis, ski, and ride horses. Sharing many of her parents' interests, she accompanied them on their travels and was often photographed with them. Like her father, she developed a love for art and drawing. As a family they vacationed together in Sun Valley, Idaho, spent time at Rocky's parents' country house in Southampton, New York, and took frequent trips to Europe. Cooper and Rocky were legally separated on May 16, 1951, when Cooper moved out of their home. For over two years, they maintained a fragile and uneasy family life with their daughter. Cooper moved back into their home in November 1953, and their formal reconciliation occurred in February 1954.
Romantic relationships
Prior to his marriage, Cooper had a series of romantic relationships with leading actresses, beginning in 1927 with Clara Bow, who advanced his career by helping him get one of his first leading roles in Children of Divorce. Bow was also responsible for getting Cooper a role in Wings, which generated an enormous amount of fan mail for the young actor. In 1928, he had a relationship with another experienced actress, Evelyn Brent, whom he met while filming Beau Sabreur. In 1929, while filming The Wolf Song, Cooper began an intense affair with Lupe Vélez, which was the most important romance of his early life. During their two years together, Cooper also had brief affairs with Marlene Dietrich while filming Morocco in 1930 and with Carole Lombard while making I Take This Woman in 1931. During his year abroad in 1931–32, Cooper had an affair with the married Countess Dorothy di Frasso, while staying at her Villa Madama near Rome.
After he was married in December 1933, Cooper remained faithful to his wife until the summer of 1942, when he began an affair with Ingrid Bergman during the production of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Their relationship lasted through the completion of filming Saratoga Trunk in June 1943. In 1948, after finishing work on The Fountainhead, Cooper began an affair with actress Patricia Neal, his co-star. At first they kept their affair discreet, but eventually it became an open secret in Hollywood, and Cooper's wife confronted him with the rumors, which he admitted were true. He also confessed that he was in love with Neal, and continued to see her. Cooper and his wife were legally separated in May 1951, but he did not seek a divorce. Neal later claimed that Cooper hit her after she went on a date with Kirk Douglas, and that he arranged for her to have an abortion when she became pregnant with Cooper's child. Neal ended their relationship in late December 1951. During his three-year separation from his wife, Cooper was rumored to have had affairs with Grace Kelly, Lorraine Chanel, and Gisèle Pascal.
Cooper biographers have explored his friendship in the late twenties with the actor Anderson Lawler, with whom Cooper shared a house on and off for a year, while at the same time seeing Clara Bow, Evelyn Brent and Lupe Vélez. Lupe Vélez once told Hedda Hopper of Vélez' affair with Cooper; whenever he would come home after seeing Lawler, she would sniff for Lawler's cologne. Vélez' biographer Michelle Vogel has reported that Vélez consented to Cooper's sexual behavior with Lawler, but only as long as she, too, could participate. In later life, he became involved in a relationship with the costume designer Irene, and was, according to Irene, "the only man she ever loved". A year after his death in 1961, Irene committed suicide by jumping from the 11th floor of the Knickerbocker Hotel, after telling Doris Day of her grief over Cooper's death.
Friendships, interests, and character
Cooper's twenty-year friendship with Ernest Hemingway began at Sun Valley in October 1940. The previous year, Hemingway drew upon Cooper's image when he created the character of Robert Jordan for the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. The two shared a passion for the outdoors, and for years they hunted duck and pheasant, and skied together in Sun Valley. Both men admired the work of Rudyard Kipling—Cooper kept a copy of the poem "If—" in his dressing room—and retained as adults Kipling's sense of boyish adventure.
As well as admiring Cooper's hunting skills and knowledge of the outdoors, Hemingway believed his character matched his screen persona, once telling a friend, "If you made up a character like Coop, nobody would believe it. He's just too good to be true." They saw each other often, and their friendship remained strong through the years.
Cooper's social life generally centered on sports, outdoor activities, and dinner parties with his family and friends from the film industry, including directors Henry Hathaway, Howard Hawks, William Wellman, and Fred Zinnemann, and actors Joel McCrea, James Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, and Robert Taylor. As well as hunting, Cooper enjoyed riding, fishing, skiing, and later in life, scuba diving. He never abandoned his early love for art and drawing, and over the years, he and his wife acquired a private collection of modern paintings, including works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Cooper owned several works by Pablo Picasso, whom he met in 1956. Cooper also had a lifelong passion for automobiles, with a collection that included a 1930 Duesenberg.
Cooper was naturally reserved and introspective, and loved the solitude of outdoor activities. Not unlike his screen persona, his communication style frequently consisted of long silences with an occasional "yup" and "shucks". He once said, "If others have more interesting things to say than I have, I keep quiet." According to his friends, Cooper could also be an articulate, well-informed conversationalist on topics ranging from horses, guns, and Western history to film production, sports cars, and modern art. He was modest and unpretentious, frequently downplaying his acting abilities and career accomplishments. His friends and colleagues described him as charming, well-mannered, and thoughtful, with a lively boyish sense of humor. Cooper maintained a sense of propriety throughout his career and never misused his movie star status—never sought special treatment or refused to work with a director or leading lady. His close friend Joel McCrea recalled, "Coop never fought, he never got mad, he never told anybody off that I know of; everybody that worked with him liked him."
Political views
Like his father, Cooper was a conservative Republican; he voted for Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Herbert Hoover in 1928 and 1932, and campaigned for Wendell Willkie in 1940. When Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented fourth presidential term in 1944, Cooper campaigned for Thomas E. Dewey and criticized Roosevelt for being dishonest and adopting "foreign" ideas. In a radio address that he paid for himself just prior to the election, Cooper said, "I disagree with the New Deal belief that the America all of us love is old and worn-out and finished—and has to borrow foreign notions that don't even seem to work any too well where they come from ... Our country is a young country that just has to make up its mind to be itself again." He also attended a Republican rally at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that drew 93,000 Dewey supporters.
Cooper was one of the founding members of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a conservative organization dedicated, according to its statement of principles, to preserving the "American way of life" and opposing communism and fascism. The organization — whose membership included Walter Brennan, Laraine Day, Walt Disney, Clark Gable, Hedda Hopper, Ronald Reagan, Barbara Stanwyck, and John Wayne — advised the United States Congress to investigate communist influence in the motion picture industry. On October 23, 1947, Cooper was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and was asked if he had observed any "communistic influence" in Hollywood.
Cooper recounted statements he'd heard suggesting that the Constitution was out of date and that Congress was an unnecessary institution—comments that Cooper said he found to be "very un-American" and testified that he had rejected several scripts because he thought they were "tinged with communist ideas". Unlike some other witnesses, Cooper did not name any individuals, nor did he name any scripts, during his testimony.
In 1951, while making High Noon, Cooper became friends with the film's screenwriter, Carl Foreman, who had been a member of the Communist Party. When Foreman was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Cooper put his career on the line to defend Foreman. When John Wayne and others threatened Cooper with blacklisting himself and the loss of his passport if he did not walk off the film, Cooper gave a statement to the press in support of Foreman, calling him "the finest kind of American". When producer Stanley Kramer removed Foreman's name as screenwriter, Cooper and director Fred Zinnemann threatened to walk off the film if Foreman's name was not restored. Foreman later said that, of all his friends and allies and colleagues in Hollywood, "Cooper was the only big one who tried to help. The only one." Cooper even offered to testify in Foreman's behalf before the committee, but character witnesses were not allowed. Foreman always sent future scripts to Cooper for first refusal, including The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Key and The Guns of Navarone. Cooper had to turn them down because of his age.
Religion
Cooper was baptized in the Anglican Church in December 1911 in Britain, and was raised in the Episcopal Church in the United States. While he was not an observant Christian for most of his adult life, many of his friends believed he had a deeply spiritual side.
On June 26, 1953, Cooper accompanied his wife and daughter, who were devout Catholics, to Rome, where they had an audience with Pope Pius XII. Cooper and his wife were still separated at the time, but the papal visit marked the beginning of their gradual reconciliation. In the coming years, Cooper contemplated his mortality and his personal behavior, and started discussing Catholicism with his family. He began attending church with them regularly, and met with their parish priest, who offered Cooper spiritual guidance. After several months of study, Cooper was baptized as a Roman Catholic on April 9, 1959, before a small group of family and friends at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.
Final years and death
On April 14, 1960, Cooper underwent surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had metastasized to his colon. He fell ill again on May 31 and underwent further surgery at Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles in early June to remove a malignant tumor from his large intestine. After recuperating over the summer, Cooper took his family on vacation to the south of France before traveling to the UK in the fall to star in The Naked Edge. In December 1960, he worked on the NBC television documentary The Real West, which was part of the company's Project 20 series.
On December 27, his wife learned from their family doctor that Cooper's cancer had spread to his lungs and bones and was inoperable. His family decided not to tell him immediately.
On January 9, 1961, Cooper attended a dinner that was given in his honor and hosted by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin at the Friars Club. The dinner was attended by many of his industry friends and concluded with a brief speech by Cooper who said, "The only achievement I'm proud of is the friends I've made in this community."
In mid-January, Cooper took his family to Sun Valley for their last vacation together. Cooper and Hemingway hiked through the snow together for the last time. On February 27, after returning to Los Angeles, Cooper learned that he was dying. He later told his family, "We'll pray for a miracle; but if not, and that's God's will, that's all right too." On April 17, Cooper watched the Academy Awards ceremony on television and saw his good friend James Stewart, who had presented Cooper with his first Oscar years earlier, accept on Cooper's behalf an honorary award for lifetime achievement—his third Oscar. Holding back tears, Stewart said, "Coop, I'll get this to you right away. And Coop, I want you to know this, that with this goes all the warm friendship and the affection and the admiration and the deep, the deep respect of all of us. We're very, very proud of you, Coop. All of us are tremendously proud." The following day, newspapers around the world announced the news that Cooper was dying. In the coming days he received numerous messages of appreciation and encouragement, including telegrams from Pope John XXIII and Queen Elizabeth II, and a telephone call from President John F. Kennedy.
In his last public statement on May 4, Cooper said, "I know that what is happening is God's will. I am not afraid of the future." He received the last rites on May 12. Cooper died quietly the following day, Saturday, May 13, 1961, at 12:47 P.M.
A requiem mass was held on May 18 at the Church of the Good Shepherd, attended by many of Cooper's friends, including James Stewart, Jack Benny, Henry Hathaway, Joel McCrea, Audrey Hepburn, Jack L. Warner, John Ford, John Wayne, Edward G. Robinson, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Fred Astaire, Randolph Scott, Walter Pidgeon, Bob Hope and Marlene Dietrich. Cooper was buried in the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. In May 1974, after his family relocated to New York, Cooper's remains were exhumed and reburied in Sacred Hearts Cemetery in Southampton. His grave is marked by a three-ton boulder from a Montauk quarry.
Acting style and reputation
Cooper's acting style consisted of three essential characteristics: his ability to project elements of his own personality onto the characters he portrayed, to appear natural and authentic in his roles, and to underplay and deliver restrained performances calibrated for the camera and the screen. Acting teacher Lee Strasberg once observed: "The simplest examples of Stanislavsky's ideas are actors such as Gary Cooper, John Wayne, and Spencer Tracy. They try not to act but to be themselves, to respond or react. They refuse to say or do anything they feel not to be consonant with their own characters." Film director François Truffaut ranked Cooper among "the greatest actors" because of his ability to deliver great performances "without direction". This ability to project elements of his own personality onto his characters produced a continuity across his performances to the extent that critics and audiences were convinced that he was simply "playing himself".
Cooper's ability to project his personality onto his characters played an important part in his appearing natural and authentic on screen. Actor John Barrymore said of Cooper, "This fellow is the world's greatest actor. He does without effort what the rest of us spend our lives trying to learn—namely, to be natural." Charles Laughton, who played opposite Cooper in Devil and the Deep agreed, "In truth, that boy hasn't the least idea how well he acts ... He gets at it from the inside, from his own clear way of looking at life." William Wyler, who directed Cooper in two films, called him a "superb actor, a master of movie acting".
In his review of Cooper's performance in The Real Glory, Graham Greene wrote, "Sometimes his lean photogenic face seems to leave everything to the lens, but there is no question here of his not acting. Watch him inoculate the girl against cholera—the casual jab of the needle, and the dressing slapped on while he talks, as though a thousand arms had taught him where to stab and he doesn't have to think anymore."
Cooper's style of underplaying before the camera surprised many of his directors and fellow actors. Even in his earliest feature films, he recognized the camera's ability to pick up slight gestures and facial movements. Commenting on Cooper's performance in Sergeant York, director Howard Hawks observed, "He worked very hard and yet he didn't seem to be working. He was a strange actor because you'd look at him during a scene and you'd think ... this isn't going to be any good. But when you saw the rushes in the projection room the next day you could read in his face all the things he'd been thinking." Sam Wood, who directed Cooper in four films, had similar observations about Cooper's performance in Pride of the Yankees, noting, "What I thought was underplaying turned out to be just the right approach. On the screen he's perfect, yet on the set you'd swear it's the worst job of acting in the history of motion pictures."
Fellow actors admired his abilities as an actor. Commenting on her two films playing opposite Cooper, actress Ingrid Bergman concluded, "The personality of this man was so enormous, so overpowering—and that expression in his eyes and his face, it was so delicate and so underplayed. You just didn't notice it until you saw it on the screen. I thought he was marvelous; the most underplaying and the most natural actor I ever worked with."
Tom Hanks declared, "In only one scene in the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, we see the future of screen acting in the form of Gary Cooper. He is quiet and natural, somehow different from the other cast members. He does something mysterious with his eyes and shoulders that is much more like 'being' than 'acting'."
Daniel Day-Lewis said, "I don't particularly like westerns as a genre, but I do love certain westerns. 'High Noon' means a lot to me – I love the purity and the honesty, I love Gary Cooper in that film, the idea of the last man standing."
Chris Pratt stated, "I started watching Westerns when I was shooting in London about four or five years ago. I really fell in love with Gary Cooper, and his stuff. That sucked me into the Westerns. Before, I never got engrossed in the story. I'd just dip in, and there were guys in horses in black and white. High Noon's later Gary Cooper, I liked that. But I liked 'The Westerner'. That's my favorite one. I have that poster hung up in my house because I really like that one."
To Al Pacino, "Gary Cooper was a phenomenon—his ability to take some thing and elevate it, give it such dignity. One of the great presences."
Mylène Demongeot first got with Gary Cooper for the opening of the first escalator to be installed in a cinema, at the Rex Theatre in Paris, on June 7, 1957. She declared in a 2015 filmed interview: "Gary Cooper ... il est sublime ! Aaahhh (Mylène pushing a cry of love not to say ecstasy) il est sublime ... Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! Là je dois dire que ça fait partie des stars, y'a Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, ces grands Américains que j'ai rencontrés comme ça, c'est vraiment des mecs incroyables. Y'en a plus des comme ça ! Euh non. (Gary Cooper was sublime, there I have to say, now he, was part of the stars, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, those great americans who I've met really were unbelievable guys, there aren't any like them anymore)."
Career assessment and legacy
Cooper's career spanned thirty-six years, from 1925 to 1961. During that time, he appeared in eighty-four feature films in a leading role. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His natural and authentic acting style appealed powerfully to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major movie genres, including Westerns, war films, adventure films, drama films, crime films, romance films, comedy films, and romantic comedy films. He appeared on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities for twenty-three consecutive years, from 1936 to 1958. According to Quigley's annual poll, Cooper was one of the top money-making stars for eighteen years, appearing in the top ten in 1936–37, 1941–49, and 1951–57. He topped the list in 1953. In Quigley's list of all-time money-making stars, Cooper is listed fourth, after John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Tom Cruise. At the time of his death, it was estimated that his films grossed well over $200 million (equivalent to $ billion in ).
In over half of his feature films, Cooper portrayed Westerners, soldiers, pilots, sailors, and explorers—all men of action. In the rest he played a wide range of characters, included doctors, professors, artists, architects, clerks, and baseball players. Cooper's heroic screen image changed with each period of his career. In his early films, he played the young naive hero sure of his moral position and trusting in the triumph of simple virtues (The Virginian). After becoming a major star, his Western screen persona was replaced by a more cautious hero in adventure films and dramas (A Farewell to Arms). During the height of his career, from 1936 to 1943, he played a new type of hero—a champion of the common man willing to sacrifice himself for others (Mr. Deeds, Meet John Doe, and For Whom the Bell Tolls).
In the post-war years, Cooper attempted broader variations on his screen image, which now reflected a hero increasingly at odds with the world who must face adversity alone (The Fountainhead and High Noon). In his final films, Cooper's hero rejects the violence of the past, and seeks to reclaim lost honor and find redemption (Friendly Persuasion and Man of the West). The screen persona he developed and sustained throughout his career represented the ideal American hero—a tall, handsome, and sincere man of steadfast integrity who emphasized action over intellect, and combined the heroic qualities of the romantic lover, the adventurer, and the common man.
On February 6, 1960, Cooper was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6243 Hollywood Boulevard for his contribution to the film industry. He was awarded a star on the sidewalk outside the Ellen Theater in Bozeman, Montana.
On May 6, 1961, he was awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters in recognition of his significant contribution to the arts. On July 30, 1961, he was posthumously awarded the David di Donatello Special Award in Italy for his career achievements.
In 1966, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. In 2015, he was inducted into the Utah Cowboy and Western Heritage Hall of Fame. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper eleventh on its list of the 25 male stars of classic Hollywood. Three of his characters—Will Kane, Lou Gehrig, and Sergeant York—made AFI's list of the one hundred greatest heroes and villains, all of them as heroes. His Lou Gehrig line, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.", is ranked by AFI as the thirty-eighth greatest movie quote of all time.
More than a half century after his death, Cooper's enduring legacy, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, is his image of the ideal American hero preserved in his film performances. Charlton Heston once observed, "He projected the kind of man Americans would like to be, probably more than any actor that's ever lived."
In the TV series Justified, based on works and characters created by Elmore Leonard, Gary Cooper is used throughout the six seasons as the man whom U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens, played by Timothy Olyphant, aspires to be. When his colleague asks Marshall Givens how he thinks his dangerous plan to bring down a villain can possibly work, he replies: "Why not? Worked for Gary Cooper."
Gary Cooper is referenced several times in the critically acclaimed television series The Sopranos, with protagonist Tony Soprano asking "What ever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type." while complaining about his problems to his therapist.
In the 1930s hit song "Puttin' On the Ritz", Cooper is referenced in the line "dress up like a million dollar trooper/Tryin' hard to look like Gary Cooper, Super duper!" More than two decades after Cooper's death a new version of the song was released in 1983 by Taco; the original lyrics were kept, including the references to Cooper.
In J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Cooper is "spotted" by Holden Caulfield to distract a woman he is dancing with.
Awards and nominations
Filmography
The following is a list of feature films in which Cooper appeared in a leading role.
The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926)
Children of Divorce (1927)
Arizona Bound (1927)
Wings (1927)
Nevada (1927)
It (1927)
The Last Outlaw (1927)
Beau Sabreur (1928)
The Legion of the Condemned (1928)
Doomsday (1928)
Half a Bride (1928)
Lilac Time (1928)
The First Kiss (1928)
The Shopworn Angel (1928)
Wolf Song (1929)
Betrayal (1929)
The Virginian (1929)
Only the Brave (1930)
The Texan (1930)
Seven Days' Leave (1930)
A Man from Wyoming (1930)
The Spoilers (1930)
Morocco (1930)
Fighting Caravans (1931)
City Streets (1931)
I Take This Woman (1931)
His Woman (1931)
Devil and the Deep (1932)
If I Had a Million (1932)
A Farewell to Arms (1932)
Today We Live (1933)
One Sunday Afternoon (1933)
Design for Living (1933)
Alice in Wonderland (1933)
Operator 13 (1934)
Now and Forever (1934)
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
The Wedding Night (1935)
Peter Ibbetson (1935)
Desire (1936)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
The General Died at Dawn (1936)
The Plainsman (1936)
Souls at Sea (1937)
The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938)
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938)
The Cowboy and the Lady (1938)
Beau Geste (1939)
The Real Glory (1939)
The Westerner (1940)
North West Mounted Police (1940)
Meet John Doe (1941)
Sergeant York (1941)
Ball of Fire (1941)
The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944)
Casanova Brown (1944)
Along Came Jones (1945)
Saratoga Trunk (1945)
Cloak and Dagger (1946)
Unconquered (1947)
Good Sam (1948)
The Fountainhead (1949)
Task Force (1949)
Bright Leaf (1950)
Dallas (1950)
You're in the Navy Now (1951)
It's a Big Country (1951)
Distant Drums (1951)
High Noon (1952)
Springfield Rifle (1952)
Return to Paradise (1953)
Blowing Wild (1953)
Garden of Evil (1954)
Vera Cruz (1954)
The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955)
Friendly Persuasion (1956)
Love in the Afternoon (1957)
Ten North Frederick (1958)
Man of the West (1958)
The Hanging Tree (1959)
They Came to Cordura (1959)
The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959)
The Naked Edge (1961)
Radio appearances
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Adrien Le Bihan, Gary Cooper, le prince des acteurs, LettMotif, 2021, 358p.()
External links
1901 births
1961 deaths
20th-century American male actors
Academy Honorary Award recipients
American expatriates in England
American male film actors
American male silent film actors
American male television actors
American people of English descent
Best Actor Academy Award winners
Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners
California Republicans
Catholics from Montana
Conservatism in the United States
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from prostate cancer
Grinnell College people
Male Western (genre) film actors
Male actors from Montana
Paramount Pictures contract players
People educated at Dunstable Grammar School
People from Brentwood, Los Angeles
People from Dunstable
People from Helena, Montana
People from Holmby Hills, Los Angeles | true | [
"Guido Coen (1915–2010) was an Italian-born British film producer and film subtitler. He and his family were interned in Douglas on the Isle of Man during the Second World War. He began his career working for Filippo Del Giudice and Two Cities Films. When Two Cities was absorbed into the Rank Organisation in the mid-1940s Coen was employed by Sir David Cunynghame of London Film Productions as a subtitler. As Coen later described it in an interview, he did not know anything about subtitling at the time, and learned on the job: I finally got a phone call from London Films, Sir Cunnyngham, that 's it, who asked me whether I had ever subtitles pictures. I immediately said I had when in point of fact I did not know what he meant, and there was a young man in the office with Sir David Cunnynghame called Lew Watt, and he said Lew Watt will do the technical side and we want you to subtitle an Italian picture in to English. I said certainly . I came out of his office and Lew Watt said to me you don't know what they're talking about do you, I said you're quite right, he said well I'll show you. And I started subtitling pictures with Lew Watt, I used to do the literary side, and he used to do the technical side, the spotting, and lengths, and we together did subtitles for 40 or 50 pictures. The funny thing was we subtitled pictures in Chinese, in Indian and for the Chinese picture I had to have a Chinese waiter with me to tell me where the subtitles [...] I had the Italian dialogue and I had the picture, they gave me a film and we did the spotting together with Lew Watt and the measurements and I used to type the script. We had the film, we had the print which used to run on the two sided thing. And Lew Watt was working all the day so we had to do this at night, so we either used to work at night till 2 o'clock in the morning or we used to work at the weekends. There was always the problem that the Movieola might break down and so we had spare keys of other cutting rooms in in elm St in case we were caught. And that was how we started.Coen later founded his own company Kenilworth Film Productions and spent most of the post-war years producing second features. He made a dozen films in partnership with the director Charles Saunders. He later produced the 1971 horror film Burke & Hare and the comedies Au Pair Girls and Intimate Games.\n\nSelected filmography\n She Shall Have Murder (1950)\n La peccatrice dell'isola (1952) (English subtitles)\n Meet Mr. Callaghan (1954)\n Behind the Headlines (1956)\n The Man Without a Body (1957)\n There's Always a Thursday (1957)\n Kill Her Gently (1957)\n Naked Fury (1959)\n Jungle Street (1960)\n Operation Cupid (1960)\n Dangerous Afternoon (1961)\n Panic (1963)\n The Penthouse (1967)\n Baby Love (1968)\n One Brief Summer (1970)\n Burke & Hare (1971)\n Au Pair Girls (1972)\n Intimate Games (1976)\n\nReferences\n\nBibliography\n Chibnall, Steve & McFarlane, Brian. The British 'B' Film. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.\n\nExternal links\n\nGuido Coen at the British History Project\nNotice of death\n\n1915 births\n2010 deaths\nFilm people from Milan\nBritish film producers\nItalian film producers\nBritish subtitlers\nItalian emigrants to the United Kingdom\n20th-century British translators",
"I Can Read! is a line of beginning reading books published by HarperCollins. The series is rated by level and is widely used to teach children to read English. The first book in the series was Else Holmelund Minarik's Little Bear, published in 1957, and subsequent notable titles have included Amelia Bedelia and Frog and Toad.\n\nStructure\nThe I Can Read! series divides its output into 6 levels\n\nMy Very First - For teaching children vowels\nMy First - For reading aloud to children.\nLevel 1 - For children who have begun to read sounds and sentences aloud.\nLevel 2 - For children who can read confidently, but still benefit from help.\nLevel 3 - Enjoyable titles for children to read unassisted.\nLevel 4 - Advanced titles to further develop the readers' literacy.\n\nHistory\nThe I Can Read! series began with 1957's Little Bear, by Else Holmelund Minarik and illustrated by Maurice Sendak.\n\nIn late 2020, HarperCollins announced the addition of a new series called \"I Can Read! Comics\". It is set to be released in June 2021 with four books, from levels 1 to 3.\n\nThere are now over 500 titles in the series.\n\nOther languages and formats\nSome I Can Read! books are also available in Spanish, French, audiobook, and e-book format.\n\nRecognition\nI Can Read! books have won Newbery Medal and Caldecott Medal honors.\n\nSelected titles\n Amelia Bedelia series, Peggy and Herman Parish\n At Home in a New Land, Joan Sandin \n Biscuit series, Alyssa Satin Capucilli\n Danny and the Dinosaur, story and pictures by Syd Hoff (1958)\n Frog and Toad series, Arnold Lobel\n Little Bear series, by Else Holmelund Minarik, pictures by Maurice Sendak\n Two Silly Trolls, Nancy Jewell\n The Witch Who Was Afraid of Witches, Alice Low\n Indian Summer, by F.N. Monjo, pictures by Anita Lobel\n Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik, pictures by Maurice Sendak (1957)\n Father Bear Comes Home by Else Holmelund Minarik, pictures by Maurice Sendak (1958)\n Little Bear's Friend by Else Holmelund Minarik, pictures by Maurice Sendak (1960)\n Little Bear's Visit by Else Holmelund Minarik, pictures by Maurice Sendak (1961)\n No Fighting, No Biting! by Else Holmelund Minarik, pictures by Maurice Sendak (1958)\n Julius, story and pictures by Syd Hoff (1959)\n Oliver, story and pictures by Syd Hoff (1959)\n Chester, story and pictures by Syd Hoff (1959)\n Stanley, story and pictures by Syd Hoff (1959)\n Little Chief, story and pictures by Syd Hoff (1959)\n Last One Home Is a Green Pig by Edith Thacher Hurd, pictures by Clement Hurd (1959)\n Hurry Hurry by Edith Thacher Hurd, pictures by Clement Hurd (1959)\n Stop Stop by Edith Thacher Hurd, pictures by Clement Hurd (1959)\n No Funny Business by Edith Thacher Hurd, pictures by Clement Hurd (1959)\n Emmett's Pig by Mary Stolz, pictures by Garth Williams\n Harry and the Lady Next Door by Gene Zion, pictures by Margaret Bloy Graham\n The Fire Cat, story and pictures by Esther Averill\n The Rooftop Mystery by Joan M. Lexau, pictures by Syd Hoff\n David and the Giant, by Mike McClintock, pictures of Fritz Siebel\n Morris Is a Cowboy, a Policeman and a Baby Sitter, story and pictures by B. Wiseman\n A Picture for Harold's Room, story and pictures by Crockett Johnson\n Tell Me Some More by Crosby Bonsall, pictures by Fritz Siebel\n Who's a Pest? by Crosby Bonsall\n The Happy Birthday Present by Joan Heilbroner, pictures by Mary Chalmers\n This Is the House Where Jack Lives by Joan Heilbroner, pictures by Aliki\n Little Runner of the Longhouse by Betty Baker, pictures by Arnold Lobel\n What Do They Do? Policemen and Firemen by Carla Greene, pictures by Leonard Kessler\n What Spot?, story and pictures by Crosby Bonsall\n The Secret Three by Mildred Myrick, pictures of Arnold Lobel\n Doctors and Nurses: What Do They Do? by Carla Greene, pictures by Leonard Kessler\n Grizzwold, by Syd Hoff\n Emily's First 100 Days Of School by Rosemary Wells\n Soldiers and Sailors: What Do They Do? by Carla Greene, pictures by Leonard Kessler\n Lucille, story and pictures by Arnold Lobel\n Red Fox and His Canoe by Nathaniel Benchley\n Railroad Engineers and Airplane Pilots: What Do They Do?\n Tom and the Two Handles by Russell Hoban, pictures by Lillian Hoban\n Three to Get Ready by Betty Boegehold, pictures by Mary Chalmers\n Johnny Lion's Book, by Edith Thacher Hurd, pictures by Clement Hurd\n Oscar Otter, by Nathaniel Benchley, pictures by Arnold Lobel\n Amelia Bedelia and the Surprise Shower, by Peggy Parish, pictures by Fritz Siebel\n Juan Bobo series, by Virginia Schomp, pictures by Jess Yeomans\n\nMystery Books\n The Case of the Hungry Stranger, story and pictures by Crosby Bonsall\n The Case of the Cat's Meow, story and pictures by Crosby Bonsall\n Big Max, by Kin Platt, pictures by Robert Lopshire\n\nSports Books\n Here Comes the Strikeout, story and pictures by Leonard Kessler\n Kick, Pass, and Run, story and pictures by Leonard Kessler\n\nEarly Books\n Cat and Dog by Else Holmelund Minarik, pictures by Fritz Siebel\n Who Will Be My Friends?, story and pictures by Syd Hoff\n Albert the Albatross, story and pictures by Syd Hoff\n What Have I Got?, by Mike McClintock, pictures by Leonard Kessler\n Come and Have Fun, by Edith Thacher Hurd, pictures by Clement Hurd\n Mine's the Best, by Crosby Bonsall\n Hester the Jester, by Ben Schecter\n The Case of the Dumb Bells, story and pictures by Crosby Bonsall\n The Homework Caper, by Joan M. Lexau, pictures by Syd Hoff\n\nScience I CAN READ Books\n Seeds and More Seeds by Millicent E. Selsam, pictures by Tomi Ungerer\n Plenty of Fish by Millicent Selsam, pictures by Erik Blegvad\n Tony's Birds by Millicent Selsam, pictures by Kurt Werth\n Terry and the Caterpillars by Millicent Selsam, pictures by Arnold Lobel\n Red Tag Comes Back by Fred Phleger, pictures by Arnold Lobel\n Prove It! by Rose Wyler and Gerald Ames, pictures by Talivaldis Stubis\n Greg's Microscope by Millicent Selsam, pictures by Arnold Lobel\n Seahorse by Robert A. Morris, pictures by Arnold Lobel\n Let's Get Turtles by Millicent Selsam, pictures by Arnold Lobel\n Benny's Animals and How He Put Them In Order, by Millicent Selsam, pictures by John Kaufmann\n When an Animal Grows, by Millicent Selsam\n Hidden Animals, by Millicent Selsam\n The Toad Hunt, by Janet Chenery\n Ants Are Fun, by Mildred Myrick, pictures by Arnold Lobel\n Wolfie, by Janet Chenery\n Catch a Whale by the Tail, by Edward Ricciuti\n The Penguins Are Coming, by R.L. Penney\n A Nest of Wood Ducks, by Evelyn Shaw, pictures by Cherryl Pape\n The Bug That Laid the Golden Eggs, Millicent Selsam\n Alligator by Evelyn S. Shaw\n Octopus by Evelyn S. Shaw\n Woodchuck by Faith McNulty\n Elephant Seal Island by Evelyn S. Shaw\n More Potatoes! by Millicent Selsam\n Fireflies by Joanne Ryder\n Barn Owl by Phyllis Flower\n Egg to Chick by Millicent Selsam\n An Animal for Alan by Edward R. Ricciuti, pictures by Tom Eaton\n Donald and the Fish That Walked by Edward R. Ricciuti\n Fish Out of School by Evelyn S. Shaw\n Look for a Bird by Edith Thacher Hurd\n\nReferences\n\n \"Biscuit Goes to School\" by Alyssa Satin Capucilli; pictures by Pat Schories. Fiction, 26 pages. Harper Collins Publishers, 2002. .\n\nExternal links\n I Can Read!\n\nBook series introduced in 1957\nAmerican children's books\nLearning to read\nSeries of children's books\nWilliam Collins, Sons books\nHarperCollins books"
] |
[
"Gary Cooper",
"Silent films, 1925-28",
"what happened in 1925?",
"In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures",
"what pictures did he do?",
"The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones."
] | C_84d38f8ca490447a92f516e3616fdb66_1 | did he win any awards for them? | 3 | did Gary Cooper win any awards for Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones? | Gary Cooper | In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, including Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt work--which sometimes injured horses and riders--"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name. Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week. Cooper's first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal--finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings, the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada--both films directed by John Waters. In 1928, Paramount paired Cooper with a youthful Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss--advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride. That year, Cooper also made Lilac Time with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928. CANNOTANSWER | Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings, the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. | Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper; May 7, 1901 – May 13, 1961) was an American actor known for his strong, silent, and understated acting style. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice and had a further three nominations, as well as receiving an Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements in 1961. He was one of the top 10 film personalities for 23 consecutive years, and one of the top money-making stars for 18 years. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper at No. 11 on its list of the 25 greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Cooper's career spanned 36 years, from 1925 to 1961, and included leading roles in 84 feature films. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era through to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His screen persona appealed strongly to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major film genres. His ability to project his own personality onto the characters he played contributed to his natural and authentic appearance on screen. Throughout his career, he sustained a screen persona that represented the ideal American hero.
Cooper began his career as a film extra and stunt rider, but soon landed acting roles. After establishing himself as a Western hero in his early silent films, he appeared as the Virginian and became a movie star in 1929 with his first sound picture, The Virginian. In the early 1930s, he expanded his heroic image to include more cautious characters in adventure films and dramas such as A Farewell to Arms (1932) and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935). During the height of his career, Cooper portrayed a new type of hero—a champion of the common man—in films such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Meet John Doe (1941), Sergeant York (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). He later portrayed more mature characters at odds with the world in films such as The Fountainhead (1949) and High Noon (1952). In his final films, he played non-violent characters searching for redemption in films such as Friendly Persuasion (1956) and Man of the West (1958).
Early life
Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana, on May 7, 1901, the younger of two sons of English parents Alice (née Brazier; 1873–1967) and Charles Henry Cooper (1865–1946). His brother, Arthur, was six years his senior. Cooper's father came from Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire, and became a prominent lawyer, rancher, and Montana Supreme Court justice. His mother hailed from Gillingham, Kent, and married Charles in Montana. In 1906, Charles purchased the Seven-Bar-Nine cattle ranch, about north of Helena near Craig, Montana. Cooper and Arthur spent their summers at the ranch and learned to ride horses, hunt, and fish. Cooper attended Central Grade School in Helena.
Alice wanted her sons to have an English education, so she took them back to England in 1909 to enroll them in Dunstable Grammar School in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. While there, Cooper and his brother lived with their father's cousins, William and Emily Barton, at their home in Houghton Regis. Cooper studied Latin, French, and English history at Dunstable until 1912. While he adapted to English school discipline and learned the requisite social graces, he never adjusted to the rigid class structure and formal Eton collars he was required to wear. He received his confirmation in the Church of England at the Church of All Saints in Houghton Regis on December 3, 1911. His mother accompanied her sons back to the U.S. in August 1912, and Cooper resumed his education at Johnson Grammar School in Helena.
When Cooper was 15, he injured his hip in a car accident. On his doctor's recommendation, he returned to the Seven-Bar-Nine ranch to recuperate by horseback riding. The misguided therapy left him with his characteristic stiff, off-balanced walk and slightly angled horse-riding style. He left Helena High School after two years in 1918, and returned to the family ranch to work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for him to attend Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana, where English teacher Ida Davis encouraged him to focus on academics and participate in debating and dramatics. Cooper later called Davis "the woman partly responsible for [him] giving up cowboy-ing and going to college".
Cooper was still attending high school in 1920 when he took three art courses at Montana Agricultural College in Bozeman. His interest in art was inspired years earlier by the Western paintings of Charles Marion Russell and Frederic Remington. Cooper especially admired and studied Russell's Lewis and Clark Meeting Indians at Ross' Hole (1910), which still hangs in the state capitol building in Helena. In 1922, to continue his art education, he enrolled in Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. He did well academically in most of his courses, but was not accepted into the school's drama club. His drawings and watercolor paintings were exhibited throughout the dormitory, and he was named art editor for the college yearbook. During the summers of 1922 and 1923, Cooper worked at Yellowstone National Park as a tour guide driving the yellow open-top buses. Despite a promising first 18 months at Grinnell, he left college suddenly in February 1924, spent a month in Chicago looking for work as an artist, and then returned to Helena, where he sold editorial cartoons to the local Independent newspaper.
In autumn 1924, Cooper's father left the Montana Supreme Court bench and moved with his wife to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives, and Cooper joined his parents there in November at his father's request. After briefly working a series of unpromising jobs, he met two friends from Montana who were working as film extras and stunt riders in low-budget Western films for the small movie studios on Poverty Row. They introduced him to another Montana cowboy, rodeo champion Jay "Slim" Talbot, who took him to see a casting director. Wanting money for a professional art course, Cooper worked as a film extra for $5 a day, and as a stunt rider for $10. Cooper and Talbot became close friends and hunting companions, and Talbot later worked as Cooper's stuntman and stand-in for over three decades.
Career
Silent films, 1925–1928
In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, but also the already emergent major studios, Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt workwhich sometimes injured horses and riders"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name.
Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week.
Cooper's first important film role was a supporting part in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) starring Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal—finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings (both 1927), the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada—both films directed by John Waters.
Paramount paired Cooper with Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss (both 1928)—advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride (also both 1928). Around the same time, Cooper made Lilac Time (1928) with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928.
Hollywood stardom, 1929–1935
Cooper became a major movie star in 1929 with the release of his first talking picture, The Virginian (1929), which was directed by Victor Fleming and co-starred Mary Brian and Walter Huston. Based on the popular novel by Owen Wister, The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honor and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western movie genre that persist to the present day. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, the romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero who embodied male freedom, courage, and honor was created in large part by Cooper in the film. Unlike some silent film actors who had trouble adapting to the new sound medium, Cooper transitioned naturally, with his "deep and clear" and "pleasantly drawling" voice, which was perfectly suited for the characters he portrayed on screen, also according to Meyers. Looking to capitalize on Cooper's growing popularity, Paramount cast him in several Westerns and wartime dramas, including Only the Brave, The Texan, Seven Days' Leave, A Man from Wyoming, and The Spoilers (all released in 1930). Norman Rockwell depicted Cooper in his role as The Texan for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 24, 1930.
One of the more important performances in Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's film Morocco (also 1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her introduction to American audiences. During production, von Sternberg focused his energies on Dietrich and treated Cooper dismissively. Tensions came to a head after von Sternberg yelled directions at Cooper in German. The actor approached the director, picked him up by the collar, and said, "If you expect to work in this country you'd better get on to the language we use here." Despite the tensions on the set, Cooper produced "one of his best performances", according to Thornton Delehanty of the New York Evening Post.
After returning to the Western genre in Zane Grey's Fighting Caravans (1931) with French actress Lili Damita, Cooper appeared in the Dashiell Hammett crime film City Streets (also 1931), co-starring Sylvia Sidney and Paul Lukas, playing a westerner who gets involved with big-city gangsters in order to save the woman he loves. Cooper concluded the year with appearances in two unsuccessful films: I Take This Woman (also 1931) with Carole Lombard, and His Woman with Claudette Colbert. The demands and pressures of making ten films in two years left Cooper exhausted and in poor health, suffering from anemia and jaundice. He had lost during that period, and felt lonely, isolated, and depressed by his sudden fame and wealth. In May 1931, Cooper left Hollywood and sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year.
During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso at the Villa Madama in Rome, where she taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. After guiding him through the great art museums and galleries of Italy, she accompanied him on a ten-week big-game hunting safari on the slopes of Mount Kenya in East Africa, where he was credited with over sixty kills, including two lions, a rhinoceros, and various antelopes. His safari experience in Africa had a profound influence on Cooper and intensified his love of the wilderness. After returning to Europe, he and the countess set off on a Mediterranean cruise of the Italian and French Rivieras. Rested and rejuvenated by his year-long exile, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood in April 1932 and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 a week, and director and script approval.
In 1932, after completing Devil and the Deep with Tallulah Bankhead to fulfill his old contract, Cooper appeared in A Farewell to Arms, the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Co-starring Helen Hayes, a leading New York theatre star and Academy Award winner, and Adolphe Menjou, the film presented Cooper with one of his most ambitious and challenging dramatic roles, playing an American ambulance driver wounded in Italy who falls in love with an English nurse during World War I. Critics praised his highly intense and emotional performance, and the film became one of the year's most commercially successful pictures. In 1933, after making Today We Live with Joan Crawford and One Sunday Afternoon with Fay Wray, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy film Design for Living, based on the successful Noël Coward play. Co-starring Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March, the film was a box office success, ranking as one of the top ten highest-grossing films of 1933. All three of the lead actors—March, Cooper, and Hopkins—received attention from this film as they were all at the peak of their careers. Cooper's performance — playing an American artist in Europe competing with his playwright friend for the affections of a beautiful woman — was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy. Cooper changed his name legally to "Gary Cooper" in August 1933.
In 1934, Cooper was loaned out to MGM for the Civil War drama film Operator 13 with Marion Davies, about a beautiful Union spy who falls in love with a Confederate soldier. Despite Richard Boleslawski's imaginative direction and George J. Folsey's lavish cinematography, the film did poorly at the box office.
Back at Paramount, Cooper appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever, with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. In the film, he plays a confidence man who tries to sell his daughter to the relatives who raised her, but is eventually won over by the adorable girl. Impressed by Temple's intelligence and charm, Cooper developed a close rapport with her, both on and off screen. The film was a box-office success.
The following year, Cooper was loaned out to Samuel Goldwyn Productions to appear in King Vidor's romance film The Wedding Night with Anna Sten, who was being groomed as "another Garbo". In the film, Cooper plays an alcoholic novelist who retreats to his family's New England farm where he meets and falls in love with a beautiful Polish neighbor. Cooper delivered a performance of surprising range and depth, according to biographer Larry Swindell. Despite receiving generally favorable reviews, the film was not popular with American audiences, who may have been offended by the film's depiction of an extramarital affair and its tragic ending.
That same year, Cooper appeared in two Henry Hathaway films: the melodrama Peter Ibbetson with Ann Harding, about a man caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the adventure film The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. While the former, championed by the surrealists became more successful in Europe than in the United States, the latter was nominated for seven Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films. Hathaway had the highest respect for Cooper's acting ability, calling him "the best actor of all of them".
American folk hero, 1936–1943
From Mr. Deeds to The Real Glory, 1936–1939
Cooper's career took an important turn in 1936. After making Frank Borzage's romantic comedy film Desire with Marlene Dietrich at Paramount—in which he delivered a performance considered by some contemporary critics as one of his finest—Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. In the film, Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, a quiet, innocent writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont, and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin were able to use Cooper's well-established screen persona as the "quintessential American hero"—a symbol of honesty, courage, and goodness—to create a new type of "folk hero" for the common man. Commenting on Cooper's impact on the character and the film, Capra observed:
Both Desire and Mr. Deeds opened in April 1936 to critical praise and were major box-office successes. In his review in The New York Times, Frank Nugent wrote that Cooper was "proving himself one of the best light comedians in Hollywood". For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Cooper appeared in two other Paramount films in 1936. In Lewis Milestone's adventure film The General Died at Dawn with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success.
In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly fictionalized version of the opening of the American western frontier. The film was an even greater box-office hit than its predecessor, due in large part to Jean Arthur's definitive depiction of Calamity Jane and Cooper's inspired portrayal of Hickock as an enigmatic figure of "deepening mythic substance". That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-three years.
In late 1936, Paramount was preparing a new contract for Cooper that would raise his salary to $8,000 a week when Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn for six films over six years with a minimum guarantee of $150,000 per picture. Paramount brought suit against Goldwyn and Cooper, and the court ruled that Cooper's new Goldwyn contract afforded the actor sufficient time to also honor his Paramount agreement. Cooper continued to make films with both studios, and by 1939 the United States Treasury reported that Cooper was the country's highest wage earner, at $482,819 (equivalent to $ million in ).
In contrast to his output the previous year, Cooper appeared in only one picture in 1937, Henry Hathaway's adventure film Souls at Sea. A critical and box-office failure, Cooper referred to it as his "almost picture", saying, "It was almost exciting, and almost interesting. And I was almost good." In 1938, he appeared in Archie Mayo's biographical film The Adventures of Marco Polo. Plagued by production problems and a weak screenplay, the film became Goldwyn's biggest failure to that date, losing $700,000. During this period, Cooper turned down several important roles, including the role of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Cooper was producer David O. Selznick's first choice for the part. He made several overtures to the actor, but Cooper had doubts about the project, and did not feel suited to the role. Cooper later admitted, "It was one of the best roles ever offered in Hollywood ... But I said no. I didn't see myself as quite that dashing, and later, when I saw Clark Gable play the role to perfection, I knew I was right."
Back at Paramount, Cooper returned to a more comfortable genre in Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert. In the film, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. Despite the clever screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, and solid performances by Cooper and Colbert, American audiences had trouble accepting Cooper in the role of a shallow philanderer. It succeeded only at the European box office market.
In the fall of 1938, Cooper appeared in H. C. Potter's romantic comedy The Cowboy and the Lady with Merle Oberon, about a sweet-natured rodeo cowboy who falls in love with the wealthy daughter of a presidential hopeful, believing her to be a poor, hard-working lady's maid. The efforts of three directors and several eminent screenwriters could not salvage what could have been a fine vehicle for Cooper. While more successful than its predecessor, the film was Cooper's fourth consecutive box-office failure in the American market.
In the next two years, Cooper was more discerning about the roles he accepted and made four successful large-scale adventure and cowboy films. In William A. Wellman's adventure film Beau Geste (1939), he plays one of three daring English brothers who join the French Foreign Legion in the Sahara to fight local tribes. Filmed in the same Mojave Desert locations as the original 1926 version with Ronald Colman, Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona. This was the last film in Cooper's contract with Paramount.
In Henry Hathaway's The Real Glory (1939), he plays a military doctor who accompanies a small group of American Army officers to the Philippines to help the Christian Filipinos defend themselves against Muslim radicals. Many film critics praised Cooper's performance, including author and film critic Graham Greene, who recognized that he "never acted better".
From The Westerner to For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940–1943
Cooper returned to the Western genre in William Wyler's The Westerner (1940) with Walter Brennan and Doris Davenport, about a drifting cowboy who defends homesteaders against Roy Bean, a corrupt judge known as the "law west of the Pecos". Screenwriter Niven Busch relied on Cooper's extensive knowledge of Western history while working on the script. The film received positive reviews and did well at the box-office, with reviewers praising the performances of the two lead actors. That same year, Cooper appeared in his first all-Technicolor feature, Cecil B. DeMille's adventure film North West Mounted Police (1940). In the film, Cooper plays a Texas Ranger who pursues an outlaw into western Canada where he joins forces with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who are after the same man, a leader of the North-West Rebellion. While not as popular with critics as its predecessor, the film was another box-office success—the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1940.
The early 1940s were Cooper's prime years as an actor. In a relatively short period, he appeared in five critically successful and popular films that produced some of his finest performances. When Frank Capra offered him the lead role in Meet John Doe before Robert Riskin even developed the script, Cooper accepted his friend's offer, saying, "It's okay, Frank, I don't need a script." In the film, Cooper plays Long John Willoughby, a down-and-out bush-league pitcher hired by a newspaper to pretend to be a man who promises to commit suicide on Christmas Eve to protest all the hypocrisy and corruption in the country. Considered by some critics to be Capra's best film at the time, Meet John Doe was received as a "national event" with Cooper appearing on the front cover of Time magazine on March 3, 1941. In his review in the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes called Cooper's performance a "splendid and utterly persuasive portrayal" and praised his "utterly realistic acting which comes through with such authority". Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote, "Gary Cooper, of course, is 'John Doe' to the life and in the whole—shy, bewildered, non-aggressive, but a veritable tiger when aroused."
That same year, Cooper made two films with director and good friend Howard Hawks. In the biographical film Sergeant York, Cooper portrays war hero Alvin C. York, one of the most decorated American soldiers in World War I. The film chronicles York's early backwoods days in Tennessee, his religious conversion and subsequent piety, his stand as a conscientious objector, and finally his heroic actions at the Battle of the Argonne Forest, which earned him the Medal of Honor. Initially, Cooper was nervous and uncertain about playing a living hero, so he traveled to Tennessee to visit York at his home, and the two quiet men established an immediate rapport and discovered they had much in common. Inspired by York's encouragement, Cooper delivered a performance that Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune called "one of extraordinary conviction and versatility", and that Archer Winston of the New York Post called "one of his best". After the film's release, Cooper was awarded the Distinguished Citizenship Medal by the Veterans of Foreign Wars for his "powerful contribution to the promotion of patriotism and loyalty". York admired Cooper's performance and helped promote the film for Warner Bros. Sergeant York became the top-grossing film of the year and was nominated for eleven Academy Awards. Accepting his first Academy Award for Best Actor from his friend James Stewart, Cooper said, "It was Sergeant Alvin York who won this award. Shucks, I've been in the business sixteen years and sometimes dreamed I might get one of these. That's all I can say ... Funny when I was dreaming I always made a better speech."
Cooper concluded the year back at Goldwyn with Howard Hawks to make the romantic comedy Ball of Fire with Barbara Stanwyck. In the film, Cooper plays a shy linguistics professor who leads a team of seven scholars who are writing an encyclopedia. While researching slang, he meets Stanwyck's flirtatious burlesque stripper Sugarpuss O'Shea who blows the dust off their staid life of books. The screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder provided Cooper the opportunity to exercise the full range of his light comedy skills. In his review for the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes wrote that Cooper handled the role with "great skill and comic emphasis" and that his performance was "utterly delightful". Though small in scale, Ball of Fire was one of the top-grossing films of the year—Cooper's fourth consecutive picture to make the top twenty.
Cooper's only film appearance in 1942 was also his last under his Goldwyn contract. In Sam Wood's biographical film The Pride of the Yankees, Cooper portrays baseball star Lou Gehrig who established a record with the New York Yankees for playing in 2,130 consecutive games. Cooper was reluctant to play the seven-time All-Star, who only died the previous year from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — now commonly called "Lou Gehrig's disease". Beyond the challenges of effectively portraying such a popular and nationally recognized figure, Cooper knew very little about baseball and was not left-handed like Gehrig.
After Gehrig's widow visited the actor and expressed her desire that he portray her husband, Cooper accepted the role that covered a twenty-year span of Gehrig's life—his early love of baseball, his rise to greatness, his loving marriage, and his struggle with illness, culminating in his farewell speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939 before 62,000 fans. Cooper quickly learned the physical movements of a baseball player and developed a fluid, believable swing. The handedness issue was solved by reversing the print for certain batting scenes. The film was one of the year's top ten pictures and received eleven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's third).
Soon after the publication of Ernest Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, Paramount paid $150,000 for the film rights with the express intent of casting Cooper in the lead role of Robert Jordan, an American explosives expert who fights alongside the Republican loyalists during the Spanish Civil War. The original director, Cecil B. DeMille, was replaced by Sam Wood who brought in Dudley Nichols for the screenplay. After the start of principal photography in the Sierra Nevada in late 1942, Ingrid Bergman was brought in to replace ballerina Vera Zorina as the female lead—a change supported by Cooper and Hemingway. The love scenes between Bergman and Cooper were "rapturous" and passionate. Howard Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune wrote that both actors performed with "the true stature and authority of stars". While the film distorted the novel's original political themes and meaning, For Whom the Bell Tolls was a critical and commercial success and received ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's fourth).
World War II related activities
Due to his age and health, Cooper did not serve in the military during World War II, but like many of his colleagues, he got involved in the war effort by entertaining the troops. In June 1943, he visited military hospitals in San Diego, and often appeared at the Hollywood Canteen serving food to the servicemen. In late 1943, Cooper undertook a tour of the South West Pacific with actresses Una Merkel and Phyllis Brooks, and accordionist Andy Arcari.
