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Steven_Spielberg | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Spielberg | [
745
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Spielberg"
] | Steven Allan Spielberg (; born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, Spielberg is widely regarded as one of the greatest film directors of all time and is the most commercially successful director in film history. He is the recipient of many accolades, including three Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and four Directors Guild of America Awards, as well as the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1995, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2006, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2009 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. Seven of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He moved to California and studied film in college. After directing several episodes for television, including Night Gallery and Columbo, he directed the television film Duel (1971), which later received an international theatrical release. He made his theatrical debut with The Sugarland Express (1974) and became a household name with the summer blockbuster Jaws (1975). He directed more box office successes with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and the original Indiana Jones trilogy (1981–89). He explored drama in The Color Purple (1985) and Empire of the Sun (1987).
In 1993, Spielberg directed back-to-back blockbuster hits with the science fiction thriller Jurassic Park, the highest-grossing film ever at the time, and the Holocaust drama Schindler's List, which has often been listed as one of the greatest films ever made. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for the latter and the 1998 World War II epic Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg has since directed the science fiction films A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Minority Report (2002), and War of the Worlds (2005); the historical dramas Amistad (1997), Munich (2005), War Horse (2011), Lincoln (2012), Bridge of Spies (2015) and The Post (2017); the animated film The Adventures of Tintin (2011); the musical West Side Story (2021); and the semi-autobiographical drama The Fabelmans (2022).
Spielberg co-founded Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks, and he has served as a producer for many successful films and television series, among them Poltergeist (1982), Gremlins (1984), Back to the Future (1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and Band of Brothers (2001). He has had a long collaboration with the composer John Williams, with whom he has worked for all but five of his feature films. Several of Spielberg's works are considered among the greatest films in history, and some are among the highest-grossing films ever. In 2013, Time listed him as one of the 100 most influential people, and in 2023, Spielberg was the recipient of the first ever Time 100 Impact Award in the US
Early life and background
Spielberg was born on December 18, 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His mother, Leah (née Posner, later Adler; 1920–2017), was a restaurateur and concert pianist, and his father, Arnold (1917–2020), was an electrical engineer involved in the development of computers. His immediate family were Reform Jewish/Orthodox Jewish. Spielberg's paternal grandparents were Jews from Ukraine; his grandmother Rebecca, maiden name Chechik, was from Sudylkiv, and his grandfather Shmuel Spielberg was from Kamianets-Podilskyi. Schmuel escaped to Cincinnati in 1906 to avoid being drafted into the Russian army, and he brought his fiancée Rebecca there in 1908. Spielberg has three younger sisters: Anne, Sue, and Nancy. In 1952, his family moved to Haddon Township, New Jersey after his father was hired by RCA. Spielberg attended Hebrew school from 1953 to 1957, in classes taught by Rabbi Albert L. Lewis. At their home in Cincinnati, his grandmother taught English to Holocaust survivors. They, in turn, taught him numbers: "One man in particular, I kept looking at his numbers–his number tattooed on his forearm... he started – you know, when–during the dinner break, when everybody was eating and not learning, he would point to the numbers. And he would say, that is a two, and that is a four. And then he'd say, and this is a eight, and that's a one. And I'll never forget this. And he said, and that's a nine. And then he crooked his arm and inverted his arm and said, and see, it becomes a six. It's magic. And now it's a nine, and now it's a six, and now it's a nine and now it's a six. And that's really how I learned my numbers for the first time... the irony of all that, and the gift of that lesson, never really dawned on me until I was much older."
In early 1957, the family moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Spielberg had a bar mitzvah ceremony when he was thirteen. His family was involved in the synagogue and had many Jewish friends. Of the Holocaust, he said that his parents "talked about it all the time, and so it was always on my mind." His father had lost between sixteen and twenty relatives in the Holocaust. Spielberg found it difficult accepting his heritage; he said: "It isn't something I enjoy admitting... but when I was seven, eight, nine years old, God forgive me, I was embarrassed because we were Orthodox Jews. I was embarrassed by the outward perception of my parents' Jewish practices. I was never really ashamed to be Jewish, but I was uneasy at times." Spielberg was the target of anti-Semitism: "In high school, I got smacked and kicked around. Two bloody noses. It was horrible." He gradually followed Judaism less during adolescence, after his family had moved to various neighborhoods and found themselves to be the only Jews.
He recalls his parents taking him to see Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). He had never seen a movie before, and thought they were taking him to the circus. He was terrified by the movie's train crash, and at age 12, he recreated it with his Lionel trains and filmed it. He recalls: "The trains went around and around, and after a while that got boring, and I had this eight-millimeter camera, and I staged a train wreck and filmed it. That was hard on the trains, but then I could cut the film lots of different ways and look at it over and over again." This was his first home movie. In 1958, he became a Boy Scout, eventually attaining the rank of Eagle Scout. He fulfilled a requirement for the photography merit badge by making a nine-minute 8 mm Western, The Last Gunfight. Spielberg used his father's movie camera to make amateur features, and began taking the camera along on every Scout trip. At age 13, Spielberg made a 40-minute war film, Escape to Nowhere, with a cast of classmates. The film won first prize in a statewide competition. Throughout his early teens, and after entering high school, Spielberg made about fifteen to twenty 8 mm adventure films. He recalls that "my dad told me stories about World War II constantly... I knew, based on the stories my dad and his friends were telling about World War II, that there was no glory in war. And it was ugly, and it was cruel... it was, you know, visually devastating. And so I thought, someday, if I ever do make a war movie for real, it's got to be something that tells the truth about what those experiences had been for those young 17-, 18-, 19-year-old boys storming Omaha Beach, let's say."
In Phoenix, Spielberg went to the local theater every Saturday. Formative films included Victor Fleming's Captains Courageous (1937), Disney's Pinocchio and Fantasia (both 1940), Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950) and The Seven Samurai (1954), Ishirō Honda's Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), David Lean's Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962) ("the film that set me on my journey"), Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (“I’m still living off the adrenalin that… I experienced watching that film for the first time.”) He attended Arcadia High School in 1961 for three years. In 1963, he wrote and directed a 140-minute science fiction film, Firelight, the basis of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Firelight, funded mainly by his father, was shown in a local theater for one evening and grossed $501 against its $500 budget.
After taking a tour bus to Universal Studios, a chance conversation with an executive led to Spielberg getting a three-day pass to the premises. On the fourth day, he walked up to the studio gates without a pass, and the security guard waved him in: "I basically spent the next two months at Universal Studios... that was how I became an unofficial apprentice that summer." His family later moved to Saratoga, California, where he attended Saratoga High School. A year later, his parents divorced. Spielberg moved to Los Angeles to stay with his father, while his three sisters and mother remained in Saratoga. He recalls: "My parents split up when I was 15 or 16 years old, and I needed a special friend, and had to use my imagination to take me to places that felt good – that helped me move beyond the problems my parents were having, and that ended our family as a whole. And thinking about that time, I thought, an extraterrestrial character would be the perfect springboard to purge the pain of your parents’ splitting up.” He recalls his mother had "a huge adventurous personality. We always saw her as Peter Pan, the kid who never wanted to grow up, and she sort of saw herself that way. I think my mom lived a lot of childhoods in her ninety-seven years." He was not interested in academics, aspiring only to be a filmmaker. He applied to the University of Southern California's film school but was turned down because of his mediocre grades. He then applied and enrolled at California State University, Long Beach, where he became a brother of Theta Chi Fraternity. In 1968, Universal gave Spielberg the opportunity to write and direct a short film for theatrical release, the 26-minute 35 mm Amblin'. Studio vice president Sidney Sheinberg was impressed and offered Spielberg a seven-year directing contract. A year later, he dropped out of college to begin directing television productions for Universal, making him the youngest director to be signed to a long-term plan with a major Hollywood studio. Spielberg returned to Long Beach in 2002, where he presented Schindler's List to complete his Bachelor of Arts in Film and Electronic Media.
He recalls a formative encounter with one of his favorite directors, John Ford, who said: "So they tell me you want to be a picture maker. You see those paintings around the office?" Spielberg said he did. Ford pointed to a painting and asked, "Where's the horizon?" Spielberg said it was at the top. Ford asked him where it was in another painting. Spielberg said it was at the bottom. Ford said, "When you're able to distinguish the art of the horizon at the bottom of a frame or at the top of the frame, but not going right through the center of the frame, when you can appreciate why it's at the top and why it's at the bottom, you might make a pretty good picture maker."
Career
1969–1974: On the horizon
Spielberg made his professional debut with "Eyes", a segment of Night Gallery (1969) scripted by Rod Serling and starring Joan Crawford. Initially, there was skepticism from Crawford and studio executives regarding Spielberg's inexperience. Despite Spielberg's efforts to implement advanced camerawork techniques, studio executives demanded a more straightforward approach. His initial contributions received mixed responses, leading Spielberg to briefly step back from studio work. Crawford, reflecting on her collaboration with Spielberg, recognized his potential, noting his unique intuitive inspiration. She expressed her appreciation for Spielberg's talent in a note to him and also communicated her approval to Serling. Crawford's endorsement highlighted Spielberg's early recognition in Hollywood despite initial hesitations regarding his experience.
In the early 1970s, Spielberg unsuccessfully tried to raise financing for his own low-budget films. He co-wrote and directed teleplays for Marcus Welby, M.D., The Name of the Game, Columbo, Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law and The Psychiatrist. Although unsatisfied with his work, Spielberg used the opportunity to experiment with his techniques and learn about filmmaking. He earned good reviews and impressed producers; he was earning a steady income and relocated to Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles.
Impressed, Universal signed Spielberg to do four television films. The first was Duel (1971), adapted from Richard Matheson's short story of the same name, about a salesman (Dennis Weaver) being chased down a highway by a psychotic tanker truck driver. Impressed, executives decided to promote the film on television. Reviews were positive, and Universal asked Spielberg to shoot more scenes so that Duel could be released to international markets. "Deservedly so" writes David Thomson, "for it stands up as one of the medium's most compelling spirals of suspense. The ordinariness of the Dennis Weaver character and the monstrous malignance of the truck confront one another with a narrative assurance that never needs to remind us of the element of fable." More TV films followed: Something Evil (1972) and Savage (1973).
Spielberg made his theatrical debut with The Sugarland Express (1974), based on a true story about a married couple on the run, desperate to regain custody of their baby from foster parents. The film starred Goldie Hawn and William Atherton and marked the first of many collaborations with the composer John Williams. Although the film was awarded Best Screenplay at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, it was not a commercial success, which Spielberg blamed on Universal's inconsistent marketing. The film opened in four hundred theaters in the US to positive reviews; Pauline Kael wrote "Spielberg uses his gifts in a very free-and-easy, American way—for humor, and for a physical response to action. He could be that rarity among directors, a born entertainer—perhaps a new generation's Howard Hawks." The Hollywood Reporter wrote that "a major new director is on the horizon."
1975–1980: Magician
Producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown took a chance with Spielberg, giving him the opportunity to direct Jaws (1975), a thriller based on Peter Benchley's bestseller. In it, a great white shark attacks beachgoers at a summer resort town, prompting police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) to hunt it down with the help of a marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a veteran shark hunter (Robert Shaw). Jaws was the first movie shot on open ocean, so shooting proved difficult, especially when the mechanical shark malfunctioned. The shooting schedule overran by a hundred days, and Universal threatened to cancel production. Against expectations, Jaws was a success, setting the domestic box office record and making Spielberg a household name. It won Academy Awards for Best Film Editing (Verna Fields), Best Original Dramatic Score (John Williams) and Best Sound (Robert Hoyt, Roger Heman, Earl Madery and John Carter). Spielberg said the malfunctioning of the mechanical shark resulted in a better movie, as he had to find other ways to suggest the shark's presence. After seeing the unconventional camera techniques of Jaws, Alfred Hitchcock praised "young Spielberg" for thinking outside the visual dynamics of the theater: "He's the first one of us who doesn't see the proscenium arch". Thomson writes "like Coppola on The Godfather, Spielberg asserted his own role and deftly organized the elements into a roller coaster entertainment without sacrificing inner meanings. The suspense of the picture came from meticulous technique and good humor about its own surgical cutting. You have only to submit to the travesty of Jaws 2 to realize how much more engagingly Spielberg saw the ocean, the perils, the sinister beauty of the shark, and the vitality of its human opponents."
After declining an offer to make Jaws 2 Spielberg and Dreyfuss reunited to work on a film about UFOs, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Spielberg used 65 mm film for the best picture quality, and a new live-action recording system so that the recordings could be duplicated later. He cast one of his favorite directors, François Truffaut, as the scientist Claude Lacombe and worked with special effects expert Douglas Trumbull. One of the rare films both written and directed by Spielberg, Close Encounters was very popular with film-goers, and he received his first Best Director nomination from the Academy Awards. It earned six more nominations, winning Best Cinematography (Vilmos Zsigmond) and Best Sound Effects Editing (Frank Warner). Stanley Kauffmann wrote: "I saw Close Encounters at its first public showing in New York, and most of the audience stayed on and on to watch the credits crawl lengthily at the end. For one thing, under the credits the giant spaceship was returning to the stars. For another, they just didn’t want to leave this picture. For still another, they seemed to understand the importance of those many names to what they had just seen." Kauffmann placed it first on his list of the best American films from 1968 to 1977. Reviewing Close Encounters, Kael called Spielberg "a magician in the age of movies."
His next directorial work was 1941 (1979), an action-comedy written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale about Californians preparing for a Japanese invasion after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Spielberg was self-conscious about doing comedy as he had no prior experience in the genre. Universal and Columbia agreed to co-finance the film. 1941 grossed over $92.4 million worldwide upon release, but most critics, and the studio heads, disliked it. Charles Champlin described 1941 as "the most conspicuous waste since the last major oil spill, which it somewhat resembles." Stanley Kubrick supposedly said that the film was "great, but not funny."
1981–1990: Impresario
He directed Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), with a screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan based on a story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman. They considered it an homage to the serials of the 1930s and 1940s. It starred Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones and Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood. Filmed in La Rochelle, Hawaii, Tunisia and Elstree Studios, England, the shoot was difficult but Spielberg said that it helped him hone his business acumen. The film was a box office success and won Academy Awards for Best Art Direction (Norman Reynolds, Leslie Dilley and Michael D. Ford); Best Film Editing (Michael Kahn); Best Sound (Bill Varney, Steve Maslow, Gregg Landaker and Roy Charman); Best Sound Editing (Ben Burtt and Richard L. Anderson); and Best Visual Effects (Richard Edlund, Kit West, Bruce Nicholson and Joe Johnston). Roger Ebert wrote that "Raiders of the Lost Ark is an out-of-body experience, a movie of glorious imagination and breakneck speed that grabs you in the first shot, hurtles you through a series of incredible adventures, and deposits you back in reality two hours later–breathless, dizzy, wrung-out, and with a silly grin on your face... For locations, it ticks off the jungles of South America, the hinterlands of Tibet, the deserts of Egypt, a hidden submarine base, an isolated island, a forgotten tomb–no, make that two forgotten tombs–and an American archaeology classroom. For villains, it has sadistic Nazis, slimy gravediggers, drunken Sherpas, and scheming Frenchmen. For threats, it climaxes with the wrath of God, and leads up to that spectacular development by easy stages, with tarantulas, runaway boulders, hidden spears, falling rock slabs, burning airplanes, runaway trucks, sealed tombs, and snakes. Lots of snakes." Raiders was the first film in the Indiana Jones franchise.
Spielberg returned to science fiction with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). It tells the story of Elliot (Henry Thomas), a young boy who befriends an alien who was accidentally left behind by his companions and is attempting to return home. Spielberg eschewed storyboards so that his direction would be more spontaneous, and shot roughly in sequence so that the actors' performances would be authentic as they bonded with and said goodbye to E.T. Richard Corliss recalled: "This was the closing-night attraction at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, a venue not known for blubbering sentiment. At the end, as the little critter bade his farewells and the Jules Verne-like space ship left the ground, the audience similarly levitated. One heard the audience’s childlike applause; one felt their spirits lift. This was rapture made audible, palpable ... Screenwriter Melissa Mathison lent a fairy-tale clarity to the director’s standard plot of a lost boy seeking his way back home. And Spielberg orchestrated the movements of the camera and the puppet spaceman with the feelings of—it has to be called love—expressed in young Henry Thomas’ yearning face. E.T. was the first film character to be a finalist in TIME’s Man of the Year sweepstakes. It would have been fine with me if the little creature, this lovely film, had won." A special screening was organized for Ronald and Nancy Reagan, who were emotional by the end. E.T. grossed $700 million worldwide. It won four Academy Awards: Best Original Score (John Williams), Best Sound (Robert Knudson, Robert Glass, Don Digirolamo and Gene Cantamessa), Best Sound Editing (Charles L. Campbell and Ben Burtt) and Best Visual Effects (Carlo Rambaldi, Dennis Muren and Kenneth F. Smith). Kael wrote of E.T.: "His voice is ancient and otherworldly but friendly, humorous. And this scaly, wrinkled little man with huge, wide-apart, soulful eyes and a jack-in-the-box neck has been so fully created that he's a friend to us, too; when he speaks of his longing to go home the audience becomes as mournful as Elliot. Spielberg has earned the tears that some people in the audience—and not just children—shed. The tears are tokens of gratitude for the spell the picture has put on the audience. Genuinely entrancing movies are almost as rare as extraterrestrial visitors." Spielberg co-wrote and produced Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, 1982), released the same summer as E.T. With John Landis, he co-produced the anthology film Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), contributing the "Kick the Can" segment.
His next feature film was the Raiders of the Lost Ark prequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). Working again with Lucas and Ford, the film was shot in the United States, Sri Lanka and China. The film was darker than its predecessor, and led to the creation of the PG-13 rating because some content was deemed unsuitable for children under 13. Spielberg later said that he was unhappy with Temple of Doom because it lacked his "personal touches and love". Nonetheless, the film was a blockbuster hit, won the Academy Award for Best Special Effects and received mostly good reviews. Kael preferred it to the original, writing: "Spielberg is like a magician whose tricks are so daring they make you laugh. He creates an atmosphere of happy disbelief: the more breathtaking and exhilarating the stunts are the funnier they are. Nobody has ever fused thrills and laughter in quite the way that he does here. He starts off at full charge in the opening sequence and just keeps going." She conceded that it was less "sincere" than Raiders, adding "that's what is so good about it." On this project Spielberg met his future wife, Kate Capshaw, who played Willie Scott. Spielberg recalled, "The second film I could have done a lot better if there had been a different story. It was a good learning exercise for me to really throw myself into a black hole. I came out of the darkness of Temple Of Doom and I entered the light of the woman I was eventually going to marry and raise a family with."
Thomson writes that "At first sight, the Spielberg of the eighties may seem more an impresario—or a studio, even—then a director." Between 1984 and 1990, Spielberg served as either producer or executive producer on nineteen feature films, among them Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984), Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985), The Goonies (Richard Donner, 1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Zemeckis, 1988), Joe Versus the Volcano (John Patrick Shanley, 1990) and Arachnophobia (Frank Marshall, 1990). For some, including Young Sherlock Holmes (Barry Levinson, 1985) and Harry and the Hendersons (William Dear, 1987), the title "Steven Spielberg Presents" was in the opening credits. Much of Spielberg's producing work was aimed at children and teens, including cartoons such as Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid! and Family Dog. Spielberg also produced Don Bluth's animated features An American Tail and The Land Before Time. In 1985, NBC offered Spielberg a two-year contract on a television series, Amazing Stories; the show was marketed as a blend of The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. NBC gave Spielberg creative control and a budget of $1 million for each episode. After two seasons and disappointing ratings, the show was not renewed. Although Spielberg's involvement as a producer would vary widely from project to project, Zemeckis said that Spielberg would always "respect the filmmaker's vision". Over the next decade, Spielberg's record as a producer brought mixed critical and commercial results. In 1992, Spielberg began to scale back producing, saying "Producing has been the least fulfilling aspect of what I've done in the last decade."
In the early 1980s, Spielberg befriended Warner Communications CEO Steve Ross eventually resulting in Spielberg making films for Warner Bros. It began with The Color Purple (1985), an adaptation of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, about a generation of empowered African-American women during depression-era America. It was Spielberg's first film on a dramatic subject matter, and he expressed reservations about tackling the project: "It's the risk of being judged-and accused of not having the sensibility to do character studies." Starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, the film was a box office hit and critics started to take note of Spielberg's foray into drama. Ebert named it the best film of the year. The film also received eleven Academy Award nominations, and Spielberg won Best Director from the Directors Guild of America. The film was produced and scored by Quincy Jones.
As China underwent economic reform and opened up to the American film industry, Spielberg made Empire of the Sun (1987), the first American film shot in Shanghai since the 1930s. It is an adaptation of J. G. Ballard's autobiographical novel of the same name about Jamie Graham (Christian Bale), a young boy who goes from being the son of a wealthy British family in Shanghai to a prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. It was written by playwright Tom Stoppard and co-starred John Malkovich as an American expatriate. Critical reaction was mixed at the time of release; criticism ranged from the "overwrought" plot to Spielberg's downplaying of "disease and starvation". However, Andrew Sarris named it the best film of the year and later included it among the best of the decade. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, but was a disappointment at the box office; Ian Alterman of The New York Times thought it was overlooked by audiences. Spielberg recalled that Empire of the Sun was one of his most enjoyable films to make. Thomson called it "a great work through and through. It received few Oscar nominations, but for anyone with a sense of film I think it was the first clear sign that Spielberg the showman was an artist, too."
After directing The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun, Spielberg intended to direct Rain Man, but instead directed Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) to meet his contractual obligations. Producer Lucas and star Ford returned for the film. A longtime James Bond fan, Spielberg cast Sean Connery as Jones's father, Henry Jones, Sr. Due to complaints about violence in Temple of Doom, Spielberg returned to more family-friendly fare for the third installment. Last Crusade received mostly positive reviews and was a box office success, earning $474 million; it was his biggest hit since E.T. Biographer Joseph McBride wrote that it was a comeback for Spielberg, and Spielberg acknowledged the amount he has learned from making the Indiana Jones series. Ebert wrote that "If there is just a shade of disappointment after seeing this movie, it has to be because we will never again have the shock of this material seeming new. Raiders of the Lost Ark, now more than ever, seems a turning point in the cinema of escapist entertainment, and there was really no way Spielberg could make it new all over again. What he has done is to take many of the same elements, and apply all of his craft and sense of fun to make them work yet once again. And they do."
Also in 1989, he reunited with Richard Dreyfuss for the romantic drama Always, about an aerial firefighter. It is a modern remake of one of Spielberg's favorite childhood films, A Guy Named Joe (1943). The story was personal; he said "As a child I was very frustrated, and maybe I saw my own parents [in A Guy Named Joe]. I was also short of girlfriends. And it stuck with me." Spielberg had discussed the film with Dreyfuss back in 1975, with up to twelve drafts being written before filming commenced. Always was commercially unsuccessful and received mixed reviews. Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote, "Always is filled with big, sentimental moments, it lacks the intimacy to make any of this very moving."
1991–1998: Oscar winner
After a brief setback in which Spielberg felt "artistically stalled", he returned in 1991 with Hook, about a middle-aged Peter Pan (Robin Williams), who returns to Neverland and encounters Tinker Bell (Julia Roberts) and the eponymous Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman). During filming, the stars clashed on set; Spielberg told 60 Minutes that he would never work with Roberts again. Nominated for five Academy Awards, the studio enjoyed the film but most critics did not; Thomson called it "maudlin." Writing for The Washington Post, Desson Howe described the film as "too industrially organized", and thought it mundane. At the box office, it earned over $300 million worldwide from a $70 million budget. In 1993, Spielberg served as an executive producer for the NBC science fiction series seaQuest DSV; the show was not a hit. In 1994, he found success producing the medical drama ER.
In 1993, Spielberg returned to the adventure genre with Jurassic Park, based on the 1990 bestseller by Michael Crichton (creator of ER), with a screenplay by Crichton and David Koepp. Jurassic Park is set on a fictional island near Costa Rica, where a businessman (Richard Attenborough) has hired a team of geneticists to create a wildlife park of de-extinct dinosaurs. In a departure from his usual order of planning, Spielberg and the designers storyboarded certain sequences from the novel early on. The film also used computer-generated imagery provided by Industrial Light & Magic; Jurassic Park was completed on time and became the highest-grossing film at the time, and won three Academy Awards. The film's dominance during its theatrical run, as well as Spielberg's $250 million salary, made him self-conscious of his own success.
Also in 1993, Spielberg directed Schindler's List, about Oskar Schindler, a businessman who helped save 1,100 Jews from the Holocaust. Based on Schindler's Ark by Australian novelist Thomas Keneally, Spielberg waited ten years to make the film as he did not feel "mature" enough. He wanted to embrace his heritage, and after the birth of his son, Max, he said that "it greatly affected me [...] A spirit began to ignite in me, and I became a Jewish dad". Filming commenced on March 1, 1993, in Poland, while Spielberg was still editing Jurassic Park in the evenings. To make filming "bearable", Spielberg brought his wife and children with him. Against expectations, the film was a commercial success, and Spielberg used his percentage of profits to start the Shoah Foundation, a non-profit organization that archives testimonies of Holocaust survivors. Schindler's List won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and Spielberg's first as Best Director. It also won seven BAFTAs, and three Golden Globes. Schindler's List is one of the American Film Institute's 100 best American films ever made. While Schindler's List was praised by most critics, some reviewers, including filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, criticized the film for its weak representation of the Holocaust. Imre Kertész, a Hungarian author and concentration camp survivor, also disliked the film, saying, "I regard as kitsch any representation of the Holocaust that is incapable of understanding or unwilling to understand the organic connection between our own deformed mode of life and the very possibility of the Holocaust." Thomson calls it "the most moving film I have ever seen."
In 1994, Spielberg took a break from directing to spend more time with his family, and set up his new film studio, DreamWorks, with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen. After his hiatus, he returned to directing with a sequel to Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). A loose adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel The Lost World, the plot follows mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and his researchers who study dinosaurs at Jurassic Park which is on an island and are confronted by another team with a different agenda. Spielberg wanted the onscreen creatures to be more realistic than in the first film; he used 3D storyboards, computer imagery and robotic puppets. Budgeted at $73 million, The Lost World: Jurassic Park opened in May 1997 and was one of the highest grossing films of the year. The Village Voice critic opined that The Lost World was "better crafted but less fun" than the first film, while The Guardian wrote "It looks like a director on autopilot [...] The special effects brook no argument."
Amistad (1997), his first film released under DreamWorks, was based on the true story of the events in 1839 aboard the slave ship La Amistad. Producer Debbie Allen, who had read the book Amistad I in 1978, thought Spielberg would be perfect to direct. Spielberg was hesitant taking on the project, afraid that it would be compared to Schindler's List, but he said, "I've never planned my career [...] In the end I do what I think I gotta do." Starring Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou and Matthew McConaughey, Spielberg used Allen's ten years worth of research to reenact the difficult historical scenes. The film struggled to find an audience, and underperformed at the box office; Spielberg admitted that "[Amistad] became too much of a history lesson."
Spielberg's 1998 release was World War II epic Saving Private Ryan, about a group of US soldiers led by Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) sent to bring home a paratrooper whose three older brothers were killed in the same twenty-four hours of the Normandy landing. Filming took place in England, and US Marine Dale Dye was hired to train the actors and keep them in character during the combat scenes. Halfway through filming, Spielberg reminded the cast that they were making a tribute to thank "your grandparents and my dad, who fought in [the war]". Upon release, critics praised the direction and its realistic portrayal of war. The film grossed a successful $481 million worldwide and Spielberg won a second Academy Award for Best Director. In August 1999, Spielberg and Hanks were awarded the Distinguished Public Service Medal from Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen. Thomson writes "Ryan changed war films: combat, shock, wounds, and fear had never been so graphically presented; and yet there was also a true sense of what duties and ideas had felt like in 1944. I disliked the framing device. I would have admired a director who trusted us to get there without that. Never mind—Ryan is a magnificent film." Ebert wrote "Spielberg knows how to make audiences weep better than any director since Chaplin in City Lights. But weeping is an incomplete response, letting the audience off the hook. This film embodies ideas. After the immediate experience begins to fade, the implications remain and grow."
1999–2012: Master of technology
Spielberg returned to science fiction with A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), a loose adaptation of Brian Aldiss's 1969 short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long". Stanley Kubrick had first asked Spielberg to direct the feature in 1979. Spielberg tried to make it in the style that Kubrick would have, though with mixed results according to some critics. The plot revolves around an android, David (Haley Joel Osment) who, like Pinocchio, dreams of being a "real boy". Critics thought Spielberg directed with "sentimentality", and Ebert wrote, "Here is one of the most ambitious films of recent years [...] but it miscalculates in asking us to invest our emotions in a character, a machine." The film won five Saturn Awards and grossed $236 million worldwide. Jonathan Rosenbaum highly praised the film: "If the best movies are often those that change the rules, Steven Spielberg’s sincere, cockeyed, serious, and sometimes masterful realization of Stanley Kubrick’s ambitious late project deserves to be a contender... If A.I. Artificial Intelligence—a film whose split personality is apparent even in its two-part title—is as much a Kubrick movie as a Spielberg one, this is in large part because it defamiliarizes Spielberg, makes him strange. Yet it also defamiliarizes Kubrick, with equally ambiguous results—making his unfamiliarity familiar. Both filmmakers should be credited for the results—Kubrick for proposing that Spielberg direct the project and Spielberg for doing his utmost to respect Kubrick’s intentions while making it a profoundly personal work." A. O. Scott called it "the best fairy tale–the most disturbing, complex and intellectually challenging boy's adventure story–Mr. Spielberg has made" and chose it as the best film of the year.
Spielberg followed A.I. with the sci-fi neo-noir Minority Report (2002), based on Philip K. Dick's short story of the same name about a group of investigators who try to prevent crimes before they are committed. The film received critical acclaim. Ebert named Minority Report the best film of 2002, praising its craftsmanship: "here is Spielberg using every trick in the book and matching them without seams, so that no matter how he's achieving his effects, the focus is always on the story and the characters... Some directors place their trust in technology. Spielberg, who is a master of technology, trusts only story and character, and then uses everything else as a workman uses his tools." However, critic Todd McCarthy thought there was not enough action. The film earned over $358 million worldwide. Also in 2002, he released Catch Me If You Can, based on the autobiography of con-artist Frank Abagnale. Leonardo DiCaprio played Abangale; Christopher Walken and Hanks also starred. Spielberg said, "I have always loved movies about sensational rogues—they break the law, but you just have to love them for the moxie." The film was a critical and commercial success.
Spielberg worked with Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Stanley Tucci in The Terminal (2004), a lighthearted comedy about an Eastern European man stranded in an airport. The film was praised for its production design and was a commercial success, although reviews were mixed. In 2005, Spielberg directed War of the Worlds, a co-production of Paramount and DreamWorks, based on H. G. Wells's novel of the same name; Spielberg had been a fan of the book and of George Pal's 1953 film. Starring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning, the film is about an American dock worker who is forced to look after his children, from whom he lives separately, as he tries to protect and reunite them with their mother when extraterrestrials invade Earth. Spielberg used storyboards to help the actors react to computer imagery that they could not see and used natural lighting and camerawork to avoid an "over stylized" science fiction picture. The film was a box office hit grossing over $600 million worldwide.
Spielberg's Munich (2005) is about the Israeli government's secret retaliation after eleven Israeli Olympic athletes were kidnapped and murdered in the 1972 Munich massacre. The film is based on Vengeance, a book by Canadian journalist George Jonas. It was previously adapted for the screen in the 1986 television film Sword of Gideon. Spielberg, who personally remembers the incident, sought advice from former president Bill Clinton, among others, before making the film because he did not want to cause further problems in the Middle East. Although the film garnered mostly positive reviews, some critics perceived it as anti-Semitic; it is one of Spielberg's most controversial films to date. Munich received five Academy Awards nominations: Best Picture, Best Film Editing, Best Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director for Spielberg. It was his sixth Best Director nomination, and fifth Best Picture nomination.
In the mid-2000s, Spielberg scaled down his directing career and became more selective about film projects to undertake. In December 2005, he and his partners sold DreamWorks to media conglomerate Viacom (now known as Paramount Global). The sale was finalized in February 2006. In June 2006, Spielberg planned to make Interstellar, but abandoned the project, which was eventually directed by Christopher Nolan. During this period, Spielberg remained active as a producer.
Spielberg returned to the Indiana Jones series in 2008 with the fourth installment, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Released nineteen years after Last Crusade, the film is set in 1957, pitting Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) against Soviet agents led by Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), searching for a telepathic crystal skull. Principal photography was complete in October 2007, and the film was released on May 22, 2008. This was his first film not released by DreamWorks since 1997. The film received generally favorable reviews from critics, but some fans were disappointed by the introduction of science fiction elements which were uncharacteristic of the previous films. Writing for The Age, Tom Ryan praised Spielberg and George Lucas for their realistic 1950s setting—"The energy on display is impressive". It was a box office success, grossing $790 million worldwide.
Starting in 2009, Spielberg shot the first film in a planned trilogy of motion capture films based on Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin. Spielberg had long been a fan of the comics, and per Michael Farr, Hergé "thought Spielberg was the only person who could ever do Tintin justice." The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn was co-produced by Peter Jackson and premiered in Brussels, Belgium. The film was released in North American theaters on December 21, 2011, in Digital 3D and IMAX. It received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed over $373 million worldwide. The Adventures of Tintin won Best Animated Feature at the 69th Golden Globe Awards. It was the first non-Pixar film to win the award since the category was introduced.
Spielberg followed Tintin with War Horse, shot in England in the summer of 2010. It was released four days after Tintin, on December 25, 2011. The film is based on Michael Morpurgo's 1982 novel of the same name and follows the long friendship between a British boy and his horse Joey before and during World War I. Distributed by Walt Disney Studios with whom DreamWorks made a distribution deal in 2009, War Horse was the first of four consecutive Spielberg films released by Disney. It had an acclaimed response from critics and was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. In a review for Salon magazine, Andrew O'Hehir wrote, "at this point in his career Spielberg is pursuing personal goals, and everything that's terrific and overly flat and tooth-rottingly sweet about War Horse reflects that."
Spielberg directed the historical drama Lincoln (2012), starring Daniel Day-Lewis as President Abraham Lincoln and Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln. Based on Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln and written by Tony Kushner, the film depicts the final four months of Lincoln's life. The film was shot in Richmond, Virginia in late 2011. and was released in the US in November 2012. Lincoln was acclaimed and earned more than $250 million worldwide. It was nominated for twelve Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, winning Best Production Design and Best Actor for Day-Lewis's performance. Donald Clarke from The Irish Times praised the direction: "Against the odds, Spielberg makes something genuinely exciting of the backstage wheedling."
2013–present: Recent work
It was announced on May 2, 2013, that Spielberg would direct American Sniper, but he left the project before production began. Instead, he directed Bridge of Spies (2015), a Cold War thriller based on the 1960 U-2 incident, and focusing on James B. Donovan's negotiations with the Soviets for the release of pilot Gary Powers after his aircraft was shot down over Soviet territory. It was written by Matt Charman and the Coen brothers, and starred Tom Hanks as Donovan, as well as Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan and Alan Alda. It was filmed in the fall of 2014 in New York City, Berlin and Wroclaw, and was released on October 16. Bridge of Spies was popular with critics, and was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture; Rylance won Best Supporting Actor, becoming the second actor to win for a performance directed by Spielberg.
In 2016, Spielberg made The BFG, an adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's book, starring newcomer Ruby Barnhill, and Mark Rylance as the titular Big Friendly Giant. DreamWorks bought the rights in 2010, and John Madden had intended to direct. The film was the last to be written by E.T. screenwriter Melissa Mathison before her death. It was co-produced and released by Walt Disney Pictures, marking the first Disney-branded film to be directed by Spielberg. The BFG premiered as an out-of-competition entry at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, and received a wide release in the US on July 1, 2016. The BFG received fair reviews; Michael Phillips of The Chicago Tribune compared certain scenes to the works of Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick, while Toronto Sun's Liz Braun thought that there were "moments of wonder and delight" but it was too long.
A year later, Spielberg directed The Post, an account of The Washington Post's printing of the Pentagon Papers. Starring Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, production began in New York on May 30, 2017. Spielberg stated his attraction to the project: "When I read the first draft of the script, this wasn't something that could wait three years or two years—this was a story I felt we needed to tell today." The film received a wide release on January 12, 2018. The Post gained positive reception; the critic from the Associated Press thought "Spielberg infuses every scene with tension and life and the grandeur of the ordinary that he's always been so good at conveying." In 2017, Spielberg and other filmmakers were featured in the Netflix documentary series Five Came Back, which discussed the contributions of directors Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston, George Stevens and William Wyler about their war-related works. Spielberg was also an executive producer.
Spielberg directed the science fiction Ready Player One (2018), adapted from the novel of the same name by Ernest Cline. It stars Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, and Mark Rylance. The plot takes place in 2045 when much of humanity uses virtual reality to escape the real world. Ready Player One began production in July 2016, and was intended to be released on December 15, 2017, but was moved to March 2018 to avoid competition with Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It premiered at the 2018 South by Southwest film festival. Spielberg's direction was praised along with the action scenes and visual effects, but many critics thought the film was too long and overused 1980s nostalgia.
In 2019, Spielberg filmed West Side Story, an adaptation of the musical of the same name. It stars Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler in her film debut with Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez, Mike Faist, and Rita Moreno in supporting roles. Written by Tony Kushner, the film stays true to the 1950s setting. West Side Story was released in December 2021 to positive reviews and received seven Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, and Best Director. Spielberg also received nominations from the Golden Globe Awards, Directors Guild of America, and Critics' Choice Movie Awards. The Economist praised the choreography, stating that it "stunningly melds beauty and violence". In March 2022, Spielberg said that West Side Story would be the last musical he will direct.
Spielberg's 2022 film The Fabelmans is a fictionalized account of his own adolescence, which he wrote with Tony Kushner. Gabriel LaBelle plays Sammy Fabelman, a character inspired by Spielberg, while Michelle Williams plays Sammy's mother Mitzi Fabelman, Paul Dano plays Burt Fabelman, his father, Seth Rogen plays Bennie Loewy, Burt's best friend and co-worker who becomes Sammy's surrogate uncle, and Judd Hirsch as Mitzi's Uncle Boris. Filming began in Los Angeles in July 2021, and the film premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, Spielberg's first appearance at that festival. It received widespread critical acclaim and won the festival's People's Choice Award. It received a limited theatrical release on November 11, 2022, by Universal Pictures, before expanding wide on November 23. Despite the favorable critical reception, West Side Story and The Fabelmans were box office failures, which Variety suggested could be attributed to a decline in the popularity of Spielberg in a film-going environment altered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the public's loss of interest in prestige films. The Fabelmans received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. It was, however, a major box office success in France and became the highest-rated film of the 21st century in the country, with a 4.9 average from critics on AlloCiné from 43 reviews, with all but 6 giving the film 5 stars. Cahiers du Cinéma wrote that Spielberg, at age 76, had "come to represent like no other, the idea of cinema as wonder, at a time when the relationship to the spectacular and the cinema seems more tormented than ever" and declared that the film will "undoubtedly remain the most important and singular film of his career."
Spielberg had planned to direct Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but he stepped down and was replaced by James Mangold. Spielberg said that he would remain "hands on" as a producer, along with Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall. In 2016, it was announced that it would be written by David Koepp, with a release by Disney on July 19, 2019. After a change of filming and release dates, it was postponed again when Jonathan Kasdan was announced as the film's new writer. Soon after, a new release date of July 9, 2021, was announced. In May 2019, Dan Fogelman was hired to write a new script, and Kasdan's story, focused on the Nazi gold train, would not be used; the script was ultimately credited to Mangold, Koepp, Jez Butterworth, and John-Henry Butterworth. In April 2020, it was announced that the release of the film was delayed to July 29, 2022, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and in October 2021, the release date was again delayed to June 30, 2023. The film began production in the UK in June 2021 and finished in February 2022.
Other ventures
Production
Spielberg's first film as an executive producer was the directorial debut of Robert Zemeckis, I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978). He produced Zemeckis's dark comedy Used Cars (1980), which was a critical but not a commercial success. In 1980, Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall founded Amblin Productions; the first film it produced was the romantic comedy Continental Divide (Michael Apted, 1981). It went on to produce Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984), Back to the Future (Zemeckis, 1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Zemeckis, 1988), Joe Versus the Volcano (John Patrick Shanley, 1990), Men in Black (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1997) and The Mask of Zorro (Martin Campbell, 1998). It produced Don Bluth's animated films An American Tail (1986) and The Land Before Time (1988), leading to the spin-off Amblimation.
In 1994, Spielberg founded DreamWorks with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen. Spielberg cited greater creative control and distribution improvements as the main reasons for founding his own studio; he and his partners compared themselves to the founders of United Artists in 1919. DreamWorks' investors included Microsoft founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates. After founding DreamWorks, Spielberg continued to operate Amblin Entertainment and direct films for other studios. He helped design Jurassic Park: The Ride at Universal Studios Florida. The workload of filmmaking and operating a studio raised questions about his commitments, but Spielberg maintained that "this is all fitting nicely into my life and I'm still home by six and I'm still home on the weekends." In 1998, DreamWorks Animation produced its first full-length animated features, Antz and The Prince of Egypt. Shrek (2001) was the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Spielberg and Tom Hanks produced Band of Brothers (2001), a ten-part HBO miniseries based on Stephen E. Ambrose's book of the same name. It follows Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division's 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. It won a Golden Globe for Best Miniseries. He produced Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), an adaptation of Arthur Golden's novel of the same name. Spielberg and Zemeckis executive-produced the animated film Monster House (2006), marking their eighth collaboration. He also worked with Clint Eastwood for the first time, co-producing Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima with Robert Lorenz. Spielberg served as executive producer for Disturbia, (2007) and the Transformers film series. That same year, Spielberg and Mark Burnett co-produced On the Lot, a reality and competition show about filmmaking. Spielberg returned to the World War II theme, co-producing the 2010 miniseries The Pacific with Hanks and Gary Goetzman. It is centered on the battles in the Pacific Theater. The next year, Spielberg co-created Falling Skies, a science fiction series on TNT, with Robert Rodat and produced the 2011 Fox series Terra Nova and J. J. Abrams's Super 8.
In January 2013, HBO confirmed that it was developing a World War II miniseries based on the book Donald L. Miller's Masters of the Air with Spielberg and Hanks. NME reported in March 2017 that production was under the working title The Mighty Eighth. By 2019, it was confirmed development of the series, now titled Masters of the Air, had moved to Apple TV+. It premiered on January 26, 2024.
Prospective projects
In May 2009, Spielberg bought the rights to the life story of Martin Luther King Jr., with the intention of being involved as both the producer and director. The purchase was made from the King estate, led by son Dexter, while the two other surviving children, the Reverend Bernice and Martin III, immediately threatened to sue, not having given their approvals to the project. In March 2013, Spielberg announced that he was developing a miniseries based on the life of Napoleon. In May 2016, it was announced that Cary Joji Fukunaga was in talks to direct the miniseries for HBO, from a script by David Leland based on extensive research materials accumulated by Stanley Kubrick over the years.
Spielberg was set to film an adaptation of David I. Kertzer's The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara in early 2017, for release at the end of that year, but production had been postponed. It was first announced in 2014, with Tony Kushner adapting the book for the screen. Mark Rylance, in his fourth collaboration with Spielberg, was announced to star in the role of Pope Pius IX. Spielberg saw more than 2,000 children to play the role of the young Edgardo Mortara. In 2015, it was announced that Spielberg was attached to direct an adaptation of American photojournalist Lynsey Addario's memoir It's What I Do, with Jennifer Lawrence in the lead role. In April 2018, it was announced that Spielberg would direct a film adaptation of the Blackhawk comic book series. Warner Bros. would distribute the film with David Koepp writing the script.
Upcoming projects
On June 21, 2021, it was announced that Amblin Entertainment signed a deal with Netflix to release multiple new feature films for the streaming service. Under the deal, Amblin is expected to produce at least two films a year for Netflix for an unspecified number of years. In February 2022, Deadline Hollywood reported that Spielberg was developing an original film centered around the character Frank Bullitt, a fictional San Francisco police officer originally portrayed by Steve McQueen in the 1968 film Bullitt. The screenplay is set to be written by Josh Singer, who previously co-wrote The Post for Spielberg. McQueen's son Chad and granddaughter Molly will serve as executive producers. Bradley Cooper was cast as Bullitt in November 2022 and will also serve as producer alongside Spielberg and Kristie Macosko Krieger.
On January 18, 2023, Spielberg told press at a red carpet event for The Fabelmans that he was executive producing a documentary about John Williams, directed by Laurent Bouzereau with production companies Amblin Television, Imagine Documentaries, and Nedland Media. Other executive producers for the film include Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Darryl Frank, Justin Falvey, Justin Wilkes, Sara Bernstein, and Meredith Kaulfers. The announcement came days after Williams suggested that he might not retire from film scoring as he had previously announced. In April 2024, it was announced that Spielberg was developing a film based on UFOs, with David Koepp attached to pen the script, which will be based on an original idea from Spielberg.
Video games
Spielberg has been an avid gamer since 1974. Spielberg played many of LucasArts adventure games, including the first Monkey Island games.
In 1995, Spielberg helped create and design LucasArts' adventure game The Dig. He also collaborated with software publishers Knowledge Adventure on the game Steven Spielberg's Director's Chair, which was released in 1996; Spielberg appears in the game to direct the player.
In 2005, Spielberg collaborated with Electronic Arts (EA) on several games including one for the Wii called Boom Blox, and its sequel Boom Blox Bash Party. He is also the creator of EA's Medal of Honor series.
In 2008, he owned a Wii, a PlayStation 3, a PSP, and an Xbox 360, and enjoyed playing first-person shooters such as the Medal of Honor series and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. He dislikes the use of cutscenes in games, and thinks that natural storytelling is a challenge for game developers.
Filmmaking style and techniques
Influences
Spielberg cites John Ford as a formative influence: “I try to rent a John Ford film… before I start every movie, simply because he inspires me…. He’s like a classic painter, he celebrates the frame, not just what’s inside it.” He names Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life (1946) as an influence on themes of "family, community and suburbia". He enjoyed the work of Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean, Stanley Kubrick and John Frankenheimer. In college, he was inspired by foreign films directed by Ingmar Bergman, Jacques Tati and François Truffaut. Spencer Tracy has also influenced the characters of Spielberg's films, as did The Twilight Zone. He says Lawrence of Arabia is the film he's seen more times than any other.
Method and themes
Spielberg often uses storyboards to visualize sequences, eschewing them for E.T. the Extraterrestrial and The Color Purple.for a more spontaneous effect. After filming Jaws, Spielberg learned to save special effects scenes until last and to exclude the media from filming locations. Spielberg prefers to shoot quickly, with large amounts of coverage (from single-shot to multi-shot setups), so that he will have many options in the editing room. From the beginning of his career, Spielberg's shooting style consisted of extreme high and low camera angles, long takes, and handheld cameras. He favors wide-angle lens for creating depth, and by the time he was making Minority Report, he was more confident with elaborate camera movements.
In an interview with The Tech in 2015, Spielberg described how he chooses his film projects:[Sometimes], a story speaks to me, even if it doesn't speak to any of my collaborators or any of my partners, who look at me and scratch their heads and say, "Gee, are you sure you wanna get into that trench for a year and a half?" I love people challenging me that way because it's a real test about my own convictions and [whether] I can be the standing man of my own life and take a stand on a subject that may not be popular, but that I would be proud to add to the body of my work. That's pretty much the litmus test that gets me to say, "Yeah, I'll direct that one."Spielberg's films contain many recurrent themes. One of the most pertinent revolves around "ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances." The ordinary people often have limitations, but they succeed in becoming a "hero". A consistent theme in his family-friendly work is a childlike sense of wonder and faith, and "the goodness in humanity will prevail." He has also explored the importance of childhood, loss of innocence, and the need for parental figures. In exploring the parent-child relationship, there is usually a flawed or irresponsible father figure. This theme personally resonates with Spielberg's childhood. Exploring extraterrestrial life is another aspect to his work. Spielberg described himself as like an "alien" during childhood, and this interest came from his father, a science fiction fan.
Collaborators
Michael Kahn has edited all of Spielberg's films since 1977, with the exception of E.T. (1982). Spielberg has also worked consistently with production designer Rick Carter and writer David Koepp. The producer Kathleen Kennedy is one of Spielberg's longest serving collaborators. Spielberg also displays loyalty to his actors, casting them repeatedly, including Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, Mark Rylance, Richard Dreyfuss and Tom Cruise. In 2005, Cruise called him "the greatest storyteller cinema's ever known".
Hanks has collaborated with Spielberg on various projects in both film and television. He first worked with Spielberg in Saving Private Ryan (1998) for which he received a nomination for Academy Award for Best Actor. Hanks starred in four more films, Catch Me if You Can (2002), The Terminal (2004), Bridge of Spies (2015) and The Post (2017). The pair also executive produced the war miniseries Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010), both of which gained them Primetime Emmy Awards.
Janusz Kamiński has served as a cinematographer on dozens of Spielberg's films. Kamiński's first collaboration with Spielberg started with the holocaust drama film Schindler's List (1993) for which Kamiński received the Academy Award for Best Cinematography. The film used black-and-white cinematography. As Spielberg's career evolved from action to drama films, he and Kamiński adopted more handheld camerawork, as evidenced in Schindler's List and Amistad. Kamiński would later receive his second Academy Award for cinematography on Saving Private Ryan. The film's opening sequence to re-enact the invasion of Normandy was praised for realism. Kamiński garnered three more Academy Award nominations for his work on War Horse (2011), the historical epic Lincoln (2015), and West Side Story (2021).
Spielberg's long-time partnership with composer John Williams began with The Sugarland Express (1974) Williams would return to compose all but five of Spielberg's feature films (the exceptions are Twilight Zone: The Movie, The Color Purple, Bridge of Spies, Ready Player One and West Side Story). Williams won three of his five Academy Awards for Best Original Score for his work on Spielberg's films, which were Jaws (1975), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Schindler's List (1993). While making Schindler's List, Spielberg approached Williams about composing the score. After seeing a rough, unedited cut, Williams was impressed, and said that composing would be too challenging. He said to Spielberg, "You need a better composer than I am for this film." Spielberg responded, "I know. But they're all dead!" In 2016, Spielberg presented Williams with the 44th AFI Life Achievement Award, the first to be awarded to a composer. The Fabelmans (2022) was Williams's 29th collaboration with Spielberg.
Personal life
Spielberg met actress Amy Irving in 1976 when she auditioned for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. After meeting her, Spielberg told his co-producer Julia Phillips, "I met a real heartbreaker last night." Although she was too young for the role, she and Spielberg began dating and she eventually moved into what she described as his "bachelor funky" house. They broke up in 1979. In 1984, they renewed their romance and married in November 1985. Their son, Max, had been born on June 13 of that year. In 1989, the couple divorced; they agreed to live near each other to share custody of their son. Their divorce settlement is one of the most expensive in history.
Spielberg met actress Kate Capshaw when he cast her in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. They married on October 12, 1991; Capshaw converted to Judaism before their marriage. Spielberg said he rediscovered "the honor of being a Jew" when they married. He said, "Kate is Protestant and she insisted on converting to Judaism. She spent a year studying, did the "mikveh", the whole thing. She chose to do a full conversion before we were married in 1991, and she married me after becoming a Jew. I think that, more than anything else, brought me back to Judaism." He credits her for the family's level of observance; "This shiksa goddess has made me a better Jew than my own parents", he said. He and his family live in Pacific Palisades, California and East Hampton, New York.
He has five children with Capshaw: Sasha Rebecca Spielberg (born May 14, 1990), Sawyer Avery Spielberg (born March 10, 1992), and Destry Allyn Spielberg (born December 1, 1996), and two adopted children: Theo Spielberg (born August 21, 1988), and Mikaela George (born February 28, 1996). He also has a stepdaughter, Jessica Capshaw (born August 9, 1976). He is the godfather of Drew Barrymore and Gwyneth Paltrow.
In 1997, a man named Jonathan Norman stalked Spielberg and attempted to enter his home; Norman was jailed for 25 years. In 2001, Spielberg was stalked by conspiracy theorist and former social worker Diana Napolis. She accused him and actress Jennifer Love Hewitt, of installing a mind-control device in her brain, and being part of a satanic cult. Napolis was committed to a mental institution, and pled guilty to stalking. She was released on probation with a condition that she have no contact with either Spielberg or Hewitt.
Spielberg was diagnosed with dyslexia at age 60.
In 2013, Spielberg purchased the 282-foot (86 m) mega-yacht The Seven Seas for US$182 million. He has put it up for sale and has made it available for charter. At US$1.2 million per month, it is one of the most expensive charters on the market. The Canadian steel mogul Barry Zekelman bought it for US$150 millions and rechristened the ship Man of Steel. Thereafter, Spielberg ordered a brand new 358-foot (109 m) Seven Seas.
In 2022, at age 75, Spielberg was diagnosed with COVID-19 but recovered.
In December 2022, Spielberg was a guest on Desert Island Discs for BBC Radio 4, choosing for his luxury item an H-8 Bolex Camera.
Political views
Spielberg has usually supported US Democratic Party candidates. He has donated over $800,000 to the Democratic party and its nominees. He has been a close friend of former president Bill Clinton and worked with the president for the USA Millennium celebrations. He directed an 18-minute film for the project, scored by John Williams and entitled The American Journey. It was shown at America's Millennium Gala on December 31, 1999, in the National Mall at the Reflecting Pool at the base of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Spielberg endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election; he donated $1 million to Priorities USA Action.
Spielberg resigned as a member of the national advisory board of the Boy Scouts of America in 2001 because he disagreed with the organization's anti-homosexuality stance. In 2007, the Arab League voted to boycott Spielberg's movies after he donated $1 million for relief efforts in Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War. On February 20, 2007, Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen invited Democrats to a fundraiser for Barack Obama.
In February 2008, Spielberg resigned as advisor to the 2008 Summer Olympics in response to the Chinese government's inaction over the War in Darfur. Spielberg said in a statement, "I find that my conscience will not allow me to continue business as usual [...] Sudan's government bears the bulk of the responsibility for these on-going crimes, but the international community, and particularly China, should be doing more." The International Olympic Committee (IOC) respected Spielberg's decision but IOC president Jacques Rogge expressed disappointment: "[Spielberg] certainly would have brought a lot to the opening ceremony in terms of creativity." Chinese state media called Spielberg's comments "unfair".
In September 2008, Spielberg and his wife offered their support to same-sex marriage in California by issuing a statement following their donation of $100,000 to the "No on Proposition 8" campaign fund, a figure equal to the amount of money Brad Pitt donated to the same campaign less than a week prior. In 2018, Spielberg and his wife donated $500,000 to the March for Our Lives student demonstration in favor of gun control in the United States.
In December 2023, after the Hamas-led attack on Israel, the Shoah Foundation which was founded by Spielberg, said that it had gathered over 100 video testimonies of those who experienced the attacks on that day to add them to the collection of "Holocaust survivor and witness testimony." Speaking of the attacks he said, "I never imagined I would see such unspeakable barbarity against Jews in my lifetime" and that the Shoah Foundation project will ensure "that their stories would be recorded and shared in the effort to preserve history and to work toward a world without antisemitism or hate of any kind."
Filmography
Prolific in film since the 1960s, Spielberg has directed 36 feature films, and co-produced many works.
Awards and honors
Spielberg has won three Academy Awards. He received nine nominations for Best Director, and won twice (for Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan). His third was in Best Picture, for Schindler's List. He is the only director to receive a Best Director nomination from the academy in 6 different decades. In 1987, he was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for his work as a creative producer. Drawing from his own experiences in Scouting, Spielberg helped the Boy Scouts of America develop a merit badge in cinematography to promote filmmaking as a marketable skill; the badge was launched at the 1989 National Scout Jamboree. In 1989, Spielberg was presented with the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. Spielberg received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1995.
In 1998, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. The award was presented to him by President Roman Herzog in recognition of Schindler's List and work with the Shoah Foundation. Spielberg was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Public Service in 1999, in recognition for Saving Private Ryan. For the same film, he also received an award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures by the Directors Guild of America. The next year, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of America.
Spielberg was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003, located on 6801 Hollywood Boulevard. Additionally, he was awarded the Blessed are the Peacemakers Award from the Catholic Theological Union in 2003. On July 15, 2006, Spielberg was awarded the Gold Hugo Lifetime Achievement Award at the Summer Gala of the Chicago International Film Festival, and was awarded a Kennedy Center honor on December 3. The tribute to Spielberg featured a biographical short film narrated by Liam Neeson, and a performance of the finale to Leonard Bernstein's Candide, conducted by John Williams.
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted Spielberg in 2005, the first year it considered non-literary contributors. He was a recipient of the Visual Effects Society Lifetime Achievement Award in February 2008; it is awarded for "significant and lasting contributions to the art and science of the visual effects industry." In 2009, Spielberg was awarded the Cecil B. DeMille Award by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for "outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment".
In 2001, he was awarded an honorary knighthood, KBE, by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the British film industry. Premiere ranked him first place in the list of 100 Most Powerful People in Movies in 2003. In 2004, he was awarded France's highest civil honor, the Legion of Honour by President Jacques Chirac. In June 2008, Spielberg received Arizona State University's Hugh Downs Award for Communication Excellence. In October 2009, Spielberg received the Philadelphia Liberty Medal; the prize was presented by former US President Bill Clinton. In October 2011, he was made a Commander of the Order of the Belgian Crown, one of Belgium's highest honors.
On November 19, 2013, Spielberg was honored by the National Archives and Records Administration with a Records of Achievement Award. Spielberg was given two facsimiles of the 13th Amendment; the first which passed in 1861 but was not ratified, and the second signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1865 to abolish slavery. The amendment and the process of passing it were the subject of his film Lincoln. On November 24, 2015, Spielberg was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama at the White House.
In July 2016, Spielberg was awarded a gold Blue Peter badge by the BBC children's television program Blue Peter. He has honorary degrees from the University of Southern California, 1994; Brown University, 1999; Yale University, 2002; Boston University, 2009; and Harvard University, 2016.
Legacy
A figure of the New Hollywood era, Spielberg is widely regarded as one of the most influential and commercially successful film directors of all time. Some of his films were in the top ten highest-grossing films of the 1970s and 1980s, with Jaws, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Jurassic Park all becoming the highest-grossing film ever at the time of their respective releases. In 1996, Life magazine named Spielberg the most influential person of his generation. In 2003, Premiere magazine ranked him first place in the list of 100 Most Powerful People in Movies. In 2005, Empire magazine ranked him number one on a list of the greatest film directors of all time. In 2013, Time magazine listed him as one of the 100 most influential people. According to Forbes' magazine of Most Influential Celebrities of 2014, Spielberg was ranked at first place. As of December 2022, Forbes estimates his net worth at $4 billion.
His work is admired by numerous acclaimed directors, including Robert Aldrich, Ingmar Bergman, Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick, David Lean, Sidney Lumet, Roman Polanski, Martin Scorsese, François Truffaut and Jean Renoir Spielberg's films have also influenced directors J. J. Abrams, Paul Thomas Anderson, Neill Blomkamp, Jon M. Chu, Arnaud Desplechin, Gareth Edwards, Roland Emmerich, Enrique Gato, Max Hechtman, Don Hertzfeldt, Peter Jackson, Kal Ng, Jordan Peele, Robert Rodriguez, John Sayles, Ridley Scott, John Singleton, Kevin Smith, and Michael Williams.
In 2004, film critic Tom Shone said of Spielberg, "If you have to point to any one director of the last twenty-five years [1979–2004] in whose work the medium of film was most fully itself–where we found out what it does best when left to its own devices, it has to be that guy." Jess Cagle, former editor of Entertainment Weekly, called Spielberg "arguably (well, who would argue?) the greatest filmmaker in history." Stephen Rowley, writing for Senses of Cinema, discussed Spielberg's strengths as a filmmaker, saying "there is a welcome complexity of tone and approach in these later films that defies the lazy stereotypes often bandied about his films", and that "Spielberg continues to take risks, with his body of work continuing to grow more impressive and ambitious", concluding that he has only received "limited, begrudging recognition" from critics. In a 1999 "Millennium Movies" survey of British film fans run by the Sky Premier channel, Spielberg had seven films in the top 100, which made him the most popular director.
Critics of Spielberg have argued that his films are commonly sentimental and moralistic. In Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind wrote that Spielberg is "infantilizing the audience, reconstituting the spectator as child, then overwhelming him and her with sound and spectacle, obliterating irony, aesthetic self-consciousness, and critical reflection". Critic Ray Carney and actor Crispin Glover opined that Spielberg's works lack depth and do not take risks. Filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard opined that Spielberg was partly responsible for the lack of artistic merit in mainstream cinema, and accused Spielberg of using Schindler's List to profit from a tragedy. In defense of Spielberg, critic Roger Ebert said "Has Godard or any other director living or dead done more than Spielberg, with his Holocaust Project, to honor and preserve the memories of the survivors?"
Seven of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant": Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, and Saving Private Ryan.
See also
Directors with two films rated "A+" by CinemaScore
Steven Spielberg's unrealized projects
References
Sources
Baxter, John (1996). Steven Spielberg: The Unauthorised Biography. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 9780002555876.
Buckland, Warren (2006). Directed by Steven Spielberg: Poetics of the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster. New York: Continuum. ISBN 9780826416919.
Edge, Laura Bufano (2008). Steven Spielberg: Director of Blockbuster Films. Berkeley Heights, New Jersey: Enslow Publishers. ISBN 9780766028883.
Freer, Ian (2001). The Complete Spielberg. London: Virgin Publishing. ISBN 9780753505564.
Hook, Sue Vander (2010). Steven Spielberg: Groundbreaking Director. Edina, Minnesota: Abdo Publishing Company. ISBN 9781604537048.
Horn, Geoffrey M. (2002). Steven Spielberg. Milwaukee: World Almanac Library. ISBN 9780836850802.
Jackson, Kathi (2007). Steven Spielberg: A Biography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313337963.
Mairata, James (2018). Steven Spielberg's Style by Stealth. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. ISBN 9783319690810.
Mara, Wil (2014). Great Filmmakers Steven Spielberg. New York: Cavendish Square Publishing. ISBN 9781627129367.
McBride, Joseph (1997). Steven Spielberg: A Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780684811673.
Parish, James Robert (2004). Steven Spielberg Filmmaker. New York: Ferguson. ISBN 9780816054817.
Pogrebin, Abigail (2005). Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish. New York: Broadway Books. ISBN 9780307419323.
Shone, Tom (2004). Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9780743235686.
Further reading
Haskell, Molly (2017). Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-18693-2.
Jolls, Michael (2018). The Films of Steven Spielberg. Create Space. ISBN 978-1986039680.
Morris, Nigel (2007). The Cinema of Steven Spielberg: Empire of Light. Wallflower Press. ISBN 978-1-904764-88-5.
Spielberg, Steven; Friedman, Lester D.; Notbohm, Brent (2000). Steven Spielberg: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-57806-113-6.
External links
Steven Spielberg at IMDb
Steven Spielberg at the TCM Movie Database
Steven Spielberg at AllMovie
Appearances on C-SPAN
Steven Spielberg at Curlie
Steven Spielberg collected news and commentary at The New York Times
"Steven Spielberg biography". Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
Talking About Steven Spielberg at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television
Joseph McBride Papers, 1960–2008 – Wisconsin Historical Society |
Anthony_Minghella | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Minghella | [
745
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Minghella"
] | Anthony Minghella, (6 January 1954 – 18 March 2008) was a British film director, playwright, and screenwriter. He was chairman of the board of Governors at the British Film Institute between 2003 and 2007. He directed Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990), The English Patient (1996), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), and Cold Mountain (2003), and produced Iris (2001).
He received the Academy Award for Best Director for The English Patient. In addition, he received three more Academy Award nominations; he was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for both The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley, and was posthumously nominated for Best Picture for The Reader (2008), as a producer.
Early life and education
Minghella was born in Ryde on the Isle of Wight. His family are well known on the island, where they ran a café in Ryde until the 1980s and have run an eponymous business making and selling Italian-style ice cream since the 1950s. His parents were Edoardo Minghella (an Italian immigrant) and Leeds-born Gloria Alberta (née Arcari). His mother's ancestors originally came from Valvori, a small village in southern Lazio, Italy. He was one of five children, his sisters Gioia Minghella-Giddens, Edana Minghella and Loretta Minghella, and a brother Dominic Minghella who also became a screenwriter and producer.
Minghella attended St. Mary's Catholic Primary School, Ryde, Sandown Grammar School, and St John's College, Portsmouth. Early interests suggested a possible career as a musician, with Minghella playing keyboards with local bands Earthlight and Dancer. The latter recorded an album titled Tales of the Riverbank in 1972, although it was not released until 2001.
He attended the University of Hull, studying drama. As an undergraduate he had arrived at university with an EMI contract for the band, in which he sang and played keyboards; while at university he wrote words and music for an adaptation of Gabriel Josipovici's Mobius the Stripper (1975) .
Minghella graduated after three years and stayed on to pursue a PhD. He also taught at the university for several years, on Samuel Beckett and on the medieval theatre. Ultimately, he abandoned his pursuit of a PhD to work for the BBC.
Career
Minghella's debut work was a stage adaptation of Gabriel Josipovici's Mobius the Stripper (1975) and it was his Whale Music (1985) that brought him notice. His double bill of Samuel Beckett's Play and Happy Days was his directorial debut and debut feature film as a director was A Little Like Drowning (1978). During the 1980s, he worked in television, starting as a runner on Magpie before moving into script editing the children's drama series Grange Hill for the BBC and later writing The StoryTeller series for Jim Henson. He wrote several episodes of the ITV detective drama Inspector Morse and an episode of long-running ITV drama Boon. Made in Bangkok (1986) found mainstream success in the West End.
Radio success followed with a Giles Cooper Award for the radio drama Cigarettes and Chocolate first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1988. It was revived on 3 May 2008 as a tribute to its author director following his death. His production starred Juliet Stevenson, Bill Nighy and Jenny Howe. His first radio play Hang Up, starring Anton Lesser and Juliet Stevenson, was revived on 10 May 2008 as part of the BBC Radio 4 Minghella season.
Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990), a feature drama written and directed for the BBC's Screen Two anthology strand, bypassed TV broadcast and instead had a cinema release. He turned down an offer to direct another Inspector Morse to do the project, even though he believed that the Morse episode would have been a much higher-profile ll assignment. The English Patient (1996) brought him two Academy Awards nominations, Best Director (which he won) and Adapted Screenplay. He also received an Adapted Screenplay nomination for The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999).
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, a pilot episode television adaptation which he co-wrote and directed, was broadcast posthumously on BBC One (23 March 2008); watched by 6.3 million viewers. He vocally supported I Know I'm Not Alone, a film of musician Michael Franti's peacemaking excursions into Iraq, Palestine and Israel. He directed a party election broadcast for the Labour Party in 2005. The short film depicted Tony Blair and Gordon Brown working together and was criticised for being insincere: "The Anthony Minghella party political broadcast last year was full of body language fibs", said Peter Collett, a psychologist at the University of Oxford. "When you are talking to me, I'll give you my full attention only if I think you are very high status or if I love you. On that party political broadcast, they are staring at each other like lovers. It is completely false."
With Samuel Beckett's 100th birthday celebrations, he returned to radio on BBC Radio 3 with Eyes Down Looking (2006), with: Jude Law, Juliet Stevenson and David Threlfall. An operatic directorial debut came with Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Premiered at the English National Opera (London, 2005), then at the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre (Vilnius, March 2006) and at the Metropolitan Opera (New York City, September 2006). The latter was transmitted live into cinemas worldwide (7 March 2009) as part of the Met's HD series and is now available on DVD. The ENO work was to have led to other operatic projects, directing again at English National Opera and collaborating with Osvaldo Golijov on a new opera for the Met and ENO, writing the libretto and directing the production.
He was honoured with the naming of The Anthony Minghella Theatre at the Quay Arts Centre (Isle of Wight). He made an appearance in the 2007 film Atonement as a television host interviewing the novelist central to the story.
His last work was the screenplay of the film adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical Nine (1982); Arthur Kopit (book) and Maury Yeston (score). It is based on the film 8½. He shared credit with Michael Tolkin on the screenplay.
The department of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading, opened in 2012, was named in his honour.
Personal life and death
Minghella met his first wife, Yvonne Miller, when they were students. They had one daughter, Hannah. Minghella and Miller eventually divorced. In 1985 Minghella married Hong Kong–born choreographer and dancer Carolyn Jane Choa. They had one son, Max.
Minghella's younger brother, Dominic Minghella, is the creator of the television series Robin Hood and Doc Martin. His sister, Loretta Minghella, is Master of Clare College, Cambridge.
Minghella was a fan of Portsmouth F.C., and appeared in the Channel 4 documentary, Hallowed Be Thy Game. His home had two double bedrooms dedicated to the display of Portsmouth memorabilia dating back to the club's founding in 1898.
Minghella died of a haemorrhage on 18 March 2008 in Charing Cross Hospital, Hammersmith, following an operation the previous week to remove cancer of the tonsils and neck.
Memorial plaques
A memorial plaque to Minghella was unveiled on 2 March 2016 by Jude Law, at Western Gardens, Ryde, Isle of Wight.
He is commemorated with a green plaque on The Avenues, Kingston upon Hull. The 2009 film Nine is dedicated in his memory.
Filmography
Film
Executive producer
Iris (2001)
The Quiet American (2002)
The Interpreter (2005)
Michael Clayton (2007)
Margaret (2011)
Producer
Catch a Fire (2006)
Breaking and Entering (2006)
The Reader (2008)
Love You More (2008)
Acting roles
Short film
Television
Theatre
Selected plays
Whale Music (New End Theatre, Hampstead, June 1981); revived for radio, BBC Radio 4, 10 May 2008
Two Planks and a Passion (Greenwich Theatre, November 1984)
A Little Like Drowning (Hampstead Theatre, July 1984)
Made in Bangkok (West End debut as a playwright, Aldwych Theatre. 18 March 1986, director Michael Blakemore)
Hang Up (radio play for BBC Radio 4,1987)
Cigarettes and Chocolate (60-minute radio play for BBC Radio 4, 1988)
Eyes Down Looking (Beckett 100th Birthday tribute, radio play for BBC Radio 3, 1 April 2006)
Accolades
See also
Theatre Record and its indexes for play production dates and awards.
References
External links
Anthony Minghella at IMDb
Media Masterclass with Anthony Minghella on Directing Film
Anthony Minghella: A Life in Pictures, BAFTA webcast, 2 December 2006
"About Anthony", Minghella Film Festival, Isle of Wight
An Appreciation of Anthony Minghella by Charlie Rose, 24 March 2008
Anthony Minghella, my teacher, my friend, by Harvey Weinstein, The Times, 10 April 2008
Anthony Minghella remembered by Jude Law, The Observer, Sunday 14 December 2008
Minghella musical discovered, BBC Humberside.
Obituaries:
BBC, 18 March 2008
Variety, 18 March 2008
The Guardian, 19 March 2008
The Times, 19 March 2008
The Independent, 19 March 2008
The New York Times, 19 March 2008
Los Angeles Times, 19 March 2008
The Washington Post, 19 March 2008
Tributes:
Minghella Movie Marathon, BBC, updated 25 March 2009. Retrieved 22 July 2009.
Minghella Movie Marathon, at British Film Institute. Retrieved 22 July 2009.
More stars join Minghella marathon, iwcp.co.uk, 4 March 2009. Retrieved 22 July 2009.
Anthony Minghella's family celebrates his memory with film festival, Syma Tariq, The Guardian, 12 March 2009. Retrieved 22 July 2009. |
Robert_Zemeckis | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Zemeckis | [
745
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Zemeckis"
] | Robert Lee Zemeckis (born May 14, 1952) is an American filmmaker. He first came to public attention as the director of the action-adventure romantic comedy Romancing the Stone (1984), the science-fiction comedy Back to the Future trilogy (1985–1990), and the live-action/animated comedy Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). He subsequently directed the satirical black comedy Death Becomes Her (1992) and then diversified into more dramatic fare, including the Best Picture winning film, Forrest Gump (1994), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director.
Zemeckis is regarded as an innovator in visual effects. His exploration of state-of-the-art special effects includes the early use of computer graphics inserted into live-action footage
in Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Forrest Gump, the insertion of hand-drawn animation into live-action footage in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and the performance capture techniques seen in The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007), A Christmas Carol (2009), and Welcome to Marwen (2018). He is known for his collaboration with composer Alan Silvestri, with whom he has worked since Romancing the Stone. David Thomson, a prominent film critic, wrote that "no other contemporary director has used special effects to more dramatic and narrative purpose."
Early life
Robert Lee Zemeckis was born on May 14, 1952, in Chicago, the son of Rosa (née Nespeca) and Alphonse Zemeckis. His father was Lithuanian-American while his mother was Italian-American.
Zemeckis grew up on the South Side of the city. He attended a Catholic grade school and Fenger Academy High School. Zemeckis has said "the truth was that in my family there was no art. I mean, there was no music, there were no books, there was no theater ... The only thing I had that was inspirational, was television—and it actually was."
As a child, he loved television and was fascinated by his parents' 8 mm film home movie camera. Starting off by filming family events like birthdays and holidays, he gradually began producing narrative films with his friends that incorporated stop-motion work and other special effects. Along with enjoying movies, Zemeckis remained an avid TV viewer. "You hear so much about the problems with television," he said, "but I think that it saved my life." Television gave Zemeckis his first glimpse of a world outside of his blue-collar upbringing; specifically, he learned of the existence of film schools on an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
After seeing Bonnie and Clyde with his father, Zemeckis decided that he wanted to go to film school. His parents disapproved of the idea, Zemeckis later said, "But only in the sense that they were concerned ... for my family and my friends and the world that I grew up in, this was the kind of dream that really was impossible. My parents would sit there and say, 'Don't you see where you come from? You can't be a movie director.' I guess maybe some of it I felt I had to do in spite of them, too."
Career
Education and early films (1969–1979)
Zemeckis first attended Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, and gained early experience in film as a film cutter for NBC News in Chicago during a summer break. He also edited commercials in his home state. Zemeckis applied to transfer from NIU to the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles, California, and went into the Film School on the strength of an essay and a music video based on a Beatles song. Not having heard from the university itself, Zemeckis called and was told he had been rejected because of his average grades. He gave an "impassioned plea" to the official on the other line, promising to go to summer school and improve his studies, and eventually convinced the school to accept him.
Arriving at USC that fall, Zemeckis encountered a program that was, in his words, made up of "a bunch of hippies [and] considered an embarrassment by the university". The classes were difficult, with professors constantly stressing how hard the movie business was. Zemeckis remembered not being much fazed by this, citing the "healthy cynicism" that had been bred into him from his Chicago upbringing.
At USC Zemeckis met a fellow student, writer Bob Gale. Gale later recalled, "The graduate students at USC had this veneer of intellectualism ... So Bob and I gravitated toward one another because we wanted to make Hollywood movies. We weren't interested in the French New Wave. We were interested in Clint Eastwood and James Bond and Walt Disney, because that's how we grew up." Zemeckis graduated from USC in 1973, and he and Gale cowrote the unproduced screenplays Tank and Bordello of Blood, which they pitched to John Milius, the latter of which was later developed into a film which was released in 1996.
As a result of winning a Student Academy Award at USC for his film A Field of Honor, Zemeckis came to the attention of Steven Spielberg. Spielberg said, "He barged right past my secretary and sat me down and showed me this student film ... and I thought it was spectacular, with police cars and a riot, all dubbed to Elmer Bernstein's score for The Great Escape." Spielberg became Zemeckis's mentor and executive produced his first two films, both of which Gale and Zemeckis co-wrote.
Spielberg produced I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978, starring Nancy Allen) and Used Cars (1980, starring Kurt Russell); both were critical, but not commercial, successes. I Wanna Hold Your Hand was the first of several Zemeckis films to incorporate historic figures and celebrities into his movies; he used archival footage and doubles to simulate the presence of the Beatles. After the failure of his first two films, and the Spielberg-directed 1941 (1979) (written by Gale and Zemeckis), the pair gained a reputation for writing "scripts that everyone thought were great [but] somehow didn't translate into movies people wanted to see."
Breakthrough and Forrest Gump (1980–1997)
As a result of his reputation within the industry, Zemeckis had trouble finding work in the early 1980s, though he and Gale kept busy. They wrote scripts for other directors, including Car Pool for Brian De Palma and Growing Up for Spielberg; neither ended up getting made. Another Zemeckis-Gale project, Back to the Future, about a teenager who accidentally travels back in time to the 1950s, was turned down by every major studio. The director was jobless until Michael Douglas hired him in 1984 to direct Romancing the Stone. A romantic adventure starring Douglas and Kathleen Turner, Stone was expected to flop (to the point that, after viewing a rough cut of the film, the producers of the then-in-the-works Cocoon fired Zemeckis as director), but the film became a sleeper hit. While working on Romancing the Stone, Zemeckis met composer Alan Silvestri, who has scored all his subsequent pictures.
After Romancing the Stone, Zemeckis had the clout to direct his time-traveling screenplay. Starring Michael J. Fox, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, and Christopher Lloyd, the 1985 film was wildly successful upon its release and was followed by two sequels, released as Back to the Future Part II in 1989 and Back to the Future Part III in 1990. Before the Back to the Future sequels were released, Zemeckis collaborated with Disney and directed another film, the madcap 1940s-set mystery Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which combined traditional animation and live-action; its $70 million budget made it one of the most expensive films made up to that point. The film was both a financial and critical success and won three Academy Awards. In 1990, Zemeckis commented, when asked if he would want to make non-comedies, "I would like to be able to do everything. Just now, though, I'm too restless to do anything that's not really zany."
In 1992, Zemeckis directed the black comedy Death Becomes Her, starring Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, and Bruce Willis. Although his next film would have some comedic elements, it was Zemeckis's first with dramatic elements and was also his biggest commercial success to date, Forrest Gump. Starring Tom Hanks in the title role, Forrest Gump tells the story of a man with a low I.Q., who unwittingly participates in some of the major events of the twentieth century, falls in love, and interacts with several major historical figures in the process. The film grossed $677 million worldwide and became the top-grossing US film of 1994; it won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (for Hanks) and Best Director (for Zemeckis). From this point, Hanks and Zemeckis became frequent collaborators. In 1997, Zemeckis directed Contact, a long-gestating project based on Carl Sagan's 1985 novel of the same name. The film centers on Eleanor Arroway (Jodie Foster), who believes she has made contact with extraterrestrials. In the early 1990s, he founded South Side Amusement Company, which later became ImageMovers.
During this same time period, Zemeckis was an executive producer of HBO's Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) and directed three episodes.
Later work (1999–present)
In 1999, Zemeckis donated $5 million towards the Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts at USC, a 35,000-square-foot (3,300 m2) center. When the Center opened in March 2001, Zemeckis spoke in a panel about the future of film, alongside friends Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Of those (including Spielberg) who clung to celluloid and disparaged the idea of shooting digitally, Zemeckis said, "These guys are the same ones who have been saying that LPs sound better than CDs. You can argue that until you're blue in the face, but I don't know anyone who's still buying vinyl. The film, as we have traditionally thought of it, is going to be different. But the continuum is man's desire to tell stories around the campfire. The only thing that keeps changing is the campfire." The Robert Zemeckis Center currently hosts many film school classes, much of the Interactive Media Division, and Trojan Vision, USC's student television station, which has been voted the number one college television station in the country.
In 1996, Zemeckis had begun developing a project titled The Castaway with Tom Hanks and writer William Broyles Jr. The story, inspired by Robinson Crusoe, is about a man who becomes stranded on a tropical island and undergoes a profound physical and spiritual change. While working on The Castaway, Zemeckis also became attached to a Hitchcockian thriller titled What Lies Beneath, the story of a married couple experiencing an extreme case of empty nest syndrome that was based on an idea by Steven Spielberg. Because Hanks's character needed to undergo a dramatic weight loss over the course of The Castaway (retitled Cast Away for release), Zemeckis decided that the only way to retain the same crew while Hanks lost the weight was to shoot What Lies Beneath in between. He shot the first part of Cast Away in early 1999, and shot What Lies Beneath in fall 1999, completing work on the former in early 2000. Zemeckis later quipped, when asked about shooting two films back-to-back, "I wouldn't recommend it to anyone." What Lies Beneath, starring Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer, was released in July 2000 to mixed reviews, but did well at the box office, grossing over $155 million domestically. Cast Away, starring Hanks and Twister actress Helen Hunt, was released that December and grossed $233 million domestically; Hanks received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his portrayal of Chuck Noland.
In 2004, Zemeckis reteamed with Hanks for The Polar Express, based on Chris Van Allsburg's children's book of the same name. The Polar Express utilized the computer animation technique known as performance capture, whereby the movements of the actors are captured digitally and used as the basis for the animated characters. As the first major film to use performance capture, The Polar Express caused The New York Times to write that, "Whatever critics and audiences make of this movie, from a technical perspective it could mark a turning point in the gradual transition from an analog to a digital cinema." Zemeckis served as an executive producer for Monster House (2006), a family-friendly horror comedy that used performance capture.
In February 2007, Zemeckis and Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook announced plans for a new performance capture film company devoted to CG-created, 3-D movies. The company, ImageMovers Digital, created films using the performance capture technology, with Zemeckis directing most of the projects which Disney distributed and marketed worldwide. Zemeckis used the performance capture technology again in his film, Beowulf, to retell the Anglo-Saxon epic poem of the same name. It featured Ray Winstone, Angelina Jolie, and Anthony Hopkins. Neil Gaiman, who co-wrote the adaptation with Roger Avary, described the film as a "cheerfully violent and strange take on the Beowulf legend." The film was released on November 16, 2007, to mostly positive reviews and grossed $196 million worldwide.
In July 2007, Variety announced that Zemeckis had written a screenplay for A Christmas Carol, based on Charles Dickens's 1843 short story of the same name, with plans to use performance capture and release it under the aegis of ImageMovers Digital. Zemeckis wrote the script with Jim Carrey in mind, and Carrey agreed to play a multitude of roles in the film, including Ebenezer Scrooge as a young, middle-aged, and old man, and the three ghosts who haunt Scrooge. The film began production in February 2008 and was released on November 6, 2009, to mixed reviews and grossed $325 million at the box office. Actor Gary Oldman also appeared in the film. Zemeckis is an avid supporter of 3-D Digital Cinema and has stated that since the 3-D presentations of Beowulf, all of his future films would be done in 3-D using digital motion capture. He has reportedly backed away from that statement and said that the decision to use 3-D will be on a film-by-film basis.
On August 19, 2009, it was reported that Zemeckis and his company were in talks with Apple Corps Ltd to remake the animated film Yellow Submarine utilizing performance capture. However, on March 12, 2010, with Zemeckis's biggest Disney ally, former chairman Dick Cook, gone, and amid drastic cost-cutting by the new management team, Disney announced that it was ending its relationship with ImageMovers Digital. The studio's final film, 2011's Zemeckis-produced Mars Needs Moms, was the second-worst box office failure in history, with a net loss of roughly $130 million. Zemeckis made his return to live-action filmmaking with Flight, a 2012 drama for Paramount, starring Denzel Washington.
On January 31, 2014, it was announced that a stage musical adaptation of Zemeckis's first Back to the Future film was in production. The show would be co-written by original writers Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale. According to Gale, the musical would be "true to the spirit of the film without being a slavish remake".
In August 2008, IGN revealed in an interview with Philippe Petit that Zemeckis was working with Petit to turn Petit's memoir To Reach the Clouds into a feature film. In 2015, he directed The Walk, about Philippe Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his ambition to tightrope walk between the towers of the World Trade Center.
Paramount Pictures and New Regency announced in February 2015 that Zemeckis would direct Brad Pitt in Allied, a romantic thriller set during World War II. The film was released on November 23, 2016. Next, Zemeckis directed the fantasy drama Welcome to Marwen, starring Steve Carell, which was released in December 2018 to mixed reviews and flopped at the box office. Zemeckis's film The Witches, an adaptation of the Roald Dahl novel of the same name, premiered on October 22, 2020, on HBO Max, also to mixed reviews.
On October 18, 2019, it was announced that Zemeckis is in talks to direct Disney's live-action adaptation of Pinocchio. Zemeckis was officially announced as the film's director and co-writer of the script in January 2020. In addition, Tom Hanks was reportedly announced as playing Mister Geppetto in the film, marking the fourth collaboration with Hanks since Forrest Gump, Cast Away, and The Polar Express. The film was later released, as part of Disney+ Day on Disney+, on September 8, 2022, to highly negative reviews from critics, nominated for six Razzies, including Worst Picture and Worst Director for Zemeckis ("winning" Worst Remake), ultimately losing the former to Blonde. Despite this, it also received a Visual Effects Society Award nomination for Outstanding Animated Character in a Photoreal Feature.
On February 17, 2022, Zemeckis signed on to direct Here, an adaptation of the graphic novel by Richard McGuire, with Tom Hanks set to star and Forrest Gump screenwriter Eric Roth working on the screenplay with Zemeckis. On May 11, it was announced that Robin Wright had been cast and that Sony Pictures Classics had acquired distribution rights for the United States, with Miramax handling international sales and production expected to begin in September 2022 for a theatrical release in 2024.
Personal life
Zemeckis has said that, for a long time, he sacrificed his personal life in favor of a career. "I won an Academy Award when I was 44 years old," he explained, "but I paid for it with my 20s. That decade of my life from film school till 30 was nothing but work, nothing but absolute, driving work. I had no money. I had no life." In the early 1980s, Zemeckis married actress Mary Ellen Trainor, with whom he had a son, Alexander Francis. He described the marriage as difficult to balance with filmmaking, and his relationship with Trainor eventually ended in divorce. On December 4, 2001, he married Leslie Harter, an actress, with whom he has three children.
Zemeckis is a private pilot who has logged approximately 1,600 hours of flight time, as of October 2012, flying a Cirrus SR22.
According to campaign donation records, Zemeckis has frequently contributed to political candidates affiliated with the Democratic Party, as well as PACs that support the interests of aircraft owners and pilots, family planning interests, and a group that advocates for Hollywood women.
Filmography
Short film
Feature film
Television
Accolades
Major awards
Other awards
In 1996, Zemeckis received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member George Lucas.
On November 5, 2004, Zemeckis received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in Motion Picture at 6925 Hollywood Blvd.
Accolades received by individual films
See also
Directors with two films rated "A+" by CinemaScore
Robert Zemeckis' unproduced projects
References
External links
Robert Zemeckis at IMDb
Robert Zemeckis at AllMovie
Robert Zemeckis on Charlie Rose
Robert Zemeckis collected news and commentary at The New York Times |
Jonathan_Demme | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Demme | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Demme"
] | Robert Jonathan Demme ( DEM-ee; February 22, 1944 – April 26, 2017) was an American filmmaker, whose career directing, producing, and screenwriting spanned more than 30 years and 70 feature films, documentaries, and television productions. He was an Academy Award and a Directors Guild of America Award winner, and received nominations for a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and three Independent Spirit Awards.
Beginning his career under B-movie producer Roger Corman, Demme made his directorial debut with the 1974 women-in-prison film Caged Heat, before becoming known for his casually humanist films such as Melvin and Howard (1980), Swing Shift (1984), Something Wild (1986), and Married to the Mob (1988). His 1991 psychological horror film The Silence of the Lambs, based on the novel of the same title, won five Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture.
His subsequent films earned similar acclaim, notably the HIV/AIDS-themed drama Philadelphia (1993), the supernatural Southern Gothic Beloved (1998), the conspiracy thriller The Manchurian Candidate (2004), and the independent drama Rachel Getting Married (2008). Demme also directed numerous concert films such as Stop Making Sense (1984), Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006), and Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids (2016), and worked on several television series as both a producer and director.
Early life
Demme was born on February 22, 1944, in Baldwin, New York, the son of Dorothy Louise (née Rogers) and Robert Eugene Demme, a public relations executive. He was raised in Rockville Centre, New York and Miami, where he graduated from Southwest Miami High School before attending the University of Florida.
Career
Early films
Demme broke into feature film working for exploitation film producer Roger Corman early in his career, co-writing and producing Angels Hard as They Come (1971), a motorcycle movie very loosely based on Rashomon, and The Hot Box (1972). He then moved on to directing three films for Corman's studio New World Pictures: Caged Heat (1974), Crazy Mama (1975), and Fighting Mad (1976). After Fighting Mad, Demme directed the comedy film Handle with Care (originally titled Citizens Band, 1977) for Paramount Pictures. The film was well received by critics, but received little promotion, and performed poorly at the box office. He also directed a 1978 episode of Columbo.
Demme's next film, Melvin and Howard (1980), did not get a wide release, but received a groundswell of critical acclaim and film award recognition, including Academy Award nominations, winning two of its three nominations (Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress – Mary Steenburgen, and Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay – Bo Goldman). This acclaim led to the signing of Demme to direct the Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell star vehicle Swing Shift (1984). Intended as a prestige picture for Warner Bros. as well as a major commercial vehicle for Demme, it instead became a troubled production due to the conflicting visions of Demme and star Hawn. Demme ended up renouncing the finished product, and when the film was released in May 1984, it was generally panned by critics and neglected by moviegoers. After Swing Shift, Demme stepped back from Hollywood to make the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense (also 1984) which won the National Society of Film Critics Award for best documentary; the eclectic screwball action-romantic comedy Something Wild (1986); a film-version of the stage production Swimming to Cambodia (1987), by monologist Spalding Gray; and the New York Mafia-by-way-of Downtown comedy Married to the Mob (1988).
Demme formed his production company, Clinica Estetico, with producers Edward Saxon and Peter Saraf in 1987. They were based out of New York City for fifteen years.
Later films
Demme won the Academy Award for The Silence of the Lambs (1991)—one of only three films to win all the major categories (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Actress). Inspired by his friend Juan Suárez Botas's illness with AIDS and fueled by his own moral convictions, Demme then used his influence to make Philadelphia (1993), one of the first major films to address the AIDS crisis and which garnered star Tom Hanks his first Best Actor Oscar. He also co-directed (with his nephew Ted) the music video for Bruce Springsteen's Best Song Oscar-winning "Streets of Philadelphia" from the film's soundtrack. Jonathan used several of the same actors for both movies.
Subsequently, his films included an adaptation of Toni Morrison's Beloved (1998), and remakes of two films from the 1960s: The Truth About Charlie (2002), based on Charade, that starred Mark Wahlberg in the Cary Grant role; and The Manchurian Candidate (2004), with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep. Demme's documentary film Man from Plains (2007), a documentary about former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's promotional tour publicizing his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival.
His art-house hit Rachel Getting Married (2008) was compared by many critics to Demme's films of the late 1970s and 1980s. It was included in many 2008 "best of" lists, and received numerous awards and nominations, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress by lead Anne Hathaway. In 2010, Demme made his first foray into theater, directing Family Week, a play by Beth Henley. The play was produced by MCC Theater and co-starred Rosemarie DeWitt and Kathleen Chalfant.
At one time, Demme was signed on to direct, produce, and write an adaptation of Stephen King's sci-fi novel 11/22/63, but later left the project due to disagreements with King on what should be included in the script.
He returned to the concert documentary format with Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids (2016), which he described as a "performance film, but also a portrait of an artist at a certain moment in the arc of his career", and his last project was a history of rock & roll for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame compiled from footage from Hall of Fame induction ceremonies set to debut in summer 2017.
Demme directed music videos for artists such as Suburban Lawns, New Order, KRS-One's H.E.A.L. project and Bruce Springsteen. He also produced a compilation of Haitian music called Konbit: Burning Rhythms of Haiti that was released in 1989. (Lou Reed selected Konbit... as one of his 'picks of 1989').
Demme was on the board of directors at Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York. In addition to his role on the board, he curated and hosted a monthly series called Rarely Seen Cinema.
Style
Throughout 1986–2004, Demme was known for his dramatic close-ups in films. This style of close-ups involves the character looking directly into the camera during crucial moments. According to Demme, this was done to put the viewer into the character's shoes. Beginning with Rachel Getting Married (2008), Demme adopted a documentary style of filmmaking.
He was known for his use of recurring supporting players, including Charles Napier, Harry Northup, Tracey Walter, Ann Dowd, LisaGay Hamilton, Kimberly Elise, Paul Lazar, Ron Vawter, Dean Stockwell, Obba Babatundé, Ted Levine, Paul Le Mat, Mary Steenburgen, Jason Robards, Scott Glenn, and his former producer Roger Corman, as well as casting musicians and bands in roles. These included Sister Carol, Chris Isaak, Tunde Adebimpe, the Feelies, Charles Aznavour, Steve Scales, the Flirtations, Manno Charlemagne, Bernie Worrell, David Johansen, Beau Sia, Q Lazzarus, and Rick Springfield. In addition to Corman, Demme cast a number of other fellow directors in cameos, including John Sayles, Agnès Varda, George Romero, Sidney Lumet, and John Waters. Many of these performers received opening credits billing in films they appeared in, despite sometimes having only one or two lines.
Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson has paid homage to Demme in his films and has cited him as a major influence in his work. In an interview, Anderson jokingly stated that the three filmmakers who inspired him the most are "Jonathan Demme, Jonathan Demme and Jonathan Demme." Other directors such as Alexander Payne and Wes Anderson have been known to be inspired by his close-ups in their own work.
Political activism
Demme was involved in various political projects. In 1981, he directed a series of commercials for the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way. The spots, titled "Eggs", "Music", and "Sports", were produced by Norman Lear and featured Muhammad Ali, Carol Burnett, and Goldie Hawn celebrating Freedom of Expression. In 1985, he directed a video for Artists United Against Apartheid. The short, featured various international musicians including Afrika Bambaataa, Rubén Blades, Jimmy Cliff, Herbie Hancock, Little Steven, Run–D.M.C., and Bruce Springsteen, calling for a boycott of the South African luxury resort Sun City during Apartheid. His documentary Haiti Dreams of Democracy (1988) captured Haiti's era of democratic rebuilding after dictatorship, while his documentary The Agronomist (2008) profiled Haitian journalist and human rights activist Jean Dominique. Demme spent six years on the documentary I'm Carolyn Parker (2011), which highlighted rebuilding efforts in New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina.
Personal life
Demme was married twice. His first marriage to Evelyn Purcell ended in divorce. In 1987, he married artist Joanne Howard, with whom he had three children. He was the uncle of film director Ted Demme, who died in 2002. Demme's cousin was the Rev. Robert Wilkinson Castle Jr., an Episcopal priest who appeared in some of Demme's films.
Demme was a member of the steering committee of the Friends of the Apollo Theater, Oberlin, Ohio, along with Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman. In 2013, he returned to Oberlin as part of an alumni reunion during the class of 2013 graduation ceremony and received the award for Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts.
In 2009, Demme signed a petition in support of director Roman Polanski, who had been detained while traveling to a film festival in relation to his 1977 sexual abuse charges, which the petition argued would undermine the tradition of film festivals as a place for works to be shown "freely and safely", and that arresting filmmakers traveling to neutral countries could open the door "for actions of which no-one can know the effects."
Demme was an avid collector and devotee of Haitian art, in particular of Hector Hyppolite - so much so that he called it "an addiction". In 2014, he held an auction in Philadelphia selling thousands from his collection, much of which was donated to a cultural center in Port-au-Prince.
Death
Demme died at his home in Manhattan on April 26, 2017, from complications from esophageal cancer and heart disease; he was 73.
"I am heart-broken to lose a friend, a mentor, a guy so singular and dynamic you'd have to design a hurricane to contain him. Jonathan was as quirky as his comedies and as deep as his dramas. He was pure energy, the unstoppable cheerleader for anyone creative. Just as passionate about music as he was about art, he was and will always be a champion of the soul. JD, most beloved, something wild, brother of love, director of the lambs. Love that guy. Love him so much."
Director Brady Corbet dedicated his 2018 film Vox Lux to Demme's memory, as did Luca Guadagnino with his 2018 film Suspiria and Paul Thomas Anderson with his 2017 film Phantom Thread starring Daniel Day Lewis. Demme is thanked in the credits of Spike Lee's 2020 concert film American Utopia starring David Byrne. The album A Beginner's Mind by musicians Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine is dedicated to Demme, with one of its songs, "Cimmerian Shade", mentioning him and referencing The Silence of the Lambs within its lyrics.
Filmography
Awards and nominations
References
External links
Storefront Demme Archived February 11, 2010, at the Wayback Machine media-party.com
Jonathan Demme Archived March 2, 2022, at the Wayback Machine, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan
Jonathan Demme at IMDb
Jonathan Demme at the TCM Movie Database
Appearances on C-SPAN |
Kevin_Costner | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Costner | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Costner"
] | Kevin Michael Costner (born January 18, 1955) is an American actor, producer, and director. He has received various accolades, including two Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award.
Costner rose to prominence starring in such films as The Untouchables (1987), Bull Durham (1988), Field of Dreams (1989), JFK (1991), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), The Bodyguard (1992), and A Perfect World (1993). During this time, he directed and starred in the western epic Dances with Wolves (1990), for which he won two Academy Awards: Best Picture and Best Director. He then starred in and co-produced Wyatt Earp (1994) and Waterworld (1995), and directed The Postman (1997), Open Range (2003) and Horizon: An American Saga (2024).
Costner's other notable films include Silverado (1985), No Way Out (1987), Tin Cup (1996), Message in a Bottle (1999), For Love of the Game (1999), Thirteen Days (2000), Mr. Brooks (2007), Swing Vote (2008), The Company Men (2010), 3 Days to Kill (2014), Draft Day (2014), Black or White (2014), McFarland, USA (2015), and The Highwaymen (2019). He has also played supporting parts in such films as The Upside of Anger (2005), Man of Steel (2013), Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014), Hidden Figures (2016), Molly's Game (2017), and Let Him Go (2020).
On television, Costner portrayed Devil Anse Hatfield in the miniseries Hatfields & McCoys (2012), winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. From 2018 to 2023, he portrayed rancher John Dutton on the Paramount Network drama series Yellowstone, for which he received a Golden Globe award.
Early life and education
Costner was born on January 18, 1955, in Lynwood, California, and grew up in Compton, California. His parents were William and Sharon Costner. He is the youngest of three boys, the second of whom died at birth. Sharon Rae Costner (née Tedrick) was a welfare worker, and William Costner was an electrician and a utilities executive. Costner's father's heritage originates with German immigrants to North Carolina in the 1700s, and Costner also has English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh ancestry. Costner was raised Baptist. He was not academically inclined in school, but did play sports (especially football), take piano lessons, write poetry, and sing in the First Baptist Choir. He has said that watching the 1962 film How the West Was Won as a child inspired his love for Western films.
Costner has stated that he spent his teenage years in different parts of California as his father's career progressed. He has described this time as a period when he "lost a lot of confidence", having to make new friends often. Costner lived in Ventura, then in Visalia. Costner attended Mt. Whitney High School where he was in the marching band. Costner graduated from Villa Park High School in 1973. He played baseball at Villa Park and was teammates with Dennis Burtt. He earned a BA from California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) in 1978. While at CSUF, he became a brother in the Delta Chi fraternity.
Costner became interested in acting and dancing while in his last year of college. In 1978, while on an airplane returning from his honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta, Costner had a chance encounter with actor Richard Burton. At that time, Costner was uncertain about whether he should become an actor, and he approached Burton to ask his advice. Costner has said that Burton encouraged him to pursue acting. Costner has also stated that he asked Burton whether it was possible to be an actor without experiencing turmoil in one's private life; according to Costner, Burton replied that he thought it was possible. Costner credits Burton with inspiring him to become an actor.
Having agreed to undertake a job as a marketing executive, Costner began taking acting lessons five nights a week, with the support of his wife. His marketing job lasted 30 days. He took jobs that allowed him to develop his acting skills, by paying his tuition, including working on fishing boats, as a truck driver, and giving tours of movie stars' Hollywood homes. This work supported the couple while Costner attended auditions.
Career
1981–1986: Rise to prominence
Costner made his film debut in Sizzle Beach, U.S.A. (1981). Filmed in the winter of 1978–79, the film was not released until 1981 and re-released in 1986. The release complications and lack of documentation led many to believe that Costner's debut was in The Touch (also known as Stacy's Knights), in 1983 with Eve Lilith and Andra Millian. Costner played a minor role as "Frat Boy #1" in the Ron Howard film Night Shift (1982). He appears at the climax of a frat-style, blow-out party in the New York City morgue, when the music is suddenly stopped by a frantic Henry Winkler. Costner can be seen holding a beer and looking surprised at the sudden halt of celebration.
Costner appeared in a commercial for the Apple Lisa and Table for Five in 1983, and, the same year, had a small role in the nuclear holocaust film Testament. Later, he was cast in The Big Chill and filmed several scenes that were planned as flashbacks, but they were removed from the final cut. His role was that of Alex, the friend who committed suicide, the event that brings the rest of the cast together. Costner was a friend of director Lawrence Kasdan, who promised the actor a role in a future project. That became Silverado (1985) and a breakout role for Costner. He also starred that year in the smaller films Fandango and American Flyers and appeared alongside Kiefer Sutherland in an hour-long special episode of Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories.
1987–1994: Stardom and acclaim
Costner achieved movie star status in 1987, when he starred as federal agent Eliot Ness in The Untouchables and in the leading role of the thriller No Way Out. He solidified his A-list status in the baseball-themed films Bull Durham (1988) and Field of Dreams (1989). In 1990, he partnered with producer Jim Wilson to form the production company Tig Productions. Tig's first film was the epic Dances with Wolves which Costner directed and starred in. This film was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and won seven, including two for him personally (Best Picture and Best Director). The same year saw the release of Revenge, in which he starred along with Anthony Quinn and Madeleine Stowe, directed by Tony Scott; Costner had wanted to direct it himself.
Costner portrayed Robin Hood in the action-adventure film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) where he also served as a producer. Costner starred alongside Alan Rickman, Morgan Freeman, and Christian Slater. The film received mixed reviews but was an immense box-office success. He then starred as District Attorney Jim Garrison in the Oliver Stone-directed political epic thriller JFK (1991). The film gained significant controversy for its historical inaccuracies but was also praised for its style, direction, and performances. Costner received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama nomination for his role. Critic Roger Ebert praised his performance writing, "As Garrison, Costner gives a measured yet passionate performance. Like a man who has hold of an idea he cannot let go, he forges ahead, insisting that there is more to the assassination than meets the eye."
He then starred opposite Whitney Houston in the romantic drama The Bodyguard (1992) where he also served as a producer. The film was a pop-culture sensation and financial success. The next year he starred as a criminal on the run in Clint Eastwood's drama A Perfect World (1993). Film critic Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "Costner seems about as pathological as a koala bear, and his gentle charisma reinforces the film's touchy-feely theme". He took the title role in the western biopic Wyatt Earp (1994), directed by Lawrence Kasdan, where he also served as a producer. That same year he starred in the drama film The War. The film also co-starred Elijah Wood. The film seemed to gain little attention.
1995–2011: Career fluctuations
The science fiction-post-apocalyptic epics Waterworld (1995) and The Postman (1997), the latter of which Costner also directed, were both commercial disappointments and both largely regarded by critics as artistic failures. However, while Waterworld achieved respectable box office and some positive reviews, results for The Postman were far worse and it ended up winning five Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Picture, Worst Actor and Worst Director for Costner. Costner starred in the golf comedy Tin Cup (1996) for Ron Shelton, who had previously directed him in Bull Durham. He developed the film Air Force One and was set to play the lead role of the President, but ultimately decided to concentrate on finishing The Postman instead. He personally offered the project to Harrison Ford. In 1999, he starred in Message in a Bottle with Robin Wright, based on the novel of the same name by Nicholas Sparks. The film drew mixed reviews and just about broke even at the box office.
His career revived somewhat in 2000 with Thirteen Days, in which he portrayed Kenneth O'Donnell, a top adviser to John F. Kennedy. The western Open Range, which he directed and starred in, received critical acclaim in 2003, and was a surprise success commercially. He received some of his best reviews for his supporting role as retired professional baseball player Denny Davies in The Upside of Anger, for which he received a nomination from the Broadcast Film Critics Association and won the San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor. After that, Costner starred in The Guardian and in Mr. Brooks, in which he portrayed a serial killer. In 2008, his Tig Productions company closed and was changed to Tree House Films.
In 2008, Costner starred in Swing Vote. He starred opposite Jennifer Aniston in the 2005 movie Rumour Has It. Costner was honored on September 6, 2006, when his hand and foot prints were set in concrete in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre alongside those of other celebrated actors and entertainers. In 2010, he appeared in The Company Men alongside Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper. It debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, and received good reviews. It was released in cinemas worldwide in January 2011. The film was considered to be an Oscar contender, but did not get a nomination.
Costner announced that he would be returning to the director's chair for the first time in seven years, in 2011, with A Little War of Our Own. He was also about to team up again with director Kevin Reynolds in Learning Italian. No updates have been released about either film since their original production announcement. He also appears, as a special cameo, in Funny or Die's "Field of Dreams 2: NFL Lockout". Costner portrayed Jonathan Kent in the rebooted Superman film Man of Steel, directed by Zack Snyder. Costner was going to have a role in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts.
2012–present: Resurgence and Yellowstone
Costner portrayed Devil Anse Hatfield in the three-part miniseries Hatfields & McCoys, which premiered on May 28, 2012, on the History Channel. It broke a record by pulling 13.9 million viewers. The miniseries tells the true American story of a legendary family feud – one that spanned decades and nearly launched a war between Kentucky and West Virginia. The role earned Costner the 2012 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie, the 2013 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie, and the 2013 Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television.
In 2014, Costner appeared in the spy movie Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, as Thomas Harper, a mentor for the series' title character. The same year, he starred in the thriller 3 Days to Kill and the drama Draft Day and produced and starred in Black or White. Black or White premiered at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival and opened in the United States in 2015. In 2015, Costner played coach Jim White in the drama film McFarland, USA, about cross-country running. In 2016, he played the fictional character Al Harrison, a NASA Space Task Group supervisor, in Hidden Figures, and in 2017, he starred with Jessica Chastain in Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut film Molly's Game. Since 2018, he has starred in and produced the television series Yellowstone, marking the first regular TV series role of his career. In 2019, Costner starred in The Art of Racing in the Rain, where he voiced Enzo the dog. It was his first voice-over film in his career.
In August 2022, Costner began production on Horizon: An American Saga, a Western epic that will be split into at least four films, each just under three hours in length. Costner plans on the films being released over a series of months. Costner will act as director of the project and said the film was proposed as an event television series. Production on the first film was expected to last at least 220 days, but was completed by November 2022. Production of the next films was underway by May 2023.
Other ventures
Country music
Costner is the singer in Kevin Costner & Modern West, a country rock band which he founded with the encouragement of his wife Christine. In October 2007, they began a worldwide tour which included shows in Istanbul and Rome. The group also performed at NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races at Daytona International Speedway and Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina.
The band released a country album, Untold Truths, on November 11, 2008, on Universal South Records. The album peaked at No. 61 on the Billboard Top Country Albums and No. 35 on the Top Heatseekers chart. Three singles ("Superman 14", "Long Hot Night" and "Backyard") have been released to radio, although none have charted. For the single "Superman 14" a live music video was made.
In 2009, they went on tour with opening act The Alternate Routes. In August, at the Big Valley Jamboree in Camrose, Alberta, Costner and the band were scheduled next on stage when a severe thunderstorm struck, causing the stage and stands on the main stage to collapse. One person was reported dead and forty injured. Later, an auction was held to raise money for the two young sons of the woman killed. A dinner with Costner was auctioned off for $41,000. Two guitars, one autographed by Costner, helped raise another $10,000 each.
A second Kevin Costner and Modern West album, Turn It On, was released in February 2010 in Europe and was supported by a European tour. In July 2012, the band performed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the 20th annual Telus World Skins Game in support of the IWK Health Centre Foundation, donating a guitar autographed by Costner.
Kevin Costner has also appeared in the documentary film Country Roads by Marieke Schröder.
The most recent album released by Kevin Costner and Modern West, Tales from Yellowstone, was written by Costner and his co-writers from the perspective of John Dutton, Costner's character on the hit TV series Yellowstone. Songs from the album were featured on Season 3 of the show.
Baseball
Several of Costner's films have included a baseball theme: Chasing Dreams, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, For Love of the Game, and The Upside of Anger, in three of which his character is a pro baseball player and one a former pro baseball player.
Costner has a home in Austin, Texas, and sometimes appears at Texas Longhorns baseball practices and games. He was a close friend of former Longhorns baseball coach Augie Garrido from Garrido's days coaching at Cal State Fullerton, Costner's alma mater. He cast Garrido to play the role of the Yankee manager in For Love of the Game. He tries to attend every College World Series game that the CSUF Titans team plays in Omaha, Nebraska. Costner walked on for a tryout, but did not make the team early in his time at the university.
Costner was a partial owner of the Zion, Illinois-based Lake County Fielders independent baseball team in the North American League. The Fielders name was an homage to Field of Dreams, with the logo showing a ballplayer standing amid a field of corn. On August 12, 2021, he led the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox onto the field prior to the MLB at Field of Dreams game held in Dyersville, Iowa and gave a short speech.
Business interests
In 1995, Costner bought a company that was developing oil separation machines based on a patent he purchased from the US government. The machines developed by the company were of little commercial interest until the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, when BP took six of the machines from a company in which Costner owned an interest, Ocean Therapy Solutions, for testing in late May 2010. On June 16, 2010, BP entered into a lease with Ocean Therapy Solutions for 32 of the oil-water separation devices. Although Spyron Contoguris and Stephen Baldwin had previously sold their interests in Ocean Therapy Solutions in mid-June to another investor in the company, they filed a lawsuit in Louisiana District Court claiming $10.64 million for securities fraud and misrepresentation. The suit claimed that Costner kept a meeting with BP secret from them, and the secret meeting resulted in an $18-million down payment on a $52 million purchase, and that after the down payment, but before any announcement, another investor used part of the down payment to buy out their shares, thus excluding them from their share of the profits from the total sale. The suit claimed that, despite public statements by Costner, Ocean Therapy Solutions, BP and others to the contrary, Baldwin and Contogouris were told that BP was still testing the machines and had not yet committed to lease the machines from Ocean Therapy Solutions and that the other investor in Ocean Therapy Solutions purchased their shares for $1.4 million to Baldwin and $500,000, to Contogouris. In June 2012, a federal jury in Louisiana deliberated for less than two hours before rejecting Baldwin's and Contogouris' claims in the multimillion-dollar oil-clean-up case, and the court ordered Baldwin and Contogouris to reimburse Costner and the other defendants in the case for their costs.
On June 6, 2004, Costner opened Tatanka: The Story of the Bison one mile south of Deadwood, South Dakota, on U.S. Route 85, saying he hoped it would be an educational and emotional place for people to learn about America's westward expansion. Promoters stated in a news release that the $5-million attraction had a new, 3,800-square-foot interactive center featuring exhibits, retail, and food and beverage areas, as well as offices and a small theater. The visitor center features graphics and text about the bison and the relationship of the Plains Indians to the animals - historically hunting and now raising them for food and clothing, among other things. The centerpiece is a bronze sculpture depicting a buffalo jump by Hill City artist Peggy Detmers, depicting 14 bronze bison in the act of running from their pursuers and three bronze Lakota riders on horseback. Three of the massive bison are posed in midair, cascading over the face of a cliff. Costner commissioned the work in 1994 from Detmers. The five-fourths-scale bronzes, each weighing between 2,500 and 8,000 pounds, were cast at Eagle Bronze Foundry in Lander, Wyoming.
Costner opened the Midnight Star Casino and Restaurant in Deadwood, S.D., in 1991. He hired Francis and Carla Caneva to manage the establishment and gave each of them a 3.25 percent ownership and paid them salaries and bonuses. He terminated their employment in July 2004 and asked to agree to an amicable disassociation. When they declined, Costner dissolved the partnership and hired an accountant who determined its fair market value to be $3.1 million. The Canevas sued Costner to buy their shares based on twice that amount or sell the company on the open market. They won in the lower court but, on Costner's appeal, lost in the South Dakota Supreme Court. Costner closed the establishment in 2017 and sold it in 2020.
In 2020, Costner joined Woody Sears's new audio entertainment travel app, HearHere, as a co-founder, podcast narrator, and investor. Costner narrates some of the audio stories provided by the iPhone subscription app for travelers on road trips across the United States who want to hear about the people, places, and histories they are encountering on their travels.
Philanthropy
Costner serves on an honorary board for the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. In spring 2011, he recorded two radio spots for the museum that were aired on Kansas City Royals Radio Network.
NASCAR
Costner was named ceremonial Grand Marshal of the NASCAR Cup Series' Auto Club 500 which took place on February 25, 2007, at the California Speedway. In 2008, he worked with the NASCAR Media Group and CMT Films to help produce the NASCAR Documentary The Ride of Their Lives which was released in December of that year. Costner would be the narrator for that documentary. Also in 2009, he was named the spokesman for NASCAR Day which took place on May 15. The next day, May 16, he and his country music band would perform in the infield of Charlotte Motor Speedway as well as participate as a judge in the 2nd annual Victory Challenge before the 25th Running of the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race.
Writing
In 2015, Costner co-authored The Explorer's Guild: A Passage to Shambhala, a hybrid adventure novel and graphic novel, with John Baird, researcher Stephen C. Meyer, and illustrator Rick Ross.
Costner has a chapter giving advice in Tim Ferriss' book Tools of Titans.
Personal life
Relationships
In 1975, while in college, Costner started dating fellow student Cindy Silva, and they married three years later. During their marriage, they had two daughters born in 1984 and 1986, and a son born in 1988. The couple divorced in 1994 after 16 years of marriage, due to Costner allegedly having an affair while on the set of Waterworld. Cindy Silva received a settlement of US$80 million (equivalent to $149 million in 2023). Following his divorce, he had a brief relationship with Bridget Rooney, future wife of billionaire Bill Koch; Costner and Rooney had a son together, born in 1996. He then dated political activist Birgit Cunningham. In 1996, he lived with supermodel Elle Macpherson. On September 25, 2004, Costner married his girlfriend of four years, model and handbag designer Christine Baumgartner, at his ranch in Aspen, Colorado. They have two sons, born in 2007 and 2009, and a daughter born in 2010. In May 2023, Baumgartner filed for divorce. They finalized their divorce on February 20, 2024.
Political activism
Early in his life, Costner was a Republican. He was both a supporter and friend of Ronald Reagan, frequently playing golf with the former president. He eventually switched his affiliation in the early 1990s. Since 1992, Costner has financially supported a variety of Democratic politicians, including Al Gore and Tom Daschle, but also made contributions to Republican Phil Gramm as late as 1995.
In 2008, he said publicly that he had no ambition to run for political office, adding "I've lived quite a colorful life". In the final days before that year's United States presidential election, Costner campaigned for Barack Obama, visiting various places in Colorado, where he has a home. In his speech, Costner stated the need for young voters to get to the polls, early and with enthusiasm. "We were going to change the world and we haven't", Costner said at a Colorado State University rally. "My generation didn't get it done, and we need you to help us".
In October 2014, Costner sent a tribute to British troops serving around the world, thanking them for their work.
On December 22, 2019, Costner endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg at a rally in Indianola, Iowa. Later, Costner supported Democratic candidate Joe Biden. Costner narrated a commercial for J. D. Scholten, a Democrat running for the U.S. House of Representatives from Iowa's 4th congressional district. For the 2022 United States House of Representatives election in Wyoming, Costner endorsed Republican Liz Cheney for reelection.
Acting credits and accolades
Over Costner's career he has received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director Dances with Wolves (1990). He received three Golden Globe Awards for Dances with Wolves, Hatfields & McCoys (2012) and Yellowstone (2023). He also received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Bibliography
Costner, Kevin; Michael Blake; Jim Wilson (producer's notes); Diana Landau (1991). Dances with Wolves: The Illustrated Screenplay and Story Behind the Film. Newmarket Pictorial Moviebooks. Photographer: Ben Glass. New York: Newmarket Press. ISBN 9781557040886. OCLC 22450423.
Costner, Kevin; Jonathan Baird; Stephen Meyer (2015). The Explorers Guild: Volume One: A Passage to Shambhala. Illustrator: Rick Ross. New York: Atria Books. ISBN 9781476727394. OCLC 926879500.
References
External links
Kevin Costner at IMDb
Kevin Costner at AllMovie
Kevin Costner at the TCM Movie Database
Kevin Costner in the Hollywood Walk of Fame Directory
Appearances on C-SPAN
Kevin Costner interview on KVUE in 1987 about The Untouchables from Texas Archive of the Moving Image |
Clint_Eastwood | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Eastwood | [
745
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Eastwood"
] | Clinton Eastwood Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western TV series Rawhide, Eastwood rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy of spaghetti Westerns during the mid-1960s and as antihero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made Eastwood an enduring cultural icon of masculinity. Elected in 1986, Eastwood served for two years as the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
Eastwood's greatest commercial successes are the adventure comedy Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and its action comedy sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980). Other popular Eastwood films include the Westerns Hang 'Em High (1968), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Pale Rider (1985), the action-war film Where Eagles Dare (1968), the prison film Escape from Alcatraz (1979), the war film Heartbreak Ridge (1986), the action film In the Line of Fire (1993), and the romantic drama The Bridges of Madison County (1995). More recent works include Gran Torino (2008), The Mule (2018), and Cry Macho (2021). Since 1967, Eastwood's company Malpaso Productions has produced all but four of his American films.
An Academy Award nominee for Best Actor, Eastwood won Best Director and Best Picture for his Western film Unforgiven (1992) and his sports drama Million Dollar Baby (2004). In addition to directing many of his own star vehicles, Eastwood has directed films in which he did not appear, such as the mystery drama Mystic River (2003) and the war film Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), for which he received Academy Award nominations. He also directed the biographical films Changeling (2008), Invictus (2009), American Sniper (2014), Sully (2016), and Richard Jewell (2019).
Eastwood's accolades include four Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, three César Awards, and an AFI Life Achievement Award. In 2000, he received the Italian Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion award, honoring his lifetime achievements. Bestowed two of France's highest civilian honors, he received the Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1994, and the Legion of Honour in 2007.
Early life
Eastwood was born on May 31, 1930, at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco, to Ruth (née Margret Runner; 1909–2006) and Clinton Eastwood (1906–1970). During her son's fame, Ruth was known by the surname of her second husband, John Belden Wood (1913–2004), whom she married after the death of Clinton Sr. Eastwood was nicknamed "Samson" by hospital nurses because he weighed 11 pounds 6 ounces (5.2 kg) at birth. He has a younger sister, Jeanne Bernhardt (b. 1934). He is of English, Irish, Scottish, and Dutch ancestry. Eastwood is descended from Mayflower passenger William Bradford, and through this line is the 12th generation born in North America. His family relocated three times during the 1930s as his father changed occupations. Contrary to what Eastwood has indicated in media interviews, they did not move between 1940 and 1949. Settling in Piedmont, California, the Eastwoods lived in an affluent area of the town, had a swimming pool, belonged to a country club, and each parent drove their own car. Eastwood's father was a manufacturing executive at Georgia-Pacific for most of his working life. As Clint and Jeanne grew older, Ruth took a clerical job at IBM.
Eastwood attended Piedmont Middle School, where he was held back due to poor academic scores, and records indicated he also had to attend summer school. From January 1945 until at least January 1946, he attended Piedmont High School, but was asked to leave for writing an obscene suggestion to a school official on the athletic field scoreboard and burning an effigy on the school lawn, on top of other school infractions. He transferred to Oakland Technical High School and was scheduled to graduate mid-year in January 1949, although it is not clear if he did. "Clint graduated from the airplane shop. I think that was his major", joked classmate Don Kincade. Another high school friend, Don Loomis, echoed "I don't think he was spending that much time at school because he was having a pretty good time elsewhere." Fritz Manes, a boyhood friend two years younger than Eastwood, said "I think what happened is he just went off and started having a good time. I just don't think he finished high school." Biographer Patrick McGilligan notes that high school graduation records are a matter of strict legal confidentiality. According to the author, Eastwood's school principal had to call his management first before deciding whether to be interviewed, and "whoever answered the phone at Malpaso advised him against talking to me, and he didn't".
Eastwood held a number of odd jobs, including lifeguard, paper carrier, grocery clerk, forest firefighter, and golf caddy. Eastwood said that he tried to enroll at Seattle University in 1951, but instead was drafted into the United States Army during the Korean War. "He always dropped the Korean War reference, hoping everyone would conclude that he was in combat and might be some sort of hero. Actually, he'd been a lifeguard at Fort Ord in northern California for his entire stint in the military", said Eastwood's former longtime companion Sondra Locke. Don Loomis recalled hearing that Eastwood was romancing one of the daughters of a Fort Ord officer, who might have been entreated to watch out for him when names came up for postings. While returning from a prearranged tryst in Seattle, he was a passenger on a Douglas AD bomber that ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean near Point Reyes. Using a life raft, he and the pilot swam 2 miles (3.2 km) to safety. Eastwood was discharged in February 1953.
Career
1954–1962: acting debut and Rawhide
According to a CBS press release for Rawhide, Universal-International's camera crew was shooting in Fort Ord when an enterprising assistant spotted Eastwood and invited him to meet the director, although this is disputed by Eastwood's unauthorized biographer, Patrick McGilligan. According to Eastwood's official biography, the key figure was a man named Chuck Hill, who was stationed in Fort Ord and had contacts in Hollywood. While in Los Angeles, Hill became reacquainted with Eastwood and managed to sneak him into a Universal studio, where he introduced him to cameraman Irving Glassberg. Glassberg arranged for an audition under Arthur Lubin, who, although very impressed with Eastwood's appearance and stature (then 6 ft 4 in [193 cm]), disapproved of his acting, remarking, "He was quite amateurish. He didn't know which way to turn or which way to go or do anything." Lubin suggested that he attend drama classes and arranged for Eastwood's initial contract in April 1954, at $100 per week. After signing, Eastwood was initially criticized for his stiff manner and delivering his lines through his teeth, a lifelong trademark.
In May 1954, Eastwood made his first real audition for Six Bridges to Cross, but was rejected by Joseph Pevney. After many unsuccessful auditions, he was eventually given a minor role by director Jack Arnold in Revenge of the Creature (1955), a sequel to the recently released Creature from the Black Lagoon. In September 1954, Eastwood worked for three weeks on Arthur Lubin's Lady Godiva of Coventry, won a role in February 1955, playing "Jonesy", a sailor in Francis in the Navy and appeared uncredited in another Jack Arnold film, Tarantula, where he played a squadron pilot. In May 1955, Eastwood put four hours' work into the film Never Say Goodbye and had a minor uncredited role as a ranch hand (his first western film) in August 1955 with Law Man, also known as Star in the Dust, starring John Agar and Mamie Van Doren. Universal presented him with his first television role on July 2, 1955, on NBC's Allen in Movieland, which starred comedian Steve Allen, actor Tony Curtis, and swing musician Benny Goodman. Although he continued to develop as an actor, Universal terminated his contract on October 23, 1955.
Eastwood joined the Marsh Agency, and although Lubin landed him his biggest role to date in The First Traveling Saleslady (1956) and later hired him for Escapade in Japan (1957), without a formal contract, Eastwood was struggling. On his financial advisor Irving Leonard's advice, he switched to the Kumin-Olenick Agency in 1956 and Mitchell Gertz in 1957. He landed several small roles in 1956 as a temperamental army officer for a segment of ABC's Reader's Digest series, and as a motorcycle gang member on a Highway Patrol episode. In 1957, Eastwood played a cadet in West Point series and a suicidal gold prospector on Death Valley Days.
In 1958, he played a Navy lieutenant in a segment of Navy Log and in early 1959 made a notable guest appearance as Red Hardigan on Maverick opposite James Garner as a cowardly villain intent on marrying a rich girl for money. Eastwood had a small part as an aviator in Lafayette Escadrille (1958) and played a major role as an ex-renegade of the Confederacy in Ambush at Cimarron Pass (also 1958): a film that Eastwood considers the low point of his career.
In 1958, Eastwood was cast as Rowdy Yates in the CBS hour-long western series Rawhide, the career breakthrough he had long sought. Eastwood was not especially happy with his character; Eastwood was almost 30, and Rowdy was too young and cloddish for his comfort. Filming began in Arizona in the summer of 1958. It took just three weeks for Rawhide to reach the top 20 in TV ratings and, although it never won an Emmy, it was a major success for several years, and peaked at number six in the ratings from October 1960 to April 1961. The Rawhide years (1959–65) were some of the most grueling of Eastwood's career, often filming six days a week for an average of 12 hours a day, but some directors still criticized him for not working hard enough. By late 1963, Rawhide was beginning to decline in the ratings and lacked freshness in the scripts; it was canceled in the middle of the 1965–66 season. Eastwood made his first attempt at directing when he filmed several trailers for the show, but was unable to convince producers to let him direct an episode. In the show's first season, Eastwood earned $750 an episode. At the time of Rawhide's cancellation, he received $119,000 an episode as severance pay.
1963–1969: spaghetti Westerns and stardom
In late 1963, Eastwood's Rawhide co-star Eric Fleming rejected an offer to star in an Italian-made western called A Fistful of Dollars (1964), filmed in a remote region of Spain by a then relatively unknown director, Sergio Leone. Richard Harrison suggested Eastwood to Leone because Harrison knew that Eastwood could play a cowboy convincingly. Eastwood thought the film would be an opportunity to escape from his Rawhide image. He signed a contract for $15,000 in wages for eleven weeks' work, with a bonus of a Mercedes-Benz automobile upon completion. Eastwood later said of the transition from a TV western to A Fistful of Dollars: "In Rawhide I did get awfully tired of playing the conventional white hat. The hero who kisses old ladies and dogs and was kind to everybody. I decided it was time to be an antihero." Eastwood was instrumental in creating the Man with No Name character's distinctive visual style and, although a non-smoker, Leone insisted Eastwood smoke cigars as an essential ingredient of the "mask" he was attempting to create for the character.
A Fistful of Dollars proved a landmark in the development of spaghetti Westerns, with Leone depicting a more lawless and desolate world than traditional westerns, and challenging American stereotypes of a western hero with a morally ambiguous antihero. The film's success made Eastwood a major star in Italy and he was rehired to star in For a Few Dollars More (1965), the second of the trilogy. Through the efforts of screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni, the rights to For a Few Dollars More and the trilogy's final film, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), were sold to United Artists for about $900,000.
In January 1966, Eastwood met producer Dino De Laurentiis in New York City and agreed to star in a non-Western five-part anthology production, The Witches (Le Streghe, 1967), opposite De Laurentiis's wife, Silvana Mangano. Eastwood's 19-minute installment took only a few days to shoot, but his performance did not please critics; one wrote, "no other performance of his is quite so 'un-Clintlike'".
Two months later Eastwood began work on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, again playing the mysterious Man with No Name. Lee Van Cleef returned as a ruthless fortune seeker, with Eli Wallach portraying the Mexican bandit Tuco Ramirez. The storyline involved the search for a cache of Confederate gold buried in a cemetery. During the filming of a scene in which a bridge was blown up, Eastwood urged Wallach to retreat to a hilltop. "I know about these things", he said. "Stay as far away from special effects and explosives as you can." Minutes later, confusion among the crew over the word "Vaya!" resulted in a premature explosion that could have killed Wallach.
I wanted to play it with an economy of words and create this whole feeling through attitude and movement. It was just the kind of character I had envisioned for a long time, keep to the mystery and allude to what happened in the past. It came about after the frustration of doing Rawhide for so long. I felt the less he said, the stronger he became and the more he grew in the imagination of the audience.
The Dollars trilogy was not released in the United States until 1967, when A Fistful of Dollars opened on January 18, followed by For a Few Dollars More on May 10, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly on December 29. All three were commercially successful, particularly The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which eventually earned $8 million in rental earnings and turned Eastwood into a major film star being ranked for the first time on Quigley's Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll in 1968 in fifth place. All three received poor reviews, and marked the beginning of a battle for Eastwood to win American film critics' respect. Judith Crist described A Fistful of Dollars as "cheapjack", while Newsweek called For a Few Dollars More "excruciatingly dopey". Renata Adler of The New York Times said The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was "the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre". Time magazine drew attention to the film's wooden acting, especially Eastwood's, though a few critics such as Vincent Canby and Bosley Crowther of The New York Times praised his coolness. Leone's cinematography was widely acclaimed, even by critics who disparaged the acting.
Stardom brought Eastwood more roles. He signed to star in the American revisionist western Hang 'Em High (1968) alongside Inger Stevens, Pat Hingle, Ed Begley, playing a man who takes up a marshal's badge and seeks revenge as a lawman after being lynched by vigilantes and left for dead. The film earned Eastwood $400,000 and 25% of its net box office. Using money earned from the Dollars trilogy, Eastwood's advisor Irving Leonard helped establish Eastwood's own production company, Malpaso Productions, named after Malpaso Creek on Eastwood's property in Monterey County, California. The 38-year-old actor was still relatively unknown as late as a month prior to the film's release, as evidenced by a July 1968 news item by syndicated columnist Dorothy Manners: "The proverbial man in the street is still asking, 'Who's Clint Eastwood?'" Leonard arranged for Hang 'Em High to be a joint production with United Artists; when it opened in August, it had the largest opening weekend in United Artists' history. Hang 'Em High was widely praised by critics, including Archer Winsten of the New York Post, who called it "a western of quality, courage, danger and excitement".
Before Hang 'Em High's release, Eastwood had already begun working on Coogan's Bluff (1968), about an Arizona deputy sheriff tracking a wanted psychopathic criminal (Don Stroud) through New York City. He was reunited with Universal Studios for it after receiving an offer of $1 million – more than double his previous salary. Jennings Lang arranged for Eastwood to meet Don Siegel, a Universal contract director who later became Eastwood's close friend, forming a partnership that would last more than ten years and produce five films. Shooting began in November 1967, before the script had been finalized. The film was controversial for its portrayal of violence. Coogan's Bluff also became the first collaboration with Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin, who scored several Eastwood films in the 1970s and 1980s, including the Dirty Harry films.
Eastwood was paid $750,000 for the war epic Where Eagles Dare (1968), about a World War II squad parachuting into a Gestapo stronghold in the Alps. Richard Burton played the squad's commander, with Eastwood as his right-hand man. Eastwood was also cast as Two-Face in the Batman television show, but the series was canceled before filming began.
Eastwood then branched out to star in the only musical of his career, Paint Your Wagon (1969). Eastwood and Lee Marvin play gold miners who buy a Mormon settler's less favored wife (Jean Seberg) at an auction. Bad weather and delays plagued the production, and the film's budget eventually exceeded $20 million, which was high for the time. The film was not a critical or commercial success, but was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.
1970–1989: directorial debut and Dirty Harry
Eastwood starred with Shirley MacLaine in the western Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), directed by Don Siegel. The film follows an American mercenary, who becomes mixed up with a prostitute disguised as a nun, and ends up helping a group of Juarista rebels during the reign of Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico. Eastwood again played a mysterious stranger – unshaven, wearing a serape-like vest, and smoking a cigar. Although it received moderate reviews, the film is listed in The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made. Around the same time, Eastwood starred as one of a group of Americans who steals a fortune in gold from the Nazis, in the World War II film Kelly's Heroes (also 1970), with Donald Sutherland and Telly Savalas. Kelly's Heroes was the last film Eastwood appeared in that was not produced by his own Malpaso Productions. Shot on location in Yugoslavia and London, the film received mostly a positive reception and its anti-war sentiments were recognized. Siegel directed Eastwood's next film, The Beguiled (1971), a tale of a wounded Union soldier, held captive by the sexually repressed matron (played by Geraldine Page) of a Southern girls' school. Upon release the film received major recognition in France and is considered one of Eastwood's finest works by French critics. However, it grossed less than $1 million and, according to Eastwood and Lang, flopped due to poor publicity and the "emasculated" role of Eastwood.
Eastwood's career reached a turning point in 1971. Before Irving Leonard died, he and Eastwood had discussed the idea of Malpaso producing Play Misty for Me, a film that was to give Eastwood the artistic control he desired, and his debut as a director. The script was about a jazz disc jockey named Dave (Eastwood), who has a casual affair with Evelyn (Jessica Walter), a listener who had been calling the radio station repeatedly at night, asking him to play her favorite song – Erroll Garner's "Misty". When Dave ends their relationship, the unhinged Evelyn becomes a murderous stalker. Filming commenced in Monterey in September 1970 and included footage of that year's Monterey Jazz Festival. The film was highly acclaimed with critics, such as Jay Cocks in Time magazine, Andrew Sarris in the Village Voice, and Archer Winsten in the New York Post all praising the film, as well as Eastwood's directorial skills and performance. Walter was nominated for a Golden Globe Best Actress Award (Drama), for her performance in the film.
I know what you're thinking – "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. But, being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do you, punk?
Dirty Harry (1971), written by Harry and Rita Fink, centers on a hard-edged New York City (later changed to San Francisco) police inspector named Harry Callahan who is determined to stop a psychotic killer by any means. Dirty Harry has been described as being arguably Eastwood's most memorable character, and the film has been credited with inventing the "loose-cannon cop" genre. Author Eric Lichtenfeld argues that Eastwood's role as Dirty Harry established the "first true archetype" of the action film genre. His lines (quoted above) are regarded by firearms historians, such as Garry James and Richard Venola, as the force that catapulted the ownership of .44 Magnum revolvers to new heights in the United States; specifically the Smith & Wesson Model 29 carried by Harry Callahan. Dirty Harry, released in December 1971, earned $22 million in the United States and Canada. It was Siegel's highest-grossing film and the start of a series of films featuring the character Harry Callahan. Although a number of critics praised Eastwood's performance as Dirty Harry, such as Jay Cocks who described him as "giving his best performance so far, tense, tough, full of implicit identification with his character", the film was also widely criticized as being fascistic. After having been second for the past two years, Eastwood was voted first in Quigley's Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll in 1972 and again in 1973.
Following Sean Connery's announcement that he would not play James Bond again, Eastwood was offered the role but turned it down, saying, "that was someone else's gig. That's Sean's deal. It didn't feel right for me to be doing it." He next starred in the loner Western Joe Kidd (1972), based on a character inspired by Reies Lopez Tijerina, who stormed a courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico, in June 1967. During filming, Eastwood suffered symptoms of a bronchial infection and several panic attacks. Joe Kidd received a mixed reception, with Roger Greenspun of The New York Times writing that it was unremarkable, with foolish symbolism and sloppy editing, although he praised Eastwood's performance.
Eastwood's first western as director was High Plains Drifter (1973), in which he also starred. The film had a moral and supernatural theme, later emulated in Pale Rider. The plot follows a mysterious stranger (Eastwood) who arrives in a brooding Western town where the people hire him to protect them against three soon-to-be-released felons. There remains confusion during the film as to whether the stranger is the brother of the deputy, whom the felons lynched and murdered, or his ghost. Holes in the plot were filled with black humor and allegory, influenced by Leone. The revisionist film received a mixed reception, but was a major box-office success. A number of critics thought Eastwood's directing was "as derivative as it was expressive", with Arthur Knight of the Saturday Review remarking that Eastwood had "absorbed the approaches of Siegel and Leone and fused them with his own paranoid vision of society". John Wayne, who had declined a role in the film, sent a letter to Eastwood soon after the film's release in which he complained that, "The townspeople did not represent the true spirit of the American pioneer, the spirit that made America great."
Eastwood next turned his attention towards Breezy (1973), a film about love blossoming between a middle-aged man and a teenage girl. During casting for the film Eastwood met Sondra Locke for the first time, an actress who would play major roles in six of his films over the next ten years and become an important figure in his life. Kay Lenz got the part of Breezy because Locke, at 29, was nearly twice the character's age. The film, shot very quickly and efficiently by Eastwood and Frank Stanley, came in $1 million under budget and was finished three days ahead of schedule. Breezy was not a major critical or commercial success.
Once filming of Breezy had finished, Warners announced that Eastwood had agreed to reprise his role as Callahan in Magnum Force (1973), a sequel to Dirty Harry, about a group of rogue young officers (among them David Soul, Robert Urich, and Tim Matheson) in the San Francisco Police Department who systematically exterminate the city's worst criminals. Although the film was a major success after release, grossing $58.1 million in the United States (a record for Eastwood), it was not a critical success. The New York Times critic Nora Sayre panned the often contradictory moral themes of the film, while the paper's Frank Rich called it "the same old stuff".
Eastwood teamed up with Jeff Bridges and George Kennedy in the buddy action caper Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), a road movie about a veteran bank robber Thunderbolt (Eastwood) and a young con man drifter, Lightfoot (Bridges). On its release, in spring 1974, the film was praised for its offbeat comedy mixed with high suspense and tragedy but was only a modest success at the box office, earning $32.4 million. Eastwood's acting was noted by critics, but was overshadowed by Bridges who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Eastwood reportedly fumed at the lack of Academy Award recognition for him and swore that he would never work for United Artists again.
Eastwood's next film The Eiger Sanction (1975) was based on Trevanian's critically acclaimed spy novel of the same name. Eastwood plays Jonathan Hemlock in a role originally intended for Paul Newman, an assassin turned college art professor who decides to return to his former profession for one last "sanction" in return for a rare Pissarro painting. In the process he must climb the north face of the Eiger in Switzerland under perilous conditions. Mike Hoover taught Eastwood how to climb during several weeks of preparation at Yosemite in the summer of 1974 before filming commenced in Grindelwald, Switzerland on August 12. Despite prior warnings about the perils of the Eiger, Eastwood insisted on doing all his own climbing and stunts. The film crew suffered a number of accidents, including one fatality. Upon release in May 1975, The Eiger Sanction was marginally successful commercially, receiving $14.2 million at the box-office, and gained mixed reviews. Joy Gould Boyum of The Wall Street Journal dismissed the film as "brutal fantasy". Eastwood blamed Universal Studios for the film's poor promotion and turned his back on them to make an agreement with Warner Brothers, through Frank Wells, that has lasted to the present day.
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), a western inspired by Asa Carter's 1972 novel of the same name, has lead character Josey Wales (Eastwood) as a pro-Confederate guerrilla who refuses to surrender his arms after the American Civil War and is chased across the old southwest by a group of enforcers. The supporting cast included Locke as his love interest and Chief Dan George as an elderly Cherokee who strikes up a friendship with Wales. Director Philip Kaufman was fired by producer Bob Daley under Eastwood's command in October 1975, three weeks into the shoot, resulting in a fine reported to be around $60,000 from the Directors Guild of America – who subsequently passed new legislation reserving the right to impose a major fine on a producer for discharging and replacing a director. The film was pre-screened at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts and Humanities in Idaho during a six-day conference entitled Western Movies: Myths and Images. Invited to the screening were a number of esteemed film critics, including Jay Cocks and Arthur Knight; directors such as King Vidor, William Wyler, and Howard Hawks; and a number of academics. Upon release in the summer of 1976 The Outlaw Josey Wales was widely acclaimed, with many critics and viewers seeing Eastwood's role as an iconic one that related to America's ancestral past and the destiny of the nation after the American Civil War. Roger Ebert compared the nature and vulnerability of Eastwood's portrayal of Josey Wales with his Man with No Name character in the Dollars westerns and praised the film's atmosphere. The film would later appear in Time's "Top 10 Films of the Year".
Eastwood was then offered the role of Benjamin L. Willard in Francis Coppola's Apocalypse Now, but declined as he did not want to spend weeks on location in the Philippines. He also refused the part of a platoon leader in Ted Post's Vietnam War film, Go Tell the Spartans and instead decided to make a third Dirty Harry film, The Enforcer (1976). The film had Callahan partnered with a new female officer (Tyne Daly) to face a San Francisco Bay area group resembling the Symbionese Liberation Army. The film, culminating in a shootout on Alcatraz island, was considerably shorter than the previous Dirty Harry films at 95 minutes, but was a major commercial success grossing $100 million worldwide to become Eastwood's highest-grossing film to date.
Eastwood directed and starred in The Gauntlet (1977) opposite Locke, Pat Hingle, William Prince, Bill McKinney, and Mara Corday. In this film, he portrays a down-and-out cop assigned to escort a prostitute from Las Vegas to Phoenix to testify against the mob. Although a moderate hit with the viewing public, critics had mixed feelings about the film, with many believing it was overly violent. Ebert, in contrast, gave the film three stars and called it "classic Clint Eastwood: fast, furious, and funny". In Every Which Way but Loose (1978), he had an uncharacteristic offbeat comedy role. His character, Philo Beddoe, is a trucker and brawler who roams the American West searching for a lost love (Locke) accompanied by his best friend, Orville Boggs (played by Geoffrey Lewis) and an orangutan called Clyde. The film proved surprisingly successful upon its release and became Eastwood's most commercially successful film up to that time. Panned by critics, it ranked high among the box-office successes of his career and was the second-highest-grossing film of 1978.
Eastwood starred in Escape from Alcatraz (1979), the last of his films directed by Siegel. It was based on the true story of Frank Lee Morris who, along with John and Clarence Anglin, escaped from the notorious Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in 1962. The film was a major success; Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic praised it as "crystalline cinema" and Frank Rich of Time described it as "cool, cinematic grace".