Traveling on a B-24A Liberator bomber, the group toured the Cook Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia, Queensland, Brisbane—where General Douglas MacArthur told Cooper he was watching Sergeant York in a Manila theater when Japanese bombs began falling—New Guinea, Jayapura, and throughout the Solomon Islands.
The group often shared the same sparse living conditions and K-rations as the troops. Cooper met with the servicemen and women, visited military hospitals, introduced his attractive colleagues, and participated in occasional skits. The shows concluded with Cooper's moving recitation of Lou Gehrig's farewell speech. When he returned to the United States, he visited military hospitals throughout the country. Cooper later called his time with the troops the "greatest emotional experience" of his life.
Mature roles, 1944–1952
In 1944, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's wartime adventure film The Story of Dr. Wassell with Laraine Day — his third movie with the director. In the film, Cooper plays American doctor and missionary Corydon M. Wassell, who leads a group of wounded sailors through the jungles of Java to safety. Despite receiving poor reviews, Dr. Wassell was one of the top-grossing films of the year. With his Goldwyn and Paramount contracts now concluded, Cooper decided to remain independent and formed his own production company, International Pictures, with Leo Spitz, William Goetz, and Nunnally Johnson. The fledgling studio's first offering was Sam Wood's romantic comedy Casanova Brown with Teresa Wright, about a man who learns his soon-to-be ex-wife is pregnant with his child, just as he is about to marry another woman. The film received poor reviews, with the New York Daily News calling it "delightful nonsense", and Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, criticizing Cooper's "somewhat obvious and ridiculous clowning". The film was barely profitable.
In 1945, Cooper starred in and produced Stuart Heisler's Western comedy Along Came Jones with Loretta Young for International. In this lighthearted parody of his past heroic image, Cooper plays comically inept cowboy Melody Jones who is mistaken for a ruthless killer. Audiences embraced Cooper's character, and the film was one of the top box-office pictures of the year—a testament to Cooper's still vital audience appeal. It was also International's biggest financial success during its brief history before being sold off to Universal Studios in 1946.
Cooper's career during the post-war years drifted in new directions as American society was changing. While he still played conventional heroic roles, his films now relied less on his heroic screen persona and more on novel stories and exotic settings. In November 1945, Cooper appeared in Sam Wood's nineteenth-century period drama Saratoga Trunk with Ingrid Bergman, about a Texas cowboy and his relationship with a beautiful fortune-hunter. Filmed in early 1943, the movie's release was delayed for two years due to the increased demand for war movies. Despite poor reviews, Saratoga Trunk did well at the box office and became one of the top money-makers of the year for Warner Bros. Cooper's only film in 1946 was Fritz Lang's romantic thriller Cloak and Dagger, about a mild-mannered physics professor recruited by the OSS during the last years of World War II to investigate the German atomic bomb program. Playing a part loosely based on physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Cooper was uneasy with the role and unable to convey the "inner sense" of the character. The film received poor reviews and was a box-office failure. In 1947, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's epic adventure film Unconquered with Paulette Goddard, about a Virginia militiaman who defends settlers against an unscrupulous gun trader and hostile Indians on the Western frontier during the eighteenth century. The film received mixed reviews, but even long-time DeMille critic James Agee acknowledged the picture had "some authentic flavor of the period". This last of four films made with DeMille was Cooper's most lucrative, earning the actor over $300,000 (equal to $ today) in salary and percentage of profits. Unconquered would be his last unqualified box-office success for the next five years.
In 1948, after making Leo McCarey's romantic comedy Good Sam, Cooper sold his company to Universal Studios and signed a long-term contract with Warner Bros. that gave him script and director approval and a guaranteed $295,000 (equal to $ today) per picture. His first film under the new contract was King Vidor's drama The Fountainhead (1949) with Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey. In the film, Cooper plays an idealistic and uncompromising architect who struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism in the face of societal pressures to conform to popular standards. Based on the novel by Ayn Rand who also wrote the screenplay, the film reflects her philosophy and attacks the concepts of collectivism while promoting the virtues of individualism. For most critics, Cooper was hopelessly miscast in the role of Howard Roark. In his review for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther concluded he was "Mr. Deeds out of his element". Cooper returned to his element in Delmer Daves' war drama Task Force (1949), about a retiring rear admiral who reminisces about his long career as a naval aviator and his role in the development of aircraft carriers. Cooper's performance and the Technicolor newsreel footage supplied by the United States Navy made the film one of Cooper's most popular during this period. In the next two years, Cooper made four poorly received films: Michael Curtiz' period drama Bright Leaf (1950), Stuart Heisler's Western melodrama Dallas (1950), Henry Hathaway's wartime comedy You're in the Navy Now (1951), and Raoul Walsh's Western action film Distant Drums (1951).
Cooper's most important film during the post-war years was Fred Zinnemann's Western drama High Noon (1952) with Grace Kelly and Katy Jurado for United Artists. In the film, Cooper plays retiring sheriff Will Kane who is preparing to leave town on his honeymoon when he learns that an outlaw he helped put away and his three henchmen are returning to seek their revenge. Unable to gain the support of the frightened townspeople, and abandoned by his young bride, Kane nevertheless stays to face the outlaws alone. During the filming, Cooper was in poor health and in considerable pain from stomach ulcers. His ravaged face and discomfort in some scenes "photographed as self-doubt", according to biographer Hector Arce, and contributed to the effectiveness of his performance. Considered one of the first "adult" Westerns for its theme of moral courage, High Noon received enthusiastic reviews for its artistry, with Time magazine placing it in the ranks of Stagecoach and The Gunfighter. Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote that Cooper was "at the top of his form", and John McCarten, in The New Yorker, wrote that Cooper was never more effective. The film earned $3.75 million in the United States and $18 million worldwide. Following the example of his friend James Stewart, Cooper accepted a lower salary in exchange for a percent of the profits, and ended up making $600,000. Cooper's understated performance was widely praised, and earned him his second Academy Award for Best Actor.
Later films, 1953–1961
After appearing in André de Toth's Civil War drama Springfield Rifle (1952)—a standard Warner Bros. film that was overshadowed by the success of its predecessor—Cooper made four films outside the United States. In Mark Robson's drama Return to Paradise (1953), Cooper plays an American wanderer who liberates the inhabitants of a Polynesian island from the puritanical rule of a misguided pastor. Cooper endured spartan living conditions, long hours, and ill health during the three-month location shoot on the island of Upolu in Western Samoa. Despite its beautiful cinematography, the film received poor reviews. Cooper's next three films were shot in Mexico. In Hugo Fregonese's action adventure film Blowing Wild (1953) with Barbara Stanwyck, he plays a wildcatter in Mexico who gets involved with an oil company executive and his unscrupulous wife with whom he once had an affair.
In 1954, Cooper appeared in Henry Hathaway's Western drama Garden of Evil, with Susan Hayward, about three soldiers of fortune in Mexico hired to rescue a woman's husband. That same year, he appeared in Robert Aldrich's Western adventure Vera Cruz with Burt Lancaster. In the film, Cooper plays an American adventurer hired by Emperor Maximilian I to escort a countess to Vera Cruz during the Mexican Rebellion of 1866. All of these films received poor reviews but did well at the box-office. For his work in Vera Cruz, Cooper earned $1.4 million in salary and percent of the gross.
During this period, Cooper struggled with health problems. As well as his ongoing treatment for ulcers, he suffered a severe shoulder injury during the filming of Blowing Wild when he was hit by metal fragments from a dynamited oil well. During the filming of Vera Cruz, he reinjured his hip falling from a horse, and was burned when Lancaster fired his rifle too close and the wadding from the blank shell pierced his clothing.
In 1955, he appeared in Otto Preminger's biographical war drama The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, about the World War I general who tried to convince government officials of the importance of air power, and was court-martialed after blaming the War Department for a series of air disasters. Some critics felt that Cooper was miscast, and that his dull, tight-lipped performance did not reflect Mitchell's dynamic and caustic personality. In 1956, Cooper was more effective playing a gentle Indiana Quaker in William Wyler's Civil War drama Friendly Persuasion with Dorothy McGuire. Like Sergeant York and High Noon, the film addresses the conflict between religious pacifism and civic duty. For his performance, Cooper received his second Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actor. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, and went on to earn $8 million worldwide.
In 1956, Cooper traveled to France to make Billy Wilder's romantic comedy Love in the Afternoon with Audrey Hepburn and Maurice Chevalier. In the film, Cooper plays a middle-aged American playboy in Paris who pursues and eventually falls in love with a much younger woman. Despite receiving some positive reviews—including from Bosley Crowther who praised the film's "charming performances"—most reviewers concluded that Cooper was simply too old for the part. While audiences may not have welcomed seeing Cooper's heroic screen image tarnished by his playing an aging roué trying to seduce an innocent young girl, the film was still a box-office success. The following year, Cooper appeared in Philip Dunne's romantic drama Ten North Frederick. In the film, which was based on the novel by John O'Hara, Cooper plays an attorney whose life is ruined by a double-crossing politician and his own secret affair with his daughter's young roommate. While Cooper brought "conviction and controlled anguish" to his performance, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, it was not enough to save what Bosley Crowther called a "hapless film".
Despite his ongoing health problems and several operations for ulcers and hernias, Cooper continued to work in action films. In 1958, he appeared in Anthony Mann's Western drama Man of the West (1958) with Julie London and Lee J. Cobb, about a reformed outlaw and killer who is forced to confront his violent past when the train he is riding in is held up by his former gang members. The film has been called Cooper's "most pathological Western", with its themes of impotent rage, sexual humiliation, and sadism. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, Cooper, who struggled with moral conflicts in his personal life, "understood the anguish of a character striving to retain his integrity ... [and] brought authentic feeling to the role of a tempted and tormented, yet essentially decent man". Mostly ignored by critics at the time, the film is now well-regarded by film scholars and is considered Cooper's last great film.
After his Warner Bros. contract ended, Cooper formed his own production company, Baroda Productions, and made three unusual films in 1959 about redemption. In Delmer Daves' Western drama The Hanging Tree, Cooper plays a frontier doctor who saves a criminal from a lynch mob, and later tries to exploit his sordid past. Cooper delivered a "powerful and persuasive" performance of an emotionally scarred man whose need to dominate others is transformed by the love and sacrifice of a woman. In Robert Rossen's historical adventure They Came to Cordura with Rita Hayworth, he plays an army officer who is found guilty of cowardice and assigned the degrading task of recommending soldiers for the Medal of Honor during the Pancho Villa Expedition of 1916.
While Cooper received positive reviews, Variety and Films in Review felt he was too old for the part. In Michael Anderson's action drama The Wreck of the Mary Deare with Charlton Heston, Cooper plays a disgraced merchant marine officer who decides to stay aboard his sinking cargo ship in order to prove the vessel was deliberately scuttled and to redeem his good name. Like its two predecessors, the film was physically demanding. Cooper, who was a trained scuba diver, did most of his own underwater scenes. Biographer Jeffrey Meyers observed that in all three roles, Cooper effectively conveyed the sense of lost honor and desire for redemption—what Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim called the "struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what his moral identity should be".
Personal life
Marriage and family
Cooper was formally introduced to his future wife, 20-year-old New York debutante Veronica Balfe, on Easter Sunday 1933 at a party given by her uncle, art director Cedric Gibbons. Called "Rocky" by her family and friends, she grew up on Park Avenue and attended finishing schools. Her stepfather was Wall Street tycoon Paul Shields. Cooper and Rocky were quietly married at her parents' Park Avenue residence on December 15, 1933. According to his friends, the marriage had a positive impact on Cooper, who turned away from past indiscretions and took control of his life. Athletic and a lover of the outdoors, Rocky shared many of Cooper's interests, including riding, skiing, and skeet-shooting. She organized their social life, and her wealth and social connections provided Cooper access to New York high society. Cooper and his wife owned homes in the Los Angeles area in Encino (1933–36), Brentwood (1936–53), and Holmby Hills (1954–61), and owned a vacation home in Aspen, Colorado (1949–53).
Gary and Veronica Cooper's daughter, Maria Veronica Cooper, was born on September 15, 1937. By all accounts, he was a patient and affectionate father, teaching Maria to ride a bicycle, play tennis, ski, and ride horses. Sharing many of her parents' interests, she accompanied them on their travels and was often photographed with them. Like her father, she developed a love for art and drawing. As a family they vacationed together in Sun Valley, Idaho, spent time at Rocky's parents' country house in Southampton, New York, and took frequent trips to Europe. Cooper and Rocky were legally separated on May 16, 1951, when Cooper moved out of their home. For over two years, they maintained a fragile and uneasy family life with their daughter. Cooper moved back into their home in November 1953, and their formal reconciliation occurred in February 1954.
Romantic relationships
Prior to his marriage, Cooper had a series of romantic relationships with leading actresses, beginning in 1927 with Clara Bow, who advanced his career by helping him get one of his first leading roles in Children of Divorce. Bow was also responsible for getting Cooper a role in Wings, which generated an enormous amount of fan mail for the young actor. In 1928, he had a relationship with another experienced actress, Evelyn Brent, whom he met while filming Beau Sabreur. In 1929, while filming The Wolf Song, Cooper began an intense affair with Lupe Vélez, which was the most important romance of his early life. During their two years together, Cooper also had brief affairs with Marlene Dietrich while filming Morocco in 1930 and with Carole Lombard while making I Take This Woman in 1931. During his year abroad in 1931–32, Cooper had an affair with the married Countess Dorothy di Frasso, while staying at her Villa Madama near Rome.
After he was married in December 1933, Cooper remained faithful to his wife until the summer of 1942, when he began an affair with Ingrid Bergman during the production of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Their relationship lasted through the completion of filming Saratoga Trunk in June 1943. In 1948, after finishing work on The Fountainhead, Cooper began an affair with actress Patricia Neal, his co-star. At first they kept their affair discreet, but eventually it became an open secret in Hollywood, and Cooper's wife confronted him with the rumors, which he admitted were true. He also confessed that he was in love with Neal, and continued to see her. Cooper and his wife were legally separated in May 1951, but he did not seek a divorce. Neal later claimed that Cooper hit her after she went on a date with Kirk Douglas, and that he arranged for her to have an abortion when she became pregnant with Cooper's child. Neal ended their relationship in late December 1951. During his three-year separation from his wife, Cooper was rumored to have had affairs with Grace Kelly, Lorraine Chanel, and Gisèle Pascal.
Cooper biographers have explored his friendship in the late twenties with the actor Anderson Lawler, with whom Cooper shared a house on and off for a year, while at the same time seeing Clara Bow, Evelyn Brent and Lupe Vélez. Lupe Vélez once told Hedda Hopper of Vélez' affair with Cooper; whenever he would come home after seeing Lawler, she would sniff for Lawler's cologne. Vélez' biographer Michelle Vogel has reported that Vélez consented to Cooper's sexual behavior with Lawler, but only as long as she, too, could participate. In later life, he became involved in a relationship with the costume designer Irene, and was, according to Irene, "the only man she ever loved". A year after his death in 1961, Irene committed suicide by jumping from the 11th floor of the Knickerbocker Hotel, after telling Doris Day of her grief over Cooper's death.
Friendships, interests, and character
Cooper's twenty-year friendship with Ernest Hemingway began at Sun Valley in October 1940. The previous year, Hemingway drew upon Cooper's image when he created the character of Robert Jordan for the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. The two shared a passion for the outdoors, and for years they hunted duck and pheasant, and skied together in Sun Valley. Both men admired the work of Rudyard Kipling—Cooper kept a copy of the poem "If—" in his dressing room—and retained as adults Kipling's sense of boyish adventure.
As well as admiring Cooper's hunting skills and knowledge of the outdoors, Hemingway believed his character matched his screen persona, once telling a friend, "If you made up a character like Coop, nobody would believe it. He's just too good to be true." They saw each other often, and their friendship remained strong through the years.
Cooper's social life generally centered on sports, outdoor activities, and dinner parties with his family and friends from the film industry, including directors Henry Hathaway, Howard Hawks, William Wellman, and Fred Zinnemann, and actors Joel McCrea, James Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, and Robert Taylor. As well as hunting, Cooper enjoyed riding, fishing, skiing, and later in life, scuba diving. He never abandoned his early love for art and drawing, and over the years, he and his wife acquired a private collection of modern paintings, including works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Cooper owned several works by Pablo Picasso, whom he met in 1956. Cooper also had a lifelong passion for automobiles, with a collection that included a 1930 Duesenberg.
Cooper was naturally reserved and introspective, and loved the solitude of outdoor activities. Not unlike his screen persona, his communication style frequently consisted of long silences with an occasional "yup" and "shucks". He once said, "If others have more interesting things to say than I have, I keep quiet." According to his friends, Cooper could also be an articulate, well-informed conversationalist on topics ranging from horses, guns, and Western history to film production, sports cars, and modern art. He was modest and unpretentious, frequently downplaying his acting abilities and career accomplishments. His friends and colleagues described him as charming, well-mannered, and thoughtful, with a lively boyish sense of humor. Cooper maintained a sense of propriety throughout his career and never misused his movie star status—never sought special treatment or refused to work with a director or leading lady. His close friend Joel McCrea recalled, "Coop never fought, he never got mad, he never told anybody off that I know of; everybody that worked with him liked him."
Political views
Like his father, Cooper was a conservative Republican; he voted for Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Herbert Hoover in 1928 and 1932, and campaigned for Wendell Willkie in 1940. When Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented fourth presidential term in 1944, Cooper campaigned for Thomas E. Dewey and criticized Roosevelt for being dishonest and adopting "foreign" ideas. In a radio address that he paid for himself just prior to the election, Cooper said, "I disagree with the New Deal belief that the America all of us love is old and worn-out and finished—and has to borrow foreign notions that don't even seem to work any too well where they come from ... Our country is a young country that just has to make up its mind to be itself again." He also attended a Republican rally at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that drew 93,000 Dewey supporters.
Cooper was one of the founding members of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a conservative organization dedicated, according to its statement of principles, to preserving the "American way of life" and opposing communism and fascism. The organization — whose membership included Walter Brennan, Laraine Day, Walt Disney, Clark Gable, Hedda Hopper, Ronald Reagan, Barbara Stanwyck, and John Wayne — advised the United States Congress to investigate communist influence in the motion picture industry. On October 23, 1947, Cooper was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and was asked if he had observed any "communistic influence" in Hollywood.
Cooper recounted statements he'd heard suggesting that the Constitution was out of date and that Congress was an unnecessary institution—comments that Cooper said he found to be "very un-American" and testified that he had rejected several scripts because he thought they were "tinged with communist ideas". Unlike some other witnesses, Cooper did not name any individuals, nor did he name any scripts, during his testimony.
In 1951, while making High Noon, Cooper became friends with the film's screenwriter, Carl Foreman, who had been a member of the Communist Party. When Foreman was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Cooper put his career on the line to defend Foreman. When John Wayne and others threatened Cooper with blacklisting himself and the loss of his passport if he did not walk off the film, Cooper gave a statement to the press in support of Foreman, calling him "the finest kind of American". When producer Stanley Kramer removed Foreman's name as screenwriter, Cooper and director Fred Zinnemann threatened to walk off the film if Foreman's name was not restored. Foreman later said that, of all his friends and allies and colleagues in Hollywood, "Cooper was the only big one who tried to help. The only one." Cooper even offered to testify in Foreman's behalf before the committee, but character witnesses were not allowed. Foreman always sent future scripts to Cooper for first refusal, including The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Key and The Guns of Navarone. Cooper had to turn them down because of his age.
Religion
Cooper was baptized in the Anglican Church in December 1911 in Britain, and was raised in the Episcopal Church in the United States. While he was not an observant Christian for most of his adult life, many of his friends believed he had a deeply spiritual side.
On June 26, 1953, Cooper accompanied his wife and daughter, who were devout Catholics, to Rome, where they had an audience with Pope Pius XII. Cooper and his wife were still separated at the time, but the papal visit marked the beginning of their gradual reconciliation. In the coming years, Cooper contemplated his mortality and his personal behavior, and started discussing Catholicism with his family. He began attending church with them regularly, and met with their parish priest, who offered Cooper spiritual guidance. After several months of study, Cooper was baptized as a Roman Catholic on April 9, 1959, before a small group of family and friends at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.
Final years and death
On April 14, 1960, Cooper underwent surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had metastasized to his colon. He fell ill again on May 31 and underwent further surgery at Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles in early June to remove a malignant tumor from his large intestine. After recuperating over the summer, Cooper took his family on vacation to the south of France before traveling to the UK in the fall to star in The Naked Edge. In December 1960, he worked on the NBC television documentary The Real West, which was part of the company's Project 20 series.
On December 27, his wife learned from their family doctor that Cooper's cancer had spread to his lungs and bones and was inoperable. His family decided not to tell him immediately.
On January 9, 1961, Cooper attended a dinner that was given in his honor and hosted by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin at the Friars Club. The dinner was attended by many of his industry friends and concluded with a brief speech by Cooper who said, "The only achievement I'm proud of is the friends I've made in this community."
In mid-January, Cooper took his family to Sun Valley for their last vacation together. Cooper and Hemingway hiked through the snow together for the last time. On February 27, after returning to Los Angeles, Cooper learned that he was dying. He later told his family, "We'll pray for a miracle; but if not, and that's God's will, that's all right too." On April 17, Cooper watched the Academy Awards ceremony on television and saw his good friend James Stewart, who had presented Cooper with his first Oscar years earlier, accept on Cooper's behalf an honorary award for lifetime achievement—his third Oscar. Holding back tears, Stewart said, "Coop, I'll get this to you right away. And Coop, I want you to know this, that with this goes all the warm friendship and the affection and the admiration and the deep, the deep respect of all of us. We're very, very proud of you, Coop. All of us are tremendously proud." The following day, newspapers around the world announced the news that Cooper was dying. In the coming days he received numerous messages of appreciation and encouragement, including telegrams from Pope John XXIII and Queen Elizabeth II, and a telephone call from President John F. Kennedy.
In his last public statement on May 4, Cooper said, "I know that what is happening is God's will. I am not afraid of the future." He received the last rites on May 12. Cooper died quietly the following day, Saturday, May 13, 1961, at 12:47 P.M.
A requiem mass was held on May 18 at the Church of the Good Shepherd, attended by many of Cooper's friends, including James Stewart, Jack Benny, Henry Hathaway, Joel McCrea, Audrey Hepburn, Jack L. Warner, John Ford, John Wayne, Edward G. Robinson, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Fred Astaire, Randolph Scott, Walter Pidgeon, Bob Hope and Marlene Dietrich. Cooper was buried in the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. In May 1974, after his family relocated to New York, Cooper's remains were exhumed and reburied in Sacred Hearts Cemetery in Southampton. His grave is marked by a three-ton boulder from a Montauk quarry.
Acting style and reputation
Cooper's acting style consisted of three essential characteristics: his ability to project elements of his own personality onto the characters he portrayed, to appear natural and authentic in his roles, and to underplay and deliver restrained performances calibrated for the camera and the screen. Acting teacher Lee Strasberg once observed: "The simplest examples of Stanislavsky's ideas are actors such as Gary Cooper, John Wayne, and Spencer Tracy. They try not to act but to be themselves, to respond or react. They refuse to say or do anything they feel not to be consonant with their own characters." Film director François Truffaut ranked Cooper among "the greatest actors" because of his ability to deliver great performances "without direction". This ability to project elements of his own personality onto his characters produced a continuity across his performances to the extent that critics and audiences were convinced that he was simply "playing himself".
Cooper's ability to project his personality onto his characters played an important part in his appearing natural and authentic on screen. Actor John Barrymore said of Cooper, "This fellow is the world's greatest actor. He does without effort what the rest of us spend our lives trying to learn—namely, to be natural." Charles Laughton, who played opposite Cooper in Devil and the Deep agreed, "In truth, that boy hasn't the least idea how well he acts ... He gets at it from the inside, from his own clear way of looking at life." William Wyler, who directed Cooper in two films, called him a "superb actor, a master of movie acting".
In his review of Cooper's performance in The Real Glory, Graham Greene wrote, "Sometimes his lean photogenic face seems to leave everything to the lens, but there is no question here of his not acting. Watch him inoculate the girl against cholera—the casual jab of the needle, and the dressing slapped on while he talks, as though a thousand arms had taught him where to stab and he doesn't have to think anymore."
Cooper's style of underplaying before the camera surprised many of his directors and fellow actors. Even in his earliest feature films, he recognized the camera's ability to pick up slight gestures and facial movements. Commenting on Cooper's performance in Sergeant York, director Howard Hawks observed, "He worked very hard and yet he didn't seem to be working. He was a strange actor because you'd look at him during a scene and you'd think ... this isn't going to be any good. But when you saw the rushes in the projection room the next day you could read in his face all the things he'd been thinking." Sam Wood, who directed Cooper in four films, had similar observations about Cooper's performance in Pride of the Yankees, noting, "What I thought was underplaying turned out to be just the right approach. On the screen he's perfect, yet on the set you'd swear it's the worst job of acting in the history of motion pictures."
Fellow actors admired his abilities as an actor. Commenting on her two films playing opposite Cooper, actress Ingrid Bergman concluded, "The personality of this man was so enormous, so overpowering—and that expression in his eyes and his face, it was so delicate and so underplayed. You just didn't notice it until you saw it on the screen. I thought he was marvelous; the most underplaying and the most natural actor I ever worked with."
Tom Hanks declared, "In only one scene in the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, we see the future of screen acting in the form of Gary Cooper. He is quiet and natural, somehow different from the other cast members. He does something mysterious with his eyes and shoulders that is much more like 'being' than 'acting'."
Daniel Day-Lewis said, "I don't particularly like westerns as a genre, but I do love certain westerns. 'High Noon' means a lot to me – I love the purity and the honesty, I love Gary Cooper in that film, the idea of the last man standing."
Chris Pratt stated, "I started watching Westerns when I was shooting in London about four or five years ago. I really fell in love with Gary Cooper, and his stuff. That sucked me into the Westerns. Before, I never got engrossed in the story. I'd just dip in, and there were guys in horses in black and white. High Noon's later Gary Cooper, I liked that. But I liked 'The Westerner'. That's my favorite one. I have that poster hung up in my house because I really like that one."
To Al Pacino, "Gary Cooper was a phenomenon—his ability to take some thing and elevate it, give it such dignity. One of the great presences."
Mylène Demongeot first got with Gary Cooper for the opening of the first escalator to be installed in a cinema, at the Rex Theatre in Paris, on June 7, 1957. She declared in a 2015 filmed interview: "Gary Cooper ... il est sublime ! Aaahhh (Mylène pushing a cry of love not to say ecstasy) il est sublime ... Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! Là je dois dire que ça fait partie des stars, y'a Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, ces grands Américains que j'ai rencontrés comme ça, c'est vraiment des mecs incroyables. Y'en a plus des comme ça ! Euh non. (Gary Cooper was sublime, there I have to say, now he, was part of the stars, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, those great americans who I've met really were unbelievable guys, there aren't any like them anymore)."
Career assessment and legacy
Cooper's career spanned thirty-six years, from 1925 to 1961. During that time, he appeared in eighty-four feature films in a leading role. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His natural and authentic acting style appealed powerfully to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major movie genres, including Westerns, war films, adventure films, drama films, crime films, romance films, comedy films, and romantic comedy films. He appeared on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities for twenty-three consecutive years, from 1936 to 1958. According to Quigley's annual poll, Cooper was one of the top money-making stars for eighteen years, appearing in the top ten in 1936–37, 1941–49, and 1951–57. He topped the list in 1953. In Quigley's list of all-time money-making stars, Cooper is listed fourth, after John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Tom Cruise. At the time of his death, it was estimated that his films grossed well over $200 million (equivalent to $ billion in ).
In over half of his feature films, Cooper portrayed Westerners, soldiers, pilots, sailors, and explorers—all men of action. In the rest he played a wide range of characters, included doctors, professors, artists, architects, clerks, and baseball players. Cooper's heroic screen image changed with each period of his career. In his early films, he played the young naive hero sure of his moral position and trusting in the triumph of simple virtues (The Virginian). After becoming a major star, his Western screen persona was replaced by a more cautious hero in adventure films and dramas (A Farewell to Arms). During the height of his career, from 1936 to 1943, he played a new type of hero—a champion of the common man willing to sacrifice himself for others (Mr. Deeds, Meet John Doe, and For Whom the Bell Tolls).
In the post-war years, Cooper attempted broader variations on his screen image, which now reflected a hero increasingly at odds with the world who must face adversity alone (The Fountainhead and High Noon). In his final films, Cooper's hero rejects the violence of the past, and seeks to reclaim lost honor and find redemption (Friendly Persuasion and Man of the West). The screen persona he developed and sustained throughout his career represented the ideal American hero—a tall, handsome, and sincere man of steadfast integrity who emphasized action over intellect, and combined the heroic qualities of the romantic lover, the adventurer, and the common man.
On February 6, 1960, Cooper was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6243 Hollywood Boulevard for his contribution to the film industry. He was awarded a star on the sidewalk outside the Ellen Theater in Bozeman, Montana.
On May 6, 1961, he was awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters in recognition of his significant contribution to the arts. On July 30, 1961, he was posthumously awarded the David di Donatello Special Award in Italy for his career achievements.
In 1966, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. In 2015, he was inducted into the Utah Cowboy and Western Heritage Hall of Fame. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper eleventh on its list of the 25 male stars of classic Hollywood. Three of his characters—Will Kane, Lou Gehrig, and Sergeant York—made AFI's list of the one hundred greatest heroes and villains, all of them as heroes. His Lou Gehrig line, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.", is ranked by AFI as the thirty-eighth greatest movie quote of all time.
More than a half century after his death, Cooper's enduring legacy, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, is his image of the ideal American hero preserved in his film performances. Charlton Heston once observed, "He projected the kind of man Americans would like to be, probably more than any actor that's ever lived."
In the TV series Justified, based on works and characters created by Elmore Leonard, Gary Cooper is used throughout the six seasons as the man whom U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens, played by Timothy Olyphant, aspires to be. When his colleague asks Marshall Givens how he thinks his dangerous plan to bring down a villain can possibly work, he replies: "Why not? Worked for Gary Cooper."
Gary Cooper is referenced several times in the critically acclaimed television series The Sopranos, with protagonist Tony Soprano asking "What ever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type." while complaining about his problems to his therapist.
In the 1930s hit song "Puttin' On the Ritz", Cooper is referenced in the line "dress up like a million dollar trooper/Tryin' hard to look like Gary Cooper, Super duper!" More than two decades after Cooper's death a new version of the song was released in 1983 by Taco; the original lyrics were kept, including the references to Cooper.
In J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Cooper is "spotted" by Holden Caulfield to distract a woman he is dancing with.
Awards and nominations
Filmography
The following is a list of feature films in which Cooper appeared in a leading role.
The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926)
Children of Divorce (1927)
Arizona Bound (1927)
Wings (1927)
Nevada (1927)
It (1927)
The Last Outlaw (1927)
Beau Sabreur (1928)
The Legion of the Condemned (1928)
Doomsday (1928)
Half a Bride (1928)
Lilac Time (1928)
The First Kiss (1928)
The Shopworn Angel (1928)
Wolf Song (1929)
Betrayal (1929)
The Virginian (1929)
Only the Brave (1930)
The Texan (1930)
Seven Days' Leave (1930)
A Man from Wyoming (1930)
The Spoilers (1930)
Morocco (1930)
Fighting Caravans (1931)
City Streets (1931)
I Take This Woman (1931)
His Woman (1931)
Devil and the Deep (1932)
If I Had a Million (1932)
A Farewell to Arms (1932)
Today We Live (1933)
One Sunday Afternoon (1933)
Design for Living (1933)
Alice in Wonderland (1933)
Operator 13 (1934)
Now and Forever (1934)
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
The Wedding Night (1935)
Peter Ibbetson (1935)
Desire (1936)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
The General Died at Dawn (1936)
The Plainsman (1936)
Souls at Sea (1937)
The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938)
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938)
The Cowboy and the Lady (1938)
Beau Geste (1939)
The Real Glory (1939)
The Westerner (1940)
North West Mounted Police (1940)
Meet John Doe (1941)
Sergeant York (1941)
Ball of Fire (1941)
The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944)
Casanova Brown (1944)
Along Came Jones (1945)
Saratoga Trunk (1945)
Cloak and Dagger (1946)
Unconquered (1947)
Good Sam (1948)
The Fountainhead (1949)
Task Force (1949)
Bright Leaf (1950)
Dallas (1950)
You're in the Navy Now (1951)
It's a Big Country (1951)
Distant Drums (1951)
High Noon (1952)
Springfield Rifle (1952)
Return to Paradise (1953)
Blowing Wild (1953)
Garden of Evil (1954)
Vera Cruz (1954)
The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955)
Friendly Persuasion (1956)
Love in the Afternoon (1957)
Ten North Frederick (1958)
Man of the West (1958)
The Hanging Tree (1959)
They Came to Cordura (1959)
The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959)
The Naked Edge (1961)
Radio appearances
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Adrien Le Bihan, Gary Cooper, le prince des acteurs, LettMotif, 2021, 358p.()
External links
1901 births
1961 deaths
20th-century American male actors
Academy Honorary Award recipients
American expatriates in England
American male film actors
American male silent film actors
American male television actors
American people of English descent
Best Actor Academy Award winners
Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners
California Republicans
Catholics from Montana
Conservatism in the United States
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from prostate cancer
Grinnell College people
Male Western (genre) film actors
Male actors from Montana
Paramount Pictures contract players
People educated at Dunstable Grammar School
People from Brentwood, Los Angeles
People from Dunstable
People from Helena, Montana
People from Holmby Hills, Los Angeles | false | [
"The Filmfare Award for Best Film is given by the Filmfare magazine as part of its annual Filmfare Awards for Hindi films.\n\nThe award was first given in 1954. Here is a list of the award winners and the nominees of the respective years. Each individual entry shows the title followed by the production company and the producer.\n\nYash Raj Films has produced 18 films that have been nominated, the most for any production house. It also shares the most wins at 4 along with Bimal Roy Productions and UTV Motion Pictures. While Yash Chopra has been the producer of most of the nominated and all the winning films of Yash Raj Films, Bimal Roy has been the producer of all the nominated films of Bimal Roy Productions, thus making them the producer with the most wins. Bimal Roy, Yash Chopra, and Sanjay Leela Bhansali have each directed 4 winning films, the most for any director. Aamir Khan has starred in 9 winning films which is the most for any actor in a leading role.\n\nWinners and nominees\n\n1950s\n\n1960s\n\n1970s\n\n1980s\n\n1990s\n\n2000s\n\n2010s\n\n2020s\n\nSpecial 50 Year Award\n\nIn 2005, Filmfare announced the best movie of the last 50 years as Sholay, although the film did not win the Filmfare Award for Best Film in its year of release.\n\nSee also\n Filmfare Critics Award for Best Movie\n Filmfare Awards\n Bollywood\n Cinema of India\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nFilmfare Awards Best Film\n\nF\nAwards for best film",
"The 3rd Academy Awards were awarded to films completed and screened released between August 1, 1929, and July 31, 1930, by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.\n\nAll Quiet on the Western Front was the first film to win both Best Picture and Best Director, a feat that would become common in later years. Lewis Milestone became the first person to win two Oscars, having won Best Director – Comedy at the 1st Academy Awards.\n\nThe Love Parade received six nominations, the greatest number of any film to that point. However, it did not win in any category.\n\nBest Sound Recording was introduced this year, making it the first new category since the inception of the Oscars. It was awarded to Douglas Shearer, brother of Best Actress winner Norma Shearer, making them the first sibling winners in Oscar history.\n\nThis was also the first Academy Awards ceremony to be filmed. It is unknown where it was filmed at, but what was filmed was Universal Pictures co-founder and president Carl Laemmle winning a special Academy Award for All Quiet on the Western Front which was given to him by Louis B. Mayer, who was vice president of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at the time, Norma Shearer winning her Best Actress award, and screenwriter Frances Marion winning the Academy Award for Best Writing Achievement for The Big House.\n\nAwards \n\nWinners are listed first and highlighted in boldface.\n\nMultiple nominations and awards \n\nThe following eight films received multiple nominations:\n\n 6 nominations: The Love Parade\n 4 nominations: All Quiet on the Western Front, The Big House and The Divorcee\n 3 nominations: Disraeli and Anna Christie\n 2 nominations: Bulldog Drummond and Romance\n\nThe following two films received multiple awards:\n\n 2 awards: All Quiet on the Western Front and The Big House\n\nSee also \n\n 1929 in film\n 1930 in film\n\nReferences\n\nAcademy Awards ceremonies\n1929 film awards\n1930 film awards\n1930 in American cinema\nAcademy Awards\nNovember 1930 events"
] |
[
"Gary Cooper",
"Silent films, 1925-28",
"what happened in 1925?",
"In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures",
"what pictures did he do?",
"The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones.",
"did he win any awards for them?",
"Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings, the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture."
] | C_84d38f8ca490447a92f516e3616fdb66_1 | who did he work with? | 4 | who did Gary Cooper work with? | Gary Cooper | In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, including Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt work--which sometimes injured horses and riders--"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name. Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week. Cooper's first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal--finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings, the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada--both films directed by John Waters. In 1928, Paramount paired Cooper with a youthful Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss--advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride. That year, Cooper also made Lilac Time with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928. CANNOTANSWER | In 1928, Paramount paired Cooper with a youthful Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss--advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". | Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper; May 7, 1901 – May 13, 1961) was an American actor known for his strong, silent, and understated acting style. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice and had a further three nominations, as well as receiving an Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements in 1961. He was one of the top 10 film personalities for 23 consecutive years, and one of the top money-making stars for 18 years. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper at No. 11 on its list of the 25 greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Cooper's career spanned 36 years, from 1925 to 1961, and included leading roles in 84 feature films. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era through to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His screen persona appealed strongly to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major film genres. His ability to project his own personality onto the characters he played contributed to his natural and authentic appearance on screen. Throughout his career, he sustained a screen persona that represented the ideal American hero.
Cooper began his career as a film extra and stunt rider, but soon landed acting roles. After establishing himself as a Western hero in his early silent films, he appeared as the Virginian and became a movie star in 1929 with his first sound picture, The Virginian. In the early 1930s, he expanded his heroic image to include more cautious characters in adventure films and dramas such as A Farewell to Arms (1932) and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935). During the height of his career, Cooper portrayed a new type of hero—a champion of the common man—in films such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Meet John Doe (1941), Sergeant York (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). He later portrayed more mature characters at odds with the world in films such as The Fountainhead (1949) and High Noon (1952). In his final films, he played non-violent characters searching for redemption in films such as Friendly Persuasion (1956) and Man of the West (1958).
Early life
Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana, on May 7, 1901, the younger of two sons of English parents Alice (née Brazier; 1873–1967) and Charles Henry Cooper (1865–1946). His brother, Arthur, was six years his senior. Cooper's father came from Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire, and became a prominent lawyer, rancher, and Montana Supreme Court justice. His mother hailed from Gillingham, Kent, and married Charles in Montana. In 1906, Charles purchased the Seven-Bar-Nine cattle ranch, about north of Helena near Craig, Montana. Cooper and Arthur spent their summers at the ranch and learned to ride horses, hunt, and fish. Cooper attended Central Grade School in Helena.
Alice wanted her sons to have an English education, so she took them back to England in 1909 to enroll them in Dunstable Grammar School in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. While there, Cooper and his brother lived with their father's cousins, William and Emily Barton, at their home in Houghton Regis. Cooper studied Latin, French, and English history at Dunstable until 1912. While he adapted to English school discipline and learned the requisite social graces, he never adjusted to the rigid class structure and formal Eton collars he was required to wear. He received his confirmation in the Church of England at the Church of All Saints in Houghton Regis on December 3, 1911. His mother accompanied her sons back to the U.S. in August 1912, and Cooper resumed his education at Johnson Grammar School in Helena.
When Cooper was 15, he injured his hip in a car accident. On his doctor's recommendation, he returned to the Seven-Bar-Nine ranch to recuperate by horseback riding. The misguided therapy left him with his characteristic stiff, off-balanced walk and slightly angled horse-riding style. He left Helena High School after two years in 1918, and returned to the family ranch to work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for him to attend Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana, where English teacher Ida Davis encouraged him to focus on academics and participate in debating and dramatics. Cooper later called Davis "the woman partly responsible for [him] giving up cowboy-ing and going to college".
Cooper was still attending high school in 1920 when he took three art courses at Montana Agricultural College in Bozeman. His interest in art was inspired years earlier by the Western paintings of Charles Marion Russell and Frederic Remington. Cooper especially admired and studied Russell's Lewis and Clark Meeting Indians at Ross' Hole (1910), which still hangs in the state capitol building in Helena. In 1922, to continue his art education, he enrolled in Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. He did well academically in most of his courses, but was not accepted into the school's drama club. His drawings and watercolor paintings were exhibited throughout the dormitory, and he was named art editor for the college yearbook. During the summers of 1922 and 1923, Cooper worked at Yellowstone National Park as a tour guide driving the yellow open-top buses. Despite a promising first 18 months at Grinnell, he left college suddenly in February 1924, spent a month in Chicago looking for work as an artist, and then returned to Helena, where he sold editorial cartoons to the local Independent newspaper.
In autumn 1924, Cooper's father left the Montana Supreme Court bench and moved with his wife to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives, and Cooper joined his parents there in November at his father's request. After briefly working a series of unpromising jobs, he met two friends from Montana who were working as film extras and stunt riders in low-budget Western films for the small movie studios on Poverty Row. They introduced him to another Montana cowboy, rodeo champion Jay "Slim" Talbot, who took him to see a casting director. Wanting money for a professional art course, Cooper worked as a film extra for $5 a day, and as a stunt rider for $10. Cooper and Talbot became close friends and hunting companions, and Talbot later worked as Cooper's stuntman and stand-in for over three decades.
Career
Silent films, 1925–1928
In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, but also the already emergent major studios, Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt workwhich sometimes injured horses and riders"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name.
Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week.
Cooper's first important film role was a supporting part in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) starring Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal—finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings (both 1927), the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada—both films directed by John Waters.
Paramount paired Cooper with Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss (both 1928)—advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride (also both 1928). Around the same time, Cooper made Lilac Time (1928) with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928.
Hollywood stardom, 1929–1935
Cooper became a major movie star in 1929 with the release of his first talking picture, The Virginian (1929), which was directed by Victor Fleming and co-starred Mary Brian and Walter Huston. Based on the popular novel by Owen Wister, The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honor and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western movie genre that persist to the present day. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, the romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero who embodied male freedom, courage, and honor was created in large part by Cooper in the film. Unlike some silent film actors who had trouble adapting to the new sound medium, Cooper transitioned naturally, with his "deep and clear" and "pleasantly drawling" voice, which was perfectly suited for the characters he portrayed on screen, also according to Meyers. Looking to capitalize on Cooper's growing popularity, Paramount cast him in several Westerns and wartime dramas, including Only the Brave, The Texan, Seven Days' Leave, A Man from Wyoming, and The Spoilers (all released in 1930). Norman Rockwell depicted Cooper in his role as The Texan for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 24, 1930.
One of the more important performances in Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's film Morocco (also 1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her introduction to American audiences. During production, von Sternberg focused his energies on Dietrich and treated Cooper dismissively. Tensions came to a head after von Sternberg yelled directions at Cooper in German. The actor approached the director, picked him up by the collar, and said, "If you expect to work in this country you'd better get on to the language we use here." Despite the tensions on the set, Cooper produced "one of his best performances", according to Thornton Delehanty of the New York Evening Post.
After returning to the Western genre in Zane Grey's Fighting Caravans (1931) with French actress Lili Damita, Cooper appeared in the Dashiell Hammett crime film City Streets (also 1931), co-starring Sylvia Sidney and Paul Lukas, playing a westerner who gets involved with big-city gangsters in order to save the woman he loves. Cooper concluded the year with appearances in two unsuccessful films: I Take This Woman (also 1931) with Carole Lombard, and His Woman with Claudette Colbert. The demands and pressures of making ten films in two years left Cooper exhausted and in poor health, suffering from anemia and jaundice. He had lost during that period, and felt lonely, isolated, and depressed by his sudden fame and wealth. In May 1931, Cooper left Hollywood and sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year.
During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso at the Villa Madama in Rome, where she taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. After guiding him through the great art museums and galleries of Italy, she accompanied him on a ten-week big-game hunting safari on the slopes of Mount Kenya in East Africa, where he was credited with over sixty kills, including two lions, a rhinoceros, and various antelopes. His safari experience in Africa had a profound influence on Cooper and intensified his love of the wilderness. After returning to Europe, he and the countess set off on a Mediterranean cruise of the Italian and French Rivieras. Rested and rejuvenated by his year-long exile, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood in April 1932 and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 a week, and director and script approval.
In 1932, after completing Devil and the Deep with Tallulah Bankhead to fulfill his old contract, Cooper appeared in A Farewell to Arms, the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Co-starring Helen Hayes, a leading New York theatre star and Academy Award winner, and Adolphe Menjou, the film presented Cooper with one of his most ambitious and challenging dramatic roles, playing an American ambulance driver wounded in Italy who falls in love with an English nurse during World War I. Critics praised his highly intense and emotional performance, and the film became one of the year's most commercially successful pictures. In 1933, after making Today We Live with Joan Crawford and One Sunday Afternoon with Fay Wray, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy film Design for Living, based on the successful Noël Coward play. Co-starring Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March, the film was a box office success, ranking as one of the top ten highest-grossing films of 1933. All three of the lead actors—March, Cooper, and Hopkins—received attention from this film as they were all at the peak of their careers. Cooper's performance — playing an American artist in Europe competing with his playwright friend for the affections of a beautiful woman — was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy. Cooper changed his name legally to "Gary Cooper" in August 1933.
In 1934, Cooper was loaned out to MGM for the Civil War drama film Operator 13 with Marion Davies, about a beautiful Union spy who falls in love with a Confederate soldier. Despite Richard Boleslawski's imaginative direction and George J. Folsey's lavish cinematography, the film did poorly at the box office.
Back at Paramount, Cooper appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever, with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. In the film, he plays a confidence man who tries to sell his daughter to the relatives who raised her, but is eventually won over by the adorable girl. Impressed by Temple's intelligence and charm, Cooper developed a close rapport with her, both on and off screen. The film was a box-office success.
The following year, Cooper was loaned out to Samuel Goldwyn Productions to appear in King Vidor's romance film The Wedding Night with Anna Sten, who was being groomed as "another Garbo". In the film, Cooper plays an alcoholic novelist who retreats to his family's New England farm where he meets and falls in love with a beautiful Polish neighbor. Cooper delivered a performance of surprising range and depth, according to biographer Larry Swindell. Despite receiving generally favorable reviews, the film was not popular with American audiences, who may have been offended by the film's depiction of an extramarital affair and its tragic ending.
That same year, Cooper appeared in two Henry Hathaway films: the melodrama Peter Ibbetson with Ann Harding, about a man caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the adventure film The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. While the former, championed by the surrealists became more successful in Europe than in the United States, the latter was nominated for seven Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films. Hathaway had the highest respect for Cooper's acting ability, calling him "the best actor of all of them".
American folk hero, 1936–1943
From Mr. Deeds to The Real Glory, 1936–1939
Cooper's career took an important turn in 1936. After making Frank Borzage's romantic comedy film Desire with Marlene Dietrich at Paramount—in which he delivered a performance considered by some contemporary critics as one of his finest—Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. In the film, Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, a quiet, innocent writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont, and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin were able to use Cooper's well-established screen persona as the "quintessential American hero"—a symbol of honesty, courage, and goodness—to create a new type of "folk hero" for the common man. Commenting on Cooper's impact on the character and the film, Capra observed:
Both Desire and Mr. Deeds opened in April 1936 to critical praise and were major box-office successes. In his review in The New York Times, Frank Nugent wrote that Cooper was "proving himself one of the best light comedians in Hollywood". For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Cooper appeared in two other Paramount films in 1936. In Lewis Milestone's adventure film The General Died at Dawn with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success.
In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly fictionalized version of the opening of the American western frontier. The film was an even greater box-office hit than its predecessor, due in large part to Jean Arthur's definitive depiction of Calamity Jane and Cooper's inspired portrayal of Hickock as an enigmatic figure of "deepening mythic substance". That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-three years.
In late 1936, Paramount was preparing a new contract for Cooper that would raise his salary to $8,000 a week when Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn for six films over six years with a minimum guarantee of $150,000 per picture. Paramount brought suit against Goldwyn and Cooper, and the court ruled that Cooper's new Goldwyn contract afforded the actor sufficient time to also honor his Paramount agreement. Cooper continued to make films with both studios, and by 1939 the United States Treasury reported that Cooper was the country's highest wage earner, at $482,819 (equivalent to $ million in ).
In contrast to his output the previous year, Cooper appeared in only one picture in 1937, Henry Hathaway's adventure film Souls at Sea. A critical and box-office failure, Cooper referred to it as his "almost picture", saying, "It was almost exciting, and almost interesting. And I was almost good." In 1938, he appeared in Archie Mayo's biographical film The Adventures of Marco Polo. Plagued by production problems and a weak screenplay, the film became Goldwyn's biggest failure to that date, losing $700,000. During this period, Cooper turned down several important roles, including the role of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Cooper was producer David O. Selznick's first choice for the part. He made several overtures to the actor, but Cooper had doubts about the project, and did not feel suited to the role. Cooper later admitted, "It was one of the best roles ever offered in Hollywood ... But I said no. I didn't see myself as quite that dashing, and later, when I saw Clark Gable play the role to perfection, I knew I was right."
Back at Paramount, Cooper returned to a more comfortable genre in Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert. In the film, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. Despite the clever screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, and solid performances by Cooper and Colbert, American audiences had trouble accepting Cooper in the role of a shallow philanderer. It succeeded only at the European box office market.
In the fall of 1938, Cooper appeared in H. C. Potter's romantic comedy The Cowboy and the Lady with Merle Oberon, about a sweet-natured rodeo cowboy who falls in love with the wealthy daughter of a presidential hopeful, believing her to be a poor, hard-working lady's maid. The efforts of three directors and several eminent screenwriters could not salvage what could have been a fine vehicle for Cooper. While more successful than its predecessor, the film was Cooper's fourth consecutive box-office failure in the American market.
In the next two years, Cooper was more discerning about the roles he accepted and made four successful large-scale adventure and cowboy films. In William A. Wellman's adventure film Beau Geste (1939), he plays one of three daring English brothers who join the French Foreign Legion in the Sahara to fight local tribes. Filmed in the same Mojave Desert locations as the original 1926 version with Ronald Colman, Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona. This was the last film in Cooper's contract with Paramount.
In Henry Hathaway's The Real Glory (1939), he plays a military doctor who accompanies a small group of American Army officers to the Philippines to help the Christian Filipinos defend themselves against Muslim radicals. Many film critics praised Cooper's performance, including author and film critic Graham Greene, who recognized that he "never acted better".
From The Westerner to For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940–1943
Cooper returned to the Western genre in William Wyler's The Westerner (1940) with Walter Brennan and Doris Davenport, about a drifting cowboy who defends homesteaders against Roy Bean, a corrupt judge known as the "law west of the Pecos". Screenwriter Niven Busch relied on Cooper's extensive knowledge of Western history while working on the script. The film received positive reviews and did well at the box-office, with reviewers praising the performances of the two lead actors. That same year, Cooper appeared in his first all-Technicolor feature, Cecil B. DeMille's adventure film North West Mounted Police (1940). In the film, Cooper plays a Texas Ranger who pursues an outlaw into western Canada where he joins forces with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who are after the same man, a leader of the North-West Rebellion. While not as popular with critics as its predecessor, the film was another box-office success—the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1940.
The early 1940s were Cooper's prime years as an actor. In a relatively short period, he appeared in five critically successful and popular films that produced some of his finest performances. When Frank Capra offered him the lead role in Meet John Doe before Robert Riskin even developed the script, Cooper accepted his friend's offer, saying, "It's okay, Frank, I don't need a script." In the film, Cooper plays Long John Willoughby, a down-and-out bush-league pitcher hired by a newspaper to pretend to be a man who promises to commit suicide on Christmas Eve to protest all the hypocrisy and corruption in the country. Considered by some critics to be Capra's best film at the time, Meet John Doe was received as a "national event" with Cooper appearing on the front cover of Time magazine on March 3, 1941. In his review in the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes called Cooper's performance a "splendid and utterly persuasive portrayal" and praised his "utterly realistic acting which comes through with such authority". Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote, "Gary Cooper, of course, is 'John Doe' to the life and in the whole—shy, bewildered, non-aggressive, but a veritable tiger when aroused."
That same year, Cooper made two films with director and good friend Howard Hawks. In the biographical film Sergeant York, Cooper portrays war hero Alvin C. York, one of the most decorated American soldiers in World War I. The film chronicles York's early backwoods days in Tennessee, his religious conversion and subsequent piety, his stand as a conscientious objector, and finally his heroic actions at the Battle of the Argonne Forest, which earned him the Medal of Honor. Initially, Cooper was nervous and uncertain about playing a living hero, so he traveled to Tennessee to visit York at his home, and the two quiet men established an immediate rapport and discovered they had much in common. Inspired by York's encouragement, Cooper delivered a performance that Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune called "one of extraordinary conviction and versatility", and that Archer Winston of the New York Post called "one of his best". After the film's release, Cooper was awarded the Distinguished Citizenship Medal by the Veterans of Foreign Wars for his "powerful contribution to the promotion of patriotism and loyalty". York admired Cooper's performance and helped promote the film for Warner Bros. Sergeant York became the top-grossing film of the year and was nominated for eleven Academy Awards. Accepting his first Academy Award for Best Actor from his friend James Stewart, Cooper said, "It was Sergeant Alvin York who won this award. Shucks, I've been in the business sixteen years and sometimes dreamed I might get one of these. That's all I can say ... Funny when I was dreaming I always made a better speech."
Cooper concluded the year back at Goldwyn with Howard Hawks to make the romantic comedy Ball of Fire with Barbara Stanwyck. In the film, Cooper plays a shy linguistics professor who leads a team of seven scholars who are writing an encyclopedia. While researching slang, he meets Stanwyck's flirtatious burlesque stripper Sugarpuss O'Shea who blows the dust off their staid life of books. The screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder provided Cooper the opportunity to exercise the full range of his light comedy skills. In his review for the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes wrote that Cooper handled the role with "great skill and comic emphasis" and that his performance was "utterly delightful". Though small in scale, Ball of Fire was one of the top-grossing films of the year—Cooper's fourth consecutive picture to make the top twenty.
Cooper's only film appearance in 1942 was also his last under his Goldwyn contract. In Sam Wood's biographical film The Pride of the Yankees, Cooper portrays baseball star Lou Gehrig who established a record with the New York Yankees for playing in 2,130 consecutive games. Cooper was reluctant to play the seven-time All-Star, who only died the previous year from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — now commonly called "Lou Gehrig's disease". Beyond the challenges of effectively portraying such a popular and nationally recognized figure, Cooper knew very little about baseball and was not left-handed like Gehrig.
After Gehrig's widow visited the actor and expressed her desire that he portray her husband, Cooper accepted the role that covered a twenty-year span of Gehrig's life—his early love of baseball, his rise to greatness, his loving marriage, and his struggle with illness, culminating in his farewell speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939 before 62,000 fans. Cooper quickly learned the physical movements of a baseball player and developed a fluid, believable swing. The handedness issue was solved by reversing the print for certain batting scenes. The film was one of the year's top ten pictures and received eleven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's third).
Soon after the publication of Ernest Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, Paramount paid $150,000 for the film rights with the express intent of casting Cooper in the lead role of Robert Jordan, an American explosives expert who fights alongside the Republican loyalists during the Spanish Civil War. The original director, Cecil B. DeMille, was replaced by Sam Wood who brought in Dudley Nichols for the screenplay. After the start of principal photography in the Sierra Nevada in late 1942, Ingrid Bergman was brought in to replace ballerina Vera Zorina as the female lead—a change supported by Cooper and Hemingway. The love scenes between Bergman and Cooper were "rapturous" and passionate. Howard Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune wrote that both actors performed with "the true stature and authority of stars". While the film distorted the novel's original political themes and meaning, For Whom the Bell Tolls was a critical and commercial success and received ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's fourth).
World War II related activities
Due to his age and health, Cooper did not serve in the military during World War II, but like many of his colleagues, he got involved in the war effort by entertaining the troops. In June 1943, he visited military hospitals in San Diego, and often appeared at the Hollywood Canteen serving food to the servicemen. In late 1943, Cooper undertook a tour of the South West Pacific with actresses Una Merkel and Phyllis Brooks, and accordionist Andy Arcari.
Traveling on a B-24A Liberator bomber, the group toured the Cook Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia, Queensland, Brisbane—where General Douglas MacArthur told Cooper he was watching Sergeant York in a Manila theater when Japanese bombs began falling—New Guinea, Jayapura, and throughout the Solomon Islands.
The group often shared the same sparse living conditions and K-rations as the troops. Cooper met with the servicemen and women, visited military hospitals, introduced his attractive colleagues, and participated in occasional skits. The shows concluded with Cooper's moving recitation of Lou Gehrig's farewell speech. When he returned to the United States, he visited military hospitals throughout the country. Cooper later called his time with the troops the "greatest emotional experience" of his life.
Mature roles, 1944–1952
In 1944, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's wartime adventure film The Story of Dr. Wassell with Laraine Day — his third movie with the director. In the film, Cooper plays American doctor and missionary Corydon M. Wassell, who leads a group of wounded sailors through the jungles of Java to safety. Despite receiving poor reviews, Dr. Wassell was one of the top-grossing films of the year. With his Goldwyn and Paramount contracts now concluded, Cooper decided to remain independent and formed his own production company, International Pictures, with Leo Spitz, William Goetz, and Nunnally Johnson. The fledgling studio's first offering was Sam Wood's romantic comedy Casanova Brown with Teresa Wright, about a man who learns his soon-to-be ex-wife is pregnant with his child, just as he is about to marry another woman. The film received poor reviews, with the New York Daily News calling it "delightful nonsense", and Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, criticizing Cooper's "somewhat obvious and ridiculous clowning". The film was barely profitable.
In 1945, Cooper starred in and produced Stuart Heisler's Western comedy Along Came Jones with Loretta Young for International. In this lighthearted parody of his past heroic image, Cooper plays comically inept cowboy Melody Jones who is mistaken for a ruthless killer. Audiences embraced Cooper's character, and the film was one of the top box-office pictures of the year—a testament to Cooper's still vital audience appeal. It was also International's biggest financial success during its brief history before being sold off to Universal Studios in 1946.
Cooper's career during the post-war years drifted in new directions as American society was changing. While he still played conventional heroic roles, his films now relied less on his heroic screen persona and more on novel stories and exotic settings. In November 1945, Cooper appeared in Sam Wood's nineteenth-century period drama Saratoga Trunk with Ingrid Bergman, about a Texas cowboy and his relationship with a beautiful fortune-hunter. Filmed in early 1943, the movie's release was delayed for two years due to the increased demand for war movies. Despite poor reviews, Saratoga Trunk did well at the box office and became one of the top money-makers of the year for Warner Bros. Cooper's only film in 1946 was Fritz Lang's romantic thriller Cloak and Dagger, about a mild-mannered physics professor recruited by the OSS during the last years of World War II to investigate the German atomic bomb program. Playing a part loosely based on physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Cooper was uneasy with the role and unable to convey the "inner sense" of the character. The film received poor reviews and was a box-office failure. In 1947, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's epic adventure film Unconquered with Paulette Goddard, about a Virginia militiaman who defends settlers against an unscrupulous gun trader and hostile Indians on the Western frontier during the eighteenth century. The film received mixed reviews, but even long-time DeMille critic James Agee acknowledged the picture had "some authentic flavor of the period". This last of four films made with DeMille was Cooper's most lucrative, earning the actor over $300,000 (equal to $ today) in salary and percentage of profits. Unconquered would be his last unqualified box-office success for the next five years.
In 1948, after making Leo McCarey's romantic comedy Good Sam, Cooper sold his company to Universal Studios and signed a long-term contract with Warner Bros. that gave him script and director approval and a guaranteed $295,000 (equal to $ today) per picture. His first film under the new contract was King Vidor's drama The Fountainhead (1949) with Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey. In the film, Cooper plays an idealistic and uncompromising architect who struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism in the face of societal pressures to conform to popular standards. Based on the novel by Ayn Rand who also wrote the screenplay, the film reflects her philosophy and attacks the concepts of collectivism while promoting the virtues of individualism. For most critics, Cooper was hopelessly miscast in the role of Howard Roark. In his review for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther concluded he was "Mr. Deeds out of his element". Cooper returned to his element in Delmer Daves' war drama Task Force (1949), about a retiring rear admiral who reminisces about his long career as a naval aviator and his role in the development of aircraft carriers. Cooper's performance and the Technicolor newsreel footage supplied by the United States Navy made the film one of Cooper's most popular during this period. In the next two years, Cooper made four poorly received films: Michael Curtiz' period drama Bright Leaf (1950), Stuart Heisler's Western melodrama Dallas (1950), Henry Hathaway's wartime comedy You're in the Navy Now (1951), and Raoul Walsh's Western action film Distant Drums (1951).
Cooper's most important film during the post-war years was Fred Zinnemann's Western drama High Noon (1952) with Grace Kelly and Katy Jurado for United Artists. In the film, Cooper plays retiring sheriff Will Kane who is preparing to leave town on his honeymoon when he learns that an outlaw he helped put away and his three henchmen are returning to seek their revenge. Unable to gain the support of the frightened townspeople, and abandoned by his young bride, Kane nevertheless stays to face the outlaws alone. During the filming, Cooper was in poor health and in considerable pain from stomach ulcers. His ravaged face and discomfort in some scenes "photographed as self-doubt", according to biographer Hector Arce, and contributed to the effectiveness of his performance. Considered one of the first "adult" Westerns for its theme of moral courage, High Noon received enthusiastic reviews for its artistry, with Time magazine placing it in the ranks of Stagecoach and The Gunfighter. Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote that Cooper was "at the top of his form", and John McCarten, in The New Yorker, wrote that Cooper was never more effective. The film earned $3.75 million in the United States and $18 million worldwide. Following the example of his friend James Stewart, Cooper accepted a lower salary in exchange for a percent of the profits, and ended up making $600,000. Cooper's understated performance was widely praised, and earned him his second Academy Award for Best Actor.
Later films, 1953–1961
After appearing in André de Toth's Civil War drama Springfield Rifle (1952)—a standard Warner Bros. film that was overshadowed by the success of its predecessor—Cooper made four films outside the United States. In Mark Robson's drama Return to Paradise (1953), Cooper plays an American wanderer who liberates the inhabitants of a Polynesian island from the puritanical rule of a misguided pastor. Cooper endured spartan living conditions, long hours, and ill health during the three-month location shoot on the island of Upolu in Western Samoa. Despite its beautiful cinematography, the film received poor reviews. Cooper's next three films were shot in Mexico. In Hugo Fregonese's action adventure film Blowing Wild (1953) with Barbara Stanwyck, he plays a wildcatter in Mexico who gets involved with an oil company executive and his unscrupulous wife with whom he once had an affair.
In 1954, Cooper appeared in Henry Hathaway's Western drama Garden of Evil, with Susan Hayward, about three soldiers of fortune in Mexico hired to rescue a woman's husband. That same year, he appeared in Robert Aldrich's Western adventure Vera Cruz with Burt Lancaster. In the film, Cooper plays an American adventurer hired by Emperor Maximilian I to escort a countess to Vera Cruz during the Mexican Rebellion of 1866. All of these films received poor reviews but did well at the box-office. For his work in Vera Cruz, Cooper earned $1.4 million in salary and percent of the gross.
During this period, Cooper struggled with health problems. As well as his ongoing treatment for ulcers, he suffered a severe shoulder injury during the filming of Blowing Wild when he was hit by metal fragments from a dynamited oil well. During the filming of Vera Cruz, he reinjured his hip falling from a horse, and was burned when Lancaster fired his rifle too close and the wadding from the blank shell pierced his clothing.
In 1955, he appeared in Otto Preminger's biographical war drama The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, about the World War I general who tried to convince government officials of the importance of air power, and was court-martialed after blaming the War Department for a series of air disasters. Some critics felt that Cooper was miscast, and that his dull, tight-lipped performance did not reflect Mitchell's dynamic and caustic personality. In 1956, Cooper was more effective playing a gentle Indiana Quaker in William Wyler's Civil War drama Friendly Persuasion with Dorothy McGuire. Like Sergeant York and High Noon, the film addresses the conflict between religious pacifism and civic duty. For his performance, Cooper received his second Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actor. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, and went on to earn $8 million worldwide.
In 1956, Cooper traveled to France to make Billy Wilder's romantic comedy Love in the Afternoon with Audrey Hepburn and Maurice Chevalier. In the film, Cooper plays a middle-aged American playboy in Paris who pursues and eventually falls in love with a much younger woman. Despite receiving some positive reviews—including from Bosley Crowther who praised the film's "charming performances"—most reviewers concluded that Cooper was simply too old for the part. While audiences may not have welcomed seeing Cooper's heroic screen image tarnished by his playing an aging roué trying to seduce an innocent young girl, the film was still a box-office success. The following year, Cooper appeared in Philip Dunne's romantic drama Ten North Frederick. In the film, which was based on the novel by John O'Hara, Cooper plays an attorney whose life is ruined by a double-crossing politician and his own secret affair with his daughter's young roommate. While Cooper brought "conviction and controlled anguish" to his performance, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, it was not enough to save what Bosley Crowther called a "hapless film".
Despite his ongoing health problems and several operations for ulcers and hernias, Cooper continued to work in action films. In 1958, he appeared in Anthony Mann's Western drama Man of the West (1958) with Julie London and Lee J. Cobb, about a reformed outlaw and killer who is forced to confront his violent past when the train he is riding in is held up by his former gang members. The film has been called Cooper's "most pathological Western", with its themes of impotent rage, sexual humiliation, and sadism. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, Cooper, who struggled with moral conflicts in his personal life, "understood the anguish of a character striving to retain his integrity ... [and] brought authentic feeling to the role of a tempted and tormented, yet essentially decent man". Mostly ignored by critics at the time, the film is now well-regarded by film scholars and is considered Cooper's last great film.
After his Warner Bros. contract ended, Cooper formed his own production company, Baroda Productions, and made three unusual films in 1959 about redemption. In Delmer Daves' Western drama The Hanging Tree, Cooper plays a frontier doctor who saves a criminal from a lynch mob, and later tries to exploit his sordid past. Cooper delivered a "powerful and persuasive" performance of an emotionally scarred man whose need to dominate others is transformed by the love and sacrifice of a woman. In Robert Rossen's historical adventure They Came to Cordura with Rita Hayworth, he plays an army officer who is found guilty of cowardice and assigned the degrading task of recommending soldiers for the Medal of Honor during the Pancho Villa Expedition of 1916.
While Cooper received positive reviews, Variety and Films in Review felt he was too old for the part. In Michael Anderson's action drama The Wreck of the Mary Deare with Charlton Heston, Cooper plays a disgraced merchant marine officer who decides to stay aboard his sinking cargo ship in order to prove the vessel was deliberately scuttled and to redeem his good name. Like its two predecessors, the film was physically demanding. Cooper, who was a trained scuba diver, did most of his own underwater scenes. Biographer Jeffrey Meyers observed that in all three roles, Cooper effectively conveyed the sense of lost honor and desire for redemption—what Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim called the "struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what his moral identity should be".
Personal life
Marriage and family
Cooper was formally introduced to his future wife, 20-year-old New York debutante Veronica Balfe, on Easter Sunday 1933 at a party given by her uncle, art director Cedric Gibbons. Called "Rocky" by her family and friends, she grew up on Park Avenue and attended finishing schools. Her stepfather was Wall Street tycoon Paul Shields. Cooper and Rocky were quietly married at her parents' Park Avenue residence on December 15, 1933. According to his friends, the marriage had a positive impact on Cooper, who turned away from past indiscretions and took control of his life. Athletic and a lover of the outdoors, Rocky shared many of Cooper's interests, including riding, skiing, and skeet-shooting. She organized their social life, and her wealth and social connections provided Cooper access to New York high society. Cooper and his wife owned homes in the Los Angeles area in Encino (1933–36), Brentwood (1936–53), and Holmby Hills (1954–61), and owned a vacation home in Aspen, Colorado (1949–53).
Gary and Veronica Cooper's daughter, Maria Veronica Cooper, was born on September 15, 1937. By all accounts, he was a patient and affectionate father, teaching Maria to ride a bicycle, play tennis, ski, and ride horses. Sharing many of her parents' interests, she accompanied them on their travels and was often photographed with them. Like her father, she developed a love for art and drawing. As a family they vacationed together in Sun Valley, Idaho, spent time at Rocky's parents' country house in Southampton, New York, and took frequent trips to Europe. Cooper and Rocky were legally separated on May 16, 1951, when Cooper moved out of their home. For over two years, they maintained a fragile and uneasy family life with their daughter. Cooper moved back into their home in November 1953, and their formal reconciliation occurred in February 1954.
Romantic relationships
Prior to his marriage, Cooper had a series of romantic relationships with leading actresses, beginning in 1927 with Clara Bow, who advanced his career by helping him get one of his first leading roles in Children of Divorce. Bow was also responsible for getting Cooper a role in Wings, which generated an enormous amount of fan mail for the young actor. In 1928, he had a relationship with another experienced actress, Evelyn Brent, whom he met while filming Beau Sabreur. In 1929, while filming The Wolf Song, Cooper began an intense affair with Lupe Vélez, which was the most important romance of his early life. During their two years together, Cooper also had brief affairs with Marlene Dietrich while filming Morocco in 1930 and with Carole Lombard while making I Take This Woman in 1931. During his year abroad in 1931–32, Cooper had an affair with the married Countess Dorothy di Frasso, while staying at her Villa Madama near Rome.
After he was married in December 1933, Cooper remained faithful to his wife until the summer of 1942, when he began an affair with Ingrid Bergman during the production of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Their relationship lasted through the completion of filming Saratoga Trunk in June 1943. In 1948, after finishing work on The Fountainhead, Cooper began an affair with actress Patricia Neal, his co-star. At first they kept their affair discreet, but eventually it became an open secret in Hollywood, and Cooper's wife confronted him with the rumors, which he admitted were true. He also confessed that he was in love with Neal, and continued to see her. Cooper and his wife were legally separated in May 1951, but he did not seek a divorce. Neal later claimed that Cooper hit her after she went on a date with Kirk Douglas, and that he arranged for her to have an abortion when she became pregnant with Cooper's child. Neal ended their relationship in late December 1951. During his three-year separation from his wife, Cooper was rumored to have had affairs with Grace Kelly, Lorraine Chanel, and Gisèle Pascal.
Cooper biographers have explored his friendship in the late twenties with the actor Anderson Lawler, with whom Cooper shared a house on and off for a year, while at the same time seeing Clara Bow, Evelyn Brent and Lupe Vélez. Lupe Vélez once told Hedda Hopper of Vélez' affair with Cooper; whenever he would come home after seeing Lawler, she would sniff for Lawler's cologne. Vélez' biographer Michelle Vogel has reported that Vélez consented to Cooper's sexual behavior with Lawler, but only as long as she, too, could participate. In later life, he became involved in a relationship with the costume designer Irene, and was, according to Irene, "the only man she ever loved". A year after his death in 1961, Irene committed suicide by jumping from the 11th floor of the Knickerbocker Hotel, after telling Doris Day of her grief over Cooper's death.
Friendships, interests, and character
Cooper's twenty-year friendship with Ernest Hemingway began at Sun Valley in October 1940. The previous year, Hemingway drew upon Cooper's image when he created the character of Robert Jordan for the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. The two shared a passion for the outdoors, and for years they hunted duck and pheasant, and skied together in Sun Valley. Both men admired the work of Rudyard Kipling—Cooper kept a copy of the poem "If—" in his dressing room—and retained as adults Kipling's sense of boyish adventure.
As well as admiring Cooper's hunting skills and knowledge of the outdoors, Hemingway believed his character matched his screen persona, once telling a friend, "If you made up a character like Coop, nobody would believe it. He's just too good to be true." They saw each other often, and their friendship remained strong through the years.
Cooper's social life generally centered on sports, outdoor activities, and dinner parties with his family and friends from the film industry, including directors Henry Hathaway, Howard Hawks, William Wellman, and Fred Zinnemann, and actors Joel McCrea, James Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, and Robert Taylor. As well as hunting, Cooper enjoyed riding, fishing, skiing, and later in life, scuba diving. He never abandoned his early love for art and drawing, and over the years, he and his wife acquired a private collection of modern paintings, including works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Cooper owned several works by Pablo Picasso, whom he met in 1956. Cooper also had a lifelong passion for automobiles, with a collection that included a 1930 Duesenberg.
Cooper was naturally reserved and introspective, and loved the solitude of outdoor activities. Not unlike his screen persona, his communication style frequently consisted of long silences with an occasional "yup" and "shucks". He once said, "If others have more interesting things to say than I have, I keep quiet." According to his friends, Cooper could also be an articulate, well-informed conversationalist on topics ranging from horses, guns, and Western history to film production, sports cars, and modern art. He was modest and unpretentious, frequently downplaying his acting abilities and career accomplishments. His friends and colleagues described him as charming, well-mannered, and thoughtful, with a lively boyish sense of humor. Cooper maintained a sense of propriety throughout his career and never misused his movie star status—never sought special treatment or refused to work with a director or leading lady. His close friend Joel McCrea recalled, "Coop never fought, he never got mad, he never told anybody off that I know of; everybody that worked with him liked him."
Political views
Like his father, Cooper was a conservative Republican; he voted for Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Herbert Hoover in 1928 and 1932, and campaigned for Wendell Willkie in 1940. When Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented fourth presidential term in 1944, Cooper campaigned for Thomas E. Dewey and criticized Roosevelt for being dishonest and adopting "foreign" ideas. In a radio address that he paid for himself just prior to the election, Cooper said, "I disagree with the New Deal belief that the America all of us love is old and worn-out and finished—and has to borrow foreign notions that don't even seem to work any too well where they come from ... Our country is a young country that just has to make up its mind to be itself again." He also attended a Republican rally at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that drew 93,000 Dewey supporters.
Cooper was one of the founding members of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a conservative organization dedicated, according to its statement of principles, to preserving the "American way of life" and opposing communism and fascism. The organization — whose membership included Walter Brennan, Laraine Day, Walt Disney, Clark Gable, Hedda Hopper, Ronald Reagan, Barbara Stanwyck, and John Wayne — advised the United States Congress to investigate communist influence in the motion picture industry. On October 23, 1947, Cooper was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and was asked if he had observed any "communistic influence" in Hollywood.
Cooper recounted statements he'd heard suggesting that the Constitution was out of date and that Congress was an unnecessary institution—comments that Cooper said he found to be "very un-American" and testified that he had rejected several scripts because he thought they were "tinged with communist ideas". Unlike some other witnesses, Cooper did not name any individuals, nor did he name any scripts, during his testimony.
In 1951, while making High Noon, Cooper became friends with the film's screenwriter, Carl Foreman, who had been a member of the Communist Party. When Foreman was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Cooper put his career on the line to defend Foreman. When John Wayne and others threatened Cooper with blacklisting himself and the loss of his passport if he did not walk off the film, Cooper gave a statement to the press in support of Foreman, calling him "the finest kind of American". When producer Stanley Kramer removed Foreman's name as screenwriter, Cooper and director Fred Zinnemann threatened to walk off the film if Foreman's name was not restored. Foreman later said that, of all his friends and allies and colleagues in Hollywood, "Cooper was the only big one who tried to help. The only one." Cooper even offered to testify in Foreman's behalf before the committee, but character witnesses were not allowed. Foreman always sent future scripts to Cooper for first refusal, including The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Key and The Guns of Navarone. Cooper had to turn them down because of his age.
Religion
Cooper was baptized in the Anglican Church in December 1911 in Britain, and was raised in the Episcopal Church in the United States. While he was not an observant Christian for most of his adult life, many of his friends believed he had a deeply spiritual side.
On June 26, 1953, Cooper accompanied his wife and daughter, who were devout Catholics, to Rome, where they had an audience with Pope Pius XII. Cooper and his wife were still separated at the time, but the papal visit marked the beginning of their gradual reconciliation. In the coming years, Cooper contemplated his mortality and his personal behavior, and started discussing Catholicism with his family. He began attending church with them regularly, and met with their parish priest, who offered Cooper spiritual guidance. After several months of study, Cooper was baptized as a Roman Catholic on April 9, 1959, before a small group of family and friends at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.
Final years and death
On April 14, 1960, Cooper underwent surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had metastasized to his colon. He fell ill again on May 31 and underwent further surgery at Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles in early June to remove a malignant tumor from his large intestine. After recuperating over the summer, Cooper took his family on vacation to the south of France before traveling to the UK in the fall to star in The Naked Edge. In December 1960, he worked on the NBC television documentary The Real West, which was part of the company's Project 20 series.
On December 27, his wife learned from their family doctor that Cooper's cancer had spread to his lungs and bones and was inoperable. His family decided not to tell him immediately.
On January 9, 1961, Cooper attended a dinner that was given in his honor and hosted by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin at the Friars Club. The dinner was attended by many of his industry friends and concluded with a brief speech by Cooper who said, "The only achievement I'm proud of is the friends I've made in this community."
In mid-January, Cooper took his family to Sun Valley for their last vacation together. Cooper and Hemingway hiked through the snow together for the last time. On February 27, after returning to Los Angeles, Cooper learned that he was dying. He later told his family, "We'll pray for a miracle; but if not, and that's God's will, that's all right too." On April 17, Cooper watched the Academy Awards ceremony on television and saw his good friend James Stewart, who had presented Cooper with his first Oscar years earlier, accept on Cooper's behalf an honorary award for lifetime achievement—his third Oscar. Holding back tears, Stewart said, "Coop, I'll get this to you right away. And Coop, I want you to know this, that with this goes all the warm friendship and the affection and the admiration and the deep, the deep respect of all of us. We're very, very proud of you, Coop. All of us are tremendously proud." The following day, newspapers around the world announced the news that Cooper was dying. In the coming days he received numerous messages of appreciation and encouragement, including telegrams from Pope John XXIII and Queen Elizabeth II, and a telephone call from President John F. Kennedy.
In his last public statement on May 4, Cooper said, "I know that what is happening is God's will. I am not afraid of the future." He received the last rites on May 12. Cooper died quietly the following day, Saturday, May 13, 1961, at 12:47 P.M.
A requiem mass was held on May 18 at the Church of the Good Shepherd, attended by many of Cooper's friends, including James Stewart, Jack Benny, Henry Hathaway, Joel McCrea, Audrey Hepburn, Jack L. Warner, John Ford, John Wayne, Edward G. Robinson, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Fred Astaire, Randolph Scott, Walter Pidgeon, Bob Hope and Marlene Dietrich. Cooper was buried in the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. In May 1974, after his family relocated to New York, Cooper's remains were exhumed and reburied in Sacred Hearts Cemetery in Southampton. His grave is marked by a three-ton boulder from a Montauk quarry.
Acting style and reputation
Cooper's acting style consisted of three essential characteristics: his ability to project elements of his own personality onto the characters he portrayed, to appear natural and authentic in his roles, and to underplay and deliver restrained performances calibrated for the camera and the screen. Acting teacher Lee Strasberg once observed: "The simplest examples of Stanislavsky's ideas are actors such as Gary Cooper, John Wayne, and Spencer Tracy. They try not to act but to be themselves, to respond or react. They refuse to say or do anything they feel not to be consonant with their own characters." Film director François Truffaut ranked Cooper among "the greatest actors" because of his ability to deliver great performances "without direction". This ability to project elements of his own personality onto his characters produced a continuity across his performances to the extent that critics and audiences were convinced that he was simply "playing himself".
Cooper's ability to project his personality onto his characters played an important part in his appearing natural and authentic on screen. Actor John Barrymore said of Cooper, "This fellow is the world's greatest actor. He does without effort what the rest of us spend our lives trying to learn—namely, to be natural." Charles Laughton, who played opposite Cooper in Devil and the Deep agreed, "In truth, that boy hasn't the least idea how well he acts ... He gets at it from the inside, from his own clear way of looking at life." William Wyler, who directed Cooper in two films, called him a "superb actor, a master of movie acting".
In his review of Cooper's performance in The Real Glory, Graham Greene wrote, "Sometimes his lean photogenic face seems to leave everything to the lens, but there is no question here of his not acting. Watch him inoculate the girl against cholera—the casual jab of the needle, and the dressing slapped on while he talks, as though a thousand arms had taught him where to stab and he doesn't have to think anymore."
Cooper's style of underplaying before the camera surprised many of his directors and fellow actors. Even in his earliest feature films, he recognized the camera's ability to pick up slight gestures and facial movements. Commenting on Cooper's performance in Sergeant York, director Howard Hawks observed, "He worked very hard and yet he didn't seem to be working. He was a strange actor because you'd look at him during a scene and you'd think ... this isn't going to be any good. But when you saw the rushes in the projection room the next day you could read in his face all the things he'd been thinking." Sam Wood, who directed Cooper in four films, had similar observations about Cooper's performance in Pride of the Yankees, noting, "What I thought was underplaying turned out to be just the right approach. On the screen he's perfect, yet on the set you'd swear it's the worst job of acting in the history of motion pictures."
Fellow actors admired his abilities as an actor. Commenting on her two films playing opposite Cooper, actress Ingrid Bergman concluded, "The personality of this man was so enormous, so overpowering—and that expression in his eyes and his face, it was so delicate and so underplayed. You just didn't notice it until you saw it on the screen. I thought he was marvelous; the most underplaying and the most natural actor I ever worked with."
Tom Hanks declared, "In only one scene in the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, we see the future of screen acting in the form of Gary Cooper. He is quiet and natural, somehow different from the other cast members. He does something mysterious with his eyes and shoulders that is much more like 'being' than 'acting'."
Daniel Day-Lewis said, "I don't particularly like westerns as a genre, but I do love certain westerns. 'High Noon' means a lot to me – I love the purity and the honesty, I love Gary Cooper in that film, the idea of the last man standing."
Chris Pratt stated, "I started watching Westerns when I was shooting in London about four or five years ago. I really fell in love with Gary Cooper, and his stuff. That sucked me into the Westerns. Before, I never got engrossed in the story. I'd just dip in, and there were guys in horses in black and white. High Noon's later Gary Cooper, I liked that. But I liked 'The Westerner'. That's my favorite one. I have that poster hung up in my house because I really like that one."
To Al Pacino, "Gary Cooper was a phenomenon—his ability to take some thing and elevate it, give it such dignity. One of the great presences."
Mylène Demongeot first got with Gary Cooper for the opening of the first escalator to be installed in a cinema, at the Rex Theatre in Paris, on June 7, 1957. She declared in a 2015 filmed interview: "Gary Cooper ... il est sublime ! Aaahhh (Mylène pushing a cry of love not to say ecstasy) il est sublime ... Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! Là je dois dire que ça fait partie des stars, y'a Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, ces grands Américains que j'ai rencontrés comme ça, c'est vraiment des mecs incroyables. Y'en a plus des comme ça ! Euh non. (Gary Cooper was sublime, there I have to say, now he, was part of the stars, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, those great americans who I've met really were unbelievable guys, there aren't any like them anymore)."
Career assessment and legacy
Cooper's career spanned thirty-six years, from 1925 to 1961. During that time, he appeared in eighty-four feature films in a leading role. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His natural and authentic acting style appealed powerfully to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major movie genres, including Westerns, war films, adventure films, drama films, crime films, romance films, comedy films, and romantic comedy films. He appeared on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities for twenty-three consecutive years, from 1936 to 1958. According to Quigley's annual poll, Cooper was one of the top money-making stars for eighteen years, appearing in the top ten in 1936–37, 1941–49, and 1951–57. He topped the list in 1953. In Quigley's list of all-time money-making stars, Cooper is listed fourth, after John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Tom Cruise. At the time of his death, it was estimated that his films grossed well over $200 million (equivalent to $ billion in ).
In over half of his feature films, Cooper portrayed Westerners, soldiers, pilots, sailors, and explorers—all men of action. In the rest he played a wide range of characters, included doctors, professors, artists, architects, clerks, and baseball players. Cooper's heroic screen image changed with each period of his career. In his early films, he played the young naive hero sure of his moral position and trusting in the triumph of simple virtues (The Virginian). After becoming a major star, his Western screen persona was replaced by a more cautious hero in adventure films and dramas (A Farewell to Arms). During the height of his career, from 1936 to 1943, he played a new type of hero—a champion of the common man willing to sacrifice himself for others (Mr. Deeds, Meet John Doe, and For Whom the Bell Tolls).
In the post-war years, Cooper attempted broader variations on his screen image, which now reflected a hero increasingly at odds with the world who must face adversity alone (The Fountainhead and High Noon). In his final films, Cooper's hero rejects the violence of the past, and seeks to reclaim lost honor and find redemption (Friendly Persuasion and Man of the West). The screen persona he developed and sustained throughout his career represented the ideal American hero—a tall, handsome, and sincere man of steadfast integrity who emphasized action over intellect, and combined the heroic qualities of the romantic lover, the adventurer, and the common man.
On February 6, 1960, Cooper was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6243 Hollywood Boulevard for his contribution to the film industry. He was awarded a star on the sidewalk outside the Ellen Theater in Bozeman, Montana.
On May 6, 1961, he was awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters in recognition of his significant contribution to the arts. On July 30, 1961, he was posthumously awarded the David di Donatello Special Award in Italy for his career achievements.
In 1966, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. In 2015, he was inducted into the Utah Cowboy and Western Heritage Hall of Fame. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper eleventh on its list of the 25 male stars of classic Hollywood. Three of his characters—Will Kane, Lou Gehrig, and Sergeant York—made AFI's list of the one hundred greatest heroes and villains, all of them as heroes. His Lou Gehrig line, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.", is ranked by AFI as the thirty-eighth greatest movie quote of all time.
More than a half century after his death, Cooper's enduring legacy, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, is his image of the ideal American hero preserved in his film performances. Charlton Heston once observed, "He projected the kind of man Americans would like to be, probably more than any actor that's ever lived."
In the TV series Justified, based on works and characters created by Elmore Leonard, Gary Cooper is used throughout the six seasons as the man whom U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens, played by Timothy Olyphant, aspires to be. When his colleague asks Marshall Givens how he thinks his dangerous plan to bring down a villain can possibly work, he replies: "Why not? Worked for Gary Cooper."
Gary Cooper is referenced several times in the critically acclaimed television series The Sopranos, with protagonist Tony Soprano asking "What ever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type." while complaining about his problems to his therapist.
In the 1930s hit song "Puttin' On the Ritz", Cooper is referenced in the line "dress up like a million dollar trooper/Tryin' hard to look like Gary Cooper, Super duper!" More than two decades after Cooper's death a new version of the song was released in 1983 by Taco; the original lyrics were kept, including the references to Cooper.
In J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Cooper is "spotted" by Holden Caulfield to distract a woman he is dancing with.
Awards and nominations
Filmography
The following is a list of feature films in which Cooper appeared in a leading role.
The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926)
Children of Divorce (1927)
Arizona Bound (1927)
Wings (1927)
Nevada (1927)
It (1927)
The Last Outlaw (1927)
Beau Sabreur (1928)
The Legion of the Condemned (1928)
Doomsday (1928)
Half a Bride (1928)
Lilac Time (1928)
The First Kiss (1928)
The Shopworn Angel (1928)
Wolf Song (1929)
Betrayal (1929)
The Virginian (1929)
Only the Brave (1930)
The Texan (1930)
Seven Days' Leave (1930)
A Man from Wyoming (1930)
The Spoilers (1930)
Morocco (1930)
Fighting Caravans (1931)
City Streets (1931)
I Take This Woman (1931)
His Woman (1931)
Devil and the Deep (1932)
If I Had a Million (1932)
A Farewell to Arms (1932)
Today We Live (1933)
One Sunday Afternoon (1933)
Design for Living (1933)
Alice in Wonderland (1933)
Operator 13 (1934)
Now and Forever (1934)
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
The Wedding Night (1935)
Peter Ibbetson (1935)
Desire (1936)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
The General Died at Dawn (1936)
The Plainsman (1936)
Souls at Sea (1937)
The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938)
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938)
The Cowboy and the Lady (1938)
Beau Geste (1939)
The Real Glory (1939)
The Westerner (1940)
North West Mounted Police (1940)
Meet John Doe (1941)
Sergeant York (1941)
Ball of Fire (1941)
The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944)
Casanova Brown (1944)
Along Came Jones (1945)
Saratoga Trunk (1945)
Cloak and Dagger (1946)
Unconquered (1947)
Good Sam (1948)
The Fountainhead (1949)
Task Force (1949)
Bright Leaf (1950)
Dallas (1950)
You're in the Navy Now (1951)
It's a Big Country (1951)
Distant Drums (1951)
High Noon (1952)
Springfield Rifle (1952)
Return to Paradise (1953)
Blowing Wild (1953)
Garden of Evil (1954)
Vera Cruz (1954)
The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955)
Friendly Persuasion (1956)
Love in the Afternoon (1957)
Ten North Frederick (1958)
Man of the West (1958)
The Hanging Tree (1959)
They Came to Cordura (1959)
The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959)
The Naked Edge (1961)
Radio appearances
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Adrien Le Bihan, Gary Cooper, le prince des acteurs, LettMotif, 2021, 358p.()
External links
1901 births
1961 deaths
20th-century American male actors
Academy Honorary Award recipients
American expatriates in England
American male film actors
American male silent film actors
American male television actors
American people of English descent
Best Actor Academy Award winners
Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners
California Republicans
Catholics from Montana
Conservatism in the United States
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from prostate cancer
Grinnell College people
Male Western (genre) film actors
Male actors from Montana
Paramount Pictures contract players
People educated at Dunstable Grammar School
People from Brentwood, Los Angeles
People from Dunstable
People from Helena, Montana
People from Holmby Hills, Los Angeles | false | [
"Thomas McPherson Brown (1906–1989) was a rheumatologist who held unorthodox views about the basis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and believed it could be cured with antibiotics.\n\nBrown graduated from Swarthmore College then attended Johns Hopkins Medical School. He did his medical residency at the hospital associated with the Rockefeller Institute.At Rockefeller he did research on synovial fluid from people with RA and in 1937 found Mycoplasma in the fluid from some patients, leading him to believe that RA might be an infectious disease. His work was interrupted by service in World War II; after the war he obtained a position at George Washington University and began to experimentally treat some people with RA with antibiotics, which at the time were a new class of drugs. Some of the people he treated were members of Congress or ambassadors, and some of them responded positively. He presented his work at a conference in 1949; at the same conference, the new drug cortisone was presented, and it overshadowed his work and became the leading treatment for RA.\n\nThroughout his career, Brown fought to have his antibiotic treatments recognized by the medical establishment; they were not.\n\nFootnotes\n\n1906 births\n1989 deaths\nAmerican rheumatologists\n20th-century American physicians",
"Ben Thigpen (November 16, 1908 – October 5, 1971) was an American jazz drummer. He is the father of drummer Ed Thigpen.\n\nHe was born Benjamin F. Thigpen in Laurel, Mississippi. Ben Thigpen played piano as a child, having been trained by his sister Eva. He played in South Bend, Indiana with Bobby Boswell in the 1920s, and then moved to Chicago to study under Jimmy Bertrand. While there he played with many noted Chicago bandleaders and performers, including Doc Cheatham. He played with Charlie Elgar's Creole Band during 1927-1929 but did not record with them. Following this he spent time in Cleveland with J. Frank Terry, and then became the drummer for Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy, where he stayed from 1930 to 1947. Much of his work is available on collections highlighting the piano work of Mary Lou Williams, who also played in this ensemble.\n\nAfter his time with Kirk, Thigpen's career is poorly documented. He led his own quintet in St. Louis and recorded with Singleton Palmer in the 1960s.\n\nReferences\n[ Ben Thigpen] at Allmusic\n\nExternal links\n Ben Thigpen recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings.\n\nAmerican jazz drummers\n1908 births\n1971 deaths"
] |
[
"Gary Cooper",
"Silent films, 1925-28",
"what happened in 1925?",
"In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures",
"what pictures did he do?",
"The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones.",
"did he win any awards for them?",
"Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings, the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.",
"who did he work with?",
"In 1928, Paramount paired Cooper with a youthful Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss--advertising them as the studio's \"glorious young lovers\"."
] | C_84d38f8ca490447a92f516e3616fdb66_1 | what was his greatest achievement? | 5 | what was Gary Cooper's greatest achievement? | Gary Cooper | In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, including Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt work--which sometimes injured horses and riders--"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name. Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week. Cooper's first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal--finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings, the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada--both films directed by John Waters. In 1928, Paramount paired Cooper with a youthful Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss--advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride. That year, Cooper also made Lilac Time with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928. CANNOTANSWER | Lilac Time with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928. | Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper; May 7, 1901 – May 13, 1961) was an American actor known for his strong, silent, and understated acting style. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice and had a further three nominations, as well as receiving an Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements in 1961. He was one of the top 10 film personalities for 23 consecutive years, and one of the top money-making stars for 18 years. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper at No. 11 on its list of the 25 greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Cooper's career spanned 36 years, from 1925 to 1961, and included leading roles in 84 feature films. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era through to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His screen persona appealed strongly to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major film genres. His ability to project his own personality onto the characters he played contributed to his natural and authentic appearance on screen. Throughout his career, he sustained a screen persona that represented the ideal American hero.
Cooper began his career as a film extra and stunt rider, but soon landed acting roles. After establishing himself as a Western hero in his early silent films, he appeared as the Virginian and became a movie star in 1929 with his first sound picture, The Virginian. In the early 1930s, he expanded his heroic image to include more cautious characters in adventure films and dramas such as A Farewell to Arms (1932) and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935). During the height of his career, Cooper portrayed a new type of hero—a champion of the common man—in films such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Meet John Doe (1941), Sergeant York (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). He later portrayed more mature characters at odds with the world in films such as The Fountainhead (1949) and High Noon (1952). In his final films, he played non-violent characters searching for redemption in films such as Friendly Persuasion (1956) and Man of the West (1958).
Early life
Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana, on May 7, 1901, the younger of two sons of English parents Alice (née Brazier; 1873–1967) and Charles Henry Cooper (1865–1946). His brother, Arthur, was six years his senior. Cooper's father came from Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire, and became a prominent lawyer, rancher, and Montana Supreme Court justice. His mother hailed from Gillingham, Kent, and married Charles in Montana. In 1906, Charles purchased the Seven-Bar-Nine cattle ranch, about north of Helena near Craig, Montana. Cooper and Arthur spent their summers at the ranch and learned to ride horses, hunt, and fish. Cooper attended Central Grade School in Helena.
Alice wanted her sons to have an English education, so she took them back to England in 1909 to enroll them in Dunstable Grammar School in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. While there, Cooper and his brother lived with their father's cousins, William and Emily Barton, at their home in Houghton Regis. Cooper studied Latin, French, and English history at Dunstable until 1912. While he adapted to English school discipline and learned the requisite social graces, he never adjusted to the rigid class structure and formal Eton collars he was required to wear. He received his confirmation in the Church of England at the Church of All Saints in Houghton Regis on December 3, 1911. His mother accompanied her sons back to the U.S. in August 1912, and Cooper resumed his education at Johnson Grammar School in Helena.
When Cooper was 15, he injured his hip in a car accident. On his doctor's recommendation, he returned to the Seven-Bar-Nine ranch to recuperate by horseback riding. The misguided therapy left him with his characteristic stiff, off-balanced walk and slightly angled horse-riding style. He left Helena High School after two years in 1918, and returned to the family ranch to work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for him to attend Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana, where English teacher Ida Davis encouraged him to focus on academics and participate in debating and dramatics. Cooper later called Davis "the woman partly responsible for [him] giving up cowboy-ing and going to college".
Cooper was still attending high school in 1920 when he took three art courses at Montana Agricultural College in Bozeman. His interest in art was inspired years earlier by the Western paintings of Charles Marion Russell and Frederic Remington. Cooper especially admired and studied Russell's Lewis and Clark Meeting Indians at Ross' Hole (1910), which still hangs in the state capitol building in Helena. In 1922, to continue his art education, he enrolled in Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. He did well academically in most of his courses, but was not accepted into the school's drama club. His drawings and watercolor paintings were exhibited throughout the dormitory, and he was named art editor for the college yearbook. During the summers of 1922 and 1923, Cooper worked at Yellowstone National Park as a tour guide driving the yellow open-top buses. Despite a promising first 18 months at Grinnell, he left college suddenly in February 1924, spent a month in Chicago looking for work as an artist, and then returned to Helena, where he sold editorial cartoons to the local Independent newspaper.
In autumn 1924, Cooper's father left the Montana Supreme Court bench and moved with his wife to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives, and Cooper joined his parents there in November at his father's request. After briefly working a series of unpromising jobs, he met two friends from Montana who were working as film extras and stunt riders in low-budget Western films for the small movie studios on Poverty Row. They introduced him to another Montana cowboy, rodeo champion Jay "Slim" Talbot, who took him to see a casting director. Wanting money for a professional art course, Cooper worked as a film extra for $5 a day, and as a stunt rider for $10. Cooper and Talbot became close friends and hunting companions, and Talbot later worked as Cooper's stuntman and stand-in for over three decades.
Career
Silent films, 1925–1928
In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, but also the already emergent major studios, Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt workwhich sometimes injured horses and riders"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name.
Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week.
Cooper's first important film role was a supporting part in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) starring Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal—finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings (both 1927), the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada—both films directed by John Waters.
Paramount paired Cooper with Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss (both 1928)—advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride (also both 1928). Around the same time, Cooper made Lilac Time (1928) with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928.
Hollywood stardom, 1929–1935
Cooper became a major movie star in 1929 with the release of his first talking picture, The Virginian (1929), which was directed by Victor Fleming and co-starred Mary Brian and Walter Huston. Based on the popular novel by Owen Wister, The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honor and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western movie genre that persist to the present day. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, the romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero who embodied male freedom, courage, and honor was created in large part by Cooper in the film. Unlike some silent film actors who had trouble adapting to the new sound medium, Cooper transitioned naturally, with his "deep and clear" and "pleasantly drawling" voice, which was perfectly suited for the characters he portrayed on screen, also according to Meyers. Looking to capitalize on Cooper's growing popularity, Paramount cast him in several Westerns and wartime dramas, including Only the Brave, The Texan, Seven Days' Leave, A Man from Wyoming, and The Spoilers (all released in 1930). Norman Rockwell depicted Cooper in his role as The Texan for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 24, 1930.
One of the more important performances in Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's film Morocco (also 1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her introduction to American audiences. During production, von Sternberg focused his energies on Dietrich and treated Cooper dismissively. Tensions came to a head after von Sternberg yelled directions at Cooper in German. The actor approached the director, picked him up by the collar, and said, "If you expect to work in this country you'd better get on to the language we use here." Despite the tensions on the set, Cooper produced "one of his best performances", according to Thornton Delehanty of the New York Evening Post.
After returning to the Western genre in Zane Grey's Fighting Caravans (1931) with French actress Lili Damita, Cooper appeared in the Dashiell Hammett crime film City Streets (also 1931), co-starring Sylvia Sidney and Paul Lukas, playing a westerner who gets involved with big-city gangsters in order to save the woman he loves. Cooper concluded the year with appearances in two unsuccessful films: I Take This Woman (also 1931) with Carole Lombard, and His Woman with Claudette Colbert. The demands and pressures of making ten films in two years left Cooper exhausted and in poor health, suffering from anemia and jaundice. He had lost during that period, and felt lonely, isolated, and depressed by his sudden fame and wealth. In May 1931, Cooper left Hollywood and sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year.
During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso at the Villa Madama in Rome, where she taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. After guiding him through the great art museums and galleries of Italy, she accompanied him on a ten-week big-game hunting safari on the slopes of Mount Kenya in East Africa, where he was credited with over sixty kills, including two lions, a rhinoceros, and various antelopes. His safari experience in Africa had a profound influence on Cooper and intensified his love of the wilderness. After returning to Europe, he and the countess set off on a Mediterranean cruise of the Italian and French Rivieras. Rested and rejuvenated by his year-long exile, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood in April 1932 and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 a week, and director and script approval.
In 1932, after completing Devil and the Deep with Tallulah Bankhead to fulfill his old contract, Cooper appeared in A Farewell to Arms, the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Co-starring Helen Hayes, a leading New York theatre star and Academy Award winner, and Adolphe Menjou, the film presented Cooper with one of his most ambitious and challenging dramatic roles, playing an American ambulance driver wounded in Italy who falls in love with an English nurse during World War I. Critics praised his highly intense and emotional performance, and the film became one of the year's most commercially successful pictures. In 1933, after making Today We Live with Joan Crawford and One Sunday Afternoon with Fay Wray, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy film Design for Living, based on the successful Noël Coward play. Co-starring Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March, the film was a box office success, ranking as one of the top ten highest-grossing films of 1933. All three of the lead actors—March, Cooper, and Hopkins—received attention from this film as they were all at the peak of their careers. Cooper's performance — playing an American artist in Europe competing with his playwright friend for the affections of a beautiful woman — was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy. Cooper changed his name legally to "Gary Cooper" in August 1933.
In 1934, Cooper was loaned out to MGM for the Civil War drama film Operator 13 with Marion Davies, about a beautiful Union spy who falls in love with a Confederate soldier. Despite Richard Boleslawski's imaginative direction and George J. Folsey's lavish cinematography, the film did poorly at the box office.
Back at Paramount, Cooper appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever, with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. In the film, he plays a confidence man who tries to sell his daughter to the relatives who raised her, but is eventually won over by the adorable girl. Impressed by Temple's intelligence and charm, Cooper developed a close rapport with her, both on and off screen. The film was a box-office success.
The following year, Cooper was loaned out to Samuel Goldwyn Productions to appear in King Vidor's romance film The Wedding Night with Anna Sten, who was being groomed as "another Garbo". In the film, Cooper plays an alcoholic novelist who retreats to his family's New England farm where he meets and falls in love with a beautiful Polish neighbor. Cooper delivered a performance of surprising range and depth, according to biographer Larry Swindell. Despite receiving generally favorable reviews, the film was not popular with American audiences, who may have been offended by the film's depiction of an extramarital affair and its tragic ending.
That same year, Cooper appeared in two Henry Hathaway films: the melodrama Peter Ibbetson with Ann Harding, about a man caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the adventure film The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. While the former, championed by the surrealists became more successful in Europe than in the United States, the latter was nominated for seven Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films. Hathaway had the highest respect for Cooper's acting ability, calling him "the best actor of all of them".
American folk hero, 1936–1943
From Mr. Deeds to The Real Glory, 1936–1939
Cooper's career took an important turn in 1936. After making Frank Borzage's romantic comedy film Desire with Marlene Dietrich at Paramount—in which he delivered a performance considered by some contemporary critics as one of his finest—Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. In the film, Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, a quiet, innocent writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont, and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin were able to use Cooper's well-established screen persona as the "quintessential American hero"—a symbol of honesty, courage, and goodness—to create a new type of "folk hero" for the common man. Commenting on Cooper's impact on the character and the film, Capra observed:
Both Desire and Mr. Deeds opened in April 1936 to critical praise and were major box-office successes. In his review in The New York Times, Frank Nugent wrote that Cooper was "proving himself one of the best light comedians in Hollywood". For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Cooper appeared in two other Paramount films in 1936. In Lewis Milestone's adventure film The General Died at Dawn with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success.
In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly fictionalized version of the opening of the American western frontier. The film was an even greater box-office hit than its predecessor, due in large part to Jean Arthur's definitive depiction of Calamity Jane and Cooper's inspired portrayal of Hickock as an enigmatic figure of "deepening mythic substance". That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-three years.
In late 1936, Paramount was preparing a new contract for Cooper that would raise his salary to $8,000 a week when Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn for six films over six years with a minimum guarantee of $150,000 per picture. Paramount brought suit against Goldwyn and Cooper, and the court ruled that Cooper's new Goldwyn contract afforded the actor sufficient time to also honor his Paramount agreement. Cooper continued to make films with both studios, and by 1939 the United States Treasury reported that Cooper was the country's highest wage earner, at $482,819 (equivalent to $ million in ).
In contrast to his output the previous year, Cooper appeared in only one picture in 1937, Henry Hathaway's adventure film Souls at Sea. A critical and box-office failure, Cooper referred to it as his "almost picture", saying, "It was almost exciting, and almost interesting. And I was almost good." In 1938, he appeared in Archie Mayo's biographical film The Adventures of Marco Polo. Plagued by production problems and a weak screenplay, the film became Goldwyn's biggest failure to that date, losing $700,000. During this period, Cooper turned down several important roles, including the role of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Cooper was producer David O. Selznick's first choice for the part. He made several overtures to the actor, but Cooper had doubts about the project, and did not feel suited to the role. Cooper later admitted, "It was one of the best roles ever offered in Hollywood ... But I said no. I didn't see myself as quite that dashing, and later, when I saw Clark Gable play the role to perfection, I knew I was right."
Back at Paramount, Cooper returned to a more comfortable genre in Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert. In the film, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. Despite the clever screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, and solid performances by Cooper and Colbert, American audiences had trouble accepting Cooper in the role of a shallow philanderer. It succeeded only at the European box office market.