Eastwood directed and played the title role in Bronco Billy (1980), alongside Locke, Scatman Crothers, and Sam Bottoms. Filming commenced on October 1, 1979, in the Boise metropolitan area and was shot in five and a half weeks on a budget of $5 million. Eastwood has cited Bronco Billy as being one of the most relaxed shoots of his career and biographer Richard Schickel argued that Bronco Billy is Eastwood's most self-referential character. The film was a commercial disappointment, but was liked by critics. Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that film was "the best and funniest Clint Eastwood movie in quite a while", and praised Eastwood's directing, intricately juxtaposing the old West and the new West. Released later in 1980, Any Which Way You Can was the sequel to Every Which Way but Loose and also starring Eastwood. The film received a number of bad reviews from critics, although Maslin described it as "funnier and even better than its predecessor". In theaters over the Christmas season, Any Which Way You Can was a major box office success and ranked among the top five highest-grossing films of the year.
Eastwood directed and starred in Honkytonk Man (1982), based on the eponymous Clancy Carlile's depression-era novel. Eastwood portrays a struggling western singer Red Stovall who suffers from tuberculosis, but has finally been given an opportunity to make it big at the Grand Ole Opry. He is accompanied by his young nephew (played by real-life son Kyle) to Nashville, Tennessee, where he is supposed to record a song. Only Time gave the film a good review in the United States, with most reviewers criticizing its blend of muted humor and tragedy. Nevertheless, the film received a more positive reception in France, where it was compared to John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath, and it has since acquired the very high rating of 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Around the same time, Eastwood directed, produced, and starred in the Cold War-themed Firefox (also 1982). Based on a 1977 novel with the same name written by Craig Thomas, the film was shot before but released after Honkytonk Man. Russian filming locations were not possible due to the Cold War, and the film had to be shot in Vienna and other locations in Austria to simulate many of the Eurasian story locations. With a production cost of $20 million, it was Eastwood's highest budget film to that time. People magazine likened Eastwood's performance to "Luke Skywalker trapped in Dirty Harry's Soul".
Eastwood directed and starred in the fourth Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact (1983), which is considered the darkest and most violent of the series. By this time, Eastwood received 60 percent of all profits from films he starred in and directed, with the rest going to the studio. Sudden Impact was his final on-screen collaboration with Locke. She plays a middle-aged painter who, along with her sister, was gang-raped years before the story takes place and seeks revenge for her sister's now-vegetative state by systematically murdering the rapists. The line "Go ahead, make my day" (uttered by Eastwood during an early scene in a coffee shop) has been cited as one of cinema's immortal lines. It was quoted by President Ronald Reagan in a speech to Congress, and used during the 1984 presidential elections. The film was the second most commercially successful of the Dirty Harry films, after The Enforcer, earning $70 million. It received very positive reviews, with many critics praising the feminist aspects of the film through its explorations of the physical and psychological consequences of rape.
Tightrope (1984) had Eastwood starring opposite Geneviève Bujold in a provocative thriller, inspired by newspaper articles about an elusive Bay Area rapist. Set in New Orleans to avoid confusion with the Dirty Harry films, Eastwood played a divorced cop drawn into his target's tortured psychology and fascination for sadomasochism. Tightrope was a critical and commercial hit and became the fourth highest-grossing R-rated film of 1984. Eastwood next starred in the crime comedy City Heat (also 1984) alongside Burt Reynolds, a film about an ex-cop turned private eye and his former police lieutenant partner who get mixed up with gangsters in the Prohibition era of the 1930s. The film grossed around $50 million domestically, but was overshadowed by Eddie Murphy's Beverly Hills Cop.
Westerns. A period gone by, the pioneer, the loner operating by himself, without benefit of society. It usually has something to do with some sort of vengeance; he takes care of the vengeance himself, doesn't call the police. Like Robin Hood. It's the last masculine frontier. Romantic myth, I guess, though it's hard to think about anything romantic today. In a Western you can think, Jesus, there was a time when man was alone, on horseback, out there where man hasn't spoiled the land yet.
Eastwood made his only foray into TV direction with the Amazing Stories episode Vanessa in the Garden (1985), which starred Harvey Keitel and Locke as a married couple. This was his first collaboration with Steven Spielberg, who later co-produced Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. He would revisit the Western genre when he directed and starred in Pale Rider (1985), a film based on the classic western Shane (1953) and follows a preacher descending from the mists of the Sierras to side with the miners during the California Gold Rush of 1850. The title is a reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as the rider of the pale horse is Death, and shows similarities to Eastwood's western High Plains Drifter (1973) in its themes of morality and justice as well as its exploration of the supernatural. It was hailed as one of the best films of 1985 and the best western to appear for a considerable period, with Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune remarking, "This year (1985) will go down in film history as the moment Clint Eastwood finally earned respect as an artist."
Eastwood co-starred with Marsha Mason in the military drama Heartbreak Ridge (1986), about the 1983 United States invasion of Grenada. He portrayed a United States Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant veteran of the Vietnam War who realizes he is nearing the end of his military service. Production and filming were marred by internal disagreements between Eastwood and long-time friend and producer Fritz Manes, as well as between Eastwood and the United States Department of Defense, which had expressed contempt for the film. At the time, the film was a commercial rather than a critical success, and has only come to be viewed more favorably in recent times. The film grossed $70 million domestically.
Eastwood starred in The Dead Pool (1988), the fifth and final film in the Dirty Harry series. It co-starred Patricia Clarkson, Liam Neeson, and a young Jim Carrey who plays Johnny Squares, a drug-addled rock star and the first of the victims on a list of celebrities drawn up by horror film director Peter Swan (Neeson) who are deemed most likely to die, the so-called "Dead Pool". The list is stolen by an obsessed fan who, in mimicking his favorite director, makes his way through the list killing off celebrities, of which Dirty Harry is also included. The Dead Pool grossed nearly $38 million, relatively low receipts for a Dirty Harry film. It is generally viewed as the weakest film of the series, though Roger Ebert thought it was as good as the original.
Eastwood began working on smaller, more personal projects and experienced a lull in his career between 1988 and 1992. Always interested in jazz, he directed Bird (1988), a biopic starring Forest Whitaker as jazz musician Charlie "Bird" Parker. Alto saxophonist Jackie McLean and Spike Lee, son of jazz bassist Bill Lee and a long time critic of Eastwood, criticized the characterization of Charlie Parker remarking that it did not capture his true essence and sense of humor. Eastwood received two Golden Globes for the film, the Cecil B. DeMille Award for his lifelong contribution, and the Best Director award. However, Bird was a commercial failure, earning just $11 million, which Eastwood attributed to the declining interest in jazz among black people. Carrey would appear with Eastwood again in the poorly-received comedy Pink Cadillac (1989). The film is about a bounty hunter and a group of white supremacists chasing an innocent woman (Bernadette Peters) who tries to outrun everyone in her husband's prized pink Cadillac. The film failed both critically and commercially, earning barely more than Bird and marking a low point in Eastwood's career.
1990–2009: critical acclaim and awards success
Eastwood directed and starred in White Hunter Black Heart (1990), an adaptation of Peter Viertel's roman à clef, about John Huston and the making of the classic film The African Queen. Shot on location in Zimbabwe in the summer of 1989, the film received some critical attention but with only a limited release earned just $8.4 million. Eastwood directed and co-starred with Charlie Sheen in The Rookie, a buddy cop action film released in December 1990. Critics found the film's plot and characterization unconvincing, but praised its action sequences. An ongoing lawsuit, in response to Eastwood allegedly ramming a woman's car, resulted in no Eastwood films being shown in cinemas in 1991. Eastwood won the suit and agreed to pay the complainant's legal fees if she did not appeal.
[I]f possible, he looks even taller, leaner and more mysteriously possessed than he did in Sergio Leone's seminal Fistful of Dollars a quarter of a century ago. The years haven't softened him. They have given him the presence of some fierce force of nature, which may be why the landscapes of the mythic, late 19th-century West become him, never more so than in his new Unforgiven. ... This is his richest, most satisfying performance since the underrated, politically lunatic Heartbreak Ridge. There's no one like him.
Eastwood revisited the western genre in Unforgiven (1992), a film which he directed and starred in as an aging ex-gunfighter long past his prime. Scripts existed for the film as early as 1976 under titles such as The Cut-Whore Killings and The William Munny Killings, but Eastwood delayed the project because he wanted to wait until he was old enough to play his character and to savor it as the last of his western films. Unforgiven was a major commercial and critical success; Jack Methews of the Los Angeles Times described it as "the finest classical western to come along since perhaps John Ford's 1956 The Searchers". The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards (including Best Actor for Eastwood and Best Original Screenplay for David Webb Peoples), and won four, including Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood. In June 2008 Unforgiven was ranked as the fourth-best American western, behind Shane, High Noon, and The Searchers in the American Film Institute's "AFI's 10 Top 10" list.
Eastwood played Frank Horrigan in the Secret Service thriller In the Line of Fire (1993), directed by Wolfgang Petersen and co-starring John Malkovich and Rene Russo. Horrigan is a guilt-ridden Secret Service agent haunted by his failure to save John F. Kennedy's life. The film was among the top 10 box office performers in that year, earning $102 million in the United States alone, and 25 years after he was first listed on Quigley's Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll, Eastwood was voted number one again. A few months after film wrapped, Eastwood directed and co-starred alongside Kevin Costner in A Perfect World (also 1993). Set in the 1960s, Eastwood plays a Texas Ranger in pursuit of an escaped convict (Costner) who hits the road with a young boy (T.J. Lowther). Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that the film marked the highest point of Eastwood's directing career, and the film has since been cited as one of his most underrated directorial achievements.
At the May 1994 Cannes Film Festival Eastwood received France's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres medal, and on March 27, 1995, he was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the 67th Academy Awards. His next film appearance was in a cameo role as himself in the children's film Casper (1995). He expanded his repertoire by playing opposite Meryl Streep in The Bridges of Madison County (also 1995). Based on the novel by Robert James Waller, the film relates the story of Robert Kincaid (Eastwood), a photographer working for National Geographic who, while photographing historic covered bridges in Iowa, meets and has an affair with an Italian-born farm wife, Francesca (Streep). Despite the novel receiving unfavorable reviews, The Bridges of Madison County film was a commercial and critical success. Roger Ebert wrote, "Streep and Eastwood weave a spell, and it is based on that particular knowledge of love and self that comes with middle age." The film was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Picture and won a César Award in France for Best Foreign Film. Streep was also nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.
Eastwood directed and starred in the political thriller Absolute Power (1997), alongside Gene Hackman (with whom he had appeared in Unforgiven). Eastwood played the role of a veteran thief who witnesses the Secret Service cover-up of a murder. The film received a mixed reception from critics. Later in 1997, Eastwood directed Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, based on the novel by John Berendt and starring John Cusack, Kevin Spacey, and Jude Law. The film met with a mixed critical response.
The roles that Eastwood has played, and the films that he has directed, cannot be disentangled from the nature of the American culture of the last quarter century, its fantasies and its realities.
Eastwood directed and starred in True Crime (1999). He plays Steve Everett, a journalist and recovering alcoholic, who has to cover the execution of murderer Frank Beechum (played by Isaiah Washington). True Crime received a mixed reception, with Janet Maslin of The New York Times writing, "his direction is galvanized by a sense of second chances and tragic misunderstandings, and by contrasting a larger sense of justice with the peculiar minutiae of crime. Perhaps he goes a shade too far in the latter direction, though." The film was a box office failure, earning less than half its $55 million budget and was Eastwood's worst-performing film of the 1990s aside from White Hunter Black Heart, which had a limited release.
Eastwood directed and starred in Space Cowboys (2000) alongside Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland and James Garner. Eastwood played one of a group of veteran ex-test pilots sent into space to repair an old Soviet satellite. The original music score was composed by Eastwood and Lennie Niehaus. Space Cowboys was critically well-received and holds a 79 percent rating at Rotten Tomatoes, although Roger Ebert wrote that the film was, "too secure within its traditional story structure to make much seem at risk". The film grossed more than $90 million in its United States release, more than Eastwood's two previous films combined. Eastwood played an ex-FBI agent chasing a sadistic killer (Jeff Daniels) in the thriller Blood Work (2002), loosely based on the 1998 novel of the same name by Michael Connelly. The film was a commercial failure, grossing just $26.2 million on an estimated budget of $50 million and received mixed reviews, with Rotten Tomatoes describing it as, "well-made but marred by lethargic pacing".
Eastwood directed and scored the crime drama Mystic River (2003), a film dealing with themes of murder, vigilantism and sexual abuse and starring Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, and Tim Robbins. The film was praised by critics and won two Academy Awards – Best Actor for Penn and Best Supporting Actor for Robbins – with Eastwood garnering nominations for Best Director and Best Picture. The film grossed $90 million domestically on a budget of $30 million. In 2003, Eastwood was named Best Director of the Year by the National Society of Film Critics.
Clint is a true artist in every respect. Despite his years of being at the top of his game and the legendary movies he has made, he always made us feel comfortable and valued on the set, treating us as equals.
The following year, Eastwood found further critical acclaim with Million Dollar Baby. The boxing drama won four Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Hilary Swank) and Best Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman). At age 74, Eastwood became the oldest of eighteen directors to have directed two or more Best Picture winners. He also received a nomination for Best Actor, as well as a Grammy nomination for his score, and won a Golden Globe for Best Director, which was presented to him by daughter Kathryn, who was Miss Golden Globe at the 2005 ceremony. A. O. Scott of The New York Times lauded the film as a "masterpiece" and the best film of the year.
Eastwood directed two films about World War II's Battle of Iwo Jima released in 2006. The first, Flags of Our Fathers, focused on the men who raised the American flag on top of Mount Suribachi and featured the film debut of Eastwood's son Scott. This was followed by Letters from Iwo Jima, which dealt with the tactics of the Japanese soldiers on the island and the letters they wrote home to family members. Letters from Iwo Jima was the first American film to depict a war issue completely from the view of an American enemy. Both films received praise from critics and garnered several nominations at the 79th Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Original Screenplay for Letters from Iwo Jima. At the 64th Golden Globe Awards Eastwood received nominations for Best Director in both films. Letters from Iwo Jima won the award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Eastwood next directed Changeling (2008), based on a true story set in the late 1920s. Angelina Jolie stars as a woman reunited with her missing son only to realize he is an impostor. After its release at several film festivals the film grossed over $110 million, the majority of which came from foreign markets. The film was highly acclaimed, with Damon Wise of Empire describing Changeling as "flawless". Todd McCarthy of Variety magazine described it as "emotionally powerful and stylistically sure-handed" and that the film's characters and social commentary were brought into the story with an "almost breathtaking deliberation". For the film, Eastwood received nominations for Best Original Score at the 66th Golden Globe Awards, Best Direction at the 62nd British Academy Film Awards and director of the year from the London Film Critics' Circle.
Eastwood ended a four-year "self-imposed acting hiatus" by appearing in Gran Torino (also 2008), which he also directed, produced and partly scored with his son Kyle and Jamie Cullum. Biographer Marc Eliot called Eastwood's role "an amalgam of the Man with No Name, Dirty Harry, and William Munny, here aged and cynical but willing and able to fight on whenever the need arose". Gran Torino grossed almost $30 million during its opening weekend release in January 2009, the highest of his career as an actor or director. Gran Torino eventually grossed over $268 million in theaters worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of Eastwood's career so far (without adjustment for inflation).
Eastwood's 30th directorial outing came with Invictus (2009), a film based on the story of the South African team at the 1995 Rugby World Cup with Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, Matt Damon as rugby team captain François Pienaar, and Grant L. Roberts as Ruben Kruger. The film was met with generally positive reviews; Roger Ebert gave it three and a half stars and described it as a "very good film... with moments evoking great emotion", while Variety's Todd McCarthy wrote, "Inspirational on the face of it, Clint Eastwood's film has a predictable trajectory, but every scene brims with surprising details that accumulate into a rich fabric of history, cultural impressions and emotion." For the film, Eastwood was nominated for Best Director at the 67th Golden Globe Awards.
2010–present: directorial focus and later roles
In the Eastwood-directed Hereafter (2010), he again worked with Matt Damon, who portrayed a psychic. The film had its world premiere on September 12, 2010, at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival and had a limited release later in October. Hereafter received mixed reviews from critics, with the consensus at Rotten Tomatoes being, "Despite a thought-provoking premise and Clint Eastwood's typical flair as director, Hereafter fails to generate much compelling drama, straddling the line between poignant sentimentality and hokey tedium." Around the same time, Eastwood served as executive producer for a TCM documentary about jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way (also 2010), to commemorate Brubeck's 90th birthday.
Eastwood directed J. Edgar (2011), a biopic of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, with Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role. The film received mixed reviews, although DiCaprio's performance as Hoover was widely praised. Roger Ebert wrote that the film is "fascinating", "masterful", and praised DiCaprio's performance. David Edelstein of New York Magazine, while also praising DiCaprio, wrote, "It's too bad J. Edgar is so shapeless and turgid and ham-handed, so rich in bad lines and worse readings." Eastwood starred in the baseball drama Trouble with the Curve (2012), as a veteran baseball scout who travels with his daughter for a final scouting trip. Robert Lorenz, who worked with Eastwood as an assistant director on several films, directed the film.
Everybody wonders why I continue working at this stage. I keep working because there's always new stories. ... And as long as people want me to tell them, I'll be there doing them.
During Super Bowl XLVI, Eastwood narrated a halftime advertisement for Chrysler titled "Halftime in America" (2012). The advertisement was criticized by several U.S. Republicans, who claimed it implied that President Barack Obama deserved a second term. In response to the criticism, Eastwood stated, "I am certainly not politically affiliated with Mr. Obama. It was meant to be a message about job growth and the spirit of America."
Eastwood next directed Jersey Boys (2014), a musical biography based on the Tony Award-winning musical. The film told the story of the musical group The Four Seasons. Eastwood directed American Sniper (also 2014), a film adaptation of Chris Kyle's eponymous memoir, following Steven Spielberg's departure from the project. The film was released on December 25, 2014. American Sniper grossed more than $350 million domestically and over $547 million globally, making it one of Eastwood's biggest movies commercially. His next film, Sully, starred Tom Hanks as Chesley Sullenberger, who successfully landed the US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River in an emergency landing, keeping all passengers on board alive. Released in the United States in September 2016, it became another commercial success for Eastwood, grossing over $238 million worldwide. He directed the biographical thriller The 15:17 to Paris (2018), which saw previously non-professional actors Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alek Skarlatos playing themselves as they stop the 2015 Thalys train attack. The film received a generally negative reception from critics, who were largely critical of the acting by the three leads. Eastwood next starred in and directed The Mule, which was released in December 2018. He played Earl Stone, an elderly drug smuggler based on Leo Sharp, Eastwood's first acting role since Trouble with the Curve in 2012.
In May 2019, it was announced that Eastwood would direct The Ballad of Richard Jewell, based on the life of heroic security guard Richard Jewell, who was wrongly suspected in the 1996 Olympic bombing. Later retitled simply Richard Jewell, Eastwood directed and produced the film, through Warner Bros., his tenth straight film with the company. Jonah Hill and Leonardo DiCaprio were originally set to star in the film in 2014, when it was to be directed by Paul Greengrass, but DiCaprio and Hill would ultimately serve only as producers on Eastwood's film. The film stars Paul Walter Hauser in the titular role, along with Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm, and Olivia Wilde in supporting roles. Filming began on June 24, 2019, and Richard Jewell was released on December 13, 2019.
In October 2020, it was announced that Eastwood would direct, produce, and star in Cry Macho, an adaptation of the 1975 novel of the same name, for Warner Bros. Pictures. Production of the film took place in New Mexico between November and December 2020. It was released on September 17, 2021, to mixed reviews and commercial failure.
Upcoming projects
In April 2023, reports emerged that Eastwood would direct and produce Juror No. 2, from a screenplay by Jonathan Abrams, and is expected to be Eastwood's final film. It will star Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, Zoey Deutch, and Kiefer Sutherland, and will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film's production began in June 2023, though it was temporarily suspended due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Production resumed in November 2023.
Directorial style
Beginning with the thriller Play Misty for Me, Eastwood has directed over 30 films, including Westerns, action films, musicals and dramas. He is one of few top Hollywood actors to have also become a critically and commercially successful director. The New Yorker's David Denby wrote that, unlike Eastwood,
John Ford appeared in just a few silent films; Howard Hawks never acted in movies. Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden, Steve McQueen, and Sean Connery never directed a feature. John Wayne directed only twice, and badly; ditto Burt Lancaster. Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Robert De Niro, and Sean Penn have directed a few movies each, with mixed commercial and artistic success.
From the very early days of his career, Eastwood was frustrated by directors' insistence that scenes be re-shot multiple times and perfected, and when he began directing in 1970, he made a conscious attempt to avoid any aspects of directing he had been indifferent to as an actor. As a result, Eastwood is renowned for his efficient film directing and ability to reduce filming time and control budgets. He usually avoids actors' rehearsing and prefers to complete most scenes on the first take. Eastwood's rapid filmmaking practices have been compared to those of Woody Allen, Ingmar Bergman, and Jean-Luc Godard. When acting in others' films, he sometimes takes over directing, such as for The Outlaw Josey Wales, if he believes production is too slow. In preparation for filming Eastwood rarely uses storyboards for developing the layout of a shooting schedule. He also attempts to reduce script background details on characters to allow the audience to become more involved in the film, considering their imagination a requirement for a film that connects with viewers. Eastwood has indicated that he lays out a film's plot to provide the audience with necessary details, but not "so much that it insults their intelligence".
According to Life magazine, "Eastwood's style is to shoot first and act afterward. He etches his characters virtually without words. He has developed the art of underplaying to the point that anyone around him who so much as flinches looks hammily histrionic." Interviewers Richard Thompson and Tim Hunter commented that Eastwood's films are "superbly paced: unhurried; cool; and [give] a strong sense of real time, regardless of the speed of the narrative", while Ric Gentry considers Eastwood's pacing "unrushed and relaxed". Eastwood is fond of low-key lighting and back-lighting to give his films a "noir-ish" feel.
Eastwood's frequent exploration of ethical values has drawn the attention of scholars, who have explored Eastwood's work from ethical and theological perspectives, including his portrayal of justice, mercy, suicide and the angel of death.
Politics
Eastwood is a former Republican who has sometimes supported Democrats, and has long shown an interest in California politics; he is currently a registered Libertarian.
He won election as the nonpartisan mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, in April 1986. He earned $200 per month in that position which he donated to the Carmel Youth Center. While in office, he helped to make ice cream legal to consume on city streets, added public restrooms to the public beach, and a city library annex building was built. He served for two years and declined to run for a second term. In 2001, Governor Gray Davis appointed him to the California State Park and Recreation Commission, where he led opposition to an extension of the toll six-lane 16-mile (26 km) extension of the California State Route 241 toll road through San Onofre State Beach.
Eastwood endorsed Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. He delivered a primetime address at the 2012 Republican National Convention, where he drew attention for a speech he delivered to an empty chair representing President Barack Obama, which he later regretted. On February 22, 2020, Eastwood announced that he would be endorsing Democrat Michael Bloomberg in the 2020 presidential election. Eastwood stated that he wishes that Trump would act "in a more genteel way, without tweeting and calling people names. I would personally like for him to not bring himself to that level."
Musical interests
Eastwood is an aficionado of jazz—particularly bebop, and blues, country and western and classical music. He dabbled in music early on by developing as a boogie-woogie pianist and had originally intended to pursue a career in music by studying for a music theory degree after graduating from high school. In late 1959, Eastwood produced the album Cowboy Favorites, released on the Cameo label, which included some classics such as Bob Wills's "San Antonio Rose" and Cole Porter's "Don't Fence Me In". Despite his attempts to plug the album by going on a tour, it never reached the Billboard Hot 100. In 1963, Cameo producer Kal Mann told him that "he would never make it big as a singer". Nevertheless, during the off season of filming Rawhide, Eastwood and Paul Brinegar – sometimes joined by Sheb Wooley – toured rodeos, state fairs, and festivals. In 1962, their act, entitled Amusement Business Cavalcade of Fairs, earned them as much as $15,000 a performance. Although he never made it as a major performing artist, he has passed on the influence to his son, Kyle, who is a professional jazz bassist and composer. An audiophile, Eastwood owns an extensive collection of LPs which he plays on a Rockport turntable. His favorite musicians include saxophonists Charlie Parker and Lester Young, pianists Thelonious Monk, Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, and Fats Waller, and Delta bluesman Robert Johnson.
Eastwood has his own Warner Bros. Records-distributed imprint, Malpaso Records, as part of his deal with Warner Brothers. This deal was unchanged when Warner Music Group was sold by Time Warner to private investors. Malpaso Records, which has released all of the scores of Eastwood's films from The Bridges of Madison County onward, has also released the album of a 1996 jazz concert he hosted, titled Eastwood after Hours – Live at Carnegie Hall. He composed the film scores of Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers, Grace Is Gone, Changeling, Hereafter, J. Edgar, and the original piano compositions for In the Line of Fire. He wrote and performed the song heard over the credits of Gran Torino and also co-wrote "Why Should I Care" with Linda Thompson and Carole Bayer Sager, a song recorded in 1999 by Diana Krall.
The music in Grace Is Gone received two Golden Globe nominations by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for the 65th Golden Globe Awards. Eastwood was nominated for Best Original Score, while the song "Grace is Gone" with music by Eastwood and lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager was nominated for Best Original Song. It won the Satellite Award for Best Song at the 12th Satellite Awards. Changeling was nominated for Best Score at the 14th Critics' Choice Awards, Best Original Score at the 66th Golden Globe Awards, and Best Music at the 35th Saturn Awards. On September 22, 2007, Eastwood was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music at the Monterey Jazz Festival, on which he serves as an active board member. Upon receiving the award he gave a speech claiming, "It's one of the great honors I'll cherish in this lifetime."
The scoring stage at Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank was renamed the Eastwood Scoring Stage in the 1990s.
Personal life
Relationships and children
Twice divorced, Eastwood has had numerous casual and serious relationships of varying length and intensity over his life, many of which overlapped. He has eight known children by six women, only half of whom were contemporaneously acknowledged. Eastwood refuses to confirm his exact number of offspring, and there have been wide discrepancies in the media regarding the number. He is closed to discussing his families with the media, stating, "they're vulnerable people. I can protect myself, but they can't." His biographer, Patrick McGilligan, has stated on camera that Eastwood's total number of children is indeterminate and that "one was when he was still in high school".
Eastwood's first marriage was to manufacturing secretary-turned-fitness instructor Margaret Neville Johnson in December 1953, having met her on a blind date the previous May. During the courtship, he had an affair that resulted in his daughter Laurie (born 1954), who was adopted by Clyde and Helen Warren of Seattle. While the identity of Laurie's biological mother is not public record, McGilligan said the mother belonged to a theatre group Eastwood participated in. Eastwood continued having affairs while married to Johnson, including a 1959 to 1973 liaison with stuntwoman Roxanne Tunis that produced a daughter, Kimber (born 1964). Tunis and Eastwood would keep up a "healthy relationship" until her death in 2023.
Johnson tolerated the open marriage with Eastwood, and eventually they had two children, Kyle (born 1968) and Alison (born 1972). In 1975, Eastwood and married actress-director Sondra Locke began living together; she had been in a marriage of convenience since 1967 with Gordon Leigh Anderson, an unemployed homosexual. Locke claimed that Eastwood sang "She Made Me Monogamous" to her and confided he had "never been in love before". Eastwood finally divorced Johnson in 1984; Locke, however, would remain married to Anderson until her death in 2018. According to Bill Brown, publisher of the Carmel Pine Cone, Eastwood considered Locke the love of his life, yet he has never addressed her death.
In an unpublicized affair, Eastwood sired two legally fatherless children, Scott (born 1986) and Kathryn (born 1988) with Jacelyn Reeves, a flight attendant. When Locke and Eastwood separated in 1989, Locke filed a palimony lawsuit and later sued for fraud, reaching a settlement in both cases. During the early-to-mid-1990s, Eastwood had a relationship with actress Frances Fisher that produced a daughter, Francesca (born 1993). Eastwood was married for the second time in 1996 to news anchor Dina Ruiz, who gave birth to their daughter Morgan that same year. Ruiz and Eastwood's marriage lasted until 2014.
Beginning 2014, Eastwood was seen in company with restaurant hostess Christina Sandera, though neither publicly confirmed a romance. Eastwood's spokespeople, managers, and press agents have long denied any knowledge of his life. Sandera died of a heart attack in July 2024, aged 61.
Health and leisure activities
Eastwood has been a health and fitness fanatic since he was a teenager. During the production of Rawhide, Eastwood featured in magazines and journals, which often documented his health-conscious lifestyle. In an August 1959 edition of TV Guide, for example, Eastwood was photographed doing push-ups. He gave tips on fitness and nutrition, telling people to eat plenty of fruit and raw vegetables, take vitamins, and avoid sugar-loaded beverages, excessive alcohol, and overloading on carbohydrates.
Eastwood's father's death from a heart attack at the age of 64 in 1970, described by Fritz Manes as "the only bad thing that ever happened to him in his life", came as a shock to Eastwood, since his grandfather had lived to be 92. It had a profound impact on his life; from then on he became more productive, working with greater speed and efficiency on set, and adopted an even more rigorous health regimen. Despite abstaining from hard liquor, he opened an old English-inspired pub called the Hog's Breath Inn in Carmel-by-the-Sea in 1971. Eastwood eventually sold the pub in 1999 and now owns the Mission Ranch Hotel and Restaurant, also located in Carmel-by-the-Sea.
Eastwood is an avid golfer and owns the Tehàma Golf Club. He is an investor in the world-renowned Pebble Beach Golf Links west of Carmel and donates his time to charitable causes at major tournaments. Eastwood is an FAA licensed fixed wing and rotary craft private pilot and often flies his helicopter to the studios to avoid traffic.
Spiritual beliefs and meditation
In 1973, Eastwood told the film critic Gene Siskel, "No, I don't believe in God". In 2023, his daughter Kathryn stated, "Most of my earthly family do not believe in or worship God. They either have a lack of faith or reject the god in the Bible in favor of other idols or ideas." Eastwood has said that he finds spirituality in nature (as suggested by his Western, Pale Rider, 1985), stating that "I was born during the Depression and I was brought up with no specific church. We moved every four or five months during the first 14 years of my life, so I was sent to a different church depending on wherever we lived. Most of them were Protestant, but I went to other churches because my parents wanted me to try to figure out things for myself. They always said, 'I just want to expose you to some religious order and see if that's something you like'. So although my religious training was not really specific, I do feel spiritual things. If I stand on the side of the Grand Canyon and look down, it moves me in some way." He has also said: "It would be wonderful to talk with my parents again, who are, of course, deceased. It makes the idea of death much less scary. But then again, if you think that nothing happens after you die, maybe it makes you live life better. Maybe you're supposed to do the best you can by the gift you're given of life and that alone."
In 1975, Eastwood publicly proclaimed his participation in Transcendental Meditation when he appeared on The Merv Griffin Show with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation. He has meditated every morning for years.
Real estate interests
While serving in the US Army at nearby Fort Ord, Eastwood developed an interest in Carmel area real estate. With income from his acting career, on December 24, 1967, he bought five parcels totaling 283 acres (115 ha) of land from Charles Sawyer along Highway 1 near Malpaso Creek, south of the Carmel Highlands.
In May 1968, Eastwood and actor James Garner bought 340 acres (138 ha) of wooded land in Carmel Valley from the Howard Hattan estate for $640,000. The property was across the Carmel Valley Road from the Rancho Cañada Country Club and golf course. Eastwood and Garner donated the undeveloped property to the Housing Authority of the County of Monterey in November 1983 with the stipulation that some of the land be used for senior housing.
He named his production company Malpaso Productions. Eastwood later bought another parcel in the Highlands, together totaling 650 acres (263 ha) (6 parcels). In 1995, Monterey County bought the Malpaso land from him for $3.08 million and placed a permanent conservation easement on the property. Using the proceeds from the sale, Eastwood bought the 134 acres (54 ha) Odello Ranch at the mouth of the Carmel River during the same year. He paid to lower the levees along the southern side of the Carmel River to protect the Mission Ranch resort he owned, along with the neighboring Mission Fields residential neighborhood on the north side of the river, both of which were flooded in 1994. In 1997, Eastwood and his former wife Maggie Johnson (acting as the Eastwood Trust) donated 49 acres (20 ha) of the Odello Ranch property east of Highway 1 to the Big Sur Land Trust along with the associated water rights. On June 28, 2016, Eastwood finally donated the remaining Odello East land.
Eastwood purchased 550 acres (223 ha), known as the Cañada Woods development, immediately east of the Odello Ranch.
In 2010, at age 80, Eastwood spent approximately $20 million to build himself a 15,949-square-foot compound in Carmel-by-the-Sea. His California real estate portfolio also includes a 6,136-square-foot Spanish-style mansion in Bel-Air, the 1,067.5 acre Rising River Ranch near Cassel, an apartment in Burbank, a 5,575-square-foot Desert modern home in La Quinta (sometimes misidentified as Palm Springs), as well as a large but understated house located next door to his longtime primary Bel-Air residence. Eastwood is known to have purchased property in two other states. He owns a 5,700-square-foot house in Sun Valley, Idaho, and a 1.13-acre, oceanfront manor in Kihei, Hawaii. The latter was featured in an episode of the 2012 reality show Mrs. Eastwood & Company.
Eastwood previously occupied homes in Studio City, Sherman Oaks, Tiburon, and Pebble Beach.
Filmography
Eastwood has contributed to over 50 films during his career as actor, director, producer, and composer. He has acted in several television series, including his co-starring role in Rawhide. He started directing in 1971, and made his debut as a producer in 1982 with Firefox, though he had been functioning as uncredited producer on all of his Malpaso Company films since Hang 'Em High in 1968. Eastwood also has contributed music to his films, either through performing, writing, or composing. He has mainly starred in western, action, and drama films. According to the box office revenue tracking website Box Office Mojo, films featuring Eastwood have grossed a total of more than $1.81 billion domestically, with an average of $38.6 million per film.
Awards and honors
Eastwood has been recognized with multiple awards and nominations for his work in film, television, and music. His widest reception has been in film work, for which he has received Academy Awards, Directors Guild of America Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and People's Choice Awards, among others. Eastwood is one of only two people to have been twice nominated for Best Actor and Best Director for the same film (Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby) the other being Warren Beatty (Heaven Can Wait and Reds). Along with Beatty, Robert Redford, Richard Attenborough, Kevin Costner, and Mel Gibson, he is one of the few directors best known as an actor to win an Academy Award for directing. On February 27, 2005, he became one of only three living directors (along with Miloš Forman and Francis Ford Coppola) to have directed two Best Picture winners. At the age of 74, he was the oldest recipient of the Academy Award for Best Director to date. Eastwood has directed five actors in Academy Award-winning performances: Gene Hackman in Unforgiven, Tim Robbins and Sean Penn in Mystic River, and Morgan Freeman and Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby.
On August 22, 1984, Eastwood was honored at a ceremony at Grauman's Chinese theater to record his hand and footprints in cement. Eastwood received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1996, and received an honorary degree from AFI in 2009. On December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Eastwood into the California Hall of Fame located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.
In early 2007, Eastwood was presented with the highest civilian distinction in France, Légion d'honneur, at a ceremony in Paris. French President Jacques Chirac told Eastwood that he embodied "the best of Hollywood". In October 2009, he was honored by the Lumière Award (in honor of the Lumière Brothers, inventors of the Cinematograph) during the first edition of the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon, France. This award honors his entire career and his major contribution to the 7th Art. In February 2010, Eastwood was recognized by President Barack Obama with an arts and humanities award. Obama described Eastwood's films as "essays in individuality, hard truths and the essence of what it means to be American".
Eastwood has also been awarded at least three honorary degrees from universities and colleges, including an honorary degree from the University of the Pacific in 2006, an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Southern California on May 27, 2007, and an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music at the Monterey Jazz Festival on September 22, 2007.
On February 26, 2009, Eastwood received the Honorary Golden Palm Award from Cannes Film Festival on big ceremony in Paris.
In the same year on July 22, he was honored by Emperor Akihito of Japan with the Order of the Rising Sun, 3rd class, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon for his contributions to the enhancement of Japan–United States relations.
Eastwood won the Golden Pine lifetime achievement award at the 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival, along with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Gerald Fried.
Notes
References
Cited references
Further reading
External links
Clint Eastwood at IMDb
Clint Eastwood at the American Film Institute Catalog
Appearances on C-SPAN
Clint Eastwood on Charlie Rose
Clint Eastwood collected news and commentary at The Guardian
Clint Eastwood collected news and commentary at The New York Times
Clint Eastwood at Rotten Tomatoes
Clint Eastwood at the TCM Movie Database
Clint Eastwood collected news and commentary at the Los Angeles Times |
Argentine_Grand_Prix | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_Grand_Prix | [
746
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_Grand_Prix"
] | The Argentine Grand Prix (Spanish: Gran Premio de Argentina) was a round of the Formula One championship, held intermittently from 1953 to 1998, at the Autódromo Oscar y Juan Gálvez in the Argentine national capital of Buenos Aires.
Origins and history
The Buenos Aires Grand Prix was an event first started in 1930 as a sportscar event held at the Costanera circuit until 1940 and switched to the Retiro circuit for 1941. After a six-year break and by then Juan Peron in office, racing resumed in 1947 at Retiro with the start of the South American "Temporada" Grand Prix series, competing twice that year under the Formula Libre regulations. Italian Luigi Villoresi won all 1947 Temporada events. The race regularly attracted Brazilian and European drivers and also Argentine drivers competing in Europe, such as Juan Manuel Fangio and José Froilán González. For the 1948 Grand Prix season, the race was moved to Palermo until the end of 1950. In 1951, the Costanera Norte circuit would host its last three Grand Prix events before completion of the Autodromo 17 de Octubre (October 17), a purpose-built circuit where the championship Formula One Argentine Grand Prix was held on different variants of the facility from 1953 to 1960, 1972 to 1981 and 1995 to 1998.
Buenos Aires
Built in 1952 on swampland just outside Buenos Aires, the circuit featured a white archway dedicated to the memory of Admiral William Brown. The circuit opened in March 1952 with the fifth edition of the "Perón Cup", which was won by Juan Manuel Fangio and in 1953, hosted the first Formula One race to be held in South America.
The track featured four different configurations for Grand Prix racing. From 1953 to 1960, the Argentine Grand Prix was held on the "No. 2" layout, clockwise for the all these years except 1954, when it was run counterclockwise. From 1971 to 1973 the race was held on the "No. 9" configuration, more or less the same as the "No. 2" configuration but for the section after Tobogan which was shortened and the Horquilla turn was made tighter and shorter. Then from 1974 to 1981, the race was run on the "No. 15" configuration, the longest and fastest layout that combined two very fast successive right and left hand corners with two long straights and a spectacular long and wide third corner (called the Curvon Salotto) into the infield section from the previous "No. 9" configuration. For the period from 1995 to 1998, the race was held on the twisty "No. 6" configuration using only the infield section with the S-shaped Los Mixos chicane.
1953–1960
The 1953 race saw Fangio retire his Maserati after 36 laps due to a transmission failure; Alberto Ascari's victory for Ferrari was overshadowed by an accident which killed nine people and injured many others due to overcrowding along the track. The race was heavily advertised and it is believed that around 400,000 people turned up for the event. The facility was so packed that people were standing on the edges of corners, inches away from the cars apexing the corners.
The following year, the circuit was run in an anticlockwise direction, and Fangio did reach the top of the podium, winning his home Grand Prix on his second attempt; he would go on to win the next three Grands Prix in Argentina, one of which was the 1955 race. It was one of the hottest races on record, at 40C (104F) with track temperatures reaching 51C (122F). Fangio, now driving for Mercedes, was the only driver to complete the 96 laps after three hours without handing his car over to another driver. One of his legs was badly burned by a chassis tube heated by the exhaust, an injury that forced a three-month recovery. In 1958, Stirling Moss took the win, in the penultimate race in Fangio's career. It was also the first Formula One championship victory for a rear or mid-engined car and the first for a privateer. New Zealander Bruce McLaren won in 1960. With Fangio's retirement and the subsequent retirement of fellow Argentine driver José Froilán González, combined with unstable governments after the exile of Peron (in 1955), the Argentine Grand Prix disappeared from the F1 calendar in 1961 for over a decade.
1971–1981
A non-championship Formula One race was held at Buenos Aires in 1971, won by Chris Amon over two heats. In 1972 the Argentine Grand Prix returned to the World Championship, with Carlos Reutemann emerging as the new home favorite. The variant used for these two years was similar to the one used before, except the straight leading into the hairpin after the Toboggan esses was shortened. Reutemann took pole position in his world championship debut, becoming only the second driver to achieve this feat. The race was won by world champion Jackie Stewart. 1973 saw Emerson Fittipaldi take victory at the last part of the race from Frenchman François Cevert.
For 1974, the circuit used the faster and longer No. 15 circuit, which included two very fast and slightly banked corners that led into a section that went around a lake, which included a 0.91 km (3,000 ft) long straight that led into a flat-out right handed 180 corner called the Curvon, and this led into a 1.2 km (4,000 ft) straight which returned to the twisty arena that had always been used before. The cars were flat-out for 45 whole seconds throughout this whole lake loop: overtaking was rife on this part of the circuit. During the 1974 race, homeland hero Reutemann so very nearly took victory, but the Brabham mechanics apparently did not put enough fuel in the Argentine's car and he ran out, and victory went to veteran New Zealander Denny Hulme. 1977 saw South African Jody Scheckter take an amazing victory in the Walter Wolf team's first ever Grand Prix in extremely hot weather, and 1978 saw Mario Andretti begin his domination of that season, driving for Lotus. 1979 was an exciting race, the race started with a huge accident at the first two very fast esses; Scheckter and John Watson in a McLaren collided and took out nine cars; six of whom were eliminated on the spot. The race was restarted, and the blue Ligiers of Frenchmen Jacques Laffite and Patrick Depailler lead much of the proceedings, but the wily Reutemann, now driving for Lotus, drove methodically through the field and pressed Laffite, but could not catch the flying Frenchman, and Reutemann finished 2nd.
In 1980, the drivers, led by Emerson Fittipaldi attempted to boycott the race due to the poor state of the track; the new surface was breaking up in many spots because of the hot weather and the extreme suction of the ground-effect cars of the time, and gravel was strewn all over the track from the cracks in the tarmac. The race went ahead anyway after some repairs (which proved not to be good enough, and the track broke up again) and Australian Alan Jones in a Williams, Brazilian Nelson Piquet in a Brabham, Canadian Gilles Villeneuve, Laffite and Reutemann all battled for top positions; Reutemann went out early with engine problems after he went off the circuit after attempting to pass Piquet and he got grass in his radiators. Because of the track breaking apart and being littered with gravel, Jones went off twice at the Ombu section and was passed by Laffite, Villeneuve and Piquet (who all went off at other parts of the track); and he went into the pits, got the grass out of his radiators and came out in 4th. He charged through the field and passed Villeneuve and Piquet; Laffite retired with engine problems; and the Australian took victory followed by Piquet and Keke Rosberg scoring his first podium finish; and Frenchman Alain Prost scored one point in his debut F1 race, driving for McLaren. The 1981 race, which was held in cooler April weather, was a Brabham procession; designer Gordon Murray found a way to circumvent the new regulations with a hydropneumatic suspension which lowered the cars closer to the ground; and therefore were faster around corners than everyone else. Piquet took victory, Reutemann finished 2nd and Prost took 3rd.
The 1982 round was supposed to be held in early March, but the political fallout during the drivers strike just before the South African Grand Prix caused the sponsors of the Argentine Grand Prix to back out of the race; and the race was initially postponed five weeks before it was due to take place; and then the Argentine political situation was problematic and they also entered a brief war with the United Kingdom over the Falkland Islands in early April, and within the context of an entirely European sport that consisted mostly of British organizations, this caused the Argentine organizers' contract to be terminated. An attempt to bring back the Argentine Grand Prix to the same circuit in Buenos Aires in 1986 did not work out, and the race did not return for nine years.
1995–1998
A private consortium purchased the Buenos Aires track in 1991, renamed it and began to upgrade it. They secured a place on the 1994 F1 season calendar, but the race (set for October) was aborted to continue modernization. The general layout was not changed, but an "S" chicane named after Ayrton Senna was added. The No. 6 arena circuit was used, which did not include the flat-out lake run. This tight, twisty circuit was not well suited to Formula One cars and it was very difficult to pass on this variant because of the corners being so close together. The modernized Argentine Grand Prix returned in 1995, with victory going to Damon Hill. Hill won the event again in 1996 (his championship season), and in 1997 Jacques Villeneuve won the race in his championship season.
The organizers of the event ran into financial difficulties, and the 1998 race was the last running of the Argentine Grand Prix, the checkered flag waving victory to Michael Schumacher, in his ninth win for Ferrari.
Absence
A race was scheduled for 1999, but was cancelled pre-season, leaving a five-week gap between the opening two rounds of the 1999 championship.
In February 2012, Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner announced that negotiations were coming to a close to bring the Grand Prix back to the country by 2013, this time at a street circuit to be created in the seaside resort city of Mar del Plata, scotching stories which surfaced in December 2011 that suggested a new circuit, being constructed at Zárate, was to target F1. Contracts were expected to be signed in May 2012, but this did not happen. Bernie Ecclestone, commercial rights holder of Formula One, said "we are open to racing in Argentina when I can deal with serious people".
Winners
Repeat winners (drivers)
Repeat winners (constructors)
Teams in bold are competing in the Formula One championship in the current season.
Repeat winners (engine manufacturers)
Manufacturers in bold are competing in the Formula One championship in the current season.
* Designed and built by Cosworth, funded by Ford
By year
A pink background indicates an event which was not part of the Formula One World Championship.
== References == |
1953_Formula_One_season | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Formula_One_season | [
746
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Formula_One_season"
] | The 1953 Formula One season was the seventh season of the FIA Formula One motor racing. It featured the 4th World Championship of Drivers, which was contested over nine races between 18 January and 13 September 1953. The season also included several non-championship races and a separate East German Championship.
As in 1952, all races counting towards the Formula One championship, except the Indianapolis 500, were held for cars complying with Formula Two regulations. A couple of non-championship races were still run under Formula One regulations.
The World Drivers' Championship was won by Alberto Ascari driving for Scuderia Ferrari. Ascari became the first driver since the inception of the championship in 1950 to successfully defend his title. It would be his last title, as well as the last for any Italian driver, as of 2024.
For the first time, a championship event was included outside of Europe (with expection of the Indianapolis 500): the 1953 Argentine Grand Prix. It was marred by an accident involving 1950 champion Nino Farina, who crashed into an unprotected crowd, killing nine spectators.
Teams and drivers
The following teams and drivers competed in the 1953 FIA World Championship of Drivers. The list does not include those who only contested the Indianapolis 500.
Team and driver changes
After competing in just one race in 1952, Maserati entered at least three cars in each race this year. They convinced 1951 champion Juan Manuel Fangio to return to the sport and to replace Franco Rol.
Mike Hawthorn was offered a drive with Ferrari after displaying his talent in several non-championship races in 1952. He replaced Piero Taruffi, who took up a drive with the Lancia sports car racing team.
After separating with their driver Prince Bira during the 1952 season, Gordini attracted American driver Harry Schell for this year.
Connaught had made their debut halfway through last season. They expanded their operations and hired Roy Salvadori and Kenneth McAlpine to drive.
Cooper entered with a works team for the first time, but initially only competed in the season opener.
Mid-season changes
Robert Manzon left Gordini after just one race. He would return in 1954 with Louis Rosier's private team. Roberto Mieres made his debut as Manzon's replacement.
From the Belgian Grand Prix on, Onofre Marimón joined Maserati as a full-time driver. José Froilán González left the team after the British Grand Prix. He would return to the grid with Ferrari in 1954.
Veteran racer Louis Chiron returned to F1 at the 1953 French Grand Prix with OSCA.
After competing in the season opener, Cooper returned to the grid for the French Grand Prix, with Stirling Moss as their sole driver, after he left a part-time drive at Connaught.
When Moss left, Prince Bira joined the Connaught team for three races.
Peter Collins left HWM before the end of the season. He would return in 1954 with Vanwall.
José Froilán González crashed a Lancia sports car before the German Grand Prix, got injured and was out of F1 for the rest of the season. Hermann Lang returned to Grand Prix racing after 14 years to replace him for one race, before Sergio Mantovani and Luigi Musso joined the team to make their F1 debut.
Calendar
Calendar changes
On 18 January, the Argentine Grand Prix hosted its first World Championship Grand Prix.
The Swiss Grand Prix was moved back from mid May to late August, while the Dutch Grand Prix was moved up from mid August to early June.
After a year at Rouen-Les-Essarts, the French Grand Prix was moved back to Reims-Gueux.
The Spanish Grand Prix was scheduled to be held on 26 October, but it was cancelled for monetary reasons.
Championship report
Rounds 1 to 3
The 1953 season started in Argentina, the first championship Formula One Grand Prix outside of Europe (with the exception of the Indianapolis 500). Alberto Ascari and Ferrari had dominated 1952, but Juan Manuel Fangio, the 1951 champion returning after a year away, at the new Maserati works team were expected to put up a good fight. Ascari qualified on pole position, ahead of Fangio and Ferrari teammates Luigi Villoresi and Nino Farina. The race attracted so many spectators that they were able to break through the security parameter and sit by the track. Only the fear of a riot resisted the organisers from cancelling the race. Ascari held the lead at the start, ahead of Fangio, as the lines of people grew thicker. On lap 21, one of the Adolfo Schwelm Cruz's Cooper lost a wheel, which bounced into the crowd, and eleven laps later, Farina spun off, crushing bodies until his Ferrari came to a halt. At least nine people were killed, which became ten when a panic ensued, a little boy ran unto the track and he was hit by the Cooper of Alan Brown. The race continued, Fangio retired with a broken transmission and Ascari finished a lap ahead of Villoresi and Maserati's José Froilán González.
The Indianapolis 500 was included in the Formula One championship, but no F1 drivers attended. Bill Vukovich won the race for the second year in a row.
The Dutch Grand Prix, being the first round of the year in Europe, attracted no less than twenty entrants, and Maserati brought upgraded cars. Still, the starting grid looked almost the same as in Argentina: Ascari, with Fangio and Farina next to him, and Villoresi and González on the second row. At the start, Ascari took the lead, while his teammates converged on Fangio, squeezing him almost to a standstill. The three prancing horses led away unchallenged. Both González and Fangio retired with a broken rear axle. Villoresi retired when his injection failed. Ascari and Farina finished 1-2, while González managed to get third after taking over the car from a teammate.
In the Drivers' Championship, Alberto Ascari (Ferrari) was leading with 17 points. Bill Vukovich was second with 9, but he would not enter any other races. Luigi Villoresi (Ferrari) was third with 7 points.
Rounds 4 to 7
The Maseratis were favourites going into the Belgian Grand Prix because of their high top speed. Juan Manuel Fangio delivered and set pole position, ahead of championship leader Alberto Ascari and teammate José Froilán González. Ascari's Ferrari teammates Nino Farina and Luigi Villoresi occupied the second row. González took the lead at the start and the two Maseratis streaked away, until they retired with mechanical issues two laps from each other. Farina retired as well, leaving Ascari and Villoresi to finish 1-2, ahead of Onofre Marimón on his debut for Maserati.
Ascari continued his dominance with a pole position for the French Grand Prix, ahead of Maserati's Felice Bonetto (teammate González set the qualifying time, but it was in Bonetto's car) and Villoresi. Fangio and González stood on the second row, but the latter took the lead at the start. Farina had a good start, while Bonetto spun, so González was now under threat from a group of four Ferraris. But the Argentinian streaked away and it was Fangio who started pressuring the group from behind. At half-distance, González pitted to refuel, which explained his good pace. A tight group was formed of seven red cars, all fighting for the lead. The Ferraris were better through the corners, but the Maseratis had a higher top speed, and with two laps to go, Mike Hawthorn and Fangio were side-by-side over the line. Hawthorn managed to inch in front and won, ahead of Fangio and González.
At the British Grand Prix, the front row was divided between the two Italian teams: Ascari scored pole, ahead of González, Hawthorn and Fangio. Fangio tried to take the lead at the start, but drifted wide and Ascari went back through. Hawthorn spun off and returned to the pits for a check-up. González was in second place, before officials suspected his Maserati from losing oil and ordered him to pit. Ascari increased his lead over now-second Fangio, before rain and hail fell and the circuit flooded. A couple of drivers spun, but Ascari finished his faultless race to win, a minute ahead of Fangio and two laps ahead of Farina. Ascari and González set the same fastest lap (measured in whole seconds), so they both gained an extra half a point.
In the Drivers' Championship, Alberto Ascari (Ferrari) was leading with 33.5 points, ahead of Mike Hawthorn (Ferrari) with 16 and José Froilán González (Maserati) with 13.5.
Rounds 7 to 9
Championship leader Alberto Ascari qualified on pole position for the German Grand Prix, ahead of Juan Manuel Fangio, Nino Farina and Mike Hawthorn. Fangio took the lead at the start, but Ascari was back in front after half a lap. He looked set to score his fourth win of the year, until he suddenly appeared in the pits with just three wheels. Farina took the lead, while Ascari fell back to ninth place. On lap 10, he took over the car from teammate Luigi Villoresi, suddenly bringing the championship leader back to fourth place. He set the fastest lap since Hermann Lang in 1939 but then retired with a blown engine. Farina held on to the lead and won the race, ahead of Fangio and Hawthorn.
At this point, the Spanish Grand Prix was still scheduled for 26 October, so there were three races left to go. Farina, Fangio and Hawthorn could theoretically prevent Ascari from becoming champion, but they had to win all remaining races, while setting the fastest lap in at least two of them. At the Swiss Grand Prix, Fangio scored pole position, ahead of Ascari and Farina, while Hawthorn started seventh. Ascari passed Fangio on the opening lap, while Farina fell back. On lap 10, Fangio switched cars with teammate Felice Bonetto, since the Italian's seemed to be running better, but then Fangio had to pit again with a flat tyre, and on lap 28, dramatically retired with a blown engine. This let the recovering Farina into second place, which became the lead when Ascari's carburetor failed and he spent 11 minutes in the pits. He rejoined in third, but such was his pace, that he passed both Hawthorn and Farina and then won over a minute ahead of Farina. Mike Hawthorn finished third to make it an all-Ferrari podium. Hermann Lang finished fifth in his first Grand Prix since 1939.
With his win in Switzerland, Ascari had big enough of a lead to secure his second consecutive title. This became even clearer when the Spanish Grand Prix was cancelled and only one race was left in the season, the Italian Grand Prix. Ascari showed no signs of slowing down and reached a record total of six pole positions in a season. He started ahead of Fangio and Farina. Fourth-placed Onofre Marimón made a good start to pass both champions ahead of him, to slot in behind the now-double champion. Like in Reims, the four leaders formed a group that lapped the rest of the field and never separated more than a car length or two from each other. Just over half-distance, Marimón pitted with a damaged radiator, so it was now a three-horse race. On the very last corner, Ascari spun off into the grass, Farina went off the track to avoid him and, although the latter continued over the finish line, it let Fangio claim his first win since 1951. Farina was second and, although Ascari retired just 200 yards from the finish, he was classified behind all cars still running, so Villoresi took third.
In the Drivers' Championship, Alberto Ascari (Ferrari) scored 34.5 points to clinch his second consecutive title, ahead of Juan Manuel Fangio (Maserati) with 28 and Nino Farina (Ferrari) with 26.
Results and standings
Grands Prix
World Championship of Drivers standings
Points were awarded to the top five classified finishers, with an additional point awarded for setting the fastest lap, regardless of finishing position or even classification. Only the best four results counted towards the championship. Shared drives result in half points for each driver if they finished in a points-scoring position. If more than one driver set the same fastest lap time, the fastest lap point would be divided equally between the drivers. Numbers without parentheses are championship points; numbers in parentheses are total points scored. Points were awarded in the following system:
† Position shared between more drivers of the same car
* Point for fastest lap shared between different drivers.
‡ Several cars were shared in this race. See the race page for details.
Non-championship races
The following Formula One/Formula Two/Formula Libre races, which did not count towards the World Championship of Drivers, were held in 1953.
East German races
The Bernau race was not part of the East German Championship.
East German Championship
The table below shows the points awarded for each race. Only East German drivers were eligible for points.
Notes
== References == |
Alberto_Ascari | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Ascari | [
746
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Ascari"
] | Alberto Ascari (13 July 1918 – 26 May 1955) was an Italian racing driver, who competed in Formula One from 1950 to 1955. Ascari won two Formula One World Drivers' Championship titles, which he won in 1952 and 1953 with Ferrari.
Noted for careful precision and finely-judged accuracy, Ascari was a multitalented racer who competed in motorcycle racing before switching to cars. He won consecutive Formula One world titles in 1952 and 1953 for Scuderia Ferrari, becoming the first Ferrari-powered World Champion and breaking several records across both seasons. He remains the last Italian to win the World Drivers' Championship, as of 2024. This was sandwiched by an appearance in the 1952 Indianapolis 500, and winning the 1954 Mille Miglia.
As of 2024, Ascari and Michael Schumacher are Ferrari's only back-to-back World Champions, and Ascari remains Ferrari's sole Italian champion. As the first driver to win multiple World Championship titles, he held the record for most World Championship titles from 1952 to 1954, becoming one of four drivers to have held the record for most World Championship titles. Juan Manuel Fangio held the record from 1954 to 2002 (jointly with Ascari in 1954) and Schumacher has held the record since 2002, although Schumacher also shares that record with Lewis Hamilton since 2020.
When Ascari was a young child, his father Antonio Ascari, also a famous racing driver, died in an accident at the 1925 French Grand Prix. Ascari himself was later killed during a test session for Ferrari at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza in 1955.
Early life
Born in Milan, Alberto Ascari was the son of Antonio Ascari, a talented Grand Prix motor racing star in the 1920s, racing Alfa Romeos. A fortnight before Ascari's seventh birthday, his father was killed while leading the 1925 French Grand Prix at the Autodrome de Linas-Montlhéry; the younger Ascari had an interest in racing in spite of this, and later came to dominate Grand Prix racing like no other before him. Such was his passion to become a racing driver like his father that he ran away from school twice, and sold his school books to finance his racing. Ascari raced motorcycles in his earlier years. At the age of 19 he was signed to ride for the Bianchi team. In 1940, after he entered the prestigious Mille Miglia in an Auto Avio Costruzioni 815 supplied by his father's close friend Enzo Ferrari, Ascari eventually started racing on four wheels regularly. In an interview, he famously said: "I only obey one passion, racing. I wouldn't know how to live without it."
In 1940, Ascari married a local girl. When Italy entered World War II, the family garage, by now run by Ascari, was conscripted to service and maintain vehicles of the Italian military. During this period, he and his partner fellow racing driver Luigi Villoresi established a lucrative transport business, supplying fuel to army depots in North Africa. The pair survived a ship they were aboard carrying lorries capsizing in Tripoli harbour. As their business supported the Italian war effort, it made them exempt from being called up for military service during the war.
Career
Following the end of World War II, Ascari began racing in Grands Prix with the Maserati 4CLT. His teammate was Villoresi, who became a mentor and friend to Ascari. The pair were successful on the circuits in Northern Italy. He was nicknamed Ciccio, meaning "Tubby". Formula One regulations were introduced by the FIA in 1946, with the aim of eventually replacing the pre-war Grand Prix structure. During the next four transitional years, Ascari was at the top of his game, winning numerous events around Europe. The 1948 San Remo Grand Prix was his first win. He also took second place at the 1948 British Grand Prix, which was organised by the Royal Automobile Club and is generally considered the first British Grand Prix, at the Silverstone Circuit. With Maserati he won the first 1949 Buenos Aires Grand Prix. His biggest success came when he and Villoresi signed for Scuderia Ferrari. The team boss Enzo Ferrari had been a great friend and teammate to Ascari's father, and had taken a keen interest in his successes. In 1949, he won three more races, all with Ferrari. Driving a Ferrari, he also won the third 1949 Buenos Aires Grand Prix.
The first Formula One World Championship season took place in 1950. The Ferrari team made its World Championship debut at the 1950 Monaco Grand Prix, the second race of the season, with Ascari, Villoresi, and the famous French driver Raymond Sommer on the team. At Monaco, Ascari became the youngest driver to score points and a podium position in Formula One at 31 years, 312 days, finishing second one lap behind Juan Manuel Fangio. The team had a mixed year as the supercharged Ferrari 125 F1 was too slow to challenge the dominant Alfa Romeo team, so Ferrari began working on an unblown 4.5-litre car. Much of the year was lost as the team's 2-litre Formula Two engine was progressively enlarged. When the full 4.5-litre Ferrari 375 F1 arrived for the 1950 Italian Grand Prix, the final round of the championship, Ascari gave Alfa Romeo their sternest challenge of the year before retiring; he then took over teammate Dorino Serafini's car to finish second. The new Ferrari then won the non-championship 1950 Penya Rhin Grand Prix.
Throughout 1951, Ascari was a threat to the Alfa Romeo team, although initially he was undone by unreliability. After winning the 1951 German Grand Prix at Nürburgring, he also won the 1951 Italian Grand Prix, and was only two points behind Fangio in the championship standings ahead of the climactic 1951 Spanish Grand Prix, where Fangio won the race and his first title as the 33-years-old Ascari became the youngest runner-up. Although Ascari had taken pole position, a disastrous tyre choice for the race saw the Ferraris unable to challenge Fangio; Ascari finished fourth.
For 1952, the World Championship season switched to using the 2-litre Formula Two regulations, with Ascari driving the Ferrari 500. He missed the 1952 Swiss Grand Prix as he was qualifying for the 1952 Indianapolis 500, at the time a World Championship event. He was the only European driver to race at Indy in its eleven years on the World Championship schedule; his race ended after 40 laps without having made much of an impression, as a result of a wheel collapse. Returning to Europe, he then won the remaining six rounds of the series to clinch the world title (also taking five non-championship wins) and recording the fastest lap in each race. He scored the maximum number of points a driver could earn, since only the best four of eight scores counted towards the World Championship. Aged 34, Ascari became Formula One's new youngest champion until the 29-year-old Mike Hawthorn won it in 1958; Hawthorn had been Ascari's teammate in 1951. Meanwhile, Fangio had missed most of the season after a crash in the 1952 Italian Grand Prix in June.
Ascari won three more consecutive races to start the 1953 season, giving him nine straight championship wins (not counting Indy) before his streak ended when he finished fourth at the 1953 French Grand Prix, which proved to be highly competitive. He won twice more later in the year for a second consecutive World Championship, becoming Formula One's first two-time champion. Aged 35, he was also the youngest two-time champion and the youngest back-to-back champion, both records beaten by the 34-year-old Jack Brabham in 1960, as the average age of a Formula One driver significantly decreased. The 1953 season is considered Ascari's career high point as he had faced the returning Fangio for the opening race of the season, the 1953 Argentine Grand Prix in Buenos Aires, attended by Fangio's home crowd. Additionally, it was widely expected that Ferrari was to be challenged by a resurgent Maserati, with Fangio at its helm. Instead, Ascari took pole position and achieved the first win of a season that set him on course for his second and last World Championship.
Following a dispute over his salary, Ascari left Ferrari at the end of the season and switched to Lancia for the 1954 campaign. As their car was not eventually ready for the final race of the season, Gianni Lancia allowed him to drive twice for Maserati, sharing the fastest lap at the 1954 British Grand Prix, and once for Ferrari. Ascari also won the Mille Miglia that year, driving a Lancia sportscar, surviving the dreadful weather and the failure of a throttle spring, which was temporarily replaced with a rubber band. When the Lancia D50 was ready, Ascari took pole position on its debut, the 1954 Spanish Grand Prix, and led impressively early on and set fastest lap before retiring with a clutch problem, meaning a full season of competing against Fangio's previously dominant Mercedes was much anticipated. Ascari's decision to move to Lancia is considered his career's low point. Despite promises of a new car and more money, this did not come until the season was nearly over, by which time Fangio was unreachable. While waiting for the Lancia car, Ascari had to take guest drives for Maserati and Ferrari, and he finished the season without completing any of the four Grands Prix he entered.
Ascari's 1955 season started promisingly, the Lancia taking victories at the non-championship races in Turin (Parco del Valentino) and at the Naples Grand Prix, where the Lancias took on and beat the hitherto all-conquering Mercedes. In a world championship event, the 1955 Argentine Grand Prix, he retired. During the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix on 22 May, Ascari crashed into the harbour through hay bales and sandbags late in the race after missing a chicane while leading, reportedly distracted by either the crowd's reaction to Stirling Moss' retirement or the close attentions of the lapped Cesare Perdisa behind. Whatever distracted him, he approached the chicane too quickly, and chose the only way out and took his D50 through the barriers into the sea, missing a substantial iron bollard by about 30 cm. Although his car sank, Ascari was pulled into a boat and escaped with only a broken nose.
Death
On 26 May 1955, Ascari went to the Autodromo Nazionale Monza to watch his friend Eugenio Castellotti test a Ferrari 750 Monza sports car. They were to co-drive the car in the 1000 km Monza race, having been given special dispensation by Lancia. Ascari was not scheduled to drive that day, but decided to try a few laps. He set off in street clothes and wearing Castellotti's white helmet. As he emerged from a fast curve on the third lap, the car inexplicably skidded, turned on its nose, and somersaulted twice. Thrown out onto the track, Ascari suffered multiple injuries and died a few minutes later. The crash occurred on the Curva del Vialone, one of the track's challenging high-speed corners. The corner where the accident happened was renamed in his honour, and was subsequently replaced with a chicane called Variante Ascari. The reasons and circumstances of the accident, including why Ascari, who was well known for his attention to safety, drove another driver's car, and without his own lucky blue helmet (he had left it at home, and apparently reasoned that, after his accident in Monaco four days earlier, getting back to race driving as soon as possible was the best way to recover), never came to light.
In 2001, the Swiss newspaper Rinascita published the story of Angelo Consonni, who was seven years old at the time of Ascari's death and was with his grandfather near the Curva del Vialone. Consonni said he saw two workers intent on crossing the road to reach a shed when he heard a car approaching; if the first worker was quick, the second hesitated and stopped. Soon after, the young Consonni felt a silence and saw the Ferrari spin around and overturn. Luigi Villoresi maintained that Ascari would have been afraid of being afraid. In 2014, the racing driver Ernesto Brambilla declared that he had seen the accident, confirming that the car spun around and overturned, excluding the hypothesis that the accident was caused by a spectator who crossed the track.
Motor racing fans from all over mourned, as Ascari was buried next to the grave of his father in the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan, to be forever remembered as one of the greatest racers of all time. More than a million people took to the streets in Milan for his funeral. His distraught wife Mietta Ascari told Enzo Ferrari that were it not for their children she would have taken her life. Three days before he died, Ascari had told a friend: "I never want my children to become too fond of me because one day I might not come back and they will suffer less if I don't come back." Upon Ascari's death, his friend and rival Juan Manuel Fangio lamented: "I have lost my greatest opponent. Ascari was a driver of supreme skill and I felt my title last year lost some of its value because he was not there to fight me for it. A great man." Fellow racing driver Stirling Moss recalled Ascari as "wonderfully good... he was rather better than good, he was very good indeed. He may have been as fast as Fangio... but he had not got the polish that so distinguished Fangio." Mike Hawthorn said that "Ascari was the fastest driver I ever saw. And when I say that, I include Fangio."
Ascari's death is often considered to be a contributing factor to the withdrawal of Lancia from motor racing in 1955, just three days after his funeral (although the company was also in considerable financial trouble, needing a government subsidy to survive), handing his team, drivers, cars, and spare parts over to Enzo Ferrari. He died aged 36 years and 10 months, exactly the same age as his father, who was also killed in an accident at Montlhery thirty years earlier. Both Ascaris won 13 Grands Prix, drove car number 26, and were killed in similar circumstances. His father's death helped fuel Ascari's deeply superstitious nature as he avoided black cats, was concerned about unlucky numbers, and did not allow anyone to touch the briefcase that contained his racing apparel, which included what he believed to be his lucky blue helmet and T-shirt, the goggles, and gloves. Ascari had also promised himself, after his father's death, that he would never race on the 26th of any month, and that he would become the number one racing driver. In 2015, Ascari was included in the Walk of Fame of Italian sport. In 2016, unknown thieves stole the bronze busts, which were placed on the sides of the shrine, of Ascari and his father. Ascari's bust was the work of Michele Vedani, while that of his father was created by the sculptor Orazio Grossoni.
Legacy
Ascari was popular with fellow drivers and crowds because of his modesty and eagerness to praise the ability of his rivals; he is also considered one of the hardest drivers to pass. One criticism was the perceived lack of complete focus when he was chasing for the lead. For example, Enzo Ferrari said: "When he had to follow and pass an opponent, he evidently suffered, not from an inferiority complex, but from a nervousness that did not let him express his true class." In the words of BBC Sport's chief Formula One writer Andrew Benson, Ascari did not look "much like the modern idea of a Formula 1 driver. His double chin and slightly chubby frame brought to mind a Milanese baker more than the lean, pinched athletes of the modern age. Yet this was a man who, for a period, dominated grand prix racing like no other has before or since." In his profile about Ascari, Benson further wrote that "Ascari was a ruthless winning machine. He was a phlegmatic character who approached his racing with an analytical style. With his pale blue shirt and matching helmet, Ascari cut a distinctive figure in the scarlet Ferraris of the early 1950s. He sat upright, hunched slightly forward, closer to the large steering wheel than many of his rivals, his elbows forming sharper angles." About Ascari's driving style, Enzo Ferrari said: "Ascari had a precise and distinctive driving style, but he was a man who had to lead from the start. In that position he was hard to overtake, almost impossible to beat, in my estimation. Alberto was secure when he was playing the hare. That was when his style was at its most superb. In second place, or further back, he was less sure."
A street in Rome, in the Esposizione Universale Roma area, is named in Ascari's honour, and the Autodromo Nazionale Monza and Autodromo Oscar Alfredo Gálvez have chicanes named after him. In 1972, one of the chicanes at the Monza Circuit was named in his honour Variante Ascari.
In 1992, he was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame. The British supercar manufacturer Ascari Cars, founded in 1994, is named in his honour. Italian-born American racing legend Mario Andretti counts Ascari as one of his racing heroes, having watched him at the Monza circuit in his youth. Ascari was inducted into the FIA Hall of Fame in December 2017. He appears in Mark Sullivan's novel Beneath a Scarlet Sky.
In 34 entries and 32 race starts, Ascari had 13 wins, 17 podiums, 14 pole positions, and 12 fastest laps, and won two World Championships, making him the first double World Champion and the first back-to-back winner; it was not until Michael Schumacher's fourth World Championship (the second with Ferrari) in 2001, the only other to do so, that a Ferrari driver won back-to-back titles. His rivalry with Juan Manuel Fangio was one of the greatest in Formula One; from 31 starts each, they combined for 27 wins, 30 pole positions, and 27 fastest laps, some of which were shared with others. Either Ascari or Fangio held the lead for at least one lap, often times it was both leading races and for more than a lap, in all except for two of the 37 Grands Prix (from the 1950 British Grand Prix to the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix). In total, they led 66.6% of 2,508 laps. Stirling Moss believed Fangio to be better but that Ascari was very close, while Denis Jenkinson of Motor Sport thought Ascari was better. Ascari was also called the prototype Jim Clark, as well as the last Italian Grand Prix star, being Ferrari's sole Italian World Champion and Italy's sole back-to-back champion. Ascari's rivals thought him faster than Fangio. With a win ratio of more than 40%, Ascari was second only to Fangio at the time. With Ferrari, for which he drove from 1949 to 1953, he had 13 wins in 27 races, a ratio of 48%, the highest win ratio for a Ferrari driver.
Despite his short career, having fewer Grand Prix starts than any other World Champion, Ascari is generally considered among the greatest Formula One drivers. In 2009, an Autosport survey taken by 217 Formula One drivers saw Ascari voted as the 16th-greatest Formula One driver of all time. In 2012, the BBC listed Ascari as the 9th-greatest Formula One driver. In 2020, Carteret Analytics used quantitative analysis methods to rank Formula One drivers. According to this ranking, Ascari is Formula One's fourth-best driver of all time. Similar objective mathematical models, such as Eichenberger and Stadelmann (2009, 12th when the 40 races started criteria is dropped), original F1metrics (2014, 9th), FiveThirtyEight (2018, 19th), and updated F1metrics (2019, 5th), consistently put Ascari among the top 20 greatest Formula One drivers ever. Although Fangio did not take part in the 1952 season, Ascari's performance during that season is considered one of the best single-year performance of all time; he overwhelmingly beat several strong Ferrari teammates, including Giuseppe Farina, whom he beat 53.5 to 27 in total points. Based on a 2019 adjusted scoring-rate calculation, 1952 had the all-time largest margin between first and second in the championship standings, with 8.90 points per race for Ascari and 4.36 points per race for Mike Hawthorn.
Into the 21st century, Ascari continues to hold several Formula One records, some of which have since been equalled by fellow World Champions, such as Clark, Nigel Mansell, Sebastian Vettel, and Lewis Hamilton. During his career, Ascari had seven hat-tricks (pole positions, fastest lap, and race win) and five Grand Chelems (1952 French Grand Prix, 1952 German Grand Prix, 1952 Dutch Grand Prix, 1953 Argentine Grand Prix, and 1953 British Grand Prix); as of July 2023, only 26 drivers had secured a Grand Chelem, of which there had been 66 in total. Ascari is one of three drivers (Clark and Vettel) to have achieved this feat, meaning taking pole, fastest lap, race win, and leading every lap, in consecutive races. Ascari holds the records of most consecutive hat-tricks (4), most consecutive Grand Chelems (2, jointly held with Clark and Vettel), highest number of Grand Chelems in a season (3, jointly held with Clark, Mansell, and Hamilton), most consecutive fastest laps (7), most consecutive laps in the lead (304), most consecutive distance led (2,075 km), highest percentage of fastest laps in a season (75%), and highest percentage of possible championship points in a season (100%, jointly held with Clark). A 51-year record for most consecutive wins (7), which was held by Ascari, was first equalled by Schumacher in 2004, then broken by Vettel (9) in 2013, and broken again (10) by Max Verstappen in 2023. He also held the record for the highest percentage of wins in a season (75) until 2023, when Verstappen broke Ascari's 71-year record.
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 Dorino Serafini
† Indicates shared drive with José Froilán González
‡ Indicates shared drive with Luigi Villoresi
Non-championship Formula One results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; Races in italics indicate fastest lap)
* Indicates shared drive with Luigi Villoresi
† Indicates shared drive with André Simon
‡ Indicates shared drive with Sergio Sighinolfi
Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results
Complete 12 Hours of Sebring results
Complete 24 Hours of Spa results
Complete Mille Miglia results
Complete Carrera Panamericana results
Complete 12 Hours of Casablanca results
Indianapolis 500 results
Formula One records
Ascari holds the following Formula One records:
Footnotes
See also
Peter Collins (racing driver)
Notes
References
Further reading
Andretti, Mario; Ludvigsen, Karl (2000). Alberto Ascari: Ferrari's First Double World Champion. Haynes Manuals. ISBN 9781859606803.
Desmond, Kevin (1981). Man with Two Shadows: Story of Alberto Ascari. Proteus Books. ISBN 9780906071090.
Menard, Pierre; Vassal, Jacques (2004). Alberto Ascari: The First Double World Champion'. Chronosports. ISBN 9782847070644.
"Most Fastest Laps in Series in One Season". Formula 1 Review. 2007. Archived from the original on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 19 February 2024.
External links
Alberto Ascari at Racing-Reference.info
Alberto Ascari at DriverDB.com
Alberto Ascari Grand Prix history
Alberto Ascari statistics
Statistical analysis of drivers, 1950–2013
Alberto Ascari at Find a Grave |
Sliced_bread | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliced_bread | [
746
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliced_bread"
] | Sliced bread is a loaf of bread that has been sliced with a machine and packaged for convenience, as opposed to the consumer cutting it with a knife. It was first sold in 1928, advertised as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped". By 1933, around 80% of bread sold in the US was pre-sliced, leading to the popular idiom "greatest thing since sliced bread".
History
Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa, United States, invented the first single loaf bread-slicing machine. A prototype he built in 1912 was destroyed in a fire, and it was not until 1928 that Rohwedder had a fully working machine ready. The first commercial use of the machine was by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri, who sold their first slices on July 7, 1928. Their product, "Kleen Maid Sliced Bread", proved to be a success. Battle Creek, Michigan, has a competing claim as the first city to sell bread sliced by Rohwedder's machine; however, historians have produced no documentation backing up Battle Creek's claim. The bread was advertised as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped".
St. Louis baker Gustav Papendick bought Rohwedder's second bread slicer and set out to improve it by devising a way to keep the slices together at least long enough to allow the loaves to be wrapped. After failures trying rubber bands and metal pins, he settled on placing the slices into a cardboard tray. The tray aligned the slices, allowing mechanized wrapping machines to function.
W.E. Long, who promoted the Holsum Bread brand, used by various independent bakers around the country, pioneered and promoted the packaging of sliced bread, beginning in 1928. In 1930, Wonder Bread, first sold in 1925, started marketing sliced bread nationwide.
In the United Kingdom, the first slicing and wrapping machine was installed in the Wonderloaf Bakery in Tottenham, London, in 1937. By the 1950s around 80% of bread sold in Britain was pre-sliced.
Effects
As commercially sliced bread resulted in uniform and somewhat thinner slices, people ate more slices of bread at a time. They also ate bread more frequently, because of the ease of getting and eating another piece of bread. This increased consumption of bread and, in turn, increased consumption of spreads, such as jam, to put on the bread.
1943 U.S. ban
In 1943, U.S. officials imposed a short-lived ban on sliced bread as a wartime conservation measure. The ban was ordered by Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard, who held the position of Food Administrator, and took effect on January 18, 1943. According to The New York Times, officials explained that "the ready-sliced loaf must have a heavier wrapping than an unsliced one if it is not to dry out." It was also intended to counteract a rise in the price of bread, caused by the Office of Price Administration's authorization of a ten percent increase in flour prices.
In a Sunday radio address on January 24th, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia suggested that bakeries that had their own bread-slicing machines should be allowed to continue to use them, and on January 26th, 1943, a letter appeared in The New York Times from a distraught housewife:
I should like to let you know how important sliced bread is to the morale and saneness of a household. My husband and four children are all in a rush during and after breakfast. Without ready-sliced bread I must do the slicing for toast—two pieces for each one—that's ten. For their lunches I must cut by hand at least twenty slices, for two sandwiches apiece. Afterward I make my own toast. Twenty-two slices of bread to be cut in a hurry!
On January 26th, however, John F. Conaboy, the New York Area Supervisor of the Food Distribution Administration, warned bakeries, delicatessens, and other stores that were continuing to slice bread to stop, saying that "to protect the cooperating bakeries against the unfair competition of those who continue to slice their own bread... we are prepared to take stern measures if necessary."
On March 8th, 1943, the ban was rescinded. While public outcry is generally credited for the reversal, Wickard stated that "Our experience with the order, however, leads us to believe that the savings are not as much as we expected, and the War Production Board tells us that sufficient wax paper to wrap sliced bread for four months is in the hands of paper processor and the baking industry."
A theory of the ban was that the bread slicing machines used replaceable hardened steel for the slicers. This type of steel was essential to the war effort. Rather than to try monitoring production and usage of this type of steel, preventing the sale of sliced bread would stifle demand from bakeries for fresh slicers, thereby making the steel more available to the war effort.
Around the world
Due to its convenience, sliced bread is popular in many parts of the world, and the usual thickness varies by company and country:
In the United Kingdom, sliced bread is sold as "Extra Thick", "Thick", "Medium" or "Thin", ranging from 16 mm down to 10 mm.
In the Republic of Ireland, the most popular bread type is known as "sliced pan", sold in 800- or 400-gram loaves, wrapped in wax paper.
In Japan, the same half-loaf of bread is labeled by the number of slices it is cut into (commonly a four or six cut, but also eight or ten), meaning a higher number is a thinner cut. Whole cut loaves are rarely seen. Thin sliced crustless "sandwich bread" is also sold in Japan, since regular four–six slice bread is deemed too thick.
In Canada and the United States, Texas toast is a type of packaged bread sliced twice as thick as most sliced bread.
In Australia most sliced bread slices are about 18 mm thick, known as "toast" thickness, while 12–13 mm is known as "sandwich". Less common is "café" thickness, about 24 mm.
In popular culture
The phrase "the greatest thing since sliced bread" is a common idiom used to praise an invention or development. A writer for The Kansas City Star wrote that "the phrase is the ultimate depiction of innovative achievement and American know-how."
In 1933, an advertisement for a bread offering thick and thin slices in the same loaf called it "the first improvement since sliced bread". In 1940, a package of bread consisting of two wrapped sliced half-loaves was advertised as the "greatest convenience since sliced bread".
See also
Pullman loaf, origin of a style of long narrow bread pan, and the loaves baked in it
References
External links
US 1867377 – Rohwedder's 1928 bread slicer.
"A Day in the Life" podcast on sliced bread.
"Where Sliced Bread Came From" A short video documentary with rare eyewitness testimony of people who were alive when it happened. |
Grand_National | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_National | [
747
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_National "
] | The Grand National is a National Hunt horse race held annually at Aintree Racecourse in Aintree, Merseyside, England. First run in 1839, it is a handicap steeplechase over an official distance of about 4 miles and 2½ furlongs (4 miles 514 yards (6.907 km)), with horses jumping 30 fences over two laps. It is the most valuable jump race in Europe, with a prize fund of £1 million in 2017. An event that is prominent in British culture, the race is popular amongst many people who do not normally watch or bet on horse racing at other times of the year.
The course over which the race is run features much larger fences than those found on conventional National Hunt tracks. Many of these fences, particularly Becher's Brook, The Chair and the Canal Turn, have become famous in their own right and, combined with the distance of the event, create what has been called "the ultimate test of horse and rider".
The Grand National has been broadcast live on free-to-air terrestrial television in the United Kingdom since 1960. From then until 2012 it was broadcast by the BBC. Channel 4 broadcast the event between 2013 and 2016: UK broadcasting rights were transferred to ITV from 2017. An estimated 500 to 600 million people watch the Grand National in over 140 countries. The race has also been broadcast on radio since 1927; BBC Radio held exclusive rights until 2013. Talksport acquired radio commentary rights in 2014: Both the BBC and Talksport currently broadcast the race in full.
The most recent running of the race, in 2024, was won by I Am Maximus. Since 2017, the race and accompanying festival have been sponsored by Randox.
The next meeting will take place from 3–5 April 2025.
History
Founding and early Nationals (1829–1850)
The Grand National was founded by William Lynn, a syndicate head and proprietor of the Waterloo Hotel, on land he leased in Aintree from William Molyneux, 2nd Earl of Sefton. Lynn set out a course, built a grandstand, and Lord Sefton laid the foundation stone on 7 February 1829. There is much debate regarding the first official Grand National; most leading published historians, including John Pinfold, now prefer the idea that the first running was in 1836 and was won by The Duke. This same horse won again in 1837, while Sir William was the winner in 1838. These races have long been disregarded because of the belief that they took place at Maghull and not Aintree. However, some historians have unearthed evidence in recent years that suggests those three races were run over the same course at Aintree and were regarded as having been Grand Nationals up until the mid-1860s. Contemporary newspaper reports place all the 1836–38 races at Aintree although the 1839 race is the first described as "national". However, calls for the Nationals of 1836–1838 to be restored to the record books have been unsuccessful.
In 1838 and 1839 three significant events occurred to transform the race from a small local affair to a national event. Firstly, the Great St. Albans Chase, which had clashed with the steeplechase at Aintree, was not renewed after 1838, leaving a major hole in the chasing calendar. Secondly, the railway, opened from Manchester to Liverpool in 1830, was linked to a line from London and Birmingham in 1839 enabling rail transport to the Liverpool area from large parts of the country for the first time. Finally, a committee was formed to better organise the event. These factors led to a more highly publicised race in 1839 which attracted a larger field of top quality horses and riders, greater press coverage, and increased attendance on race day. Over time the first three runnings of the event were quickly forgotten to secure the 1839 race its place in history as the first official Grand National.
The 1839 race was won by rider Jem Mason on the aptly named, Lottery. The Duke was ridden by Martin Becher. The fence Becher's Brook is named after him and is where he fell in the race.
By the 1840s, Lynn's ill-health blunted his enthusiasm for Aintree. Edward Topham, a respected handicapper and prominent member of Lynn's syndicate, began to exert greater influence over the National. He turned the chase into a handicap in 1843 after it had been a weight-for-age race for the first four years, and took over the land lease in 1848. One century later, the Topham family bought the course outright.
Later in the century, the race was the setting of a thriller by the popular novelist Henry Hawley Smart.
War National Steeplechase (1916–1918)
For three years during the First World War, while Aintree Racecourse was taken over by the War Office, an alternative race was run at Gatwick Racecourse, a now disused course on land now occupied by Gatwick Airport. The first of these races, in 1916, was called the Racecourse Association Steeplechase, and in 1917 and 1918 the race was called the War National Steeplechase. The races at Gatwick are not always recognised as "Grand Nationals" and their results are often omitted from winners' lists.
Tipperary Tim (1928)
On the day of the 1928 Grand National, before the race had begun, Tipperary Tim's jockey William Dutton heard a friend call out to him: "Billy boy, you'll only win if all the others fall down!" These words turned out to be true, as 41 of the 42 starters fell during the race. That year's National was run during misty weather conditions with the going very heavy. As the field approached the Canal Turn on the first circuit, Easter Hero fell, causing a pile-up from which only seven horses emerged with seated jockeys. By the penultimate fence, this number had reduced to three, with Great Span looking most likely to win ahead of Billy Barton and Tipperary Tim. Great Span's saddle then slipped, leaving Billy Barton in the lead until he too then fell. Although Billy Barton's jockey Tommy Cullinan managed to remount and complete the race, it was Tipperary Tim who came in first at outside odds of 100/1. With only two riders completing the course, this remains a record for the lowest number of finishers.
Second World War and the 1950s
Although the Grand National was run as normal in 1940 and most other major horse races around the world were able to be held throughout the war, the commandeering of Aintree Racecourse for defence use in 1941 meant no Grand National could be held from 1941 to 1945. It recommenced in 1946, when it was run on a Friday, and from 1947 was moved to a Saturday, at the urging of the Home Secretary James Chuter Ede, who thought this would make it more accessible to working people. It has normally been run on a Saturday ever since.
During the 1950s the Grand National was dominated by Vincent O'Brien, who trained different winners of the race for three consecutive years between 1953 and 1955. Early Mist secured O'Brien's first victory in 1953; Royal Tan won in 1954, and Quare Times completed the Irish trainer's hat-trick in 1955.
The running of the 1956 Grand National witnessed one of the chase's most bizarre incidents. Devon Loch, owned by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, had cleared the final fence in the leading position, five lengths clear of E.S.B. Forty yards from what seemed like certain victory, Devon Loch suddenly, and inexplicably, half-jumped into the air and collapsed in a belly-flop on the turf. Despite efforts by jockey Dick Francis, Devon Loch was unable to complete the race, leaving E.S.B. to cross the finishing line first. Responding to the commiserations of E.S.B.’s owner, the Queen Mother famously commented: "Oh, that's racing!"
Had Devon Loch completed the race he might have set a new record for the fastest finishing time, which E.S.B. missed by only four-fifths of a second. Many explanations have been offered for Devon Loch's behaviour on the run-in, but the incident remains inexplicable. The incident became part of the folklore of the event, and by extension British sporting culture. In modern language, the phrase "to do a Devon Loch" is often used to describe a last-minute failure to achieve an expected victory.
Foinavon (1967)
In the 1967 Grand National, most of the field were hampered or dismounted in a mêlée at the 23rd fence, allowing a rank-outsider, Foinavon, to become a surprise winner at odds of 100/1. A loose horse named Popham Down, who had unseated his rider at the first jump, suddenly veered across the leading group at the 23rd, causing them to either stop, refuse or unseat their riders. Racing journalist Lord Oaksey described the resulting pile-up by saying that Popham Down had "cut down the leaders like a row of thistles". Some horses even started running in the wrong direction, back the way they had come. Foinavon, whose owner had such little faith in him that he had travelled to Worcester that day instead, had been lagging some 100 yards behind the leading pack, giving his jockey, John Buckingham, time to steer his mount wide of the havoc and make a clean jump of the fence on the outside. Although 17 jockeys remounted and some made up considerable ground, particularly Josh Gifford on 15/2 favourite Honey End, none had time to catch Foinavon before he crossed the finishing line. The 7th/23rd fence was officially named the 'Foinavon fence' in 1984.
1970s and Red Rum
The 1970s were mixed years for the Grand National. In 1973, eight years after Mrs. Mirabel Topham announced she was seeking a buyer, the racecourse was finally sold to property developer Bill Davies. Davies tripled the admission prices, and consequently, the attendance at the 1975 race, won by L'Escargot, was the smallest in living memory. It was after this that bookmaker Ladbrokes made an offer, signing an agreement with Davies allowing them to manage the Grand National.
During this period, Red Rum was breaking all records to become the most successful racehorse in Grand National history. Originally bought as a yearling in 1966 for 400 guineas (£420), he passed through various training yards before being bought for 6,000 guineas (£6,300) by Ginger McCain on behalf of Noel le Mare. Two days after the purchase while trotting the horse on Southport beach, McCain noticed that Red Rum appeared lame. The horse was suffering from pedal osteitis, an inflammatory bone disorder. McCain had witnessed many lame carthorses reconditioned by being galloped in sea-water. He successfully used this treatment on his newly acquired racehorse.
Red Rum became, and remains as of 2018, the only horse to have won the Grand National three times, in 1973, 1974, and 1977. He also finished second in the two intervening years, 1975 and 1976.
In 1973, he was in second place at the last fence, 15 lengths behind champion horse Crisp, who was carrying 23 lbs more. Red Rum made up the ground on the run-in and, two strides from the finishing post, he pipped the tiring Crisp to win by three-quarters of a length in what is arguably the most memorable Grand National of all time. Red Rum finished in 9 minutes 1.9 seconds, taking 18.3 seconds off the previous record for the National which had been set in 1935 by Reynoldstown. His record was to stand for the next seventeen years.
Bob Champion's National (1981)
Two years before the 1981 Grand National, jockey Bob Champion had been diagnosed with testicular cancer and given only months to live by doctors. But by 1981 he had recovered and was passed fit to ride in the Grand National. He rode Aldaniti, a horse deprived in its youth and which had only recently recovered from chronic leg problems. Despite a poor start, the pair went on to win 4+1⁄2 lengths ahead of the much-fancied Spartan Missile, ridden by amateur jockey and 54-year-old grandfather John Thorne. Champion and Aldaniti were instantly propelled to celebrity status, and within two years, their story had been re-created in the film Champions, starring John Hurt.
Seagram's sponsorship (1984–1991)
From 1984 to 1991, Seagram sponsored the Grand National. The Canadian distiller provided a solid foundation on which the race's revival could be built, firstly enabling the course to be bought from Davies and to be run and managed by the Jockey Club. It is said that Ivan Straker, Seagram's UK chairman, became interested in the potential opportunity after reading a passionate newspaper article written by journalist Lord Oaksey, who, in his riding days, had come within three-quarters of a length of winning the 1963 National. The last Seagram-sponsored Grand National was in 1991. Coincidentally, the race was won by a horse named Seagram. Martell, then a Seagram subsidiary, took over sponsorship of the Aintree meeting for an initial seven years from 1992, in a £4 million deal.
The race that never was (1993)
The result of the 1993 Grand National was declared void after a series of incidents commentator Peter O'Sullevan later called "the greatest disaster in the history of the Grand National."
While under starter's orders, one jockey was tangled in the starting tape which had failed to rise correctly. A false start was declared, but due to a lack of communication between course officials, 30 of the 39 jockeys did not realise this and began the race.
Course officials tried to stop the runners by waving red flags, but many jockeys continued to race, believing that they were protesters (a group of whom had invaded the course earlier), while Peter Scudamore only stopped because he saw his trainer, Martin Pipe, waving frantically at him.
Seven horses completed the course, meaning the result was void. The first past the post was Esha Ness (in the second-fastest time ever), ridden by John White, trained by Jenny Pitman and owned by Patrick Bancroft.
The Monday National (1997)
The 1997 Grand National was postponed after two coded bomb threats were received from the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The course was secured by police who then evacuated jockeys, race personnel, and local residents along with 60,000 spectators. Cars and coaches were locked in the course grounds, leaving some 20,000 people without their vehicles over the weekend. With limited accommodation available in the city, local residents opened their doors and took in many of those stranded. This prompted tabloid headlines such as "We'll fight them on the Becher's", in reference to Winston Churchill's war-time speech. The race was run 48 hours later on the Monday, with the meeting organisers offering 20,000 tickets with free admission.
Recent history (2004–present)
Red Rum's trainer Ginger McCain returned to the Grand National in 2004, 31 years after Red Rum's epic run-in defeat of Crisp to secure his first of three wins. McCain's Amberleigh House came home first, ridden by Graham Lee, overtaking Clan Royal on the final straight. Hedgehunter, who would go on to win in 2005, fell at the last while leading. McCain had equalled George Dockeray and Fred Rimell's record feat of training four Grand National winners.
In 2005 John Smith's took over from Martell as main sponsors of the Grand National and many of the other races at the three-day Aintree meeting for the first time. In 2006 John Smith's launched the John Smith's People's Race which gave ten members of the public the chance to ride in a flat race at Aintree on Grand National day. In total, thirty members of the public took part in the event before it was discontinued in 2010.
In 2009, Mon Mome became the longest-priced winner of the National for 42 years when he defied outside odds of 100/1 to win by 12 lengths. The victory was also the first for trainer Venetia Williams, the first female trainer to triumph since Jenny Pitman in 1995. The race was also the first National ride for Liam Treadwell.
In 2010 the National became the first horse race to be televised in high-definition in the UK.
In August 2013 Crabbie's was announced as the new sponsor of the Grand National. The three-year deal between the alcoholic ginger beer producer and Aintree saw the race run for a record purse of £1 million in 2014.
In March 2016 it was announced that Randox Health would take over from Crabbie's as official partners of the Grand National festival from 2017, for at least five years.
The sponsorship award was controversial as Aintree's chairwoman, Rose Paterson, was married to Owen Paterson, a Member of Parliament (MP) who also earns a £50,000 annual fee as a consultant for Randox.
The 2020 race was not run owing to the coronavirus pandemic; in its place, a virtual race was produced using CGI technology and based on algorithms of the 40 horses most likely to have competed. The virtual race was won by Potters Corner, winner of the 2019 Welsh Grand National. (Another computer-generated virtual race was made also, whose runners were many horses who had won the Grand National in past years, each shown with its performance as at its racing prime. Its winner was Red Rum by less than a length, having just passed Manifesto.)
In December 2020 Randox Health announced they had extended their sponsorship for a further 5 years which will make them sponsors to 2026.
In 2021, Rachael Blackmore became the first female jockey to win the race, on the horse Minella Times.
In 2023, the race was disrupted by the Animal Rising protests, the first such disruptions since the cancellation of the 1993 Grand National due to a series of false starts and the 1997 Grand National due to the IRA bomb threat.
The course
The Grand National is run over the National Course at Aintree and consists of two laps of 16 fences, the first 14 of which are jumped twice. Horses completing the race cover a distance of 4 miles 514 yards (6.907 km), the longest of any National Hunt race in Britain. As part of a review of safety following the 2012 running of the event, from 2013 to 2015 the start was moved 90 yards (82 m) forward away from the crowds and grandstands, reducing the race distance by 110 yards (100 m) from the historical 4 miles 856 yards (7.220 km). The course has one of the longest run-ins from the final fence of any steeplechase, at 494 yards (452 m).
The Grand National was designed as a cross-country steeplechase when it was first officially run in 1839. The runners started at a lane on the edge of the racecourse and raced away from the course out over open countryside towards the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The gates, hedges, and ditches that they met along the way were flagged to provide them with the obstacles to be jumped along the way with posts and rails erected at the two points where the runners jumped a brook. The runners returned towards the racecourse by running along the edge of the canal before re-entering the course at the opposite end. The runners then ran the length of the racecourse before embarking on a second circuit before finishing in front of the stands. The majority of the race, therefore, took place not on the actual Aintree Racecourse but instead in the adjoining countryside. That countryside was incorporated into the modern course but commentators still often refer to it as "the country".
Fences
There are 16 fences on the National Course topped with spruce from the Lake District. The cores of 12 fences were rebuilt in 2012 and they are now made of a flexible plastic material which is more forgiving than the traditional wooden core fences. They are still topped with at least 14 inches (36 cm) of spruce for the horses to knock off. Some of the jumps carry names from the history of the race. All 16 are jumped on the first lap, but on the final lap, the runners bear to the right onto the run-in for home, avoiding The Chair and the Water Jump. The following is a summary of all 16 fences on the course:
Fence 1 & 17
Height: 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 m)
Often met at great speed, which can lead to several falls, the highest being 12 runners in 1951. The drop on the landing side was reduced after the 2011 Grand National. It was bypassed in both 2019 and 2023 on the final lap, after equine casualties. The fence was moved 60 yards nearer to the start from the 2024 race, to try to reduce the speed of the field early in the race.
Fence 2 & 18
Height: 4 feet 7 inches (1.40 m)
Before 1888 the first two fences were located approximately halfway between the first to second and second to third jumps. The second became known as The Fan, after a mare who refused the obstacle three years in succession. The name fell out of favour with the relocation of the fences.
Fence 3 & 19 – open ditch
Height: 4 feet 10 inches (1.47 m); fronted by a 6 feet (1.83 m) ditch
The first big test in the race as horses are still adapting to the obstacles. In 2022, the race was shortened to 29 fences by bypassing this fence following a fatality.
Fence 4 & 20
Height: 4 feet 10 inches (1.47 m)
A testing obstacle that often leads to falls and unseated riders. In 2011 the 20th became the first fence in Grand National history to be bypassed on the final lap, following an equine fatality.
Fence 5 & 21
Height: 5 feet (1.52 m)
A plain obstacle which precedes the most famous fence on the course. It was bypassed on the final lap for the first time in 2012 so that medics could treat a jockey who fell from his mount on the first lap and had broken a leg.
Fence 6 & 22 – Becher's Brook
Height: 5 feet (1.52 m), with the landing side 6 inches (15 cm) to 10 inches (25 cm) lower than the takeoff side
The drop at this fence often catches runners by surprise. Becher's has always been a popular vantage point as it can present one of the most spectacular displays of jumping when the horse and rider meet the fence right. Jockeys must sit back in their saddles and use their body weight as ballast to counter the steep drop. It takes its name from Captain Martin Becher who fell there in the first Grand National and took shelter in the small brook running along the landing side of the fence while the remainder of the field thundered over. It is said that Becher later reflected: "Water tastes disgusting without the benefits of whisky." It was bypassed in 2011 along with fence 20, after an equine casualty, and again in 2018 after a jockey was attended by doctors, both occurring on the final lap.
Fence 7 & 23 – Foinavon
Height: 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 m)
One of the smallest on the course, it was named in 1984 after the 1967 winner who avoided a mêlée at the fence to go on and win the race at outside odds of 100/1.
Fence 8 & 24 – Canal Turn
Height: 5 ft (1.52 m)
Noted for its sharp 90-degree left turn immediately after landing. Before the First World War it was not uncommon for loose horses to continue straight ahead after the jump and end up in the Leeds and Liverpool Canal itself. There was once a ditch before the fence but this was filled in after a mêlée in the 1928 race. It was bypassed for the first time in 2015 on the final lap as vets arrived to treat a horse who fell on the first lap.
Fence 9 & 25 – Valentine's Brook
Height: 5 feet (1.52 m) with a 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 m) brook
The fence was originally known as the Second Brook but was renamed after a horse named Valentine was reputed to have jumped the fence hind legs first in 1840. A grandstand was erected alongside the fence in the early part of the 20th century but fell into decline after the Second World War and was torn down in the 1970s.
Fence 10 & 26
Height: 5 feet (1.52 m)
A plain obstacle that leads the runners alongside the canal towards two ditches.
Fence 11 & 27 – open ditch
Height: 4 feet 10 inches (1.47 m), with a 6 feet (1.83 m) ditch on the takeoff side. This fence was 5 feet hight but was lowered by 2 inches from 2024.
Fence 12 & 28 – ditch
Height: 5 feet (1.52 m), with a 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 m) ditch on the landing side
The runners then cross the Melling Road near to the Anchor Bridge, a popular vantage point since the earliest days of the race. This also marks the point where the runners are said to be re-entering the "racecourse proper". In the early days of the race, it is thought there was an obstacle near this point known as the Table Jump, which may have resembled a bank similar to those still seen at Punchestown in Ireland. In the 1840s the Melling Road was also flanked by hedges and the runners had to jump into the road and then back out of it.
Fence 13 & 29
Height: 4 feet 7 inches (1.40 m)
A plain obstacle that comes at a point when the runners are usually in a good rhythm and thus rarely causes problems.
Fence 14 & 30
Height: 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 m)
The last fence on the final lap and which has often seen very tired horses fall. Despite some tired runners falling on the 30th and appearing injured, no horse deaths have occurred at the 30th fence to date.
On the first lap of the race, runners continue around the course to negotiate two fences which are only jumped once:
Fence 15 – The Chair
Height: 5 feet 2 inches (1.57 m), preceded by a 6 ft (1.83 m) wide ditch
This fence is the site of the accident that claimed the only human life in the National's history: in 1862, Joe Wynne fell here and died from his injuries, although a coroner's inquest revealed that the rider was in a gravely weakened condition through consumption. This brought about the ditch on the take-off side of the fence in an effort to slow the horses on approach. The fence was the location where a distance judge sat in the earliest days of the race. On the second circuit, he would record the finishing order from his position and declare any horse that had not passed him before the previous runner passed the finishing post as "distanced", meaning a non-finisher. The practice was done away with in the 1850s, but the monument where the chair stood is still there. The ground on the landing side is six inches higher than on the takeoff side, creating the opposite effect to the drop at Becher's. The fence was originally known as the Monument Jump, but "The Chair" came into more frequent use in the 1930s. Today it is one of the most popular jumps on the course for spectators.
Fence 16 – Water Jump
Height: 2 feet 6 inches (0.76 m)
Originally a stone wall in the very early Nationals. The Water Jump was one of the most popular jumps on the course, presenting a great jumping spectacle for those in the stands and was always a major feature in the newsreels' coverage of the race. As the newsreels made way for television in the 1960s, so, in turn, did the Water Jump fall under the shadow of its neighbour, The Chair, in popularity as an obstacle.
On the final lap, after the 30th fence, the remaining runners bear right, avoiding The Chair and Water Jump, to head onto a "run-in" to the finishing post. The run-in is not perfectly straight: an "elbow" requires jockeys to make a slight right before finding themselves truly on the home straight. It is on this run-in—one of the longest in the United Kingdom at 494 yards (452 m)—that many potential winners have had victory snatched away, such as Devon Loch in 1956, Crisp in 1973, What's Up Boys in 2002 and Sunnyhillboy in 2012.
Records
Leading horse:
Red Rum – 3 wins (1973, 1974, 1977)
Leading jockey:
George Stevens – 5 wins (Freetrader, 1856; Emblem 1863; Emblematic, 1864; The Colonel, 1869, 1870)
Leading trainers:
George Dockeray – 4 wins (Lottery, 1839; Jerry, 1840; Gaylad, 1842; Miss Mowbray, 1852)
Fred Rimell – 4 wins (E.S.B., 1956; Nicolaus Silver, 1961; Gay Trip, 1970; Rag Trade, 1976)
Ginger McCain – 4 wins (Red Rum, 1973, 1974, 1977; Amberleigh House, 2004)
Leading owners:
James Octavius Machell – 3 wins (Disturbance, 1873; Reugny, 1874; Regal, 1876)
Sir Charles Assheton-Smith (previously Charles Duff) – 3 wins (Cloister, 1893; Jerry M, 1912; Covertcoat, 1913)
Noel Le Mare – 3 wins (Red Rum, 1973, 1974, 1977)
Trevor Hemmings – 3 wins (Hedgehunter, 2005; Ballabriggs, 2011; Many Clouds, 2015)
Gigginstown House Stud – 3 wins (Rule The World, 2016; Tiger Roll, 2018; 2019)
J. P. McManus – 3 wins (Don't Push It, 2010; Minella Times, 2021; I Am Maximus, 2024)
Fastest winning time: Mr Frisk (1990); 8:47.80
Slowest winning time: Lottery (1839); 14:53
Oldest winning horse: Peter Simple (1853); aged 15
Youngest winning horse: Alcibiade (1865), Regal (1876), Austerlitz (1877), Empress (1880), Lutteur III (1909); all aged five
Oldest winning jockey: Dick Saunders (1982); aged 48
Youngest winning jockey: Bruce Hobbs (1938); aged 17
Longest odds winner: Tipperary Tim (1928), Gregalach (1929), Caughoo (1947), Foinavon (1967), Mon Mome (2009); all 100/1
Shortest odds winner: Poethlyn (1919); 11/4
Largest field: 66 runners (1929)
Smallest field: 10 runners (1883)
Most horses to finish: 23 (1984)
Fewest horses to finish: 2 (1928)
Most rides in the race: 21 (Richard Johnson, 1997-2019)
Most rides without winning: 21 (Richard Johnson, 1997-2019)
Winners
The following table lists the winners of the last ten Grand Nationals:
Jockeys
When the concept of the Grand National was first envisaged it was designed as a race for gentlemen riders, meaning men who were not paid to compete, and while this was written into the conditions of the early races many of the riders who weighed out for the 1839 race were professionals for hire. Throughout the Victorian era the line between the amateur and professional sportsman existed only in terms of the rider's status, and the engagement of an amateur to ride in the race was rarely considered a handicap to a contender's chances of winning. Many gentleman riders won the race before the First World War.
Although the number of amateurs remained high between the wars their ability to match their professional counterparts gradually receded. After the Second World War, it became rare for any more than four or five amateurs to take part in any given year. The last amateur rider to win the Grand National was Mr Sam Waley-Cohen in 2022 on Noble Yeats. The penultimate amateur to win the race is Marcus Armytage, who set the still-standing course record of 8:47.80, when winning on Mr Frisk in 1990. By the 21st century, however, openings for amateur riders had become very rare with some years passing with no amateur riders at all taking part. Those that do in the modern era are most usually talented young riders who are often close to turning professional. In the past, such amateur riders would have been joined by army officers, such as David Campbell who won in 1896, and sporting aristocrats, farmers or local huntsmen and point to point riders, who usually opted to ride their own mounts. But all these genres of rider have faded out in the last quarter of a century with no riders of military rank or aristocratic title having taken a mount since 1982.
The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 made it possible for female jockeys to enter the race. The first female jockey to enter the race was Charlotte Brew on the 200/1 outsider Barony Fort in the 1977 race. The first female jockey to complete the race was Geraldine Rees on Cheers in 1982. The 21st century has not seen a significant increase in female riders but it has seen them gain rides on mounts considered to have a genuine chance of winning. In 2005, Carrie Ford finished fifth on the 8/1 second-favourite Forest Gunner. In 2012, Katie Walsh achieved what was at the time the best result yet for a female jockey, finishing third on the 8/1 joint-favourite Seabass. In 2015, Nina Carberry became the first female jockey to take a fifth ride in the Grand National, her best placing being seventh in 2010. Rachael Blackmore became the first female jockey to win the Grand National aboard Minella Times in 2021.
Professionals now hold dominance in the Grand National and better training, dietary habits and protective clothing have ensured that riders' careers last much longer and offer more opportunities to ride in the race. Of the 37 riders who have enjoyed 13 or more rides in the race, 19 had their first ride in the 20th century and 11 had careers that continued into or started in the 21st century. Despite that, a long-standing record of 19 rides in the race was set by Tom Olliver back in 1859 and was not equalled until 2014 by A. P. McCoy. This has since been topped by Richard Johnson. Longevity is no guarantee of success, however, as 13 of the 34 never tasted the glory of winning the race. McCoy is the only rider to successfully remove himself from the list after winning at the 15th attempt in 2010. Richard Johnson set a new record of 21 failed attempts to win the race from 1997 to 2019, having finished second twice. The other 16 riders who never won or have not as yet won, having had more than 12 rides in the race are:
Tom Scudamore (2001–2022): never in first three in 20 attempts
Aidan Coleman (2008–2023): finished second once in 15 attempts
Noel Fehily (2001–2017): never in first three in 15 attempts
David Casey (1997–2015): finished third once in 15 attempts
Jeff King (1964–1980): finished third once in 15 attempts
Graham Bradley (1983–1999): finished second once in 14 attempts
Bill Parvin (1926–1939): finished second once in 14 attempts
Robert Thornton (1997–2011): never in first three in 14 attempts
Andrew Thornton (1996–2016): never in first three in 14 attempts
Chris Grant (1980–1994): finished second thrice in 13 attempts
Stan Mellor (1956–1971): finished second once in 13 attempts
George Waddington (1861–1882): finished second once in 13 attempts
Walter White (1854–1869): finished second once in 13 attempts
Denis O'Regan (2007–2022): finished second once in 13 attempts
David Nicholson (1957–1973): never in first three in 13 attempts
Sam Twiston-Davies (2010 – present): never in first three in 13 attempts
Peter Scudamore technically lined up for thirteen Grand Nationals without winning but the last of those was the void race of 1993, which meant that he officially competed in twelve Nationals.
Many other well-known jockeys have failed to win the Grand National. These include champion jockeys such as Terry Biddlecombe, John Francome, Josh Gifford, Stan Mellor, Jonjo O'Neill (who never finished the race) and Fred Rimell. Three jockeys who led over the last fence in the National but lost the race on the run-in ended up as television commentators: Lord Oaksey (on Carrickbeg in 1963), Norman Williamson (on Mely Moss in 2000), and Richard Pitman (on Crisp in 1973). Dick Francis also never won the Grand National in 8 attempts although he did lead over the last fence on Devon Loch in the 1956 race, only for the horse to collapse under him when well in front only 40 yards from the winning post. Pitman's son Mark also led over the last fence, only to be pipped at the post when riding Garrison Savannah in 1991. David Dick won the 1956 Grand National on E.S.B. when Devon Loch collapsed and he also holds the record for the number of clear rounds – nine times. Since 1986, any jockey making five or more clear rounds has been awarded the Aintree Clear Rounds Award.
Horse welfare
Statistics
The Grand National has been described by the BBC as higher risk than lots of other horse races. According to the British Horseracing Authority, as of 2022, the five-year average fatality rate for jump racing was 0.43%. However, the rate for the Grand National over the last ten runnings was more than twice as high, at 1.12%.
History of fatalities
During the 1970s and 1980s, the Grand National saw a total of 12 horses die (half of which were at Becher's Brook); in the next 20-year period from 1990 to 2010, when modifications to the course were most significant, there were 17 equine fatalities. The 2011 and 2012 races each yielded two deaths, including one each at Becher's Brook. In 2013, when further changes were made to introduce a more flexible fence structure, there were no fatalities in the race itself although two horses died in run-up races over the same course. The animal welfare charity League Against Cruel Sports counts the number of horse deaths over the three-day meeting from the year 2000 to 2013 at 40.
There were no equine fatalities in the main Grand National race for seven years until 2019, when one horse died at the first fence. In 2021, one horse was euthanised after the race after suffering an injury on a flat section between fences. Two more were euthanised after suffering injuries in the 2022 event. One of the incidents came at fence 3, the other on the gallop between fences 12 and 13. There was one fatality in 2023, following a fall at the first fence, and two other horses taken away by ambulance.
The involvement of animal rights protesters was questioned after the race. Sandy Thompson, trainer of the fatally injured Hill Sixteen, claimed along with several other racing personalities that the protesters had (directly or indirectly) caused the death of the gelding and were equally responsible for the number of fallers, because the delay they caused to the start, after storming the course close to post time, got the horses worked up and "hyper". The protesters have denied these comments, saying they had every right to break and enter and trespass onto racecourse ground and stage a protest despite officials' orders not to.
Organiser changes
Over the years, Aintree officials have worked in conjunction with animal welfare organisations to reduce the severity of some fences and to improve veterinary facilities. In 2008, a new veterinary surgery was constructed in the stable yard which has two large treatment boxes, an X-ray unit, video endoscopy, equine solarium, and sandpit facilities. Further changes in set-up and procedure allow vets to treat horses more rapidly and in better surroundings. Those requiring more specialist care can be transported by specialist horse ambulances, under police escort, to the nearby Philip Leverhulme Equine Hospital at the University of Liverpool at Leahurst. A mobile on-course X-ray machine assists in the prompt diagnosis of leg injuries when horses are pulled up, and oxygen and water are available by the final fence and finishing post. Five vets remain mobile on the course during the running of the race and can initiate treatment of injured fallers at the fence. Additional vets are stationed at the pull-up area, finishing post, and in the surgery.
Some of the National's most challenging fences have also been modified, while still preserving them as formidable obstacles. After the 1989 Grand National, in which two horses died in incidents at Becher's Brook, Aintree began the most significant of its modifications to the course. The brook on the landing side of Becher's was filled in and, after the 2011 race which also saw an equine fatality at the obstacle, the incline on the landing side was levelled out and the drop on was reduced by between 4 and 5 inches (10–13 cm) to slow the runners. Other fences have also been reduced in height over the years, and the entry requirements for the race have been made stricter. Screening at the Canal Turn now prevents horses from being able to see the sharp left turn and encourages jockeys to spread out along the fence, rather than take the tight left-side route. Additionally, work has been carried out to smooth the core post infrastructure of the fences with protective padding to reduce impact upon contact, and the height of the toe-boards on all fences has been increased to 14 inches (36 cm). These orange-coloured boards are positioned at the base of each fence and provide a clear ground line to assist horses in determining the base of the fence.
Parts of the course were widened in 2009 to allow runners to bypass fences if required. This was utilised for the first time during the 2011 race as casualties at fences 4 and 6 (Becher's Brook) resulted in marshals diverting the remaining contenders around those fences on the final lap.
Some within the horseracing community, including those with notable achievements in the Grand National such as Ginger McCain and Bob Champion, have argued that the lowering of fences and the narrowing of ditches, primarily designed to increase horse safety, has made matters worse by encouraging the runners to race faster.
After the 2023 race, the Jockey Club announced several major changes to the event for 2024, recognising "the need for more substantial updates on several key areas in order to better protect the welfare of racehorses and jockeys". This included a reduction in the size of the field for the first time, from 40 to 34 (long called for by welfare campaigners such as the RSPCA), as well as infrastructure changes such as moving fences to slow the speed of the race at the start, and further development of pre-race veterinary protocols.
Grand National Legends
In 2009, the race sponsors John Smith's launched a poll to determine five personalities to be inducted into the inaugural Grand National Legends initiative. The winners were announced on the day of the 2010 Grand National and inscribed on commemorative plaques at Aintree. They were:
Ginger McCain and his record three-time winning horse Red Rum;
John Buckingham and Foinavon, the unlikely winners in 1967;
Manifesto, who holds the record for most runs in the race, eight including two victories;
Jenny Pitman, the first woman to train the winner of the race in 1983; and
Sir Peter O'Sullevan, the commentator who called home the winners of fifty Grand Nationals on radio and television from 1947 to 1997.
A panel of experts also selected three additional legends:
George Stevens, the record five-time winning rider between 1856 and 1870;
Captain Martin Becher, who played a major part in bringing the National to Liverpool, rode the winner of the first precursor to the National in 1836 and was the first rider to fall into the brook at the sixth fence, which forever took his name after 1839; and
Edward Topham, who was assigned the task of framing the weights for the handicap from 1847 and whose descendants played a major role in the race for the next 125 years.
In 2011, nine additional legends were added:
Bob Champion and Aldaniti, the winners of the 1981 Grand National;
West Tip, who ran in six consecutive Nationals and won once in 1986;
Richard Dunwoody, the jockey who rode West Tip and Miinnehoma to victory and who competed in 14 Grand Nationals, being placed in eight;
Brian Fletcher, a jockey who won the race three times (including Red Rum's first victory in 1973, and finished second once and third three times);
Vincent O'Brien, who trained three consecutive winners of the race in the 1950s;
Tom Olliver, who rode in nineteen Nationals, including seventeen consecutively, and won three times, as well as finishing second three times and third once;
Count Karl Kinsky, the first international winner of the race, and at his first attempt, on board the mare Zoedone in 1883;
Jack Anthony, three-time winning jockey in 1911, 1915 and 1920; and
Peter Bromley, the BBC radio commentator who covered 42 Nationals until his retirement in the summer of 2001.
John Smith's also added five "people's legends" who were introduced on Liverpool Day, the first day of the Grand National meeting. The five were:
Arthur Ferrie, who worked as a groundsman during the 1970s and 1980s;
Edie Roche, a Melling Road resident, who opened her home to jockeys, spectators and members of the media when the course was evacuated following a bomb threat in 1997;
Ian Stewart, a fan who had travelled from Coventry every year to watch the race and was attending his fiftieth National in 2010;
Police Constable Ken Lawson, who was celebrating thirty-one years of service in the mounted section of Merseyside Police and was set to escort his third National winner in 2010; and
Tony Roberts, whose first visit to the National had been in 1948 and who had steadily spread the word to family and friends about the race, regularly bringing a party of up to thirty people to the course.
A public vote announced at the 2012 Grand National saw five more additions to the Legends hall:
Fred Winter, who rode two National winners and trained two more;
Carl Llewellyn, jockey who won two Nationals, on Party Politics in 1992 and Earth Summit in 1998, the latter being the only horse to have won the Grand National and the Scottish and Welsh Nationals;
Fred Rimell, the trainer of four different National winning horses, including Nicolaus Silver, one of only three greys to have won the race;
Michael Scudamore, rider in sixteen consecutive Grand Nationals from 1951, finishing first in 1959 and also achieving a second and a third-place;
Tommy Carberry, the jockey who stopped Red Rum's attempt at a third success in 1975 by winning on L'Escargot, also finished second and third before going on to train the winner in 1999.
The selection panel also inducted three more competitors:
Tommy Pickernell, who rode in seventeen Grand Nationals in the 19th century and won three. He allegedly turned down a substantial bribe during the 1860 race from the second-placed jockey and instead rode on to win;
Battleship, the only horse to have won both the Grand National and the American Grand National, and his jockey Bruce Hobbs, who remains the youngest jockey to win the Aintree race;
George Dockeray, who alongside Ginger McCain and Fred Rimell trained four National winners, starting with Lottery in the first official Grand National in 1839.
Sponsorship
Since 1984 it has been sponsored by 5 different companies.
Notes
Favourites
In the 71 races of the post-war era (excluding the void race in 1993), the favourite or joint-favourite have only won the race twelve times (in 1950, 1960, 1973, 1982, 1996, 1998, 2005, 2008, 2010, 2019, 2023, and 2024) and have failed to complete the course in 37 Nationals.
Mares
Since its inception, 13 mares have won the race, most recently in 1951:
Greys
Three greys have won:
The Lamb (1868, 1871)
Nicolaus Silver (1961)
Neptune Collonges (2012)
Female jockeys
Since 1977, women have ridden in 24 Grand Nationals. Geraldine Rees became the first to complete the course, on Cheers in 1982. In 2012 Katie Walsh became the first female jockey to earn a placed finish in the race, finishing third on Seabass. Rachael Blackmore became the first female jockey to win with Minella Times in 2021.
International winners
Two French-trained horses have won the Grand National: Huntsman (1862) and Cortolvin (1867). Seven other winners were bred in France — Alcibiade (1865), Reugny (1874), Lutteur III (1909), Mon Mome (2009), Neptune Collonges (2012), Pineau De Re (2014) and I Am Maximus (2024).
In 1923, Sergeant Murphy became the first U.S.-bred horse to win the race. He is also the joint-second oldest horse to win, at age 13, alongside Why Not (1884). The U.S.-bred Battleship, son of the famous Man o' War, became the first (and so far only) horse to have won both the Grand National (in 1938) and the American Grand National (which he won four years earlier). Both Jay Trump (1965) and Ben Nevis II (1980) won the Maryland Hunt Cup before winning the Grand National.
Jockey William Watkinson recorded the first riding success for Australia in 1926. He was killed at Bogside, Scotland, less than three weeks after winning the National.
1991 was the seventh and final year that the Grand National was sponsored by Seagram. Aptly, the race was won by a horse named Seagram, bred in New Zealand. 1997 saw another New Zealand-bred winner in Lord Gyllene.
Count Karl Kinsky recorded the first riding success for Austria when he won the 1883 Grand National while riding his own horse Zoedone.
Other British winners
The only Welsh-trained horse to win was Kirkland in 1905.
Rubstic, trained by John Leadbetter in Roxburghshire, became the first Scottish-trained winner, with victory in 1979. Two other horses trained in Scotland have won the race, One For Arthur in 2017 and Corach Rambler in 2023, both trained by Lucinda Russell.
Irish winners
Irish-trained horses have enjoyed by far the most success of international participants, with 20 winners since 1900, including twelve since 1999:
Famous owners
The 1900 winner Ambush II was owned by HRH Prince of Wales, later to become King Edward VII. In 1950 Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother had her first runner in the race in Monaveen, who finished fifth. Six years later she would witness her Devon Loch collapse on the run-in, just yards from a certain victory.
The favourite for the 1968 race, Different Class, was owned by actor Gregory Peck.
The 1963 winner Ayala and the 1976 winner Rag Trade were both part-owned by celebrity hairdresser Raymond Bessone.
1994 winner Miinnehoma was owned by comedian Freddie Starr.
What A Friend ran in 2011 and 2013 when part-owned by Alex Ferguson, the former manager of Manchester United.
See also
Horse racing in Great Britain
List of British National Hunt races
References
Racing Post:
1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998,
1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008,
2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018
2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
Timeform:
2017 Archived 20 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine
Notes
Sources
Winners 1886–present
Aintree Grand National Archived 13 November 2007 at the Wayback Machine on horseracinghistory.co.uk
Grand National – Aintree om pedigreequery.com
The Grand National on tbheritage.com
grandnational.org.uk Grand National Reviews on GrandNational.org
The Grand National Official Site on thejockeyclub.co.uk
External links
Aintree Grand National Stats and Trends Archived 7 February 2013 at the Wayback Machine
BBC history of Grand National
Film footage of the 1967 Grand National great pile up Archived 30 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine |
Red_Rum | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Rum | [
747
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Rum"
] | Red Rum (3 May 1965 – 18 October 1995) was an Irish champion Thoroughbred steeplechaser. He achieved an unmatched historic treble when he won the Grand National in 1973, 1974 and 1977, and also came second in the two intervening years, 1975 and 1976. The Grand National is a notoriously difficult race that has been described as "the ultimate test of a horse’s courage". He was also renowned for his jumping ability, having not fallen in 100 races.
The 1973 race in which Red Rum secured his comeback victory from 30 lengths behind is often considered one of the greatest Grand Nationals in history. In a 2002 UK poll, Red Rum's historic third triumph in the Grand National was voted the 24th greatest sporting moment of all time.
Early life
Red Rum was bred at Rossenarra stud in Kells, County Kilkenny, Ireland, by Martyn McEnery. His sire was Quorum (1954–1971), and his dam Mared (1958–1976). Mared was a granddaughter of the broodmare Batika, whose other descendants have included the Irish 2000 Guineas winner Turtle Island. McEnery gave Red Rum his name by taking the last three letters of the names of his dam and sire, respectively. Bred to win one-mile races, Red Rum won his National titles over the longest distance, four miles and four furlongs. He started his career running in low-value races as a sprinter and dead-heated in his first race, a five-furlong flat race at Aintree Racecourse. He ran another seven times as a two-year-old, winning over 7f at Warwick, and over the same distance at Doncaster in the first of his two races as a three-year-old. In his early career, he was twice ridden by Lester Piggott. The comedian Lee Mack, then a stable boy, had his first riding lesson on Red Rum.
After being passed from training yard to training yard, he found his footing when Southport car dealer Ginger McCain bought him for his client Noel le Mare and famously trained the horse on the sands at Southport, England. Galloping through sea water may have proved highly beneficial to Red Rum's hooves. McCain reportedly took Red Rum for a therapeutic swim in the sea off Southport before his first National appearances to help treat the horse's pedal osteitis, a debilitating, incurable bone disease in his hoof. McCain also won the Grand National in 2004 with Amberleigh House, 31 years after his first victory with Red Rum.
Grand National record
At the 1973 Grand National, Red Rum beat the Australian chaser Crisp, which was carrying 23 pounds more, in a new record time of nine minutes, 1.9 seconds. Crisp led the field virtually all the way in that year's National in which he was 30 lengths clear, and at the last fence was 15 lengths clear of Red Rum, his nearest pursuer. Red Rum and jockey Brian Fletcher, however, made up the ground on the final stretch and, two strides from the finishing post, pipped the tiring Crisp to win by three-quarters of a length in what is often considered one of the greatest Grand Nationals in history. Crisp's jockey Richard Pitman later stated: "I still dream about that race, of Crisp running so strongly and jumping so fearlessly, and then the sound of Red Rum's hooves as he got closer and closer at the end." He added: "I felt as though I was tied to a railway line with an express train thundering up and being unable to jump out of the way." A year later, Red Rum retained his title at the 1974 National, carrying 12 stone. (He followed that with victory in the Scottish Grand National, and remains the only horse to win both in the same season.)
Red Rum came second in 1975 and 1976; Tommy Stack replaced Fletcher as jockey in the 1976 race after Fletcher angered trainer Ginger McCain by telling the press the horse no longer felt right after a defeat in a race away from Aintree. Again, Red Rum saved his best for Aintree but was held off by Rag Trade. The following year, Stack rode the 12-year-old Red Rum to his record third Grand National triumph, in what is regarded as one of the greatest moments in horse racing history.
Retirement
Red Rum was prepared for a sixth attempt at the Grand National the season following his 1977 win, but suffered a hairline fracture in the lead up to the 1978 race. Following a canter at Aintree Racecourse the day before the 1978 Grand National he was retired. The news of Red Rum's retirement was the lead story on that night's 9 O'Clock News on BBC1 and was also front-page news of the following morning's newspapers.
Red Rum had become a national celebrity, opening supermarkets and annually leading the Grand National parade for many further years. His likeness graced playing cards, mugs, posters, models, paintings, plates and jigsaw puzzles. Several books have been written about Red Rum by his trainer, sculptor, jockeys and author Ivor Herbert; a children's story about his life was also written by Christine Pemberton. The horse helped open the Steeplechase rollercoaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach in 1977. He also switched on the Blackpool Illuminations that year. In 1975, a song entitled "Red Rum" was issued as a tribute to him by a group named Chaser, on Polydor 2058 564. It was written by Steve Jolley, Richard Palmer and Tony Swain. In 2010 the name of the racecourse bar, formerly called "The Sefton", was changed to "The Red Rum".
In 1977 Red Rum appeared as a studio guest at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards ceremony. Viewers were delighted when the horse seemed to recognise the voice of his jockey Tommy Stack, who was appearing by video link from another location.
Death and legacy
Red Rum died on 18 October 1995, aged 30. His death was one of the lead items in television news bulletins and also made the front pages of national newspapers the next day.
He was buried at the winning post of the Aintree Racecourse, which is still a destination for his fans. The epitaph reads
Respect this place
This hallowed ground
A legend here
His rest has found
His feet would fly
Our spirits soar
He earned our love
For evermore
Eleven years after his death, a survey found he remained the best-known racehorse in the UK. When asked to name an equine animal, Red Rum was named by 45% of Britons, with Black Beauty (from Anna Sewell's novel) in second with 33%. In 2002 the UK public voted Red Rum's third Grand National win #24 in the list of the 100 Greatest Sporting Moments.
In the early 1970s, the future running of the Grand National was uncertain. The emergence of Red Rum and his historic triumphs captivated the nation, and ensured huge public support for the fund to buy Aintree and put it in the hands of the Jockey Club.
On 19 September 2011, Red Rum's trainer Ginger McCain died aged 80.
Grand National record
Commemorations
Red Rum Handicap Chase at Aintree.
There are statues of Red Rum at Aintree Racecourse, in Southport and at Ayr Racecourse.
Merseyrail named one of its trains in Red Rum's honour in 2008 as part of a Merseyside Legends programme.
There used to be two pubs named Red Rum.
One was next to Aintree Racecourse; it is now a tandoori restaurant.
One was in Croxteth, but closed some time in the mid-2000s and was demolished in 2010
Southport Fire Station took delivery of an engine they named Red Rum in 1979
Red Rum Drive in Ashburn, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. (part of the area referred to as the silicon valley of the east), is named after the famous racehorse, due to the land developer being an avid horse racing fan.
Red Rum Close in Fazakerley, Liverpool.
Market Rasen Racecourse have a Bar & Lounge named Red Rum
Pedigree
See also
List of racehorses
Repeat winners of horse races
1973 Grand National
Notes and references
External links
Red Rum visiting Blakely Green, W.Midlands
Red Rum Aintree Grand National 1973
Red Rum's site
The Kumbi Site
Video (RealPlayer) – Ginger McCain talks to Sue Barker about Red Rum in 2002
Video (YouTube) BBC News Report of Red Rum's death |
White_House_Farm_murders | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Farm_murders | [
748
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Farm_murders"
] | The White House Farm murders took place near the village of Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex, England, during the night of 6–7 August 1985. Nevill and June Bamber were shot and killed inside their farmhouse at White House Farm along with their adopted daughter, Sheila Caffell, and Sheila's six-year-old twin sons, Daniel and Nicholas Caffell. The only surviving member of the immediate family was the adopted son, Jeremy Bamber, then aged 24, who said he had been at home a few miles away when the shooting took place.
Police initially believed that Sheila, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, had fired the shots before turning the gun on herself, but weeks after the murders, Jeremy's ex-girlfriend told police that he had implicated himself. The prosecution argued that, motivated by a large inheritance, Jeremy had shot the family with his father's semi-automatic rifle, then placed the gun in his unstable sister's hands to make it look like a murder–suicide. A silencer, the prosecution said, was on the rifle and would have made it too long, they argued, for Sheila's fingers to reach the trigger to shoot herself. Jeremy was convicted of five counts of murder in October 1986 by a 10–2 majority verdict, sentenced to a minimum of twenty-five years, and informed in 1994 that he would never be released. The Court of Appeal upheld the verdict in 2002.
Jeremy protested his innocence throughout, although his extended family remained convinced of his guilt. Between 2004 and 2012, his lawyers submitted several unsuccessful applications to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, arguing that the silencer might not have been used during the killings, that the crime scene might have been damaged then reconstructed, that crime scene photographs were taken weeks after the murders and that the time of Sheila's death had been miscalculated.
A key issue was whether Jeremy had received a call from his father on the night of the murder to tell him Sheila had "gone berserk" with a gun. Jeremy said that he did, that he alerted police and that Sheila fired the final shot while he and the officers were standing outside the house. It became a central plank of the prosecution's case that the father had made no such call and that the only reason Jeremy would have lied about it — indeed, the only way he could have known about the shootings when he alerted the police — was that he was the killer himself.
Bamber family
June and Nevill Bamber
Ralph Nevill Bamber (known as 'Nevill', born 8 June 1924) was a farmer, former Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot and magistrate at the local Witham magistrates' court. He and his wife, June (née Speakman, born 3 June 1924), had married in 1949 and moved into the Georgian White House Farm on Pages Lane, Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex, set among 300 acres (120 ha) of tenant farmland that had belonged to June's father. The Court of Appeal described Nevill as "a well-built man, 6 ft 4 in (193 cm) tall and in good physical health." This became significant because Jeremy's defence later suggested that Sheila, a slim woman aged 28, had been able to beat and subdue her father, something the prosecution contested.
Unable to have biological children, the Bambers adopted Sheila and Jeremy as infants; the children were not related to each other. June suffered from depression and had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital in the 1950s, including in 1958 after Sheila's adoption, where she was given electroshock therapy at least six times. In 1982 she was treated by Hugh Ferguson, a psychiatrist who later saw Sheila.
The Bambers were financially secure, owning property that included the farmhouse, a flat in London, 300 acres of land and a caravan site. The couple gave the children a good home and private education, but June was intensely religious and tried to force her children and grandchildren to adopt the same ideas. She had a poor relationship with Sheila, who felt June disapproved of her, and June's relationship with Jeremy was so troubled that he had apparently stopped speaking to her. Sheila's ex-husband was concerned about the effect June was having on his sons; she made them kneel and pray with her, which upset him and the boys.
Daniel and Nicholas Caffell
Daniel and Nicholas Caffell (born 22 June 1979) were born to Sheila and Colin Caffell, who married in 1977 and divorced in 1982. Colin was an art student when he met Sheila. Both parents were involved in the children's upbringing after the divorce, although the boys were briefly placed in foster care in 1982–83 because of Sheila's health problems. For several months before the murders they had been living with Colin in his home in Kilburn, North London, not far from Sheila's residence in Maida Vale.
A week-long visit to White House Farm had been arranged for August 1985 at the Bambers' request; the plan was that the boys would visit their grandparents with Sheila before going on holiday to Norway with their father. Daniel and Nicholas were reluctant to stay at the farm. They disliked that June made them pray, and in the car on the way asked Colin to speak to her about it. In addition Daniel had become a vegetarian and was worried about being forced to eat meat. When their father dropped them off at the house on 4 August, it was the last time he saw them. The boys are buried together in Highgate Cemetery. Sheila was cremated, and the urn with her ashes was placed in their coffin.
Sheila Caffell
Background
Sheila Jean "Bambi" Caffell (born 18 July 1957) was born to the 18-year-old daughter of Eric Jay, a senior chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury. At his insistence, the baby was placed for adoption. Her mother gave Sheila up to the Church of England Children's Society two weeks after the birth, and the Bambers adopted her in October 1957. The chaplain had known Nevill in the RAF and selected the Bambers from a list of prospective adopters.
After school Sheila attended secretarial college in Swiss Cottage, London. In 1974, when she was aged 17, she discovered she was pregnant by Colin Caffell. The Bambers arranged an abortion. Her relationship with her mother deteriorated significantly that summer after June found Sheila and Colin sunbathing naked in a field. June reportedly started calling Sheila the "devil's child."
Sheila continued with her secretarial course, then trained as a hairdresser, and briefly worked as a model with the Lucie Clayton Charm Academy, including two months' work in Tokyo. After she became pregnant again, she married Colin at Chelmsford Register Office in May 1977, but miscarried in the sixth month. The Bambers bought the couple a garden flat in Carlingford Road, Hampstead, to help Sheila recuperate. Sheila suffered another miscarriage, then on 22 June 1979, after four months of bed rest in hospital, she gave birth to Daniel and Nicholas. Colin, apparently having begun an affair just before the birth, left Sheila for five months. Sheila became increasingly upset; on one occasion, when Colin left her 21st birthday party with another woman, she required hospital treatment after breaking a window with her fist. The couple divorced in May 1982.
After the divorce, Nevill bought Sheila a flat in Morshead Mansions, Maida Vale, and Colin helped raise the children from his home in nearby Kilburn. Sheila decided to trace her birth mother, then living in Canada. They met at Heathrow Airport in 1982 for a brief reunion, but a relationship did not develop. At around this time Sheila became friendly with a group of young women who nicknamed her "Bambi", and who later told reporters that she often complained about her poor relationship with her adoptive mother. The group partook in drugs, particularly cocaine, and fraternisations with older men. As her brief modelling career had ended after the birth of the boys, Sheila lived on welfare and took low-paying jobs, including as a waitress for one week at School Dinners, a London restaurant in which dinner was served by young women in school uniform, stockings and suspenders. There were also cleaning jobs and one episode of nude photography that she later regretted.
Health
Sheila's mental health continued to decline, with episodes of banging her head against walls. In 1983 her family doctor referred her to Hugh Ferguson, the psychiatrist who had treated June. Ferguson said Sheila was in an agitated state, paranoid and psychotic. She was admitted to St Andrew's Hospital, a private psychiatric facility, where Ferguson diagnosed a schizoaffective disorder. After Sheila was discharged in September 1983, he continued seeing her as an out-patient and concluded that his first diagnosis had been mistaken. Ferguson now believed that she had schizophrenia and began treating her with trifluoperazine, an antipsychotic drug.
Ferguson wrote that Sheila believed the devil had given her the power to project evil onto others, and that she could make her sons have sex and cause violence with her. She called them the "devil's children", the phrase June had used of Sheila, and said she believed she was capable of murdering them or of getting them to kill others. She spoke about suicide, although the court heard that Ferguson did not regard her as a suicide risk.
Sheila was readmitted to St Andrew's in March 1985, five months before the murders, after a psychotic episode in which she believed herself to be in direct communication with God and that certain people, including her boyfriend, were trying to hurt or kill her. She was discharged four weeks later, and as an out-patient received a monthly injection of haloperidol, an antipsychotic drug that has a sedative effect. From that point, the twins lived all or most of the time with Colin in Kilburn. According to Jeremy, the family discussed placing the boys in daytime foster care over dinner on the night of the murders, with little response from Sheila.
Despite Sheila's erratic mental state, Ferguson told the court that the kind of violence necessary to commit the murders was not consistent with his view of her. In particular, he said he did not believe she would have killed her father or children, because her difficult relationship was confined to her mother. Colin said the same: that, despite her tendency to throw things and sometimes hit him, she had never harmed the children. June's sister, Pamela Boutflour, testified that Sheila was not a violent person and that she had never known her to use a gun; June's niece, Ann Eaton, told the court that Sheila did not know how to use one. Jeremy disputed this, telling police on the night of the shooting, as they stood outside the house, that he and Sheila had gone target shooting together. He acknowledged later that he had not seen her fire a gun as an adult.
Jeremy Bamber
Jeremy Nevill Bamber was born on 13 January 1961 to a student midwife who, after an affair with a married British Army sergeant, gave her baby to the Church of England Children's Society when he was six weeks old. His biological parents later married and had other children; his father became a senior staff member in Buckingham Palace. The Bambers adopted Jeremy when he was six months old. They sent him to St Nicholas Primary, then along with Sheila to Maldon Court prep school. This was followed when he was aged 9, in September 1970, by Gresham's School, a boarding school in Holt, Norfolk, where he joined the cadet force. Jeremy was apparently unhappy at Gresham's because of bullying and other factors.
After leaving Gresham's with no qualifications, Jeremy attended sixth form college, and in 1978 achieved seven O-levels. Nevill paid for him to visit Australia, where he took a scuba-diving course, before travelling to New Zealand. Former friends alleged that Jeremy had broken into a jeweller's shop while in New Zealand and had stolen an expensive watch. He had also boasted, they said, of being involved in smuggling heroin. Jeremy returned to England in 1982 to work on his adoptive parents' farm for £170 a week, and set up home in a cottage Nevill owned at 9 Head Street, Goldhanger. The cottage lay 3–3.5 miles (5.6 km) from White House Farm, a five-minute drive by car and at least fifteen minutes by bicycle. Nevill also gave Jeremy a car to use, and eight percent of a family company, Osea Road Camp Sites Ltd, which ran the Bambers' caravan site.
To his supporters, who over the years have included Members of Parliament and journalists, Jeremy is a victim of one of Britain's worst miscarriages of justice. The Guardian took up his case in the early 1990s; one or more Guardian journalists began corresponding with him in 2006, and two interviewed him in 2011. Describing Jeremy as "clever and strategic", they wrote that there was something about him that made the public unsympathetic toward him. He was "handsome in a rather cruel, caddish way—he seemed to exude arrogance and indifference. ... Like Meursault in the Camus novel L'Étranger, he did not seem to display the appropriate emotions." He is reported to have passed a polygraph test in 2007.
Jeremy's detractors include his extended family and his father's former secretary, Barbara Wilson. She told reporters that Jeremy used to provoke his parents, riding in circles around his mother on a bicycle, wearing make-up to upset his father and once hiding a bag of live rats in Wilson's car. Whenever Jeremy visited the farm there were arguments, she claimed. Tension had apparently increased in the weeks before the murders; Wilson said Nevill had remarked to her about foreseeing a "shooting accident." Jeremy's ex-girlfriend, Julie Mugford, alleged that he had talked about killing his family. A farm worker testified that Jeremy had once said of Sheila: "I'm not going to share my money with my sister." The court heard that, in March that year, while discussing security at the family's caravan site, he had told his uncle: "I could kill anybody. I could even [or 'easily'] kill my parents." Jeremy denied having said this.
Extended family, inheritance
The financial ties and inheritance issues within the immediate and extended family provided a motive and added a layer of complexity to the case. The Bambers' company, N. and J. Bamber Ltd, was worth £400,000 in 1985 (c. £1,061,016 in 2021). In their wills, June left £230,000 (c. £608,000) and Nevill £380,000 (c. £1,004,000). During the trial, the court heard that the Bambers had left their estate to both Jeremy and Sheila, to be divided equally. In addition, Nevill's will had said that, to inherit, Jeremy had to be working on the farm at the time of his father's death. The court also heard, from Mugford's mother, that he had been saying June wanted to change her will to bypass him and Sheila and leave her estate to Sheila's twins instead.
The parents' estate included land and buildings occupied by Jeremy's cousins, who were made aware, after the murders, that he intended to sell them. It was one of those cousins who found the silencer in the gun cupboard, with the flecks of blood and paint that proved pivotal to the prosecution. Because of Jeremy's conviction, the estate passed instead to the cousins. One moved into White House Farm, while that cousin and several others acquired full ownership of the caravan site and other buildings. This conflict of interest became a bone of contention, as did the apparent failure of the police to search and secure the crime scene. Jeremy argues that the family set him up, a claim that one of the group dismissed in 2010 as "an absolute load of piffle."