In the fall of 1938, Cooper appeared in H. C. Potter's romantic comedy The Cowboy and the Lady with Merle Oberon, about a sweet-natured rodeo cowboy who falls in love with the wealthy daughter of a presidential hopeful, believing her to be a poor, hard-working lady's maid. The efforts of three directors and several eminent screenwriters could not salvage what could have been a fine vehicle for Cooper. While more successful than its predecessor, the film was Cooper's fourth consecutive box-office failure in the American market.
In the next two years, Cooper was more discerning about the roles he accepted and made four successful large-scale adventure and cowboy films. In William A. Wellman's adventure film Beau Geste (1939), he plays one of three daring English brothers who join the French Foreign Legion in the Sahara to fight local tribes. Filmed in the same Mojave Desert locations as the original 1926 version with Ronald Colman, Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona. This was the last film in Cooper's contract with Paramount.
In Henry Hathaway's The Real Glory (1939), he plays a military doctor who accompanies a small group of American Army officers to the Philippines to help the Christian Filipinos defend themselves against Muslim radicals. Many film critics praised Cooper's performance, including author and film critic Graham Greene, who recognized that he "never acted better".
From The Westerner to For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940–1943
Cooper returned to the Western genre in William Wyler's The Westerner (1940) with Walter Brennan and Doris Davenport, about a drifting cowboy who defends homesteaders against Roy Bean, a corrupt judge known as the "law west of the Pecos". Screenwriter Niven Busch relied on Cooper's extensive knowledge of Western history while working on the script. The film received positive reviews and did well at the box-office, with reviewers praising the performances of the two lead actors. That same year, Cooper appeared in his first all-Technicolor feature, Cecil B. DeMille's adventure film North West Mounted Police (1940). In the film, Cooper plays a Texas Ranger who pursues an outlaw into western Canada where he joins forces with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who are after the same man, a leader of the North-West Rebellion. While not as popular with critics as its predecessor, the film was another box-office success—the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1940.
The early 1940s were Cooper's prime years as an actor. In a relatively short period, he appeared in five critically successful and popular films that produced some of his finest performances. When Frank Capra offered him the lead role in Meet John Doe before Robert Riskin even developed the script, Cooper accepted his friend's offer, saying, "It's okay, Frank, I don't need a script." In the film, Cooper plays Long John Willoughby, a down-and-out bush-league pitcher hired by a newspaper to pretend to be a man who promises to commit suicide on Christmas Eve to protest all the hypocrisy and corruption in the country. Considered by some critics to be Capra's best film at the time, Meet John Doe was received as a "national event" with Cooper appearing on the front cover of Time magazine on March 3, 1941. In his review in the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes called Cooper's performance a "splendid and utterly persuasive portrayal" and praised his "utterly realistic acting which comes through with such authority". Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote, "Gary Cooper, of course, is 'John Doe' to the life and in the whole—shy, bewildered, non-aggressive, but a veritable tiger when aroused."
That same year, Cooper made two films with director and good friend Howard Hawks. In the biographical film Sergeant York, Cooper portrays war hero Alvin C. York, one of the most decorated American soldiers in World War I. The film chronicles York's early backwoods days in Tennessee, his religious conversion and subsequent piety, his stand as a conscientious objector, and finally his heroic actions at the Battle of the Argonne Forest, which earned him the Medal of Honor. Initially, Cooper was nervous and uncertain about playing a living hero, so he traveled to Tennessee to visit York at his home, and the two quiet men established an immediate rapport and discovered they had much in common. Inspired by York's encouragement, Cooper delivered a performance that Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune called "one of extraordinary conviction and versatility", and that Archer Winston of the New York Post called "one of his best". After the film's release, Cooper was awarded the Distinguished Citizenship Medal by the Veterans of Foreign Wars for his "powerful contribution to the promotion of patriotism and loyalty". York admired Cooper's performance and helped promote the film for Warner Bros. Sergeant York became the top-grossing film of the year and was nominated for eleven Academy Awards. Accepting his first Academy Award for Best Actor from his friend James Stewart, Cooper said, "It was Sergeant Alvin York who won this award. Shucks, I've been in the business sixteen years and sometimes dreamed I might get one of these. That's all I can say ... Funny when I was dreaming I always made a better speech."
Cooper concluded the year back at Goldwyn with Howard Hawks to make the romantic comedy Ball of Fire with Barbara Stanwyck. In the film, Cooper plays a shy linguistics professor who leads a team of seven scholars who are writing an encyclopedia. While researching slang, he meets Stanwyck's flirtatious burlesque stripper Sugarpuss O'Shea who blows the dust off their staid life of books. The screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder provided Cooper the opportunity to exercise the full range of his light comedy skills. In his review for the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes wrote that Cooper handled the role with "great skill and comic emphasis" and that his performance was "utterly delightful". Though small in scale, Ball of Fire was one of the top-grossing films of the year—Cooper's fourth consecutive picture to make the top twenty.
Cooper's only film appearance in 1942 was also his last under his Goldwyn contract. In Sam Wood's biographical film The Pride of the Yankees, Cooper portrays baseball star Lou Gehrig who established a record with the New York Yankees for playing in 2,130 consecutive games. Cooper was reluctant to play the seven-time All-Star, who only died the previous year from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — now commonly called "Lou Gehrig's disease". Beyond the challenges of effectively portraying such a popular and nationally recognized figure, Cooper knew very little about baseball and was not left-handed like Gehrig.
After Gehrig's widow visited the actor and expressed her desire that he portray her husband, Cooper accepted the role that covered a twenty-year span of Gehrig's life—his early love of baseball, his rise to greatness, his loving marriage, and his struggle with illness, culminating in his farewell speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939 before 62,000 fans. Cooper quickly learned the physical movements of a baseball player and developed a fluid, believable swing. The handedness issue was solved by reversing the print for certain batting scenes. The film was one of the year's top ten pictures and received eleven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's third).
Soon after the publication of Ernest Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, Paramount paid $150,000 for the film rights with the express intent of casting Cooper in the lead role of Robert Jordan, an American explosives expert who fights alongside the Republican loyalists during the Spanish Civil War. The original director, Cecil B. DeMille, was replaced by Sam Wood who brought in Dudley Nichols for the screenplay. After the start of principal photography in the Sierra Nevada in late 1942, Ingrid Bergman was brought in to replace ballerina Vera Zorina as the female lead—a change supported by Cooper and Hemingway. The love scenes between Bergman and Cooper were "rapturous" and passionate. Howard Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune wrote that both actors performed with "the true stature and authority of stars". While the film distorted the novel's original political themes and meaning, For Whom the Bell Tolls was a critical and commercial success and received ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's fourth).
World War II related activities
Due to his age and health, Cooper did not serve in the military during World War II, but like many of his colleagues, he got involved in the war effort by entertaining the troops. In June 1943, he visited military hospitals in San Diego, and often appeared at the Hollywood Canteen serving food to the servicemen. In late 1943, Cooper undertook a tour of the South West Pacific with actresses Una Merkel and Phyllis Brooks, and accordionist Andy Arcari.
Traveling on a B-24A Liberator bomber, the group toured the Cook Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia, Queensland, Brisbane—where General Douglas MacArthur told Cooper he was watching Sergeant York in a Manila theater when Japanese bombs began falling—New Guinea, Jayapura, and throughout the Solomon Islands.
The group often shared the same sparse living conditions and K-rations as the troops. Cooper met with the servicemen and women, visited military hospitals, introduced his attractive colleagues, and participated in occasional skits. The shows concluded with Cooper's moving recitation of Lou Gehrig's farewell speech. When he returned to the United States, he visited military hospitals throughout the country. Cooper later called his time with the troops the "greatest emotional experience" of his life.
Mature roles, 1944–1952
In 1944, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's wartime adventure film The Story of Dr. Wassell with Laraine Day — his third movie with the director. In the film, Cooper plays American doctor and missionary Corydon M. Wassell, who leads a group of wounded sailors through the jungles of Java to safety. Despite receiving poor reviews, Dr. Wassell was one of the top-grossing films of the year. With his Goldwyn and Paramount contracts now concluded, Cooper decided to remain independent and formed his own production company, International Pictures, with Leo Spitz, William Goetz, and Nunnally Johnson. The fledgling studio's first offering was Sam Wood's romantic comedy Casanova Brown with Teresa Wright, about a man who learns his soon-to-be ex-wife is pregnant with his child, just as he is about to marry another woman. The film received poor reviews, with the New York Daily News calling it "delightful nonsense", and Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, criticizing Cooper's "somewhat obvious and ridiculous clowning". The film was barely profitable.
In 1945, Cooper starred in and produced Stuart Heisler's Western comedy Along Came Jones with Loretta Young for International. In this lighthearted parody of his past heroic image, Cooper plays comically inept cowboy Melody Jones who is mistaken for a ruthless killer. Audiences embraced Cooper's character, and the film was one of the top box-office pictures of the year—a testament to Cooper's still vital audience appeal. It was also International's biggest financial success during its brief history before being sold off to Universal Studios in 1946.
Cooper's career during the post-war years drifted in new directions as American society was changing. While he still played conventional heroic roles, his films now relied less on his heroic screen persona and more on novel stories and exotic settings. In November 1945, Cooper appeared in Sam Wood's nineteenth-century period drama Saratoga Trunk with Ingrid Bergman, about a Texas cowboy and his relationship with a beautiful fortune-hunter. Filmed in early 1943, the movie's release was delayed for two years due to the increased demand for war movies. Despite poor reviews, Saratoga Trunk did well at the box office and became one of the top money-makers of the year for Warner Bros. Cooper's only film in 1946 was Fritz Lang's romantic thriller Cloak and Dagger, about a mild-mannered physics professor recruited by the OSS during the last years of World War II to investigate the German atomic bomb program. Playing a part loosely based on physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Cooper was uneasy with the role and unable to convey the "inner sense" of the character. The film received poor reviews and was a box-office failure. In 1947, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's epic adventure film Unconquered with Paulette Goddard, about a Virginia militiaman who defends settlers against an unscrupulous gun trader and hostile Indians on the Western frontier during the eighteenth century. The film received mixed reviews, but even long-time DeMille critic James Agee acknowledged the picture had "some authentic flavor of the period". This last of four films made with DeMille was Cooper's most lucrative, earning the actor over $300,000 (equal to $ today) in salary and percentage of profits. Unconquered would be his last unqualified box-office success for the next five years.
In 1948, after making Leo McCarey's romantic comedy Good Sam, Cooper sold his company to Universal Studios and signed a long-term contract with Warner Bros. that gave him script and director approval and a guaranteed $295,000 (equal to $ today) per picture. His first film under the new contract was King Vidor's drama The Fountainhead (1949) with Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey. In the film, Cooper plays an idealistic and uncompromising architect who struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism in the face of societal pressures to conform to popular standards. Based on the novel by Ayn Rand who also wrote the screenplay, the film reflects her philosophy and attacks the concepts of collectivism while promoting the virtues of individualism. For most critics, Cooper was hopelessly miscast in the role of Howard Roark. In his review for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther concluded he was "Mr. Deeds out of his element". Cooper returned to his element in Delmer Daves' war drama Task Force (1949), about a retiring rear admiral who reminisces about his long career as a naval aviator and his role in the development of aircraft carriers. Cooper's performance and the Technicolor newsreel footage supplied by the United States Navy made the film one of Cooper's most popular during this period. In the next two years, Cooper made four poorly received films: Michael Curtiz' period drama Bright Leaf (1950), Stuart Heisler's Western melodrama Dallas (1950), Henry Hathaway's wartime comedy You're in the Navy Now (1951), and Raoul Walsh's Western action film Distant Drums (1951).
Cooper's most important film during the post-war years was Fred Zinnemann's Western drama High Noon (1952) with Grace Kelly and Katy Jurado for United Artists. In the film, Cooper plays retiring sheriff Will Kane who is preparing to leave town on his honeymoon when he learns that an outlaw he helped put away and his three henchmen are returning to seek their revenge. Unable to gain the support of the frightened townspeople, and abandoned by his young bride, Kane nevertheless stays to face the outlaws alone. During the filming, Cooper was in poor health and in considerable pain from stomach ulcers. His ravaged face and discomfort in some scenes "photographed as self-doubt", according to biographer Hector Arce, and contributed to the effectiveness of his performance. Considered one of the first "adult" Westerns for its theme of moral courage, High Noon received enthusiastic reviews for its artistry, with Time magazine placing it in the ranks of Stagecoach and The Gunfighter. Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote that Cooper was "at the top of his form", and John McCarten, in The New Yorker, wrote that Cooper was never more effective. The film earned $3.75 million in the United States and $18 million worldwide. Following the example of his friend James Stewart, Cooper accepted a lower salary in exchange for a percent of the profits, and ended up making $600,000. Cooper's understated performance was widely praised, and earned him his second Academy Award for Best Actor.
Later films, 1953–1961
After appearing in André de Toth's Civil War drama Springfield Rifle (1952)—a standard Warner Bros. film that was overshadowed by the success of its predecessor—Cooper made four films outside the United States. In Mark Robson's drama Return to Paradise (1953), Cooper plays an American wanderer who liberates the inhabitants of a Polynesian island from the puritanical rule of a misguided pastor. Cooper endured spartan living conditions, long hours, and ill health during the three-month location shoot on the island of Upolu in Western Samoa. Despite its beautiful cinematography, the film received poor reviews. Cooper's next three films were shot in Mexico. In Hugo Fregonese's action adventure film Blowing Wild (1953) with Barbara Stanwyck, he plays a wildcatter in Mexico who gets involved with an oil company executive and his unscrupulous wife with whom he once had an affair.
In 1954, Cooper appeared in Henry Hathaway's Western drama Garden of Evil, with Susan Hayward, about three soldiers of fortune in Mexico hired to rescue a woman's husband. That same year, he appeared in Robert Aldrich's Western adventure Vera Cruz with Burt Lancaster. In the film, Cooper plays an American adventurer hired by Emperor Maximilian I to escort a countess to Vera Cruz during the Mexican Rebellion of 1866. All of these films received poor reviews but did well at the box-office. For his work in Vera Cruz, Cooper earned $1.4 million in salary and percent of the gross.
During this period, Cooper struggled with health problems. As well as his ongoing treatment for ulcers, he suffered a severe shoulder injury during the filming of Blowing Wild when he was hit by metal fragments from a dynamited oil well. During the filming of Vera Cruz, he reinjured his hip falling from a horse, and was burned when Lancaster fired his rifle too close and the wadding from the blank shell pierced his clothing.
In 1955, he appeared in Otto Preminger's biographical war drama The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, about the World War I general who tried to convince government officials of the importance of air power, and was court-martialed after blaming the War Department for a series of air disasters. Some critics felt that Cooper was miscast, and that his dull, tight-lipped performance did not reflect Mitchell's dynamic and caustic personality. In 1956, Cooper was more effective playing a gentle Indiana Quaker in William Wyler's Civil War drama Friendly Persuasion with Dorothy McGuire. Like Sergeant York and High Noon, the film addresses the conflict between religious pacifism and civic duty. For his performance, Cooper received his second Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actor. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, and went on to earn $8 million worldwide.
In 1956, Cooper traveled to France to make Billy Wilder's romantic comedy Love in the Afternoon with Audrey Hepburn and Maurice Chevalier. In the film, Cooper plays a middle-aged American playboy in Paris who pursues and eventually falls in love with a much younger woman. Despite receiving some positive reviews—including from Bosley Crowther who praised the film's "charming performances"—most reviewers concluded that Cooper was simply too old for the part. While audiences may not have welcomed seeing Cooper's heroic screen image tarnished by his playing an aging roué trying to seduce an innocent young girl, the film was still a box-office success. The following year, Cooper appeared in Philip Dunne's romantic drama Ten North Frederick. In the film, which was based on the novel by John O'Hara, Cooper plays an attorney whose life is ruined by a double-crossing politician and his own secret affair with his daughter's young roommate. While Cooper brought "conviction and controlled anguish" to his performance, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, it was not enough to save what Bosley Crowther called a "hapless film".
Despite his ongoing health problems and several operations for ulcers and hernias, Cooper continued to work in action films. In 1958, he appeared in Anthony Mann's Western drama Man of the West (1958) with Julie London and Lee J. Cobb, about a reformed outlaw and killer who is forced to confront his violent past when the train he is riding in is held up by his former gang members. The film has been called Cooper's "most pathological Western", with its themes of impotent rage, sexual humiliation, and sadism. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, Cooper, who struggled with moral conflicts in his personal life, "understood the anguish of a character striving to retain his integrity ... [and] brought authentic feeling to the role of a tempted and tormented, yet essentially decent man". Mostly ignored by critics at the time, the film is now well-regarded by film scholars and is considered Cooper's last great film.
After his Warner Bros. contract ended, Cooper formed his own production company, Baroda Productions, and made three unusual films in 1959 about redemption. In Delmer Daves' Western drama The Hanging Tree, Cooper plays a frontier doctor who saves a criminal from a lynch mob, and later tries to exploit his sordid past. Cooper delivered a "powerful and persuasive" performance of an emotionally scarred man whose need to dominate others is transformed by the love and sacrifice of a woman. In Robert Rossen's historical adventure They Came to Cordura with Rita Hayworth, he plays an army officer who is found guilty of cowardice and assigned the degrading task of recommending soldiers for the Medal of Honor during the Pancho Villa Expedition of 1916.
While Cooper received positive reviews, Variety and Films in Review felt he was too old for the part. In Michael Anderson's action drama The Wreck of the Mary Deare with Charlton Heston, Cooper plays a disgraced merchant marine officer who decides to stay aboard his sinking cargo ship in order to prove the vessel was deliberately scuttled and to redeem his good name. Like its two predecessors, the film was physically demanding. Cooper, who was a trained scuba diver, did most of his own underwater scenes. Biographer Jeffrey Meyers observed that in all three roles, Cooper effectively conveyed the sense of lost honor and desire for redemption—what Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim called the "struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what his moral identity should be".
Personal life
Marriage and family
Cooper was formally introduced to his future wife, 20-year-old New York debutante Veronica Balfe, on Easter Sunday 1933 at a party given by her uncle, art director Cedric Gibbons. Called "Rocky" by her family and friends, she grew up on Park Avenue and attended finishing schools. Her stepfather was Wall Street tycoon Paul Shields. Cooper and Rocky were quietly married at her parents' Park Avenue residence on December 15, 1933. According to his friends, the marriage had a positive impact on Cooper, who turned away from past indiscretions and took control of his life. Athletic and a lover of the outdoors, Rocky shared many of Cooper's interests, including riding, skiing, and skeet-shooting. She organized their social life, and her wealth and social connections provided Cooper access to New York high society. Cooper and his wife owned homes in the Los Angeles area in Encino (1933–36), Brentwood (1936–53), and Holmby Hills (1954–61), and owned a vacation home in Aspen, Colorado (1949–53).
Gary and Veronica Cooper's daughter, Maria Veronica Cooper, was born on September 15, 1937. By all accounts, he was a patient and affectionate father, teaching Maria to ride a bicycle, play tennis, ski, and ride horses. Sharing many of her parents' interests, she accompanied them on their travels and was often photographed with them. Like her father, she developed a love for art and drawing. As a family they vacationed together in Sun Valley, Idaho, spent time at Rocky's parents' country house in Southampton, New York, and took frequent trips to Europe. Cooper and Rocky were legally separated on May 16, 1951, when Cooper moved out of their home. For over two years, they maintained a fragile and uneasy family life with their daughter. Cooper moved back into their home in November 1953, and their formal reconciliation occurred in February 1954.
Romantic relationships
Prior to his marriage, Cooper had a series of romantic relationships with leading actresses, beginning in 1927 with Clara Bow, who advanced his career by helping him get one of his first leading roles in Children of Divorce. Bow was also responsible for getting Cooper a role in Wings, which generated an enormous amount of fan mail for the young actor. In 1928, he had a relationship with another experienced actress, Evelyn Brent, whom he met while filming Beau Sabreur. In 1929, while filming The Wolf Song, Cooper began an intense affair with Lupe Vélez, which was the most important romance of his early life. During their two years together, Cooper also had brief affairs with Marlene Dietrich while filming Morocco in 1930 and with Carole Lombard while making I Take This Woman in 1931. During his year abroad in 1931–32, Cooper had an affair with the married Countess Dorothy di Frasso, while staying at her Villa Madama near Rome.
After he was married in December 1933, Cooper remained faithful to his wife until the summer of 1942, when he began an affair with Ingrid Bergman during the production of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Their relationship lasted through the completion of filming Saratoga Trunk in June 1943. In 1948, after finishing work on The Fountainhead, Cooper began an affair with actress Patricia Neal, his co-star. At first they kept their affair discreet, but eventually it became an open secret in Hollywood, and Cooper's wife confronted him with the rumors, which he admitted were true. He also confessed that he was in love with Neal, and continued to see her. Cooper and his wife were legally separated in May 1951, but he did not seek a divorce. Neal later claimed that Cooper hit her after she went on a date with Kirk Douglas, and that he arranged for her to have an abortion when she became pregnant with Cooper's child. Neal ended their relationship in late December 1951. During his three-year separation from his wife, Cooper was rumored to have had affairs with Grace Kelly, Lorraine Chanel, and Gisèle Pascal.
Cooper biographers have explored his friendship in the late twenties with the actor Anderson Lawler, with whom Cooper shared a house on and off for a year, while at the same time seeing Clara Bow, Evelyn Brent and Lupe Vélez. Lupe Vélez once told Hedda Hopper of Vélez' affair with Cooper; whenever he would come home after seeing Lawler, she would sniff for Lawler's cologne. Vélez' biographer Michelle Vogel has reported that Vélez consented to Cooper's sexual behavior with Lawler, but only as long as she, too, could participate. In later life, he became involved in a relationship with the costume designer Irene, and was, according to Irene, "the only man she ever loved". A year after his death in 1961, Irene committed suicide by jumping from the 11th floor of the Knickerbocker Hotel, after telling Doris Day of her grief over Cooper's death.
Friendships, interests, and character
Cooper's twenty-year friendship with Ernest Hemingway began at Sun Valley in October 1940. The previous year, Hemingway drew upon Cooper's image when he created the character of Robert Jordan for the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. The two shared a passion for the outdoors, and for years they hunted duck and pheasant, and skied together in Sun Valley. Both men admired the work of Rudyard Kipling—Cooper kept a copy of the poem "If—" in his dressing room—and retained as adults Kipling's sense of boyish adventure.
As well as admiring Cooper's hunting skills and knowledge of the outdoors, Hemingway believed his character matched his screen persona, once telling a friend, "If you made up a character like Coop, nobody would believe it. He's just too good to be true." They saw each other often, and their friendship remained strong through the years.
Cooper's social life generally centered on sports, outdoor activities, and dinner parties with his family and friends from the film industry, including directors Henry Hathaway, Howard Hawks, William Wellman, and Fred Zinnemann, and actors Joel McCrea, James Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, and Robert Taylor. As well as hunting, Cooper enjoyed riding, fishing, skiing, and later in life, scuba diving. He never abandoned his early love for art and drawing, and over the years, he and his wife acquired a private collection of modern paintings, including works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Cooper owned several works by Pablo Picasso, whom he met in 1956. Cooper also had a lifelong passion for automobiles, with a collection that included a 1930 Duesenberg.
Cooper was naturally reserved and introspective, and loved the solitude of outdoor activities. Not unlike his screen persona, his communication style frequently consisted of long silences with an occasional "yup" and "shucks". He once said, "If others have more interesting things to say than I have, I keep quiet." According to his friends, Cooper could also be an articulate, well-informed conversationalist on topics ranging from horses, guns, and Western history to film production, sports cars, and modern art. He was modest and unpretentious, frequently downplaying his acting abilities and career accomplishments. His friends and colleagues described him as charming, well-mannered, and thoughtful, with a lively boyish sense of humor. Cooper maintained a sense of propriety throughout his career and never misused his movie star status—never sought special treatment or refused to work with a director or leading lady. His close friend Joel McCrea recalled, "Coop never fought, he never got mad, he never told anybody off that I know of; everybody that worked with him liked him."
Political views
Like his father, Cooper was a conservative Republican; he voted for Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Herbert Hoover in 1928 and 1932, and campaigned for Wendell Willkie in 1940. When Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented fourth presidential term in 1944, Cooper campaigned for Thomas E. Dewey and criticized Roosevelt for being dishonest and adopting "foreign" ideas. In a radio address that he paid for himself just prior to the election, Cooper said, "I disagree with the New Deal belief that the America all of us love is old and worn-out and finished—and has to borrow foreign notions that don't even seem to work any too well where they come from ... Our country is a young country that just has to make up its mind to be itself again." He also attended a Republican rally at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that drew 93,000 Dewey supporters.
Cooper was one of the founding members of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a conservative organization dedicated, according to its statement of principles, to preserving the "American way of life" and opposing communism and fascism. The organization — whose membership included Walter Brennan, Laraine Day, Walt Disney, Clark Gable, Hedda Hopper, Ronald Reagan, Barbara Stanwyck, and John Wayne — advised the United States Congress to investigate communist influence in the motion picture industry. On October 23, 1947, Cooper was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and was asked if he had observed any "communistic influence" in Hollywood.
Cooper recounted statements he'd heard suggesting that the Constitution was out of date and that Congress was an unnecessary institution—comments that Cooper said he found to be "very un-American" and testified that he had rejected several scripts because he thought they were "tinged with communist ideas". Unlike some other witnesses, Cooper did not name any individuals, nor did he name any scripts, during his testimony.
In 1951, while making High Noon, Cooper became friends with the film's screenwriter, Carl Foreman, who had been a member of the Communist Party. When Foreman was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Cooper put his career on the line to defend Foreman. When John Wayne and others threatened Cooper with blacklisting himself and the loss of his passport if he did not walk off the film, Cooper gave a statement to the press in support of Foreman, calling him "the finest kind of American". When producer Stanley Kramer removed Foreman's name as screenwriter, Cooper and director Fred Zinnemann threatened to walk off the film if Foreman's name was not restored. Foreman later said that, of all his friends and allies and colleagues in Hollywood, "Cooper was the only big one who tried to help. The only one." Cooper even offered to testify in Foreman's behalf before the committee, but character witnesses were not allowed. Foreman always sent future scripts to Cooper for first refusal, including The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Key and The Guns of Navarone. Cooper had to turn them down because of his age.
Religion
Cooper was baptized in the Anglican Church in December 1911 in Britain, and was raised in the Episcopal Church in the United States. While he was not an observant Christian for most of his adult life, many of his friends believed he had a deeply spiritual side.
On June 26, 1953, Cooper accompanied his wife and daughter, who were devout Catholics, to Rome, where they had an audience with Pope Pius XII. Cooper and his wife were still separated at the time, but the papal visit marked the beginning of their gradual reconciliation. In the coming years, Cooper contemplated his mortality and his personal behavior, and started discussing Catholicism with his family. He began attending church with them regularly, and met with their parish priest, who offered Cooper spiritual guidance. After several months of study, Cooper was baptized as a Roman Catholic on April 9, 1959, before a small group of family and friends at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.
Final years and death
On April 14, 1960, Cooper underwent surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had metastasized to his colon. He fell ill again on May 31 and underwent further surgery at Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles in early June to remove a malignant tumor from his large intestine. After recuperating over the summer, Cooper took his family on vacation to the south of France before traveling to the UK in the fall to star in The Naked Edge. In December 1960, he worked on the NBC television documentary The Real West, which was part of the company's Project 20 series.
On December 27, his wife learned from their family doctor that Cooper's cancer had spread to his lungs and bones and was inoperable. His family decided not to tell him immediately.
On January 9, 1961, Cooper attended a dinner that was given in his honor and hosted by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin at the Friars Club. The dinner was attended by many of his industry friends and concluded with a brief speech by Cooper who said, "The only achievement I'm proud of is the friends I've made in this community."
In mid-January, Cooper took his family to Sun Valley for their last vacation together. Cooper and Hemingway hiked through the snow together for the last time. On February 27, after returning to Los Angeles, Cooper learned that he was dying. He later told his family, "We'll pray for a miracle; but if not, and that's God's will, that's all right too." On April 17, Cooper watched the Academy Awards ceremony on television and saw his good friend James Stewart, who had presented Cooper with his first Oscar years earlier, accept on Cooper's behalf an honorary award for lifetime achievement—his third Oscar. Holding back tears, Stewart said, "Coop, I'll get this to you right away. And Coop, I want you to know this, that with this goes all the warm friendship and the affection and the admiration and the deep, the deep respect of all of us. We're very, very proud of you, Coop. All of us are tremendously proud." The following day, newspapers around the world announced the news that Cooper was dying. In the coming days he received numerous messages of appreciation and encouragement, including telegrams from Pope John XXIII and Queen Elizabeth II, and a telephone call from President John F. Kennedy.
In his last public statement on May 4, Cooper said, "I know that what is happening is God's will. I am not afraid of the future." He received the last rites on May 12. Cooper died quietly the following day, Saturday, May 13, 1961, at 12:47 P.M.
A requiem mass was held on May 18 at the Church of the Good Shepherd, attended by many of Cooper's friends, including James Stewart, Jack Benny, Henry Hathaway, Joel McCrea, Audrey Hepburn, Jack L. Warner, John Ford, John Wayne, Edward G. Robinson, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Fred Astaire, Randolph Scott, Walter Pidgeon, Bob Hope and Marlene Dietrich. Cooper was buried in the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. In May 1974, after his family relocated to New York, Cooper's remains were exhumed and reburied in Sacred Hearts Cemetery in Southampton. His grave is marked by a three-ton boulder from a Montauk quarry.
Acting style and reputation
Cooper's acting style consisted of three essential characteristics: his ability to project elements of his own personality onto the characters he portrayed, to appear natural and authentic in his roles, and to underplay and deliver restrained performances calibrated for the camera and the screen. Acting teacher Lee Strasberg once observed: "The simplest examples of Stanislavsky's ideas are actors such as Gary Cooper, John Wayne, and Spencer Tracy. They try not to act but to be themselves, to respond or react. They refuse to say or do anything they feel not to be consonant with their own characters." Film director François Truffaut ranked Cooper among "the greatest actors" because of his ability to deliver great performances "without direction". This ability to project elements of his own personality onto his characters produced a continuity across his performances to the extent that critics and audiences were convinced that he was simply "playing himself".
Cooper's ability to project his personality onto his characters played an important part in his appearing natural and authentic on screen. Actor John Barrymore said of Cooper, "This fellow is the world's greatest actor. He does without effort what the rest of us spend our lives trying to learn—namely, to be natural." Charles Laughton, who played opposite Cooper in Devil and the Deep agreed, "In truth, that boy hasn't the least idea how well he acts ... He gets at it from the inside, from his own clear way of looking at life." William Wyler, who directed Cooper in two films, called him a "superb actor, a master of movie acting".
In his review of Cooper's performance in The Real Glory, Graham Greene wrote, "Sometimes his lean photogenic face seems to leave everything to the lens, but there is no question here of his not acting. Watch him inoculate the girl against cholera—the casual jab of the needle, and the dressing slapped on while he talks, as though a thousand arms had taught him where to stab and he doesn't have to think anymore."
Cooper's style of underplaying before the camera surprised many of his directors and fellow actors. Even in his earliest feature films, he recognized the camera's ability to pick up slight gestures and facial movements. Commenting on Cooper's performance in Sergeant York, director Howard Hawks observed, "He worked very hard and yet he didn't seem to be working. He was a strange actor because you'd look at him during a scene and you'd think ... this isn't going to be any good. But when you saw the rushes in the projection room the next day you could read in his face all the things he'd been thinking." Sam Wood, who directed Cooper in four films, had similar observations about Cooper's performance in Pride of the Yankees, noting, "What I thought was underplaying turned out to be just the right approach. On the screen he's perfect, yet on the set you'd swear it's the worst job of acting in the history of motion pictures."
Fellow actors admired his abilities as an actor. Commenting on her two films playing opposite Cooper, actress Ingrid Bergman concluded, "The personality of this man was so enormous, so overpowering—and that expression in his eyes and his face, it was so delicate and so underplayed. You just didn't notice it until you saw it on the screen. I thought he was marvelous; the most underplaying and the most natural actor I ever worked with."
Tom Hanks declared, "In only one scene in the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, we see the future of screen acting in the form of Gary Cooper. He is quiet and natural, somehow different from the other cast members. He does something mysterious with his eyes and shoulders that is much more like 'being' than 'acting'."
Daniel Day-Lewis said, "I don't particularly like westerns as a genre, but I do love certain westerns. 'High Noon' means a lot to me – I love the purity and the honesty, I love Gary Cooper in that film, the idea of the last man standing."
Chris Pratt stated, "I started watching Westerns when I was shooting in London about four or five years ago. I really fell in love with Gary Cooper, and his stuff. That sucked me into the Westerns. Before, I never got engrossed in the story. I'd just dip in, and there were guys in horses in black and white. High Noon's later Gary Cooper, I liked that. But I liked 'The Westerner'. That's my favorite one. I have that poster hung up in my house because I really like that one."
To Al Pacino, "Gary Cooper was a phenomenon—his ability to take some thing and elevate it, give it such dignity. One of the great presences."
Mylène Demongeot first got with Gary Cooper for the opening of the first escalator to be installed in a cinema, at the Rex Theatre in Paris, on June 7, 1957. She declared in a 2015 filmed interview: "Gary Cooper ... il est sublime ! Aaahhh (Mylène pushing a cry of love not to say ecstasy) il est sublime ... Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! Là je dois dire que ça fait partie des stars, y'a Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, ces grands Américains que j'ai rencontrés comme ça, c'est vraiment des mecs incroyables. Y'en a plus des comme ça ! Euh non. (Gary Cooper was sublime, there I have to say, now he, was part of the stars, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, those great americans who I've met really were unbelievable guys, there aren't any like them anymore)."
Career assessment and legacy
Cooper's career spanned thirty-six years, from 1925 to 1961. During that time, he appeared in eighty-four feature films in a leading role. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His natural and authentic acting style appealed powerfully to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major movie genres, including Westerns, war films, adventure films, drama films, crime films, romance films, comedy films, and romantic comedy films. He appeared on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities for twenty-three consecutive years, from 1936 to 1958. According to Quigley's annual poll, Cooper was one of the top money-making stars for eighteen years, appearing in the top ten in 1936–37, 1941–49, and 1951–57. He topped the list in 1953. In Quigley's list of all-time money-making stars, Cooper is listed fourth, after John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Tom Cruise. At the time of his death, it was estimated that his films grossed well over $200 million (equivalent to $ billion in ).
In over half of his feature films, Cooper portrayed Westerners, soldiers, pilots, sailors, and explorers—all men of action. In the rest he played a wide range of characters, included doctors, professors, artists, architects, clerks, and baseball players. Cooper's heroic screen image changed with each period of his career. In his early films, he played the young naive hero sure of his moral position and trusting in the triumph of simple virtues (The Virginian). After becoming a major star, his Western screen persona was replaced by a more cautious hero in adventure films and dramas (A Farewell to Arms). During the height of his career, from 1936 to 1943, he played a new type of hero—a champion of the common man willing to sacrifice himself for others (Mr. Deeds, Meet John Doe, and For Whom the Bell Tolls).
In the post-war years, Cooper attempted broader variations on his screen image, which now reflected a hero increasingly at odds with the world who must face adversity alone (The Fountainhead and High Noon). In his final films, Cooper's hero rejects the violence of the past, and seeks to reclaim lost honor and find redemption (Friendly Persuasion and Man of the West). The screen persona he developed and sustained throughout his career represented the ideal American hero—a tall, handsome, and sincere man of steadfast integrity who emphasized action over intellect, and combined the heroic qualities of the romantic lover, the adventurer, and the common man.
On February 6, 1960, Cooper was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6243 Hollywood Boulevard for his contribution to the film industry. He was awarded a star on the sidewalk outside the Ellen Theater in Bozeman, Montana.
On May 6, 1961, he was awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters in recognition of his significant contribution to the arts. On July 30, 1961, he was posthumously awarded the David di Donatello Special Award in Italy for his career achievements.
In 1966, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. In 2015, he was inducted into the Utah Cowboy and Western Heritage Hall of Fame. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper eleventh on its list of the 25 male stars of classic Hollywood. Three of his characters—Will Kane, Lou Gehrig, and Sergeant York—made AFI's list of the one hundred greatest heroes and villains, all of them as heroes. His Lou Gehrig line, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.", is ranked by AFI as the thirty-eighth greatest movie quote of all time.
More than a half century after his death, Cooper's enduring legacy, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, is his image of the ideal American hero preserved in his film performances. Charlton Heston once observed, "He projected the kind of man Americans would like to be, probably more than any actor that's ever lived."
In the TV series Justified, based on works and characters created by Elmore Leonard, Gary Cooper is used throughout the six seasons as the man whom U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens, played by Timothy Olyphant, aspires to be. When his colleague asks Marshall Givens how he thinks his dangerous plan to bring down a villain can possibly work, he replies: "Why not? Worked for Gary Cooper."
Gary Cooper is referenced several times in the critically acclaimed television series The Sopranos, with protagonist Tony Soprano asking "What ever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type." while complaining about his problems to his therapist.
In the 1930s hit song "Puttin' On the Ritz", Cooper is referenced in the line "dress up like a million dollar trooper/Tryin' hard to look like Gary Cooper, Super duper!" More than two decades after Cooper's death a new version of the song was released in 1983 by Taco; the original lyrics were kept, including the references to Cooper.
In J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Cooper is "spotted" by Holden Caulfield to distract a woman he is dancing with.
Awards and nominations
Filmography
The following is a list of feature films in which Cooper appeared in a leading role.
The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926)
Children of Divorce (1927)
Arizona Bound (1927)
Wings (1927)
Nevada (1927)
It (1927)
The Last Outlaw (1927)
Beau Sabreur (1928)
The Legion of the Condemned (1928)
Doomsday (1928)
Half a Bride (1928)
Lilac Time (1928)
The First Kiss (1928)
The Shopworn Angel (1928)
Wolf Song (1929)
Betrayal (1929)
The Virginian (1929)
Only the Brave (1930)
The Texan (1930)
Seven Days' Leave (1930)
A Man from Wyoming (1930)
The Spoilers (1930)
Morocco (1930)
Fighting Caravans (1931)
City Streets (1931)
I Take This Woman (1931)
His Woman (1931)
Devil and the Deep (1932)
If I Had a Million (1932)
A Farewell to Arms (1932)
Today We Live (1933)
One Sunday Afternoon (1933)
Design for Living (1933)
Alice in Wonderland (1933)
Operator 13 (1934)
Now and Forever (1934)
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
The Wedding Night (1935)
Peter Ibbetson (1935)
Desire (1936)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
The General Died at Dawn (1936)
The Plainsman (1936)
Souls at Sea (1937)
The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938)
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938)
The Cowboy and the Lady (1938)
Beau Geste (1939)
The Real Glory (1939)
The Westerner (1940)
North West Mounted Police (1940)
Meet John Doe (1941)
Sergeant York (1941)
Ball of Fire (1941)
The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944)
Casanova Brown (1944)
Along Came Jones (1945)
Saratoga Trunk (1945)
Cloak and Dagger (1946)
Unconquered (1947)
Good Sam (1948)
The Fountainhead (1949)
Task Force (1949)
Bright Leaf (1950)
Dallas (1950)
You're in the Navy Now (1951)
It's a Big Country (1951)
Distant Drums (1951)
High Noon (1952)
Springfield Rifle (1952)
Return to Paradise (1953)
Blowing Wild (1953)
Garden of Evil (1954)
Vera Cruz (1954)
The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955)
Friendly Persuasion (1956)
Love in the Afternoon (1957)
Ten North Frederick (1958)
Man of the West (1958)
The Hanging Tree (1959)
They Came to Cordura (1959)
The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959)
The Naked Edge (1961)
Radio appearances
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Adrien Le Bihan, Gary Cooper, le prince des acteurs, LettMotif, 2021, 358p.()
External links
1901 births
1961 deaths
20th-century American male actors
Academy Honorary Award recipients
American expatriates in England
American male film actors
American male silent film actors
American male television actors
American people of English descent
Best Actor Academy Award winners
Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners
California Republicans
Catholics from Montana
Conservatism in the United States
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from prostate cancer
Grinnell College people
Male Western (genre) film actors
Male actors from Montana
Paramount Pictures contract players
People educated at Dunstable Grammar School
People from Brentwood, Los Angeles
People from Dunstable
People from Helena, Montana
People from Holmby Hills, Los Angeles | false | [
"Tom Bacher is a former Danish badminton player. He was a Danish international from the mid 1960s until the mid 1970s. \nHis greatest achievement was winning the 1970 All England Badminton Championships doubles title with Poul Petersen.\n\nMedal Record at the All England Badminton Championships\n\nReferences\n\nDanish male badminton players",
"Andrew Dwyer (born 4 November 1956) is a former English professional squash player.\n\nDwyer was born on 4 November 1956 and lived in Hove, Sussex. He started playing at Withdean and was capped by England in 1977. His greatest achievement was being part of the winning England team during the 1979 World Team Squash Championships, the last world amateur championship before the game went open.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\nEnglish male squash players\n1956 births\nLiving people"
] |
[
"Gary Cooper",
"Silent films, 1925-28",
"what happened in 1925?",
"In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures",
"what pictures did he do?",
"The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones.",
"did he win any awards for them?",
"Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings, the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.",
"who did he work with?",
"In 1928, Paramount paired Cooper with a youthful Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss--advertising them as the studio's \"glorious young lovers\".",
"what was his greatest achievement?",
"Lilac Time with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928."
] | C_84d38f8ca490447a92f516e3616fdb66_1 | what is an important fact in this article? | 6 | what is an important fact about Gary Cooper in this article? | Gary Cooper | In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, including Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt work--which sometimes injured horses and riders--"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name. Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week. Cooper's first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal--finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings, the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada--both films directed by John Waters. In 1928, Paramount paired Cooper with a youthful Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss--advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride. That year, Cooper also made Lilac Time with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928. CANNOTANSWER | he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. | Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper; May 7, 1901 – May 13, 1961) was an American actor known for his strong, silent, and understated acting style. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice and had a further three nominations, as well as receiving an Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements in 1961. He was one of the top 10 film personalities for 23 consecutive years, and one of the top money-making stars for 18 years. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper at No. 11 on its list of the 25 greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Cooper's career spanned 36 years, from 1925 to 1961, and included leading roles in 84 feature films. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era through to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His screen persona appealed strongly to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major film genres. His ability to project his own personality onto the characters he played contributed to his natural and authentic appearance on screen. Throughout his career, he sustained a screen persona that represented the ideal American hero.
Cooper began his career as a film extra and stunt rider, but soon landed acting roles. After establishing himself as a Western hero in his early silent films, he appeared as the Virginian and became a movie star in 1929 with his first sound picture, The Virginian. In the early 1930s, he expanded his heroic image to include more cautious characters in adventure films and dramas such as A Farewell to Arms (1932) and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935). During the height of his career, Cooper portrayed a new type of hero—a champion of the common man—in films such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Meet John Doe (1941), Sergeant York (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). He later portrayed more mature characters at odds with the world in films such as The Fountainhead (1949) and High Noon (1952). In his final films, he played non-violent characters searching for redemption in films such as Friendly Persuasion (1956) and Man of the West (1958).
Early life
Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana, on May 7, 1901, the younger of two sons of English parents Alice (née Brazier; 1873–1967) and Charles Henry Cooper (1865–1946). His brother, Arthur, was six years his senior. Cooper's father came from Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire, and became a prominent lawyer, rancher, and Montana Supreme Court justice. His mother hailed from Gillingham, Kent, and married Charles in Montana. In 1906, Charles purchased the Seven-Bar-Nine cattle ranch, about north of Helena near Craig, Montana. Cooper and Arthur spent their summers at the ranch and learned to ride horses, hunt, and fish. Cooper attended Central Grade School in Helena.
Alice wanted her sons to have an English education, so she took them back to England in 1909 to enroll them in Dunstable Grammar School in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. While there, Cooper and his brother lived with their father's cousins, William and Emily Barton, at their home in Houghton Regis. Cooper studied Latin, French, and English history at Dunstable until 1912. While he adapted to English school discipline and learned the requisite social graces, he never adjusted to the rigid class structure and formal Eton collars he was required to wear. He received his confirmation in the Church of England at the Church of All Saints in Houghton Regis on December 3, 1911. His mother accompanied her sons back to the U.S. in August 1912, and Cooper resumed his education at Johnson Grammar School in Helena.
When Cooper was 15, he injured his hip in a car accident. On his doctor's recommendation, he returned to the Seven-Bar-Nine ranch to recuperate by horseback riding. The misguided therapy left him with his characteristic stiff, off-balanced walk and slightly angled horse-riding style. He left Helena High School after two years in 1918, and returned to the family ranch to work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for him to attend Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana, where English teacher Ida Davis encouraged him to focus on academics and participate in debating and dramatics. Cooper later called Davis "the woman partly responsible for [him] giving up cowboy-ing and going to college".
Cooper was still attending high school in 1920 when he took three art courses at Montana Agricultural College in Bozeman. His interest in art was inspired years earlier by the Western paintings of Charles Marion Russell and Frederic Remington. Cooper especially admired and studied Russell's Lewis and Clark Meeting Indians at Ross' Hole (1910), which still hangs in the state capitol building in Helena. In 1922, to continue his art education, he enrolled in Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. He did well academically in most of his courses, but was not accepted into the school's drama club. His drawings and watercolor paintings were exhibited throughout the dormitory, and he was named art editor for the college yearbook. During the summers of 1922 and 1923, Cooper worked at Yellowstone National Park as a tour guide driving the yellow open-top buses. Despite a promising first 18 months at Grinnell, he left college suddenly in February 1924, spent a month in Chicago looking for work as an artist, and then returned to Helena, where he sold editorial cartoons to the local Independent newspaper.
In autumn 1924, Cooper's father left the Montana Supreme Court bench and moved with his wife to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives, and Cooper joined his parents there in November at his father's request. After briefly working a series of unpromising jobs, he met two friends from Montana who were working as film extras and stunt riders in low-budget Western films for the small movie studios on Poverty Row. They introduced him to another Montana cowboy, rodeo champion Jay "Slim" Talbot, who took him to see a casting director. Wanting money for a professional art course, Cooper worked as a film extra for $5 a day, and as a stunt rider for $10. Cooper and Talbot became close friends and hunting companions, and Talbot later worked as Cooper's stuntman and stand-in for over three decades.
Career
Silent films, 1925–1928
In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, but also the already emergent major studios, Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt workwhich sometimes injured horses and riders"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name.
Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week.
Cooper's first important film role was a supporting part in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) starring Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal—finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings (both 1927), the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada—both films directed by John Waters.
Paramount paired Cooper with Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss (both 1928)—advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride (also both 1928). Around the same time, Cooper made Lilac Time (1928) with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928.
Hollywood stardom, 1929–1935
Cooper became a major movie star in 1929 with the release of his first talking picture, The Virginian (1929), which was directed by Victor Fleming and co-starred Mary Brian and Walter Huston. Based on the popular novel by Owen Wister, The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honor and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western movie genre that persist to the present day. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, the romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero who embodied male freedom, courage, and honor was created in large part by Cooper in the film. Unlike some silent film actors who had trouble adapting to the new sound medium, Cooper transitioned naturally, with his "deep and clear" and "pleasantly drawling" voice, which was perfectly suited for the characters he portrayed on screen, also according to Meyers. Looking to capitalize on Cooper's growing popularity, Paramount cast him in several Westerns and wartime dramas, including Only the Brave, The Texan, Seven Days' Leave, A Man from Wyoming, and The Spoilers (all released in 1930). Norman Rockwell depicted Cooper in his role as The Texan for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 24, 1930.
One of the more important performances in Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's film Morocco (also 1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her introduction to American audiences. During production, von Sternberg focused his energies on Dietrich and treated Cooper dismissively. Tensions came to a head after von Sternberg yelled directions at Cooper in German. The actor approached the director, picked him up by the collar, and said, "If you expect to work in this country you'd better get on to the language we use here." Despite the tensions on the set, Cooper produced "one of his best performances", according to Thornton Delehanty of the New York Evening Post.
After returning to the Western genre in Zane Grey's Fighting Caravans (1931) with French actress Lili Damita, Cooper appeared in the Dashiell Hammett crime film City Streets (also 1931), co-starring Sylvia Sidney and Paul Lukas, playing a westerner who gets involved with big-city gangsters in order to save the woman he loves. Cooper concluded the year with appearances in two unsuccessful films: I Take This Woman (also 1931) with Carole Lombard, and His Woman with Claudette Colbert. The demands and pressures of making ten films in two years left Cooper exhausted and in poor health, suffering from anemia and jaundice. He had lost during that period, and felt lonely, isolated, and depressed by his sudden fame and wealth. In May 1931, Cooper left Hollywood and sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year.
During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso at the Villa Madama in Rome, where she taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. After guiding him through the great art museums and galleries of Italy, she accompanied him on a ten-week big-game hunting safari on the slopes of Mount Kenya in East Africa, where he was credited with over sixty kills, including two lions, a rhinoceros, and various antelopes. His safari experience in Africa had a profound influence on Cooper and intensified his love of the wilderness. After returning to Europe, he and the countess set off on a Mediterranean cruise of the Italian and French Rivieras. Rested and rejuvenated by his year-long exile, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood in April 1932 and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 a week, and director and script approval.
In 1932, after completing Devil and the Deep with Tallulah Bankhead to fulfill his old contract, Cooper appeared in A Farewell to Arms, the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Co-starring Helen Hayes, a leading New York theatre star and Academy Award winner, and Adolphe Menjou, the film presented Cooper with one of his most ambitious and challenging dramatic roles, playing an American ambulance driver wounded in Italy who falls in love with an English nurse during World War I. Critics praised his highly intense and emotional performance, and the film became one of the year's most commercially successful pictures. In 1933, after making Today We Live with Joan Crawford and One Sunday Afternoon with Fay Wray, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy film Design for Living, based on the successful Noël Coward play. Co-starring Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March, the film was a box office success, ranking as one of the top ten highest-grossing films of 1933. All three of the lead actors—March, Cooper, and Hopkins—received attention from this film as they were all at the peak of their careers. Cooper's performance — playing an American artist in Europe competing with his playwright friend for the affections of a beautiful woman — was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy. Cooper changed his name legally to "Gary Cooper" in August 1933.
In 1934, Cooper was loaned out to MGM for the Civil War drama film Operator 13 with Marion Davies, about a beautiful Union spy who falls in love with a Confederate soldier. Despite Richard Boleslawski's imaginative direction and George J. Folsey's lavish cinematography, the film did poorly at the box office.
Back at Paramount, Cooper appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever, with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. In the film, he plays a confidence man who tries to sell his daughter to the relatives who raised her, but is eventually won over by the adorable girl. Impressed by Temple's intelligence and charm, Cooper developed a close rapport with her, both on and off screen. The film was a box-office success.
The following year, Cooper was loaned out to Samuel Goldwyn Productions to appear in King Vidor's romance film The Wedding Night with Anna Sten, who was being groomed as "another Garbo". In the film, Cooper plays an alcoholic novelist who retreats to his family's New England farm where he meets and falls in love with a beautiful Polish neighbor. Cooper delivered a performance of surprising range and depth, according to biographer Larry Swindell. Despite receiving generally favorable reviews, the film was not popular with American audiences, who may have been offended by the film's depiction of an extramarital affair and its tragic ending.
That same year, Cooper appeared in two Henry Hathaway films: the melodrama Peter Ibbetson with Ann Harding, about a man caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the adventure film The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. While the former, championed by the surrealists became more successful in Europe than in the United States, the latter was nominated for seven Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films. Hathaway had the highest respect for Cooper's acting ability, calling him "the best actor of all of them".
American folk hero, 1936–1943
From Mr. Deeds to The Real Glory, 1936–1939
Cooper's career took an important turn in 1936. After making Frank Borzage's romantic comedy film Desire with Marlene Dietrich at Paramount—in which he delivered a performance considered by some contemporary critics as one of his finest—Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. In the film, Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, a quiet, innocent writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont, and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin were able to use Cooper's well-established screen persona as the "quintessential American hero"—a symbol of honesty, courage, and goodness—to create a new type of "folk hero" for the common man. Commenting on Cooper's impact on the character and the film, Capra observed:
Both Desire and Mr. Deeds opened in April 1936 to critical praise and were major box-office successes. In his review in The New York Times, Frank Nugent wrote that Cooper was "proving himself one of the best light comedians in Hollywood". For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Cooper appeared in two other Paramount films in 1936. In Lewis Milestone's adventure film The General Died at Dawn with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success.
In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly fictionalized version of the opening of the American western frontier. The film was an even greater box-office hit than its predecessor, due in large part to Jean Arthur's definitive depiction of Calamity Jane and Cooper's inspired portrayal of Hickock as an enigmatic figure of "deepening mythic substance". That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-three years.
In late 1936, Paramount was preparing a new contract for Cooper that would raise his salary to $8,000 a week when Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn for six films over six years with a minimum guarantee of $150,000 per picture. Paramount brought suit against Goldwyn and Cooper, and the court ruled that Cooper's new Goldwyn contract afforded the actor sufficient time to also honor his Paramount agreement. Cooper continued to make films with both studios, and by 1939 the United States Treasury reported that Cooper was the country's highest wage earner, at $482,819 (equivalent to $ million in ).
In contrast to his output the previous year, Cooper appeared in only one picture in 1937, Henry Hathaway's adventure film Souls at Sea. A critical and box-office failure, Cooper referred to it as his "almost picture", saying, "It was almost exciting, and almost interesting. And I was almost good." In 1938, he appeared in Archie Mayo's biographical film The Adventures of Marco Polo. Plagued by production problems and a weak screenplay, the film became Goldwyn's biggest failure to that date, losing $700,000. During this period, Cooper turned down several important roles, including the role of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Cooper was producer David O. Selznick's first choice for the part. He made several overtures to the actor, but Cooper had doubts about the project, and did not feel suited to the role. Cooper later admitted, "It was one of the best roles ever offered in Hollywood ... But I said no. I didn't see myself as quite that dashing, and later, when I saw Clark Gable play the role to perfection, I knew I was right."
Back at Paramount, Cooper returned to a more comfortable genre in Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert. In the film, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. Despite the clever screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, and solid performances by Cooper and Colbert, American audiences had trouble accepting Cooper in the role of a shallow philanderer. It succeeded only at the European box office market.
In the fall of 1938, Cooper appeared in H. C. Potter's romantic comedy The Cowboy and the Lady with Merle Oberon, about a sweet-natured rodeo cowboy who falls in love with the wealthy daughter of a presidential hopeful, believing her to be a poor, hard-working lady's maid. The efforts of three directors and several eminent screenwriters could not salvage what could have been a fine vehicle for Cooper. While more successful than its predecessor, the film was Cooper's fourth consecutive box-office failure in the American market.
In the next two years, Cooper was more discerning about the roles he accepted and made four successful large-scale adventure and cowboy films. In William A. Wellman's adventure film Beau Geste (1939), he plays one of three daring English brothers who join the French Foreign Legion in the Sahara to fight local tribes. Filmed in the same Mojave Desert locations as the original 1926 version with Ronald Colman, Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona. This was the last film in Cooper's contract with Paramount.
In Henry Hathaway's The Real Glory (1939), he plays a military doctor who accompanies a small group of American Army officers to the Philippines to help the Christian Filipinos defend themselves against Muslim radicals. Many film critics praised Cooper's performance, including author and film critic Graham Greene, who recognized that he "never acted better".
From The Westerner to For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940–1943
Cooper returned to the Western genre in William Wyler's The Westerner (1940) with Walter Brennan and Doris Davenport, about a drifting cowboy who defends homesteaders against Roy Bean, a corrupt judge known as the "law west of the Pecos". Screenwriter Niven Busch relied on Cooper's extensive knowledge of Western history while working on the script. The film received positive reviews and did well at the box-office, with reviewers praising the performances of the two lead actors. That same year, Cooper appeared in his first all-Technicolor feature, Cecil B. DeMille's adventure film North West Mounted Police (1940). In the film, Cooper plays a Texas Ranger who pursues an outlaw into western Canada where he joins forces with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who are after the same man, a leader of the North-West Rebellion. While not as popular with critics as its predecessor, the film was another box-office success—the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1940.
The early 1940s were Cooper's prime years as an actor. In a relatively short period, he appeared in five critically successful and popular films that produced some of his finest performances. When Frank Capra offered him the lead role in Meet John Doe before Robert Riskin even developed the script, Cooper accepted his friend's offer, saying, "It's okay, Frank, I don't need a script." In the film, Cooper plays Long John Willoughby, a down-and-out bush-league pitcher hired by a newspaper to pretend to be a man who promises to commit suicide on Christmas Eve to protest all the hypocrisy and corruption in the country. Considered by some critics to be Capra's best film at the time, Meet John Doe was received as a "national event" with Cooper appearing on the front cover of Time magazine on March 3, 1941. In his review in the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes called Cooper's performance a "splendid and utterly persuasive portrayal" and praised his "utterly realistic acting which comes through with such authority". Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote, "Gary Cooper, of course, is 'John Doe' to the life and in the whole—shy, bewildered, non-aggressive, but a veritable tiger when aroused."
That same year, Cooper made two films with director and good friend Howard Hawks. In the biographical film Sergeant York, Cooper portrays war hero Alvin C. York, one of the most decorated American soldiers in World War I. The film chronicles York's early backwoods days in Tennessee, his religious conversion and subsequent piety, his stand as a conscientious objector, and finally his heroic actions at the Battle of the Argonne Forest, which earned him the Medal of Honor. Initially, Cooper was nervous and uncertain about playing a living hero, so he traveled to Tennessee to visit York at his home, and the two quiet men established an immediate rapport and discovered they had much in common. Inspired by York's encouragement, Cooper delivered a performance that Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune called "one of extraordinary conviction and versatility", and that Archer Winston of the New York Post called "one of his best". After the film's release, Cooper was awarded the Distinguished Citizenship Medal by the Veterans of Foreign Wars for his "powerful contribution to the promotion of patriotism and loyalty". York admired Cooper's performance and helped promote the film for Warner Bros. Sergeant York became the top-grossing film of the year and was nominated for eleven Academy Awards. Accepting his first Academy Award for Best Actor from his friend James Stewart, Cooper said, "It was Sergeant Alvin York who won this award. Shucks, I've been in the business sixteen years and sometimes dreamed I might get one of these. That's all I can say ... Funny when I was dreaming I always made a better speech."
Cooper concluded the year back at Goldwyn with Howard Hawks to make the romantic comedy Ball of Fire with Barbara Stanwyck. In the film, Cooper plays a shy linguistics professor who leads a team of seven scholars who are writing an encyclopedia. While researching slang, he meets Stanwyck's flirtatious burlesque stripper Sugarpuss O'Shea who blows the dust off their staid life of books. The screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder provided Cooper the opportunity to exercise the full range of his light comedy skills. In his review for the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes wrote that Cooper handled the role with "great skill and comic emphasis" and that his performance was "utterly delightful". Though small in scale, Ball of Fire was one of the top-grossing films of the year—Cooper's fourth consecutive picture to make the top twenty.
Cooper's only film appearance in 1942 was also his last under his Goldwyn contract. In Sam Wood's biographical film The Pride of the Yankees, Cooper portrays baseball star Lou Gehrig who established a record with the New York Yankees for playing in 2,130 consecutive games. Cooper was reluctant to play the seven-time All-Star, who only died the previous year from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — now commonly called "Lou Gehrig's disease". Beyond the challenges of effectively portraying such a popular and nationally recognized figure, Cooper knew very little about baseball and was not left-handed like Gehrig.
After Gehrig's widow visited the actor and expressed her desire that he portray her husband, Cooper accepted the role that covered a twenty-year span of Gehrig's life—his early love of baseball, his rise to greatness, his loving marriage, and his struggle with illness, culminating in his farewell speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939 before 62,000 fans. Cooper quickly learned the physical movements of a baseball player and developed a fluid, believable swing. The handedness issue was solved by reversing the print for certain batting scenes. The film was one of the year's top ten pictures and received eleven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's third).
Soon after the publication of Ernest Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, Paramount paid $150,000 for the film rights with the express intent of casting Cooper in the lead role of Robert Jordan, an American explosives expert who fights alongside the Republican loyalists during the Spanish Civil War. The original director, Cecil B. DeMille, was replaced by Sam Wood who brought in Dudley Nichols for the screenplay. After the start of principal photography in the Sierra Nevada in late 1942, Ingrid Bergman was brought in to replace ballerina Vera Zorina as the female lead—a change supported by Cooper and Hemingway. The love scenes between Bergman and Cooper were "rapturous" and passionate. Howard Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune wrote that both actors performed with "the true stature and authority of stars". While the film distorted the novel's original political themes and meaning, For Whom the Bell Tolls was a critical and commercial success and received ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's fourth).
World War II related activities
Due to his age and health, Cooper did not serve in the military during World War II, but like many of his colleagues, he got involved in the war effort by entertaining the troops. In June 1943, he visited military hospitals in San Diego, and often appeared at the Hollywood Canteen serving food to the servicemen. In late 1943, Cooper undertook a tour of the South West Pacific with actresses Una Merkel and Phyllis Brooks, and accordionist Andy Arcari.
Traveling on a B-24A Liberator bomber, the group toured the Cook Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia, Queensland, Brisbane—where General Douglas MacArthur told Cooper he was watching Sergeant York in a Manila theater when Japanese bombs began falling—New Guinea, Jayapura, and throughout the Solomon Islands.
The group often shared the same sparse living conditions and K-rations as the troops. Cooper met with the servicemen and women, visited military hospitals, introduced his attractive colleagues, and participated in occasional skits. The shows concluded with Cooper's moving recitation of Lou Gehrig's farewell speech. When he returned to the United States, he visited military hospitals throughout the country. Cooper later called his time with the troops the "greatest emotional experience" of his life.
Mature roles, 1944–1952
In 1944, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's wartime adventure film The Story of Dr. Wassell with Laraine Day — his third movie with the director. In the film, Cooper plays American doctor and missionary Corydon M. Wassell, who leads a group of wounded sailors through the jungles of Java to safety. Despite receiving poor reviews, Dr. Wassell was one of the top-grossing films of the year. With his Goldwyn and Paramount contracts now concluded, Cooper decided to remain independent and formed his own production company, International Pictures, with Leo Spitz, William Goetz, and Nunnally Johnson. The fledgling studio's first offering was Sam Wood's romantic comedy Casanova Brown with Teresa Wright, about a man who learns his soon-to-be ex-wife is pregnant with his child, just as he is about to marry another woman. The film received poor reviews, with the New York Daily News calling it "delightful nonsense", and Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, criticizing Cooper's "somewhat obvious and ridiculous clowning". The film was barely profitable.
In 1945, Cooper starred in and produced Stuart Heisler's Western comedy Along Came Jones with Loretta Young for International. In this lighthearted parody of his past heroic image, Cooper plays comically inept cowboy Melody Jones who is mistaken for a ruthless killer. Audiences embraced Cooper's character, and the film was one of the top box-office pictures of the year—a testament to Cooper's still vital audience appeal. It was also International's biggest financial success during its brief history before being sold off to Universal Studios in 1946.
Cooper's career during the post-war years drifted in new directions as American society was changing. While he still played conventional heroic roles, his films now relied less on his heroic screen persona and more on novel stories and exotic settings. In November 1945, Cooper appeared in Sam Wood's nineteenth-century period drama Saratoga Trunk with Ingrid Bergman, about a Texas cowboy and his relationship with a beautiful fortune-hunter. Filmed in early 1943, the movie's release was delayed for two years due to the increased demand for war movies. Despite poor reviews, Saratoga Trunk did well at the box office and became one of the top money-makers of the year for Warner Bros. Cooper's only film in 1946 was Fritz Lang's romantic thriller Cloak and Dagger, about a mild-mannered physics professor recruited by the OSS during the last years of World War II to investigate the German atomic bomb program. Playing a part loosely based on physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Cooper was uneasy with the role and unable to convey the "inner sense" of the character. The film received poor reviews and was a box-office failure. In 1947, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's epic adventure film Unconquered with Paulette Goddard, about a Virginia militiaman who defends settlers against an unscrupulous gun trader and hostile Indians on the Western frontier during the eighteenth century. The film received mixed reviews, but even long-time DeMille critic James Agee acknowledged the picture had "some authentic flavor of the period". This last of four films made with DeMille was Cooper's most lucrative, earning the actor over $300,000 (equal to $ today) in salary and percentage of profits. Unconquered would be his last unqualified box-office success for the next five years.
In 1948, after making Leo McCarey's romantic comedy Good Sam, Cooper sold his company to Universal Studios and signed a long-term contract with Warner Bros. that gave him script and director approval and a guaranteed $295,000 (equal to $ today) per picture. His first film under the new contract was King Vidor's drama The Fountainhead (1949) with Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey. In the film, Cooper plays an idealistic and uncompromising architect who struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism in the face of societal pressures to conform to popular standards. Based on the novel by Ayn Rand who also wrote the screenplay, the film reflects her philosophy and attacks the concepts of collectivism while promoting the virtues of individualism. For most critics, Cooper was hopelessly miscast in the role of Howard Roark. In his review for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther concluded he was "Mr. Deeds out of his element". Cooper returned to his element in Delmer Daves' war drama Task Force (1949), about a retiring rear admiral who reminisces about his long career as a naval aviator and his role in the development of aircraft carriers. Cooper's performance and the Technicolor newsreel footage supplied by the United States Navy made the film one of Cooper's most popular during this period. In the next two years, Cooper made four poorly received films: Michael Curtiz' period drama Bright Leaf (1950), Stuart Heisler's Western melodrama Dallas (1950), Henry Hathaway's wartime comedy You're in the Navy Now (1951), and Raoul Walsh's Western action film Distant Drums (1951).
Cooper's most important film during the post-war years was Fred Zinnemann's Western drama High Noon (1952) with Grace Kelly and Katy Jurado for United Artists. In the film, Cooper plays retiring sheriff Will Kane who is preparing to leave town on his honeymoon when he learns that an outlaw he helped put away and his three henchmen are returning to seek their revenge. Unable to gain the support of the frightened townspeople, and abandoned by his young bride, Kane nevertheless stays to face the outlaws alone. During the filming, Cooper was in poor health and in considerable pain from stomach ulcers. His ravaged face and discomfort in some scenes "photographed as self-doubt", according to biographer Hector Arce, and contributed to the effectiveness of his performance. Considered one of the first "adult" Westerns for its theme of moral courage, High Noon received enthusiastic reviews for its artistry, with Time magazine placing it in the ranks of Stagecoach and The Gunfighter. Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote that Cooper was "at the top of his form", and John McCarten, in The New Yorker, wrote that Cooper was never more effective. The film earned $3.75 million in the United States and $18 million worldwide. Following the example of his friend James Stewart, Cooper accepted a lower salary in exchange for a percent of the profits, and ended up making $600,000. Cooper's understated performance was widely praised, and earned him his second Academy Award for Best Actor.
Later films, 1953–1961
After appearing in André de Toth's Civil War drama Springfield Rifle (1952)—a standard Warner Bros. film that was overshadowed by the success of its predecessor—Cooper made four films outside the United States. In Mark Robson's drama Return to Paradise (1953), Cooper plays an American wanderer who liberates the inhabitants of a Polynesian island from the puritanical rule of a misguided pastor. Cooper endured spartan living conditions, long hours, and ill health during the three-month location shoot on the island of Upolu in Western Samoa. Despite its beautiful cinematography, the film received poor reviews. Cooper's next three films were shot in Mexico. In Hugo Fregonese's action adventure film Blowing Wild (1953) with Barbara Stanwyck, he plays a wildcatter in Mexico who gets involved with an oil company executive and his unscrupulous wife with whom he once had an affair.
In 1954, Cooper appeared in Henry Hathaway's Western drama Garden of Evil, with Susan Hayward, about three soldiers of fortune in Mexico hired to rescue a woman's husband. That same year, he appeared in Robert Aldrich's Western adventure Vera Cruz with Burt Lancaster. In the film, Cooper plays an American adventurer hired by Emperor Maximilian I to escort a countess to Vera Cruz during the Mexican Rebellion of 1866. All of these films received poor reviews but did well at the box-office. For his work in Vera Cruz, Cooper earned $1.4 million in salary and percent of the gross.
During this period, Cooper struggled with health problems. As well as his ongoing treatment for ulcers, he suffered a severe shoulder injury during the filming of Blowing Wild when he was hit by metal fragments from a dynamited oil well. During the filming of Vera Cruz, he reinjured his hip falling from a horse, and was burned when Lancaster fired his rifle too close and the wadding from the blank shell pierced his clothing.
In 1955, he appeared in Otto Preminger's biographical war drama The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, about the World War I general who tried to convince government officials of the importance of air power, and was court-martialed after blaming the War Department for a series of air disasters. Some critics felt that Cooper was miscast, and that his dull, tight-lipped performance did not reflect Mitchell's dynamic and caustic personality. In 1956, Cooper was more effective playing a gentle Indiana Quaker in William Wyler's Civil War drama Friendly Persuasion with Dorothy McGuire. Like Sergeant York and High Noon, the film addresses the conflict between religious pacifism and civic duty. For his performance, Cooper received his second Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actor. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, and went on to earn $8 million worldwide.
In 1956, Cooper traveled to France to make Billy Wilder's romantic comedy Love in the Afternoon with Audrey Hepburn and Maurice Chevalier. In the film, Cooper plays a middle-aged American playboy in Paris who pursues and eventually falls in love with a much younger woman. Despite receiving some positive reviews—including from Bosley Crowther who praised the film's "charming performances"—most reviewers concluded that Cooper was simply too old for the part. While audiences may not have welcomed seeing Cooper's heroic screen image tarnished by his playing an aging roué trying to seduce an innocent young girl, the film was still a box-office success. The following year, Cooper appeared in Philip Dunne's romantic drama Ten North Frederick. In the film, which was based on the novel by John O'Hara, Cooper plays an attorney whose life is ruined by a double-crossing politician and his own secret affair with his daughter's young roommate. While Cooper brought "conviction and controlled anguish" to his performance, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, it was not enough to save what Bosley Crowther called a "hapless film".
Despite his ongoing health problems and several operations for ulcers and hernias, Cooper continued to work in action films. In 1958, he appeared in Anthony Mann's Western drama Man of the West (1958) with Julie London and Lee J. Cobb, about a reformed outlaw and killer who is forced to confront his violent past when the train he is riding in is held up by his former gang members. The film has been called Cooper's "most pathological Western", with its themes of impotent rage, sexual humiliation, and sadism. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, Cooper, who struggled with moral conflicts in his personal life, "understood the anguish of a character striving to retain his integrity ... [and] brought authentic feeling to the role of a tempted and tormented, yet essentially decent man". Mostly ignored by critics at the time, the film is now well-regarded by film scholars and is considered Cooper's last great film.
After his Warner Bros. contract ended, Cooper formed his own production company, Baroda Productions, and made three unusual films in 1959 about redemption. In Delmer Daves' Western drama The Hanging Tree, Cooper plays a frontier doctor who saves a criminal from a lynch mob, and later tries to exploit his sordid past. Cooper delivered a "powerful and persuasive" performance of an emotionally scarred man whose need to dominate others is transformed by the love and sacrifice of a woman. In Robert Rossen's historical adventure They Came to Cordura with Rita Hayworth, he plays an army officer who is found guilty of cowardice and assigned the degrading task of recommending soldiers for the Medal of Honor during the Pancho Villa Expedition of 1916.
While Cooper received positive reviews, Variety and Films in Review felt he was too old for the part. In Michael Anderson's action drama The Wreck of the Mary Deare with Charlton Heston, Cooper plays a disgraced merchant marine officer who decides to stay aboard his sinking cargo ship in order to prove the vessel was deliberately scuttled and to redeem his good name. Like its two predecessors, the film was physically demanding. Cooper, who was a trained scuba diver, did most of his own underwater scenes. Biographer Jeffrey Meyers observed that in all three roles, Cooper effectively conveyed the sense of lost honor and desire for redemption—what Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim called the "struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what his moral identity should be".
Personal life
Marriage and family
Cooper was formally introduced to his future wife, 20-year-old New York debutante Veronica Balfe, on Easter Sunday 1933 at a party given by her uncle, art director Cedric Gibbons. Called "Rocky" by her family and friends, she grew up on Park Avenue and attended finishing schools. Her stepfather was Wall Street tycoon Paul Shields. Cooper and Rocky were quietly married at her parents' Park Avenue residence on December 15, 1933. According to his friends, the marriage had a positive impact on Cooper, who turned away from past indiscretions and took control of his life. Athletic and a lover of the outdoors, Rocky shared many of Cooper's interests, including riding, skiing, and skeet-shooting. She organized their social life, and her wealth and social connections provided Cooper access to New York high society. Cooper and his wife owned homes in the Los Angeles area in Encino (1933–36), Brentwood (1936–53), and Holmby Hills (1954–61), and owned a vacation home in Aspen, Colorado (1949–53).
Gary and Veronica Cooper's daughter, Maria Veronica Cooper, was born on September 15, 1937. By all accounts, he was a patient and affectionate father, teaching Maria to ride a bicycle, play tennis, ski, and ride horses. Sharing many of her parents' interests, she accompanied them on their travels and was often photographed with them. Like her father, she developed a love for art and drawing. As a family they vacationed together in Sun Valley, Idaho, spent time at Rocky's parents' country house in Southampton, New York, and took frequent trips to Europe. Cooper and Rocky were legally separated on May 16, 1951, when Cooper moved out of their home. For over two years, they maintained a fragile and uneasy family life with their daughter. Cooper moved back into their home in November 1953, and their formal reconciliation occurred in February 1954.
Romantic relationships
Prior to his marriage, Cooper had a series of romantic relationships with leading actresses, beginning in 1927 with Clara Bow, who advanced his career by helping him get one of his first leading roles in Children of Divorce. Bow was also responsible for getting Cooper a role in Wings, which generated an enormous amount of fan mail for the young actor. In 1928, he had a relationship with another experienced actress, Evelyn Brent, whom he met while filming Beau Sabreur. In 1929, while filming The Wolf Song, Cooper began an intense affair with Lupe Vélez, which was the most important romance of his early life. During their two years together, Cooper also had brief affairs with Marlene Dietrich while filming Morocco in 1930 and with Carole Lombard while making I Take This Woman in 1931. During his year abroad in 1931–32, Cooper had an affair with the married Countess Dorothy di Frasso, while staying at her Villa Madama near Rome.
After he was married in December 1933, Cooper remained faithful to his wife until the summer of 1942, when he began an affair with Ingrid Bergman during the production of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Their relationship lasted through the completion of filming Saratoga Trunk in June 1943. In 1948, after finishing work on The Fountainhead, Cooper began an affair with actress Patricia Neal, his co-star. At first they kept their affair discreet, but eventually it became an open secret in Hollywood, and Cooper's wife confronted him with the rumors, which he admitted were true. He also confessed that he was in love with Neal, and continued to see her. Cooper and his wife were legally separated in May 1951, but he did not seek a divorce. Neal later claimed that Cooper hit her after she went on a date with Kirk Douglas, and that he arranged for her to have an abortion when she became pregnant with Cooper's child. Neal ended their relationship in late December 1951. During his three-year separation from his wife, Cooper was rumored to have had affairs with Grace Kelly, Lorraine Chanel, and Gisèle Pascal.
Cooper biographers have explored his friendship in the late twenties with the actor Anderson Lawler, with whom Cooper shared a house on and off for a year, while at the same time seeing Clara Bow, Evelyn Brent and Lupe Vélez. Lupe Vélez once told Hedda Hopper of Vélez' affair with Cooper; whenever he would come home after seeing Lawler, she would sniff for Lawler's cologne. Vélez' biographer Michelle Vogel has reported that Vélez consented to Cooper's sexual behavior with Lawler, but only as long as she, too, could participate. In later life, he became involved in a relationship with the costume designer Irene, and was, according to Irene, "the only man she ever loved". A year after his death in 1961, Irene committed suicide by jumping from the 11th floor of the Knickerbocker Hotel, after telling Doris Day of her grief over Cooper's death.
Friendships, interests, and character
Cooper's twenty-year friendship with Ernest Hemingway began at Sun Valley in October 1940. The previous year, Hemingway drew upon Cooper's image when he created the character of Robert Jordan for the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. The two shared a passion for the outdoors, and for years they hunted duck and pheasant, and skied together in Sun Valley. Both men admired the work of Rudyard Kipling—Cooper kept a copy of the poem "If—" in his dressing room—and retained as adults Kipling's sense of boyish adventure.
As well as admiring Cooper's hunting skills and knowledge of the outdoors, Hemingway believed his character matched his screen persona, once telling a friend, "If you made up a character like Coop, nobody would believe it. He's just too good to be true." They saw each other often, and their friendship remained strong through the years.
Cooper's social life generally centered on sports, outdoor activities, and dinner parties with his family and friends from the film industry, including directors Henry Hathaway, Howard Hawks, William Wellman, and Fred Zinnemann, and actors Joel McCrea, James Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, and Robert Taylor. As well as hunting, Cooper enjoyed riding, fishing, skiing, and later in life, scuba diving. He never abandoned his early love for art and drawing, and over the years, he and his wife acquired a private collection of modern paintings, including works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Cooper owned several works by Pablo Picasso, whom he met in 1956. Cooper also had a lifelong passion for automobiles, with a collection that included a 1930 Duesenberg.
Cooper was naturally reserved and introspective, and loved the solitude of outdoor activities. Not unlike his screen persona, his communication style frequently consisted of long silences with an occasional "yup" and "shucks". He once said, "If others have more interesting things to say than I have, I keep quiet." According to his friends, Cooper could also be an articulate, well-informed conversationalist on topics ranging from horses, guns, and Western history to film production, sports cars, and modern art. He was modest and unpretentious, frequently downplaying his acting abilities and career accomplishments. His friends and colleagues described him as charming, well-mannered, and thoughtful, with a lively boyish sense of humor. Cooper maintained a sense of propriety throughout his career and never misused his movie star status—never sought special treatment or refused to work with a director or leading lady. His close friend Joel McCrea recalled, "Coop never fought, he never got mad, he never told anybody off that I know of; everybody that worked with him liked him."
Political views
Like his father, Cooper was a conservative Republican; he voted for Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Herbert Hoover in 1928 and 1932, and campaigned for Wendell Willkie in 1940. When Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented fourth presidential term in 1944, Cooper campaigned for Thomas E. Dewey and criticized Roosevelt for being dishonest and adopting "foreign" ideas. In a radio address that he paid for himself just prior to the election, Cooper said, "I disagree with the New Deal belief that the America all of us love is old and worn-out and finished—and has to borrow foreign notions that don't even seem to work any too well where they come from ... Our country is a young country that just has to make up its mind to be itself again." He also attended a Republican rally at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that drew 93,000 Dewey supporters.
Cooper was one of the founding members of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a conservative organization dedicated, according to its statement of principles, to preserving the "American way of life" and opposing communism and fascism. The organization — whose membership included Walter Brennan, Laraine Day, Walt Disney, Clark Gable, Hedda Hopper, Ronald Reagan, Barbara Stanwyck, and John Wayne — advised the United States Congress to investigate communist influence in the motion picture industry. On October 23, 1947, Cooper was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and was asked if he had observed any "communistic influence" in Hollywood.
Cooper recounted statements he'd heard suggesting that the Constitution was out of date and that Congress was an unnecessary institution—comments that Cooper said he found to be "very un-American" and testified that he had rejected several scripts because he thought they were "tinged with communist ideas". Unlike some other witnesses, Cooper did not name any individuals, nor did he name any scripts, during his testimony.
In 1951, while making High Noon, Cooper became friends with the film's screenwriter, Carl Foreman, who had been a member of the Communist Party. When Foreman was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Cooper put his career on the line to defend Foreman. When John Wayne and others threatened Cooper with blacklisting himself and the loss of his passport if he did not walk off the film, Cooper gave a statement to the press in support of Foreman, calling him "the finest kind of American". When producer Stanley Kramer removed Foreman's name as screenwriter, Cooper and director Fred Zinnemann threatened to walk off the film if Foreman's name was not restored. Foreman later said that, of all his friends and allies and colleagues in Hollywood, "Cooper was the only big one who tried to help. The only one." Cooper even offered to testify in Foreman's behalf before the committee, but character witnesses were not allowed. Foreman always sent future scripts to Cooper for first refusal, including The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Key and The Guns of Navarone. Cooper had to turn them down because of his age.
Religion
Cooper was baptized in the Anglican Church in December 1911 in Britain, and was raised in the Episcopal Church in the United States. While he was not an observant Christian for most of his adult life, many of his friends believed he had a deeply spiritual side.
On June 26, 1953, Cooper accompanied his wife and daughter, who were devout Catholics, to Rome, where they had an audience with Pope Pius XII. Cooper and his wife were still separated at the time, but the papal visit marked the beginning of their gradual reconciliation. In the coming years, Cooper contemplated his mortality and his personal behavior, and started discussing Catholicism with his family. He began attending church with them regularly, and met with their parish priest, who offered Cooper spiritual guidance. After several months of study, Cooper was baptized as a Roman Catholic on April 9, 1959, before a small group of family and friends at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.
Final years and death
On April 14, 1960, Cooper underwent surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had metastasized to his colon. He fell ill again on May 31 and underwent further surgery at Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles in early June to remove a malignant tumor from his large intestine. After recuperating over the summer, Cooper took his family on vacation to the south of France before traveling to the UK in the fall to star in The Naked Edge. In December 1960, he worked on the NBC television documentary The Real West, which was part of the company's Project 20 series.
On December 27, his wife learned from their family doctor that Cooper's cancer had spread to his lungs and bones and was inoperable. His family decided not to tell him immediately.
On January 9, 1961, Cooper attended a dinner that was given in his honor and hosted by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin at the Friars Club. The dinner was attended by many of his industry friends and concluded with a brief speech by Cooper who said, "The only achievement I'm proud of is the friends I've made in this community."
In mid-January, Cooper took his family to Sun Valley for their last vacation together. Cooper and Hemingway hiked through the snow together for the last time. On February 27, after returning to Los Angeles, Cooper learned that he was dying. He later told his family, "We'll pray for a miracle; but if not, and that's God's will, that's all right too." On April 17, Cooper watched the Academy Awards ceremony on television and saw his good friend James Stewart, who had presented Cooper with his first Oscar years earlier, accept on Cooper's behalf an honorary award for lifetime achievement—his third Oscar. Holding back tears, Stewart said, "Coop, I'll get this to you right away. And Coop, I want you to know this, that with this goes all the warm friendship and the affection and the admiration and the deep, the deep respect of all of us. We're very, very proud of you, Coop. All of us are tremendously proud." The following day, newspapers around the world announced the news that Cooper was dying. In the coming days he received numerous messages of appreciation and encouragement, including telegrams from Pope John XXIII and Queen Elizabeth II, and a telephone call from President John F. Kennedy.
In his last public statement on May 4, Cooper said, "I know that what is happening is God's will. I am not afraid of the future." He received the last rites on May 12. Cooper died quietly the following day, Saturday, May 13, 1961, at 12:47 P.M.
A requiem mass was held on May 18 at the Church of the Good Shepherd, attended by many of Cooper's friends, including James Stewart, Jack Benny, Henry Hathaway, Joel McCrea, Audrey Hepburn, Jack L. Warner, John Ford, John Wayne, Edward G. Robinson, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Fred Astaire, Randolph Scott, Walter Pidgeon, Bob Hope and Marlene Dietrich. Cooper was buried in the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. In May 1974, after his family relocated to New York, Cooper's remains were exhumed and reburied in Sacred Hearts Cemetery in Southampton. His grave is marked by a three-ton boulder from a Montauk quarry.
Acting style and reputation
Cooper's acting style consisted of three essential characteristics: his ability to project elements of his own personality onto the characters he portrayed, to appear natural and authentic in his roles, and to underplay and deliver restrained performances calibrated for the camera and the screen. Acting teacher Lee Strasberg once observed: "The simplest examples of Stanislavsky's ideas are actors such as Gary Cooper, John Wayne, and Spencer Tracy. They try not to act but to be themselves, to respond or react. They refuse to say or do anything they feel not to be consonant with their own characters." Film director François Truffaut ranked Cooper among "the greatest actors" because of his ability to deliver great performances "without direction". This ability to project elements of his own personality onto his characters produced a continuity across his performances to the extent that critics and audiences were convinced that he was simply "playing himself".
Cooper's ability to project his personality onto his characters played an important part in his appearing natural and authentic on screen. Actor John Barrymore said of Cooper, "This fellow is the world's greatest actor. He does without effort what the rest of us spend our lives trying to learn—namely, to be natural." Charles Laughton, who played opposite Cooper in Devil and the Deep agreed, "In truth, that boy hasn't the least idea how well he acts ... He gets at it from the inside, from his own clear way of looking at life." William Wyler, who directed Cooper in two films, called him a "superb actor, a master of movie acting".
In his review of Cooper's performance in The Real Glory, Graham Greene wrote, "Sometimes his lean photogenic face seems to leave everything to the lens, but there is no question here of his not acting. Watch him inoculate the girl against cholera—the casual jab of the needle, and the dressing slapped on while he talks, as though a thousand arms had taught him where to stab and he doesn't have to think anymore."
Cooper's style of underplaying before the camera surprised many of his directors and fellow actors. Even in his earliest feature films, he recognized the camera's ability to pick up slight gestures and facial movements. Commenting on Cooper's performance in Sergeant York, director Howard Hawks observed, "He worked very hard and yet he didn't seem to be working. He was a strange actor because you'd look at him during a scene and you'd think ... this isn't going to be any good. But when you saw the rushes in the projection room the next day you could read in his face all the things he'd been thinking." Sam Wood, who directed Cooper in four films, had similar observations about Cooper's performance in Pride of the Yankees, noting, "What I thought was underplaying turned out to be just the right approach. On the screen he's perfect, yet on the set you'd swear it's the worst job of acting in the history of motion pictures."
Fellow actors admired his abilities as an actor. Commenting on her two films playing opposite Cooper, actress Ingrid Bergman concluded, "The personality of this man was so enormous, so overpowering—and that expression in his eyes and his face, it was so delicate and so underplayed. You just didn't notice it until you saw it on the screen. I thought he was marvelous; the most underplaying and the most natural actor I ever worked with."
Tom Hanks declared, "In only one scene in the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, we see the future of screen acting in the form of Gary Cooper. He is quiet and natural, somehow different from the other cast members. He does something mysterious with his eyes and shoulders that is much more like 'being' than 'acting'."
Daniel Day-Lewis said, "I don't particularly like westerns as a genre, but I do love certain westerns. 'High Noon' means a lot to me – I love the purity and the honesty, I love Gary Cooper in that film, the idea of the last man standing."
Chris Pratt stated, "I started watching Westerns when I was shooting in London about four or five years ago. I really fell in love with Gary Cooper, and his stuff. That sucked me into the Westerns. Before, I never got engrossed in the story. I'd just dip in, and there were guys in horses in black and white. High Noon's later Gary Cooper, I liked that. But I liked 'The Westerner'. That's my favorite one. I have that poster hung up in my house because I really like that one."
To Al Pacino, "Gary Cooper was a phenomenon—his ability to take some thing and elevate it, give it such dignity. One of the great presences."
Mylène Demongeot first got with Gary Cooper for the opening of the first escalator to be installed in a cinema, at the Rex Theatre in Paris, on June 7, 1957. She declared in a 2015 filmed interview: "Gary Cooper ... il est sublime ! Aaahhh (Mylène pushing a cry of love not to say ecstasy) il est sublime ... Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! Là je dois dire que ça fait partie des stars, y'a Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, ces grands Américains que j'ai rencontrés comme ça, c'est vraiment des mecs incroyables. Y'en a plus des comme ça ! Euh non. (Gary Cooper was sublime, there I have to say, now he, was part of the stars, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, those great americans who I've met really were unbelievable guys, there aren't any like them anymore)."
Career assessment and legacy
Cooper's career spanned thirty-six years, from 1925 to 1961. During that time, he appeared in eighty-four feature films in a leading role. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His natural and authentic acting style appealed powerfully to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major movie genres, including Westerns, war films, adventure films, drama films, crime films, romance films, comedy films, and romantic comedy films. He appeared on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities for twenty-three consecutive years, from 1936 to 1958. According to Quigley's annual poll, Cooper was one of the top money-making stars for eighteen years, appearing in the top ten in 1936–37, 1941–49, and 1951–57. He topped the list in 1953. In Quigley's list of all-time money-making stars, Cooper is listed fourth, after John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Tom Cruise. At the time of his death, it was estimated that his films grossed well over $200 million (equivalent to $ billion in ).
In over half of his feature films, Cooper portrayed Westerners, soldiers, pilots, sailors, and explorers—all men of action. In the rest he played a wide range of characters, included doctors, professors, artists, architects, clerks, and baseball players. Cooper's heroic screen image changed with each period of his career. In his early films, he played the young naive hero sure of his moral position and trusting in the triumph of simple virtues (The Virginian). After becoming a major star, his Western screen persona was replaced by a more cautious hero in adventure films and dramas (A Farewell to Arms). During the height of his career, from 1936 to 1943, he played a new type of hero—a champion of the common man willing to sacrifice himself for others (Mr. Deeds, Meet John Doe, and For Whom the Bell Tolls).
In the post-war years, Cooper attempted broader variations on his screen image, which now reflected a hero increasingly at odds with the world who must face adversity alone (The Fountainhead and High Noon). In his final films, Cooper's hero rejects the violence of the past, and seeks to reclaim lost honor and find redemption (Friendly Persuasion and Man of the West). The screen persona he developed and sustained throughout his career represented the ideal American hero—a tall, handsome, and sincere man of steadfast integrity who emphasized action over intellect, and combined the heroic qualities of the romantic lover, the adventurer, and the common man.
On February 6, 1960, Cooper was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6243 Hollywood Boulevard for his contribution to the film industry. He was awarded a star on the sidewalk outside the Ellen Theater in Bozeman, Montana.
On May 6, 1961, he was awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters in recognition of his significant contribution to the arts. On July 30, 1961, he was posthumously awarded the David di Donatello Special Award in Italy for his career achievements.
In 1966, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. In 2015, he was inducted into the Utah Cowboy and Western Heritage Hall of Fame. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper eleventh on its list of the 25 male stars of classic Hollywood. Three of his characters—Will Kane, Lou Gehrig, and Sergeant York—made AFI's list of the one hundred greatest heroes and villains, all of them as heroes. His Lou Gehrig line, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.", is ranked by AFI as the thirty-eighth greatest movie quote of all time.
More than a half century after his death, Cooper's enduring legacy, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, is his image of the ideal American hero preserved in his film performances. Charlton Heston once observed, "He projected the kind of man Americans would like to be, probably more than any actor that's ever lived."
In the TV series Justified, based on works and characters created by Elmore Leonard, Gary Cooper is used throughout the six seasons as the man whom U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens, played by Timothy Olyphant, aspires to be. When his colleague asks Marshall Givens how he thinks his dangerous plan to bring down a villain can possibly work, he replies: "Why not? Worked for Gary Cooper."
Gary Cooper is referenced several times in the critically acclaimed television series The Sopranos, with protagonist Tony Soprano asking "What ever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type." while complaining about his problems to his therapist.
In the 1930s hit song "Puttin' On the Ritz", Cooper is referenced in the line "dress up like a million dollar trooper/Tryin' hard to look like Gary Cooper, Super duper!" More than two decades after Cooper's death a new version of the song was released in 1983 by Taco; the original lyrics were kept, including the references to Cooper.
In J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Cooper is "spotted" by Holden Caulfield to distract a woman he is dancing with.
Awards and nominations
Filmography
The following is a list of feature films in which Cooper appeared in a leading role.
The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926)
Children of Divorce (1927)
Arizona Bound (1927)
Wings (1927)
Nevada (1927)
It (1927)
The Last Outlaw (1927)
Beau Sabreur (1928)
The Legion of the Condemned (1928)
Doomsday (1928)
Half a Bride (1928)
Lilac Time (1928)
The First Kiss (1928)
The Shopworn Angel (1928)
Wolf Song (1929)
Betrayal (1929)
The Virginian (1929)
Only the Brave (1930)
The Texan (1930)
Seven Days' Leave (1930)
A Man from Wyoming (1930)
The Spoilers (1930)
Morocco (1930)
Fighting Caravans (1931)
City Streets (1931)
I Take This Woman (1931)
His Woman (1931)
Devil and the Deep (1932)
If I Had a Million (1932)
A Farewell to Arms (1932)
Today We Live (1933)
One Sunday Afternoon (1933)
Design for Living (1933)
Alice in Wonderland (1933)
Operator 13 (1934)
Now and Forever (1934)
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
The Wedding Night (1935)
Peter Ibbetson (1935)
Desire (1936)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
The General Died at Dawn (1936)
The Plainsman (1936)
Souls at Sea (1937)
The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938)
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938)
The Cowboy and the Lady (1938)
Beau Geste (1939)
The Real Glory (1939)
The Westerner (1940)
North West Mounted Police (1940)
Meet John Doe (1941)
Sergeant York (1941)
Ball of Fire (1941)
The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944)
Casanova Brown (1944)
Along Came Jones (1945)
Saratoga Trunk (1945)
Cloak and Dagger (1946)
Unconquered (1947)
Good Sam (1948)
The Fountainhead (1949)
Task Force (1949)
Bright Leaf (1950)
Dallas (1950)
You're in the Navy Now (1951)
It's a Big Country (1951)
Distant Drums (1951)
High Noon (1952)
Springfield Rifle (1952)
Return to Paradise (1953)
Blowing Wild (1953)
Garden of Evil (1954)
Vera Cruz (1954)
The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955)
Friendly Persuasion (1956)
Love in the Afternoon (1957)
Ten North Frederick (1958)
Man of the West (1958)
The Hanging Tree (1959)
They Came to Cordura (1959)
The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959)
The Naked Edge (1961)
Radio appearances
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Adrien Le Bihan, Gary Cooper, le prince des acteurs, LettMotif, 2021, 358p.()
External links
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People from Helena, Montana
People from Holmby Hills, Los Angeles | true | [
"A phantonym is a word that appears to mean one thing, but in fact means another. \n\nThe term was coined by Jack Rosenthal in his 2009 article for the NY Times. An example of phantonym usage noted in the article was when Barack Obama said, \"I just want to make sure that we're having an honest debate and presenting to the American people a fulsome accounting of what is going on in this program,\" where he meant \"full\" instead of \"fulsome\". Phantonyms are usually commonly confused words.\n\nReferences \n\nLexical semantics\nSemantic relations\nTypes of words",
"\"Toward a Fair Use Standard\", 103 Harv. L. Rev. 1105 (1990), is a law review article on the fair use doctrine in US copyright law, written by then-District Court Judge Pierre N. Leval. The article argued that the most critical element of the fair use analysis is the transformativeness of a work, the first of the statutory factors listed in the Copyright Act of 1976, . \n\nLeval's article is cited in the Supreme Court's 1994 decision in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., which marked a shift in judicial treatment of fair use toward a transformativeness analysis and away from emphasizing the \"commerciality\" analysis of the fourth factor. Prior to Leval's article, the fourth factor had often been described as the most important of the factors. \n\nIn his article, Leval noted: \nI believe the answer to the question of justification turns primarily on whether, and to what extent, the challenged use is transformative. The use must be productive and must employ the quoted matter in a different manner or for a different purpose from the original. ...[If] the secondary use adds value to the original—if the quoted matter is used as raw material, transformed in the creation of new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings—this is the very type of activity that the fair use doctrine intends to protect for the enrichment of society.\n\nTransformative uses may include criticizing the quoted work, exposing the character of the original author, proving a fact, or summarizing an idea argued in the original in order to defend or rebut it. They also may include parody, symbolism, aesthetic declarations, and innumerable other uses.\n\nLeval's article was published with an accompanying article by Lloyd Weinreb \"Fair's Fair: A Comment on the Fair Use Doctrine\", 103 Harvard Law Review 1137 (1990), which generally critiqued Leval's thesis.\n\nFurther reading \n \n \n\n1990 essays\n1990 in law\nFair use\nCopyright law literature\nLegal literature\nWorks originally published in the Harvard Law Review\nUnited States copyright law"
] |
[
"Gary Cooper",
"Silent films, 1925-28",
"what happened in 1925?",
"In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures",
"what pictures did he do?",
"The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones.",
"did he win any awards for them?",
"Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings, the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.",
"who did he work with?",
"In 1928, Paramount paired Cooper with a youthful Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss--advertising them as the studio's \"glorious young lovers\".",
"what was his greatest achievement?",
"Lilac Time with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928.",
"what is an important fact in this article?",
"he change his first name to \"Gary\" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana."
] | C_84d38f8ca490447a92f516e3616fdb66_1 | Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | 7 | In addition to Gary Cooper's pictures, are there any other interesting aspects about this article? | Gary Cooper | In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, including Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt work--which sometimes injured horses and riders--"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name. Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week. Cooper's first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal--finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings, the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada--both films directed by John Waters. In 1928, Paramount paired Cooper with a youthful Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss--advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride. That year, Cooper also made Lilac Time with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928. CANNOTANSWER | his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, | Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper; May 7, 1901 – May 13, 1961) was an American actor known for his strong, silent, and understated acting style. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice and had a further three nominations, as well as receiving an Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements in 1961. He was one of the top 10 film personalities for 23 consecutive years, and one of the top money-making stars for 18 years. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper at No. 11 on its list of the 25 greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Cooper's career spanned 36 years, from 1925 to 1961, and included leading roles in 84 feature films. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era through to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His screen persona appealed strongly to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major film genres. His ability to project his own personality onto the characters he played contributed to his natural and authentic appearance on screen. Throughout his career, he sustained a screen persona that represented the ideal American hero.
Cooper began his career as a film extra and stunt rider, but soon landed acting roles. After establishing himself as a Western hero in his early silent films, he appeared as the Virginian and became a movie star in 1929 with his first sound picture, The Virginian. In the early 1930s, he expanded his heroic image to include more cautious characters in adventure films and dramas such as A Farewell to Arms (1932) and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935). During the height of his career, Cooper portrayed a new type of hero—a champion of the common man—in films such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Meet John Doe (1941), Sergeant York (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). He later portrayed more mature characters at odds with the world in films such as The Fountainhead (1949) and High Noon (1952). In his final films, he played non-violent characters searching for redemption in films such as Friendly Persuasion (1956) and Man of the West (1958).
Early life
Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana, on May 7, 1901, the younger of two sons of English parents Alice (née Brazier; 1873–1967) and Charles Henry Cooper (1865–1946). His brother, Arthur, was six years his senior. Cooper's father came from Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire, and became a prominent lawyer, rancher, and Montana Supreme Court justice. His mother hailed from Gillingham, Kent, and married Charles in Montana. In 1906, Charles purchased the Seven-Bar-Nine cattle ranch, about north of Helena near Craig, Montana. Cooper and Arthur spent their summers at the ranch and learned to ride horses, hunt, and fish. Cooper attended Central Grade School in Helena.
Alice wanted her sons to have an English education, so she took them back to England in 1909 to enroll them in Dunstable Grammar School in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. While there, Cooper and his brother lived with their father's cousins, William and Emily Barton, at their home in Houghton Regis. Cooper studied Latin, French, and English history at Dunstable until 1912. While he adapted to English school discipline and learned the requisite social graces, he never adjusted to the rigid class structure and formal Eton collars he was required to wear. He received his confirmation in the Church of England at the Church of All Saints in Houghton Regis on December 3, 1911. His mother accompanied her sons back to the U.S. in August 1912, and Cooper resumed his education at Johnson Grammar School in Helena.
When Cooper was 15, he injured his hip in a car accident. On his doctor's recommendation, he returned to the Seven-Bar-Nine ranch to recuperate by horseback riding. The misguided therapy left him with his characteristic stiff, off-balanced walk and slightly angled horse-riding style. He left Helena High School after two years in 1918, and returned to the family ranch to work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for him to attend Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana, where English teacher Ida Davis encouraged him to focus on academics and participate in debating and dramatics. Cooper later called Davis "the woman partly responsible for [him] giving up cowboy-ing and going to college".
Cooper was still attending high school in 1920 when he took three art courses at Montana Agricultural College in Bozeman. His interest in art was inspired years earlier by the Western paintings of Charles Marion Russell and Frederic Remington. Cooper especially admired and studied Russell's Lewis and Clark Meeting Indians at Ross' Hole (1910), which still hangs in the state capitol building in Helena. In 1922, to continue his art education, he enrolled in Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. He did well academically in most of his courses, but was not accepted into the school's drama club. His drawings and watercolor paintings were exhibited throughout the dormitory, and he was named art editor for the college yearbook. During the summers of 1922 and 1923, Cooper worked at Yellowstone National Park as a tour guide driving the yellow open-top buses. Despite a promising first 18 months at Grinnell, he left college suddenly in February 1924, spent a month in Chicago looking for work as an artist, and then returned to Helena, where he sold editorial cartoons to the local Independent newspaper.
In autumn 1924, Cooper's father left the Montana Supreme Court bench and moved with his wife to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives, and Cooper joined his parents there in November at his father's request. After briefly working a series of unpromising jobs, he met two friends from Montana who were working as film extras and stunt riders in low-budget Western films for the small movie studios on Poverty Row. They introduced him to another Montana cowboy, rodeo champion Jay "Slim" Talbot, who took him to see a casting director. Wanting money for a professional art course, Cooper worked as a film extra for $5 a day, and as a stunt rider for $10. Cooper and Talbot became close friends and hunting companions, and Talbot later worked as Cooper's stuntman and stand-in for over three decades.
Career
Silent films, 1925–1928
In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, but also the already emergent major studios, Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt workwhich sometimes injured horses and riders"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name.
Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week.
Cooper's first important film role was a supporting part in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) starring Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal—finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings (both 1927), the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada—both films directed by John Waters.
Paramount paired Cooper with Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss (both 1928)—advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride (also both 1928). Around the same time, Cooper made Lilac Time (1928) with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928.
Hollywood stardom, 1929–1935
Cooper became a major movie star in 1929 with the release of his first talking picture, The Virginian (1929), which was directed by Victor Fleming and co-starred Mary Brian and Walter Huston. Based on the popular novel by Owen Wister, The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honor and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western movie genre that persist to the present day. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, the romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero who embodied male freedom, courage, and honor was created in large part by Cooper in the film. Unlike some silent film actors who had trouble adapting to the new sound medium, Cooper transitioned naturally, with his "deep and clear" and "pleasantly drawling" voice, which was perfectly suited for the characters he portrayed on screen, also according to Meyers. Looking to capitalize on Cooper's growing popularity, Paramount cast him in several Westerns and wartime dramas, including Only the Brave, The Texan, Seven Days' Leave, A Man from Wyoming, and The Spoilers (all released in 1930). Norman Rockwell depicted Cooper in his role as The Texan for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 24, 1930.
One of the more important performances in Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's film Morocco (also 1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her introduction to American audiences. During production, von Sternberg focused his energies on Dietrich and treated Cooper dismissively. Tensions came to a head after von Sternberg yelled directions at Cooper in German. The actor approached the director, picked him up by the collar, and said, "If you expect to work in this country you'd better get on to the language we use here." Despite the tensions on the set, Cooper produced "one of his best performances", according to Thornton Delehanty of the New York Evening Post.
After returning to the Western genre in Zane Grey's Fighting Caravans (1931) with French actress Lili Damita, Cooper appeared in the Dashiell Hammett crime film City Streets (also 1931), co-starring Sylvia Sidney and Paul Lukas, playing a westerner who gets involved with big-city gangsters in order to save the woman he loves. Cooper concluded the year with appearances in two unsuccessful films: I Take This Woman (also 1931) with Carole Lombard, and His Woman with Claudette Colbert. The demands and pressures of making ten films in two years left Cooper exhausted and in poor health, suffering from anemia and jaundice. He had lost during that period, and felt lonely, isolated, and depressed by his sudden fame and wealth. In May 1931, Cooper left Hollywood and sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year.
During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso at the Villa Madama in Rome, where she taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. After guiding him through the great art museums and galleries of Italy, she accompanied him on a ten-week big-game hunting safari on the slopes of Mount Kenya in East Africa, where he was credited with over sixty kills, including two lions, a rhinoceros, and various antelopes. His safari experience in Africa had a profound influence on Cooper and intensified his love of the wilderness. After returning to Europe, he and the countess set off on a Mediterranean cruise of the Italian and French Rivieras. Rested and rejuvenated by his year-long exile, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood in April 1932 and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 a week, and director and script approval.
In 1932, after completing Devil and the Deep with Tallulah Bankhead to fulfill his old contract, Cooper appeared in A Farewell to Arms, the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Co-starring Helen Hayes, a leading New York theatre star and Academy Award winner, and Adolphe Menjou, the film presented Cooper with one of his most ambitious and challenging dramatic roles, playing an American ambulance driver wounded in Italy who falls in love with an English nurse during World War I. Critics praised his highly intense and emotional performance, and the film became one of the year's most commercially successful pictures. In 1933, after making Today We Live with Joan Crawford and One Sunday Afternoon with Fay Wray, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy film Design for Living, based on the successful Noël Coward play. Co-starring Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March, the film was a box office success, ranking as one of the top ten highest-grossing films of 1933. All three of the lead actors—March, Cooper, and Hopkins—received attention from this film as they were all at the peak of their careers. Cooper's performance — playing an American artist in Europe competing with his playwright friend for the affections of a beautiful woman — was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy. Cooper changed his name legally to "Gary Cooper" in August 1933.