Jeremy has launched two legal actions while in prison, claiming a share of the estate, which the cousins said was part of an attempt to harass and vilify them. In 2003 he began a High Court action to recover £1.2 million from the estate of his maternal grandmother, arguing that he should have inherited her home at Carbonnells Farm, Wix, which went instead to June's sister—the grandmother had cut Jeremy out of her will when he was arrested—and that he was owed seventeen years' rent from his cousins who lived there. In 2004 he went to the High Court again to claim a £326,000 share of the profit from the caravan site. The court ruled against him in both cases.
Jeremy's visit to the farm
Atmosphere in the house
On Sunday, 4 August 1985, three days before the murders, Sheila and the boys arrived at White House Farm to spend the week with Nevill and June. The housekeeper saw Sheila that day and noticed nothing unusual. Two farm workers saw her the following day with her children and said she seemed happy. One of the crime scene photographs showed that someone had carved "I hate this place" into the cupboard doors of the bedroom in which the twins were sleeping.
Jeremy visited the farm on the evening of Tuesday, 6 August. He told the court that during his visit his parents suggested to Sheila that the boys be placed in daytime foster care with a local family; he said Sheila did not seem bothered by the suggestion and had simply said she would rather stay in London. The boys had been in foster care before, although in London rather than near White House Farm, and it had not appeared to cause a problem for Sheila. Ferguson told the Court of Appeal in 2002 that any suggestion that the children be removed from her care would have provoked a strong reaction from Sheila, but that she might have welcomed daytime help.
A farmworker heard Jeremy leave around 9:30 pm. Barbara Wilson, the farm's secretary, telephoned Nevill at around that time and was left with the impression that she had interrupted an argument. She said Nevill was short with her and seemed to hang up in irritation, something he had never done before; he was by all accounts an even-tempered man. June's sister, Pamela Boutflour, telephoned around 10 pm. She spoke to Sheila, who she said was quiet, then to June, who seemed normal.
Murder weapon
Jeremy told the court that, hours before the murders on 6 August, he had loaded the rifle, thinking he heard rabbits outside, but had not used it. He left the rifle on the kitchen table, with a full magazine and a box of ammunition, before leaving the house. It did not at that point have the silencer or telescopic sight attached, he claimed. Both had been on the rifle in late July, according to a nephew, but Jeremy said his father must have removed them. The prosecution disputed this, maintaining that the silencer was on the rifle when the family was murdered.
Nevill kept several guns at the farm. He was reportedly careful with them, cleaning them after use and securing them. He had bought the gun, a .22 Anschütz model 525 semi-automatic rifle, on 30 November 1984, along with a Parker Hale silencer, telescopic sight and 500 rounds of ammunition. It used cartridges, which were loaded into a magazine that held ten rounds. Twenty-five shots were fired during the killing, so if the rifle was fully loaded to begin with, it would have been reloaded at least twice. The court heard that the magazine became harder to load with each cartridge; loading the tenth was described as "exceptionally hard".
The rifle had normally been used to shoot rabbits with the silencer and telescopic sight attached. The court heard that the sight had to be removed with a screwdriver, but it was usually left in place because it was time-consuming to realign it. Nevill's nephew visited the farmhouse on the weekend of 26–28 July 1985 and told the court that he had seen the rifle, in the gun cupboard in the ground-floor office, with the sight and silencer attached. He had taken the gun out and used it for target shooting.
Police logs, 7 August 1985
Telephones in the farmhouse
There were three telephones at White House Farm on the night of the shooting, all on the same landline. There was usually a cream rotary phone in the main bedroom on Nevill's bedside table; a beige Statesman phone in the kitchen; and a blue Sceptre 100 phone in the office on the first floor. (There was a fourth phone too, an Envoy cordless phone in the kitchen, but it had been picked up for repair on 5 August.) The rotary phone had at some point been moved out of the main bedroom and into the kitchen, where the police found it with its receiver off the hook. They found the Statesman phone still in the kitchen but hidden in a pile of magazines.
Jeremy's call to police
Jeremy telephoned Chelmsford police station (and not the 999 emergency number) from his home in the early hours of 7 August to raise the alarm. He told them he had received a telephone call from his father—from the landline at White House Farm to the landline at Bamber's home—to say that Sheila had "gone berserk" with a gun. Jeremy said the line went dead in the middle of the call.
The prosecution argued that Jeremy had received no such call, and that his claim to have done so was part of his setting the scene to blame Sheila. Nevill was "severely bloodied" at that point, according to the Court of Appeal, but the telephone had "no visible blood" on it when police examined the scene, although it was acknowledged that no swabs had been taken. It was Jeremy, the prosecution said, who had left the kitchen telephone off the hook after calling his home from White House Farm to establish that part of his alibi.
After Jeremy telephoned the police, a British Telecom operator checked the White House Farm line—at 3:56 am according to the police log, and at 4:30 am according to the Court of Appeal—and found that the line was open. The operator could hear a dog barking. British Telecom did not at the time keep records of local calls. According to experts who testified at the trial, if Nevill had telephoned Jeremy without replacing the receiver, the line between them would have remained open for one or two minutes. During this time, Jeremy would not have been able to use his telephone.
Explaining why he had called a local police station and not 999, Jeremy told police on the night that he had not thought it would make a difference to how soon they would arrive. He said he had spent time looking up the number, and even though his father had asked him to come quickly, he had first telephoned his girlfriend, Julie Mugford, in London, then had driven slowly to the farmhouse. Jeremy acknowledged that he could have called one of the farm workers but had not considered it. In his early witness statements, Jeremy said he had telephoned the police immediately after receiving his father's call, then telephoned Mugford. During later police interviews, he said he had called Mugford first. Jeremy said he was confused about the sequence of events.
Logs
Event log
In 2010 Jeremy's lawyers highlighted two police logs in support of his application to have his case referred back to the Court of Appeal. The question was whether these logs support the prosecution position that there was one call that night to the police, from Jeremy alone, or the defence position that there were two calls, one from Nevill followed by a second from Jeremy.
One log shows that Jeremy rang the local police station and spoke to police constable Michael West in the information room. As a result, West began an "event log". This states that Jeremy's call came in at 3:36 am on 7 August 1985. Jeremy maintains that he telephoned ten minutes after his father phoned him. But at trial it was accepted that West had misread a digital clock and that the call had probably come in just before 3:26 am, because that was when West asked a civilian dispatcher, Malcolm Bonnett, to send a car to the scene. The car, Charlie Alpha 5, was dispatched at 3:35 am. The event log noted a call from:
Mr. Bamber, 9 Head Street, Goldhanger ... [Bamber's home address]. Father phoned (age 62). "Please come over. Your sister has gone crazy + has the gun." Phone went dead. Father Mr. Bamber H/A White House Farm ... Sister Sheila Bamber age 27. Has history of mental illness. ... Despatched CA5 [Charlie Alpha 5] to scene ... Informant requested to attend scene."
The Court of Appeal noted that Jeremy said he had "tried to ring his father back at White House Farm but he could not get a reply". During the trial, the court heard that Jeremy said his father had not hung up after speaking and that he could hear noise in the background. At some point PC West spoke to Jeremy again on the telephone; Jeremy apparently complained about the time the police were taking, saying: "When my father rang he sounded terrified." He was told to go to the farm and wait for the police.
Radio log
Michael Bonnett, a civilian dispatcher in Chelmsford police station's information room, began a "radio log" which kept track of messages about the situation. The radio log discusses a telephone call made at 3:26 am on 7 August. According to the prosecution, this is the call known to have been made by Jeremy, the same call entered in the event log. According to the defence, the radio log is not simply a duplicate log of Jeremy's call but a log of a separate call to the police by Nevill.
The radio log is headed, "Daughter gone berserk": "Mr Bamber, White House Farm, Tolleshunt d’Arcy—daughter Sheila Bamber, aged 26 years, has got hold of one of my guns." It adds: "Message passed to CD by the son of Mr Bamber after phone went dead." It goes on to say: "Mr Bamber has a collection of shotguns and .410s", and it includes White House Farm's telephone number: 860209. The final entry says: "0356 GPO [the telephone operator] have checked phone line to farmhouse and confirm phone left off hook." The radio log shows that a patrol car, Charlie Alpha 7 (CA7)—not Charlie Alpha 5, as mentioned in the event log—was sent to the scene at 3:35 am.
Scene at White House Farm
Events outside
After the telephone calls, Jeremy drove to the farmhouse, as did three officers from Witham police station who later testified that he had been driving much more slowly than them; they passed him on Pages Lane and arrived at the farmhouse one or two minutes before him. Jeremy's cousin, Ann Eaton, testified that he was normally a fast driver. The group waited outside the house for a tactical firearms unit to arrive, which turned up at 5 am and decided to wait until daylight before trying to enter. Police determined that all the doors and windows to the house were shut except for the window in the main bedroom on the first floor. Using a loudhailer, they spent two hours trying to communicate with Sheila. The only sound they reported from the house was a dog barking.
While waiting outside, the police questioned Jeremy, who they said seemed calm. According to the Court of Appeal, Jeremy told them about the phone call from his father and that it had sounded as though someone had cut off the call. He also said he did not get along with his sister. When asked whether she might have "gone berserk with a gun", the police said he replied: "I don't really know. She is a nutter. She's been having treatment." When asked why Nevill would have called Jeremy and not the police, he replied that his father was the sort of person who might want to keep things within the family. Jeremy claimed to have called Chelmsford police station, rather than 999, because he did not think it would affect the police's response time. Over the next few hours he talked about cars in general with one of the officers, saying that the Osea Road caravan site "would be able to stand him a Porsche" soon.
Jeremy told the police that Sheila was familiar with guns and that they had gone target shooting together. He said he had been at the farmhouse himself a few hours earlier, and that he had loaded the rifle because he thought he had heard rabbits outside. Jeremy had left the rifle on the kitchen table fully loaded, with a box of ammunition nearby. A doctor who was called to the house testified the deaths could have occurred at any time during the night. He said Jeremy appeared to be in a state of shock: he broke down, cried and seemed to vomit. The doctor said Jeremy told him about the discussion the family had had about possibly placing Sheila's sons in foster care.
Scene inside
Apparent struggle
The police entered the farmhouse at 7:54 am, using a sledgehammer to break the back door. The door had been locked from the inside, with the key still in the lock. They found five bodies with multiple gunshot wounds, Nevill downstairs in the kitchen and the rest upstairs. Twenty-five shots had been fired, mostly at close range. In what order the family was killed is not known. A telephone was lying on one of the kitchen surfaces with its receiver off the hook, next to empty .22 cartridge cases. The police said chairs and stools were overturned, and there was broken crockery, a broken sugar basin, a broken ceiling light, and what looked like blood on the floor.
Nevill
Nevill was found in the kitchen, dressed in pyjamas, lying over an overturned chair next to the fireplace, amid a scene suggestive of a struggle. He had been shot eight times, six times to the head and face, fired when the rifle was a few inches from his skin. The remaining shots to his body had occurred from at least two feet away. Based on where the empty cartridge cases were found—three in the kitchen and one on the stairs—the police concluded that he had been shot four times upstairs, but had managed to get downstairs where a struggle took place, and during which he was hit several times with the rifle and shot again, this time fatally.
There were two wounds to Nevill's right side, and two to the top of his head which would probably have resulted in unconsciousness. The left side of his lip was wounded, his jaw was fractured, and his teeth, neck and larynx were damaged. The pathologist said he "would not have been able to engage in purposeful talk", according to the Court of Appeal. There were gunshot wounds to his left shoulder and left elbow. The court heard that he had "black eyes and a broken nose, linear bruising to the cheeks, lacerations to the head, linear type bruising to the right forearm, bruising to the left wrist and forearm and three circular burn type marks to the back. The linear marks were consistent with Mr Bamber having been struck with a long blunt object, possibly a gun." One of the pillars of the prosecution case was that Sheila would not have been strong enough to inflict this beating on Nevill, who was 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) tall and by all accounts in good health.
June
June's body and clothing were heavily bloodstained; she was found in her nightdress with bare feet. The police believe she had been sitting up during part of the attack, based on the pattern of blood on her clothing. She was found lying on the floor by the door of the master bedroom. June had been shot seven times. One shot to her forehead, between her eyes, was fired from under one foot (30 cm) away. That and another shot to the right side of her head would both have caused her death quickly, the court heard. There were also shots to the right side of her lower neck and to her right forearm, and two injuries on the right side of her chest and right knee.
Daniel and Nicholas
The boys were found in their beds in their own room (formerly Sheila's room). They appeared to have been shot while in bed. The court heard that Daniel had been shot five times in the back of the head, four times with the gun held within one foot (30 cm) of his head, and once from over two feet (60 cm) away. Nicholas had been shot three times, all contact or close-proximity shots.
Sheila
Sheila was found on the floor of the master bedroom with her mother. She was in her nightdress, her feet were bare, and she had two bullet wounds under her chin, one of them on her throat. The pathologist, Peter Vanezis, said that the lower of the injuries had occurred from three inches (76 mm) away and that the higher one was a contact injury. The higher of the two would have killed her immediately. The lower injury would have killed her too, he said, but not necessarily straight away. Vanezis testified that it would be possible for a person with such an injury to stand up and walk around, but the lack of blood on her nightdress suggested to him that she had not done this. He believed that the lower of her injuries had happened first because it had caused bleeding inside the neck; the court heard that if the immediately fatal wound had happened first, the bleeding would not have occurred to the same extent. The pattern of bloodstains on her nightdress suggested she had been sitting up when she received both injuries, Vanezis said.
Blood and urine samples indicated that Sheila had taken haloperidol and, several days earlier, had used cannabis. There were no marks on her body suggestive of a struggle. The firearms officer who first saw her said her feet and hands were clean, her fingernails manicured and not broken, and her fingertips free of blood, dirt or powder. There was no trace of lead dust. The rifle magazine would have been loaded at least twice during the killings; this would usually leave lubricant and material from the bullets on the hands. A scenes-of-crimes officer, Detective Constable Hammersley, said there were bloodstains on the back of her right hand but that otherwise her hands were clean.
There was no blood on Sheila's feet or other debris, such as the sugar that was on the downstairs floor. Low traces of lead were found on her hands and forehead at post-mortem, but the levels were consistent with the everyday handling of things around the house. A forensic scientist, Brian Elliott, testified that if Sheila had loaded eighteen cartridges into a magazine he would expect to see more lead on her hands. The blood on her nightdress was consistent with her own, and no trace of firearm-discharge residue was on it. Given that Sheila was wearing just a nightdress, it was hard to see how she could have carried the cartridges. The rifle, without the silencer or sights attached, was lying on her body pointing up at her neck. June's Bible lay on the floor to the right of Sheila. It was normally kept in a bedside cupboard. June's fingerprints were on it, as were others that could not be identified, including one made by a child.
Police investigation
Murder-suicide theory, crime scene
The police and media were initially convinced by the murder-suicide theory. Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Jones, deputy head of CID, was so sure Sheila had killed her family that he ordered Jeremy's cousins out of his office when they asked him to consider whether Jeremy had set the whole thing up. The Daily Express reported on 8 August 1985, the day after the murders:
A farming family affectionately dubbed "The Archers" was slaughtered in a bloodbath yesterday. Brandishing a gun taken from her father's collection, deranged divorcee Sheila Bamber, 28, first shot her twin six-year-old sons. She gunned down her father as he tried to phone for help. Then she murdered her mother before turning the automatic .22 rifle on herself.
The result of this certainty was that the investigation was poorly conducted. The murder scene was not secured or searched thoroughly, and evidence was not recorded or preserved. Within a couple of days, the police had burned the bloodstained bedding and carpets, apparently to spare Jeremy's feelings. The scenes-of-crime officer moved the murder weapon without wearing gloves, and it was not examined for fingerprints until weeks later. Three days after the killings, Bamber and the extended family were given back the keys to the house.
Police did not find the silencer in the cupboard. One of Jeremy's cousins found it on 10 August, with what appeared to be flecks of red paint and blood, and took it to another of the cousin's homes; it took the police a further three days to collect it. A few days after that, the cousins found a scratch on the red mantelpiece that the prosecution said was caused by the silencer during a struggle for the gun; that accounted for the fleck of red paint. The Bible found near Sheila was not examined at all. Journalist David Connett writes that a hacksaw blade that might have been used to gain entry to the house lay in the garden for months. Officers did not take contemporaneous notes; those who had dealt with Jeremy wrote down their statements weeks later. The bodies were released days after the murders, and three of them (Nevill, June and Sheila) were cremated. Jeremy's clothes were not examined until one month later. Ten years later, all blood samples were destroyed.
After Jeremy was convicted, the trial judge, Mr Justice Maurice Drake, expressed concern about the "less than thorough investigation", while The Times wrote about "blunders, omissions and ineptitude". Home Secretary Douglas Hurd requested a report on the investigation from Essex Chief Constable Robert Bunyard and in March 1989 issued a statement in the House of Commons: "It is clear that errors were made in the early stages of the police investigation contrary to existing force practice."
Funeral, Bamber's behaviour
The inquest into the murders was opened on 14 August 1985. The police gave evidence that the killings constituted a murder–suicide, and the bodies were released. Nevill, June and Sheila were cremated; the boys were buried. Jeremy's behaviour before and after the funeral increased suspicion among his family that he had been involved; they alleged that he sobbed during the funeral service for his parents and sister, and at one point seemed to buckle and had to be supported by Mugford, but that he was smiling and joking later at the wake.
Shortly after the funerals, Jeremy travelled to Amsterdam with Mugford and a friend, where he bought a large quantity of cannabis; the travel agent who sold the tickets said the group had been in high spirits. Jeremy also began selling his family's belongings; Mugford's mother was offered June's car and an ad was placed in a local newspaper asking £900 for Nevill's. Just after his first arrest and release in September, Jeremy tried to sell twenty nude photographs of Sheila for £20,000 to The Sun and went on another overseas trip with a friend, this time to Saint-Tropez.
Fingerprints on rifle
A print from Sheila's right ring finger was found on the right side of the butt of the rifle, pointing downwards. A print from Jeremy's right forefinger was on the rear end of the barrel, above the stock and pointing across the gun. He said he had used the gun to shoot rabbits. There were three other prints that could not be identified.
Silencer
The silencer was not on the gun when the bodies were discovered. It was found by one of Jeremy's cousins, three days after the murders, in the ground-floor office gun cupboard. Whether it was on the gun during the murders became a pivotal issue. The prosecution maintained that the silencer had indeed been on the gun, and that this meant Sheila could not have shot herself. Forensic tests indicated that her arms were not long enough to turn the gun on herself with the silencer attached. If she had shot the others with the silencer, then realized the gun was too long for her to shoot herself, the silencer would have been found next to her body; she had no reason to return it to the gun cupboard before going back upstairs to shoot herself. If Sheila was not the killer, it meant Jeremy had lied about the telephone call from his father saying Sheila had "gone berserk" with the gun.
The police searched the gun cupboard on the day of the murders but found nothing. Three days later, on 10 August, Bamber's extended family visited the farm with Basil Cock, the estate's executor. During that visit, one of the cousins, David Boutflour, found the silencer and rifle sights in the gun cupboard. The court heard that this was witnessed by Boutflour's father and sister, as well as by Basil Cock and the farm secretary.
Instead of alerting the police, the family took the silencer to Boutflour's sister's home. Boutflour said it felt sticky. They found red paint and blood on the silencer, and its surface had been damaged. When the police collected the silencer on 12 August, five days after the murders, an officer reportedly noticed an inch-long grey hair attached to it, but this had disappeared by the time the silencer arrived at the Forensic Science Service (FSS) at Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. A scientist at the FSS, John Hayward, found blood on the inside and outside surface of the silencer, the latter not enough to permit analysis. The blood inside was found to be the same blood group as Sheila's, although it could have been a mixture of Nevill's and June's. A firearms expert, Malcolm Fletcher, said the blood was backspatter caused by a close-contact shooting.
Scratch marks on mantelpiece
Jeremy's cousins returned to the farmhouse to search for the source of the red paint on the silencer. In the kitchen they found marks in the red paint on the underside of the mantelpiece above an AGA cooker. A sample taken by a scenes-of-crime officer was found to contain the same fifteen layers of paint and varnish that were in the paint flake found on the silencer. Casts of the marks on the mantelpiece were deemed consistent with the silencer having come into contact with the mantel several times.
Julie Mugford's statements
Background
On 7 September 1985, a month after the murders, Mugford changed her statement to police, now alleging that Jeremy had been planning to kill his family. As a result of her second statement, he was arrested the following day.
Jeremy and Mugford had started dating in 1983, when she was aged 19 and studying for a degree in education at Goldsmiths College in London. She had taken a holiday job in Sloppy Joe's, a pizzeria in Colchester, where Jeremy had a bar job in the evenings. During police interviews, Mugford admitted to a brief background of dishonesty: in 1985 she had been cautioned for using a friend's chequebook after it had been reported stolen to obtain goods worth around £700; she said that she and the friend had repaid the money to the bank. Mugford also acknowledged having helped Jeremy, in March 1985, to steal just under £1,000 from the office of the Osea Road caravan site his family owned. She said that he had staged a break-in to make it appear that strangers were responsible.
Statements to police
Mugford was initially supportive of Jeremy. Photographs of his parents' and Sheila's funeral show him weeping and hanging onto her arm. During an interview with the police on the day after the murders, she said that Jeremy had telephoned her at home in the early hours of 7 August, between 3:00 and 3:30 am, and said, "There's something wrong at home," and sounded worried. She said she had been tired and had not asked what was wrong.
Mugford's position changed the following month after she'd had a series of rows with Jeremy. He seemed to want to end the relationship, and they had argued about his involvement in the murders. Mugford told Jeremy he was a psychopath and at one point tried to smother him with a pillow. During one argument on 4 September, another woman telephoned Jeremy in Mugford's presence. As it became clear to Mugford that he had been seeing the woman, she smashed a mirror and slapped him; he then twisted her arm up her back. Three days later, she went to the police and changed her statement.
In the second statement, Mugford alleged that between July and October 1984, Jeremy had said he wished he could "get rid of them all". He had talked disparagingly about his "old" father and "mad" mother, she claimed, who were trying to "run his life". Jeremy was also alleged to have said that his sister had nothing to live for and that the twins were disturbed. That the Bambers were paying for Sheila's expensive flat in Maida Vale annoyed him, she said.
In discussions she said she had dismissed as "idle talk", Jeremy had talked about sedating his parents with sleeping pills, shooting them, then setting fire to the farmhouse. He reportedly said Sheila would make a good scapegoat. Mugford alleged he had discussed cycling along the back roads to the house, entering through the kitchen window because the catch was broken, and leaving it via a different window that latched when it was shut from the outside. A telephone call would be made from White House Farm to his home in Goldhanger "because the last phone call made would be recorded". Jeremy claimed to have killed rats with his bare hands to test whether he was able to kill but he said it had taught him that he would not be able to kill his family, although he allegedly continued to talk about doing so.
"Tonight or never" allegation
Mugford said she had spent the weekend before the murders with Jeremy in his cottage in Goldhanger, where he had dyed his hair black. She had seen his mother's bicycle there, she said; the prosecution later alleged that he had used this bicycle to cycle between his cottage and White House Farm on the night of the murders to avoid being seen in his car on the road. Mugford told police that Jeremy had telephoned her at 9:50 pm on 6 August to say he had been thinking about the crime all day, was "pissed off", and that it was "tonight or never". A few hours later, at 3:00–3:30 am on 7 August, Mugford said he phoned her again to say: "Everything is going well. Something is wrong at the farm. I haven't had any sleep all night ... bye honey and I love you lots." Her flatmates' evidence suggested that call had come through closer to 3:00 am. Jeremy called later in the morning to tell Mugford that Sheila had gone mad and that a police car was coming to pick her up. When she arrived with the police at Jeremy's cottage, she said he had pulled her to one side and said: "I should have been an actor."
Later on the evening of 7 August, Mugford asked Jeremy whether he had done it. He said no, but that a friend of his had, whom he named; the man was a plumber the family had used in the past. Jeremy allegedly said he had told this friend how he could enter and leave the farmhouse undetected, and that one of his instructions had been for the friend to telephone him from one of the phones in the farmhouse that had a memory redial facility, so that if the police checked it he would have an alibi. Everything had gone as planned, he said, except that Nevill had put up a fight, and the friend had become angry and shot him seven times. The friend had allegedly told Sheila to lie down and shoot herself last, Jeremy said. The friend then placed the Bible on her chest so she appeared to have killed herself in a religious frenzy. The children were shot in their sleep, he said. Mugford said Jeremy claimed to have paid the friend £2,000.
Letter about Mugford
A letter dated 26 September 1985 from the assistant director of public prosecutions who prepared the case against Jeremy suggests that Mugford not be prosecuted for the burglary, the cheque fraud, and a further offence of selling cannabis. Mugford subsequently testified against Jeremy during his trial in October 1986. The judge told the jury that they could convict Jeremy on Mugford's testimony alone. Immediately after the verdict was announced, Mugford sold her story to the News of the World for £25,000 (equivalent to £93,000 in 2,023).
Bamber's arrest
As a result of Mugford's statement, Jeremy was arrested on 8 September 1985, as was the friend Mugford said he had implicated, although the latter had a solid alibi and was released. Jeremy told police Mugford was lying because he had jilted her. He said he loved his parents and sister, and denied that they had kept him short of money; he claimed the only reason he had broken into the caravan site with Mugford was to prove that security was poor. He further claimed he had occasionally gained entry to the farmhouse through a downstairs window and had used a knife to move the catches from the outside. He also claimed he had seen his parents' wills, and that they had left the estate to be shared between him and Sheila. As for the rifle, Jeremy told police the gun was used mostly with the silencer off because it would otherwise not fit in its case.
Charged on 9 September with breaking into the Osea Bay caravan site on 25 March 1985 and stealing £980, Jeremy was released on bail on 13 September, after which he went on holiday to Saint-Tropez with a friend. Shortly before this, he tried to sell his life story and nude photographs of Sheila to The Sun newspaper for £20,000. Before leaving England, Jeremy said that he returned to the farmhouse, gaining entry by the downstairs bathroom window. He claimed he did this because he had left his keys in London and needed papers from the house for the trip to France; he entered through the window rather than borrow keys from the farm's housekeeper who lived nearby. When he returned to England on 29 September, Jeremy was arrested at Dover and charged with the murders.
Trial, October 1986
Prosecution case
Jeremy's trial, which lasted eighteen days, opened on 3 October 1986 before Mr Justice Drake and a jury of seven men and five women at Chelmsford Crown Court. The prosecution was led by Anthony Arlidge QC, and the defence by Geoffrey Rivlin QC, supported by Ed Lawson QC. The Times wrote that Jeremy cut an arrogant figure in the witness box. At one point, when prosecutors accused him of lying, he replied: "That is what you have got to establish."
The prosecution case was that Jeremy, motivated by hatred and greed, had left White House Farm around 10 pm on 6 August 1985, after dining with his family, to drive to his home in Goldhanger. Later, perhaps in the early hours of the morning of 7 August, he had returned to the farm on his mother's bicycle — which he had borrowed a few days earlier — cycling along a route that avoided the main roads and approaching the farmhouse from the back. He had entered the house through a downstairs bathroom window, taken the rifle with the silencer attached, and gone upstairs. He had shot June in her bed; she had managed to walk a few steps before collapsing and dying. He had shot Nevill in the bedroom too, but Nevill was able to get downstairs where he and Jeremy fought in the kitchen before Jeremy shot him four times, twice in his temple and twice in the top of his head. He had shot Sheila in the main bedroom, next to her mother, and had shot the children in their beds as they slept.
Jeremy had then arranged the scene to make it appear that Sheila was the killer, the prosecution argued. He discovered that she could not have reached the trigger with the silencer attached, so he removed it and returned it to the gun cupboard, then placed a Bible next to her body to introduce a religious theme. After removing the kitchen phone from its hook, he left the house via a kitchen window, perhaps after showering, and banged the window from the outside so that the catch dropped back into position. He had then cycled back to Goldhanger on his mother's bicycle. Shortly after 3 am, he had telephoned Mugford, then the police at 3:26 am to say he had just received a frantic call from his father. To create a delay before the bodies were discovered, he had not called 999, had driven slowly to the farmhouse, and had told police that his sister was familiar with guns so that they would be reluctant to enter.
The prosecution further argued that Jeremy had not received a telephone call from his father, that Nevill was too badly injured after the first shots to have spoken to anyone, that there was no blood on the kitchen phone that had been left off the hook, and that Nevill would have called the police before calling Jeremy. They also argued that, had Jeremy really received such a call, he would have dialled 999, alerted the farm workers, then made his way quickly to White House Farm himself.
The silencer played a central role in the prosecution's case. It was deemed to have been on the rifle when it was fired because of the blood found inside it. The prosecution said the blood had come from Sheila's head when the silencer was pointed at her. Had she discovered that she could not shoot herself with the silencer attached, the court heard, it would have been found next to her body; she had no reason to return it to the gun cupboard. That she had carried out the killings was further discounted because, it was argued, she had not recently expressed suicidal thoughts; the expert evidence was that she would not have harmed her children or father; she had no interest in or knowledge of guns; she lacked the strength to overcome her father; and there was no evidence on her clothes or body that she had moved around the crime scene or been involved in a struggle. In particular, her long fingernails had remained intact.
Defence case
The defence maintained that the witnesses who said Jeremy disliked his family were lying or had misinterpreted his words. Mugford had lied about his confession, they said, because he had betrayed her. No one had seen Jeremy cycle to and from the farm. There were no marks on him on the night in question that suggested he had been in a fight. No blood-stained clothing of his was recovered. He had not driven to the farm as quickly as he could have after his father telephoned because he was afraid, they said. There was no probative value in the finding of a hacksaw in the garden, because Jeremy had entered the house via the windows many times, before the killings and since.
The defence argued that Sheila was the killer and that she did know how to handle guns, having been raised on a farm and had attended shoots when she was younger. She had a very serious mental illness, had told a psychiatrist she felt capable of killing her children, and the loaded rifle and cartridges had been left on the kitchen table by Jeremy. There had been a recent family argument about placing her children in foster care. A former boyfriend of Sheila's gave a written statement to the court that she had had some kind of breakdown in March 1985, in his presence, when she began beating the wall with her fists because the telephone line had gone dead during a call; she had said the phone was bugged and talked about God and the devil, and how the latter loved her. This former boyfriend said he had feared for the safety of people around Sheila, who had a "deep and intense dislike" of June, her adoptive mother. The defence argued that people who have carried out so-called "altruistic" killings have been known to engage in ritualistic behaviour before killing themselves, and that Sheila might have placed the silencer in the cupboard, changed her clothes and washed herself, which would explain why there was little lead on her hands, or why sugar from the floor was not found on her feet. There was also a possibility that the blood in the silencer was not hers, but was a mixture of Nevill's and June's.
Summing up, verdict
The judge told the jury that there were three crucial points, in no particular order. Did they believe Mugford or Jeremy? Were they sure that Sheila was not the killer who then committed suicide? He said this question involved another: was the second, fatal, shot fired at Sheila with the silencer on? If yes, she could not have fired it. Finally, did Nevill call Jeremy in the middle of the night? If there was no such call, it undermined the entirety of Jeremy's story; the only reason he would have had to invent the phone call was that he was responsible for the murders.
On 28 October, after deliberating for more than nine hours, the jury found Jeremy guilty by a majority of 10–2 (the minimum required for conviction). Sentencing him to five life terms, with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of twenty-five years, the judge told Jeremy: "Your conduct in planning and carrying out the killing of five members of your family was evil, almost beyond belief." In December 1994, Home Secretary Michael Howard told Jeremy that he would remain in prison for the rest of his life, following a decision in 1988 by the Home Secretary of the day, Douglas Hurd.
Appeals
Leave to appeal refused, 1989 and 1994
Jeremy first sought leave to appeal in November 1986, arguing that the judge had misdirected the jury. The application was heard and refused by Mr Justice Caulfield in April 1988. During a full hearing in March 1989 before three Appeal Court judges—Lord Lane, the Lord Chief Justice; Mr Justice Roch; and Mr Justice Henry—Jeremy's lawyer, Geoffrey Rivlin QC, argued that the trial judge's summing up had been biased against his client, that his language had been too forceful, and that he had undermined the defence by advancing his own theory. Rivlin also argued that the defence had not pressed Mugford about her dealings with the media but should have, because as soon as the trial was over her story began to appear in newspapers. On 20 March 1989 the judges refused Jeremy leave to appeal, ruling that there was nothing unsafe or unsatisfactory about the verdicts.
Because the trial judge had criticized the police investigation, Essex Police held an internal inquiry. Jeremy alleged this report confirmed that evidence had been withheld by the police so he made a formal complaint, which was investigated in 1991 by the City of London Police. This investigation uncovered more material, which Jeremy used to petition the Home Secretary in September 1993 for a referral back to the Court of Appeal, refused in July 1994. During this process, the Home Office declined to give Jeremy the expert evidence it had obtained, so he applied for judicial review of their decision in November 1994, which resulted in the Home Office handing over the evidence. In 1996 a police officer destroyed many of the trial exhibits, saying later he had not been aware that the case was ongoing. Jeremy's defence team referred to the destruction of blood samples as a "disgrace".
Court of Appeal, 2002
Criminal Cases Review Commission referral
In 1997 the Home Office passed Jeremy's case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which had just been established to review alleged miscarriages of justice. In March 2001 the CCRC referred the case to the Court of Appeal because of the discovery of DNA inside the silencer; this was found as a result of a test not available in 1986 and constituted fresh evidence. Jeremy's conviction rested in part on evidence that Sheila's blood had been found inside the silencer, suggesting that it had been on the gun when she died; but her arms were not long enough to point the gun back at herself and pull the trigger with the silencer attached. The appeal was heard from 17 October to 1 November 2002, at the Royal Courts of Justice, by Lord Justice Kay, Mr Justice Wright and Mr Justice Henriques, who published their decision on 12 December 2002. The prosecution was represented by Victor Temple QC and Jeremy by Michael Turner QC. In a 522-paragraph judgment, the judges concluded that there was no conduct on the part of investigators that threatened the integrity of the trial, and that the more they examined the case, the more they thought the jury had been right.
Grounds
Jeremy initially brought sixteen issues to the attention of the court. Two (grounds 14 and 15) related to the silencer and DNA testing; the rest were about failure to disclose evidence or the fabrication of evidence. The defence withdrew ground 11 ("the proposed purchase of a Porsche by the appellant") before the hearing.
New silencer evidence
Although all the grounds (except 11) were reviewed by the court, the CCRC referred the case to the Court of Appeal on the basis of ground 15, the discovery of DNA on the silencer, the result of a test not available in 1986. The silencer evidence during the trial had come from John Hayward, a biologist in private practice, formerly of the FSS. He had found a "considerable amount of blood" inside the silencer; he had stated that it was human blood and that the blood group was consistent with it having come from Sheila. He said there was a "remote possibility" that it was a mixture of blood from Nevill and June.
Mark Webster, an expert instructed by Jeremy's defence team, argued that Hayward's tests had been inadequate and that there was a real possibility, not a remote one, that the blood had come from Nevill and June. This was a critical point, because the prosecution case rested on the silencer having been on the gun when Sheila was shot, something she could not have done herself because of the length of her arms. If she was shot with the silencer on the gun, it meant that someone else had shot her. If her blood was inside the silencer, it supported the prosecution's position that she had been shot by another party, but if the blood inside the silencer belonged to someone else, that part of the prosecution case collapsed.
The defence argued that new tests comparing DNA in the silencer to a sample from Sheila's biological mother suggested that the "major component" of the DNA in the silencer had not come from Sheila. A DNA sample from June's sister suggested that the major component had come from June, the defence argued. The court concluded that June's DNA was in the silencer, that Sheila's DNA may have been in the silencer, and that there was evidence of DNA from at least one male. The judges' conclusion was that the results were complex, incomplete, and also meaningless because they did not establish how June's DNA came to be in the silencer years after the trial, did not establish that Sheila's was not in it, and did not lead to a conclusion that Jeremy's conviction was unsafe.
Against whole-life tariff
In 2008 Jeremy lost a High Court appeal before Mr Justice Tugendhat against his whole-life tariff. This was upheld by the Court of Appeal in 2009. Jeremy and three other British whole-life prisoners appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, but the appeal was rejected in 2012. Jeremy and two of the prisoners (one of them the serial killer Peter Moore) appealed that decision, and in 2013 the European Court's Grand Chamber ruled that keeping the prisoners in jail with no prospect of release or review may not have been compatible with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.
Campaign
Background
A campaign, known from November 2015 as JB Campaign Ltd, gathered pace over the years to secure Jeremy's release. The civil-liberties group Justice for All took up his case in 1993 to prepare for his appeal that year, and The Guardian ran a long investigative piece by Jim Shelley in November 1993 that included a telephone interview with Jeremy from HMP Long Martin, Worcestershire; Jeremy said he still could not understand why he had been convicted. From March 2001 several websites were set up to discuss the evidence, and in 2002 Jeremy used one of the sites to offer a £1 million reward for evidence that would overturn his conviction. Campaign events included a supporter reading a letter from Jeremy to his parents at their graveside, and a "Bamber bake-off" featuring his mother's favourite recipes.
Jeremy's case was taken up by MPs George Galloway (Respect) and Andrew Hunter (DUP) and journalists Bob Woffinden and Eric Allison of The Guardian. Allison became one of the campaign's patrons. Woffinden argued between 2007 and 2011 that Sheila had shot her family, then watched as police gathered outside before shooting herself. He changed his mind in 2011 and said he believed Jeremy was guilty. In 2015 the human-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell appealed to the Chief Constable of Essex Police to disclose all evidence related to the case.
Campaign's arguments
Location of Sheila's body, time of death
The defence disputed the location of Sheila's body. The police said they had found her upstairs with her mother. According to early police logs, one officer reported seeing through a window what he thought was the body of a woman near the kitchen door, but he later radioed that it was a man. A retired police officer who worked on the case said in 2011 that the first police logs were simply mistaken in reporting that a woman's body had been found downstairs. Jeremy's lawyers argued that images of Sheila taken by a police photographer at around 9 am on 7 August 1985 showed that her blood was still wet. According to the defence team, had she been killed before 3:30 am, as the prosecution said, the blood would have congealed by 9 am. They argued that she was alive when Jeremy was standing outside the house with the police, shot herself in the kitchen just as the police entered, then ran up one of the staircases to the bedroom, where she shot herself again, this time fatally.
Alleged crime-scene damage
The defence argued that the first officers to enter the farmhouse had inadvertently disturbed the crime scene, then reconstructed it. Crime-scene photographs not made available to the original defence show Sheila's right arm and hand in slightly different positions in relation to the gun, which is lying across her body. The gun itself also appears to have moved. Former Detective Chief Superintendent Mick Gradwell of Lancashire Constabulary, shown the photographs by The Guardian, said in 2011: "The evidence shows, or portrays, Essex police having damaged the scene, and then having staged it again to make it look like it was originally. And if that has happened, and that hasn't been disclosed, that is really, really serious."
Arguments about the silencer
The contention that the gun had a silencer on it during the murders was central to the prosecution's case; Jeremy and his lawyers have sought since 1987 to discredit the silencer evidence. With the silencer fitted, the gun was too long for Sheila to have turned it on herself. According to the prosecution, paint on the silencer could be matched to fresh scratch marks on the kitchen mantelpiece, assumed to have been made during a fight for the gun. That the silencer was found in the gun cupboard was important to the prosecution, because Sheila had no reason to return it to the cupboard before killing herself. But that it was found by one of the cousins who inherited part of the estate—days after the police had searched the house—blighted the prosecution's case, although it was accepted by a majority of the jury.
Lee writes that the silencer evidence became confused because of the way the exhibit was named. It was first called "SBJ/1", because it was handed over by Detective Sergeant Stan Jones (SBJ). When it was learned that David Boutflour had found it, the silencer was renamed exhibit "DB/1". But because there was a Detective Constable David Bird, it was renamed again to "DRB/1". The name changes led to confusion in later documents, giving the impression that more than one silencer had been found. In 2011, Lee writes, Jeremy's blog announced: "We can now prove 100% that there were two sound moderators obtained by police at different times." The CCRC responded that year that the claims were "not supported by the material that exists". Again in 2013 Jeremy's blog said: "I can now prove with 100% certainty that Essex police seized one Parker Hale (MM1 type) suppressor from the house on 7 August 1985" (the day of the murder, rather than the day the cousin found it). According to The Times in 2013, he aimed to show that the police had taken four silencers from his family members, including the one in the cupboard, and that evidence and paperwork from them—and from an additional laboratory silencer—had been mixed up.
In or around 2012, Jeremy's lawyers commissioned gun experts from the US and UK to examine photographs of the bodies and the silencer evidence. They argued that injuries on the bodies were consistent with the silencer not having been used, and that its absence would explain burn marks on Nevill's body. The court had heard that "three circular burn type marks" had been found on Nevill's back. In November 1985 a police report submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions had argued that the burn marks were made with the hot end of the gun or with a poker from the AGA cooker.
Arguments about scratch marks
The defence commissioned a report from Peter Sutherst, a British forensic photographic expert, who was asked in 2008 to examine negatives of the kitchen taken on the day of the murders and later. In his report, dated 17 January 2010, Sutherst argued that the scratch marks in the red paintwork on the kitchen mantelpiece had been created after the crime-scene photographs had been taken. The prosecution alleged that the marks had been made during the struggle in the kitchen between Bamber and his father, as the silencer, attached to the rifle, had scratched against the mantelpiece. The prosecution said that paint chips identical to the paint on the mantelpiece had been found on or inside the silencer. Sutherst said the scratch marks appeared in photographs taken on 10 September 1985, 34 days after the murders, but were not visible in the original crime-scene photographs. He also said he had failed to find in the photographs any chipped paint on the carpet below the mantelpiece, where it might have been expected to fall had the mantelpiece been scratched during a struggle. Sutherst was asked by the CCRC to examine a red spot on the carpet visible in photographs underneath the scratches on the mantelpiece. He said the red spot matched a piece of nail varnish missing from one of Sheila's toes. Sutherst concluded that the scratch marks on the mantel had been created after the day of the murders.
Arguments about police logs
Police telephone logs had been entered as evidence during the trial, but had not been noticed by Jeremy's lawyers. Jeremy's new defence team based their new CCRC submissions in part on these logs, particularly on the radio log that, they say, shows Nevill called police that night to say his daughter had "gone berserk" with one of his guns. A separate log of a police radio message shows there was an attempt to speak to someone inside the farmhouse that night, as police waited outside to enter, but there was no response. Police say the officers simply made a mistake.
Arguments about Mugford letter
Jeremy's lawyers argued that the 26 September 1985 letter to Mugford from John Walker, assistant director of public prosecutions, raised the possibility that she had been persuaded to testify in the hope that charges against her would not be pursued. In the letter, Walker had suggested to the Chief Constable of Essex Police, "with considerable hesitation", that Mugford not be prosecuted for drug offences, burglary and cheque fraud, offences to which she had confessed during her police interviews regarding Bamber. The defence team also highlighted that, as soon as the verdict was announced, Mugford sold her story to the News of the World for £25,000 (equivalent to £92,526 in 2023).
Criminal Cases Review Commission, 2004–2012
In 2004 Jeremy's defence team, which included Giovanni di Stefano, applied unsuccessfully to have the CCRC refer the case back to the Court of Appeal. His lawyers made a fresh submission to the CCRC in 2009. The CCRC provisionally rejected Jeremy's 2009 submission in February 2011 in an 89-page document. It invited his lawyers to respond within three months, extended the deadline to allow them to study all 406 crime-scene photographs, and in September 2011 granted them an indefinite period in which to pursue an additional line of inquiry.
The CCRC finally rejected the application in April 2012 in a 109-page report, which said the submission had not identified any new evidence or legal argument that would raise the real possibility of the Court of Appeal overturning the conviction. In November 2012 the High Court turned down Bamber's application for a judicial review of that decision. The next year, di Stefano was sentenced in the UK to 14 years in prison for having fraudulently presented himself as a lawyer. As of December 2013 Jeremy's defence team was said to be preparing a fresh submission.
In popular media
The case became the subject of a television drama series, White House Farm, starring Freddie Fox as Bamber and Cressida Bonas as Sheila, broadcast in January 2020 on ITV in the UK and HBO Max in the United States. In 2021, documentary maker Louis Theroux produced a four-part series for Sky Crime on the murders, titled The Bambers: Murder At The Farm. Theroux told the Radio Times that the series had to be extended from an initial three-episode format due to the complexities of the case, and told Sky News that "both scenarios have anomalies".
See also
White House Farm (TV series)
Bain family murders
List of rampage killers (familicides in Europe)
Sources
Notes
References
Works cited
Most news reports are cited above only.
Books and long-form journalism
Legal cases
Further reading
Caffell, Colin (2020 edition) In Search of the Rainbow's End: Inside the White House Farm Murders. With 2018 foreword from Caffell. Hodder & Stoughton (paprback) ISBN 9781529309164
Bambers' funeral service, Anglia Television, August 1985.
The White House Farm Murders, Yorkshire Television, 1993.
Real Crimes: Jeremy Bamber, Anglia Television, 2003.
Crimes That Shook Britain: Jeremy Bamber. Series 2. Crime+Investigation, A&E Networks, 2011.
Appleyard, Nick (2009). "Tonight's the Night". Life Means Life. London: John Blake Publishing Ltd.
D'Cruze, Shani; Walklate, Sandra L.; Pegg, Samantha (2013). "The White House Farm murders". Murder: Social and Historical Approaches to Understanding Murder and Murderers. Uffculme: Willan.
Howard, Amanda (2014). "Jeremy Bamber". A Killer in the Family. London: New Holland Publishers.
Lane, Brian (1995). Chronicle of 20th Century Murder. Wiltshire: Select Editions.
Leyton, Elliott (2009). Sole Survivor: Children Who Murder Their Families. London: John Blake Publishing Ltd. |
Freddie_Fox_(actor) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Fox_(actor) | [
748
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Fox_(actor)"
] | Frederick Samson Robert Morice Fox (born April 5, 1989) is an English film and stage actor. His prominent screen performances include roles as singer Marilyn in the BBC's Boy George biopic Worried About the Boy (2010), Freddie Baxter in series Cucumber (2015) and Banana (2015), and Jeremy Bamber in White House Farm (2020).
His many notable theatre credits include starring as Simon Bliss in Hay Fever (2012) at the Noël Coward Theatre; as Oscar Wilde's young lover Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas in The Judas Kiss (2012–2013) at the Hampstead Theatre, during a UK tour, and in a West End transfer; as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet (2015) at the Sheffield Crucible and in Kenneth Branagh's 2016 production at the Garrick Theatre; as Tristan Tzara in Travesties (2016–2017) at the Menier Chocolate Factory and Apollo Theatre; as Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband (2018) at the Vaudeville Theatre; and as Edmond Rostand in Edmond de Bergerac (2019) at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and during a UK tour.
Fox appeared on the big screen in The Three Musketeers (2011), The Riot Club (2014), Pride (2014), Victor Frankenstein (2015), King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017), Black '47 (2018) and Fanny Lye Deliver'd (2019).
Early life and education
Frederick Samson Robert Morice Fox was born on 5 April 1989 in Hammersmith, London. He was raised between London and the family home in Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset and was surrounded by actors and writers from a young age.
He is the son of actress Joanna David (née Joanna Elizabeth Hacking) and actor Edward Fox. He is the younger brother of actress Emilia Fox and the half-brother of Lucy Arabella Preston (the Viscountess Gormanston), the grandson of actress Angela Worthington Fox and theatrical agent Robin Fox, and the great-grandson of the playwright Frederick Lonsdale. He is the nephew of producer Robert Fox and actor James Fox, and a cousin to actors Laurence, Jack and Lydia Fox. He was named after Fred Zinnemann, who directed his father in The Day of the Jackal, and after his great-great-grandfather Victorian industrialist Samson Fox, who invented the corrugated boiler flue and built Harrogate's former Kursaal now known as the Royal Hall. Asked if he believes in his acting gene, he said, "I used not to until my sister Milly was on the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are?" where they discovered the thespian thread goes back 100 years.
From 1994 to 2002, Fox was educated at Arnold House School, a preparatory school for boys in the St John's Wood area of London, where he was head boy. He was prefect during secondary school at Bryanston School, a boarding school in Dorset where he perfected his elocution and overcame fairly serious dyslexia. During his time there, he portrayed a headmaster in A Risky Business, a play written especially for him by a classics master.
He then attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and graduated in 2010. His drama teachers praised his talent for acting.
Career
Beginnings
Fox's first screen appearance was at age seven as an extra in the 1997 TV adaptation of Rebecca. In 2009, he appeared in St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold as head boy and in Agatha Christie's Marple as Tom Savage. In 2010, he starred as Jamie in the musical The Last Five Years at the Silk Street Theatre and, after a sell-out success, at the Barbican Pit Theatre.
2010–2015: Worried About the Boy, Cucumber, Banana
Fox starred in his first breakthrough role as the androgynous 1980s pop star Marilyn in Worried About The Boy based on the life of the singer Boy George. He appeared as Peter Scabius in Any Human Heart and as Guy Wells in Rosamunde Pilcher's Shades of Love. He played cleft-palated Camille Chandebise in A Flea in Her Ear at The Old Vic, Tony Davenport in the stage play revival of Cause Célèbre at The Old Vic, and Ratallack in The Shadow Line.
His international film debut came through his role as King Louis XIII of France in The Three Musketeers (2011). In 2012, he played the title role in The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He appeared in Lewis as Sebastian Dromgoole and in Tom Stoppard's critically acclaimed period drama Parade's End as Edward Wannop. He then played Simon Bliss in Hay Fever at the Noël Coward Theatre and made an early career impact as Oscar Wilde's young lover Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas in The Judas Kiss (2012–2013) at the Hampstead Theatre, during a UK tour, and in its West End transfer. Fox voiced Prince Louis of Battenberg in Margy Kinmonth's Royal Paintbox with HRH The Prince of Wales featuring the artworks of the British royal family across centuries. He also starred as Sandy Irvine in Words of Everest.
In Lone Scherfig's The Riot Club (2014) Fox played James Leighton-Masters, the outgoing president of the ten-member elite Oxford University club. Based on Laura Wade's hit play Posh, it tackles class and social structure as a commentary on the Bullingdon Club. He appeared as Jeff Cole in the critically acclaimed historical comedy-drama Pride and starred in Anthony Fabian's Freeze-Frame (2014) commissioned by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to promote collaboration between China and UK's film industries.
In 2015, he played the breakout 'bisexual nympho' Freddie Baxter in the Channel 4 hit series Cucumber, a role which he reprised in E4's Banana, and appeared as himself in Tofu. Both Cucumber and Banana were nominated for the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding TV Movie or Limited Series in 2016. i-D said of Fox, "you can't deny he's a connoisseur at picking the parts which have maximum impact." Fox then played the wealthy aristocrat Finnegan, the benefactor of the title character's Prometheus creation in Victor Frankenstein.
2015–2017: Romeo and Juliet, Travesties, Dennis and Gnasher: Unleashed!
In June 2016, he was announced as third prize winner at the 2015 Ian Charleson Awards, having played the role of Romeo in Romeo and Juliet (2015) to great acclaim at the Sheffield Crucible. His proficiency with the role led him to be called into service again as Romeo in Kenneth Branagh's 2016 production at the Garrick Theatre on short notice when the preceding Romeo and his understudy were both injured. With just a 2-day rehearsal after he was cast, Fox took over the role on 26 July and performed it until the end of the play's run on 13 August, garnering rave reviews and impressing cast and crew. He then starred in The Northleach Horror as the maverick scientist Whitsuntide and led the cast of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Southwark Playhouse as Nick Bottom / Demetrius.
He performed as poet Tristan Tzara, one of the founders and central figures of the Dada movement, in Tom Stoppard's Travesties from September until November 2016 at the Menier Chocolate Factory, the play being listed in The Arts Desk's Best of 2016: Theatre. The following year, it ran for a West End revival from February to April 2017 at the Apollo Theatre to widespread acclaim, subsequently earning Fox nominations at the Laurence Olivier Awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and the WhatsOnStage Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Play.
He then voiced Dennis in the animated series Dennis & Gnasher: Unleashed!, in its launch becoming the highest-rated animated show on CBBC for 6 to 12 year olds and one of the top 10 shows for kids across all channels. Its first season received nominations at the 2018 British Animation Awards as Best Children's Series, the 2019 Kidscreen Awards as Best Animated Series, and the 2018 International Emmy Kids Awards in the Animation category. He then appeared as Rubio in King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) directed by Guy Ritchie. Fox played key scenes as Mr. Sloane in Joe Orton Laid Bare, voiced a character/s in Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2, and voiced Corvin in Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
2018–2019: The Ice King, An Ideal Husband, Hero, Edmond de Bergerac, Fanny Lye Deliver'd
In February 2018, Fox starred as the British Commander Pope in Black '47, Ireland's first historical film on the Great Famine of 1847. Released in the same month at the CPH:DOX to great acclaim was James Erskine's The Ice King narrated by Fox which profiles the life of John Curry who revolutionised ice skating from a dated sport into an exalted art form and became the first openly gay Olympian when homosexuality was still illegal. Little White Lies remarks, "Fox affects Curry's distinctive accent with remarkable accuracy." In An Ideal Husband, which ran from May to July 2018 at the Vaudeville Theatre to critical acclaim, Freddie starred with his father Edward for the first time playing fictional father and son the Earl of Caversham and Lord Goring. According to Financial Times, Freddie "effortlessly delivers that mix of insouciance and gravity" and, for The Telegraph,"embodies the Wildean spirit of modernity".
In the same year was his directorial debut through the short film Hero (2018), which he co-wrote and co-produced, centred on an isolated young boy and a decaying old film star brought together by their shared love of the silver screen. It premiered in August at the Rhode Island International Film Festival where he won the Grand Prize (Short) for Directorial Discovery Award. It was subsequently selected at the Kerry Film Festival and the Linea d'Ombra Film Festival, and released on Amazon UK and ITunes in multiple countries in November 2019.
In 2019, he headlined the English production of Edmond de Bergerac playing the titular role playwright Edmond Rostand at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre before touring the UK to great acclaim. The Guardian raved that as Edmond, Fox is "by turns a jangle of nerves, a lead weight of despondency and a blaze of success." Fox then voiced Captain Holly in Watership Down and played the characters Jokannen, Dorian Gray, and Lord Goring in The Importance of Being Oscar. He starred as Detective Sargeant Wilbur Strauss in the highly rated Victorian comedy Year of the Rabbit, which he described as his "first real comedy show" and "a total lesson in improvised and situational comedy" that he had never had before. He also rendered dramatic performances in "The Class Ceiling" episode of Novels That Shaped Our World. Thomas Clay's Fanny Lye Deliver'd then premiered to positive reviews as a new cult classic set in 1657 Shropshire where Fox played Thomas Ashbury. The Independent said that he "gives Thomas a flash of predatory charisma," and according to The Irish News, "preaches 'perfect libertinism' in captivating sermons".
2020–present: White House Farm
At the start of 2020, Fox delivered a persuasive performance in his role as the convicted mass murderer Jeremy Bamber in the ITV crime drama White House Farm based on the White House Farm murders in August 1985. In preparation, he created a psychology as convincing and enigmatic as the character should be "to leave the viewer asking questions". The London Evening Standard praised Fox's "ambiguous, wide-eyed look that hovers between angelic and devious, that it's hard to know whether to feel sympathy or suspicion." The Times remarked that he managed to be both "revealing and inscrutable, which can't be easy." The series won as Best New Drama at the 2020 TV Choice Awards leading to its international release on HBO Max in September 2020 and on Netflix in February 2021. Subsequently, he appeared on his co-star Cressida Bonas' podcast Fear Itself, where he expressed his fear of not reaching his full potential.
In the same year, Fox guest-starred as the alcoholic busker Miles Stevens in McDonald & Dodds and as King Hugo of Sweden in Hulu's critically acclaimed comedy-drama series The Great (2020). He reprised his voice-over role as Dennis in the second season of Dennis & Gnasher: Unleashed! from which select episodes were condensed into the film Dennis and Gnasher: Unleashed! On the Big Screen. He then portrayed Margaret Thatcher's son Mark Thatcher in season 4 of the award-winning Netflix historical drama series The Crown (2020).
In 2021, Fox opened The Golden Era of Broadway episode of The Theatre Channel, singing an arrangement of "Willkommen" and "Money" from Cabaret, and starred as Tony Kroesig, a Bullingdon club member and aristocrat banker turned politician, in The Pursuit of Love.
In April 2023, it was announced that Fox had been cast as Ser Gwayne Hightower in the second season of House of the Dragon.
Philanthropy
Fox is a patron of the St Giles Trust and Future 5 – a campaign by Prostate Cancer Research Centre. He is also an honorary vice president of the Story of Christmas Appeal. In March 2015, he became the face of Live Below The Line. An avid runner himself, he supported the St James's Place Foundation Triathlon and Duathlon in 2016 which raised £1.3m for Hope and Homes for Children. He was involved with the charity when he visited orphanages in Rwanda in 2015 and in Uganda in 2018 which he wrote about in a two-part blog entry, "Love is Everything—Freddie Fox in Uganda". He is a frequent supporter and reader at fundraising activities and charity events of The Poetry Hour, Breast Cancer Now, the Brain Tumour Research Campaign, The Story of Christmas Appeal, and The National Brain Appeal among others. In 2020, he participated in a charity reading of Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound that was produced by Lockdown Theatre in association with The Royal Theatrical Fund. In 2021, he performed with Alfie Boe on a global livestream concert, Alfie Boe & Friends Live at the Savoy "Lockdown Edition", which sold tickets to donate to Hospitality Action and the Connection at St. Martin's.
Public image
Fox was described by The Guardian as "deliciously debonair" and "at age 23, is all responsive intelligence and poised charm and is unguarded – as people happy in their own skins often are." "He is almost tyrannically polite and charming," says The Telegraph, and, "raised in a pack of upper-class thespians, his every utterance comes as a measured, um-less paragraph." Often branded as an acting royalty, he comes from a family whose decades-long performances formed a dynasty which he now fronts as the latest scion. Amidst inevitable assumptions, he clarifies that though his parents' ties may have opened doors to agents, it is "not a masonic back door to every job".
Another Magazine remarked that at the age of 23, Fox "has surprisingly well-formed opinions on men's style." According to The Gentleman's Journal, whose cover he headlined on their Autumn 2014 issue, Fox "continues to impress commentators with his suave, dandy-esque style." He was featured in The Chap's Summer 2018 edition in what the magazine boasts of as their best edition, saying that "no previous issue has so comprehensively gathered so many vital strands of 'anarcho-dandyism'". Fox launched the opening of White Shirt Week in St James's, London in 2013. His commentary on the role his costume played in The Riot Club was featured on Financial Times.
Averse to social media, he said that he keeps a boundary while talking about things he is interested in to preserve his mystery as an actor "so that there's still an element of surprise about where characters come from."
Personal life
Fox dated Tamzin Merchant, his co-star in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, for two years until September 2013. In June 2020, it was reported that he was dating Sex Education star Tanya Reynolds, whom he met in 2016 during production of Fanny Lye Deliver'd. While promoting Cucumber in 2015, Fox stated that he hopes to "fall in love with another person, as opposed to a sex" and expounded further in 2020 saying that "being able to say that you have a more rounded experience as a human being, whether it be through sexuality, or whatever, is now perceived as a real advantage".
Filmography
Film
Television
Theatre
Web
Directed film
Concert performance
Video games
Radio and audio
Since 2010, Freddie Fox has voiced characters in numerous radio productions of the BBC.
Awards and nominations
References
External links
Freddie Fox at IMDb |
Laurence_Fox | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Fox | [
748
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Fox"
] | Laurence Paul Fox (born 26 May 1978) is an English former actor, broadcaster, musician and political activist. A member of the British entertainment industry's Fox family, he graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and debuted in the film The Hole (2001). His best known role is James Hathaway in the TV drama series Lewis (2006–2015). He has also released a studio album titled Holding Patterns (2016).
A conservative, Fox publicly criticised the George Floyd protests and COVID-19 vaccines in 2020. After founding the right-wing populist political party Reclaim, he stood unsuccessfully in the 2021 London mayoral election in opposition to what he deemed "extreme political correctness". He gained 1.9% of the vote, thus losing his election deposit. He subsequently stood in the 2024 London Assembly election, in which he also lost his deposit. Fox's political career has resulted in several controversies and legal disputes.
Early life and education
Laurence Paul Fox was born in Leeds on 26 May 1978, the son of Mary Elizabeth Piper and actor James Fox. His paternal grandfather was talent agent Robin Fox and his paternal grandmother was actress Angela Worthington, whose father was playwright Frederick Lonsdale. He has two older brothers named Tom and Robin, a younger sister named Lydia, and a younger brother named Jack. Robin is a film producer, while Lydia and Jack are actors; Lydia is married to comedian and filmmaker Richard Ayoade. Fox's uncles are actor Edward Fox and producer Robert Fox. He is also the cousin of actors Emilia and Freddie Fox, the children of his uncle Edward.
Fox was raised as an evangelical Christian. At the age of 13, he was enrolled at Harrow School. He was expelled a few weeks before taking his A-Level exams, and was unable to obtain a place at any university due to a report about him from Harrow.
After working as a gardener and in an office, he decided to follow his family into acting, and successfully auditioned for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). During his time there, he appeared in numerous student productions, including the lead roles of Gregers Werle in Ibsen's The Wild Duck, Marcus Andronicus in Titus Andronicus, and Stephen Daedalus in an adaptation of James Joyce's novel Ulysses. He graduated in 2001.
Acting career
Fox made his acting debut in the horror-thriller film The Hole (2001). He next appeared in Robert Altman's film Gosford Park (2001). He then donned uniforms in a slew of film and television features, including roles as a German airman in Island at War (2004), an SS officer in The Last Drop (2005), and as British soldiers in the 2002 films Deathwatch and Ultimate Force, and in Colditz (2005). In the last made-for-television film, Fox played Capt. Tom Willis who, after an unsuccessful attempt to break out of a prisoner-of-war camp, is brought to Oflag IV-C in Colditz Castle, one of the most infamous German POW camps for officers in World War II. Actor Kevin Whately caught Fox's performance in the last ten minutes of the film. The next day, at a meeting regarding a new project, Whately mentioned that Fox "would be worth taking a look at".
As a result, Fox was cast in the ITV detective drama Lewis as Detective Sergeant James Hathaway, who becomes the partner of Detective Inspector Robert Lewis, played by Whately. The pilot of this spin-off from Inspector Morse (1987–2000) was ITV's highest-rated drama of 2006.
Fox has also portrayed Prince Charles, in Whatever Love Means (2005); Wisley, one of Jane Austen's suitors, in Becoming Jane (2007); and Sir Christopher Hatton, the Lord Chancellor of England in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, also released in 2007. In addition, in that year Fox was seen on ITV as Cecil Vyse in Andrew Davies's adaptation of A Room with a View based on E.M. Forster's 1908 novel.
On stage, Fox appeared in Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw at the Strand Theatre (now the Novello Theatre) in London in 2002, and John Ford's 17th-century play 'Tis Pity She's a Whore in 2005. Between 2006 and 2007 he starred in Treats by Christopher Hampton with his future wife, Billie Piper. In April 2007, Fox received a police caution after he was arrested for assault when he punched a photographer outside the Garrick Theatre in London where he was performing in Treats. The caution remained on his record for three years. In 2013, Fox played Guy Haines in Strangers on a Train at London's Gielgud Theatre. On 9 May 2015, he read a letter written by a soldier three days prior to his death in the Second World War, as part of VE Day 70: A Party to Remember, an anniversary concert for VE Day.
Fox released his debut album Holding Patterns in 2016 through his own label Fox Cub Records. His second album A Grief Observed was released in 2019. Holding Patterns peaked at number 89 in the UK album chart.
In 2018, Fox joined the cast of the ITV series Victoria, playing Lord Palmerston, for its third season, which first aired on PBS in January 2019.
In November 2020, Fox was dropped by his talent agency Artists Rights Group after stating on Question Time that an audience member's description of him as a "white privileged male" was "racist". He had been dropped by his previous managers Authentic Talent earlier in the year.
In 2021, Fox portrayed Hunter Biden in filmmaker Robert Davi's biopic My Son Hunter, starring alongside fellow conservatives Gina Carano and John James, the former of whom was also dropped by her agent after allegedly expressing some of the same opinions as Fox. The film was distributed by the American right-wing media company Breitbart.
Music
Fox has released two albums, Holding Patterns in 2016 and A Grief Observed in 2019. The former charted, at no. 89, but the latter did not.
Broadcasting
From November 2022, Fox presented a regular Friday night slot on GB News.
In September 2023, Fox was suspended by GB News after saying of female journalist Ava Evans: "Show me a single self-respecting man that would like to climb into bed with that woman ever." Dan Wootton, the host of the show on which Fox spoke, along with Calvin Robinson, was also suspended. Fox released on Twitter an apparent private message exchange with Wootton in which he had reacted approvingly to what Fox had said. In early October 2023, GB News confirmed that, following its investigation, it had terminated the contracts of Fox and Robinson. Ofcom, the government's broadcasting regulatory body, opened an investigation into the incident that was still ongoing as of January 2024. Ofcom announced that the incident was the most complained about broadcast on British television in 2023, with the regulator receiving almost 9000 complaints. On 4 March 2024 Ofcom ruled that Fox's "misogynistic" comments broke broadcasting rules and “were degrading and demeaning both to [her] and women generally”.
Personal views and opinions
Views on political correctness
In 2019, Fox told The Times that YouTube videos had "totally radicalised" him against "woke culture" and "political correctness".
Views on COVID-19
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Fox frequently criticised the British government's response to the pandemic and encouraged people to disregard the government's social distancing guidance and disobey other public health restrictions. During an interview on Good Morning Britain, he said that "if the NHS can't cope, then the NHS isn't fit for purpose". The show's hosts, Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid, censured this. During a national lockdown in March 2021, Fox participated in an anti-lockdown protest.
Views on race and racism
Appearing as a panellist on the BBC's political debate programme Question Time in January 2020, Fox said that Meghan Markle was not a victim of racism and described an audience member who called him a "white privileged male" as racist. The British actors' union Equity called him "a disgrace to our industry" for his views, but withdrew its criticism and apologised two months later.
In January 2020, Fox attracted media attention for stating that the depiction of a Sikh soldier in the film 1917 was "forced diversity" in spite of Sikh soldiers having fought on the Western Front in the First World War. When interviewed, he explained, "I suppose it would have been less incongruous to me if he'd got on the truck to a whole regiment of Sikh soldiers. [...] I mean, as you've noticed, I say quite a lot of unfortunate things, but I think it's really important that one is able to express one's opinion." He followed by apologising on Twitter to "fellow humans who are Sikhs" and wrote, "I am as moved by the sacrifices your relatives made as I am by the loss of all those who die in war, whatever creed or colour. Please accept my apology for being clumsy in the way I expressed myself."
In August 2021, Fox posted a tweet stating "get kneeling, fuckers" about the recent arrest of black footballer Benjamin Mendy on charges of rape and sexual assault. The tweet was removed by Twitter and the account was temporarily locked for violating its rules against "hateful conduct".
In August 2023, Fox posted a photo of himself in blackface, describing himself as having "racially transitioned".
Views on progress pride flag
In June 2022, Fox tweeted an image of a swastika made from the Progress Pride flag with the caption, "You can openly call the [Union Flag] a symbol of fascism and totalitarianism on Twatter [sic]. You cannot criticise the holy flags." This led to him being suspended from Twitter for a day. His actions were publicly condemned by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Campaign Against Antisemitism.
Political activity
Reclaim Party
In September 2020, Fox attracted funding for a new political party, provisionally called Reclaim, and dubbed "UKIP for culture". In October 2020, Fox became leader of the party, succeeding Jeremy Hosking.
It emerged in October 2020 that the party name had yet to be successfully registered with the Electoral Commission and that there was a naming conflict with the "Reclaim Project" of Manchester, an established charity in Manchester endeavouring to give opportunities to working-class children. The name Reclaim Party was approved in February 2021 as an identity mark for Brexit Express.
In May 2023 the Reclaim Party gained its first MP, Andrew Bridgen, after he was expelled from the governing Conservative Party. Bridgen resigned from the party in December 2023.
In July 2023, Fox stood in the 2023 Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election as a Reclaim Party candidate. He finished fourth with 2.3% of the vote, losing his deposit.
2021 candidacy for London mayor
In March 2021, Fox announced he would stand in the London mayoral elections, in order to "fight against extreme political correctness" and pledging to "end the Met's obsession with diversity and inclusivity." His candidacy was endorsed by Reform UK, who stood aside for him in the election, and Nigel Farage.
The major source of Fox's campaign funds was Brexit backer Jeremy Hosking, who, in the first quarter of 2021, gave the Reclaim Party more than £1,000,000 in cash and services. Fox finished in sixth place with 47,634 votes (1.9%) in the mayoral election. He lost his £10,000 election deposit.
2024 London elections
Fox attempted to stand in 2024 London mayoral election but failed to fill in the nomination forms correctly. The election authorities returned Fox's deposit and other fees.
He was a candidate on the London-wide list in the 2024 London Assembly election, though he stood under 'no description', rather than for Reclaim. He received 13,795 out of a total 2,476,687 votes (0.56%) and was not elected, losing his £5,000 deposit.
Legal issues
Blake, Seymour and Thorp v Fox defamation and libel lawsuit
In October 2020, Fox announced he would boycott the supermarket Sainsbury's because they "support racial segregation and discrimination", making reference to the store establishing "safe spaces" for black employees, while asking others to do the same. Sainsbury's later clarified that the safe spaces were online support groups established in response to Black Lives Matter and were promoted as part of support for Black History Month. Feeling he was "falsely smeared as a racist", Fox replied to a number of tweets reacting to that announcement by calling their authors paedophiles. Two of those people, RuPaul's Drag Race UK contestant Crystal (Colin Seymour) and Simon Blake, deputy chair of the LGBT rights charity Stonewall, both gay men, later announced they would sue Fox for defamation. Fox deleted the tweets and explained in further tweets that he wanted to teach people a lesson in calling people something which they are not.
In April 2021, Crystal and Blake lodged a claim for defamation in the High Court and were joined in the legal action by actress Nicola Thorp, whom Fox also called a paedophile. In response, Fox filed a countersuit over the accusations of racism. In December 2021, judge Barbara Fontaine urged the protagonists to reach a compromise; Fox's lawyers had estimated his legal costs would be between £360,000 and £500,000 for a full trial.
In April 2022, Fox requested a jury trial and said that "a judge could show involuntary bias", the first such request since the Defamation Act 2013. It was refused. Court documents revealed that this request cost Fox legal fees of more than £116,000. Later that month the High Court ruled that Fox must pay more than £36,000 in legal fees to Blake, Seymour and Thorp.
The trial progressed at the High Court to decisions on preliminary issues such as the "natural and ordinary" meanings of the tweets, which included that they were a factual claim that "Ms Thorp was a paedophile". Fox took this decision to the Court of Appeal, who ruled in August 2023 that they were "satisfied that the ordinary reasonable reader of that tweet would not have taken the word [paedophile] literally", but dismissed Fox's other challenges.
The libel trial and trials for counterclaims was heard between 22 November and 1 December 2023 at the High Court by Mrs Justice Collins Rice as judge, with Blake and Seymour as claimants, against Fox as defendant and counterclaimant, and Thorp as defendant to the counterclaim.
On 29 January 2024 a judgment was given with Justice Collins Rice ruling in favour of the claimants. The judge ruled that Fox's labelling of Crystal and Blake as paedophiles was "seriously harmful, defamatory and baseless" and Fox's tweets "the very epitome of 'mere retaliation' – an escalatory and disproportionate response by way of entirely irrelevant statements." In ruling against Fox, the judge summarised that "the law affords few defences to defamation of this sort. Mr Fox did not attempt to show these allegations were true, and he was not able to bring himself on the facts within the terms of any other defence recognised in law."
Fox's counterclaims of defamation against Crystal, Blake and Thorp were also dismissed. Whilst the judge did not make a judgement on whether or not describing Fox as "a racist" was "substantially true", the judge ruled that the expression of such opinions were unlikely to significantly damage his reputation and that there were multiple other probable causes to any reputational damage. The judge summarised that "Mr Fox did not attempt to show these allegations were true, and he was not able to bring himself on the facts within the terms of any other defence recognised in law".
After the ruling, Fox said he was considering an appeal. On 25 April 2024, it was announced that Fox would have to pay a total of £180,000 in compensatory damages to Crystal and Blake.
Defamation complaint following 2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony comments
During the opening ceremonies of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris on 26 July Fox commented on a segment featuring French drag performer and host of Drag Race France Nicky Doll, along with other French drag performers, calling them "deviant little pedos" and "child fuckers" on Twitter. Nicky Doll responded the following day on Twitter saying "Lawyer on the line, see you in court!" Doll later posted on 2 August that he had filed a defamation complaint against Fox and other Twitter users through lawyer Anne-Sophie Laguens and NGO Stop Homophobie. As of 3 August Fox has not yet responded.
2023 arrest
On 4 October 2023, multiple news sources reported that Fox had been arrested by police on suspicion of conspiring to commit criminal damage to ULEZ cameras and encouraging or assisting offences to be committed. He was reported as having said on the previous day in an interview on Rumble that he declared support for a ULEZ vigilante group, saying: "I encourage them to tear down every single camera there is and I will be joining them [...] I am pretty close with several and I will be out there with my angle grinder."
Fox v Yassin (2024) libel lawsuit
On 31 January 2024, a hearing was held at the High Court whereby Fox is taking legal action against a man who called him a "racist" on social media. Fox sued Mukhtar Ali Yassin for libel over a row on X (formerly known as Twitter) over four tweets sent during the exchange in May 2023. Ben Gallop, representing Fox, told the court that Yassin had made "seriously defamatory allegations of racism against my client that are bare comments". Judge Mrs Justice Collins Rice ruled that a hearing should take place to decide whether the posts were statements of fact or opinion, and what should be included in any future trial. Fox said in March 2024 that he had discontinued the case; Yassin said Fox had agreed to its dismissal, paying thousands of pounds of legal fees to do so.
2024 police investigation
On 3 May 2024, multiple news sources reported that Fox was under investigation by police for sharing an upskirt photo of the broadcaster Narinder Kaur on Twitter.
Personal life
Fox met actress Billie Piper while they were performing together in the play Treats in 2006. They started dating soon after, were married on 31 December 2007. Fox and Piper have two sons. They divorced in May 2016. In 2024, Piper commented on the divorce in British Vogue, where she expressed the desire for her children to have privacy and anonymity, and the difficulty of this given Fox's public profile. Fox disputed some of Piper's claims. He also said that the pair had been to court many times since their split and criticised the family court system as biased towards the mother.
In June 2024, Fox announced his engagement to Elizabeth Barker.
In an October 2012 Independent interview, Fox described himself as a "vaguely lapsed Christian" who occasionally prays and thinks "the world is a better place for people who believe in God" despite not having "squared that circle" himself.
Filmography
Film
Television
Some information in this table was obtained from Laurence Fox: Filmography, Internet Movie Database (IMDb), retrieved 16 March 2008.
Theatre
Some information in this table was obtained from the following websites: Laurence Fox, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, archived from the original on 3 February 2008, retrieved 18 March 2008; Laurence Fox: Other works, Internet Movie Database (IMDb), retrieved 16 March 2008.
Discography
Albums
Holding Patterns (2016)
A Grief Observed (2019)
Singles/EPs
"Gunfight" (2012)
"So Be Damned" (2013)
Sorry for My Words EP (2013)
"Headlong" (2015)
"Rise Again" (2016)
References
External links
Laurence Fox – official site
Laurence Fox at IMDb
Laurence Fox discography at Discogs
Laurence Fox at Hello! |
2021_London_mayoral_election | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_London_mayoral_election | [
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] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_London_mayoral_election"
] | The 2021 London mayoral election was held on 6 May 2021 to elect the mayor of London. It was held simultaneously with elections for the London Assembly, other local elections across England and Wales, and devolved elections in Scotland and Wales. The mayoral and Assembly elections were to be held on the 7th of May 2020, but in March 2020 the government announced the election would be postponed until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sadiq Khan was re-selected as the Labour candidate in 2018, the Conservative Party selected Shaun Bailey and the Green Party chose Siân Berry. Rory Stewart, a former Conservative MP and minister, ran as an independent before withdrawing due to the delay in the election. Siobhan Benita, who had been the Liberal Democrat candidate, also withdrew after the election delay. She was replaced as the party's candidate by Luisa Porritt. Twenty candidates appeared on the ballot, more than in any previous election for the position.
Sadiq Khan of the Labour Party was re-elected, winning 40% of first preference votes and 55% in a run-off against Bailey.
Background
The mayor of London has responsibilities covering policing, transport, housing, planning, economic development, arts, culture and the environment. They control a budget of around £17 billion per year. Mayors are typically elected for a period of four years, with no limit to the number of terms served. Under the Greater London Authority Act 1999, mayoral elections are held on the first Thursday in May in the fourth calendar year following the previous election, unless varied by an order by the Secretary of State. On 13 March 2020, the government announced the election would be postponed until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The change in election date was ignored when calculating the four-yearly election cycle. Consequently, the following election was held in 2024, and Khan served a reduced term of three years. The incumbent mayor, Sadiq Khan, a member of the Labour Party, was elected in the 2016 election, when he defeated the Conservative candidate, Zac Goldsmith.
In the 2018 local elections across Greater London the Labour Party increased its number of council seats to the highest level since 1978. The Liberal Democrats and the Green Party also gained seats. In the 2019 European Parliament elections, the Liberal Democrats came first in London. They won the most votes in the London region with 27%, returning three Members of European Parliament (MEPs), the party's best ever result. The Labour Party came second, with 24% of the vote, losing two seats to end up with two MEPs. The Brexit Party returned two MEPs and the Green Party won 12.5% of the vote, holding its one seat. The Conservative Party failed to get a single MEP elected in London for the first time in the party's history. In the 2019 general election, there was no net change in the number of seats for any party, although several seats changed hands. The biggest changes in vote share were for Labour, who saw a fall of 6.5%, and the Liberal Democrats, who were up 6.1%, compared to the previous 2017 general election.
Electoral system
The election used a supplementary vote system, in which voters express a first and a second preference for candidates.
If a candidate receives more than 50% of the first preference vote, that candidate wins
If no candidate receives more than 50% of first preference votes, the top two candidates proceed to a second round and all other candidates are eliminated
The first preference votes for the remaining two candidates stand in the final count
Voters' ballots whose first and second preference candidates have both been eliminated are discarded
Voters whose first preference candidates have been eliminated and whose second preference candidate is one of the top two have their second preference votes added to that candidate's count
This means that the winning candidate has the support of a majority of voters who expressed a preference among the top two. The 2021 election is planned to be the last conducted using the supplementary vote system; in March 2021, the Government indicated its plan to change the voting system to first past the post from 2024.
All registered electors (British, Irish, Commonwealth and European Union citizens) living in London aged 18 or over were entitled to vote in the mayoral election. Those who were temporarily away from London at the time of the election (for example, away working, on holiday, in student accommodation or in hospital) were also entitled to vote in the mayoral election. The deadline to register to vote in the election was 11:59pm, 19 April 2021.
Mayoral candidates require 66 signatures of people on the electoral register in London supporting the nomination, 2 from each of the 32 London boroughs and 2 from the City of London, and must give a deposit of £10,000 (returned if they get more than 5% in the election). The required number of signatures was lowered from 330 to reduce person-to-person contact during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Due to measures related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the count was not completed until Sunday 9 May.
Campaign
Before the delay (2018–2020)
The incumbent mayor Sadiq Khan announced in June 2018 that he intended to stand for re-election. Later that year, he received enough nominations from local party groups and trade unions affiliated to the Labour Party that he was automatically re-selected to be the party's candidate. His re-selection followed speculation that a figure from the left wing of his party could challenge him for the candidacy. This speculation followed disagreements about the "direction of the party" between Khan and Jeremy Corbyn, who was the leader of the party nationally at the time. Khan announced in early 2020 that part of his election platform would be to deliver a "green new deal for the city". This would include making London carbon neutral by 2030 and opposing building a third runway at Heathrow Airport.
The Conservative Party selected Shaun Bailey as its candidate in September 2018. In his selection campaign, he emphasised fighting crime. This included "maximising" CCTV coverage of London as an alternative to increasing the number of police officers and giving automatic jail terms for acid attacks. In the weeks after his selection, Bailey was criticised for sharing an Islamophobic tweet attacking Sadiq Khan. He was also criticised for controversial views he had published earlier in his career about multiculturalism, Islam and Hinduism. He was the first Conservative mayoral candidate to also stand in the London Assembly election at the same time.
The Green Party chose Siân Berry as their candidate in February 2019. She had been their mayoral candidate in the 2008 and 2016 elections and had served as co-leader of the party since 2018. She launched her campaign with a focus on housing, calling for a "people's land bank" which would let communities bring empty buildings and land back into use.
Siobhan Benita was selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate in November 2018. Benita had run as an independent candidate in the 2012 London mayoral election. She had come in fifth with 3.8% of first preference votes, while the fourth-placed Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick received 4.2%. Benita criticised Khan's action on knife crime in London. She formally launched her campaign for the London mayoral election on 13 February 2020. She said she wants to legalise cannabis in London. This would reduce levels of knife crime, she said, by removing power and money from gangs and freeing up police time. She also pledged to reduce violent crime in general and reopen closed police stations. On the environment, she said she would reduce air pollution and declared an aim to "reach zero-carbon" by 2030.
The former UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage said in August 2018 that he was considering running as the UKIP candidate. He said that he would be more successful than the Conservatives. He left UKIP in December 2018 and became the leader of the Brexit Party in March 2019.
On 4 October 2019, Rory Stewart announced he was standing as an independent candidate for the London mayoralty. At the time he was sitting as an independent MP. He had been a Conservative MP and came fifth in the Conservative leadership election. He was then expelled from their Parliamentary group due to his opposition to a "no deal" Brexit. He left the House of Commons when he did not contest a seat in the December 2019 general election. In February, he asked for people to sign up for him to stay on their sofa for a night so that he could listen to their concerns.
After postponement (2020–2021)
On 13 March 2020, the election was delayed to May 2021 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Other local elections in England were also delayed. Stewart withdrew from the campaign in May 2020, saying the delay in the election meant it was impractical to sustain a campaign as an independent. He chose not to endorse any other candidate. In July 2020, Benita withdrew from the campaign; she also cited the financial difficulties of sustaining her candidacy. The Liberal Democrats selected Luisa Porritt as their new candidate on 13 October 2020. She called for a curfew on bars and restaurants that was in place as part of pandemic restrictions to be removed.
Following the first COVID-19 lockdown, the United Kingdom saw a sharp fall in public transport use. This led to the government giving Transport for London (TfL) a bailout of £1.6 billion. The national government made the bailout conditional on the London government raising fees on the service, increasing the London congestion charge, ending free bus travel for the young and suspending free travel at certain times for over-60s. Bailey accused Khan of raising the congestion charge, which Full Fact said was inaccurate. The bailout contributed to concern that Boris Johnson's Conservative government wanted to intrude on the mayor's authority. Later in 2020, the housing minister Robert Jenrick sent a letter to Khan which said that the council housing programme and the balloting of council housing estates on any estate changes put into the new 2020 London plan should be dropped. The letter also criticised Khan's proposal for rent controls. On 24 October, Khan wrote on the LabourList blog that he wouldn't support the proposals from the government.
In December 2020, Bailey published leaflets with City Hall branded claiming that Khan was raising council taxes by 21.2%. Lawyers for the Labour Party referred the matter to the Crown Prosecution Service, saying that the leaflets were illegally fraudulent under the Representation of the People Act 1983. In February 2021 The Guardian reported that nearly 40% of donations to Bailey's campaign had come from the businessman Michael Ashcroft.
Tensions arose in some cases around campaigning under lockdown restrictions. On 24 January 2021, Rose and six of his staff were fined by the police for breaking lockdown rules while filming promotional material for his campaign. That month, the government said that door-to-door campaigning or leafleting by individual party activists was not allowed under COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. In February, Rose was stopped by police while canvassing who told him it was not allowed under COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. Rose complained the restrictions prevented him from competing with larger political parties. In March, police visited the Reclaim Party candidate Laurence Fox to warn him about coronavirus regulations.
The Times reported that officials in the Conservative Party had twice tried to remove Bailey as their candidate, but had decided not to as they could not find a "credible alternative".
Policy and the short campaign (March 2021 – May 2021)
The official Statement of Persons Nominated was published on 31 March. Twenty candidates will appear on the ballot, significantly more than in any previous election for the position.
A number of debates were broadcast. In late April, Khan, Bailey, Berry and Porritt took part in a debate hosted by the BBC and another hosted by ITV.
Sadiq Khan
On 5 March, Khan launched his campaign for re-election in a café which had received business support from City Hall, including having raised money through a business support scheme Khan had introduced. He announced a programme for his prospective second term focused on economic recovery and employment following the COVID-19 pandemic. This included investing in the West End to attract tourism and supporting people who had lost their jobs to find new work. He also said he would make it easier for businesses to access support. The launch was protested by six residents opposed to a low traffic neighbourhood that Enfield London Borough Council had implemented. He later said he would "kickstart London's sporting economy". This would include seeking for Indian Premier League matches to take place in London. In May, he promised to examine a sustainability-focused bid for London to host the Olympic Games in 2036 or 2040.
On transport and the environment, Khan expressed support for the use of low traffic neighbourhoods and said that roads should be used by "blue light services, to electricians, to plumbers, to commercial drivers, to taxis, to those that need to use our roads—delivery drivers and so forth—rather than individuals that could be walking, cycling and using public transport." He said that if re-elected, he would seek government funding to accelerate TfL's transition to zero-emission buses, so that the move would be complete by 2030 rather than 2037. He also promised to expand the availability of 4G on the London Underground. On 22 April, Khan said he was giving his second preference to Berry and asked his supporters to do the same.
On housing, he set a target of 10,000 new council homes and said he would build more on TfL land. He further said that he would explore options including a fund to allow councils to buy back former council houses, supporting a new factory for off-site construction, and starting a Greater London Authority-owned company to build affordable homes directly. On crime, Khan said he would continue to seek government funding for 6,000 more police officers in London and provide more technology funding to the Metropolitan Police. He also promised to launch an independent commission of experts to study the effects of decriminalising cannabis.
He was endorsed by singer Dua Lipa.
Shaun Bailey
On 4 March, Bailey claimed that Khan had failed to meet more than half of his 2016 election promises. He said that, if elected, he would start a "London-wide campaign" against litter to remind people to use bins. During a debate on 20 April, he said he would ban Quds Day marches in London. His manifesto proposed an annual festival in the city based on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
On transport and the environment, Bailey said he would seek corporate sponsors for London Underground stations to raise money, and start a new bank to finance transport projects, including 4G access on the London Underground. He said he would offer interest-free loans to black cab drivers to pay for 10% of the cost of an electric vehicle, and promised to make TfL's bus fleet zero-emission by 2025. He said that if elected, he would hold a competition to design murals for the city. He also pledged to plant half a million new trees. On tax and the economy, Bailey said he would lobby the government to allow the Greater London Authority to keep the full amount of business rates paid, rather than 75%. He also proposed the establishment of an infrastructure bank to raise private finance for infrastructure probjects, including making repairs to Hammersmith Bridge.
On housing, he said he would start a Greater London Authority-owned company called Housing for London to build houses. He also said he would make beauty an important planning criterion and build 100,000 shared ownership homes which people could buy a share in for £5,000. On crime, Bailey said he would hire 8,000 more police officers and reopen dozens of police stations. He would introduce a fund to help former prisoners get qualifications. He also promised to install a CCTV camera on every bus stop. On 19 April, Bailey said that, if elected, he would "visibly make a difference" to crime in the first hundred days by increasing police patrols and "boost" usage of stop-and-search. He also promised to open a new youth centre in every borough and hire 4,000 youth workers. He said he would require large employers to subject their staff to drug tests and publish league tables of companies with the most and least drug use.
The billionaire property developer Nick Candy led a fundraising campaign for Bailey.
Siân Berry
In February 2021, Berry said she would focus on LGBT rights. This included making London the most "trans-inclusive city in the world" and protecting LGBT spaces. In an interview in March, she proposed a voluntary increase in the London living wage amongst accredited employers to £14 an hour. She also said she would improve London's bus stops, reduce speed limits with the goal of no road deaths, put more toilets in London Underground stations, and close London City Airport to build houses on the site. Berry published her manifesto in April, which included plans to establish a fund to introduce repair centres and a library of things in each borough.
On transport and the environment, Berry supported the expansion of 4G access across the London Underground. She promised to merge TfL fare zones with the eventual goal of reaching a single fare zone for the entire city. Her manifesto included a proposal to extend London's Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to cover the entire city, and a goal to cut traffic in terms of the number of miles travelled by 40% by 2026. She would also implement a pay-as-you-go road pricing scheme. She also promised to end the use of incineration and landfill, making London a zero waste city by 2030. She promised to "gold plate" the green belt to prevent development, and instead plant new woodlands and increase food production on green belt land. She said the next mayor should take direct control of Oxford Street and Kensington High Street to stop local councils blocking cycling schemes and part-pedestrianisation.
On housing, she said she would start a commission to reduce private rent. On tax and the economy, she proposed a "Creative Autonomy Allowance" scheme whereby 1,000 young artists and entrepreneurs would be paid a monthly income for three years to support the start of their careers. On crime, Berry pledged to reduce the number of murders in the city to zero in ten years by investing in preventative measures. She said that violence could be reduced by reallocating police resources away from minor drug offences and large presences at protests. She said she would introduce a target for an even gender balance amongst new Metropolitan Police recruits. She also supported the introduction of supervised injection sites.
Luisa Porritt
When she was selected, Porritt said that if elected she would use empty office buildings for housing and revive town centres in the suburbs. She said that Low Traffic Neighbourhood plans and the introduction of cycle lanes were being rushed and "a good idea being done the wrong way". In March 2021, she formally launched her campaign. She pledged to diversify high streets away from shops and towards services and start a "London Housing Company" to convert empty buildings and build new housing. She also proposed a trial of a universal basic income for the city.
On transport and the environment, Porritt said she would make the city's rental bicycles free on Sundays for a year, and increase the area covered by rental bicycles to Lewisham and Greenwich. Porritt questioned Khan's environmentalism given his support for the Silvertown Tunnel project, which she called his "dirty little secret". She proposed a road pricing policy to replace the ULEZ, congestion charged and proposed boundary charge. The pay-as-you-go scheme would work by charging drivers based on "the number of journeys you make, the distance travelled, the type of vehicle you have, the level of emissions that produces", and its proceeds would go towards TfL's funding. Her proposals also included establishing ten new parks and including a green roof on all new buildings. On housing, she said she would focus on giving young people access to shelter throughout the year in a bid to end homelessness.
On crime, she said she would double the number of police officers assigned to each ward and investigate reopening thirty police stations. She said she would "effectively legalise cannabis by encouraging the Met Police not to prosecute cannabis crimes".
Other candidates
On 30 March 2021, Laurence Fox said he had made an agreement with Reform UK leader Richard Tice that Reform UK wouldn't field a candidate in the mayoral election. Tice and other Reform UK members attended Fox's campaign launch that month, while the party's former leader, Nigel Farage, also endorsed Fox. In April, Fox proposed six months of free bus and London Underground travel, saying that the increase in economic activity would pay for the cost of lost fares, which he said would be £500 million. Fox has spread misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic and calls the threat of COVID-19 variants "scaremongering". He said that if elected, he would instruct the Metropolitan Police and schools to not enforce pandemic-related restrictions. His campaign was funded by the businessman Jeremy Hosking.
The Guardian noted a wave of social media content creators turning to local elections for content, Niko Omilana, Max Fosh and Brian Rose. Rose, a podcaster who has actively promoted misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, stood for the London Real Party. He was reported to be second favourite in the contest by a bookmaker. He said he had made substantial bets on himself "[b]ut not enough to move the markets." In the run-up to the election, he was polling in the low single figures. He said he had spent more than a million pounds on billboards and that he was "going to pull off the biggest upset in British political history". He pledged that if elected he would build 50,000 new homes on TfL land by Christmas 2021. On 22 April, Lib Dem candidate Luisa Porritt said he should withdraw from the election after the Jewish Leadership Council and the London Jewish Forum described conspiracy theories proposed by David Icke expounded in a video with Rose, which Rose did not challenge, as "clearly antisemitic". During the campaign, a 2018 video of Rose drinking his own urine resurfaced. Speaking about the video, he said "I actually think this shows why I'm the best candidate, I'm open to new ideas."
Mandu Reid, the Women's Equality Party candidate, said that if elected she would offer an extension of the national government's programme of 30 days free childcare to eligible London residents who were retraining after losing their jobs. She also said that she would reallocate money Khan had planned to use to fund more police on the street to 'establish a specialist squad within the Met "to rebuild trust and get justice" for women suffering violence, as part of a "perpetrator strategy"'.
Piers Corbyn, the candidate for the Let London Live party, told the BBC that he would "end lockdown on day one" if he were elected. Corbyn is a conspiracy theorist who has promoted misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19, including calling the virus a "hoax". He is sceptical of climate change and is an anti-vaxxer. He has been fined and arrested during the campaign for breaches of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, including an arrest on suspicion of malicious communications and public nuisance over his distributing a leaflet comparing COVID-19 vaccination programme with the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. His policy platform includes a pledge to prevent extension of London's Ultra Low Emission Zone.
Count Binface, the satirical candidate for the Count Binface Party, pledged to rename London Bridge the Phoebe Waller Bridge. His manifesto also included a croissant price cap and tying government officials' pay to nurses' pay. He said that he wasn't going to win, but that the supplementary vote system meant that voters could give him their first preference and vote for or against Khan with their second preference.
On 21 April, an opinion poll showed that the independent candidate Niko Omilana, a YouTuber who makes prank videos, on 5% of the vote, ahead of all candidates other than Khan, Bailey, Berry and Porritt. His policy platform centred on telling the prime minister Boris Johnson to "shush". Omilana's manager said "it's an investment for him" as more brands would be interested in working with him after the campaign. Omilana was endorsed by fellow YouTubers Keemstar and KSI. Max Fosh, another YouTuber standing in the election, "urged people not to vote for him" and used his platform to encourage young people to vote and to troll Fox.
Valerie Brown, the Burning Pink candidate, was arrested in the early hours of Saturday 8 May, between the election and the announcement of the results. Her campaign manager, Ramon Salgado-Touzon, was arrested on Friday 7 May. Both were accused of criminal damage after spraying pink paint on offices of The Guardian newspaper. Brown was previously arrested and charged with criminal damage of windows at HSBC's headquarters on 22 April.
Candidates
Labour Party
The incumbent mayor Sadiq Khan, who announced in June 2018 that he would run for re-election, became Labour's candidate after more than half of local parties and party affiliates in London voted to automatically reselect him. The comedian Eddie Izzard and Tottenham MP David Lammy had been suggested as potential candidates for the party.
Conservative Party
Shaun Bailey was selected as the candidate of the Conservative Party in September 2018. Bailey has been a member of the London Assembly since 2016, having worked as a youth worker and as a special adviser to David Cameron.
The party had started the process for selecting their candidate in June 2018. The Guardian reported that more than twenty prospective candidates applied, mostly from local government. A longlist of ten was published in July 2018. Following interviews, the party produced a shortlist of three for London members of the Conservative Party to vote on using a preferential voting system. To vote, members needed to reside in London and to have been members on 26 June 2018.
Bailey had been endorsed in the party's selection process by the Evening Standard, as well as Conservative police and crime commissioners Anthony Stansfeld, David Lloyd, Matthew Scott and Roger Hirst.
Green Party
Siân Berry, who has been a Member of the London Assembly since 2016 and was co-leader of the Green Party from 2018 to 2021, was announced as the party's mayoral candidate on 14 February 2019. She had been the party's candidate for mayor of London in 2008, when she came fourth with 3.2% of the first preference vote, and in 2016, when she came third with 5.8% of the first preference vote. Nominations had opened in November 2018 and closed in January 2019, with four candidates duly nominated. The other nominated candidates were former deputy leader and candidate for the UK Parliament, London Assembly and European Parliament Shahrar Ali, actor and Cities of London and Westminster December 2019 candidate Zack Polanski, as well as former senior civil servant, general election candidate and London Assembly candidate Peter Underwood.
Liberal Democrats
Luisa Porritt, a former Member of the European Parliament from 2019 to 2020 and a councillor in Camden, was selected as the party's candidate in October 2020. Initially, the party had selected Siobhan Benita, a former senior civil servant and 2012 independent candidate for London mayor. Benita withdrew in July 2020 after the election was postponed to 2021.
In the first selection process, Benita was chosen to be the Liberal Democrat candidate on 21 November 2018. The other shortlisted candidates were the anti-Brexit campaigner and former and 2020 London Assembly candidate Rob Blackie, Ebookers founder Dinesh Dhamija, and former parliamentary candidate, consultant and 2020 London Assembly candidate Lucy Salek. Benita came first among first preferences, but with less than half the votes. After last-placed Lucy Salek was eliminated and second preferences among her voters tallied, Benita had a majority of the votes cast and was chosen as the party's candidate.
The former Conservative parliamentary candidates Azi Ahmed and Kishan Devani had previously been discussed as potential Liberal Democrat candidates for the mayoralty, as had Rachel Johnson, a journalist and sister of Boris Johnson, the Conservative Prime Minister and a former mayor of London.
However, on 27 July 2020, Benita announced her withdrawal from the candidacy, saying she was unable to commit to another year of campaigning following the election's postponement to 2021 given the unpaid nature of the role. The party began a new selection process following Benita's withdrawal. A shortlist of two candidates was announced on 10 September: Luisa Porritt and Geeta Sidhu-Robb. Porritt had served as an MEP for London from 2019 to 2020 and as a councillor on Camden London Borough Council from 2018, having become group leader earlier in September 2020. Sidhu-Robb had previously worked as a lawyer, and was the founder and chief executive of the health company Nosh Detox. She had formerly served as the vice-chair of the People's Vote campaign and served as chair of its successor, Democracy Unleashed.
On 13 September, two days after the shortlist was announced, footage of Sidhu-Robb from the 1997 general election, when she was the Conservative candidate for the seat of Blackburn, re-emerged in which Sidhu-Robb said (in what has been reported to be Urdu or Gujarati), "Don't vote for a Jew, Jack Straw is a Jew. If you vote for him, you're voting for a Jew. Jews are the enemies of Muslims". A few hours later, Sidhu-Robb was suspended from the party and as a candidate. Sidhu-Robb apologised for the comments and said she had regretted making them at the time. Following these events, Benita revealed that she had not only stood down as candidate, but had also resigned from the party.
As a result, a vote among the membership was held on the same timetable, but with Porritt standing against only the option to reopen nominations. The result was announced on 13 October 2020, with Porritt being selected.
Other parties and candidates
The following people also stood.
Candidates who had indicated intention to stand
Environmental campaigner Rosalind Readhead intended to stand, but withdrew from the race 30 March 2021 to help stop the environmental vote being split. London-based rapper Drillminister had announced his candidacy as an independent candidate, campaigning on reducing homelessness, improving transport, increasing mental health support, diversifying the Metropolitan Police Service and rehabilitation to curb crime and improving air quality in the capital. Charlie Mullins, founder of Pimlico Plumbers, had announced he would stand as an independent. Winston McKenzie, an activist and perennial candidate, had also announced he was intending to stand for the party he founded and leads, Unity in Action. Drillminister, Mullins and McKenzie were all absent from the list of candidates nominated.
Opinion polls
Graphical summary
The chart below shows opinion polls conducted for the 2021 London mayoral election. The trend lines are local regressions (LOESS).
After May 2020
Before May 2020
The polls below were taken when the election was expected in May 2020. Rory Stewart and Siobhan Benita both dropped out of the election following its delay.
Results
Counting of the votes started on Friday 7 May at 7am. Due to measures taken to limit the spread of coronavirus, a result came on the evening of Saturday 8 May. Turnout at the election was 42%.
Analysis and reactions
The result was closer than expected, with Bailey receiving a greater than expected share of the vote compared to polling and despite receiving few resources from Conservative Campaign HQ. Unlike incumbents in Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and Tees Valley, Khan saw his victory margin cut, and Bailey received the largest number of first preference votes in Ealing and Hillingdon, and Brent and Harrow, two constituencies where Khan won the most votes in the previous election.
Khan's first round vote share was down 4.2%, while Bailey's first round vote share was up 0.3% on the candidate in 2016. Berry's vote share was up 2.0%. The Liberal Democrats were down 0.2%. UKIP's vote share fell by 3%. The only other party that stood a candidate in 2016 and 2021 were the Women's Equality Party, who saw their vote share fall by 1.2%.
Two prominent YouTubers stood as candidates, both claiming that they successfully engaged young people in the election. Max Fosh came second to last and said he had no intention of standing as a candidate again, but Niko Omilana came fifth. Fosh told the BBC that he made about £4,500 from YouTube videos of his campaign, a net loss of £5500 taking into account his lost deposit, but that he also gained followers. Omilana did not answer the BBC's enquiries on this matter, but Hussein Kesvani estimated he would make back his lost deposit through increased YouTube revenues.
This was the Lib Dems' second-worst performance, only behind 2012. It also marked the third time in a row both that they had lost their deposit and had come fourth in London; this led the Green Party to suggest the Lib Dems are no longer London's third party, although the Liberal Democrats maintain far greater representation than the Green Party among MPs, councillors and controlled councils in London.
The election saw an unusually high number of spoiled votes – 4.3%, up from around 2% at previous elections. The majority of spoiled ballots were rejected for voting for too many candidates. This was attributed to the confusing ballot paper design – voters were told to vote once in each column for their first and second preferences, but the candidates were themselves arranged into two columns. The rate of spoiled ballots was highest in deprived areas where Labour is traditionally strongest, and Lewis Baston of OnLondon suggested that Khan's vote was disproportionately affected by the unusually high rejection rate. Khan's spokesman said he was "deeply concerned by the issues around the ballot paper and the effective disenfranchisement of 100,000 Londoners".
See also
Other elections in the UK which were held on the same day:
2021 London Assembly election
2021 Scottish Parliament election
2021 Senedd election
2021 United Kingdom local elections
Notes
== References == |
1984_Summer_Olympics_medal_table | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Summer_Olympics_medal_table | [
749
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Summer_Olympics_medal_table"
] | The 1984 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIII Olympiad, were a summer multi-sport event held in Los Angeles, California, United States, from July 28 to August 12. A total of 6,829 athletes from 140 nations participated in 221 events in 21 sports.
Overall, 47 nations received at least one medal, and 25 of them won at least one gold medal. Athletes from host nation United States won the most medals overall, with 174, and the most gold medals, with 83. The former record was the largest overall medal haul for the nation since the 1904 edition; the latter record was the highest gold medal tally at a single Games in Olympic history and the most for a host nation. It marked the first time the United States led the medal count in both gold and overall medals since 1968. Sports commentators noted that the absence of the Soviet Union and various other Eastern Bloc nations stemming from a boycott contributed to the highly skewed medal results benefitting the United States and other countries. Romania won the second most gold medals (20) and the third most total medals (53), marking its highest medal tally in history. West Germany won the third most gold medals, with 17, and the second most total medals, with 59.
Runner Carl Lewis and gymnast Ecaterina Szabo won the most gold medals at the games with four each. Gymnast Li Ning won the greatest number of medals overall, winning six in total. Morocco and Portugal won their first Olympic gold medals. Algeria, Dominican Republic, Ivory Coast, Syria, and Zambia won their nation's first Olympic medals.
Medal table
The medal table is based on information provided by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and is consistent with IOC convention in its published medal tables. The table uses the Olympic medal table sorting method. By default, the table is ordered by the number of gold medals the athletes from a nation have won, where a nation is an entity represented by a National Olympic Committee (NOC). The number of silver medals is taken into consideration next, and then the number of bronze medals. If teams are still tied, equal ranking is given and they are listed alphabetically by their IOC country code.
In the boxing and judo events, two bronze medals are awarded in each weight class. Two gold medals (and no silver medals) were awarded for first place ties in the women's uneven bars, women's balance beam, and men's rings gymnastics events. Four silver medals (and no bronze) were awarded in the men's vault gymnastics competition. Two bronze medals were awarded for third-place ties in both the women's 100 metre hurdles and the men's pole vault competitions.
Key
‡ Changes in medal standings (see below)
* Host nation (United States)
Changes in medal standings
See also
All-time Olympic Games medal table
1984 Summer Paralympics medal table
Notes
References
External links
"Los Angeles 1984". Olympics.com. International Olympic Committee. |
Spain_at_the_1984_Summer_Olympics | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain_at_the_1984_Summer_Olympics | [
749
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain_at_the_1984_Summer_Olympics"
] | Spain competed at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, United States. 179 competitors, 163 men and 16 women, took part in 104 events in 23 sports.
Medalists
Archery
In its third Olympic archery competition, Spain was represented by two men and two women.
Women's Individual Competition:
Montserrat Martin – 2418 points (→ 28th place)
Ascension Guerra – 2304 points (→ 38th place)
Men's Individual Competition:
Manuel Rubio – 2390 points (→ 37th place)
José Prieto – 2341 points (→ 47th place)
Athletics
Men's 400 metres
Angel Heras
Heat — 46.06
Quarterfinals — 45.88 (→ did not advance)
Antonio Sánchez
Heat — 46.04
Quarterfinals — 45.79 (→ did not advance)
Men's 1,500 metres
José Manuel Abascal
Qualifying Heat — 3:37.68
Semi-Finals — 3:35.70
Final — 3:34.30 (→ Bronze Medal)
Andrés Vera
Qualifying Heat — 3:45.44
Semi-Finals — 3:36.55
Final — 3:37.02 (→ 7th place)
José Luis González
Qualifying Heat — 3:47.01 (→ did not advance)
Men's 5,000 metres
Jorge García
Heat — 14:12.15 (→ did not advance)
Men's 10,000 metres
Antonio Prieto
Qualifying Heat — 28:57.78 (→ did not advance)
Men's Marathon
Juan Carlos Traspaderne
Final — did not finish (→ no ranking)
Santiago de la Parte
Final — did not finish (→ no ranking)
Men's Long Jump
Antonio Corgos
Qualification — 8.02m
Final — 7.69m (→ 10th place)
Men's 20 km Walk
Josep Marín
Final — 1:25:32 (→ 6th place)
Men's 50 km Walk
Jordi Llopart
Final — 4:03:09 (→ 7th place)
Manuel Alcalde
Final — 4:05:47 (→ 9th place)
Men's Hammer Throw
Raul Jimeno
Qualification — 66.38m (→ did not advance)
Men's Pole Vault
Alberto Ruiz
Qualifying Round — 5.45m
Final — 5.20m (→ 9th place)
Alfonso Cano
Qualifying Round — no mark (→ did not advance)
Women's 100 metres
Teresa Rione
First Heat — 11.55s
Second Heat — 11.76s (→ did not advance)
Women's High Jump
Isabel Mozún
Qualification — 1.75m (→ did not advance, 26th place)
Basketball
Men's Team Competition
Preliminary round (Group B)
Defeated Canada (83-82)
Defeated Uruguay (107-90)
Defeated France (97-82)
Defeated PR China (102-83)
Lost to United States (68-101)
Quarterfinals
Defeated Australia (101-93)
Semifinals
Defeated Yugoslavia (74-61)
Final
Lost to United States (65-96) → Silver Medal
Team Roster
Fernando Romay
Juan San Epifanio
Ignacio Solozábal
José López
José Margall
Fernando Martín Espina
Juan de la Cruz
Andrés Jiménez
José Llorente
Fernando Arcega
José Beirán
Juan Corbalán
Boxing
Men's Light Flyweight (– 48 kg)
Agapito Gómez
First Round — Defeated Mahjoub Mjirich (MAR), on points (3:2)
Second Round — Lost to Marcelino Bolivar (VEN), on points (1:4)
Men's Flyweight (– 51 kg)
Julio Gómez
First Round — Lost to Alvaro Mercado (COL), on points (1:4)
Men's Featherweight (– 57 kg)
Raul Trapero
First Round — Bye
Second Round — Lost to Türgüt Aykaç (TUR) 0:5
Men's Lightweight (– 60 kg)
José Antonio Hernando
First Round — Bye
Second Round — Defeated Jean-Claude Labonte (SEY), 5:0
Third Round — Defeated Douglas Odane (GHA), 5:0
Quarterfinals — Lost to Luis Ortiz (PUR), 0:5
Canoeing
Cycling
Four cyclists represented Spain in 1984.
Individual road race
Francisco Antequera — 23rd place
Manuel Jorge Domínguez — did not finish (→ no ranking)
Miguel Induráin — did not finish (→ no ranking)
José Salvador Sanchis — did not finish (→ no ranking)
Diving
Men's 3m Springboard
Ricardo Camacho
Preliminary round — 509.10 (→ did not advance, 17th place)
Equestrianism
Fencing
Two fencers, both men, represented Spain in 1984.
Men's épée
Ángel Fernández
Men's sabre
Antonio García
Gymnastics
Handball
Men's Team Competition
Preliminary round (Group B)
Lost to West Germany (16:18)
Lost to Denmark (16:21)
Lost to Sweden (25:26)
Defeated United States (17:16)
Defeated South Korea (31:25)
Classification Match
7th/8th place: Lost to Switzerland (17:18) → 8th place
Team Roster
Cecilio Alonso
Juan Javier Cabanas
Juan de la Puente
Juan Pedro de Miguel
Pere García
Rafael López
Agustín Millán
Juan Francisco Muñoz
José Ignacio Novoa
Jaime Puig
Javier Reino
Lorenzo Rico
Julián Ruiz
Eugenio Serrano
Juan José Uría
Hockey
Men's Team Competition
Preliminary round (Group A)
Spain – West Germany 1-3
Spain – Australia 1-3
Spain – India 3-4
Spain – United States 3-1
Spain – Malaysia 3-1
Classification Matches
5th/8th place: Spain – Netherlands 0-0 (Netherlands win after penalty strokes, 10-4)
7th/8th place: Spain – New Zealand 0-1 (→ 8th place)
Team Roster
José Agut
Javier Cabot
Juan Arbós
Andrés Gómez
Juan Carlos Peón
Jaime Arbós
Ricardo Cabot
Juan Malgosa
Carlos Roca
Mariano Bordas
Ignacio Cobos
Jordi Oliva
Miguel de Paz
Ignacio Escudé
Santiago Malgosa
José Miguel García
Judo
Modern pentathlon
Three male modern pentathletes represented Spain in 1984.
Individual
Jorge Quesada
Eduardo Burguete
Federico Galera
Team
Jorge Quesada
Eduardo Burguete
Federico Galera
Rhythmic gymnastics
Rowing
There were eight competitions for men and Spain qualified four boats, but had no women competing in 1984. Although he had competed at the 1980 Summer Olympics, Manuel Vera Vázquez was still the youngest competitor of the Spanish rowing team. The coxless pair of Fernando Climent and Luis María Lasúrtegui was a surprise medallist, and as of 2016, the team's silver medal is the only Olympic rowing medal that the nation has ever won.
Sailing
Men
Open
Shooting
Men
Women
Open
Swimming
Men's 200m Freestyle
Juan Carlos Vallejo
Heat — 1:51.97
B-Final — 1:51.77 (→ 10th place)
Javier Miralpeix
Heat — 1:55.25 (→ did not advance, 28th place)
Men's 400m Freestyle
Juan Enrique Escalas
Heat — 3:55.93
B-Final — 3:55.25 (→ 10th place)
Men's 1500m Freestyle
Rafael Escalas
Heat — 15:30.09 (→ did not advance, 11th place)
Juan Enrique Escalas
Heat — 15:44.85 (→ did not advance, 18th place)
Men's 100m Backstroke
Ricardo Aldabe
Heat — 57.90
B-Final — 58.31 (→ 13th place)
Men's 200m Backstroke
Ricardo Aldabe
Heat — 2:03.94
Final — 2:04.53 (→ 7th place)
Men's 100m Breaststroke
Enrique Romero
Heat — 1:05.19 (→ did not advance, 18th place)
Men's 200m Breaststroke
Enrique Romero
Heat — 2:21.25
B-Final — 2:21.19 (→ 13th place)
Men's 100m Butterfly
David López-Zubero
Heat — 55.66
B-Final — 55.61 (→ 12th place)
Harri Garmendia
Heat — 55.97 (→ did not advance, 19th place)
Men's 200m Butterfly
Harri Garmendia
Heat — 2:02.37
B-Final — 2:01.82 (→ 15th place)
Men's 200m Individual Medley
Harri Garmendia
Heat — 2:08.30 (→ did not advance, 19th place)
Men's 400m Individual Medley
Rafael Escalas
Heat — DNS (→ did not advance, no ranking)
Men's 4 × 200 m Freestyle Relay
Juan Enrique Escalas, Rafael Escalas, Juan Carlos Vallejo, and David López-Zubero
Heat — 7:32.21 (→ did not advance, 11th place)
Synchronized swimming
Water polo
Men's Team Competition
Preliminary round (Group B)
Defeated Brazil (19-12)
Defeated Greece (12-9)
Lost to United States (8-10)
Final Round (Group D)
Drew with West Germany (8-8)
Defeated Netherlands (8-4)
Lost to Yugoslavia (8-14)
Drew with Australia (10-10) → 4th place
Team Roster
Leandro Ribera
José Morillo
Felix Férnandez
Alberto Canal
Manuel Estiarte
Pedro Robert
Rafael Aguilar
Jorge Signes
Antonio Aguilar
Jorge Carmona
Jorge Sans
Jorge Neira
Mariano Moya
Weightlifting
Wrestling
References
External links
Spanish Olympic Committee |
Sailing_at_the_1984_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_470 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_at_the_1984_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_470 | [
749
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_at_the_1984_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_470"
] | The 470 was a sailing event on the Sailing at the 1984 Summer Olympics program in Long Beach, Los Angeles County, California . Seven races were scheduled. 56 sailors, on 28 boats, from 28 nations competed.
Results
DNF = Did Not Finish, DNS= Did Not Start, DSQ = Disqualified, PMS = Premature Start, YMP = Yacht Materially Prejudiced
= Male, = Female
Daily standings
Notes
References
(ed.) Richard B. Perelman (1985). Official Report Los Angeles 1984,Volume 1: Organization and Planning (PDF). Los Angeles: Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee. Retrieved 24 January 2011. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
(ed.) Richard B. Perelman (1985). Official Report Los Angeles 1984,Volume 2: Competition and Summary and Results (PDF). Los Angeles: Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee. Retrieved 24 January 2011. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
Evans, Hilary; Gjerde, Arild; Heijmans, Jeroen; Mallon, Bill; et al. "Sailing at the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games: 470". Olympics at Sports-Reference.com. Sports Reference LLC. Archived from the original on 17 April 2020. Retrieved 24 January 2011.
Hugh Drake & Paul Henderson (2009). Canada's Olympic Sailing Legacy, Paris 1924 - Beijing 2008. Toronto: CYA. |
List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Alan_Menken | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Alan_Menken | [
750
] | [
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Alan_Menken"
] | This is a list of awards and nominations for composer Alan Menken. Menken has been recognized with multiple awards and nominations for his work in film, theatre, television, and music.
For his work in film he earned 19 Academy Award nominations winning 8 Oscars for The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and Pocahontas (1995). He also earned 16 Golden Globe Award nominations winning 7 awards. He has earned two British Academy Film Award nominations, and five Critics' Choice Movie Award nominations. For his work in theatre he received five Tony Award nominations winning once, and 2 Laurence Olivier Awards winning once. He also received 26 Grammy Awards nominations, winning 11 awards. For his work in television he has earned two Emmy Awards.
Major awards
Academy Awards
BAFTA Awards
Emmy Awards
Golden Globe Awards
Grammy Awards
Laurence Olivier Awards
Tony Awards
Miscellaneous awards
Annie Awards
BMI Film & TV Awards
Critics' Choice Awards
Drama Desk Awards
Drama League Awards
Evening Standard Theatre Awards
French Mickey d'Or
Georgia Film Critics Association Awards
Gold Derby Awards
Golden Raspberry Awards
Menken officially accepted this Razzie and has spoken proudly of it in interviews since.
Hawaii Film Critics Society Awards
Hollywood Film Awards
Hollywood Music in Media Awards
Houston Film Critics Society Awards
International Film Music Critics Association Awards
Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards
Latino Entertainment Journalists Association Film Awards
New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards
Online Film & Television Association Awards
Outer Critics Circle Awards
Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards
Saturn Awards
Society of Composers & Lyricists
St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Awards
Webby Awards
World Soundtrack Awards
Special honors
Disney Legends Awards
Hollywood Walk of Fame
Songwriters Hall of Fame
1993 – Distinguished Alumni Award (given by New York University Association)
1998 – Kol Zimrah Award (given by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion)
1998 – Colleen Dewhurst Awards: "in recognition for outstanding contribution to the arts" (given by Northern Westchester Center for the Arts)
2000 – Presidential Medal (given by New York University)
2008 – Inductee: NYU Musical Theatre Hall of Fame
2009 – Lifetime Achievement Award (given during the Musical Awards)
2011 – Maestro Award (given by Billboard/The Hollywood Reporter Film and TV Conference)
2012 – Honors: "for extraordinary life achievement" (given by Encompass New Opera Theatre)
2013 – The Oscar Hammerstein Award (given by York Theatre Company)
2013 – Broadway Junior Honors: "in recognition for his contribution towards the advancement of musical theatre for young people"
2013 – Freddie G. Award for Musical Achievement (given during Junior Theatre Festival)
Notes
== References == |
List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Tom_Hanks | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Tom_Hanks | [
750
] | [
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Tom_Hanks"
] | Actor, director, producer, and screenwriter Tom Hanks has been honored with numerous awards and nominations, including two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actor for playing a lawyer suffering with AIDs in Philadelphia (1993) and the title role in Forrest Gump (1994). He is one of two actors to receive them consecutively, the other being Spencer Tracy. Tom Hanks has won a total of 50 awards on this list. He has received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2002. He received the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2004. In 2014, he received a Kennedy Center Honor, and in 2016, he received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, as well as the French Legion of Honor. In 2020, he received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award.
Hanks made his starring film debut in Ron Howard's romantic comedy Splash (1984). During the eighties he starred in various comedies including Bachelor Party (1984), The Money Pit (1986), Nothing in Common (1986), Dragnet (1987), The 'Burbs (1989), and Turner & Hooch (1989). He made his breakthrough with in Penny Marshall's Big (1988) for which he earned an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination. Hanks' soon became known as a romantic leading man with his films with Meg Ryan, Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), and You've Got Mail (1999). In 1996, he directed the comedy That Thing You Do! (1996). He also is known for voicing Woody the Cowboy in the Toy Story franchise.
During the 1990s he excelled in critically acclaimed dramas such as Penny Marshall's A League of Their Own (1992), Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia (1993), Robert Zemeckis' Forrest Gump (1994), Ron Howard's Apollo 13 (1995), Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998), and Frank Darabont's The Green Mile (1999). Since the turn of the 21st century, Hanks' continued working in dramatic films, including Cast Away (2000), Road to Perdition (2002), Catch Me if You Can (2002), The Terminal (2004), Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Cloud Atlas (2012), Captain Philips (2013), Saving Mr. Banks (2013), Bridge of Spies (2015), Sully (2016), The Post (2017), A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), Greyhound (2020), and News of the World (2020). He also starred in The Da Vinci Code (2005), Angels & Demons (2009), and Inferno (2015).
He is also known for his work as a producer and director on various television series including From the Earth to the Moon (1998), Band of Brothers (2005), John Adams (2008), and The Pacific (2009). For his work in television he has earned seven Primetime Emmy Award wins. He is also known for his work on stage having trained as a Shakespearean Actor acting in productions at the Lakewood Civic Auditorium from 1977 to 1979. In 2013, he made his Broadway debut in Nora Ephron's Lucky Guy earning a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination.
Major associations
Academy Awards
BAFTA Awards
Critics' Choice Awards
Emmy Awards
Golden Globe Awards
Screen Actors Guild Awards
Tony Awards
Critics awards
Miscellaneous awards
Honorary awards
See also
List of Tom Hanks performances
== References == |
36th_Annual_Grammy_Awards | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36th_Annual_Grammy_Awards | [
750
] | [
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/36th_Annual_Grammy_Awards"
] | The 36th Annual Grammy Awards were held on March 1, 1994. They recognized accomplishments by musicians from the previous year. Whitney Houston was the Big Winner winning 3 awards including Record of the Year and Album of the Year while opening the show with "I Will Always Love You".
Audrey Hepburn's win made her the fifth person to become an EGOT, and the first person to complete the status posthumously.
Paul Simon was the first performer of the evening.
Performers
Whitney Houston – I Will Always Love You
Kenny G & Toni Braxton – Breathe Again
Gloria Estefan w/ Tito Puente, Sheila E. and Arturo Sandoval – Mi Tierra
Garth Brooks – Standing Outside the Fire
Clint Black & Wynonna Judd - A Bad Goodbye
Sting – If I Ever Lose My Faith in You
Aerosmith – Livin' on the Edge
Billy Joel – The River Of Dreams
Aretha Franklin – (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman
Natalie Cole – It's Sand, Man
Bonnie Raitt, Don Was, Bruce Springsteen, Steve Winwood, Tony! Toni! Toné!, Narada Michael Walden, B.B. King – tribute to Curtis Mayfield
Presenters
Bono – Grammy Legend Award to Frank Sinatra
Danny Glover – Lifetime Achievement Award to Aretha Franklin
SWV & Salt-N-Pepa – Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group
Dolly Parton & David Foster – Best Female Pop Vocal Performance
Kenny G & Toni Braxton – Best Male Pop Vocal Performance
Shawn Colvin, Trisha Yearwood & Mary Chapin Carpenter – Best Male Country Vocal Performance
Meat Loaf & Vanessa Williams – Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals
k.d. lang & Tony Bennett – Best Alternative Music Album
Tevin Campbell, Jon Secada & Celine Dion – Best Tropical Latin Album
Lee Ritenour & Oleta Adams – Best Jazz Vocal Performance
Billy Joel – Producer of the Year
Alan Jackson, Don Was & Jody Watley – Best New Artist
Spin Doctors & Melissa Etheridge – Song of the Year
B.B. King & Steve Winwood – Record of the Year
Bonnie Raitt & Lena Horne – Album of the Year
Award winners
Record of the Year
"I Will Always Love You" – Whitney Houston
David Foster, producer; Tom Elmhirst & Mark Rankin, engineers/mixers
Walter Afanasieff (producer) for "A Whole New World" - Peabo Bryson & Regina Belle
Joe Nicolo & Danny Kortchmar (producer) for "The River of Dreams" - Billy Joel
Sting & Hugh Padgham (producer) for "If I Ever Lose My Faith in You" - Sting
Neil Young (producer) for "Harvest Moon" - Neil Young
Album of the Year
The Bodyguard: Original Soundtrack Album – Whitney Houston
Houston, Babyface, BeBe Winans, David Cole, David Foster, L.A. Reid, Narada Michael Walden, Robert Clivilles, Clive Davis, producer
R.E.M & Scott Litt (producers) for Automatic for the People
Walter Becker (producer) & Donald Fagen (artist) for Kamakiriad
Billy Joel & Danny Kortchmar, Joe Nicolo (producers) for River of Dreams
Sting and Hugh Padgham (producers) for Ten Summoner's Tales
Song of the Year
Alan Menken & Tim Rice (songwriters) for "A Whole New World" performed by Peabo Bryson & Regina Belle
Billy Joel for "The River of Dreams" performed by Billy Joel
Jim Steinman for "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" performed by Meat Loaf
Sting for "If I Ever Lose My Faith in You" performed by Sting
Neil Young for "Harvest Moon" performed by Neil Young
Best New Artist
Toni Braxton
Belly
Blind Melon
Digable Planets
SWV
Pop
Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female
Whitney Houston for "I Will Always Love You"
Mariah Carey — "Dreamlover"
Shawn Colvin — "I Don't Know Why"
k.d. lang — "Miss Chatelaine"
Tina Turner — "I Don't Wanna Fight"
Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male
Sting for "If I Ever Lose My Faith in You"
"The Crying Game" – Boy George
"The River of Dreams" – Billy Joel
"Don't Take Away My Heaven" – Aaron Neville
"Have I Told You Lately" – Rod Stewart
Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal
Peabo Bryson & Regina Belle for "A Whole New World"
"When I Fall in Love" — Celine Dion & Clive Griffin
"Man on the Moon" — R.E.M.
"The Music of the Night" — Barbra Streisand & Michael Crawford
"Love Is" — Vanessa Williams & Brian McKnight
Best Pop Instrumental Performance
Branford Marsalis & Bruce Hornsby for "Barcelona Mona"
Alternative
Best Alternative Music Performance
U2 for Zooropa
Belly – Star
Nirvana – In Utero
R.E.M. – Automatic for the People
The Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream
Blues
Best Traditional Blues Album
B.B. King for Blues Summit
Best Contemporary Blues Album
Buddy Guy for Feels Like Rain
Children's
Best Musical Album for Children
Alan Menken, Tim Rice (producers) & various artists for Aladdin - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Best Spoken Word Album for Children
Deborah Raffin, Michael Viner (producers) & Audrey Hepburn for Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales
Comedy
From 1994 through 2003, see "Best Spoken Comedy Album" under the "Spoken" field, below.
Classical
Best Orchestral Performance
Pierre Boulez (conductor)& the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Bartók: The Wooden Prince
Best Classical Vocal Performance
Arleen Auger for The Art of Arleen Auger (Works of Larsen, Purcell, Schumann, Mozart)
Best Opera Recording
Steven Paul (producer), John Nelson (conductor), John Aler, Kathleen Battle, Michael Chance, Mark S. Doss, Marilyn Horne, Neil Mackie, Sylvia McNair, Samuel Ramey, the Ambrosian Opera Chorus & the English Chamber Orchestra for Handel: Semele
Best Performance of a Choral Work
Pierre Boulez (conductor), Margaret Hillis (choir director) & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Chorus for Bartók: Cantata Profana
Best Classical Performance-Instrumental Soloist(s) (with orchestra)
James Levine (conductor), Anne-Sophie Mutter & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Berg: Violin Concerto/Rihm: Time Chant
Best Classical Performance-Instrumental Soloist (without orchestra)
John Browning for Barber: The Complete Solo Piano Music
Best Chamber Music Performance
The Emerson String Quartet for Ives: String Quartets Nos. 1, 2/ Barber: String Quartet Op.11 (American Originals)
Best Contemporary Composition
Elliott Carter (composer), Oliver Knussen (conductor) & the London Symphony Orchestra for Violin Concerto
Best Classical Album
Karl-August Naegler (producer), Pierre Boulez (conductor), John Aler, John Tomlinson & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Chorus for Bartók: The Wooden Prince & Cantata Profana
Composing and arranging
Best Instrumental Composition
Kenny G (composer) for "Forever in Love"
Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or for Television
Alan Menken & Tim Rice (songwriters) for "A Whole New World (Aladdin's Theme)" performed by Regina Belle & Peabo Bryson
Best Instrumental Composition Written for a Motion Picture or for Television
Alan Menken (composer) for Aladdin performed by various artists
Best Arrangement on an Instrumental
Dave Grusin (arranger) for "Mood Indigo"
Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s)
David Foster & Jeremy Lubbock (arrangers) for "When I Fall in Love" performed by Céline Dion & Clive Griffin
Country
Best Country Vocal Performance, Female
Mary Chapin Carpenter for "Passionate Kisses"
Best Country Vocal Performance, Male
Dwight Yoakam for "Ain't That Lonely Yet"
Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal
Brooks & Dunn for "Hard Workin' Man"
Best Country Vocal Collaboration
Linda Davis & Reba McEntire for "Does He Love You"
Best Country Instrumental Performance
Asleep at the Wheel, Chet Atkins, Eldon Shamblin, Johnny Gimble, Marty Stuart, Reuben "Lucky Oceans" Gosfield & Vince Gill for "Red Wing"
Best Country Song
Lucinda Williams (songwriter) for "Passionate Kisses" performed by Mary Chapin Carpenter
Best Bluegrass Album
The Nashville Bluegrass Band for Waitin' for the Hard Times to Go
Folk
Best Traditional Folk Album
The Chieftains for The Celtic Harp: A Tribute To Edward Bunting
Best Contemporary Folk Album
Nanci Griffith for Other Voices/Other Rooms
Gospel
Best Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album
Steven Curtis Chapman for The Live Adventure
Best Rock Gospel Album
dc Talk for Free at Last
Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album
Shirley Caesar for Stand Still
Best Contemporary Soul Gospel Album
The Winans for All Out
Best Southern Gospel, Country Gospel or Bluegrass Gospel Album
Kathy Mattea for Good News
Best Gospel Album by a Choir or Chorus
Carol Cymbala (choir director) for Live...We Come Rejoicing performed by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir
Historical
Best Historical Album
Michael Lang & Phil Schaap (producers) for The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve 1945-1959
Jazz
Best Jazz Instrumental Solo
Joe Henderson for "Miles Ahead"
Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Individual or Group
Joe Henderson for So Near, So Far (Musings for Miles)
Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance
Miles Davis & Quincy Jones for Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux
Best Jazz Vocal Performance
Natalie Cole for Take a Look
Best Contemporary Jazz Performance (Instrumental)
Pat Metheny Group for The Road to You
Latin
Best Latin Pop Album
Luis Miguel for Aries
Best Tropical Latin Album
Gloria Estefan for Mi Tierra
Best Mexican-American Album
Selena for Live!
Musical show
Best Musical Show Album
George Martin (producer), Pete Townshend (composer & lyricist) & the original cast for The Who's Tommy
Music video
Best Music Video, Short Form
Prudence Fenton (video producer), Stephen Johnson (video director) & Peter Gabriel for "Steam"
Best Music Video, Long Form
Julie Fong (video producer), Doug Nichol (video director) & Sting for Ten Summoner's Tales
New Age
Best New Age Album
Paul Winter Consort for Spanish Angel
Packaging and notes
Best Recording Package
David Lau (art director of The PolyGram) for The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve 1945-1959 performed by Billie Holiday
Best Album Notes
Buck Clayton, Joel E. Siegel & Phil Schaap (notes writers) for The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve 1945-1959 performed by Billie Holiday
Polka
Best Polka Album
Walter Ostanek for Accordionally Yours performed by Walter Ostanek & His Band
Production and engineering
Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical
Hugh Padgham (engineer) for Ten Summoner's Tales performed by Sting
Best Engineered Album, Classical
Rainer Maillard (engineer), Pierre Boulez (conductor) & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Chorus for Bartók: The Wooden Prince & Cantata Profana
Producer of the Year
David Foster
Classical Producer of the Year
Judith Sherman
R&B
Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female
Toni Braxton for "Another Sad Love Song"
Aretha Franklin – "Someday We'll All Be Free"
Whitney Houston – "I'm Every Woman"
Janet Jackson – "That's The Way Love Goes"
Patti LaBelle – "All Right Now"
Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male
Ray Charles for "A Song for You"
"Can We Talk" – Tevin Campbell
"For the Cool in You" – Babyface
"How Deep Is Your Love" – Luther Vandross
"Voodoo" – Teddy Pendergrass
Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal
Sade for "No Ordinary Love"
Boyz II Men "Let It Snow"
Earth, Wind & Fire "Sunday Morning"
En Vogue "Give It Up, Turn It Loose"
Tony! Toni! Toné! "Anniversary"
Best Rhythm & Blues Song
Janet Jackson, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (songwriters) for "That's the Way Love Goes" performed by Janet Jackson
Babyface & Daryl Simmons (songwriters) for "Can We Talk" (Tevin Campbell)
Luther Vandross & Marcus Miller (songwriters) for "Little Miracles (Happen Every Day)" (Luther Vandross)
Luther Vandross & Reed Vertelney (songwriters) for "Heaven Knows" (Luther Vandross)
Raphael Wiggins & Carl Wheeler (songwriters) for "Anniversary" (Tony! Toni! Toné!)
Rap
Best Rap Solo Performance
Dr. Dre for "Let Me Ride"
Paperboy – "Ditty"
Sir Mix-a-Lot – "Just Da Pimpin' In Me"
MC Lyte – "Ruffneck"
LL Cool J – "Stand by Your Man"
Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group
Digable Planets for "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)"
Arrested Development — "Revolution"
Cypress Hill — "Insane in the Brain"
Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg — "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang"
Naughty by Nature — "Hip Hop Hooray"
Reggae
Best Reggae Album
Inner Circle for Bad Boys
Rock
Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo
Meat Loaf for "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)"
Neil Young – "All Along the Watchtower"
Lenny Kravitz – "Are You Gonna Go My Way"
Sting – "Demolition Man"
Peter Gabriel – "Steam"
Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal
Aerosmith for "Livin' on the Edge"
Blind Melon – "No Rain"
Bob Dylan, Roger McGuinn, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Eric Clapton and George Harrison– "My Back Pages"
Soul Asylum – "Runaway Train"
Spin Doctors – "Two Princes"
Best Rock Instrumental Performance
Steve Vai for "Sofa"
Aerosmith – "Boogie Man"
Jeff Beck and Jed Leiber – "Hi-Heel Sneakers"
Joe Satriani – "Speed of Light"
Tangerine Dream – "Purple Haze
Best Hard Rock Performance with Vocal
Stone Temple Pilots for "Plush"
AC/DC – "Highway to Hell" (live)
Living Colour – "Leave It Alone"
Robert Plant – "Calling to You"
The Smashing Pumpkins – "Cherub Rock"
Best Metal Performance with Vocal
Ozzy Osbourne for "I Don't Want to Change the World"
Iron Maiden – "Fear of the Dark" (live)
Megadeth – "Angry Again"
Suicidal Tendencies – "Institutionalized"
White Zombie – "Thunder Kiss '65"
Best Rock Song
David Pirner (songwriter) for "Runaway Train" performed by Soul Asylum
Spoken
Best Spoken Word or Non-musical Album
Maya Angelou for On the Pulse of Morning
Best Spoken Comedy Album
George Carlin for Jammin' in New York
Traditional pop
Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance
Tony Bennett for Steppin' Out
World
Best World Music Album
V. M. Bhatt & Ry Cooder for A Meeting by the River
Special merit awards
Grammy Legend Award
Curtis Mayfield
Frank Sinatra
MusiCares Person of the Year
Gloria Estefan
References
External links
Grammy Award Winners |
66th_Academy_Awards | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/66th_Academy_Awards | [
750
] | [
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/66th_Academy_Awards"
] | The 66th Academy Awards ceremony, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored films released in 1993 and took place on March 21, 1994, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles beginning at 6:00 p.m. PST / 9:00 p.m. EST. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 23 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Gil Cates and directed by Jeff Margolis. Actress Whoopi Goldberg hosted the show for the first time. This ceremony was the first to present the annual In Memoriam tribute. Nearly a month earlier in a ceremony held at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California on February 26, the Academy Awards for Technical Achievement were presented by host Laura Dern.
Schindler's List won seven awards, including Best Picture. Other winners included Jurassic Park and The Piano with three awards, Philadelphia with two, and The Age of Innocence, Belle Époque, Defending Our Lives, The Fugitive, I Am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School, Mrs. Doubtfire, Schwarzfahrer, and The Wrong Trousers with one. The telecast was watched by more than 46 million viewers in the United States.
Winners and nominees
The nominees for the 66th Academy Awards were announced on February 9, 1994, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, California, by Academy president Arthur Hiller and actress Christine Lahti. Schindler's List led all nominees with twelve nominations; The Piano and The Remains of the Day tied for second with eight.
The winners were announced during the awards ceremony on March 21, 1994. Best Director nominee Jane Campion became the second woman to be nominated in that category. Holly Hunter and Emma Thompson's nominations in both lead and supporting acting categories marked the first, and so far, only occurrence that two performers earned double acting nominations in the same year. Best Supporting Actress winner Anna Paquin, at age 11, became the second youngest winner of a competitive acting Oscar, behind Tatum O'Neal, who won at age 10 for Paper Moon (1973). 19-year old Leonardo DiCaprio became the seventh-youngest nominee in the Best Supporting Actor category for his role as Arnie Grape in What's Eating Gilbert Grape.
Awards
Winners are listed first, highlighted in boldface, and indicated with a double-dagger (‡).
Academy Honorary Award
Deborah Kerr
Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award
Paul Newman
Films with multiple nominations and awards
Presenters and performers
The following individuals, listed in order of appearance, presented awards or performed musical numbers:
Presenters
Performers
Ceremony information
Due to the negative reception received from the preceding year's ceremony, actor Billy Crystal announced that after overseeing four consecutive Oscar ceremonies, he would not be hosting the 1994 telecast. In a statement released by his publicist, he stated, "After three Grammys, four Oscars and six Comic Reliefs, I'm going to take a break from my hosting duties. I always felt honored to host the show and did my best to carry on the tradition of Bob Hope and Johnny Carson. I hope the new host has as good a time as I did." With Crystal absent to host the Oscars, many media outlets wondered whom producer Gil Cates would hire to emcee the program. Film columnist Jack Matthews suggested that actor Tom Hanks, who would eventually win Best Actor for Philadelphia, should host the show writing that he "has charm, dignity, wit, intelligence and, it's worth mentioning, he's a movie star!" Cates also offered the role to performers Steve Martin, Bette Midler, and Johnny Carson, but they all turned down the opportunity.
After several days of speculation, Cates announced that he hired Oscar-winning actress and comedian Whoopi Goldberg to host the festivities for the first time. By virtue of her selection, Goldberg became both the first African American to host as well as the first woman to host the telecast solo. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Cates explained the decision to hire her saying, "She is a highly recognizable star who has millions of fans." He also addressed the media's concerns regarding Goldberg's raunchy and outspoken humor stating, "Some people may think she's potentially dangerous, and she says things that come to her mind. It's going to be exciting for me. The main thing is she wants to do it and she's smart. Whatever she says will be appropriate." Goldberg expressed that she was thrilled to be selected to emcee the 1994 ceremony commenting, "To go from watching to winning to hosting in one lifetime is major."
As with previous ceremonies he produced, Cates centered the show around a theme. This year, he christened the show with the theme "People Behind the Camera" commenting that "It will be a salute to those unseen men and women who make what we see on the screen, the artist and craftspeople responsible for the magic of the movies." In tandem with the theme, the ceremony's opening number featured a montage produced by Chuck Workman saluting the many individuals such as directors, editors, and composers who are involved in moviemaking. During that segment, singer Bernadette Peters performing a modified version of Stephen Sondheim's song "Putting It Together" from his musical Sunday in the Park with George. Filmmaker and editor Carol A. Streit assembled another montage featuring a salute to the work of cinematographers and their contributions to film.
Several other people and elements were also involved with the production of the ceremony. Production designer Roy Christopher designed a new stage for the ceremony which prominently featured five giant Oscar statues each flanked inside metal cones that were illuminated recurrently throughout the show. Film composer and musician Bill Conti served as musical director of the ceremony. Dancer Debbie Allen choreographed a dancer number showcasing the Best Original Score nominees featuring eight prestigious ballet and dance troupes from around the world.
Box office performance of nominees
At the time of the nominations announcement on February 9, the combined gross of the five Best Picture nominees at the US box office was $261 million, with an average of $52.2 million per film. The Fugitive was the highest earner among the Best Picture nominees with $179 million in domestic box office receipts. The film was followed by Schindler's List ($29.6 million), The Piano ($25.7 million), The Remains of the Day ($19.5 million), and finally In the Name of the Father ($6.5 million).
Of the top 50 grossing movies of the year, 36 nominations went to 14 films on the list. Only The Fugitive (3rd), The Firm (4th), Sleepless in Seattle (6th), In the Line of Fire (7th), Dave (13th), Philadelphia (29th), What's Love Got to Do With It (38th), and The Age of Innocence (49th) were nominated for directing, acting, screenwriting, or Best Picture. The other top 50 box office hits that earned nominations were Jurassic Park (1st), Mrs. Doubtfire (2nd), Cliffhanger (9th), The Nightmare Before Christmas (24th), Addams Family Values (25th), and Beethoven's 2nd (27th).
Critical reviews
The show received a positive reception from most media publications. The New York Times film critic Janet Maslin raved that the telecast had "less silliness and less small talk, with more emphasis on cleverly chosen film clips and the bona fide Hollywood magic being celebrated." She also praised host Goldberg saying that she "sustained a tone of levity, which became particularly important as the sweep by Schindler's List threatened to bring out great ponderousness in some quarters." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette television critic Robert Bianco commended Goldberg's performance writing that "She never acted like she was too smart or to hip for the show she was hosting; she never smirked like there was a joke she alone was cool enough to get." He also extolled producer Cates by commenting, "In place of the extraneous jokes and terrible production numbers, he gave us a theme that worked and a generous selection of clips to back it up." Anne Thompson of Entertainment Weekly lauded Goldberg by stating, "Her elegant appearance (at least during the first half), her uncharacteristic restraint (she didn't cuss), and her ability to make it funny (despite the very somber speeches) made the ho-hum telecast worth watching."
Some media outlets were more critical of the show. Television critic Howard Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Times lamented that Goldberg's humor "wilted in a blessedly brief 3-hour-and-18-minute telecast." He also wrote that compared with Billy Crystal, her hosting skills were "balmy". Orlando Sentinel film critic Jay Boyar bemoaned that "this year's Oscarcast was only a little more exciting than a wine snob droning on about his favorite vintages." Harold Schindler of The Salt Lake City Tribune remarked that Whoopi's preference for "insider" jokes "left the audience murmuring and most viewers probably scratching their heads." He also added the biggest letdown of the telecast was "Goldberg's seeming ineptness at understanding the moment"
Ratings and reception
The American telecast on ABC drew in an average of 46.26 million people over its length, which was a 1% increase from the previous year's ceremony. However, the show drew lower Nielsen ratings compared to the previous ceremony with 31.86% of households watching over a 49.28 share. It also drew a lower 18–49 demographic rating with a 19.73 rating over a 40.53 share among viewers in that demographic.
In July 1994, the ceremony presentation received seven nominations at the 46th Primetime Emmys. Two months later, the ceremony won one of those nominations for Outstanding Technical Direction/Camera/Video for a Miniseries or Special (Averill Perry, Jim Ralston, Kenneth R. Shapiro, Bill Pope, Hector Ramirez, Larry Heider, Dave Levisohn, Blair White, Bill Philben, Ralph Alcocer, Larry Stenman, Bud Holland, David Irete, Tom Geren, Dale Carlson, David Plakos, Ted Ashton, Jeff Mydoc, Chuck Pharis, Jean M. Mason).
"In Memoriam"
The first annual "In Memoriam" tribute was presented by actress Glenn Close. The montage featured an excerpt of the main title of Terms of Endearment composed by Michael Gore.
See also
14th Golden Raspberry Awards
36th Grammy Awards
46th Primetime Emmy Awards
47th British Academy Film Awards
48th Tony Awards
51st Golden Globe Awards
List of submissions to the 66th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
References
Bibliography
External links
Official websites
Academy Awards Official website Archived March 4, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Official website Archived January 22, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
Oscar's Channel Archived October 2, 2018, at the Wayback Machine at YouTube (run by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)
Analysis
1993 Academy Awards Winners and History Archived February 18, 2014, at the Wayback Machine Filmsite
Academy Awards, USA: 1994 Archived November 29, 2017, at the Wayback Machine Internet Movie Database
Other resources
The 66th Annual Academy Awards at IMDb |
A92_road | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A92_road | [
751
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A92_road"
] | The A92 is a major road that runs through Fife, Dundee, Angus, Aberdeenshire, and Aberdeen City in Scotland. From south to north, it runs from Dunfermline to Blackdog, just north of Aberdeen.
History
The A92's original route in southern Fife is now numbered as the A921. It connects with the M90 junction 1 via Burntisland and Kirkcaldy and links into the Thornton bypass.
Plans were drawn up in the 1960s for a new East Fife regional dual carriageway road starting at the M90 at Masterton (Junction 2), which would have mirrored what is now the A921 and B9157 to the Mossgreen area, before heading north-eastward to Chapel Level, connecting up with the Thornton By-pass. The plans were held back until the early 1970s, and were held back further due to the Oil crisis. During the 1970s the Scottish Development Department commissioned a new traffic study which concluded that the A92 should follow the more northern route to provide a better link for Cowdenbeath and Lochgelly before connecting directly onto the Thornton Bypass, which was completed by early 1983.
The new section between Crossgates and Glenrothes began construction in 1980, and was built in four phases:
Thornton By-pass: Opened on 16 August 1983
Halbeath - Cowdenbeath: Opened in September 1985
Cowdenbeath - Lochgelly: Opened on 13 August 1987
Lochgelly - Thornton: the final phase which opened on 16 July 1990
In early April 1998 the A92 was extended beyond the Crossgates junction to provide direct access with the M90 southbound, to ease congestion around the Halbeath interchange. The new section was built three months ahead of schedule, costing £8.4m.
Numbering
The A92 formerly continued north from Stonehaven through Aberdeen, and terminated at Fraserburgh. The section between Stonehaven and Aberdeen was renumbered A90 in 1994. Upon completion of the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route (AWPR) in 2018, the section between Stonehaven and Blackdog was once again numbered as A92. The section between Blackdog and Fraserburgh has now been renumbered A90 and A952.
The section of the A92 between Dundee and Aberdeen was formerly part of the Euroroute system, on route E120, a closed loop connecting Inverness, Aberdeen, Dundee and Perth.
Route
Starting at its junction with the M90 motorway near Dunfermline, it runs north east past Cowdenbeath, Lochgelly, Kirkcaldy, Glenrothes, Ladybank and Newport-on-Tay. The road is a dual carriageway from the M90 to Glenrothes town centre, changing to a single carriageway as it passes through the northern side of the town, before switching back to dual carriageway north of Glenrothes (until it meets the A912 towards Perth and the A914 towards St Andrews), it reverts to a single carriageway until a few miles short of the Tay Road Bridge at Dundee. The section through Fife is often described as the East Fife Regional Road.
Across the Tay Road Bridge, the A92 continues along the east coast past Monifieth, Carnoustie, Muirdrum, Arbroath, Montrose, Inverbervie and the Fowlsheugh Nature Reserve before reaching Stonehaven where the road once again becomes dual carriageway. From here, the A92 runs parallel with the A90 for around 2 miles. The road then continues past Stonehaven and Portlethen heading into and through the city of Aberdeen before terminating at Blackdog, where the road once again merges with the A90.
The 16-mile section of the road from Dundee to Arbroath was upgraded to dual carriageway standard in 2005 and significantly reduced the journey time between the two towns. Between Arbroath and Stonehaven the road is a single carriageway apart from a very short section of dual carriageway near Gourdon. The road returns to dual carriageway from Stonehaven heading north to Aberdeen, briefly returning to single carriageway at the Bridge of Dee, and then again returning to single carriageway between the Haudagain and Parkway roundabouts in Aberdeen. The remainder of the road from the Parkway roundabout to the termination point at Blackdog is dual carriageway.
Archaeological
The A92 road traverses lands on which prehistorical archaeological sites are present. Examples of these features include Gourdon Hill and the Stone of Morphie, both situated slightly to the west of the A92 alignment.
References
Links
The Motorway Archive. M90. Inverkeithing to Perth motorway and M85. Perth by-pass
A92 - Roader's Digest: The SABRE Wiki
East Fife Regional Road - Roader's Digest: The SABRE Wiki |
Stone_of_Morphie | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_of_Morphie | [
751
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_of_Morphie"
] | The Stone of Morphie (sometimes known as the Stone of Morphy) is a standing stone about 700 metres west of the Coast Highway (A92 road) bridge of the River North Esk and 400 metres east of the historic Mill of Morphie in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The stone is approximately 3.5 metres high and is unshaped and uninscripted; the base of this stone measures approximately 70 by 100 centimetres.
The RCAHMS record number for the Stone of Morphie is NO76SW 6 7169 6273. According to RCAHMS, the stone is "Traditionally said to mark the grave of a son of Camus, killed in a battle between the Scots and the Danes". Local tradition claims the site as an alternative burial site for a leader of a Viking army that was decimated by the Scots army at the apocryphal Battle of Barry in 1010 AD. The date and mention of this battle rests with Boece.
Etymology
The name Morphie may be of Brittonic origin, and derived from an element consanguineous to Welsh morfa, meaning "a sea-plain".
See also
Eassie Stone
Lunan Water
Red Castle, Angus
== References == |
Erin_Darke | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Darke | [
752
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Darke"
] | Erin Darke (born September 10, 1984) is an American actress. She is known for her role as Cindy Reston in the TV series Good Girls Revolt. She also played Mary in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Leeta in the AMC series Dietland. She has appeared in the films Love & Mercy (2014), Beside Still Waters (2014), Still Alice (2014), and Don't Think Twice (2016).
Early life
Erin Constance-Maja Darke was born September 10, 1984, in Flint, Michigan to Kristina Strand and Ian Darke.
At the age of 16, Darke enrolled in the University of Michigan-Flint, where in 2005 she earned a bachelor's degree of fine arts in theater performance. As Darke told her alma mater, "[The teachers at the school] were patient and kind, but also constantly pushed me to challenge myself, explore, and work hard. These are all things that are essential to a career in this industry and I'm grateful to have learned them early."
Career
Shortly after graduating, Darke moved to New York City and starred in several plays before getting a job at a casting office. This was her full time job until she decided that "my heart was still in acting" and went on to star in Obelisk Road, a 2009 short film, and procured minor roles in the 2011 films We Need to Talk About Kevin and Young Adult. In 2012, Darke had a minor role in Disconnect. Darke played a small role in the 2013 thriller Kill Your Darlings. She met British actor Daniel Radcliffe on set in 2012, and they began a relationship. Along with Kill Your Darlings, Darke played a lead role in Beside Still Waters. In 2014, Darke acted in Still Alice and Hunter&Game, along with several other films.
In 2015, she landed a lead role in the television series Good Girls Revolt, which follows several young female news reporters who sue their male bosses for showing them sexism. Darke starred in the 2016 film Delinquent. In 2017, Darke played Mary in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Darke acted in the 2018 TV series Dietland. Together with Radcliffe, Darke starred in Miracle Workers in 2019. In 2023, Darke played an AI in Molli and Max in the Future.
Personal life
Darke has been in a relationship with English actor Daniel Radcliffe since 2012, having met on the set of the film Kill Your Darlings. They have a son born in April 2023. They live together in New York.
Filmography
Film
Television
References
External links
Erin Darke at IMDb |
Ottawa | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa"
] | Ottawa ( , ; Canadian French: [ɔtawɑ]) is the capital city of Canada. It is located in the southern portion of the province of Ontario, at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core of the Ottawa–Gatineau census metropolitan area (CMA) and the National Capital Region (NCR). As of 2021, Ottawa had a city population of 1,017,449 and a metropolitan population of 1,488,307, making it the fourth-largest city and fourth-largest metropolitan area in Canada.
Ottawa is the political centre of Canada and the headquarters of the federal government. The city houses numerous foreign embassies, key buildings, organizations, and institutions of Canada's government; these include the Parliament of Canada, the Supreme Court, the residence of Canada's viceroy, and Office of the Prime Minister.
Founded in 1826 as Bytown, and incorporated as Ottawa in 1855, its original boundaries were expanded through numerous annexations and were ultimately replaced by a new city incorporation and amalgamation in 2001. The municipal government of Ottawa is established and governed by the City of Ottawa Act of the Government of Ontario. It has an elected city council across 24 wards and a mayor elected city-wide.
Ottawa has the highest proportion of university-educated residents among Canadian cities and is home to several colleges and universities, research and cultural institutions, including the University of Ottawa, Carleton University, Algonquin College, Collège La Cité, the National Arts Centre, the National Gallery of Canada; and numerous national museums, monuments, and historic sites. It is one of the most visited cities in Canada, with over 11 million visitors annually contributing more than $2.2B to the city's economy.
Etymology
The city name Ottawa was chosen in 1855 as a reference to the Ottawa River, the name of which is derived from the Algonquin adawe, meaning 'to trade.' The city's modern name in the Algonquin language is Odàwàg. The Algonquin Anishinaabe previously occupied a large tract of land on which Ottawa was settled.
History
Early history
The Ottawa Valley became habitable around 10,000 years ago, following the natural draining of the Champlain Sea. Archaeological findings of arrowheads, tools and pottery indicate that Indigenous populations first settled in the area about 6,500 years ago. These findings suggest that these Algonquin people were engaged in foraging, hunting and fishing, but also trade and travel. Three major rivers meet within Ottawa, making it an important trade and travel area for thousands of years. The Algonquins are a broad Indigenous people who are closely related to the Odawa and Ojibwe peoples. This period ended with the arrival of settlers and colonization of North America by Europeans during and after the 15th century.
European exploration and early development
In 1610, Étienne Brûlé became the first documented European to navigate the Ottawa River, passing what would become Ottawa on his way to the Great Lakes. Three years later, Samuel de Champlain wrote about the waterfalls in the area and about his encounters with the Algonquin people.
The first non-Indigenous settlement in the area was created by Philemon Wright, a New Englander. Wright founded a lumber town in the area on 7 March 1800 on the north side of the river, across from the present-day city of Ottawa in Hull. He, with five other families and twenty-five labourers, also created an agricultural community, which was named Wright's Town. Wright pioneered the Ottawa Valley timber trade (soon to be the area's most significant economic activity) by transporting timber by river from the Ottawa Valley to Quebec City.
In 1826, news of the British military's impending construction of the Rideau Canal led to land speculators founding a community on the south side of the Ottawa River. The following year, the town was named after British military engineer Colonel John By who was responsible for the entire Rideau Waterway construction project. The Rideau canal provided a secure route between Montreal and Kingston on Lake Ontario. It bypassed a vulnerable stretch of the St. Lawrence River bordering the state of New York that had left re-supply ships bound for southwestern Ontario easily exposed to enemy fire during the War of 1812.
Colonel By set up military barracks on the site of today's Parliament Hill. He also laid out the streets of the town and created two distinct neighbourhoods named "Upper Town" west of the canal and "Lower Town" east of the canal. Similar to its Upper Canada and Lower Canada namesakes, historically, "Upper Town" was predominantly English-speaking and Protestant, whereas "Lower Town" was mostly French, Irish and Catholic.
Bytown's population grew to 1,000 as the Rideau Canal was completed in 1832. Bytown' early pioneer period saw Irish labour unrest during the Shiners' War from 1835 to 1845 and political dissension that was evident in the 1849 Stony Monday Riot. In 1855, Bytown was renamed Ottawa and incorporated as a city. William Pittman Lett was installed as the first city clerk, serving from 1844 to 1891, guiding Ottawa through 36 years of development, leading the hiring of key municipal roles, founding civic organizations, and proposing a set of by-laws for the city.
Selection as capital
The selection of Ottawa as the capital of Canada predates the Confederation of Canada. The choice was contentious and not straightforward, with the parliament of the United Province of Canada holding more than 200 votes over several decades to attempt to settle on a legislative solution to the location of the capital.
The governor-general of the province had designated Kingston as the capital in 1841. However, the major population centres of Toronto and Montreal, as well as the former capital of Lower Canada, Quebec City, all had legislators dissatisfied with Kingston. Anglophone merchants in Quebec were the leading group supportive of the Kingston arrangement. In 1842, a vote rejected Kingston as the capital, and study of potential candidates included the then-named Bytown, but that option proved less popular than Toronto or Montreal. In 1843, a report of the Executive Council recommended Montreal as the capital as a more fortifiable location and commercial centre; however, the governor-general refused to execute a move without a parliamentary vote. In 1844, the Queen's acceptance of a parliamentary vote moved the capital to Montreal.
In 1849, after violence in Montreal, a series of votes was held, with Kingston and Bytown again considered potential capitals. However, the successful proposal was for two cities to share capital status and the legislature to alternate sitting in each: Quebec City and Toronto, in a policy known as perambulation. Logistical difficulties made this an unpopular arrangement, and although an 1856 vote passed for the lower house of parliament to relocate permanently to Quebec City, the upper house refused to approve funding.
The funding impasse led to the ending of the legislature's role in determining the seat of government. The legislature requested the Queen determine the seat of government. The Queen then acted on the advice of her governor general Edmund Head, who, after reviewing proposals from various cities, selected the recently renamed Ottawa. The Queen sent a letter to colonial authorities selecting Ottawa as the capital, effective 31 December 1857. George Brown, briefly a co-premier of the Province of Canada, attempted to reverse this decision but was unsuccessful. The Parliament ratified the Queen's choice in 1859, with Quebec serving as interim capital from 1859 to 1865. The relocation process began in 1865, with the first session of Parliament held in the new buildings in 1866. The buildings were generally well received by legislators.
Ottawa was chosen as the capital for two primary reasons. First, Ottawa's isolated location, surrounded by dense forest far from the Canada–US border and situated on a cliff face, would make it more defensible from attack. Second, Ottawa was approximately midway between Toronto and Kingston (in Canada West) and Montreal and Quebec City (in Canada East), making the selection an important political compromise.
Other minor considerations included that despite Ottawa's regional isolation, there was water transportation access from spring to fall, both to Montreal via the Ottawa River, and to Kingston via the Rideau Waterway. Additionally, by 1854 it also had a modern all-season railway (the Bytown and Prescott Railway) that carried passengers, lumber and supplies the 82 kilometres (50 miles) to Prescott on the Saint Lawrence River and beyond. Ottawa's small size was also thought to be less prone to politically motivated mob violence, as had happened in the previous Canadian capitals. Finally, the government already owned the land that eventually became Parliament Hill, which it thought would be an ideal location for the Parliament buildings.
The original Parliament buildings, which included the Centre, East and West Blocks, were constructed between 1859 and 1866 in the Gothic Revival style. At the time, this was the largest North American construction project ever attempted and Public Works Canada and its architects were not initially well prepared for the relatively shallow-lying bedrock and had to redesign architectural drawings, leading to delays. The Library of Parliament and Parliament Hill landscaping were completed in 1876.
Post-Confederation
Starting in the 1850s, entrepreneurs known as lumber barons began to build large sawmills, which became some of the largest mills in the world. Rail lines built in 1854 connected Ottawa to areas south and, from 1886 to the transcontinental rail network via Hull and Lachute, Quebec. By 1885 Ottawa was the only city in Canada whose downtown street-lights were powered entirely by electricity. In 1889, the Government developed and distributed 60 "water leases" (still in use) to mainly local industrialists which gave them permission to generate electricity and operate hydroelectric generators at Chaudière Falls. Public transportation began in 1870 with a horsecar system, overtaken in the 1890s by a vast electric streetcar system that operated until 1959.
The Hull–Ottawa fire of 1900 destroyed two-thirds of Hull, including 40 percent of its residential buildings and most of the buildings of its largest employers along the waterfront. It began as a chimney fire in Hull on the north side of the river, but due to wind, spread rapidly throughout the widespread wooden buildings. In Ottawa, it destroyed about one-fifth of the buildings from the Lebreton Flats south to Booth Street and down to Dow's Lake. The fire had a disproportionate effect on west-end lower-income neighbourhoods. It had also spread among many lumber yards, a major part of Ottawa's economy. The fire destroyed approximately 3200 buildings and caused an estimated $300 million in damage (in 2020 Canadian dollars). An estimated 14% of Ottawans were left homeless.
On 1 June 1912, the Grand Trunk Railway opened both the Château Laurier hotel and its neighbouring downtown Union Station. On 3 February 1916, the Centre Block of the Parliament buildings was destroyed by a fire. The House of Commons and Senate was temporarily relocated to the recently constructed Victoria Memorial Museum, now the Canadian Museum of Nature until the completion of the new Centre Block in 1922. The centrepiece of the new Parliament Buildings is a dominant Gothic Revival-styled structure known as the Peace Tower.
The location of what is now Confederation Square was a former commercial district centrally located in a triangular area downtown surrounded by historically significant heritage buildings, including the Parliament buildings. It was redeveloped as a ceremonial centre in 1938 as part of the City Beautiful Movement. It became the site of the National War Memorial in 1939 and was designated a National Historic Site in 1984. A new Central Post Office (now the Privy Council of Canada) was constructed in 1939 beside the War Memorial because the original post office building on the proposed Confederation Square grounds had to be demolished.
Post–Second World War
Ottawa's former industrial appearance was vastly altered by the 1950 Greber Plan. Prime Minister Mackenzie King hired French architect-planner Jacques Greber to design an urban plan for managing development in the National Capital Region, to make it more aesthetically pleasing and a location more befitting for Canada's political centre. Greber's plan included the creation of the National Capital Greenbelt, the Kichi Zibi Mikan and the Queensway highway system. His plan also called for changes in institutions such as moving downtown Union Station (now the Senate of Canada Building) to the suburbs, the removal of the street car system, the decentralization of selected government offices, the relocation of industries and removal of substandard housing from the downtown. The plan also recommended the creation of the Rideau Canal and Ottawa River pathways.
In 1958, the National Capital Commission was established as a Crown Corporation through the National Capital Act. The commission's original mission was to implement the Greber Plan recommendations conducted during the 1960s and 1970s. This marked the creation of a permanent political infrastructure for managing the capital region. Prior attempts to do so in the previous 50 years had been temporary. These included plans from the 1899 Ottawa Improvement Commission (OIC), the Todd Plan in 1903, the Holt Report in 1915 and the Federal District Commission (FDC) established in 1927 with a 16-year mandate.
From 1931 to 1958, City Hall had been at the Transportation Building adjacent to Union Station (now part of the Rideau Centre). In 1958, a new City Hall opened on Green Island near Rideau Falls, where urban renewal had recently transformed this industrial location into a green space. In 2001, Ottawa City Hall returned downtown to a 1990 building on 110 Laurier Avenue West, the home of the now-defunct Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton. This new location was close to Ottawa's first (1849–1877) and second (1877–1931) City Halls. This new city hall complex also contained an adjacent 19th-century restored heritage building formerly known as the Ottawa Normal School.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, there was a large increase in construction in the National Capital Region, which was followed by large growth in the high-tech industry during the 1990s and 2000s. Ottawa became one of Canada's largest high-tech cities and was nicknamed Silicon Valley North. By the 1980s, Bell Northern Research (later Nortel) employed thousands, and large federally assisted research facilities such as the National Research Council contributed to an eventual technology boom. The early companies led to newer firms such as Newbridge Networks, Mitel and Corel.
In 1991, provincial and federal governments responded to a land claim submitted by the Algonquins of Ontario regarding the unceded status of the land on which Ottawa is situated. Negotiations have been ongoing, with an eventual goal to sign a treaty that would release Canada from claims for misuse of land under Algonquin title, affirm rights of the Algonquins, and negotiate conditions of the title transfer.
Ottawa's city limits have expanded over time, including a large expansion effective 1 January 2001, when the province of Ontario amalgamated all the constituent municipalities of the Regional Municipality of Ottawa–Carleton into a single city. Regional Chair Bob Chiarelli was elected as the new city's first mayor in the 2000 municipal election, defeating Gloucester mayor Claudette Cain. The city's growth led to strains on the public transit system and road bridges. On 15 October 2001, a diesel-powered light rail transit (LRT) line was introduced on an experimental basis. Known today as the Trillium Line, it was dubbed the O-Train and connected downtown Ottawa to the southern suburbs via Carleton University. The decision to extend the O-Train, and to replace it with an electric light rail system, was a major issue in the 2006 municipal elections, where Chiarelli was defeated by businessman Larry O'Brien. After O'Brien's election, transit plans were changed to establish a series of light rail stations from the east side of the city into downtown, and for using a tunnel through the downtown core. Jim Watson, the last mayor of Ottawa before amalgamation, was re-elected in the 2010 election.
In October 2012, the City Council approved the final Lansdowne Park plan, an agreement with the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group that saw a new stadium, increased green space and housing and retail added to the site. In December 2012, City Council voted unanimously to move forward with the Confederation Line, a 12.5 km (7.8 mi) light rail transit line, which was opened on 14 September 2019.
Geography
Neighbourhoods
The present-day city of Ottawa consists of the historic main urban area, as well as other urban, suburban and rural areas within the city's post-amalgamation limits.
Old Ottawa
Old Ottawa refers to the former pre-amalgamation city, as well as the former city of Vanier, a densely populated, historically francophone, working class enclave, and the former village of Rockcliffe Park, a wealthy residential neighbourhood adjacent to the Prime Minister's official residence at 24 Sussex and the Governor General's residence. The old city includes the downtown core and older neighbourhoods to the east, west, and south. These vibrant neighbourhoods include the bustling commercial and cultural areas of Old Ottawa South,
Centretown, Lower Town, and Sandy Hill, the affluent tree-lined neighbourhoods of The Glebe, Westboro, and New Edinburgh, and the historically blue-collar communities of Hintonburg, Mechanicsville, Carlington, and LeBreton Flats, with a mixture of housing types, artist lofts, and industrial uses. The old city also includes the ethnic enclaves of Chinatown and Little Italy.
Suburbs and outlying communities
Modern Ottawa is made up of eleven historic townships, ten of which are from the former Carleton County and one from the former Russell County. Ottawa city limits are bounded on the east by the United Counties of Prescott and Russell; by Renfrew County and Lanark County in the west; on the south by the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville and the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry; and on the north by the Regional County Municipality of Les Collines-de-l'Outaouais and the City of Gatineau.
The main suburban areas extend a considerable distance to the east, west and south of the inner-city. These areas also include the former cities of Cumberland, Gloucester, Kanata and Nepean. The towns of Stittsville and Richmond within the former Goulbourn Township are to the southwest. Nepean as a suburb also includes Barrhaven. The communities of Manotick and Riverside South are on the other side of the Rideau River, and Greely, southeast of Riverside South.
A number of rural communities (villages and hamlets) are administratively part of the Ottawa municipality. Some of these communities are Burritts Rapids; Ashton; Fallowfield; Kars; Fitzroy Harbour; Munster; Carp; North Gower; Metcalfe; Constance Bay and Osgoode. Several towns are within the federally defined National Capital Region but outside the city of Ottawa municipal boundaries; these include communities of Almonte, Carleton Place, Embrun, Kemptville, Rockland, and Russell.
Architecture
Influenced by government structures, much of the city's architecture tends to be formal and functional; the city is also marked by Romantic and Picturesque styles of architecture such as the Parliament Buildings' gothic revival architecture. Ottawa's domestic architecture contains single-family homes, but also includes smaller numbers of semi-detached houses, rowhouses, and apartment buildings. Many domestic buildings in Centretown are clad in red brick, with trim in wood, stone, or metal; variations are common, depending on the cultural heritage of the neighbourhoods and the time they were built.
The skyline has been controlled by building height restrictions originally implemented to keep Parliament Hill and the Peace Tower at 92.2 m (302 ft) visible from most parts of the city. Today, several buildings are slightly taller than the Peace Tower, with the tallest being the Claridge Icon at 143 metres (469 ft). Many federal buildings in the National Capital Region are managed by Public Works Canada, which leads to heritage conservation in its renovations and management of buildings, such as the renovation of the Senate Building. Most of the federal land in the region is managed by the National Capital Commission; its control of much undeveloped land and appropriations powers gives the NCC a great deal of influence over the city's development.
Climate
Ottawa has a warm-summer humid continental climate (Köppen: Dfb) with four distinct seasons and is between Zones 5a and 5b on the Canadian Plant Hardiness Scale. The average July maximum temperature is 26.7 °C (80 °F). The average January minimum temperature is −14.0 °C (6.8 °F). The highest temperature ever recorded in Ottawa was 37.8 °C (100 °F) on 4 July 1913, 1 August 1917 and 11 August 1944.
Summers are warm and humid in Ottawa. On average, there are 11 days across the three summer months of June, July and August that have temperatures exceeding 30 °C (86 °F).
Snow and ice are dominant during the winter season. On average, almost every day of January, February and March has more than 5 cm of snowpack (29, 28, and 22 days, respectively), and on average, approximately 12 days a year see 5 cm or more of snowfall, with 4 of those having over 10 cm.
An average of 17 days of the year experience temperatures below −20 °C (−4 °F). Spring and fall are variable, prone to extremes in temperature and unpredictable swings in conditions. The month of May, for example, sees a day below freezing about every other year but sees days above 30 °C at about the same rate.
Annual precipitation averages around 750mm per year. Precipitation is spread throughout the year, with some variation. May through November are the months more likely to see significant precipitation events, with each month having an average of 3 days of over 1 cm of precipitation, with December through April seeing on average 1–2 days. May through November have, on average, over 8 cm of rainfall per month, with peaks of approximately 9 cm in June and September. December through April have less than 8 cm, with February being the driest month at an average of 5 cm of precipitation.
Ottawa experiences about 2,080 hours of average sunshine annually (45% of possible). Winds in Ottawa tend to come from the West, though eastward winds caused by lake-effect cells in afternoons are not unusual. Winds tend to be slightly more dominant during the winter.
Physical geography
Ottawa is situated on the south bank of the Ottawa River and contains the mouths of the Rideau River and Rideau Canal. The Rideau Canal (Rideau Waterway) first opened in 1832 and is 202 km (126 mi) long. It connects the Saint Lawrence River on Lake Ontario at Kingston to the Ottawa River near Parliament Hill. It was able to bypass the unnavigable sections of the Cataraqui and Rideau rivers and various small lakes along the waterway due to flooding techniques and the construction of 47 water transport locks.
Ottawa is situated in a lowland on top of Paleozoic carbonate and shale and is surrounded by more craggy Precambrian igneous and metamorphic formations. Ottawa has had fluvial deposition of till and sands, leading to the widespread formation of eskers. There are limited distinct features arising from glacial deposits, but Ottawa was affected by the Late Wisconsian advance. Before the draining of the Champlain Sea, the area had high salinity. After the draining of the sea, the area had pine-dominated forests. Ottawa is located within the Western Quebec Seismic Zone, and while relatively inactive, the city does occasionally experience earthquakes.
Built environment
During part of the winter season the Ottawa section of the canal forms the world's largest skating rink, thereby providing both a recreational venue and a 7.8 km (4.8 mi) transportation path to downtown for ice skaters (from Carleton University and Dow's Lake to the Rideau Centre and National Arts Centre). On 29 June 2007, the Rideau Canal was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The older part of the city (including what remains of Bytown) is known as Lower Town, and occupies an area between the canal and the rivers. Across the canal to the west lie both Centretown and Downtown Ottawa, which share a border along Gloucester Street. These core neighbourhoods contain streets such as Elgin and Bank, which fill the role of commercial main streets in the region.
Centretown is next to downtown, which includes a substantial economic and architectural government presence across multiple branches of government. The legislature's work takes place in the parliamentary precinct, which includes buildings on Parliament Hill and others downtown, such as the Senate of Canada Building. Important buildings in the executive branch include the Office of the Prime Minister and Privy Council as well as many civil service buildings. The Supreme Court of Canada building can also be found in this area.
Across the Ottawa River, which forms the border between Ontario and Quebec, lies the city of Gatineau, itself the result of amalgamation of the former Quebec cities of Hull and Aylmer. Although formally and administratively separate cities in two different provinces, Ottawa and Gatineau (along with several nearby municipalities) collectively constitute the National Capital Region, which is considered a single metropolitan area. One federal Crown corporation, the National Capital Commission, or NCC, has significant land holdings in both cities, including sites of historical and touristic importance. The NCC, through its responsibility for planning and development of these lands, has a crucial role in shaping the development of the city. Around the main urban area is an extensive greenbelt, administered by the NCC for conservation and leisure, and comprising mostly forest, farmland and marshland.
Demographics
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Ottawa had a population of 1,017,449 living in 407,252 of its 427,113 total private dwellings, a change of 8.9% from its 2016 population of 934,243. With a land area of 2,788.2 km2 (1,076.5 sq mi), it had a population density of 364.9/km2 (945.1/sq mi) in 2021.
As of 2021 the Ottawa-Gatineau census metropolitan area (CMA) had a population of 1,488,307 living in 604,721 of its 638,013 total private dwellings, a change of 8.5% from its 2016 population of 1,371,576. With a land area of 8,046.99 km2 (3,106.96 sq mi), it had a population density of 185.0/km2 (479.0/sq mi) in 2021.
Ottawa's median age of 40.1 is below the provincial and national averages as of 2016. Youths under 15 constituted 16.7% of the total population in 2016, while those of retirement age (65 years and older) made up 15.4%.
The 2021 census reported that immigrants (individuals born outside Canada) comprise 259,215 persons or 25.9% of the total population of Ottawa. Of the total immigrant population, the top countries of origin were China (20,320 persons or 7.8%), India (16,200 persons or 6.2%), United Kingdom (14,760 persons or 5.7%), Lebanon (11,900 persons or 4.6%), Philippines (10,505 persons or 4.1%), United States of America (8,795 persons or 3.4%), Haiti (6,710 persons or 2.6%), Syria (6,370 persons or 2.5%), Vietnam (6,155 persons or 2.4%), and Iran (6,000 persons or 2.3%).
Race and ethnicity
As of 2021, approximately 64.9% of Ottawa's population was white or European, while 2.6% were Indigenous, and 32.5% were visible minorities (higher than the national percentage of 26.5%).
Religion
According to the 2021 census, religious groups in Ottawa included:
Christianity (528,700 persons or 52.8%)
Irreligion (316,740 persons or 31.6%)
Islam (98,920 persons or 9.9%)
Hinduism (20,300 persons or 2.0%)
Buddhism (10,800 persons or 1.1%)
Judaism (10,600 persons or 1.1%)
Sikhism (6,375 persons or 0.6%)
Indigenous Spirituality (445 persons or <0.1%)
Other (8,055 persons or 0.8%)
In 2011, around 65% of Ottawa residents described themselves as Christian, with Catholics accounting for 38.5% of the population and members of Protestant churches 25%. Other religions were also present in Ottawa, the most prominent being Islam (6.7%), Hinduism (1.4%), Buddhism (1.3%), and Judaism (1.2%). Those with no religious affiliation represented 22.8%.
Language
Bilingualism became official policy for the conduct of municipal business in 2002, and 37.6% of the population can speak both languages as of 2016, making it the largest city in Canada with both English and French as co-official languages. Those who identify their mother tongue as English constitute 62.4 percent, while those with French as their mother tongue make up 14.2 percent of the population. Regarding respondents' knowledge of one or both official languages, 59.9 percent and 1.5 percent of the population know English and French only, respectively, while 37.2 percent know both official languages. The overall Ottawa–Gatineau census metropolitan area (CMA) has a larger proportion of French speakers than Ottawa since Gatineau's population's first language is mostly French. However, Gatineau is also the most bilingual city in Canada, making the region one of the most bilingual. An additional 20.4 percent of the population list languages other than English and French as their mother tongue. These include Arabic (3.2%), Chinese (3.0%), Spanish (1.2%), Italian (1.1%), and many others.
Economy
As of 2015, the region of Ottawa-Gatineau has the sixth-highest total household income of all Canadian metropolitan areas ($82,053), and the Ontario portion more directly overlapping the City of Ottawa has a higher household income ($86,451). The median household income after taxes in the City of Ottawa is $73,745 in 2016 was higher than the national median of $61,348. Ottawa's unemployment rate has remained below the national and provincial unemployment rates since 2006, with a rate of 5.2% in April 2022, low compared to the decade preceding. In 2019 Mercer ranks Ottawa with the third highest quality of living of any Canadian city, and 19th highest in the world. It is also rated the second cleanest city in Canada, and third cleanest city in the world.
Ottawa's primary employers are the Public Service of Canada and the high-tech industry, although tourism and healthcare also represent increasingly sizeable economic activities. The federal government is the city's largest employer, employing over 116,000 individuals from the National Capital Region. The national headquarters for many federal departments are in Ottawa, particularly throughout Centretown and in the Terrasses de la Chaudière and Place du Portage complexes in Hull. The National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa is the main command centre for the Canadian Armed Forces. It hosts the Department of National Defence. During the summer, the city hosts the Ceremonial Guard, which performs functions such as the Changing the Guard.
As Canada's national capital, tourism is an important part of Ottawa's economy, particularly after the 150th anniversary of Canada, centred in Ottawa. The lead-up to the festivities saw much investment in civic infrastructure, upgrades to tourist infrastructure and increases in national cultural attractions. The National Capital Region annually attracts an estimated 22 million tourists, who spend about 2.2 billion dollars and support 30,600 jobs directly.
In addition to the economic activities that come with being the national capital, Ottawa is an important technology centre; in 2015, its 1800 companies employed approximately 63,400 people. The concentration of companies in this industry earned the city the nickname of "Silicon Valley North." Most of these companies specialize in telecommunications, software development and environmental technology. Large technology companies such as Nortel, Corel, Mitel, Cognos, Halogen Software, Shopify and JDS Uniphase were founded in the city. Ottawa also has regional locations for Nokia, 3M, Adobe Systems, Bell Canada, IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Many of the telecommunications and new technology are in the western part of the city (formerly Kanata). The "tech sector" was doing particularly well in 2015/2016.
Nordion, i-Stat and the National Research Council of Canada and OHRI are part of the growing life science sector.
The health sector is another major employer, which employs over 18,000 people in the city. Business, finance, administration, and sales and service rank high among types of occupations. Approximately ten percent of Ottawa's GDP is derived from finance, insurance and real estate whereas employment in goods-producing industries is only half the national average. The City of Ottawa is the second largest employer with approximately 2,100 people employed by the Ottawa Police service, and 13,300 full-time equivalent non-police employees.
In 2016, Ottawa experienced an increase of 10,000 jobs over the 2012 average growth, which was relatively slower than in the late 1990s. All major clusters tracked by the city saw increases in employment between 2014 and 2019. Major areas of growth in the 2010s included local and federal administration, finance and accommodation. Between 2008 and 2020, there was growth in the number of government employees and a reduction in high-tech jobs, a reversal of previous trends from 2003 to 2008.
Ottawa already has the largest rural economy among Canada's major cities. In Ottawa, the rural economy contributes over $1 billion to the GDP. Agriculture alone accounts for $400 million, $136.7 million of which is farm-gate sales. Rural economic activity includes agriculture, retail sales, construction, forestry and mining (aggregates), tourism, manufacturing, personal and business services, and transportation, to name a few. Rural employment expanded by a healthy 18% from 1996 to 2001.
Media
Three main daily local newspapers are printed in Ottawa: two English newspapers, the Ottawa Citizen established as the Bytown Packet in 1845 and the Ottawa Sun, and one French newspaper, Le Droit. The city is also home to local stations of the television broadcast networks and systems CBC and CTV, as well as English and French radio stations.
In addition to the market's local media services, Ottawa is home to several national media operations, including CPAC (Canada's national legislature broadcaster) and the parliamentary bureau staff of virtually all of Canada's major newsgathering organizations in television, radio and print. The city is also home to the head office of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Education
Primary and secondary education
Ottawa has four main public school boards: English, English-Catholic, French, and French-Catholic. The English-language Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) is the largest board with 147 schools, followed by the English-Catholic Ottawa Catholic School Board with 85 schools. The two French-language boards are the French-Catholic Conseil des écoles catholiques du Centre-Est with 49 schools, and the French Conseil des écoles publiques de l'Est de l'Ontario with 37 schools. Ottawa also has numerous private schools which are not part of a board.
The Ottawa Public Library was created in 1906 as part of the Carnegie library system. as of 2008 the library system had 2.3 million items at its 34 branches and two mobile libraries. Approximately 9.5 million loans were conducted in 2020, approximately 6.7 million physical loans and the remainder digital items.
Higher education and research
Ottawa is known as the most educated city in Canada, with over half the population having graduated from college and/or university. Ottawa has the highest per capita concentration of engineers, scientists, and residents with PhDs in Canada. The city has two main public universities and two main public colleges.
Carleton University was founded in 1942 to meet the needs of returning World War II veterans and later became Ontario's first private, non-denominational college. Over time, Carleton transitioned into the highly ranked comprehensive university it is today. The university's main campus sits between Old Ottawa South and Dow's Lake. Carleton's catholic affiliated university college, is the Dominican University College.
The University of Ottawa (originally named the "College of Bytown") was the first post-secondary institution established in the city in 1848. The university later grew to become the largest English-French bilingual university in the world. It is also a member of the U15, a group of highly respected research-intensive universities in Canada. The university's main campus is in the Sandy Hill neighbourhood, just adjacent to the city's downtown core. The University of Ottawa's catholic affiliated university college is St. Paul University.
Algonquin College is a college of applied arts and technology founded in 1967. Its main campus is located in the City View neighbourhood of College Ward. The college serves the National Capital Region and the outlying areas of Eastern Ontario, Western Quebec, and Upstate New York. The college has satellite campuses in Pembroke and Perth, as well as four international campuses through their international offshore partnerships.
Collège La Cité is the largest French-language college in Ontario. Founded in 1989, its campus is located off the Aviation Parkway in the Carson Meadows neighbourhood. La Cité has a satellite campus in Hawkesbury and a business office in Toronto.
Other colleges and universities in the metropolitan area are located in the neighbouring suburb of Gatineau, including the University of Quebec in Outaouais, Cégep de l'Outaouais, and Heritage College.
Public health
There are six active general medical hospitals in the city of Ottawa: The Queensway Carleton Hospital, The Ottawa Hospital (Civic Hospital, General Hospital, Riverside Hospital), Montfort Hospital, and Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario. Several specialized hospital facilities are also present, such as the world-renowned University of Ottawa Heart Institute, the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, and Élisabeth Bruyère Hospital. There are also several hospitals and major medical centres in neighbouring suburban communities and commuter towns. The University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine operates teaching hospitals in conjunction with partners throughout the city.
Ottawa is the headquarters of numerous major medical organizations and institutions such as Canadian Red Cross, Canadian Blood Services, Health Canada, Canadian Medical Association, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, Canadian Nurses Association, and the Medical Council of Canada.
Culture and contemporary life
Traditionally, the ByWard Market (in Lower Town), Parliament Hill and the Golden Triangle (both in Centretown – Downtown) have been the focal points of the cultural scenes in Ottawa. Modern thoroughfares such as Wellington Street, Rideau Street, Sussex Drive, Elgin Street, Bank Street, Somerset Street, Preston Street, Richmond Road in Westboro, and Sparks Street are home to many boutiques, museums, theatres, galleries, landmarks and memorials in addition to eating establishments, cafes, bars and nightclubs.
As Canada's capital, Ottawa has played host to many significant cultural events in Canadian history, including the first visit of the reigning Canadian sovereign—King George VI, with his consort, Queen Elizabeth—to his parliament, on 19 May 1939. VE Day was marked with a large celebration on 8 May 1945, the first raising of the country's new national flag took place on 15 February 1965, and the centennial of Confederation was celebrated on 1 July 1967. Queen Elizabeth II was in Ottawa on 17 April 1982, to issue a royal proclamation of the enactment of the Constitution Act. In 1983, Prince Charles and Diana Princess of Wales came to Ottawa for a state dinner hosted by then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. In 2011, Ottawa was selected as the first city to receive Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge during their tour of Canada.
Ottawa was featured in the short story collection For Your Eyes Only, by Ian Fleming.
Landmarks
There is one World Heritage Site in Ottawa, the Rideau Canal, along with 25 National Historic Sites of Canada in Ottawa, including the Château Laurier, the Parliament of Canada, Confederation Square, the former Ottawa Teachers' College and Laurier House. Many other properties of cultural value have been designated as having "heritage elements" by the City of Ottawa under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act.
Arts
Performing and visual arts
The Ottawa Little Theatre, founded in 1913 as the Ottawa Drama League, is Ottawa's longest-running community theatre company. Since 1969, Ottawa has been the home of the National Arts Centre, a major performing arts venue that houses four stages and is home to the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra and Opera Lyra Ottawa.
Established in 1975, the Great Canadian Theatre Company specializes in the production of Canadian plays at a local level. The cities museum landscape is notable for containing six of Canada's nine national museums, the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum, the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, the Canada Science and Technology Museum, Canadian Museum of Nature, Canadian War Museum and National Gallery of Canada. The National Gallery of Canada; designed by famous architect Moshe Safdie, it is a permanent home to the Maman sculpture. The Canadian War Museum houses over 3.75 million artifacts and was moved to an expanded facility in 2005. The Canadian Museum of Nature was built in 1905, and underwent a major renovation between 2004 and 2010, leading to a centrepiece Blue Whale skeleton, and the creation of a monthly nightclub experience, Nature Nocturne.
Cuisine
Ottawa is home to several regional dishes. As a city with traditional French-Canadian roots, staples such as poutine are served throughout the city. However, many consider shawarma Ottawa's official dish; the city contains more shawarma restaurants than anywhere else in Canada. The city is also home to "Ottawa-style" pizza, consisting usually of a thicker doughy crust and slightly spicy pizza sauce, with the toppings baked under a heavy layer of cheese, keeping the toppings soft. Beaver tails, a fried dough pastry, were first created in Ottawa in the 1970s. Le Cordon Bleu has a long-established culinary arts institute in the central Ottawa neighbourhood of Sandy Hill, the only Le Cordon Bleu campus in North America.
Festivals
Ottawa hosts a variety of annual seasonal activities—such as Winterlude, the largest festival in Canada, and Canada Day celebrations on Parliament Hill and surrounding downtown area, as well as Bluesfest, Canadian Tulip Festival, Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival, Ottawa International Jazz Festival, Fringe Festival, Capital Pride, and CityFolk Festival, that have grown to become some of the largest festivals of their kind in the world. In 2010, Ottawa's Festival industry received the IFEA "World Festival and Event City Award" for the category of North American cities with a population between 500,000 and 1,000,000.
Sports
Professional sports
Sport in Ottawa has a history dating back to the 19th century. The city is currently home to six professional sports teams. The Ottawa Senators are a professional ice hockey team playing in the National Hockey League. The Senators history in Ottawa dates back to 1883; the franchise would go on to win the Stanley Cup eleven times by 1927. The team is currently a member of the Atlantic Division and play their home games at the Canadian Tire Centre. In 2023, it was announced that Ottawa would be home to one of the six charter franchises of the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL). The Ottawa Charge play home games at TD Place Arena.
The Ottawa Redblacks are a professional Canadian Football team playing in the Canadian Football League. Formerly the Ottawa Rough Riders represented the city until 1996. With a history dating back to 1876, the team was one of the oldest and longest-lived professional sports teams in North America. The professional soccer club, Atlético Ottawa, plays in the Canadian Premier League. The team was founded in by Spanish club Atlético Madrid, and along with the Redblacks, play their home games at TD Place Stadium. The Ottawa Blackjacks are a professional basketball team, playing in the Canadian Elite Basketball League, out of the TD Place Arena. The Ottawa Titans play professional baseball in the Frontier League at Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton Park. Ottawa was previously home to the Ottawa Lynx, a Triple-A club, as well as the Ottawa Champions, an independent baseball team in the Can-Am League.
Collegiate sports
The University of Ottawa and Carleton University varsity teams compete in U Sports in various sports. Algonquin College and Collège La Cité teams compete in the OCAA.
The Carleton Ravens are nationally ranked in basketball and soccer. Carleton's men's basketball program is regarded as the greatest of all time, having won 17 of the last 20 national championships. The Ottawa Gee-Gees are nationally ranked in basketball and soccer.
Non-professional and amateur sports
Several non-professional teams also play in Ottawa, including the Ottawa 67's junior ice hockey team.
The city is home to an assortment of amateur organized team sports such as soccer, basketball, baseball, curling, rowing, ultimate, and horse racing. Casual recreational activities, such as skating, cycling, tennis, hiking, sailing, golfing, skiing, and fishing/ice fishing are also popular.
Starting in 2025 a new Ironman Triathlon will be starting in Ottawa.
Government and politics
The City of Ottawa is a single-tier municipality, meaning it is in itself a census division and has no county or regional municipality government above it, and has no subsidiary municipalities to provide municipal services. Ottawa is governed by the 25-member Ottawa City Council consisting of 24 councillors each representing one ward and the mayor, Mark Sutcliffe as of the 2022 Ottawa municipal election, is elected in a citywide vote.
Along with being the capital of Canada, Ottawa is politically diverse in local politics. Most of the city has traditionally supported the Liberal Party in federal elections. The safest areas for the Liberals are the ones dominated by Francophones, especially in Vanier and central Gloucester. Central Ottawa is usually more left-leaning, and the New Democratic Party have won ridings there. Some of Ottawa's suburbs are swing areas, such as central Nepean. Another example of a swing area is Orleans, despite its often Liberal Party-aligned francophone population. Ridings further outside the city centre, such as those including Kanata, Barrhaven and rural areas, tend to be more conservative, fiscally and socially. This is especially true in the former Townships of West Carleton, Goulbourn, Rideau and Osgoode, which are more in line with the conservative areas in the surrounding counties. Rural parts of the former township of Cumberland, with a large number of Francophones, traditionally support the Liberal Party, though their support has recently weakened.
At present, Ottawa is host to 130 embassies. A further 49 countries accredit their embassies and missions in the United States to Canada.
Transportation
Public transportation
Ottawa's public transit system is managed by OC Transpo. OC Transpo operates an integrated, multi-modal Rapid Transit system which includes:
The O-Train light rail system. The four-line public rail system includes two existing lines and two currently under construction.
Line 1, (Confederation Line) is an east–west line which operates medium-capacity light rail vehicles and travels under the city's downtown core.
Line 2, (Trillium Line), is a north–south rail transit corridor which utilizes a mix of Stadler FLIRTs and Alstom Coradia LINTs connecting the south end of Ottawa to Line 1 at Bayview station.
Line 3, is an under construction mass-transit line that will run mostly in parallel to Line 1, splitting at Lincoln Fields station and continuing west.
Line 4, is an under-construction 4 km (2.5 mi) airport link connecting the Trillium Line to the Ottawa Macdonald–Cartier International Airport
A vast Bus rapid transit (BRT) system that uses a series of dedicated bus-only roadways named the Transitway and reserved lanes on city streets and highways. The Transitway has long distances between stops and full station amenities (including platforms, walkways, fare gates, ticket booths, elevators and convenience stores). It connects Ottawa's suburbs to the inner city. The Rapid bus service network operates all day, seven days a week, reaching the suburban communities of Kanata to the West, Barrhaven to the South-West, Orléans to the East, and South Keys to the South.
Over 190 local bus routes are served by a fleet of ordinary, articulated and double-decker buses. Both OC Transpo and the Quebec-based Société de transport de l'Outaouais (STO) operate bus transit services between Ottawa and Gatineau. OC Transpo also operates a door-to-door bus service for disabled individuals known as ParaTranspo. There is a proposed LRT system that could link Ottawa with Gatineau.
Airports
The Ottawa Macdonald–Cartier International Airport is the city's principal airport. There are also three main regional airports Gatineau-Ottawa Executive Airport, Ottawa/Carp Airport, and Ottawa/Rockcliffe Airport.
Inter-city transportation
Ottawa station is the main inter-city train station operated by Via Rail. It is located 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) to the east of downtown in Eastway Gardens (adjacent to O-Train Tremblay station) and serves Via Rail's Corridor Route. The city is also served by inter-city passenger rail service at Fallowfield station in the southwestern suburban community of Barrhaven.
Intercity bus services are currently provided by several carriers at various stops throughout the city, following the closure of the former Ottawa Central Station bus terminal on 1 June 2021. Major carriers include: Megabus, Ontario Northland, Autobus Gatineau, and Orléans Express.
Streets and highways
The City of Ottawa has over 12,200 km (7,600 mi) lane-kilometres of road and a series of freeways. The primary freeways are the east–west provincial Highway 417 (designated as the Queensway and part of the Trans-Canada Highway), Ottawa-Carleton Highway 174 (formerly Provincial Highway 17), Highway 7, and the north–south provincial Highway 416 (designated as Veterans' Memorial Highway), which connects to other 400-Series highways via the 401. From downtown there are also freeway connections to Autoroute 5 and Autoroute 50, in neighbouring Gatineau.
The city also has several scenic parkways and promenades, such as the Kichi Zibi Mikan (formerly the Macdonald Parkway), Colonel By Drive, Queen Elizabeth Driveway, the Sir George-Étienne Cartier Parkway (formerly the Rockcliffe Parkway), and the Aviation Parkway. The National Capital Commission manages ceremonial routes linking key attractions on both sides of the Ottawa River, including Confederation Boulevard.
Cycling and pedestrian network
Numerous paved multi-use trails, mostly operated by the National Capital Commission and the city, wind their way through much of the capital, including along the Ottawa River, Rideau River, and Rideau Canal. These pathways are used for transportation, tourism, and recreation. Because many streets either have wide curb lanes or bicycle lanes, cycling is a mode of transportation used by up to 2.5% of citizens, including in winter. This is the largest percentage of any major Canadian city. As of 31 December 2015, over 900 km (560 mi) of cycling facilities are found in Ottawa, including 435 km (270 mi) of multi-use pathways, 8 km (5.0 mi) of cycle tracks, 200 km (120 mi) of on-road bicycle lanes, and 257 km (160 mi) of paved shoulders. 204 km (127 mi) of new cycling facilities were added between 2011 and 2014.
Numerous downtown streets are restricted to pedestrians only. The entire length of Sparks Street was turned into a pedestrian mall in 1966. Since 1960, additional avenues, streets, and parkways, are reserved for pedestrian and bicycle use only on Saturdays, Sundays and on selected holidays and events. In 2021 city council unanimously approved the Byward Market Public Realm Plan to make the market area more car-free and pedestrian friendly. From 2009 to 2015 the NCC introduced the Capital Bixi bicycle-sharing system. This continued until the company VeloGo took over the program from 2015 to 2018 when the partnership ceased. Scooter-sharing systems have since been introduced in the downtown and inner-city areas.
Notable people
See also
Outline of Ottawa
List of francophone communities in Ontario
World national capitals
List of Ottawa buildings
Geography of Ottawa
Ottawa's Mayor: Mark Sutcliffe
Footnotes
References
Bibliography
External links
Official website |
Justice_Building | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_Building | [
753
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_Building"
] | The Justice Building designed by Thomas W. Fuller in Ottawa is so-called because it was previously home to the Department of Justice.
Originally called Block D, it was built from 1935 to 1938 for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). It was renovated in 1998–2001 and now houses some of the offices of Members of Parliament.
It is similar Gothic Revival architecture design to the Confederation Building located just east of it, which was also designed by Thomas W. Fuller.
In Ian Fleming's short story "For Your Eyes Only" James Bond visits the RCMP headquarters when it was located in this building, and the book contains a description of the structure.
External links
Explore the buildings near Parliament Hill - Public Services and Procurement Canada
Thomas W. Fuller, Chief Dominion Architect 1927-1936 Archived 2015-01-12 at the Wayback Machine |
Thomas_W._Fuller | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_W._Fuller | [
753
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_W._Fuller"
] | Thomas William Fuller (May 3, 1865 – November 4, 1951), the son of Thomas Fuller, was a Canadian architect. Before his selection as Dominion Architect, Fuller designed a number of federal buildings in Dawson City, Yukon, some of which are now designated as National Historic Sites of Canada. These include the Post Office (1899); Court House (1900–01); Territorial Administration Building, 5th Avenue (1901); Public School (1901) which burned 1957; and Commissioner's Residence (1901).
He served as Chief Dominion Architect from 1927 to 1936, designing a number of prominent public buildings in Canada. Thomas W. Fuller designed a number of post offices:
Outremont, Quebec, Bernard Avenue, (1928–29); Hespeler, Ontario Queen Street East, (1928); Fort Frances, Ontario (1929); Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 1st Avenue, 1929; Moncton, New Brunswick (1931); Penetanguishene, Ontario (1931); Perth, Ontario (1933); Montreal, Quebec, St. James Street (1932); Montreal, Quebec Notre-Dame-de-Grace Sherbrooke Street East (1934–35); Fort William, Ontario, Syndicate Avenue near Donald Street (1934); Montreal, Quebec, Central Post Office, Peel Street, (1935); Amherst, Nova Scotia (1935).
His son, Thomas G. Fuller, founded Thomas Fuller Construction company in 1958 which built many public buildings in Ottawa as well as the sheltered harbour for the Britannia Yacht Club. In 2002, the company was awarded a contract to renovate the Canadian Library of Parliament.
Works
External links
Yukon Nuggets
Thomas W. Fuller, Chief Dominion Architect 1927-1936 Archived 2015-01-12 at the Wayback Machine
Canada`s Historic Places
== References == |
Brown_County,_Kansas | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_County,_Kansas | [
754
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_County,_Kansas"
] | Brown County is a county located in the northeast portion of the U.S. state of Kansas. Its county seat and most populous city is Hiawatha. As of the 2020 census, the county population was 9,508. The county was named after Albert G. Brown, a U.S. Senator from Mississippi and Kansas statehood advocate. The Kickapoo Indian Reservation of Kansas, the majority of the Sac and Fox Reservation, and the majority of the Iowa Reservation of Kansas and Nebraska are located within the county.
History
Early history
For many millennia, the Great Plains of North America was inhabited by nomadic Native Americans. From the 16th century to 18th century, the Kingdom of France claimed ownership of large parts of North America. In 1762, after the French and Indian War, France secretly ceded New France to Spain, per the Treaty of Fontainebleau.
19th century
In 1802, Spain returned most of the land to France, but keeping title to about 7,500 square miles. In 1803, most of the land for modern day Kansas was acquired by the United States from France as part of the 828,000 square mile Louisiana Purchase for 2.83 cents per acre.
In 1854, the Kansas Territory was organized, then in 1861 Kansas became the 34th U.S. state. Brown County was founded in 1855, was named for Albert G. Brown.
Geography
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 572 square miles (1,480 km2), of which 571 square miles (1,480 km2) is land and 1.2 square miles (3.1 km2) (0.2%) is water. The Wolf River has its source in the county. Brown State Fishing Lake, formerly known as "Brown County State Park" is in the county, 8 miles (13 km) east of Hiawatha.
Adjacent counties
Richardson County, Nebraska (north)
Doniphan County (east)
Atchison County (southeast)
Jackson County (southwest)
Nemaha County (west)
Major highways
Sources: National Atlas, U.S. Census Bureau
U.S. Route 36
U.S. Route 73
U.S. Route 75
U.S. Route 159
Kansas Highway 20
Kansas Highway 246
Demographics
As of the 2000 census, there were 10,724 people, 4,318 households, and 2,949 families residing in the county. The population density was 19 people per square mile (7.3 people/km2). There were 4,815 housing units at an average density of 8 per square mile (3.1/km2). The racial makeup of the county was 86.87% White, 1.56% Black or African American, 8.82% Native American, 0.21% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 0.73% from other races, and 1.81% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.32% of the population.
There were 4,318 households, out of which 31.40% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 55.80% were married couples living together, 9.20% had a female householder with no husband present, and 31.70% were non-families. 28.80% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.70% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.44 and the average family size was 2.99.
In the county, the population was spread out, with 26.40% under the age of 18, 7.40% from 18 to 24, 24.00% from 25 to 44, 22.70% from 45 to 64, and 19.50% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females there were 93.50 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 89.80 males.
The median income for a household in the county was $31,971, and the median income for a family was $39,525. Males had a median income of $29,163 versus $19,829 for females. The per capita income for the county was $15,163. About 10.60% of families and 12.90% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16.40% of those under age 18 and 11.80% of those age 65 or over.
Government
Presidential elections
Like all of Kansas outside the eastern cities, Brown County is overwhelmingly Republican, although its history of Yankee settlement means it has been thus for longer than certain other parts of the state. Brown was Alf Landon’s strongest county in his home state during his disastrous 1936 presidential campaign. FDR was never to win so much as 42 percent of the vote in any of his four Presidential elections; indeed no Democratic presidential nominee has ever won a majority in Brown County, with the highest percentage being 47 percent by William Jennings Bryan in 1896. A mortally divided Republican Party allowed Woodrow Wilson to win a plurality in 1912 with under 37 percent of the county’s vote – nonetheless since 1968 no Democrat has reached even that percentage.
Laws
Following amendment to the Kansas Constitution in 1986, the county remained a prohibition, or "dry", county until 2000, when voters approved the sale of alcoholic liquor by the individual drink without a food sales requirement.
Education
Unified school districts
Hiawatha USD 415
South Brown County USD 430
School district office in neighboring county
Doniphan West USD 111
Prairie Hills USD 113
North Jackson USD 335
Bureau of Indian Education-affiliated tribal schools
Kickapoo Nation School
Communities
List of townships / incorporated cities / unincorporated communities / extinct former communities within Brown County.
Cities
‡ means a community has portions in an adjacent county.
Unincorporated communities
† means a community is designated a Census-Designated Place (CDP) by the United States Census Bureau.
Indian reservations
Townships
Brown County is divided into ten townships. The cities of Hiawatha, Horton, and Sabetha are considered governmentally independent and are excluded from the census figures for the townships. In the following table, the population center is the largest city (or cities) included in that township's population total, if it is of a significant size.
See also
National Register of Historic Places listings in Brown County, Kansas
Community information for Kansas
Kansas locations by per capita income
List of counties in Kansas
List of townships in Kansas
List of cities in Kansas
List of unincorporated communities in Kansas
List of ghost towns in Kansas
References
Further reading
Standard Atlas of Brown County, Kansas; Geo. A. Ogle & Co; 70 pages; 1919.
Plat Book of Brown County, Kansas; Northwest Publishing Company; 44 pages; 1904.
Meacham's Illustrated Atlas of Brown and Nemaha Counties, Kansas; J.H. Meacham & Company; 127 pages; 1887.
External links
County
Brown County - Official
Brown County - Directory of Public Officials
Maps
Brown County Maps: Current, Historic, KDOT
Kansas Highway Maps: Current, Historic, KDOT
Kansas Railroad Maps: Current, 1996, 1915, KDOT and Kansas Historical Society |
Demographics_of_Paris | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Paris | [
754
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Paris"
] | The city of Paris (also called the Commune or Department of Paris) had a population of 2,165,423 people within its administrative city limits as of January 1, 2019. It is surrounded by the Paris unité urbaine, or urban area, the most populous urban area in the European Union. In 2018 the unité urbaine had a population of 10,816,803 in 2,854 km2 (1,102 sq mi). The Paris Region, or Île-de-France, covers 12,012 km2 (4,638 sq mi), and has its own regional council and president. It has a population of 12,213,447 as of January 2018, or 18.3 percent of the population of France. The metropolitan or functional area (aire d'attraction) of Paris covers 18,941 km2 (7,313 sq mi) and has 13,064,617 inhabitants (2018).
The population of the city of Paris reached a historic high of 2.9 million in 1921 but then declined; between 1954 and 1999 it declined at every census, falling to 2,125,246 in 1999. After that it began to climb again, reaching 2,240,621 in 2012, but falling to 2,187,526 in 2017.
The city's population loss reflected the experience of most other core cities in the developed world that have not expanded their boundaries. The principal factors in the process were a significant decline in household size, and a dramatic migration of residents to the suburbs between 1962 and 1975. Factors in the migration included deindustrialisation, high rent, the gentrification of many inner quarters, the transformation of living space into offices, and greater affluence among working families. The city's population loss was one of the most severe among international municipalities and the largest for any that had achieved more than 2,000,000 residents. Since then, an influx of younger residents and immigrants has contributed to the growth of the city.
Density
According to Eurostat, the EU statistical agency, in 2012 the Commune of Paris was the most densely populated city in the European Union, with 21,616 people per square kilometre within the city limits (the NUTS-3 statistical area), ahead of Inner London West, which had 10,374 persons per square kilometre. According to the same census, three departments bordering Paris, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne, had population densities of over ten thousand persons per square kilometre, ranking among the ten most densely populated areas of the EU.
Paris is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Its density, excluding the outlying woodland parks of Boulogne and Vincennes, was 24,448 inhabitants per square kilometre (63,320/sq mi) in the 1999 official census, which could be compared only with some Asian megapolises and the New York City borough of Manhattan. Even including the two woodland areas, its population density was 20,755/km2 (53,760/sq mi) in 2017, the sixth-most-densely populated commune in France after Levallois-Perret, Vincennes, Le Pré-Saint-Gervais, Saint-Mandé and Montrouge, all of which border the city proper.
The most sparsely populated quarters are the western and central office and administration-focused arrondissements. The city's population is densest in the northern and eastern arrondissements; the 11th arrondissement had a density of 40,672 inhabitants per square kilometre (105,340/sq mi) in 1999, and some of the same arrondissement's eastern quarters had densities close to 100,000/km2 (260,000/sq mi) in the same year.
Notes: Without the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes.
References: INSEE
Paris agglomeration
The city of Paris covers an area much smaller than the urban area of which it is the core. At present, Paris's real urbanisation, defined by the pôle urbain (urban cluster) statistical area, covers 2,845 km2 (1,098 sq mi), or an area about 27 times larger than the city itself. The administration of Paris's urban growth is divided between itself and its surrounding departments: Paris's closest ring of three adjoining departments, or petite couronne ("small ring") are fully saturated with urban growth, and the ring of four departments outside of these, the grande couronne departments, are only covered in their inner regions by Paris's urbanisation. These eight departments form the larger administrative Île-de-France région; most of this region is filled, and overextended in places, by the Paris aire urbaine, which, in 2017, was populated by over 12 million people.
The Paris agglomeration has shown a steady rate of growth since the end of the late 16th century French Wars of Religion, save brief setbacks during the French Revolution and World War II. With an estimated total of 12.2 million inhabitants for 2017, the annual population growth rate of the Île-de-France région lied between 0.3% and 0.9% over the past 50 years.
Immigration
By law, French censuses do not ask questions regarding ethnicity or religion, but do gather information concerning one's country of birth. From this it is still possible to determine that Paris and its metropolitan area is one of the most multi-cultural in Europe: According to the 2011 census, 456,105 residents of the municipality of Paris, or 20.3 percent, and 2,117,901 residents of the Paris Region (Île-de-France), or 17.9 percent, were born outside France. At the 1999 census, 4.2% of the population in Paris metropolitan area were recent immigrants (people who had immigrated to France between 1990 and 1999), the majority from Asia and Africa. 37 % of all immigrants in France live in the Paris region.
The first wave of international migration to Paris started as early as 1820 with the arrivals of German peasants fleeing an agricultural crisis in their homeland. Several waves of immigration followed continually until today: Italians and central European Jews during the 19th century; Russians after the revolution of 1917 and Armenians fleeing genocide in the Ottoman Empire; colonial subjects during World War I and later; Poles between the two world wars; Spaniards, Italians, Portuguese, and North Africans from the 1950s to the 1970s; North African Jews after the independence of those countries; Africans and Asians since then.
The Paris metropolitan region or "aire urbaine" is estimated to be home to some 1.7 million Muslims, making up between 10–15 per cent of the area's population. However, without official data, the margin of error of these estimates is extremely high as it is based on one's country of birth (someone born in a Muslim country or born to a parent from a Muslim country is considered as a "potential Muslim"). According to the North American Jewish Data Bank, an estimated 310,000 Jews also live in Paris and the surrounding Île-de-France region, an area with a population of 11.7 million inhabitants. Paris has historically been a magnet for immigrants, hosting one of the largest concentrations of immigrants in Europe today.
Immigrants and their children in departments of Île-de-France (Paris Region)
Anch National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies, responsible for the production and analysis of official statistics in France, 20 per cent of people living in the city of Paris are immigrants and 41.3 per cent of people under 20 have at least one immigrant parent. Among the young people under 18, 12.1 per cent are of Maghrebi origin, 9.9 per cent of Subsaharan African origin and 4.0 per cent of South European origin. In 2020-2021, about 6 million people, or 49% of the population of Paris, are either immigrants (21%) or have at least one immigrant parent (28%), these figures do not include French people born in Overseas France and their direct descendants.
(source: Insee, EAR 2006)
Reading: 436 576 immigrants live in Paris, representing 20% of Parisians and 22.4% of immigrants in Île-de-France.
162 635 children under 20 with at least one immigrant parent live in Paris, representing 41.3 per cent of the total of children under 20 in Paris and 15.4 per cent of the total of children under 20 with at least one immigrant parent in Île-de-France.
Expatriates
As of 2005 many expatriates settle in the western portion of Paris. Western Paris is in close proximity to many international schools and the La Défense area.
Many international students living in Paris live in the large dormitory complex of Cité Université Internationale de Paris, located just on the edge of the city in the 14th arrondissement.
Ethnic groups
Africans
As of 2012 tens of thousands of people of African origins live in Paris. This group includes those born in France who had African parents and naturalized French citizens born in Africa. The majority come from the Maghreb, including Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Other countries with populations in Paris include Burkina Faso, the Congo, Guinea, Mali, and Senegal.
Asians
As of 1998 Île-de-France has half of the Asian population of France. As of 1990 the majority of Asians living in France are ethnic Chinese originating from several countries.
In 1974 France stopped allowing foreign workers into its borders. The Asian population of France increased despite the closure. In 1975 there were 20,000 Asians in Île-de-France. In 1982 the region had 59,000. This increased to 108,000 in 1990.
In France the "Asians" are defined as people originating from the East Asian cultural sphere. The term does not include people from the Indian subcontinent. The usage of "Asians" differs from that of Anglo-Saxon countries.
Geography of the Asian population
For the entire Île-de-France region, there were a total of 108,511 persons who held or formerly held Cambodian, Chinese, Laotian, Taiwanese, and Vietnamese citizenships as of 1990. This included 64,361 current citizens of those countries and 44,150 former citizens who became naturalized as French citizens.
As of 1990, there were a combined total of 31,773 persons who held or formerly held Cambodian, Chinese, Laotian, Taiwanese, and Vietnamese citizenships in the City of Paris. This included 21,655 current citizens of those countries and 10,118 former citizens who became naturalized as French citizens.
As of 1990 fewer than 10,000 persons of East/Southeast Asian origin resided in six communes of Marne-la-Vallée. 26% of the population of Lognes was Asian, and other percentages were 8% in Noisiel, 5-6% in Noisy-le-Grand, and 5-6% in Torcy. In 1982 there were 6,000 Asians in Marne-la-Vallée, making up 3-4% of the area's population. In 1987 the number increased to 9,000.
As of circa 1998 Ivry-sur-Seine and Vitry-sur-Seine had a combined Asian population of 3,600.
As of circa 1998 there were about 6,000 East/Southeast Asians in and around Aulnay-sous-Bois, and there were 3,000 persons of East and Southeast Asian origin in Aulnay proper. Most of them were of Cambodian origin, including those with and without Cambodian citizenship. The commune also had an above-average number of persons of Laotian origin, including those with and without Laotian citizenship. Ethnicities included Khmer people, Lao people, and Overseas Chinese.
Cambodians
As of 1990, in the City of Paris there were 7,950 Cambodian citizens and 3,279 former Cambodian citizens who became naturalized as French. The combined total is 11,229.
That year, in the Île-de-France region there were 26,553 Cambodian citizens and 13,068 former Cambodian citizens naturalized as French. The combined total was 39,421.
Chinese
As of 1990 the majority of Asians living in the Paris area are ethnic Chinese originating from several countries. The largest group includes ethnic Chinese from Indochina, and a smaller group originates from Zhejiang.
Japanese
As of 2013 the official number of Japanese residents in Paris was 16,277.
Laotians
As of 1990, in the City of Paris there were 2,185 Laotian citizens and 1,376 former Laotian citizens naturalized as French, making a combined total of 3,561.
As of that year, in the Île-de-France region there were 10,110 Laotian citizens and 8,177 former Laotian citizens, making a combined total of 18,287.
Vietnamese
In periods before 1975 several Vietnamese arrived in Paris, including intellectuals, those who worked as civil servants in colonial times, and those who came to Paris to study and did not return home. Ethnic Vietnamese arriving after 1975 became a part of an ethnic network established by those that came before them. Many Vietnamese achieved proficiency in the medical, scientific, and computer science fields.
As of 1990, in the City of Paris there were 3,802 Vietnamese citizens and 4,155 former Vietnamese citizens naturalized as French, making a total of 7,957.
As of that year, in the Île-de-France region there were 16,387 Vietnamese citizens and 20,261 former Vietnamese citizens naturalized as French, making a total of 36,648.
Historical population
Notes for the table:
until the 1830s, urbanization was contained within the administrative borders of the City of Paris; urban area figures before 1835 are thus the same as the city proper figures
the phenomenon of long commutes did not appear until the 1960s; metropolitan area figures before 1968 are thus essentially the same as the urban area figures
time comparisons should be exercised with care, as statistical borders vary year after year. E.g., the metropolitan area figure for 1968 is within the 1968 borders of the metropolitan area, whereas the metropolitan area figure for 1975 is within the 1975 expanded borders of the metropolitan area.
See also
Demographics of France
List of metropolitan areas by population
Larger urban zone
Largest urban areas of the European Union
References
Guillon, Michelle. "The Chinese and Chinese Districts in Paris" (Chapter 11). In: Sinn, Elizabeth (editor). The Last Half Century of Chinese Overseas. Hong Kong University Press, 1 January 1998. ISBN 9622094465, 9789622094468.
Hassell, James E. (1991). Russian Refugees in France and the United States Between the World Wars. American Philosophical Society. ISBN 978-0-87169-817-9.
Madge, Charles; Willmott, Peter (2006). Inner City Poverty in Paris and London. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-41762-4. Archived from the original on 1 January 2016. Retrieved 25 October 2015.
Notes
Bibliography
Goebel, Michael. Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism (Cambridge University Press, 2015) excerpts
Zarka, Yves Charles; Taussig, Sylvie; Fleury, Cynthia (2004). "Les contours d'une population susceptible d'être musulmane d'après la filiation". L'Islam en France (in French). Presses universitaires de France. ISBN 978-2-13-053723-6.
Further reading
Grzegorczyk, Anna (Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Warsaw). "Social and ethnic segregation in the Paris metropolitan area at the beginning of the 21st century" (Archive). Miscellanea Geographica – Regional Studies on Development. Vol.17, No.2, 2013. pp. 20–29. ISSN 2084-6118. DOI:10.2478/10288-012-0040-3. |
International_Year_for_the_Culture_of_Peace | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Year_for_the_Culture_of_Peace | [
754
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Year_for_the_Culture_of_Peace"
] | The International Year for the Culture of Peace was designated by the United Nations as the year 2000, with the aim of celebrating and encouraging a culture of peace.
Origins
Since 1959 the United Nations has designated specific years to emphasize issues which are part of the mission of the organization. The International Year for the Culture of Peace was proclaimed in a United Nations General Assembly resolution in 1997 on the basis of an Economic and Social Council resolution. The General Assembly invited a Declaration and Programme of Action from UNESCO and adopted it after ten months of difficult negotiation.
The IYCP Taskforce
The lead organization for the International Year was UNESCO. There was a logic to this, in that UNESCO is the United Nations organization dealing with education, and also in that the constitutional mandate of UNESCO involves the encouragement of a global culture of peace. Within the UNESCO Secretariat in Paris, a specific International Year for the Culture of Peace Taskforce was established from 1998 to 2000, with the aim of co-ordinating the activities to publicize the International Year. Members of the Taskforce included: David Adams (Chair), Enzo Fazzino, Katherine Stoessel, Di Bretherton, Zeynep Varoglu and Jan Visser.
International Year Strategies and Results
The strategies behind the International Year centred upon involving civil society as much as possible. The specific initiatives included the collection of some 75 million signatures worldwide in support of a culture of peace, with the Manifesto 2000 Project. Another initiative was the Culture of Peace News Network, otherwise known as the CPNN, a web-based news service reporting news in support of a culture of peace.
An extensive description of the results obtained during the International Year was published by UNESCO.
Assessment of the International Year
Opinion is divided as to how effective the International Year was. It is possible to argue that there was much rhetoric in the International Year, and yet often the impact of such events can only be discerned many years later.
Ongoing Commitment of the United Nations
The work of supporting and encouraging a culture of peace continues through the International Decade for the Promotion of a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World, and the ongoing Culture of Peace News Network.
See also
The Ribbon International
References
External links
Adams, David (2003) 'Early History of the Culture of Peace: A Personal Memoire'
Page, James S. (2001) 'The International Year for the Culture of Peace: Was It Worthwhile?'. International Journal of Cultural Studies. 4(3): 348-351
Culture of Peace News Network |
Edward_II_of_England | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_II_of_England | [
755
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_II_of_England"
] | Edward II (25 April 1284 – 21 September 1327), also known as Edward of Caernarfon or Caernarvon, was King of England from 1307 until he was deposed in January 1327. The fourth son of Edward I, Edward became the heir to the throne following the death of his older brother Alphonso. Beginning in 1300, Edward accompanied his father on campaigns in Scotland, and in 1306 he was knighted in a grand ceremony at Westminster Abbey. Edward succeeded to the throne the next year, following his father's death. In 1308, he married Isabella, daughter of the powerful King Philip IV of France, as part of a long-running effort to resolve the tensions between the English and French crowns.
Edward had a close and controversial relationship with Piers Gaveston, who had joined his household in 1300. The precise nature of Edward and Gaveston's relationship is uncertain; they may have been friends, lovers, or sworn brothers. Gaveston's arrogance and power as Edward's favourite provoked discontent both among the barons and the French royal family, and Edward was forced to exile him. On Gaveston's return, the barons pressured the King into agreeing to wide-ranging reforms called the Ordinances of 1311. The newly empowered barons banished Gaveston, to which Edward responded by revoking the reforms and recalling his favourite. Led by Edward's cousin Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster, a group of the barons seized and executed Gaveston in 1312, beginning several years of armed confrontation. English forces were pushed back in Scotland, where Edward was decisively defeated by Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Widespread famine followed, and criticism of the King's reign mounted.
The Despenser family, in particular Hugh Despenser the Younger, became close friends and advisers to Edward, but in 1321 Lancaster and many of the barons seized the Despensers' lands and forced the King to exile them. In response, Edward led a short military campaign, capturing and executing Lancaster. Edward and the Despensers strengthened their grip on power, revoking the 1311 reforms, executing their enemies and confiscating estates. Unable to make progress in Scotland, Edward finally signed a truce with Robert. Opposition to the regime grew, and when Isabella was sent to France to negotiate a peace treaty in 1325, she turned against Edward and refused to return. Isabella allied herself with the exiled Roger Mortimer, and invaded England with a small army in 1326. Edward's regime collapsed and he fled into Wales, where he was captured in November. Edward was forced to relinquish his crown in January 1327 in favour of his son, Edward III, and he died in Berkeley Castle on 21 September, probably murdered on the orders of the new regime.
Edward's relationship with Gaveston inspired Christopher Marlowe's 1592 play Edward II, along with other plays, films, novels and media. Many of these have focused on the possible sexual relationship between the two men. Edward's contemporaries criticised his performance as a king, noting his failures in Scotland and the oppressive regime of his later years, although 19th-century academics have argued that the growth of parliamentary institutions during his reign was a positive development for England over the longer term. Debate has continued into the 21st century as to whether Edward was a lazy and incompetent king, or simply a reluctant and ultimately unsuccessful ruler.
Background
Edward II was the fourth son of Edward I, King of England, Lord of Ireland, and ruler of Gascony in south-western France (which he held as the feudal vassal of the king of France), and Eleanor, Countess of Ponthieu in northern France. Eleanor was from the Castilian royal family. Edward I proved a successful military leader, leading the suppression of the baronial revolts in the 1260s and joining the Ninth Crusade. During the 1280s he conquered North Wales, removing the native Welsh princes from power and, in the 1290s, he intervened in Scotland's civil war, claiming suzerainty over the country. He was considered an extremely successful ruler by his contemporaries, largely able to control the powerful earls that formed the senior ranks of the English nobility. The historian Michael Prestwich describes Edward I as "a king to inspire fear and respect", while John Gillingham characterises him as an "efficient bully".
Despite Edward I's successes, when he died in 1307 he left a range of challenges for his son to resolve. One of the most critical was the problem of English rule in Scotland, where Edward I's long but ultimately inconclusive military campaign was ongoing when he died. His control of Gascony created tension with the French kings. They insisted that the English kings give homage to them for the lands; the English kings saw this demand as insulting to their honour, and the issue remained unresolved. Edward I also faced increasing opposition from his barons over the taxation and requisitions required to resource his wars, and left his son debts of around £200,000 on his death.
Early life (1284–1307)
Birth
Edward II was born in Caernarfon Castle in north Wales on 25 April 1284, less than a year after Edward I had conquered the region, and as a result is sometimes called Edward of Caernarfon. The King probably chose the castle deliberately as the location for Edward's birth as it was an important symbolic location for the native Welsh, associated with Roman imperial history, and it formed the centre of the new royal administration of North Wales. Edward's birth brought predictions of greatness from contemporary prophets, who believed that the Last Days of the world were imminent, declaring him a new King Arthur, who would lead England to glory. David Powel, a 16th-century clergyman, suggested that the baby was offered to the Welsh as a prince "that was borne in Wales and could speake never a word of English", but there is no evidence to support this account.
Edward's name was English in origin, linking him to the Anglo-Saxon saint Edward the Confessor, and was chosen by his father instead of the more traditional Norman and Castilian names selected for Edward's brothers: John and Henry, who had died before Edward was born, and Alphonso, who died in August 1284, leaving Edward as the heir to the throne. Although Edward was a relatively healthy child, there were enduring concerns throughout his early years that he too might die and leave his father without a male heir. After his birth, Edward was looked after by a wet nurse called Mariota or Mary Maunsel for a few months until she fell ill, when Alice de Leygrave became his foster mother. He would have barely known his natural mother, Eleanor, who was in Gascony with his father during his earliest years. An official household, complete with staff, was created for the new baby, under the direction of a clerk, Giles of Oudenarde.
Childhood, personality and appearance
Spending increased on Edward's personal household as he grew older and, in 1293, William of Blyborough took over as its administrator. Edward was probably given a religious education by the Dominican friars, whom his mother invited into his household in 1290. He was assigned one of his grandmother's followers, Guy Ferre, as his magister, who was responsible for his discipline, training him in riding and military skills. It is uncertain how well educated Edward was; there is little evidence for his ability to read and write, although his mother was keen that her other children be well educated, and Ferre was himself a relatively learned man for the period. Edward likely mainly spoke Anglo-Norman French in his daily life, in addition to some English and possibly Latin.
Edward had a normal upbringing for a member of a royal family. He was interested in horses and horsebreeding, and became a good rider; he also liked dogs, in particular greyhounds. In his letters, he shows a quirky sense of humour, joking about sending unsatisfactory animals to his friends, such as horses who disliked carrying their riders, or lazy hunting dogs too slow to catch rabbits. He was not particularly interested in hunting or falconry, both popular activities in the 14th century. He enjoyed music, including Welsh music and the newly invented crwth instrument, as well as musical organs. He did not take part in jousting, either because he lacked the aptitude or because he had been banned from participating for his personal safety, but he was certainly enthusiastic in his support of the sport.
Edward grew up to be tall and muscular, and was considered good-looking by the standards of the period. He had a reputation as a competent public speaker and was known for his generosity to household staff. Unusually, he enjoyed rowing, as well as hedging and ditching, and enjoyed associating with labourers and other lower-class workers. This behaviour was not considered normal for the nobility of the period and attracted criticism from contemporaries.
In 1290, Edward's father had confirmed the Treaty of Birgham, in which he promised to marry his six-year-old son to the young Margaret of Norway, who had a potential claim to the crown of Scotland. Margaret died later that year, bringing an end to the plan. Edward's mother, Eleanor, died shortly afterwards, followed by his grandmother, Eleanor of Provence. Edward I was distraught at his wife's death and held a huge funeral for her; his son inherited the County of Ponthieu from Eleanor. Next, a French marriage was considered for the young Edward, to help secure a lasting peace with France, but King Philip IV's refusal to release fortresses in Gascony offered by Edward I provoked the Gascon War in 1294. The idea was replaced with the proposal of a marriage to a daughter of the rebellious Guy, Count of Flanders, but this too failed after King Philip was able to have the proposed bride sent to Paris.
Early campaigns in Scotland
Between 1297 and 1298, Edward was left as regent in charge of England while the King campaigned in Flanders against Philip IV, who had occupied part of the English king's lands in Gascony. On his return, Edward I signed a peace treaty, under which he took Philip's sister Margaret as his wife and agreed that Prince Edward would in due course marry Philip's daughter, Isabella, who was then only two years old. In theory, this marriage would mean that the disputed Duchy of Gascony would be inherited by a descendant of both Edward and Philip, providing a possible end to the long-running tensions. The young Edward seems to have got on well with his new stepmother, who gave birth to two sons, Thomas of Brotherton in 1300 and Edmund of Woodstock in 1301. As king, Edward later provided his half-brothers with financial support and titles.
Edward I returned to Scotland once again in 1300, and this time took his son with him, making him the commander of the rearguard at the siege of Caerlaverock Castle. In the spring of 1301, the King declared Edward the Prince of Wales, granting him the earldom of Chester and lands across North Wales; he seems to have hoped that this would help pacify the region, and that it would give his son some financial independence. Edward received homage from his Welsh subjects and then joined his father for the 1301 Scottish campaign; he took an army of around 300 soldiers north with him and captured Turnberry Castle. Prince Edward also took part in the 1303 campaign during which he besieged Brechin Castle, deploying his own siege engine in the operation. In the spring of 1304, Edward conducted negotiations with the rebel Scottish leaders on the King's behalf and, when these failed, he joined his father for the siege of Stirling Castle.
In 1305, Edward and his father quarrelled, probably over the issue of money. The prince had an altercation with Bishop Walter Langton, who served as the royal treasurer, apparently over the amount of financial support Edward received from the Crown. The king defended his treasurer, and banished Prince Edward and his companions from his court, cutting off their financial support. After some negotiations involving family members and friends, the two men were reconciled.
The Scottish conflict flared up once again in 1306, when Robert the Bruce killed his rival John Comyn III of Badenoch, and declared himself King of the Scots. Edward I mobilised a fresh army, but decided that, this time, his son would be formally in charge of the expedition. Prince Edward was made the duke of Aquitaine and then, along with many other young men, he was knighted in a lavish ceremony at Westminster Abbey called the Feast of the Swans. Amid a huge feast in the neighbouring hall, reminiscent of Arthurian legends and crusading events, the assembly took a collective oath to defeat Bruce. It is unclear what role Prince Edward's forces played in the campaign that summer, which, under the orders of Edward I, saw a punitive, brutal retaliation against Bruce's faction in Scotland. Edward returned to England in September, where diplomatic negotiations to finalise a date for his wedding to Isabella continued.
Piers Gaveston and sexuality
During this time, Edward became close to Piers Gaveston. Gaveston was the son of one of the King's household knights whose lands lay adjacent to Gascony, and had himself joined Prince Edward's household in 1300, possibly on Edward I's instruction. The two got on well; Gaveston became a squire and was soon being referred to as a close companion of Edward, before being knighted by the King during the Feast of the Swans in 1306. The King then exiled Gaveston to Gascony in 1307 for reasons that remain unclear. According to one chronicler, Edward had asked his father to allow him to give Gaveston the County of Ponthieu, and the King responded furiously, pulling his son's hair out in great handfuls, before exiling Gaveston. The official court records, however, show Gaveston being only temporarily exiled, supported by a comfortable stipend; no reason is given for the order, suggesting that it may have been an act aimed at punishing the prince.
The possibility that Edward had a sexual relationship with Gaveston or his later favourites has been extensively discussed by historians, complicated by the paucity of surviving evidence to determine for certain the details of their relationships. Homosexuality was fiercely condemned by the Church in 14th-century England, which equated it with heresy. Both men had sexual relationships with their wives, who bore them children; Edward also had an illegitimate son, and may have had an affair with his niece, Eleanor de Clare.
The contemporary evidence supporting their homosexual relationship comes primarily from an anonymous chronicler in the 1320s who described how Edward "felt such love" for Gaveston that "he entered into a covenant of constancy, and bound himself with him before all other mortals with a bond of indissoluble love, firmly drawn up and fastened with a knot." The first specific suggestion that Edward engaged in sex with men was recorded in 1334, when Adam Orleton, the Bishop of Winchester, was accused of having stated in 1326 that Edward was a "sodomite", although Orleton defended himself by arguing that he had meant that Edward's adviser, Hugh Despenser the Younger, was a sodomite, rather than the late king. The Meaux Chronicle from the 1390s simply notes that Edward gave himself "too much to the vice of sodomy".
Alternatively, Edward and Gaveston may have simply been friends with a close working relationship. Contemporary chronicler comments are vaguely worded; Orleton's allegations were at least in part politically motivated, and are very similar to the highly politicised sodomy allegations made against Pope Boniface VIII and the Knights Templar in 1303 and 1308, respectively. Later accounts by chroniclers of Edward's activities may trace back to Orleton's original allegations, and were certainly adversely coloured by the events at the end of Edward's reign. Such historians as Michael Prestwich and Seymour Phillips have argued that the public nature of the English royal court would have made it unlikely that any homosexual affairs would have remained discreet; neither the contemporary Church, Edward's father nor his father-in-law appear to have made any adverse comments about Edward's sexual behaviour.
A more recent theory, proposed by the historian Pierre Chaplais, suggests that Edward and Gaveston entered into a bond of adoptive brotherhood. Compacts of adoptive brotherhood, in which the participants pledged to support each other in a form of "brotherhood-in-arms", were not unknown between close male friends in the Middle Ages. Many chroniclers described Edward and Gaveston's relationship as one of brotherhood, and one explicitly noted that Edward had taken Gaveston as his adopted brother. Chaplais argues that the pair may have made a formal compact in either 1300 or 1301, and that they would have seen any later promises they made to separate or to leave each other as having been made under duress, and therefore invalid.
Early reign (1307–1311)
Coronation and marriage
Edward I mobilised another army for the Scottish campaign in 1307, which Prince Edward was due to join that summer, but the elderly king had been increasingly unwell and died on 7 July at Burgh by Sands. Edward travelled from London immediately after the news reached him, and on 20 July he was proclaimed king. He continued north into Scotland and on 4 August received homage from his Scottish supporters at Dumfries, before abandoning the campaign and returning south. Edward promptly recalled Piers Gaveston, who was then in exile, and made him Earl of Cornwall, before arranging his marriage to the wealthy Margaret de Clare. Edward also arrested his old adversary Bishop Langton, and dismissed him from his post as treasurer. Edward I's body was kept at Waltham Abbey for several months before being taken for burial to Westminster, where Edward erected a simple marble tomb for his father.
In 1308, Edward's marriage to Isabella of France proceeded. Edward crossed the English Channel to France in January, leaving Gaveston as his custos regni in charge of the kingdom. This arrangement was unusual, and involved unprecedented powers being delegated to Gaveston, backed by a specially engraved Great Seal. Edward probably hoped that the marriage would strengthen his position in Gascony and bring him much needed funds. The final negotiations, however, proved challenging: Edward and Philip IV did not like each other, and the French king drove a hard bargain over the size of Isabella's dower and the details of the administration of Edward's lands in France. As part of the agreement, Edward gave homage to Philip for the Duchy of Aquitaine and agreed to a commission to complete the implementation of the 1303 Treaty of Paris.
The pair were married in Boulogne on 25 January. Edward gave Isabella a psalter as a wedding gift, and her father gave her gifts worth over 21,000 livres and a fragment of the True Cross. The pair returned to England in February, where Edward had ordered Westminster Palace to be lavishly restored in readiness for their coronation and wedding feast, complete with marble tables, forty ovens and a fountain that produced wine and pimento, a spiced medieval drink. After some delays, the ceremony went ahead on 25 February at Westminster Abbey, under the guidance of Henry Woodlock, the Bishop of Winchester. As part of the coronation, Edward swore to uphold "the rightful laws and customs which the community of the realm shall have chosen". It is uncertain what this meant: It might have been intended to force Edward to accept future legislation, it may have been inserted to prevent him from overturning any future vows he might take, or it may have been an attempt by the king to ingratiate himself with the barons. The event was marred by the large crowds of eager spectators who surged into the palace, knocking down a wall and forcing Edward to flee by the back door.
Isabella was only twelve at the time of her wedding, young even by the standards of the period, and Edward probably had sexual relations with mistresses during their first few years together. During this time he fathered an illegitimate son, Adam, who was born possibly as early as 1307. Edward and Isabella's first son, the future Edward III, was born in 1312 amid great celebrations, and three more children followed: John in 1316, Eleanor in 1318 and Joan in 1321.
Tensions over Gaveston
Gaveston's return from exile in 1307 was initially accepted by the barons, but opposition quickly grew. He appeared to have an excessive influence on royal policy, leading to complaints from one chronicler that there were "two kings reigning in one kingdom, the one in name and the other in deed". Accusations, probably untrue, were levelled at Gaveston that he had stolen royal funds and had purloined Isabella's wedding presents. Gaveston had played a key role at Edward's coronation, provoking fury from both the English and the French contingents about the earl's ceremonial precedence and magnificent clothes, and about Edward's apparent preference for Gaveston's company over that of Isabella at the feast.
Parliament met in February 1308 in a heated atmosphere. Edward was eager to discuss the potential for governmental reform, but the barons were unwilling to begin any such debate until the problem of Gaveston had been resolved. Violence seemed likely, but the situation was resolved through the mediation of the moderate Henry de Lacy, 3rd Earl of Lincoln, who convinced the barons to back down. A fresh parliament was held in April, where the barons once again criticised Gaveston, demanding his exile, this time supported by Isabella and the French monarchy. Edward resisted, but finally acquiesced, agreeing to send Gaveston to Aquitaine, under threat of excommunication by the Archbishop of Canterbury should he return. At the last moment, Edward changed his mind and instead sent Gaveston to Dublin, appointing him as the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Edward called for a fresh military campaign for Scotland, but this idea was quietly abandoned, and instead the king and the barons met in August 1308 to discuss reform. Behind the scenes, Edward started negotiations to convince both Pope Clement V and Philip IV to allow Gaveston to return to England, offering in exchange to suppress the Knights Templar in England, and to release Bishop Langton from prison. Edward called a new meeting of members of the Church and key barons in January 1309, and the leading earls then gathered in March and April, possibly under the leadership of Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster. Another parliament followed, which refused to allow Gaveston to return to England, but offered to grant Edward additional taxes if he agreed to a programme of reform.
Edward sent assurances to the Pope that the conflict surrounding Gaveston's role was at an end. On the basis of these promises, and procedural concerns about how the original decision had been taken, the Pope agreed to annul the Archbishop's threat to excommunicate Gaveston, thus opening the possibility of Gaveston's return. Gaveston arrived back in England in June, where he was met by Edward. At the parliament the next month, Edward made a range of concessions to placate those opposed to Gaveston, including agreeing to limit the powers of the royal steward and the marshal of the royal household, to regulate the Crown's unpopular powers of purveyance, and to abandon recently enacted customs legislation; in return, parliament agreed to fresh taxes for the war in Scotland. Temporarily, at least, Edward and the barons appeared to have come to a successful compromise.
Ordinances of 1311
Following his return, Gaveston's relationship with the major barons became increasingly difficult. He was considered arrogant, and he took to referring to the earls by offensive names, including calling one of their more powerful members the "dog of Warwick". The Earl of Lancaster and Gaveston's enemies refused to attend parliament in 1310 because Gaveston would be present. Edward was facing increasing financial problems, owing £22,000 to his Frescobaldi Italian bankers, and facing protests about how he was using his right of prises to acquire supplies for the war in Scotland. His attempts to raise an army for Scotland collapsed and the earls suspended the collection of the new taxes.
The king and parliament met again in February 1310, and the proposed discussions of Scottish policy were replaced by debate of domestic problems. Edward was petitioned to abandon Gaveston as his counsellor and instead adopt the advice of 21 elected barons, termed Ordainers, who would carry out a widespread reform of both the government and the royal household. Under huge pressure, he agreed to the proposal and the Ordainers were elected, broadly evenly split between reformers and conservatives. While the Ordainers began their plans for reform, Edward and Gaveston took a new army of around 4,700 men to Scotland, where the military situation had continued to deteriorate. Robert the Bruce declined to give battle and the campaign progressed ineffectually over the winter until supplies and money ran out in 1311, forcing Edward to return south.
By now the Ordainers had drawn up their Ordinances for reform and Edward had little political choice but to give way and accept them in October. The Ordinances of 1311 contained clauses limiting the king's right to go to war or to grant land without parliament's approval, giving parliament control over the royal administration, abolishing the system of prises, excluding the Frescobaldi bankers, and introducing a system to monitor the adherence to the Ordinances. In addition, the Ordinances exiled Gaveston once again, this time with instructions that he should not be allowed to live anywhere within Edward's lands, including Gascony and Ireland, and that he should be stripped of his titles. Edward retreated to his estates at Windsor and Kings Langley; Gaveston left England, possibly for northern France or Flanders.
Mid-reign (1311–1321)
Death of Gaveston
Tensions between Edward and the barons remained high, and the earls opposed to the king kept their personal armies mobilised late into 1311. By now Edward had become estranged from his cousin, the Earl of Lancaster, who was also the Earl of Leicester, Lincoln, Salisbury and Derby, with an income of around £11,000 a year from his lands, almost double that of the next wealthiest baron. Backed by the earls of Arundel, Gloucester, Hereford, Pembroke and Warwick, Lancaster led a powerful faction in England, but he was not personally interested in practical administration, nor was he a particularly imaginative or effective politician.
Edward responded to the baronial threat by revoking the Ordinances and recalling Gaveston to England, being reunited with him at York in January 1312. The barons were furious and met in London, where Gaveston was excommunicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury and plans were put in place to capture Gaveston and prevent him from fleeing to Scotland. Edward, Isabella and Gaveston left for Newcastle, pursued by Lancaster and his followers. Abandoning many of their belongings, the royal party fled by ship and landed at Scarborough, where Gaveston stayed while Edward and Isabella returned to York. After a short siege, Gaveston surrendered to the earls of Pembroke and Surrey, on the promise that he would not be harmed. He had with him a huge collection of gold, silver and gems, probably part of the royal treasury, which he was later accused of having stolen from Edward.
On the way back from the north, Pembroke stopped in the village of Deddington in the Midlands, putting Gaveston under guard there while he went to visit his wife. The Earl of Warwick took this opportunity to seize Gaveston, taking him to Warwick Castle, where the Earl of Lancaster and the rest of his faction assembled on 18 June. At a brief trial, Gaveston was declared guilty of being a traitor under the terms of the Ordinances; he was beheaded on Blacklow Hill the following day, under the authority of Lancaster. Gaveston's body was not buried until 1315, when his funeral was held in King's Langley Priory.
Tensions with Lancaster and France
Reactions to the death of Gaveston varied considerably. Edward was furious and deeply upset over what he saw as the murder of Gaveston; he made provisions for Gaveston's family, and intended to take revenge on the barons involved. The earls of Pembroke and Surrey were embarrassed and angry about Warwick's actions, and shifted their support to Edward in the aftermath. To Lancaster and his core of supporters, the execution had been both legal and necessary to preserve the stability of the kingdom. Civil war again appeared likely, but in December, the Earl of Pembroke negotiated a potential peace treaty between the two sides, which would pardon the opposition barons for the killing of Gaveston, in exchange for their support for a fresh campaign in Scotland. Lancaster and Warwick, however, did not give the treaty their immediate approval, and further negotiations continued through most of 1313.
Meanwhile, the Earl of Pembroke had been negotiating with France to resolve the long-standing disagreements over the administration of Gascony, and as part of this Edward and Isabella agreed to travel to Paris in June 1313 to meet with Philip IV. Edward probably hoped both to resolve the problems in the south of France and to win Philip's support in the dispute with the barons; for Philip it was an opportunity to impress his son-in-law with his power and wealth. It proved a spectacular visit, including a grand ceremony in which the two kings knighted Philip's sons and two hundred other men in Notre-Dame de Paris, large banquets along the River Seine, and a public declaration that both kings and their queens would join a crusade to the Levant. Philip gave lenient terms for settling the problems in Gascony, and the event was spoiled only by a serious fire in Edward's quarters.
On his return from France, Edward found his political position greatly strengthened. After intense negotiation, the earls, including Lancaster and Warwick, came to a compromise in October 1313, fundamentally very similar to the draft agreement of the previous December. Edward's finances improved, thanks to parliament agreeing to the raising of taxes, a loan of 160,000 florins (£25,000) from the Pope, £33,000 borrowed from Philip, and further loans organised by Edward's new Italian banker, Antonio Pessagno. For the first time in his reign, Edward's government was well funded.
Battle of Bannockburn
By 1314, Robert the Bruce had recaptured most of the castles in Scotland once held by Edward, pushing raiding parties into northern England as far as Carlisle. In response, Edward planned a major military campaign with the support of Lancaster and the barons, mustering a large army between 15,000 and 20,000 strong. Meanwhile, Robert had besieged Stirling Castle, a key fortification in Scotland; its English commander had stated that unless Edward arrived by 24 June, he would surrender. News of this reached the king in late May, and he decided to speed up his march north from Berwick-upon-Tweed to relieve the castle. Robert, with between 5,500 and 6,500 troops, predominantly spearmen, prepared to prevent Edward's forces from reaching Stirling.
The battle began on 23 June as the English army attempted to force its way across the high ground of the Bannock Burn, which was surrounded by marshland. Skirmishing between the two sides broke out, resulting in the death of Sir Henry de Bohun, whom Robert killed in personal combat. Edward continued his advance the following day, and encountered the bulk of the Scottish army as they emerged from the woods of New Park. Edward appears not to have expected the Scots to give battle here, and as a result had kept his forces in marching, rather than battle, order, with the archers—who would usually have been used to break up enemy spear formations—at the back of his army, rather than the front. His cavalry found it hard to operate in the cramped terrain and were crushed by Robert's spearmen. The English army was overwhelmed and its leaders were unable to regain control.
Edward stayed behind to fight, but it became obvious to the Earl of Pembroke that the battle was lost and he dragged the king away from the battlefield, hotly pursued by the Scottish forces. Edward only just escaped the heavy fighting, making a vow to found a Carmelite religious house at Oxford if he survived. The historian Roy Haines describes the defeat as a "calamity of stunning proportions" for the English, whose losses in the battle were huge. In the aftermath of the defeat, Edward retreated to Dunbar, then travelled by ship to Berwick, and then back to York; in his absence, Stirling Castle quickly fell.
Famine and criticism
After the fiasco of Bannockburn, the Earls of Lancaster and Warwick saw their political influence increase, and they pressured Edward to re-implement the Ordinances of 1311. Lancaster became the head of the royal council in 1316, promising to take forward the Ordinances through a new reform commission, but he appears to have abandoned this role soon afterwards, partially because of disagreements with the other barons, and possibly because of ill-health. Lancaster refused to meet with Edward in parliament for the next two years, bringing effective governance to a standstill. This stymied any hopes for a fresh campaign into Scotland and raised fears of civil war. After much negotiation, once again involving the Earl of Pembroke, Edward and Lancaster finally agreed to the Treaty of Leake in August 1318, which pardoned Lancaster and his faction and established a new royal council, temporarily averting conflict.
Edward's difficulties were exacerbated by prolonged problems in English agriculture, part of a wider phenomenon in northern Europe known as the Great Famine. It began with torrential rains in late 1314, followed by a very cold winter and heavy rains the following spring that killed many sheep and cattle. The bad weather continued, almost unabated, into 1321, resulting in a string of bad harvests. Revenues from the exports of wool plummeted and the price of food rose, despite attempts by Edward's government to control prices. Edward called for hoarders to release food, and tried to encourage both internal trade and the importation of grain, but with little success. The requisitioning of provisions for the royal court during the famine years only added to tensions.
Meanwhile, Robert the Bruce exploited his victory at Bannockburn to raid northern England, initially attacking Carlisle and Berwick, and then reaching further south into Lancashire and Yorkshire, even threatening York itself. Edward undertook an expensive but unsuccessful campaign to stem the advance in 1319, but the famine made it increasingly difficult to keep his garrisons supplied with food. Meanwhile, a Scottish expedition led by Robert's brother Edward Bruce successfully invaded Ireland in 1315. Edward Bruce declared himself the High King of Ireland. He was finally defeated in 1318 by Edward II's Irish justiciar, Edmund Butler, at the Battle of Faughart, and Edward Bruce's severed head was sent back to Edward II. Revolts also broke out in Lancashire and Bristol in 1315, and in Glamorgan in Wales in 1316, but were suppressed.
The famine and the Scottish policy were felt to be a punishment from God, and complaints about Edward multiplied, one contemporary poem describing the "Evil Times of Edward II". Many criticised Edward's "improper" and ignoble interest in rural pursuits. In 1318, a mentally ill man named John of Powderham appeared in Oxford, claiming that he was the real Edward II, and that Edward was a changeling, swapped at birth. John was duly executed, but his claims resonated with those criticising Edward for his lack of regal behaviour and steady leadership. Opposition also grew around Edward's treatment of his royal favourites.
Edward had managed to retain some of his previous advisers, despite attempts by the Ordainers to remove them, and divided the extensive de Clare inheritance among two of his new favourites, the former household knights Hugh Audley and Roger Damory, instantly making them extremely rich. Many of the moderates who had helped deliver the peaceful compromise in 1318 now began to turn against Edward, making violence ever more likely.
Later reign (1321–1326)
The Despenser War
The long-threatened civil war finally broke out in England in 1321, triggered by the tension between many of the barons and the royal favourites, the Despenser family. Hugh Despenser the Elder had served both Edward and his father, while Hugh Despenser the Younger had married into the wealthy de Clare family, become the King's chamberlain, and acquired Glamorgan in the Welsh Marches in 1317. Hugh the Younger subsequently expanded his holdings and power across Wales, mainly at the expense of the other Marcher Lords. The Earl of Lancaster and the Despensers were fierce enemies, and Lancaster's antipathy was shared by most of the Despensers' neighbours, including the Earl of Hereford, the Mortimer family and the recently elevated Hugh Audley and Roger Damory. Edward, however, increasingly relied on the Despensers for advice and support, and he was particularly close to Hugh the Younger, whom one chronicler noted he "loved ... dearly with all his heart and mind".
In early 1321, Lancaster mobilised a coalition of the Despensers' enemies across the Marcher territories. Edward and Hugh the Younger became aware of these plans in March and headed west, hoping that negotiations led by the moderate Earl of Pembroke would defuse the crisis. This time, Pembroke made his excuses and declined to intervene, and war broke out in May. The Despensers' lands were quickly seized by a coalition of the Marcher Lords and the local gentry, and Lancaster held a high-level gathering of the barons and clergy in June which condemned the Despensers for having broken the Ordinances. Edward attempted reconciliation, but in July the opposition occupied London and called for the permanent removal of the Despensers. Fearing that he might be deposed if he refused, Edward agreed to exile the Despensers and pardoned the Marcher Lords for their actions.
Edward began to plan his revenge. With the help of Pembroke, he formed a small coalition of his half-brothers, a few of the earls and some of the senior clergy, and prepared for war. Edward started with Bartholomew de Badlesmere, 1st Baron Badlesmere, and Isabella was sent to Bartholomew's stronghold, Leeds Castle, to deliberately create a casus belli. Bartholomew's wife, Margaret, took the bait and her men killed several of Isabella's retinue, giving Edward an excuse to intervene. Lancaster refused to help Bartholomew, his personal enemy, and Edward quickly regained control of south-east England. Alarmed, Lancaster now mobilised his own army in the north of England, and Edward mustered his own forces in the south-west. The Despensers returned from exile and were pardoned by the royal council.
In December, Edward led his army across the River Severn and advanced into the Welsh Marches, where the opposition forces had gathered. The coalition of Marcher Lords crumbled and the Mortimers surrendered to Edward, but Damory, Audley, and the Earl of Hereford marched north in January to join Lancaster, who had laid siege the king's castle at Tickhill. Bolstered by fresh reinforcements from the Marcher Lords, Edward pursued them, meeting Lancaster's army on 10 March at Burton-on-Trent. Lancaster, outnumbered, retreated without a fight, fleeing north. Andrew Harclay cornered Lancaster at the Battle of Boroughbridge, and captured the earl. Edward and Hugh the Younger met Lancaster at Pontefract Castle, where, after a summary trial, the earl was found guilty of treason and beheaded.
Edward and the Despensers
Edward punished Lancaster's supporters through a system of special courts across the country, with the judges instructed in advance how to sentence the accused, who were not allowed to speak in their own defence. Many of these so-called "Contrariants" were simply executed, and others were imprisoned or fined, with their lands seized and their surviving relatives detained. The Earl of Pembroke, whom Edward now mistrusted, was arrested; he was released only after pledging all his possessions as collateral for his own loyalty. Edward was able to reward his loyal supporters, especially the Despenser family, with the confiscated estates and new titles. The fines and confiscations made Edward rich: almost £15,000 was brought in during the first few months, and by 1326, Edward's treasury contained £62,000. A parliament was held at York on 2 May 1322 at which the Ordinances were formally revoked through the Statute of York, and fresh taxes agreed for a new campaign against the Scots.
The English campaign against Scotland was planned on a massive scale, with a force of about 23,000 men. Edward advanced through Lothian towards Edinburgh, but Robert the Bruce declined to meet him in battle, drawing Edward further into Scotland. Plans to resupply the campaign by sea failed, and the large army rapidly ran out of food. Edward was forced to retreat south of the border, pursued by Scottish raiding parties. Edward's illegitimate son, Adam, died during the campaign, and the raiding parties almost captured Isabella, who was staying at Tynemouth and was forced to flee by sea. Edward planned a fresh campaign, backed by a round of further taxes, but confidence in his Scottish policy was diminishing. Andrew Harclay, instrumental in securing Edward's victories the previous year and recently made the Earl of Carlisle, independently negotiated a peace treaty with Robert the Bruce, proposing that Edward would recognise Robert as the King of Scotland and that, in return, Robert would cease to interfere in England. Edward was furious and immediately executed Harclay, but agreed to a thirteen-year truce with Robert.
Hugh Despenser the Younger lived and ruled in grand style, playing a leading role in Edward's government, and executing policy through a wide network of family retainers. Supported by Chancellor Robert Baldock and Lord Treasurer Walter Stapledon, the Despensers accumulated land and wealth, using their position in government to provide superficial cover for what historian Seymour Phillips describes as "the reality of fraud, threats of violence and abuse of legal procedure". Meanwhile, Edward faced growing opposition. Miracles were reported around the late Earl of Lancaster's tomb, and at the gallows used to execute members of the opposition in Bristol. Law and order began to break down, encouraged by the chaos caused by the seizure of lands. The old opposition consisting of Marcher Lords' associates attempted to free the prisoners Edward held in Wallingford Castle, and Roger Mortimer, one of the most prominent of the imprisoned Marcher Lords, escaped from the Tower of London and fled to France.
War with France
The disagreements between Edward and the French Crown over the Duchy of Gascony led to the War of Saint-Sardos in 1324. Charles, Edward's brother-in-law, had become King of France in 1322, and was more aggressive than his predecessors. In 1323, he insisted that Edward come to Paris to give homage for Gascony, and demanded that Edward's administrators in Gascony allow French officials there to carry out orders given in Paris. Matters came to a head in October when a group of Edward's soldiers hanged a French sergeant for attempting to build a new fortified town in the Agenais, a contested section of the Gascon border. Edward denied any responsibility for this incident, but relations between Edward and Charles soured. In 1324, Edward dispatched the Earl of Pembroke to Paris to broker a solution, but the earl died suddenly of an illness along the way. Charles mobilised his army and ordered the invasion of Gascony.
Edward's forces in Gascony were around 4,400 strong, but the French army, commanded by Charles of Valois, numbered 7,000. Valois took the Agenais and then advanced further and cut off the main city of Bordeaux. In response, Edward ordered the arrest of any French persons in England and seized Isabella's lands, on the basis that she was of French origin. In November 1324 he met with the earls and the English Church, who recommended that Edward should lead a force of 11,000 men to Gascony. Edward decided not to go personally, sending instead the Earl of Surrey. Meanwhile, Edward opened up fresh negotiations with the French king. Charles advanced various proposals, the most tempting of which was the suggestion that if Isabella and Prince Edward were to travel to Paris, and the prince was to give homage to Charles for Gascony, he would terminate the war and return the Agenais. Edward and his advisers had concerns about sending the prince to France, but agreed to send Isabella on her own as an envoy in March 1325.
Fall from power (1326–1327)
Rift with Isabella
Isabella, with Edward's envoys, carried out negotiations with the French in late March. The negotiations proved difficult, and they arrived at a settlement only after Isabella personally intervened with her brother, Charles. The terms favoured the French Crown: In particular, Edward would give homage in person to Charles for Gascony. Concerned about the consequences of war breaking out once again, Edward agreed to the treaty but decided to give Gascony to his son, Edward, and sent the prince to give homage in Paris. The young Prince Edward crossed the English Channel and completed the bargain in September.
Edward now expected Isabella and their son to return to England, but instead she remained in France and showed no intention of making her way back. Until 1322, Edward and Isabella's marriage appears to have been successful, but by the time Isabella left for France in 1325, it had deteriorated. Isabella appears to have disliked Hugh Despenser the Younger intensely, not least because of his abuse of high-status women. Isabella was embarrassed that she had fled from Scottish armies three times during her marriage to Edward, and she blamed Hugh for the final occurrence in 1322. When Edward had negotiated the recent truce with Robert the Bruce, he had severely disadvantaged a range of noble families who owned land in Scotland, including the Beaumonts, close friends of Isabella. She was also angry about the arrest of her household and seizure of her lands in 1324. Finally, Edward had taken away her children and given custody of them to Hugh Despenser's wife.
By February 1326 it was clear that Isabella was involved in a relationship with an exiled Marcher Lord, Roger Mortimer. It is unclear when Isabella first met Mortimer or when their relationship began, but they both wanted to see Edward and the Despensers removed from power. Edward appealed for his son to return, and for Charles to intervene on his behalf, but this had no effect.
Edward's opponents began to gather around Isabella and Mortimer in Paris, and Edward became increasingly anxious about the possibility that Mortimer might invade England. Isabella and Mortimer turned to William I, Count of Hainaut, and proposed a marriage between Prince Edward and William's daughter, Philippa. In return for the advantageous alliance with the English heir to the throne, and a sizeable dower for the bride, William offered 132 transport vessels and eight warships to assist in the invasion of England. Prince Edward and Philippa were betrothed on 27 August, and Isabella and Mortimer prepared for their campaign.
Invasion
During August and September 1326, Edward mobilised his defences along the coasts of England to protect against the possibility of an invasion either by France or by Roger Mortimer. Fleets were gathered at the ports of Portsmouth in the south and Orwell on the east coast, and a raiding force of 1,600 men was sent across the English Channel into Normandy as a diversionary attack. Edward issued a nationalistic appeal for his subjects to defend the kingdom, but with little impact. The regime's hold on power at the local level was fragile, the Despensers were widely disliked, and many of those Edward entrusted with the defence of the kingdom proved incompetent or promptly turned against the regime. Some 2,000 men were ordered to gather at Orwell to repel any invasion, but only 55 appear to have actually arrived.
Roger Mortimer, Isabella and thirteen-year-old Prince Edward, accompanied by King Edward's half-brother Edmund of Woodstock, landed in Orwell on 24 September with a small force of men and met with no resistance. Instead, enemies of the Despensers moved rapidly to join them, including Edward's other half-brother, Thomas of Brotherton; Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster, who had inherited the earldom from his brother Thomas; and a range of senior clergy. Ensconced in the residence halls of the fortified and secure Tower of London, Edward attempted to garner support from within the capital. The city of London rose against his government, and on 2 October he left London, taking the Despensers with him. London descended into anarchy, as mobs attacked Edward's remaining officials and associates, killing his former treasurer Walter Stapledon in St Paul's Cathedral, and taking the Tower and releasing the prisoners inside.
Edward continued west up the Thames Valley, reaching Gloucester between 9 and 12 October; he hoped to reach Wales and from there mobilise an army against the invaders. Mortimer and Isabella were not far behind. Proclamations condemned the Despensers' recent regime. Day by day they gathered new supporters. Edward and the younger Despenser crossed over the border and set sail from Chepstow, probably aiming first for Lundy and then for Ireland, where the king hoped to receive refuge and raise a fresh army. Bad weather drove them back, though, and they landed at Cardiff. Edward retreated to Caerphilly Castle and attempted to rally his remaining forces.
Edward's authority collapsed in England where, in his absence, Isabella's faction took over the administration with the support of the Church. Her forces surrounded Bristol, where Hugh Despenser the Elder had taken shelter; he surrendered and was promptly executed. Edward and Hugh the Younger fled their castle around 2 November, leaving behind jewellery, considerable supplies, and at least £13,000 in cash, possibly once again hoping to reach Ireland, but on 16 November they were betrayed and captured by a search party north of Caerphilly. Edward was escorted first to Monmouth Castle, and from there back into England, where he was held at the Earl of Lancaster's fortress at Kenilworth. Edward's final remaining forces, by now besieged in Caerphilly Castle, surrendered after four months in March 1327.
Abdication
Isabella and Mortimer rapidly took revenge on the former regime. Hugh Despenser the Younger was put on trial, declared a traitor and sentenced to be disembowelled, castrated and quartered; he was duly executed on 24 November 1326. Edward's former chancellor, Robert Baldock, died in Fleet Prison; the Earl of Arundel was beheaded. Edward's position, however, was problematic; he was still married to Isabella and, in principle, he remained the king, but most of the new administration had much to lose were he to be released and potentially regain power.
There was no established procedure for removing an English king. Adam Orleton, the bishop of Hereford, made a series of public allegations about Edward's conduct as king, and in January 1327 a parliament convened at Westminster at which the question of Edward's future was raised; Edward refused to attend the gathering. Parliament, initially ambivalent, responded to the London crowds that called for the king's son Edward to take the throne. On 12 January the leading barons and clergy agreed that Edward II should be removed and replaced by his son. The following day it was presented to an assembly of the barons, where it was argued that Edward's weak leadership and personal faults had led the kingdom into disaster, and that he was incompetent to lead the country.
Shortly after this, a representative delegation of barons, clergy and knights was sent to Kenilworth to speak to the king. On 20 January 1327, the Earl of Lancaster and the bishops of Winchester and Lincoln met privately with Edward in the castle. They informed Edward that if he were to resign as monarch, his son Edward would succeed him, but if he failed to do so, his son might be disinherited as well, and the crown given to an alternative candidate. In tears, Edward agreed to abdicate, and on 21 January, Sir William Trussell, representing the kingdom as a whole, withdrew his homage and formally ended Edward's reign. A proclamation was sent to London, announcing that Edward, now known as Edward of Caernarvon, had freely resigned his kingdom and that his son Edward would succeed him. The coronation took place at Westminster Abbey on 1 February 1327.
Death (1327)
Death and aftermath
Those opposed to the new government began to make plans to free Edward, and Roger Mortimer decided to move him to the more secure location of Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, where Edward arrived around 5 April 1327. Once at the castle, he was kept in the custody of Mortimer's son-in-law, Thomas de Berkeley, 3rd Baron Berkeley, and John Maltravers, who were given £5 a day for Edward's maintenance. It is unclear how well cared for Edward was; the records show luxury goods being bought on his behalf, but some chroniclers suggest that he was often mistreated. A poem, the "Lament of Edward II", has been attributed to Edward during his imprisonment by some scholars, but this is disputed.
Concerns continued to be raised over fresh plots to liberate Edward, some involving the Dominican order and former household knights, and one such attempt got at least as far as breaking into the prison within the castle. As a result of these threats, Edward was moved around to other locations in secret for a period, before returning to permanent custody at the castle in late summer 1327. The political situation remained unstable, and new plots appear to have been formed to free him.
On 23 September Edward III was informed that his father had died at Berkeley Castle during the night of 21 September. Most historians agree that Edward II did die at Berkeley on that date, although there is a minority view that he died much later. His death was, as Mark Ormrod notes, "suspiciously timely", as it simplified Mortimer's political problems considerably, and most historians believe that Edward was probably murdered on the orders of the new regime, although it is impossible to be certain. Several of the individuals suspected of involvement in the death, including Sir Thomas Gurney, Maltravers and William Ockley, later fled. If Edward died from natural causes, his death may have been hastened by depression following his imprisonment.
The rule of Isabella and Mortimer did not last long after the announcement of Edward's death. They made peace with the Scots in the Treaty of Northampton, but this move was highly unpopular. Isabella and Mortimer both amassed and spent great wealth, and criticism of them mounted. Relations between Mortimer and Edward III became strained and in 1330 the king conducted a coup d'état at Nottingham Castle. He arrested Mortimer and then executed him on fourteen charges of treason, including the murder of Edward II. Edward III's government sought to blame Mortimer for all the recent problems, effectively politically rehabilitating Edward II. Edward III placed his mother under arrest, but she was released soon after.
Burial and cult
Edward's body was embalmed at Berkeley Castle, where it was viewed by local leaders from Bristol and Gloucester. It was then taken to Gloucester Abbey on 21 October, and on 20 December, Edward was buried by the high altar, the funeral having probably been delayed to allow Edward III to attend in person. Gloucester was probably chosen because other abbeys had refused or been forbidden to take the king's body, and because it was close to Berkeley. The funeral was a grand affair and cost £351 in total, complete with gilt lions, standards painted with gold leaf and oak barriers to manage the anticipated crowds. Edward III's government probably hoped to put a veneer of normality over the recent political events, increasing the legitimacy of the young king's own reign.
A temporary wooden effigy with a copper crown was made for the funeral; this is the first known use of a funeral effigy in England, and was probably necessary because of the condition of the King's body, as he had been dead for three months. Edward's heart was removed, placed in a silver container, and later buried with Isabella at Newgate Church in London. His tomb includes a very early example of an English alabaster effigy, with a tomb chest and a canopy made of oolite and Purbeck stone. Edward was buried in the shirt, coif and gloves from his coronation, and his effigy depicts him as king, holding a sceptre and orb, and wearing a strawberry-leaf crown. The effigy features a pronounced lower lip, and may be a close likeness of Edward.
Edward II's tomb rapidly became a popular site for visitors, probably encouraged by the local monks, who lacked an existing pilgrimage attraction. Visitors donated extensively to the abbey, allowing the monks to rebuild much of the surrounding church in the 1330s. Miracles reportedly took place at the tomb, and modifications had to be made to enable visitors to walk around it in larger numbers. The chronicler Geoffrey le Baker depicted Edward as a saintly, tortured martyr, and Richard II gave royal support for an unsuccessful bid to have Edward canonised in 1395. The tomb was opened by officials in 1855, uncovering a wooden coffin, still in good condition, and a sealed lead coffin inside it. The tomb remains in what is now Gloucester Cathedral, and was extensively restored in 2007 and 2008 at a cost of over £100,000.
Controversies
Controversy rapidly surrounded Edward's death. With Mortimer's execution in 1330, rumours began to circulate that Edward had been murdered at Berkeley Castle. Accounts that he had been killed by the insertion of a red-hot iron or poker into his anus slowly began to spread, possibly as a result of deliberate propaganda; chroniclers in the mid-1330s and 1340s disseminated this account further, supported in later years by Geoffrey le Baker's colourful account of the killing. It became incorporated into most later histories of Edward, typically being linked to his possible homosexuality. Most historians now dismiss this account of Edward's death, querying the logic in his captors murdering him in such an easily detectable fashion.
Another set of theories surround the possibility that Edward did not really die in 1327. These theories typically involve the "Fieschi Letter", sent to Edward III by an Italian priest called Manuel Fieschi, who claimed that Edward escaped Berkeley Castle in 1327 with the help of a servant and ultimately retired to become a hermit in the Holy Roman Empire. The body buried at Gloucester Cathedral was said to be that of the porter of Berkeley Castle, killed by the assassins and presented by them to Isabella as Edward's corpse to avoid punishment. The letter is often linked to an account of Edward III meeting with a man called William the Welshman in Antwerp in 1338, who claimed to be Edward II. Some parts of the letter's content are considered broadly accurate by historians, although other aspects of its account have been criticised as implausible. A few historians have supported versions of its narrative. Paul C. Doherty questions the veracity of the letter and the identity of William the Welshman, but nonetheless has suspicions that Edward may have survived his imprisonment. The popular historian Alison Weir believes the events in the letter to be essentially true, using the letter to argue that Isabella was innocent of murdering Edward. and Natalie Fryde has claimed that Edward's survival is "a possibility". The historian Ian Mortimer suggests that the story in Fieschi's letter is broadly accurate, but argues that it was in fact Mortimer and Isabella who had Edward secretly released, and who then faked his death, a fiction later maintained by Edward III when he came to power. Ian Mortimer's account was criticised by most scholars when it was first published, in particular by historian David Carpenter, who argues that there is no "convincing evidence for Edward’s survival, let alone for it being the result of a Mortimer plot”.
Edward as king
Kingship, government and law
Edward was ultimately a failure as a king; the historian Michael Prestwich observes that he "was lazy and incompetent, liable to outbursts of temper over unimportant issues, yet indecisive when it came to major issues", echoed by Roy Haines' description of Edward as "incompetent and vicious", and as "no man of business". Edward did not just delegate routine government to his subordinates, but also higher level decision making, and Pierre Chaplais argues that he "was not so much an incompetent king as a reluctant one", preferring to rule through a powerful deputy, such as Piers Gaveston or Hugh Despenser the Younger. Edward's willingness to promote his favourites had serious political consequences, although he also attempted to buy the loyalty of a wider grouping of nobles through grants of money and fees. He could take a keen interest in the minutiae of administration, however, and on occasion engaged in the details of a wide range of issues across England and his wider domains.
One of Edward's persistent challenges through most of his reign was a shortage of money; of the debts he inherited from his father, around £60,000 was still owing in the 1320s. Edward worked his way through many treasurers and other financial officials, few of whom stayed long, raising revenues through often unpopular taxes, and requisitioning goods using his right of prise. He also took out many loans, first through the Frescobaldi family, and then through his banker Antonio Pessagno. Edward took a strong interest in financial matters towards the end of his reign, distrusting his own officials and directly cutting back on the expenses of his own household.
Edward was responsible for implementing royal justice through his network of judges and officials. It is uncertain to what extent Edward took a personal interest in dispensing justice, but he appears to have involved himself to some degree during the first part of his reign, and to have increasingly intervened in person after 1322. Edward made extensive use of Roman civil law during his reign when arguing in defence of his causes and favourites, which may have attracted criticism from those who perceived this as abandoning the established principles of English common law. Edward was also criticised by contemporaries for allowing the Despensers to exploit the royal justice system for their own ends; the Despensers certainly appear to have abused the system, although just how widely they did so is unclear. Amid the political turbulence, armed gangs and violence spread across England under Edward's reign, destabilising the position of many of the local gentry; much of Ireland similarly disintegrated into anarchy.
Under Edward's rule, parliament's importance grew as a means of making political decisions and answering petitions, although as the historian Claire Valente notes, the gatherings were "still as much an event as an institution". After 1311, parliament began to include, in addition to the barons, the representatives of the knights and burgesses, who in later years would constitute the "commons". Although parliament often opposed raising fresh taxes, active opposition to Edward came largely from the barons, rather than parliament itself, although the barons did seek to use the parliamentary meetings as a way of giving legitimacy to their long-standing political demands. After resisting it for many years, Edward began intervening in parliament in the second half of his reign to achieve his own political aims. It remains unclear whether he was deposed in 1327 by a formal gathering of parliament or simply a gathering of the political classes alongside an existing parliament.
Court
Edward's royal court was itinerant, travelling around the country with him. When housed in Westminster Palace, the court occupied a complex of two halls, seven chambers and three chapels, along with other smaller rooms, but, due to the Scottish conflict, the court spent much of its time in Yorkshire and Northumbria. At the heart of the court was Edward's royal household, in turn divided into the "hall" and the "chamber"; the size of the household varied over time, but in 1317 was around five hundred people, including household knights, squires, and kitchen and transport staff. The household was surrounded by a wider group of courtiers, and appears to have also attracted a circle of prostitutes and criminal elements.
Music and minstrels were very popular at Edward's court, but hunting appears to have been a much less important activity, and there was little emphasis on chivalric events. Edward was interested in buildings and paintings, but less so in literary works, which were not extensively sponsored at court. There was an extensive use of gold and silver plates, jewels and enamelling at court, which would have been richly decorated. Edward kept a camel as a pet and, as a young man, took a lion with him on campaign to Scotland. The court could be entertained in exotic ways: by an Italian snake-charmer in 1312, and the following year by 54 nude French dancers.
Religion
Edward's approach to religion was normal for the period, and the historian Michael Prestwich describes him as "a man of wholly conventional religious attitudes". There were daily chapel services and almsgiving at his court, and Edward blessed the sick, although he did this less often than his predecessors. Edward remained close to the Dominican Order, which had helped to educate him, and followed their advice in asking for papal permission to be anointed with the Holy Oil of St. Thomas of Canterbury in 1319; this request was refused, causing the king some embarrassment. Edward supported the expansion of the universities during his reign, establishing King's Hall in Cambridge to promote training in religious and civil law, Oriel College in Oxford and a short-lived university in Dublin.
Edward enjoyed a good relationship with Pope Clement V, despite the king's repeated intervention in the operation of the English Church, including punishing bishops with whom he disagreed. With Clement's support, Edward attempted to gain the financial support of the English Church for his military campaigns in Scotland, including taxation and borrowing money against the funds gathered for the crusades. The Church did relatively little to influence or moderate Edward's behaviour during his reign, possibly because of the bishops' self-interest and concern for their own protection.
Pope John XXII, elected in 1316, sought Edward's support for a new crusade, and was also inclined to support him politically. In 1317, in exchange for papal support in his war with Scotland, Edward agreed to recommence paying the annual Papal tribute, which had been first agreed to by King John in 1213; Edward soon ceased the payments, however, and never offered his homage, another part of the 1213 agreement. In 1325 Edward asked Pope John to instruct the Irish Church to openly preach in favour of his right to rule the island, and to threaten to excommunicate any contrary voices.
Legacy
Historiography
No chronicler for this period is entirely trustworthy or unbiased, often because their accounts were written to support a particular cause, but it is clear that most contemporary chroniclers were highly critical of Edward. The Polychronicon, Vita Edwardi Secundi, Vita et Mors Edwardi Secundi and the Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvon for example all condemned the king's personality, habits and choice of companions. Other records from his reign show criticism by his contemporaries, including the Church and members of his own household. Political songs were written about him, complaining about his failure in war and his oppressive government. Later in the 14th century, some chroniclers, such as Geoffrey le Baker and Thomas Ringstead, rehabilitated Edward, presenting him as a martyr and a potential saint, although this tradition died out in later years.
Historians in the 16th and 17th centuries focused on Edward's relationship with Gaveston, drawing comparisons between Edward's reign and the events surrounding the relationship of Jean Louis de Nogaret de La Valette, Duke of Épernon, and Henry III of France, and between George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and Charles I of England. In the first half of the 19th century, popular historians such as Charles Dickens and Charles Knight popularised Edward's life with the Victorian public, focusing on the king's relationship with his favourites and, increasingly, alluding to his possible homosexuality. From the 1870s onwards, however, open academic discussion of Edward's sexuality was circumscribed by changing English values. By the start of the 20th century, English schools were being advised by the government to avoid overt discussion of Edward's personal relationships in history lessons. Views on his sexuality have continued to develop over the years.
By the end of the 19th century, more administrative records from the period had become available to historians such as William Stubbs, Thomas Tout and J. C. Davies, who focused on the development of the English constitutional and governmental system during his reign. Although critical of what they regarded as Edward II's inadequacies as a king, they also emphasised the growth of the role of parliament and the reduction in personal royal authority under Edward, which they perceived as positive developments. During the 1970s the historiography of Edward's reign shifted away from this model, supported by the further publishing of records from the period in the last quarter of the 20th century. The work of Jeffrey Denton, Jeffrey Hamilton, John Maddicott and Seymour Phillips re-focused attention on the role of the individual leaders in the conflicts. With the exceptions of Hilda Johnstone's work on Edward's early years and Natalie Fryde's study of Edward's final years, the focus of the major historical studies for several years was on the leading magnates rather than Edward himself, until substantial biographies of the king were published by Roy Haines and Seymour Phillips in 2003 and 2011.
Cultural references
Several plays have shaped Edward's contemporary image. Christopher Marlowe's play Edward II was first performed around 1592 and focuses on Edward's relationship with Piers Gaveston, reflecting 16th-century concerns about the relationships between monarchs and their favourites. Marlowe presents Edward's death as a murder, drawing parallels between the killing and martyrdom; although Marlowe does not describe the actual nature of Edward's murder in the script, it has usually been performed following the tradition that Edward was killed with a red-hot poker. The character of Edward in the play, who has been likened to Marlowe's contemporaries James VI of Scotland and Henry III of France, may have influenced William Shakespeare's portrayal of Richard II. In the 17th century, the playwright Ben Jonson picked up the same theme for his unfinished work, Mortimer His Fall.
The filmmaker Derek Jarman adapted the Marlowe play into a film in 1991, creating a postmodern pastiche of the original, depicting Edward as a strong, explicitly homosexual leader, ultimately overcome by powerful enemies. In Jarman's version, Edward finally escapes captivity, following the tradition in the Fieschi letter. Edward's current popular image was also shaped by his contrasting appearance in Mel Gibson's 1995 film Braveheart, where he is portrayed as weak and implicitly homosexual, wearing silk clothes and heavy makeup, shunning the company of women and incapable of dealing militarily with the Scots. The film received extensive criticism, both for its historical inaccuracies and for its negative portrayal of homosexuality.
Edward's life has also been used in a wide variety of other media. In the Victorian era, the painting Edward II and Piers Gaveston by Marcus Stone strongly hinted at a homosexual relationship between the pair, while avoiding making this aspect explicit. It was initially shown at the Royal Academy in 1872 but was marginalised in later decades as the issue of homosexuality became more sensitive. More recently, the director David Bintley used Marlowe's play as the basis for the ballet Edward II, first performed in 1995; the music from the ballet forms a part of composer John McCabe's symphony Edward II, produced in 2000. Novels such as John Penford's 1984 The Gascon and Chris Hunt's 1992 Gaveston have focused on the sexual aspects of Edward and Gaveston's relationship, while Stephanie Merritt's 2002 Gaveston transports the story into the 20th century.
Issue
Edward II had four children with Isabella:
Edward III of England (13 November 1312 – 21 June 1377). Married Philippa of Hainault on 24 January 1328. They had eight sons and five daughters.
John of Eltham (15 August 1316 – 13 September 1336). Died aged 20. Never married. No issue.
Eleanor of Woodstock (18 June 1318 – 22 April 1355). Married Reinoud II of Guelders in May 1332 and had two sons.
Joan of the Tower (5 July 1321 – 7 September 1362). Married David II of Scotland on 17 July 1328 and became Queen of Scots, but had no issue.
Edward also fathered the illegitimate Adam FitzRoy (c. 1307–1322), who accompanied his father in the Scottish campaigns of 1322 and died shortly afterwards.
Ancestry
See also
History of same-sex relationships, specifically the note on historiographical considerations
List of earls in the reign of Edward II of England
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links
"Edward II's tomb". Gloucester Cathedral. Archived from the original on 6 August 2019. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
Edward II at the official website of the British monarchy
Edward II at BBC History
"Archival material relating to Edward II of England". UK National Archives.
Portraits of King Edward II at the National Portrait Gallery, London |
Edward_III_of_England | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_III_of_England | [
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] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_III_of_England"
] | Edward III (13 November 1312 – 21 June 1377), also known as Edward of Windsor before his accession, was King of England from January 1327 until his death in 1377. He is noted for his military success and for restoring royal authority after the disastrous and unorthodox reign of his father, Edward II. Edward III transformed the Kingdom of England into one of the most formidable military powers in Europe. His fifty-year reign is one of the longest in English history, and saw vital developments in legislation and government, in particular the evolution of the English Parliament, as well as the ravages of the Black Death. He outlived his eldest son, Edward the Black Prince, and was succeeded by his grandson, Richard II.
Edward was crowned at age fourteen after his father was deposed by his mother, Isabella of France, and her lover, Roger Mortimer. At the age of seventeen, he led a successful coup d'état against Mortimer, the de facto ruler of England, and began his personal reign. After a successful campaign in Scotland, he declared himself rightful heir to the French throne, starting the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453). Following some initial setbacks, this first phase of the war went exceptionally well for England and would become known as the Edwardian War. Victories at Crécy and Poitiers, in 1356, led to the highly favourable Treaty of Brétigny, in which England made territorial gains, and Edward renounced his claim to the French throne. Edward's later years were marked by foreign policy failure and domestic strife, largely as a result of his decreasing activity and poor health.
Edward was temperamental and thought himself capable of feats such as healing by the royal touch, as some prior English kings did. He was also capable of unusual clemency. He was in many ways a conventional medieval king whose main interest was warfare, but he also had a broad range of non-military interests. Admired in his own time, and for centuries after, he was later denounced as an irresponsible adventurer by Whig historians, but modern historians credit him with significant achievements.
Background
King Edward II of England had court favourites who were unpopular with his nobility, such as Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser the Younger. Gaveston was killed during a noble rebellion against Edward in 1312, while Despenser was hated by the English nobility. Edward was also unpopular with the common people due to his repeated demands that they provide unpaid military service in Scotland. None of his campaigns there were successful, and this led to a further decline in his popularity, particularly with the nobility. His image was damaged again in 1322 when he executed his cousin Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, and confiscated the Lancaster estates. Historian Chris Given-Wilson wrote that, by 1325, the nobility believed that "no landholder could feel safe" under the regime. This distrust of Edward was shared by his wife, Isabella of France, who believed Despenser responsible for poisoning the King's mind against her. In September 1324 Queen Isabella was publicly humiliated when the government declared her an enemy alien, and the King repossessed her estates, probably at the urging of Despenser. Edward also disbanded her retinue. Edward had already been threatened with deposition on two previous occasions (in 1310 and 1321). Historians agree that hostility towards Edward was universal. W. H. Dunham and C. T. Wood ascribed this to Edward's "cruelty and personal faults", suggesting that "very few, not even his half-brothers or his son, seemed to care about the wretched man" and that none would fight for him. A contemporary chronicler described Edward as rex inutilis, or a "useless king".
Early life (1312–1327)
Edward was born at Windsor Castle on 13 November 1312, and was described in a contemporary prophecy as "the boar that would come out of Windsor". The reign of his father, Edward II, was a particularly problematic period of English history. The King had alienated several English nobles and Scottish allies by abandoning his father's war with Scotland soon after his accession, and continued to lose battles against the Scots intermittently. Also controversial was the King's patronage of a small group of royal favourites rather than his nobility generally. This, says the historian Michael Prestwich, "unbalanced the whole system of royal patronage". However, the birth of a male heir in 1312 — the future Edward III — soon improved Edward II's relations with the French, and a moderate element within the nobility temporarily quelled baronial opposition. The young prince was created Earl of Chester at only twelve days old, and by January the following year had been provided with an entire household. An early influence on Prince Edward was the Bishop of Durham, Richard de Bury, one of the century's major bibliophiles. Originally a tutor, he appears to have become a mentor to the King. Under Bury's tutelage, Edward learned to write and to read French and Latin. He would have had access to famous contemporary works, such as Vegetius's De Re Militari, which had been translated into Anglo-Norman, as well as the Mirror for Princes and various psalters and religious texts.
Since the Norman Conquest had united the Duchy of Normandy and its French estates with those of the Crown and the land of England, English kings had held several territories, including Poitou, Aquitaine, Normandy, Anjou and Maine, and these holdings — at one point covering more of France than that held by the French king — had frequently led to conflict. In 1325, Edward II was faced with a demand from his brother-in-law Charles IV of France to perform homage for the English Duchy of Aquitaine. The King was reluctant to leave the country, as discontent was once again brewing domestically, particularly over his relationship with the favourite Hugh Despenser the Younger. Instead, he had his son Edward created Duke of Aquitaine in his place and sent him to France to perform the homage. The young Edward was accompanied by his mother Isabella, who was King Charles's sister and was meant to negotiate a peace treaty with the French. While in France, Isabella conspired with the exiled Roger Mortimer to have Edward II deposed. To build up diplomatic and military support for the venture, Isabella had her son engaged to the twelve-year-old Philippa of Hainault. An invasion of England was launched and Edward II's forces deserted him completely. Isabella and Mortimer summoned a parliament, and the King was forced to relinquish the throne to his son, who was proclaimed king in London on 25 January 1327. The new king was crowned as Edward III at Westminster Abbey on 1 February at the age of 14.
Early reign (1327–1337)
Mortimer's rule and fall
One of Edward's first acts — de facto Mortimer's — was to lead another campaign to Scotland in July 1327. It was not long before the new reign also met with other problems caused by the central position of Mortimer at court, who was now the de facto ruler of England. Mortimer used his position to acquire noble estates and titles, and his unpopularity grew with the humiliating defeat by the Scots at the Battle of Stanhope Park in the county of Durham, and the ensuing Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton, agreed with the Scots in 1328. The young king also came into conflict with his guardian. Mortimer knew his position in relation to the King was precarious and subjected Edward to disrespect. The King married Philippa of Hainault at York Minster on 24 January 1328, and the birth of their first child, Edward of Woodstock, on 15 June 1330 only increased tension with Mortimer. Eventually, the King decided to take direct action against Mortimer. Although up until now Edward had kept a low profile, it is likely that he increasingly suspected that Mortimer's behaviour could endanger Edward's own life, as the former's position became more unpopular. This was exacerbated by his execution of Edward's uncle Edmund, Earl of Kent. Contemporary chroniclers suspected, too, that Mortimer had designs on the throne, and it is likely that it was these rumours that encouraged Edward to act against him and his mother, who supposedly maintained a close relationship with Mortimer.
Aided by his close companion William Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu, and a small number of other trusted men, Edward took Mortimer by surprise and captured him at Nottingham Castle on 19 October 1330. Mortimer was executed and Edward's personal reign began. The historian Mark Ormrod argued that at this point Edward had had "little instruction in the art of kingship", and although he had received several books on the subject on his betrothal to Phillipa, "it is extremely doubtful that he read or comprehended these works". His reign, continues Ormrod, was to be guided by his practical, rather than theoretical, experience.
War in Scotland
Edward III was not content with the peace agreement made in his name, but the renewal of the war with Scotland originated in private, rather than royal initiative. A group of English magnates known as The Disinherited, who had lost land in Scotland by the peace accord, staged an invasion of Scotland and won a great victory at the Battle of Dupplin Moor in 1332. They attempted to install Edward Balliol as king of Scotland in place of the infant David II, but Balliol was soon expelled and was forced to seek the help of Edward III. The English king responded by laying siege to the important border town of Berwick and defeated a large relieving army at the Battle of Halidon Hill, even while under threat from foreign raids. However, Berwick was taken after the besieged Scots set fire to the town, forcing them to treat; at one point Edward's queen was under siege in Bamburgh Castle, but this was too late to save the Scots' campaign. He reinstated Balliol on the throne and received a substantial amount of land in southern Scotland. These victories proved hard to sustain, as forces loyal to David II gradually regained control of the country. A Scottish uprising in 1344 required the raising of another army and a supporting navy. Edward, having repaired Roxburgh Castle, launched a number of ineffective strikes against the Scots. In 1338, Edward agreed a truce with the Scots.