In 1934, Cooper was loaned out to MGM for the Civil War drama film Operator 13 with Marion Davies, about a beautiful Union spy who falls in love with a Confederate soldier. Despite Richard Boleslawski's imaginative direction and George J. Folsey's lavish cinematography, the film did poorly at the box office.
Back at Paramount, Cooper appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever, with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. In the film, he plays a confidence man who tries to sell his daughter to the relatives who raised her, but is eventually won over by the adorable girl. Impressed by Temple's intelligence and charm, Cooper developed a close rapport with her, both on and off screen. The film was a box-office success.
The following year, Cooper was loaned out to Samuel Goldwyn Productions to appear in King Vidor's romance film The Wedding Night with Anna Sten, who was being groomed as "another Garbo". In the film, Cooper plays an alcoholic novelist who retreats to his family's New England farm where he meets and falls in love with a beautiful Polish neighbor. Cooper delivered a performance of surprising range and depth, according to biographer Larry Swindell. Despite receiving generally favorable reviews, the film was not popular with American audiences, who may have been offended by the film's depiction of an extramarital affair and its tragic ending.
That same year, Cooper appeared in two Henry Hathaway films: the melodrama Peter Ibbetson with Ann Harding, about a man caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the adventure film The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. While the former, championed by the surrealists became more successful in Europe than in the United States, the latter was nominated for seven Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films. Hathaway had the highest respect for Cooper's acting ability, calling him "the best actor of all of them".
American folk hero, 1936–1943
From Mr. Deeds to The Real Glory, 1936–1939
Cooper's career took an important turn in 1936. After making Frank Borzage's romantic comedy film Desire with Marlene Dietrich at Paramount—in which he delivered a performance considered by some contemporary critics as one of his finest—Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. In the film, Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, a quiet, innocent writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont, and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin were able to use Cooper's well-established screen persona as the "quintessential American hero"—a symbol of honesty, courage, and goodness—to create a new type of "folk hero" for the common man. Commenting on Cooper's impact on the character and the film, Capra observed:
Both Desire and Mr. Deeds opened in April 1936 to critical praise and were major box-office successes. In his review in The New York Times, Frank Nugent wrote that Cooper was "proving himself one of the best light comedians in Hollywood". For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Cooper appeared in two other Paramount films in 1936. In Lewis Milestone's adventure film The General Died at Dawn with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success.
In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly fictionalized version of the opening of the American western frontier. The film was an even greater box-office hit than its predecessor, due in large part to Jean Arthur's definitive depiction of Calamity Jane and Cooper's inspired portrayal of Hickock as an enigmatic figure of "deepening mythic substance". That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-three years.
In late 1936, Paramount was preparing a new contract for Cooper that would raise his salary to $8,000 a week when Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn for six films over six years with a minimum guarantee of $150,000 per picture. Paramount brought suit against Goldwyn and Cooper, and the court ruled that Cooper's new Goldwyn contract afforded the actor sufficient time to also honor his Paramount agreement. Cooper continued to make films with both studios, and by 1939 the United States Treasury reported that Cooper was the country's highest wage earner, at $482,819 (equivalent to $ million in ).
In contrast to his output the previous year, Cooper appeared in only one picture in 1937, Henry Hathaway's adventure film Souls at Sea. A critical and box-office failure, Cooper referred to it as his "almost picture", saying, "It was almost exciting, and almost interesting. And I was almost good." In 1938, he appeared in Archie Mayo's biographical film The Adventures of Marco Polo. Plagued by production problems and a weak screenplay, the film became Goldwyn's biggest failure to that date, losing $700,000. During this period, Cooper turned down several important roles, including the role of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Cooper was producer David O. Selznick's first choice for the part. He made several overtures to the actor, but Cooper had doubts about the project, and did not feel suited to the role. Cooper later admitted, "It was one of the best roles ever offered in Hollywood ... But I said no. I didn't see myself as quite that dashing, and later, when I saw Clark Gable play the role to perfection, I knew I was right."
Back at Paramount, Cooper returned to a more comfortable genre in Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert. In the film, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. Despite the clever screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, and solid performances by Cooper and Colbert, American audiences had trouble accepting Cooper in the role of a shallow philanderer. It succeeded only at the European box office market.
In the fall of 1938, Cooper appeared in H. C. Potter's romantic comedy The Cowboy and the Lady with Merle Oberon, about a sweet-natured rodeo cowboy who falls in love with the wealthy daughter of a presidential hopeful, believing her to be a poor, hard-working lady's maid. The efforts of three directors and several eminent screenwriters could not salvage what could have been a fine vehicle for Cooper. While more successful than its predecessor, the film was Cooper's fourth consecutive box-office failure in the American market.
In the next two years, Cooper was more discerning about the roles he accepted and made four successful large-scale adventure and cowboy films. In William A. Wellman's adventure film Beau Geste (1939), he plays one of three daring English brothers who join the French Foreign Legion in the Sahara to fight local tribes. Filmed in the same Mojave Desert locations as the original 1926 version with Ronald Colman, Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona. This was the last film in Cooper's contract with Paramount.
In Henry Hathaway's The Real Glory (1939), he plays a military doctor who accompanies a small group of American Army officers to the Philippines to help the Christian Filipinos defend themselves against Muslim radicals. Many film critics praised Cooper's performance, including author and film critic Graham Greene, who recognized that he "never acted better".
From The Westerner to For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940–1943
Cooper returned to the Western genre in William Wyler's The Westerner (1940) with Walter Brennan and Doris Davenport, about a drifting cowboy who defends homesteaders against Roy Bean, a corrupt judge known as the "law west of the Pecos". Screenwriter Niven Busch relied on Cooper's extensive knowledge of Western history while working on the script. The film received positive reviews and did well at the box-office, with reviewers praising the performances of the two lead actors. That same year, Cooper appeared in his first all-Technicolor feature, Cecil B. DeMille's adventure film North West Mounted Police (1940). In the film, Cooper plays a Texas Ranger who pursues an outlaw into western Canada where he joins forces with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who are after the same man, a leader of the North-West Rebellion. While not as popular with critics as its predecessor, the film was another box-office success—the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1940.
The early 1940s were Cooper's prime years as an actor. In a relatively short period, he appeared in five critically successful and popular films that produced some of his finest performances. When Frank Capra offered him the lead role in Meet John Doe before Robert Riskin even developed the script, Cooper accepted his friend's offer, saying, "It's okay, Frank, I don't need a script." In the film, Cooper plays Long John Willoughby, a down-and-out bush-league pitcher hired by a newspaper to pretend to be a man who promises to commit suicide on Christmas Eve to protest all the hypocrisy and corruption in the country. Considered by some critics to be Capra's best film at the time, Meet John Doe was received as a "national event" with Cooper appearing on the front cover of Time magazine on March 3, 1941. In his review in the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes called Cooper's performance a "splendid and utterly persuasive portrayal" and praised his "utterly realistic acting which comes through with such authority". Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote, "Gary Cooper, of course, is 'John Doe' to the life and in the whole—shy, bewildered, non-aggressive, but a veritable tiger when aroused."
That same year, Cooper made two films with director and good friend Howard Hawks. In the biographical film Sergeant York, Cooper portrays war hero Alvin C. York, one of the most decorated American soldiers in World War I. The film chronicles York's early backwoods days in Tennessee, his religious conversion and subsequent piety, his stand as a conscientious objector, and finally his heroic actions at the Battle of the Argonne Forest, which earned him the Medal of Honor. Initially, Cooper was nervous and uncertain about playing a living hero, so he traveled to Tennessee to visit York at his home, and the two quiet men established an immediate rapport and discovered they had much in common. Inspired by York's encouragement, Cooper delivered a performance that Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune called "one of extraordinary conviction and versatility", and that Archer Winston of the New York Post called "one of his best". After the film's release, Cooper was awarded the Distinguished Citizenship Medal by the Veterans of Foreign Wars for his "powerful contribution to the promotion of patriotism and loyalty". York admired Cooper's performance and helped promote the film for Warner Bros. Sergeant York became the top-grossing film of the year and was nominated for eleven Academy Awards. Accepting his first Academy Award for Best Actor from his friend James Stewart, Cooper said, "It was Sergeant Alvin York who won this award. Shucks, I've been in the business sixteen years and sometimes dreamed I might get one of these. That's all I can say ... Funny when I was dreaming I always made a better speech."
Cooper concluded the year back at Goldwyn with Howard Hawks to make the romantic comedy Ball of Fire with Barbara Stanwyck. In the film, Cooper plays a shy linguistics professor who leads a team of seven scholars who are writing an encyclopedia. While researching slang, he meets Stanwyck's flirtatious burlesque stripper Sugarpuss O'Shea who blows the dust off their staid life of books. The screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder provided Cooper the opportunity to exercise the full range of his light comedy skills. In his review for the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes wrote that Cooper handled the role with "great skill and comic emphasis" and that his performance was "utterly delightful". Though small in scale, Ball of Fire was one of the top-grossing films of the year—Cooper's fourth consecutive picture to make the top twenty.
Cooper's only film appearance in 1942 was also his last under his Goldwyn contract. In Sam Wood's biographical film The Pride of the Yankees, Cooper portrays baseball star Lou Gehrig who established a record with the New York Yankees for playing in 2,130 consecutive games. Cooper was reluctant to play the seven-time All-Star, who only died the previous year from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — now commonly called "Lou Gehrig's disease". Beyond the challenges of effectively portraying such a popular and nationally recognized figure, Cooper knew very little about baseball and was not left-handed like Gehrig.
After Gehrig's widow visited the actor and expressed her desire that he portray her husband, Cooper accepted the role that covered a twenty-year span of Gehrig's life—his early love of baseball, his rise to greatness, his loving marriage, and his struggle with illness, culminating in his farewell speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939 before 62,000 fans. Cooper quickly learned the physical movements of a baseball player and developed a fluid, believable swing. The handedness issue was solved by reversing the print for certain batting scenes. The film was one of the year's top ten pictures and received eleven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's third).
Soon after the publication of Ernest Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, Paramount paid $150,000 for the film rights with the express intent of casting Cooper in the lead role of Robert Jordan, an American explosives expert who fights alongside the Republican loyalists during the Spanish Civil War. The original director, Cecil B. DeMille, was replaced by Sam Wood who brought in Dudley Nichols for the screenplay. After the start of principal photography in the Sierra Nevada in late 1942, Ingrid Bergman was brought in to replace ballerina Vera Zorina as the female lead—a change supported by Cooper and Hemingway. The love scenes between Bergman and Cooper were "rapturous" and passionate. Howard Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune wrote that both actors performed with "the true stature and authority of stars". While the film distorted the novel's original political themes and meaning, For Whom the Bell Tolls was a critical and commercial success and received ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's fourth).
World War II related activities
Due to his age and health, Cooper did not serve in the military during World War II, but like many of his colleagues, he got involved in the war effort by entertaining the troops. In June 1943, he visited military hospitals in San Diego, and often appeared at the Hollywood Canteen serving food to the servicemen. In late 1943, Cooper undertook a tour of the South West Pacific with actresses Una Merkel and Phyllis Brooks, and accordionist Andy Arcari.
Traveling on a B-24A Liberator bomber, the group toured the Cook Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia, Queensland, Brisbane—where General Douglas MacArthur told Cooper he was watching Sergeant York in a Manila theater when Japanese bombs began falling—New Guinea, Jayapura, and throughout the Solomon Islands.
The group often shared the same sparse living conditions and K-rations as the troops. Cooper met with the servicemen and women, visited military hospitals, introduced his attractive colleagues, and participated in occasional skits. The shows concluded with Cooper's moving recitation of Lou Gehrig's farewell speech. When he returned to the United States, he visited military hospitals throughout the country. Cooper later called his time with the troops the "greatest emotional experience" of his life.
Mature roles, 1944–1952
In 1944, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's wartime adventure film The Story of Dr. Wassell with Laraine Day — his third movie with the director. In the film, Cooper plays American doctor and missionary Corydon M. Wassell, who leads a group of wounded sailors through the jungles of Java to safety. Despite receiving poor reviews, Dr. Wassell was one of the top-grossing films of the year. With his Goldwyn and Paramount contracts now concluded, Cooper decided to remain independent and formed his own production company, International Pictures, with Leo Spitz, William Goetz, and Nunnally Johnson. The fledgling studio's first offering was Sam Wood's romantic comedy Casanova Brown with Teresa Wright, about a man who learns his soon-to-be ex-wife is pregnant with his child, just as he is about to marry another woman. The film received poor reviews, with the New York Daily News calling it "delightful nonsense", and Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, criticizing Cooper's "somewhat obvious and ridiculous clowning". The film was barely profitable.
In 1945, Cooper starred in and produced Stuart Heisler's Western comedy Along Came Jones with Loretta Young for International. In this lighthearted parody of his past heroic image, Cooper plays comically inept cowboy Melody Jones who is mistaken for a ruthless killer. Audiences embraced Cooper's character, and the film was one of the top box-office pictures of the year—a testament to Cooper's still vital audience appeal. It was also International's biggest financial success during its brief history before being sold off to Universal Studios in 1946.
Cooper's career during the post-war years drifted in new directions as American society was changing. While he still played conventional heroic roles, his films now relied less on his heroic screen persona and more on novel stories and exotic settings. In November 1945, Cooper appeared in Sam Wood's nineteenth-century period drama Saratoga Trunk with Ingrid Bergman, about a Texas cowboy and his relationship with a beautiful fortune-hunter. Filmed in early 1943, the movie's release was delayed for two years due to the increased demand for war movies. Despite poor reviews, Saratoga Trunk did well at the box office and became one of the top money-makers of the year for Warner Bros. Cooper's only film in 1946 was Fritz Lang's romantic thriller Cloak and Dagger, about a mild-mannered physics professor recruited by the OSS during the last years of World War II to investigate the German atomic bomb program. Playing a part loosely based on physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Cooper was uneasy with the role and unable to convey the "inner sense" of the character. The film received poor reviews and was a box-office failure. In 1947, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's epic adventure film Unconquered with Paulette Goddard, about a Virginia militiaman who defends settlers against an unscrupulous gun trader and hostile Indians on the Western frontier during the eighteenth century. The film received mixed reviews, but even long-time DeMille critic James Agee acknowledged the picture had "some authentic flavor of the period". This last of four films made with DeMille was Cooper's most lucrative, earning the actor over $300,000 (equal to $ today) in salary and percentage of profits. Unconquered would be his last unqualified box-office success for the next five years.
In 1948, after making Leo McCarey's romantic comedy Good Sam, Cooper sold his company to Universal Studios and signed a long-term contract with Warner Bros. that gave him script and director approval and a guaranteed $295,000 (equal to $ today) per picture. His first film under the new contract was King Vidor's drama The Fountainhead (1949) with Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey. In the film, Cooper plays an idealistic and uncompromising architect who struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism in the face of societal pressures to conform to popular standards. Based on the novel by Ayn Rand who also wrote the screenplay, the film reflects her philosophy and attacks the concepts of collectivism while promoting the virtues of individualism. For most critics, Cooper was hopelessly miscast in the role of Howard Roark. In his review for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther concluded he was "Mr. Deeds out of his element". Cooper returned to his element in Delmer Daves' war drama Task Force (1949), about a retiring rear admiral who reminisces about his long career as a naval aviator and his role in the development of aircraft carriers. Cooper's performance and the Technicolor newsreel footage supplied by the United States Navy made the film one of Cooper's most popular during this period. In the next two years, Cooper made four poorly received films: Michael Curtiz' period drama Bright Leaf (1950), Stuart Heisler's Western melodrama Dallas (1950), Henry Hathaway's wartime comedy You're in the Navy Now (1951), and Raoul Walsh's Western action film Distant Drums (1951).
Cooper's most important film during the post-war years was Fred Zinnemann's Western drama High Noon (1952) with Grace Kelly and Katy Jurado for United Artists. In the film, Cooper plays retiring sheriff Will Kane who is preparing to leave town on his honeymoon when he learns that an outlaw he helped put away and his three henchmen are returning to seek their revenge. Unable to gain the support of the frightened townspeople, and abandoned by his young bride, Kane nevertheless stays to face the outlaws alone. During the filming, Cooper was in poor health and in considerable pain from stomach ulcers. His ravaged face and discomfort in some scenes "photographed as self-doubt", according to biographer Hector Arce, and contributed to the effectiveness of his performance. Considered one of the first "adult" Westerns for its theme of moral courage, High Noon received enthusiastic reviews for its artistry, with Time magazine placing it in the ranks of Stagecoach and The Gunfighter. Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote that Cooper was "at the top of his form", and John McCarten, in The New Yorker, wrote that Cooper was never more effective. The film earned $3.75 million in the United States and $18 million worldwide. Following the example of his friend James Stewart, Cooper accepted a lower salary in exchange for a percent of the profits, and ended up making $600,000. Cooper's understated performance was widely praised, and earned him his second Academy Award for Best Actor.
Later films, 1953–1961
After appearing in André de Toth's Civil War drama Springfield Rifle (1952)—a standard Warner Bros. film that was overshadowed by the success of its predecessor—Cooper made four films outside the United States. In Mark Robson's drama Return to Paradise (1953), Cooper plays an American wanderer who liberates the inhabitants of a Polynesian island from the puritanical rule of a misguided pastor. Cooper endured spartan living conditions, long hours, and ill health during the three-month location shoot on the island of Upolu in Western Samoa. Despite its beautiful cinematography, the film received poor reviews. Cooper's next three films were shot in Mexico. In Hugo Fregonese's action adventure film Blowing Wild (1953) with Barbara Stanwyck, he plays a wildcatter in Mexico who gets involved with an oil company executive and his unscrupulous wife with whom he once had an affair.
In 1954, Cooper appeared in Henry Hathaway's Western drama Garden of Evil, with Susan Hayward, about three soldiers of fortune in Mexico hired to rescue a woman's husband. That same year, he appeared in Robert Aldrich's Western adventure Vera Cruz with Burt Lancaster. In the film, Cooper plays an American adventurer hired by Emperor Maximilian I to escort a countess to Vera Cruz during the Mexican Rebellion of 1866. All of these films received poor reviews but did well at the box-office. For his work in Vera Cruz, Cooper earned $1.4 million in salary and percent of the gross.
During this period, Cooper struggled with health problems. As well as his ongoing treatment for ulcers, he suffered a severe shoulder injury during the filming of Blowing Wild when he was hit by metal fragments from a dynamited oil well. During the filming of Vera Cruz, he reinjured his hip falling from a horse, and was burned when Lancaster fired his rifle too close and the wadding from the blank shell pierced his clothing.
In 1955, he appeared in Otto Preminger's biographical war drama The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, about the World War I general who tried to convince government officials of the importance of air power, and was court-martialed after blaming the War Department for a series of air disasters. Some critics felt that Cooper was miscast, and that his dull, tight-lipped performance did not reflect Mitchell's dynamic and caustic personality. In 1956, Cooper was more effective playing a gentle Indiana Quaker in William Wyler's Civil War drama Friendly Persuasion with Dorothy McGuire. Like Sergeant York and High Noon, the film addresses the conflict between religious pacifism and civic duty. For his performance, Cooper received his second Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actor. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, and went on to earn $8 million worldwide.
In 1956, Cooper traveled to France to make Billy Wilder's romantic comedy Love in the Afternoon with Audrey Hepburn and Maurice Chevalier. In the film, Cooper plays a middle-aged American playboy in Paris who pursues and eventually falls in love with a much younger woman. Despite receiving some positive reviews—including from Bosley Crowther who praised the film's "charming performances"—most reviewers concluded that Cooper was simply too old for the part. While audiences may not have welcomed seeing Cooper's heroic screen image tarnished by his playing an aging roué trying to seduce an innocent young girl, the film was still a box-office success. The following year, Cooper appeared in Philip Dunne's romantic drama Ten North Frederick. In the film, which was based on the novel by John O'Hara, Cooper plays an attorney whose life is ruined by a double-crossing politician and his own secret affair with his daughter's young roommate. While Cooper brought "conviction and controlled anguish" to his performance, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, it was not enough to save what Bosley Crowther called a "hapless film".
Despite his ongoing health problems and several operations for ulcers and hernias, Cooper continued to work in action films. In 1958, he appeared in Anthony Mann's Western drama Man of the West (1958) with Julie London and Lee J. Cobb, about a reformed outlaw and killer who is forced to confront his violent past when the train he is riding in is held up by his former gang members. The film has been called Cooper's "most pathological Western", with its themes of impotent rage, sexual humiliation, and sadism. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, Cooper, who struggled with moral conflicts in his personal life, "understood the anguish of a character striving to retain his integrity ... [and] brought authentic feeling to the role of a tempted and tormented, yet essentially decent man". Mostly ignored by critics at the time, the film is now well-regarded by film scholars and is considered Cooper's last great film.
After his Warner Bros. contract ended, Cooper formed his own production company, Baroda Productions, and made three unusual films in 1959 about redemption. In Delmer Daves' Western drama The Hanging Tree, Cooper plays a frontier doctor who saves a criminal from a lynch mob, and later tries to exploit his sordid past. Cooper delivered a "powerful and persuasive" performance of an emotionally scarred man whose need to dominate others is transformed by the love and sacrifice of a woman. In Robert Rossen's historical adventure They Came to Cordura with Rita Hayworth, he plays an army officer who is found guilty of cowardice and assigned the degrading task of recommending soldiers for the Medal of Honor during the Pancho Villa Expedition of 1916.
While Cooper received positive reviews, Variety and Films in Review felt he was too old for the part. In Michael Anderson's action drama The Wreck of the Mary Deare with Charlton Heston, Cooper plays a disgraced merchant marine officer who decides to stay aboard his sinking cargo ship in order to prove the vessel was deliberately scuttled and to redeem his good name. Like its two predecessors, the film was physically demanding. Cooper, who was a trained scuba diver, did most of his own underwater scenes. Biographer Jeffrey Meyers observed that in all three roles, Cooper effectively conveyed the sense of lost honor and desire for redemption—what Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim called the "struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what his moral identity should be".
Personal life
Marriage and family
Cooper was formally introduced to his future wife, 20-year-old New York debutante Veronica Balfe, on Easter Sunday 1933 at a party given by her uncle, art director Cedric Gibbons. Called "Rocky" by her family and friends, she grew up on Park Avenue and attended finishing schools. Her stepfather was Wall Street tycoon Paul Shields. Cooper and Rocky were quietly married at her parents' Park Avenue residence on December 15, 1933. According to his friends, the marriage had a positive impact on Cooper, who turned away from past indiscretions and took control of his life. Athletic and a lover of the outdoors, Rocky shared many of Cooper's interests, including riding, skiing, and skeet-shooting. She organized their social life, and her wealth and social connections provided Cooper access to New York high society. Cooper and his wife owned homes in the Los Angeles area in Encino (1933–36), Brentwood (1936–53), and Holmby Hills (1954–61), and owned a vacation home in Aspen, Colorado (1949–53).
Gary and Veronica Cooper's daughter, Maria Veronica Cooper, was born on September 15, 1937. By all accounts, he was a patient and affectionate father, teaching Maria to ride a bicycle, play tennis, ski, and ride horses. Sharing many of her parents' interests, she accompanied them on their travels and was often photographed with them. Like her father, she developed a love for art and drawing. As a family they vacationed together in Sun Valley, Idaho, spent time at Rocky's parents' country house in Southampton, New York, and took frequent trips to Europe. Cooper and Rocky were legally separated on May 16, 1951, when Cooper moved out of their home. For over two years, they maintained a fragile and uneasy family life with their daughter. Cooper moved back into their home in November 1953, and their formal reconciliation occurred in February 1954.
Romantic relationships
Prior to his marriage, Cooper had a series of romantic relationships with leading actresses, beginning in 1927 with Clara Bow, who advanced his career by helping him get one of his first leading roles in Children of Divorce. Bow was also responsible for getting Cooper a role in Wings, which generated an enormous amount of fan mail for the young actor. In 1928, he had a relationship with another experienced actress, Evelyn Brent, whom he met while filming Beau Sabreur. In 1929, while filming The Wolf Song, Cooper began an intense affair with Lupe Vélez, which was the most important romance of his early life. During their two years together, Cooper also had brief affairs with Marlene Dietrich while filming Morocco in 1930 and with Carole Lombard while making I Take This Woman in 1931. During his year abroad in 1931–32, Cooper had an affair with the married Countess Dorothy di Frasso, while staying at her Villa Madama near Rome.
After he was married in December 1933, Cooper remained faithful to his wife until the summer of 1942, when he began an affair with Ingrid Bergman during the production of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Their relationship lasted through the completion of filming Saratoga Trunk in June 1943. In 1948, after finishing work on The Fountainhead, Cooper began an affair with actress Patricia Neal, his co-star. At first they kept their affair discreet, but eventually it became an open secret in Hollywood, and Cooper's wife confronted him with the rumors, which he admitted were true. He also confessed that he was in love with Neal, and continued to see her. Cooper and his wife were legally separated in May 1951, but he did not seek a divorce. Neal later claimed that Cooper hit her after she went on a date with Kirk Douglas, and that he arranged for her to have an abortion when she became pregnant with Cooper's child. Neal ended their relationship in late December 1951. During his three-year separation from his wife, Cooper was rumored to have had affairs with Grace Kelly, Lorraine Chanel, and Gisèle Pascal.
Cooper biographers have explored his friendship in the late twenties with the actor Anderson Lawler, with whom Cooper shared a house on and off for a year, while at the same time seeing Clara Bow, Evelyn Brent and Lupe Vélez. Lupe Vélez once told Hedda Hopper of Vélez' affair with Cooper; whenever he would come home after seeing Lawler, she would sniff for Lawler's cologne. Vélez' biographer Michelle Vogel has reported that Vélez consented to Cooper's sexual behavior with Lawler, but only as long as she, too, could participate. In later life, he became involved in a relationship with the costume designer Irene, and was, according to Irene, "the only man she ever loved". A year after his death in 1961, Irene committed suicide by jumping from the 11th floor of the Knickerbocker Hotel, after telling Doris Day of her grief over Cooper's death.
Friendships, interests, and character
Cooper's twenty-year friendship with Ernest Hemingway began at Sun Valley in October 1940. The previous year, Hemingway drew upon Cooper's image when he created the character of Robert Jordan for the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. The two shared a passion for the outdoors, and for years they hunted duck and pheasant, and skied together in Sun Valley. Both men admired the work of Rudyard Kipling—Cooper kept a copy of the poem "If—" in his dressing room—and retained as adults Kipling's sense of boyish adventure.
As well as admiring Cooper's hunting skills and knowledge of the outdoors, Hemingway believed his character matched his screen persona, once telling a friend, "If you made up a character like Coop, nobody would believe it. He's just too good to be true." They saw each other often, and their friendship remained strong through the years.
Cooper's social life generally centered on sports, outdoor activities, and dinner parties with his family and friends from the film industry, including directors Henry Hathaway, Howard Hawks, William Wellman, and Fred Zinnemann, and actors Joel McCrea, James Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, and Robert Taylor. As well as hunting, Cooper enjoyed riding, fishing, skiing, and later in life, scuba diving. He never abandoned his early love for art and drawing, and over the years, he and his wife acquired a private collection of modern paintings, including works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Cooper owned several works by Pablo Picasso, whom he met in 1956. Cooper also had a lifelong passion for automobiles, with a collection that included a 1930 Duesenberg.
Cooper was naturally reserved and introspective, and loved the solitude of outdoor activities. Not unlike his screen persona, his communication style frequently consisted of long silences with an occasional "yup" and "shucks". He once said, "If others have more interesting things to say than I have, I keep quiet." According to his friends, Cooper could also be an articulate, well-informed conversationalist on topics ranging from horses, guns, and Western history to film production, sports cars, and modern art. He was modest and unpretentious, frequently downplaying his acting abilities and career accomplishments. His friends and colleagues described him as charming, well-mannered, and thoughtful, with a lively boyish sense of humor. Cooper maintained a sense of propriety throughout his career and never misused his movie star status—never sought special treatment or refused to work with a director or leading lady. His close friend Joel McCrea recalled, "Coop never fought, he never got mad, he never told anybody off that I know of; everybody that worked with him liked him."
Political views
Like his father, Cooper was a conservative Republican; he voted for Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Herbert Hoover in 1928 and 1932, and campaigned for Wendell Willkie in 1940. When Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented fourth presidential term in 1944, Cooper campaigned for Thomas E. Dewey and criticized Roosevelt for being dishonest and adopting "foreign" ideas. In a radio address that he paid for himself just prior to the election, Cooper said, "I disagree with the New Deal belief that the America all of us love is old and worn-out and finished—and has to borrow foreign notions that don't even seem to work any too well where they come from ... Our country is a young country that just has to make up its mind to be itself again." He also attended a Republican rally at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that drew 93,000 Dewey supporters.
Cooper was one of the founding members of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a conservative organization dedicated, according to its statement of principles, to preserving the "American way of life" and opposing communism and fascism. The organization — whose membership included Walter Brennan, Laraine Day, Walt Disney, Clark Gable, Hedda Hopper, Ronald Reagan, Barbara Stanwyck, and John Wayne — advised the United States Congress to investigate communist influence in the motion picture industry. On October 23, 1947, Cooper was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and was asked if he had observed any "communistic influence" in Hollywood.
Cooper recounted statements he'd heard suggesting that the Constitution was out of date and that Congress was an unnecessary institution—comments that Cooper said he found to be "very un-American" and testified that he had rejected several scripts because he thought they were "tinged with communist ideas". Unlike some other witnesses, Cooper did not name any individuals, nor did he name any scripts, during his testimony.
In 1951, while making High Noon, Cooper became friends with the film's screenwriter, Carl Foreman, who had been a member of the Communist Party. When Foreman was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Cooper put his career on the line to defend Foreman. When John Wayne and others threatened Cooper with blacklisting himself and the loss of his passport if he did not walk off the film, Cooper gave a statement to the press in support of Foreman, calling him "the finest kind of American". When producer Stanley Kramer removed Foreman's name as screenwriter, Cooper and director Fred Zinnemann threatened to walk off the film if Foreman's name was not restored. Foreman later said that, of all his friends and allies and colleagues in Hollywood, "Cooper was the only big one who tried to help. The only one." Cooper even offered to testify in Foreman's behalf before the committee, but character witnesses were not allowed. Foreman always sent future scripts to Cooper for first refusal, including The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Key and The Guns of Navarone. Cooper had to turn them down because of his age.
Religion
Cooper was baptized in the Anglican Church in December 1911 in Britain, and was raised in the Episcopal Church in the United States. While he was not an observant Christian for most of his adult life, many of his friends believed he had a deeply spiritual side.
On June 26, 1953, Cooper accompanied his wife and daughter, who were devout Catholics, to Rome, where they had an audience with Pope Pius XII. Cooper and his wife were still separated at the time, but the papal visit marked the beginning of their gradual reconciliation. In the coming years, Cooper contemplated his mortality and his personal behavior, and started discussing Catholicism with his family. He began attending church with them regularly, and met with their parish priest, who offered Cooper spiritual guidance. After several months of study, Cooper was baptized as a Roman Catholic on April 9, 1959, before a small group of family and friends at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.
Final years and death
On April 14, 1960, Cooper underwent surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had metastasized to his colon. He fell ill again on May 31 and underwent further surgery at Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles in early June to remove a malignant tumor from his large intestine. After recuperating over the summer, Cooper took his family on vacation to the south of France before traveling to the UK in the fall to star in The Naked Edge. In December 1960, he worked on the NBC television documentary The Real West, which was part of the company's Project 20 series.
On December 27, his wife learned from their family doctor that Cooper's cancer had spread to his lungs and bones and was inoperable. His family decided not to tell him immediately.
On January 9, 1961, Cooper attended a dinner that was given in his honor and hosted by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin at the Friars Club. The dinner was attended by many of his industry friends and concluded with a brief speech by Cooper who said, "The only achievement I'm proud of is the friends I've made in this community."
In mid-January, Cooper took his family to Sun Valley for their last vacation together. Cooper and Hemingway hiked through the snow together for the last time. On February 27, after returning to Los Angeles, Cooper learned that he was dying. He later told his family, "We'll pray for a miracle; but if not, and that's God's will, that's all right too." On April 17, Cooper watched the Academy Awards ceremony on television and saw his good friend James Stewart, who had presented Cooper with his first Oscar years earlier, accept on Cooper's behalf an honorary award for lifetime achievement—his third Oscar. Holding back tears, Stewart said, "Coop, I'll get this to you right away. And Coop, I want you to know this, that with this goes all the warm friendship and the affection and the admiration and the deep, the deep respect of all of us. We're very, very proud of you, Coop. All of us are tremendously proud." The following day, newspapers around the world announced the news that Cooper was dying. In the coming days he received numerous messages of appreciation and encouragement, including telegrams from Pope John XXIII and Queen Elizabeth II, and a telephone call from President John F. Kennedy.
In his last public statement on May 4, Cooper said, "I know that what is happening is God's will. I am not afraid of the future." He received the last rites on May 12. Cooper died quietly the following day, Saturday, May 13, 1961, at 12:47 P.M.
A requiem mass was held on May 18 at the Church of the Good Shepherd, attended by many of Cooper's friends, including James Stewart, Jack Benny, Henry Hathaway, Joel McCrea, Audrey Hepburn, Jack L. Warner, John Ford, John Wayne, Edward G. Robinson, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Fred Astaire, Randolph Scott, Walter Pidgeon, Bob Hope and Marlene Dietrich. Cooper was buried in the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. In May 1974, after his family relocated to New York, Cooper's remains were exhumed and reburied in Sacred Hearts Cemetery in Southampton. His grave is marked by a three-ton boulder from a Montauk quarry.
Acting style and reputation
Cooper's acting style consisted of three essential characteristics: his ability to project elements of his own personality onto the characters he portrayed, to appear natural and authentic in his roles, and to underplay and deliver restrained performances calibrated for the camera and the screen. Acting teacher Lee Strasberg once observed: "The simplest examples of Stanislavsky's ideas are actors such as Gary Cooper, John Wayne, and Spencer Tracy. They try not to act but to be themselves, to respond or react. They refuse to say or do anything they feel not to be consonant with their own characters." Film director François Truffaut ranked Cooper among "the greatest actors" because of his ability to deliver great performances "without direction". This ability to project elements of his own personality onto his characters produced a continuity across his performances to the extent that critics and audiences were convinced that he was simply "playing himself".
Cooper's ability to project his personality onto his characters played an important part in his appearing natural and authentic on screen. Actor John Barrymore said of Cooper, "This fellow is the world's greatest actor. He does without effort what the rest of us spend our lives trying to learn—namely, to be natural." Charles Laughton, who played opposite Cooper in Devil and the Deep agreed, "In truth, that boy hasn't the least idea how well he acts ... He gets at it from the inside, from his own clear way of looking at life." William Wyler, who directed Cooper in two films, called him a "superb actor, a master of movie acting".
In his review of Cooper's performance in The Real Glory, Graham Greene wrote, "Sometimes his lean photogenic face seems to leave everything to the lens, but there is no question here of his not acting. Watch him inoculate the girl against cholera—the casual jab of the needle, and the dressing slapped on while he talks, as though a thousand arms had taught him where to stab and he doesn't have to think anymore."
Cooper's style of underplaying before the camera surprised many of his directors and fellow actors. Even in his earliest feature films, he recognized the camera's ability to pick up slight gestures and facial movements. Commenting on Cooper's performance in Sergeant York, director Howard Hawks observed, "He worked very hard and yet he didn't seem to be working. He was a strange actor because you'd look at him during a scene and you'd think ... this isn't going to be any good. But when you saw the rushes in the projection room the next day you could read in his face all the things he'd been thinking." Sam Wood, who directed Cooper in four films, had similar observations about Cooper's performance in Pride of the Yankees, noting, "What I thought was underplaying turned out to be just the right approach. On the screen he's perfect, yet on the set you'd swear it's the worst job of acting in the history of motion pictures."
Fellow actors admired his abilities as an actor. Commenting on her two films playing opposite Cooper, actress Ingrid Bergman concluded, "The personality of this man was so enormous, so overpowering—and that expression in his eyes and his face, it was so delicate and so underplayed. You just didn't notice it until you saw it on the screen. I thought he was marvelous; the most underplaying and the most natural actor I ever worked with."
Tom Hanks declared, "In only one scene in the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, we see the future of screen acting in the form of Gary Cooper. He is quiet and natural, somehow different from the other cast members. He does something mysterious with his eyes and shoulders that is much more like 'being' than 'acting'."
Daniel Day-Lewis said, "I don't particularly like westerns as a genre, but I do love certain westerns. 'High Noon' means a lot to me – I love the purity and the honesty, I love Gary Cooper in that film, the idea of the last man standing."
Chris Pratt stated, "I started watching Westerns when I was shooting in London about four or five years ago. I really fell in love with Gary Cooper, and his stuff. That sucked me into the Westerns. Before, I never got engrossed in the story. I'd just dip in, and there were guys in horses in black and white. High Noon's later Gary Cooper, I liked that. But I liked 'The Westerner'. That's my favorite one. I have that poster hung up in my house because I really like that one."
To Al Pacino, "Gary Cooper was a phenomenon—his ability to take some thing and elevate it, give it such dignity. One of the great presences."
Mylène Demongeot first got with Gary Cooper for the opening of the first escalator to be installed in a cinema, at the Rex Theatre in Paris, on June 7, 1957. She declared in a 2015 filmed interview: "Gary Cooper ... il est sublime ! Aaahhh (Mylène pushing a cry of love not to say ecstasy) il est sublime ... Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! Là je dois dire que ça fait partie des stars, y'a Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, ces grands Américains que j'ai rencontrés comme ça, c'est vraiment des mecs incroyables. Y'en a plus des comme ça ! Euh non. (Gary Cooper was sublime, there I have to say, now he, was part of the stars, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, those great americans who I've met really were unbelievable guys, there aren't any like them anymore)."
Career assessment and legacy
Cooper's career spanned thirty-six years, from 1925 to 1961. During that time, he appeared in eighty-four feature films in a leading role. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His natural and authentic acting style appealed powerfully to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major movie genres, including Westerns, war films, adventure films, drama films, crime films, romance films, comedy films, and romantic comedy films. He appeared on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities for twenty-three consecutive years, from 1936 to 1958. According to Quigley's annual poll, Cooper was one of the top money-making stars for eighteen years, appearing in the top ten in 1936–37, 1941–49, and 1951–57. He topped the list in 1953. In Quigley's list of all-time money-making stars, Cooper is listed fourth, after John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Tom Cruise. At the time of his death, it was estimated that his films grossed well over $200 million (equivalent to $ billion in ).
In over half of his feature films, Cooper portrayed Westerners, soldiers, pilots, sailors, and explorers—all men of action. In the rest he played a wide range of characters, included doctors, professors, artists, architects, clerks, and baseball players. Cooper's heroic screen image changed with each period of his career. In his early films, he played the young naive hero sure of his moral position and trusting in the triumph of simple virtues (The Virginian). After becoming a major star, his Western screen persona was replaced by a more cautious hero in adventure films and dramas (A Farewell to Arms). During the height of his career, from 1936 to 1943, he played a new type of hero—a champion of the common man willing to sacrifice himself for others (Mr. Deeds, Meet John Doe, and For Whom the Bell Tolls).
In the post-war years, Cooper attempted broader variations on his screen image, which now reflected a hero increasingly at odds with the world who must face adversity alone (The Fountainhead and High Noon). In his final films, Cooper's hero rejects the violence of the past, and seeks to reclaim lost honor and find redemption (Friendly Persuasion and Man of the West). The screen persona he developed and sustained throughout his career represented the ideal American hero—a tall, handsome, and sincere man of steadfast integrity who emphasized action over intellect, and combined the heroic qualities of the romantic lover, the adventurer, and the common man.
On February 6, 1960, Cooper was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6243 Hollywood Boulevard for his contribution to the film industry. He was awarded a star on the sidewalk outside the Ellen Theater in Bozeman, Montana.
On May 6, 1961, he was awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters in recognition of his significant contribution to the arts. On July 30, 1961, he was posthumously awarded the David di Donatello Special Award in Italy for his career achievements.
In 1966, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. In 2015, he was inducted into the Utah Cowboy and Western Heritage Hall of Fame. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper eleventh on its list of the 25 male stars of classic Hollywood. Three of his characters—Will Kane, Lou Gehrig, and Sergeant York—made AFI's list of the one hundred greatest heroes and villains, all of them as heroes. His Lou Gehrig line, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.", is ranked by AFI as the thirty-eighth greatest movie quote of all time.
More than a half century after his death, Cooper's enduring legacy, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, is his image of the ideal American hero preserved in his film performances. Charlton Heston once observed, "He projected the kind of man Americans would like to be, probably more than any actor that's ever lived."
In the TV series Justified, based on works and characters created by Elmore Leonard, Gary Cooper is used throughout the six seasons as the man whom U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens, played by Timothy Olyphant, aspires to be. When his colleague asks Marshall Givens how he thinks his dangerous plan to bring down a villain can possibly work, he replies: "Why not? Worked for Gary Cooper."
Gary Cooper is referenced several times in the critically acclaimed television series The Sopranos, with protagonist Tony Soprano asking "What ever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type." while complaining about his problems to his therapist.
In the 1930s hit song "Puttin' On the Ritz", Cooper is referenced in the line "dress up like a million dollar trooper/Tryin' hard to look like Gary Cooper, Super duper!" More than two decades after Cooper's death a new version of the song was released in 1983 by Taco; the original lyrics were kept, including the references to Cooper.
In J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Cooper is "spotted" by Holden Caulfield to distract a woman he is dancing with.
Awards and nominations
Filmography
The following is a list of feature films in which Cooper appeared in a leading role.
The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926)
Children of Divorce (1927)
Arizona Bound (1927)
Wings (1927)
Nevada (1927)
It (1927)
The Last Outlaw (1927)
Beau Sabreur (1928)
The Legion of the Condemned (1928)
Doomsday (1928)
Half a Bride (1928)
Lilac Time (1928)
The First Kiss (1928)
The Shopworn Angel (1928)
Wolf Song (1929)
Betrayal (1929)
The Virginian (1929)
Only the Brave (1930)
The Texan (1930)
Seven Days' Leave (1930)
A Man from Wyoming (1930)
The Spoilers (1930)
Morocco (1930)
Fighting Caravans (1931)
City Streets (1931)
I Take This Woman (1931)
His Woman (1931)
Devil and the Deep (1932)
If I Had a Million (1932)
A Farewell to Arms (1932)
Today We Live (1933)
One Sunday Afternoon (1933)
Design for Living (1933)
Alice in Wonderland (1933)
Operator 13 (1934)
Now and Forever (1934)
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
The Wedding Night (1935)
Peter Ibbetson (1935)
Desire (1936)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
The General Died at Dawn (1936)
The Plainsman (1936)
Souls at Sea (1937)
The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938)
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938)
The Cowboy and the Lady (1938)
Beau Geste (1939)
The Real Glory (1939)
The Westerner (1940)
North West Mounted Police (1940)
Meet John Doe (1941)
Sergeant York (1941)
Ball of Fire (1941)
The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944)
Casanova Brown (1944)
Along Came Jones (1945)
Saratoga Trunk (1945)
Cloak and Dagger (1946)
Unconquered (1947)
Good Sam (1948)
The Fountainhead (1949)
Task Force (1949)
Bright Leaf (1950)
Dallas (1950)
You're in the Navy Now (1951)
It's a Big Country (1951)
Distant Drums (1951)
High Noon (1952)
Springfield Rifle (1952)
Return to Paradise (1953)
Blowing Wild (1953)
Garden of Evil (1954)
Vera Cruz (1954)
The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955)
Friendly Persuasion (1956)
Love in the Afternoon (1957)
Ten North Frederick (1958)
Man of the West (1958)
The Hanging Tree (1959)
They Came to Cordura (1959)
The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959)
The Naked Edge (1961)
Radio appearances
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Adrien Le Bihan, Gary Cooper, le prince des acteurs, LettMotif, 2021, 358p.()
External links
1901 births
1961 deaths
20th-century American male actors
Academy Honorary Award recipients
American expatriates in England
American male film actors
American male silent film actors
American male television actors
American people of English descent
Best Actor Academy Award winners
Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners
California Republicans
Catholics from Montana
Conservatism in the United States
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from prostate cancer
Grinnell College people
Male Western (genre) film actors
Male actors from Montana
Paramount Pictures contract players
People educated at Dunstable Grammar School
People from Brentwood, Los Angeles
People from Dunstable
People from Helena, Montana
People from Holmby Hills, Los Angeles | true | [
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region",
"Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts"
] |
[
"Gary Cooper",
"Silent films, 1925-28",
"what happened in 1925?",
"In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures",
"what pictures did he do?",
"The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones.",
"did he win any awards for them?",
"Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings, the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.",
"who did he work with?",
"In 1928, Paramount paired Cooper with a youthful Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss--advertising them as the studio's \"glorious young lovers\".",
"what was his greatest achievement?",
"Lilac Time with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928.",
"what is an important fact in this article?",
"he change his first name to \"Gary\" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns,"
] | C_84d38f8ca490447a92f516e3616fdb66_1 | which westerns did he do? | 8 | which westerns did Gary Cooper do? | Gary Cooper | In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, including Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt work--which sometimes injured horses and riders--"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name. Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week. Cooper's first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal--finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings, the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada--both films directed by John Waters. In 1928, Paramount paired Cooper with a youthful Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss--advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride. That year, Cooper also made Lilac Time with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928. CANNOTANSWER | silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, | Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper; May 7, 1901 – May 13, 1961) was an American actor known for his strong, silent, and understated acting style. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice and had a further three nominations, as well as receiving an Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements in 1961. He was one of the top 10 film personalities for 23 consecutive years, and one of the top money-making stars for 18 years. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper at No. 11 on its list of the 25 greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Cooper's career spanned 36 years, from 1925 to 1961, and included leading roles in 84 feature films. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era through to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His screen persona appealed strongly to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major film genres. His ability to project his own personality onto the characters he played contributed to his natural and authentic appearance on screen. Throughout his career, he sustained a screen persona that represented the ideal American hero.
Cooper began his career as a film extra and stunt rider, but soon landed acting roles. After establishing himself as a Western hero in his early silent films, he appeared as the Virginian and became a movie star in 1929 with his first sound picture, The Virginian. In the early 1930s, he expanded his heroic image to include more cautious characters in adventure films and dramas such as A Farewell to Arms (1932) and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935). During the height of his career, Cooper portrayed a new type of hero—a champion of the common man—in films such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Meet John Doe (1941), Sergeant York (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). He later portrayed more mature characters at odds with the world in films such as The Fountainhead (1949) and High Noon (1952). In his final films, he played non-violent characters searching for redemption in films such as Friendly Persuasion (1956) and Man of the West (1958).
Early life
Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana, on May 7, 1901, the younger of two sons of English parents Alice (née Brazier; 1873–1967) and Charles Henry Cooper (1865–1946). His brother, Arthur, was six years his senior. Cooper's father came from Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire, and became a prominent lawyer, rancher, and Montana Supreme Court justice. His mother hailed from Gillingham, Kent, and married Charles in Montana. In 1906, Charles purchased the Seven-Bar-Nine cattle ranch, about north of Helena near Craig, Montana. Cooper and Arthur spent their summers at the ranch and learned to ride horses, hunt, and fish. Cooper attended Central Grade School in Helena.
Alice wanted her sons to have an English education, so she took them back to England in 1909 to enroll them in Dunstable Grammar School in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. While there, Cooper and his brother lived with their father's cousins, William and Emily Barton, at their home in Houghton Regis. Cooper studied Latin, French, and English history at Dunstable until 1912. While he adapted to English school discipline and learned the requisite social graces, he never adjusted to the rigid class structure and formal Eton collars he was required to wear. He received his confirmation in the Church of England at the Church of All Saints in Houghton Regis on December 3, 1911. His mother accompanied her sons back to the U.S. in August 1912, and Cooper resumed his education at Johnson Grammar School in Helena.
When Cooper was 15, he injured his hip in a car accident. On his doctor's recommendation, he returned to the Seven-Bar-Nine ranch to recuperate by horseback riding. The misguided therapy left him with his characteristic stiff, off-balanced walk and slightly angled horse-riding style. He left Helena High School after two years in 1918, and returned to the family ranch to work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for him to attend Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana, where English teacher Ida Davis encouraged him to focus on academics and participate in debating and dramatics. Cooper later called Davis "the woman partly responsible for [him] giving up cowboy-ing and going to college".
Cooper was still attending high school in 1920 when he took three art courses at Montana Agricultural College in Bozeman. His interest in art was inspired years earlier by the Western paintings of Charles Marion Russell and Frederic Remington. Cooper especially admired and studied Russell's Lewis and Clark Meeting Indians at Ross' Hole (1910), which still hangs in the state capitol building in Helena. In 1922, to continue his art education, he enrolled in Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. He did well academically in most of his courses, but was not accepted into the school's drama club. His drawings and watercolor paintings were exhibited throughout the dormitory, and he was named art editor for the college yearbook. During the summers of 1922 and 1923, Cooper worked at Yellowstone National Park as a tour guide driving the yellow open-top buses. Despite a promising first 18 months at Grinnell, he left college suddenly in February 1924, spent a month in Chicago looking for work as an artist, and then returned to Helena, where he sold editorial cartoons to the local Independent newspaper.
In autumn 1924, Cooper's father left the Montana Supreme Court bench and moved with his wife to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives, and Cooper joined his parents there in November at his father's request. After briefly working a series of unpromising jobs, he met two friends from Montana who were working as film extras and stunt riders in low-budget Western films for the small movie studios on Poverty Row. They introduced him to another Montana cowboy, rodeo champion Jay "Slim" Talbot, who took him to see a casting director. Wanting money for a professional art course, Cooper worked as a film extra for $5 a day, and as a stunt rider for $10. Cooper and Talbot became close friends and hunting companions, and Talbot later worked as Cooper's stuntman and stand-in for over three decades.
Career
Silent films, 1925–1928
In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, but also the already emergent major studios, Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt workwhich sometimes injured horses and riders"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name.
Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week.
Cooper's first important film role was a supporting part in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) starring Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal—finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings (both 1927), the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada—both films directed by John Waters.
Paramount paired Cooper with Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss (both 1928)—advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride (also both 1928). Around the same time, Cooper made Lilac Time (1928) with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928.
Hollywood stardom, 1929–1935
Cooper became a major movie star in 1929 with the release of his first talking picture, The Virginian (1929), which was directed by Victor Fleming and co-starred Mary Brian and Walter Huston. Based on the popular novel by Owen Wister, The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honor and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western movie genre that persist to the present day. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, the romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero who embodied male freedom, courage, and honor was created in large part by Cooper in the film. Unlike some silent film actors who had trouble adapting to the new sound medium, Cooper transitioned naturally, with his "deep and clear" and "pleasantly drawling" voice, which was perfectly suited for the characters he portrayed on screen, also according to Meyers. Looking to capitalize on Cooper's growing popularity, Paramount cast him in several Westerns and wartime dramas, including Only the Brave, The Texan, Seven Days' Leave, A Man from Wyoming, and The Spoilers (all released in 1930). Norman Rockwell depicted Cooper in his role as The Texan for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 24, 1930.
One of the more important performances in Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's film Morocco (also 1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her introduction to American audiences. During production, von Sternberg focused his energies on Dietrich and treated Cooper dismissively. Tensions came to a head after von Sternberg yelled directions at Cooper in German. The actor approached the director, picked him up by the collar, and said, "If you expect to work in this country you'd better get on to the language we use here." Despite the tensions on the set, Cooper produced "one of his best performances", according to Thornton Delehanty of the New York Evening Post.
After returning to the Western genre in Zane Grey's Fighting Caravans (1931) with French actress Lili Damita, Cooper appeared in the Dashiell Hammett crime film City Streets (also 1931), co-starring Sylvia Sidney and Paul Lukas, playing a westerner who gets involved with big-city gangsters in order to save the woman he loves. Cooper concluded the year with appearances in two unsuccessful films: I Take This Woman (also 1931) with Carole Lombard, and His Woman with Claudette Colbert. The demands and pressures of making ten films in two years left Cooper exhausted and in poor health, suffering from anemia and jaundice. He had lost during that period, and felt lonely, isolated, and depressed by his sudden fame and wealth. In May 1931, Cooper left Hollywood and sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year.