One reason for the change of strategy towards Scotland was a growing concern for the relationship between England and France. As long as Scotland and France were in an alliance, the English were faced with the prospect of fighting a war on two fronts. The French carried out raids on English coastal towns, leading to rumours in England of a full-scale French invasion.
Creating a new nobility
When Edward took power, he found his family in "complete disarray", says Ormrod. His nobility was divided into factions after the troublesome reign of his father and was weakened by line failure among many families. While the lesser baronage was less affected by political misadventure as their seniors, they were also weaker due to their rights being more insubstantive. Edward had to pacify two noble parties: one which had been against his father from the beginning, and another which had opposed Mortimer's and Isabella's minority regime. James Bothwell argues that, while he managed to reconcile the sides bloodlessly and with minimum acrimony, it was insufficient to leave him secure on his own: he lanced the opposition but had not turned them into a loyalist cadre. Only the Earls of Arundel, Oxford and Warwick could be counted on as loyalists.
To counter the limited loyalty among the aristocrats, following the March 1337 Parliament Edward created a duke and eight new earls. He also summoned 61 new men to the lords with lesser titles, usually by writ of summons, over the rest of his reign. These creations — although expensive — received very little ill will among the extant aristocracy, including the royal family. The 1337 creations were Hugh de Audley to the Earldom of Gloucester, William de Bohun to that of Northampton, William de Clinton to Huntingdon, Henry of Grosmont to Lancaster, William de Montagu to Salisbury and Robert de Ufford to Suffolk. Of these, Bohun, Clinton, Montagu and Ufford had played leading roles in Edward's coup against Mortimer; they were likewise the greatest beneficiaries in terms of grants and estates. Another common denominator was that most of them had also been trusted companions of Edward before the coup; Ufford, for example, jousted with him and attended him in his homage before Philip VI of France, while Montagu had been his "closest supporter", and had run secret diplomatic missions to the Pope for him before the coup.
James Bothwell has noted that, while these men may have been less well off before they were promoted, they were not less experienced, either politically or militarily. These promotions were especially important to Edward because it had been from among the earls that his father had created so many bitter enemies, and therefore that was the demography that Edward wanted to reorganise in his favour. These promotions reinforced his own and the Crown's position and, with war approaching, he created six new recruitment conduits from the regions directly to the royal army. For the earls themselves, the prospect was not so positive: due to the parlous state of the royal finances, most of them did not receive a minimum of 1000 marks a year that was promised to them to uphold their new estate. All except Gloucester had to be satisfied with irregular grants of land to boost their incomes, but these would often not be available until the incumbent died and they escheated to the King.
Mid-reign (1337–1360)
Sluys
In 1337, Philip VI of France confiscated the English king's Duchy of Aquitaine and the county of Ponthieu. Instead of seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict by paying homage to the French king, as his father had done, Edward responded by laying claim to the French crown as the grandson of Philip IV of France. The French rejected this based on the precedents for agnatic succession set in 1316 and 1322 and upheld the rights of Philip IV's nephew Philip VI, leading to tensions that caused the Hundred Years' War. In the early stages of the war, Edward's strategy was to build alliances with other Continental rulers. In 1338, Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor, named Edward Vicar general of the Holy Roman Empire and promised his support. As late as 1373, the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373 established an Anglo-Portuguese Alliance. These measures produced few results.
The only major military victory during this phase of the war was the English naval victory at Sluys on 24 June 1340, which secured control of the English Channel. This victory decimated a superior French fleet and lowered the threat of a French invasion of England, which increased English desires to attack France. This situation lasted less than a year. Edward was unlikely to have been happy with this victory due to his continuing financial problems. The English also captured 166 French merchantmen; they had been raiding the south coast of England for several years and were unpopular amongst English sailors. Up to 16,000 French sailors were killed and French captain, Nicolas Béhuchet — who could otherwise have expected to be ransomed — was hanged from his own yardarm. Edward saw God's hand in his triumph and a triumphal coin was struck in commemoration — showing Edward in a ship, probably meant to be Béhuchet's own — and the King's gained a reputation as a naval warrior.
Cost of war
Meanwhile, the fiscal pressure on the kingdom caused by Edward's expensive alliances led to discontent at home. The regency council at home was frustrated by the mounting national debt, while the King and his commanders on the Continent were angered by the failure of the government in England to provide sufficient funds. To deal with the situation, Edward himself returned to England, arriving in London unannounced on 30 November 1340. Finding the affairs of the realm in disorder, he purged the royal administration of a great number of ministers and judges. These measures did not bring domestic stability, and a stand-off ensued between the King and John de Stratford, Archbishop of Canterbury, during which Stratford's relatives Robert Stratford, Bishop of Chichester, and Henry de Stratford were temporarily stripped of title and imprisoned respectively. Stratford claimed that Edward had violated the laws of the land by arresting royal officers. A certain level of conciliation was reached at the Parliament of April 1341. Here Edward was forced to accept severe limitations to his financial and administrative freedom, in return for a grant of taxation. Yet in October the same year, Edward repudiated this statute and Archbishop Stratford was politically ostracised. The extraordinary circumstances of the April Parliament had forced the King into submission, but under normal circumstances, the powers of the king in medieval England were virtually unlimited, a fact that Edward was able to exploit.
Historian Nicholas Rodger called Edward III's claim to be the "Sovereign of the Seas" into question, arguing there was hardly any royal navy before the reign of Henry V (1413–1422). Despite Rodger's view, King John had already developed a royal fleet of galleys and had attempted to establish an administration for these ships and others which were arrested (privately owned ships pulled into royal/national service). Henry III, his successor, continued this work. Notwithstanding the fact that he, along with his predecessor, had hoped to develop a strong and efficient naval administration, their endeavours produced one that was informal and mostly ad hoc. A formal naval administration emerged during Edward's reign, comprising lay administrators and led by William de Clewre, Matthew de Torksey and John de Haytfield successively bearing the title of Clerk of the King's Ships. Robert de Crull was the last to fill this position during Edward III's reign and would have the longest tenure in this position. It was during his tenure that Edward's naval administration would become a base for what evolved during the reigns of successors such as Henry VIII's Council of Marine and Navy Board and Charles I's Board of Admiralty. Rodger also argues that for much of the fourteenth century, the French had the upper hand, apart from Sluys in 1340 and, perhaps, off Winchelsea in 1350. Yet, the French never invaded England and King John II of France died in captivity in England. There was a need for an English navy to play a role in this and to handle other matters, such as the insurrection of the Anglo-Irish lords and acts of piracy.
Command structure
Edward's military command structure began with himself at the centre, and then members of the court acted as his generals. This included the King's family, and Edward utilised the martial capabilities of his sons, particularly his eldest son, Edward the Black Prince. This was not only pragmatic, in that they were all good warriors, but had the added propaganda value of demonstrating the hereditary nature of Edward's claim to the French throne. However, command was not always the prerogative of the nobility. Knights Banneret — knights able to lead other knights — were also favoured as leaders of armies or divisions, as they were also already close to the king, being part of his household and bodyguard. They bore particular responsibilities during King Edward's chevauchées, which often required the main army to split into smaller forces, each requiring its own captain. This sometimes led to dissension. For example, in the 1369 Loire campaign, the Earl of Pembroke shared command with Sir John Chandos; although the latter was appointed seneschal of France by the Black Prince, Pembroke refused to work beneath him on account of his superior social status. Ultimately, though, the task of raising the armies that they would lead fell to both: the aristocracy could raise the largest number of tenants and retainers after the King, but it was the lower men who acted as recruiting sergeants in the regions. Unlike during his father's or great grandfather's campaigns in Scotland, the feudal levy ― whereby military service was provided for free in exchange for land rights ― by the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War it had become the norm for men of all ranks to be paid for their service from the King. In return, the crown shouldered the responsibility for paying for the bulk of equipment. The military historian Andrew Ayton has described this transition as amounting to a "military revolution", and one spearheaded by the King himself.
Crécy and Poitiers
By the early 1340s, it was clear that Edward's policy of alliances was too costly, and yielded too few results. The following years saw more direct involvement by English armies, including in the Breton War of Succession, but these interventions also proved fruitless at first. Edward defaulted on Florentine loans of 1,365,000 florins, resulting in the ruin of the lenders.
A change came in July 1346, when Edward staged a major offensive, sailing for Normandy with a force of 15,000 men. His army sacked the city of Caen, and marched across northern France, to meet up with Flemish forces in Flanders. It was not Edward's initial intention to engage the French army, but at Crécy, just north of the Somme, he found favourable terrain and decided to fight a pursuing army led by Philip VI. On 26 August, the English army defeated a far larger French army in the Battle of Crécy. Shortly after this, on 17 October, an English army defeated and captured King David II of Scotland at the Battle of Neville's Cross. With his northern borders secured, Edward felt free to continue his major offensive against France, laying siege to the town of Calais. The operation was the greatest English venture of the Hundred Years' War, involving an army of 32,000 men. The siege started on 4 September 1346, and lasted until the town surrendered on 3 August 1347.
After the fall of Calais, factors outside of Edward's control forced him to wind down the war effort. In 1348, the Black Death struck England with full force, killing a third or more of the country's population. This loss of manpower led to a shortage of farm labour and a corresponding rise in wages. The great landowners struggled with the shortage of manpower and the resulting inflation in labour cost. To curb the rise in wages, the King and Parliament responded with the Ordinance of Labourers in 1349, followed by the Statute of Labourers in 1351. These attempts to regulate wages could not succeed in the long run, but in the short term they were enforced with great vigour. All in all, the plague did not lead to a full-scale breakdown of government and society, and recovery was remarkably swift. This was to a large extent thanks to the competent leadership of royal administrators such as Treasurer William Edington and Chief Justice William de Shareshull.
It was not until the mid-1350s that military operations on the Continent were resumed on a large scale. In 1356, Edward's eldest son, Edward, Prince of Wales, won an important victory in the Battle of Poitiers. The greatly outnumbered English forces not only routed the French, but captured the French king John II and his youngest son, Philip. After a succession of victories, the English held great possessions in France, the French king was in English custody, and the French central government had almost totally collapsed. There has been a historical debate as to whether Edward's claim to the French crown originally was genuine, or if it was simply a political ploy meant to put pressure on the French government. Regardless of the original intent, the stated claim now seemed to be within reach. Yet a campaign in 1359, meant to complete the undertaking, was inconclusive. In 1360, therefore, Edward accepted the Treaty of Brétigny, whereby he renounced his claims to the French throne, but secured his extended French possessions in full sovereignty. Edward kept his subjects fully informed of political and military developments abroad by a large number of regular reports from himself and his captains to various outlets, including convocation, the City of London and the archbishops, that, while the scholar A. E. Prince acknowledged that taken singularly, these reports may not represent a cohesive public relations within government, they do perhaps indicate, as a whole, the existence of a "simple propaganda organization" with which the King boosted domestic morale. These then ended up as part of popular chronicles, either verbatim or in part, whether newsletters or public letters.
Government
Legislation
The middle years of Edward's reign were a period of significant legislative activity. Perhaps the best-known piece of legislation was the Statute of Labourers of 1351, which addressed the labour shortage problem caused by the Black Death. The statute fixed wages at their pre-plague level and checked peasant mobility by asserting that lords had the first claim on their men's services. In spite of concerted efforts to uphold the statute, it eventually failed due to competition among landowners for labour The law has been described as an attempt "to legislate against the law of supply and demand", which made it doomed to fail. Nevertheless, the labour shortage had created a community of interest between the smaller landowners of the House of Commons and the greater landowners of the House of Lords. The resulting measures angered the peasants, leading to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.
The reign of Edward III coincided with the so-called Babylonian Captivity of the papacy at Avignon. During the wars with France, opposition emerged in England against perceived injustices by a papacy largely controlled by the French crown. Papal taxation of the English Church was suspected to be financing the nation's enemies, while the practice of provisions (the Pope's providing benefices for clerics) caused resentment in the English population. The statutes of Provisors and Praemunire, of 1350 and 1353 respectively, aimed to amend this by banning papal benefices, as well as limiting the power of the papal court over English subjects. The statutes did not sever the ties between the king and the Pope, who were equally dependent upon each other.
Other legislation of importance includes the Treason Act 1351. It was precisely the harmony of the reign that allowed a consensus on the definition of this controversial crime. Yet the most significant legal reform was probably that concerning the Justices of the Peace. This institution began before the reign of Edward III but, by 1350, the justices had been given the power not only to investigate crimes and make arrests but also to try cases, including those of felony. With this, an enduring fixture in the administration of local English justice had been created.
Parliament and taxation
Parliament as a representative institution was already well established by the time of Edward III, but the reign was nevertheless central to its development. During this period, membership in the English baronage, formerly a somewhat indistinct group, became restricted to those who received a personal summons to Parliament. This happened as Parliament gradually developed into a bicameral institution, composed of a House of Lords and a House of Commons. Yet it was not in the Lords, but in the Commons that the greatest changes took place, with the expanding political role of the Commons. Informative is the Good Parliament, where the Commons for the first time — albeit with noble support — were responsible for precipitating a political crisis. In the process, both the procedure of impeachment and the office of the Speaker were created. Even though the political gains were of only temporary duration, this parliament represented a watershed in English political history.
The political influence of the Commons originally lay in their right to grant taxes. The financial demands of the Hundred Years' War were enormous, and the King and his ministers tried different methods of covering the expenses. Edward had a steady income from crown lands, and could also take up substantial loans from Italian and domestic financiers. To finance warfare, he had to resort to taxation of his subjects. Taxation took two primary forms: levy and customs. The levy was a grant of a proportion of all moveable property, normally a tenth for towns and a fifteenth for farmland. This could produce large sums of money, but each such levy had to be approved by Parliament, and the king had to prove the necessity. The customs therefore provided a welcome supplement, as a steady and reliable source of income. An "ancient duty" on the export of wool had existed since 1275. Edward I had tried to introduce an additional duty on wool, but this unpopular maltolt, or "unjust exaction", was soon abandoned. Then, from 1336 onwards, a series of schemes aimed at increasing royal revenues from wool export were introduced. After some initial problems and discontent, it was agreed through the Statute of the Staple of 1353 that the new customs should be approved by Parliament, though in reality, they became permanent.
Through the steady taxation of Edward III's reign, Parliament — and in particular the Commons — gained political influence. A consensus emerged that in order for a tax to be just, the King had to prove its necessity, it had to be granted by the community of the realm, and it had to be to the benefit of that community. In addition to imposing taxes, Parliament would also present petitions for redress of grievances to the King, most often concerning misgovernment by royal officials. This way the system was beneficial for both parties. Through this process, the Commons, and the community they represented, became increasingly politically aware, and the foundation was laid for the particular English brand of constitutional monarchy. It became the norm for the king's ministers to argue his case before Parliament, the Commons to grant the king the tax he requested, and then the king's concessions to Parliament would be announced at its end.
The King occasionally attempted to avoid resorting to Parliament to raise taxes, such as in 1338 when he attempted a forced loan on wool. This soon collapsed — in the words of E. B. Fryde it was a "lamentable failure" — and once again, Edward had to return to Parliament. Edward also attempted to reinforce what he believed to be his ancient rights, such as the return of all goods and chattels of felons to the Crown, and scutage, as well as new proposals, such as that debts should be repaid to the Crown in one payment rather than incrementally. All these schemes collapsed, however, the latter because the lords claimed that such a method of taxation infringed upon their traditional rights. According to Fryde, "one of Edward's most onerous and wasteful liabilities" came in February 1339, when he effectively pawned the Great Crown of England to the Archbishop of Trier, for which the King promised repayment of £16,650. Edward met his creditors in Ghent in 1340, but, unable to immediately satisfy their demands, notes Bertie Wilkinson, "pretending that he wanted to take a walk, he secretly rode away".
Six new earls and the first three English dukedoms created
Central to Edward III's policy was reliance on the higher nobility for purposes of war and administration. While Edward II had regularly been in conflict with a great portion of his peerage, his son successfully created a spirit of camaraderie between himself and his greatest subjects. Both Edward I and Edward II had been limited in their policy towards the nobility, allowing the creation of few new peerages during the sixty years preceding Edward III's reign. Edward III reversed this trend when, in 1337, as a preparation for the imminent war, he created six new earls on the same day.
At the same time, Edward expanded the ranks of the peerage upwards, by introducing the new title of duke for close relatives of the king; creating the first three dukedoms of England (Cornwall, Lancaster, and Clarence). His eldest son, Edward the Black Prince, was created Duke of Cornwall, the first English duke, in 1337. In 1351 the Earl of Lancaster was elevated to the Duke of Lancaster. In 1362, the second son of King Edward III, Lionel of Antwerp, was made the first Duke of Clarence.
Chivalry and national identity
Furthermore, Edward bolstered the sense of community within this group by the creation of a new order of chivalry. In January 1344 a great feast was held in Windsor Castle to which large numbers were invited; not just the lords but the City of London also sent a contingent. The first night saw a feast at which all the attending ladies, with only two knights among them, dined, while the other men ate in their tents. This was followed by jousting over the next three days, where Edward — "not because of his kingly rank but because of his great exertions", iterates Adam Murimuth in his chronicle — was deemed champion. This was followed by the King's announcement of the founding of the Round Table of King Arthur, to which "certain lords" took an oath. The first meeting of the new chapter was arranged for the following Whitsun. Nothing, however, was to come of the project; as Murimuth comments, "this work was later stopped for various reasons".
Instead, around four years later, Edward founded Order of the Garter, probably in 1348. The new order carried connotations from the legend by the circular shape of the garter. Edward's wartime experiences during the Crécy campaign (1346–7) seem to have been a determining factor in his abandonment of the Round Table project. It has been argued that the total warfare tactics employed by the English at Crécy in 1346 were contrary to Arthurian ideals and made Arthur a problematic paradigm for Edward, especially at the time of the institution of the Garter. There are no formal references to King Arthur and the Round Table in the surviving early fifteenth century copies of the Statutes of the Garter, but the Garter Feast of 1358 did involve a round table game. Thus, there was some overlap between the projected Round Table fellowship and the actualized Order of the Garter. Polydore Vergil tells of how the young Joan of Kent — allegedly the King's favourite at the time — accidentally dropped her garter at a ball at Calais. Edward responded to the ensuing ridicule of the crowd by tying the garter around his own knee with the words honi soit qui mal y pense (shame on him who thinks ill of it).
This reinforcement of the aristocracy and the emerging sense of national identity must be seen in conjunction with the war in France. Just as the war with Scotland had done, the fear of a French invasion helped strengthen a sense of national unity and nationalise the aristocracy that had been largely Anglo-Norman since the Norman conquest. Since the time of Edward I, popular myth suggested that the French planned to extinguish the English language, and as his grandfather had done, Edward III made the most of this scare. As a result, the English language experienced a strong revival; in 1362, a Statute of Pleading ordered English to be used in law courts, and the year after, Parliament was for the first time opened in English. At the same time, the vernacular saw a revival as a literary language, through the works of William Langland, John Gower and especially The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Yet the extent of this Anglicisation must not be exaggerated. The statute of 1362 was in fact written in the French language and had little immediate effect, and Parliament was opened in that language as late as 1377. The Order of the Garter, though a distinctly English institution, included also foreign members such as John IV, Duke of Brittany, and Robert of Namur.
Later reign (1360–1377)
Further campaigns in France and governance
While Edward's early reign had been energetic and successful, his later years were marked by inertia, military failure and political strife. The day-to-day affairs of the state had less appeal to Edward than military campaigning, so during the 1360s Edward increasingly relied on the help of his subordinates, in particular William Wykeham A relative upstart, Wykeham was made Keeper of the Privy Seal in 1363 and Chancellor in 1367, though due to political difficulties connected with his inexperience, the Parliament forced him to resign the chancellorship in 1371. Compounding Edward's difficulties were the deaths of his most trusted men, some from the 1361–62 recurrence of the plague. William Montagu, 1st Earl of Salisbury, Edward's companion in the 1330 coup, died as early as 1344. William de Clinton, 1st Earl of Huntingdon, who had also been with Edward at Nottingham, died in 1354. One of the earls created in 1337, William de Bohun, 1st Earl of Northampton, died in 1360, and the next year Henry of Grosmont, Duke of Lancaster, perhaps the greatest of Edward's captains, succumbed to what was probably plague. Their deaths left the majority of the magnates younger and more naturally aligned to the princes than to the King himself.
Increasingly, Edward began to rely on his sons for the leadership of military operations. The king's second son, Lionel of Antwerp, attempted to subdue by force the largely autonomous Anglo-Irish lords in Ireland. The venture failed, and the only lasting mark he left was the suppressive Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366. In France, meanwhile, the decade following the Treaty of Brétigny was one of relative tranquillity, but on 8 April 1364, John II died in captivity in England, after unsuccessfully trying to raise his own ransom at home. He was followed by the vigorous Charles V, who enlisted the help of the capable Bertrand du Guesclin, Constable of France In 1369, the French war started anew, and Edward's son John of Gaunt was given the responsibility of a military campaign. The effort failed, and with the Treaty of Bruges in 1375, the great English possessions in France were reduced to only the coastal towns of Calais, Bordeaux, and Bayonne.
Alice Perrers
Alice Perrers was originally one of Philippa's household ladies, having been appointed by 1359. Within five years, by which time she would have been 18, and after the death of her husband, she is speculated to have become the lover of the elderly King. She maintained an active business life outside her career in the royal household, particularly as a moneylender, while also making the most out of her royal connections, accepted gifts from courtiers and those wishing to further their causes with the King. Edward presented her with gifts, including land, manors and jewels, and in 1371 these included those of the now-dead Philippa. Alice, in what may have been an attempt to keep her new estates after the King's death, tied them up in a series of enfeoffments. This meant that legally they ceased to be royal gifts which could be resumed to the Crown, but hers to receive from her feoffees when she chose. These gifts included 50 manors in 25 counties and £20,000 in jewels. The contemporary chronicler Thomas Walsingham saw her as a low-born woman who, through her own ambition, made a fortune from the besotted King; and this was the popular view presented to the Good Parliament of 1376, in which she was also accused of taking 2000 to 3000 pounds in gold and silver per annum from the royal treasury. Another contemporary, the Anonimalle Chronicler, complained that this was all "without any notable profit and in great damage to our lord the king", and argued that Alice be removed from the King's circle even though he was still living, albeit known to be dying. Modern historians have credited her with more agency than merely using "womanly wiles" to get her own way, noting her head for business and the law. Bothwell also notes that she probably recognised the precariousness of her own position after the King had died — "which it was obvious to all in the 1370s was imminent" — and intended much of her wealth to provide for her two daughters, whose lives would be even more precarious in the following reign. She was correct in her surmise: by the time the Good Parliament met, Edward was too weak but to acquiesce in her banishment. This did not, however, last very long; she had returned to his inner circle later that year and remained there until his death. However, in 1378 her previous fears resurfaced, and this time put on trial before Parliament in the first year of Richard II's reign. She was found guilty and sentenced to be exiled. Further, her property was forfeited to the Crown.
Discontent at home
Military failure abroad, and the associated fiscal pressure of constant campaigns, led to political discontent in England. Finance was a particular grievance; although it was rarely raised as an issue before 1371, after that time complaints about the royal household's expenditure were frequent. The problems came to a head in the Parliament of 1376, the so-called Good Parliament. The Parliament was called to grant taxation, but the House of Commons took the opportunity to address specific grievances. In particular, criticism was directed at some of the King's closest advisors. Lord Chamberlain William Latimer, 4th Baron Latimer, and Steward of the Household John Neville, 3rd Baron Neville de Raby, were dismissed from their positions. Edward III's mistress, Alice Perrers, who was seen to hold far too much power over the ageing king, was banished from court. Yet the real adversary of the Commons, supported by powerful men such as Wykeham and Edmund Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March, was John of Gaunt. Both the King and Edward of Woodstock were by this time incapacitated by illness, leaving Gaunt in virtual control of government. Gaunt was forced to give in to the demands of Parliament, but at its next convocation in 1377, most of the achievements of the Good Parliament were reversed.
Death and succession
Edward III did not have much to do with any of this; after around 1375 he played a limited role in the government of the realm. Around 29 September 1376, he fell ill with a large abscess. After a brief period of recovery in February 1377, the King died of a stroke at Sheen on 21 June.
Edward III was succeeded by his ten-year-old grandson, King Richard II, son of Edward of Woodstock, since Woodstock himself had died on 8 June 1376. In 1376, Edward had signed letters patent on the order of succession to the crown, citing in second position his third son John of Gaunt, but ignoring Philippa, daughter of his second son Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence. Philippa's exclusion contrasted with a decision by Edward I in 1290, which had recognized the right of women to inherit the crown and to pass it on to their descendants. The order of succession determined in 1376 led the House of Lancaster to the throne in 1399 (John of Gaunt was Duke of Lancaster), whereas the rule decided by Edward I would have favoured Philippa's descendants, among them the House of York, beginning with Richard of York, her great-grandson. The large number of cousins that were created is sometimes argued to have laid the foundations for the Wars of the Roses in the fifteenth century.
Family
Edward III and his wife Philippa had eight sons and five daughters born over a 25-year period. This was considered a success by contemporaries and a sign of God's favour. Edward understood the importance of a "strong and united royal family", argues Ormrod. It allowed him, through their marriages, to make alliances within his own aristocracy and also with continental dynasties. However, the latter policy gradually fell apart with the gradual loss of England's European possessions towards the end of the century. For example, he organised the marriage of his sister Eleanor of Woodstock to the Count of Guelders as part of a pro-Netherlandish, anti-French policy in 1332. Yet when the coalition collapsed in 1340, the fact that he had only lost her in that particular marriage market was a positive. From around this time, says Ormrod, "the Hundred Years' War became a family enterprise": the Edward the Black Prince commanded a force at Crécy, and ten years later his younger brothers Lionel, John and Edmund had joined the war. However, while his sons were fighting in France, they could not be procreating the royal line; by 1358, only Lionel had married and provided Edward with a grandchild. By the mid-1360s his family had furthered his continental policy, both diplomatically and militarily, sufficiently that he allowed his son Edward and his daughter Isabella to do that rarest of things in the Middle Ages: marry for love. Neither the former's match with Joan of Kent and the latter's to Enguerrand VII de Coucy, were particularly advantageous to the King; the first was a clandestine marriage, while de Courcy was a French hostage. Ormrod concludes that, by 1376:
Edward III's greatest misfortune was that he lived long enough to witness the complete collapse of [his] elaborate dynastic plan. By 1377, the king's family had been depleted, his territories reduced, his diplomacy wrecked, and his own control of affairs nullified.
A fourth son, Thomas of Windsor, is also sometimes posited as being born in 1347 and dying the following year. However, the historian Kathryn Warner has suggested that, as William of Woodstock was also born and died the same year, and combined with the paucity of material evidence, it is likely that this Thomas is a composite. She argues that "the entire existence of 'Thomas of Windsor' in some modern books and websites appears to be based on the spurious story by two chroniclers that Philippa was heavily pregnant when she interceded for the Calais burghers in early August 1347". She also notes that for William, who also died young, there is much evidence for his existence, including "his funeral or tomb, or for the queen's purification after his birth, or for any kind of celebration held to mark the birth of another royal child". The medievalist Nicholas Orme has noted that medieval chroniclers were particularly accurate when it came to recording royal births.
The geneticist Adam Rutherford has calculated Edward had over 300 great-great-grandchildren and, therefore, over 20,000 descendants by 1600. Thus, by the 21st century, it is "virtually impossible" that a person with a predominantly British ancestry is not descended from Edward III, as they would have around 32,000 ancestors from 1600. Conversely, Rutherford has calculated that statistically, the odds on a 20th-century British person not being descended from Edward III is 0.99532,768 = 4.64 × 10−72.
Issue
Edward the Black Prince (1330–1376), eldest son and heir apparent, born at Woodstock Palace, Oxfordshire. He predeceased his father, having in 1361 married his cousin Joan, Countess of Kent, by whom he had issue: King Richard II;
Isabella of England (1332 – c. 1382), born at Woodstock Palace, Oxfordshire, in 1365 married Enguerrand VII de Coucy, 1st Earl of Bedford, by whom she had issue;
William of Hatfield (1337–1337), second son, born at Hatfield Manor House, Hatfield, South Yorkshire, died shortly after birth and was buried in York Minster;
Joan of England (1333/4–1348), born in the Tower of London; she was betrothed to Peter of Castile but died of the black death en route to Castile before the marriage could take place. Peter's two daughters from his union with María de Padilla married Joan's younger brothers John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley;
Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence (1338–1368), third son (second surviving son), born at Antwerp in the Duchy of Brabant, where his father was based. In 1352 he married firstly Elizabeth de Burgh, 4th Countess of Ulster, without male issue, but his female issue was the senior royal ancestor of the Yorkist king Edward IV: Philippa, 5th Countess of Ulster. Descent from Lionel was the basis of the Yorkist claim to the throne, not direct paternal descent from the 1st Duke of York, a more junior line. Secondly, in 1368, Lionel married Violante Visconti, without issue;
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (1340–1399), Edward's third surviving son, was born at "Gaunt" (Ghent) in the County of Flanders, which city was an important buyer of English wool, then the foundation of English prosperity. In 1359, he married firstly his third cousin, the great heiress Blanche of Lancaster, descended from the 1st Earl of Lancaster, a younger son of King Henry III. By Blanche he had issue: Henry of Bolingbroke, who became King Henry IV, having seized the throne from his first cousin King Richard II. In 1371, he married secondly the Infanta Constance of Castile, by whom he had issue. In 1396, he married thirdly, his mistress Katherine Swynford, by whom he had illegitimate issue, later legitimised as the House of Beaufort;
Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York (1341–1402), fifth son (fourth surviving son), born at Kings Langley Palace, Hertfordshire. He married firstly Isabella of Castile, by whom he had issue, sister of Constance of Castile, second wife of his elder brother John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster. Secondly, in 1392 he married his second cousin Joan Holland, without issue. His great-grandson (the 4th Duke of York) became King Edward IV in 1461, having deposed his half-second cousin the Lancastrian King Henry VI;
Blanche (1342–1342), born in the Tower of London, died shortly after birth and was buried in Westminster Abbey;
Mary of Waltham (1344–1361), born at Bishop's Waltham, Hampshire; in 1361 she married John IV, Duke of Brittany, without issue;
Margaret (Countess of Pembroke) (1346–1361), born at Windsor Castle; in 1359 she married John Hastings, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, without issue;
William of Windsor (1348–1348), sixth son, born before 24 June 1348 at Windsor Castle, died in infancy probably on 9 July 1348, buried on 5 September 1348 in Westminster Abbey;
Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester (1355–1397), seventh son (fifth surviving son), born at Woodstock Palace in Oxfordshire; in 1376 he married Eleanor de Bohun, by whom he had issue.
Personality
Mark Ormrod has noted that in this period, politics was often dictated by the personality and character of the king. However, it was also understood that not only should a king rule well and wisely, but that he should be seen to do so. Ormrod argues that, while he did not begin his reign with these skills, unlike many of his fellow Plantagenet kings, he acquired them. His collection of chronicles indicates an interest in history, even to the extent that, on occasion, he consulted their authors. He may have been particularly keen to emulate Henry II and Edward I, whose own martial prowess and success would have resonated with him. His tastes were conventional, Ormrod says, and J. R. Lander also has argued that this is reflected in his hobbies. Unlike his father's passion for manual work, including carpentry, thatching and rowing, Edward III "shared to the full the conventional tastes and pleasure of the aristocracy", with his principal interest being architecture. This conservativism is also reflected in his religious views, which, expressed as they were through the patronage of friaries and visiting of shrines, demonstrate a conventional religion. This is also reflected in his almsgiving. While ancestors such as Henry III had often been haphazard and exuberant in the amounts they gave and when they did so, Edward III maintained a regular 366 meals a week to be provided for the poor with another £25 to be distributed during the four main feasts. However, alongside his conventionality ran a populist streak, and Ormrod has described him as a "natural showman", particularly in his alacrity to heal those suffering from scrofula by his royal touch. In less than two years, between 1338 and 1340, he touched for scrofula in both England and while campaigning in France; another 355 occurred between November 1340 and the same month the following year. He was generous to the point of extravagance. In an alternative view, Norman Cantor has described Edward as an "avaricious and sadistic thug".
From what is known of Edward's character, he could be impulsive and temperamental, as was seen by his actions against Stratford and the ministers in 1340/41. Other escapades were not just impulsive but dangerous, such as in 1349, when he sailed to Calais with only a small bodyguard. At the same time, he was well known for his clemency; Mortimer's grandson was not only absolved, he came to play an important part in the French wars and was eventually made a Knight of the Garter. His favourite pursuit was the art of war and, in this, he conformed to the medieval notion of good kingship. As a warrior he was so successful that one modern military historian has described him as the greatest general in English history. He seems to have been unusually devoted to Queen Philippa. Much has been made of Edward's sexual licentiousness, but there is no evidence of any infidelity on his part before Alice Perrers became his lover, and by that time the Queen was already terminally ill. This devotion extended to the rest of the family as well; in contrast to many of his predecessors, Edward never experienced opposition from any of his five adult sons.
Legacy
Edward III, argues the scholar Michael A.R. Graves, left a "dual legacy". These were the large brood of children and grandchildren he left, and his claim to the French throne. In the first instance, his endowment of his sons as Dukes of Clarence, Lancaster and York allowed them to create their own dynasties which were both part of the royal family and the aristocracy, which, following Henry Bolingbroke's usurpation of Edward's grandson, Richard II, "bedevilled" the Lancastrian dynasty. Secondly, while the resumption of Edward's claims and war in France was initially successful—contemporaries compared Henry V's decisive victory at Agincourt with Edward's at Crécy and Poitiers— when the tide turned against the English in France, the dynasty was also weakened. Indeed, war in France was problematic for the House of York as well as Lancaster. Edward IV was probably consciously following in his namesake's footsteps when he invaded France in 1475, even if the subsequent Treaty of Picquigny was wholly unintended. Edward IV's reign looked back on that of Edward III — with its martial and administrative progress — as something to model their own on, argues Morgan. Edward IV's own Household Books, summarise the approach as "we take to bylde upon a more perfit new house", and indeed many of their grants and warrants contain a final clause that whatever was under discussion should be as they were in Edward III's final year. Even the final destruction of the Plantagenets at Bosworth in 1485 failed to impinge on Edward III's posthumous image; he was also the most recent king Henry VII could lay claim of descent from.
Historiography
Edward III enjoyed unprecedented popularity in his own lifetime, and even the troubles of his later reign were never blamed directly on the King himself. His contemporary Jean Froissart wrote in his Chronicles: "His like had not been seen since the days of King Arthur." D. A. L. Morgan has drawn attention to the continuing popularity of Edward into the next century, observing that "by 1500 Edward III was well into his stride as the greatest King ever to have ruled England", quoting The Great Chronicle of London on Henry VII, who if not for his avarice, "mygth have been pereless of alle princis that regnyd ovyr England syne the tyme of Edwardthe thyrd". This view persisted for a while but, with time, Edward's image changed. The Whig historians of a later age preferred constitutional reform to foreign conquest and accused Edward of ignoring his responsibilities to his own nation. Bishop Stubbs, in his The Constitutional History of England, states:
Edward III was not a statesman, though he possessed some qualifications which might have made him a successful one. He was a warrior; ambitious, unscrupulous, selfish, extravagant and ostentatious. His obligations as a king sat very lightly on him. He felt himself bound by no special duty, either to maintain the theory of royal supremacy or to follow a policy which would benefit his people. Like Richard I, he valued England primarily as a source of supplies.
This view has been challenged through most of the 20th century, and Ormrod has observed that "no modern reader could seriously accept all these compliments at face value", although also that in their efforts to counter the prevailing hagiography, early 20th-century historians were more critical:
Edward III is now often seen as a rather second-rate ruler, stubborn and selfish in his foreign ambitions, weak and yielding in his domestic policies. He lacked the forcefulness of Henry II, the statesmanship of Edward I, the charisma of Henry V, or the application of Henry VII. He was prepared to accept short-term compromises and to ignore the wider implications Of his actions.
Later scholarship, suggests Ormrod, "tended to be rather kinder". In a 1960 article, May McKisack points out the teleological nature of Stubbs' judgement. A medieval king could not be expected to work towards some future ideal of a parliamentary monarchy as if it were good in itself; rather, his role was a pragmatic one – to maintain order and solve problems as they arose. At this, Edward excelled. Edward had also been accused of endowing his younger sons too liberally and thereby promoting dynastic strife culminating in the Wars of the Roses. This claim was rejected by K. B. McFarlane, who argued that this was not only the common policy of the age, but also the best. Later biographers of Edward such as Mark Ormrod and Ian Mortimer have followed this historiographical trend. The older negative view has not completely disappeared; Cantor has argued that Edward was a "destructive and merciless force". Ormrod argues that in overturning the Stubbsian paradigm, historians may have gone too far in the opposite direction, not taking into account the problems he had to solve and the number of different factions he had to accommodate to get things done. Chris Given-Wilson and Michael Prestwich, in their introduction to the proceedings of the 1999 Centre for Medieval Studies conference at the University of York, summarise modern consensus as being, effectively, that he was, overall, a strong king, a just king and a good warrior and strategist; basically a good king for the time. This, they argue, is the most important point regarding modern scholarship on Edward III: not necessarily to overturn previous consensus, but to look at all aspects of a multi-faceted King and examine how he achieved this success. Modern historians are also more distant than contemporaries in their view of the King's fecundity being a sign of success; more often, it is seen as a liability as each mouth had to be paid for, draining limited resources. Further, it may have led to later partisanship between the Crown and its cadet branches.
Later events
Edward's grandson, the young Richard II, faced political and economic problems, many resulting from the Black Death, including the Peasants' Revolt that broke out across the south of England in 1381. Over the coming decades, Richard and groups of nobles vied for power and control of policy towards France until Henry of Bolingbroke seized the throne with the support of Parliament in 1399. Ruling as Henry IV, he exercised power through a royal council and Parliament, while attempting to enforce political and religious conformity. His son, Henry V, reinvigorated the war with France and came close to achieving strategic success shortly before his death in 1422. Henry VI became king at the age of only nine months and both the English political system and the military situation in France began to unravel.
A sequence of bloody civil wars – later termed the Wars of the Roses – erupted in 1455, spurred on by an economic crisis and a widespread perception of poor government. The idea that Edward III was to blame for the later-15th century Wars of the Roses was prevalent as late as the 19th century, but came to be challenged in the 20th.
Notes
References
Sources
Further reading
External links
The Medieval Sourcebook has some sources relating to the reign of Edward III:
The Ordinance of Labourers, 1349
The Statute of Labourers, 1351
Thomas Walsingham's account of the Good Parliament of 1376
"Archival material relating to Edward III of England". UK National Archives.
Portraits of King Edward III at the National Portrait Gallery, London |
Richard_II_of_England | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_II_of_England | [
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] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_II_of_England"
] | Richard II (6 January 1367 – c. 14 February 1400), also known as Richard of Bordeaux, was King of England from 1377 until he was deposed in 1399. He was the son of Edward, Prince of Wales (later known as the Black Prince), and Joan, Countess of Kent. Richard's father died in 1376, leaving Richard as heir apparent to his grandfather, King Edward III; upon the latter's death, the 10-year-old Richard succeeded to the throne.
During Richard's first years as king, government was in the hands of a series of regency councils, influenced by Richard's uncles John of Gaunt and Thomas of Woodstock. England at that time faced various problems, most notably the Hundred Years' War. A major challenge of the reign was the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, and the young king played a central part in the successful suppression of this crisis. Less warlike than either his father or grandfather, he sought to bring an end to the Hundred Years' War. A firm believer in the royal prerogative, Richard restrained the power of the aristocracy and relied on a private retinue for military protection instead. In contrast to his grandfather, Richard cultivated a refined atmosphere centred on art and culture at court, in which the king was an elevated figure.
The King's dependence on a small number of courtiers caused discontent among the nobility, and in 1387 control of government was taken over by a group of aristocrats known as the Lords Appellant. By 1389 Richard had regained control, and for the next eight years governed in relative harmony with his former opponents. In 1397, he took his revenge on the Appellants, many of whom were executed or exiled. The next two years have been described by historians as Richard's "tyranny". In 1399, after John of Gaunt died, the King disinherited Gaunt's son Henry Bolingbroke, who had previously been exiled. Henry invaded England in June 1399 with a small force that quickly grew in numbers. Meeting little resistance, he deposed Richard and had himself crowned king. Richard is thought to have been starved to death in captivity, although questions remain regarding his final fate.
Richard's posthumous reputation has been shaped to a large extent by William Shakespeare, whose play Richard II portrayed Richard's misrule and his deposition as responsible for the 15th-century Wars of the Roses. Modern historians do not accept this interpretation, while not exonerating Richard from responsibility for his own deposition. While probably not insane, as many historians of the 19th and 20th centuries believed him to be, he may have had a personality disorder, particularly manifesting itself towards the end of his reign. Most authorities agree that his policies were not unrealistic or even entirely unprecedented, but that the way in which he carried them out was unacceptable to the political establishment, leading to his downfall.
Early life
Richard of Bordeaux was the younger son of Edward, Prince of Wales, and Joan, Countess of Kent. Edward, eldest son of Edward III and heir apparent to the throne of England, had distinguished himself as a military commander in the early phases of the Hundred Years' War, particularly in the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. After further military adventures, however, he contracted dysentery in Spain in 1370. He never fully recovered and had to return to England the next year.
Richard was born at the Archbishop's Palace of Bordeaux, in the English principality of Aquitaine, on 6 January 1367. According to contemporary sources, three kings, "the King of Castile, the King of Navarre and the King of Portugal", were present at his birth. This anecdote, and the fact that his birth fell on the feast of Epiphany, was later used in the religious imagery of the Wilton Diptych, where Richard is one of three kings paying homage to the Virgin and Child.
Richard's elder brother, Edward of Angoulême, died near his sixth birthday in 1370. The Prince of Wales finally succumbed to his long illness in June 1376. The Commons in the English Parliament genuinely feared that Richard's uncle, John of Gaunt, would usurp the throne. For this reason, Richard was quickly invested with the princedom of Wales and his father's other titles.
On 21 June 1377, King Edward III, who was for some years frail and decrepit, died after a 50-year reign. This resulted in the 10-year-old Richard succeeding to the throne. He was crowned on 16 July at Westminster Abbey. Again, fears of John of Gaunt's ambitions influenced political decisions, and a regency led by the King's uncles was avoided. Instead, the King was nominally to exercise kingship with the help of a series of "continual councils", from which Gaunt was excluded.
Gaunt, together with his younger brother Thomas of Woodstock, Earl of Buckingham, still held great informal influence over the business of government, but the King's councillors and friends, particularly Sir Simon de Burley and Robert de Vere, 9th Earl of Oxford, increasingly gained control of royal affairs.
In a matter of three years, these councillors earned the mistrust of the Commons to the point that the councils were discontinued in 1380. Contributing to discontent was an increasingly heavy burden of taxation levied through three poll taxes between 1377 and 1381 that were spent on unsuccessful military expeditions on the continent. By 1381, there was a deep-felt resentment against the governing classes in the lower levels of English society.
Early reign
Peasants' Revolt
Whereas the poll tax of 1381 was the spark of the Peasants' Revolt, the root of the conflict lay in tensions between peasants and landowners precipitated by the economic and demographic consequences of the Black Death and subsequent outbreaks of the plague. The rebellion started in Kent and Essex in late May, and on 12 June, bands of peasants gathered at Blackheath near London under the leaders Wat Tyler, John Ball, and Jack Straw. John of Gaunt's Savoy Palace was burnt down. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury, who was also Lord Chancellor, and Lord High Treasurer Robert Hales were both killed by the rebels, who were demanding the complete abolition of serfdom. The King, sheltered within the Tower of London with his councillors, agreed that the Crown did not have the forces to disperse the rebels and that the only feasible option was to negotiate.
It is unclear how much Richard, who was still only fourteen years old, was involved in these deliberations, although historians have suggested that he was among the proponents of negotiations. The King set out by the River Thames on 13 June, but the large number of people thronging the banks at Greenwich made it impossible for him to land, forcing him to return to the Tower. The next day, Friday, 14 June, he set out by horse and met the rebels at Mile End. He agreed to the rebels' demands, but this move only emboldened them; they continued their looting and killings. Richard met Wat Tyler again the next day at Smithfield and reiterated that the demands would be met, but the rebel leader was not convinced of the King's sincerity. The King's men grew restive, an altercation broke out, and William Walworth, the Lord Mayor of London, pulled Tyler down from his horse and killed him. The situation became tense once the rebels realised what had happened, but the King acted with calm resolve and, saying "I am your captain, follow me!", he led the mob away from the scene. Walworth meanwhile gathered a force to surround the peasant army, but the King granted clemency and allowed the rebels to disperse and return to their homes.
The King soon revoked the charters of freedom and pardon that he had granted, and as disturbances continued in other parts of the country, he personally went into Essex to suppress the rebellion. On 28 June at Billericay, he defeated the last rebels in a small skirmish and effectively ended the Peasants' Revolt. In the following days rebel leaders, such as John Ball, were hunted down and executed. Despite his young age, Richard had shown great courage and determination in his handling of the rebellion. It is likely, though, that the events impressed upon him the dangers of disobedience and threats to royal authority, and helped shape the absolutist attitudes to kingship that would later prove fatal to his reign.
Coming of age
It is only with the Peasants' Revolt that Richard starts to emerge clearly in the annals. One of his first significant acts after the rebellion was to marry Anne of Bohemia, daughter of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, on 20 January 1382. It had diplomatic significance; in the division of Europe caused by the Western Schism, Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire were seen as potential allies against France in the ongoing Hundred Years' War. Nonetheless, the marriage was not popular in England. Despite great sums of money awarded to the Empire, the political alliance never resulted in any military victories. Furthermore, the marriage was childless. Anne died from the plague in 1394, greatly mourned by her husband.
Michael de la Pole had been instrumental in the marriage negotiations; he had the King's confidence and gradually became more involved at court and in government as Richard came of age. De la Pole came from an upstart merchant family. When Richard made him chancellor in 1383, and created him Earl of Suffolk two years later, this antagonised the more established nobility. Another member of the close circle around the King was Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who in this period emerged as the King's favourite. Richard's close friendship to de Vere was also disagreeable to the political establishment. This displeasure was exacerbated by the earl's elevation to the new title of Duke of Ireland in 1386. The chronicler Thomas Walsingham suggested the relationship between the King and de Vere was of a homosexual nature, due to a resentment Walsingham had toward the King.
Tensions came to a head over the approach to the war in France. While the court party preferred negotiations, Gaunt and Buckingham urged a large-scale campaign to protect English possessions. Instead, a so-called crusade led by Henry le Despenser, Bishop of Norwich, was dispatched, which failed miserably. Faced with this setback on the continent, Richard turned his attention instead towards France's ally, the Kingdom of Scotland. In 1385, the King himself led a punitive expedition to the north, but the effort came to nothing, and the army had to return without ever engaging the Scots in battle. Meanwhile, only an uprising in Ghent prevented a French invasion of southern England. The relationship between Richard and his uncle John of Gaunt deteriorated further with military failure, and Gaunt left England to pursue his claim to the throne of Castile in 1386 amid rumours of a plot against his person. With Gaunt gone, the unofficial leadership of the growing dissent against the King and his courtiers passed to Buckingham – who had by now been created Duke of Gloucester – and Richard Fitzalan, 4th Earl of Arundel.
First crisis of 1386–1388
The threat of a French invasion did not subside, but instead grew stronger into 1386. At the parliament of October that year, Michael de la Pole – in his capacity of chancellor – requested taxation of an unprecedented level for the defence of the realm. Rather than consenting, the parliament responded by refusing to consider any request until the chancellor was removed. The parliament (later known as the Wonderful Parliament) was presumably working with the support of Gloucester and Arundel. The King famously responded that he would not dismiss as much as a scullion from his kitchen at parliament's request. Only when threatened with deposition was Richard forced to give in and let de la Pole go. A commission was set up to review and control royal finances for a year.
Richard was deeply perturbed by this affront to his royal prerogative, and from February to November 1387 went on a "gyration" (tour) of the country to muster support for his cause. By installing de Vere as Justice of Chester, he began the work of creating a loyal military power base in Cheshire. He also secured a legal ruling from Chief Justice Robert Tresilian that parliament's conduct had been unlawful and treasonable.
On his return to London, the King was confronted by Gloucester, Arundel and Thomas de Beauchamp, 12th Earl of Warwick, who brought an appeal of treason against de la Pole, de Vere, Tresilian, and two other loyalists: the mayor of London, Nicholas Brembre, and Alexander Neville, the Archbishop of York. Richard stalled the negotiations to gain time, as he was expecting de Vere to arrive from Cheshire with military reinforcements. The three peers then joined forces with Gaunt's son Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby, and Thomas de Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham – the group known to history as the Lords Appellant. On 20 December 1387 they intercepted de Vere at Radcot Bridge, where he and his forces were routed and he was obliged to flee the country.
Richard now had no choice but to comply with the appellants' demands; Brembre and Tresilian were condemned and executed, while de Vere and de la Pole – who had by now also left the country – were sentenced to death in absentia at the Merciless Parliament in February 1388. The appellants had now succeeded completely in breaking up the circle of favourites around the King.
Later reign
A fragile peace
Richard gradually re-established royal authority in the months after the deliberations of the Merciless Parliament. The aggressive foreign policy of the Lords Appellant failed when their efforts to build a wide, anti-French coalition came to nothing, and the north of England fell victim to a Scottish incursion. Richard was now over twenty-one years old and could with confidence claim the right to govern in his own name. Furthermore, John of Gaunt returned to England in 1389 and settled his differences with the King, after which the old statesman acted as a moderating influence on English politics. Richard assumed full control of the government on 3 May 1389, claiming that the difficulties of the past years had been due solely to bad councillors. He outlined a foreign policy that reversed the actions of the appellants by seeking peace and reconciliation with France, and promised to lessen the burden of taxation on the people significantly. Richard ruled peacefully for the next eight years, having reconciled with his former adversaries. Still, later events would show that he had not forgotten the indignities he perceived. In particular, the execution of his former teacher Sir Simon de Burley was an insult not easily forgotten.
With national stability secured, Richard began negotiating a permanent peace with France. A proposal put forward in 1393 would have greatly expanded the territory of Aquitaine possessed by the English Crown. However, the plan failed because it included a requirement that the English king pay homage to the King of France – a condition that proved unacceptable to the English public. Instead, in 1396, a truce was agreed to, which was to last 28 years. As part of the truce, Richard agreed to marry Isabella of Valois, daughter of Charles VI of France, when she came of age. There were some misgivings about the betrothal, in particular, because the princess was then only six years old and thus would not be able to produce an heir to the throne of England for many years.
Although Richard sought peace with France, he took a different approach to the situation in Ireland. The English lordships in Ireland were in danger of being overrun by the Gaelic Irish kingdoms, and the Anglo-Irish lords were pleading for the King to intervene. In the autumn of 1394, Richard left for Ireland, where he remained until May 1395. His army of more than 8,000 men was the largest force brought to the island during the late Middle Ages. The invasion was a success, and a number of Irish chieftains submitted to English overlordship. It was one of the most successful achievements of Richard's reign, and strengthened his support at home, although the consolidation of the English position in Ireland proved to be short-lived.
Second crisis of 1397–1399
The period that historians refer to as the "tyranny" of Richard II began towards the end of the 1390s. The King had Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick arrested in July 1397. The timing of these arrests and Richard's motivation are not entirely clear. Although one chronicle suggested that a plot was being planned against the King, there is no evidence that this was the case. It is more likely that Richard had simply come to feel strong enough to safely retaliate against these three men for their role in events of 1386–1388 and eliminate them as threats to his power.
Arundel was the first of the three to be brought to trial, at the parliament of September 1397. After a heated quarrel with the King, he was condemned and executed. Gloucester was being held prisoner by the Earl of Nottingham at Calais while awaiting his trial. As the time for the trial drew near, Nottingham brought news that Gloucester was dead. It is thought likely that the King had ordered him to be killed to avoid the disgrace of executing a prince of the blood.
Warwick was also condemned to death, but his life was spared and his sentence reduced to life imprisonment. Arundel's brother Thomas Arundel, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was exiled for life. Richard then took his persecution of adversaries to the localities. While recruiting retainers for himself in various counties, he prosecuted local men who had been loyal to the appellants. The fines levied on these men brought great revenues to the crown, although contemporary chroniclers raised questions about the legality of the proceedings.
These actions were made possible primarily through the collusion of John of Gaunt, but with the support of a large group of other magnates, many of whom were rewarded with new titles, and were disparagingly referred to as Richard's "duketti". These included the former Lords Appellant
Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby, who was made Duke of Hereford, and
Thomas de Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, who was created Duke of Norfolk.
Also among them were
John, the King's half-brother, promoted from Earl of Huntingdon to Duke of Exeter
Thomas Holland, the King's nephew, promoted from Earl of Kent to Duke of Surrey
Edward of Norwich, Earl of Rutland, the King's cousin, who received Gloucester's French title of Duke of Aumale
Gaunt's son John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset, who was made Marquess of Somerset and Marquess of Dorset
John Montacute, 3rd Earl of Salisbury
Lord Thomas le Despenser, who became Earl of Gloucester.
With the forfeited lands of the convicted appellants, the King could reward these men with lands suited to their new ranks.
A threat to Richard's authority still existed, however, in the form of the House of Lancaster, represented by John of Gaunt and his son Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford. The House of Lancaster not only possessed greater wealth than any other family in England, they were of royal descent and, as such, likely candidates to succeed the childless Richard.
Discord broke out in the inner circles of court in December 1397, when Henry, Duke of Hereford, and Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, became embroiled in a quarrel. According to Henry, Thomas had claimed that the two, as former Lords Appellant, were next in line for royal retribution. Thomas vehemently denied these charges, as such a claim would have amounted to treason. A parliamentary committee decided that the two should settle the matter by battle, but at the last moment Richard exiled the two dukes instead: Thomas for life, Henry for ten years.
In 1398 Richard summoned the Parliament of Shrewsbury, which declared all the acts of the Merciless Parliament to be null and void, and announced that no restraint could legally be put on the King. It delegated all parliamentary power to a committee of twelve lords and six commoners chosen from the King's friends, making Richard an absolute ruler unbound by the necessity of gathering a Parliament again.
On 3 February 1399, John of Gaunt died. Rather than allowing Henry to succeed, Richard extended the term of his exile to life and expropriated his properties. The King felt safe from Henry, who was residing in Paris, since the French had little interest in any challenge to Richard and his peace policy. Richard left the country in May for another expedition in Ireland.
Court culture
In the last years of Richard's reign, and particularly in the months after the suppression of the appellants in 1397, the King enjoyed a virtual monopoly on power in the country, a relatively uncommon situation in medieval England. In this period a particular court culture was allowed to emerge, one that differed sharply from that of earlier times. A new form of address developed; where the King previously had been addressed simply as "highness", now "royal majesty", or "high majesty" were often used. It was said that on solemn festivals Richard would sit on his throne in the royal hall for hours without speaking, and anyone on whom his eyes fell had to bow his knees to the King. The inspiration for this new sumptuousness and emphasis on dignity came from the courts on the continent, not only the French and Bohemian courts that had been the homes of Richard's two wives, but also the court that his father had maintained while residing in Aquitaine.
Richard's approach to kingship was rooted in his strong belief in the royal prerogative, the inspiration of which can be found in his early youth, when his authority was challenged first by the Peasants' Revolts and then by the Lords Appellant. Richard rejected the approach his grandfather Edward III had taken to the nobility. Edward's court had been a martial one, based on the interdependence between the king and his most trusted noblemen as military captains. In Richard's view, this put a dangerous amount of power in the hands of the baronage. To avoid dependence on the nobility for military recruitment, he pursued a policy of peace towards France. At the same time, he developed his own private military retinue, larger than that of any English king before him, and gave them livery badges with his White Hart. He was then free to develop a courtly atmosphere in which the king was a distant, venerated figure, and art and culture, rather than warfare, were at the centre.
Patronage and the arts
As part of Richard's programme of asserting his authority, he also tried to cultivate the royal image. Unlike any other English king before him, he had himself portrayed in panel paintings of elevated majesty, of which two survive: an over life-size Westminster Abbey portrait (c. 1390), and the Wilton Diptych (1394–1399), a portable work probably intended to accompany Richard on his Irish campaign. It is one of the few surviving English examples of the courtly International Gothic style of painting that was developed in the courts of the Continent, especially Prague and Paris. Richard's expenditure on jewellery, rich textiles and metalwork was far higher than on paintings, but as with his illuminated manuscripts, there are hardly any surviving works that can be connected with him, except for a crown, "one of the finest achievements of the Gothic goldsmith", that probably belonged to his wife Anne.
Among Richard's grandest projects in the field of architecture was Westminster Hall, which was extensively rebuilt during his reign, perhaps spurred on by the completion in 1391 of John of Gaunt's magnificent hall at Kenilworth Castle. Fifteen life-size statues of kings were placed in niches on the walls, and the hammer-beam roof by the royal carpenter Hugh Herland, "the greatest creation of medieval timber architecture", allowed the original three Romanesque aisles to be replaced with a single huge open space, with a dais at the end for Richard to sit in solitary state. The rebuilding had been begun by Henry III in 1245, but had by Richard's time been dormant for over a century.
The court's patronage of literature is especially important because this was the period in which the English language took shape as a literary language. There is little evidence to tie Richard directly to the patronage of poetry, but it was nevertheless within his court that this culture was allowed to thrive. The greatest poet of the age, Geoffrey Chaucer, served the King as a diplomat, a customs official and a clerk of The King's Works while producing some of his best-known work. Chaucer was also in the service of John of Gaunt, and wrote The Book of the Duchess as a eulogy to Gaunt's wife Blanche. Chaucer's colleague and friend John Gower wrote his Confessio Amantis on a direct commission from Richard, although he later grew disenchanted with the King.
Richard was interested in occult topics such as geomancy, which he viewed as a greater discipline that included philosophy, science, and alchemic elements and commissioned a book on, and sponsored writing and discussion of them in his court.
Downfall
Deposition
In June 1399, Louis I, Duke of Orléans, gained control of the court of the insane Charles VI of France. The policy of rapprochement with the English crown did not suit Louis's political ambitions, and for this reason he found it opportune to allow Henry Bolingbroke to leave for England. With a small group of followers, Henry landed at Ravenspurn in Yorkshire towards the end of June 1399. Meeting with Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland, who had his own misgivings about the King, Henry Bolingbroke insisted that his only object was to regain his own patrimony. Northumberland took him at his word and declined to interfere. The King had taken most of his household knights and the loyal members of his nobility with him to Ireland, so Henry Bolingbroke experienced little resistance as he moved south. Keeper of the Realm Edmund, Duke of York, had little choice but to side with Henry. Meanwhile, Richard was delayed in his return from Ireland and did not land in Wales until 24 July. He made his way to Conwy, where on 12 August he met with Northumberland for negotiations. On 19 August, Richard surrendered to Henry at Flint Castle, promising to abdicate if his life were spared. Both men then made their way to Chester Castle where Richard was held in the crypt of the Agricola Tower. On the journey to London, the indignant king had to ride all the way behind Henry. On arrival, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London on 1 September.
Henry was by now fully determined to take the throne, but presenting a rationale for this action proved a dilemma. It was argued that Richard, through his tyranny and misgovernment, had rendered himself unworthy of being king. However, Henry was not next in line to the throne; the heir presumptive was Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, great-grandson of Edward III's second surviving son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence. Henry's father, John of Gaunt, was Edward's third son to survive to adulthood. The problem was solved by emphasising Henry's descent in a direct male line, whereas March's descent was through his grandmother, Philippa of Clarence.
According to the official record, read by the Archbishop of Canterbury during an assembly of lords and commons at Westminster Hall on Tuesday 30 September, Richard gave up his crown willingly and ratified his deposition citing as a reason his own unworthiness as a monarch. In contrast, the Traison et Mort Chronicle suggests otherwise. It describes a meeting between Richard and Henry that took place one day before the parliament's session. The King succumbed to blind rage, ordered his own release from the Tower, called his cousin a traitor, demanded to see his wife, and swore revenge, throwing down his bonnet, while Henry refused to do anything without parliamentary approval. When parliament met to discuss Richard's fate, John Trevor, Bishop of St Asaph, read thirty-three articles of deposition that were unanimously accepted by lords and commons. On 1 October 1399, Richard II was formally deposed. On 13 October, the feast day of Edward the Confessor, Henry was crowned king.
Death
Henry had agreed to let Richard live after his abdication. This changed when it was revealed that the earls of Huntingdon, Kent, and Salisbury, and Lord Despenser, and possibly also the Earl of Rutland – all now demoted from the ranks they had been given by Richard – were planning to murder the new king and restore Richard in the Epiphany Rising. Although averted, the plot highlighted the danger of allowing Richard to live. He is thought to have starved to death in captivity in Pontefract Castle on or around 14 February 1400, although there is some question over the date and manner of his death. His body was taken south from Pontefract and displayed in St Paul's Cathedral on 17 February before burial in King's Langley Priory on 6 March.
Rumours that Richard was still alive persisted, but never gained much credence in England; in Scotland, however, a man identified as Richard came into the hands of Regent Albany, lodged in Stirling Castle, and serving as the notional – and perhaps reluctant – figurehead of various anti-Lancastrian and Lollard intrigues in England. Henry IV's government dismissed him as an impostor, and several sources from both sides of the border suggest the man had a mental illness, one also describing him as a "beggar" by the time of his death in 1419, but he was buried as a king in Blackfriars, Stirling, the local Dominican friary. Meanwhile, Henry V – in an effort both to atone for his father's act of murder and to silence the rumours of Richard's survival – had decided to have the body at King's Langley reinterred in Westminster Abbey on 4 December 1413. Here Richard himself had prepared an elaborate tomb, where the remains of his wife Anne were already entombed.
Character and assessment
Contemporary writers, even those less sympathetic to the King, agreed that Richard was a "most beautiful king", though with an unmanly "face which was white, rounded and feminine." He was athletic and tall; when his tomb was opened in 1871, he was found to be six feet (1.82 m) tall. He was also intelligent and well read, and when agitated he had a tendency to stammer. While the Westminster Abbey portrait probably shows a good similarity of the King, the Wilton Diptych portrays him as significantly younger than he was at the time; it must be assumed that he had a beard by this point. Religiously, he was orthodox, and particularly towards the end of his reign he became a strong opponent of the Lollard heresy. He was particularly devoted to the cult of Edward the Confessor, and around 1395 he had his own coat of arms impaled with the mythical arms of the Confessor. Though not a warrior king like his grandfather, Richard nevertheless enjoyed tournaments, as well as hunting.
The popular view of Richard has more than anything been influenced by Shakespeare's play about the King, Richard II. Shakespeare's Richard was a cruel, vindictive, and irresponsible king, who attained a semblance of greatness only after his fall from power. Writing a work of fiction, Shakespeare took many liberties and made great omissions, basing his play on works by writers such as Edward Hall and Samuel Daniel, who in turn based their writings on contemporary chroniclers such as Thomas Walsingham. Hall and Daniel were part of Tudor historiography, which was highly unsympathetic to Richard. The Tudor orthodoxy, reinforced by Shakespeare, saw a continuity in civil discord starting with Richard's misrule that did not end until Henry VII's accession in 1485. The idea that Richard was to blame for the later-15th century Wars of the Roses was prevalent as late as the 19th century, but came to be challenged in the 20th. Some recent historians prefer to look at the Wars of the Roses in isolation from the reign of Richard II.
Richard's mental state has been a major issue of historical debate since the first academic historians started treating the subject in the 19th century. One of the first modern historians to deal with Richard II as a king and as a person was Bishop Stubbs. Stubbs argued that towards the end of his reign, Richard's mind "was losing its balance altogether." Historian Anthony Steel, who wrote a full-scale biography of the King in 1941, took a psychiatric approach to the issue, and concluded that Richard had schizophrenia. This was challenged by V. H. Galbraith, who argued that there was no historical basis for such a diagnosis, a line that has also been followed by later historians of the period, such as Anthony Goodman and Anthony Tuck. Nigel Saul, who wrote an academic biography of Richard II in 1997 concedes that – even though there is no basis for assuming the King had a mental illness – he showed clear signs of a narcissistic personality, and towards the end of his reign "Richard's grasp on reality was becoming weaker."
One of the primary historiographical questions surrounding Richard concerns his political agenda and the reasons for its failure. His kingship was thought to contain elements of the early modern absolute monarchy as exemplified by the Tudor dynasty. More recently, Richard's concept of kingship has been seen by some as not so different from that of his antecedents, and that it was exactly by staying within the framework of traditional monarchy that he was able to achieve as much as he did. Yet his actions were too extreme and too abrupt. For one, the absence of war was meant to reduce the burden of taxation, and so help Richard's popularity with the Commons in parliament. However, this promise was never fulfilled, as the cost of the royal retinue, the opulence of court and Richard's lavish patronage of his favourites proved as expensive as war had been, without offering commensurate benefits. As for his policy of military retaining, this was later emulated by Edward IV and Henry VII, but Richard II's exclusive reliance on the county of Cheshire hurt his support from the rest of the country. Simon Walker writes: "What he sought was, in contemporary terms, neither unjustified nor unattainable; it was the manner of his seeking that betrayed him."
Family tree
See also
Cultural depictions of Richard II of England
List of earls in the reign of Richard II of England
Notes
References
Sources
External links
Richard II at the official website of the British monarchy
"Richard II's treasure". The Institute of Historical Research / Royal Holloway, University of London.
"Richard II's Irish chancery rolls" (online ed.). CIRCLE. Archived from the original on 19 March 2012. listed by year, translated
Miri Rubin, Caroline Barron & Alastair Dunn (discussion with) (16 November 2006). The Peasants' Revolt (radio program). In Our Time. BBC Radio 4.
Richard II at BBC History
Portraits of King Richard II at the National Portrait Gallery, London |
Mary_Elizabeth_Butt | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Elizabeth_Butt | [
756
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Elizabeth_Butt"
] | Mary Elizabeth Butt (née Holdsworth; 1903–1993) was a prominent Texas philanthropist and wife of former HEB Grocery Company CEO Howard Edward Butt Sr., son of HEB founder, Florence Butt. Her philanthropic efforts were particularly focused on the care of emotionally disturbed children and the development of library services.
Early life
Mary Elizabeth Holdsworth Butt was born on February 4, 1903, near Loma Vista, Texas, the daughter of Rosa (née Ross) and Thomas Holdsworth. She was the fourth of seven children. Her father, the son of an English schoolteacher, emigrated from England to Texas with his parents in 1880. Her mother was a schoolteacher who grew up and worked in Kerrville, Texas. Both her parents were devout, tithing Baptists. In 1924, she married Howard Edward Butt. Howard owned a small grocery store in Kerrville. Over time, her husband's business prospered and expanded, enabling Mary Elizabeth to take an active role in supporting numerous and varied charitable causes. Her husband stated: "I make the money, and Mary spends it (on worthy causes). And I am glad she does." In 1940, they moved to Corpus Christi, Texas.
Philanthropy
In 1929, she moved to Brownsville, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley and thereafter to Harlingen. Mary Elizabeth started the State Crippled Children's Program using her dining room as an office. She also served as chairwoman of the Cameron County Child Welfare Board. In addition, she started the first tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment program in the region; and also purchased the first equipment used to test the hearing and vision of schoolchildren.
In 1934, the Butts formed the H. E. Butt Foundation, one of the first charitable organizations in Texas. The foundation focused on funding public school programs, establishing libraries and constructing recreational facilities.
Mary Butt served as its president.
In 1940, the Butt family moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, where she organized the local branches of the YWCA; the Nueces County home for the aged; the Nueces County Tuberculosis Hospital; and the local branch of the American Cancer Society. She also established the Mary Bethune Day Nursery which addressed shortfalls in access to day care for African-American children.
In 1949, she along with Dr. Robert Sutherland (director of the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health founded by Ima Hogg in 1940) and Margaret Scarbrough (wife of Austin retailer Lemuel Scarbrough and founder of the Scarbrough Foundation), organized and hosted the first Conference of Texas Foundations and Trusts which coordinated philanthropic giving so as to avoid duplication and promoted the exchange ideas and strategies. Texas became the first state to have such an organization and the model was duplicated in other states. The Foundation quickly blossomed from 10 mostly family-sponsored organizations at inception to 48 organizations in 1956. The organization (now known as the Conference of Southwest Foundations) presently consists of 200 member organizations in a seven-state area.
In 1953, she helped to establish the Hilltop Hospital which treated tuberculosis patients and eventually serving five years as the chairman of its board. In 1954, the Butts established the H. E. Butt Foundation Camp located on the Frio River As she was particularly dedicated to the care of emotionally disturbed children, she developed a camping program for specifically for their care. As of 2012, the camp continues to serve, without cost, over 20,000 campers annually and is also the site of the Laity Lodge, a prominent center of Christian learning founded by their son, Howard E. Butt Jr.
In 1955, she was appointed by Texas Governor Allan Shivers to the governing board of Texas State Hospitals and Special Schools (later the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation). She served as the only woman member of the board for 18 years being appointed by six different governors.
The Butts contributed to the founding of the Butt-Holdsworth Memorial Library, which was inaugurated in summer 1967.
Personal life and death
She had four children with her husband:
Howard E. Butt Jr., the president of H. E. Butt Foundation and founder of the Christian learning center, Laity Lodge;
Margaret Eleanor Butt Crook, served as director of Bread for the World. Her husband, William H. Crook, served as director of the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) and later as United States Ambassador to Australia; and
Charles Clarence Butt, the chairman of H. E. Butt Grocery Company and founder of education leadership organization The Holdsworth Center. Charles named The Holdsworth Center after Mary Elizabeth.
Another child, Mary Beth Butt, who lived for only 10 days (November 17, 1943 - November 27, 1943), is buried beside Mary Elizabeth Holdsworth Butt at the Glen Rest Cemetery in Kerrville, Texas, was the fourth child of Howard Butt, Sr., and Mary Elizabeth Holdsworth Butt.
Mary Elizabeth Holdsworth Butt died in her house in Corpus Christi on October 6, 1993.
Awards
The Texas State Historical Association lists the many awards Butt has received over the years for her philanthropic activities:
In 1954, she was the first woman to be awarded the Mrs. South Texas Award in recognition of her work in the fields of "public health, social service, and education."
In 1968, Howard and Mary Butt were awarded the Texas Library Association Philanthropic Award of the Year in recognition of their service to public libraries.
In 1975, they were awarded the Brotherhood Award from the Corpus Christi Chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews in recognition of their charitable activities.
In 1981, Mary received the first Yellow Rose Award by the Parent's Association for the Retarded in Texas.
In 1986, the Texas Alliance for the Mentally Ill made Mary Elizabeth the first recipient of its lifetime award, in honor of her "leadership in improving human services for the people of Texas."
In 1993, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges' Awards Committee selected her to receive the council's highest award for "Meritorious Service to the Children of America."
On March 23, 1995, the Senate of the State of Texas passed a resolution to "honor the life and memory of Mary Elizabeth Holdsworth Butt and express appreciation for her many gifts to the citizens of our state".
References
External links
Joe Herring Jr Blog: Kerrville Stories Random photos of the Howard Butt family
Elizabeth Crook Books: "Aunt Sister" by Elizabeth Crook Reprinted with permission from the May 2004 issue of TEXAS MONTHLY |
Robat-e_Morad | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robat-e_Morad | [
757
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robat-e_Morad"
] | Robat-e Morad (Persian: رباطمراد) is a village in, and the capital of, Galehzan Rural District of the Central District of Khomeyn County, Markazi province, Iran.
Demographics
Population
At the time of the 2006 National Census, the village's population was 1,738 in 555 households. The following census in 2011 counted 1,688 people in 607 households. The 2016 census measured the population of the village as 1,415 people in 532 households. It was the most populous village in its rural district.
See also
Iran portal
Notes
== References == |
Markazi_province | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markazi_province | [
757
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markazi_province"
] | Markazi province (Persian: استان مرکزی) is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. Its capital is the city of Arak. The present borders of the province date to 1977, when the province was split into the current Markazi and Tehran provinces, with portions being annexed by Isfahan, Semnan, and Zanjan provinces. In 2014, the province was placed in Region 4.
History
Markazi Province was part of the Median Empire in the first millennium BC, which included all of the central and western parts of modern-day Iran. The region is considered to be one of the ancient settlements on the Iranian plateau. Numerous remaining ruins testify to the antiquity of this area.
In the early centuries of Islam, the name of the area was changed to Jibal or Kuhestan. By the early 10th century, Khorheh had become a famous city of Jibal province, followed by Tafresh and Khomein.
In recent times, the expansion of the North-South railroad (commonly known as the Persian Corridor) and the establishment of major industries have helped boost development in the area.
Demographics
Population
At the time of the 2006 National Census, the province's population was 1,326,826 in 364,155 households. The following census in 2011 counted 1,413,959 people in 426,613 households. The 2016 census measured the population of the province as 1,429,475 in 455,866 households. Persians make up the majority of the province, but there are significant minorities of Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Lurs, etc.
Administrative divisions
The population history and structural changes of Markazi Province's administrative divisions over three consecutive censuses are shown in the following table.
Cities
According to the 2016 census, 1,099,764 people (over 76% of the population of Markazi Province) live in the following cities:
Colleges and universities
Arak University of Medical Sciences
Arak University of Technology
University of Arak
Tafresh University
Islamic Azad University of Khomein
Islamic Azad University of Arak
Islamic Azad University of Saveh
Islamic Azad University of Farahan
Islamic Azad University of Ashtian
Islamic Azad University of Tafresh
Farhangian University of Arak
Energy University (Saveh)
Notable people
Many figures in Iranian history trace their origins to this province. namely: Mirza Abu'l-Qasem Qa'em-Maqam, Abbas Eqbal Ashtiani, Mirza Taqi Khan Amir Kabir, Mirza Bozorg Qa'em-Maqam, Mahmoud Hessabi, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Araki, and many others.
Gallery
See also
Media related to Markazi Province at Wikimedia Commons
Notes
References
External links
Markazi Government General
Foreign Commercial Centre of Markazi Province
Cultural Heritage Organization of Markazi province
Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries & Mines |
Quincy_Medical_Center | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincy_Medical_Center | [
758
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincy_Medical_Center"
] | Quincy Medical Center was a small for-profit community hospital located in Quincy, Massachusetts for 124 years, from 1890 to 2014. A municipal hospital for most of its existence, it transitioned to non-profit in 1999 and then for-profit when it was purchased by Steward Health Care in 2011. It was closed in 2014 due to year of financial difficulties, though Steward's nearby Carney Hospital continued to operate the former hospital's ED as a stand-alone on the same site until 2020.
During its history, the hospital offered a varying range of services, including emergency care, behavioral health, obstetrics, surgery, and orthopedics.
In 2013, its final full fiscal year, Quincy Medical Center operated with total revenues of $79 million, at a loss of $19.7 million, and discharged 4,803 inpatients. In 2014, the year it closed, the hospital operated with total revenues of $68 million and losses of $39 million, and discharged 4,419 inpatients.
History
Quincy Medical Center was founded in 1890 as Quincy Hospital, established to treat local granite workers suffering from dust inhalation. Initially operated as a private corporation, the city began assisting in the funding of the hospital in 1896, providing $1,000 to $5,000 per year. This ended in 1919, when the city took over the hospital following the ratification of Article CIII, an amendment to the Constitution of Massachusetts which prohibited the public funding of privately-owned hospitals. Throughout most of the rest of the 20th century, the city provided millions in funding on reconstruction and improvement projects for the hospital.
In late 1999, amid mounting financial difficulties affecting hospitals across Massachusetts and a state legislature gridlocked over which hospitals should receive aid, Quincy Mayor James A. Sheets raised the possibility that the City may need to close the hospital. Sheets followed this by appealing to the legislature requesting they reconsider. Finally, in October, the legislature approved a bill which would provide a $12.1 million loan to save the hospital, with an additional $7 million to be placed in a fund for other struggling hospitals. Thanks to this loan, Quincy Hospital reopened as Quincy Medical Center, affiliating itself with Boston Medical Center.
The hospital's new affiliation with BMC made it a teaching hospital, and brought with it 25 clinical specialists to expand care at the facility as well as the appointment of BMC administrators as chiefs of medicine and surgery. However, the hospital's previous financial hardships remained, and the new board of trustees set out to strategize for the future of the hospital, which retained $60 million in debt. Before long, the city pledged $33 million over six years, and unions representing 1,100 hospital workers agreed to 10 percent cuts in compensation, which would lead to savings of $3.6 million annually.
Despite collective efforts, Quincy Medical Center's financial struggles continued. This led to a change in June 2011, when the hospital's board of trustees approved a deal that would see the hospital acquired by Steward Health Care, a for-profit Massachusetts health care system then owned by New York private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. Four days later, the hospital filed for bankruptcy, citing $50 million in debt, inability to make monthly payments to bondholders, and the unwillingness of Steward or other potential buyers the invest enough to pay off the hospital's debts. Steward received necessary approvals from state officials, including the Public Health Council and Attorney General Martha Coakley, and the acquisition was completed September 30, 2011. Coakley's approval contained several stipulations, including that the hospital remain open for 10 years (6.5 under poor financial conditions), that 18 months notice be provided to the state if the hospital is to be closed, that Steward pay off at least $35 million of the hospital's bankruptcy debt, and that they commit to spend no less than $44 million on the needs of the hospital in the first 10 years.
Despite the agreement to keep the hospital open for 6.5-10 years, Steward announced in November 2014 that the hospital would close on December 31. This not only violated the terms of their agreement with the Coakley, but also violated state law requiring that any hospital give 90 days' notice before closing. Given declining numbers in ED visits and admissions, the hospital system came to an agreement with the state which would see the hospital remain open until February of 2015, and maintain a satellite emergency department (i.e., an ED independent of an inpatient hospital) in the city until the end of that year. Ultimately due to low inpatient volume, the hospital was given a waiver allowing them to close inpatient operations on December 26, 2014.
Following the closure of the main hospital, the emergency department at Quincy Medical Center was kept open as a "satellite" facility, operated under the license of Steward's nearby Carney Hospital.
In 2016, Steward sold the hospital's property to developer FoxRock Properties in a temporary sale-leaseback deal which would allow them to continue running the satellite ED. The lease arrangement, originally written to terminate in 2021, lasted until 2020 when FoxRock utilized a clause allowing for early termination. Steward reported that they had attempted to find adequate space elsewhere in the city to move the ED, but were unable to find a landlord willing to host it. While city officials criticized Steward for closing the hospital and for their failure to open another ED in the city, they conceded that "we know the marketplace will not sustain a hospital in that location or in the city."
Demolition of the hospital campus was completed by FoxRock in 2021 to make way for residential development. The only building left standing was the hospital's administrative building, which would be restored and remain as part of the development.
Legacy
Quincy Medical Center grew with and helped shape the City of Quincy through the end of the 19th century and the whole of the 20th. Its establishment as a center of care for granite workers was representative of Quincy's overall history as a prominent exporter of granite. The surrounding neighborhood gained its current name, Hospital Hill, due to the prominence of the hospital, and generations of Quincy residents were born, cared for, and died at the hospital.
However, the hospital faced financial difficulty throughout its existence, escalating in the late 20th century and culminating with its closure in the new millenium - leaving Quincy as the largest city in Massachusetts without an acute care hospital or emergency department. In its later years, the saturation of the health care market took its toll on Quincy Medical Center. While it provided convenience to residents of Quincy, the hospital's deteriorating relationships with other providers left more preferable options for a wider range of care, and the presence of nearby regional competitors like South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's campus in Milton, and numerous hospitals in Boston offered more convenience and higher level of care for those not within city limits. These factors were commonly blamed for the inability of the hospital to become financially viable.
References
External links
Official site
Unofficial historical site with timeline and photographs |
List_of_mayors_of_Quincy,_Massachusetts | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_Quincy,_Massachusetts | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_Quincy,_Massachusetts"
] | The Mayor of Quincy is the head of the municipal government in Quincy, Massachusetts.
List of mayors
== References == |
Sailing_at_the_2003_Pan_American_Games | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_at_the_2003_Pan_American_Games | [
759
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_at_the_2003_Pan_American_Games"
] | == Men's events ==
Women's events
Open events
References
"Pan American Games - Santo Domingo 2003 - Sailing results". PanamSailing.org. |
Lanee_Butler | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanee_Butler | [
759
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanee_Butler"
] | Lanee "Carrie" Butler-Beashel (born June 3, 1970, in Manhasset, New York) is an American windsurfer. She competed at four Olympics from 1992 to 2004. Her best position was fourth in 2000.
She is married to America's Cup sailor Adam Beashel. Her brother in law is six-time Olympian Colin Beashel. She and Adam have two sons, born in 2005 and 2008.
References
External links
Lanee Beashel at World Sailing
Lanee Butler at World Sailing
Lanee Butler at Olympics.com
Carrie Butler-Beashel at Olympedia |
Colin_Beashel | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Beashel | [
759
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Beashel"
] | Colin Kenneth Beashel (born 21 November 1959) is an Australian sailor who crewed on the winning America's Cup team Australia II in 1983 and competed at six Olympics between 1984 and 2004, winning bronze in 1996. He became, jointly with Brazilian Torben Grael, the eighth sailor to compete at six Olympics. He helmed Australia Challenge at the 1992 Louis Vuitton Cup.
Born in Sydney, Beashel comes from a sailing family. His father Ken is a local sailing legend. His brother Adam was a sailor for Team New Zealand in the Americas Cup in 2003, 2007 and 2013. Adam's wife Lanee Butler sailed at four Olympics.
Beashel competed at the Olympics in the two-person keelboat, with Richard Coxon in 1984, Gregory Torpy in 1988, and David Giles from 1992 to 2004. He and Giles also won the World Championships in 1998 in the Star class. He now runs the family boat shop in Elvina Bay, Pittwater.
See also
List of athletes with the most appearances at Olympic Games
References
External links
Colin Beashel at World Sailing
Colin Beashel at Olympics.com
Colin Beashel at the Australian Olympic Committee
Colin Beashel at Olympedia |
Babar_the_Elephant | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babar_the_Elephant | [
760
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babar_the_Elephant"
] | Babar the Elephant (UK: , US: ; French pronunciation: [babaʁ]) is an elephant character who first appeared in 1931 in the French children's book Histoire de Babar by Jean de Brunhoff.
The book is based on a tale that Brunhoff's wife, Cécile, had invented for their children. It tells of a young African elephant, named Babar, whose mother is killed by a big game hunter. Babar escapes, and in the process leaves the jungle in exile, visits Paris, and returns to bring the benefits of civilization to his fellow elephants. Just as he returns to his community of elephants, their king tragically dies from eating a poisonous mushroom. Because of his travels and civilization, Babar is chosen king of the elephant kingdom. He marries his cousin, Celeste (French: Céleste), and they subsequently have children and teach them valuable lessons.
Story synopsis
After Babar's mother is shot and killed by a hunter, he flees the jungle and finds his way to an unspecified big city with no particular characteristics. He is befriended by the Old Lady, who buys him clothes and hires him a tutor. Babar's cousins Celeste and Arthur find him in the big city and help him return to the Elephant realm. Following the death of the King of the Elephants, who had eaten a poisonous mushroom (the illustrations indicate that it is a fly agaric), a council of old elephants approach Babar, saying that as he has "lived among men and learnt much", he would be suitable to become the new King. Babar is crowned King of the Elephants and marries his cousin, Celeste.
In Jean de Brunhoff's second Babar book, The Travels of Babar, when the married couple leave by balloon on their honeymoon:
... stormy winds down the balloon on an island, and yet again will the royal couple escape by whale, be marooned on an even smaller island and be rescued by a passing ocean liner only to be turned over to an animal trainer and put to work in a circus. And when they escape and return home, what awaits them but war with the rhinoceroses.
It was sparked when Arthur tied a firecracker to the tail of Lord Rataxes. Babar wins the war by having the elephants paint monster faces on their backsides, which cause the frightened rhinoceroses to run away. After the victory celebrations, the book ends with Babar, Celeste and the Old Lady sitting together and discussing how Babar can rule wisely and make all the elephants happy.
In the third book, Babar the King, Babar founds the city of Celesteville. After many dromedaries are found, they help with building the city. Each elephant citizen is given a job to do. Once the city is built, everyone celebrates. However, problems arise; the Old Lady is bitten by a snake, and Cornelius' home catches fire. Babar has a dream where he is visited by Misfortune and other demons which are chased away by elephant angels representing Courage, Hope, and other virtues. The morning after the hopeful dream, the Old Lady and Cornelius make full recoveries.
Among Babar's other associates in the various incarnations of the series are the monkey Zephir, the old elephant counsellor Cornelius (also later Pompadour who was created for the Babar television series), Babar's cousin Arthur, and Babar's children, Pom, Flora, and Alexander. A younger daughter, Isabelle, is later introduced. The Old Lady comes to live in the Kingdom as an honored guest.
Despite the presence of these counsellors, Babar's rule seems to be totally independent of any elected body, and completely autocratic. However, his leadership style seems to strive for the overall benefit of his elephant subjects—a form of benevolent dictatorship.
Besides his Westernizing policies, Babar engages in battle with the warlike rhinoceroses of a hostile bordering nation, led by Lord Rataxes. Much later, in Babar and the Adventures of Badou, Pom grows to become the father of Prince Babar II (known as Badou).
History
In 1931, Jean de Brunhoff introduced Babar in Histoire de Babar, and Babar enjoyed immediate success. In 1933, A.A. Milne introduced an English-language version, The Story of Babar, in Britain and the United States.
Before his death in 1937, Jean de Brunhoff published six more stories. His son Laurent de Brunhoff, also a writer and illustrator, carried on the series from 1946, beginning with Babar et Le Coquin d'Arthur.
An animated television series, Babar was produced in Canada by Nelvana Limited and the Clifford Ross Company, running from 3 January 1989 to 5 June 1991, with 65 episodes. An additional 13 episodes aired in 2000. The character has also appeared in a number of films. The first two of Jean de Brunhoff's Babar books have inspired two major concert works: L'Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant (The Story of Babar, the Little Elephant) by Francis Poulenc in 1940; and The Travels of Babar (Le Voyage de Babar) by Raphael Mostel in 1994. In 2010, a sequel and spin-off, Babar and the Adventures of Badou, was released, introducing new characters, including Badou, Babar's grandson and Pom's son. It takes place several years after the original series.
Influence and legacy
Babar, who likes to wear a bright green suit, introduces a very French form of Western civilization to the elephants, and they soon dress in Western attire. The attention to stylish clothing perhaps reflects the fact that the original publisher of the books was Editions du Jardin des Modes, owned by Condé-Nast. The Babar books were the first Condé-Nast publications not specifically about fashion.
Author Maurice Sendak described the innovations of Jean de Brunhoff:
Like an extravagant piece of poetry, the interplay between few words and many pictures, commonly called the picture book, is a difficult, exquisite, and most easily collapsible form that few have mastered....Jean de Brunhoff was a master of this form. Between 1931 and 1937 he completed a body of work that forever changed the face of the illustrated book.
The series has over 100 licensees worldwide, and the "Babar" brand has a multi-generational following. There are 12 Babar stores in Japan. A global cultural phenomenon, whose fans span generations, Babar stands along with Disney's Mickey Mouse as one of the most recognized children's characters in the world. There are now over 30,000 Babar publications in over 17 languages, and over 8 million books have been sold. Laurent de Brunhoff's Babar's Yoga for Elephants is a top seller in the U.S. with over 100,000 copies sold to date. The Babar series of books are recommended reading on former First Lady Laura Bush's national reading initiative list. All 78 episodes of the TV series are broadcast in 30 languages in over 150 countries, making Babar one of the largest distributed animation shows in history. Babar has been a perennial favourite for years at the White House Easter Egg Roll.
Since 2001, the Babar franchise has been owned by Corus Entertainment's Nelvana in conjunction with the artist, Clifford Ross.
Babar made a nameless appearance in The New Traveller's Almanac (part of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series). Babar and his elephants escort Mina Murray and Allan Quatermain through the African jungle. Mina considers them "civilized and gentle", but Allan denies that their leader is really wearing a crown.
In the 1988 comedy film Coming to America, the Joffer royal family have a pet elephant named "Babar". In 1993, de Brunhoff's elephant inspired the BaBar experiment, an international hadron physics collaboration based in the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University.
Criticism
Herbert R. Kohl and Vivian Paley, have argued that, although superficially delightful, the stories can be seen as a justification for colonialism. Others argue that the French civilization described in the early books had already been destroyed by World War I and the books were an exercise in nostalgia for pre-1914 France. Ariel Dorfman's The Empire's Old Clothes is another critical view, in which he concludes: "In imagining the independence of the land of the elephants, Jean de Brunhoff anticipates, more than a decade before history forced Europe to put it into practice, the theory of neocolonialism".
In April 2012, Babar's Travels was removed from the shelves by library staff in East Sussex in response to parental complaints for what was perceived as stereotypes of Africans. Jean de Brunhoff's son Laurent de Brunhoff was embarrassed by stereotypical Africans and Native Americans in Babar's Picnic and asked the publisher to withdraw it.
A more sympathetic view is expressed in the 2008 New Yorker article "Freeing the Elephants", in which Adam Gopnik argues it "is not an unconscious expression of the French colonial imagination; it is a self-conscious comedy about the French colonial imagination and its close relation to the French domestic imagination. The gist ... is explicit and intelligent: the lure of the city, of civilization, of style and order and bourgeois living is real, for elephants as for humans". He concludes that the satisfaction derived from Babar is based on the knowledge that "while it is a very good thing to be an elephant, still, the life of an elephant is dangerous, wild, and painful. It is therefore a safer thing to be an elephant in a house near a park".
Books
Jean de Brunhoff wrote and illustrated seven Babar books; the series was continued by his son, Laurent de Brunhoff.
Jean de Brunhoff's Babar books (1931–1941), and the titles of the English translations, were:
Laurent de Brunhoff's books (1948–2017) (selected list):
English translations of the original Babar books are routinely republished in the UK and in the US, individually and in collections.
Other English-language titles about Babar include the following:
Films and television
Les Aventures de Babar (French language TV series) (1968)
Bill Melendez Productions:
The Story of Babar the Little Elephant (1968)
Babar the Elephant Comes to America (1971)
Atkinson Film-Arts:
Babar and Father Christmas (1986)
Nelvana Productions:
Babar (1989–91; 2000)
Babar: The Movie (1989)
Babar: King of the Elephants (1999)
Babar and the Adventures of Badou (2010–2015)
Video games
Mindscape released Babar and the Royal Coin Caper for the PC in 2005, Both Babar and Cornelius are voiced by Daniel Davies and Dave Pender. The Danish game company The Game Factory published Babar to the Rescue for the Game Boy Advance in 2006.
References
External links
Official website of Random House, North American publisher of the Babar books of Jean de Brunhoff
Digital maquette of Jean de Brunhoff's Histoire de Babar le petit Éléphant
Official website of Raphael Mostel, composer and publisher & production proprietor of "The Travels of Babar" based on Jean de Brunhoff's classic book and art Le Voyage de Babar
Official website of Harry N. Abrams, North American publisher of the Babar books of Laurent de Brunhoff
Official Babar site of Treehouse TV
New York Review of Books article
Laurent de Brunhoff - Video Interview
Maurice Sendak essay celebrating golden jubilee of Babar the Elephant
Laurent de Brunhoff Reveals Shocking Beginning of Beloved Babar Series |
Jean_de_Brunhoff | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_de_Brunhoff | [
760
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_de_Brunhoff"
] | Jean de Brunhoff (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ də bʁynɔf]; 9 December 1899 – 16 October 1937) was a French writer and illustrator remembered best for creating the Babar series of children's books concerning a fictional elephant, the first of which was published in 1931.
Early life
De Brunhoff was the fourth and youngest child of Maurice de Brunhoff, a publisher, and his wife Marguerite. He attended Protestant schools, including the prestigious École Alsacienne. Brunhoff joined the army and was sent to the front when World War I was almost over. Afterward, he decided to be a professional artist and studied painting at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. In 1924, he married Cécile Sabouraud, a talented pianist, and they had two sons, Laurent and Mathieu, born in 1925 and 1926; a third son, Thierry, was born nine years later.
Babar
The Babar books began as a bedtime story that Cécile de Brunhoff invented for their children, Mathieu and Laurent, when they were four and five years old, respectively. She was allegedly trying to comfort Mathieu, who was sick. The boys liked the story of the little elephant who left the jungle for a city resembling Paris so much that they asked their father, a painter, to illustrate it. He made it into a picture book, with text, which was published by a family-owned publishing house, Le Jardin des Modes. Originally, it was planned that the book's title page would describe the story as told by Jean and Cécile de Brunhoff. However, she had her name omitted. Due to the role she played in the genesis of the Babar story, some sources refer to her as the creator of the Babar story.
After the first book Histoire de Babar (The Story of Babar), five more titles followed before Jean de Brunhoff died of tuberculosis at the age of 37. He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
After Jean's death, his brother Michel de Brunhoff, who was the editor of the magazine Vogue Paris, oversaw the publication in book form of Jean's two last books, Babar and His Children and Babar and Father Christmas, both of which had been drawn in black and white for a British newspaper, The Daily Sketch. Michel de Brunhoff arranged for the black and white drawings to be painted in color, with the then-thirteen-year-old Laurent helping with the work. The French publishing house Hachette later bought the rights to the Babar series. The first six Babar books were reprinted with millions of copies sold around the world.
Babar's revival
Soon after the end of World War II, Laurent, who had become an artistic painter like his father and had also studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, began work on a Babar book of his own. Although his style of painting was different from his father's and he emphasized picture more than text in the creation of his books, he trained himself to draw elephants in strict accord with the style of his father. Consequently, many people did not notice any difference in authorship and assumed the six-year gap in the series was because of the war. Laurent has always been careful to emphasize that Babar was his father's creation (and to some extent his mother's) and that he continued the series largely as a way of keeping the memory of his father and his own childhood alive.
Death
Jean de Brunhoff died from tuberculosis on 16 October 1937, aged 37.
Bibliography
The Story of Babar. New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1934
The Travels of Babar. New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1934
Babar the King. New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1935
A.B.C. of Babar. New York: Random House, 1936 (out of print)
Zephir's Holidays (also published as Babar and Zephir and Babar's Friend Zephir). New York: Random House, 1937
Babar and His Children. New York: Random House, 1938
Babar and Father Christmas. New York: Random House, 1940 (final book)
Further reading
Jean and Laurent de Brunhoff, Babar's Anniversary Album: Six Favorite Stories, with an Introduction by Maurice Sendak and family photos and captions by Laurent de Brunhoff (New York: Random House, 1981).
Sendak's introduction reprinted in Sendak's Caldecott & Co.: Notes on Books and Pictures (New York: Noonday Press, 1990).
Ann Hildebrand, Jean and Laurent de Brunhoff: The Legacy of Babar (New York: Twayne, 1991).
Christine Nelson, Drawing Babar: Early Drafts and Watercolors (New York: The Morgan Library and Museum, 2008).
Nicholas Fox Weber, The Art of Babar (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989). Dorothée Charles, Les Histoires de Babar (Paris: Les Arts Décoratifs/ Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2011).
References
External links
Lambiek Comiclopedia article about Jean de Brunhoff.
Jean de Brunhoff at IMDb
Jean de Brunhoff discography at Discogs |
Frederick_Ashton | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Ashton | [
761
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] | Sir Frederick William Mallandaine Ashton (17 September 1904 – 18 August 1988) was a British ballet dancer and choreographer. He also worked as a director and choreographer in opera, film and revue.
Determined to be a dancer despite the opposition of his conventional middle-class family, Ashton was accepted as a pupil by Léonide Massine and then by Marie Rambert. In 1926 Rambert encouraged him to try his hand at choreography, and though he continued to dance professionally, with success, it was as a choreographer that he became famous.
Ashton was chief choreographer to Ninette de Valois, from 1935 until his retirement in 1963, in the company known successively as the Vic-Wells Ballet, the Sadler's Wells Ballet and the Royal Ballet. He succeeded de Valois as director of the company, serving until his own retirement in 1970.
Ashton is widely credited with the creation of a specifically English genre of ballet. Among his best-known works are Façade (1931), Symphonic Variations (1946), Cinderella (1948), La fille mal gardée (1960), Monotones I and II (1965), Enigma Variations (1968) and the ballet film The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971).
Life and career
Early years
Ashton was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, the fourth of the five children of George Ashton (1864–1924) and his second wife, Georgiana (1869–1939), née Fulcher. George Ashton was manager of the Central and South American Cable Company and vice-consul at the British consulate in Guayaquil.
In 1907, the family moved to Lima, Peru, where Ashton attended a Dominican school. When they returned to Guayaquil in 1914, he attended a school for children of the English colony. One of his formative influences was serving as an altar boy, which inspired in him a love of ritual, as demonstrated in The Wise Virgins. Another, still more potent, influence was being taken to see Anna Pavlova dance in 1917. He was immediately determined that he would become a dancer.
Dancing was not a career acceptable to a conventional English family at that time. Ashton later recalled, "My father was horrified. You can imagine the middle-class attitude. My mother would say, 'He wants to go on the stage.' She could not bring herself to say 'into the ballet.'" Ashton's father sent him to England in 1919 to Dover College, where he was miserable. Homosexual, and with an accent that his classmates laughed at, he did not fit in at a minor public school of the early 1920s.
He was not academically inclined, and his father decided that, upon leaving the school in 1921, Ashton should join a commercial company. He worked for an import–export firm in the City of London, where his ability to speak Spanish and French as well as English was an advantage. In January 1924, George Ashton committed suicide. His widow was left financially dependent on her elder sons, who ran a successful business in Guayaquil. She moved to London to be with Ashton and his younger sister, Edith.
Massine and Rambert
Despite family disapproval (and at first in secret) Ashton pursued his ambition to dance professionally. He auditioned for Léonide Massine; at the unusually late age of twenty he was accepted as a pupil. After Massine left London, Ashton was taken on as a student by Marie Rambert. She encouraged him to try choreographing. His first attempt was in 1926 for a revue staged by Nigel Playfair and Rambert's husband Ashley Dukes. The Observer commented on "an engaging little ballet called A Tragedy of Fashion: or The Scarlet Scissors, which Mr. Eugene Goossens has set most suitably to music. Miss Marie Rambert, as an impudently vivacious mannequin, and Mr. Frederick Ashton as a distracted man modist, lead the dancing. It is as chic a trifle as Mr Playfair's modish establishment leads you to expect." The costumes and scenery were by Sophie Fedorovitch, who continued to work with Ashton for more than twenty years, and became, in his words, "not only my dearest friend but my greatest artistic collaborator and adviser".
Rambert sought to widen her students' horizons, taking them to see London performances by the Diaghilev Ballet. They had a great influence on Ashton—most particularly Bronislava Nijinska's ballet Les biches. In 1930 Ashton created an innovative ballet, Capriol Suite, using Peter Warlock's 1926 suite of the same name. The music was based on 16th-century French music, and Ashton researched the dances of the earlier era, and created a period piece with "basse danse, pavane, tordion, and bransle—smoothly mixing robust masculine leaps with courtly duets." The following year Rambert founded the Ballet Club, forerunner of the Ballet Rambert, with Alicia Markova as prima ballerina and Ashton as the main choreographer and one of the leading dancers.
Ashton's ballets of the early 1930s included La péri (1931), The Lady of Shalott (1931), Façade (1931), Foyer de danse (1932) and Les Masques (1933). He also contributed to West End revues and musicals, including The Cat and the Fiddle (1932) for C. B. Cochran, and Gay Hussar (1933), in which The Manchester Guardian singled out the "spirited and lovely choreography in the classic manner".
Vic-Wells
Ashton's association with Ninette de Valois, founder of the Vic-Wells Ballet, began in 1931, when he created a comic ballet, Regatta for her. It received mixed reviews; The Times thought it successful as "a piece of flippant amusement", but The Manchester Guardian considered that "it completely fails ... definitely a poor show". Nevertheless, Ashton was by now recognised as a choreographer of considerable talent and had gained a national, though not yet international, reputation.
In 1933 Ashton devised another work for de Valois and her company, the ballet-divertissement Les Rendezvous. Robert Greskovic describes the work as a "classically precise yet frothy excursion showcas[ing] big skirted 'ballet girls' and dashing swain partners". The piece was an immediate success, has been revived many times, and at 2013 remains in the Royal Ballet's repertoire eighty years after its creation. In 1935 de Valois appointed Ashton as resident choreographer of her company, where he worked alongside Constant Lambert, the musical director from 1931 until 1947, and a company including Markova, Anton Dolin and Robert Helpmann. The Times describes Ashton's first years with the Vic-Wells as a richly productive period: "His Apparitions in 1936 was by many compared favourably with Massine's Symphonie Fantastique on a similar theme, and that year saw also the touching Nocturne to Delius's Paris. These works have vanished, but the following year's witty A Wedding Bouquet and Les Patineurs are still with us."
In 1936–37, his homosexuality notwithstanding, Ashton had an affair with an American heiress and socialite, Alice von Hofmannsthal. After the affair ended, her love for him continued, though she had two subsequent marriages, both to gay Englishmen.
As the 1930s progressed, Ashton's career began to extend internationally. In 1934 he choreographed Virgil Thomson's opera Four Saints in Three Acts in New York, and in 1939 he created his first ballet for a foreign company: Devil's Holiday (Le Diable s'amuse) for the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo. He continued to create dances for other forms of theatre, from revues such as The Town Talks and Home and Beauty, to opera, including Clive Carey's production of Die Fledermaus at Sadler's Wells, and film, notably Escape Me Never, another collaboration with William Walton, following Façade four years earlier.
Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden
Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War Ashton was offered a position in New York with what was to become the American Ballet Theatre. He declined, and returned to de Valois' company, soon renamed "Sadler's Wells Ballet". He created some works along more sombre lines, including Dante Sonata, which symbolised the unending struggle between the children of darkness and the children of light. In Ballet magazine, Lynette Halewood commented in 2000, "No other work by Ashton is so disturbing and so bleak".
In 1941 Ashton was called up for war service. He was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Air Force, at first analysing aerial photographs and later as an intelligence officer. While in the RAF he was granted occasional spells of leave to carry on his work with the ballet. His collaboration with Walton continued with The Quest (1943). It was created and staged in a hurry, and Walton later said that it was not much of a success from anyone's point of view. It had a theme of knightly chivalry, though Walton observed that Helpmann in the lead looked more like the Dragon than St George. As with the 1940 Ashton-Walton collaboration The Wise Virgins, the music has survived but the ballet has not.
After the end of the war David Webster invited de Valois to move her company from Sadler's Wells to be resident at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden alongside the new opera company he was establishing. Ashton's first ballet for the company in its new home was Symphonic Variations (1946). The historian Montague Haltrecht writes of it, "It is a masterpiece created for the Opera House and for the company's dancers, and almost of itself defines a style of English dancing." Although the Covent Garden stage was much larger than that at Sadler's Wells, Ashton confined himself to six dancers, led by Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes. The work, which remains in the repertoire as at 2013, was a success from the outset.
Another plotless ballet was Scènes de ballet (1947), which remains a repertoire piece. In 1948, at the urging of de Valois, Ashton created his first major three-act ballet for a British company, his version of Prokofiev's Cinderella. The original cast included Moira Shearer as Cinderella, Somes as the Prince, Alexander Grant as the jester, and Ashton and Helpmann en travesti as Cinderella's stepsisters. Some critics have commented that Ashton was not yet fully in control of a full-length ballet, with intermittent weaknesses in the choreography, but the comedy of the stepsisters was, and has remained, a favourite with audiences. The ballet critic Laura Jacobs called it "slapstick of a celestial order", and recalled that she and her fellow New York critics were "struck speechless by this luminous ballet".
In the late 1940s and early 1950s Ashton worked more frequently for other ballet companies, creating works for the Ballets de Paris (Le Rêve de Léonor, 1949, to Britten's Bridge Variations) and the New York City Ballet (Illuminations, 1950, to Britten's Les Illuminations, and Picnic at Tintagel, 1952, to Bax's The Garden of Fand). He created dances for films, including The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) and The Story of Three Loves (1953), and directed operas at Glyndebourne (Britten's Albert Herring, 1947) and Covent Garden (Massenet's Manon, 1947, and Gluck's Orpheus, 1953, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli with Kathleen Ferrier in the title role).
Ashton's second full-length ballet for de Valois' company was Sylvia (1952). Ashton's biographer Kathrine Sorley Walker considers that it works "even less well" than Cinderella, but contemporary reviews praised it with little or no reservation. In 2005, reviewing a New York revival, the critic Jennie Schulman called it a "blockbuster", "radiant" with "choreographic abundance to please even the most finicky of gods and the most demanding of balletomanes".
Ashton's third full-length ballet was Romeo and Juliet for the Royal Danish Ballet in 1955. It was a considerable success, but Ashton resisted attempts to present it at Covent Garden, which he thought too large a theatre and stage for his intimate treatment of the story. It was not seen in London until 1985 when it was produced by the London Festival Ballet rather than at Covent Garden.
Royal Ballet
In October 1956 Elizabeth II granted Sadler's Wells Ballet a charter, giving it the title of "the Royal Ballet" with effect from 15 January 1957. This recognised the eminence the company had achieved: internationally it was widely regarded as "the leading company outside Russia". De Valois remained the director of the company, with Ashton as principal choreographer.
One of Ashton's most celebrated ballets was created for the Royal Ballet in 1960: La fille mal gardée. The first ballet of that title had been presented in France in 1789, and several later versions had been staged in the 19th century, using music by various composers. Ashton did his customary careful research and decided to make use of Ferdinand Hérold's music (1828), arranged, with additions from other versions, by John Lanchbery. Walker says of the work, "He adhered closely to the original scenario, but created deliciously inventive new choreography that was the happiest amalgam of classical ballet and English folk-dance, while Osbert Lancaster's delightful designs were firmly related to French country life." It was an immediate success, and has been regularly staged since, not only by the Royal Ballet, but by companies in ten other European countries and in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Africa and the US.
When de Valois retired in 1963, Ashton succeeded her as director. His time in charge was looked on as something of a golden age. Under him, the corps de ballet was recognised as rivalling and even excelling the best anywhere else in the world. He continued to add to the repertoire with his own new productions, he persuaded his former mentor Bronislava Nijinska to revive her Les biches and Les noces, and he presented Mam'zelle Angot by his other mentor, Massine. He also brought in Antony Tudor, his English contemporary, better known in the US, to stage both new and old works. The ballet critic John Percival considered that despite the numerous glories of the company under Ashton's directorship, he was unsuited to and uninterested in management, and lacked de Valois' gift for strategic planning (though better in both these regards than his successor as director, Kenneth MacMillan). Percival believed that this weakened the company in the long term. Ashton's works for the company while he was director included The Dream (1964) (for Anthony Dowell and Antoinette Sibley), the pas de trois Monotones II (1965), Jazz Calendar (1968) and Enigma Variations (My Friends Pictured Within) (1968).
Webster, due to retire in 1970 as general administrator of the Royal Opera House, decided that his departure should be accompanied by a change to the leadership of the two companies. Georg Solti, musical director of the opera company, was keen to concentrate on his new post as conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and did not wish to renew his Covent Garden contract when it expired in 1971. Ashton had frequently told colleagues how he looked forward to his own retirement, but nonetheless was hurt by the abruptness with which his departure was arranged and announced by Webster. He stood down in July 1970 after a farewell gala organised by Michael Somes, John Hart and Leslie Edwards.
After his retirement, Ashton made several short ballets as pièces d'occasion, but his only longer works were the cinema film, The Tales of Beatrix Potter made in 1970 and released in 1971, and A Month in the Country (1976), a one-act piece, lasting about forty minutes, freely adapted from Turgenev's comedy of manners. The piece has been revived regularly, in every decade since the premiere.
Ashton's last years were marred by the death of his partner, Martyn Thomas, in a car crash in 1985 – a blow from which Ashton never fully recovered. He died in his sleep on 19 August 1988, at his country home in Suffolk, and was buried on 24 August at St Mary's Church, Yaxley, Suffolk.
Choreography
Ashton created more than eighty ballets. In his Who's Who entry, he identified his best-known works as:
Full-length ballets
Cinderella (1948)
Sylvia (1952)
Romeo and Juliet (1955) – for Royal Danish Ballet.
Ondine (1958)
La fille mal gardée (1960)
Shorter works
Other notable Ashton ballets include:
La valse (1958)
Monotones I and II (1965)
The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1970 film)
Méditation from Thaïs (1971)
Voices of Spring (1977)
The Fred Step
Ashton included in many of his ballets a signature step, known to dancers as "the Fred step". It is defined by David Vaughan as "posé en arabesque, coupé dessous, small développé a la seconde, pas de bourrée dessous, pas de chat". Adrian Grater has enlarged the definition to include the transitional movements; this in Benesh notation is transcribed thus:
It was based on a step used by Anna Pavlova in a gavotte that she frequently performed. Alicia Markova recalled in 1994 that Ashton had first used the step in a short ballet that concluded Nigel Playfair's 1930 production of Marriage à la Mode. It is not seen in Ashton's 1931 Façade, but after that, it became a feature of his choreography. The critic Alastair Macaulay writes:
[T]he Fred step is often tucked away. He may give it to the ballerina (Antoinette Sibley as La Capricciosa in Varii Capricci, 1983) or to supporting dancers (Symphonic Variations, 1946). He may give it to a corps de ballet of peasants (Sylvia 1952), to junior dancers (a pair of dancing artichokes in the ... vegetable ballet he made for the 1979 film "Stories from a Flying Trunk"), or to a minor character (Moth in The Dream, 1964). Often the eye is distracted from it by action elsewhere onstage. In each instance, it is changed in some aspect (particularly its conclusion), so that the entire step seems metamorphosed.
Ashton himself danced the step as the timorous sister in Cinderella, and later he and Fonteyn danced a gentle version of it together in Salut d'amour, created by Ashton for her sixtieth birthday gala at Covent Garden. The Royal Ballet has a demonstration of the step on its website, explained by the company's ballet mistress, Ursula Hageli and danced by Romany Pajdak.
Legacy
Ashton left the rights to many of his ballets to friends and colleagues, including Fonteyn (Daphnis and Chloe and Ondine), Dowell (The Dream and A Month in the Country), Michael Somes (Cinderella and Symphonic Variations), Alexander Grant (La fille mal gardée and Façade), Antony Dyson (Enigma Variations and Monotones), and Brian Shaw (Les Patineurs and Rendezvous). Rights to most of his other ballets were left to his nephew, Anthony Russell-Roberts, who was Administrative Director of the Royal Ballet from 1983 to 2009.
To perpetuate the legacy of Ashton and his ballets, the Frederick Ashton Foundation was set up in 2011. It is independent of, but works closely with, the Royal Ballet.
Honours
Ashton was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1950 Birthday Honours, knighted in the 1962 Birthday Honours, appointed Companion of Honour (CH) in the 1970 Birthday Honours for services to the ballet, and appointed to the Order of Merit (OM) in 1977.
His honours from other countries included the Legion of Honour (France, 1960) and the Order of the Dannebrog (Denmark, 1964). He received the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award from the Royal Academy of Dance in 1959. He was awarded the Freedom of the City of London (1981), and received honorary doctorates from the universities of Durham (1962), East Anglia (1967), London (1970), Hull (1971) and Oxford (1976).
Notes, references and sources
Notes
References
Sources
Further reading
Anderson, Zoë (2006). The Royal Ballet – 75 Years. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0571227953.
Franchi, Cristina (2004). Frederick Ashton – Founder Choreographer of the Royal Ballet. Royal Opera House heritage series. London: Oberon. ISBN 1840024615.
Morris, Geraldine. A Network of Styles: Discovering the Choreographed Movement of Frederick Ashton. Guildford: University of Surrey. OCLC 53605132.
External links
Ballet.co Ashton pages
Archive film of Frederick Ashton's Thaïs Pas de Deux performed by Nina Ananiashvili and David Ananeli in 2010 at Jacob's Pillow
www.ashtonballets.com |
List_of_ballets_choreographed_by_Frederick_Ashton | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ballets_choreographed_by_Frederick_Ashton | [
761
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ballets_choreographed_by_Frederick_Ashton"
] | The following is a list, by decade, of ballets created by the English choreographer Frederick Ashton.
1920s
A Tragedy of Fashion (music by Eugene Goossens, arranged by Ernest Irving) (1926)
Various dances for a Purcell Opera Society production of The Fairy-Queen: (music by Henry Purcell) (1927)
Pas de deux (music by Fritz Kreisler) (1927)
Suite de danses (music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) (1927)
Argentine Dance (music by Artello) (1927)
Nymphs and Shepherds (music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) (1928)
Leda (music by Christoph Willibald Gluck) (1928)
Various dances for Jew Süss (incidental music arranged by Constant Lambert) (1929)
1930s
Capriol Suite (music by Peter Warlock) (1930)
Pomona (music by Constant Lambert) (1930)
Regatta (music by Gavin Gordon) (1931)
La Péri (music by Léo Delibes) (1931)
Façade (music by William Walton) (1931)
The Lady of Shalott (music by Jean Sibelius) (1931)
Foyer de danse (music by Lord Berners) (1932)
Les Masques (music by Francis Poulenc) (1933)
Les Rendezvous (music by Daniel Auber, arranged by Constant Lambert) (1933)
Pavane pour une enfante défunte (music by Maurice Ravel) (1933)
Mephisto Valse (music by Franz Liszt) (1934)
Le Baisier de la fée (music by Igor Stravinsky) (1935)
Apparitions (music by Franz Liszt, arranged by Constant Lambert and orchestrated by Gordon Jacob) (1936)
Nocturne (music by Frederick Delius) (1936)
Les Patineurs (music by Giacomo Meyerbeer, arranged by Constant Lambert) (1937 )
A Wedding Bouquet (music by Lord Berners) (1937)
Horoscope (music by Constant Lambert) (1938)
The Judgement of Paris (music by Lennox Berkeley) (1938)
Cupid and Psyche (music by Lord Berners) (1939)
1940s
Dante Sonata (music by Franz Liszt, orchestrated by Constant Lambert) (1940)
The Wise Virgins (music by J S Bach, orchestrated by William Walton), (1940)
The Wanderer (music by Franz Schubert) (1941)
The Quest (music by William Walton) (1943)
Symphonic Variations (music by César Franck) (1946)
Les Sirènes (music by Lord Berners, orchestrated by Roy Douglas) (1946)
various dances for a Royal Opera production of The Fairy-Queen (music by Henry Purcell, arranged by Constant Lambert) (1946)
Valses nobles et sentimentales (music by Maurice Ravel) (1947)
Scènes de ballet (music by Igor Stravinsky) (1948)
Don Juan (music by Richard Strauss) (1948)
Cinderella (music by Sergei Prokofiev) (1948)
Le Rêve de Léonor (music by Benjamin Britten, orchestrated by Arthur Oldham) (1949)
1950s
Illuminations (music by Benjamin Britten) (1950)
Daphnis et Chloé (music by Maurice Ravel) (1951), created for Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes
Tiresias (music by Constant Lambert) (1951)
Sylvia (music by Léo Delibes) (1952)
Picnic at Tintagel (music by Arnold Bax) (1952)
Homage to the Queen (music by Malcolm Arnold) (1953)
Madame Chrysanthème (music by Alan Rawsthorne) (1955)
Romeo and Juliet (music by Sergei Prokofiev) (1955)
Rinaldo and Armida (music by Malcolm Arnold) (1955)
La Péri (music by Paul Dukas) (1956)
Birthday Offering (music by Alexander Glazunov, arranged by Robert Irving) (1956)
Ondine (music by Hans Werner Henze) (1958), created for Dame Margot Fonteyn
La Valse (music by Maurice Ravel) (1958)
1960s
La fille mal gardée (music by Ferdinand Hérold - John Lanchbery (1960)
Persephone (music by Igor Stravinsky) (1961)
The Two Pigeons (music by André Messager, arranged by John Lanchbery) (1961)
Marguerite and Armand (music by Franz Liszt, orchestrated by Humphrey Searle) 1963). Soloists: Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev
The Dream after Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (music by Felix Mendelssohn, some music arranged by John Lanchbery) (1964)
Monotones (music by Erik Satie, orchestrated by Claude Debussy) (1965)
Jazz Calendar (music by Richard Rodney Bennett) (1968)
Enigma Variations (music by Edward Elgar) (1968)
1970s
Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus (The Creatures of Prometheus) (music by Ludwig van Beethoven) (1970)
Lament of the Waves (music by Gérard Masson) (1970)
The Walk to the Paradise Garden (music by Frederick Delius) (1972)
Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan (music by Johannes Brahms) (1976) (expanded from Brahms Waltz, 1975)
A Month in the Country (music by Frédéric Chopin, arranged by John Lanchbery) (1976)
Voices of Spring (music by Johann Strauss II) (1977)
1980s
Rhapsody (music by Sergei Rachmaninoff) (1980)
Pas de légumes (music by Gioachino Rossini) (1982)
La chatte métamorphosée en femme (music by Jacques Offenbach) (1985) |
Jamal_Murray | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamal_Murray | [
762
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamal_Murray"
] | Jamal Murray (born February 23, 1997) is a Canadian professional basketball player for the Denver Nuggets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He also represents the Canadian national team. He played one season of college basketball for the Kentucky Wildcats before being selected by the Nuggets as the seventh overall pick in the 2016 NBA draft. Nicknamed "Blue Arrow", he is regarded as one of the greatest postseason and clutch performers in NBA history.
Early life
Murray was born and raised in Kitchener, Ontario, the son of Sylvia (from Syria) and Roger Murray (born in Jamaica and moved to Canada at age nine). He also has a younger brother, Lamar. His father grew up running track and field and playing basketball; as a youth, his father played against Kitchener native Lennox Lewis before Lewis began his professional boxing career.
When Murray was three years old, he could play basketball "for hours" and at age six played in a league for ten-year-olds. By the age of 12 or 13, he began playing pick-up games against top high school and college players. His father put him through many basketball drills and kung fu exercises, including meditation.
High school career
Murray attended Grand River Collegiate Institute in Kitchener, later transferring to Orangeville Prep in Orangeville, Ontario, where his father served as an assistant coach. He and fellow prospect Thon Maker formed a duo that helped Orangeville Prep defeat many American schools.
At the 2013 Jordan Brand Classic International Game, Murray was named MVP, becoming the second Canadian to win the award after Duane Notice. At the 2015 Nike Hoop Summit, Murray scored a game-high 30 points and was named the MVP.
Murray was named MVP of the 2015 BioSteel All-Canadian Basketball Game, which includes the top high school players in Canada.
Murray played AAU basketball for the CIA Bounce.
College career
On June 24, 2015, Murray reclassified to the class of 2015 and committed to Kentucky to play for coach John Calipari. As a freshman in 2015–16, he was featured on the Midseason Top 25 list for the John R. Wooden Award, and was named to the 35-man midseason watchlist for the Naismith Trophy. He appeared in 36 games and averaged 20.0 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 2.2 assists while shooting 40.8% from three-point range. Following his freshman season, Murray was named a third-team All-American by the Associated Press. Murray also made the All-SEC First Team and the SEC All-Freshman Team. Murray's 20.0 points per game are the most by any freshman in Kentucky's program history and the most for any player in John Calipari's tenure as head coach.
He led the Wildcats, who had seven future NBA players on the roster, to a #1 ranking early in the season and the SEC title prior to being upset by 5-seed Indiana in the second round of March Madness. In April 2016, Murray declared for the NBA draft, forgoing his final three years of college eligibility.
Professional career
Denver Nuggets (2016–present)
2016–2019: Early years and first playoffs
On June 23, 2016, Murray was selected by the Denver Nuggets as the seventh overall pick in the 2016 NBA draft. On August 9, 2016, he signed his rookie scale contract with the Nuggets. On November 13, 2016, he scored a then career-high 19 points in a 112–105 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. He topped that mark on November 22, scoring 24 points in a 110–107 win over the Chicago Bulls. On December 1, he was named Western Conference Rookie of the Month for games played in October and November. On February 17, 2017, Murray was named MVP of the Rising Stars Challenge after posting a game-high 36 points (9-14 3FG) and a game-high 11 assists in Team World's 150–139 victory over Team USA. On April 7, 2017, he scored a career-high 30 points in a 122–106 win over the New Orleans Pelicans. At the season's end, he was named to the NBA All-Rookie Second Team.
On November 11, 2017, Murray scored a career-high 32 points in a 125–107 win over the Orlando Magic. Six days later, he had a 31-point effort in a 146–114 win over the New Orleans Pelicans. On January 22, 2018, he scored a career-high 38 points, including a three-point play in the final minute, as the Nuggets beat the Portland Trail Blazers 104–101. On February 1, 2018, he had a 33-point effort in a 127–124 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder. His 90.5% free-throw percentage was fifth in the league and the 10th highest in team history.
On November 5, 2018, Murray scored a career-high 48 points in a 115–107 win over the Boston Celtics. On December 18, he had 22 points and a career-high 15 assists in a 126–118 win over the Dallas Mavericks. On December 29, he scored 46 points and made a career-high nine 3-pointers in a 122–118 win over the Phoenix Suns. On January 3, he scored 17 of his 36 points in the fourth quarter of the Nuggets' 117–113 win over the Sacramento Kings. On January 17, he scored 22 of his 25 points in the third quarter of the Nuggets' 135–105 win over the Bulls. On February 6, after missing six games with a sprained left ankle, Murray had 19 points and 11 assists in a 135–130 loss to the Brooklyn Nets. In Game 3 of the Nuggets' second-round playoff series against the Trail Blazers, Murray had a then playoff career-high 34 points in a 140–137 quadruple-overtime loss. In Game 4, he again scored 34 points in a 116–112 win.
2019–2020: Western Conference Finals and NBA Bubble comebacks
On the first day of free agency period, Murray signed a contract extension of a 5-year, $170 million
maximum deal with the Nuggets.
On November 17, 2019, Murray recorded a season-high 39 points and 8 assists, including seven three-pointers, in a 131–114 win over the Memphis Grizzlies. Three days later, during a 105–95 victory over the Houston Rockets, Murray recorded a career-high 6 steals, along with scoring 10 points and adding 9 assists. On December 23, Murray scored 28 points and would knock down a game-winning step-back jumper against the Phoenix Suns with 2.5 seconds remaining in overtime to secure a 113–111 road victory. On January 4, 2020, he tied his season-high 39 points in a 128–114 loss to the Washington Wizards. After missing ten games due to an ankle sprain suffered against Charlotte on January 15, Murray returned to have one of the best stretches of his career, averaging 31.3 points per game over a four-game stretch, including 36 points on 14-of-17 shooting and six three-pointers against the Suns on February 8. On March 4, Murray hit yet another game-winner, making an off-balance jumper with 4.5 seconds remaining in regulation to seal a 114–112 victory over the Hornets while capping off an 18-point, 6-assist performance.
On August 17, during the Nuggets' first round matchup with the Utah Jazz in the 2020 NBA playoffs, Murray recorded 36 points and 9 assists, scoring 20 points in the fourth quarter and overtime to lead the Nuggets to a 135–125 Game 1 victory. In Game 4 six days later, Murray erupted for a career-high 50 points, along with 11 rebounds and 7 assists, in a 129–127 loss to the Jazz. With Donovan Mitchell scoring 51, it was the first time in NBA playoff history that two opponents scored at least 50 points in the same game. In a potential elimination game in Game 5 with Denver down 3–1 in the series, Murray recorded 42 points, 8 rebounds, and 8 assists to lead the Nuggets to a 117–107 win and force a Game 6, where Murray again scored 50 points, shooting 9–12 from three and helping the Nuggets extend the series to a Game 7 with a 119–107 victory. Following Game 6, Murray became emotional during the postgame interview with TNT’s Jared Greenberg, addressing racial injustice, as well as honoring George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, as each of their pictures were on his shoes.
On September 15, in Game 7 against the Los Angeles Clippers, Murray scored 40 points while hitting six three-pointers, leading the Nuggets to a series-clinching 104–89 win to advance to the Western Conference Finals for the first time since 2009. With the win, the Nuggets became the first team in NBA history to comeback from multiple 3–1 deficits in a single postseason. However, the Nuggets would go on to lose in the Western Conference Finals in five games to the eventual NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers, with Murray recording 28 points, 8 rebounds, and 12 assists in the lone Denver victory in Game 3.
2020–2022: ACL injury and year absence
On February 19, 2021, Murray scored a career–high 50 points in a 120–103 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers. During the game he became the first player in NBA history to score 50 points without attempting a free throw, as well as being the second player to get 50 points while shooting more than 80 percent from the field and from three-point range. On April 12, Murray suffered a torn ACL on his left knee during a game against the Golden State Warriors. The following day, the Nuggets announced Murray would be out indefinitely. On April 21, Murray underwent surgery on the torn ACL on his left knee. The same day Nuggets announced that he remained out indefinitely. Murray averaged a career-high 21.2 points, 4.8 assists, and 1.3 steals, and shot a career-high 47.7% FG and 40.8% 3FG while playing 35.5 minutes per game.
Although he was never officially shut down for the season, Murray missed the entire 2021–22 campaign while recovering from his ACL tear. Without Murray, the Nuggets lost in 5 games to the Golden State Warriors during the first round of the playoffs.
2022–present: Return from injury and first NBA championship
On October 19, 2022, Murray played in his first game in eighteen months, scoring 12 points in 26 minutes of playing time during a 123–102 loss to the Utah Jazz. On December 8, Murray scored 21 points including a game-winning three-pointer in a 121–120 win over the Portland Trail Blazers. On January 9, 2023, Murray scored a then-season-high 34 points in a 122–109 win over the Los Angeles Lakers. On February 4, Murray scored a season-high 41 points, along with five rebounds and seven assists in a 128–108 win over the Atlanta Hawks. On March 10, in a game against the San Antonio Spurs, Murray made his 805th career three-pointer and surpassed Will Barton to become the all-time leader in three-pointers made in Nuggets history. His 172 three-pointers was fifth in franchise history, but second that season behind teammate Michael Porter Jr.'s 188.
In Game 2 of the Nuggets' first round playoff series against the Minnesota Timberwolves, Murray scored 40 points in a 122–113 win. This was his fifth 40-point postseason game, passing Alex English for the franchise record. In Game 1 of the Western Conference Semifinals, Murray recorded 34 points, 5 rebounds and 9 assists in a 125–107 win over the Phoenix Suns. In Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals, Murray scored 23 of his 37 points in the fourth quarter, along with 10 rebounds, 5 assists and 4 steals, propelling the Nuggets to a 108–103 come-from-behind win over the Los Angeles Lakers for a 2–0 lead in the series. In Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals, Murray scored 30 of his 37 points in the first half, along with seven rebounds and six assists in a 119–108 win, helping the Nuggets take a commanding 3–0 series lead. Murray was again an integral part of the Nuggets during Game 4, during which he scored 25 points en route to a 113–111 victory. With the win, the Nuggets completed a 4-game sweep of the Lakers and advanced to their first-ever NBA Finals appearance. He also became the first player in NBA history to average 30 points on 50/40/90 shooting in the Conference Finals.
In Game 1 of the NBA Finals, Murray put up 26 points and 10 assists in a 104–93 win over the Miami Heat. He and Nikola Jokić also became only the second pair of teammates in NBA history to each put up at least 25 points and 10 assists in an NBA Finals game since Magic Johnson and James Worthy in the 1987 NBA Finals. In Game 3, Murray posted a 30-point triple-double with 34 points, 10 rebounds, and 10 assists in a 109–94 win over the Heat. He and Jokić became the first teammates in NBA history (regular season or playoffs) to record 30-point triple-doubles in the same game. In Game 4, Murray put up 15 points and 12 assists in a 108–95 win over the Heat. He also became the first player in NBA history to put up at least 10 assists in each of his first four Finals games. In Game 5, Murray put up 14 points, eight rebounds, and eight assists in a 94–89 win over the Heat to help lead the Nuggets to their first NBA championship in franchise history. He also averaged 21.4 points, 6.2 rebounds, and 10.0 assists per game in the Finals, joining Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and LeBron James as the only players in NBA history to average at least 20 points and 10 assists per game in an NBA Finals series.
On April 22, 2024, in Game 2 of the first round of the playoffs against the Los Angeles Lakers, Murray put up 20 points along with a buzzer-beating, game-winning fadeaway jump shot over Anthony Davis in a 101–99 victory as the Nuggets took a 2–0 lead. A week later, Murray suffered a strained calf before Game 5. Despite this, he managed to score scored 32 points, including a 14-foot game-winning shot in a 108–106 Game 5 victory, thus sending the Denver Nuggets past the Los Angeles Lakers to the Western Conference Semifinals.
On May 6, 2024, during Game 2 of the Conference Semifinals against the Minnesota Timberwolves, Murray threw a heat pack and towel towards the court while he was on the bench. He was fined $100,000 the next day by the NBA but was not suspended. The Nuggets lost the series in seven games, despite a 35-point performance from Murray in a 98–90 closeout loss in a decisive Game 7.
On September 7, 2024, Murray signed a four-year, $208 million contract extension with the Nuggets.
Career statistics
NBA
Regular season
Playoffs
College
National team career
Murray represented Canada at the 2013 FIBA Americas Under-16 Championship in Uruguay, and averaged 17 points, 6 rebounds and 2.4 steals per game in leading the team to a bronze medal. He played for the Canadian national team at the 2015 Pan American Games, helping the team win a silver medal. His final averages for the tournament were 16.0 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 2.4 assists per game, while shooting 45.9% from the field.
On May 24, 2022, Murray agreed to a three-year commitment to play with the Canadian senior men's national team. He joined Canada in their preparations for the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup, but eventually decided to miss the competition to recover from his championship-winning NBA season.
He was named to Canada's roster for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
Awards and honors
NBA
NBA Champion: 2023
NBA All-Rookie Second Team: 2017
Rising Stars Challenge MVP: 2017
Western Conference Rookie of the Month: October/November 2016
College
Third-team All-American – AP (2016)
First-team All-SEC (2016)
SEC All-Freshman Team (2016)
SEC All-Tournament Team (2016)
References
External links
Career statistics and player information from NBA.com and Basketball-Reference.com
Murray's official website Archived November 26, 2021, at the Wayback Machine
Kentucky Wildcats bio |
2021_NBA_draft | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_NBA_draft | [
762
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_NBA_draft"
] | The 2021 NBA draft, the 75th edition of the National Basketball Association's annual draft, was held on July 29, 2021, at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. The NBA draft returned to Brooklyn after the previous year's draft was held through videoconferencing at ESPN Studios in Bristol, Connecticut due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With the first overall pick, the Detroit Pistons selected Cade Cunningham. The NBA used a "ceremonial pick" for the late Terrence Clarke, between the 14th and 15th pick of the draft.
Draft picks
Notable undrafted players
These players were not selected in the 2021 NBA draft, but have played at least one game in the NBA.
Trades involving draft picks
Pre-draft trades
Prior to the draft, the following trades were made and resulted in exchanges of draft picks between teams.
Draft-night trades
Draft-night trades were made after the draft began. These trades are usually not confirmed until the next day or after free agency officially begins.
Combine
Prior to the NBA Draft Combine, the 2021 NBA G League Elite Camp, which took place on June 19–21 at the Wintrust Arena and Marriott Marquis in Chicago, provided another chance for players not originally invited to the combine to impress scouts. The best performers from this camp were given invites to the main combine.
The NBA Draft Combine was held on June 21–27 at the same site sponsored by Microsoft. A total of 69 players attended the NBA Draft Combine 2021, with these players undergoing a series of interviews, five-on-five games, drills, and measurements. Lottery-projected pick Keon Johnson broke the combine's vertical leap record of 45.5 in (1.16 m), set by Kenny Gregory in 2001, with a vertical leap of 48 in (1.2 m). The combine also featured some recent graduates of the inaugural NBA G League Ignite team, which is a developmental basketball program meant to provide prospects with a paid alternative to playing NCAA college basketball. The success of these players, Jalen Green, Jonathan Kuminga, Daishen Nix, and Isaiah Todd, may pave the way for more top prospects to participate in the G League system pre-draft.
Projected top picks who decided not to attend the NBA Draft Combine include potential No. 1 pick Cade Cunningham and likely top-four pick Jalen Suggs. Numerous other potential prospects, especially those playing overseas, also decided to skip the Combine.
Draft lottery
The NBA draft lottery was held on June 22. It was also televised nationally on ESPN.
Eligibility and entrants
The draft is conducted under the eligibility rules established in the league's 2017 collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with its players' union, with special modifications agreed to by both parties due to disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The previous CBA that ended the 2011 lockout instituted no immediate changes to the draft. but called for a committee of owners and players to discuss further charges.
All drafted players must be at least 19 years old during the calendar year of the draft. In term of dates, players who were eligible for the 2021 NBA draft must have been born on or before December 31, 2002.
This draft could have possibly been the last in which high school players of any nationality are ineligible for pick after graduation as the two associations sought at first to lower the minimum age back to 18 and end the need to wait one year after their high school class graduated, also called the "one and done" requirement, ahead of next year's edition, as discussed in 2019. If approved, the current CBA may have to be amended and the amendment ratified. However, the ineligibility for the draft shortly after high school remained in place, as reported in 2020, unless there were further discussions about its repeal.
Since the 2016 draft, the following rules are, as implemented by the NCAA Division I council for that division:
Declaration for the draft no longer results in automatic loss of college eligibility. As long as a player does not sign a contract with a professional team outside the NBA, or sign with an agent, he retains college eligibility as long as he makes a timely withdrawal from the draft.
NCAA players now have 10 days after the end of the NBA Draft Combine to withdraw from the draft. Since the combine is normally held in mid-May, the current deadline is about five weeks after the previous mid-April deadline.
NCAA players may participate in the draft combine, and are allowed to attend one tryout per year with each NBA team without losing college eligibility.
NCAA players may now enter and withdraw from the draft up to two times without loss of eligibility. Previously, the NCAA treated a second declaration of draft eligibility as a permanent loss of college eligibility.
The NBA announced on February 26, 2021, that for this draft only, all college players who wished to enter the draft, regardless of class, had to formally declare eligibility. In October 2020, COVID-19 led the NCAA to declare that the 2020–21 season would not be counted against the college eligibility of any basketball player. The exact language of the CBA with regard to automatic eligibility of college seniors is "The player has graduated from a four-year college or university in the United States, and has no remaining intercollegiate basketball eligibility." Due to the NCAA ruling, every college senior in the 2020–21 season had remaining eligibility. The league was required to consult with the players' union and the NCAA to determine whether it would require seniors to opt out of the draft (which was implemented by the NFL for its 2021 draft, affected by a similar NCAA ruling for football) or require opt-ins, with the latter option being chosen.
Early entrants
Players who were not automatically eligible had to declare their eligibility for the draft by notifying the NBA offices in writing no later than at least 60 days before the event. For the 2021 draft, the date fell on May 30. Under the CBA a player may withdraw his name from consideration from the draft at any time before the final declaration deadline, which usually falls 10 days before the draft at 5:00 pm EDT (2100 UTC). Under current NCAA rules, players usually have until 10 days after the draft combine to withdraw from the draft and retain college eligibility. They must have withdrawn on or before July 7, 22 days prior to this draft.
A player who has hired an agent retains his remaining college eligibility regardless of whether he is drafted after an evaluation from the NBA Undergraduate Advisory Committee. Players who declare for the NBA draft and are not selected have the opportunity to return to their school for at least another year only after terminating all agreements with their agents, who must have been certified no later than August 1, 2020.
The NBA released its official list of early entrants on June 2, 2021, consisting of 296 players from college and other educational institutions and 57 international players. The current version of the list found in this article omits players who withdrew from the draft after June 2.
College underclassmen
Terrence Clarke, a freshman guard from Kentucky, declared for the draft, but died on April 22, three months before it. At the draft, the NBA honored him with an honorary selection.
College seniors
"Redshirt" refers to players who were redshirt seniors in the 2020–21 season. "Graduate" refers to players who were graduate transfers in 2020–21.
International players
International players that declared for this draft and did not previously declare in another prior draft could drop out 10 days before the event, on July 19. A total of 51 international players withdrew their names from consideration for the draft, with only the following eight prospects remaining after the international deadline.
Juhann Begarin – G, Paris Basketball (France)
Vrenz Bleijenbergh – F, Antwerp Giants (Belgium)
Biram Faye – C, Bàsquet Girona (Spain)
Usman Garuba – F, Real Madrid (Spain)
Josh Giddey – G, Adelaide 36ers (Australia)
Rokas Jokubaitis – G, Žalgiris Kaunas (Lithuania)
Alperen Şengün – C, Beşiktaş Icrypex (Turkey)
Amar Sylla – C, Filou Oostende (Belgium)
Automatically eligible entrants
Players who do not meet the criteria for "international" players are automatically eligible if they meet any of the following criteria:
They have no remaining college eligibility.
If they graduated from high school in the U.S., but did not enroll in a U.S. college or university, four years have passed since their high school class graduated.
They have signed a contract with a professional basketball team not in the NBA, anywhere in the world, and have played under the contract.
As noted above, the NCAA's COVID-19 eligibility waiver for 2020–21 resulted in all college seniors having remaining eligibility, leading to the NBA and its players' union agreeing that seniors would have to declare for the 2021 draft.
Players who meet the criteria for "international" players are automatically eligible if they meet any of the following criteria:
They are at least 22 years old during the calendar year of the draft. In term of dates players born on or before December 31, 1999, were automatically eligible for the 2021 draft.
They have signed a contract with a professional basketball team not in the NBA within the United States, and have played under that contract.
Invited attendees
After previously not having a proper "green room" invitation process for the 2020 NBA draft due to the COVID-19 pandemic (with players instead being conducted interviews and showings through videotelephony), the NBA allowed for invites to attend the NBA draft event once again this season. The NBA usually annually invites players to sit in the so-called "green room", a special room set aside at the draft site for the invited players plus their families and agents, with 2020 being considered an exception due to the unprecedented nature of COVID-19 impacting the world at the time. This year, a reported 20 players were invited (listed alphabetically).
See also
List of first overall NBA draft picks
NBA records
Notes
References
External links
Official site |
1953_Iranian_parliamentary_dissolution_referendum | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_parliamentary_dissolution_referendum | [
763
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_parliamentary_dissolution_referendum"
] | A referendum on the dissolution of Parliament, the first referendum ever held in Iran, was held in August 1953. The dissolution was approved by more than 99% of voters.
Following the referendum, there were talks about another referendum to abolish the Pahlavi dynasty and make Iran a republic, however the government was overthrown by a coup d'état shortly after.
Timeline
12 July: PM Mohammad Mosaddegh openly announced his intention to hold the referendum, asking people to either choose between his government or the 17th Parliament.
14 July: The decision to hold the referendum was approved by the cabinet.
3 August: The referendum was held in Tehran.
10 August: The referendum was held in other cities.
13 August: The official results of the polls were declared by the interior ministry.
16 August: Mosaddegh officially announced the dissolution of the parliament.
19 August: The government was overthrown in a coup d'état.
Campaign
Conduct
The balloting was not secret and there were two separate voting booths, i.e. the opponents of Mossadegh had to cast their vote in a separate tent. Critics pointed that the referendum had ignored the democratic demand for secret ballots.
Results
By city
Reactions
Domestic
Ayatollah Kashani said taking part in such a referendum is haraam (religiously prohibited). However, Ayatollah Boroujerdi supported the referendum.
Mohammad Reza Shah declared the results "fraudulant".
International
United States: On 5 August 1953, the U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, speaking to a gathering of state governors in Seattle, criticized Mosaddegh for the decision and specified, that it had been supported by the communist party. An editorial published by The New York Times on 4 August characterized the exercise as "More fantastic and farcical than any ever held under Hitler or Stalin", and an effort by Mosaddegh "to make himself unchallenged dictator of the country".
== References == |
August_16 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_16 | [
763
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_16#1901%E2%80%93present_2"
] | August 16 is the 228th day of the year (229th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 137 days remain until the end of the year.
Events
Pre-1600
1 BC – Wang Mang consolidates his power in China and is declared marshal of state. Emperor Ai of Han, who died the previous day, had no heirs.
942 – Start of the four-day Battle of al-Mada'in, between the Hamdanids of Mosul and the Baridis of Basra over control of the Abbasid capital, Baghdad.
963 – Nikephoros II Phokas is crowned emperor of the Byzantine Empire.
1328 – The House of Gonzaga seizes power in the Duchy of Mantua, and will rule until 1708.
1513 – Battle of the Spurs (Battle of Guinegate): King Henry VIII of England and his Imperial allies defeat French Forces who are then forced to retreat.
1570 – The Principality of Transylvania is established after John II Zápolya renounces his claim as King of Hungary in the Treaty of Speyer.
1601–1900
1652 – Battle of Plymouth: Inconclusive naval action between the fleets of Michiel de Ruyter and George Ayscue in the First Anglo-Dutch War.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: The Americans led by General John Stark rout British and Brunswick troops under Friedrich Baum at the Battle of Bennington in Walloomsac, New York.
1780 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Camden: The British defeat the Americans near Camden, South Carolina.
1792 – Maximilien de Robespierre presents the petition of the Commune of Paris to the Legislative Assembly, which demanded the formation of a revolutionary tribunal.
1793 – French Revolution: A levée en masse is decreed by the National Convention.
1812 – War of 1812: American General William Hull surrenders Fort Detroit without a fight to the British Army.
1819 – Peterloo Massacre: Seventeen people die and over 600 are injured in cavalry charges at a public meeting at St. Peter's Field, Manchester, England.
1841 – U.S. President John Tyler vetoes a bill which called for the re-establishment of the Second Bank of the United States. Enraged Whig Party members riot outside the White House in the most violent demonstration on White House grounds in U.S. history.
1844 – Governor-general of the Philippines Narciso Claveria, signs a decree to reform the country's calendar by skipping Tuesday, December 31, as a solution to anomalies that had existed since 1844.
1858 – U.S. President James Buchanan inaugurates the new transatlantic telegraph cable by exchanging greetings with Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. However, a weak signal forces a shutdown of the service in a few weeks.
1859 – The Grand Duchy of Tuscany formally deposes the exiled House of Lorraine.
1863 – The Dominican Restoration War begins when Gregorio Luperón raises the Dominican flag in Santo Domingo after Spain had recolonized the country.
1869 – Battle of Acosta Ñu: A Paraguayan battalion largely made up of children is massacred by the Brazilian Army during the Paraguayan War.
1870 – Franco-Prussian War: The Battle of Mars-la-Tour is fought, resulting in a Prussian victory.
1876 – Richard Wagner's Siegfried, the penultimate opera in his Ring cycle, is premiered at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.
1891 – The Basilica of San Sebastian, Manila, the first all-steel church in Asia, is officially inaugurated and blessed.
1896 – Skookum Jim Mason, George Carmack and Dawson Charlie discover gold in a tributary of the Klondike River in Canada, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.
1900 – The Battle of Elands River during the Second Boer War ends after a 13-day siege is lifted by the British. The battle had begun when a force of between 2,000 and 3,000 Boers had surrounded a force of 500 Australians, Rhodesians, Canadians and British soldiers at a supply dump at Brakfontein Drift.
1901–present
1906 – The 8.2 Mw Valparaíso earthquake hits central Chile, killing 3,882 people.
1913 – Tōhoku Imperial University of Japan (modern day Tohoku University) becomes the first university in Japan to admit female students.
1913 – Completion of the Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS Queen Mary.
1916 – The Migratory Bird Treaty between Canada and the United States is signed.
1918 – The Battle of Lake Baikal was fought between the Czechoslovak Legion and the Red Army.
1920 – Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians is hit on the head by a fastball thrown by Carl Mays of the New York Yankees. Next day, Chapman will become the second player to die from injuries sustained in a Major League Baseball game.
1920 – The congress of the Communist Party of Bukhara opens. The congress would call for armed revolution.
1920 – Polish–Soviet War: The Battle of Radzymin concludes; the Soviet Red Army is forced to turn away from Warsaw.
1923 – The United Kingdom gives the name "Ross Dependency" to part of its claimed Antarctic territory and makes the Governor-General of the Dominion of New Zealand its administrator.
1927 – The Dole Air Race begins from Oakland, California, to Honolulu, Hawaii, during which six out of the eight participating planes crash or disappear.
1929 – The 1929 Palestine riots break out in Mandatory Palestine between Palestinian Arabs and Jews and continue until the end of the month. In total, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs are killed.
1930 – The first color sound cartoon, Fiddlesticks, is released by Ub Iwerks.
1930 – The first British Empire Games are opened in Hamilton, Ontario, by the Governor General of Canada, the Viscount Willingdon.
1933 – Christie Pits riot takes place in Toronto, Ontario.
1942 – World War II: US Navy L-class blimp L-8 drifts in from the Pacific and eventually crashes in Daly City, California. The two-man crew cannot be found.
1944 – First flight of a jet with forward-swept wings, the Junkers Ju 287.
1945 – The National Representatives' Congress, the precursor of the current National Assembly of Vietnam, convenes in Sơn Dương.
1946 – Mass riots in Kolkata begin; more than 4,000 people would be killed in 72 hours.
1946 – The All Hyderabad Trade Union Congress is founded in Secunderabad.
1954 – The first issue of Sports Illustrated is published.
1960 – Cyprus gains its independence from the United Kingdom.
1960 – Joseph Kittinger parachutes from a balloon over New Mexico, United States, at 102,800 feet (31,300 m), setting three records that held until 2012: High-altitude jump, free fall, and highest speed by a human without an aircraft.
1964 – Vietnam War: A coup d'état replaces Dương Văn Minh with General Nguyễn Khánh as President of South Vietnam. A new constitution is established with aid from the U.S. Embassy.
1966 – Vietnam War: The House Un-American Activities Committee begins investigations of Americans who have aided the Viet Cong. The committee intends to introduce legislation making these activities illegal. Anti-war demonstrators disrupt the meeting and 50 people are arrested.
1972 – In an unsuccessful coup d'état attempt, the Royal Moroccan Air Force fires upon Hassan II of Morocco's plane while he is traveling back to Rabat.
1975 – Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam symbolically hands over land to the Gurindji people after the eight-year Wave Hill walk-off, a landmark event in the history of Indigenous land rights in Australia, commemorated in a 1991 song by Paul Kelly and an annual celebration.
1987 – Northwest Airlines Flight 255, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, crashes after takeoff in Detroit, Michigan, killing 154 of the 155 on board, plus two people on the ground.
1989 – A solar particle event affects computers at the Toronto Stock Exchange, forcing a halt to trading.
1991 – Indian Airlines Flight 257, a Boeing 737-200, crashes during approach to Imphal Airport, killing all 69 people on board.
2005 – West Caribbean Airways Flight 708, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, crashes in Machiques, Venezuela, killing all 160 people on board.
2008 – The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago is topped off at 1,389 feet (423 m), at the time becoming the world's highest residence above ground-level.
2010 – AIRES Flight 8250 crashes at Gustavo Rojas Pinilla International Airport in San Andrés, San Andrés y Providencia, Colombia, killing two people.
2012 – South African police fatally shoot 34 miners and wound 78 more during an industrial dispute at Marikana near Rustenburg.
2013 – The ferry St. Thomas Aquinas collides with a cargo ship and sinks at Cebu, Philippines, killing 61 people with 59 others missing.
2015 – More than 96 people are killed and hundreds injured following a series of air-raids by the Syrian Arab Air Force on the rebel-held market town of Douma.
2015 – Trigana Air Flight 267, an ATR 42, crashes in Oksibl, Bintang Mountains Regency, killing all 54 people on board.
2020 – The August Complex fire in California burns more than one million acres of land.
Births
Pre-1600
1355 – Philippa, 5th Countess of Ulster (d. 1382)
1378 – Hongxi Emperor of China (d. 1425)
1401 – Jacqueline, Countess of Hainaut (d. 1436)
1557 – Agostino Carracci, Italian painter and etcher (d. 1602)
1565 – Christina, Grand Duchess of Tuscany (d. 1637)
1573 – Anne of Austria, Queen of Poland (d. 1598)
1601–1900
1637 – Countess Emilie Juliane of Barby-Mühlingen (d. 1706)
1645 – Jean de La Bruyère, French philosopher and author (d. 1696)
1650 – Vincenzo Coronelli, Italian monk, cosmographer, and cartographer (d. 1718)
1682 – Louis, Duke of Burgundy (d. 1712)
1744 – Pierre Méchain, French astronomer and surveyor (d. 1804)
1761 – Yevstigney Fomin, Russian pianist and composer (d. 1800)
1815 – John Bosco, Italian priest and educator (d. 1888)
1816 – Octavia Taylor, daughter of Zachary Taylor (d. 1820)
1820 – Andrew Rainsford Wetmore, Canadian lawyer and politician, 1st Premier of New Brunswick (d. 1892)
1821 – Arthur Cayley, English mathematician and academic (d. 1895)
1824 – John Chisum, American cattle baron (d. 1884)
1831 – John Jones Ross, Canadian lawyer and politician, 7th Premier of Quebec (d. 1901)
1832 – Wilhelm Wundt, German physician, psychologist, and physiologist (d. 1920)
1842 – Jakob Rosanes, Ukrainian-German mathematician, chess player, and academic (d. 1922)
1845 – Gabriel Lippmann, Luxembourger-French physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1921)
1848 – Vladimir Sukhomlinov, Russian general (d. 1926)
1855 – James McGowen, Australian politician, 18th Premier of New South Wales (d. 1922)
1856 – Aparicio Saravia, Uruguayan general and politician (d. 1904)
1858 – Arthur Achleitner, German author (d. 1927)
1860 – Martin Hawke, 7th Baron Hawke, English-Scottish cricketer (d. 1938)
1860 – Jules Laforgue, Uruguayan-French poet and author (d. 1887)
1862 – Amos Alonzo Stagg, American baseball player and coach (d. 1965)
1864 – Elsie Inglis, Scottish surgeon and suffragette (d. 1917)
1865 – Mary Gilmore, Australian socialist, poet and journalist (d. 1962)
1868 – Bernarr Macfadden, American bodybuilder and publisher, founded Macfadden Publications (d. 1955)
1876 – Ivan Bilibin, Russian illustrator and stage designer (d. 1942)
1877 – Roque Ruaño, Spanish priest and engineer (d. 1935)
1882 – Désiré Mérchez, French swimmer and water polo player (d. 1968)
1884 – Hugo Gernsback, Luxembourger-American author and publisher (d. 1967)
1888 – T. E. Lawrence, British colonel, diplomat, writer and archaeologist (d. 1935)
1888 – Armand J. Piron, American violinist, composer, and bandleader (d. 1943)
1892 – Hal Foster, Canadian-American author and illustrator (d. 1982)
1892 – Otto Messmer, American cartoonist and animator, co-created Felix the Cat (d. 1983)
1894 – George Meany, American plumber and labor leader (d. 1980)
1895 – Albert Cohen, Greek-Swiss author and playwright (d. 1981)
1895 – Liane Haid, Austrian-Swiss actress and singer (d. 2000)
1895 – Arthur Rose Eldred, First Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America (d. 1951)
1900 – Ida Browne, Australian geologist and palaeontologist (d. 1976)
1901–present
1902 – Georgette Heyer, English author (d. 1974)
1902 – Wallace Thurman, American author and playwright (d. 1934)
1904 – Minoru Genda, Japanese general, pilot, and politician (d. 1989)
1904 – Wendell Meredith Stanley, American biochemist and virologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1971)
1908 – Orlando Cole, American cellist and educator (d. 2010)
1908 – William Keepers Maxwell, Jr., American editor, novelist, short story writer, and essayist (d. 2000)
1909 – Paul Callaway, American organist and conductor (d. 1995)
1910 – Gloria Blondell, American actress (d. 1986)
1910 – Mae Clarke, American actress (d. 1992)
1911 – E. F. Schumacher, German economist and statistician (d. 1977)
1912 – Ted Drake, English footballer and manager (d. 1995)
1913 – Menachem Begin, Belarusian-Israeli politician, Prime Minister of Israel, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1992)
1915 – Al Hibbler, American baritone singer (d. 2001)
1916 – Iggy Katona, American race car driver (d. 2003)
1917 – Matt Christopher, American author (d. 1997)
1917 – Roque Cordero, Panamanian composer and educator (d. 2008)
1919 – Karl-Heinz Euling, German captain (d. 2014)
1920 – Charles Bukowski, German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer (d. 1994)
1922 – James Casey, English comedian, radio scriptwriter and producer (d. 2011)
1922 – Ernie Freeman, American pianist and bandleader (d. 2001)
1923 – Millôr Fernandes, Brazilian journalist and playwright (d. 2012)
1924 – Fess Parker, American actor (d. 2010)
1924 – Inez Voyce, American baseball player (d. 2022)
1925 – Willie Jones, American baseball player (d. 1983)
1925 – Mal Waldron, American pianist and composer (d. 2002)
1927 – Lois Nettleton, American actress (d. 2008)
1928 – Ann Blyth, American actress and singer
1928 – Eydie Gormé, American singer (d. 2013)
1928 – Ara Güler, Turkish photographer and journalist (d. 2018)
1928 – Eddie Kirkland, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2011)
1928 – Wyatt Tee Walker, American pastor, theologian, and activist (d. 2018)
1929 – Bill Evans, American pianist and composer (d. 1980)
1929 – Helmut Rahn, German footballer (d. 2003)
1929 – Fritz Von Erich, American wrestler and trainer (d. 1997)
1930 – Robert Culp, American actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 2010)
1930 – Frank Gifford, American football player, sportscaster, and actor (d. 2015)
1930 – Leslie Manigat, Haitian educator and politician, 43rd President of Haiti (d. 2014)
1930 – Flor Silvestre, Mexican singer and actress (d. 2020)
1933 – Reiner Kunze, German poet and translator
1933 – Tom Maschler, English author and publisher (d. 2020)
1933 – Julie Newmar, American actress
1933 – Stuart Roosa, American colonel, pilot, and astronaut (d. 1994)
1934 – Angela Buxton, British tennis player (d. 2020)
1934 – Diana Wynne Jones, English author (d. 2011)
1934 – Douglas Kirkland, Canadian-American photographer (d. 2022)
1934 – Ketty Lester, American singer and actress
1934 – Pierre Richard, French actor, director, and screenwriter
1934 – John Standing, English actor
1934 – Sam Trimble, Australian cricketer (d. 2019)
1935 – Cliff Fletcher, Canadian businessman
1935 – Andreas Stamatiadis, Greek footballer and coach
1936 – Anita Gillette, American actress and singer
1936 – Alan Hodgkinson, English footballer and coach (d. 2015)
1937 – David Anderson, Canadian journalist, lawyer, and politician
1937 – David Behrman, American composer and producer
1937 – Ian Deans, Canadian politician (d. 2016)
1937 – Boris Rõtov, Estonian chess player (d. 1987)
1939 – Seán Brady, Irish cardinal
1939 – Trevor McDonald, Trinidadian-English journalist and academic
1939 – Billy Joe Shaver, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2020)
1939 – Eric Weissberg, American singer, banjo player, and multi-instrumentalist (d. 2020)
1940 – Bruce Beresford, Australian director and producer
1942 – Lesley Turner Bowrey, Australian tennis player
1942 – Barbara George, American R&B singer-songwriter (d. 2006)
1942 – Robert Squirrel Lester, American soul singer (d. 2010)
1943 – Woody Peoples, American football player (d. 2010)
1944 – Kevin Ayers, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2013)
1945 – Bob Balaban, American actor, director, and producer
1945 – Russell Brookes, English race car driver (d. 2019)
1945 – Suzanne Farrell, American ballerina and educator
1945 – Gary Loizzo, American guitarist, singer, recording engineer, and record producer (d. 2016)
1945 – Nigel Terry, British stage and film actor (d. 2015)
1946 – Masoud Barzani, Iranian-Kurdish politician, President of Iraqi Kurdistan
1946 – Lesley Ann Warren, American actress
1947 – Carol Moseley Braun, American lawyer and politician, United States Ambassador to New Zealand
1947 – Katharine Hamnett, English fashion designer
1948 – Earl Blumenauer, American politician, U.S. Representative from Oregon
1948 – Barry Hay, Indian-born Dutch rock musician
1948 – Mike Jorgensen, American baseball player and manager
1948 – Pierre Reid, Canadian educator and politician (d. 2021)
1948 – Joey Spampinato, American singer-songwriter and bass player
1949 – Scott Asheton, American drummer (d. 2014)
1949 – Paul Pasqualoni, American football player and coach
1949 – Bill Spooner, American guitarist and songwriter
1950 – Hasely Crawford, Trinidadian runner
1950 – Marshall Manesh, Iranian-American actor
1950 – Jeff Thomson, Australian cricketer
1951 – Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, Nigerian businessman and politician, 13th President of Nigeria (d. 2010)
1952 – Reginald VelJohnson, American actor
1953 – Kathie Lee Gifford, American talk show host, singer, and actress
1953 – James "J.T." Taylor, American R&B singer-songwriter
1954 – James Cameron, Canadian director, producer, and screenwriter
1954 – George Galloway, Scottish-English politician and broadcaster
1955 – Jeff Perry, American actor
1955 – James Reilly, Irish surgeon and politician, Minister for Children and Youth Affairs
1956 – Vahan Hovhannisyan, Armenian soldier and politician (d. 2014)
1957 – Laura Innes, American actress and director
1957 – R. R. Patil, Indian lawyer and politician, Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra (d. 2015)
1958 – Madonna, American singer-songwriter, producer, actress, and director
1958 – Angela Bassett, American actress
1958 – Anne L'Huillier, French physicist
1958 – José Luis Clerc, Argentinian tennis player and coach
1959 – Marc Sergeant, Belgian cyclist and manager
1960 – Rosita Baltazar, Belizean choreographer, dancer, and dance instructor (d. 2015)
1960 – Timothy Hutton, American actor, producer and director
1960 – Franz Welser-Möst, Austrian-American conductor and director
1961 – Christian Okoye, American football player
1962 – Steve Carell, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
1963 – Aloísio Pires Alves, Brazilian footballer and manager
1963 – Christine Cavanaugh, American voice artist (d. 2014)
1964 – Jimmy Arias, American tennis player and sportscaster
1966 – Eddie Olczyk, American ice hockey player, coach, and commentator
1967 – Mark Coyne, Australian rugby league player
1967 – Ulrika Jonsson, Swedish journalist, actress, and author
1968 – Arvind Kejriwal, Indian civil servant and politician, 7th Chief Minister of Delhi
1968 – Andy Milder, American actor
1968 – Mateja Svet, Slovenian skier
1968 – Wolfgang Tillmans, German photographer
1970 – Bonnie Bernstein, American journalist and sportscaster
1970 – Manisha Koirala, Nepalese actress in Indian films
1970 – Seth Peterson, American actor
1971 – Stefan Klos, German footballer
1972 – Stan Lazaridis, Australian footballer
1972 – Emily Strayer, American singer and musician
1974 – Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Guyanese cricketer
1974 – Didier Cuche, Swiss skier
1974 – Krisztina Egerszegi, Hungarian swimmer
1974 – Iván Hurtado, Ecuadorian footballer and politician
1974 – Ryan Longwell, American football player
1975 – Didier Agathe, French footballer
1975 – Jonatan Johansson, Finnish footballer, coach, and manager
1975 – George Stults, American actor
1975 – Taika Waititi, New Zealand director, screenwriter and actor
1979 – Paul Gallacher, Scottish footballer
1979 – Ian Moran, Australian cricketer
1980 – Vanessa Carlton, American singer-songwriter
1980 – Bob Hardy, English bass player
1980 – Emerson Ramos Borges, Brazilian footballer
1980 – Piet Rooijakkers, Dutch cyclist
1981 – Roque Santa Cruz, Paraguayan footballer
1982 – Cam Gigandet, American actor
1982 – Joleon Lescott, English footballer
1983 – Nikolaos Zisis, Greek basketball player
1984 – Matteo Anesi, Italian speed skater
1984 – Candice Dupree, American basketball player
1984 – Konstantin Vassiljev, Estonian footballer
1985 – Cristin Milioti, American actress
1986 – Yu Darvish, Japanese baseball player
1986 – Martín Maldonado, Puerto Rican baseball player
1986 – Shawn Pyfrom, American actor
1987 – Carey Price, Canadian ice hockey player
1987 – Eri Kitamura, Japanese voice actress and singer.
1988 – Ismaïl Aissati, Moroccan footballer
1988 – Ryan Kerrigan, American football player
1988 – Rumer Willis, American actress
1989 – Cedric Alexander, American wrestler
1989 – Wang Hao, Chinese race walker
1989 – Moussa Sissoko, French footballer
1990 – Godfrey Oboabona, Nigerian footballer
1991 – José Eduardo de Araújo, Brazilian footballer
1991 – Evanna Lynch, Irish actress
1991 – Young Thug, American rapper, singer and songwriter
1992 – Diego Schwartzman, Argentinian tennis player
1993 – Cameron Monaghan, American actor and model
1996 – Caeleb Dressel, American swimmer
1997 – Greyson Chance, American musician
1999 – Karen Chen, American figure skater
Deaths
Pre-1600
AD 79 – Empress Ma, Chinese Han dynasty consort (b. 40)
856 – Theutbald I, bishop of Langres
963 – Marianos Argyros, Byzantine general (b. 944)
1027 – George I of Georgia (b. 998)
1153 – Bernard de Tremelay, fourth Grand Master of the Knights Templar
1225 – Hōjō Masako, Japanese regent and onna-bugeisha (b. 1156)
1258 – Theodore II Laskaris, Byzantine-Greek emperor (b. 1222)
1285 – Philip I, Count of Savoy (b. 1207)
1297 – John II of Trebizond (b. 1262)
1327 – Roch, French saint (b. 1295)
1339 – Azzone Visconti, founder of the state of Milan (b. 1302)
1358 – Albert II, Duke of Austria (b. 1298)
1419 – Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia (b. 1361)
1443 – Ashikaga Yoshikatsu, Japanese shōgun (b. 1434)
1492 – Beatrice of Silva, Dominican nun
1518 – Loyset Compère, French composer (b. 1445)
1532 – John, Elector of Saxony (b. 1468)
1601–1900
1661 – Thomas Fuller, English historian and author (b. 1608)
1678 – Andrew Marvell, English poet and author (b. 1621)
1705 – Jacob Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician and theorist (b. 1654)
1733 – Matthew Tindal, English philosopher and author (b. 1657)
1791 – Charles-François de Broglie, marquis de Ruffec, French soldier and diplomat (b. 1719)
1836 – Marc-Antoine Parseval, French mathematician and theorist (b. 1755)
1855 – Henry Colburn, English publisher (b. 1785)
1861 – Ranavalona I, Queen consort of Kingdom of Madagascar and then sovereign (b. 1778)
1878 – Richard Upjohn, English-American architect (b. 1802)
1886 – Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Indian mystic and philosopher (b. 1836)
1887 – Webster Paulson, English civil engineer (b. 1837)
1888 – John Pemberton, American pharmacist and chemist, invented Coca-Cola (b. 1831)
1893 – Jean-Martin Charcot, French neurologist and academic (b. 1825)
1899 – Robert Bunsen, German chemist and academic (b. 1811)
1900 – José Maria de Eça de Queirós, Portuguese journalist and author (b. 1845)
1901–present
1904 – Prentiss Ingraham, American soldier and author (b. 1843)
1911 – Patrick Francis Moran, Irish-Australian cardinal (b. 1830)
1914 – Carl Theodor Schulz, German-Norwegian gardener (b. 1835)
1916 – George Scott, English footballer (b. 1885)
1920 – Henry Daglish, Australian politician, Premier of Western Australia (b. 1866)
1921 – Peter I of Serbia (b. 1844)
1938 – Andrej Hlinka, Slovak priest, journalist, and politician (b. 1864)
1938 – Robert Johnson, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1911)
1945 – Takijirō Ōnishi, Japanese admiral (b. 1891)
1948 – Babe Ruth, American baseball player and coach (b. 1895)
1949 – Margaret Mitchell, American journalist and author (b. 1900)
1952 – Lydia Field Emmet, American painter and academic (b. 1866)
1956 – Bela Lugosi, Hungarian-American actor (b. 1882)
1957 – Irving Langmuir, American chemist and physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1881)
1958 – Jacob M. Lomakin, Soviet Consul General in New York City, journalist and economist (b. 1904)
1959 – William Halsey, Jr., American admiral (b. 1882)
1959 – Wanda Landowska, Polish-French harpsichord player (b. 1879)
1961 – Abdul Haq, Pakistani linguist and scholar (b. 1870)
1963 – Joan Eardley, British artist (b. 1921)
1971 – Spyros Skouras, Greek-American businessman (b. 1893)
1972 – Pierre Brasseur, French actor and screenwriter (b. 1905)
1973 – Selman Waksman, Ukrainian-American biochemist and microbiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1888)
1977 – Elvis Presley, American singer and actor (b. 1935)
1978 – Alidius Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer, Dutch soldier and politician, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies (b. 1888)
1979 – John Diefenbaker, Canadian lawyer and politician, 13th Prime Minister of Canada (b. 1895)
1983 – Earl Averill, American baseball player (b. 1902)
1984 – Duško Radović, Serbian children's writer, poet, journalist, aphorist and TV editor (b. 1922)
1986 – Ronnie Aird, English cricketer and administrator (b. 1902)
1986 – Jaime Sáenz, Bolivian author and poet (b. 1921)
1989 – Amanda Blake, American actress (b. 1929)
1990 – Pat O'Connor, New Zealand wrestler and trainer (b. 1925)
1991 – Luigi Zampa, Italian director and screenwriter (b. 1905)
1992 – Mark Heard, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (b. 1951)
1993 – Stewart Granger, English-American actor (b. 1913)
1997 – Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Pakistani musician and Qawwali singer (b. 1948)
1997 – Sultan Ahmad Nanupuri, Bangladeshi Islamic scholar and teacher (b. 1914)
1998 – Phil Leeds, American actor (b. 1916)
1998 – Dorothy West, American journalist and author (b. 1907)
2002 – Abu Nidal, Palestinian terrorist leader (b. 1937)
2002 – Jeff Corey, American actor (b. 1914)
2002 – John Roseboro, American baseball player and coach (b. 1933)
2003 – Idi Amin, Ugandan field marshal and politician, 3rd President of Uganda (b. 1928)
2004 – Ivan Hlinka, Czech ice hockey player and coach (b. 1950)
2004 – Balanadarajah Iyer, Sri Lankan journalist and poet (b. 1957)
2004 – Carl Mydans, American photographer and journalist (b. 1907)
2004 – Robert Quiroga, American boxer (b. 1969)
2005 – Vassar Clements, American fiddler (b. 1928)
2005 – Tonino Delli Colli, Italian cinematographer (b. 1922)
2005 – William Corlett, English novelist and playwright (b. 1938)
2005 – Frère Roger, Swiss monk and mystic (b. 1915)
2006 – Alfredo Stroessner, Paraguayan general and dictator; 46th President of Paraguay (b. 1912)
2007 – Bahaedin Adab, Iranian engineer and politician (b. 1945)
2008 – Dorival Caymmi, Brazilian singer-songwriter and actor (b. 1914)
2008 – Ronnie Drew, Irish musician, folk singer and actor (b. 1934)
2008 – Masanobu Fukuoka, Japanese farmer and author (b. 1913)
2010 – Dimitrios Ioannidis, Greek general (b. 1923)
2011 – Mihri Belli, Turkish activist and politician (b. 1916)
2012 – Princess Lalla Amina of Morocco (b. 1954)
2012 – Martine Franck, Belgian photographer and director (b. 1938)
2012 – Abune Paulos, Ethiopian patriarch (b. 1935)
2012 – William Windom, American actor (b. 1923)
2013 – David Rees, Welsh mathematician and academic (b. 1918)
2014 – Patrick Aziza, Nigerian general and politician, Governor of Kebbi State (b. 1947)
2014 – Vsevolod Nestayko, Ukrainian author (b. 1930)
2014 – Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, Italian-South African lawyer and politician (b. 1960)
2014 – Peter Scholl-Latour, German journalist, author, and academic (b. 1924)
2015 – Jacob Bekenstein, Mexican-American physicist, astronomer, and academic (b. 1947)
2015 – Anna Kashfi, British actress (b. 1934)
2015 – Shuja Khanzada, Pakistani colonel and politician (b. 1943)
2015 – Mile Mrkšić, Serb general (b. 1947)
2016 – João Havelange, Brazilian water polo player, lawyer, and businessman (b. 1916)
2016 – John McLaughlin, American television personality (b. 1927)
2018 – Aretha Franklin, American singer-songwriter (b. 1942)
2018 – Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Indian prime minister (b. 1924)
2018 – Wakako Yamauchi, American-Japanese writer (b. 1924)
2019 – Peter Fonda, American actor, director, and screenwriter. (b. 1940)
2019 – Richard Williams, Canadian-British animator (b. 1933)
2021 – Sean Lock, English comedian and actor (b. 1963)
2023 – Howard S. Becker, American sociologist (b. 1928)
Holidays and observances
Bennington Battle Day (Vermont, United States)
Children's Day (Paraguay)
Christian feast day:
Ana Petra Pérez Florido
Armel (Armagillus)
Diomedes of Tarsus
Roch
Stephen I of Hungary
Translation of the Acheiropoietos icon from Edessa to Constantinople. (Eastern Orthodox Church)
August 16 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Gozan no Okuribi (Kyoto, Japan)
National Airborne Day (United States)
Restoration Day (Dominican Republic)
The first day of the Independence Days, celebrates the independence of Gabon from France in 1960.
Xicolatada (Palau-de-Cerdagne, France)
References
External links
"On This Day". BBC.
The New York Times: On This Day
"Historical Events on August 16". OnThisDay.com. |
James_%22J.T.%22_Taylor | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_%22J.T.%22_Taylor | [
763
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_%22J.T.%22_Taylor"
] | James "J.T." Warren Taylor (born August 16, 1953) is an American singer who achieved fame as the lead singer of Kool & the Gang between 1979 and 1988.
Taylor joined Kool & the Gang in 1979 and remained with the group for nine years. His tenure as lead singer was the most successful era in the band's history with the albums Ladies' Night (1979), Celebrate! (1980) and Emergency (1984) and hit singles including "Ladies' Night", the US No. 1 "Celebration", "Get Down on It", "Joanna", "Misled" and "Cherish".
Taylor left the group in 1989 to begin a solo career but has reunited with the band a few times for concerts, also recording one last album with them in 1996.
Early life
Taylor was born on August 16, 1953, in Laurens, South Carolina, and grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey. Before his rise to fame, he was a teacher and night club singer, having first joined a band at the age of 13. In 1978 he played with Milton Galfas, Christopher Galfas, and Eleton Johns in Full Force. He left Full Force when Christopher Galfas brought him to his brother's House of Music studio to audition for Kool & the Gang.
Kool & the Gang
Taylor joined the band in 1979 after the group auditioned for a lead singer. He noted that vocals added more warmth to the songs, especially to ballads, which the group had avoided as no one could sing them properly. Taylor also recalled some resistance from some members and the group of female singers they had used on The Force and Everybody's Dancin'. In 1979, the band recorded and released Ladies' Night, which became their most successful album since their formation helped by the singles "Too Hot" and "Ladies' Night", which went to No. 5 and No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, respectively. In January 1980, Ladies' Night was certified platinum by the RIAA for selling one million copies in the US.
In September 1980, the band released the album Celebrate! It became a bigger commercial success than Ladies' Night; the lead single "Celebration" remains the band's only single to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. The song originated from the lyric "Come on, let's all celebrate" from "Ladies' Night" which inspired Robert Bell to write a song that he described as "an international anthem." The band developed the song on a tour bus after attending the American Music Awards. The song was used in national media coverage for the 1980 World Series, the 1981 Super Bowl, the 1981 NBA Finals, and the 1981 return of the Iran hostages.
After the release of Something Special (1981), which continued the level of success of the previous two albums, the band recorded As One (1982), their fourth and final album with producer Eumir Deodato. The latter struggled to reach gold certification in the US, which led to the band's decision to end their time with Deodato as they had enough with the direction they had adopted. They then decided to produce their next album, In the Heart (1983), by themselves with Jim Bonnefond as co-producer. The album contained the US top-five single "Joanna". The song was declared the most-played pop song in 1984 by Broadcast Music International. Bonnefond stayed with the group for Emergency (1984), which remains their highest selling album with over two million copies sold in the US. It spawned four US top 20 singles, including "Emergency", "Cherish", "Fresh", and "Misled". This feat made Kool & the Gang the only band to have four top 20 singles from a single album in 1985.
In June 1984, Kool & the Gang took time off from recording Emergency to perform at Wembley Stadium as part of a sold-out summer concert organised by Elton John. That November, during a visit to Phonogram's offices in London, Bob Geldof arrived to pitch his idea of the multi-artist charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" to the label. Kool & the Gang participated in the project.
The group's seventeenth album, Forever, was released in November 1986. The album included two hit singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart: "Victory" (US #10, R&B #2) and "Stone Love" (US #10, R&B #4). Two further singles, "Holiday" and "Special Way" were also released from the album; the former reached the top ten on the R&B Chart, the latter hit reached #6 on the Adult Contemporary chart. By 1986, the band had scored 14 top 40 singles in the US since 1980, more than Michael Jackson. In July 1986, the band recorded a special version of "Celebration" with different vocals that was used in an advertisement for Wendy's.
In 1987, the band completed a 50-city tour of the US. The tour included the group establishing their own public service program, devised by Robert Bell and Taylor, which encouraged school children to pursue education, giving free tickets to those with perfect attendance. The group rehearsed their stage show with a choreographer at Prince's studio at Paisley Park. At the time of the tour's start, the band ceased producing adverts with Schlitz beer because of their new image towards children and that they felt it had run its course. After the tour, Taylor left Kool & the Gang to pursue a solo career, but briefly returned in 1996 for the State of Affairs album. He has also reunited with the band a few times in live concerts.
In 2024, Taylor was selected for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a member of Kool & the Gang.
Solo career
In 1988, Taylor pursued a solo career and has released four solo albums to date.
He scored an immediate solo hit with "All I Want Is Forever", a duet with Regina Belle, which was featured on the soundtrack to the early-1989 Gregory Hines film, Tap. The song later appeared as a bonus track on CD editions of Taylor's debut solo album, Master of the Game, along with Belle's next solo album, both of which were released that same year. Master of the Game produced several additional hits, including the single "The Promised Land" which also appeared on the soundtrack of Ghostbusters II.
In 1991, Taylor released his second solo album, Feel the Need, which garnered the hits "Long Hot Summer Night" and "Heart to Heart", a duet with Stephanie Mills.
1993 saw the release of the singer's third solo album, Baby I'm Back, followed by his fourth solo album in 2000 titled A Brand New Me.
Acting career
In the 1990s, Taylor began his acting career in the 1992 Hollywood film The Mambo Kings and the long-running Broadway musical Raisin.
Discography
With Kool & the Gang
Studio albums
Singles
Solo
Studio albums
Singles
References
External links
James "J.T." Taylor at AllMusic
James "J.T." Taylor at Discogs
Facebook page
Myspace |
List_of_MLS_Cup_finals | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MLS_Cup_finals | [
764
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MLS_Cup_finals#Results_by_team"
] | The MLS Cup is the annual championship match of Major League Soccer (MLS), the top-level men's soccer league for the United States and Canada. The match marks the conclusion of the MLS Cup Playoffs, a five-round knockout competition contested by the top nine teams from each of the league's two conferences. The playoffs tournament is organized by the league at the end of the regular season in a format which is similar to other professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada, but unlike most soccer leagues. The league also awards the Supporters' Shield to teams that have the most points during the regular season. Both the MLS Cup champion and Supporters' Shield winner qualify for the CONCACAF Champions League, contested by the champions of CONCACAF leagues in North America, Central America, and the Caribbean. The MLS Cup champion also qualifies for the Campeones Cup, a friendly held since 2018 against the winners of the Mexican Campeón de Campeones from Liga MX.
First contested in 1996, the MLS Cup was originally hosted by a predetermined neutral site selected by the league before the regular season. Since the 2012 edition, the match has been hosted by the remaining team with the highest regular season standing. The final, originally contested in October, was moved to November and later December as the length of the regular season and playoffs were extended by the league. The playoffs originally allowed for lower-ranked seeds, known as wild cards, to be placed into different sides of the bracket regardless of their actual conference. As a result, several MLS Cups have featured two teams from the same conference.
The Columbus Crew are the reigning cup-holders, having defeated Los Angeles FC in the 2023 final for their third title. The LA Galaxy hold the record for most MLS Cup titles, having won five times in nine appearances. The championship has been won by the same team in two or more consecutive years on three occasions, and the match has featured consecutive sets of finalists on three occasions. Four finals have featured two teams participating as finalists for the first time. Nine teams have also won "the double", claiming the MLS Cup and either the Supporters' Shield, the U.S. Open Cup, or the Canadian Championship during the same season; only Toronto FC has won a treble, having achieved it in 2017. Landon Donovan has played in seven MLS Cup finals and totaled 726 minutes—both competition records.
The highest recorded attendance for the MLS Cup was set in the 2018 final, with 73,019 spectators at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia. From 1996 to 2008, the English broadcast of the MLS Cup was carried in the United States on terrestrial network ABC; it was moved to sister channel ESPN for the following seven editions. From 2015 to 2022, ESPN and Fox held rights to alternating editions of the cup; the 2019 cup, originally slated to be broadcast on ESPN, was moved to ABC. The Spanish language rights for the MLS Cup in the U.S. were awarded to Univision in 2007 and the match was aired on their various networks until 2023. The U.S. linear television rights beginning in 2023 are held by Fox in English and Fox Deportes in Spanish; the MLS Cup final will air on those channels as well as Apple TV+'s MLS Season Pass streaming service worldwide. In Canada, the MLS Cup has been broadcast in English by TSN since 2011 and in French by TVA Sports since 2017. The largest television audience for an MLS Cup broadcast was the 2016 final, which drew 3.5 million viewers in the United States and Canada.
Finals
Results by team
As of the 2023 season, a total of 32 teams have competed in MLS. Nineteen of these teams have appeared in a cup final, with fifteen of these teams having won the MLS Cup. In the table below, teams are ordered first by the number of appearances in an MLS Cup Final, then by the number of wins, and finally by alphabetical order. In the "Years of Appearance" column, bold years indicate a winning MLS Cup appearance.
Stadiums
From 1996 to 2011, the MLS Cup was hosted by a neutral site selected before the start of the season in a manner similar to the National Football League's Super Bowl championship. Three teams advanced to the final after being named as hosts: D.C. United in 1997, the New England Revolution in 2002, and the LA Galaxy in 2011. Since the 2012 edition, the match has been hosted by the finalist with the highest regular season standing. Several teams with smaller or inadequate stadiums have also considered using larger American football stadiums to host the MLS Cup, but all post-2012 editions have been played at regular MLS venues. The move towards a non-neutral venue was deemed a risk due to the cold November and December weather in some northern cities, as well as the lack of adequate stadiums for some teams.
The MLS Cup has been hosted in 14 stadiums across 10 metropolitan areas in the United States and Canada. Dignity Health Sports Park, previously named the Home Depot Center and StubHub Center, in Carson, California, has hosted the MLS Cup the most times of any venue, with six editions between 2003 and 2014. The Los Angeles metropolitan area has hosted the MLS Cup eight times at three venues: the Rose Bowl, Dignity Health Sports Park, and Banc of California Stadium. The largest attendance for an MLS Cup final was the 2018 edition at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, with 73,019 spectators; the smallest was in 2020 at Mapfre Stadium in Columbus, Ohio, with only 1,500 spectators allowed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Three editions have been hosted outside the United States, all at BMO Field in Toronto, Canada. Since the move to non-neutral venues, 10 of 13 MLS Cups have been won by the host team.
See also
List of American and Canadian soccer champions
Notes
References
External links
MLS Cup winners Archived May 29, 2023, at the Wayback Machine
Highlights from MLSsoccer.com (Archived May 18, 2020, at the Wayback Machine) |
2021_French_Open_%E2%80%93_Men's_singles | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_French_Open_%E2%80%93_Men's_singles | [
764
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_French_Open_%E2%80%93_Men%2527s_singles"
] | Novak Djokovic defeated Stefanos Tsitsipas in the final, 6–7(6–8), 2–6, 6–3, 6–2, 6–4 to win the men's singles tennis title at the 2021 French Open. It was his second French Open title and 19th major title overall.
With this victory, he became the first man to achieve the double career Grand Slam in the Open Era, and the first player in the Open Era to win a major after coming back from two sets to love down in two matches during the same major. Tsitsipas became the first Greek player to reach a major final. It also marked the second consecutive year a man trailed by two sets in a major final yet rallied to win, following Dominic Thiem's victory at the 2020 US Open.
Rafael Nadal was the four-time defending champion, but lost to Djokovic in a 4 hour and 11 minute epic semifinal. Nadal's defeat marked only his third loss out of 108 French Open matches, including his first loss in 14 semifinal appearances at the tournament. It also marked the first time that Nadal lost a match at the French Open after taking the opening set, and the first French Open where a player defeated Nadal and went on to win the tournament. In winning this match, Djokovic became the only man ever to defeat Nadal two times at the French Open.
Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev were in contention for the world No. 1 ranking; Djokovic retained the ranking after Medvedev lost in the quarterfinals.
Nadal and Roger Federer were attempting to win a record 21st major title and become the outright leader in the men's singles major tally. Federer, like Djokovic, was attempting to become the first man in the Open Era to achieve the double career Grand Slam in what would prove to be his final French Open appearance. This was the first time in major history that Djokovic, Federer, and Nadal, the three most successful men's singles major champions of all time, were in the same half of the main draw. After both reached the semifinals, Djokovic and Nadal met for a record-extending 58th time in the Open Era, with Djokovic emerging victorious in four sets.
For the first time in the Open Era, no French players reached the third round. This tournament also marked the last time that any Grand Slam featured Nadal, Federer and Djokovic together, thus marking an end of the "Big Three" era. Thiem's first-round defeat guaranteed a new French Open finalist from the bottom half of the draw; Tsitsipas ultimately emerged as that finalist. Carlos Alcaraz became the youngest player since Djokovic in 2005 to win a match at the French Open, and was also the youngest player to reach the third round at the tournament since Andrei Medvedev in 1992. This was the first time since 2004 that a French Open men's singles final went to five sets; on that occasion, Gastón Gaudio also came from two sets down to win the title.
Seeds
Click on the seed number of a player to go to their draw section.
Draw
Key
Finals
Top half
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Bottom half
Section 5
Section 6
Section 7
Section 8
Seeded players
The following are the seeded players. Seedings are based on ATP rankings as of 24 May 2021. Rankings and points before are as of 31 May 2021. Because the tournament was moved a week, points of the week of 10 June 2019 include results from Stuttgart and 's-Hertogenbosch.
As announced by the ATP in March 2021, tournaments from 4 March to 4 August 2019 points due to COVID ranking adjustments will count 50%, including their 2020 points whichever is greater. 2019 points which are higher will still be dropped as normal. Accordingly, the higher of each player's 2019 or 2020 points will be replaced by his 2021 points at the end of the tournament. Note that this is a different ranking adjustment system than the one being used by the WTA for the women's event.
† The player did not qualify for the tournament in 2019. Therefore, this represents his points from the 2019 ATP Challenger Tour.
Withdrawn players
The following players would have been seeded, but withdrew before the tournament began.
Other entry information
Wild cards
The following players were awarded wild cards into the main draw.
Protected ranking
Qualifiers
Lucky losers
Withdrawals
Before the tournament
During the tournament
Retirements
Explanatory notes
References
External links
Main draw
2021 French Open – Men's draws at the Roland Garros
2021 French Open – Men's draws and results at the International Tennis Federation |
2010_G20_Toronto_summit | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_G20_Toronto_summit | [
765
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_G20_Toronto_summit"
] | The 2010 G20 Toronto summit was the fourth meeting of the G20 heads of state/government, to discuss the global financial system and the world economy, which took place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, during June 26–27, 2010. The summit's priorities included evaluating the progress of financial reform, developing sustainable stimulus measures, debating global bank tax, and promoting open markets. Alongside the twenty-one representatives of the G20 major economies, leaders of six invited nations, and eight additional intergovernmental organizations also took part in the summit.
Prior to the summit, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that the theme would be "recovery and new beginnings," referring to an anticipated economic stimulus from the impact of the ongoing world recession. Harper initially proposed to hold the summit in Huntsville, Ontario, where the 36th G8 summit was scheduled immediately prior. Organizers later deemed the town insufficient to provide hospitality for the large number of G20 delegates and journalists, favouring Toronto as the host location.
Organizers formed an Integrated Security Unit, consisting of police officers from several regional departments, to provide security during the summit in Downtown Toronto. The event was part of the largest and most expensive security operation in Canadian history. Many hundreds of members of the public were wrongfully detained, some held in inhumane conditions. The total combined cost between the 36th G8 summit in Huntsville and the G20 summit in Toronto including security, infrastructure, and hospitality, was determined to be approximately C$858 million.
Agenda
Many leaders of the G20 disagreed about which issues should be discussed at the summit. The prime focus of the summit discussions was the recovery from the ongoing global recession and the European debt crisis. Summit leaders were divided over which strategies would be best for tackling these problems. The European Union emphasized the need to cut their deficits by focusing on austerity measures. In contrast, the United States emphasized the importance of maintaining economic stimulus spending in order to encourage growth. In summit discussions, the countries of the European Union explained projected reductions in spending and balanced budgets. Alternatively, China, India, and the United States argued in favor of increased stimulus funding to mitigate the effects of recession. Among the specifics proposed by the European Union were a global bank tax and a Robin Hood tax, but the United States and Canada opposed these plans. Other topics of concern were international development and continuing international aid to Africa and other developing nations. Some invitees expressed criticism of Israel's Gaza strip blockade and of the nuclear programs of North Korea and the United States raised issues of corruption and security in Afghanistan.
Preparations
Security
Security officials began preparing for summit security in Toronto in February 2010. General policing and patrolling was provided by the Toronto Police Service, the Ontario Provincial Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Canadian Forces, while the Peel Regional Police aided in policing at Toronto Pearson International Airport in Mississauga during the arrivals of delegates. The five departments formed an Integrated Security Unit (ISU), similar to the one created for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Additional officers were deployed from York Regional Police, Halton Regional Police Service, Barrie Police Service,Greater Sudbury Police Service, Waterloo Regional Police Service, Niagara Regional Police Service, Hamilton Police Service, Ottawa Police Service, and Service de police de la Ville de Montréal. Calgary Police Service supplied 150 volunteer police officers a week before the summit.
According to an early estimate by The Globe and Mail, 25,000 uniformed police officers, 1,000 security guards from Commissionaires Great Lakes, and several Canadian military forces were to be deployed during the summit. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) conducted Amalgam Virgo exercises on May 6 and 7 across the Greater Toronto Area using CF-18 Hornet jets, CH-124 Sea Kings, and CH-146 Griffon helicopters at low altitudes. The total cost for security at both the G8 and the G20 summits was determined to be $1.8 billion, paid entirely by the federal Crown-in-Council, excluding the costs of any possible damage to local business.
The ISU created a security perimeter, beginning with the outer boundary, specifically bordered by King Street to the north, Lake Shore Boulevard to the south, Yonge Street to the east, and Spadina Avenue to the west, where vehicles would be restricted during the summit dates. Residents who lived within the security zone were issued registration cards prior to the summit and other pedestrians who wished to enter the security zone were only able to do so at one of 38 checkpoints, where they were required to present two pieces of photo identification and provide justification for entry. The area surrounding the Metro Toronto Convention Centre itself was fenced and off-limits to civilians and protesters. The 3-metre (10 ft) high fence, contracted to SNC-Lavalin by Public Works and Government Services Canada and installed by two Gormley, Ontario-based companies, was built at a cost of $5.5-million and installation began on June 7. The Toronto Police Service installed 77 additional closed-circuit television security cameras in the area and purchased four Long Range Acoustic Devices which were to be in use exclusively during the summit. The ISU decided on also using water cannons for riot control.
The security perimeter even extended into the waters of Lake Ontario and included a Maritime Security Operation with numerous Police vessels and the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Griffon patrolling to discourage international demonstrators from unlawful entry into Canada.
Infrastructure
A former film studio located on Eastern Avenue was designated as a temporary detention centre for individuals arrested during the summit. Toronto Police Service announced that Trinity Bellwoods Park would be the designated protest area, but following opposition from local residents, police relocated the designated protest zone to the northern part of Queen's Park. Canada Post declared that it would remove post boxes in the security zone. Toronto Parking Authority removed some parking meters as well. Small trees along sidewalks around the convention centre were removed to prevent them from being used as weapons by protesters. Other removed municipal properties include 745 newspaper boxes, 200 public trash cans, 70 mailboxes, 29 bus shelters, and 5 public information boards.
Canada's largest banks, which are headquartered in Downtown Toronto, made plans to have employees work at alternate sites outside their downtown facilities, such as at home or in other branches. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) announced the closure of seven liquor stores in the downtown core during the summit as a precaution to looting. The PATH, CN Tower, University of Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Ontario Legislative Building were also closed to public during the summit dates.
A three-game Major League Baseball series between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Philadelphia Phillies, scheduled June 25 to 27 at the Rogers Centre, was relocated to Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, after much discussion by league officials and amidst discontentment from fans, who highly anticipated the return of former Blue Jays pitcher Roy Halladay to Toronto after being traded to the Phillies; because the American League Blue Jays was still officially the "home" team, the series marked the first time in Major League history that the designated hitter was used in a National League ballpark during the regular season. Mirvish Productions cancelled performances of two musicals at its theatres, Rock of Ages and Mamma Mia!, during the week of the summit. Similarly, the Factory Theatre cancelled shows during the summit week.
Highway 427 and the Gardiner Expressway, the route from Toronto Pearson International Airport in Mississauga to the Convention Centre in downtown, periodically closed down for motorcades, and police jammed wireless reception along the two highways. Exits to Yonge Street and Bay Street from the Gardiner Expressway were closed during the summit dates. Toronto Transit Commission announced that subway stations near the convention centre would remain open and operational, despite some detoured bus routes and the closure of Queens Quay Station. Via Rail announced that it would not operate at Union Station during the summit dates, instead providing shuttle bus service from the Yorkdale and Scarborough Centre bus terminals to the Brampton and Oshawa stations respectively. Nav Canada announced that it would place restrictions on the airspace in Toronto, making it limited to commercial flights only while all others would be restricted within a 30-nautical-mile (56 km) radius. Porter Airlines received permission to continue flights to and from Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport. The Toronto District School Board and Toronto Catholic District School Board cancelled school bus services to six Downtown schools on June 25, affecting 45,000 students, 10,000 of whom were physically disabled.
Summit organizers established a media centre for international media personnel, journalists, and press reporters at the Direct Energy Centre at the Exhibition Place. The Federal and Ontario governments constructed a 20,000-square-foot (1,858 m2) pavilion, called Experience Canada or Canadian Corridor in the media centre to promote Canadian tourism internationally. The pavilion included three life-sized government-funded displays: Cityscape, which showcased successful Canadian businesses and innovation; The Bridge, which included information kiosks for media personnel as well as large high-definition screens that televised the 2010 FIFA World Cup games; and Northern Ontario Oasis, an artificial lakefront based on Muskoka region's cottage country. The Northern Ontario Oasis included donated canoes, a shoreline with deck chairs for journalists to cool off, and a mobile phone recharging station. The background was a large screen that portrayed various images of the Muskoka region. The cost of the international media centre, the Experience Canada pavilion, and artificial lake, which were $23 million, $1.9 million, and $57,000 respectively, was the target of controversies.
Attendance
Participants of the Toronto summit were announced by Stephen Harper on May 8, 2010. Harper extended invitations to the leaders of Ethiopia and Malawi to further represent the continent of Africa along with South Africa, a G20 member. He also invited leaders of the Netherlands, Spain, Vietnam, and Nigeria.
Toronto Pearson International Airport was the port of entry for delegates attending both the G8 and G20 summits. French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Chinese president Hu Jintao were the first of the G20 leaders to arrive. The arrival of Hu coincided with his state visit to Canada, hosted by Governor General of Canada Michaëlle Jean in Ottawa. Presidents Jacob Zuma of South Africa and Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria arrived on June 24. British prime minister David Cameron arrived on June 25, following a short visit in Halifax to celebrate the centennial of the Canadian Forces Maritime Command. Remaining leaders with the G8 also arrived on the same day.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Labour Organization, as well as Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, and Vietnam made their first G20 summit appearances in Toronto. Recently designated heads of government, namely Cameron and Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan, made the G8 and G20 summits their first international conferences. Australia's deputy prime minister, Wayne Swan, attended the summit on behalf of Julia Gillard, whose appointment as prime minister occurred on June 24. Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva cancelled his trip to remain in his country due to the then-recent flooding in Northeastern Brazil; in his place, Guido Mantega, Brazil's finance minister, headed the nation's delegation. After the G8 summit in Huntsville, Ontario ended, Cameron, whose aircraft was grounded due to weather conditions, shared transportation to Toronto in Marine One with US President, Barack Obama.
Protests
Major protests occurred in downtown Toronto during the week of the summit, which abruptly escalated during the days of the summit. Early opposition to the G20 included an incident in Ottawa where a bank was firebombed by anarchists, who claimed they would be present during the G20 summit in Toronto. The perceived security threat caused the Integrated Security Unit to increase security measures.
Protests began one week ahead of the summit, organized by groups including Oxfam Canada and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. Issues such as poverty, gay rights, capitalism and globalization, indigenous rights, and controversial issues with the summit itself were the object of protests. Despite a few arrests, protests over the week were mainly determined to be peaceful.
As the first day of the summit approached, protesters grew in numbers. Several streets were closed to demonstrations on the debut of the summit. Peaceful protests were followed by black bloc tactics as individuals dressed in black dispersed from the crowd and began damaging the windows of particular businesses across downtown Toronto, mostly fast food chains, retail stores and banks, as well as local businesses. Police cruisers were set on fire and vehicles of media corporations were damaged. Nearby hospitals, shopping centres, and hotels were put in lockdown mode while public transit services were diverted from downtown to other locations.
As security was further tightened and forces increased in presence the following day, protests against police brutality occurred in front of the Eastern Avenue temporary detention centre, where nearly 500 arrested individuals were kept from the previous day's riots. A group of protesters was also "kettled" for around four-and-a-half hours, including a severe rainstorm after black bloc protesters were believed to be in the crowd. Over 1100 people were confirmed to be arrested over the week. The ISU performed sweeping arrests within a specific boundary from the summit venue. Individuals arrested during the protests condemned the treatment they received from police.
Ultimately, a constable would be convicted of assaulting a protestor and a superintendent of unlawful arrest and discreditable conduct for ordering the "kettling" incidents; both received notional punishments and kept their police jobs. In October, 2020, more than a decade after the summit, the Toronto police conceded that "there were times when matters were not addressed in the way they should have been and many hundreds of members of the public were detained or arrested when they should not have been and were held in detention in conditions that were unacceptable." They agreed to pay $16.5 million to about a thousand people they unlawfully detained or arrested in various incidents.
Outcome
Prior to the Toronto summit, it was speculated that it would not see the same outcome as previous summits. This was partially due to most countries' entering recovery mode from the global economic recession after the past G20 summits; thus, the likelihood of new issues being raised was minimal.
During the working dinner for G20 leaders on the evening of June 26, South African president [Jacob Zuma] promoted more partnership between the international community and Africa for the development in the continent. "As Africa we bring to the G20 Summit the key message that we must, together as the developing and developed worlds, promote stronger and more effective and equal international partnerships for growth and development," he remarked.
At the summit, the US president Barack Obama warned that global recovery was still "fragile." In hopes of boosting American exports, he proposed a free trade agreement between the United States and South Korea. A key agreement the leaders of developed nations made was to cut annual budget deficits in half by 2013. The leaders also agreed on reducing debt-to-GDP ratio in each economy by 2016. The debate on imposing a tax on financial institutions was settled as the group agreed that financial institutions would be required to make fair contributions to recover costs from the financial sector reform, but the manner of collecting the contributions would be left to each government. Participants also decided that the institutions would be required to keep a higher amount of financial capital in case of future financial shocks. Climate change and food security were also discussed; the leaders reiterated their commitment to a "greener growth".
The G20 Toronto Summit Declaration, which was released shortly after the summit concluded, stated that "serious challenges remain." According to the document, the challenges include high unemployment rates in various economies and the concurrent existence of the impact of the financial crisis. The International Monetary Fund, in its post-summit document, indicated that a speedy cut in deficits may substantially slow growth. In a publication entitled Top Ten Commandments for Fiscal Adjustment in Advanced Economies, the organization insisted that balanced public spending could stabilize bond markets, reduce interest rates from less government spending, and encourage private investment. It also recommended that emerging economies such as China, which has largely benefited from trade surpluses, rely less on developed nations and increase their own spending in order to promote domestic demand.
Criticism
Financial costs
The financial costs of hosting the G8 and G20 summits was the topic of several political debates and the target of criticism by local groups. The reasons for the large price for both summits were questioned by some politicians and local groups. Members of Parliament Olivia Chow and Mark Holland labelled the initially claimed budget of $1.1-billion for hosting the summits as "obscene" and "insane" while others argued that the money could have been used for long-pending municipal projects in Canada, such as Transit City. The security cost for the two summits was believed to be more expensive than the combined security costs of the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Vancouver and Whistler, British Columbia, which were $878 million. However, according to final calculations from the House of Commons of Canada as of October 2010, the exact cost for holding both summits was $857,901,850.31, making it less expensive than the security costs for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
It was initially claimed that the summits stand as the most expensive ever held, with security costs for the London and Pittsburgh reported as having been only $30 million and $18 million, respectively. However, the Canadian Parliamentary Budget Officer, Kevin Page, stated in his official report on the costs of the Huntsville and Toronto gatherings that other countries had not been as open about the full price for the similar meetings held there and that the $18 million figure for the Pittsburgh summit was merely for overtime pay for local police and the cost of law enforcement brought from other regions. Ward Elcock, former Canadian Security Intelligence Service director and the chief of the Integrated Security Units for the Winter Olympics and the G8/G20 summits, claimed that the security costs were in fact "comparable" with those of previous summits. Finance minister Jim Flaherty defended the security cost, claiming "it's necessary to spend substantially to have security. It's Canada's turn, and it's necessary that we either don't take our turn or pay the appropriate price to have the security that is necessary so that everyone is safe here in Toronto."
The creation of the $23-million international media centre, which included the $1.9 million Experience Canada pavilion and $57,000 artificial lake, at the Exhibition Place was widely opposed and criticized by politicians as "a waste of taxpayers' money." Criticism mainly targeted Stephen Harper and Canada's Conservative government. Some protesting groups gave names to the artificial lake, such as "Harper's Folly". In a debate in the House of Commons, member Mark Holland said, "Instead of hosting world leaders, maybe the government should consider party planning for Lady Gaga." According to some critics, the spending misled the objective of the summits into showing off Canada's attributes instead of promoting the summits' agendas. New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton condemned the Harper government, saying, "we've got a government here that has to create an artificial lake when Canada has more lakes than just about any other country in the world. It is the taxpayers who are going to end up at the bottom of the fake lake." Transport minister John Baird defended the artificial lake, saying that the summits gave a "chance to showcase the very best that [Canada] has to offer." Foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon said it was "normal practice" for a country to showcase its attributes while hosting world events. Harper also defended by saying, "This is a classic attempt for us to be able to market the country." Upon its opening, the artificial lake received mostly negative reviews from Canadian reporters.
Economic impact
The summit's economic impact was a major concern of a few local politicians and citizens. The City of Toronto government, as well as some public representatives, previously argued that the G20 summit should be held at an isolated venue, such as the Exhibition Place, rather than the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, which is located in the city's central business district. As a result, during the aftermath of the protests during the summit, when several business and properties in Downtown Toronto were damaged, mayor David Miller urged the federal government to compensate for all the damages. It was initially outlined by the government that only damages to businesses within the security zone would be compensated. However, all damages occurred outside of the security zone. Some businesses in the downtown core suffered financially as a result. According to Member of Parliament John McCallum, "Stephen Harper made a huge mistake in holding this summit in downtown Toronto." According to the Toronto Star, at least 40 stores in the Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Area suffered damages and one repair firm performed up to $750,000 in repairs.
International response
On June 17, the United States Department of State issued a travel alert for Toronto, warning tourists of the expected traffic disruptions and potentially violent protests during the G20 summit. The alert, which was expected to expire on the last day of the summit, stated that "Even demonstrations that are meant to be peaceful can become violent and unpredictable." Toronto Mayor David Miller described the warning as an "over-reaction."
During the summit, a few overseas reporters commented on Canada and the summits. A reporter of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) made positive remarks about Canada's economy, saying "The Canadians, it seems, have answers for even the toughest puzzles and they are keen to share their strategies with the rest of the world. Why in this economy, we all want to be Canadian." A writer in The New York Times made positive comments about the summits' preparations and natural beauty of the Muskoka region. The Times of India and The Hindu commented on impacts on city life in Toronto due to the G20 summit and the "unprecedented" security measures taken in Canada. A Reuters reporter, on the other hand, condemned the international media centre's artificial lake.
Looking forward, French president Nicolas Sarkozy announced that the costs for hosting the proposed 2011 G20 Cannes summit and 37th G8 summit in France would be one-tenth of Canada's.
See also
14th G7 summit
G20 Research Group
Notes
References
External links
Official website |
Toronto | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto | [
765
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto"
] | Toronto is the most populous city in Canada and the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the fourth-most populous city in North America. The city is the anchor of the Golden Horseshoe, an urban agglomeration of 9,765,188 people (as of 2021) surrounding the western end of Lake Ontario, while the Greater Toronto Area proper had a 2021 population of 6,712,341. Toronto is an international centre of business, finance, arts, sports, and culture and is one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world.
Indigenous peoples have travelled through and inhabited the Toronto area, located on a broad sloping plateau interspersed with rivers, deep ravines, and urban forest, for more than 10,000 years. After the broadly disputed Toronto Purchase, when the Mississauga surrendered the area to the British Crown, the British established the town of York in 1793 and later designated it as the capital of Upper Canada. During the War of 1812, the town was the site of the Battle of York and suffered heavy damage by American troops. York was renamed and incorporated in 1834 as the city of Toronto. It was designated as the capital of the province of Ontario in 1867 during Canadian Confederation. The city proper has since expanded past its original limits through both annexation and amalgamation to its current area of 630.2 km2 (243.3 sq mi).
The diverse population of Toronto reflects its current and historical role as an important destination for immigrants to Canada. About half of its residents were born outside of Canada and over 200 ethnic origins are represented among its inhabitants. While the majority of Torontonians speak English as their primary language, over 160 languages are spoken in the city. The mayor of Toronto is elected by direct popular vote to serve as the chief executive of the city. The Toronto City Council is a unicameral legislative body, comprising 25 councillors since the 2018 municipal election, representing geographical wards throughout the city.
Toronto is a prominent centre for music, theatre, motion picture production, and television production, and is home to the headquarters of Canada's major national broadcast networks and media outlets. Its varied cultural institutions, which include numerous museums and galleries, festivals and public events, entertainment districts, national historic sites, and sports activities, attract over 43 million tourists each year. Toronto is known for its many skyscrapers and high-rise buildings, in particular the CN Tower, the tallest free-standing structure on land outside of Asia.
The city is home to the Toronto Stock Exchange, the headquarters of Canada's five largest banks, and the headquarters of many large Canadian and multinational corporations. Its economy is highly diversified with strengths in technology, design, financial services, life sciences, education, arts, fashion, aerospace, environmental innovation, food services, and tourism. Toronto is the third-largest tech hub in North America after Silicon Valley and New York City, and the fastest growing hub.
Toponymy
The word Toronto has been recorded with various spellings in French and English, including Tarento, Tarontha, Taronto, Toranto, Torento, Toronto, and Toronton. Taronto referred to 'The Narrows', a channel of water through which Lake Simcoe discharges into Lake Couchiching where the Huron had planted tree saplings to corral fish. This narrows was called tkaronto by the Mohawk, meaning 'where there are trees standing in the water', and was recorded as early as 1615 by Samuel de Champlain. The word Toronto, meaning 'plenty', also appears in a 1632 French lexicon of the Huron language, which is also an Iroquoian language. It also appears on French maps referring to various locations, including Georgian Bay, Lake Simcoe, and several rivers. A portage route from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron running through this point, known as the Toronto Carrying-Place Trail, led to widespread use of the name.
The pronunciation of the city is broadly tə-RONT-oh, which locals pronounce [təˈɹɒnoʊ] or [ˈtɹɒnoʊ], leaving the second 't' silent.
History
Early history
The site of Toronto lay at the entrance to one of the oldest routes to the northwest, a route known and used by the Huron, Iroquois, and Ojibwe. Archaeological sites show evidence of human occupation dating back thousands of years. The site was of strategic importance from the beginning of Ontario's recorded history.
In the 1660s, the Iroquois established two villages within what is today Toronto, Ganatsekwyagon (Bead Hill) on the banks of the Rouge River and Teiaiagon on the banks of the Humber River. By 1701, the Mississaugas had displaced the Iroquois, who abandoned the Toronto area at the end of the Beaver Wars, with most returning to their homeland in present-day New York state.
French traders founded Fort Rouillé in 1750 (the current Exhibition grounds were later developed there), but abandoned it in 1759 during the Seven Years' War. The British defeated the French and their indigenous allies in the war, and the area became part of the British colony of Quebec in 1763.
During the American Revolutionary War, an influx of British settlers arrived there as United Empire Loyalists fled for the British-controlled lands north of Lake Ontario. The Crown granted them land to compensate for their losses in the Thirteen Colonies. The new province of Upper Canada was being created and needed a capital. In 1787, the British Lord Dorchester arranged for the Toronto Purchase with the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation, thereby securing more than a quarter of a million acres (1000 km2) of land in the Toronto area. Dorchester intended the location to be named Toronto. The first 25 years after the Toronto purchase were quiet, although "there were occasional independent fur traders" present in the area, with the usual complaints of debauchery and drunkenness.
In 1793, Governor John Graves Simcoe established the town of York on the Toronto Purchase lands, naming it after Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany. Simcoe decided to move the Upper Canada capital from Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake) to York, believing the new site would be less vulnerable to attack by the United States. The York garrison was built at the entrance of the town's natural harbour, sheltered by a long sand-bar peninsula. The town's settlement formed at the harbour's eastern end behind the peninsula, near the present-day intersection of Parliament Street and Front Street (in the "Old Town" area).
19th century
In 1813, as part of the War of 1812, the Battle of York ended in the town's capture and plunder by United States forces. John Strachan negotiated the town's surrender. American soldiers destroyed much of the garrison and set fire to the parliament buildings during their five-day occupation. Because of the sacking of York, British troops retaliated later in the war with the burning of Washington, D.C.
York was incorporated as the City of Toronto on March 6, 1834, adopting the Indigenous name. Reformist politician William Lyon Mackenzie became the first mayor of Toronto. Mackenzie would later lead the unsuccessful Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837 against the British colonial government.
Toronto's population of 9,000 included some African-American slaves, some of whom had been brought by the Loyalists, and Black Loyalists, whom the Crown had freed (most of the latter were resettled in Nova Scotia). By 1834, refugee slaves from America's South were also immigrating to Toronto to gain freedom. Slavery was banned outright in Upper Canada (and throughout the British Empire) in 1834. Torontonians integrated people of colour into their society. In the 1840s, an eating house at Frederick and King Streets, a place of mercantile prosperity in the early city, was operated by a black man named Bloxom.
As a major destination for immigrants to Canada, the city grew rapidly through the remainder of the 19th century. The first significant wave of immigrants were Irish, fleeing the Great Irish Famine; most of them were Catholic. By 1851, the Irish-born population had become the largest single ethnic group in the city. The Scottish and English population welcomed smaller numbers of Protestant Irish immigrants, some from what is now Northern Ireland, which gave the Orange Order significant and long-lasting influence over Toronto society. Almost every mayor of Toronto was a member of the Orange Order between 1850 and 1950, and the city was sometimes referred to as the "Belfast of Canada" because of Orange influence in municipal politics and administration.
For brief periods, Toronto was twice the capital of the united Province of Canada: first from 1849 to 1851, following unrest in Montreal, and later from 1855 to 1859. After this date, Quebec was designated as the capital until 1865 (two years before Canadian Confederation). Since then, the capital of Canada has remained Ottawa, Ontario.
Toronto became the capital of the province of Ontario after its official creation in 1867. The seat of government of the Ontario briefly returned to the same building that hosted the Third Parliament Building of Upper Canada, before moving to the Ontario Legislative Building at Queen's Park in 1893. Because of its provincial capital status, the city was also the location of Government House, the residence of the viceregal representative of the Crown in right of Ontario.
Long before the Royal Military College of Canada was established in 1876, supporters of the concept proposed military colleges in Canada. Staffed by British Regulars, adult male students underwent a three-month-long military course at the School of Military Instruction in Toronto. Established by Militia General Order in 1864, the school enabled officers of militia or candidates for commission or promotion in the Militia to learn military duties, drill and discipline, to command a company at Battalion Drill, to drill a company at Company Drill, the internal economy of a company, and the duties of a company's officer. The school was retained at Confederation, in 1867. In 1868, Schools of cavalry and artillery instruction were formed in Toronto.
In the 19th century, the city built an extensive sewage system to improve sanitation, and streets were illuminated with gas lighting as a regular service. Long-distance railway lines were constructed, including a route completed in 1854 linking Toronto with the Upper Great Lakes. The Grand Trunk Railway and the Northern Railway of Canada joined in the building of the first Union Station in downtown. The advent of the railway dramatically increased the numbers of immigrants arriving, commerce and industry, as had the Lake Ontario steamers and schooners entering port before. These enabled Toronto to become a major gateway linking the world to the interior of the North American continent. Expanding port and rail facilities brought in northern timber for export and imported Pennsylvania coal. Industry dominated the waterfront for the next 100 years.
During the late 19th century, Toronto became the largest alcohol distillation (in particular, spirits) centre in North America. By the 1860s, the Gooderham and Worts Distillery operations became the world's largest whisky factory. A preserved section of this once dominant local industry remains in the Distillery District. The harbour allowed access to grain and sugar imports used in processing.
Horse-drawn streetcars gave way to electric streetcars in 1891 when the city granted the operation of the transit franchise to the Toronto Railway Company. The public transit system passed into public ownership in 1921 as the Toronto Transportation Commission, later renamed the Toronto Transit Commission. The system now has the third-highest ridership of any city public transportation system in North America.
20th century
The Great Toronto Fire of 1904 destroyed a large section of downtown Toronto. The fire destroyed more than 100 buildings. The fire claimed one victim, John Croft, who was an explosive expert clearing the ruins from the fire. It caused CA$10,387,000 in damage (roughly CA$277,600,000 in 2020 terms).
The city received new European immigrant groups from the late 19th century into the early 20th century, particularly Germans, French, Italians, and Jews. They were soon followed by Russians, Poles, and other Eastern European nations, in addition to the Chinese entering from the West. Like the Irish before them, many of these migrants lived in overcrowded shanty-type slums, such as "the Ward", which was centred on Bay Street, now the heart of the country's Financial District.
As new migrants began to prosper, they moved to better housing in other areas, in what is now understood to be succession waves of settlement. Despite its fast-paced growth, by the 1920s, Toronto's population and economic importance in Canada remained second to the much longer established Montreal, Quebec. However, by 1934, the Toronto Stock Exchange had become the largest in the country.
In 1954, the City of Toronto and 12 surrounding municipalities were federated into a regional government known as Metropolitan Toronto. The postwar boom had resulted in rapid suburban development. It was believed a coordinated land-use strategy and shared services would provide greater efficiency for the region. The metropolitan government began to manage services that crossed municipal boundaries, including highways, police services, water and public transit. In that year, a half-century after the Great Fire of 1904, disaster struck the city again when Hurricane Hazel brought intense winds and flash flooding. In the Toronto area, 81 people were killed, nearly 1,900 families were left homeless, and the hurricane caused more than CA$25 million in damage.
In 1967, the seven smallest municipalities of Metropolitan Toronto were merged with larger neighbours, resulting in a six-municipality configuration that included the former city of Toronto and the surrounding municipalities of East York, Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough, and York.
In the decades after World War II, refugees from war-torn Europe and Chinese job-seekers arrived, as well as construction labourers, particularly from Italy and Portugal. Toronto's population grew to more than one million in 1951 when large-scale suburbanization began and doubled to two million by 1971. Following the elimination of racially based immigration policies by the late 1960s, Toronto became a destination for immigrants from all over the world. By the 1980s, Toronto had surpassed Montreal as Canada's most populous city and chief economic hub. During this time, in part owing to the political uncertainty raised by the resurgence of the Quebec sovereignty movement, many national and multinational corporations moved their head offices from Montreal to Toronto and Western Canadian cities.
On January 1, 1998, Toronto was greatly enlarged, not through traditional annexations, but as an amalgamation of the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto and its six lower-tier constituent municipalities: East York, Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough, York, and the original city itself. They were dissolved by an act of the Government of Ontario and formed into a single-tier City of Toronto (colloquially dubbed the "megacity"), replacing all six governments.
The merger was proposed as a cost-saving measure by the Progressive Conservative provincial government under premier Mike Harris. The announcement touched off vociferous public objections. In March 1997, a referendum in all six municipalities produced a vote of more than 3:1 against amalgamation. However, municipal governments in Canada are creatures of the provincial governments, and referendums have little to no legal effect. The Harris government could thus legally ignore the referendum results and did so in April when it tabled the City of Toronto Act. Both opposition parties held a filibuster in the provincial legislature, proposing more than 12,000 amendments that allowed residents on streets of the proposed megacity to take part in public hearings on the merger and adding historical designations to the streets. This only delayed the bill's inevitable passage, given the Progressive Conservatives' majority.
North York mayor Mel Lastman became the first "megacity" mayor, and the 62nd mayor of Toronto, with his electoral victory. Lastman gained national attention after multiple snowstorms, including the January Blizzard of 1999, dumped 118 centimetres (46 in) of snow and effectively immobilized the city. He called in the Canadian Army to aid snow removal by use of their equipment to augment police and emergency services. The move was ridiculed by some in other parts of the country, fuelled in part by what was perceived as a frivolous use of resources.
21st century
The city attracted international attention in 2003 when it became the centre of a major SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak. Public health attempts to prevent the disease from spreading elsewhere temporarily dampened the local economy. From August 14 to 17, 2003, the city was hit by a massive blackout which affected millions of Torontonians (it also affected most of Southern Ontario and parts of the United States), stranding some hundreds of people in tall buildings, knocking out traffic lights and suspending subway and streetcar service across the city during those aforementioned days.
On March 6, 2009, the city celebrated the 175th anniversary of its inception as the City of Toronto in 1834. Toronto hosted the 4th G20 summit during June 26–27, 2010. This included the largest security operation in Canadian history. Following large-scale protests and rioting, law enforcement arrested more than 1,000 people, the largest mass arrest in Canadian history.
On July 8, 2013, severe flash flooding hit Toronto after an afternoon of slow-moving, intense thunderstorms. Toronto Hydro estimated 450,000 people were without power after the storm and Toronto Pearson International Airport reported 126 mm (5 in) of rain had fallen over five hours, more than during Hurricane Hazel. Within six months, from December 20 to 22, 2013, Toronto was brought to a near halt by the worst ice storm in the city's history, rivalling the severity of the 1998 Ice Storm (which mainly affected southeastern Ontario, and Quebec). At the height of the storm, over 300,000 Toronto Hydro customers had no electricity or heating. Toronto hosted WorldPride in June 2014, and the Pan and Parapan American Games in 2015.
The city continues to grow and attract immigrants. A 2019 study by Toronto Metropolitan University (then known as Ryerson University) showed that Toronto was the fastest-growing city in North America. The city added 77,435 people between July 2017 and July 2018. The Toronto metropolitan area was the second-fastest-growing metropolitan area in North America, adding 125,298 persons, compared with 131,767 in the Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metroplex in Texas. The large growth in the Toronto metropolitan area is attributed to international migration to Toronto.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Canada first occurred in Toronto and was among the hotspots in the country.
Toronto was named as one of 16 cities in North America (and one of two Canadian cities) to host matches for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Geography
Toronto covers an area of 630 square kilometres (243 sq mi), with a maximum north–south distance of 21 kilometres (13 mi). It has a maximum east–west distance of 43 km (27 mi), and it has a 46-kilometre (29 mi) long waterfront shoreline, on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. The Toronto Islands and Port Lands extend out into the lake, allowing for a somewhat sheltered Toronto Harbour south of the downtown core. An Outer Harbour was constructed southeast of downtown during the 1950s and 1960s, and it is now used for recreation. The city's limits are formed by Lake Ontario to the south, the western boundary of Marie Curtis Park, Etobicoke Creek, Eglinton Avenue and Highway 427 to the west, Steeles Avenue to the north and the Rouge River and the Scarborough–Pickering Townline to the east.
Topography
The city is mostly flat or gentle hills, and the land gently slopes upward away from the lake. The flat land is interrupted by the Toronto ravine system, which is cut by numerous creeks and rivers of the Toronto waterway system, most notably the Humber River in the west end, the Don River east of downtown (these two rivers flanking and defining the Toronto Harbour), and the Rouge River at the city's eastern limits. Most of the ravines and valley lands in Toronto today are parklands and recreational trails are laid out along the ravines and valleys. The original town was laid out in a grid plan on the flat plain north of the harbour, and this plan was extended outwards as the city grew. The width and depth of several of the ravines and valleys are such that several grid streets, such as Finch Avenue, Leslie Street, Lawrence Avenue, and St. Clair Avenue, terminate on one side of a ravine or valley and continue on the other side. Toronto has many bridges spanning the ravines. Large bridges such as the Prince Edward Viaduct were built to span broad river valleys.
Despite its deep ravines, Toronto is not remarkably hilly, but its elevation does increase steadily away from the lake. Elevation differences range from 76.5 metres (251 ft) above sea level at the Lake Ontario shore to 209 m (686 ft) above sea level near the York University grounds in the city's north end at the intersection of Keele Street and Steeles Avenue. There are occasional hilly areas; in particular, midtown Toronto, as well as the Silverthorn and Fairbank neighbourhoods, have several sharply sloping hills. Lake Ontario remains occasionally visible from the peaks of these ridges as far north as Eglinton Avenue, 7 to 8 kilometres (4.3 to 5.0 mi) inland.
The other major geographical feature of Toronto is its escarpments. During the last ice age, the lower part of Toronto was beneath Glacial Lake Iroquois. Today, a series of escarpments mark the lake's former boundary, known as the "Iroquois Shoreline". The escarpments are most prominent from Victoria Park Avenue to the mouth of Highland Creek, where they form the Scarborough Bluffs. Other observable sections include the area near St. Clair Avenue West between Bathurst Street and the Don River, and north of Davenport Road from Caledonia to Spadina Road; the Casa Loma grounds sit above this escarpment.
The geography of the lakeshore has dramatically changed since the first settlement of Toronto. Much of the land on the harbour's north shore is landfill, filled in during the late 19th century. Until then, the lakefront docks (then known as wharves) were set back farther inland than today. Much of the adjacent Port Lands on the harbour's east side was a wetland filled in early in the 20th century. The shoreline from the harbour west to the Humber River has been extended into the lake. Further west, landfill has been used to create extensions of land such as Humber Bay Park.
The Toronto Islands were a natural peninsula until a storm in 1858 severed their connection to the mainland, creating a channel to the harbour. The peninsula was formed by longshore drift taking the sediments deposited along the Scarborough Bluffs shore and transporting them to the Islands area.
The other source of sediment for the Port Lands wetland and the peninsula was the deposition of the Don River, which carved a wide valley through the sedimentary land of Toronto and deposited it in the shallow harbour. The harbour and the channel of the Don River have been dredged numerous times for shipping. The lower section of the Don River was straightened and channelled in the 19th century. The former mouth drained into a wetland; today, the Don River drains into the harbour through a concrete waterway, the Keating Channel. To mitigate flooding in the area, as well as to create parkland, a second more natural mouth is being built to the south during the first half of the 2020s, thereby creating Villiers Island.
Neighbourhoods and former municipalities
Toronto encompasses an area formerly administered by several separate municipalities that were amalgamated over the years. Each developed a distinct history and identity over the years, and their names remain in common use among Torontonians. Former municipalities include East York, Etobicoke, Forest Hill, Mimico, North York, Parkdale, Scarborough, Swansea, Weston and York. Throughout the city, there exist hundreds of small neighbourhoods and some larger neighbourhoods covering a few square kilometres.
The many residential communities of Toronto express a character distinct from the skyscrapers in the commercial core. Victorian and Edwardian-era residential buildings can be found in enclaves such as Rosedale, Cabbagetown, The Annex, and Yorkville. The Wychwood Park neighbourhood, historically significant for the architecture of its homes, and for being one of Toronto's earliest planned communities, was designated as an Ontario Heritage Conservation district in 1985. The Casa Loma neighbourhood is named after "Casa Loma", a castle built in 1911 by Sir Henry Pellat, complete with gardens, turrets, stables, an elevator, secret passages, and a bowling alley. Spadina House is a 19th-century manor that is now a museum.
Old Toronto
The pre-amalgamation City of Toronto covers the downtown core and older neighbourhoods to the east, west, and north. It is the most densely populated part of the city. The Financial District contains the First Canadian Place, Toronto-Dominion Centre, Scotia Plaza, Royal Bank Plaza, Commerce Court and Brookfield Place. This area includes, among others, the neighbourhoods of St. James Town, Garden District, St. Lawrence, Corktown, and Church and Wellesley. From that point, the Toronto skyline extends northward along Yonge Street.
Old Toronto is also home to many historically wealthy residential enclaves, such as Yorkville, Rosedale, The Annex, Forest Hill, Lawrence Park, Lytton Park, Deer Park, Moore Park, and Casa Loma, most stretching away from downtown to the north.
East and west of downtown, neighbourhoods such as Kensington Market, Chinatown, Leslieville, Cabbagetown and Riverdale are home to bustling commercial and cultural areas as well as communities of artists with studio lofts, with many middle- and upper-class professionals.
Other neighbourhoods in the central city retain an ethnic identity, including two smaller Chinatowns, the Greektown area, Little Italy, Portugal Village, and Little India, among others.
Suburbs
The inner suburbs are contained within the former municipalities of York and East York. These are mature and traditionally working-class areas, consisting primarily of post–World War I small, single-family homes and small apartment blocks. Neighbourhoods such as Crescent Town, Thorncliffe Park, Flemingdon Park, Weston, and Oakwood Village consist mainly of high-rise apartments, which are home to many new immigrant families. During the 2000s, many neighbourhoods became ethnically diverse and underwent gentrification due to increasing population and a housing boom during the late 1990s and the early 21st century. The first neighbourhoods affected were Leaside and North Toronto, gradually progressing into the western neighbourhoods in York.
The outer suburbs comprising the former municipalities of Etobicoke (west), Scarborough (east) and North York (north) largely retain the grid plan laid before post-war development. Sections were long established and quickly growing towns before the suburban housing boom began and the emergence of metropolitan government, existing towns or villages such as Mimico, Islington and New Toronto in Etobicoke; Willowdale, Newtonbrook and Downsview in North York; Agincourt, Wexford and West Hill in Scarborough where suburban development boomed around or between these and other towns beginning in the late 1940s. Upscale neighbourhoods were built, such as the Bridle Path in North York, the area surrounding the Scarborough Bluffs in Guildwood, and most of central Etobicoke, such as Humber Valley Village, and The Kingsway. One of the largest and earliest "planned communities" was Don Mills, parts of which were first built in the 1950s. Phased development, mixing single-detached housing with higher-density apartment blocks, became more popular as a suburban model of development. During the late 20th century, North York City Centre and Scarborough City Centre developed separate downtown districts outside Downtown Toronto after the former boroughs were promoted to cities. High-rise development in these areas has given these former municipalities distinguishable skylines of their own, with high-density transit corridors serving them; some of these developments are also transit-oriented.
Industrial
In the 1800s, a thriving industrial area developed around Toronto Harbour and the lower Don River mouth, linked by rail and water to Canada and the United States. Examples included the Gooderham and Worts Distillery, Canadian Malting Company, the Toronto Rolling Mills, the Union Stockyards and the Davies pork processing facility (the inspiration for the "Hogtown" nickname). This industrial area expanded west along the harbour and rail lines and was supplemented by the infilling of the marshlands on the east side of the harbour to create the Port Lands. A garment industry developed along lower Spadina Avenue, the "Fashion District". Beginning in the late 19th century, industrial areas were set up on the outskirts, such as West Toronto / The Junction, where the Stockyards relocated in 1903. The Great Fire of 1904 destroyed a large amount of industry in the downtown. Some companies moved west along King Street, and some moved as far west as Dufferin Street, where the large Massey-Harris farm equipment manufacturing complex was located. Over time, pockets of industrial land mostly followed rail lines and later highway corridors as the city grew outwards. This trend continues to this day; the largest factories and distribution warehouses are in the suburban environs of Peel and York Regions, but also within the current city: Etobicoke (concentrated around Pearson Airport), North York, and Scarborough.
Many of Toronto's former industrial sites close to (or in) downtown have been redeveloped, including parts of the Toronto waterfront, the rail yards west of downtown, and Liberty Village, the Massey-Harris district and large-scale development is underway in the West Don Lands.
The Gooderham & Worts Distillery produced spirits until 1990 and is preserved today as the "Distillery District", the largest and best-preserved collection of Victorian industrial architecture in North America. Some industry remains in the area, including the Redpath Sugar Refinery. Similar areas that retain their industrial character but are now largely residential are the Fashion District, Corktown, and parts of South Riverdale and Leslieville. Toronto still has some active older industrial areas, such as Brockton Village, Mimico and New Toronto. In the west end of Old Toronto and York, the Weston/Mount Dennis and The Junction areas still contain factories, meat-packing facilities and rail yards close to medium-density residential. However, the Junction's Union Stockyards moved out of Toronto in 1994.
The brownfield industrial area of the Port Lands, on the east side of the harbour, is one area planned for redevelopment. Formerly a marsh that was filled in to create industrial space, it was never intensely developed—its land unsuitable for large-scale development—because of flooding and unstable soil.
It still contains numerous industrial uses, such as the Portlands Energy Centre power plant, port facilities, movie and television production studios, concrete processing facilities, and low-density industrial facilities. The Waterfront Toronto agency has developed plans for a naturalized mouth to the Don River and to create a flood barrier around the Don, making more of the land on the harbour suitable for higher-value residential and commercial development.
A former chemicals plant site along the Don River is slated to become a large commercial complex and transportation hub.
Architecture
Toronto's buildings vary in design and age, with many structures dating back to the early 19th century, while other prominent buildings were just newly built in the first decade of the 21st century. Lawrence Richards, a member of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Toronto, has said, "Toronto is a new, brash, rag-tag place—a big mix of periods and styles." Bay-and-gable houses, mainly found in Old Toronto, are a distinct architectural feature of the city. Defining the Toronto skyline is the CN Tower, a telecommunications and tourism hub. Completed in 1976 at a height of 553.33 metres (1,815 ft 5 in), it was the world's tallest freestanding structure until 2007 when it was surpassed by Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
Toronto is a city of high-rises and had 1,875 buildings over 30 metres (98 ft) as of 2011.
Through the 1960s and 1970s, significant pieces of Toronto's architectural heritage were demolished to make way for redevelopment or parking. In contrast, since 2000, amid the Canadian property bubble, Toronto has experienced a condo construction boom and architectural revival, with several buildings opened by world-renowned architects. Daniel Libeskind's Royal Ontario Museum addition, Frank Gehry's remake of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and Will Alsop's distinctive OCAD University expansion are among the city's new showpieces. The mid-1800s Distillery District, on the eastern edge of downtown, has been redeveloped into a pedestrian-oriented arts, culture and entertainment neighbourhood. This construction boom has some observers call the phenomenon the Manhattanization of Toronto after the densely built island borough of New York City.
Climate
The city of Toronto has a hot summer humid continental climate (Köppen: Dfa), though was on the threshold of a warm summer humid continental climate (Dfb) until the 20th century due to the urban heat island but still found in the metropolitan region, with warm, humid summers and cold winters. According to the classification applied by Natural Resources Canada, the city of Toronto is in plant hardiness zone 7a. Some suburbs and nearby towns have lower zone ratings.
The city experiences four distinct seasons, with considerable variance in length. As a result of the rapid passage of weather systems (such as high- and low-pressure systems), the weather is variable from day to day in all seasons. Owing to urbanization and its proximity to water, Toronto has a fairly low diurnal temperature range. The denser urbanscape makes for warmer nights year-round; the average nighttime temperature is about 3.0 °C (5.4 °F) warmer in the city than in rural areas in all months. However, it can be noticeably cooler on many spring and early summer afternoons under the influence of a lake breeze, since Lake Ontario is cool relative to the air during these seasons. These lake breezes mostly occur in summer, bringing relief on hot days. Other low-scale maritime effects on the climate include lake-effect snow, fog, and delaying of spring- and fall-like conditions, known as seasonal lag.
Winters are cold, with frequent snow. During the winter months, temperatures are usually below 0 °C (32 °F). Toronto winters sometimes feature cold snaps when maximum temperatures remain below −10 °C (14 °F), often made to feel colder by wind chill. Occasionally, they can drop below −25 °C (−13 °F). Snowstorms, sometimes mixed with ice and rain, can disrupt work and travel schedules while accumulating snow can fall anytime from November until mid-April. However, mild stretches also occur in most winters, melting accumulated snow. The summer months are characterized by very warm temperatures. Daytime temperatures are usually above 20 °C (68 °F), and often rise above 30 °C (86 °F). However, they can occasionally surpass 35 °C (95 °F) accompanied by high humidity. Spring and autumn are transitional seasons with generally mild or cool temperatures with alternating dry and wet periods. Daytime temperatures average around 10 to 12 °C (50 to 54 °F) during these seasons.
Precipitation is fairly evenly distributed throughout the year, but summer is usually the wettest season, the bulk falling during thunderstorms. The average yearly precipitation is 822.7 mm (32.4 in), with an average annual snowfall of 121.5 cm (48 in). Toronto experiences an average of 2,066 sunshine hours or 45 percent of daylight hours, varying between a low of 28 percent in December to 60 percent in July.
Climate change has affected Toronto, and as a consequence, the Toronto City Council declared a climate emergency, setting a net-zero carbon emissions target by 2040 through the TransformTO climate action plan.
The highest temperature ever recorded in Toronto was 40.6 °C (105 °F) on July 8, 9, and 10, 1936, during the 1936 North American heat wave. The coldest temperature ever recorded was −32.8 °C (−27 °F) on January 10, 1859.
Parks
Toronto has diverse public spaces, from city squares to public parks overlooking ravines. Nathan Phillips Square is the city's main square in downtown, contains the Toronto Sign, and forms the entrance to City Hall. Yonge–Dundas Square, near City Hall, has also gained attention in recent years as one of the busiest gathering spots in the city. Other squares include Harbourfront Square, on the Toronto waterfront, and the civic squares at the former city halls of the defunct Metropolitan Toronto, most notably Mel Lastman Square in North York. The Toronto Public Space Committee is an advocacy group concerned with the city's public spaces. In recent years, Nathan Phillips Square has been refurbished with new facilities, and the central waterfront along Queen's Quay West has been updated recently with a new street architecture and a new square next to Harbourfront Centre.
In the winter, Nathan Phillips Square, Harbourfront Centre, and Mel Lastman Square feature popular rinks for public ice skating. Etobicoke's Colonel Sam Smith Trail opened in 2011 and is Toronto's first skating trail. Earl Bales Park offers outdoor skiing and snowboarding slopes with a chairlift, rental facilities, and lessons. Several parks have marked cross-country skiing trails.
There are many large downtown parks, which include Allan Gardens, Christie Pits, Grange Park, Little Norway Park, Moss Park, Queen's Park, Riverdale Park and Trinity Bellwoods Park. An almost hidden park is the compact Cloud Gardens, which has both open areas and a glassed-in greenhouse, near Queen Street and Yonge. South of downtown are two large parks on the waterfront: Tommy Thompson Park on the Leslie Street Spit, which has a nature preserve and is open on weekends, and the Toronto Islands, accessible from downtown by ferry.
Large parks in the outer areas managed by the city include High Park, Humber Bay Park, Centennial Park, Downsview Park, Guild Park and Gardens, Sunnybrook Park and Morningside Park. Toronto also operates several public golf courses. Most ravine lands and river bank floodplains in Toronto are public parklands. After Hurricane Hazel in 1954, construction of buildings on floodplains was outlawed, and private lands were bought for conservation. In 1999, Downsview Park, a former military base in North York, initiated an international design competition to realize its vision of creating Canada's first urban park. The winner, "Tree City", was announced in May 2000. Approximately 8,000 hectares (20,000 acres), or 12.5 percent of Toronto's land base, is maintained parkland. Morningside Park is the largest park managed by the city, which is 241.46 hectares (596.7 acres) in size.
In addition to public parks managed by the municipal government, parts of Rouge National Urban Park, the largest urban park in North America, is in the eastern portion of Toronto. Managed by Parks Canada, the national park is centred around the Rouge River and encompasses several municipalities in the Greater Toronto Area.
Demographics
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Toronto had a population of 2,794,356 living in 1,160,892 of its 1,253,238 total private dwellings, a change of 2.3 percent from its 2016 population of 2,731,571. With a land area of 631.1 km2 (243.7 sq mi), it had a population density of 4,427.8/km2 (11,467.8/sq mi) in 2021.
At the census metropolitan area (CMA) level in the 2021 census, the Toronto CMA had a population of 6,202,225 living in 2,262,473 of its 2,394,205 total private dwellings, a change of 4.6 percent from its 2016 population of 5,928,040. With a land area of 5,902.75 km2 (2,279.06 sq mi), it had a population density of 1,050.7/km2 (2,721.4/sq mi) in 2021.
In 2016, persons aged 14 years and under made up 14.5 percent of the population, and those aged 65 and over made up 15.6 percent. The median age was 39.3 years. The city's gender population is 48 percent male and 52 percent female. Women outnumber men in all age groups 15 and older.
The 2021 census reported that immigrants (individuals born outside Canada) comprise 1,286,145 persons or 46.6 percent of the total population of Toronto. Of the total immigrant population, the top countries of origin were Philippines (132,980 persons or 10.3%), China (129,750 persons or 10.1%), India (102,155 persons or 7.9%), Sri Lanka (47,895 persons or 3.7%), Jamaica (42,655 persons or 3.3%), Italy (37,705 persons or 2.9%), Iran (37,185 persons or 2.9%), Hong Kong (36,855 persons or 2.9%), United Kingdom (35,585 persons or 2.8%), and Portugal (34,360 persons or 2.7%).
The city's foreign-born persons comprised 47 percent of the population, compared to 49.9 percent in 2006. According to the United Nations Development Programme, Toronto has the second-highest percentage of constant foreign-born population among world cities, after Miami, Florida. While Miami's foreign-born population has traditionally consisted primarily of Cubans and other Latin Americans, no single nationality or culture dominates Toronto's immigrant population, placing it among the most diverse cities in the world. In 2010, it was estimated over 100,000 immigrants arrived in the Greater Toronto Area each year.
Race and ethnicity
In 2016, the three most commonly reported ethnic origins overall were Chinese (332,830 or 12.5 percent), English (331,890 or 12.3 percent) and Canadian (323,175 or 12.0 percent). Common regions of ethnic origin were European (47.9 per cent), Asian (including Middle-Eastern – 40.1 per cent), African (5.5 per cent), Latin/Central/South American (4.2 per cent), and North American aboriginal (1.2 per cent).
In 2016, 51.5 per cent of the residents of the city proper belonged to a visible minority group, compared to 49.1 per cent in 2011, and 13.6 per cent in 1981. The largest visible minority groups were South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan at 338,960 or 12.6 percent), East Asian (Chinese at 332,830 or 12.5 percent), and Black (239,850 or 8.9 percent). Visible minorities are projected to increase to 63 percent of the city's population by 2031.
This diversity is reflected in Toronto's ethnic neighbourhoods, which include Chinatown, Corso Italia, Greektown, Kensington Market, Koreatown, Little India, Little Italy, Little Jamaica, Little Portugal and Roncesvalles (Polish community).
Religion
According to the 2021 census, religious groups in Toronto included:
Christianity (1,274,450 persons or 46.2%)
No religion and secular perspectives (845,615 persons or 30.6%)
Islam (264,155 persons or 9.6%)
Hinduism (171,980 persons or 6.2%)
Judaism (99,390 persons or 3.6%)
Buddhism (62,475 persons or 2.3%)
Sikhism (21,545 persons or 0.8%)
Indigenous Spirituality (935 persons or <0.1%)
Other (20,730 persons or 0.8%)
Language
English is the predominant language spoken by Torontonians, with approximately 95 percent of residents having proficiency in it, although only 54.7 percent of Torontonians reported English as their mother tongue. Greater Toronto English, or simply Toronto slang, is a dialect found primarily in Toronto, primarily spoken by Millennials and members of Generation Z. English is one of two official languages of Canada, with the other being French. Approximately 1.6 percent of Torontonians reported French as their mother tongue, although 9.1 percent reported being bilingual in both official languages. In addition to services provided by the federal government, provincial services in Toronto are available in both official languages as a result of the French Language Services Act. Approximately 4.9 percent of Torontonians reported having no knowledge in either of the official languages of the country.
Because the city is also home to many other languages, municipal services, most notably its 9-1-1 emergency telephone service, is equipped to respond in over 150 languages. In the 2001 Canadian census, the collective varieties of Chinese and Italian are the most widely spoken languages at work after English. Approximately 55 percent of respondents who reported proficiency in a Chinese language reported knowledge of Mandarin in the 2016 census.
Economy
Toronto is an international centre for business and finance. Generally considered the financial and industrial capital of Canada, Toronto has a high concentration of banks and brokerage firms on Bay Street in the Financial District. The Toronto Stock Exchange is the world's seventh-largest stock exchange by market capitalization. The five largest financial institutions of Canada, collectively known as the Big Five, all have their global corporate headquarters in Toronto, alongside Canada's major insurance giants.
The city is an important centre for the media, publishing, telecommunication, information technology and film production industries; it is home to Bell Media, Rogers Communications, and Torstar. Other prominent Canadian corporations and Canadian subsidiaries of international corporations in the Greater Toronto Area include Magna International, Pizza Pizza, Mr. Sub, Celestica, Manulife, Sun Life Financial, Toyota Canada Inc. the Hudson's Bay Company, and major hotel companies and operators, such as Four Seasons Hotels and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts.
Although much of the region's manufacturing activities occur outside the city limits, Toronto continues to be a wholesale and distribution point for the industrial sector. The city's strategic position along the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor within the Great Lakes megalopolis and its road and rail connections help support the nearby production of motor vehicles, iron, steel, food, machinery, chemicals and paper. The completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 gave ships access to the Great Lakes from the Atlantic Ocean.
Toronto's unemployment rate was 6.7 percent as of July 2016. According to the website Numbeo, Toronto's cost of living plus rent index was second highest in Canada (of 31 cities). The local purchasing power was the sixth lowest in Canada, mid-2017. The average monthly social assistance caseload for January to October 2014 was 92,771. The number of impoverished seniors increased from 10.5 percent in 2011 to 12.1 percent in 2014. Toronto's 2013 child poverty rate was 28.6 percent, the highest among large Canadian cities of 500,000 or more residents.
Bay Street
The Financial District in Toronto centres on Bay Street, the equivalent to Wall Street in New York. The city hosts the headquarters of all five of Canada's largest banks, Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Scotiabank, Bank of Montreal and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, and was ranked as the safest banking system in the world between 2007 and 2014 according to the World Economic Forum. Toronto's economy has seen a steady growth boom thanks to many corporations relocating their Canadian headquarters into the city and Canada's growing cultural significance, resulting in several companies setting up shop in Toronto.
Media and entertainment
Toronto is Canada's largest media market, and has four conventional dailies, two alt-weeklies, and three free commuter papers in a greater metropolitan area of about 6 million inhabitants. The Toronto Star and the Toronto Sun are the prominent daily city newspapers, while national dailies The Globe and Mail and the National Post are also headquartered in the city. The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, and National Post are broadsheet newspapers. StarMetro is distributed as free commuter newspapers. Several magazines and local newspapers cover Toronto, including Now and Toronto Life, while numerous magazines are produced in Toronto, such as Canadian Business, Chatelaine, Flare and Maclean's. Daily Hive, Western Canada's largest online-only publication, opened its Toronto office in 2016. Toronto contains the headquarters of the major English-language Canadian television networks CBC, CTV, Citytv, Global, The Sports Network (TSN) and Sportsnet. Much (formerly MuchMusic), M3 (formerly MuchMore) and MTV Canada are the main music television channels based in the city. However, they no longer primarily show music videos as a result of channel drift and a shift in demographics.
Film production
Toronto is one of the centres of Canada's film and television industry due in part to the lower cost of production in Canada. The city's streets and landmarks are seen in a variety of films, mimicking the scenes of American cities such as Chicago and New York. The city provides diverse settings and neighbourhoods to shoot films, with production facilitated by Toronto's Film and Television Office. Toronto's film industry has extended beyond the Toronto CMA into adjoining cities such as Hamilton and Oshawa.
Real estate
Real estate is a major force in the city's economy; Toronto is home to some of the nation's—and the world's—most expensive real estate. The Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB), formerly the Toronto Real Estate Board, is a non-profit professional association of registered real estate brokers and salespeople in Toronto, and parts of the Greater Toronto Area. TRREB was formed in 1920. Many large real estate investment trusts are based in Toronto.
Technology and biotech
Toronto is a large hub of the Canadian and global technology industry, generating $52 billion in revenues annually. In 2017, Toronto tech firms offered almost 30,000 jobs which is higher than the combination of San Francisco Bay area, Seattle and Washington, D.C. The area bound between the Greater Toronto Area, the region of Waterloo and the city of Hamilton was termed a "digital corridor" by the Branham Group, a region highly concentrated with technology companies and jobs similar to Silicon Valley in California. Toronto is home to a large startup ecosystem and is the third-largest center for information and communications technology in North America, behind New York City and the Silicon Valley. In 2023, the city was ranked as the 17th best startup scene in the world.
Tourism
In 2018, 27.5 million tourists visited Toronto, generating $10.3 billion (~$12.3 billion in 2023) in economic activity. The Toronto Eaton Centre receives over 47 million visitors per year. Other commercial areas popular with tourists include the Path network, which is the world's largest underground shopping complex, as well as Kensington Market and St. Lawrence Market. The Toronto Islands are close to downtown Toronto and do not permit private motor vehicles beyond the airport. Other tourist attractions include the CN Tower, Casa Loma, Toronto's theatres and musicals, Yonge–Dundas Square, and Ripley's Aquarium of Canada.
The Royal Ontario Museum is a museum of world culture and natural history. The Toronto Zoo is home to over 5,000 animals representing over 460 distinct species. The Art Gallery of Ontario contains an extensive collection of Canadian, European, African and contemporary artwork. Also, it hosts exhibits from museums and galleries from all over the world. The Gardiner Museum of ceramic art is the only museum in Canada entirely devoted to ceramics, and the Museum's collection contains more than 2,900 ceramic works from Asia, the Americas, and Europe. The city also hosts the Ontario Science Centre, the Bata Shoe Museum, and Textile Museum of Canada.
Other prominent art galleries and museums include the Design Exchange, the TIFF Lightbox, the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada, the Institute for Contemporary Culture, the Toronto Sculpture Garden, the CBC Museum, the Redpath Sugar Museum, the University of Toronto Art Centre, Hart House, the TD Gallery of Inuit Art, Little Canada and the Aga Khan Museum. The city also runs its own museums, which include the Spadina House. The Don Valley Brick Works is a former industrial site that opened in 1889 and was partly restored as a park and heritage site in 1996, with further restoration being completed in stages since then. The Canadian National Exhibition ("The Ex") is held annually at Exhibition Place and is the oldest annual fair in the world. The Ex has an average attendance of 1.25 million.
City shopping areas include the Yorkville neighbourhood, Queen West, Harbourfront, the Entertainment District, the Financial District, and the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood. The Eaton Centre is Toronto's most popular tourist attraction with over 52 million visitors annually.
Greektown on the Danforth is home to the annual "Taste of the Danforth" festival, which attracts over one million people in 2+1⁄2 days. Toronto is also home to Casa Loma, the former estate of Sir Henry Pellatt, a prominent Toronto financier, industrialist and military man. Other notable neighbourhoods and attractions in Toronto include The Beaches, the Toronto Islands, Kensington Market, Fort York, and the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Education
Primary and secondary education
There are four public school boards that provide elementary and secondary education in Toronto, the Conseil scolaire catholique MonAvenir, the Conseil scolaire Viamonde (CSV), the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB), and the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). CSV and TDSB are secular public school boards, whereas MonAvenir and TCDSB are separate public school boards. CSV and MonAvenir are French first language school boards, whereas TCDSB and TDSB are English first language school boards.
TDSB operates the most schools among the four Toronto-based school boards, with 451 elementary schools, 105 secondary schools, and five adult learning centres. TCDSB operates 163 elementary schools, 29 secondary schools, three combined institutions, and one adult learning centre. CSV operates 11 elementary schools, and three secondary schools in the city. MonAvenir operates nine elementary schools, and three secondary schools in Toronto.
Postsecondary education
There are several public universities and colleges based in Toronto. The city is also home to several supplementary schools, seminaries, and vocational schools. Examples of such institutions include The Royal Conservatory of Music, which includes the Glenn Gould School; the Canadian Film Centre, a media training institute founded by filmmaker Norman Jewison; and Tyndale University, a Christian post-secondary institution and Canada's largest seminary.
Universities
Five public universities are based in Toronto. Four of these universities are based in downtown Toronto: OCAD University, Toronto Metropolitan University, the Université de l'Ontario français, and the University of Toronto. The University of Toronto also operates two satellite campuses, one of which is in the city's eastern district of Scarborough, while the other is in the neighbouring city of Mississauga. York University is the only Toronto-based university not situated in downtown Toronto, maintaining a primary campus in the northwestern portion of North York and a secondary campus in midtown Toronto.
Several other public universities based elsewhere in Ontario also operate satellite campuses or facilities in Toronto, including Queen's University at Kingston, the University of Ottawa, the University of Western Ontario, Wilfrid Laurier University, and the University of Guelph. The latter operates a satellite campus in northwestern Etobicoke together with Humber Polytechnic, called the University of Guelph-Humber. In addition to public universities, Toronto also holds the satellite campus for Northeastern University, a private university based in Boston.
Colleges
There are four public colleges based in Toronto, Centennial College, George Brown College, Humber College, and Seneca Polytechnic (formerly Seneca College). The four institutions operate several campuses throughout the city. Several public colleges based elsewhere in Ontario also operate satellite facilities and campuses in Toronto, including Cambrian College, Canadore College, Collège Boréal, Collège La Cité, Fleming College, Georgian College, Lambton College, Loyalist College, St. Clair College, and Sault College.
Human resources
Public health
Toronto is home to twenty public hospitals, including the Hospital for Sick Children, Mount Sinai Hospital, St. Michael's Hospital, North York General Hospital,Toronto General Hospital, Toronto Western Hospital, Etobicoke General Hospital, St. Joseph's Health Centre, Scarborough General Hospital, Birchmount Hospital, Centenary Hospital, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), and Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, many of which are affiliated with the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine.
Specialized hospitals are also outside of the downtown core. These hospitals include the Baycrest Health Sciences geriatric hospital and the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital for children with disabilities.
Toronto's Discovery District is a centre of research in biomedicine. It is on a 2.5-square-kilometre (620-acre) research park that is integrated into Toronto's downtown core. It is also home to the MaRS Discovery District, which was created in 2000 to capitalize on the research and innovation strength of the province of Ontario. Another institute is the McLaughlin Centre for Molecular Medicine (MCMM).
Toronto is also host to a wide variety of health-focused non-profit organizations that work to address specific illnesses for Toronto, Ontario and Canadian residents. Organizations include Crohn's and Colitis Canada, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Alzheimer Society of Canada, and Alzheimer Society of Ontario, all located in the same office at Yonge–Eglinton, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada, the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research, Cystic Fibrosis Canada, the Canadian Mental Health Association, and the ALS Society of Canada.
In 2022, 187 homeless people died in Toronto, with 47 percent dying of drug toxicity, the leading cause. Toronto Public Health described it as an "urgent public health issue", and has responded by opening supervised drug consumption sites, and by advocating for the allowance of personal drug possession.
Public library
Toronto Public Library is the largest public library system in Canada. In 2008, it averaged a higher circulation per capita than any other public library system internationally, making it the largest neighbourhood-based library system in the world. Within North America, it also had the highest circulation and visitors when compared to other large urban systems.
Established as the library of the Mechanics' Institute in 1830, the Toronto Public Library now consists of 100 branch libraries and has over 12 million items in its collection.
Culture and contemporary life
Toronto's theatre and performing arts scene has more than fifty ballet and dance companies, six opera companies, two symphony orchestras, many music venues, and a host of theatres. The city is home to the National Ballet of Canada, the Canadian Opera Company, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Canadian Electronic Ensemble, and the Canadian Stage Company. Notable performance venues include the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, Roy Thomson Hall, the Princess of Wales Theatre, the Royal Alexandra Theatre, Massey Hall, the Meridian Arts Centre (formerly the Toronto Centre for the Arts), the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres, and the Meridian Hall (originally the "O'Keefe Centre" and formerly the "Hummingbird Centre" and the "Sony Centre for the Performing Arts").
Ontario Place features the world's first permanent IMAX movie theatre, the Cinesphere, as well as the Budweiser Stage (formerly Molson Amphitheatre), an open-air venue for music concerts. In the spring of 2012, Ontario Place closed after declining attendance. Although the Budweiser Stage and harbour still operate, the park and Cinesphere are no longer in use. There are ongoing plans to revitalise Ontario Place.
Each summer, the Canadian Stage Company presents an outdoor Shakespeare production in Toronto's High Park called "Dream in High Park". Canada's Walk of Fame acknowledges the achievements of successful Canadians with a series of stars on designated blocks of sidewalks along King Street and Simcoe Street.
The production of domestic and foreign film and television is a major local industry. As of 2011, Toronto ranks as the third-largest production centre for film and television after Los Angeles and New York City, sharing the nickname "Hollywood North" with Vancouver. The Toronto International Film Festival is an annual event celebrating the international film industry. Another film festival is the Take 21 (formerly the Toronto Student Film Festival), which screens the works of students 12–18 years of age from many different countries across the globe.
Toronto's Caribana (formerly known as Scotiabank Caribbean Carnival) takes place from mid-July to early August of every summer. Primarily based on the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival, the first Caribana took place in 1967 when the city's Caribbean community celebrated Canada's Centennial. More than forty years later, it has grown to attract one million people to Toronto's Lake Shore Boulevard annually. Tourism for the festival is in the hundreds of thousands, and each year, the event generates over $400 million in revenue for Ontario's economy.
One of the most significant events in the city, Pride Week, takes place in late June and is one of the largest LGBTQ+ festivals in the world.
Sports
Toronto is represented in five major league sports, with teams in the National Hockey League (NHL), Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA), Canadian Football League (CFL), and Major League Soccer (MLS). It was formerly represented in a sixth and seventh; the USL W-League that announced on November 6, 2015, that it would cease operation ahead of the 2016 season and the Canadian Women's Hockey League ceased operations in May 2019. The city's major sports venues include the Scotiabank Arena (formerly Air Canada Centre), Rogers Centre (formerly SkyDome), Coca-Cola Coliseum (formerly Ricoh Coliseum), and BMO Field. Toronto is one of six North American cities (alongside Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and the New York Tri-state area) to have won titles in its five major leagues (MLB, NHL, NBA, MLS and either NFL or CFL), and the only one to have done so in the Canadian Football League.
Historic sports clubs of Toronto include the Granite Club (established in 1836), the Royal Canadian Yacht Club (established in 1852), the Toronto Cricket Skating and Curling Club (established before 1827), the Argonaut Rowing Club (established in 1872), the Toronto Lawn Tennis Club (established in 1881), and the Badminton and Racquet Club (established in 1924).
Professional sports
Toronto is home to the Toronto Maple Leafs, one of the NHL's Original Six clubs, and has also served as home to the Hockey Hall of Fame since 1958. The city had a rich history of hockey championships. Along with the Maple Leafs' 13 Stanley Cup titles, the Toronto Marlboros and St. Michael's College School-based Ontario Hockey League teams, combined, have won a record 12 Memorial Cup titles. The Toronto Marlies of the American Hockey League also play in Toronto at Coca-Cola Coliseum and are the farm team for the Maple Leafs. The Toronto Six, the first Canadian franchise in the National Women's Hockey League, began play with the 2020–21 season.
The city is home to the Toronto Blue Jays MLB baseball team. The team has won two World Series titles (1992, 1993). The Blue Jays play their home games at the Rogers Centre in the downtown core. Toronto has a long history of minor-league professional baseball dating back to the 1800s, culminating in the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team, whose owner first proposed an MLB team for Toronto.
The Toronto Raptors basketball team entered the NBA in 1995 and has since earned eleven playoff spots and five Atlantic Division titles in 24 seasons. They won their first NBA title in 2019. The Raptors are the only NBA team with their own television channel, NBA TV Canada. They play their home games at Scotiabank Arena, which is shared with the Maple Leafs. In 2016, Toronto hosted the 65th NBA All-Star game, the first to be held outside the United States.
The city is represented in Canadian football by the CFL's Toronto Argonauts, which was founded in 1873. The club has won 18 Grey Cup Canadian championship titles. The club's home games are played at BMO Field.
Toronto is represented in soccer by the Toronto FC MLS team, who have won seven Canadian Championship titles, as well as the MLS Cup in 2017 and the Supporters' Shield for best regular season record, also in 2017. They share BMO Field with the Toronto Argonauts. Toronto has a high level of participation in soccer across the city at several smaller stadiums and fields. Toronto FC entered the league as an expansion team in 2007.
The Toronto Rock is the city's National Lacrosse League team. They won five National Lacrosse League Cup titles in seven years in the late 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century, appearing in an NLL-record five straight championship games from 1999 to 2003, and are first all-time in the number of Champion's Cups won. The Rock formerly shared the Scotiabank Arena with the Maple Leafs and the Raptors. However, the Toronto Rock moved to the nearby city of Hamilton while retaining its Toronto name.
The Toronto Wolfpack became Canada's first professional rugby league team and the world's first transatlantic professional sports team when they began play in the Rugby Football League's League One competition in 2017. Due to COVID-19 restrictions on international travel the team withdrew from the Super League in 2020 with its future uncertain. The rugby club's ownership changed in 2021, now 'Team Wolfpack' will play in the newly formed North American Rugby League tournament.
Toronto is home to the Toronto Rush, a semi-professional ultimate team that competes in the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL). Ultimate (disc), in Canada, has its beginning roots in Toronto, with 3300 players competing annually in the Toronto Ultimate Club (League).
Toronto has hosted several National Football League (NFL) exhibition games at the Rogers Centre. Ted Rogers leased the Buffalo Bills from Ralph Wilson for the purposes of having the Bills play eight home games in the city between 2008 and 2013.
Collegiate sports
The University of Toronto in downtown Toronto was where the first recorded college football game was held in November 1861. Many post-secondary institutions in Toronto are members of U Sports or the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association, the former for universities and the latter for colleges.
Toronto was home to the International Bowl, an NCAA sanctioned post-season college football game that pitted a Mid-American Conference team against a Big East Conference team. From 2007 to 2010, the game was played at Rogers Centre annually in January.
Events
Toronto, along with Montreal, hosts an annual tennis tournament called the Canadian Open (not to be confused with the identically named golf tournament) between the months of July and August. In odd-numbered years, the men's tournament is held in Montreal, while the women's tournament is held in Toronto, and vice versa in even-numbered years.
The city hosts the Toronto Waterfront Marathon annually, one of the World Athletics Label Road Races. Toronto also hosts the annual Grand Prix of Toronto car race (officially named Honda Indy Toronto), part of the IndyCar Series schedule, held on a street circuit at Exhibition Place. It was known previously as the Champ Car's Molson Indy Toronto from 1986 to 2007. Both thoroughbred and standardbred horse racing events are conducted at Woodbine Racetrack in Rexdale.
Toronto hosted the 2015 Pan American Games in July 2015 and the 2015 Parapan American Games in August 2015. It beat the cities of Lima, Peru, and Bogotá, Colombia, to win the rights to stage the games. The games were the largest multi-sport event ever to be held in Canada (in terms of athletes competing), double the size of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Toronto was a candidate city for the 1996 and 2008 Summer Olympics, which were awarded to Atlanta and Beijing respectively.
Toronto was named as one of 16 cities in North America (and one of two Canadian cities) to host matches for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Government and politics
Government
Toronto is a single-tier municipality governed by a mayor–council system. The structure of the municipal government is stipulated by the City of Toronto Act. The mayor of Toronto is elected by direct popular vote to serve as the chief executive of the city. The Toronto City Council is a unicameral legislative body, comprising 25 councillors, since the 2018 municipal election, representing geographical wards throughout the city. The mayor and members of the city council serve four-year terms without term limits. (Until the 2006 municipal election, the mayor and city councillors served three-year terms.)
As of 2016, the city council has twelve standing committees, each consisting of a chair (some have a vice-chair) and several councillors. The mayor names the committee chairs and the remaining members of the committees are appointed by city council. An executive committee is formed by the chairs of each standing committee, the mayor, the deputy mayor and four other councillors. Councillors are also appointed to oversee the Toronto Transit Commission and the Toronto Police Services Board.
The city has four community councils that consider local matters. The City council has delegated final decision-making authority on local, routine matters, while others—like planning and zoning issues—are recommended to the city council. Each city councillor serves as a member of a community council.
There are about 40 subcommittees and advisory committees appointed by the city council. These bodies are made up of city councillors and private citizen volunteers. Examples include the Pedestrian Committee, Waste Diversion Task Force 2010, and the Task Force to Bring Back the Don.
The City of Toronto had an approved operating budget of CA$13.53 billion in 2020 and a ten-year capital budget and plan of CA$43.5 billion. The city's revenues include subsidies from the Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario (for programs mandated by those governments), 33 per cent from property tax, 6 per cent from the land transfer tax and the rest from other tax revenues and user fees. The city's largest operating expenditures are the Toronto Transit Commission at CA$2.14 billion, and the Toronto Police Service, CA$1.22 billion.
Crime
The historically low crime rate in Toronto has resulted in the city having a reputation as one of the safest major cities in North America. For instance, in 2007, the homicide rate for Toronto was 3.43 per 100,000 people, compared with Atlanta (19.7), Boston (10.3), Los Angeles (10.0), New York City (6.3), Vancouver (3.1), and Montreal (2.6). Toronto's robbery rate also ranks low, with 207.1 robberies per 100,000 people, compared with Los Angeles (348.5), Vancouver (266.2), New York City (265.9), and Montreal (235.3). Toronto has a comparable rate of car theft to various U.S. cities, although it is not among the highest in Canada.
In 2005, Toronto media coined the term "Year of the Gun" because of a record number of gun-related homicides, 52 out of 80 homicides in total. The total number of homicides dropped to 70 in 2006; that year, nearly 2,000 people in Toronto were victims of a violent gun-related crime, about one-quarter of the national total. 86 homicides were committed in 2007, roughly half of which involved guns. Gang-related incidents have also been on the rise; between the years 1997 and 2005, over 300 gang-related homicides have occurred. As a result, the Ontario government developed an anti-gun strategy. In 2011, Toronto's murder rate plummeted to 51 murders—nearly a 26% drop from the previous year. The 51 homicides were the lowest number the city has recorded since 1999 when there were 47. While subsequent years did see a return to higher rates, it remained nearly flat line of 57–59 homicides in from 2012 to 2015. 2016 went to 75 for the first time in over eight years. 2017 had a drop off of 10 murders to close the year at 65, with a homicide rate of 2.4 per 100,000 population.
The total number of homicides in Toronto reached a record 98 in 2018; the number included fatalities from the Toronto van attack and the Danforth shooting, which gave the city a homicide rate of around 3.6 per 100,000 people. The record year for murders was previously 1991, with 89, at a rate of 3.9 murders per 100,000 people. The 2018 homicide rate was higher than in Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal, Hamilton, New York City, San Diego, and Austin. Homicides in 2019 dropped to 80 (a rate of 2.9 per 100,000 people) below the rate of most US cities, but still higher than the Canadian average of 1.8. Shooting incidents also increased to an all-time high of 492 in 2019, even outpacing gun incidents that occurred in 2018. 2020 saw another decrease in homicides with the city having a total of 71 murders for the year (a rate of around 2.6 per 100,000 people). However, in 2021, the city saw an increase in homicides, with the city murders increasing to 85, giving Toronto a homicide rate of 3.04 per 100,000 people. A decrease in murders happened the following year with 71 being reported in 2022 (a murder rate of 2.5 per 100,000), which was then followed by a slight increase in homicides with 73 being reported in 2023, giving the city a murder rate of 2.6 per 100,000 people, along with a record 12,143 reports of auto theft in the year.
Transportation
Toronto is a central transportation hub for road, rail, and air networks in Southern Ontario. The city has many forms of transport, including highways and public transit. Toronto also has an extensive network of bicycle lanes and multi-use trails and paths.
Public transportation
Toronto's primary public transportation system is operated by the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC). The backbone of its public transport network is the Toronto subway system, which includes three heavy-rail rapid transit lines spanning the city, including the U-shaped Line 1, east–west Line 2, and the short east–west Line 4 with Line 1 extending as far beyond city limits as Vaughan Metropolitan Centre.
The TTC also operates an extensive network of buses and streetcars, with the latter serving the downtown core and buses serving many parts of the city not served by the sparse subway network. TTC buses and streetcars use the same fare system as the subway, and many subway stations offer a fare-paid area for transfers between rail and surface vehicles.
There have been numerous plans to extend the subway and implement light-rail lines, but budgetary concerns have thwarted many efforts. By November 2011, construction on Line 5 Eglinton began. Line 5 is scheduled to finish construction by 2024. In 2015, the Ontario government promised to fund Line 6 Finch West, which is to be completed by 2024. In 2019, the Government of Ontario released a transit plan for the Greater Toronto Area which includes a new 16-kilometre (9.9 mi) Ontario Line, Line 1 extension to Richmond Hill Centre, a Line 2 extension to Sheppard Avenue / McCowan Road to replace Line 3, and an extension for Line 5 Eglinton to Toronto Pearson Airport.
Toronto's century-old Union Station is also getting a major renovation and upgrade which would be able to accommodate more rail traffic from GO Transit, Via Rail, UP Express and Amtrak. Construction on a new Union Station Bus Terminal is also in the works with an expected completion in 2020. Toronto's public transit network also connects to other municipal networks such as York Region Transit, Viva, Durham Region Transit, Brampton Transit, and MiWay.
The Government of Ontario operates a regional rail and bus transit system called GO Transit in the Greater Toronto Area. GO Transit carries over 250,000 passengers every weekday (2013) and 57 million annually, with a majority of them travelling to or from Union Station. Metrolinx is currently implementing Regional Express Rail into its GO Transit network and plans to electrify many of its rail lines by 2030.
Intercity transportation
Toronto Union Station serves as a hub for VIA Rail's intercity services in Central Canada and includes services to various parts of Ontario, Corridor services to Montreal and national capital Ottawa, and long-distance services to Vancouver and New York City.
GO Transit provides intercity bus services from the Union Station Bus Terminal and other bus terminals in the city to destinations within the Golden Horseshoe. Long-distance intercity coach services by multiple companies also operated from the Union Station Bus Terminal and provide a network of services to further cities in Ontario, neighbouring provinces, and the United States. The Toronto Coach Terminal formerly served as the city's intercity coach hub from 1931 to 2021, when the terminal was decommissioned.
Airports
Canada's busiest airport, Toronto Pearson International Airport (IATA: YYZ), straddles the city's western boundary with the suburban city of Mississauga. The Union Pearson Express (UP Express) train service provides a direct link between Pearson International and Union Station. It began carrying passengers in June 2015.
Limited commercial and passenger service to nearby destinations in Canada and the United States is offered from the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport (IATA: YTZ) on the Toronto Islands, southwest of downtown. Buttonville Municipal Airport (IATA: YKZ) in Markham provides general aviation facilities. Downsview Airport (IATA: YZD), near the city's north end, is owned by de Havilland Canada and serves the Bombardier Aviation aircraft factory.
Within a few hours' drive, Hamilton's John C. Munro International Airport (IATA: YHM) and Buffalo's Buffalo Niagara International Airport (IATA: BUF) serve as alternate airports for the Toronto area in addition to serving their respective cities. A secondary international airport, to be located northeast of Toronto in Pickering, has been planned by the Government of Canada.
Streets and highways
The grid of major city streets was laid out by a concession road system, in which major arterial roads are 6,600 ft (2.0 km) apart (with some exceptions, particularly in Scarborough and Etobicoke, as they used a different survey). Major east-west arterial roads are generally parallel with the Lake Ontario shoreline, and major north–south arterial roads are roughly perpendicular to the shoreline, though slightly angled north of Eglinton Avenue. This arrangement is sometimes broken by geographical accidents, most notably the Don River ravines. Toronto's grid north is approximately 18.5° to the west of true north. Many arterials, particularly north–south ones, due to the city originally being within the former York County, continue beyond the city into the 905 suburbs and further into the rural countryside.
There are several municipal expressways and provincial highways that serve Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area. In particular, Highway 401 bisects the city from west to east, bypassing the downtown core. It is the busiest road in North America,
and one of the busiest highways in the world. Other provincial highways include Highway 400, which connects the city with Northern Ontario and beyond and Highway 404, an extension of the Don Valley Parkway into the northern suburbs. The Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW), North America's first divided intercity highway, terminates at Toronto's western boundary and connects Toronto to Niagara Falls and Buffalo. The main municipal expressways in Toronto include the Gardiner Expressway, the Don Valley Parkway, and, to some extent, Allen Road. Toronto's traffic congestion is one of the highest in North America, and is the second highest in Canada after Vancouver.
Sister cities
Partnership cities
Friendship cities
Notable people
See also
Outline of Toronto (extensive topic list)
Great Lakes megalopolis
Largest cities in the Americas
List of metropolitan areas in the Americas
Notes
References
Bibliography
Further reading
External links
Official website |
Is%C3%A8re | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%C3%A8re | [
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] | Isère (US: ee-ZAIR, French: [izɛʁ] ; Arpitan: Isera; Occitan: Isèra, Occitan pronunciation: [iˈsɛɾa]) is a landlocked department in the southeastern French region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Named after the river Isère, it had a population of 1,271,166 in 2019. Its prefecture is Grenoble. It borders Rhône to the northwest, Ain to the north, Savoie to the east, Hautes-Alpes to the south, Drôme and Ardèche to the southwest and Loire to the west.
History
Isère is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790. It was established from the main part of the former province of Dauphiné. Its area was reduced twice, in 1852 and again in 1967, on both occasions losing territory to the department of Rhône.
In 1852 in response to rapid urban development around the edge of Lyon, the (hitherto Isère) communes of Bron, Vaulx-en-Velin, Vénissieux and Villeurbanne were transferred to Rhône. In 1967 the redrawing of local government borders led to the creation of the Urban Community of Lyon (more recently known simply as Greater Lyon or Grand Lyon). At that time intercommunal groupings of this nature were not permitted to straddle departmental frontiers, and accordingly 23 more Isère communes (along with six communes from Ain) found themselves transferred to Rhône. The affected Isère communes were Chaponnay, Chassieu, Communay, Corbas, Décines-Charpieu, Feyzin, Genas, Jonage, Jons, Marennes, Meyzieu, Mions, Pusignan, Saint-Bonnet-de-Mure, Saint-Laurent-de-Mure, Saint-Pierre-de-Chandieu, Saint-Priest, Saint-Symphorien-d'Ozon, Sérézin-du-Rhône, Simandres, Solaize, Ternay and Toussieu.
Most recently, on 1 April 1971, Colombier-Saugnieu was transferred to Rhône. Banners appeared in the commune's three little villages at the time proclaiming Dauphinois toujours ("Always Dauphinois").
Geography
Isère includes a part of the French Alps. The highest point in the department is the subpeak Pic Lory at 4,088 metres (13,412 feet), subsidiary to the 4,102 metres (13,458 feet) Barre des Écrins in the adjoining Hautes-Alpes department. The summit of La Meije at 3,988 metres (13,084 feet) is also well known. The Vercors Plateau aesthetically dominates the western part of the department.
Principal towns
The most populous commune is Grenoble, the prefecture. As of 2019, there are 7 communes with more than 20,000 inhabitants:
Demographics
Inhabitants of the department are called Isérois (masculine) and Iséroises (feminine).
Population development since 1801:
Politics
Departmental politics
The President of the Departmental Council has been Jean-Pierre Barbier of The Republicans (LR) since 2015.
Following the 2021 departmental election, the Departmental Council of Isère (58 seats) was composed as follows:
Representation in Paris
National Assembly
In the 2022 legislative election, Isère elected the following representatives to the National Assembly:
In 2024, all the Renaissance and Democratic Movement candidates lost their seats: to La France Insoumise in the 1st and 9th constituencies, and to RN-coalition parties in the 8th and 10th. The other representatives were all reelected.
Senate
In the 2017 Senate election, Isère elected Didier Rambaud (La République En Marche!), Guillaume Gontard (miscellaneous left), Frédérique Puissat (The Republicans), Michel Savin (The Republicans) and André Vallini (Socialist Party) for the 2017–2023 term.
Culture
The Grande Chartreuse is the mother abbey of the Carthusian order. It is located 22 km (14 mi) north of Grenoble.
As early as the 13th century, residents of the north and central parts of Isère spoke a dialect of the Franco-Provençal language called Dauphinois, while those in the Southern parts spoke the Vivaro-Alpine dialect of Occitan. Both continued to be spoken in rural areas of Isère into the 20th century.
Tourism
Isère features many ski resorts, including the Alpe d'Huez, Les Deux Alpes, the 1968 Winter Olympics resorts of Chamrousse, Villard de Lans, Autrans. Other popular resorts include Les 7 Laux, Méaudre, Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse, Alpe du Grand Serre and Gresse-en-Vercors. At the department level, Isère is the third-largest ski and winter destination in France, after Savoie and Haute-Savoie. It also hosts Coupe Icare, an annual festival of free flight, such as paragliding and hang-gliding, held at the world-renowned paragliding site at Lumbin.
Grenoble has a dozen museums, including its most famous, established in 1798, the Museum of Grenoble. The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), an international research facility in Grenoble, is also open to visitors.
See also
Cantons of the Isère department
Charmant Som
Communes of the Isère department
Arrondissements of the Isère department
Chartreuse Mountains
Grande Sure
References
External links
Prefecture website (in French)
Departmental Council website (in French)
Coolidge, William Augustus Brevoort (1911). "Isère (department)" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 14 (11th ed.). p. 867. |
Grenoble | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenoble | [
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] | Grenoble ( grə-NOH-bəl; French: [ɡʁənɔbl] ; Arpitan: Grenoblo or Grainóvol; Occitan: Graçanòbol) is the prefecture and largest city of the Isère department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France. It was the capital of the Dauphiné historical province and lies where the river Drac flows into the Isère at the foot of the French Alps.
The population of the commune of Grenoble was 158,198 as of 2019, while the population of the Grenoble metropolitan area (French: aire d'attraction de Grenoble or agglomération grenobloise) was 714,799 which makes it the largest metropolis in the Alps, ahead of Innsbruck and Bolzano. A significant European scientific centre, the city advertises itself as the "Capital of the Alps", due to its size and its proximity to the mountains. The many suburban communes that make up the rest of the metropolitan area include four with populations exceeding 20,000: Saint-Martin-d'Hères, Échirolles, Fontaine and Voiron.
Grenoble's history goes back over 2,000 years, to a time when it was a village of the Allobroges Gallic tribe. It became the capital of the Dauphiné in the 11th century. This status, consolidated by the annexation to France, allowed it to develop its economy. Grenoble then became a parliamentary and military city, close to the border with Savoy, which at the time was part of the Holy Roman Empire. Industrial development increased the prominence of Grenoble through several periods of economic expansion over the last three centuries. This started with a booming glove industry in the 18th and 19th centuries, continued with the development of a strong hydropower industry in the late 19th to early 20th centuries, and ended with a post-World War II economic boom symbolized by the holding of the X Olympic Winter Games in 1968.
The city has grown to be one of Europe's most important research, technology and innovation centres, with one in five inhabitants working directly in these fields. Grenoble is classified as a global city with the ranking of "sufficiency" by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. The city held the title of European Green Capital in 2022.
History
Antiquity
The first references to what is now Grenoble date back to 43 BC. Cularo was at that time a Gallic village of the Allobroges tribe, near a bridge across the Isère. Three centuries later and with insecurity rising in the late Roman empire, a strong wall was built around the small town in 286 AD.
The Emperor Gratian visited Cularo and, touched by the people's welcome, made the village a Roman city. In honour of this, Cularo was renamed Gratianopolis ("city of Gratian") in 381 (leading to Graignovol during the Middle Ages, and then Grenoble).
Christianity spread to the region during the 4th century, and the diocese of Grenoble was founded in 377 AD. From that time on, the bishops exercised significant political power over the city. Until the French Revolution, they styled themselves the "bishops and princes of Grenoble".
Middle Ages
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the city became part of the first Burgundian kingdom in the 5th century and of the later Kingdom of Burgundy until 1032, when it was integrated into the Holy Roman Empire. The Burgundian rule was interrupted between 942 and 970 by Arab rule based in Fraxinet.
Grenoble grew significantly in the 11th century when the Counts of Albon chose the city as the capital of their territories. Their possessions at the time were a patchwork of several territories sprawled across the region, and the central position of Grenoble allowed the Counts to strengthen their authority. When they later adopted the title of "Dauphins", Grenoble became the capital of the State of Dauphiné.
Despite their status, the Counts had to share authority over the city with the Bishop of Grenoble. One of the most famous of those was Saint Hugh. Under his rule, the city's bridge was rebuilt, and a regular and leper hospital was built.
The inhabitants of Grenoble took advantage of the conflicts between the Counts and the bishops and obtained the recognition of a Charter of Customs that guaranteed their rights. That charter was confirmed by Kings Louis XI in 1447 and Francis I in 1541.
In 1336 the last Dauphin Humbert II founded a court of justice, the Conseil delphinal, which settled at Grenoble in 1340. He also established the University of Grenoble in 1339. Without an heir and deep into debt, Humbert sold his state to France in 1349, on the condition that the heir to the French crown used the title of Dauphin. The first one, the future Charles V, spent nine months in Grenoble. The city remained the capital of the Dauphiné, henceforth a province of France, and the Estates of Dauphiné were created.
The only Dauphin who governed his province was the future Louis XI, whose "reign" lasted from 1447 to 1456. It was only under his rule that Dauphiné properly joined the Kingdom of France. The Old Conseil Delphinal became a Parlement (the third in France after the Parliaments of Paris and Toulouse), strengthening the status of Grenoble as a Provincial capital. He also ordered the construction of the Palais du Parlement (finished under Francis I) and ensured that the Bishop pledged allegiance, thus unifying the political control of the city.
At that time, Grenoble was a crossroads between Vienne, Geneva, Italy, and Savoy. It was the industrial centre of the Dauphiné and the province's biggest city, but a rather small one.
Renaissance
Owing to Grenoble's geographical situation, French troops were garrisoned in the city and its region during the Italian Wars. Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I went several times to Grenoble. Its people consequently had to suffer from the exactions of the soldiers.
The nobility of the region took part in various battles (Marignano, Pavia) and in doing so gained significant prestige. The best-known of its members was Bayard, "the knight without fear and beyond reproach".
Grenoble suffered as a result of the French Wars of Religion. The Dauphiné was indeed an important settlement for Protestants and therefore experienced several conflicts. The baron des Adrets, the leader of the Huguenots, pillaged the Cathedral of Grenoble and destroyed the tombs of the former Dauphins.
In August 1575, Lesdiguières became the new leader of the Protestants and, thanks to the accession of Henry IV to the throne of France, allied himself with the governor and the lieutenant general of the Dauphiné. But this alliance did not bring an end to the conflicts. Indeed, a Catholic movement, the Ligue, which took Grenoble in December 1590, refused to make peace. After months of assaults, Lesdiguières defeated the Ligue and took back Grenoble. He became the leader of the entire province.
Lesdiguières became the lieutenant-general of the Dauphiné and administered the Province from 1591 to 1626. He began the construction of the Bastille to protect the city and ordered the construction of new walls, increasing the city's size. He also constructed the Hôtel Lesdiguières, built new fountains, and dug sewers.
In 1689, the bishop Étienne Le Camus launched the construction of Saint-Louis Church.
From Louis XIV to the French Revolution
The revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV caused the departure of 2,000 Protestants from Grenoble, weakening the city's economy. However, it also weakened the competing glove industry of Grasse, leaving the glove factories of Grenoble without any competition. This allowed a stronger economic development for the city during the 18th century. At the beginning of that century, only 12 glovers made 15,000 dozen gloves each year; by 1787, 64 glovers made 160,000 dozen gloves each year.
The city gained some notoriety on 7 June 1788 when the townspeople assaulted troops of Louis XVI in the "Day of the Tiles". The people attacked the royal troops to prevent an expulsion of the notables of the city, which would have seriously endangered the economic prosperity of Grenoble. Following these events, the Assembly of Vizille took place. Its members organized the meeting of the old Estates General, thus beginning the French Revolution. During the Revolution, Grenoble was represented in Paris by two illustrious notables, Jean Joseph Mounier and Antoine Barnave.
In 1790, the Dauphiné was divided into three departments, and Grenoble became the chef-lieu of the Isère department. Only two refractory priests were executed at Grenoble during the Reign of Terror. Pope Pius VI, prisoner of France, spent two days at Grenoble in 1799 before going to Valence where he died.
19th century
The establishment of the Empire was overwhelmingly approved (in Isère, the results showed 82,084 yes and only 12 no). Grenoble welcomed for the second time a prisoner Pope in 1809. Pius VII spent 10 days in the city en route to his exile in Fontainebleau.
In 1813 Grenoble was under threat from the Austrian army, which invaded Switzerland and Savoy. The well-defended city contained the Austrian attacks, and the French army defeated the Austrians, forcing them to withdraw at Geneva. However, the later invasion of France in 1814 resulted in the capitulation of the troops and the occupation of the city.
During his return from the island of Elba in 1815, Napoleon took a road that led him near Grenoble at Laffrey. There he met the Royalist Régiment d'Angoulême (former 5th) of Louis XVIII's Royal Army. Napoleon stepped toward the soldiers and said these famous words: "If there is among you a soldier who wants to kill his Emperor, here I am." The soldiers all joined his cause. After that, Napoleon was acclaimed at Grenoble and General Jean Gabriel Marchand could not prevent Napoleon from entering the city through the Bonne gate. He said later: "From Cannes to Grenoble, I still was an adventurer; in that last city, I came back a sovereign". But after the defeat of Waterloo, the region suffered from a new invasion of Austrian and Sardinian troops.
The 19th century saw significant industrial development of Grenoble. The glove factories reached their Golden Age, and their products were exported to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia.
General Haxo transformed the Bastille fortress, which took on its present aspect between 1824 and 1848. The Second Empire saw the construction of the French railway network, and the first trains arrived at Grenoble in 1858. Shortly thereafter Grenoble experienced widespread destruction by extensive flooding in 1859.
In 1869 engineer Aristide Bergès played a major role in industrializing hydroelectricity production. With the development of his paper mills, he accelerated the economic development of the Grésivaudan valley and Grenoble.
On 4 August 1897, a stone and bronze fountain was inaugurated in Grenoble to commemorate the pre-revolutionary events of June 1788. Built by the sculptor Henri Ding, the Fountain of the Three Orders, which represents three characters, is located on Place Notre-Dame. People in Grenoble interpret these characters as follows: "Is it raining?" inquires the third estate; "Please heaven it had rained", lament the clergy; and "It will rain", proclaims the nobility.
20th century
World War I accelerated Grenoble's economic development. To sustain the war effort, new hydroelectric industries developed along the various rivers of the region, and several existing companies moved into the armaments industry (for example in Livet-et-Gavet). Electrochemical factories were also established in the area surrounding Grenoble, initially to produce chemical weapons. This development resulted in significant immigration to Grenoble, particularly from Italian workers who settled in the Saint-Laurent neighborhood.
The economic development of the city was highlighted by the organization of the International Exhibition of Hydropower and Tourism in 1925, which was visited by more than 1 million people. The organization of this exhibition forced the military to remove the old city walls and allowed the expansion of the city to the south. This exhibition also highlighted the city's hydropower industry and the region's tourist attractions.
The site of the exhibition became an urban park in 1926, named Parc Paul Mistral after the death of the mayor in 1932. The only building of this exhibition remaining in the park is the crumbling Tour Perret, which has been closed to the public since 1960 due to its very poor state of maintenance.
World War II
During World War II, at the Battle of France, the German invasion was stopped near Grenoble at Voreppe by the forces of General Cartier. The French forces resisted until the armistice, after which Grenoble was part of the French State before an Italian occupation from 1942 to 1943. The relative tolerance of the Italian occupiers towards the Jewish populations resulted in a significant number moving to the region from the German-occupied parts of France.
Grenoble was extremely active in the Résistance against the occupation. Its action was symbolized by figures such as Eugène Chavant, Léon Martin, and Marie Reynoard. The University of Grenoble supported the clandestine operations and provided false documentation for young people to prevent them from being assigned to STO.
In September 1943, German troops occupied Grenoble, escalating the conflict with the clandestine movements. On 11 November 1943 (the anniversary of the armistice of 1918), massive strikes and demonstrations took place in front of the local collaboration offices. In response, the occupiers arrested 400 demonstrators in the streets. On 13 November, the resistance blew up the artillery at the Polygon, which was a psychological shock for an enemy who then intensified the repression. On 25 November, the occupiers killed 11 members of the Résistance organizations of Grenoble. This violent crackdown was nicknamed "Grenoble's Saint-Bartholomew". From these events, Grenoble was styled by the Free French Forces the title of Capital of the Maquis on the antennas of the BBC.
This event only intensified the activities of Grenoble's resistance movements. The Germans could not prevent the destruction of their new arsenal on 2 December at the Bonne Barracks. After the Normandy landing, resistance operations reached their peak, with numerous attacks considerably hampering the activity of German troops. With the landing in Provence, German troops evacuated the city on 22 August 1944. On 5 November 1944, General Charles de Gaulle came to Grenoble and bestowed on the city the Compagnon de la Libération to recognise "a heroic city at the peak of the French resistance and combat for the liberation".
Post-war
In 1955, future physics Nobel prize laureate Louis Néel created the Grenoble Center for Nuclear Studies (CENG), resulting in the birth of the Grenoble model, a combination of research and industry. The first stone was laid in December 1956.