During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso at the Villa Madama in Rome, where she taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. After guiding him through the great art museums and galleries of Italy, she accompanied him on a ten-week big-game hunting safari on the slopes of Mount Kenya in East Africa, where he was credited with over sixty kills, including two lions, a rhinoceros, and various antelopes. His safari experience in Africa had a profound influence on Cooper and intensified his love of the wilderness. After returning to Europe, he and the countess set off on a Mediterranean cruise of the Italian and French Rivieras. Rested and rejuvenated by his year-long exile, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood in April 1932 and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 a week, and director and script approval.
In 1932, after completing Devil and the Deep with Tallulah Bankhead to fulfill his old contract, Cooper appeared in A Farewell to Arms, the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Co-starring Helen Hayes, a leading New York theatre star and Academy Award winner, and Adolphe Menjou, the film presented Cooper with one of his most ambitious and challenging dramatic roles, playing an American ambulance driver wounded in Italy who falls in love with an English nurse during World War I. Critics praised his highly intense and emotional performance, and the film became one of the year's most commercially successful pictures. In 1933, after making Today We Live with Joan Crawford and One Sunday Afternoon with Fay Wray, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy film Design for Living, based on the successful Noël Coward play. Co-starring Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March, the film was a box office success, ranking as one of the top ten highest-grossing films of 1933. All three of the lead actors—March, Cooper, and Hopkins—received attention from this film as they were all at the peak of their careers. Cooper's performance — playing an American artist in Europe competing with his playwright friend for the affections of a beautiful woman — was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy. Cooper changed his name legally to "Gary Cooper" in August 1933.
In 1934, Cooper was loaned out to MGM for the Civil War drama film Operator 13 with Marion Davies, about a beautiful Union spy who falls in love with a Confederate soldier. Despite Richard Boleslawski's imaginative direction and George J. Folsey's lavish cinematography, the film did poorly at the box office.
Back at Paramount, Cooper appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever, with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. In the film, he plays a confidence man who tries to sell his daughter to the relatives who raised her, but is eventually won over by the adorable girl. Impressed by Temple's intelligence and charm, Cooper developed a close rapport with her, both on and off screen. The film was a box-office success.
The following year, Cooper was loaned out to Samuel Goldwyn Productions to appear in King Vidor's romance film The Wedding Night with Anna Sten, who was being groomed as "another Garbo". In the film, Cooper plays an alcoholic novelist who retreats to his family's New England farm where he meets and falls in love with a beautiful Polish neighbor. Cooper delivered a performance of surprising range and depth, according to biographer Larry Swindell. Despite receiving generally favorable reviews, the film was not popular with American audiences, who may have been offended by the film's depiction of an extramarital affair and its tragic ending.
That same year, Cooper appeared in two Henry Hathaway films: the melodrama Peter Ibbetson with Ann Harding, about a man caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the adventure film The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. While the former, championed by the surrealists became more successful in Europe than in the United States, the latter was nominated for seven Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films. Hathaway had the highest respect for Cooper's acting ability, calling him "the best actor of all of them".
American folk hero, 1936–1943
From Mr. Deeds to The Real Glory, 1936–1939
Cooper's career took an important turn in 1936. After making Frank Borzage's romantic comedy film Desire with Marlene Dietrich at Paramount—in which he delivered a performance considered by some contemporary critics as one of his finest—Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. In the film, Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, a quiet, innocent writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont, and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin were able to use Cooper's well-established screen persona as the "quintessential American hero"—a symbol of honesty, courage, and goodness—to create a new type of "folk hero" for the common man. Commenting on Cooper's impact on the character and the film, Capra observed:
Both Desire and Mr. Deeds opened in April 1936 to critical praise and were major box-office successes. In his review in The New York Times, Frank Nugent wrote that Cooper was "proving himself one of the best light comedians in Hollywood". For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Cooper appeared in two other Paramount films in 1936. In Lewis Milestone's adventure film The General Died at Dawn with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success.
In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly fictionalized version of the opening of the American western frontier. The film was an even greater box-office hit than its predecessor, due in large part to Jean Arthur's definitive depiction of Calamity Jane and Cooper's inspired portrayal of Hickock as an enigmatic figure of "deepening mythic substance". That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-three years.
In late 1936, Paramount was preparing a new contract for Cooper that would raise his salary to $8,000 a week when Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn for six films over six years with a minimum guarantee of $150,000 per picture. Paramount brought suit against Goldwyn and Cooper, and the court ruled that Cooper's new Goldwyn contract afforded the actor sufficient time to also honor his Paramount agreement. Cooper continued to make films with both studios, and by 1939 the United States Treasury reported that Cooper was the country's highest wage earner, at $482,819 (equivalent to $ million in ).
In contrast to his output the previous year, Cooper appeared in only one picture in 1937, Henry Hathaway's adventure film Souls at Sea. A critical and box-office failure, Cooper referred to it as his "almost picture", saying, "It was almost exciting, and almost interesting. And I was almost good." In 1938, he appeared in Archie Mayo's biographical film The Adventures of Marco Polo. Plagued by production problems and a weak screenplay, the film became Goldwyn's biggest failure to that date, losing $700,000. During this period, Cooper turned down several important roles, including the role of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Cooper was producer David O. Selznick's first choice for the part. He made several overtures to the actor, but Cooper had doubts about the project, and did not feel suited to the role. Cooper later admitted, "It was one of the best roles ever offered in Hollywood ... But I said no. I didn't see myself as quite that dashing, and later, when I saw Clark Gable play the role to perfection, I knew I was right."
Back at Paramount, Cooper returned to a more comfortable genre in Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert. In the film, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. Despite the clever screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, and solid performances by Cooper and Colbert, American audiences had trouble accepting Cooper in the role of a shallow philanderer. It succeeded only at the European box office market.
In the fall of 1938, Cooper appeared in H. C. Potter's romantic comedy The Cowboy and the Lady with Merle Oberon, about a sweet-natured rodeo cowboy who falls in love with the wealthy daughter of a presidential hopeful, believing her to be a poor, hard-working lady's maid. The efforts of three directors and several eminent screenwriters could not salvage what could have been a fine vehicle for Cooper. While more successful than its predecessor, the film was Cooper's fourth consecutive box-office failure in the American market.
In the next two years, Cooper was more discerning about the roles he accepted and made four successful large-scale adventure and cowboy films. In William A. Wellman's adventure film Beau Geste (1939), he plays one of three daring English brothers who join the French Foreign Legion in the Sahara to fight local tribes. Filmed in the same Mojave Desert locations as the original 1926 version with Ronald Colman, Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona. This was the last film in Cooper's contract with Paramount.
In Henry Hathaway's The Real Glory (1939), he plays a military doctor who accompanies a small group of American Army officers to the Philippines to help the Christian Filipinos defend themselves against Muslim radicals. Many film critics praised Cooper's performance, including author and film critic Graham Greene, who recognized that he "never acted better".
From The Westerner to For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940–1943
Cooper returned to the Western genre in William Wyler's The Westerner (1940) with Walter Brennan and Doris Davenport, about a drifting cowboy who defends homesteaders against Roy Bean, a corrupt judge known as the "law west of the Pecos". Screenwriter Niven Busch relied on Cooper's extensive knowledge of Western history while working on the script. The film received positive reviews and did well at the box-office, with reviewers praising the performances of the two lead actors. That same year, Cooper appeared in his first all-Technicolor feature, Cecil B. DeMille's adventure film North West Mounted Police (1940). In the film, Cooper plays a Texas Ranger who pursues an outlaw into western Canada where he joins forces with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who are after the same man, a leader of the North-West Rebellion. While not as popular with critics as its predecessor, the film was another box-office success—the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1940.
The early 1940s were Cooper's prime years as an actor. In a relatively short period, he appeared in five critically successful and popular films that produced some of his finest performances. When Frank Capra offered him the lead role in Meet John Doe before Robert Riskin even developed the script, Cooper accepted his friend's offer, saying, "It's okay, Frank, I don't need a script." In the film, Cooper plays Long John Willoughby, a down-and-out bush-league pitcher hired by a newspaper to pretend to be a man who promises to commit suicide on Christmas Eve to protest all the hypocrisy and corruption in the country. Considered by some critics to be Capra's best film at the time, Meet John Doe was received as a "national event" with Cooper appearing on the front cover of Time magazine on March 3, 1941. In his review in the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes called Cooper's performance a "splendid and utterly persuasive portrayal" and praised his "utterly realistic acting which comes through with such authority". Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote, "Gary Cooper, of course, is 'John Doe' to the life and in the whole—shy, bewildered, non-aggressive, but a veritable tiger when aroused."
That same year, Cooper made two films with director and good friend Howard Hawks. In the biographical film Sergeant York, Cooper portrays war hero Alvin C. York, one of the most decorated American soldiers in World War I. The film chronicles York's early backwoods days in Tennessee, his religious conversion and subsequent piety, his stand as a conscientious objector, and finally his heroic actions at the Battle of the Argonne Forest, which earned him the Medal of Honor. Initially, Cooper was nervous and uncertain about playing a living hero, so he traveled to Tennessee to visit York at his home, and the two quiet men established an immediate rapport and discovered they had much in common. Inspired by York's encouragement, Cooper delivered a performance that Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune called "one of extraordinary conviction and versatility", and that Archer Winston of the New York Post called "one of his best". After the film's release, Cooper was awarded the Distinguished Citizenship Medal by the Veterans of Foreign Wars for his "powerful contribution to the promotion of patriotism and loyalty". York admired Cooper's performance and helped promote the film for Warner Bros. Sergeant York became the top-grossing film of the year and was nominated for eleven Academy Awards. Accepting his first Academy Award for Best Actor from his friend James Stewart, Cooper said, "It was Sergeant Alvin York who won this award. Shucks, I've been in the business sixteen years and sometimes dreamed I might get one of these. That's all I can say ... Funny when I was dreaming I always made a better speech."
Cooper concluded the year back at Goldwyn with Howard Hawks to make the romantic comedy Ball of Fire with Barbara Stanwyck. In the film, Cooper plays a shy linguistics professor who leads a team of seven scholars who are writing an encyclopedia. While researching slang, he meets Stanwyck's flirtatious burlesque stripper Sugarpuss O'Shea who blows the dust off their staid life of books. The screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder provided Cooper the opportunity to exercise the full range of his light comedy skills. In his review for the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes wrote that Cooper handled the role with "great skill and comic emphasis" and that his performance was "utterly delightful". Though small in scale, Ball of Fire was one of the top-grossing films of the year—Cooper's fourth consecutive picture to make the top twenty.
Cooper's only film appearance in 1942 was also his last under his Goldwyn contract. In Sam Wood's biographical film The Pride of the Yankees, Cooper portrays baseball star Lou Gehrig who established a record with the New York Yankees for playing in 2,130 consecutive games. Cooper was reluctant to play the seven-time All-Star, who only died the previous year from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — now commonly called "Lou Gehrig's disease". Beyond the challenges of effectively portraying such a popular and nationally recognized figure, Cooper knew very little about baseball and was not left-handed like Gehrig.
After Gehrig's widow visited the actor and expressed her desire that he portray her husband, Cooper accepted the role that covered a twenty-year span of Gehrig's life—his early love of baseball, his rise to greatness, his loving marriage, and his struggle with illness, culminating in his farewell speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939 before 62,000 fans. Cooper quickly learned the physical movements of a baseball player and developed a fluid, believable swing. The handedness issue was solved by reversing the print for certain batting scenes. The film was one of the year's top ten pictures and received eleven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's third).
Soon after the publication of Ernest Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, Paramount paid $150,000 for the film rights with the express intent of casting Cooper in the lead role of Robert Jordan, an American explosives expert who fights alongside the Republican loyalists during the Spanish Civil War. The original director, Cecil B. DeMille, was replaced by Sam Wood who brought in Dudley Nichols for the screenplay. After the start of principal photography in the Sierra Nevada in late 1942, Ingrid Bergman was brought in to replace ballerina Vera Zorina as the female lead—a change supported by Cooper and Hemingway. The love scenes between Bergman and Cooper were "rapturous" and passionate. Howard Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune wrote that both actors performed with "the true stature and authority of stars". While the film distorted the novel's original political themes and meaning, For Whom the Bell Tolls was a critical and commercial success and received ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's fourth).
World War II related activities
Due to his age and health, Cooper did not serve in the military during World War II, but like many of his colleagues, he got involved in the war effort by entertaining the troops. In June 1943, he visited military hospitals in San Diego, and often appeared at the Hollywood Canteen serving food to the servicemen. In late 1943, Cooper undertook a tour of the South West Pacific with actresses Una Merkel and Phyllis Brooks, and accordionist Andy Arcari.
Traveling on a B-24A Liberator bomber, the group toured the Cook Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia, Queensland, Brisbane—where General Douglas MacArthur told Cooper he was watching Sergeant York in a Manila theater when Japanese bombs began falling—New Guinea, Jayapura, and throughout the Solomon Islands.
The group often shared the same sparse living conditions and K-rations as the troops. Cooper met with the servicemen and women, visited military hospitals, introduced his attractive colleagues, and participated in occasional skits. The shows concluded with Cooper's moving recitation of Lou Gehrig's farewell speech. When he returned to the United States, he visited military hospitals throughout the country. Cooper later called his time with the troops the "greatest emotional experience" of his life.
Mature roles, 1944–1952
In 1944, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's wartime adventure film The Story of Dr. Wassell with Laraine Day — his third movie with the director. In the film, Cooper plays American doctor and missionary Corydon M. Wassell, who leads a group of wounded sailors through the jungles of Java to safety. Despite receiving poor reviews, Dr. Wassell was one of the top-grossing films of the year. With his Goldwyn and Paramount contracts now concluded, Cooper decided to remain independent and formed his own production company, International Pictures, with Leo Spitz, William Goetz, and Nunnally Johnson. The fledgling studio's first offering was Sam Wood's romantic comedy Casanova Brown with Teresa Wright, about a man who learns his soon-to-be ex-wife is pregnant with his child, just as he is about to marry another woman. The film received poor reviews, with the New York Daily News calling it "delightful nonsense", and Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, criticizing Cooper's "somewhat obvious and ridiculous clowning". The film was barely profitable.
In 1945, Cooper starred in and produced Stuart Heisler's Western comedy Along Came Jones with Loretta Young for International. In this lighthearted parody of his past heroic image, Cooper plays comically inept cowboy Melody Jones who is mistaken for a ruthless killer. Audiences embraced Cooper's character, and the film was one of the top box-office pictures of the year—a testament to Cooper's still vital audience appeal. It was also International's biggest financial success during its brief history before being sold off to Universal Studios in 1946.
Cooper's career during the post-war years drifted in new directions as American society was changing. While he still played conventional heroic roles, his films now relied less on his heroic screen persona and more on novel stories and exotic settings. In November 1945, Cooper appeared in Sam Wood's nineteenth-century period drama Saratoga Trunk with Ingrid Bergman, about a Texas cowboy and his relationship with a beautiful fortune-hunter. Filmed in early 1943, the movie's release was delayed for two years due to the increased demand for war movies. Despite poor reviews, Saratoga Trunk did well at the box office and became one of the top money-makers of the year for Warner Bros. Cooper's only film in 1946 was Fritz Lang's romantic thriller Cloak and Dagger, about a mild-mannered physics professor recruited by the OSS during the last years of World War II to investigate the German atomic bomb program. Playing a part loosely based on physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Cooper was uneasy with the role and unable to convey the "inner sense" of the character. The film received poor reviews and was a box-office failure. In 1947, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's epic adventure film Unconquered with Paulette Goddard, about a Virginia militiaman who defends settlers against an unscrupulous gun trader and hostile Indians on the Western frontier during the eighteenth century. The film received mixed reviews, but even long-time DeMille critic James Agee acknowledged the picture had "some authentic flavor of the period". This last of four films made with DeMille was Cooper's most lucrative, earning the actor over $300,000 (equal to $ today) in salary and percentage of profits. Unconquered would be his last unqualified box-office success for the next five years.
In 1948, after making Leo McCarey's romantic comedy Good Sam, Cooper sold his company to Universal Studios and signed a long-term contract with Warner Bros. that gave him script and director approval and a guaranteed $295,000 (equal to $ today) per picture. His first film under the new contract was King Vidor's drama The Fountainhead (1949) with Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey. In the film, Cooper plays an idealistic and uncompromising architect who struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism in the face of societal pressures to conform to popular standards. Based on the novel by Ayn Rand who also wrote the screenplay, the film reflects her philosophy and attacks the concepts of collectivism while promoting the virtues of individualism. For most critics, Cooper was hopelessly miscast in the role of Howard Roark. In his review for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther concluded he was "Mr. Deeds out of his element". Cooper returned to his element in Delmer Daves' war drama Task Force (1949), about a retiring rear admiral who reminisces about his long career as a naval aviator and his role in the development of aircraft carriers. Cooper's performance and the Technicolor newsreel footage supplied by the United States Navy made the film one of Cooper's most popular during this period. In the next two years, Cooper made four poorly received films: Michael Curtiz' period drama Bright Leaf (1950), Stuart Heisler's Western melodrama Dallas (1950), Henry Hathaway's wartime comedy You're in the Navy Now (1951), and Raoul Walsh's Western action film Distant Drums (1951).
Cooper's most important film during the post-war years was Fred Zinnemann's Western drama High Noon (1952) with Grace Kelly and Katy Jurado for United Artists. In the film, Cooper plays retiring sheriff Will Kane who is preparing to leave town on his honeymoon when he learns that an outlaw he helped put away and his three henchmen are returning to seek their revenge. Unable to gain the support of the frightened townspeople, and abandoned by his young bride, Kane nevertheless stays to face the outlaws alone. During the filming, Cooper was in poor health and in considerable pain from stomach ulcers. His ravaged face and discomfort in some scenes "photographed as self-doubt", according to biographer Hector Arce, and contributed to the effectiveness of his performance. Considered one of the first "adult" Westerns for its theme of moral courage, High Noon received enthusiastic reviews for its artistry, with Time magazine placing it in the ranks of Stagecoach and The Gunfighter. Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote that Cooper was "at the top of his form", and John McCarten, in The New Yorker, wrote that Cooper was never more effective. The film earned $3.75 million in the United States and $18 million worldwide. Following the example of his friend James Stewart, Cooper accepted a lower salary in exchange for a percent of the profits, and ended up making $600,000. Cooper's understated performance was widely praised, and earned him his second Academy Award for Best Actor.
Later films, 1953–1961
After appearing in André de Toth's Civil War drama Springfield Rifle (1952)—a standard Warner Bros. film that was overshadowed by the success of its predecessor—Cooper made four films outside the United States. In Mark Robson's drama Return to Paradise (1953), Cooper plays an American wanderer who liberates the inhabitants of a Polynesian island from the puritanical rule of a misguided pastor. Cooper endured spartan living conditions, long hours, and ill health during the three-month location shoot on the island of Upolu in Western Samoa. Despite its beautiful cinematography, the film received poor reviews. Cooper's next three films were shot in Mexico. In Hugo Fregonese's action adventure film Blowing Wild (1953) with Barbara Stanwyck, he plays a wildcatter in Mexico who gets involved with an oil company executive and his unscrupulous wife with whom he once had an affair.
In 1954, Cooper appeared in Henry Hathaway's Western drama Garden of Evil, with Susan Hayward, about three soldiers of fortune in Mexico hired to rescue a woman's husband. That same year, he appeared in Robert Aldrich's Western adventure Vera Cruz with Burt Lancaster. In the film, Cooper plays an American adventurer hired by Emperor Maximilian I to escort a countess to Vera Cruz during the Mexican Rebellion of 1866. All of these films received poor reviews but did well at the box-office. For his work in Vera Cruz, Cooper earned $1.4 million in salary and percent of the gross.
During this period, Cooper struggled with health problems. As well as his ongoing treatment for ulcers, he suffered a severe shoulder injury during the filming of Blowing Wild when he was hit by metal fragments from a dynamited oil well. During the filming of Vera Cruz, he reinjured his hip falling from a horse, and was burned when Lancaster fired his rifle too close and the wadding from the blank shell pierced his clothing.
In 1955, he appeared in Otto Preminger's biographical war drama The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, about the World War I general who tried to convince government officials of the importance of air power, and was court-martialed after blaming the War Department for a series of air disasters. Some critics felt that Cooper was miscast, and that his dull, tight-lipped performance did not reflect Mitchell's dynamic and caustic personality. In 1956, Cooper was more effective playing a gentle Indiana Quaker in William Wyler's Civil War drama Friendly Persuasion with Dorothy McGuire. Like Sergeant York and High Noon, the film addresses the conflict between religious pacifism and civic duty. For his performance, Cooper received his second Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actor. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, and went on to earn $8 million worldwide.
In 1956, Cooper traveled to France to make Billy Wilder's romantic comedy Love in the Afternoon with Audrey Hepburn and Maurice Chevalier. In the film, Cooper plays a middle-aged American playboy in Paris who pursues and eventually falls in love with a much younger woman. Despite receiving some positive reviews—including from Bosley Crowther who praised the film's "charming performances"—most reviewers concluded that Cooper was simply too old for the part. While audiences may not have welcomed seeing Cooper's heroic screen image tarnished by his playing an aging roué trying to seduce an innocent young girl, the film was still a box-office success. The following year, Cooper appeared in Philip Dunne's romantic drama Ten North Frederick. In the film, which was based on the novel by John O'Hara, Cooper plays an attorney whose life is ruined by a double-crossing politician and his own secret affair with his daughter's young roommate. While Cooper brought "conviction and controlled anguish" to his performance, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, it was not enough to save what Bosley Crowther called a "hapless film".
Despite his ongoing health problems and several operations for ulcers and hernias, Cooper continued to work in action films. In 1958, he appeared in Anthony Mann's Western drama Man of the West (1958) with Julie London and Lee J. Cobb, about a reformed outlaw and killer who is forced to confront his violent past when the train he is riding in is held up by his former gang members. The film has been called Cooper's "most pathological Western", with its themes of impotent rage, sexual humiliation, and sadism. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, Cooper, who struggled with moral conflicts in his personal life, "understood the anguish of a character striving to retain his integrity ... [and] brought authentic feeling to the role of a tempted and tormented, yet essentially decent man". Mostly ignored by critics at the time, the film is now well-regarded by film scholars and is considered Cooper's last great film.
After his Warner Bros. contract ended, Cooper formed his own production company, Baroda Productions, and made three unusual films in 1959 about redemption. In Delmer Daves' Western drama The Hanging Tree, Cooper plays a frontier doctor who saves a criminal from a lynch mob, and later tries to exploit his sordid past. Cooper delivered a "powerful and persuasive" performance of an emotionally scarred man whose need to dominate others is transformed by the love and sacrifice of a woman. In Robert Rossen's historical adventure They Came to Cordura with Rita Hayworth, he plays an army officer who is found guilty of cowardice and assigned the degrading task of recommending soldiers for the Medal of Honor during the Pancho Villa Expedition of 1916.
While Cooper received positive reviews, Variety and Films in Review felt he was too old for the part. In Michael Anderson's action drama The Wreck of the Mary Deare with Charlton Heston, Cooper plays a disgraced merchant marine officer who decides to stay aboard his sinking cargo ship in order to prove the vessel was deliberately scuttled and to redeem his good name. Like its two predecessors, the film was physically demanding. Cooper, who was a trained scuba diver, did most of his own underwater scenes. Biographer Jeffrey Meyers observed that in all three roles, Cooper effectively conveyed the sense of lost honor and desire for redemption—what Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim called the "struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what his moral identity should be".
Personal life
Marriage and family
Cooper was formally introduced to his future wife, 20-year-old New York debutante Veronica Balfe, on Easter Sunday 1933 at a party given by her uncle, art director Cedric Gibbons. Called "Rocky" by her family and friends, she grew up on Park Avenue and attended finishing schools. Her stepfather was Wall Street tycoon Paul Shields. Cooper and Rocky were quietly married at her parents' Park Avenue residence on December 15, 1933. According to his friends, the marriage had a positive impact on Cooper, who turned away from past indiscretions and took control of his life. Athletic and a lover of the outdoors, Rocky shared many of Cooper's interests, including riding, skiing, and skeet-shooting. She organized their social life, and her wealth and social connections provided Cooper access to New York high society. Cooper and his wife owned homes in the Los Angeles area in Encino (1933–36), Brentwood (1936–53), and Holmby Hills (1954–61), and owned a vacation home in Aspen, Colorado (1949–53).
Gary and Veronica Cooper's daughter, Maria Veronica Cooper, was born on September 15, 1937. By all accounts, he was a patient and affectionate father, teaching Maria to ride a bicycle, play tennis, ski, and ride horses. Sharing many of her parents' interests, she accompanied them on their travels and was often photographed with them. Like her father, she developed a love for art and drawing. As a family they vacationed together in Sun Valley, Idaho, spent time at Rocky's parents' country house in Southampton, New York, and took frequent trips to Europe. Cooper and Rocky were legally separated on May 16, 1951, when Cooper moved out of their home. For over two years, they maintained a fragile and uneasy family life with their daughter. Cooper moved back into their home in November 1953, and their formal reconciliation occurred in February 1954.
Romantic relationships
Prior to his marriage, Cooper had a series of romantic relationships with leading actresses, beginning in 1927 with Clara Bow, who advanced his career by helping him get one of his first leading roles in Children of Divorce. Bow was also responsible for getting Cooper a role in Wings, which generated an enormous amount of fan mail for the young actor. In 1928, he had a relationship with another experienced actress, Evelyn Brent, whom he met while filming Beau Sabreur. In 1929, while filming The Wolf Song, Cooper began an intense affair with Lupe Vélez, which was the most important romance of his early life. During their two years together, Cooper also had brief affairs with Marlene Dietrich while filming Morocco in 1930 and with Carole Lombard while making I Take This Woman in 1931. During his year abroad in 1931–32, Cooper had an affair with the married Countess Dorothy di Frasso, while staying at her Villa Madama near Rome.
After he was married in December 1933, Cooper remained faithful to his wife until the summer of 1942, when he began an affair with Ingrid Bergman during the production of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Their relationship lasted through the completion of filming Saratoga Trunk in June 1943. In 1948, after finishing work on The Fountainhead, Cooper began an affair with actress Patricia Neal, his co-star. At first they kept their affair discreet, but eventually it became an open secret in Hollywood, and Cooper's wife confronted him with the rumors, which he admitted were true. He also confessed that he was in love with Neal, and continued to see her. Cooper and his wife were legally separated in May 1951, but he did not seek a divorce. Neal later claimed that Cooper hit her after she went on a date with Kirk Douglas, and that he arranged for her to have an abortion when she became pregnant with Cooper's child. Neal ended their relationship in late December 1951. During his three-year separation from his wife, Cooper was rumored to have had affairs with Grace Kelly, Lorraine Chanel, and Gisèle Pascal.
Cooper biographers have explored his friendship in the late twenties with the actor Anderson Lawler, with whom Cooper shared a house on and off for a year, while at the same time seeing Clara Bow, Evelyn Brent and Lupe Vélez. Lupe Vélez once told Hedda Hopper of Vélez' affair with Cooper; whenever he would come home after seeing Lawler, she would sniff for Lawler's cologne. Vélez' biographer Michelle Vogel has reported that Vélez consented to Cooper's sexual behavior with Lawler, but only as long as she, too, could participate. In later life, he became involved in a relationship with the costume designer Irene, and was, according to Irene, "the only man she ever loved". A year after his death in 1961, Irene committed suicide by jumping from the 11th floor of the Knickerbocker Hotel, after telling Doris Day of her grief over Cooper's death.
Friendships, interests, and character
Cooper's twenty-year friendship with Ernest Hemingway began at Sun Valley in October 1940. The previous year, Hemingway drew upon Cooper's image when he created the character of Robert Jordan for the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. The two shared a passion for the outdoors, and for years they hunted duck and pheasant, and skied together in Sun Valley. Both men admired the work of Rudyard Kipling—Cooper kept a copy of the poem "If—" in his dressing room—and retained as adults Kipling's sense of boyish adventure.
As well as admiring Cooper's hunting skills and knowledge of the outdoors, Hemingway believed his character matched his screen persona, once telling a friend, "If you made up a character like Coop, nobody would believe it. He's just too good to be true." They saw each other often, and their friendship remained strong through the years.
Cooper's social life generally centered on sports, outdoor activities, and dinner parties with his family and friends from the film industry, including directors Henry Hathaway, Howard Hawks, William Wellman, and Fred Zinnemann, and actors Joel McCrea, James Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, and Robert Taylor. As well as hunting, Cooper enjoyed riding, fishing, skiing, and later in life, scuba diving. He never abandoned his early love for art and drawing, and over the years, he and his wife acquired a private collection of modern paintings, including works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Cooper owned several works by Pablo Picasso, whom he met in 1956. Cooper also had a lifelong passion for automobiles, with a collection that included a 1930 Duesenberg.
Cooper was naturally reserved and introspective, and loved the solitude of outdoor activities. Not unlike his screen persona, his communication style frequently consisted of long silences with an occasional "yup" and "shucks". He once said, "If others have more interesting things to say than I have, I keep quiet." According to his friends, Cooper could also be an articulate, well-informed conversationalist on topics ranging from horses, guns, and Western history to film production, sports cars, and modern art. He was modest and unpretentious, frequently downplaying his acting abilities and career accomplishments. His friends and colleagues described him as charming, well-mannered, and thoughtful, with a lively boyish sense of humor. Cooper maintained a sense of propriety throughout his career and never misused his movie star status—never sought special treatment or refused to work with a director or leading lady. His close friend Joel McCrea recalled, "Coop never fought, he never got mad, he never told anybody off that I know of; everybody that worked with him liked him."
Political views
Like his father, Cooper was a conservative Republican; he voted for Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Herbert Hoover in 1928 and 1932, and campaigned for Wendell Willkie in 1940. When Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented fourth presidential term in 1944, Cooper campaigned for Thomas E. Dewey and criticized Roosevelt for being dishonest and adopting "foreign" ideas. In a radio address that he paid for himself just prior to the election, Cooper said, "I disagree with the New Deal belief that the America all of us love is old and worn-out and finished—and has to borrow foreign notions that don't even seem to work any too well where they come from ... Our country is a young country that just has to make up its mind to be itself again." He also attended a Republican rally at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that drew 93,000 Dewey supporters.
Cooper was one of the founding members of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a conservative organization dedicated, according to its statement of principles, to preserving the "American way of life" and opposing communism and fascism. The organization — whose membership included Walter Brennan, Laraine Day, Walt Disney, Clark Gable, Hedda Hopper, Ronald Reagan, Barbara Stanwyck, and John Wayne — advised the United States Congress to investigate communist influence in the motion picture industry. On October 23, 1947, Cooper was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and was asked if he had observed any "communistic influence" in Hollywood.
Cooper recounted statements he'd heard suggesting that the Constitution was out of date and that Congress was an unnecessary institution—comments that Cooper said he found to be "very un-American" and testified that he had rejected several scripts because he thought they were "tinged with communist ideas". Unlike some other witnesses, Cooper did not name any individuals, nor did he name any scripts, during his testimony.
In 1951, while making High Noon, Cooper became friends with the film's screenwriter, Carl Foreman, who had been a member of the Communist Party. When Foreman was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Cooper put his career on the line to defend Foreman. When John Wayne and others threatened Cooper with blacklisting himself and the loss of his passport if he did not walk off the film, Cooper gave a statement to the press in support of Foreman, calling him "the finest kind of American". When producer Stanley Kramer removed Foreman's name as screenwriter, Cooper and director Fred Zinnemann threatened to walk off the film if Foreman's name was not restored. Foreman later said that, of all his friends and allies and colleagues in Hollywood, "Cooper was the only big one who tried to help. The only one." Cooper even offered to testify in Foreman's behalf before the committee, but character witnesses were not allowed. Foreman always sent future scripts to Cooper for first refusal, including The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Key and The Guns of Navarone. Cooper had to turn them down because of his age.
Religion
Cooper was baptized in the Anglican Church in December 1911 in Britain, and was raised in the Episcopal Church in the United States. While he was not an observant Christian for most of his adult life, many of his friends believed he had a deeply spiritual side.
On June 26, 1953, Cooper accompanied his wife and daughter, who were devout Catholics, to Rome, where they had an audience with Pope Pius XII. Cooper and his wife were still separated at the time, but the papal visit marked the beginning of their gradual reconciliation. In the coming years, Cooper contemplated his mortality and his personal behavior, and started discussing Catholicism with his family. He began attending church with them regularly, and met with their parish priest, who offered Cooper spiritual guidance. After several months of study, Cooper was baptized as a Roman Catholic on April 9, 1959, before a small group of family and friends at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.
Final years and death
On April 14, 1960, Cooper underwent surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had metastasized to his colon. He fell ill again on May 31 and underwent further surgery at Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles in early June to remove a malignant tumor from his large intestine. After recuperating over the summer, Cooper took his family on vacation to the south of France before traveling to the UK in the fall to star in The Naked Edge. In December 1960, he worked on the NBC television documentary The Real West, which was part of the company's Project 20 series.
On December 27, his wife learned from their family doctor that Cooper's cancer had spread to his lungs and bones and was inoperable. His family decided not to tell him immediately.
On January 9, 1961, Cooper attended a dinner that was given in his honor and hosted by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin at the Friars Club. The dinner was attended by many of his industry friends and concluded with a brief speech by Cooper who said, "The only achievement I'm proud of is the friends I've made in this community."
In mid-January, Cooper took his family to Sun Valley for their last vacation together. Cooper and Hemingway hiked through the snow together for the last time. On February 27, after returning to Los Angeles, Cooper learned that he was dying. He later told his family, "We'll pray for a miracle; but if not, and that's God's will, that's all right too." On April 17, Cooper watched the Academy Awards ceremony on television and saw his good friend James Stewart, who had presented Cooper with his first Oscar years earlier, accept on Cooper's behalf an honorary award for lifetime achievement—his third Oscar. Holding back tears, Stewart said, "Coop, I'll get this to you right away. And Coop, I want you to know this, that with this goes all the warm friendship and the affection and the admiration and the deep, the deep respect of all of us. We're very, very proud of you, Coop. All of us are tremendously proud." The following day, newspapers around the world announced the news that Cooper was dying. In the coming days he received numerous messages of appreciation and encouragement, including telegrams from Pope John XXIII and Queen Elizabeth II, and a telephone call from President John F. Kennedy.
In his last public statement on May 4, Cooper said, "I know that what is happening is God's will. I am not afraid of the future." He received the last rites on May 12. Cooper died quietly the following day, Saturday, May 13, 1961, at 12:47 P.M.
A requiem mass was held on May 18 at the Church of the Good Shepherd, attended by many of Cooper's friends, including James Stewart, Jack Benny, Henry Hathaway, Joel McCrea, Audrey Hepburn, Jack L. Warner, John Ford, John Wayne, Edward G. Robinson, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Fred Astaire, Randolph Scott, Walter Pidgeon, Bob Hope and Marlene Dietrich. Cooper was buried in the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. In May 1974, after his family relocated to New York, Cooper's remains were exhumed and reburied in Sacred Hearts Cemetery in Southampton. His grave is marked by a three-ton boulder from a Montauk quarry.
Acting style and reputation
Cooper's acting style consisted of three essential characteristics: his ability to project elements of his own personality onto the characters he portrayed, to appear natural and authentic in his roles, and to underplay and deliver restrained performances calibrated for the camera and the screen. Acting teacher Lee Strasberg once observed: "The simplest examples of Stanislavsky's ideas are actors such as Gary Cooper, John Wayne, and Spencer Tracy. They try not to act but to be themselves, to respond or react. They refuse to say or do anything they feel not to be consonant with their own characters." Film director François Truffaut ranked Cooper among "the greatest actors" because of his ability to deliver great performances "without direction". This ability to project elements of his own personality onto his characters produced a continuity across his performances to the extent that critics and audiences were convinced that he was simply "playing himself".
Cooper's ability to project his personality onto his characters played an important part in his appearing natural and authentic on screen. Actor John Barrymore said of Cooper, "This fellow is the world's greatest actor. He does without effort what the rest of us spend our lives trying to learn—namely, to be natural." Charles Laughton, who played opposite Cooper in Devil and the Deep agreed, "In truth, that boy hasn't the least idea how well he acts ... He gets at it from the inside, from his own clear way of looking at life." William Wyler, who directed Cooper in two films, called him a "superb actor, a master of movie acting".
In his review of Cooper's performance in The Real Glory, Graham Greene wrote, "Sometimes his lean photogenic face seems to leave everything to the lens, but there is no question here of his not acting. Watch him inoculate the girl against cholera—the casual jab of the needle, and the dressing slapped on while he talks, as though a thousand arms had taught him where to stab and he doesn't have to think anymore."
Cooper's style of underplaying before the camera surprised many of his directors and fellow actors. Even in his earliest feature films, he recognized the camera's ability to pick up slight gestures and facial movements. Commenting on Cooper's performance in Sergeant York, director Howard Hawks observed, "He worked very hard and yet he didn't seem to be working. He was a strange actor because you'd look at him during a scene and you'd think ... this isn't going to be any good. But when you saw the rushes in the projection room the next day you could read in his face all the things he'd been thinking." Sam Wood, who directed Cooper in four films, had similar observations about Cooper's performance in Pride of the Yankees, noting, "What I thought was underplaying turned out to be just the right approach. On the screen he's perfect, yet on the set you'd swear it's the worst job of acting in the history of motion pictures."
Fellow actors admired his abilities as an actor. Commenting on her two films playing opposite Cooper, actress Ingrid Bergman concluded, "The personality of this man was so enormous, so overpowering—and that expression in his eyes and his face, it was so delicate and so underplayed. You just didn't notice it until you saw it on the screen. I thought he was marvelous; the most underplaying and the most natural actor I ever worked with."
Tom Hanks declared, "In only one scene in the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, we see the future of screen acting in the form of Gary Cooper. He is quiet and natural, somehow different from the other cast members. He does something mysterious with his eyes and shoulders that is much more like 'being' than 'acting'."
Daniel Day-Lewis said, "I don't particularly like westerns as a genre, but I do love certain westerns. 'High Noon' means a lot to me – I love the purity and the honesty, I love Gary Cooper in that film, the idea of the last man standing."
Chris Pratt stated, "I started watching Westerns when I was shooting in London about four or five years ago. I really fell in love with Gary Cooper, and his stuff. That sucked me into the Westerns. Before, I never got engrossed in the story. I'd just dip in, and there were guys in horses in black and white. High Noon's later Gary Cooper, I liked that. But I liked 'The Westerner'. That's my favorite one. I have that poster hung up in my house because I really like that one."
To Al Pacino, "Gary Cooper was a phenomenon—his ability to take some thing and elevate it, give it such dignity. One of the great presences."
Mylène Demongeot first got with Gary Cooper for the opening of the first escalator to be installed in a cinema, at the Rex Theatre in Paris, on June 7, 1957. She declared in a 2015 filmed interview: "Gary Cooper ... il est sublime ! Aaahhh (Mylène pushing a cry of love not to say ecstasy) il est sublime ... Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! Là je dois dire que ça fait partie des stars, y'a Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, ces grands Américains que j'ai rencontrés comme ça, c'est vraiment des mecs incroyables. Y'en a plus des comme ça ! Euh non. (Gary Cooper was sublime, there I have to say, now he, was part of the stars, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, those great americans who I've met really were unbelievable guys, there aren't any like them anymore)."
Career assessment and legacy
Cooper's career spanned thirty-six years, from 1925 to 1961. During that time, he appeared in eighty-four feature films in a leading role. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His natural and authentic acting style appealed powerfully to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major movie genres, including Westerns, war films, adventure films, drama films, crime films, romance films, comedy films, and romantic comedy films. He appeared on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities for twenty-three consecutive years, from 1936 to 1958. According to Quigley's annual poll, Cooper was one of the top money-making stars for eighteen years, appearing in the top ten in 1936–37, 1941–49, and 1951–57. He topped the list in 1953. In Quigley's list of all-time money-making stars, Cooper is listed fourth, after John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Tom Cruise. At the time of his death, it was estimated that his films grossed well over $200 million (equivalent to $ billion in ).
In over half of his feature films, Cooper portrayed Westerners, soldiers, pilots, sailors, and explorers—all men of action. In the rest he played a wide range of characters, included doctors, professors, artists, architects, clerks, and baseball players. Cooper's heroic screen image changed with each period of his career. In his early films, he played the young naive hero sure of his moral position and trusting in the triumph of simple virtues (The Virginian). After becoming a major star, his Western screen persona was replaced by a more cautious hero in adventure films and dramas (A Farewell to Arms). During the height of his career, from 1936 to 1943, he played a new type of hero—a champion of the common man willing to sacrifice himself for others (Mr. Deeds, Meet John Doe, and For Whom the Bell Tolls).
In the post-war years, Cooper attempted broader variations on his screen image, which now reflected a hero increasingly at odds with the world who must face adversity alone (The Fountainhead and High Noon). In his final films, Cooper's hero rejects the violence of the past, and seeks to reclaim lost honor and find redemption (Friendly Persuasion and Man of the West). The screen persona he developed and sustained throughout his career represented the ideal American hero—a tall, handsome, and sincere man of steadfast integrity who emphasized action over intellect, and combined the heroic qualities of the romantic lover, the adventurer, and the common man.
On February 6, 1960, Cooper was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6243 Hollywood Boulevard for his contribution to the film industry. He was awarded a star on the sidewalk outside the Ellen Theater in Bozeman, Montana.
On May 6, 1961, he was awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters in recognition of his significant contribution to the arts. On July 30, 1961, he was posthumously awarded the David di Donatello Special Award in Italy for his career achievements.
In 1966, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. In 2015, he was inducted into the Utah Cowboy and Western Heritage Hall of Fame. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper eleventh on its list of the 25 male stars of classic Hollywood. Three of his characters—Will Kane, Lou Gehrig, and Sergeant York—made AFI's list of the one hundred greatest heroes and villains, all of them as heroes. His Lou Gehrig line, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.", is ranked by AFI as the thirty-eighth greatest movie quote of all time.
More than a half century after his death, Cooper's enduring legacy, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, is his image of the ideal American hero preserved in his film performances. Charlton Heston once observed, "He projected the kind of man Americans would like to be, probably more than any actor that's ever lived."
In the TV series Justified, based on works and characters created by Elmore Leonard, Gary Cooper is used throughout the six seasons as the man whom U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens, played by Timothy Olyphant, aspires to be. When his colleague asks Marshall Givens how he thinks his dangerous plan to bring down a villain can possibly work, he replies: "Why not? Worked for Gary Cooper."
Gary Cooper is referenced several times in the critically acclaimed television series The Sopranos, with protagonist Tony Soprano asking "What ever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type." while complaining about his problems to his therapist.
In the 1930s hit song "Puttin' On the Ritz", Cooper is referenced in the line "dress up like a million dollar trooper/Tryin' hard to look like Gary Cooper, Super duper!" More than two decades after Cooper's death a new version of the song was released in 1983 by Taco; the original lyrics were kept, including the references to Cooper.
In J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Cooper is "spotted" by Holden Caulfield to distract a woman he is dancing with.
Awards and nominations
Filmography
The following is a list of feature films in which Cooper appeared in a leading role.
The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926)
Children of Divorce (1927)
Arizona Bound (1927)
Wings (1927)
Nevada (1927)
It (1927)
The Last Outlaw (1927)
Beau Sabreur (1928)
The Legion of the Condemned (1928)
Doomsday (1928)
Half a Bride (1928)
Lilac Time (1928)
The First Kiss (1928)
The Shopworn Angel (1928)
Wolf Song (1929)
Betrayal (1929)
The Virginian (1929)
Only the Brave (1930)
The Texan (1930)
Seven Days' Leave (1930)
A Man from Wyoming (1930)
The Spoilers (1930)
Morocco (1930)
Fighting Caravans (1931)
City Streets (1931)
I Take This Woman (1931)
His Woman (1931)
Devil and the Deep (1932)
If I Had a Million (1932)
A Farewell to Arms (1932)
Today We Live (1933)
One Sunday Afternoon (1933)
Design for Living (1933)
Alice in Wonderland (1933)
Operator 13 (1934)
Now and Forever (1934)
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
The Wedding Night (1935)
Peter Ibbetson (1935)
Desire (1936)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
The General Died at Dawn (1936)
The Plainsman (1936)
Souls at Sea (1937)
The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938)
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938)
The Cowboy and the Lady (1938)
Beau Geste (1939)
The Real Glory (1939)
The Westerner (1940)
North West Mounted Police (1940)
Meet John Doe (1941)
Sergeant York (1941)
Ball of Fire (1941)
The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944)
Casanova Brown (1944)
Along Came Jones (1945)
Saratoga Trunk (1945)
Cloak and Dagger (1946)
Unconquered (1947)
Good Sam (1948)
The Fountainhead (1949)
Task Force (1949)
Bright Leaf (1950)
Dallas (1950)
You're in the Navy Now (1951)
It's a Big Country (1951)
Distant Drums (1951)
High Noon (1952)
Springfield Rifle (1952)
Return to Paradise (1953)
Blowing Wild (1953)
Garden of Evil (1954)
Vera Cruz (1954)
The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955)
Friendly Persuasion (1956)
Love in the Afternoon (1957)
Ten North Frederick (1958)
Man of the West (1958)
The Hanging Tree (1959)
They Came to Cordura (1959)
The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959)
The Naked Edge (1961)
Radio appearances
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Adrien Le Bihan, Gary Cooper, le prince des acteurs, LettMotif, 2021, 358p.()
External links
1901 births
1961 deaths
20th-century American male actors
Academy Honorary Award recipients
American expatriates in England
American male film actors
American male silent film actors
American male television actors
American people of English descent
Best Actor Academy Award winners
Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners
California Republicans
Catholics from Montana
Conservatism in the United States
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from prostate cancer
Grinnell College people
Male Western (genre) film actors
Male actors from Montana
Paramount Pictures contract players
People educated at Dunstable Grammar School
People from Brentwood, Los Angeles
People from Dunstable
People from Helena, Montana
People from Holmby Hills, Los Angeles | true | [
"Mbekezeli Mabuza (born 6 January 1985) is a Zimbabwean cricketer.\n\nMabuza has played domestic cricket in Zimbabwe for the Bulawayo-based Matabeleland, Westerns and Matabeleland Tuskers, and has also represented Zimbabwe A. Mabuza made his First class debut for Matabeleland on 19 March 2004 in a Logan Cup match against Manicaland. He played his first List A match for Matabeleland on 9 November 2004 against Mashonaland, and his first Twenty20 match on 19 March 2008 for Westerns against Easterns.\n\nIn April 2009, Mabuza scored his maiden First class century for Westerns in a Logan Cup defeat against Easterns. In May 2009, he took a match-winning 5-wicket haul for Westerns in the final of Zimbabwe's domestic Twenty20 competition against Northerns.\n\nMabuza and fellow Westerns player Simba Kusano were involved in a car crash in August 2009. Mabuza suffered a back injury, while Kusano suffered a broken leg and did not play any further top level cricket.\n\nIn October 2010, Mabuza starred with both bat and ball in a MetBank Pro40 Championship victory for the Tuskers against the Southern Rocks. He scored an unbeaten 46, sharing a century partnership with English wicket-keeper Adam Wheater, before bowling the final over to deny the Southern Rocks victory.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\n1985 births\nLiving people\nZimbabwean cricketers\nMatabeleland cricketers\nSportspeople from Bulawayo",
"Thomas O'Driscoll Hunter (December 19, 1932 – December 27, 2017) was an American actor known for work in Spaghetti Westerns and as a Hollywood screenwriter. He was also the founder of the New England Repertory Company.\n\nBiography\nBorn in Savannah, Georgia, Hunter served in the United States Marine Corps and graduated from the University of Virginia. He studied acting with Sanford Meisner and Uta Hagen.\n\nHe entered film in a small role in Blake Edwards' What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966). After completing the film, a chance meeting with Dino De Laurentiis led him to be invited to star as the lead in The Hills Run Red leading him to a career in European cinema with guest appearances in American television series. His dissatisfaction with European cinema led him to found the New England Repertory Company.\n\nHunter published two books. The novel Softly Walks the Beast is an end-of-the-world story that takes place in the not-too-distant future and centers on a dwindling community of smart and resourceful people on a college campus, struggling against the horrible and seemingly unstoppable after-effects of a nuclear war. \"Softly Walks the Beast\" was first published in 1982 and a second edition was published in 2014.\n\nIn 2015, Hunter published Memoirs of a Spaghetti Cowboy: Tales of Oddball Luck and Derring-Do, which chronicles his adventures starring in numerous Spaghetti Westerns and other foreign productions while living in Rome.\n\nFilmography\n\nScreenwriter\n The 'Human' Factor (1975)\n The Final Countdown (1980)\n\nActor\n\nNotes\n\nExternal links\n \n\n1932 births\n2017 deaths\nAmerican male film actors\nAmerican male television actors\nUnited States Marines\nMale Spaghetti Western actors\nActors from Savannah, Georgia\nWriters from Savannah, Georgia\nMilitary personnel from Georgia (U.S. state)"
] |
[
"Gary Cooper",
"Silent films, 1925-28",
"what happened in 1925?",
"In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures",
"what pictures did he do?",
"The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones.",
"did he win any awards for them?",
"Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings, the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.",
"who did he work with?",
"In 1928, Paramount paired Cooper with a youthful Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss--advertising them as the studio's \"glorious young lovers\".",
"what was his greatest achievement?",
"Lilac Time with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928.",
"what is an important fact in this article?",
"he change his first name to \"Gary\" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns,",
"which westerns did he do?",
"silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix,"
] | C_84d38f8ca490447a92f516e3616fdb66_1 | which other silent films? | 9 | In addition to The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, which other silent films did Gary Cooper do? | Gary Cooper | In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, including Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt work--which sometimes injured horses and riders--"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name. Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week. Cooper's first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal--finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings, the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada--both films directed by John Waters. In 1928, Paramount paired Cooper with a youthful Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss--advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride. That year, Cooper also made Lilac Time with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928. CANNOTANSWER | The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. | Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper; May 7, 1901 – May 13, 1961) was an American actor known for his strong, silent, and understated acting style. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice and had a further three nominations, as well as receiving an Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements in 1961. He was one of the top 10 film personalities for 23 consecutive years, and one of the top money-making stars for 18 years. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper at No. 11 on its list of the 25 greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Cooper's career spanned 36 years, from 1925 to 1961, and included leading roles in 84 feature films. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era through to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His screen persona appealed strongly to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major film genres. His ability to project his own personality onto the characters he played contributed to his natural and authentic appearance on screen. Throughout his career, he sustained a screen persona that represented the ideal American hero.
Cooper began his career as a film extra and stunt rider, but soon landed acting roles. After establishing himself as a Western hero in his early silent films, he appeared as the Virginian and became a movie star in 1929 with his first sound picture, The Virginian. In the early 1930s, he expanded his heroic image to include more cautious characters in adventure films and dramas such as A Farewell to Arms (1932) and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935). During the height of his career, Cooper portrayed a new type of hero—a champion of the common man—in films such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Meet John Doe (1941), Sergeant York (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). He later portrayed more mature characters at odds with the world in films such as The Fountainhead (1949) and High Noon (1952). In his final films, he played non-violent characters searching for redemption in films such as Friendly Persuasion (1956) and Man of the West (1958).
Early life
Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana, on May 7, 1901, the younger of two sons of English parents Alice (née Brazier; 1873–1967) and Charles Henry Cooper (1865–1946). His brother, Arthur, was six years his senior. Cooper's father came from Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire, and became a prominent lawyer, rancher, and Montana Supreme Court justice. His mother hailed from Gillingham, Kent, and married Charles in Montana. In 1906, Charles purchased the Seven-Bar-Nine cattle ranch, about north of Helena near Craig, Montana. Cooper and Arthur spent their summers at the ranch and learned to ride horses, hunt, and fish. Cooper attended Central Grade School in Helena.
Alice wanted her sons to have an English education, so she took them back to England in 1909 to enroll them in Dunstable Grammar School in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. While there, Cooper and his brother lived with their father's cousins, William and Emily Barton, at their home in Houghton Regis. Cooper studied Latin, French, and English history at Dunstable until 1912. While he adapted to English school discipline and learned the requisite social graces, he never adjusted to the rigid class structure and formal Eton collars he was required to wear. He received his confirmation in the Church of England at the Church of All Saints in Houghton Regis on December 3, 1911. His mother accompanied her sons back to the U.S. in August 1912, and Cooper resumed his education at Johnson Grammar School in Helena.
When Cooper was 15, he injured his hip in a car accident. On his doctor's recommendation, he returned to the Seven-Bar-Nine ranch to recuperate by horseback riding. The misguided therapy left him with his characteristic stiff, off-balanced walk and slightly angled horse-riding style. He left Helena High School after two years in 1918, and returned to the family ranch to work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for him to attend Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana, where English teacher Ida Davis encouraged him to focus on academics and participate in debating and dramatics. Cooper later called Davis "the woman partly responsible for [him] giving up cowboy-ing and going to college".