In 1968 Grenoble hosted the X Olympic Winter Games. This event helped modernize the city with the development of infrastructure such as an airport, motorways, a new town hall, and a new train station. It also helped the development of ski resorts like Chamrousse, Les Deux Alpes, and Villard-de-Lans.
Geography
Grenoble is surrounded by mountains. To the north lies the Chartreuse, to the south and west the Vercors, and to the east the Belledonne range. Grenoble is regarded as the capital of the French Alps. It is the centre of the Grenoble urban unit (agglomeration).
Except for a few dozen houses on the slopes of the Bastille hill of Chartreuse, Grenoble is exclusively built on the alluvial plain of the rivers Isère and Drac at an altitude of 214 metres (702 ft). As a result, the city itself is extremely flat. Mountain sports are an important tourist attraction in summer and winter. Twenty large and small ski resorts surround the city, the nearest being Le Sappey-en-Chartreuse, which is about 15 minutes away by car.
Historically, Grenoble and the surrounding areas were heavy industry and mining sites. Abandoned mills and factories can be found in small towns and villages, and a few have been converted to tourist attractions, such as the coal mine at La Mure.
Climate
The climate in Grenoble depends on the data from the chosen weather station. Grenoble Airport, located 40 km northwest of the city has a range from temperate continental climate to oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb, Trewartha: Dc, Do) depending on the chosen classifications. The area contains significant seasonal differences between warm to hot summers and cool to cold winters. Both temperatures above 30 °C (86 °F) for the summer months and winter air frosts are common.
In addition, the climate is much gloomier than in the Mediterranean region, although less so than in Northern France. Rainfall is quite heavy by French standards, although the number of rainy days is relatively moderate.
As a result of winter lows averaging below freezing, snowfall also occurs, although the Grenoble Airport area itself is too mild to sustain a snowpack all winter, unlike the surrounding mountains. The record low of −27.1 °C (−16.8 °F) decisively indicates the continental influence, being colder than records in typical maritime climates. Winter nights are also colder than in all other French lowland areas.
The Grenoble metropolitan area experiences two different microclimates: one more windy and cold to the west, the other, on the contrary, not very windy and warmer to the east.
However, the city of Grenoble features a humid subtropical climate (Köppen: Cfa) with no dry season. Although the record is incomplete, the newer station will meet the humid subtropical classification if maintained for the required 30-year period.
Saint-Martin-d'Hères weather station
(5 km east of Grenoble at an altitude of 220m)
Alpes-Isère Airport weather station
(40 km north-west of Grenoble at an altitude of 400m)
1981–2010 normals
Population
Urbanism and architecture
The Bouchayer-Viallet site is a powerful symbol of Grenoble's industrial past. This former factory is now converted into a dual-purpose area more closely linked to the Berriat neighbourhood. Innovative business activities as Apple Inc. co-exist with housing, sporting facilities, contemporary music venue and arts centres as Le Magasin. At the entrance to the Bouchayer-Viallet site, Square des Fusillés has been redeveloped and extended taking over an old car park, to facilitate access from the tramway stop and Cours Berriat.
Redevelopment of the former De Bonne barracks was an important step in the drive to launch sustainable housing in France. In 2009, the site of De Bonne was distinguished as the best eco-neighborhood in France. A shopping mall contains 53 shops arranged around an inner concourse, with one side opening onto the park and the other connecting to the town.
Main sights
La Bastille
The Bastille, an ancient series of fortifications on the mountainside, overlooks Grenoble on the northern side and is visible from many points in the city. The Bastille is one of Grenoble's most visited tourist attractions and provides a good vantage point over both the town below and the surrounding mountains.
The Bastille fort was begun in the Middle Ages, and later centuries saw extensive additions, including a semi-underground defense network. The Bastille has been credited as the most extensive example of early 18th-century fortifications in all of France. It then held an important strategic point on the French Alpine frontier with the Kingdom of Sardinia.
The first cable transport system, installed on the Bastille in 1875, was built by the Porte de France Cement Company for freight. This cable transport system connected a quarry on Mount Jalla, just over the Bastille, and Grenoble. It was abandoned in the early 20th century.
Since 1934, the Bastille has been the destination of the "Grenoble-Bastille cable car". This system of mostly transparent egg-shaped cable cars known to locals as "Les Bulles" (the bubbles) provides the occupants with an excellent view over the Isère. At the top are two restaurants and installed in the casemates of the fort itself since June 2006, the Bastille Art Centre allows visitors to see contemporary art exhibitions. There is also a small military museum on mountain troops (Musée des troupes de montagne) and, since 2000, a memorial to the mountain troops (Mémorial national des troupes de montagne) further along the road, on top of the hill.
Palace of the Parliament of Dauphiné
This renaissance palace was constructed at the Place Saint André around 1500 and extended in 1539. It was the location of the Parlement of Dauphiné until the French Revolution. It then became the Grenoble courthouse, until the courts were moved to a modern building in 2002. The left wing of the palace was extended in 1897. The front of the former seat of the nearby Dauphiné Parlement combines elements from a gothic chapel and a Renaissance façade.
The building now belongs to the Isère Council (Conseil Général de l'Isère). An ongoing renovation project will give this building a new life whilst preserving its patrimonial character and adding a modern touch.
Museum of Grenoble
The city's most prized museum, the Museum of Grenoble (Musée de Grenoble), welcomes 200,000 visitors a year. It is primarily renowned for its extensive paintings collection, which covers Western paintings from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. In the early 20th century, the Museum of Grenoble became the first French museum to open its collections to modern art, and its collection of modern and contemporary art has grown to become one of the largest in Europe. The painting holdings include works by painters such as Veronese, Rubens, Zurbarán, Ingres, Delacroix, Renoir, Gauguin, Signac, Monet, Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky, Joan Miró, Paul Klee, Giorgio de Chirico and Andy Warhol. The museum also presents a few Egyptian antiquities as well as Greek and Roman artifacts. The Sculpture collection features works by Auguste Rodin, Matisse, Alberto Giacometti and Alexander Calder. In April 2010, the prophetess of Antinoe, a 6th-century mummy discovered in 1907 in the Coptic necropolis of Antinoe in Middle Egypt, returned to the Museum of Grenoble, after more than fifty years of absence and extensive restoration.
Archaeological museums
Situated on the right bank of the Isère, on Place Saint-Laurent, the Grenoble Archaeological Museum presents the archaeological excavations done on its location. The vestiges date back to the 3rd century AD and provide a timeline of the history of Christianity in the region. The museum is situated below a 12th-century Benedictine church, under which Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac, brother of famed egyptologist Jean-François Champollion, discovered a 6th-century AD church in 1803. It was one of the first classified monuments in France thanks to the intervention of Prosper Mérimée, historic monument inspector. Systematic excavations were conducted from 1978 to 2011, as part of a regional research program on the evolution of churches during the Middle Ages. After eight years of work, the museum reopened on 6 May 2011.
The Musée de l'Ancien Évêché is the second archaeological museum in the city and is located near the Grenoble Cathedral. Installed in 1998, it houses the first baptistery of the city.
The Grenoble townhall hosts a bust of Stendhal by sculptor Pierre Charles Lenoir.
Education and science
Secondary level
The large community of both foreign students and foreign researchers prompted the creation of an international school. The Cité Scolaire Internationale Europole (CSI Europole) was formerly housed within the Lycée Stendhal across from the Maison du Tourisme, but later moved to its own building in the Europole district. In the centre of the city, two high schools have provided education to the isérois for more than three centuries. The oldest one, the Lycée Stendhal, was founded in 1651 as a Jesuit College. An astronomical and astrological sundial created in the college's main building in 1673 can still be visited today. The second-oldest higher education establishment in Grenoble is the Lycée Champollion, completed in 1887 to offer an excellent education to both high school students and students of preparatory classes.
Higher education
The city is an important university centre with over 54,000 students in 2013, of whom 16% arrive from abroad.
In a 1339 pontificial bull, Pope Benedict XII commissioned the establishment of the University of Grenoble.
In 1965, the university mostly relocated from downtown to a suburban main campus outside of the city in Saint Martin d'Hères (with some parts in Gières). However, smaller campuses remain both downtown and in the northwestern part of the city known as the Polygone Scientifique ("Scientific Polygon").
From 1970 to 2015, the university was divided into four separate institutions sharing the campus grounds, some buildings and laboratories, and even part of their administration:
Grenoble I – Joseph Fourier University (sciences, health, technologies)
Grenoble II – Pierre Mendès-France University (social sciences)
which includes the Institute of political studies
Grenoble III – Stendhal University (humanities)
Grenoble Institute of Technology (INPG or Grenoble-INP) is a federation of engineering colleges.
The first three of those merged back on 1 January 2016 to form the Université Grenoble Alpes, and the last one joined them on 1 January 2020.
Campuses are also located in Grenoble for :
École nationale de l'aviation civile (French civil aviation university),
École d'Architecture de Grenoble ( School of Architecture of Grenoble) and
Grenoble École de Management (Grenoble School of Management) triple accredited AMBA-EQUIS-AACSB Business School.
Science and engineering
Grenoble is a major scientific centre, especially in the fields of physics, computer science, and applied mathematics: Universite Joseph Fourier (UJF) is one of the leading French scientific universities while the Grenoble Institute of Technology trains more than 5,000 engineers every year in key technology disciplines. Grenoble's high-tech expertise is organized mainly around three domains: information technology, biotechnologies, and new technologies of energy.
Many fundamental and applied scientific research laboratories are conjointly managed by Joseph Fourier University, Grenoble Institute of Technology, and the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). Numerous other scientific laboratories are managed independently or in collaboration with the CNRS and the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA).
Other research centres in or near Grenoble include the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the Institut de radioastronomie millimétrique, one of the main research facilities of the Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique (Nuclear Energy Commission, CEA), the LNCMI and the European branch of Xerox Research (whose most notable center was PARC). Leti and the recent development of Minatec, a centre for innovation in micro- and nano-technology, only increases Grenoble's position as a European scientific centre. Biotechnologies are also well represented in the Grenoble region with the molecular biology research center BioMérieux, the Clinatec center, the regional center NanoBio and many ramifications of the global competitiveness cluster Lyonbiopôle.
Meanwhile, Grenoble has large laboratories related to space and to the understanding and observation of the universe as the Institut de radioastronomie millimétrique, the Institut de planétologie et d'astrophysique de Grenoble, the Laboratoire de physique subatomique et de cosmologie de Grenoble, the Institut Néel but also to a lesser extent the Institut des sciences de la Terre (part of the Observatoire des Sciences de l'Univers de Grenoble).
In order to foster this technological cluster university institutions and research organizations united to create the GIANT (Grenoble Innovation for Advanced New Technologies) Campus with the aim at becoming one of the world's top campuses in research (CEA, CNRS), higher education (INP-UGA, Grenoble Ecole de Management), and high tech.
The city benefits from the highest concentration of strategic jobs in France after Paris, with 14% of the employments, 35,186 jobs, 45% of which specialized in design and research. Grenoble is also the largest research center in France after Paris with 22,800 jobs (11,800 in public research, 7,500 in private research and 3,500 PhD students).
Grenoble is also renowned for the excellence of its academic research in humanities and political sciences. Its universities, alongside public scientific institutions, host some of the largest research centres in France (in fields such as political science, urban planning or the sociology of organizations).
Knowledge and innovation community
Grenoble is one of the co-location centres of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology's Knowledge and Innovation Communities for sustainable energy.
Economy
Industry occupies a large part of the local economy. High-tech industries have a significant presence, especially in the field of semiconductors, electronics, and biotechnology. STMicroelectronics, Schneider Electric and Soitec have major manufacturing and R&D facilities. Traditional industries in fields such as heavy equipment manufacturing and chemistry are still present and include Caterpillar, GE Renewable Energy, and Arkema.
The town was once famous for glove manufacturing, for which Xavier Jouvin introduced an innovative technique in the 19th century. A few small companies continue to produce gloves for a very high-end market.
Companies
In 2011, the largest employers in the Grenoble metropolitan area were:
The presence of companies such as HP or Caterpillar in the area has drawn many American and British workers to Grenoble, especially in the surrounding mountain villages. The region has the second largest English-speaking community in France, after Paris. That community has an English-speaking Church and supports the International School. Many of these Americans, British, Australians etc. go to Grenoble with the intention of returning home after some time but the mountains and general lifestyle often keep them there. Some choose to put their children in the international school "cité internationale", while the "American School of Grenoble" is the alternative for those who prefer to have the core curriculum in English. With numerous associations like Open House, this large English-speaking population organizes family events making life in Grenoble harder to turn away from.
Publisher Glénat has its head office in Grenoble. Inovallée is a science park with about 12,000 jobs located at Meylan and Montbonnot-Saint-Martin near Grenoble.
Media
téléGrenoble Isère is the local TV channel with France 3 Alpes. The local newspaper is Le Dauphiné libéré.
Sport
Grenoble hosted the 1968 Winter Olympics. The city is surrounded by ski resorts nestled in the surrounding mountains. Stade Lesdiguières is located in Grenoble and has been the venue for international rugby league and rugby union games.
Grenoble is the home of first rugby union, FC Grenoble, and ice hockey teams, Brûleurs de loups, and a second-tier football team, Grenoble Foot 38.
Six-Days of Grenoble, a six-day track cycling race held since 1971
The via ferrata Grenoble is a climbing route located on the hill of the Bastille in Grenoble.
The abundance of natural sites around Grenoble as well as the particular influence of mountaineering practices and history make many Grenoble inhabitants very fond of sports and outdoor activities (e.g., hiking, mountain biking, backcountry skiing, rock climbing, and paragliding). The Tour de France cycling race regularly passes through the city.
Transport
A comprehensive bus and tram service operates 26 bus routes and five tram lines. It serves much of greater Grenoble, while a new cable car system known as the Métrocâble is scheduled to be completed in 2022. Being essentially flat, Grenoble is also a bicycle-friendly city.
The Gare de Grenoble is served by the TGV rail network, with frequent high-speed services (3 hours) to and from Paris-Gare de Lyon, usually with a stop at Lyon Saint-Exupéry Airport. While Grenoble is not directly on any high-speed line, TGVs can run at reduced speeds on the classic network and enable such connections. Local rail services connect Grenoble with Lyon, and less frequently to Geneva, to Valence, and to destinations to the south. Valence and Lyon to the west provides connections with TGV services along the Rhône Valley. Rail and road connections to the south are less developed.
Grenoble can be accessed by air from Grenoble-Isère Airport, Lyon Saint-Exupéry Airport and Geneva International Airport, with the airport bus connections being most frequent to Lyon Saint-Exupéry.
Highways link Grenoble to the other major cities in the area including the A48 autoroute to the northwest toward Lyon, the A49 to the southwest toward the Rhone valley via Valence, the A41 to the northeast toward Chambéry, the Alps, and Italy and Switzerland.
A partial ring road around the south of the city, the Rocade Sud, connects the motorway arriving from the northwest (A48) with that arriving from the northeast (A41). A project to complete the ring road, with a tunnel under the Bastille as part of the likely routes, was rejected after its environmental impact studies.
From 2014 to 2017, the city of Grenoble tested the rental of seventy I-Road electric vehicles.
In 2016, the speed limit was lowered to 30 km/h (19 mph) on 80% of the streets of Grenoble and forty-two neighboring municipalities, to both improve safety and reduce pollution levels. The limit, however, remains 50 km/h (31 mph) on the main arteries.
Culture
Grenoble hosts several festivals: the Détours de Babel in March, the Open Air Short Film Festival in early July, and the Cabaret Frappé music festival at the end of July.
The Summum is the biggest concert hall in Grenoble, and the most famous artists produce there. Another big hall, Le grand angle, is located nearby in Voiron. Smaller halls in the city include the Salle Olivier Messiaen in the Minim Monastery.
The main cultural center of the city is called MC2 (for Maison de la culture, version 2), which hosts music, theater, and dance performances. The Conservatory of Grenoble is founded in 1935.
There are several theaters in Grenoble, the main one being Grenoble Municipal Theatre (Théatre de Grenoble). Others are the Théâtre de Création, the Théâtre Prémol, and the Théâtre 145. Grenoble also hosts Upstage Productions, which performs once a year through an exclusively English speaking troupe.
There are two main art centres in Grenoble: the Centre national d'Art contemporain (also called Le Magasin) and the Centre d'art Bastille.
Grenoble is known for its walnuts, Noix de Grenoble which enjoy an appellation of controlled origin.
The town also hosts a well-known comics publisher, Glénat.
Notable people
International relations
After World War I, one street in the centre of Smederevska Palanka (Serbia) was named French street (Francuska ulica) and one street in Grenoble was named Palanka street(Rue de Palanka). The same neighborhood also has a Belgrade Street (Rue de Belgrade).
Twin towns and sister cities
Grenoble is twinned with:
Gallery
See also
Université Grenoble-Alpes
Bishopric of Grenoble
Grand'Place
List of mayors of Grenoble
Route Napoléon
Saint Roch Cemetery
Arboretum Robert Ruffier-Lanche
Cellatex
References
Bibliography
External links
"Grenoble" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. XI (9th ed.). 1880. p. 184-185.
Grenoble City website (in French) |
1981_NBA_Finals | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_NBA_Finals | [
767
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_NBA_Finals"
] | The 1981 NBA World Championship Series was the championship round of the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s 1980–81 season, and the culmination of the season's playoffs. It pitted the 62–20 Eastern Conference champion Boston Celtics against the 40–42 Western Conference champion Houston Rockets. This series has the distinction of featuring for the third time in NBA history, and last to date, a team with a losing record in the Finals. They were the first team since the Minneapolis Lakers in 1959 to reach the championship round despite having more regular season losses than wins. This, along with 1986 (which was also played by the Celtics and the Rockets), was one of the only two NBA championships of the 1980s not to feature the Lakers.
Background
Houston Rockets
Prior to the season, the NBA moved the Rockets and San Antonio Spurs from the Central Division of the Eastern Conference to the Midwest Division of the Western Conference. The Rockets and Spurs traded places with the Chicago Bulls and Milwaukee Bucks. The Midwest Division also took in the expansion Dallas Mavericks.
The Rockets that season were led by Moses Malone, who practically carried the Rockets to the NBA Finals. Meanwhile, Calvin Murphy, the shortest player in the league at the time, set two NBA records, sinking 78 consecutive free throws to break Rick Barry's mark of 60 set in 1976 and achieving a free-throw percentage of .958, breaking Rick Barry's record set with the Rockets in 1979. Other key contributors of the 1980–81 team were Rudy Tomjanovich, Robert Reid, Mike Dunleavy Sr., Allen Leavell, Billy Paultz, Bill Willoughby, Calvin Garrett, Tom Henderson, and Major Jones. The Rockets clinched the last spot in the playoffs on the final night of the regular season following a loss by the Golden State Warriors to Seattle, as Golden State had the tiebreaker over Houston. Houston tied with Kansas City for second place in the Midwest behind San Antonio with a regular season record of 40–42 (this would be only the second time that an NBA team with a losing record would make the Finals, after 1959).
Houston's playoff run began by drawing the defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers and Magic Johnson in the first round. The Rockets upset Los Angeles, two games to one, with the Rockets winning both games in Los Angeles. The Western Conference Semifinals matchup featured the Rockets against the Spurs and multi-year scoring champion George Gervin in a Texas Shootout. The Rockets would win the series in seven games behind strong contributions from Murphy and Reid, including Murphy's career playoff high of 42 points in the climactic Game 7 at San Antonio. This set up an unlikely Conference Finals matchup with Kansas City, being that both teams finished the regular season with identical losing records, together compiling just 80 total victories of 164 games played. The Kings, led by Otis Birdsong, Scott Wedman, and Phil Ford fell to the Rockets in five games, and the Rockets would break into the NBA Finals for the first time, the first of four in franchise history. It would be the only time two conference finalists in the playoffs both had losing records, and the second and last time to date a team with a losing record made it all the way to the Finals round (the first being the 1959 Minneapolis Lakers).
Boston Celtics
This was the Celtics' first appearance in The Finals since their 1976 championship winning team against the Phoenix Suns. The Celtics were not quite the same team as five years before, as they added the likes of Larry Bird, Robert Parish, and Kevin McHale, a trio that would come to be known as "The Big Three." M. L. Carr, Cedric Maxwell, and Nate Archibald were also capable players off the bench, and key cogs in Boston's balanced offensive attack. However, the Celtics lost future Hall of Famers Dave Cowens and JoJo White to retirement. Still, the Celtics, led by Bird, won 62 games and managed to squeak past Philadelphia for the league's best record due to tiebreakers.
The Celtics's playoff run started with a first-round bye, straight into the conference semifinals. Despite the layoff, the Celtics easily swept the Artis Gilmore-led Chicago Bulls, and then faced the defending Eastern Conference champion Philadelphia 76ers for the right to advance to The Finals. After a hard-fought and physical series, the Celtics eventually came back from a three-games-to-one deficit to defeat the Sixers, repeating a feat they accomplished in 1968. Five of the games in the series ended with the winning team on top by two points or less, including a 91-90 nail-biter in Game 7.
Both teams had met in the playoffs the year earlier, when the Rockets were in their final season in the Eastern Conference. The 1980 Eastern Conference Semifinal matchup had a slightly different Celtics team, with Hall of Fame center Dave Cowens still playing for the team, as well not featuring perennial stars Kevin McHale and Robert Parish, both of whom would not arrive in Boston until the 1981 season. Rick Barry for Houston was also in the final season of his career in 1980. The Celtics blew out the Rockets in a four-game sweep, by a total of 74 points in the 1980 Eastern Conference Semis.
Road to the Finals
(*)The Celtics were tied with the Philadelphia 76ers for the NBA's best record, but the Celtics earned the division title and the overall top seed based on tie-breakers.
Regular season series
The Boston Celtics won both games in the regular season series:
Series summary
Game summaries
Game 1
No one figured this series to be much of a Finals. Houston, in fact, had lost its previous dozen games to the Celtics, including a 4–0 series sweep in the previous years' playoffs. But Malone, who had averaged nearly 28 points and 15 rebounds over the season, would have none of the "Boston Curse". He came into the series fired up, going so far as to call the Celtics "chumps". The Celtics, meanwhile, were coming off three close games in the Eastern Conference Finals in upsetting the heavily favored Philadelphia 76ers. So, the Celtics were understandably flat.
Houston led 57–51 at the half and kept that intensity through the game. Late in the fourth period, with the Celtics trailing 87–84, Bird put up an 18-footer from the right side. As soon as he turned it loose, he immediately rushed in for the rebound. He caught the ball in midair as his momentum was carrying him out of bounds on the baseline just right of the lane. In an instant, he switched the ball to his left hand (a right-handed shot would have hit the side of the backboard) and flipped it in the basket. Bird would finish with 18 points, 21 rebounds, and nine assists. Moses Malone would grab 15 rebounds, but was held to 13 points.
The crowd went nuts over Bird's shot, with general manager Red Auerbach leading the cheers. Bill Russell, who was broadcasting the game for CBS, looked on in disbelief.
"Larry was able to make the play", said Russell, "because he not only knew where the ball was going to land, he knew that he knew."
The shot carried Boston to a 98–95 win and Auerbach proclaimed, "It was one of the best shots I've ever seen a player make."
Game 2
Malone would come up big in this game, scoring 31 points and pulling down another 15 boards. Bill Willoughby would add 14 off the bench to make up for poor shooting by Robert Reid (0 for 7) and Calvin Murphy (4 for 13). Reserve guard Allen Leavell's late basket would give the Rockets the 92–90 victory. Bird would lead the Celtics once again with 19 points and 21 rebounds. The victory was Houston's eighth road win of the playoffs, a record that stood until the 1995 Rockets won nine playoff games en route to winning the championship.
Game 3
With the series back in Houston, Robert Reid, matched up with Larry Bird, would begin to garner attention for his defense on the Celtics star, holding him to three baskets and eight points. But, the Celtics would not need Bird's scoring in this one. The Rockets shot a paltry 3 for 17 in the second quarter, fell behind by 17, and never recovered.
Cedric Maxwell led six Celtics in double figures with 19 points. His teammates, meanwhile, played some pretty good defense of their own, holding the Rockets to 71 points, the lowest output for an NBA team in a Finals game since the Syracuse Nationals scored 71 in the 1955 NBA Finals (which was, incidentally, the year the shot clock was introduced). The record low stood until it was embarrassingly shattered by the Utah Jazz in Game 3 of the 1998 Finals when they lost 96–54 to Chicago Bulls.
Game 4
Reid continued his air-tight defense on Bird, holding him to another eight points, while scoring 19 himself. The star of this game was Mike Dunleavy, Sr., who had 28 points. Malone would add 24 points and 22 rebounds as the Rockets tied the series. Another key was the Rockets' relentless offensive rebounding and second-chance opportunities; they grabbed 28 offensive rebounds (Reid had 10 and Malone nine with four put-back dunks) on the way to out-shooting the Celtics in attempts, 103 to 74.
Game 5
The Rockets had a losing regular season record at 40–42, but, up to Game 5, they showed they definitely belonged in the finals with the Celtics. So, no one could blame Moses Malone for doing some trash-talking. Earlier, he had simply declared, "Boston ain't that good." Before Game 5, though, Malone went a little too far, saying, "I could get four guys off the street in Petersburg (Virginia, Malone's hometown) and beat them." This was all coach Bill Fitch would need to motivate his troops.
With Bird still struggling offensively, Cedric Maxwell shouldered the load, scoring 28 points and pulling down 15 rebounds and sparking several fast breaks to a Celtics rout, 109–80.
The infamous on-air incident between Rick Barry and Bill Russell occurred early in the third quarter of this game.
Game 6
Motivated from Malone's previous barbs, the Celtics took it right to the Rockets back at The Summit, leading 84–67 in the final period. However, as coach Fitch looked on in disgust, the Celtics went five minutes without a basket as the Rockets, led by Calvin Garrett, reeled off 13 unanswered points in a furious comeback and eventually cut the lead to only three, with the Houston crowd erupting louder after each basket. Larry Bird then finally broke out of his shooting doldrums to personally blunt the Rockets' rally. Bird hit a 15-foot jumper, fed series MVP Maxwell for a basket, and hit a back-breaking, 24-foot, three-point shot to put the Rockets away for good and send Boston to its 14th NBA Championship, and at last a championship ring for 11-year veteran Nate Archibald.
As of 2024, this is the most recent time the Celtics have clinched a championship on the road, with each of their next four titles being won at home.
Player statistics
Boston Celtics
Houston Rockets
Television coverage
Before 2003, the 1981 NBA Finals received the lowest television rating in NBA history. The 1981 Finals drew a 6.7 rating, according to Nielsen Media Research. Meanwhile, the 2003 Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and New Jersey Nets drew a 6.5 rating. Due to this, the 1981 finals were the last to be broadcast on tape-delay, with weeknight games airing after the late local news in most cities. Games 3 and 4 were played back-to-back on Saturday and Sunday, May 9 and 10, to give CBS two live Finals games. It is the last time Finals games were played on consecutive days. Game 3 was the last Finals contest played on a Saturday until Game 5 in 2021. Game 4 tipped off at noon Central (1 p.m. Eastern/10 a.m. Pacific) in order for CBS to telecast golf following the game. Had Game 7 been played, it would have tipped off at 1 p.m. Eastern.
Following the Finals, Gary Bender became the lead play-by-play announcer for CBS' coverage of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, while Rick Barry's contract, following his questionable racial comments about Bill Russell during the Finals, was not renewed. Russell would remain the main color analyst for the next two years alongside newly promoted main play-by-play commentator Dick Stockton. Curiously, Barry and Russell would reunite, this time on the NBA on TBS for two seasons beginning in the 1984–85 season. Russell was replaced as CBS' lead analyst following the 1983 Finals by former Celtics teammate Tom Heinsohn.
Brent Musburger narrated the duration of the 1981 NBA Playoffs on film, known as "The Dynasty Renewed". The 1981 film was expanded from 30 minutes to one hour, with more highlights from rounds prior to the finals.
Team rosters
Boston Celtics
Houston Rockets
See also
1981 NBA Playoffs
References
External links
NBA History
NBA Official Website |
1982_NBA_Finals | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_NBA_Finals | [
767
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_NBA_Finals"
] | The 1982 NBA World Championship Series was the championship round of the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s 1981–82 season, the top level of competition in men's professional basketball in North America. The series saw the Western Conference champion Los Angeles Lakers face the Eastern Conference champion Philadelphia 76ers. It was a rematch of the 1980 NBA Finals. The Lakers won 4 games to 2.
The 1982 NBA Finals documentary "Something to Prove" recaps all the action of this series. It was the last NBA video documentary to exclusively use film in all on-court action. Dick Stockton narrated the documentary, with the condensed USA Network version narrated by Al Albert.
This was the first Finals to be claimed on the winning team's home court since 1977. The series ended June 8, later than any previous NBA Finals. The previous record was June 7, 1978. This record was eclipsed two years later when the finals ended on June 12, 1984.
Background
Los Angeles Lakers
The Lakers were stunned in the 1981 NBA Playoffs by the Houston Rockets in a 3-game mini-series. The previous season saw the Lakers in a state of uncertainty, after Magic Johnson missed 45 games due to a knee injury. Their problems continued early in the new season, and with the team at 7–4 the Lakers decided to fire head coach Paul Westhead. Taking over as head coach was Pat Riley, and his promotion to the job led to the birth of the Showtime offense.
With a healthy Johnson and the additions of Kurt Rambis and Bob McAdoo, the Lakers rallied to finish with a 57–25 record, best in the Western Conference. They were even more flawless in the playoffs as they both swept the Phoenix Suns in the Western Conference Semifinals, and the San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference Finals.
Philadelphia 76ers
Like the Lakers, the 76ers were coming off a heartbreaking playoff defeat, as they blew a 3–1 lead and lost to the eventual champion Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals. Not much was changed for the 76ers roster-wise and record-wise in the new season, however, as the team finished second behind the Celtics in the Atlantic Division for the third straight year.
Due to a then-existing rule where division winners would earn a first-round bye, the 76ers were forced to play a best-of-three miniseries, even though their 58–24 record was three games better than the Central Division champion Milwaukee Bucks. Nevertheless, Philadelphia easily swept the Atlanta Hawks 2–0 in the first round, then ousted the Bucks in the next round 4–2. In the Eastern Conference finals, the 76ers blew out the Celtics twice at The Spectrum to take a 3–1 lead, only to lose the next two games in a harrowing replay of the 1981 playoffs. But led by Andrew Toney's 34 points, the 76ers exorcised the demons of 1981 by blowing out the Celtics 120–106 in Game 7. As time wound down, the Boston Garden crowd began to chant "Beat L.A.!", encouraging the 76ers to defeat the hated Lakers in the championship round.
Road to the Finals
Regular season series
Both teams split the two meetings, each won by the home team:
Series summary
Game summaries
Game 1
Fresh from holding off the Celtics in the conference finals, the Sixers worked their offense to precision and held a 15-point lead midway through the third quarter 83-68. But, then, the Lakers began to turn it up on defense and the result was many fast breaks. The Lakers went on a 40–9 run over the game's next 11 minutes. Wilkes scored 10, Kareem and McAdoo scored 8 each, Nixon and Cooper scored 7 each, and Nixon had 4 assists during the run, on the way to a 124-117 Game 1 win, thereby stealing the home-court advantage.
After the game, Sixers coach Billy Cunningham commented that the Sixers weren't affected that much by the trapping Laker defense, just cold shooting and sloppy play. However, he also questioned whether or not it was a "zone defense", which was illegal at the time.
Game 2
In this game, Laker coach Pat Riley took a different defensive approach, assigning Magic Johnson to cover Julius Erving straight-up on defense. While Magic couldn't match the Doctor's athleticism, the move did keep Erving from the offensive boards.
In Game 2 that wasn't quite enough, as Erving brought the Sixers back with 24 points and 16 rebounds, mostly defensive. Billy Cunningham used all his centers, Caldwell Jones, Darryl Dawkins and Earl Cureton at different points to guard Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The Sixers got 38 offensive rebounds for 50 second-chance points, while the Lakers only had six offensive boards.
The Sixers used that advantage to take a 110–94 win that evened the series. In a balanced scoring attack, Maurice Cheeks had 19 points and eight assists, Jones added 12 points and 11 rebounds, and Bobby Jones and Clint Richardson each scored 10. This was the Lakers first loss in the 1982 post season.
Game 3
Back at home at The Forum, the Lakers completely dominated Game 3. Norm Nixon scored 29 points as the Lakers marched to a 129–108 victory. Andrew Toney scored 36 and Julius Erving 21, but no one else came through.
Game 4
The Lakers controlled the tempo in Game 4 by going to their half-court game, passing down low to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. On the defensive end, they kept up the pressure with their zone trap. The Lakers went up, three games to one, with a 111–101 win. Jamaal Wilkes and Magic Johnson had 24 points each, while Abdul-Jabbar added 22 and Bob McAdoo 19 off the bench. Hard-charging bruiser Kurt Rambis pulled down 11 rebounds, matching Abdul-Jabbar's output.
Game 5
Back in Philadelphia, the Sixers took out their frustrations and destroyed the Lakers, 135–102. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was held to just six points, a career playoff low, thanks to the spirited defense of Darryl Dawkins. In the midst of the offensive explosion, Dawkins also contributed 20 points and seven rebounds to the effort.
This was the Lakers' most lopsided playoff defeat up to this time. It was eclipsed when they were routed 148-114 by the Celtics in Game 1 of the 1985 Finals. Coincidentally, the Lakers also won that series in six games despite the blowout loss.
Game 6
The Sixers' strong showing in Game 5 gave them hope for Game 6 in the Forum, but the Lakers got the early lead and were up, 66–57, at the half.
In the third period, the Sixers' defense turned it up a notch. They held Los Angeles to 20 points for the quarter and several times cut the lead to one point. Super-sub Bob McAdoo, known more for his offense, made a key defensive play late in the third when he blocked a Julius Erving layup on a breakaway that would have given the Sixers the lead.
The Lakers came back and surged early in the fourth period to boost their lead to 11. Erving, who led all scorers with 30 points, and Andrew Toney, who had 29, responded by trimming the lead to 103–100 with about four minutes left, but then Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scored and was fouled and made the free throw to put Los Angeles up by six. Moments later, Wilkes got a breakaway layup to close it out, 114–104.
Jamaal Wilkes led the Lakers with 27 points, and Magic Johnson, with 13 points, 13 rebounds and 13 assists, was named the series MVP. McAdoo, who had 16 points, nine rebounds and three blocks, was pretty much reborn as a player in this series after being cast off by several teams as a selfish, non-team player.
Aside from the Doctor's and Toney's efforts, no one else stepped up for the Sixers. Darryl Dawkins fouled out and only had 10 points and one rebound in 20 minutes played. Dawkins would soon be shipped to the New Jersey Nets, and the 76ers acquired the final piece of their championship puzzle: Moses Malone, an MVP center from the Houston Rockets.
Team rosters
Los Angeles Lakers
Philadelphia 76ers
Player statistics
Los Angeles Lakers
Philadelphia 76ers
Television coverage
Unlike previous years, where weeknight games were shown on tape delay, all games in the Finals were televised live by CBS. As a compromise to CBS to allow the live telecasts, the NBA returned the start of its season to late October after starting it earlier in October the previous two seasons, meaning the finals would start after the conclusion of the mid-May sweeps period. The later date also eliminated the back-to-back games on Mother's Day weekend, which was used in 1980 and 1981 to avert another tape delay broadcast.
This was also the first of nine straight NBA finals (1982-1990) that Dick Stockton would call for CBS Sports. Stockton also announced the starting lineups of the 1982 NBA Finals in lieu of P.A. announcers Dave Zinkoff (for the 76ers) and Larry McKay (for the Lakers; McKay would be replaced the next season by Lawrence Tanter).
Aftermath
Both teams would meet in the Finals again in 1983. The Sixers, bolstered by the addition of league MVP Moses Malone, won 65 games, and steamrolled through the playoffs, in which they lost only once (completing Malone's famous "Fo, Fo, Fo" prediction, stating that the Sixers needed to win 4 games in each of the three series) in route to their third NBA title overall (they won in 1955 as the Syracuse Nationals, and in 1967). The Lakers finished the regular season with 58 wins, but were overmatched by the hungrier Sixers in the Finals. Then-rookie and future Hall of Famer James Worthy did not play in the series because of a late-season leg injury.
See also
76ers–Lakers rivalry
1982 NBA Playoffs
References
External links
NBA History |
1983_NBA_Finals | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_NBA_Finals | [
767
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_NBA_Finals"
] | The 1983 NBA World Championship Series, also known as Showdown '83, was the championship round of the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s 1982–83 season, and the culmination of the season's playoffs. It was the last NBA Championship Series completed before June 1. The Eastern Conference champion Philadelphia 76ers defeated the Western Conference champion Los Angeles Lakers four games to zero to win their third NBA championship. After their previous four final meetings, they beat the Lakers for the first time in NBA Finals history. 76ers center Moses Malone was named the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player (MVP). This, along with the 1989 NBA Finals, were the only two NBA championships of the 1980s not to be won by either the Lakers or the Boston Celtics; every NBA Finals of that decade featured either the Lakers or Celtics, and sometimes both (1984, 1985, 1987). Coincidentally, the Lakers were also swept in the 1989 NBA Finals, that time by the Detroit Pistons.
Background
Philadelphia 76ers
The 76ers lost their first two Finals meetings with the Lakers in 1980 and 1982. While Julius Erving played superbly in both series, their frontcourt of Darryl Dawkins, Caldwell Jones, and Bobby Jones couldn't neutralize Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. So in the off-season, the 76ers acquired Moses Malone from the Houston Rockets in an effort to counter Abdul-Jabbar, in addition to providing some offense and rebounding to the team. They parted ways with Caldwell Jones, Dawkins, and Lionel Hollins before the season, while giving greater responsibility to high-scoring guard Andrew Toney and backup playmaker Clint Richardson, and adding forwards Clemon Johnson and rookie Marc Iavaroni.
Malone's acquisition paid dividends, as the 76ers won 65 games in the 1982–83 NBA season. Prior to the playoffs, Malone predicted the team would win in four games in each of the three rounds, ending it with the statement Fo, Fo, Fo. The 76ers would steamroll through the playoffs, sweeping the New York Knicks 4–0 in the conference semifinals, before overcoming the Milwaukee Bucks in five games.
Los Angeles Lakers
The Lakers earned the top pick of the 1982 NBA draft, becoming the only defending champion to earn the top overall pick in the same season. This was because Cleveland Cavaliers owner Ted Stepien traded their first round pick and Butch Lee to the Lakers for Don Ford and draft pick Chad Kinch three years earlier. Because the Cavaliers earned the worst record at 15–67, they would have earned the top overall pick via a coin toss with the 17–65 San Diego Clippers. Instead, the Lakers would earn the top pick and ultimately selected future Hall of Famer James Worthy first overall.
The Lakers won 58 games the next season. Worthy was a strong contender for Rookie of the Year when he broke his leg late in the season, therefore missing the rest of the season and the playoffs. Despite Worthy's absence, Magic Johnson, already a top-level guard, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 35 and still in his prime, led the Lakers back to the Finals. They beat the Portland Trail Blazers 4–1 and the San Antonio Spurs 4–2 in the second and third playoff rounds, respectively.
Road to the Finals
Regular season series
The Philadelphia 76ers won both games in the regular season series:
Series summary
The final piece of the Philadelphia 76ers' championship puzzle was completed before the 1982–83 season when they acquired center Moses Malone from the Houston Rockets. They went on to capture their third NBA championship as they won 65 games, and stormed through the playoffs, first sweeping the New York Knicks, and then beating the Milwaukee Bucks in five games. They finally finished it off with a four-game sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers, who had defeated them the season before.
Said head coach Billy Cunningham, "The difference from last year was Moses." Malone was named MVP of the 1983 Finals, as well as league MVP for the third time in his career. The 76ers completed one of the most dominating playoff runs in league history with a 12–1 mark after league and NBA Finals MVP Moses promised "Fo', fo', fo" (as in "four, four, four"—four wins to win round 1, four wins to win round 2, etc.), but it actually wound up as "Fo', fi', fo." (four, five, four). The 76ers were also led by Julius Erving, Maurice Cheeks, Andrew Toney, and Bobby Jones.
With 59 seconds to go in Game 4, it was Erving who made a three-point play to hold the lead for good, crushing the Lakers in a four-game sweep and ending the last NBA Finals to end before June.
Until the Phillies won the 2008 World Series over the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1, this was the last time a team from Philadelphia in the Big Four leagues won their league's championship.
Game 1
Game 2
Game 3
Game 4
Player statistics
Philadelphia 76ers
Los Angeles Lakers
Television coverage
The 1983 NBA Finals was broadcast by CBS. Dick Stockton and Bill Russell were the commentators and Brent Musburger was the host, with Kevin Loughery as a pre-game, halftime and post-game analyst. It also introduced a new theme music (composed by Allyson Bellink) for the CBS Sports coverage of the NBA, used an introduction of the NBA arenas (similar to the Boston Garden) until the 1989 Playoffs and later revived the second theme beginning in the 1989 Finals.
Russell departed CBS following the series, and was replaced by former Celtics teammate Tom Heinsohn. Russell would later resurface as a color analyst on TBS until 1987.
Team rosters
Philadelphia 76ers
Los Angeles Lakers
See also
76ers–Lakers rivalry
1983 NBA Playoffs
References
External links
NBA History |
1984_NBA_Finals | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_NBA_Finals | [
767
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_NBA_Finals"
] | The 1984 NBA World Championship Series was the championship round of the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s 1983–84 season, and the culmination of the season's playoffs. The Eastern Conference champion Boston Celtics defeated the Western Conference champion Los Angeles Lakers in seven games. Celtics forward Larry Bird averaged 27 points and 14 rebounds a game during the series, earning the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player (MVP).
This series was a rematch of the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics after their rivalry was revived in 1979 with the Magic Johnson–Larry Bird pair entering the league. After alternating wins with the Lakers, the Celtics won Game 7 and the series with a score of 111–102.
This was the last NBA Finals to use the 2–2–1–1–1 format until 2014. The following year, the NBA Finals format was changed to 2–3–2 after Red Auerbach complained about the constant travelling during the Finals. Although the 2–2–1–1–1 format remained intact for the remainder of the playoff rounds, the 2–3–2 format would be used until 2013.
Background
The seeds of the 1984 Finals were first sown five years earlier, during the 1979 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament. In the final game of the tournament, Larry Bird and his erstwhile unbeaten Indiana State Sycamores lost to Magic Johnson and his Michigan State Spartans by the score of 75–64. After the tournament, both entered the NBA in the 1979–80 season with high expectations. Bird, who was selected 6th in the 1978 NBA draft but committed back to Indiana State for his senior season, was named Rookie of the Year after leading the Celtics to a 32-game turnaround from the previous year, going from 29 to 61 wins. The expected Celtics–Lakers finals, however, never happened. The Philadelphia 76ers defeated the Celtics in the conference finals before losing to the Lakers in the 1980 NBA Finals, with Johnson earning Finals MVP honors for his Game 6 performance. Since then Bird won a championship in 1981, then Magic led the Lakers to the finals in 1982 and 1983, winning in the former.
Boston Celtics
In the 1983–84 season, the Celtics won 62 games to lead the league. The Celtics were led by Bird, who won his first MVP award, and was complemented by 1981 Finals MVP Cedric Maxwell, first-time all-star and Sixth Man Award winner Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, Gerald Henderson and Danny Ainge. Boston's most crucial addition was Dennis Johnson, whom they acquired from the Phoenix Suns in the offseason in hopes of addressing their porous back-court defense.
In the playoffs, the Celtics defeated the Washington Bullets in four, the New York Knicks in seven, and the Milwaukee Bucks in five.
Los Angeles Lakers
The Lakers were coming off a four-game sweep by the Philadelphia 76ers in the previous year's finals. Before the season began, the Lakers traded long-time guard Norm Nixon to the San Diego Clippers in exchange for the draft rights to Byron Scott. The trade signaled a transition period, as some of the key players from the first two championships gave way to younger talent. Despite the changes, it did not stop the Lakers from finishing with the best record (54–28) in the Western Conference, powered by their one-two punch of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson.
During the playoffs, the Lakers defeated the Kansas City Kings in three, the Dallas Mavericks in five, and the Phoenix Suns in six. However, the Lakers suffered a key injury when their 3rd leading scorer, Jamaal Wilkes (17 PPG) was ruled out of the finals. This cost the Lakers valuable depth, as James Worthy, a key contributor off the bench, would now have to start in Wilkes' place.
Road to the Finals
Regular season series
The Los Angeles Lakers won both games in the regular season series:
Series summary
Game 1
Led by Magic Johnson, the Lakers fast break offense scored 52 points en route to a 115-109 victory at Boston Garden to open the series.
Game 2
In Game 2, the Lakers led 113-111 with 18 seconds left when Gerald Henderson stole a James Worthy pass to score a game tying layup. The Lakers then inbounded the ball and Magic Johnson inexplicably dribbled the clock out during regulation time. With the Celtics down by one near the end of overtime, Scott Wedman hit a shot from the baseline with 14 seconds remaining to put Boston ahead. The Lakers' chance to win on the ensuing possession was thwarted by a Robert Parish steal, followed by Larry Bird sinking a pair of free throws to secure the 124–121 victory for the Celtics.
Game 3
In Game 3, the Lakers raced to an easy 137-104 victory as Magic Johnson dished out 21 assists, an NBA Finals record. After the game, Larry Bird said his team played like "sissies" in an attempt to light a fire under his teammates. It was Boston's worst playoff defeat in franchise history to that date.
Game 4
In Game 4, the Lakers had a five-point game lead with less than a minute to play, but made several execution errors, including Magic Johnson's bad pass to Robert Parish late in the fourth quarter, and missing two crucial free throws in OT as the Celtics tied the game and then came away with a 129-125 victory in overtime. Johnson was called "Tragic Johnson" by Celtics fans due to the two crucial errors he committed in Game 4 (the Parish steal, followed by two botched free throws in OT). The Lakers took an early lead in overtime, but a controversial foul call on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, with 16 seconds remaining in regulation, had been his 6th foul, and he was out of the game. The Laker momentum was stalled, and Larry Bird came up with a crucial jumper over Magic Johnson with 16 seconds remaining in overtime, then M.L. Carr stole James Worthy's inbounds pass followed by a dunk to seal the win. The game was also marked by Celtic forward Kevin McHale's clothesline take-down of Laker forward Kurt Rambis on a breakaway layup which triggered the physical aspect of the rivalry. Larry Bird would go after Kareem Abdul-Jabbar later on in the third quarter, and 1981 Finals MVP Cedric Maxwell further antagonized the Lakers by following a missed James Worthy free throw by crossing the lane with his hands around his own neck, symbolizing that Worthy was "choking" under pressure. Also, Bird pushed Michael Cooper to the baseline following the inbound play during the second quarter.
Game 4 of the 1984 Finals marked the last Finals game to go into overtime until Game 2 of the 1990 NBA Finals.
Game 5
In Game 5, the Celtics took a 3-2 series lead with a 121-103 victory, as Larry Bird scored 34 points and grabbed 17 rebounds. The game was known as the "Heat Game", as it was played under 97 °F (36 °C) heat, and without any air conditioning, at Boston Garden. The Celtics did not warm up with their sweat pants on because of extreme heat, and an oxygen tank was provided to give air to an aging Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Referee Hugh Evans became dehydrated and fainted at one point in the first half. He worked the first half, but was replaced by John Vanak for the second half. It was also the last time that a team with home court advantage in the NBA finals played Game 5 on its own floor until 2014. The next year, the NBA Finals switched to the 2-3-2 format with Game 5 going to the team without home-court advantage, which continued through 2013.
Game 6
In Game 6, the Lakers evened the series with a 119-108 victory. In the game the Lakers answered the Celtics' rough tactics when Laker forward James Worthy shoved Cedric Maxwell into a basket support. After the game a Laker fan threw a beer at Celtics guard M.L. Carr as he left the floor, causing him to label the series "all-out-war."
Game 7
In Game 7, the heat that was an issue in Game 5 was not as bad (indoor temperatures hovered around 91 °F (33 °C) during the game, due to additional fans being brought in to try to cool the air). The Celtics were led by Cedric Maxwell who had 24 points, eight rebounds and eight assists as they came away with a 111-102 victory. In the game, the Lakers rallied to cut a 14-point-deficit to three with one minute remaining when Cedric Maxwell knocked the ball away from Magic Johnson. Dennis Johnson responded by sinking two free throws to seal the victory. Larry Bird was named MVP of the series.
The series was the eighth time in NBA history that the Celtics and Lakers met in the NBA finals, with Boston winning each time, and the first championship that the Celtics claimed at home since 1966.
Player statistics
Boston Celtics
Los Angeles Lakers
Team rosters
Boston Celtics
Los Angeles Lakers
Television coverage
The 1984 championship series scored high TV ratings. All the playoff action was documented on the 1984 NBA Season documentary Pride and Passion, narrated by Dick Stockton. Stockton, the play-by-play announcer for the series, was joined by Tom Heinsohn, and the duo would call the next four NBA Finals until 1987.
Aftermath
Reflecting back on the series, Magic Johnson said ". . . (the Lakers) learned a valuable lesson. Only the strong survive. . . talent just don't get it. That's the first time the (80's) Lakers ever encountered that, someone stronger minded." The teams met again in the 1985 finals, which the Lakers won 4–2.
In 1986, they failed to meet in a third straight NBA Finals (it was later accomplished 31 years later by the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors), as the Lakers were eliminated in the Conference Finals by the Houston Rockets. The Lakers and the Celtics met again in 1987 where the Lakers won in six games.
See also
1984 NBA Playoffs
References
External links
NBA History
Boston Globe story about Game 5 (published 7 June 2009) |
1985_NBA_Finals | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_NBA_Finals | [
767
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_NBA_Finals"
] | The 1985 NBA World Championship Series was the championship round of the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s 1984–85 season, and the culmination of the season's playoffs. It featured the defending NBA champion and Eastern Conference playoff champion Boston Celtics against the Western Conference playoff champion Los Angeles Lakers.
The Celtics were looking to repeat as NBA champions for the first time since the 1968–69 season. The Celtics had home court advantage for the second year in a row as they finished the regular season with a 63–19 record while the Lakers compiled a 62–20 record. The Lakers looked to bounce back from the previous year's painful loss to the Celtics in the championship series, and were still seeking to beat Boston for the first time ever in NBA Finals history. Also for the first time since 1955, the Finals implemented a 2–3–2 format with Games 1 and 2 in Boston while the next three games were in Los Angeles. The final two games of the series would be played in Boston, if required. This change of format came after David Stern had a conversation with Celtics legend Red Auerbach in 1984, who disliked the frequent traveling between games. The 2–3–2 format would be used until the 2013 NBA Finals, after which the 2–2–1–1–1 format returned in 2014.
With the help of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson, the Los Angeles Lakers achieved their first NBA Finals victory over the Boston Celtics in nine meetings, four to two games. The Lakers recovered after losing in a rout in game 1, dubbed as the "Memorial Day Massacre". The series was the last time the NBA World Championship Series branding would be in use as the NBA Finals branding would replace it for 1986. The video documentary Return to Glory recaps the 1985 NBA playoffs action.
Background
Los Angeles Lakers
After losing to the Celtics in the previous year's finals, the Lakers entered the 1984–85 NBA season with a mission. Once again using the effective Showtime offense, they ran away with the Western Conference-leading 62 wins. The team as a whole underwent a slight evolution, as James Worthy supplanted Jamaal Wilkes as the starting small forward, while Byron Scott began to earn more minutes as the backup to both Magic Johnson and Michael Cooper.
In the playoffs, the Lakers eliminated the Phoenix Suns, Portland Trail Blazers and Denver Nuggets, going 11–2 in the three playoff rounds.
Boston Celtics
The Celtics repeated with the NBA's best record by winning 63 games. For the second straight season, Larry Bird won the MVP award, while Kevin McHale won Sixth Man Award for the second year running, despite making the transition from bench cog to starter late in the season with Cedric Maxwell nursing a knee injury. Danny Ainge also emerged as the team's starting shooting guard, after the Celtics traded Gerald Henderson to the Seattle SuperSonics in the offseason.
The Celtics defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers, Detroit Pistons and Philadelphia 76ers, finishing with an 11–4 record heading into the finals. By that point, Boston's classic starting five under head coach K. C. Jones was solidified, featuring Bird, McHale and Robert Parish in the frontcourt, and Ainge and Dennis Johnson in the backcourt.
Road to the Finals
Regular season series
Both teams split the two meetings, each won by the home team:
Series summary
Game 1
The Celtics defeated the Lakers 148–114. It was dubbed the "Memorial Day Massacre" and a profound embarrassment for the Lakers team. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had only 12 points and 3 rebounds, while Magic Johnson pulled down only one rebound. Danny Ainge of the Celtics started hot, scoring 15 points in the first quarter. Scott Wedman made all 11 shots he took from the field. Afterwards, Abdul-Jabbar apologized to his teammates for his terrible performance.
The 34-point differential set a new record for a Finals game between the Celtics and Lakers in their rivalry. This record would stand until the 2008 NBA Finals, when the Celtics defeated the Lakers, 131–92.
Game 2
The Lakers recovered from the Game 1 loss behind Abdul-Jabbar's 30 points, 17 rebounds, 3 blocks, and 8 assists. Lakers swingman Michael Cooper finished with 22 points on an 8 for 9 shooting performance, including several clutch outside jumpers down the stretch. The series was evened at 1–1.
Game 3
The Celtics held a 48–38 lead in the second quarter before the Lakers rallied and led, 65–59, at halftime. The Lakers pulled away in the second half and won the game 136–111. Abdul-Jabbar scored his 4,456th career point and became the league's all-time leading playoff scorer, which had previously been held by Lakers guard Jerry West. Larry Bird's shooting slump from game 2 continued. He shot a combined 17 of 42 from the field in games two and three. James Worthy led the Lakers with 29 points.
Game 4
The Celtics tied the series in the fourth game with a 107–105 win with a buzzer-beating jumper by Dennis Johnson, who scored 27 points. Kevin McHale led all players with 28 points to go along with 12 rebounds for the Celtics.
Game 5
In this game, the Lakers stomped out the Celtics by jumping out to a 64–51 lead and stretched it to 89–72 before the Celtics cut the deficit to 4 points, late in the 4th quarter. The Celtics would cut the lead to 4 points several times, but the Lakers answered each time. Magic Johnson made three shots, Kareem added four more shots, and Cooper hit 2 outside jumpers, and the Lakers came away with a 120–111 victory to take a 3–2 series lead.
Game 6
In the series clincher, the game was tied at halftime. The Lakers would hold the Celtics to just 18 third quarter points to pull away. Abdul-Jabbar scored 29 points and James Worthy scored 28 of his own, as Los Angeles became the first team to clinch a title at the Boston Garden. Magic Johnson dished out a game-high 14 assists. Celtics' forward Kevin McHale scored 32 points and grabbed 16 rebounds—both game-highs—before fouling out in the fourth quarter. Larry Bird's dismal shooting continued as he hit just 12 of 29 shots.
The 38-year-old Abdul-Jabbar was named MVP of the series, his second Finals MVP award and first since 1971 (back when he was known as Lew Alcindor), averaging 25.7 points, 9.0 rebounds, 5.2 assists and 1.5 blocks in six games. Worthy averaged 23.7 points for the Lakers, while Magic Johnson scored 18.3 points per game to go along with 14.0 assists and 6.8 rebounds. Los Angeles shot 51.2% as a team for the series.
McHale led Boston in scoring (26.0) and rebounding (10.7) while shooting 59.8% from the floor. Bird averaged 23.8 points and 8.8 rebounds on just 44.9% shooting. Celtics' guard Dennis Johnson led both teams in minutes played (247). Boston shot 47.6% from the floor while out-rebounding Los Angeles 259–256.
It was the first time (and only time until 2022) in NBA Finals history where the other team clinched the championship against the Celtics in Boston. It was also only the Celtics' second Finals series defeat, having previously lost to the St. Louis Hawks in 1958.
Player statistics
Los Angeles Lakers
Boston Celtics
Television coverage
The Finals were telecast by CBS in the United States, with its coverage anchored by Brent Musburger. Dick Stockton did play-by-play with Tom Heinsohn as color analyst, working their second Finals together. Pat O'Brien worked sideline duties for both teams.
Celebration
The Lakers were invited to a reception at the White House with President Ronald Reagan, where Kareem Abdul-Jabbar presented the President with a jersey. The following Tuesday would be declared "Laker Day" by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley with a parade beginning at 9th in Broadway.
Team rosters
Los Angeles Lakers
Boston Celtics
Aftermath
After appearing in and winning both the 1981 and 1984 NBA Finals, this finals championship marked the first loss for the Larry Bird-led Celtics. Boston would appear in two more NBA Finals before the decade was over winning it all the next year (against Houston), only to lose in a rematch to the Lakers in 1987. It would take another 22 years before the Celtics would make another NBA Finals appearance again (which by that time the "Big 3" of Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish had long since retired) which they won against the Kobe Bryant-led Los Angeles Lakers in 6 games.
See also
1985 NBA Playoffs
References
External links
NBA History
1985 NBA Finals at Basketball Reference
"Return to Glory" – Documentary on the 1985 NBA Playoffs on YouTube |
1986_NBA_Finals | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_NBA_Finals | [
767
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_NBA_Finals"
] | The 1986 NBA Finals was the championship round of the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s 1985–86 season, and the culmination of the season's playoffs. It pitted the Eastern Conference champion Boston Celtics against the Western Conference champion Houston Rockets, in a rematch of the 1981 NBA Finals (though only Allen Leavell and Robert Reid remained from the Rockets' 1981 team). It was the second and last NBA Championship Series of the 1980s not to feature the Los Angeles Lakers, who were eliminated by the Rockets on both occasions.
The heavily favored Celtics defeated the Rockets four games to two to win their then-record 16th NBA championship. The championship would be the Celtics' last until 2008. Larry Bird was named the Finals MVP.
On another note, this series marked the first time the "NBA Finals" branding was officially used, as they dropped the "NBA World Championship Series" branding which had been in use since the beginning of the league, though it had been unofficially called the "NBA Finals" for years.
Until the 2011 series, this was the last time the NBA Finals had started before June. Since game three, all NBA Finals games have been played in June. Starting with the following year, the NBA Finals would be held exclusively in the month of June. It was also the last NBA Finals series to schedule a game on a Monday until 1999 and also the last NBA Finals game to be played on Memorial Day. Until the 2018 series, it was the last to conclude before June 10.
CBS Sports used Dick Stockton and Tom Heinsohn as the play-by-play man and color commentator respectively. Meanwhile, Brent Musburger was the host and Pat O'Brien (the Rockets' sideline) and Lesley Visser (the Celtics' sideline) were the sideline reporters.
Background
Boston Celtics
The Celtics made the 1985 NBA Finals, but lost in six games to the Los Angeles Lakers. The series exposed some of Boston's weaknesses, such as the lack of bench scoring, which was exploited after Kevin McHale moved to the starting lineup with Cedric Maxwell bothered by knee injuries. In addition, Larry Bird played through an elbow injury, which severely affected his shooting. In the offseason, president Red Auerbach decided to tweak the roster, trading Maxwell to the Los Angeles Clippers for oft-injured center Bill Walton. He also made a trade with the Indiana Pacers, acquiring Jerry Sichting for Quinn Buckner. These moves would pave the way for the Celtics' greatest season yet.
Entering the 1985–86 season, the Celtics surged to a league-best 67–15 record, powered by an NBA record 40 victories at home. Their incomparable home record alone (since tied by the San Antonio Spurs in the 2015–2016 regular season) put the Celtics in the conversation among the NBA's greatest teams in a single season.
In the playoffs, Boston needed just three games to defeat the Chicago Bulls in the first round, despite a playoff record 63 points by Michael Jordan in Game 2. When asked about Jordan's performance in Boston's 135-131 2OT victory, Boston's coach K. C. Jones said, "I don't have a word for today." In retrospect, this game is considered to be a classic clash of the NBA's (arguably) greatest player, Jordan, and the NBA's (arguably) greatest team, Bird's 1985–86 Celtics. In the second round, Boston eliminated the Atlanta Hawks in five games, with the clinching Game 5 a no-doubter as Boston outscored Atlanta 36–6 in the third quarter in route to a 132–99 victory. Then in the conference finals, Boston swept the Milwaukee Bucks in four games, a direct reversal of their second round meeting in the 1983 NBA Playoffs.
Houston Rockets
Following their previous Finals appearance in 1981, the Rockets entered a brief rebuilding period. Long-time Rockets Calvin Murphy and Rudy Tomjanovich retired, while Mike Dunleavy, Sr., Bill Willoughby, Tom Henderson and Billy Paultz moved on to different teams. But the biggest move came during the 1982 offseason, when the Rockets traded Moses Malone to the 1983 champions Philadelphia 76ers. The loss of Malone sent the Rockets to a league-worst 14–68 record in the 1982–83 season, after which the Rockets were awarded the top pick of the 1983 NBA draft and selected Ralph Sampson.
After a 29-win season in 1984, the Rockets were once again rewarded with the top pick in the 1984 NBA draft. They selected another center in Akeem Olajuwon, and paired alongside Sampson, they were dubbed as the "Twin Towers". Houston also added some valuable role players to complement the duo and holdovers Allen Leavell and Robert Reid, acquiring Rodney McCray, Lewis Lloyd, Craig Ehlo, Mitchell Wiggins and Jim Petersen.
Under third-year head coach Bill Fitch (the head coach of the 1980–81 Celtics championship team), the Rockets posted a 51–31 record and won the Midwest Division title. In the first round, they swept the Sacramento Kings, then eliminated the Denver Nuggets in six games during the second round. In the conference finals, they were matched up against the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers, and after losing Game 1, the Rockets stunned the Lakers by winning the final four games, highlighted by a series-clinching buzzer beater by Sampson in Game 5.
Road to the Finals
Regular season series
The Boston Celtics won both games in the regular season series:
The Finals
The Larry Bird–led Celtics defeated the Rockets again 4 games to 2 in the 1986 NBA Finals. The Celtics won the first two games at the Boston Garden, where they had gone 40–1 during the regular season. The Rockets had been almost as good at home during the regular season, and they defeated the Celtics 106–104 in game three. Game 4 was a tense battle at the Summit, which the Celtics won 106–103, with Bill Walton coming off the bench for a tired Robert Parish to score a crucial basket. The infamous fifth game featured the signature moment of the series, when 7'4" Ralph Sampson ignited a brawl with Jerry Sichting, a player 15 inches (380 mm) shorter than Sampson, leading to his ejection. While Jim Petersen led the Rockets to a decisive victory, Sampson's actions motivated the Celtics to end the series in six. Bird dismantled the young Rockets in game 6; the raucous Garden crowd booed every time Sampson touched the ball. The Celtics eliminated the Rockets 114–97 in a game that wasn't as close as the score would indicate.
With backup forward Scott Wedman sidelined due to a wrist injury, Bird got very little rest during the six-game series, logging 269 out of a possible 288 minutes of floor time. Bird was named the Finals' MVP for that year, averaging 24 points, 9.7 rebounds, 9.7 assists, and 2.7 steals per game for the series. The Celtics' victory capped off a 29-year period that had seen them win 16 championships and it was their last championship until 2008.
Series summary
Game 1
The "Twin Towers" Ralph Sampson and Akeem Olajuwon were saddled with foul trouble for much of the game. Sampson got three quick fouls just 4:45 into the game and scored only two points; Olajuwon picked up five fouls despite scoring 33, 25 of which came in the first half. The backcourt tandem of Dennis Johnson and Danny Ainge provided the third quarter spurt for the Celtics, combining for 22 points, while Boston held Houston to just 17 points in an expected victory.
Game 2
The third quarter again proved decisive for the Celtics, outscoring the Rockets 34–19 in the quarter. Sampson and Olajuwon combined for 32 points in the first half, but only seven in the second. Larry Bird paced the Celtics with 31 points on 12-for-19 shooting, while Kevin McHale added 25 in another Boston rout. It was Boston's 40th consecutive victory at home, regular season and playoffs combined.
Game 3
The Rockets rallied from eight points down in the fourth quarter before escaping to a much-needed two-point win at home, despite another third quarter meltdown. Sampson and Olajuwon combined for 47 points and 30 rebounds, Robert Reid added 20, while reserve guard Mitchell Wiggins tipped in off an Olajuwon miss late in the fourth to put the Rockets ahead for good. The Celtics only managed one more shot in their final two possessions, a missed 5-footer by Robert Parish. Kevin McHale and Larry Bird both scored 28 points in the loss, but Bird was held to 3-for-12 shooting in the second half due to Reid's defense.
Game 4
Larry Bird's three-pointer with 2:26 remaining gave Boston the lead for good, while holding the Rockets to just one basket in the final four minutes, keyed by Kevin McHale forcing three turnovers on Houston's final three possessions. Robert Parish scored 22 while hauling 15 rebounds. Dennis Johnson also added 22, while Bird scored 21 and dished out 10 assists. Ralph Sampson led the Rockets with 25 points, while Akeem Olajuwon, Robert Reid and Rodney McCray added 21, 19 and 17 respectively. The Rockets suffered their first home loss of the 1986 playoffs.
Game 5
The game was highlighted by Ralph Sampson's ejection early in the second quarter. With 9:40 remaining in the second, Sampson threw punches at the Celtics' reserve guard Jerry Sichting, 16 inches shorter than Sampson, leading to his ejection while the benches were cleared. The Rockets were leading 34–33 at the time of the brawl, and would lead by as many as 25 points in the second half to score a lopsided victory. Akeem Olajuwon scored 32 points while blocking 8 shots. Though Kevin McHale scored 33, Larry Bird was held to only 17 points, ultimately leading to one of the worst losses suffered by the Celtics that season.
As of 2023, this remained the last NBA Finals game to be played by the Celtics in a state other than Massachusetts or California. The next time the Celtics played an NBA Finals game outside those two states also occurred in Texas, during Game Three of the 2024 NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks.
Game 6
Larry Bird recorded a triple-double of 29 points, 11 rebounds and 12 assists to pace a lopsided Boston win that clinched their 16th NBA championship. Kevin McHale added 29 points, 10 rebounds and four blocks. Olajuwon paced the Rockets with 21 points and 10 rebounds, but Ralph Sampson was held to only eight points on 4-for-12 shooting, visibly distracted by an angry Boston Garden crowd in the aftermath of Game 5. The Celtics led by as much as 30 in the fourth to put away the Rockets.
Following the conclusion of the 1986 NBA Finals, a video documentary of the 1985–86 NBA season, known as "Sweet Sixteen", was released. David Perry was the narrator after Dick Stockton narrated the last three NBA season documentaries.
This would be the city of Boston's last professional sports championship until 2002 when the New England Patriots won Super Bowl XXXVI. Had the 1985 Patriots and the 1986 Boston Red Sox won Super Bowl XX and the 1986 World Series, respectively (the Patriots lost 46–10 to the Chicago Bears, while the Red Sox lost in seven games to the New York Mets), it would have given Boston three different professional sports championships in the same calendar year. In 2007–08, the city came very close to achieving this, as the 2007 Red Sox and 2007–08 Celtics won titles, but the 2007 Patriots lost Super Bowl XLII to the New York Giants. A Houston–Boston World Series was also a possibility; however, the Mets defeated the Houston Astros in six games of the 1986 National League Championship Series. In 2018–19, the 2018 Red Sox won the 2018 World Series, while the 2018 Patriots won Super Bowl LIII, giving Boston two different professional sports championships within a year, while the 2018–19 Boston Bruins reached the 2019 Stanley Cup Finals, but lost to the St. Louis Blues in seven games.
The closing song following Game 6 was "Whatever We Imagine" by James Ingram.
Player statistics
Boston Celtics
Houston Rockets
Team rosters
Boston Celtics
Houston Rockets
See also
1986 NBA Playoffs
References
External links
NBA History
1986 NBA Finals at Basketball Reference |
1987_NBA_Finals | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_NBA_Finals | [
767
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_NBA_Finals"
] | The 1987 NBA Finals was the championship round of the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s 1986–87 season, and the culmination of the season's playoffs. The Western Conference champion Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Eastern Conference and defending NBA champion Boston Celtics 4 games to 2. The key moment of the series was Magic Johnson's Junior sky hook in Game 4. This was the tenth time that the Celtics and Lakers met in the NBA Finals (more than any other Finals matchup). It would be the Celtics' last Finals appearance until the two teams met in 2008.
This was the first NBA Championship Series conducted entirely in June. The last time there were no NBA Championship Series games in May was in the 1970–1971 season, when the finals (a four-game sweep that year) ended on April 30. It is also the first NBA Finals series to be conducted on a Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday rotation, which was in use until 1990 and revived since the 2004 NBA Finals; in between the NBA Finals were conducted on a Sunday-Wednesday-Friday rotation.
Background
Boston Celtics
Thanks to the 1984 trade of Gerald Henderson and the subsequent fall of the Seattle SuperSonics, at the end of 1985–86 the Celtics were not only the best team in the NBA but also owned the second pick in the 1986 NBA draft. They chose Len Bias with the pick and had high hopes that the presence of the young Maryland Terrapins star would ensure that the franchise would remain a powerhouse after Bird, McHale, and Parish retired. Unfortunately, Bias died 48 hours after being drafted, after using cocaine at a party and overdosing.
The Celtics finished the regular season with a 59–23 record, best in the Eastern Conference. Despite retaining the core of the team that won the championship a year earlier, Boston endured numerous injuries to its roster. Their bench, an asset of the previous year's team, was decimated by injuries to Scott Wedman and Bill Walton. With limited options, head coach K. C. Jones was forced to give his starting five of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, Dennis Johnson and Danny Ainge extended minutes, but the lengthy playing time took its toll on the players' health, and by the start of the playoffs, the Celtics were a roster full of walking wounded.
After sweeping the Chicago Bulls in the first round, the Celtics were pushed to a Game 7 in the next two rounds by the Milwaukee Bucks and the Detroit Pistons, only to advance each time. Still, the Celtics' health became a question mark as they entered the Finals.
Los Angeles Lakers
The Lakers finished the regular season with a league-best 65–17 record. Head coach Pat Riley made a strategical move, shifting the offensive focus to Magic Johnson. The Lakers acquired center Mychal Thompson via trade midway through the season. Both moves helped alleviate the load off of the aging Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who turned 40 during the playoffs. A.C. Green supplanted Kurt Rambis in the starting lineup.
During the Lakers' path to the Finals they swept the Denver Nuggets in the first round, defeated the Golden State Warriors in five games during the second round, and swept the Seattle SuperSonics in the conference finals.
This 1987 Lakers team is widely considered both Magic Johnson's best team, and one of the greatest teams in NBA history. There are many reasons for this besides Magic Johnson being league MVP this year instead of Larry Bird: Kareem was still in late prime condition, the Lakers had many scoring options, they had an excellent defense which included defensive player of the year Michael Cooper, and Mychal Thompson's elite post defense Meant they had another body to throw at the likes of McHale and Parish of the Celtics.
Road to the Finals
Regular season series
The Los Angeles Lakers won both games in the regular season series:
Series summary
Game 1
The Lakers were coming off a four-game sweep of the Seattle SuperSonics, while the Celtics were coming off a grueling seven-game win over the Detroit Pistons. Magic Johnson led a 126–113 victory with 29 points, 13 assists, eight rebounds and no turnovers. James Worthy, on the receiving end of many of Johnson's passes, had 33 points and nine rebounds. The Lakers ran 35 fast breaks in the first two quarters and led by 15 at intermission.
Game 2
The Celtics plan for Game 2 was to concentrate on stopping Magic Johnson. Danny Ainge, at 6'5", could not deal with the 6'9" Magic. In this game, Michael Cooper emerged as a great 3 point shooter. He hit six 3 pointers, a playoff record. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar added 23 points on 10 of 14 shots, while Magic posted 20 assists and 22 points. It all added up to a 141–122 rout, Boston's sixth straight road loss in the playoffs.
Game 3
The Celtics recovered from their two knockout blows in Games 1 and 2 with a counterpunch of their own. A little-used backup center, Greg Kite, provided the spark. Kite, entering the game late in the first quarter when Robert Parish encountered foul trouble, played 20 minutes, and while he failed to score, he grabbed nine rebounds, blocked a Magic Johnson layup, and did solid body work on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The defensive minutes Kite gave Boston from the bench were just enough, as Larry Bird scored 30 points and Dennis Johnson hit 11 of 22 attempts from the field to finish with 26 points. The resurgent Celtics shot 17 of 21 from the floor in the second quarter.
Kevin McHale Celtics' forward bounced back in Boston with 21 points and 10 rebounds while letting the air out of James Worthy's game, limiting the Lakers' forward to only 13 points and three rebounds. Magic led the Lakers with 32 points in the 109–103 loss.
Game 4
After their Game 3 win, Larry Bird said, "This (Game 3) was the most important game of the series for us. If we lost, it might've been tough to get up for Game 4. Now it's going to be easy."
The Celtics took it right to the Lakers, controlling the boards and taking a 55–47 lead into halftime. The Celtics had a balanced scoring attack with Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, Danny Ainge, and Dennis Johnson all scoring in double figures. In the 3rd quarter, Bird finally got hot by scoring 12 in the quarter and helping the Celtics lead by as many as 16 points. But Los Angeles fought back to cut the Celtics lead to 85–78 going into the 4th.
In the 4th quarter the Lakers continued fighting back until they managed to tie the game at 95–95 on a Kareem Abdul-Jabbar skyhook with 5:30 remaining. The Celtics responded on both ends of the court by going on an 8–0 run, helped by good defense which led to 2 fast-break lay-ups to take a 103–96 lead with 2 minutes left. Then the Lakers called time out. On the Celtics' next possession, Robert Parish lost the ball to Michael Cooper. Cooper passed the ball ahead to Magic Johnson, who started a break. Cooper spotted up in 3-point territory, while Magic drove, forcing Cooper's defender to help out. Magic then kicked the ball out to a now wide open Cooper who drilled the three to cut the lead to 103–100.
On the Celtics next possession, Larry Bird forced a pass to Kevin McHale in the post, which instead sailed out of bounds, giving possession right back to the Lakers. James Worthy then hit a tough fade-away over Kevin McHale and Robert Parish in the lane to cut the deficit to one. On the very next possession, Bird missed a step-back jumper over the outstretched frame of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and the Lakers got the ball back with just under 45 seconds remaining. The Lakers called a timeout to set up a pick for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The pass was there for an alley-oop dunk, and the Lakers took a 104–103 lead, their first lead since early in the 1st quarter. The Celtics called timeout with 29 seconds left in the game.
Out of the timeout Bird threw the ball inbounds and was immediately face-guarded by James Worthy. In fact, Worthy had a fist-full of Bird's jersey to make sure Bird would not score. With Worthy's defense, the Celtics could not get their best player the ball and instead went through the motions of their offense until Danny Ainge got open. That forced Worthy to let go of Bird and help out on Ainge. Bird immediately got himself open by going to the 3-point line right in front of the Lakers' bench. Ainge found Bird wide open and Bird hit the three point bomb with 12 seconds left, to put Boston up 106–104 and sent the Boston Garden crowd into a frenzy.
On the next possession, Abdul-Jabbar was fouled and went to the line, where he made the first and missed the second. The officials ruled that McHale fumbled the ball out of bounds with seven seconds left.
What followed was another play for the ages. Magic set a pick on Kevin McHale, which almost opened up a lay-up for Worthy, but Dennis Johnson was able to switch over in time on help defend. However, that left McHale scrambling to guard Magic who just got open and received the inbounds pass near the left sideline. Twenty feet from the basket, Magic had the advantage on the post-defender McHale, who was also playing through a bad ankle injury. Magic dribbled, hesitated to get McHale off-balance, then drove into the paint. Magic then lofted a hook shot, which just cleared the fingertips of both McHale and Parish, and swished through the net giving the Lakers a 107–106 lead with only 2 seconds left.
The Celtics still had one last shot: Dennis inbounded the ball to Bird, who had broken to the corner. Larry, to his surprise, found himself wide open behind the 3-point line right in front of the Lakers' bench. Bird caught the inbounds pass from Johnson, turned, and put up a fall-away jumper as time expired. The shot barely missed as the Boston crowd let out a collective groan and the Lakers' bench danced off the court to celebrate the victory. The win gave the Lakers a commanding 3–1 series lead.
Game 5
The Celtics had to win Game 5 in the Garden, and would control most of the game. Danny Ainge set the tone by nailing 5 of 6 from 3-point range to give Boston early control, including a halfcourt heave at the buzzer before halftime.
Magic countered for Los Angeles with 29 points, 12 assists, eight rebounds, and four steals, but he received little help. Before the game Bird had told his teammates, "If they want to celebrate, let's not let them do it on the parquet." The Celtics had incentive enough. They got their second win, 123–108, and the series jetted back across the continent.
Game 6
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar arrived for Game 6 with a shaved head and a determination to close out this series. For a while, though, it appeared like the Celtics would steal it. Magic Johnson had only four points at the half and Dennis Johnson poured in 18 for the Celtics on his way to a game-high 33 as Boston led 56–51 at intermission.
The Lakers scored the first two baskets of the second half to cut it to 56–55. On the Celtics' ensuing possession, James Worthy deflected a pass and gave chase. Worthy went to the floor, batted the ball inbounds to a breaking Magic Johnson, and Magic slammed home a breakaway dunk. This gave the Lakers their first lead of the game 57–56, since early in the first quarter, and they never trailed again. The Lakers outscored the Celtics 30–12 in the third quarter for an 18-point turnaround, mostly on fast breaks. The score at the end of three quarters was 81–68, Lakers. The Celtics only scored 12 points in the third quarter, one more than the record for the lowest scoring quarter in playoff history.
Worthy would finish with 22 points, and Mychal Thompson had 16 points and 10 rebounds off the bench, but the play of the Lakers' two superstars, Magic and Kareem, would be the dagger that finished off the Celtics. Magic recovered from his cold first half to post 16 points, 19 assists, and eight rebounds, and Kareem would pump in a team-high 32 points.
"Magic is a great, great basketball player," Bird stated flatly, settling the issue for the moment. "The best I've ever seen."
Indeed, Magic would gain the NBA Finals MVP award and his fourth championship ring.
For the Lakers, this would be their last NBA Finals series triumph over the Celtics until 2010.
Team rosters
Los Angeles Lakers
Boston Celtics
Player statistics
Los Angeles Lakers
Boston Celtics
Television coverage
The Boston Celtics season documentary Home of the Brave, narrated by David Perry, recaps Boston's 1987 season while the Los Angeles Lakers documentary Drive for Five, narrated by legendary Lakers announcer Chick Hearn, recaps the Lakers' magnificent 1987 season in route to a fourth title of the 1980s.
CBS' James Brown filled in for Pat O'Brien when he attended the birth of his son. Brown was on for Games 3 and 4. Both Brown and O'Brien reported on the Lakers' sideline. While Lesley Visser was on for all the games as sideline reporter for CBS as she reported on the Celtics' sideline.
Dick Stockton and Tom Heinsohn worked play-by-play and color commentary respectively. It was the fourth consecutive and last Finals series to pair Stockton and Heinsohn together; Heinsohn was demoted in favor of Billy Cunningham following the series. At the time, Stockton and Heinsohn had worked the most number of NBA Finals series together. ESPN/ABC's Mike Breen, Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy later broke the record for the most complete NBA Finals series called by a single television play-by-play/color commentary team following the 2011 NBA Finals, and called a record 14 complete NBA Finals series in total (the 2022 NBA Finals did involve the trio of Breen, Jackson and Van Gundy, but Mark Jones filled in for Breen on play-by-play in Games 1 and 2 due to his recovery from COVID-19, and Van Gundy missed Game 1 for the same reason).
Aftermath
The 1987 Finals would be the Celtics' last until their 2008 championship season, but would be the last for the 'Big Three' of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish. In K.C. Jones' final season as Celtics' coach they still won the Atlantic Division title by winning 57 games, but the Celtics fell in six games to the Detroit Pistons, in the rematch of their Eastern Conference Finals showdown in 1988. The Celtics would not reach that far again for the next 14 years.
Following their championship win, Lakers coach Pat Riley guaranteed a repeat championship during the team's championship parade a few days after winning the NBA Finals. The 1987-88 NBA season, despite winning three games less than the previous year, was still a success for the Lakers. However their playoff run would not be as smooth as expected. With the exception of a three-game first round sweep of the San Antonio Spurs, the Lakers were pushed to a Game 7 by the Utah Jazz, Dallas Mavericks, and Detroit Pistons before claiming the first repeat championship since the Celtics of 1969.
Prior to 2008, the Celtics and Lakers came close to renewing their rivalry in the 2002 NBA Finals. But while the Lakers defeated the Sacramento Kings 4–3, the Celtics lost to the New Jersey Nets 4–2 in their respective conference finals.
See also
1987 NBA Playoffs
References
External links
NBA History
Game 6 on YouTube |
1988_NBA_Finals | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_NBA_Finals | [
767
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_NBA_Finals"
] | The 1988 NBA Finals was the championship round of the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s 1987–88 season, and the culmination of the season's playoffs. The Western Conference champion Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Eastern Conference champion Detroit Pistons 4 games to 3 to win their 11th title.
One of Los Angeles Lakers head coach Pat Riley's most famous moments came when he promised the crowd a repeat championship during the Lakers' 1987 championship parade in downtown Los Angeles. With every team in the league now gunning for them, the Los Angeles Lakers still found a way to win, taking their seventh consecutive Pacific Division title. While the 1988 Lakers did not produce as many wins in the regular season as the 1987 Lakers, they were just as successful in the playoffs, becoming the first team in 19 years to repeat as champions.
One of Pistons guard Isiah Thomas's career-defining performances came in Game 6. Despite badly twisting his ankle midway through the period, Thomas scored an NBA Finals record 25 third-quarter points, as Detroit fell valiantly, 103–102, to the Lakers at the Forum.
Thomas still managed to score 10 first-half points in Game 7, as Detroit built a 5-point lead. In the 3rd quarter, the Lakers, inspired by Finals MVP James Worthy and Byron Scott (14 3rd-quarter points), exploded as they built a 10-point lead entering the final period. The lead swelled to 15 before Detroit mounted a furious 4th-quarter rally, trimming the lead to two points on several occasions. The Lakers ultimately prevailed and captured their 5th championship in the last 9 seasons.
This was the first NBA Finals since 1983 not to feature the Boston Celtics.
Background
Los Angeles Lakers
During the 1987 championship parade in Los Angeles, Lakers coach Pat Riley guaranteed a repeat championship, a feat that had not been achieved since the Boston Celtics won the 1969 NBA Finals. Motivated by their coach's boast, the Lakers once again earned the league's best record in the 1987–88 season (62–20), despite winning three games less than the previous year. They also had a 15-game winning streak from December 11, 1987, until the Lakers were beaten by the LA Clippers (109–110) on January 13, 1988. They also had another double-digit winning streak (10-game winning streak) from February 11 until February 28.
The playoffs proved to be a difficult climb for the Lakers, however. They swept the San Antonio Spurs in the first round. They came back from a 2–1 deficit against the Utah Jazz in the semifinals round before beating them in Game 7. They then defeated the Dallas Mavericks in 7 games in the Conference Finals round. The Lakers eventually prevailed in both series thanks to their championship experience.
Detroit Pistons
The Pistons of head coach Chuck Daly were an up-and-coming team that gradually moved up the Eastern Conference ranks. Known as the "Bad Boys" for their physical and defensive-minded style of play, the Pistons' core featured guards Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars, forwards Adrian Dantley and Rick Mahorn, center Bill Laimbeer, and bench players Vinnie Johnson, Dennis Rodman and John Salley. Midway through the season, Detroit gained a valuable backup to Laimbeer and Mahorn when they acquired James Edwards.
The 1987–88 season marked a further ascension for the franchise, as Detroit won the Central Division title with a 54–28 record. The second-seeded Pistons beat the Washington Bullets and the Chicago Bulls in five games each, before facing the Boston Celtics once again in the conference finals. This time, the Pistons were the better team, eliminating the Celtics in six games for their first NBA Finals appearance since 1956 and the franchise’s first since moving to Detroit.
Road to the Finals
Regular season series
The Los Angeles Lakers won both games in the regular season series:
Series summary
Game 1
The Pistons had just dispatched the Celtics in six games, while the Lakers were coming off back-to-back seven-game wins over the Utah Jazz and Dallas Mavericks. The Lakers were tired, and it showed. Adrian Dantley scored 34 points, hitting 14 of 16 shots from the field. The Pistons took control of the game with four seconds left in the first half when Bill Laimbeer hit a three-point shot to put the Pistons up 54–40. Isiah Thomas then stole Kareem's inbound pass at half court and let fly with another three-pointer which hit nothing but net at the halftime buzzer. The Pistons had a 57–40 halftime lead and never looked back, stealing Game 1 with a 105–93 win.
Game 2
Facing the possibility of going down 2–0 with three games to play in Detroit, the veteran Lakers found resolve with a 108–96 win. James Worthy led the Lakers with 26 points, Byron Scott had 24, and Magic Johnson 23 despite battling the flu.
Game 3
With Magic still battling the flu, the Lakers got a key win in Detroit, 99–86, to go up 2–1 in games. The Lakers took control of the game in the third period, outscoring the Pistons 31–18. Despite his illness, Magic had 18 points, 14 assists, and six rebounds.
Game 4
In front of their home fans, the Pistons tied the series at 2–2 with a 111–86 win. The Pistons decided to attack the basket and make Magic Johnson defend. Johnson wound up on the bench early in the second half with foul trouble.
With Magic out of the game, the Pistons built a substantial lead. During timeouts, Bill Laimbeer was almost frantic. He kept saying, "No letup! We don't let up!" They didn't, and blew out the defending NBA champions by 25 points.
Left open by the trapping Lakers defense, Dantley led the team with 27 points. Vinnie Johnson came off the bench to add 16 while James Edwards had 14 points and five rebounds off the bench.
Game 5
The Pistons' 104–94 victory was a perfect farewell to the Pontiac Silverdome. Bill Laimbeer told Joe Dumars with a minute left in the game to "look around and enjoy this because you'll never see anything like it again". He went on to say, "Forty-one thousand people waving towels and standing. It was awesome."
The Lakers opened Game 5 with a fury of physical intimidation, scoring the game's first 12 points. But that approach soon backfired, as the Laker big men got into foul trouble.
Dantley played a major role in the turnaround, scoring 25 points, 19 of them in the first half, to rally the Pistons to a 59–50 halftime lead. Vinnie Johnson added 12 of his 16 points in the first half to keep Detroit moving.
Joe Dumars added 19 points on 9-of-13 shooting to send the Pistons back to Los Angeles, one win away from their first NBA title.
Games 3, 4, and 5 were the last NBA Finals games to be contested in a domed stadium built primarily for football until the 1999 NBA Finals in which Games 1 and 2 were played at the Alamodome in San Antonio. The Pistons left the Pontiac Silverdome after the 1987–88 season and moved into The Palace of Auburn Hills for the 1988-89 NBA season.
Game 6
The Lakers led 56–48 in the third quarter when Isiah Thomas suddenly began a classic performance. He scored his team's next 14 points, hitting two free throws, a driving layup, four jump shots, and a running bank shot.
With a little less than 5 minutes left in the period and the score 70–64, Lakers, Thomas rolled his right ankle while passing off to Joe Dumars for a basket. Thomas tried to run upcourt, but collapsed while the Lakers scored again. Despite a severe sprain, Thomas returned to the game with 3:44 left and the Lakers up 74–66. Thomas, with his bad ankle, scored 11 of the Pistons' last 15 points of the quarter to finish with 25, an NBA Finals record for one quarter, on 11-of-13 shooting. During this time, the Pistons outscored the Lakers 15–5 to take an 81–79 lead.
The fourth quarter was nip-and-tuck; with 1:30 left, Thomas, sore ankle and all, hit a baseline jumper for his 42nd and 43rd points to give the Pistons a 100–99 lead. The Lakers came down and Magic Johnson got the ball inside to James Worthy, but his layup attempt was blocked by Dennis Rodman. Joe Dumars penetrated inside on the ensuing possession, was fouled, and hit the two free throws for a three-point lead at 102–99 with a minute left.
The Lakers called timeout, and on the next possession, Byron Scott drove by Thomas from the top of the key and hit a 14-footer from the right elbow to cut the lead to one with 45 seconds left. Thomas then missed another baseline jumper and Worthy rebounded with 27 seconds remaining. The Lakers then set up and Scott got it to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who drew a foul on Bill Laimbeer (his sixth) as he wheeled for a skyhook on the right baseline with 14 seconds left. This foul has remained controversial to the Pistons and their fans, who claim that Laimbeer never made contact with Jabbar on his shot attempt. Abdul-Jabbar then proceeded to sink two high-pressure free throws providing the Lakers with a one-point lead.
After a time out, the Pistons set up for a final shot. Thomas collided with Dantley after inbounding the ball, but Dumars penetrated in the paint and put up a shot that missed after he was forced to by A.C. Green to alter it. After a scramble, Scott came up with the ball for the Lakers and was shoved out of bounds by Rodman, inciting a near-fight, with 5 seconds left on the clock. Scott missed both free throw attempts, but the Pistons, who had no timeouts remaining, lost precious seconds trying to secure the loose rebound and could not get a shot off before time expired.
Thomas would end up with 43 points and eight assists in a heroic performance.
Game 7
This was the first Game 7 since 1984, and the first to be played under the 2–3–2 format, adopted in 1985.
In the final game, Thomas' ankle was still sore, as evidenced by his limping badly in warm-ups. He did manage to play the first half, scoring 10 points and leading the Pistons to a 52–47 halftime lead. But, the delay between halves caused the ankle to stiffen, and Thomas played little in the second half. With Isiah on the bench, the Lakers turned the halftime deficit into a 90–75 lead early in the 4th quarter. A key factor was Laker guard Michael Cooper; he had been mired in a terrible shooting slump all series, but suddenly caught fire, hitting three 3-point baskets.
Chuck Daly then went to a faster lineup with Dennis Rodman, John Salley, Joe Dumars, and Vinnie Johnson that created matchup problems for the Lakers and enabled the Pistons to score at a torrid pace. With 3:54 left, Salley canned two free throws to cut the Laker lead to 98–92, making the Forum fans nervous.
With 1:17 left, Dumars hit a jump shot to cut the lead to 102–100. Magic Johnson then hit a free throw after a Rodman foul to put the Lakers up by three. After the two teams exchanged turnovers, Rodman took an ill-advised jumper with 40 seconds left. Byron Scott rebounded and was fouled. His two free throws pushed the lead to 105–100. After another Pistons' turnover, Michael Cooper had a chance to essentially clinch the victory after being fouled, but he missed both free throws, and the Lakers' lead remained at five.
After Dumars made a layup, James Worthy hit a free throw and Bill Laimbeer canned a 28-foot three-pointer, pushing the score to 106–105 with six seconds showing. A.C. Green completed the scoring with a layup off a length-of-the court pass from Magic, making it 108–105. Laimbeer made a long desperate pass to Thomas who caught the ball trying to shoot a three to send the game to overtime, but Thomas fell to the floor in a collision with Johnson, losing the ball as time ran out. Fans were already beginning to storm onto the floor even though time had not expired, but the officials ignored this. Pat Riley and the Laker players hurried back to their dressing room as the players and coaches on both teams were pummeled by the storming fans.
Worthy racked up a monster triple-double: 36 points, 16 rebounds and 10 assists. It would prove to be the only triple-double in Worthy's Hall of Fame career. For that and his earlier efforts in the series, he was named the Finals MVP, cementing his nickname "Big Game James".
Michael Cooper, Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are the only members of all 5 Lakers championship teams from the 1980s. Pat Riley is the only coach that was on all 5 Lakers championship teams from the 1980s, he was an assistant coach on the 1980 championship team, and head coach on the other four championship teams.
This was the Lakers' first Game 7 Finals victory since 1954; however, it was their first ever Game 7 win in the championship series since moving to Los Angeles in 1960; they were 0–5 in previous Game 7's since moving (1962, 1966, 1969, 1970, 1984). This would end up being the Lakers' last home win in the championship series until 2000.
Team rosters
Los Angeles Lakers
Detroit Pistons
Player statistics
Los Angeles Lakers
Detroit Pistons
Television coverage
The Detroit Pistons season documentary "Bad Boys", narrated by George Blaha recaps Detroit's run to the Finals and how they garnered the "Bad Boys" moniker while the Los Angeles Lakers documentary "Back To Back", narrated by Chick Hearn recaps the Lakers quest to become the first team since the Bill Russell-led Celtics to achieve NBA championships in consecutive years.
That year, CBS Sports used three sideline reporters which were Pat O'Brien (the Pistons' sideline), Lesley Visser (the Lakers' sideline) and James Brown (both teams). Dick Stockton and Billy Cunningham served as the play-by-play announcer and color analyst respectively. After the season, Cunningham left CBS to join the Miami Heat ownership group, and Hubie Brown was promoted the following season.
See also
1988 NBA Playoffs
References
External links
NBA History |
1989_NBA_Finals | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_NBA_Finals | [
767
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_NBA_Finals"
] | The 1989 NBA Finals was the championship round of the 1988–89 National Basketball Association (NBA) season, and the conclusion of the 1989 NBA Playoffs. The series was a rematch of the previous year's championship round between the Eastern Conference playoff champion Detroit Pistons and the defending NBA champion and Western Conference playoff champion Los Angeles Lakers. This, along with the 1983 NBA Finals, were the only two NBA championships of the 1980s not to be won by either the Lakers or the Boston Celtics; every NBA Finals of that decade featured either the Lakers or Celtics, and sometimes both (1984, 1985, 1987). Coincidentally, the Lakers were also swept in the 1983 NBA Finals, that time by the Philadelphia 76ers.
During the season, the Lakers had won their division, with Magic Johnson collecting his second MVP award. The team swept the first three playoff series (Pacific Division foes: Portland, Seattle, and Phoenix), resulting in a rematch with the Detroit Pistons in the Finals.
The Pistons had dominated the Eastern Conference, winning 63 games during the regular season. After sweeping the Boston Celtics and Milwaukee Bucks, the Pistons beat the Chicago Bulls in six games, earning a second straight trip to the NBA Finals. In the season before, the Lakers had beaten them in a tough, seven-game series.
The Pistons won the series in a four-game sweep of the injury-riddled Lakers, marking the first time a team (Lakers) had swept the first three rounds of the playoffs, only to be swept in the finals. As of today, the Pistons are the most recent Eastern Conference team to sweep an NBA Finals. The Pistons teams clinched all four series on the road, which were later followed by the 1999 San Antonio Spurs and the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers.
For their rough physical play, and sometimes arrogant demeanor, Pistons' center Bill Laimbeer nicknamed the team 'The Bad Boys'. The name became an unofficial 'slogan' for the Pistons throughout the next season as well.
Following the series, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar announced his retirement at 42, after 20 years with the NBA.
Pistons' guard Joe Dumars was named MVP for the series.
Prior to the 2014 NBA Finals, the Pistons were the last Finals champion to have been runner-up to the same opponent the previous season as they did in the 1988 Finals.
Background
Detroit Pistons
Before the season began, the Pistons moved from the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan to the brand-new The Palace of Auburn Hills, Michigan. The new arena was envisioned by Pistons owner William Davidson. The arena consisted of luxury boxes and club seating, which added profits compared to older arenas. The Pistons sold out all 41 games at The Palace.
The team itself was also an improvement, highlighted by a mid-season trade that sent Adrian Dantley to the Dallas Mavericks for Mark Aguirre. With Aguirre taking over the starting small forward spot, the Pistons went on a tear, winning 31 of its final 37 games to finish with a league-best 63–19 record.
Their second-half momentum carried over to the playoffs, sweeping both the Boston Celtics and the Milwaukee Bucks in the first two rounds. However, they lost two of the first three games to their archrival Chicago Bulls in the conference finals, but after devising the Jordan Rules scheme to contain Michael Jordan, the Pistons won the final three games to earn another Finals berth.
Los Angeles Lakers
Prior to the season, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar announced that the 1988–89 season was to be his last. Therefore, his 'retirement tour' consisted of pregame tributes in every arena to pay homage to the retiring Lakers captain.
Seeking to become the first team since the Boston Celtics dynasty of the 1960s to win three consecutive championships, the Lakers managed to put up a conference-best 57–25 record. The team's core remained mostly intact, save for veteran forward Kurt Rambis, who was drafted by the Charlotte Hornets in the expansion draft. Their most notable addition was former Chicago Bulls forward Orlando Woolridge.
In the playoffs, the Lakers turned it up a notch. They became the first team to win their first 11 playoff games, as they swept the Portland Trail Blazers, Seattle SuperSonics and Phoenix Suns in each of the first three rounds. Magic Johnson won the MVP award that year.
Road to the Finals
Regular season series
The Detroit Pistons won both games in the regular season series:
Series summary
Game summaries
Game 1
Just before Game 1, Lakers guard Byron Scott suffered a severe hamstring injury in practice; he would miss the series. His absence would especially be felt on the defensive end. Magic Johnson had a size advantage, but was too slow to defend against the Pistons' three-headed backcourt monster of Joe Dumars, Isiah Thomas, and Vinnie Johnson. Super-sub Michael Cooper would have to log more minutes than he was accustomed to, and rookie David Rivers was inexperienced. Another option was Tony Campbell, but he played very little during the season.
Without Scott's quick switches and help defense, the Piston guards smoked the Lakers in Game 1. Thomas had 24 points, Dumars 22, and Johnson 19. With six minutes left, Detroit led 97–79, and the final score was 109–97.
Game 2
The short-handed Lakers snapped right back in Game 2, pounding the boards and taking a strong first-quarter lead. Joe Dumars had a hot first half with 24 points (he would finish with 33) to keep Detroit close. Los Angeles held a 62–56 lead at halftime.
With about four minutes left in the third period, a major misfortune would befall the Lakers, leading 75–73. John Salley blocked a Mychal Thompson shot, which started a Detroit fast break. Magic Johnson dropped back to play defense, and in so doing, pulled his hamstring. Magic was visibly hurt and frustrated, and had to be coaxed into leaving the floor. Dick Stockton, commentating for CBS, said, "I've never seen him (Magic) look like that", referring to Magic's look of intense pain combined with resignation.
The Pistons had made the bucket on the break to tie the game at 75–75, but the Lakers, minus Johnson, charged to a 90–81 lead late in the period. In the fourth, however, the Lakers missed three easy baskets and committed an offensive foul as Detroit first tied the game, then went up 102–95. The gritty Lakers charged back and cut the lead to 106–104. The Pistons committed a 24-second violation, giving the Lakers the ball with eight seconds left.
James Worthy drove to the basket and was fouled, giving him an opportunity to tie the game. But the 1988 Finals MVP missed the first free throw. He made the second, bringing the Lakers within one, 106–105. Isiah Thomas then hit two free throws with one second remaining to give the Pistons a three-point lead and the Lakers, who called timeout to advance the ball to midcourt, one last chance to force overtime, but Jeff Lamp lost the ball on the inbound pass, and the horn sounded, ending Game 2 with the Pistons winning, 108–105, to take a 2–0 series lead.
Game 3
The Pistons had a 2–0 series lead, but knew it would be tough going in L.A. Magic Johnson tried to play, but the pain of his hamstring injury was just too great. He left Game 3 after just five minutes with the Lakers leading, 11–8.
Without Magic, the Lakers made a heroic effort. James Worthy scored 26 points, and the 42-year-old Kareem Abdul-Jabbar found the fountain of youth, contributing 24 points and 13 rebounds. Michael Cooper, the last remaining backcourt veteran, had 13 assists and 15 points. But it wasn't enough.
Dennis Rodman, despite suffering from painful back spasms, pulled down 19 rebounds between trips to the sideline for rubdowns. But the main effort came from the guards. Joe Dumars scored 31, including a remarkable third quarter in which he scored 17 consecutive points (21 in all for the period). Vinnie Johnson added 17, including 13 points in the fourth. Isiah Thomas pitched in with 26 points and eight assists, including six and three in the final period.
The Pistons led 113–108 with 15 seconds left when Thomas allowed A.C. Green to tie him up and steal the ball. Thomas then fouled Lakers rookie point guard David Rivers, who made both free throws, pulling Los Angeles to within three at 113–110 with 13 seconds left. Dumars then lost the ball out of bounds with nine seconds left, giving the Lakers a shot at the tie.
The Lakers then ran a play where Rivers got free for an open three-pointer in the corner. Dumars lunged and blocked the shot, and saved the ball from going out of bounds. The Pistons then ran out the clock after Bill Laimbeer's free throw to close the game with a 114–110 win, putting them on the verge of an unexpected sweep.
Game 4
With the Lakers' backs to the wall, coach Pat Riley admonished key offensive player James Worthy to step up his game. Worthy responded with a championship effort of 40 points on 17-of-26 field-goal shooting with Rick Mahorn in his face every step of the way. The Forum crowd was also anticipating Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's possible curtain call. During the pregame warmups and introductions, Kareem received several ovations.
With Worthy playing out of his mind, the Lakers took a 35–23 lead at the end of the first period. Despite trouble at the free-throw line (11 missed), the Pistons began to claw back as Los Angeles led 55–49 at intermission.
The Pistons started fast in the third quarter, beginning with a three-point basket by Bill Laimbeer. Mahorn then scored four quick points, and the Pistons took a 59–58 lead moments later. Dumars hit a driving bank shot, drew the foul and made the free throw, giving him 19 points on the evening. Mahorn followed that with another bucket and the Lakers called timeout. Worthy led the Lakers back into a 78–76 lead at the end of the third, but they knew the Pistons were coming on.
The Pistons took control of the game in the fourth, with James Edwards scoring particularly well. With 3:23 left and the Pistons leading 100–94, the crowd rose to a standing ovation as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar left the game. For the next two minutes, it seemed nobody wanted to hit a shot. Abdul-Jabbar reentered the game and spun and hit a bank shot with 1:37 left, his last two NBA points, cutting the Pistons' margin to 100–96. Kareem went out of the game with 47 seconds remaining amid thunderous applause.
Laimbeer hit a jumper at the 28-second mark, and the Pistons began celebrating. Riley sent Abdul-Jabbar back in after the timeout, but Michael Cooper missed a three-pointer and Isiah Thomas was fouled. Riley then sent Orlando Woolridge in for Abdul-Jabbar, this time for good, prompting a standing ovation from the crowd and acknowledgment from the players on both the Lakers and, in a rare show of sportsmanship, the Pistons. Thomas then hit the foul shots, closing out the 105–97 win and the championship. Dumars was named Finals MVP.
This was the first NBA Finals that ended in a four-game sweep since the Finals went to the 2–3–2 format in 1985.
Team rosters
Detroit Pistons
Los Angeles Lakers
Player statistics
Detroit Pistons
Los Angeles Lakers
Television coverage
This series was aired on CBS. Dick Stockton and Hubie Brown called the action. Stockton also narrated the season-ending documentary "Motor City Madness" for NBA Entertainment.
That year, Pat O'Brien filled in for Brent Musburger for Game 2 as pre-game, half-time and post-game host as Musburger was on assignment for CBS Sports, the same thing that happened in 1988. CBS used three sideline reporters which were O'Brien (the Pistons' sideline), Lesley Visser (the Lakers' sideline) and James Brown (both teams). This was Musburger's last NBA Finals assignment for CBS, as he was fired on April 1, 1990, months before NBA's television contract with CBS expired. Musburger moved to ABC and ESPN, and later called nine NBA Finals series for ESPN Radio between 1996 and 2004.
For the start of 1989 NBA Finals CBS completely revamped their opening montage for their NBA broadcasts. The computer-generated imagery (once again set in and around a virtual arena) was made to look more realistic (live-action footage was incorporated in the backdrops). Also, the familiar theme music (an uptempo series of four notes and three bars composed by Allyson Bellink since the 1983 NBA Finals) each was rearranged to sound more intricate and to have a more emotional impact, along the lines of the network's later World Series coverage. Between the 1989 NBA Finals and the 1990 NBA Finals' intros, the theme music was slightly revised; the 1989 Finals intro incorporated more of a guitar riff, while the 1990 Finals intro featured a little more usage of trumpets.
International
Aftermath
The Pistons would repeat as champions in 1990. The Pistons won 59 games that season, then defeated the Indiana Pacers (3–0), New York Knicks (4–1) and Chicago Bulls (4–3) in the first three rounds, before overcoming the Portland Trail Blazers 4–1 in the Finals.
The Lakers earned the league's best record with a 63–19 record in the 1989–90 NBA season, despite losing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to retirement. However the Lakers fell to the Phoenix Suns 4–1 in the Western Conference Semifinals (a team that featured former Laker Kurt Rambis), after which head coach Pat Riley resigned and became, after a brief stint as a broadcaster with NBC, the head coach of the New York Knicks. Riley would lead the Knicks to the finals in 1994 only to lose in a hard-fought seven games to the Houston Rockets. Riley would leave the Knicks after the 1994-95 season to become the head coach and president of the Miami Heat. The Lakers did make it back to the finals in 1991 but fell to the Bulls in five games.
The Pistons and Lakers met again in the 2004 NBA Finals. Much had changed since they last met, but they still took on the personalities of their respective teams: the more physical, defensive Pistons against the finesse, offensively-minded Lakers. In the rematch, the underdog Pistons, led by Ben Wallace, Chauncey Billups, Richard Hamilton, Rasheed Wallace and Tayshaun Prince, and coached by Larry Brown, upset the star-studded future Hall-of-Fame Lakers team of Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, Karl Malone and Gary Payton, and coached by Phil Jackson, in five games.
References
External links
NBA History
1989 NBA Finals at Basketball Reference |
Eastman_School_of_Music | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_School_of_Music | [
768
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_School_of_Music"
] | The Eastman School of Music is the music school of the University of Rochester, a private research university in Rochester, New York, United States. Established in 1921 by celebrated industrialist and philanthropist George Eastman, it was the first professional school of the university.
The school offers Bachelor of Music (BM) degrees, Master of Arts (MA) degrees, Master of Music (MM) degrees, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degrees, and Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degrees in various musical fields, along with a special dual degree with the College of Arts & Sciences for students with multiple interests.
As of 2024, there were more than 950 students enrolled in the collegiate division of the Eastman School (approximately 500 undergraduate and 450 graduate students).
History
Alfred Klingenberg, a Norwegian pianist, was the school's first director, serving from 1921 to 1923. He was succeeded by composer Howard Hanson in 1924, who had an enormous impact on the development of the school, including influencing the creation the first Doctor of Musical Arts degree in the United States. Upon his retirement in 1964, after serving as director of the school for 40 years, Hanson was succeeded by conductor Walter Hendl.
Hendl served as director from 1964 to 1972, and was then succeeded by pianist and musicologist Robert Freeman who served from 1972 to 1996. Associate Director Daniel Patrylak served as the acting director from the time of Hendl's resignation (May 1972) until Robert Freeman assumed the position in July 1973. Following the resignation of Robert Freeman in 1996, James Undercofler was then appointed Director and Dean of the Eastman School, and held that position until he resigned in 2006 to accept the position of CEO and President of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Jamal Rossi, an Eastman alumnus, was appointed Interim Dean of the Eastman School in April 2006. On May 21, 2007, composer/conductor Douglas Lowry, formerly the dean of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, was appointed Dean of the Eastman School, to begin serving in 2007. Following Lowry's death in 2013, Rossi was appointed Dean.
Campus and facilities
The Eastman School occupies parts of five buildings in downtown Rochester, New York. The main hall includes the renovated 3,094-seat Eastman Theater, the 455-seat Kilbourn Hall, the 222-seat Hatch Recital Hall, and offices for faculty.
The Eastman Theatre opened in 1922 as a center for music, dance, and silent film with orchestral and organ accompaniment. Today, the 3,094-seat theatre is the primary concert hall for the Eastman School's larger ensembles, including its orchestras, wind ensembles, jazz ensembles, and chorale. Also, the Eastman Opera Theatre presents fully staged operatic productions in the theatre each spring. It also is the principal performance venue for the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. A $5 million renovation of the theatre was completed in 2004. The theatre is located at 60 Gibbs Street, on the corner of Main and Gibbs Streets. Due to a $10 million donation by Eastman Kodak Inc. in April 2008, the Eastman Theatre was officially renamed "Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre" upon the renovation's completion in 2010.
The Sibley Music Library—the largest academic music library in North America, is located across the street from the main hall. Hiram Watson Sibley founded the library in 1904 using the fortune he made as first president of Western Union. It moved to its current location in 1989, and occupies 45,000 square feet (4,200 m2) on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors of the Miller Center, formerly known as Eastman Place. The Sibley Music Library currently holds almost 750,000 items, ranging from 11th century codices to the latest compositions and recordings. Considered among its jewels are the original drafts of Debussy's impressionistic masterpiece, "La Mer".
The Student Living Center, which is located at 100 Gibbs Street, is the dormitory building of the Eastman School of Music. In 1991, the new building was opened at the corner of Main and Gibbs Streets, replacing the University Avenue dormitories built nearly 70 years earlier. It is a four-story quadrangle and 14-story tower surrounding a landscaped inner courtyard, and contains its own dining hall. The majority of students enrolled in the undergraduate program live on campus in this building.
Academics
The school offers Bachelor of Music (BM) degrees, Master of Arts (MA) degrees, Master of Music (MM) degrees, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degrees, and Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degrees in many musical fields. The school also awards a "Performer's Certificate" or "Artist's Diploma" to students who demonstrate exceptionally outstanding performance ability. The Institute for Music Leadership, which was formed in 2001, offers a variety of diploma programs designed to educate and give students the skills and experience necessary to meet the demands of performance and education in today's changing musical world. In 2018, The Institute for Music Leadership created a Master of Arts degree in Music Leadership for musicians who seek to lead traditional or non-traditional musical arts organizations.
Faculty and alumni
Eastman alumni include singer Renée Fleming, bass-baritone William Warfield, Canadian Brass co-founder Charles Daellenbach, cellist Robert deMaine, drummer Steve Gadd, bassist Tony Levin, flugelhornist Chuck Mangione, author and journalist Michael Walsh, trumpeter Allen Vizzutti, scholar Horace Clarence Boyer and composers Maria Schneider and Cardon V. Burnham. Current faculty include musicians and pedagogues like the Ying Quartet, Anthony Dean Griffey, Katherine Ciesinski and Paul O'Dette.
Directors and deans
See also
List of concert halls
References
External links
Official website |
George_Eastman | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eastman | [
768
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eastman"
] | George Eastman (July 12, 1854 – March 14, 1932) was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream. After a decade of experiments in photography, he patented and sold a roll film camera, making amateur photography accessible to the general public for the first time. Working as the treasurer and later president of Kodak, he oversaw the expansion of the company and the film industry.
Eastman was a major philanthropist, establishing the Eastman School of Music, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and schools of dentistry and medicine at the University of Rochester and Eastman Dental Hospital at University College London, and making large contributions to the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), the construction of several buildings at the second campus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the Charles River, and Tuskegee University and Hampton University, two historically black universities in the South. With interests in improving health, he provided funds for clinics in London and other European cities to serve low-income residents.
In his final two years, Eastman was in intense pain caused by a disorder affecting his spine. On March 14, 1932, he shot himself in the heart, leaving a note which read, "To my friends: my work is done. Why wait?"
Eastman is regarded as one of the most influential and well-known residents of Rochester, New York. He has been commemorated on several college campuses and the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the George Eastman Museum has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
Early life
Eastman was born in Waterville, New York, as the youngest child of George Washington Eastman and Maria Eastman (née Kilbourn), at the 10-acre (4.0 ha) farm which his parents had bought in 1849. He had two older sisters, Ellen Maria and Katie. He was largely self-educated, although he attended a private school in Rochester after the age of eight.
In the early 1840s his father had started a business school, the Eastman Commercial College in Rochester, New York. The city became one of the first "boomtowns" in the United States, based on its rapid industrialization. As his father's health started deteriorating, the family gave up the farm and moved to Rochester in 1860. His father died of a brain disorder on April 27, 1862. To survive and afford George's schooling, his mother took in boarders.
The second daughter, Katie, had contracted polio when young and died in late 1870 when George was 15 years old. The young George left school early and started working to help support the family. As Eastman began to have success with his photography business, he vowed to repay his mother for the hardships she had endured in raising him.
Career
Founding of Kodak
While working as a bank clerk in the 1870s, Eastman became interested in photography. After receiving lessons from George Monroe and George Selden, he developed a machine for coating dry plates in 1879. In 1881, he founded the Eastman Dry Plate Company with Henry Strong to sell plates, with Strong as company president and Eastman as treasurer, where he handled most executive functions. Around the same time, he began experiments to create a flexible film roll that could replace plates altogether. In 1885, he received a patent for a film roll, and then focused on creating a camera to use the rolls. In 1888, he patented and released the Kodak camera ("Kodak" being a word Eastman created). It was sold loaded with enough roll film for 100 exposures. When all the exposures had been made, the photographer mailed the camera back to the Eastman company in Rochester, along with $10. The company would process the film, make a print of each exposure, load another roll of film into the camera, and send the camera and the prints to the photographer.
The separation of photo-taking from the difficult process of film development was novel and made photography more accessible to amateurs than ever before, and the camera was immediately popular with the public. By August 1888, Eastman was struggling to meet orders, and he and his employees soon had several other cameras in development. The rapidly-growing Eastman Dry Plate Company was reorganized as the Eastman Company In 1889, and then incorporated as Eastman Kodak in 1892.
Growth of film industry
Eastman recognized that most of his revenue would come from the sale of additional film rolls, rather than camera sales, and focused on film production. By providing quality and affordable film to every camera manufacturer, Kodak managed to turn competitors into de facto business partners. In 1889 he patented the processes for the first nitrocellulose film along with chemist Henry Reichenbach. A number of patent infringement lawsuits would preoccupy Eastman and his lawyers in subsequent years, including one from Reichenbach after he was fired in 1892. The largest lawsuit would come from rival film producer Ansco. Inventor Hannibal Goodwin had filed a patent for nitrocellulose film in 1887, prior to Eastman and Reichenbach's, but it was not granted until 1898. Ansco purchased the patent in 1900 and sued Kodak for infringement. Kodak ultimately lost the suit, which lasted over a decade and cost the company $5 Million.
Eastman paid close attention to Kodak's advertisements. He coined the slogan, “You press the button, we do the rest”, which became ubiquitous in the general public.
As Kodak pursued a monopoly on film through patents and acquisitions, the company experienced rapid growth. By 1896, Kodak was the leading supplier of film stock internationally, and by 1915, the company was the largest employer in Rochester, with over 8,000 employees and annual earnings of $15.7 Million. In 1934, shortly after Eastman's death, Kodak employed 23,000. One of the largest markets for film became the emerging motion picture industry. When Thomas Edison and other film producers formed the Motion Picture Patents Company in 1908, Eastman negotiated for Kodak to be sole supplier of film to the industry. His monopolistic actions attracted the attention of the federal government, which began an anti-trust investigation into Kodak in 1911 for exclusive contracts, acquisitions of competitors, and price-fixing. This resulted in a lawsuit against Kodak in 1913 and a final judgement in 1921, ordering Kodak to stop fixing prices and sell many of its interests.
Kodak's growth was sustained during the 20th century by new innovations in film and cameras, including the Brownie camera, which was marketed to children. Eastman took interest in color photography in 1904, and funded experiments in color film production for the next decade. The resulting product, created by John Capstaff, was a two-color process named Kodachrome. Later, in 1935, Kodak would release the more famous second Kodachrome, the first marketed integral tripack film. During World War I, Eastman established a photographic school in Rochester to train pilots for aerial reconnaissance.
In an era of growing trade union activities, Eastman sought to counter the union movement by anticipating worker demands. To this end, he implemented a number of worker benefit programs, including a welfare fund to provide workmen's compensation in 1910 and a profit-sharing program for all employees in 1912.
Personal life
Eastman never married. He was close to his mother and to his sister Ellen Maria and her family. He had a long platonic relationship with Josephine Dickman, a trained singer and the wife of business associate George Dickman. He became especially close to Dickman after the death of his mother, Maria Eastman, in 1907. He was also an avid traveler, enjoyed music and social gatherings, and had a passion for playing the piano.
The loss of his mother, Maria, was particularly crushing to George. Almost pathologically concerned with decorum, he found himself, for the first time, unable to control his emotions in the presence of his friends. "When my mother died I cried all day", he said later. "I could not have stopped to save my life." Due to his mother's reluctance to accept his gifts, Eastman could never do enough for his mother during her lifetime. He continued to honor her after her death. On September 4, 1922, he opened the Eastman Theatre in Rochester, which included a chamber-music hall, Kilbourn Theater, dedicated to his mother's memory. At the Eastman House he maintained a rose bush, using a cutting from her childhood home.
Later years
Eastman was a presidential elector in 1900 and 1916. In 1915, Eastman founded the Bureau of Municipal Research in Rochester to gather information and make government policy recommendations. The agency was later renamed the Center for Governmental Research and continues to carry out that mission. In 1924, Eastman and the Bureau supported a referendum to change Rochester's government to a city manager system, which passed.
In 1920, Eastman established the Eastman Savings and Loan to provide financial services to Kodak employees. The institution was later rechartered as ESL Federal Credit Union.
In the 1920s, Eastman was involved in calendar reform and supported the 13-month per year International Fixed Calendar developed by Moses B. Cotsworth. On January 17, 1925, Eastman invited Cotsworth to his home; he had been introduced to Cotsworth's calendar by a mutual friend and was interested in the system. He secretly funded Cotsworth for a year and then openly supported him and the 13-month plan. Eastman took a major role in planning and financing the campaign for a new global calendar, and also headed the National Committee on Calendar Simplification, in the United States, which was created at the behest of the League of Nations. Eastman supported Cotsworth's campaign until his death.
Eastman wrote several articles to promote the 13-month system, including "Problems of Calendar Improvement" in Scientific American and "The Importance of Calendar Reform to the Business World" in Nation's Business. By 1928, the Kodak Company implemented the calendar in its business bookkeeping, and continued to use it until 1989. He was chairman of the National Committee on Calendar Simplification. Although a conference was held at the League of Nations in 1931, with his death and the looming tensions of World War II, this calendar was dropped from consideration.
In 1925 Eastman gave up his daily management of Kodak and officially retired as president. He remained associated with the company in a business executive capacity, as the chairman of the board, until his death.
Philanthropy
During his lifetime, Eastman donated $100 million to various organizations, becoming one of the major philanthropists in the United States during his lifetime. His largest donations went to the University of Rochester and to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to build their programs and facilities. Preferring to remain anonymous, he made donations under the alias "Mr. Smith". In 1918, he endowed the establishment of the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, and in 1921 a school of medicine and dentistry there. In 1922, he founded the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, hiring its first music director Albert Coates. Figured for its value in 1932, the year of Eastman's death, $100 million is equivalent to more than $2 billion in 2022.
In 1915, Eastman provided funds for the establishment of the Eastman Dental Dispensary in Rochester. He donated £200,000 in 1926 to fund a dental clinic in London after being approached by the chairman of the Royal Free Hospital, George Riddell, 1st Baron Riddell. Donations of £50,000 each had been made by Lord Riddell and the Royal Free honorary treasurer. On November 20, 1931, the UCL Eastman Dental Institute opened in a ceremony attended by Neville Chamberlain, then Minister of Health, and the American Ambassador to the UK. The clinic was incorporated into the Royal Free Hospital and was committed to providing dental care for disadvantaged children from central London. It is now a part of University College London. In 1929 he founded the George Eastman Visiting Professorship at Oxford, to be held each year by a different American scholar of the highest distinction. Eastman also funded Eastmaninstitutet, a dental care clinic for children opened in 1937 in Stockholm, Sweden.
Views on race
Marion Gleason, a close confidante of Eastman, later described his views on African Americans as "typical of his time – paternalistic, but strictly against social fraternization." Although he made generous donations to the Hampton Institute and Tuskegee Institute, becoming their largest donor in his era, he also upheld and reinforced the de facto segregation which existed in Rochester. Kodak hired virtually no black employees during Eastman's lifetime, and a 1939 commission of the New York State Legislature on living conditions of African Americans found that Kodak had only a single black employee. The Eastman Dental Dispensary also rejected black applicants, and the Eastman Theater restricted black patrons to its balcony. Eastman rejected several requests to meet with NAACP representatives, including a direct appeal from president Walter White in 1929.
From 1925 until his death, Eastman donated $10,000 per year to the American Eugenics Society (increasing the donation to $15,000 in 1932), a popular cause among many of the upper class when there were concerns about immigration and "race mixing".
Infirmity and suicide
In his final two years, Eastman was in intense pain caused by a disorder affecting his spine. He had trouble standing, and his walk became a slow shuffle. Today, it might be diagnosed as a form of degenerative disease such as disc herniations from trauma or age causing either painful nerve root compressions, or perhaps a type of lumbar spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the spinal canal caused by calcification in the vertebrae. Since his mother suffered the final two years of her life in a wheelchair, she also may have had a spine condition but that is uncertain. Only her uterine cancer and successful surgery are documented in her health history.
Eastman suffered from depression due to his pain, reduced ability to function, and also since he had witnessed his mother's suffering from pain. On March 14, 1932, Eastman died by suicide with a single gunshot through the heart. His suicide note read, "To my friends, my work is done – Why wait? GE."
Raymond Granger, an insurance salesman in Rochester, was visiting to collect insurance payments from several members of the staff. He arrived at the scene to find the workforce shocked and upset. At least one chronicler said that Eastman's fear of senility or other debilitating diseases of old age was a contributing factor to his action.
Eastman's funeral was held at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Rochester; his coffin was carried out to Charles Gounod's "Marche Romaine". It was buried in the grounds of the company he founded, at what is now known as Eastman Business Park.
The Security Trust Company of Rochester was the executor of Eastman's estate. His entire estate was bequeathed to the University of Rochester.
Legacy
Eastman disdained public notoriety and sought to tightly control his image. He was reluctant to share information in interviews, and on multiple occasions both Eastman and Kodak blocked biographers from full access to his records. A definitive biography was finally published in 1996.
Eastman is the only person represented by two stars in the Film category in the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one on the north side of the 6800 block of Hollywood Boulevard and the other one on the west side of the 1700 block of Vine Street. Both recognize the same achievement, that he developed bromide paper, which became a standard of the film industry.
The Eastman Quadrangle of the River Campus of the University of Rochester is named for Eastman. The Rochester Institute of Technology has a building dedicated to him, in recognition of his support and substantial donations. MIT installed a plaque of Eastman on one of the buildings he funded. (Students rub the nose of Eastman's image on the plaque for good luck.)
Eastman had built a mansion at 900 East Avenue in Rochester. Here he entertained friends to dinner and held private music concerts. The University of Rochester used the mansion for various purposes for decades after his death. In 1949, it re-opened after having been adapted for use as the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark, and is now known as the George Eastman Museum.
Eastman's boyhood home was saved from destruction. It was restored to its state during his childhood and is displayed at the Genesee Country Village and Museum.
Patents
U.S. patent 226,503 "Method and Apparatus for Coating Plates", filed September 1879, issued April 1880.
U.S. patent 306,470 "Photographic Film", filed May 10, 1884, issued October 14, 1884.
U.S. patent 306,594 "Photographic Film", filed March 7, 1884, issued October 14, 1884.
U.S. patent 317,049 (with William H. Walker) "Roll Holder for Photographic Films", filed August 1884, issued May 1885.
U.S. patent 388,850 "Camera", filed March 1888, issued September 1888.
Eastman licensed, then purchased U.S. patent 248,179 "Photographic Apparatus" (roll film holder), filed June 21, 1881, issued October 11, 1881, to David H. Houston.
Honors and commemorations
In 1930 he was awarded the American Institute of Chemists Gold Medal.
In 1934, the George Eastman Monument at Kodak Park (now Eastman Business Park) was unveiled.
On July 12, 1954, the U.S. Post Office issued a three-cent commemorative stamp marking the 100th anniversary of Eastman's birth, which was first issued in Rochester, New York.
Also in 1954, to commemorate Eastman's 100th birthday, the University of Rochester erected a meridian marker near the center of Eastman Quadrangle on the campus of the University of Rochester using a gift from Eastman's former associate and University alumnus Charles F. Hutchison.
In the fall of 2009, a statue of Eastman was erected approximately 60 feet (18 m) north by northeast of the meridian marker on the Eastman Quadrangle of the University of Rochester.
In 1966, the George Eastman House was designated a National Historic Landmark.
The auditorium at the Dave C. Swalm School of Chemical Engineering at Mississippi State University is named for Eastman, in recognition of his inspiration to Swalm.
In 1968, Eastman was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum.
Representation in other media
PBS American Experience produced an episode entitled The Wizard of Photography: The story of George Eastman and how he transformed photography. It first aired May 22, 2000.
Several short documentary films about his life have been made and shown at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester.
See also
Stanley Motor Carriage Company
References
Further reading
Ackerman, Carl W. (1930). George Eastman: Founder of Kodak and the Photography Business. Beard Books. ISBN 1-893-12299-9.
Brayer, Elizabeth (1996). George Eastman: A Biography. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801852633.
Collins, Douglas (1990). The Story of Kodak (1st ed.). New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 9780810912229.
Cook, Anna J (2024). A Man Beyond Time: Moses Cotsworth's fight for the 13-month calendar. Independent Publishing Network. ISBN 9781805177203.
External links
George Eastman archive at the University of Rochester
George Eastman House Archived December 2, 2021, at the Wayback Machine
George Eastman: His Life, Legacy, and Estate, George Eastman House
UCL Eastman Dental Institute, London
Eastman Institute for Oral Health, University of Rochester, NY
Newspaper clippings about George Eastman in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW |
List_of_stars_on_the_Hollywood_Walk_of_Fame | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stars_on_the_Hollywood_Walk_of_Fame | [
768
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stars_on_the_Hollywood_Walk_of_Fame"
] | The following list includes the names, locations, and categories of all the stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The categories are motion pictures, television, recording, radio, live performance, and sports entertainment. The list does not include a star's name until his or her award ceremony has taken place, not at the time of nomination or an accepted nomination.
The stars are ordered alphabetically by surname, and all names are shown as they appear on the stars. All entries can be found on the Hollywood Walk of Fame website maintained by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce (see the External links section below). As of September 26, 2024, there are 2,790 stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
See also
List of actors with Hollywood Walk of Fame motion picture stars
List of fictional characters with stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Notes
References
External links
Hollywood Walk of Fame Starfinder at the official website
Hollywood Star Walk: LA Times – an interactive map of star locations with photos |
Jim_Thorpe | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe | [
769
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe"
] | James Francis Thorpe (Sac and Fox languages: Wa-Tho-Huk, translated as "Bright Path"; May 22 or 28, 1887 – March 28, 1953) was an American athlete and Olympic gold medalist. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe was the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States in the Olympics. Considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports, he won two Olympic gold medals in the 1912 Summer Olympics (one in classic pentathlon and the other in decathlon). He also played football (collegiate and professional), professional baseball, and professional basketball.
He lost his Olympic titles after it was found he had been paid for playing two seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the Olympics, thus violating the contemporary amateurism rules. In 1983, 30 years after his death, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) restored his Olympic medals with replicas, after ruling that the decision to strip him of his medals fell outside of the required 30 days. Official IOC records still listed Thorpe as co-champion in decathlon and pentathlon until 2022, when it was decided to restore him as the sole champion in both events.
Thorpe grew up in the Sac and Fox Nation in Indian Territory (what is now the U.S. state of Oklahoma). As a youth, he attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he was a two-time All-American for the school's football team under coach Pop Warner. After his Olympic success in 1912, which included a record score in the decathlon, he added a victory in the All-Around Championship of the Amateur Athletic Union. In 1913, he played for the Pine Village Pros in Indiana. Later in 1913, Thorpe signed with the New York Giants, and he played six seasons in Major League Baseball between 1913 and 1919. Thorpe joined the Canton Bulldogs American football team in 1915, helping them win three professional championships. He later played for six teams in the National Football League (NFL). He played as part of several all-American Indian teams throughout his career, and barnstormed as a professional basketball player with a team composed entirely of American Indians.
From 1920 to 1921, Thorpe was nominally the first president of the American Professional Football Association, which became the NFL in 1922. He played professional sports until age 41, the end of his sports career coinciding with the start of the Great Depression. He struggled to earn a living after that, working several odd jobs. He suffered from alcoholism, and lived his last years in failing health and poverty. He was married three times and had eight children, including Grace Thorpe, an environmentalist and Native rights activist, before suffering from heart failure and dying in 1953.
Thorpe has received numerous accolades for his athletic accomplishments. The Associated Press ranked him as the "greatest athlete" from the first 50 years of the 20th century, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame inducted him as part of its inaugural class in 1963. The town of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, was named in his honor. It has a monument site that contains his remains, which were the subject of legal action. Thorpe appeared in several films and was portrayed by Burt Lancaster in the 1951 film Jim Thorpe – All-American.
Early life
Information about Thorpe's birth, name and ethnic background varies widely. He was baptized "Jacobus Franciscus Thorpe" in the Catholic Church. Thorpe was born in Indian Territory of the United States (later Oklahoma), but no birth certificate has been found. He was generally considered to have been born on May 22, 1887, near the town of Prague. Thorpe said in a note to The Shawnee News-Star in 1943 that he was born May 28, 1888, "near and south of Bellemont – Pottawatomie County – along the banks of the North Fork River ... hope this will clear up the inquiries as to my birthplace." Most biographers believe that he was born on May 22, 1887, the date listed on his baptismal certificate. Thorpe referred to Shawnee as his birthplace in his 1943 note to the newspaper.
Thorpe's father, Hiram Thorpe, had an Irish father and a Sac and Fox Indian mother. His mother, Charlotte Vieux, was the daughter of Citizen Potawatomi Nation members Elizabeth and Jacob Vieux, and was a descendant of Chief Louis Vieux. Thorpe was raised as a Sac and Fox, and his native name, Wa-Tho-Huk, is translated as "path lit by great flash of lightning" or, more simply, "Bright Path". As was the custom for Sac and Fox, he was named for something occurring around the time of his birth, in this case the light brightening the path to the cabin where he was born. Thorpe's parents were both Roman Catholic, a faith which Thorpe observed throughout his adult life.
Thorpe attended the Sac and Fox Indian Agency school in Stroud, with his twin brother, Charlie. Charlie helped him through school until he died of pneumonia when they were nine years old. Thorpe ran away from school several times. His father sent him to the Haskell Institute, an Indian boarding school in Lawrence, Kansas, so that he would not run away again.
When Thorpe's mother died of childbirth complications two years later, the youth became depressed. After several arguments with his father, he left home to work on a horse ranch.
In 1904, the sixteen-year-old Thorpe returned to his father and decided to attend Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. There his athletic ability was recognized and he was coached by Glenn Scobey "Pop" Warner, one of the most influential coaches of early American football history. Later that year the youth was orphaned after his father Hiram Thorpe died from gangrene poisoning, after being wounded in a hunting accident. The young Thorpe again dropped out of school. He resumed farm work for a few years before returning to Carlisle School.
Amateur career
College career
Thorpe began his athletic career at Carlisle in 1907 when he walked past the track and, still in street clothes, beat all the school's high jumpers with an impromptu 5-ft 9-in jump. His earliest recorded track and field results come from 1907. He also competed in football, baseball, lacrosse, and ballroom dancing, winning the 1912 intercollegiate ballroom dancing championship.
Pop Warner was hesitant to allow Thorpe, his best track and field athlete, to compete in such a physical game as football. Thorpe, however, convinced Warner to let him try some rushing plays in practice against the school team's defense; Warner assumed he would be tackled easily and give up the idea. Thorpe "ran around past and through them not once, but twice". He walked over to Warner and said, "Nobody is going to tackle Jim", while flipping him the ball.
Thorpe first gained nationwide notice in 1911 for his athletic ability. As a running back, defensive back, placekicker and punter, Thorpe scored all of his team's four field goals in an 18–15 upset of Harvard, a top-ranked team in the early days of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). His team finished the season 11–1. In 1912, Carlisle won the national collegiate championship largely as a result of Thorpe's efforts: he scored 25 touchdowns and 198 points during the season, according to CNN's Greg Botelho. Steve Boda, a researcher for the NCAA, credits Thorpe with 27 touchdowns and 224 points. Thorpe rushed 191 times for 1,869 yards, according to Boda; the figures do not include statistics from two of Carlisle's 14 games in 1912 because full records are not available.
Carlisle's 1912 record included a 27–6 victory over the West Point Army team. In that game, Thorpe's 92-yard touchdown was nullified by a teammate's penalty, but on the next play Thorpe rushed for a 97-yard touchdown. Future President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who played against him in that game, recalled of Thorpe in a 1961 speech:
Here and there, there are some people who are supremely endowed. My memory goes back to Jim Thorpe. He never practiced in his life, and he could do anything better than any other football player I ever saw.
Thorpe was a third-team All-American in 1908 and a first-team All-American in 1911 and 1912. Football was – and remained – Thorpe's favorite sport. He did not compete in track and field in 1910 or 1911, although this turned out to be the sport in which he gained his greatest fame.
In the spring of 1912, he started training for the Olympics. He had confined his efforts to jumps, hurdles and shot-puts, but now added pole vaulting, javelin, discus, hammer and 56 lb weight. In the Olympic trials held at Celtic Park in New York, his all-round ability stood out in all these events and so he earned a place on the team that went to Sweden.
The poet Marianne Moore, who taught Thorpe at Carlisle, recalled: He had a kind of ease in his gait that is hard to describe. Equilibrium with no stricture, but couched in the lineup of football he was the epitome of concentration, wary, with an effect of plenty in reserve.
Olympic career
For the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden, two new multi-event disciplines were included, the pentathlon and the decathlon. A pentathlon, based on the ancient Greek event, had been introduced at the 1906 Intercalated Games. The 1912 version consisted of the long jump, javelin throw, 200-meter dash, discus throw, and 1500-meter run.
The decathlon was a relatively new event in modern athletics, although a similar competition known as the all-around championship had been part of American track meets since the 1880s. A men's version had been featured on the program of the 1904 St. Louis Olympics. The events of the new decathlon differed slightly from the American version.
Thorpe was so versatile that he served as Carlisle's one-man team in several track meets. According to his obituary in The New York Times, he could run the 100-yard dash in 10 seconds flat; the 220 in 21.8 seconds; the 440 in 51.8 seconds; the 880 in 1:57, the mile in 4:35; the 120-yard high hurdles in 15 seconds; and the 220-yard low hurdles in 24 seconds. He could long jump 23 ft 6 in and high-jump 6 ft 5 in. He could pole vault 11 feet; put the shot 47 ft 9 in; throw the javelin 163 feet; and throw the discus 136 feet.
Thorpe entered the U.S. Olympic trials for both the pentathlon and the decathlon. He easily earned a place on the pentathlon team, winning three events. The decathlon trial was subsequently cancelled, and Thorpe was chosen to represent the U.S. in the event. The pentathlon and decathlon teams also included Avery Brundage, a future International Olympic Committee president.
Thorpe was extremely busy in the Olympics. Along with the decathlon and pentathlon, he competed in the long jump and high jump. The first competition was the pentathlon on July 7. He won four of the five events and placed third in the javelin, an event he had not competed in before 1912. Although the pentathlon was primarily decided on place points, points were also earned for the marks achieved in the individual events. Thorpe won the gold medal. That same day, he qualified for the high jump final, in which he finished in a tie for fourth. On July 12, Thorpe placed seventh in the long jump.
Thorpe's final event was the decathlon, his first (and as it turned out, his only) decathlon. Strong competition from local favorite Hugo Wieslander was expected. Thorpe, however, defeated Wieslander by 688 points. He placed in the top four in all ten events, and his Olympic record of 8,413 points stood for nearly two decades. Even more remarkably, because someone had stolen his shoes just before he was due to compete, he found a mismatched pair of replacements, including one from a trash can, and won the gold medal wearing them. Overall, Thorpe won eight of the 15 individual events comprising the pentathlon and decathlon.
As was the custom of the day, the medals were presented to the athletes during the closing ceremonies of the games. Along with the two gold medals, Thorpe also received two challenge prizes, which had been donated by King Gustav V of Sweden for the decathlon and Czar Nicholas II of Russia for the pentathlon. Several sources recount that, when awarding Thorpe his prize, King Gustav said, "You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world", to which Thorpe replied, "Thanks, King". Thorpe biographer Kate Buford suggests that the story is apocryphal, as she believes that such a comment "would have been out of character for a man who was highly uncomfortable in public ceremonies and hated to stand out." The anecdote appeared in newspapers by 1948, 36 years after his appearance in the Olympics and time for myth making, and in books as early as 1952.
Thorpe's successes were followed in the United States. On the Olympic team's return, Thorpe was the star attraction in a ticker-tape parade on Broadway. He remembered later, "I heard people yelling my name, and I couldn't realize how one fellow could have so many friends."
Apart from his track and field appearances, Thorpe also played in one of two exhibition baseball games at the 1912 Olympics, which featured two teams composed mostly of U.S. track and field athletes. Thorpe had previous experience in the sport, as the public soon learned.
All-Around champion
After his victories at the Olympic Games in Sweden, on September 2, 1912, Thorpe returned to Celtic Park, the home of the Irish American Athletic Club, in Queens, New York (where he had qualified four months earlier for the Olympic Games), to compete in the Amateur Athletic Union's All-Around Championship. Competing against Bruno Brodd of the Irish American Athletic Club and John L. Bredemus of Princeton University, he won seven of the ten events contested and came in second in the remaining three. With a total point score of 7,476 points, Thorpe broke the previous record of 7,385 points set in 1909 (also at Celtic Park), by Martin Sheridan, the champion athlete of the Irish American Athletic Club. Sheridan, a five-time Olympic gold medalist, was present to watch his record broken. He approached Thorpe after the event and shook his hand saying, "Jim, my boy, you're a great man. I never expect to look upon a finer athlete." He told a reporter from New York World, "Thorpe is the greatest athlete that ever lived. He has me beaten fifty ways. Even when I was in my prime, I could not do what he did today."
Controversy
In 1912, strict rules regarding amateurism were in effect for athletes participating in the Olympics. Athletes who received money prizes for competitions, were sports teachers, or had competed previously against professionals, were not considered amateurs. They were barred from competition.
In late January 1913, the Worcester Telegram reported that Thorpe had played semi-professional baseball before the Olympics, and other U.S. newspapers followed up the story. Thorpe had played semi-professional baseball in the Eastern Carolina League for Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in 1909 and 1910, receiving meager pay; reportedly as little as US$2 (65 today) per game and as much as US$35 1,145) per week. College players, in fact, regularly spent summers playing professionally in order to earn some money, but most used aliases, unlike Thorpe. Although the public did not seem to care much about Thorpe's past, the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), and especially its secretary James Edward Sullivan, took the case very seriously.
Thorpe wrote a letter to Sullivan, in which he admitted playing professional baseball:
I hope I will be partly excused by the fact that I was simply an Indian schoolboy and did not know all about such things. In fact, I did not know that I was doing wrong, because I was doing what I knew several other college men had done, except that they did not use their own names ...
His letter did not help. The AAU decided to withdraw Thorpe's amateur status retroactively. Later that year, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) unanimously decided to strip Thorpe of his Olympic titles, medals and awards, and declare him a professional.
Although Thorpe had played for money, the AAU and IOC did not follow their own rules for disqualification. The rulebook for the 1912 Olympics stated that protests had to be made "within 30 days from the closing ceremonies of the games." The first newspaper reports did not appear until January 1913, about six months after the Stockholm Games had concluded. There is also some evidence that Thorpe was known to have played semi-professional baseball before the Olympics, but the AAU had ignored the issue until being confronted with it in 1913. The only positive aspect of this affair for Thorpe was that, as soon as the news was reported that he had been declared a professional, he received offers from professional sports clubs.
Professional career
Baseball
In 1910, Thorpe had the unusual status of a sought-after free agent at the major league level during the era of the reserve clause, because the minor league team that last held his contract had disbanded that year, so he was free to choose which baseball team to play for. In January 1913, he turned down a starting position with the St. Louis Browns, then at the bottom of the American League. Thorpe signed with the New York Giants baseball club in 1913, the defending 1912 National League champion. With Thorpe playing in 19 of their 151 games, they repeated as the 1913 National League champions. Immediately following the Giants' October loss in the 1913 World Series, Thorpe and the Giants joined the Chicago White Sox for a world tour. Barnstorming across the United States and around the world, Thorpe was the celebrity of the tour.
Thorpe's presence increased the publicity, attendance and gate receipts for the tour. He met with Pope Pius X and Abbas II Hilmi Bey (the last Khedive of Egypt), and played before 20,000 people in London including King George V. Thorpe was the last man to compete in both the Olympics (in a non-baseball sport) and Major League Baseball before Eddy Alvarez did the same in 2020.
Thorpe played sporadically with the Giants as an outfielder for three seasons. After playing in the minor leagues with the Milwaukee Brewers in 1916, he returned to the Giants in 1917. He was sold to the Cincinnati Reds early in the season. In the "double no-hitter" between Fred Toney of the Reds and Hippo Vaughn of the Chicago Cubs, Thorpe drove in the winning run in the 10th inning. Late in the season, he was sold back to the Giants. Again, he played sporadically for them in 1918 before being traded to the Boston Braves on May 21, 1919, for Pat Ragan. In his career, he amassed 91 runs scored, 82 runs batted in and a .252 batting average over 289 games. He continued to play minor league baseball until 1922, and once played for the minor league Toledo Mud Hens.