Cooper was still attending high school in 1920 when he took three art courses at Montana Agricultural College in Bozeman. His interest in art was inspired years earlier by the Western paintings of Charles Marion Russell and Frederic Remington. Cooper especially admired and studied Russell's Lewis and Clark Meeting Indians at Ross' Hole (1910), which still hangs in the state capitol building in Helena. In 1922, to continue his art education, he enrolled in Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. He did well academically in most of his courses, but was not accepted into the school's drama club. His drawings and watercolor paintings were exhibited throughout the dormitory, and he was named art editor for the college yearbook. During the summers of 1922 and 1923, Cooper worked at Yellowstone National Park as a tour guide driving the yellow open-top buses. Despite a promising first 18 months at Grinnell, he left college suddenly in February 1924, spent a month in Chicago looking for work as an artist, and then returned to Helena, where he sold editorial cartoons to the local Independent newspaper.
In autumn 1924, Cooper's father left the Montana Supreme Court bench and moved with his wife to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives, and Cooper joined his parents there in November at his father's request. After briefly working a series of unpromising jobs, he met two friends from Montana who were working as film extras and stunt riders in low-budget Western films for the small movie studios on Poverty Row. They introduced him to another Montana cowboy, rodeo champion Jay "Slim" Talbot, who took him to see a casting director. Wanting money for a professional art course, Cooper worked as a film extra for $5 a day, and as a stunt rider for $10. Cooper and Talbot became close friends and hunting companions, and Talbot later worked as Cooper's stuntman and stand-in for over three decades.
Career
Silent films, 1925–1928
In early 1925, Cooper began his film career in silent pictures such as The Thundering Herd and Wild Horse Mesa with Jack Holt, Riders of the Purple Sage and The Lucky Horseshoe with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider with Buck Jones. He worked for several Poverty Row studios, but also the already emergent major studios, Famous Players-Lasky and Fox Film Corporation. While his skilled horsemanship led to steady work in Westerns, Cooper found the stunt workwhich sometimes injured horses and riders"tough and cruel". Hoping to move beyond the risky stunt work and obtain acting roles, Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Knowing that other actors were using the name "Frank Cooper", Collins suggested he change his first name to "Gary" after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper immediately liked the name.
Cooper also found work in a variety of non-Western films, appearing, for example, as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (1925), as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (1925), and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (1926). Gradually, he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, in films such as Tricks (1925), in which he played the film's antagonist, and the short film Lightnin' Wins (1926). As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios. On June 1, 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions for fifty dollars a week.
Cooper's first important film role was a supporting part in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) starring Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky, in which he plays a young engineer who helps a rival suitor save the woman he loves and her town from an impending dam disaster. Cooper's experience living among the Montana cowboys gave his performance an "instinctive authenticity", according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers. The film was a major success. Critics singled out Cooper as a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Goldwyn rushed to offer Cooper a long-term contract, but he held out for a better deal—finally signing a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 a week. In 1927, with help from Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles in Children of Divorce and Wings (both 1927), the latter being the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. That year, Cooper also appeared in his first starring roles in Arizona Bound and Nevada—both films directed by John Waters.
Paramount paired Cooper with Fay Wray in The Legion of the Condemned and The First Kiss (both 1928)—advertising them as the studio's "glorious young lovers". Their on-screen chemistry failed to generate much excitement with audiences. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. During this time, he was earning as much as $2,750 per film and receiving a thousand fan letters a week. Looking to exploit Cooper's growing audience appeal, the studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies such as Evelyn Brent in Beau Sabreur, Florence Vidor in Doomsday, and Esther Ralston in Half a Bride (also both 1928). Around the same time, Cooper made Lilac Time (1928) with Colleen Moore for First National Pictures, his first movie with synchronized music and sound effects. It became one of the most commercially successful films of 1928.
Hollywood stardom, 1929–1935
Cooper became a major movie star in 1929 with the release of his first talking picture, The Virginian (1929), which was directed by Victor Fleming and co-starred Mary Brian and Walter Huston. Based on the popular novel by Owen Wister, The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honor and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western movie genre that persist to the present day. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, the romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero who embodied male freedom, courage, and honor was created in large part by Cooper in the film. Unlike some silent film actors who had trouble adapting to the new sound medium, Cooper transitioned naturally, with his "deep and clear" and "pleasantly drawling" voice, which was perfectly suited for the characters he portrayed on screen, also according to Meyers. Looking to capitalize on Cooper's growing popularity, Paramount cast him in several Westerns and wartime dramas, including Only the Brave, The Texan, Seven Days' Leave, A Man from Wyoming, and The Spoilers (all released in 1930). Norman Rockwell depicted Cooper in his role as The Texan for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 24, 1930.
One of the more important performances in Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's film Morocco (also 1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her introduction to American audiences. During production, von Sternberg focused his energies on Dietrich and treated Cooper dismissively. Tensions came to a head after von Sternberg yelled directions at Cooper in German. The actor approached the director, picked him up by the collar, and said, "If you expect to work in this country you'd better get on to the language we use here." Despite the tensions on the set, Cooper produced "one of his best performances", according to Thornton Delehanty of the New York Evening Post.
After returning to the Western genre in Zane Grey's Fighting Caravans (1931) with French actress Lili Damita, Cooper appeared in the Dashiell Hammett crime film City Streets (also 1931), co-starring Sylvia Sidney and Paul Lukas, playing a westerner who gets involved with big-city gangsters in order to save the woman he loves. Cooper concluded the year with appearances in two unsuccessful films: I Take This Woman (also 1931) with Carole Lombard, and His Woman with Claudette Colbert. The demands and pressures of making ten films in two years left Cooper exhausted and in poor health, suffering from anemia and jaundice. He had lost during that period, and felt lonely, isolated, and depressed by his sudden fame and wealth. In May 1931, Cooper left Hollywood and sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year.
During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso at the Villa Madama in Rome, where she taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. After guiding him through the great art museums and galleries of Italy, she accompanied him on a ten-week big-game hunting safari on the slopes of Mount Kenya in East Africa, where he was credited with over sixty kills, including two lions, a rhinoceros, and various antelopes. His safari experience in Africa had a profound influence on Cooper and intensified his love of the wilderness. After returning to Europe, he and the countess set off on a Mediterranean cruise of the Italian and French Rivieras. Rested and rejuvenated by his year-long exile, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood in April 1932 and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 a week, and director and script approval.
In 1932, after completing Devil and the Deep with Tallulah Bankhead to fulfill his old contract, Cooper appeared in A Farewell to Arms, the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Co-starring Helen Hayes, a leading New York theatre star and Academy Award winner, and Adolphe Menjou, the film presented Cooper with one of his most ambitious and challenging dramatic roles, playing an American ambulance driver wounded in Italy who falls in love with an English nurse during World War I. Critics praised his highly intense and emotional performance, and the film became one of the year's most commercially successful pictures. In 1933, after making Today We Live with Joan Crawford and One Sunday Afternoon with Fay Wray, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy film Design for Living, based on the successful Noël Coward play. Co-starring Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March, the film was a box office success, ranking as one of the top ten highest-grossing films of 1933. All three of the lead actors—March, Cooper, and Hopkins—received attention from this film as they were all at the peak of their careers. Cooper's performance — playing an American artist in Europe competing with his playwright friend for the affections of a beautiful woman — was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy. Cooper changed his name legally to "Gary Cooper" in August 1933.
In 1934, Cooper was loaned out to MGM for the Civil War drama film Operator 13 with Marion Davies, about a beautiful Union spy who falls in love with a Confederate soldier. Despite Richard Boleslawski's imaginative direction and George J. Folsey's lavish cinematography, the film did poorly at the box office.
Back at Paramount, Cooper appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever, with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. In the film, he plays a confidence man who tries to sell his daughter to the relatives who raised her, but is eventually won over by the adorable girl. Impressed by Temple's intelligence and charm, Cooper developed a close rapport with her, both on and off screen. The film was a box-office success.
The following year, Cooper was loaned out to Samuel Goldwyn Productions to appear in King Vidor's romance film The Wedding Night with Anna Sten, who was being groomed as "another Garbo". In the film, Cooper plays an alcoholic novelist who retreats to his family's New England farm where he meets and falls in love with a beautiful Polish neighbor. Cooper delivered a performance of surprising range and depth, according to biographer Larry Swindell. Despite receiving generally favorable reviews, the film was not popular with American audiences, who may have been offended by the film's depiction of an extramarital affair and its tragic ending.
That same year, Cooper appeared in two Henry Hathaway films: the melodrama Peter Ibbetson with Ann Harding, about a man caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the adventure film The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. While the former, championed by the surrealists became more successful in Europe than in the United States, the latter was nominated for seven Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films. Hathaway had the highest respect for Cooper's acting ability, calling him "the best actor of all of them".
American folk hero, 1936–1943
From Mr. Deeds to The Real Glory, 1936–1939
Cooper's career took an important turn in 1936. After making Frank Borzage's romantic comedy film Desire with Marlene Dietrich at Paramount—in which he delivered a performance considered by some contemporary critics as one of his finest—Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. In the film, Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, a quiet, innocent writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont, and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin were able to use Cooper's well-established screen persona as the "quintessential American hero"—a symbol of honesty, courage, and goodness—to create a new type of "folk hero" for the common man. Commenting on Cooper's impact on the character and the film, Capra observed:
Both Desire and Mr. Deeds opened in April 1936 to critical praise and were major box-office successes. In his review in The New York Times, Frank Nugent wrote that Cooper was "proving himself one of the best light comedians in Hollywood". For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Cooper appeared in two other Paramount films in 1936. In Lewis Milestone's adventure film The General Died at Dawn with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success.
In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly fictionalized version of the opening of the American western frontier. The film was an even greater box-office hit than its predecessor, due in large part to Jean Arthur's definitive depiction of Calamity Jane and Cooper's inspired portrayal of Hickock as an enigmatic figure of "deepening mythic substance". That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-three years.
In late 1936, Paramount was preparing a new contract for Cooper that would raise his salary to $8,000 a week when Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn for six films over six years with a minimum guarantee of $150,000 per picture. Paramount brought suit against Goldwyn and Cooper, and the court ruled that Cooper's new Goldwyn contract afforded the actor sufficient time to also honor his Paramount agreement. Cooper continued to make films with both studios, and by 1939 the United States Treasury reported that Cooper was the country's highest wage earner, at $482,819 (equivalent to $ million in ).
In contrast to his output the previous year, Cooper appeared in only one picture in 1937, Henry Hathaway's adventure film Souls at Sea. A critical and box-office failure, Cooper referred to it as his "almost picture", saying, "It was almost exciting, and almost interesting. And I was almost good." In 1938, he appeared in Archie Mayo's biographical film The Adventures of Marco Polo. Plagued by production problems and a weak screenplay, the film became Goldwyn's biggest failure to that date, losing $700,000. During this period, Cooper turned down several important roles, including the role of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Cooper was producer David O. Selznick's first choice for the part. He made several overtures to the actor, but Cooper had doubts about the project, and did not feel suited to the role. Cooper later admitted, "It was one of the best roles ever offered in Hollywood ... But I said no. I didn't see myself as quite that dashing, and later, when I saw Clark Gable play the role to perfection, I knew I was right."
Back at Paramount, Cooper returned to a more comfortable genre in Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert. In the film, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. Despite the clever screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, and solid performances by Cooper and Colbert, American audiences had trouble accepting Cooper in the role of a shallow philanderer. It succeeded only at the European box office market.
In the fall of 1938, Cooper appeared in H. C. Potter's romantic comedy The Cowboy and the Lady with Merle Oberon, about a sweet-natured rodeo cowboy who falls in love with the wealthy daughter of a presidential hopeful, believing her to be a poor, hard-working lady's maid. The efforts of three directors and several eminent screenwriters could not salvage what could have been a fine vehicle for Cooper. While more successful than its predecessor, the film was Cooper's fourth consecutive box-office failure in the American market.
In the next two years, Cooper was more discerning about the roles he accepted and made four successful large-scale adventure and cowboy films. In William A. Wellman's adventure film Beau Geste (1939), he plays one of three daring English brothers who join the French Foreign Legion in the Sahara to fight local tribes. Filmed in the same Mojave Desert locations as the original 1926 version with Ronald Colman, Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona. This was the last film in Cooper's contract with Paramount.
In Henry Hathaway's The Real Glory (1939), he plays a military doctor who accompanies a small group of American Army officers to the Philippines to help the Christian Filipinos defend themselves against Muslim radicals. Many film critics praised Cooper's performance, including author and film critic Graham Greene, who recognized that he "never acted better".
From The Westerner to For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940–1943
Cooper returned to the Western genre in William Wyler's The Westerner (1940) with Walter Brennan and Doris Davenport, about a drifting cowboy who defends homesteaders against Roy Bean, a corrupt judge known as the "law west of the Pecos". Screenwriter Niven Busch relied on Cooper's extensive knowledge of Western history while working on the script. The film received positive reviews and did well at the box-office, with reviewers praising the performances of the two lead actors. That same year, Cooper appeared in his first all-Technicolor feature, Cecil B. DeMille's adventure film North West Mounted Police (1940). In the film, Cooper plays a Texas Ranger who pursues an outlaw into western Canada where he joins forces with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who are after the same man, a leader of the North-West Rebellion. While not as popular with critics as its predecessor, the film was another box-office success—the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1940.
The early 1940s were Cooper's prime years as an actor. In a relatively short period, he appeared in five critically successful and popular films that produced some of his finest performances. When Frank Capra offered him the lead role in Meet John Doe before Robert Riskin even developed the script, Cooper accepted his friend's offer, saying, "It's okay, Frank, I don't need a script." In the film, Cooper plays Long John Willoughby, a down-and-out bush-league pitcher hired by a newspaper to pretend to be a man who promises to commit suicide on Christmas Eve to protest all the hypocrisy and corruption in the country. Considered by some critics to be Capra's best film at the time, Meet John Doe was received as a "national event" with Cooper appearing on the front cover of Time magazine on March 3, 1941. In his review in the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes called Cooper's performance a "splendid and utterly persuasive portrayal" and praised his "utterly realistic acting which comes through with such authority". Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote, "Gary Cooper, of course, is 'John Doe' to the life and in the whole—shy, bewildered, non-aggressive, but a veritable tiger when aroused."
That same year, Cooper made two films with director and good friend Howard Hawks. In the biographical film Sergeant York, Cooper portrays war hero Alvin C. York, one of the most decorated American soldiers in World War I. The film chronicles York's early backwoods days in Tennessee, his religious conversion and subsequent piety, his stand as a conscientious objector, and finally his heroic actions at the Battle of the Argonne Forest, which earned him the Medal of Honor. Initially, Cooper was nervous and uncertain about playing a living hero, so he traveled to Tennessee to visit York at his home, and the two quiet men established an immediate rapport and discovered they had much in common. Inspired by York's encouragement, Cooper delivered a performance that Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune called "one of extraordinary conviction and versatility", and that Archer Winston of the New York Post called "one of his best". After the film's release, Cooper was awarded the Distinguished Citizenship Medal by the Veterans of Foreign Wars for his "powerful contribution to the promotion of patriotism and loyalty". York admired Cooper's performance and helped promote the film for Warner Bros. Sergeant York became the top-grossing film of the year and was nominated for eleven Academy Awards. Accepting his first Academy Award for Best Actor from his friend James Stewart, Cooper said, "It was Sergeant Alvin York who won this award. Shucks, I've been in the business sixteen years and sometimes dreamed I might get one of these. That's all I can say ... Funny when I was dreaming I always made a better speech."
Cooper concluded the year back at Goldwyn with Howard Hawks to make the romantic comedy Ball of Fire with Barbara Stanwyck. In the film, Cooper plays a shy linguistics professor who leads a team of seven scholars who are writing an encyclopedia. While researching slang, he meets Stanwyck's flirtatious burlesque stripper Sugarpuss O'Shea who blows the dust off their staid life of books. The screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder provided Cooper the opportunity to exercise the full range of his light comedy skills. In his review for the New York Herald Tribune, Howard Barnes wrote that Cooper handled the role with "great skill and comic emphasis" and that his performance was "utterly delightful". Though small in scale, Ball of Fire was one of the top-grossing films of the year—Cooper's fourth consecutive picture to make the top twenty.
Cooper's only film appearance in 1942 was also his last under his Goldwyn contract. In Sam Wood's biographical film The Pride of the Yankees, Cooper portrays baseball star Lou Gehrig who established a record with the New York Yankees for playing in 2,130 consecutive games. Cooper was reluctant to play the seven-time All-Star, who only died the previous year from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — now commonly called "Lou Gehrig's disease". Beyond the challenges of effectively portraying such a popular and nationally recognized figure, Cooper knew very little about baseball and was not left-handed like Gehrig.
After Gehrig's widow visited the actor and expressed her desire that he portray her husband, Cooper accepted the role that covered a twenty-year span of Gehrig's life—his early love of baseball, his rise to greatness, his loving marriage, and his struggle with illness, culminating in his farewell speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939 before 62,000 fans. Cooper quickly learned the physical movements of a baseball player and developed a fluid, believable swing. The handedness issue was solved by reversing the print for certain batting scenes. The film was one of the year's top ten pictures and received eleven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's third).
Soon after the publication of Ernest Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, Paramount paid $150,000 for the film rights with the express intent of casting Cooper in the lead role of Robert Jordan, an American explosives expert who fights alongside the Republican loyalists during the Spanish Civil War. The original director, Cecil B. DeMille, was replaced by Sam Wood who brought in Dudley Nichols for the screenplay. After the start of principal photography in the Sierra Nevada in late 1942, Ingrid Bergman was brought in to replace ballerina Vera Zorina as the female lead—a change supported by Cooper and Hemingway. The love scenes between Bergman and Cooper were "rapturous" and passionate. Howard Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune wrote that both actors performed with "the true stature and authority of stars". While the film distorted the novel's original political themes and meaning, For Whom the Bell Tolls was a critical and commercial success and received ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Cooper's fourth).
World War II related activities
Due to his age and health, Cooper did not serve in the military during World War II, but like many of his colleagues, he got involved in the war effort by entertaining the troops. In June 1943, he visited military hospitals in San Diego, and often appeared at the Hollywood Canteen serving food to the servicemen. In late 1943, Cooper undertook a tour of the South West Pacific with actresses Una Merkel and Phyllis Brooks, and accordionist Andy Arcari.
Traveling on a B-24A Liberator bomber, the group toured the Cook Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia, Queensland, Brisbane—where General Douglas MacArthur told Cooper he was watching Sergeant York in a Manila theater when Japanese bombs began falling—New Guinea, Jayapura, and throughout the Solomon Islands.
The group often shared the same sparse living conditions and K-rations as the troops. Cooper met with the servicemen and women, visited military hospitals, introduced his attractive colleagues, and participated in occasional skits. The shows concluded with Cooper's moving recitation of Lou Gehrig's farewell speech. When he returned to the United States, he visited military hospitals throughout the country. Cooper later called his time with the troops the "greatest emotional experience" of his life.
Mature roles, 1944–1952
In 1944, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's wartime adventure film The Story of Dr. Wassell with Laraine Day — his third movie with the director. In the film, Cooper plays American doctor and missionary Corydon M. Wassell, who leads a group of wounded sailors through the jungles of Java to safety. Despite receiving poor reviews, Dr. Wassell was one of the top-grossing films of the year. With his Goldwyn and Paramount contracts now concluded, Cooper decided to remain independent and formed his own production company, International Pictures, with Leo Spitz, William Goetz, and Nunnally Johnson. The fledgling studio's first offering was Sam Wood's romantic comedy Casanova Brown with Teresa Wright, about a man who learns his soon-to-be ex-wife is pregnant with his child, just as he is about to marry another woman. The film received poor reviews, with the New York Daily News calling it "delightful nonsense", and Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, criticizing Cooper's "somewhat obvious and ridiculous clowning". The film was barely profitable.
In 1945, Cooper starred in and produced Stuart Heisler's Western comedy Along Came Jones with Loretta Young for International. In this lighthearted parody of his past heroic image, Cooper plays comically inept cowboy Melody Jones who is mistaken for a ruthless killer. Audiences embraced Cooper's character, and the film was one of the top box-office pictures of the year—a testament to Cooper's still vital audience appeal. It was also International's biggest financial success during its brief history before being sold off to Universal Studios in 1946.
Cooper's career during the post-war years drifted in new directions as American society was changing. While he still played conventional heroic roles, his films now relied less on his heroic screen persona and more on novel stories and exotic settings. In November 1945, Cooper appeared in Sam Wood's nineteenth-century period drama Saratoga Trunk with Ingrid Bergman, about a Texas cowboy and his relationship with a beautiful fortune-hunter. Filmed in early 1943, the movie's release was delayed for two years due to the increased demand for war movies. Despite poor reviews, Saratoga Trunk did well at the box office and became one of the top money-makers of the year for Warner Bros. Cooper's only film in 1946 was Fritz Lang's romantic thriller Cloak and Dagger, about a mild-mannered physics professor recruited by the OSS during the last years of World War II to investigate the German atomic bomb program. Playing a part loosely based on physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Cooper was uneasy with the role and unable to convey the "inner sense" of the character. The film received poor reviews and was a box-office failure. In 1947, Cooper appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's epic adventure film Unconquered with Paulette Goddard, about a Virginia militiaman who defends settlers against an unscrupulous gun trader and hostile Indians on the Western frontier during the eighteenth century. The film received mixed reviews, but even long-time DeMille critic James Agee acknowledged the picture had "some authentic flavor of the period". This last of four films made with DeMille was Cooper's most lucrative, earning the actor over $300,000 (equal to $ today) in salary and percentage of profits. Unconquered would be his last unqualified box-office success for the next five years.
In 1948, after making Leo McCarey's romantic comedy Good Sam, Cooper sold his company to Universal Studios and signed a long-term contract with Warner Bros. that gave him script and director approval and a guaranteed $295,000 (equal to $ today) per picture. His first film under the new contract was King Vidor's drama The Fountainhead (1949) with Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey. In the film, Cooper plays an idealistic and uncompromising architect who struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism in the face of societal pressures to conform to popular standards. Based on the novel by Ayn Rand who also wrote the screenplay, the film reflects her philosophy and attacks the concepts of collectivism while promoting the virtues of individualism. For most critics, Cooper was hopelessly miscast in the role of Howard Roark. In his review for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther concluded he was "Mr. Deeds out of his element". Cooper returned to his element in Delmer Daves' war drama Task Force (1949), about a retiring rear admiral who reminisces about his long career as a naval aviator and his role in the development of aircraft carriers. Cooper's performance and the Technicolor newsreel footage supplied by the United States Navy made the film one of Cooper's most popular during this period. In the next two years, Cooper made four poorly received films: Michael Curtiz' period drama Bright Leaf (1950), Stuart Heisler's Western melodrama Dallas (1950), Henry Hathaway's wartime comedy You're in the Navy Now (1951), and Raoul Walsh's Western action film Distant Drums (1951).
Cooper's most important film during the post-war years was Fred Zinnemann's Western drama High Noon (1952) with Grace Kelly and Katy Jurado for United Artists. In the film, Cooper plays retiring sheriff Will Kane who is preparing to leave town on his honeymoon when he learns that an outlaw he helped put away and his three henchmen are returning to seek their revenge. Unable to gain the support of the frightened townspeople, and abandoned by his young bride, Kane nevertheless stays to face the outlaws alone. During the filming, Cooper was in poor health and in considerable pain from stomach ulcers. His ravaged face and discomfort in some scenes "photographed as self-doubt", according to biographer Hector Arce, and contributed to the effectiveness of his performance. Considered one of the first "adult" Westerns for its theme of moral courage, High Noon received enthusiastic reviews for its artistry, with Time magazine placing it in the ranks of Stagecoach and The Gunfighter. Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote that Cooper was "at the top of his form", and John McCarten, in The New Yorker, wrote that Cooper was never more effective. The film earned $3.75 million in the United States and $18 million worldwide. Following the example of his friend James Stewart, Cooper accepted a lower salary in exchange for a percent of the profits, and ended up making $600,000. Cooper's understated performance was widely praised, and earned him his second Academy Award for Best Actor.
Later films, 1953–1961
After appearing in André de Toth's Civil War drama Springfield Rifle (1952)—a standard Warner Bros. film that was overshadowed by the success of its predecessor—Cooper made four films outside the United States. In Mark Robson's drama Return to Paradise (1953), Cooper plays an American wanderer who liberates the inhabitants of a Polynesian island from the puritanical rule of a misguided pastor. Cooper endured spartan living conditions, long hours, and ill health during the three-month location shoot on the island of Upolu in Western Samoa. Despite its beautiful cinematography, the film received poor reviews. Cooper's next three films were shot in Mexico. In Hugo Fregonese's action adventure film Blowing Wild (1953) with Barbara Stanwyck, he plays a wildcatter in Mexico who gets involved with an oil company executive and his unscrupulous wife with whom he once had an affair.
In 1954, Cooper appeared in Henry Hathaway's Western drama Garden of Evil, with Susan Hayward, about three soldiers of fortune in Mexico hired to rescue a woman's husband. That same year, he appeared in Robert Aldrich's Western adventure Vera Cruz with Burt Lancaster. In the film, Cooper plays an American adventurer hired by Emperor Maximilian I to escort a countess to Vera Cruz during the Mexican Rebellion of 1866. All of these films received poor reviews but did well at the box-office. For his work in Vera Cruz, Cooper earned $1.4 million in salary and percent of the gross.
During this period, Cooper struggled with health problems. As well as his ongoing treatment for ulcers, he suffered a severe shoulder injury during the filming of Blowing Wild when he was hit by metal fragments from a dynamited oil well. During the filming of Vera Cruz, he reinjured his hip falling from a horse, and was burned when Lancaster fired his rifle too close and the wadding from the blank shell pierced his clothing.
In 1955, he appeared in Otto Preminger's biographical war drama The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, about the World War I general who tried to convince government officials of the importance of air power, and was court-martialed after blaming the War Department for a series of air disasters. Some critics felt that Cooper was miscast, and that his dull, tight-lipped performance did not reflect Mitchell's dynamic and caustic personality. In 1956, Cooper was more effective playing a gentle Indiana Quaker in William Wyler's Civil War drama Friendly Persuasion with Dorothy McGuire. Like Sergeant York and High Noon, the film addresses the conflict between religious pacifism and civic duty. For his performance, Cooper received his second Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actor. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, and went on to earn $8 million worldwide.
In 1956, Cooper traveled to France to make Billy Wilder's romantic comedy Love in the Afternoon with Audrey Hepburn and Maurice Chevalier. In the film, Cooper plays a middle-aged American playboy in Paris who pursues and eventually falls in love with a much younger woman. Despite receiving some positive reviews—including from Bosley Crowther who praised the film's "charming performances"—most reviewers concluded that Cooper was simply too old for the part. While audiences may not have welcomed seeing Cooper's heroic screen image tarnished by his playing an aging roué trying to seduce an innocent young girl, the film was still a box-office success. The following year, Cooper appeared in Philip Dunne's romantic drama Ten North Frederick. In the film, which was based on the novel by John O'Hara, Cooper plays an attorney whose life is ruined by a double-crossing politician and his own secret affair with his daughter's young roommate. While Cooper brought "conviction and controlled anguish" to his performance, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, it was not enough to save what Bosley Crowther called a "hapless film".
Despite his ongoing health problems and several operations for ulcers and hernias, Cooper continued to work in action films. In 1958, he appeared in Anthony Mann's Western drama Man of the West (1958) with Julie London and Lee J. Cobb, about a reformed outlaw and killer who is forced to confront his violent past when the train he is riding in is held up by his former gang members. The film has been called Cooper's "most pathological Western", with its themes of impotent rage, sexual humiliation, and sadism. According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, Cooper, who struggled with moral conflicts in his personal life, "understood the anguish of a character striving to retain his integrity ... [and] brought authentic feeling to the role of a tempted and tormented, yet essentially decent man". Mostly ignored by critics at the time, the film is now well-regarded by film scholars and is considered Cooper's last great film.
After his Warner Bros. contract ended, Cooper formed his own production company, Baroda Productions, and made three unusual films in 1959 about redemption. In Delmer Daves' Western drama The Hanging Tree, Cooper plays a frontier doctor who saves a criminal from a lynch mob, and later tries to exploit his sordid past. Cooper delivered a "powerful and persuasive" performance of an emotionally scarred man whose need to dominate others is transformed by the love and sacrifice of a woman. In Robert Rossen's historical adventure They Came to Cordura with Rita Hayworth, he plays an army officer who is found guilty of cowardice and assigned the degrading task of recommending soldiers for the Medal of Honor during the Pancho Villa Expedition of 1916.
While Cooper received positive reviews, Variety and Films in Review felt he was too old for the part. In Michael Anderson's action drama The Wreck of the Mary Deare with Charlton Heston, Cooper plays a disgraced merchant marine officer who decides to stay aboard his sinking cargo ship in order to prove the vessel was deliberately scuttled and to redeem his good name. Like its two predecessors, the film was physically demanding. Cooper, who was a trained scuba diver, did most of his own underwater scenes. Biographer Jeffrey Meyers observed that in all three roles, Cooper effectively conveyed the sense of lost honor and desire for redemption—what Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim called the "struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what his moral identity should be".
Personal life
Marriage and family
Cooper was formally introduced to his future wife, 20-year-old New York debutante Veronica Balfe, on Easter Sunday 1933 at a party given by her uncle, art director Cedric Gibbons. Called "Rocky" by her family and friends, she grew up on Park Avenue and attended finishing schools. Her stepfather was Wall Street tycoon Paul Shields. Cooper and Rocky were quietly married at her parents' Park Avenue residence on December 15, 1933. According to his friends, the marriage had a positive impact on Cooper, who turned away from past indiscretions and took control of his life. Athletic and a lover of the outdoors, Rocky shared many of Cooper's interests, including riding, skiing, and skeet-shooting. She organized their social life, and her wealth and social connections provided Cooper access to New York high society. Cooper and his wife owned homes in the Los Angeles area in Encino (1933–36), Brentwood (1936–53), and Holmby Hills (1954–61), and owned a vacation home in Aspen, Colorado (1949–53).
Gary and Veronica Cooper's daughter, Maria Veronica Cooper, was born on September 15, 1937. By all accounts, he was a patient and affectionate father, teaching Maria to ride a bicycle, play tennis, ski, and ride horses. Sharing many of her parents' interests, she accompanied them on their travels and was often photographed with them. Like her father, she developed a love for art and drawing. As a family they vacationed together in Sun Valley, Idaho, spent time at Rocky's parents' country house in Southampton, New York, and took frequent trips to Europe. Cooper and Rocky were legally separated on May 16, 1951, when Cooper moved out of their home. For over two years, they maintained a fragile and uneasy family life with their daughter. Cooper moved back into their home in November 1953, and their formal reconciliation occurred in February 1954.
Romantic relationships
Prior to his marriage, Cooper had a series of romantic relationships with leading actresses, beginning in 1927 with Clara Bow, who advanced his career by helping him get one of his first leading roles in Children of Divorce. Bow was also responsible for getting Cooper a role in Wings, which generated an enormous amount of fan mail for the young actor. In 1928, he had a relationship with another experienced actress, Evelyn Brent, whom he met while filming Beau Sabreur. In 1929, while filming The Wolf Song, Cooper began an intense affair with Lupe Vélez, which was the most important romance of his early life. During their two years together, Cooper also had brief affairs with Marlene Dietrich while filming Morocco in 1930 and with Carole Lombard while making I Take This Woman in 1931. During his year abroad in 1931–32, Cooper had an affair with the married Countess Dorothy di Frasso, while staying at her Villa Madama near Rome.
After he was married in December 1933, Cooper remained faithful to his wife until the summer of 1942, when he began an affair with Ingrid Bergman during the production of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Their relationship lasted through the completion of filming Saratoga Trunk in June 1943. In 1948, after finishing work on The Fountainhead, Cooper began an affair with actress Patricia Neal, his co-star. At first they kept their affair discreet, but eventually it became an open secret in Hollywood, and Cooper's wife confronted him with the rumors, which he admitted were true. He also confessed that he was in love with Neal, and continued to see her. Cooper and his wife were legally separated in May 1951, but he did not seek a divorce. Neal later claimed that Cooper hit her after she went on a date with Kirk Douglas, and that he arranged for her to have an abortion when she became pregnant with Cooper's child. Neal ended their relationship in late December 1951. During his three-year separation from his wife, Cooper was rumored to have had affairs with Grace Kelly, Lorraine Chanel, and Gisèle Pascal.
Cooper biographers have explored his friendship in the late twenties with the actor Anderson Lawler, with whom Cooper shared a house on and off for a year, while at the same time seeing Clara Bow, Evelyn Brent and Lupe Vélez. Lupe Vélez once told Hedda Hopper of Vélez' affair with Cooper; whenever he would come home after seeing Lawler, she would sniff for Lawler's cologne. Vélez' biographer Michelle Vogel has reported that Vélez consented to Cooper's sexual behavior with Lawler, but only as long as she, too, could participate. In later life, he became involved in a relationship with the costume designer Irene, and was, according to Irene, "the only man she ever loved". A year after his death in 1961, Irene committed suicide by jumping from the 11th floor of the Knickerbocker Hotel, after telling Doris Day of her grief over Cooper's death.
Friendships, interests, and character
Cooper's twenty-year friendship with Ernest Hemingway began at Sun Valley in October 1940. The previous year, Hemingway drew upon Cooper's image when he created the character of Robert Jordan for the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. The two shared a passion for the outdoors, and for years they hunted duck and pheasant, and skied together in Sun Valley. Both men admired the work of Rudyard Kipling—Cooper kept a copy of the poem "If—" in his dressing room—and retained as adults Kipling's sense of boyish adventure.
As well as admiring Cooper's hunting skills and knowledge of the outdoors, Hemingway believed his character matched his screen persona, once telling a friend, "If you made up a character like Coop, nobody would believe it. He's just too good to be true." They saw each other often, and their friendship remained strong through the years.
Cooper's social life generally centered on sports, outdoor activities, and dinner parties with his family and friends from the film industry, including directors Henry Hathaway, Howard Hawks, William Wellman, and Fred Zinnemann, and actors Joel McCrea, James Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, and Robert Taylor. As well as hunting, Cooper enjoyed riding, fishing, skiing, and later in life, scuba diving. He never abandoned his early love for art and drawing, and over the years, he and his wife acquired a private collection of modern paintings, including works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Cooper owned several works by Pablo Picasso, whom he met in 1956. Cooper also had a lifelong passion for automobiles, with a collection that included a 1930 Duesenberg.
Cooper was naturally reserved and introspective, and loved the solitude of outdoor activities. Not unlike his screen persona, his communication style frequently consisted of long silences with an occasional "yup" and "shucks". He once said, "If others have more interesting things to say than I have, I keep quiet." According to his friends, Cooper could also be an articulate, well-informed conversationalist on topics ranging from horses, guns, and Western history to film production, sports cars, and modern art. He was modest and unpretentious, frequently downplaying his acting abilities and career accomplishments. His friends and colleagues described him as charming, well-mannered, and thoughtful, with a lively boyish sense of humor. Cooper maintained a sense of propriety throughout his career and never misused his movie star status—never sought special treatment or refused to work with a director or leading lady. His close friend Joel McCrea recalled, "Coop never fought, he never got mad, he never told anybody off that I know of; everybody that worked with him liked him."
Political views
Like his father, Cooper was a conservative Republican; he voted for Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Herbert Hoover in 1928 and 1932, and campaigned for Wendell Willkie in 1940. When Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented fourth presidential term in 1944, Cooper campaigned for Thomas E. Dewey and criticized Roosevelt for being dishonest and adopting "foreign" ideas. In a radio address that he paid for himself just prior to the election, Cooper said, "I disagree with the New Deal belief that the America all of us love is old and worn-out and finished—and has to borrow foreign notions that don't even seem to work any too well where they come from ... Our country is a young country that just has to make up its mind to be itself again." He also attended a Republican rally at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that drew 93,000 Dewey supporters.
Cooper was one of the founding members of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a conservative organization dedicated, according to its statement of principles, to preserving the "American way of life" and opposing communism and fascism. The organization — whose membership included Walter Brennan, Laraine Day, Walt Disney, Clark Gable, Hedda Hopper, Ronald Reagan, Barbara Stanwyck, and John Wayne — advised the United States Congress to investigate communist influence in the motion picture industry. On October 23, 1947, Cooper was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and was asked if he had observed any "communistic influence" in Hollywood.
Cooper recounted statements he'd heard suggesting that the Constitution was out of date and that Congress was an unnecessary institution—comments that Cooper said he found to be "very un-American" and testified that he had rejected several scripts because he thought they were "tinged with communist ideas". Unlike some other witnesses, Cooper did not name any individuals, nor did he name any scripts, during his testimony.
In 1951, while making High Noon, Cooper became friends with the film's screenwriter, Carl Foreman, who had been a member of the Communist Party. When Foreman was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Cooper put his career on the line to defend Foreman. When John Wayne and others threatened Cooper with blacklisting himself and the loss of his passport if he did not walk off the film, Cooper gave a statement to the press in support of Foreman, calling him "the finest kind of American". When producer Stanley Kramer removed Foreman's name as screenwriter, Cooper and director Fred Zinnemann threatened to walk off the film if Foreman's name was not restored. Foreman later said that, of all his friends and allies and colleagues in Hollywood, "Cooper was the only big one who tried to help. The only one." Cooper even offered to testify in Foreman's behalf before the committee, but character witnesses were not allowed. Foreman always sent future scripts to Cooper for first refusal, including The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Key and The Guns of Navarone. Cooper had to turn them down because of his age.
Religion
Cooper was baptized in the Anglican Church in December 1911 in Britain, and was raised in the Episcopal Church in the United States. While he was not an observant Christian for most of his adult life, many of his friends believed he had a deeply spiritual side.
On June 26, 1953, Cooper accompanied his wife and daughter, who were devout Catholics, to Rome, where they had an audience with Pope Pius XII. Cooper and his wife were still separated at the time, but the papal visit marked the beginning of their gradual reconciliation. In the coming years, Cooper contemplated his mortality and his personal behavior, and started discussing Catholicism with his family. He began attending church with them regularly, and met with their parish priest, who offered Cooper spiritual guidance. After several months of study, Cooper was baptized as a Roman Catholic on April 9, 1959, before a small group of family and friends at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.
Final years and death
On April 14, 1960, Cooper underwent surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had metastasized to his colon. He fell ill again on May 31 and underwent further surgery at Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles in early June to remove a malignant tumor from his large intestine. After recuperating over the summer, Cooper took his family on vacation to the south of France before traveling to the UK in the fall to star in The Naked Edge. In December 1960, he worked on the NBC television documentary The Real West, which was part of the company's Project 20 series.
On December 27, his wife learned from their family doctor that Cooper's cancer had spread to his lungs and bones and was inoperable. His family decided not to tell him immediately.
On January 9, 1961, Cooper attended a dinner that was given in his honor and hosted by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin at the Friars Club. The dinner was attended by many of his industry friends and concluded with a brief speech by Cooper who said, "The only achievement I'm proud of is the friends I've made in this community."
In mid-January, Cooper took his family to Sun Valley for their last vacation together. Cooper and Hemingway hiked through the snow together for the last time. On February 27, after returning to Los Angeles, Cooper learned that he was dying. He later told his family, "We'll pray for a miracle; but if not, and that's God's will, that's all right too." On April 17, Cooper watched the Academy Awards ceremony on television and saw his good friend James Stewart, who had presented Cooper with his first Oscar years earlier, accept on Cooper's behalf an honorary award for lifetime achievement—his third Oscar. Holding back tears, Stewart said, "Coop, I'll get this to you right away. And Coop, I want you to know this, that with this goes all the warm friendship and the affection and the admiration and the deep, the deep respect of all of us. We're very, very proud of you, Coop. All of us are tremendously proud." The following day, newspapers around the world announced the news that Cooper was dying. In the coming days he received numerous messages of appreciation and encouragement, including telegrams from Pope John XXIII and Queen Elizabeth II, and a telephone call from President John F. Kennedy.
In his last public statement on May 4, Cooper said, "I know that what is happening is God's will. I am not afraid of the future." He received the last rites on May 12. Cooper died quietly the following day, Saturday, May 13, 1961, at 12:47 P.M.
A requiem mass was held on May 18 at the Church of the Good Shepherd, attended by many of Cooper's friends, including James Stewart, Jack Benny, Henry Hathaway, Joel McCrea, Audrey Hepburn, Jack L. Warner, John Ford, John Wayne, Edward G. Robinson, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Fred Astaire, Randolph Scott, Walter Pidgeon, Bob Hope and Marlene Dietrich. Cooper was buried in the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. In May 1974, after his family relocated to New York, Cooper's remains were exhumed and reburied in Sacred Hearts Cemetery in Southampton. His grave is marked by a three-ton boulder from a Montauk quarry.
Acting style and reputation
Cooper's acting style consisted of three essential characteristics: his ability to project elements of his own personality onto the characters he portrayed, to appear natural and authentic in his roles, and to underplay and deliver restrained performances calibrated for the camera and the screen. Acting teacher Lee Strasberg once observed: "The simplest examples of Stanislavsky's ideas are actors such as Gary Cooper, John Wayne, and Spencer Tracy. They try not to act but to be themselves, to respond or react. They refuse to say or do anything they feel not to be consonant with their own characters." Film director François Truffaut ranked Cooper among "the greatest actors" because of his ability to deliver great performances "without direction". This ability to project elements of his own personality onto his characters produced a continuity across his performances to the extent that critics and audiences were convinced that he was simply "playing himself".
Cooper's ability to project his personality onto his characters played an important part in his appearing natural and authentic on screen. Actor John Barrymore said of Cooper, "This fellow is the world's greatest actor. He does without effort what the rest of us spend our lives trying to learn—namely, to be natural." Charles Laughton, who played opposite Cooper in Devil and the Deep agreed, "In truth, that boy hasn't the least idea how well he acts ... He gets at it from the inside, from his own clear way of looking at life." William Wyler, who directed Cooper in two films, called him a "superb actor, a master of movie acting".
In his review of Cooper's performance in The Real Glory, Graham Greene wrote, "Sometimes his lean photogenic face seems to leave everything to the lens, but there is no question here of his not acting. Watch him inoculate the girl against cholera—the casual jab of the needle, and the dressing slapped on while he talks, as though a thousand arms had taught him where to stab and he doesn't have to think anymore."
Cooper's style of underplaying before the camera surprised many of his directors and fellow actors. Even in his earliest feature films, he recognized the camera's ability to pick up slight gestures and facial movements. Commenting on Cooper's performance in Sergeant York, director Howard Hawks observed, "He worked very hard and yet he didn't seem to be working. He was a strange actor because you'd look at him during a scene and you'd think ... this isn't going to be any good. But when you saw the rushes in the projection room the next day you could read in his face all the things he'd been thinking." Sam Wood, who directed Cooper in four films, had similar observations about Cooper's performance in Pride of the Yankees, noting, "What I thought was underplaying turned out to be just the right approach. On the screen he's perfect, yet on the set you'd swear it's the worst job of acting in the history of motion pictures."
Fellow actors admired his abilities as an actor. Commenting on her two films playing opposite Cooper, actress Ingrid Bergman concluded, "The personality of this man was so enormous, so overpowering—and that expression in his eyes and his face, it was so delicate and so underplayed. You just didn't notice it until you saw it on the screen. I thought he was marvelous; the most underplaying and the most natural actor I ever worked with."
Tom Hanks declared, "In only one scene in the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, we see the future of screen acting in the form of Gary Cooper. He is quiet and natural, somehow different from the other cast members. He does something mysterious with his eyes and shoulders that is much more like 'being' than 'acting'."
Daniel Day-Lewis said, "I don't particularly like westerns as a genre, but I do love certain westerns. 'High Noon' means a lot to me – I love the purity and the honesty, I love Gary Cooper in that film, the idea of the last man standing."
Chris Pratt stated, "I started watching Westerns when I was shooting in London about four or five years ago. I really fell in love with Gary Cooper, and his stuff. That sucked me into the Westerns. Before, I never got engrossed in the story. I'd just dip in, and there were guys in horses in black and white. High Noon's later Gary Cooper, I liked that. But I liked 'The Westerner'. That's my favorite one. I have that poster hung up in my house because I really like that one."
To Al Pacino, "Gary Cooper was a phenomenon—his ability to take some thing and elevate it, give it such dignity. One of the great presences."
Mylène Demongeot first got with Gary Cooper for the opening of the first escalator to be installed in a cinema, at the Rex Theatre in Paris, on June 7, 1957. She declared in a 2015 filmed interview: "Gary Cooper ... il est sublime ! Aaahhh (Mylène pushing a cry of love not to say ecstasy) il est sublime ... Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! Là je dois dire que ça fait partie des stars, y'a Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, ces grands Américains que j'ai rencontrés comme ça, c'est vraiment des mecs incroyables. Y'en a plus des comme ça ! Euh non. (Gary Cooper was sublime, there I have to say, now he, was part of the stars, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, John Wayne, those great americans who I've met really were unbelievable guys, there aren't any like them anymore)."
Career assessment and legacy
Cooper's career spanned thirty-six years, from 1925 to 1961. During that time, he appeared in eighty-four feature films in a leading role. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era to the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His natural and authentic acting style appealed powerfully to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major movie genres, including Westerns, war films, adventure films, drama films, crime films, romance films, comedy films, and romantic comedy films. He appeared on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities for twenty-three consecutive years, from 1936 to 1958. According to Quigley's annual poll, Cooper was one of the top money-making stars for eighteen years, appearing in the top ten in 1936–37, 1941–49, and 1951–57. He topped the list in 1953. In Quigley's list of all-time money-making stars, Cooper is listed fourth, after John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Tom Cruise. At the time of his death, it was estimated that his films grossed well over $200 million (equivalent to $ billion in ).
In over half of his feature films, Cooper portrayed Westerners, soldiers, pilots, sailors, and explorers—all men of action. In the rest he played a wide range of characters, included doctors, professors, artists, architects, clerks, and baseball players. Cooper's heroic screen image changed with each period of his career. In his early films, he played the young naive hero sure of his moral position and trusting in the triumph of simple virtues (The Virginian). After becoming a major star, his Western screen persona was replaced by a more cautious hero in adventure films and dramas (A Farewell to Arms). During the height of his career, from 1936 to 1943, he played a new type of hero—a champion of the common man willing to sacrifice himself for others (Mr. Deeds, Meet John Doe, and For Whom the Bell Tolls).
In the post-war years, Cooper attempted broader variations on his screen image, which now reflected a hero increasingly at odds with the world who must face adversity alone (The Fountainhead and High Noon). In his final films, Cooper's hero rejects the violence of the past, and seeks to reclaim lost honor and find redemption (Friendly Persuasion and Man of the West). The screen persona he developed and sustained throughout his career represented the ideal American hero—a tall, handsome, and sincere man of steadfast integrity who emphasized action over intellect, and combined the heroic qualities of the romantic lover, the adventurer, and the common man.
On February 6, 1960, Cooper was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6243 Hollywood Boulevard for his contribution to the film industry. He was awarded a star on the sidewalk outside the Ellen Theater in Bozeman, Montana.
On May 6, 1961, he was awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters in recognition of his significant contribution to the arts. On July 30, 1961, he was posthumously awarded the David di Donatello Special Award in Italy for his career achievements.
In 1966, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. In 2015, he was inducted into the Utah Cowboy and Western Heritage Hall of Fame. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper eleventh on its list of the 25 male stars of classic Hollywood. Three of his characters—Will Kane, Lou Gehrig, and Sergeant York—made AFI's list of the one hundred greatest heroes and villains, all of them as heroes. His Lou Gehrig line, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.", is ranked by AFI as the thirty-eighth greatest movie quote of all time.
More than a half century after his death, Cooper's enduring legacy, according to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, is his image of the ideal American hero preserved in his film performances. Charlton Heston once observed, "He projected the kind of man Americans would like to be, probably more than any actor that's ever lived."
In the TV series Justified, based on works and characters created by Elmore Leonard, Gary Cooper is used throughout the six seasons as the man whom U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens, played by Timothy Olyphant, aspires to be. When his colleague asks Marshall Givens how he thinks his dangerous plan to bring down a villain can possibly work, he replies: "Why not? Worked for Gary Cooper."
Gary Cooper is referenced several times in the critically acclaimed television series The Sopranos, with protagonist Tony Soprano asking "What ever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type." while complaining about his problems to his therapist.
In the 1930s hit song "Puttin' On the Ritz", Cooper is referenced in the line "dress up like a million dollar trooper/Tryin' hard to look like Gary Cooper, Super duper!" More than two decades after Cooper's death a new version of the song was released in 1983 by Taco; the original lyrics were kept, including the references to Cooper.
In J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Cooper is "spotted" by Holden Caulfield to distract a woman he is dancing with.
Awards and nominations
Filmography
The following is a list of feature films in which Cooper appeared in a leading role.
The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926)
Children of Divorce (1927)
Arizona Bound (1927)
Wings (1927)
Nevada (1927)
It (1927)
The Last Outlaw (1927)
Beau Sabreur (1928)
The Legion of the Condemned (1928)
Doomsday (1928)
Half a Bride (1928)
Lilac Time (1928)
The First Kiss (1928)
The Shopworn Angel (1928)
Wolf Song (1929)
Betrayal (1929)
The Virginian (1929)
Only the Brave (1930)
The Texan (1930)
Seven Days' Leave (1930)
A Man from Wyoming (1930)
The Spoilers (1930)
Morocco (1930)
Fighting Caravans (1931)
City Streets (1931)
I Take This Woman (1931)
His Woman (1931)
Devil and the Deep (1932)
If I Had a Million (1932)
A Farewell to Arms (1932)
Today We Live (1933)
One Sunday Afternoon (1933)
Design for Living (1933)
Alice in Wonderland (1933)
Operator 13 (1934)
Now and Forever (1934)
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
The Wedding Night (1935)
Peter Ibbetson (1935)
Desire (1936)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
The General Died at Dawn (1936)
The Plainsman (1936)
Souls at Sea (1937)
The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938)
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938)
The Cowboy and the Lady (1938)
Beau Geste (1939)
The Real Glory (1939)
The Westerner (1940)
North West Mounted Police (1940)
Meet John Doe (1941)
Sergeant York (1941)
Ball of Fire (1941)
The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944)
Casanova Brown (1944)
Along Came Jones (1945)
Saratoga Trunk (1945)
Cloak and Dagger (1946)
Unconquered (1947)
Good Sam (1948)
The Fountainhead (1949)
Task Force (1949)
Bright Leaf (1950)
Dallas (1950)
You're in the Navy Now (1951)
It's a Big Country (1951)
Distant Drums (1951)
High Noon (1952)
Springfield Rifle (1952)
Return to Paradise (1953)
Blowing Wild (1953)
Garden of Evil (1954)
Vera Cruz (1954)
The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955)
Friendly Persuasion (1956)
Love in the Afternoon (1957)
Ten North Frederick (1958)
Man of the West (1958)
The Hanging Tree (1959)
They Came to Cordura (1959)
The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959)
The Naked Edge (1961)
Radio appearances
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Adrien Le Bihan, Gary Cooper, le prince des acteurs, LettMotif, 2021, 358p.()
External links
1901 births
1961 deaths
20th-century American male actors
Academy Honorary Award recipients
American expatriates in England
American male film actors
American male silent film actors
American male television actors
American people of English descent
Best Actor Academy Award winners
Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners
California Republicans
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Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism
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People from Holmby Hills, Los Angeles | true | [
"Calamity Anne's Beauty is a 1913 American silent short Western comedy film directed by Allan Dwan and starring Louise Lester as Calamity Anne.\n\nOther cast\n Charlotte Burton\n J. Warren Kerrigan\n Phyllis Gordon\n Jack Richardson\n Jessalyn Van Trump\n\nExternal links\n\n1913 films\n1910s Western (genre) comedy films\nAmerican silent short films\nAmerican Western (genre) comedy films\nAmerican black-and-white films\nAmerican films\n1913 short films\nBeauty\nComedy short films\n1913 comedy films\nSilent American Western (genre) films",
"Clowns Spinning Hats is a black-and-white silent film featuring clowns throwing hats back and forth to each other. It was written and produced by Lubin Films and released April 7, 1900.\n\nSee also\n List of American films of 1900\nLubin Studios\nSilent film\nClown\n\nExternal links\n\n1900 films\nAmerican films\nAmerican silent short films\nAmerican black-and-white films\n1900 comedy films\nAmerican comedy films\n1900 short films\nComedy films about clowns\nLubin Manufacturing Company films\n\nComedy short films"
] |
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