Football
Thorpe had not abandoned football either. He first played professional football in 1913 as a member of the Indiana-based Pine Village Pros, a team that had a several-season winning streak against local teams during the 1910s. He signed with the Canton Bulldogs in 1915. They paid him $250 (7,530) a game, a tremendous wage at the time. Before signing him Canton was averaging 1,200 fans a game, but 8,000 showed up for Thorpe's debut against the Massillon Tigers. The team won titles in 1916, 1917, and 1919. Thorpe reportedly ended the 1919 championship game by kicking a wind-assisted 95-yard punt from his team's own 5-yard line, effectively putting the game out of reach.
In 1920, the Bulldogs were one of 14 teams to form the American Professional Football Association, which became the National Football League (NFL) two years later. Thorpe was nominally their first president, but spent most of the year playing for Canton; a year later, he was replaced as president by Joseph Carr. He continued to play for Canton, coaching the team as well. Between 1921 and 1923, he helped organize and played for the Oorang Indians (LaRue, Ohio), an all-Native American team. Although the team's record was 3–6 in 1922, and 1–10 in 1923, Thorpe played well and was selected for the Green Bay Press-Gazette's first All-NFL team in 1923. This was later formally recognized in 1931 by the NFL as the league's official All-NFL team.
Thorpe never played for an NFL championship team. He retired from professional football at age 41, having played 52 games for six teams from 1920 to 1928.
Basketball
Most of Thorpe's biographers were unaware of his basketball career until a ticket that documented his time in professional basketball was discovered in an old book in 2005. By 1926, he was the main feature of the World Famous Indians of LaRue, Ohio, a traveling basketball team. The team barnstormed for at least two years (1927–28) in multiple states. Although stories about Thorpe's team were published in some local newspapers at the time, his basketball career is not well-documented.
For a brief time in 1913, he was considering going into professional hockey for the Tecumseh Hockey Club in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Marriage and family
Thorpe married three times and had a total of eight children. In 1913, Thorpe married Iva M. Miller, whom he had met at Carlisle. In 1917, Iva and Thorpe bought a house now known as the Jim Thorpe House in Yale, Oklahoma, and lived there until 1923. They had four children: James F., Gale, Charlotte, and Grace Frances, an environmentalist and Native rights activist. Miller filed for divorce from Thorpe in 1925, claiming desertion.
In 1926, Thorpe married Freeda Verona Kirkpatrick (September 19, 1905 – March 2, 2007). She was working for the manager of the baseball team for which he was playing at the time. They had four sons: Phillip, William, Richard, and John Thorpe. Kirkpatrick divorced Thorpe in 1941, after they had been married for 15 years.
Lastly, Thorpe married Patricia Gladys Askew on June 2, 1945. She was with him when he died.
Later life, film career, and death
After his athletic career, Thorpe struggled to provide for his family. He found it difficult to work a non-sports-related job and never held a job for an extended period of time. During the Great Depression in particular, he had various jobs, among others as a movie actor, mostly as an extra, usually playing an American Indian in Westerns, starting with the 1931 serial Battling with Buffalo Bill. In the 1932 comedy Always Kickin', Thorpe was prominently cast in a speaking part as himself, a kicking coach teaching young football players to drop-kick. He played the captain of the guard in 1935's She, an umpire in the 1940 film Knute Rockne, All American, and a member of the Navajo Nation in the 1950 film Wagon Master. An American Indian Magazine article states Thorpe appeared in over 70 films.
In 1931, during the Great Depression, Thorpe sold the film rights to his life story to MGM for $1,500 (equivalent to $30,000 in 2023). Warner Bros. eventually acquired the rights and memorialized Thorpe in Jim Thorpe – All-American (1951), starring Burt Lancaster. The film was directed by Michael Curtiz. Although there were rumors that Thorpe received no money, he was paid $15,000 by Warner Bros. plus a $2,500 donation toward an annuity for him by the studio's head of publicity. The movie included archival footage of the 1912 and 1932 Olympics. Thorpe was seen in one scene as a coaching assistant. It was also distributed in the United Kingdom, where it was called Man of Bronze.
Apart from his career in films, he worked as a construction worker, a doorman/bouncer, a security guard, and a ditchdigger. He briefly joined the United States Merchant Marine in 1945, during World War II. Thorpe was a chronic alcoholic during his later life. He ran out of money sometime in the early 1950s. When hospitalized for lip cancer in 1950, Thorpe was admitted as a charity case. At a press conference announcing the procedure, his wife, Patricia, wept and pleaded for help, saying, "We're broke ... Jim has nothing but his name and his memories. He has spent money on his own people and has given it away. He has often been exploited."
In early 1953, Thorpe went into heart failure for the third time while dining with Patricia in their home in Lomita, California. He was briefly revived by artificial respiration and spoke to those around him, but lost consciousness shortly afterward. He died on March 28 at the age of 65.
Victim of racism
Thorpe, whose parents were both mixed-race, was raised as a Native American. He accomplished his athletic feats despite the severe racial inequality of the United States. It has often been suggested that his Olympic medals were stripped by the athletic officials because of his ethnicity. While it is difficult to prove this, the public comment at the time largely reflected this view. At the time Thorpe won his gold medals, not all Native Americans were recognized as U.S. citizens (the U.S. government had frequently demanded that they make concessions to adopt European-American ways to receive such recognition). Citizenship was not granted to all American Indians until 1924.
When Thorpe attended Carlisle, the students' ethnicity was used for marketing purposes. The football team was called the Indians. To create headlines, the school and journalists often portrayed sporting competitions as conflicts of Indians against whites. The first notice of Thorpe in The New York Times was headlined "Indian Thorpe in Olympiad; Redskin from Carlisle Will Strive for Place on American Team." Throughout his life, Thorpe's accomplishments were described in a similar racial context by other newspapers and sportswriters, which reflected the era.
Legacy
Olympic awards reinstated
Over the years, supporters of Thorpe attempted to have his Olympic titles reinstated. American Olympic officials, including former teammate and later president of the IOC Avery Brundage, rebuffed several attempts. Brundage once said, "Ignorance is no excuse." Most persistent were the author Robert Wheeler and his wife, Florence Ridlon. They succeeded in having the AAU and United States Olympic Committee overturn its decision and restore Thorpe's amateur status before 1913.
In 1982, Wheeler and Ridlon established the Jim Thorpe Foundation and gained support from the U.S. Congress. Armed with this support and evidence from 1912 proving that Thorpe's disqualification had occurred after the 30-day time period allowed by Olympics rules, they succeeded in making the case to the IOC. In October 1982, the IOC Executive Committee approved Thorpe's reinstatement. In an unusual ruling, they declared that Thorpe was co-champion with Ferdinand Bie and Hugo Wieslander, although both of these athletes had always said they considered Thorpe to be the only champion. In a ceremony on January 18, 1983, the IOC presented two of Thorpe's children, Gale and Bill, with commemorative medals. Thorpe's original medals had been held in museums, but they were stolen and have never been recovered. The IOC listed Thorpe as a co-gold medalist.
In July 2020, a petition from Bright Path Strong began circulating that called upon the IOC to reinstate Thorpe as the sole winner in his events in the 1912 Olympics. It was backed by Pictureworks Entertainment, which is making a film about Thorpe. The petition was supported by Olympian Billy Mills, who won a gold medal in the 10,000 meters at the 1964 Tokyo Games. The IOC voted to reinstate Thorpe as the sole winner of both events on July 14, 2022, after the National Olympic Committees of Norway and Sweden, representing Bie and Wieslander, had given their approval.
Honors
Thorpe's monument, featuring the quote from Gustav V ("You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world."), still stands near the town named for him, Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. The grave rests on mounds of soil from Thorpe's native Oklahoma and from the stadium in which he won his Olympic medals.
Thorpe's achievements received great acclaim from sports journalists, both during his lifetime and since his death. In 1950, an Associated Press poll of almost 400 sportswriters and broadcasters voted Thorpe the "greatest athlete" of the first half of the 20th century. That same year, the Associated Press ranked Thorpe as the "greatest American football player" of the first half of the century. Pro Football Hall of Fame voters selected him for the NFL 50th Anniversary All-Time Team in 1967. In 1999, the Associated Press placed him third on its list of the top athletes of the century, following Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan. ESPN ranked Thorpe seventh on their list of best North American athletes of the century.
Thorpe was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963, one of seventeen players in the charter class. Thorpe is memorialized in the Pro Football Hall of Fame rotunda with a larger-than-life statue. He was also inducted into halls of fame for college football, American Olympic teams, and the national track and field competition.
In 2018, Thorpe became one of the inductees in the first induction ceremony held by the National Native American Hall of Fame. The fitness center and a hall at Haskell Indian Nations University are named in honor of Thorpe.
President Richard Nixon, as authorized by U.S. Senate Joint Resolution 73, proclaimed Monday, April 16, 1973, as "Jim Thorpe Day" to promote nationwide recognition of Thorpe's life. In 1986, the Jim Thorpe Association established an award with Thorpe's name. The Jim Thorpe Award is given annually to the best defensive back in college football. The annual Thorpe Cup athletics meeting is named in his honor. The United States Postal Service issued a 32¢ stamp on February 3, 1998, as part of the Celebrate the Century stamp sheet series.
In a poll of sports fans published in 2000 by ABC Sports, Thorpe was voted the Greatest Athlete of the Twentieth Century; the pool of 15 other top athletes included Muhammad Ali, Pelé, Babe Ruth, Jesse Owens, Wayne Gretzky, Jack Nicklaus, and Michael Jordan.
In 2018, Thorpe was honored on the Native American dollar coin; proposed designs were released in 2015.
In 2024, President Joe Biden announced that Thorpe would be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor given in the United States.
Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania
After Thorpe's funeral was held at St. Benedict's Catholic Church in Shawnee, Oklahoma, his body lay in state at Fairview Cemetery. Residents had paid to have it returned to Shawnee by train from California. The people began a fund-raising effort to erect a memorial for Thorpe at the town's athletic park. Local officials had asked state legislators for funding, but a bill that included $25,000 for their proposal was vetoed by Governor Johnston Murray.
Meanwhile, Thorpe's third wife, unbeknownst to the rest of his family, took Thorpe's body and had it shipped to Pennsylvania when she heard that the small Pennsylvania towns of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk were seeking to attract business. She made a deal with officials which, according to Thorpe's son Jack, was made by the widowed Patricia for monetary considerations. The towns "bought" Thorpe's remains, erected a monument to him at the grave, merged, and renamed the newly united town in his honor as Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Thorpe had never been there. The monument site contains his tomb, two statues of him in athletic poses, and historical markers recounting his life story.
In June 2010, Jack Thorpe filed a federal lawsuit against the borough of Jim Thorpe, seeking to have his father's remains returned to his homeland and re-interred near other family members in Oklahoma. Citing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, Jack was arguing to bring his father's remains to the reservation in Oklahoma, to be buried near those of his father, sisters and brother, a mile from the place he was born. He claimed that the agreement between his stepmother and Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, borough officials was made against the wishes of other family members, who want him buried in Native American land. Jack Thorpe died at 73 on February 22, 2011.
In April 2013, U.S. District Judge Richard Caputo ruled that Jim Thorpe borough amounts to a museum under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act ("NAGPRA"), and therefore is bound by that law. A lawyer for Bill and Richard Thorpe said the men would pursue the legal process to have their father's remains returned to Sac and Fox land in central Oklahoma. On October 23, 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed Judge Caputo's ruling. The appeals court held that Jim Thorpe borough is not a "museum", as that term is used in NAGPRA, and that the plaintiffs therefore could not invoke that federal statute to seek reinterment of Thorpe's remains. In NAGPRA language, "'museum' means any institution or State or local government agency (including any institution of higher learning) that receives Federal funds and has possession of, or control over, Native American cultural items." The Court of Appeals directed the trial court to enter a judgment in favor of the borough. The appeals court said Pennsylvania law allows the plaintiffs to ask a state court to order reburial of Thorpe's remains, but noted, "once a body is interred there is great reluctance in permitting same to be moved, absent clear and compelling reasons for such a move." On October 5, 2015, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear the matter, effectively bringing the legal process to an end.
Jim Thorpe Marathon
The Jim Thorpe Area Running Festival is a series of races started in 2019 in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. It includes a marathon, a 26.2 mile footrace that features a steady elevation drop from start to finish.
Notes
References
Inline citations
Sources
Bird, S. Elizabeth (May 2, 1996). Dressing in feathers: the construction of the Indian in American popular culture. London, UK: Avalon. ISBN 978-0-8133-2667-2.
Bloom, John (May 2, 1996). ""There Is Madness in the Air": The 1926 Haskell Homecoming and Popular Representations of Sports in Federal Indian Boarding Schools". In Bird, S. Elizabeth (ed.). Dressing in feathers: the construction of the Indian in American popular culture. London, UK: Avalon. ISBN 978-0-8133-2667-2.
Buford, Kate (2012). Native American son: the life and sporting legend of Jim Thorpe. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-4089-6. OCLC 756837088.
Cava, Pete (Summer 1992). Baseball in the Olympics (PDF). pp. 7–15. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 9, 2017.
Cook, William A. (2011). Jim Thorpe: a biography. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co. ISBN 978-0-7864-6355-8. OCLC 692291486.
Dodge, Robert V. (2013). Which chosen people? Manifest destiny meets the Sioux as seen by Frank Fiske, frontier photographer. New York, N.Y: Algora Publishing. ISBN 978-1-62894-029-9.
Dyreson, Mark (1998). Making the American team: sport, culture, and the Olympic experience. Sport and society. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-06654-2.
Elfers, James E. (2003). The Tour to End All Tours: the story of major league baseball's 1913-1914 world tour. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-6748-0.
Findling, John E.; Pelle, Kimberly D., eds. (2004). Encyclopedia of the modern Olympic movement. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-32278-5.
Gerasimo, Luisa; Whiteley, Sandra, eds. (2003). The teacher's calendar of famous birthdays. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-141230-8.
Hilger, Michael (2016). Native Americans in the movies: portrayals from silent films to the present. Lanham Boulder New York London: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4422-4002-5.
Hoxie, Frederick E., ed. (1996). Encyclopedia of North American Indians. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-66921-1.
Jeansonne, Glen; Luhrssen, David (2006). A time of paradox: America since 1890. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-7425-3376-9. OCLC 62109927.
Landrum, Dr. Gene N. (2006). Empowerment: the Competitive Edge in Sports, Business & Life. Brendan Kelly Publishing, Incorporated. ISBN 978-1-89-599724-8.
Lincoln, Kenneth; Slagle, Al Logan (1997). The good red road: passages into Native America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-7974-2.
Magill, Frank Northen, ed. (1987). Great lives from history. Vol. 1 5: American series Sit - Z. Vol. 1. Pasadena, Cal.: Salem Pr. ISBN 978-0-89356-529-9.
Maraniss, David (2022). Path lit by lightning: the life of Jim Thorpe (1st ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4767-4841-2.
Neft, David S.; Cohen, Richard M.; Korch, Rick (1994). The Complete History of Professional Football from 1892 to the Present. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-31-211435-0.
O'Hanlon-Lincoln, Ceane (2004). County chronicles: a vivid collection of Fayette County, Pennsylvania histories. Chicora, PA: Mechling Bookbindery. ISBN 978-0-9744657-8-4.
Quirk, Charles E., ed. (July 10, 2014). Sports and the Law: Major Legal Cases. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-13-568222-4.
Rendell, Matt, ed. (2004). The Olympics: Athens to Athens, 1896 - 2004. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-84382-5.
Schaffer, Kay; Smith, Sidonie, eds. (2000). The Olympics at the Millennium: power, politics, and the games. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-2820-5.
Watterson, John Sayle (November 14, 2002). College Football: History, Spectacle, Controversy. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-80-187114-6.
Wheeler, Robert W. (1979). Jim Thorpe, World's Greatest Athlete. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-80-611745-4.
Williams, Randy (2006). Sports cinema: 100 movies: the best of Hollywood's athletic heroes, losers, myths, and misfits. Pompton Plains, NJ: Limelight Ed. ISBN 978-0-87910-331-6.
Zarnowski, Frank (March 31, 2005). All-Around Men: Heroes of a Forgotten Sport. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-81-085423-9.
Zarnowski, Frank (2013). The Pentathlon of the Ancient World. Jefferson, NC: Mcfarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-6783-9.
Further reading
Benjey, Tom (2008). Doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs. Carlisle, PA: Tuxedo Press. ISBN 978-0-9774486-7-8.
Mallon, Bill; Widlund, Ture (2002). "In the Matter of Jacobus Franciscus Thorpe". The 1912 Olympic Games: results for all competitors in all events, with commentary. Results of the early modern Olympics. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-1047-7.
Newcombe, Jack (1975). The best of the athletic boys: The white man's impact on Jim Thorpe (1st ed.). Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-06186-5.
Updyke, Rosemary K. (December 1997). Jim Thorpe: The Legend Remembered. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company. ISBN 978-1-56-554539-7.
Wallechinsky, David (2000). The complete book of the Summer Olympics (2000 ed., 1st ed.). Woodstock, N.Y: Overlook Press. ISBN 978-1-58567-033-8.
External links
Jim Thorpe at the Team USA Hall of Fame
Jim Thorpe at Olympics.com
Jim Thorpe at Olympedia
Jim Thorpe at the Pro Football Hall of Fame
Jim Thorpe at the College Football Hall of Fame
Career statistics and player information from NFL.com · Pro Football Reference
Career statistics and player information from Baseball Reference, or Baseball Reference (Minors)
Jim Thorpe at IMDb |
1911_Carlisle_Indians_football_team | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1911_Carlisle_Indians_football_team | [
769
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1911_Carlisle_Indians_football_team"
] | The 1911 Carlisle Indians football team represented the Carlisle Indian Industrial School as an independent during the 1911 college football season. Led by tenth-year head coach Pop Warner, the Indians compiled a record of 11–1 and outscored opponents 298 to 49. The season included one of the greatest upsets in college football history. Against Harvard, Jim Thorpe scored all of the Indians' points in a shocking upset over the period powerhouse, 18–15. The only loss for Carlisle came at the hands of Syracuse the following week, 12–11. Walter Camp selected Thorpe first-team All-American. One source claims Thorpe was "recognized as the greatest player of the year and a man whose kicking is likely to revolutionize the game." College Football Hall of Fame members on the team include Thorpe, Gus Welch, and William "Lone Star" Dietz.
Schedule
Players
Line
Backfield
See also
1911 College Football All-America Team
== References == |
Donahoe,_Texas | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donahoe,_Texas | [
770
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donahoe,_Texas"
] | Donahoe is a ghost town in Bell County, in the U.S. state of Texas. It is located within the Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood metropolitan area.
Geography
Donahoe was located on Donahoe Creek, 16 mi (26 km) southeast of Belton in the southeastern corner of Bell County.
Education
Today, Donahoe is located within the Bartlett Independent School District.
== References == |
Bartlett_Independent_School_District | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartlett_Independent_School_District | [
770
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartlett_Independent_School_District"
] | Bartlett Independent School District is a public school district based in Bartlett, Texas (USA). Located in Bell County, portions of the district extend into Williamson and Milam counties.
Finances
As of the 2010-2011 school year, the appraised valuation of property in the district was $86,161,000. The maintenance tax rate was $0.104 and the bond tax rate was $0.011 per $100 of appraised valuation.
Academic achievement
In 2011, the school district was rated "academically acceptable" by the Texas Education Agency.
Schools
In 2011-2012, the district had three schools.
Regular instructional
Bartlett School (Grades PK-12)
JJAEP instructional
Williamson County JJAEP
Bell County JJAEP
Closed schools
Bartlett Elementary School.
The elementary school was last given separate accountability ratings in 2007.
See also
List of school districts in Texas
References
External links
Bartlett ISD |
Bulldog | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldog | [
770
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldog"
] | The Bulldog is a British breed of dog of mastiff type. It may also be known as the English Bulldog or British Bulldog. It is a medium-sized, muscular dog of around 40–55 lb (18–25 kg). They have large heads with thick folds of skin around the face and shoulders and a relatively flat face with a protruding lower jaw. The breed has significant health issues as a consequence of breeding for its distinctive appearance, including brachycephaly, hip dysplasia, heat sensitivity, and skin infections. Due to concerns about their quality of life, breeding Bulldogs is illegal in Norway and the Netherlands.
The modern Bulldog was bred as a companion dog from the Old English Bulldog, a now-extinct breed used for bull-baiting, when the sport was outlawed in England under the Cruelty to Animals Act. The Bulldog Club (in England) was formed in 1878, and the Bulldog Club of America was formed in 1890. While often used as a symbol of ferocity and courage, modern Bulldogs are generally friendly, amiable dogs. Bulldogs are now commonly kept as pets; in 2013, the Bulldog was the 12th most frequently registered breed worldwide.
History
The first reference to the word "Bulldog" is dated 1631 or 1632 in a letter by a man named Preswick Eaton where he writes: "procuer mee two good Bulldogs, and let them be sent by ye first shipp". In 1666, English scientist Christopher Merret applied: "Canis pugnax, a Butchers Bull or Bear Dog", as an entry in his Pinax Rerum Naturalium Britannicarum.
The designation "bull" was applied because of the dog's use in the sport of bull-baiting. This entailed the setting of dogs (after placing wagers on each dog) onto a tethered bull. The dog that grabbed the bull by the nose and pinned it to the ground would be the victor. It was common for a bull to maim or kill several dogs at such an event, either by goring, tossing, or trampling over them. Over the centuries, dogs used for bull-baiting developed the stocky bodies and massive heads and jaws that typify the breed, as well as a ferocious and savage temperament. Bull-baiting was made illegal in England by the Cruelty to Animals Act 1835. Therefore, the Old English Bulldog had outlived its usefulness in England as a sporting animal and its "working" days were numbered. However, emigrants did have a use for such dogs in the New World. In mid-17th century New York, Bulldogs were used as a part of a citywide roundup effort led by Governor Richard Nicolls. Because cornering and leading wild bulls was dangerous, Bulldogs were trained to seize a bull by its nose long enough for a rope to be secured around its neck.
Bulldogs as pets were continually promoted by dog dealer Bill George.
In 1864, a group of Bulldog breeders under R. S. Rockstro founded the first Bulldog Club. Three years after its opening the Club ceased to exist, not having organized a single show. The main achievement of the Rockstro Bulldog Club was a detailed description of the Bulldog, known as the Philo-Kuan Standard. Samuel Wickens, treasurer of the club, published this description in 1865 under the pseudonym Philo-Kuan.
On 4 April 1873, The Kennel Club was founded, the first dog breeding club dealing with the registration of purebred dogs and dog breeds. Bulldogs were included in the first volume of the Kennel Club Stud Book, which was presented at the Birmingham Show on 1 December 1874. The first English Bulldog entered into the register was a male dog named Adam, born in 1864.
In March 1875, the third Bulldog Club was founded, which still exists today. Members of this club met frequently at the Blue Post pub on Oxford Street in London. The founders of the club collected all available information about the breed and its best representatives and developed a new standard for the English Bulldog, which was published on 27 May 1875, the same year they held the first breed show. Since 1878, exhibitions of the club were held annually, except during the Second World War. On 17 May 1894, the Bulldog Club was granted the status of a corporation and since then has carried the official name "The Bulldog Club, Inc.". It is the oldest mono-breed dog kennel club in the world.
The Bulldog was officially recognised by the American Kennel Club in 1886.
In 1894, the two top Bulldogs, King Orry and Dock Leaf, competed in a contest to see which dog could walk 20 miles (32 km). King Orry was reminiscent of the original Bulldogs, lighter-boned and very athletic. Dock Leaf was a smaller and heavier set, more like modern Bulldogs. King Orry was declared the winner that year, finishing the 20-mile (32 km) walk while Dock Leaf collapsed and expired. Though today Bulldogs look tough, they cannot perform the job they were originally bred for, as they cannot withstand the rigours of running after and being thrown by a bull, and also cannot grip with such a short muzzle.
Description
Appearance
Bulldogs have characteristically wide heads and shoulders along with a pronounced mandibular prognathism. There are generally thick folds of skin on the brow; round, black, wide-set eyes; a short muzzle with characteristic folds called a rope or nose roll above the nose; hanging skin under the neck; drooping lips and pointed teeth, and an underbite with an upturned jaw. The coat is short, flat, and sleek with colours of red, fawn, white, brindle, and piebald. They have short tails that can either hang down straight or be tucked in a coiled "corkscrew" into a tail pocket.
In the United Kingdom, the breed standards are 55 lb (25 kg) for a male and 50 lb (23 kg) for a female. In the United States, the standard calls for a smaller dog — a typical mature male weighs 50 lb (23 kg), while mature females weigh about 40 lb (18 kg).
Temperament
According to the American Kennel Club (AKC), a Bulldog's disposition should be "equable and kind, resolute, and courageous (not vicious or aggressive), and demeanour should be pacifist and dignified. These attributes should be countenanced by the expression and behaviour".
Bulldogs are known for getting along well with children, other dogs, and other pets.
Health
Lifespan
A 2022 study in the UK of veterinary data found a life expectancy of 7.39 years, the second lowest of all breeds in the study. A 2024 UK study found a life expectancy of 9.8 years for the breed compared to an average of 12.7 for purebreeds and 12 for crossbreeds.
A 2004 UK survey found the leading cause of death of Bulldogs to be cardiac-related (20%), cancer (18%), and old age (9%).
Brachycephaly
The shortened snout and pushed in face of the Bulldog is known as brachycephaly. Brachycephaly results in deformation of the upper airway tract and leads to obstruction of breathing. Effects of brachycephaly are stridor, stertorous breathing, emesis, skin fold dermatitis, brachycephalic airway obstructive syndrome, exophthalmos, pharyngeal gag reflex, cyanosis, and laryngeal collapse. Other issues arising from brachycephaly are risk of complications whilst under anaesthesia, and hyperthermia — with the latter caused due to an inability to effectively reduce body temperature via panting. Many airlines ban the breed from flying in the cargo hold due to a high rate of deaths from air pressure interacting poorly with their breathing problems.
Other conditions
Statistics from the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals indicate that of the 467 Bulldogs tested between 1979 and 2009 (30 years), 73.9% were affected by hip dysplasia, the highest amongst all breeds. Similarly, the breed has the worst score in the British Veterinary Association/Kennel Club Hip Dysplasia scoring scheme, although only 22 Bulldogs were tested in the scheme.
A study in England found the Bulldog to have a nearly three times greater risk of patellar luxation, with 2.9% of all Bulldogs having the condition.
In a 1963 UK study, 17% of Bulldogs surveyed had skin fold dermatitis. The breed is also predisposed to atopic dermatitis.
A study by the Royal Veterinary College found that Bulldogs are a much less healthy breed than average, with over twice the odds of being diagnosed with at least one of the common dog disorders investigated in the study.
Over 80% of Bulldog litters are delivered by Caesarean section because their characteristically large heads can become lodged in the mother's birth canal and to avoid potential breathing problems for the mother during labour.
A British study found demodicosis to be more prevalent in the Bulldog than other breeds. The overall prevalence was 1.5% in the breed compared to the 0.17% rate for all dogs. For dogs aged under 2 years, the prevalence was 3.6% compared to 0.48%.
The Bulldog is one of the two most commonly affected breeds for hiatal hernia.
Controversies and legal status
In January 2009, after the BBC documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed, The Kennel Club introduced revised breed standards for the British Bulldog, along with 209 other breeds, to address health concerns. Opposed by the British Bulldog Breed Council, it was speculated by the press that the changes would lead to a smaller head, fewer skin folds, a longer muzzle, and a taller thinner posture, to combat problems with respiration and breeding due to head size and width of shoulders. In 2019 the Dutch Kennel Club implemented some breeding rules to improve the health of the Bulldog. Among these is a fitness test where the dog has to walk 1 km (0.62 miles) in 12 minutes. Its temperature and heart rate have to recover after 15 minutes.
In 2014, the Dutch government forbade the breeding of dogs with a snout shorter than a third of the skull, including Bulldogs, a law that it began enforcing in 2019. In 2022, the Oslo District Court made a ruling that banned the breeding of Bulldogs in Norway due to their propensity for developing health problems. In its verdict the court judged that no dog of this breed could be considered healthy, therefore using them for breeding would be a violation of Norway's Animal Welfare Act.
Cultural significance
Bulldogs are often associated with determination, strength, and courage due to their historical occupation, though the modern-day dog is bred for appearance and friendliness and not suited for significant physical exertion. They are often used as mascots by universities, sports teams, and other organizations. Some of the better-known Bulldog mascots include Georgetown's Jack, Butler's Blue IV, Yale's Handsome Dan, the University of Georgia's Uga, Mississippi State's Bully, and the United States Marine Corps' Chesty.
The Bulldog originated in England and has a longstanding association with British culture; the BBC wrote: "To many the Bulldog is a national icon, symbolising pluck and determination". During the Second World War, the Prime Minister Winston Churchill was likened to a Bulldog for his defiance of Nazi Germany.
See also
Dogs portal
List of dog breeds
British Bulldog (game)
Bulldog type
== References == |
Mount_Kilimanjaro | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Kilimanjaro | [
771
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Kilimanjaro"
] | Mount Kilimanjaro () is a dormant volcano in Tanzania. With three volcanic cones — Kibo, Mawenzi and Shira — it is the highest mountain in Africa and the highest single free-standing mountain above sea level in the world: 5,895 m (19,341 ft) above sea level and 4,900 m (16,100 ft) above its plateau base. It is also the highest volcano in the Eastern Hemisphere.
Kilimanjaro is the fourth most topographically prominent peak on Earth. It is part of Kilimanjaro National Park and is a major hiking and climbing destination. Because of its shrinking glaciers and ice fields, which are projected to disappear between 2025 and 2035, it has been the subject of many scientific studies.
Toponymy
The origin of the name Kilimanjaro is not known, but several theories exist. European explorers had adopted the name by 1860 and reported that Kilimanjaro was the mountain's Kiswahili name. The 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia also records the name of the mountain as Kilima-Njaro.
Johann Ludwig Krapf wrote in 1860 that Swahilis along the coast called the mountain Kilimanjaro. Although he did not offer any support, he claimed that Kilimanjaro meant either "mountain of greatness" or "mountain of caravans." Under the latter meaning, kilima meant "mountain" and jaro meant "caravans." Jim Thompson claimed in 1885, again without support, that the term Kilima-Njaro "has generally been understood to mean" the mountain (kilima) of greatness (njaro). He also suggested "though not improbably it may mean" the white mountain.
Njaro is an ancient Kiswahili word for "shining." Similarly, Krapf wrote that a chief of the Wakamba people, whom he visited in 1849, "had been to Jagga and had seen the Kima jajeu, mountain of whiteness, the name given by the Wakamba to Kilimanjaro ..." More correctly, in the Kikamba language this would be kiima kyeu, and this possible derivation has been popular with several investigators.
Others have assumed that kilima is Swahili for "mountain." The problem with this assumption is that kilima actually means "hill" and is, therefore, the diminutive of mlima, the proper Swahili word for "mountain." However, "[i]t is ... possible ... that an early European visitor, whose knowledge of [Kiswahili] was not extensive, changed mlima to kilima by analogy with the two Wachagga names: Kibo and Kimawenzi." A different approach is to assume that the kileman- part of Kilimanjaro comes from the Kichagga kileme "that which defeats" or kilelema "that which has become difficult or impossible." The -jaro part would "then be derived from njaare, a bird; or, according to other informants, a leopard; or, possibly from jyaro, a caravan". Considering that the name Kilimanjaro has never been current among the Wachagga people, it is possible that the name was derived from Wachagga saying that the mountain was unclimbable, kilemanjaare or kilemajyaro, and porters misinterpreting this as being the name of the mountain.
An alternative explanation suggested by several sources, that jyaro may be referring to a 'god or a deity' which protected the mountains from tresspassers. They knew that birds did not fly on the mountain and local travellers would become sick if they ventured too high - we now understand this to be altitude sickness.
In the 1880s, the mountain became a part of German East Africa and was called Kilima-Ndscharo in German following the Kiswahili name components. On 6 October 1889, Hans Meyer reached the highest summit on the crater ridge of Kibo. He named it Kaiser-Wilhelm-Spitze (Kaiser Wilhelm peak). That name was used until Tanzania was formed in 1964, when the summit was renamed Uhuru Peak, meaning "Freedom Peak" in Kiswahili.
Geology and geography
Kilimanjaro is a large dormant stratovolcano composed of three distinct volcanic cones: Kibo, the highest; Mawenzi at 5,149 m (16,893 ft); and Shira, the lowest at 4,005 m (13,140 ft). Mawenzi and Shira are extinct, while Kibo is dormant and could erupt again.
Uhuru Peak is the highest summit on Kibo's crater rim. The Tanzania National Parks Authority, a Tanzanian government agency, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization lists the height of Uhuru Peak as 5,895 m (19,341 ft), based on a British survey in 1952. The height has since been measured as 5,892 m (19,331 ft) in 1999, 5,902 m (19,364 ft) in 2008, and 5,899 m (19,354 ft) in 2014.
A map of the Kibo cone on Mount Kilimanjaro was published by the British government's Directorate of Overseas Surveys (DOS) in 1964 based on aerial photography conducted in 1962 as the "Subset of Kilimanjaro, East Africa (Tanganyika) Series Y742, Sheet 56/2, D.O.S. 422 1964, Edition 1, Scale 1:50,000". Tourist mapping was first published by the Ordnance Survey in England in 1989 based on the original DOS mapping at a scale of 1:100,000, with 100 ft (30 m) contour intervals, as DOS 522. West Col Productions produced a map with tourist information in 1990, at a scale of 1:75,000, with 100 m (330 ft) contour intervals; it included inset maps of Kibo and Mawenzi on 1:20,000 and 1:30,000 scales respectively and with 50 m (160 ft) contour intervals. In recent years, numerous other maps have become available, of various qualities.
Volcanology
The volcanic interior of Kilimanjaro is poorly known because there has not been any significant erosion to expose the igneous strata that comprise the volcano's structure.
Eruptive activity at the Shira center commenced about 2.5 million years ago, with the last important phase occurring about 1.9 million years ago, just before the northern part of the edifice collapsed. Shira is topped by a broad high plain at 3,800 m (12,500 ft), which may be a filled caldera. The remnant caldera rim has been degraded deeply by erosion. Before the caldera formed and erosion began, Shira might have been between 4,900 and 5,200 m (16,100 and 17,100 ft) high. It is mostly composed of basaltic lavas, with some pyroclastics. The formation of the caldera was accompanied by lava emanating from ring fractures, but there was no large-scale explosive activity. Two cones formed subsequently, the phonolitic one at the northwest end of the ridge and the doleritic Platzkegel in the caldera center.
Both Mawenzi and Kibo began erupting about 1 million years ago. They are separated by the Saddle Plateau at 4,400 m (14,400 ft) elevation.: 3
The youngest dated rocks at Mawenzi are about 448,000 years old. Mawenzi forms a horseshoe-shaped ridge with pinnacles and ridges opening to the northeast, with a tower-like shape resulting from deep erosion and a mafic dike swarm. Several large cirques cut into the ring and the largest of these sits on top of the Great Barranco gorge. Also notable are the East and West Barrancos on the northeastern side of the mountain. Most of the eastern side of the mountain has been removed by erosion. Mawenzi has a subsidiary peak, Neumann Tower, 4,425 m (14,518 ft).
Kibo is the largest cone on the mountain and is more than 24 km (15 mi) wide at the Saddle Plateau altitude. The last activity here, dated to 150,000–200,000 years ago, created the current Kibo summit crater. Kibo still has gas-emitting fumaroles in its crater. Kibo is capped by an almost symmetrical cone with escarpments rising 180 to 200 m (590 to 660 ft) on the south side. These escarpments define a 2.5 km-wide (1.6 mi) caldera caused by the collapse of the summit.
Within this caldera is the Inner Cone and within the crater of the Inner Cone is the Reusch Crater, which the Tanganyika government in 1954 named after Gustav Otto Richard Reusch, upon his climbing the mountain for the 25th time (out of 65 attempts during his lifetime). The Ash Pit, 350 m (1,150 ft) deep, lies within the Reusch Crater. About 100,000 years ago, part of Kibo's crater rim collapsed, creating the area known as the Western Breach and the Great Barranco.
An almost continuous layer of lava buries most older geological features, except exposed strata within the Great West Notch and the Kibo Barranco. The former exposes intrusions of syenite. Kibo has five main lava formations:
Phonotephrites and tephriphonolites of the Lava Tower group, on a dyke cropping out at 4,600 m (15,100 ft), dated to 482,000 years ago.
Tephriphonolite to phonolite lavas "characterized by rhomb mega-phenocrysts of sodic feldspars" of the Rhomb Porphyry group, dated to 460,000–360,000 years ago.
Aphyric phonolite lavas, "commonly underlain by basal obsidian horizons", of the Lent group, dated to 359,000–337,000 years ago
Porphyritic tephriphonolite to phonolite lavas of the Caldera Rim group, dated to 274,000–170,000 years ago
Phonolite lava flows with aegirine phenocrysts, of the Inner Crater group, which represents the last volcanic activity on Kibo
Kibo has more than 250 parasitic cones on its northwest and southeast flanks that were formed between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago and erupted picrobasalts, trachybasalts, ankaramites, and basanites. They reach as far as Lake Chala and Taveta in the southeast and the Lengurumani Plain in the northwest. Most of these cones are well preserved, except the Saddle Plateau cones which were heavily affected by glacial action. Despite their mostly small size, lava from the cones has obscured large portions of the mountain. The Saddle Plateau cones are mostly cinder cones with terminal effusion of lava, while the Upper Rombo Zone cones mostly generated lava flows. All Saddle Plateau cones predate the last glaciation.
According to reports gathered in the 19th century from the Maasai, Lake Chala on Kibo's eastern flank was the site of a village that was destroyed by an eruption.
Glaciers
Kibo's diminishing ice cap exists because Kilimanjaro is a little-dissected, massive mountain that rises above the snow line. The cap is divergent and at the edges splits into individual glaciers. The central portion of the ice cap is interrupted by the presence of the Kibo crater.: 5 The summit glaciers and ice fields do not display significant horizontal movements because their low thickness precludes major deformation.
Geological evidence shows five successive glacial episodes during the Quaternary period, namely First (500,000 BP), Second (greater than 360,000 years ago to 240,000 BP), Third (150,000 to 120,000 BP), Fourth (also known as "Main") (20,000 to 17,000 BP), and Little (16,000 to 14,000 BP). The Third may have been the most extensive, and the Little appears to be statistically indistinguishable from the Fourth.
A continuous ice cap covering approximately 400 km2 (150 sq mi) down to an elevation of 3,200 m (10,500 ft) covered Kilimanjaro during the Last Glacial Maximum in the Pleistocene epoch (the Main glacial episode), extending across the summits of Kibo and Mawenzi. Because of the exceptionally prolonged dry conditions during the subsequent Younger Dryas stadial, the ice fields on Kilimanjaro may have become extinct around 11,500 years BP. Ice cores taken from Kilimanjaro's Northern Ice Field (NIF) indicates that the glaciers there have a basal age of about 11,700 years, although an analysis of ice taken in 2011 from exposed vertical cliffs in the NIF supports an age extending only to 800 years BP. Higher precipitation rates at the beginning of the Holocene epoch (11,500 years BP) allowed the ice cap to reform. The glaciers survived a widespread drought during a three century period beginning around 4,000 years BP.
In the late 1880s, the summit of Kibo was completely covered by an ice cap about 20 km2 (7.7 sq mi) in extent with outlet glaciers cascading down the western and southern slopes, and except for the inner cone, the entire caldera was buried. Glacier ice also flowed through the Western Breach. The slope glaciers retreated rapidly between 1912 and 1953, in response to a sudden shift in climate at the end of the 19th century that made them "drastically out of equilibrium", and more slowly thereafter. Their continuing demise indicates they are still out of equilibrium in response to a constant change in climate over the past century.
In contrast to the persistent slope glaciers, the glaciers on Kilimanjaro's crater plateau have appeared and disappeared repeatedly during the Holocene epoch, with each cycle lasting a few hundred years.: 1088 It appears that decreasing specific humidity instead of temperature changes has caused the shrinkage of the slope glaciers since the late 19th century. No clear warming trend at the elevation of those glaciers occurred between 1948 and 2005. Although air temperatures at that elevation are always below freezing, solar radiation causes melting on vertical faces. Vertical ice margin walls are a unique characteristic of the summit glaciers and a major place of the shrinkage of the glaciers. They manifest stratifications, calving, and other ice features. "There is no pathway for the plateau glaciers other than to continuously retreat once their vertical margins are exposed to solar radiation." The Kilimanjaro glaciers have been used for deriving ice core records, including two from the southern icefield. Based on this data, this icefield formed between 1,250 and 1,450 years BP.
Almost 85 percent of the ice cover on Kilimanjaro disappeared between October 1912 and June 2011, with coverage decreasing from 11.40 km2 (4.40 sq mi) to 1.76 km2 (0.68 sq mi).: 423 Between 1912 and 1953, there was about a 1.1 percent average annual loss of ice coverage. The average annual loss for 1953 to 1989 was 1.4 percent, while the loss rate for 1989 to 2007 was 2.5 percent. Of the ice cover still present in 2000, almost 40 percent had disappeared by 2011.: 425 Ice climber Will Gadd noticed differences between his 2014 and 2020 climbs. The glaciers are thinning in addition to losing areal coverage, and do not have active accumulation zones; retreat occurs on all glacier surfaces. Loss of glacier mass is caused by both melting and sublimation. While the current shrinking and thinning of Kilimanjaro's ice fields appear to be unique within its almost twelve-millennium history, it is contemporaneous with widespread glacier retreat in mid-to-low latitudes across the globe. In 2013, it was estimated that, at the current rate of global warming, most of the ice on Kilimanjaro will disappear by 2040, and "it is highly unlikely that any ice body will remain after 2060".: 430
The Furtwangler Glacier on Kilimanjaro is a remnant of the ice cap that once covered the mountain. This has retreated dramatically over the last century with over 80 percent glacial retreat. The glacier is named after Walter Furtwangler, who along with Ziegfried Koenig, was the fourth to ascend to the summit of Kilimanjaro in 1912.
A complete disappearance of the ice would be of only "negligible importance" to the water budget of the area around the mountain. The forests of Kilimanjaro, far below the ice fields, "are [the] essential water reservoirs for the local and regional populations".
Drainage
Kilimanjaro is drained by a network of rivers and streams, especially on the wetter and more heavily eroded southern side and especially above 1,200 m (3,900 ft). Below that altitude, increased evaporation and human water usage reduce the water flows. The Lumi and Pangani rivers drain Kilimanjaro on the eastern and southern sides, respectively.
IUGS geological heritage site
In respect of it being 'the highest stratovolcano of the East African Rift that maintains a glacier on its summit', the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) included 'The Pleistocene Kilimanjaro volcano' in its assemblage of 100 'geological heritage sites' around the world in a listing published in October 2022. The organization defines an IUGS Geological Heritage Site as 'a key place with geological elements and/or processes of international scientific relevance, used as a reference, and/or with a substantial contribution to the development of geological sciences through history.'
Human history
Chagga states
Kilimanjaro is attested to in numerous stories by the people who live in East Africa. The Chagga, who traditionally lived on the southern and eastern slopes of the mountain in sovereign Chagga states, tell how a man named Tone once provoked a god, Ruwa, to bring famine upon the land. The people became angry at Tone, forcing him to flee. Nobody wanted to protect him but a solitary dweller who had stones that turned miraculously into cattle. The dweller bid that Tone never open the stable of the cattle. When Tone did not heed the warning and the cattle escaped, Tone followed them, but the fleeing cattle threw up hills to run on, including Mawenzi and Kibo. Tone finally collapsed on Kibo, ending the pursuit.
Another Chagga legend tells of ivory-filled graves of elephants on the mountain, and of a cow named Rayli that produces miraculous fat from her tail glands. If a man tries to steal such a gland but is too slow in his moves, Rayli will blast a powerful snort and blow the thief down onto the plain.
Early records
The mountain may have been known to non-Africans since antiquity. Sailors' reports recorded by Ptolemy mention a "moon mountain" and a spring lake of the Nile, which may indicate Kilimanjaro, although available historical information does not allow differentiation among others in East Africa like Mount Kenya, the mountains of Ethiopia, the Virunga Mountains, the Rwenzori Mountains, and Kilimanjaro. Before Ptolemy, Aeschylus and Herodotus referred to "Egypt nurtured by the snows" and to a spring between two mountains, respectively. One of these mentions two tall mountains in the coastal regions with a valley with traces of fire between them. Martín Fernández de Enciso, a Spanish traveler to Mombasa who obtained information about the interior from native caravans, said in his Summa de Geografía (1519) that west of Mombasa "stands the Ethiopian Mount Olympus, which is exceedingly high, and beyond it are the Mountains of the Moon, in which are the sources of the Nile".: 1–5 : 114
European exploration
The German missionaries Johannes Rebmann of Mombasa and Johann Krapf were the first Europeans known to have attempted to reach the mountain. According to English geographer Halford Mackinder and English explorer Harry Johnston, Rebmann in 1848 was the first European to report the existence of Kilimanjaro. Hans Meyer has claimed that Rebmann first arrived in Africa in 1846 and quotes Rebmann's diary entry of 11 May 1848 as saying, This morning, at 10 o'clock, we obtained a clearer view of the mountains of Jagga, the summit of one of which was covered by what looked like a beautiful white cloud. When I inquired as to the dazzling whiteness, the guide merely called it 'cold' and at once I knew it could be neither more nor less than snow.... Immediately I understood how to interpret the marvelous tales Dr. Krapf and I had heard at the coast, of a vast mountain of gold and silver in the far interior, the approach to which was guarded by evil spirits.: 6
In August 1861, the Prussian officer Baron Karl Klaus von der Decken accompanied by English geologist Richard Thornton attempted to climb Kibo but "got no farther than 2,500 m (8,200 ft) owing to the inclemency of the weather".: 9 In December 1862, von der Decken tried a second time together with Otto Kersten, reaching a height of 4,300 m (14,000 ft).
In August 1871, missionary Charles New became the "first European to reach the equatorial snows" on Kilimanjaro at an elevation of slightly more than 4,000 m (13,000 ft).: 11 In June 1887, the Hungarian Count Sámuel Teleki and the Austrian Lieutenant Ludwig von Höhnel made an attempt to climb the mountain. Approaching from the saddle between Mawenzi and Kibo, Höhnel stopped at 4,950 m (16,240 ft), but Teleki continued until he reached the snow at 5,300 m (17,400 ft). Later in 1887, the German geology professor Hans Meyer reached the lower edge of the ice cap on Kibo, where he was forced to turn back because he lacked the equipment needed to progress across the ice.: 81 The following year, Meyer planned another attempt with Oscar Baumann, a cartographer, but the mission was aborted after the pair were held hostage and ransomed during the Abushiri Revolt.: 82 In the autumn of 1888, the American naturalist Abbott and the German explorer Otto Ehrenfried Ehlers approached the summit from the northwest. While Abbott turned back earlier, Ehlers at first claimed to have reached the summit rim, but after severe criticism of the claim, withdrew it.: 17–19
In 1889, Meyer returned to Kilimanjaro with the Austrian mountaineer Ludwig Purtscheller for a third attempt.: 82 This attempt was based on the establishment of several campsites with food supplies so that multiple attempts at the top could be made without having to descend too far.: 82 Meyer and Purtscheller pushed to near the crater rim on 3 October but turned back exhausted from hacking footsteps in the icy slope.: 82 Three days later, they reached the highest summit, on the southern rim of the crater.: 82 They were the first to confirm that Kibo has a crater.: 82 After descending to the saddle between Kibo and Mawenzi, Meyer and Purtscheller attempted to climb the more technically challenging Mawenzi but could only reach the top of Klute Peak, a subsidiary peak, before retreating due to illness.: 84 On 18 October, they reascended Kibo to enter and study the crater, cresting the rim at Hans Meyers Notch.: 84 In total, Meyer and Purtscheller spent 16 days above 4,600 m (15,000 ft) during their expedition.: 84 They were accompanied in their high camps by Mwini Amani of Pangani, who cooked and supplied the sites with water and firewood.: 135–186
The first ascent of the highest summit of Mawenzi was made on 29 July 1912, by the German climbers Eduard Hans Oehler and Fritz Klute, who named it Hans Meyer Peak. Oehler and Klute went on to make the third-ever ascent of Kibo, via the Drygalski Glacier, and descended via the Western Breach.: 85
In 1989, the organizing committee of the 100-year celebration of the first ascent decided to award posthumous certificates to the African porter-guides who had accompanied Meyer and Purtscheller. One person in pictures or documents of the 1889 expedition was thought to match a living inhabitant of Marangu, Yohani Kinyala Lauwo. Lauwo did not know his own age, nor remember Meyer or Purtscheller. He did recall joining a Kilimanjaro expedition involving a Dutch doctor who lived near the mountain, and that he did not wear shoes during the climb. Lauwo claimed that he had climbed the mountain three times before the beginning of World War I. The committee concluded that he had been a member of Meyer's team and therefore must have been born around 1871. Lauwo died on 10 May 1996, 107 years after the first ascent. It is sometimes suggested that he was a co-first-ascendant of Kilimanjaro.
Fauna and flora
Animals
Large animals are rare on Kilimanjaro and are more frequent in the forests and lower parts of the mountain. Elephants and Cape buffaloes are among the animals that can be potentially hazardous to trekkers. Bushbucks, chameleons, dik-diks, duikers, mongooses, sunbirds, and warthogs have also been reported. Zebras, leopards and hyenas have been observed sporadically on the Shira plateau. Specific species associated with the mountain include the Kilimanjaro shrew and the chameleon Kinyongia tavetana.
Vegetation
Natural forests cover about 1,000 km2 (250,000 acres) on Kilimanjaro. In the foothill area, maize, beans, sunflowers and, on the western side, wheat are cultivated. There are remnants of the former savanna vegetation with Acacia, Combretum, Terminalia and Grewia. Between 1,000 m (3,300 ft) and 1,800 m (5,900 ft), coffee appears as part of the "Chagga home gardens" agroforestry. Native vegetation at this altitude range (Strombosia, Newtonia, and Entandrophragma) is limited to inaccessible valleys and gorges and is different from vegetation at higher altitudes. On the southern slope, montane forests first contain Ocotea usambarensis as well as ferns and epiphytes; farther up in cloud forests Podocarpus latifolius, Hagenia abyssinica and Erica excelsa grow, as well as fog-dependent mosses. On the drier northern slopes olive, Croton-Calodendrum, Cassipourea, and Juniperus form forests in order of increasing altitude. Between 3,100 m (10,200 ft) and 3,900 m (12,800 ft) lie Erica bush and heathlands, followed by Helichrysum, until 4,500 m (14,800 ft). Neophytes have been observed, including Poa annua.
Records from the Maundi crater at 2,780 m (9,120 ft) indicate that the vegetation of Kilimanjaro has varied over time. Forest vegetation retreated during the Last Glacial Maximum and the ericaceous vegetation belt lowered by 1,500 m (4,900 ft) between 42,000 and 30,000 years ago because of the drier and colder conditions.
The Tussock Grassland is an area on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro that contains many unique species of vegetation, such as the water holding cabbage.
Climate
The climate of Kilimanjaro is influenced by the height of the mountain, which allows the simultaneous influence of the equatorial trade winds and the high altitude anti-trades, and by the isolated position of the mountain. Kilimanjaro has daily upslope and nightly downslope winds, a regimen stronger on the southern than the northern side of the mountain. The flatter southern flanks are more extended and affect the atmosphere more strongly.: 3–4
Kilimanjaro has two distinct rainy seasons, one from March to May and another around November. The northern slopes receive much less rainfall than the southern ones. The lower southern slope receives 800 to 900 mm (31 to 35 in) annually, rising to 1,500 to 2,000 mm (59 to 79 in) at 1,500 m (4,900 ft) altitude and peaking "partly over" 3,000 mm (120 in) in the forest belt at 2,000 to 2,300 m (6,600 to 7,500 ft). In the alpine zone, annual precipitation decreases to 200 mm (7.9 in).: 18
The average temperature in the summit area is approximately −7 °C (19 °F). Nighttime surface temperatures on the Northern Ice Field (NIF) fall on average to −9 °C (16 °F), with an average daytime high of −4 °C (25 °F). During nights of extreme radiational cooling, the NIF can cool to as low as −15 to −27 °C (5 to −17 °F).: 674
Snowfall can occur at any time of year but is mostly associated with northern Tanzania's two rainy seasons.: 673 Precipitation in the summit area occurs principally as snow and graupel of 250 to 500 mm (9.8 to 19.7 in) per year and ablates within days or years.
Climatic zones
Bushland / Lower Slope:, 800 to 1,800 m (2,600 to 5,900 ft)
Rainforest: 1,800 to 2,800 m (5,900 to 9,200 ft)
Heather / Moorland: 2,800 to 4,000 m (9,200 to 13,100 ft)
Alpine Desert: 4,000 to 5,000 m (13,000 to 16,000 ft)
Arctic: 5,000 to 5,895 m (16,404 to 19,341 ft).
Tourism industry
Kilimanjaro National Park generated US$51 million in revenue in 2013,: 285 the second-most of any Tanzanian national park.: 258 The Tanzania National Parks Authority reported that the park recorded 57,456 tourists during the 2011–12 budget year, of whom 16,425 hiked the mountain; the park's General Management Plan specifies an annual capacity of 28,470. The mountain hikers generated irregular and seasonal jobs for about 11,000 guides, porters, and cooks in 2007. Concerns have been raised about the poor working conditions and inadequate wages of these workers.: 287–291 : 259
Due to Kilimanjaro National Park's popularity as a destination, the Tanzanian government has invested in road infrastructure to improve accessibility. In Tanzania, Kilimanjaro International Airport also serves as an important transportation hub.
There are seven official trekking routes by which to ascend and descend Kilimanjaro: Lemosho, Lemosho Western-Breach, Machame, Marangu, Mweka, Rongai, Shira, and Umbwe. The Machame route can be completed in six or seven days, Lemosho in six to eight, and the Northern Circuit routes in seven or more days. The Lemosho Route can also be continued via the Western-Breach, submitting via the western side of the mountain. The Western Breach is more secluded and avoids the 6-hour midnight ascent to the summit (like other routes). The Rongai is the easiest of the camping routes. The Marangu is also relatively easy, if frequently busy; accommodation is in shared huts. The Lemosho Western-Breach Route commences on the western side of Kilimanjaro at Lemosho and continues to the summit via the Western-Breach Route.
Climbing records
The oldest person to climb Mount Kilimanjaro is Anne Lorimor, aged 89 years and 37 days, who reached Uhuru Peak at 3:14 p.m. local time on 18 July 2019. The oldest man to summit is American Fred Dishelhorst, who reached the top on 19 July 2017 at the age of 88 years old. The second oldest man to summit the mountain is the American Robert Wheeler, who was 85 years and 201 days when he summited on 2 October 2014. Maxwell J. Ojerholm of Massachusetts, USA, reached Uhuru Peak, the true summit, unassisted, at the age of ten years, on July 4, 2009, taking the difficult Machame Route. Colin M. Barker of Missouri, USA, later completed the same route at the age of ten years on December 22, 2020. Theodore Margaroli from London, age 10, reached the summit unassisted by the Western Breach, the hardest but most scenic route, in 2019. Despite an age-limit of 10 years for a climbing permit, Keats Boyd from Los Angeles reached the summit on 21 January 2008 at the age of 7. This record was equaled by Montannah Kenney from Texas in March 2018 and again in July 2018 by Coaltan Tanner from New Mexico.
The fastest ascent and the fastest round trip have been recorded by the Swiss-Ecuadorian mountain guide Karl Egloff. On 13 August 2014, after guiding a party to the summit the previous days, he ran from Umbwe Gate to the top in 4 hours and 56 minutes and returned to the Mweka Gate at 1,630 m (5,350 ft) in a total time of 6 hours, 42 minutes and 24 seconds. Previous records, using the same route, were held by Spanish mountain runner Kílian Jornet (ascent in 5:23:50, round trip 7:14 on 29 September 2010) and by Tanzanian guide Simon Mtuy (an unsupported round trip in 9:21 on 22 February 2006).
The female round trip record is held by Fernanda Maciel from Brazil in a time of 10 hours and 6 minutes. Her ascent time of 7:08 was broken on 23 February 2018 by the Danish ultramarathon runner Kristina Schou Madsen with a time of 6:52:54 from Mweka Gate.
Several climbs by disabled people have drawn attention. Wheelchair user Bernard Goosen from South Africa scaled Kilimanjaro in six days in 2007. In 2012, Kyle Maynard who has no forearms or lower legs, crawled unassisted to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.
In 2020, a team featuring two double above-knee amputees, Hari Budha Magar and Justin Oliver Davis, summited Kilimanjaro. It took them six days to cover the 56 km (35 mi) distance to the summit.
In 2023, Maria Sakharuk (14 years old) became the youngest ukrainian girl to climb the mountain.
Safety
Though the climb is not technically as challenging as the Himalayas or Andes, the high elevation, low temperature, and occasional high winds can make Kilimanjaro a difficult trek. Acclimatization is required, and even experienced and physically fit trekkers may suffer some degree of altitude sickness. A study of people attempting to reach the summit of Kilimanjaro in July and August 2005 found that 61.3 percent succeeded and 77 percent experienced acute mountain sickness (AMS). A retrospective study of 917 persons who attempted to reach the summit via the Lemosho or Machame routes found that 70.4 percent experienced AMS, defined in this study to be headache, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, or loss of appetite.
Kilimanjaro's summit is well above the altitude at which life-threatening high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) or high altitude cerebral edema (HACE), the most severe forms of AMS, can occur. These health risks are increased substantially by excessively fast climbing schedules motivated by high daily national park fees, busy holiday travel schedules, and the lack of permanent shelter on most routes. The six-day Machame route, which involves one day of "climbing high" to Lava Tower (4,630 m (15,190 ft) and "sleeping low" at Barranco Camp (3,976 m (13,044 ft)), may delay the onset of AMS but does not ultimately prevent its occurrence.
Falls on steep portions of the mountain and rock slides have killed trekkers. For this reason, the route via the Arrow Glacier was closed for several years, reopening in December 2007. Now again it officially closed as of January 20th 2024. Due to strong El Niño, the Western Breach has washed down the mountain. This huge runoff has carved new ravines on the slopes and seems to be dislodging the sediment that cements the rock together, disrupting the rock stability. At the route's base, rain water has opened new drainages and there is an active, flowing river through the Arrow Glacier Camp were there has been no water at all for decades. The improper disposal of human waste on the mountain environment has created a health hazard, necessitating the boiling of all water.
According to the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Moshi, 25 people died from January 1996 to October 2003 while climbing the mountain. Seventeen were female and eight were male, ranging in age from 29 to 74. Fourteen died from advanced high altitude illness, including one with HACE, five with HAPE, and six with both HACE and HAPE. The remaining eleven deaths resulted from "trauma (3), myocardial infarction (4), pneumonia (2), cardio-pulmonary failure of other underlying cause (1), and acute appendicitis (1). The overall mortality rate was 13.6 per 100,000 climbers."
Special events
According to the Tanzania National Parks Authority, the first wedding performed on the mountain below the summit took place on 21 September 2014, when an American couple exchanged vows at Shira 2 Camp. In 2011, a couple exchanged their vows at the summit.
On 26 September 2014, a new world record for the highest-ever cricket match was set when a group of international cricketers played on a flat crater on the mountain at an elevation of 5,730 m (18,800 ft).
In literature and film
Journalist Tom Bissell noted that Kilimanjaro is "perhaps the world’s most literary mountain". The mountain is prominently featured in Ernest Hemingway's 1936 short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro. The short story was adapted into a 1952 film starring Gregory Peck. Dave Eggers wrote about his ascent in the short story Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly. Writer Douglas Adams climbed the mountain in a rubber rhinoceros suit to raise money for African rhino conservation efforts.
An IMAX film documenting an ascent—Kilimanjaro: To The Roof Of Africa—was released in 2002.
See also
Balletto Glacier
Barranco Glacier
Credner Glacier
Furtwängler Glacier
Great Penck Glacier
List of volcanoes in Tanzania
Little Penck Glacier
Rebmann Glacier
Sacred mountains
Southeast Africa
References
External links
"Kilimanjaro". Global Volcanism Program. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 24 June 2021.
NASA Earth Explorer page
Glacial Recession on Kilimanjaro (pictures of southern icefields) Archived 15 February 2011 at the Wayback Machine
Mount Kilimanjaro live webcam
Kilimanjaro flora picture gallery
Aerial photographs of Mount Kilimanjaro, 1937–38 |
Mount_Katahdin | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Katahdin | [
771
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Katahdin"
] | Mount Katahdin ( kə-TAH-din) is the highest mountain in the U.S. state of Maine at 5,269 feet (1,606 m). Named Katahdin, which means "Great Mountain", by the Penobscot Native Americans, it is within Northeast Piscataquis, Piscataquis County, and is the centerpiece of Baxter State Park. It is a steep, tall massif formed from a granite intrusion weathered to the surface. The flora and fauna on the mountain are typical of those found in northern New England, with the summit hosting fragile and endangered alpine tundra.
Katahdin was known to the Native Americans in the region and was known to Europeans at least since 1689. It has inspired hikes, climbs, journal narratives, paintings, and a piano sonata. The area around the peak was protected by Governor Percival Baxter starting in the 1930s. Katahdin is the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail and is near a stretch known as the Hundred-Mile Wilderness. Though part of the Appalachian Mountain system, Katahdin is isolated from the range, and sits largely on its own as a monadnock. The nearest higher mountains in any direction are the high peaks of the Presidential Range, around 170 miles (270 km) to the south-west.
In 1967, Mount Katahdin was designated as a National Natural Landmark by the National Park Service.
The mountain is commonly called just "Katahdin", though the official name is "Mount Katahdin" as decided by the US Board on Geographic Names in 1893.
Geology
Katahdin is part of a laccolith that formed in the Acadian orogeny when an island arc collided with eastern North America approximately 400 million years ago. On the sides of Katahdin are four glacial cirques carved into the granite by alpine glaciers and in these cirques behind moraines and eskers are several ponds.
In Baxter State Park, many outcrops of sedimentary rocks have striations, whereas Katahdin Granite and Traveler Rhyolite lava have weathered surfaces on which striations are commonly not preserved. Bedrock surfaces of igneous rocks which were buried by glacial sediments and only recently exposed have well preserved striations, as in the vicinity of Ripogenus Dam. Several outcrops of sedimentary rocks along the Patten Road show striations, especially on the north side of the road at Hurricane Deck. A few outcrops near the Pattern Road just north of Horse Mountain are striated, as are several outcrops of sedimentary rocks along the road from Trout Brook Farm northward to Second Lake Matagamon.
Fauna
Fauna include black bear, deer, and moose as well as black flies and mosquitos in the spring. A subspecies of Arctic butterfly, known as the Katahdin Arctic (Oeneis polixenes katahdin) is specific to the area, and is currently listed as endangered.
Among the birds are Bicknell's thrush and various songbirds and raptors. A study of the animal communities was published by Irving H. Blake in 1926. The flora includes pine, spruce, fir, hemlock, beech, maple, birch, aspen, and pincushion plant (Diapensia lapponica).
Geography
Katahdin is in Baxter State Park, which is in east central Piscataquis County, about 25 mi (40 km) northwest of Millinocket. It is on the drainage divide between the East and West branches of the Penobscot River.
The mountain massif itself consists of multiple peaks. Baxter Peak is the tallest, and is the official northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. South Peak and Pamola Peak are southeast and east of Baxter Peak, respectively, along the Knife Edge ridgeline, while Hamlin Peak lies to the north.
There is low lake country to the south and west of Katahdin, and lowlands extending east to the Atlantic and north to the Saint Lawrence River in Canada.
It is commonly thought that Katahdin is the first place in the United States mainland to receive sunlight in the morning, but this is incorrect. Other mountains lower in elevation but farther to the east or southeast see the first sunrise of the day, depending on the season. Regardless, the summit of Katahdin offers some of the longest unbroken lines of sight in the United States, and on clear days can be seen all the way from the White Mountains of neighboring New Hampshire; a distance of 170 miles (270 km).
Katahdin's height and isolation earns it significant coverage in indigenous and post-colonial Maine culture and literature. Katahdin's profile is distinctive and the indisputable centerpiece of Baxter State Park. Katahdin and nearby Hamlin Peak are the only two areas to host a subarctic climate and alpine vegetation in Maine. In winter, the snowcapped east and west faces of Katahdin resemble "the Kilimanjaro of New England", and it dominates the otherwise flat and endless forests of the North Maine Woods. Katahdin is also the northernmost mountain in the eastern United States with an elevation over 4,000 feet (1,200 m).
Climate
Human history
Katahdin is referred to 60 years after Field's climb of Agiokochuk (Mount Washington) in the writings of John Gyles, a teenage colonist who was captured near Portland, Maine, in 1689 by the Abenaki. While in the company of Abenaki hunting parties, he traveled up and down several Maine rivers including both branches of the Penobscot, passing close to "Teddon". He remarked that it was higher than the White Hills above the Saco River.
Among some Native Americans, Katahdin was believed to be the home of the storm god Pamola, and thus an area to be avoided.
The first recorded climb of "Catahrdin" was by Massachusetts surveyors Zackery Adley and Charles Turner, Jr. in August 1804. The letter describing the ascent of Charles Turner Jr. states that they began at the (West Branch Penobscot) at 8:00 a.m. and arrived on the summit at 5:00 p.m. guided by two Native Americans who were initially cautious but when the "cold part of the mountain" was reached and sensing the determination of the others became ambitious to reach the top first. Turner lists his party as: William Howe, Amos Patten, Joseph Treat, Samuel Call, William Rice, Richard Winslow, Charles Turner, Jr. In the 1930s Governor Percival Baxter began to acquire land and finally deeded more than 200,000 acres (810 km2) to the State of Maine for a park, named Baxter State Park after him. The summit was officially recognized by the US Board on Geographic Names as "Baxter Peak" in 1931.
In the 1840s Henry David Thoreau climbed Katahdin, which he spelled "Ktaadn"; his ascent is recorded in a well-known chapter of The Maine Woods. A few years later Theodore Winthrop wrote about his visit in Life in the Open Air. Painters Frederic Edwin Church and Marsden Hartley are well-known artists who created landscapes of Katahdin. On 30 November 2011, Christie's auctioned Church's 1860 painting Twilight (Katahdin) for $3.1 million.
Elizabeth Oakes Smith "climbed Mount Katahdin in 1849—reportedly the first white woman to do so".
Recreation opportunities
As the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail and southern terminus of the International Appalachian Trail, Katahdin is a popular hiking and backpacking destination and the centerpiece of Baxter State Park. Baxter State Park is open year-round, though strictly regulated in winter. The overnight camping season is, weather permitting, from May 15 to October 15 each year, with some campgrounds staying open until October 22. Capacity limits have been placed on day use parking at the trailheads to minimize the overuse of trails.
Mt. Katahdin has several trails leading up to Baxter, Pamola, or Hamlin Peaks These trails start right up the mountain, but each trail on the mountain ends up taking eight to ten hours round-trip depending on ability. Even for experienced hikers, Katahdin is often considered one of the most challenging hikes in the entire Appalachian Mountain range. The rest of the trails go up the north side or west side of the mountain. These are accessed from the Chimney Pond Trail. For these trails, hikers must park at the Roaring Brook Campground and hike in. All trails are maintained by the Baxter State Park Authority, which runs the State Park. All of the trails on the mountain are classified as very strenuous, the highest classification the Park Authority gives, except for Saddle (strenuous), Hamlin Ridge trail (moderate), and Chimney Pond (moderate).
The most famous hike to the summit goes along Knife Edge, a glacial arête which traverses the ridge between Pamola Peak and Baxter Peak. There have been more than 60 deaths on Katahdin since 1933 including October 8 and 9, 2020. The park as a whole typically sees a need for roughly 40 search-and-rescue events per year (1 in 2,000 hikers), with a peak of 70 in 2013. The vast majority of incidents occur in the summer months, and the primary causes are leg injury, exhaustion, dehydration and disorientation. Because of this, Katahdin and not-so-nearby Mount Washington routinely near the top of the most deadly "low mountains" on Earth, with more fatalities per foot of elevation gained than some much higher mountains in the Himalaya.
Namesakes
Two US Navy ships have been named USS Katahdin. Katahdin is also the name of a 1914 steamboat (later converted to diesel) owned by the Moosehead Marine Museum that plies the waters of Moosehead Lake in northern Maine.
The Katahdin potato, which was certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1932, and is still popular in the Northeastern United States.
The Katahdin sheep.
Composer Alan Hovhaness composed a sonata for piano in 1987 titled Mt. Katahdin, dedicated to Carleton S. Coon for his 60th birthday.
Katahdin is a monster in 1979 horror film Prophecy.
See also
Donn Fendler – author of book about being lost on Katahdin in 1939.
Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument
List of mountain peaks of North America
List of mountain peaks of the United States
List of U.S. states by elevation
List of mountains of Maine
References
External links
More detailed Wiki on Katahdin Including Trails
Katahdin Webcam
Katahdin Webcam - Millinocket
Katahdin Webcam - Twin Pine Camps, Millinocket
"Mount Katahdin". Peakware.com. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. (photos)
Baxter State Park Official Website
Summit Log (October 2005 summit log)
Katahdin at Summitpost many photos
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "Going to Mount Katahdin", Putnam's Monthly (September 1856), vol. VIII, pp. 242-256
William W. Geller, "Mount Katahdin — March 1853: the Mysteries of an Ascent" (2016) Maine History Documents. 119. Page 10 identifies Higginson as the anonymous author of "Going to Katahdin", omitting "Mount", but endnote 13 on page 19 makes clear that it is the same article as "Going to Mount Katahdin", listed above. |
Goku | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goku | [
772
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goku"
] | Son Goku is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the Dragon Ball manga series created by Akira Toriyama. He is based on Sun Wukong (known as Son Goku in Japan and Monkey King in the West), a main character of the classic 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, combined with influences from the Hong Kong action cinema of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee. Goku made his debut in the first Dragon Ball chapter, Bulma and Son Goku, originally published in Japan's Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine on December 3, 1984. Goku is introduced as an eccentric, monkey-tailed boy who practices martial arts and possesses superhuman strength. He meets Bulma and joins her on a journey to find the seven wish-granting Dragon Balls. Along the way, he finds new friends who follow him on his journey to become stronger. As Goku grows up, he becomes the Earth's mightiest warrior and battles a wide variety of villains with the help of his friends and family, while also gaining new allies in the process.
Born under the name Kakarot, as a member of the Saiyan race on Planet Vegeta, he is sent to Earth as an infant prior to his homeworld's destruction at the hands of Frieza (ordered by Beerus). Upon his arrival on Earth, the infant is discovered by Son Gohan, who becomes the adoptive grandfather of the boy and gives him the name Goku. The boy is initially full of violence and aggression due to his Saiyan nature, until an accidental head injury turns him into a cheerful, carefree person. Grandpa Gohan's kindness and teachings help to further influence Goku, who later on names his first son Gohan in honor of him.
As the protagonist of Dragon Ball, Goku appears in most of the episodes, films, television specials and OVAs of the manga's anime adaptations (Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z) and sequels (Dragon Ball GT, Dragon Ball Super), as well as many of the franchise's video games. Due to the series' international popularity, Goku became one of the most recognizable and iconic manga/anime characters worldwide. Outside the Dragon Ball franchise, Goku has made cameo appearances in Toriyama's self-parody series Neko Majin Z, has been the subject of other parodies, and has appeared in special events. Most Western audiences were introduced to the adult version of Goku featured in the Dragon Ball Z anime, which adapted the final 26 Dragon Ball manga volumes, as opposed to his initial appearance as a child due to the limited success of the first anime series overseas.
Conception and creation
Goku, and Dragon Ball in general, evolved from one of Akira Toriyama's earlier one-shot series called Dragon Boy. In this story, the protagonist looks similar to Goku, but has a pair of wings. The original inspiration were Hong Kong action cinema, including those by Bruce Lee such as Enter the Dragon (1973) and by Jackie Chan such as Drunken Master (1978); Toriyama said he had a young Chan in mind for a live-action Goku, stating that "nobody could play Goku but him." Goku uses a variety and hybrid of East Asian martial arts styles, including Karate and Wing Chun (Kung fu).
Bulma and Goku were the first pair of characters which were introduced in the manga and Toriyama stated that he subsequently introduced other characters in pairs because "that way, I'm able to explain the characters and their relationship to each other through their interactions. In my case, I feel that it isn't good to insert too much narration. I suppose Goku and Bulma are representative of that." He further added that "as a child, Goku doesn't know anything [of the world], so without Bulma, he'd be a character who didn't say anything." Toriyama mentioned Torishima wanted Goku to form a relationship with Bulma, but this was never applied to the series. With the conclusion of the Cell arc, Gohan was intended to replace his father as the protagonist, but Toriyama later decided that Gohan was unsuitable for the role. According to Toriyama, Goku is more of a selfish person than a hero as his main interest in the story is to fight strong opponents rather than protecting the innocent. As a result, Toriyama was angered when the anime adaptations of Dragon Ball started portraying Goku as more heroic than his manga counterpart.
Design
The character Goku is based on Sun Wukong (Son Goku in Japanese), the central character of the Chinese novel Journey to the West. To be creative with the idea of Sun Wukong, Toriyama designed Goku as a human boy with a monkey's tail, rather than a complete simian, because the tail would give the character a distinguishing feature. He later stated that the tail was a pain to draw, hence why he had it get cut off early on. Toriyama did not initially plan to make Goku an alien, it was not until the introduction of fighters from other planets that he established him as a Saiyan. Goku was given the ability to teleport to any planet in seconds, so that Toriyama could increase the pace of the story.
Wanting the series to have a Chinese appearance, Toriyama used the color of the robes worn by Buddhist monks for Goku's dōgi. During the early chapters of the manga, Toriyama's editor Kazuhiko Torishima commented that Goku looked rather plain. Toriyama had given him simple clothes on purpose because it was a fighting manga, so to combat this he added several characters like Master Roshi and Krillin, and created the Tenkaichi Budōkai to focus the storyline on fighting. To defy the assumption that Goku would win the tournaments, Toriyama made him lose the first and second but win the third.
Toriyama's editor was initially against having Goku grow up, saying it was uncommon to have the protagonist drastically change in manga, however, he gave in when Toriyama threatened that he would not be able to continue the series if the character did not. Toriyama later stated he had him grow up as a means to make drawing the fight scenes easier.
When Toriyama thought up the Super Saiyan concept during the Frieza arc, he felt the only way to show Goku's massive power-up was to have him transform. Initially he was concerned that the facial expression looked like that of a villain, but felt it was acceptable since the transformation was brought about by anger. The Super Saiyan form spared the trouble of coloring Goku's hair all the time for the standard black-and-white manga pages. This was the reason for the Super Saiyan form having blonde hair, because it was easier to draw for Toriyama's assistant who spent a lot of time blacking in Goku's hair. Goku's piercing eyes in Super Saiyan form were inspired by Bruce Lee's paralyzing glare. For the Dragon Ball Z anime adaptation, character designer Tadayoshi Yamamuro used Lee as a reference, stating that, when he "first becomes a Super Saiyan, his slanting pose with that scowling look in his eyes is all Bruce Lee."
Dragon Ball GT chief character designer Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru said he agonized over designing Goku's Super Saiyan 4 appearance, which was the idea of the show's producers, questioning whether it was necessary to go further with the transformations. Because Super Saiyan 4 is brought about while in a Saiyan's Ōzaru form, he made the hair more "wild" and covered Goku's body in red fur. There was only a single final draft of the character, although Nakatsuru did consider making the hair blonde, he ended up choosing black as it provides more contrast with the red fur.
During the plans of the final story arc of Dragon Ball Super, it was decided that Goku should have another transformation: The Ultra Instinct. The concept was that the Ultra Instinct would be completely different from Goku's previous Super Saiyan transformations.
Voice actors
In the Japanese version of every Dragon Ball anime series and subsequent related media, Goku has been voiced by Masako Nozawa. Toriyama selected Nozawa upon hearing her audition sample, remarking that only Goku could sound like that. Nozawa stated that she was ecstatic when she got the role because she had always wanted to be in one of Toriyama's works. She said she had to be mindful of the fact that Goku grew up in the mountains and did not know much of the world. Despite having to voice Goku, Gohan, Goten and Bardock, Nozawa says she is able to instantly get into the respective character upon seeing their image.
Nozawa explained that she did not read the manga so that she would not know what was coming in the story until recording, making her reactions the same as Goku's. Nozawa said that she liked young Goku with his tail because he was cute, and stated that the character was still the same even at the end of the series.
In the numerous English versions, Goku has been played by different actors because different companies produced the dubs, by reason of changes of automated dialogue replacement companies and recording studios, or due to actors quitting:
In Harmony Gold's very brief dub of the original Dragon Ball series, Goku was voiced by Barbara Goodson.
In Funimation's initial dub of the anime, Goku was voiced by Saffron Henderson in the first 13 episodes of the original Dragon Ball series (produced in association with BLT Productions), and by Ian James Corlett and Peter Kelamis in the first 67 episodes of Dragon Ball Z (edited into 53 episodes, produced in association with Saban and Ocean Productions).
In Funimation's in-house dub, Goku was voiced by Stephanie Nadolny as a child in Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball GT, and Dragon Ball Daima, and has been consistently voiced by Sean Schemmel as an adult throughout the entire Dragon Ball franchise. Since Dragon Ball Z Kai, Colleen Clinkenbeard has voiced Kid Goku for Funimation.
In AB Groupe's dub of the anime produced for Canadian and European broadcast (initially also in association with Ocean Productions and later with Blue Water Studios), Goku was voiced by Peter Kelamis again and later by Kirby Morrow in episodes 123-291 of Dragon Ball Z, by Zoe Slusar as a child in both Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball GT, by Jeffrey Watson as an older teen in Dragon Ball, and by Jeremiah Yurk as an adult and Super Saiyan 4 in GT.
In Bang Zoom's dub of the first 27 episodes of Dragon Ball Super produced for Toonami Asia's broadcast, Goku was voiced by Lex Lang.
Appearances
In Dragon Ball
Goku first appears in Dragon Ball as a monkey-tailed child adopted by the hermit martial artist Gohan. Before the series' narrative begins, he accidentally and unknowingly kills Gohan when he temporarily transforms into the mighty Ōzaru after staring at a full moon. Goku loses the ability when his friends cut off his tail.
Living alone with an item known as a Dragon Ball which he keeps as a memento of Gohan, Goku befriends a teenage girl named Bulma. He joins her to find the seven Dragon Balls, which, when gathered, summon the wish-granting dragon Shenron. They encounter the desert bandit Yamcha and two shapeshifters named Oolong and Puar, who join their quest. Goku is later trained by the martial artist Master Roshi, alongside a monk named Krillin, who later becomes his best friend. It is Roshi who gives Goku the magic cloud Kinto'un, as a reward for saving his pet sea turtle, which becomes Goku's primary source of flight travel across the world.
Goku's first shown martial arts attack as a child is Jan ken, three physical blows modeled after the hand signs in rock-paper-scissors. As a child, he wields the Nyoi-bō, a magic staff that extends and retracts on command, given to him by his grandfather.
Goku's signature attack is the Kamehameha (named after King Kamehameha I of Hawai'i), which he learned from Roshi. The Kamehameha is a concentration of energy, released as a concussive beam. Roshi spent about 50 years developing and perfecting the technique, but, as a child, Goku is able to understand and copy the technique immediately after only one demonstration. After training with the Earth's Guardian, Kami, Goku learns to fly by virtue of the technique Bukū-jutsu and uses the Nimbus cloud less frequently for flight travel.
While participating in the World Martial Arts Tournament that attracts the most powerful fighters in the world, Goku battles foes, later turned allies, such as Tien Shinhan and Chiaotzu, as well as the Namekian Piccolo. After becoming the runner-up champion of the 21st and 22nd tournaments, Goku wins in the 23rd with Piccolo's defeat, and marries Chi-Chi soon after to fulfill a promise he made to her years ago despite not knowing what marriage was.
Five years later, Goku meets his evil older brother Raditz and learns about his heritage. Goku comes from a race of nearly extinct extraterrestrials called Saiyans, himself having been sent from their home planet to prepare Earth for sale on the intergalactic market by destroying all its life. While Grandpa Gohan was taking care of him, Goku accidentally fell into a deep ravine and suffered a severe head injury, which caused him to forget his mission and drastically altered his personality.
After Raditz kidnaps Goku's son Gohan, he forms a truce with Piccolo in order to defeat Raditz. After sacrificing his life during the battle, Goku trains with King Kai in the Other World. He teaches Goku the Kaiō-ken, which multiplies his energy and strength but with possible strain to the body. It is from King Kai that Goku learns his most powerful attack: the Genki-Dama, an energy sphere created by gathering energy from surrounding animals, nature and humans.
After being revived by the Dragon Balls, Goku faces off with the Saiyan prince Vegeta, who eventually becomes his greatest rival and another ally. On his journey to Planet Namek in order to aid his friends in gathering the Namekian Dragon Balls to revive those killed by the Saiyans, Goku fights the galactic tyrant Frieza, who destroyed the Saiyans' home planet and nearly the entire race. During his epic battle with Frieza, Goku becomes the first Saiyan in a thousand years to transform into a fabled Super Saiyan.
After defeating Frieza and escaping the destruction of Namek, Goku learns a teleportation skill called Shunkan Idō, taught by the inhabitants of the planet Yardrat. Goku contracts a heart virus whereof the time-traveler Trunks warns him, but recovers after taking medicine provided by Trunks. Goku trains Gohan to be his successor and sacrifices himself again during the battle against the evil bio-android Cell. Goku is temporarily resurrected on Earth seven years later and meets his second son Goten.
Goku battles Vegeta again after Vegeta willingly falls under the control of the wizard Babidi in order to gain power. Shortly after, he is drawn into a battle for the universe against the monster Majin Buu. Despite having mastered two new Super Saiyan transformations, Goku prepares Goten and Trunks to take his place as Earth's defender. After his life is fully restored, Goku attempts to fuse with Gohan in order to defeat Buu, but this fails when the latter is temporarily absorbed by Buu and so he persuades the newly arrived Vegeta to fuse with him, creating Vegito. Later when the Fusion technique is abandoned on both sides, Goku destroys Buu with a Spirit Bomb attack. Ten years later, during another World Martial Arts Tournament, Goku meets Uub, Buu's human reincarnation, and leaves with him, intending to train him as the new protector of Earth.
In Dragon Ball Super
After defeating Majin Buu, Goku meets a new opponent known as Beerus, the God of Destruction in the film Battle of Gods. An alternative, more innately powerful form known as the Super Saiyan God is reached by Goku during this film. Though the temporary transformation wears off, Goku manages to harness its godly powers. In its sequel film Resurrection 'F', Goku manages to achieve a blue-haired evolution of Super Saiyan God under Whis's tutelage, known as the Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan, or "Super Saiyan Blue" for short, which Goku uses to battle the newly revived Frieza. These forms appear in Dragon Ball Super and its manga tie-in, which expand upon the stories from the two films.
Afterwards, Goku and his friends participate in a fighting tournament set between Beerus and his brother Champa, who is Universe 6's God of Destruction, facing the best warriors from Champa's universe. During this tournament, Goku reveals that he has learned to combine the perfect energy control of his Super Saiyan Blue form with his older technique, the Kaiō-ken. After meeting with the omnipotent being known as Grand Zeno, Goku encounters an evil alternate version of himself called "Goku Black", who is terrorizing Future Trunks' timeline. Black is eventually revealed to be a rogue Supreme Kai in training named Zamasu, who has stolen Goku's body from yet another alternate timeline and teamed up with the Zamasu of Future Trunks' timeline to fulfill their "Zero Mortals Plan". After Zamasu and Black become even more dangerous by undergoing Potara Fusion during the battle in Future Trunks' timeline, Goku ultimately summons the future version of Grand Zeno who erases Zamasu.
Goku causes the Zenos to decide to hold a multi-universal martial arts tournament with the losing universes wiped from existence; the Tournament of Power. Throughout the tournament, Goku faces multiple opponents but finds his toughest in Jiren. It is during his fights with Jiren that Goku acquires a temporary transformed state using a divine technique known as Migatte no Goku'i. Ultimately, Goku and Frieza manage to work together to force Jiren out of bounds in a triple elimination, leaving Android 17 as the winner who uses his wish on the Super Dragon Balls to restore the erased universes.
Goku's origin story from the Dragon Ball Minus manga chapter is retold in the film Dragon Ball Super: Broly. His birth parents are Bardock, a low-class Saiyan mercenary, and Gine, the owner of a butcher shop. Bardock has a strong suspicion that Frieza is up to something when he receives an order on his scouter for all Saiyans to return home, so he convinces Gine to send their infant son in a space pod to Earth. In the present, following the events of the Tournament of Power, Goku and Vegeta encounter another Saiyan survivor named Broly, whom Frieza has recruited to defeat them. When Broly proves to be too powerful for either of them to handle individually, Goku and Vegeta use the Metamoran Fusion Dance, which creates Gogeta. Gogeta almost defeats his opponent, but Broly's allies teleport him back to the barren planet he grew up on. Goku teleports to this planet as well to provide Broly and his two friends with survival supplies, hoping to be able to spar with Broly again someday.
In the manga, directly after the final scene of Broly, Goku and Vegeta meet Galactic Patrol by Jaco and a mysteriously highly skilled agent named Merus in order to help stop an ancient warlock called Moro. With Moro headed to New Namek to use the Namekian Dragon Balls, the two Saiyans travel to the planet to stop him, where they are defeated by him using his magic to drain their life essences until near death. Once recovered, they attempt to go after Moro again, but he escapes from them, Merus and (the also conscripted) Majin Buu with the help of his accomplice Cranberry (who he kills) in order to wish upon the Dragon Balls to free all the Galactic Prison prisoners. After a few days, Goku hears from Merus that Moro has grown even stronger and is unstoppable. This leads to Goku asking Merus to help train him to master the Ultra Instinct technique so he can defeat Moro. Goku helps his friends take out Moro's forces before he comes face-to-face with Moro again. When Moro fuses with Seven-Three, he and his allies are soundly defeated and mortally wounded. Goku achieves the full power of "Ultra Instinct" once more, which he uses to debilitate Moro to near-death. Even after healing him with a Senzu bean, he is unfazed by his ensuing sneak attack, unsuccessfully attempting to convince him to reconsider his ways and go back to prison, and him using a stray severed arm with Merus's copied power to obtain Ultra Instinct for himself, Goku continuously outmatches Moro. Ultimately, with the help of his friends and family, along with key assistance from Buu/Grand Supreme Kai and Uub unknowingly contributing divine power, Goku manages to finish off Moro and save the Earth once more. He, Vegeta, Buu and Jaco then reunite with a now-mortal Merus to be honoured as heroes by the Galactic Patrol.
Much later, Goku and Vegeta are contacted by a group of beings called the Heeters, on a seemingly imperative mission to defeat a surviving member of the now-extinct sharpshooting Cerealean race; Granolah. Blinded by his desire for revenge, Granolah confronts Goku and defeats him, as Goku's Ultra Instinct turns out to be taxing to his body and loses its accuracy as he keeps fighting. The fight is later revealed to be a ruse by the Heeters to eliminate Granolah and the Saiyans from the Heeters' plot to assassinate Frieza and achieve universal conquest. He is later rescued by the last Namekian on the planet Cereal, Monaito, who hides them in his home after a disastrous battle with the Heeter warrior Gas, who wishes absolute power using the planet's Dragon Balls. Monaito reveals the identity of his father, Bardock, and the story of his actions in keeping him and the young Granolah safe from the Heeters a long time ago. Moved by the story, Goku and Vegeta finally find resolve about the meaning of the Saiyan race's pride, and later confront Gas for a second round. Goku stalls him by teleporting across random locations within the cosmos via Shunkan Idō with Gas tailing him, in an effort to give Granolah time to regain his power. Remembering Whis' advice about finding one's true and personal Ultra Instinct, Goku later molds his own version of the technique, using his emotions as freely as he pleases. Despite this, he and Vegeta are ultimately bested, even after Granolah inflicted his deadliest sniping shot towards the villain with Goku's assistance, but are saved by Frieza's unexpected arrival. Frieza kills Gas and Elec, the Heeter leader and mastermind of the coup, in swift succession, before unveiling a new transformation and demonstrating his new powers by knocking Goku and Vegeta out of their empowered forms in one quick strike. He spares the duo before making his leave.
In the film Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, Goku does not play the role of protagonist, as he and Vegeta train on Beerus' domain, accompanied by newcomer Broly, and his companions from the previous film. He spars with Vegeta without any transformations or ki techniques except for flight. Back on Earth, Piccolo is forced to deal with the reinvigorated Red Ribbon Army with Gohan as his only best defense for Earth against the army's threat, as Bulma is unable to contact Goku and Vegeta because Beerus' ice cream container accidentally obstructed Whis' angelic staff. In the post-credits scene, tired and exhausted, Goku falls down from Vegeta's weak last punch, admitting defeat as his rival celebrates his triumph.
In other media
In the anime-only sequel series Dragon Ball GT, Goku is transformed back into a child by an accidental wish made by his old enemy Pilaf using the Black Star Dragon Balls while Pilaf was about to wish to take over the world. Goku, Trunks and his own granddaughter Pan travel the universe to search for the Black Star Dragon Balls and return them to Earth to prevent its destruction. After acquiring the Super Saiyan 4 transformation, Goku battles the evil Tuffle Baby, Super Android 17, and the evil Shadow Dragons. His final challenge is against Omega Shenron, whom he destroys using the Spirit Bomb. Goku leaves with the original form of Shenron, but not before saying his goodbyes to his friends on Earth. He appears 100 years later at the next World Martial Arts Tournament as an adult, where he watches a battle between Goku Jr., his descendant, and Vegeta Jr., Vegeta's descendant. An elderly Pan sees him, but he quickly departs.
Goku has appeared in various other media including an unofficial Taiwanese live-action film and an unofficial Korean live-action film. He was portrayed by Justin Chatwin in the 2009 20th Century Fox feature Dragonball Evolution. Goku has appeared in almost every Dragon Ball licensed video game, including crossover games such as Jump Super Stars, Jump Ultimate Stars and Battle Stadium D.O.N. In 1992, Goku was featured in the interactive game Dragon Ball Z: Get Together! Goku World, in which Goku and his gang travel back in time to review events in the Dragon Ball timeline and interacts with his younger self. In December 2007, Goku made a guest appearance in avatar form in the MMORPG Second Life for a Jump Festa promotion titled Jumpland@Second Life. Goku appears in the Dr. Slump and Arale-chan video game for the Nintendo DS.
Goku has been the subject of, and is mentioned in, various songs. "Son Goku Song" and "Gokū no Gokigen Jānī" feature Goku as a child singing about himself. During his adult years, the song "Aitsu wa Son Gokū" by Hironobu Kageyama, where Kageyama praises everything about Goku, and the duet "Ore-tachi no Energy" feature words spoken by the character. For the release of the single of the Dragonball Evolution international theme song "Rule", Toriyama supplied CD artwork of singer Ayumi Hamasaki dressed as Goku.
Goku has been used in Japanese public service announcements aimed at children. In June 1988, Goku and other Dragon Ball characters were featured in two PSA short films. The first, in which Goku is taught the importance of obeying traffic safety by others, is entitled Goku's Traffic Safety. The second is called Goku's Fire Fighting Regiment, in which he teaches two children the importance of fire safety.
Goku has made guest appearances in various Japanese television shows and manga. In 2005, Goku appeared in the Toriyama parody manga Neko Majin Z where he is the sensei of the main character Z. On September 15, 2006, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Kōen-mae Hashutsujo, the special manga Super Kochikame was released. The chapter entitled This is the Police Station in front of Dragon Park on Planet Namek has Ryotsu Kankichi travel to planet Namek and try to issue Freeza a citation and scold both he and Goku for parking their ships illegally.
Goku and other Dragon Ball characters joined the cast of One Piece in the 2006 crossover manga Cross Epoch. He appears in a single panel of Toriyama's 2013 manga Jaco the Galactic Patrolman, which is set before the events of Dragon Ball. The collected tankōbon volume of Jaco features the bonus story Dragon Ball Minus: The Departure of the Fated Child, depicting how and why Goku's parents sent him to Earth.
Goku has been the subject of various parodies. In the episode "Career Day" of Takeshi's Castle, known in the United States as MXC, the hosts Beat Takeshi and Sonomanma Higashi dressed as popular anime characters, one as Goku as a child, the other as Doraemon. Weekly Shōnen Jump's Gag Special 2005 issue, released on November 12, 2004, featured a Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo one-shot Dragon Ball parody manga, a retelling of the first fight between Goku and Vegeta. In chapter #179 of the Yakitate!! Japan manga, Kawachi executes a Genki-Dama parody called a Shinrai-Dama on the character Katsuo. In the manga and anime series Blood Lad, the character Staz performs the gestures for Goku's Kamehameha, having learned it from his favorite manga superhero, but it has no actual effect.
Goku regularly appears on Fuji TV. In 2003, Goku appeared in the interactive feature Orb's Panic Adventure!, which was featured at the Fuji TV headquarters in the orb section. In this, Freeza attacks a visiting tourist, blasting the orb section free from the rest of the Fuji TV building. Goku fights Freeza over the real life aqua city of Odaiba. In 2004, a sequel called Orb's Panic Adventure Returns! was produced. On March 25, 2006, Goku and Freeza appeared in an original animated short film in the IQ Mirror Mistake 7 segment of the Japanese game show IQ Supplement.
On April 7, 2007, Goku and Fuji TV announcer Masaharu Miyake were commentators on the anime segment in the Japan Great Man Awards titled Who is the Strongest Hero?. The segment featured a special tournament to decide who was the greatest person in Japanese history. During the intermission, Goku promoted the coming release of R2 Dragon Ball DVDs.
Since the U.S. debut of Dragon Ball Z in 1996, Goku has appeared in American pop culture. He was featured in an issue of Wizard magazine in which he and Superman fought a hypothetical battle and won. In the Codename: Kids Next Door episode "Operation: R.E.P.O.R.T", Numbuh Four's version of the story is a parody of the Goku and Freeza's battle in Dragon Ball Z. Goku appears in Robot Chicken in a sketch entitled A Very Dragon Ball Z Christmas, where Goku and Gohan fight an evil Mrs. Claus with Santa's reindeer, in an attempt to save Christmas.
The Saturday Night Live sketch TV Funhouse titled Kobayashi depicts real-life hot-dog-eating champion Takeru Kobayashi as able to transform into a Super Saiyan as he prepares to eat hot dogs; Goku appears briefly near the end. Goku is referenced in the songs "Goku" and "Anime" by Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, where he brags that he looks and feels like Goku.
Goku appears in a parody of the film Moneyball on an episode of Mad entitled Money Ball Z, in which Billy Beane drafts Goku and a couple of other Dragon Ball characters into the Oakland A's. In 2013, he and Superman fought in a "Death Battle" episode of the Rooster Teeth web series ScrewAttack and lost. The episode "Goku vs. Superman" in the web series Epic Rap Battles of History won a Streamy Award for Best Music Video.
The use of the Kamehameha attack became an Internet meme which started with Japanese schoolgirls photographing themselves apparently using, and being affected by, this attack. It has attracted considerable media attention in France, Germany, as well as in many Spanish-speaking countries in South America.
Cultural impact
A number of notable public figures have commented on their feelings towards Goku or his status in popular culture. For example, Jackie Chan has gone on record stating that Goku is his favorite Dragon Ball character. The German rock band Son Goku takes their name from the Dragon Ball protagonist. The band's lead singer Thomas D chose the name because Goku embodies the band's philosophy, saying he was "fascinated by Goku's naïveté and cheerfulness, yet, at the same time, a great warrior saving the world."
In 2010, a fiberglass statue of Goku was created by Canadian-born Hong Kong artist Edison Chen, with Chen's facial features instead of Goku's, as part of Chen's collection that was displayed at the "Treacherous Treis" exhibition in Singapore's Museum of Art and Design. CNN released an article explaining how Goku was Spanish professional tennis player Rafael Nadal's childhood inspiration, and called Nadal "the Dragon Ball of tennis" due to his unorthodox style "from another planet."
One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda and Naruto creator Masashi Kishimoto said that Goku inspired their protagonists as well as series structure, with Tekken's Lars Alexandersson showing traits of a hero through his design inspired by Goku alongside Marvel Comic's Thor. Commenting on Goku's popularity, Kishimoto stated that when people hear the name "Son Goku", no longer do they think of the Journey to the West character, but instead Dragon Ball's protagonist comes to mind. Additionally, for the second half of the series, Kishimoto created an ape named Son Goku in reference to Toriyama's character to the point the ape has four tails just like the four-star Dragon Ball Goku earned from his grandfather.
In his book about Akira Toriyama published in 2004, Julius Weideman said Goku's journey and ever-growing strength resulted in the character winning "the admiration of young boys everywhere." Jason Thompson stated that unlike the "manly" heroes of other popular shōnen manga of the late 1980s and early 1990s, such as City Hunter and Fist of the North Star, Toriyama made his protagonist (Goku) cartoonish and small, thus starting a trend that Thompson says continues to this day. In 2015, the Japan Anniversary Association officially declared May 9 as "Goku Day". Goku is the first manga character to have a balloon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, with his first appearance at the 2018 parade.
Merchandise
Several pieces of merchandising based on Goku have been released, including action figures, plushes, and keychains.
Reception
Goku has appeared in several "top" character lists. He was ranked number one in IGN's 2009 list of Top 25 Anime Characters of All Time and reappeared on the same list in 2014, however, on this occasion they ranked him third, with Cowboy Bebop's Spike Spiegel and Neon Genesis Evangelion's Shinji Ikari placed above him, saying that "He was, in many ways, a character that bucked the trends of his time and defined the direction of shonen manga/anime for decades." In Mania Entertainment's 10 Most Iconic Anime Heroes, Thomas Zoth commented that "Goku and Dragon Ball completely revolutionized shōnen manga."
In a Newtype poll from March 2010, Goku was voted the fifth most popular male character from the 1980s. Goku ranked consistently high in the Anime Grand Prix poll in the category of "best male character" in the late 1980s and early 1990s, appearing seventeenth in the 1987 poll, fifteenth in the 1988 poll, second in the 1989 poll, fourth in the 1990 poll, third in the 1991 poll, fourth in the 1992 poll, thirteenth in 1993 poll, and twelfth in 1994 poll.
In a 1993 character popularity poll for the series, Weekly Shōnen Jump readers voted Goku second, after his son Gohan. He came in first in the magazine's 1995 poll, as well as in a 2004 poll amongst fans of the series for the book Dragon Ball Forever. In a 2005 The Daily Reader article entitled "The Greatest Geek Movie Heroes of All Time", Goku is the only animated character listed, and is ranked tenth. In a survey of 1,000 people, conducted by Oricon in 2007, Goku ranked first place as the "Strongest Manga character of all time."
In the survey "Friendship" developed by rankingjapan.com, in which people chose which anime character they would like as a friend, Goku ranked fifth. In 2000, Goku placed third in an Animax poll of favorite anime characters. In 2011, readers of Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition voted Goku as the 41st-top video game character of all time. NTT customers voted him as their third favorite black haired male anime character in a 2014 poll.
Game designer Hiroshi Matsuyama from CyberConnect2 said that while Goku is an appealing character readers could root for during the manga, he was hard to relate and, thus, instead preferred other characters like Krillin or Bulma. However, during the manga's final story arc, Matsuyama recalls being overjoyed when Goku says that Mr. Satan, a comic relief character with no superextraordinary skills, was the real hero of mankind as the Earthlings found him as the saviour of mankind when Buu was about win the final fight.
Goku's characterization has been well received by publications for manga, anime and other media. Anime News Network noted Goku as a good source of comedy and remarked that after everything he experiences, he still remains a naïve character. Tim Jones from THEM Anime Reviews noted that Goku is not an omnipotent character in the first anime series, unlike Dragon Ball Z, and does not disappear for long periods of time between sagas. Jones also liked the way the series' depict his entire adventures, making him a good main character. Voice actor Mamoru Miyano said that Goku's first Super Saiyan transformation in the manga was his favorite part from the series as Goku not only changed visually but his personality changes into a "classic, prototypical hero".
Rationalmagic.com praised Goku's innocence as one of the funniest parts of the series. In January 2017, Nozawa won two Guinness World Records for her longevity as Goku; she has been the sole voice actor for the role for over 23 years. According to Screen Rant, Goku's origin story has some similarities to that of Superman. On the other hand, Collider was more critical to Goku's actions in the series most notably when Gohan becomes an active character who goes through several character's arcs yet he is constantly overshadowed by his father to the point Akira Toriyama refrained from turning Gohan into his successor following the Cell Games and Goku once again took over Gohan's role in the final arc of Dragon Ball Z.
Despite his predominantly positive reception, Goku has received some negative feedback, in particular for his characterization in Dragon Ball Super due to how his constant desires for fighting stronger enemies resulted in setting up a story where all universes could be destroyed. While Anime Now's Richard Eisenbeis believes Goku is determined to protect his universe, the fact that he does not seemingly care about other loser universes being destroyed has been criticized.
Monique Jones from Syfy panned the character's relationship dynamic with his wife, as well as his perceived incompetency and irresponsibility as a father, drawing attention to the "tons of memes and fan chatter about Piccolo actually being the best dad Gohan's ever had". Sam Leach from Anime News Network agreed that fans of the series tend to joke about Piccolo being a better paternal figure to Gohan than his actual father, Goku, and felt that Dragon Ball Super emphasized this more when Piccolo started training him again.
The same site also criticized Goku often being busy in the narrative, most notably in Frieza's resurrection, as the supporting characters have some extra scenes only to have their spotlight stolen by Goku and Vegeta. His rematch with Frieza was criticized for how overpowered the character has become and how much back up his allies can provide in the battle, ruining the tension the film was supposed to generate. Despite enjoying his rematch with Frieza, DVD Talk expressed similar responses in the handling of these characters.
IGN noted that Goku has a tendency to show enemies mercy, including Vegeta, Piccolo, Cell and Moro. His decision to let Cell have a senzu bean without informing his allies in particular was considered to be infamous, which affected Gohan's confidence and led to his defeat. La Tercera went to call Goku irresponsible and immature to the character for helping Moro as a result of this show of mercy and the consequences. Both Goku and Vegeta were criticized for being too overpowered in Super to the point they steal the series' spotlight to the supporting cast while their strategies either lack complexity or create a plothole such as the time limit to the fusion Vegito.
See also
List of Dragon Ball characters
Explanatory notes
References
Further reading
Padula, Derek (2012). Dragon Ball Z 'It's Over 9,000!' When Worldviews Collide. foreword by Ryo Horikawa. Derek Padula. ISBN 978-0-9831205-2-0. |
Dragon_Ball_Z | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z | [
772
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z"
] | Dragon Ball Z is a Japanese anime television series produced by Toei Animation. Part of the Dragon Ball media franchise, it is the sequel to the 1986 Dragon Ball television series and adapts the latter 325 chapters of the original Dragon Ball manga series created by Akira Toriyama. The series aired in Japan on Fuji TV from April 1989 to January 1996 and was later dubbed for broadcast in at least 81 countries worldwide.
Dragon Ball Z continues the adventures of Son Goku in his adult life as he and his companions defend the Earth against villains including aliens (Vegeta, Frieza), androids (Cell), and magical creatures (Majin Buu). At the same time, the story follows the life of Goku's son, Gohan, as well as the development of his rivals, Piccolo and Vegeta.
Due to the success of the series in the United States, the manga chapters making up its story were initially released by Viz Media under the Dragon Ball Z title. The anime's popularity has also spawned various media and merchandise that has come to represent the majority of the material within the Dragon Ball franchise, including films, home video releases, soundtracks, trading cards, and video games. Dragon Ball Z remains a cultural icon through numerous adaptations and re-releases, including a remastered broadcast titled Dragon Ball Z Kai.
Dragon Ball Z has since been followed by a sequel series titled Dragon Ball GT (1996–1997) and a "midquel" series titled Dragon Ball Super (2015–2018).
Plot
Saiyan Saga
Dragon Ball Z picks up five years after the end of the Dragon Ball series, with Son Goku now a young adult and father to his son, Gohan.
A humanoid alien named Raditz arrives on Earth in a spacecraft and tracks down Goku, revealing to him that he is his long-lost older brother and that they are members of a near-extinct elite alien warrior race called Saiyans (サイヤ人, Saiya-jin). Goku (originally named Kakarot (カカロット, Kakarotto) had been sent to Earth as an infant to conquer the planet, but suffered a severe blow to his head shortly after his arrival and lost all memory of his mission, as well as his blood-thirsty Saiyan nature.
Raditz tells Goku that along with two stronger elites, Vegeta and Nappa, they are the only remaining Saiyans after their home planet Vegeta was destroyed. Raditz asks Goku to enlist in helping conquering planets and joining the remaining Saiyans. When Goku refuses to join and help them, Raditz takes Goku and Krillin down with one strike, kidnaps Gohan, and threatens to murder him if Goku does not kill 100 humans within the next 24 hours. Goku decides to team up with his arch-enemy Piccolo, who was also defeated by Raditz in an earlier encounter, to defeat him and save his son. During the battle, Gohan's rage momentarily makes him stronger than Piccolo and Goku as he attacks Raditz to protect his father. The battle ends with Goku restraining Raditz so that Piccolo can hit them with a deadly move called Special Beam Cannon (魔貫光殺砲, Makankōsappō, lit. "Demon Penetrating, Killing Ray Gun"), mortally wounding them both, and kills them after a short while. But before Raditz succumbs to his injuries, he reveals to Piccolo that the other two Saiyans are much stronger than him and will come for the Dragon Balls in one year.
Having witnessed Gohan's latent potential, Piccolo takes him into the wilderness to train for the upcoming battle against the Saiyans. In the afterlife, Goku travels the million-kilometer Snake Way so that he can train under the ruler of the North Galaxy, King Kai. King Kai teaches Goku the Kaio-ken (界王拳, Kaiōken, lit. "Fist of Kings of Worlds") and the Spirit Bomb (元気玉, Genki Dama, lit. "Energy Sphere") techniques. Despite his gruff and villainous nature, Piccolo grows fond of Gohan while he oversees him learning to fend for himself. This forges an unlikely emotional bond between the two.
After a year, Goku is revived with the Dragon Balls, but King Kai panics as he realizes that Goku will have to take Snake Way again to get back and will not make it until hours after the Saiyans arrive. Goku's allies group up to fight until Goku gets back, but prove to be no match for Nappa and the "Prince of All Saiyans", Vegeta. Yamcha, Tien Shinhan, Chiaotzu and Piccolo all perish in the battle, with Piccolo's death causing both Kami and the Dragon Balls to fade from existence. When Goku finally arrives at the battlefield, he avenges his fallen friends by easily defeating Nappa before crippling him by breaking his spine in half. A furious Vegeta then executes Nappa for his failure to kill Goku.
Goku uses several grades of the Kaio-ken to win the first clash with Vegeta, which concludes with a climactic ki beam struggle, but it comes at a great cost to his body. Vegeta comes back and creates an artificial moon to transform into a Great Ape, which he uses to torture Goku. Krillin and Gohan sense that Goku is in trouble, and they return for a group fight with the now-seemingly unstoppable Vegeta. They are aided at key moments by Yajirobe, who cuts Vegeta's tail to revert him into his normal state. Goku gives Krillin a Spirit Bomb that he made, and Krillin uses it to severely damage Vegeta. Vegeta is ultimately defeated when he is crushed by Gohan's Great Ape form, and he retreats to his spaceship as Krillin approaches to finish him off. Goku convinces Krillin to spare Vegeta's life and allow him to escape Earth, with Vegeta vowing to return and destroy the planet in revenge for his humiliation at Goku's hands.
Frieza Saga
During the battle, Krillin overhears Vegeta mentioning the original set of Dragon Balls from Piccolo's homeworld, Namek (ナメック星, Namekku-sei). While Goku recovers from his injuries, Gohan, Krillin, and Goku's oldest friend Bulma depart for Namek to use these Dragon Balls to revive their fallen friends in the battle.
Upon their arrival on Namek, Krillin, Gohan, and Bulma discover that Vegeta and his superior, the galactic tyrant Frieza, are already there, each looking to use the Dragon Balls to obtain immortality. Vegeta is stronger than before, as Saiyans become stronger when they recover from the brink of death, so he seizes the opportunity to rebel against Frieza. A triangular game of cat-and-mouse ensues, with Frieza, Vegeta, and Gohan plus Krillin alternately possessing one or more of the Dragon Balls, with no one managing to possess all seven at any given time.
Vegeta manages to isolate Frieza's lieutenants one by one and kill them. When Frieza sees that Vegeta is posing too big of a problem, he summons the Ginyu Force, a team of elite mercenaries led by Captain Ginyu, who can switch bodies with his opponents. Vegeta reluctantly teams up with Gohan and Krillin to fight them, knowing that they are too much for him to handle alone. The Ginyu Force proves too powerful, but Goku finally arrives and defeats them single-handedly, saving Vegeta, Gohan, and Krillin. Vegeta believes Goku may have become the legendary warrior of the Saiyans, the Super Saiyan (超(スーパー)サイヤ人, Sūpā Saiya-jin). As Goku heals from a brutal fight with Captain Ginyu, Krillin, Dende, and Gohan secretly use the Dragon Balls behind Vegeta's back to wish for Piccolo's resurrection and teleport him to Namek. Vegeta finds them using the Dragon Balls without him, but the Grand Elder dies and rendering the Dragon Balls inert before he can wish for immortality. Just as this happens, Frieza arrives and decides to kill the four of them for denying him his wish for immortality.
Piccolo arrives on Namek but is accidentally separated from the others due to a badly-worded wish. He finds the strongest Namekian warrior, Nail, who was defeated by Frieza and fuses with him to greatly increase his power.
Despite both Piccolo and Vegeta's advances in power, they are greatly outclassed by Frieza, who goes through several transformations before reaching his final form, which he then uses to kill Dende.
Goku arrives after healing from his injuries, and Vegeta tells him that Frieza was the one who destroyed the Saiyan homeworld and massacred the Saiyan race, as he feared that he would one day be overthrown by a Super Saiyan. Frieza then kills Vegeta in front of Goku.
Though Goku's power exceeds Vegeta's, he is still no match for Frieza. Goku uses his last resort, a massive Spirit Bomb with the energy of Namek and the surrounding worlds, and it seemingly defeats the tyrant. However, Frieza manages to survive, and he unleashes his wrath upon the group by gravely wounding Piccolo and murdering Krillin. Goku's rage finally erupts, and he undergoes a strange transformation that turns his hair blond, his eyes green, and causes a golden aura to radiate from his body. Goku has finally become a Super Saiyan.
Meanwhile, the revived Kami uses Earth's Dragon Balls to resurrect everyone on Namek that was killed by Frieza and his henchmen, which also allows the Grand Elder to be resurrected for a short time, and the Namekian Dragon to return. Dende uses the final wish to teleport everyone on Namek to Earth except for Goku and Frieza.
Even at 100% power, Frieza cannot manage to defeat the Super Saiyan transformation. Goku outwits Frieza, cutting him in half with his own attack, before escaping Namek as the planet is destroyed in a massive explosion.
Garlic Jr. Saga
After the battle with Frieza, Goku's friends and family are waiting for word on his return when a demonic star drifts into Earth's orbit and opens up a rift in space, allowing the malevolent immortal Garlic Jr. to break free from his imprisonment inside the Dead Zone. Seeking revenge for a past defeat at the hands of Goku and Piccolo, Garlic Jr. traps Kami and Mr. Popo inside a bottle and uses his Black Water Mist to turn all of Earth's inhabitants into bloodthirsty, vampire-like beings. Gohan, Krillin, Piccolo, Krillin's then-girlfriend Maron, and Gohan's pet dragon Icarus are the only ones unaffected and set out to stop Garlic Jr. and restore the Earth and its inhabitants. This proves to be easier said than done, as Garlic Jr. has complete immortality, making him impossible to kill. Luckily, Gohan's hidden potential gives him the edge he needs to eradicate Garlic Jr.'s forces and send him back into the Dead Zone. He also destroys the star, ensuring that Garlic Jr. will remain trapped in the Dead Zone for all eternity.
Androids Saga
One year later, Frieza is revealed to have survived and arrives on Earth with his father, King Cold, seeking revenge. However, a mysterious young man named Trunks appears, transforms into a Super Saiyan, and kills Frieza and King Cold. Goku returns a few hours later, having spent the past year on the alien planet Yardrat learning a new technique: Instant Transmission, which allows him to teleport to any location he desires. Trunks reveals privately to Goku that he is the son of Vegeta and Bulma, and has traveled from 17 years in the future to warn Goku that two Androids (人造人間, Jinzōningen, lit. "Artificial Humans") created by Dr. Gero will appear in three years to seek revenge against Goku for destroying the Red Ribbon Army when he was a child. Trunks says all of Goku's friends will fall to them - while Goku himself will die from a heart virus six months before their arrival.
Trunks gives Goku medicine from the future that will save him from the heart virus and departs back to his own time. When the androids arrive, Goku falls ill during his fight with Android 19 but is saved by Vegeta, who reveals that he has also achieved the Super Saiyan transformation. Vegeta and Piccolo easily defeat Android 19 and Dr. Gero (who turned himself into "Android 20"), but Trunks returns from the future to check on their progress and reveals that the androids they defeated are not the ones that killed all of them in the future.
Goku is out of commission and his allies are overwhelmed by the arrival of Androids 16, 17 and 18, while an even stronger bio-Android called Cell emerges from a different timeline and embarks on a quest to find and absorb Androids 17 and 18, allowing him to attain his "perfect form".
Cell successfully absorbs Android 17, becoming considerably more powerful, but Vegeta returns to the battle, having greatly elevated his power, and easily overpowers him. However, Vegeta allows Cell to absorb Android 18, believing that his "perfect form" will be no match for his Super Saiyan power. Vegeta is subsequently defeated, with Cell mockingly thanking him for helping him achieve perfection.
Cell allows everyone to live for the time being and announces a fighting tournament to decide the fate of the Earth, known as the "Cell Games". Goku, recovered from the heart virus and having reached the zenith of the Super Saiyan form, takes on Cell at the tournament. Goku eventually realizes that Cell is far too powerful for him to handle, and forfeits the fight to the astonishment of everyone else. Goku proclaims that Gohan will be able to defeat Cell. Though initially outclassed, Gohan is eventually able to tap into his latent power and achieve the Super Saiyan 2 transformation after Android 16 sacrifices himself in a failed attempt to kill Cell. Refusing to accept defeat, Cell prepares to self-destruct and destroy the Earth.
Goku uses his Instant Transmission ability to teleport himself and Cell to King Kai's planet, where Cell explodes and kills everyone there. However, Cell survives the blast and returns to Earth more powerful than ever, where he promptly murders Trunks, but Gohan unleashes the totality of his power in a massive Kamehameha wave and obliterates Cell for good.
The Dragon Balls are then used to revive everyone that was killed by Cell, while Goku chooses to remain in the afterlife, refusing an offer by his friends to use the Namekian Dragon Balls to bring him back. Trunks returns to his timeline and uses his bolstered power to finally slay the Future Androids and Cell.
Majin Buu Saga
Seven years later, Goku is allowed to go back to Earth for one day to reunite with his loved ones and meet his youngest son, Goten, at the World Martial Arts Tournament (天下一武道会, Tenkaichi Budōkai, "Number One Martial Arts Gathering Under the Heavens"). Soon after, Goku and his allies are drawn into a fight by the Supreme Kai against a magical being named Majin Buu (魔人ブウ, "Majin Buu") summoned by the evil wizard Babidi. All efforts to stop the resurrection prove to be futile as Buu is successfully revived and begins slaughtering Earth's inhabitants. Goten and Trunks are taught the fusion technique by Piccolo, while Gohan gets his latent potential unlocked by the Elder Supreme Kai.
Meanwhile, Buu befriends Mr. Satan and vows to never kill anyone ever again, but is interrupted when a deranged gunman shoots and nearly kills Mr. Satan. As a result, Majin Buu becomes so angry that he expels the evil within himself, creating an evil Buu that proceeds to absorb the good Buu. The result is Super Buu, a psychopathic monster who wants nothing more than the destruction of the universe. After numerous battles that result in the deaths of many of Goku's allies as well as the destruction of Earth, Goku is fully restored by the Elder Supreme Kai and defeats Kid Buu (the original form of Majin Buu) with a Spirit Bomb attack containing the energy of all the inhabitants of Earth, who were resurrected along with the planet by the Namekian Dragon Balls. Goku makes a wish for Kid Buu to be reincarnated as a good person and, ten years later at another Tenkaichi Budōkai, he meets Kid Buu's human reincarnation, Uub. Leaving the match between them unfinished, Goku departs with Uub so he can train him to become Earth's new defender.
Production and broadcasting
Kazuhiko Torishima, Akira Toriyama's editor for Dr. Slump and the first half of Dragon Ball, felt that the Dragon Ball anime's ratings were gradually declining because it had the same producer that worked on Dr. Slump. Torishima said this producer had this "cute and funny" image connected to Toriyama's work and was missing the more serious tone in the newer series, and therefore asked the studio to change the producer. Impressed with their work on Saint Seiya, he asked its director Kōzō Morishita and writer Takao Koyama to help "reboot" Dragon Ball, which coincided with Goku growing up. The new producer explained that ending the first anime and creating a new one would result in more promotional money. The result was the start of Dragon Ball Z. Toriyama suggested the title because Z is the last letter of the alphabet. He wanted to finish the series because he was running out of ideas for it. Ironically enough, the sequel series would end up producing more episodes than its predecessor.
Dragon Ball Z is adapted from the final 324 chapters of the manga series which were published in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1988 to 1995. It premiered in Japan on Fuji Television on April 26, 1989, taking over its predecessor's time slot, and ran for 291 episodes until its conclusion on January 31, 1996. Because Toriyama was writing the manga during the production of the anime, Dragon Ball Z added original material not adapted from the manga, including lengthening scenes or adding new ones, and adding new attacks and characters not present in the manga. For example, Toriyama was asked to create an additional character for Goku's training with King Kai, resulting in the cricket Gregory.
Throughout the production, the voice actors were tasked with playing different characters and performing their lines on cue, switching between roles as necessary. The voice actors were unable to record the lines separately because of the close dialogue timing. When asked if juggling the different voices of Goku, Gohan and Goten were difficult, Masako Nozawa said that it was not and that she was able to switch roles simply upon seeing the character's picture. She did admit that when they were producing two films a year and television specials in addition to the regular series, there were times when they had only line art to look at while recording, which made giving finer nuanced details in her performance difficult.
One of the character designers for Dragon Ball Z was Tadayoshi Yamamuro. He was responsible for designing and animating Goku's Super Saiyan form in the series. He used the martial artist Bruce Lee as a reference for Goku's Super Saiyan form, stating that, when he "first becomes a Super Saiyan, his slanting pose with that scowling look in his eyes is all Bruce Lee." In the original manga itself, Goku's piercing eyes in Super Saiyan form were also based on Bruce Lee's paralyzing glare.
English dub production and broadcasting
In 1996, Funimation Productions (now known as Crunchyroll LLC) licensed Dragon Ball Z for an English-language release in North America, after cancelling their initial dub of Dragon Ball half-way through their originally-planned 26-episode first season. Funimation's 1996 release was not the first broadcast in the United States, as some networks had already aired versions of the series in other languages on a smaller scale. This included Nippon Golden Network's broadcast of a subtitled Japanese version in Hawaii from 1994. Funimation worked with Saban Entertainment to syndicate the series on television, and Pioneer Entertainment to handle home video distribution. A Vancouver-based cast recording at the Ocean Studios were hired by Funimation to dub the anime (Funimation had previously used a similar Vancouver-based voice cast in their initial Dragon Ball dub, recorded at Dick & Roger's Sound Studio). Contract musicians for Saban, Ron Wasserman and Jeremy Sweet, known for their work on the Power Rangers franchise, composed a new guitar-driven soundtrack. The dub's opening theme (nicknamed "Rock the Dragon") was sung by Sweet, and afterwards Wasserman got hired by Saban to do background music for the dub. For contractual reasons, the background music and opening theme was officially credited to Saban founders Shuki Levy and Haim Saban (under the alias Kussa Mahehi), with the actual extent of their involvement in the soundtrack being unclear.
Funimation's initial English dub of Dragon Ball Z had mandated cuts to content and length, which reduced the first 67 episodes into 53 (though TV episode 53 actually ends half-way through uncut episode 67). Most of the edits were done to make the anime more tame and kid-friendly, most notably having references to death sidestepped with phrases like "sent to the next dimension". It premiered in the United States on September 13, 1996, in first-run syndication, but halted production in 1998 after two seasons despite strong ratings. This was due to Saban scaling down its syndication operations, in order to focus on producing original material for the Fox Kids Network and its newly acquired Fox Family Channel. Pioneer also ceased its home video release of the series at volume 17 (the end of the dub) and retained the rights to produce an uncut subtitled version, but did not do so. They did, however, release uncut dubs of the first three Z movies on home video.
On August 31, 1998, reruns of this canceled dub began airing on Cartoon Network as part of the channel's weekday afternoon Toonami block. Cartoon Network eventually ordered more episodes of Dragon Ball Z, and Funimation resumed production on the series' English dub without Saban's assistance. Cartoon Network replaced the original Vancouver-based cast with an in-house voice cast at their Texas-based studio, with the goal of the new voices sounding similar to the Vancouver cast. The Saban-produced soundtrack from the first two seasons was replaced with a new background score composed by Bruce Faulconer and his team of musicians, which was used throughout the rest of Funimation's Dragon Ball Z dub. This renewed dub featured less censorship due to both Saban's absence and fewer restrictions on cable programming, and aired new episodes on Cartoon Network's Toonami block from September 13, 1999, to April 7, 2003 (continuing in re-runs through 2008). Kids' WB briefly ran Dragon Ball Z in 2001 on its short-lived Toonami block.
In 2005, Funimation began to re-dub episodes 1–67 with their in-house voice cast, including content originally cut from their dub with Saban. This dub's background score was composed by Nathan M. Johnson (Funimation had ceased working with Faulconer Productions after the final episode of Dragon Ball Z in 2003). Funimation's new uncut dub of these episodes aired on Cartoon Network beginning in June 2005. Funimation's later remastered DVDs of the series saw them redub portions of the dialogue, mostly after episode 67, and had the option to play the entire series' dub with both the American and Japanese background music.
In January 2011, Funimation and Toei announced that they would stream Dragon Ball Z within 30 minutes before their simulcast of One Piece.
The Funimation dubbed episodes also aired in Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, and New Zealand. However, beginning with episode 108 (123 uncut), Westwood Media (in association with Ocean Studios) produced an alternate English dub, distributed to Europe by AB Groupe. The alternate dub was created for broadcast in the UK, the Netherlands and Ireland, although it also aired in Canada beginning from episode 168 (183 uncut) to fulfill Canadian content requirements. Funimation's in-house dub continued to air in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand. The Westwood Media production used the same voice cast from the original 53-episode dub produced by Funimation, it featured an alternate soundtrack by Tom Keenlyside and John Mitchell, though most of this score was pieces Ocean reused from other productions Keenlyside and Mitchell had scored for them, and it used the same scripts and video master as the TV edit of Funimation's in-house dub. The Westwood Media dub never received a home video release. In Australia, Dragon Ball Z was broadcast by the free-to-air commercial network, Network 10 during morning children's programming, Cheez TV, originally using the censored Funimation/Saban dub before switching to Funimation's in-house dub.
Dragon Ball Z originally aired on the British Comedy Network in Fall 1998.
The series was also available on the Funimation video streaming service (formerly FunimationNOW) upon its launch in 2016. In March 2022, Dragon Ball Z was added to Crunchyroll, a service that Funimation acquired a year before, which in turn was acquired in 2018 by its current parent company, Sony Pictures Television.
Dragon Ball Z Kai
In February 2009, Toei Animation announced that it would begin broadcasting a remastered version of Dragon Ball Z as part of the series's 20th anniversary celebrations. The series premiered on Fuji TV in Japan on April 5, 2009, under the title Dragon Ball Kai. The ending suffix Kai (改(かい)) in the name means "updated" or "altered" and reflects the improvements and corrections of the original work. The original footage was remastered for HDTV, featuring updated opening and ending sequences, new music, and a re-recording of the vocal tracks. The original material and any damaged frames were removed, along with the majority of the filler episodes to more closely follow the manga, resulting in a faster-moving story. According to Torishima, Kai was conceived when Bandai asked if a new Dragon Ball anime could be made to increase the franchise's merchandise sales. As Toriyama refused to create a new story, it was decided to release a remastered version of the Dragon Ball Z anime that more closely follows the manga instead. He said the reception to Kai was positive, "so it all worked out".
The series initially concluded on its 97th episode in Japan on March 27, 2011, with the finale of the Cell saga. It was originally planned to run 98 episodes; however, due to the Tōhoku offshore earthquake and tsunami, the final episode was not aired and was later released direct-to-video in Japan on August 2, 2011.
In November 2012, Mayumi Tanaka, the Japanese voice actor of Krillin announced that she and the rest of the cast were recording more episodes of Dragon Ball Kai. In February 2014, the Kai adaptation of the Majin Buu saga was officially confirmed. The new run of the series, which is titled Dragon Ball Z Kai: The Final Chapters internationally, began airing in Japan on Fuji TV on April 6, 2014, and ended its run on June 28, 2015. The final arc of Kai was originally produced to last 69 episodes (as most of the international versions run), but the Japanese broadcast cut it down to 61 episodes.
English dub production and broadcasting
Funimation licensed Kai for an English-language release in February 2010. The series was initially broadcast in the U.S. on Nicktoons from May 24, 2010, to January 1, 2012, continuing in re-runs until April 2013. In addition to Nicktoons, the series also began airing on the 4Kids-owned Saturday morning programming block Toonzai on The CW in August 2010, then on its successor, the Saban-owned Vortexx, beginning in August 2012 until the block ended in September 2014. Both the Nicktoons and CW airings were edited for content. Kai began airing uncut on Adult Swim's Toonami block on November 8, 2014, and re-runs of the previous weeks' episodes aired at the beginning of Adult Swim from February 2015 to June 2016. In the United Kingdom, CSC Media Group acquired the broadcast rights to Kai and began airing it on Kix! in early 2013.
Despite Kai's continuation not being officially confirmed at the time even in Japan, Funimation voice actors Sean Schemmel (Goku) and Kyle Hebert (Gohan), announced in April 2013 that they had started recording an English dub for new episodes. In November 2013, Kai's Australasian distributor Madman Entertainment revealed that the Majin Buu arc of Kai would be released in 2014 and that they were waiting on dubs to be finished. In February 2014, Funimation officially stated that they had not yet started recording a dub for the final arc of Kai. On December 6, 2016, Funimation announced the continuation of Kai would begin airing on Adult Swim's Toonami block. The series aired from January 7, 2017, to June 23, 2018, alongside Dragon Ball Super.
An alternate English dub of Kai by Ocean Productions was recorded for the original 98 episodes, featuring many of the original Vancouver cast reprising their roles, but it has yet to air.
Editing
Dragon Ball Z's original North American release was the subject of heavy editing which resulted in a large amount of removed content and alterations that greatly changed the original work. Funimation CEO Gen Fukunaga is often criticized for his role in the editing; but it was the initial distributor Saban which required such changes or they would not air the work, as was the case with the episode dealing with orphans. These changes included altering every aspect of the show from character names, clothing, scenes and dialogue of the show. The character Mr. Satan was renamed Hercule and this change has been retained in other English media such as Viz's Dragon Ball Z manga and video games, though the English dubs of Dragon Ball Kai and Dragon Ball Super changed the name back to Mr. Satan. The dialogue changes would sometimes contradict the scenes itself; after the apparent fatal explosion of a helicopter, one of the characters said, "I can see their parachutes; they're okay!" Funimation's redub for the 2005 release would address many of the issues raised by Saban, with the uncut releases preserving the integrity of the original Japanese release.
During the original Japanese TV airing of Dragon Ball Kai, scenes involving blood and brief nudity were removed. Nicktoons would also alter Kai for its broadcast; it released a preview showcasing these changes which included removing the blood and cheek scar from Bardock and altering the color of Master Roshi's alcohol. The show was further edited for its broadcast on The CW; most notoriously, the character Mr. Popo was tinted blue. The show's DVD and Blu-ray releases only contained the edits present in the original Japanese version. A rumor that Cartoon Network would be airing Kai uncut was met with an official statement to debunk the rumor in June 2010;. However, it would later air uncut on the channel as part of Adult Swim's Toonami block.
Steven Simmons, who did the subtitling for Funimation's home video releases, offered commentary on the subtitling from a project and technical standpoint, addressing several concerns. Simmons said that Gen Fukunaga did not want any swearing on the discs, but because there was no taboo word list, Simmons would substitute a variation in the strength of the words by situation with the changes starting in episode 21. The typographical errors in the script were caused by dashes (—) and double-quotes (") failing to appear, which resulted in confusing dialogue.
Music
Dragon Ball Z has released a series of 21 soundtracks as part of the Dragon Ball Z Hit Song Collection series. In total, dozens of releases exist for Dragon Ball Z which includes Japanese and foreign adapted releases of the anime themes and video game soundtracks.
Shunsuke Kikuchi composed the score for Dragon Ball Z. The opening theme for the first 199 episodes is "Cha-La Head-Cha-La" performed by Hironobu Kageyama. The second opening theme used up until the series finale at episode 291 is "We Gotta Power" also performed by Kageyama. Both opening themes were replaced with an original instrumental piece by Mark Menza, the composer of the alternate soundtrack, in the remastered Funimation dub due to licensing issues. The ending theme used for the first 199 episodes is "Detekoi Tobikiri Zenkai Power!" (でてこいとびきりZENKAIパワー!, "Come Out, Incredible Full Power!") performed by MANNA. The second ending theme used for the remaining episodes is "Bokutachi wa Tenshi Datta" (僕達は天使だった, "We Were Angels") performed by Kageyama. The initial English-Language release used a completely new musical score composed by Faulconer Productions. It was used for the North American broadcasts of the show from 1999 to 2005.
Kenji Yamamoto composed the score for Dragon Ball Kai. The opening theme, "Dragon Soul", and the first ending theme used for the first 54 episodes, "Yeah! Break! Care! Break!", are both performed by Takayoshi Tanimoto of the unit, Dragon Soul, in Japanese. Sean Schemmel, Justin Cook, Vic Mignogna, Greg Ayres, Sonny Strait and Brina Palencia performed the English version of the opening theme, while Jerry Jewell performed the English version of the ending theme. The second ending theme, used from episodes 55–98, is "Kokoro no Hane" (心の羽根, "Wings of the Heart") performed by Team Dragon, a unit of the idol girl group AKB48, in Japanese and Leah Clark in English. On March 9, 2011, Toei announced that due to Yamamoto's score infringing on the rights of an unknown third party or parties, the music for remaining episodes and reruns of previous episodes would be replaced. Later reports from Toei stated that except for the series' opening and closing songs, as well as eyecatch music, Yamamoto's score was replaced with Shunsuke Kikuchi's score from Dragon Ball Z.
The music for The Final Chapters is composed by Norihito Sumitomo. The opening theme is "Kuu•Zen•Zetsu•Go" (空•前•絶•後) by Takayoshi Tanimoto of Dragon Soul, while the first ending song is "Haikei, Tsuratsusutora" (拝啓、ツラツストラ, "Dear Zarathustra") by Japanese rock band Good Morning America, and the second "Junjō" (純情, "Pure Heart") by Leo Ieiri from episode 112 to 123. The third ending song is "Oh Yeah!!!!!!!" by Czecho No Republic from episode 124 to 136, the fourth "Galaxy" by Kyūso Nekokami from 137 to 146, and the fifth is "Don't Let Me Down" by Gacharic Spin from 147 to 159. The international broadcast features two pieces of theme music. The opening theme, titled "Fight It Out", is performed by rock singer Masatoshi Ono, while the ending theme is "Never Give Up!!!", performed by rhythm and blues vocalist Junear.
Related media
Home media
In Japan, Dragon Ball Z did not receive a home video release until 2003, seven years after its broadcast. Pony Canyon announced a remastering of the series in two 26-disc DVD box sets, that were made-to-order only, released on March 19 and September 18 and referred to as "Dragon Box". Since then, Pony Canyon content of these sets began being released on mass-produced individual 6-episode DVDs on November 2, 2005, and finished with the 49th volume released on February 7, 2007. In July 2009, Funimation announced that they would be releasing the Japanese frame-by-frame "Dragon Box" restoration of Dragon Ball Z in North America. These seven limited edition collector's DVD box sets were released uncut and unedited in the show's original 4:3 fullscreen format between November 10, 2009, and October 11, 2011.
The international home release structure of Dragon Ball Z is complicated by the licensing and release of the companies involved in producing and distributing the work. Releases of the media occurred on both VHS and DVD with separate edited and uncut versions being released simultaneously. Both versions of the edited and uncut material are treated as different entries and would frequently make Billboard rankings as separate entries. Home release sales were featured prominently on the Nielsen VideoScan charts. Further complicating the release of the material was Funimation itself; which was known to release "DVDs out of sequence in order to get them out as fast as possible"; as in the case of their third season. Pioneer Entertainment distributed the Funimation/Saban edited-only dub of 53 episodes on seventeen VHS between 1997 and 1999, and seventeen DVDs throughout 1999. Two box sets separating them into the Saiyan and Namek arcs were also released on VHS in 1999, and on DVD in 2001. In 1999, Funimation's own distribution of their initial onward dub, which began with episode 54, in edited or uncut VHS ran between 1999 and 2006. A DVD version was produced alongside these, although they were only produced uncut and contained the option to watch the original Japanese with subtitles.
In 2005, Funimation began releasing their onward dub of the beginning of Dragon Ball Z on DVD, marking the first time the episodes were seen uncut in North America. However, only nine volumes were released, leaving it incomplete. Instead, Funimation remastered and cropped the entire series into 16:9 widescreen format and began re-releasing it to DVD in nine individual "season" box sets; the first set released on February 6, 2007, and the final on May 19, 2009. On August 13, 2013, Funimation released all 53 episodes and the three movies from their first Dragon Ball Z dub created with Saban and Ocean Studios in a collector's DVD box set, titled the Rock the Dragon Edition.
In July 2011, Funimation announced plans to release Dragon Ball Z in Blu-ray format, with the first set released on November 8, 2011. However, production of these 4:3 sets was suspended after the second volume, citing financial and technical concerns over restoring the original film material frame by frame, with Funimation noting that the restoration costs incurred exceeded the retail price they were able to sell them for. Only a year later, the company began producing a cropped 16:9 remastered Blu-ray release in 2013, with nine sets released in total.
In March 2019, Funimation announced plans to release a 30th anniversary Blu-ray release of Dragon Ball Z, with the box set being remastered in 4:3 aspect ratio, and containing an artbook and a collectible figure. It would be crowdfunded, originally requiring a minimum of 2500 pre-orders in order to be manufactured, but was later increased to a minimum of 3,000 units. The release sparked controversy amongst fans due to the framing of the video, color saturation and digital video noise reduction. Funimation responded by stating that they cropped the release by going in "scene-by-scene to make judgements based on the image available in each frame of how much to trim to get to a consistent 4:3 aspect ratio, while still attempting to cut as little out of the picture as possible," and that they felt the digital video noise reduction was "mandatory for this release based on the different levels of fan support from various past DBZ releases with different levels of noise reduction over the years."
Kai
In Japan, Dragon Ball Kai was released on wide-screen on 33 DVDs and fullscreen on a single Blu-ray and eight four-disc Blu-ray sets from September 18, 2009, to August 2, 2011.
Funimation released eight DVD and Blu-ray box sets of Dragon Ball Z Kai from May 18, 2010, to June 5, 2012. These sets contain the original Japanese audio track with English subtitles, as well as the uncut version of the English dub, which does not contain any of the edits made for the TV airings. Before the final volume was even published, Funimation began re-releasing the series in four DVD and Blu-ray "season" sets between May 22, 2012, and March 12, 2013. Funimation released The Final Chapters in three DVD and Blu-ray volumes from April 25 to June 20, 2017.
Manga
While the manga was all titled Dragon Ball in Japan, due to the popularity of the Dragon Ball Z anime in the west, Viz Media initially changed the title of the last 26 volumes of the manga to "Dragon Ball Z" to avoid confusion. The volumes were originally published in Japan between 1988 and 1995. It began serialization in the American Shonen Jump, beginning in the middle of the series with the appearance of Trunks; the tankōbon volumes of both Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball were released simultaneously by Viz Media in the United States. In March 2001, Viz continued this separation by re-shipping the Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z titles starting with the first volumes of each work. Viz's marketing for the manga made distinct the differences between Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z tone. Viz billed Dragon Ball Z: "More action-packed than the stories of Goku's youth, Dragon Ball Z is pure adrenaline, with battles of truly Earth-shaking proportions!" Between 2008 and 2010, Viz re-released the two series in a format called "Viz Big Edition," which collects three individual volumes into a single large volume. However, in 2013 Viz began publishing new 3-in-1 volumes collecting the entire manga series, including what they previously released as Dragon Ball Z, under the Dragon Ball name.
Films
The Dragon Ball Z films comprise a total of 15 entries as of 2015. The first 13 films were typically released every March and July during the series' original run by the spring and summer vacations of Japanese schools. They were typically double features paired up with other anime films, and were thus, usually an hour or less in length. These films themselves offer contradictions in both chronology and design that make them incompatible with a single continuity. All 15 films were licensed in North America by Funimation, and all have received in-house dubs by the company. Before Funimation, the third film was a part of the short-lived Saban syndication, being split into three episodes, and the first three films received uncut English dubs in 1998 produced by Funimation with Ocean Studios and released by Pioneer. Several of the films have been broadcast on Cartoon Network and Nicktoons in the United States, Toonami UK in the United Kingdom (these featured an alternate English dub produced by an unknown cast by AB Groupe), and Cartoon Network in Australia.
Television specials and original video animations
Three TV specials based on Dragon Ball Z were produced and broadcast on Fuji TV. The first two were Dragon Ball Z: Bardock – The Father of Goku in 1990 and Dragon Ball Z: The History of Trunks in 1993, the latter being based on a special chapter of the original manga. Both were licensed by Funimation in North America and AB Groupe in Europe. In 2013, a two-part hour-long crossover with One Piece and Toriko, titled Dream 9 Toriko & One Piece & Dragon Ball Z Chō Collaboration Special!!, was created and aired.
Additionally, two original video animations (OVAs) bearing the Dragon Ball Z title have been made. The first is Dragon Ball Z Side Story: Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans, which was originally released in 1993 in two parts as "Official Visual Guides" for the video game of the same title. Dragon Ball: Plan to Eradicate the Super Saiyans was a 2010 remake of this OVA. None of the OVAs have been dubbed into English, and the only one to see a release in North America is the 2010 remake, which was subtitled and included as a bonus feature in Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2.
Video games
Over 57 video games are bearing the Dragon Ball Z name across a range of platforms from the Nintendo Entertainment System to the current generation consoles, with the most recent release being Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot in 2020.
In North America, licensing rights had been given to both Namco Bandai and Atari. In 1999, Atari acquired exclusive rights to the video games through Funimation, a deal which was extended for five more years in 2005. A 2007 dispute would end with Atari paying Funimation $3.5 million. In July 2009, Namco Bandai was reported to have obtained exclusive rights to release the games for a period of five years. This presumably would have taken effect after Atari's licensing rights expired at the end of January 2010.
Reception
Dragon Ball Z was listed as the 78th best animated show in IGN's "Top 100 Animated Series", and was also listed as the 50th greatest animated show in Wizard magazine's "Top 100 Greatest Animated shows" list. The series ranked sixth on Wizard's Anime Magazine on their "Top 50 Anime released in North America".
In Asia, the Dragon Ball Z franchise, including the anime and merchandise, earned a profit of $3 billion by 1999. In the United States, the series sold over 14 million videos by 2002, and over 25 million DVDs by January 2012.
In 2005, media historian Hal Erickson wrote that "Dragon Ball may be the closest thing on American television to an animated soap opera — though this particular genre is an old, established and venerated one in Japan, the series' country of origin." Christopher J. Olson and CarrieLynn D. Reinhard note that "Western fans flocked to Dragon Ball Z because it offered exciting action not found in movies or television shows (animated or otherwise) at that time." A key characteristic that set Dragon Ball Z (and later other anime shows) apart from American television shows at the time was a serialization format, in which a continuous story arc stretches over multiple episodes or seasons. Traditional American television had an episodic format, with each episode typically consisting of a self-contained story. Serialization has since also become a common characteristic of American streaming television shows during the "Peak TV" era.
Funimation's in-house English dub though has received mixed reviews from some critics over the years. IGN criticized the dub for "having poor quality, along with some over the top, and quite annoying voice acting." Frieza's female voice in particular left many fans confused over the character's gender. Other criticisms have been towards the English dub's script, and inaccurately translating the source material, such as portraying Goku's character as a more stoic superhero.
Cultural impact and legacy
Dragon Ball Z's popularity is reflected through a variety of data through online interactions which show the popularity of the media. In 2001, it was reported that the official website of Dragon Ball Z recorded 4.7 million hits per day and included 500,000+ registered fans. The term "Dragonball Z" ranked fourth in 1999 and second in 2000 by Lycos' web search engine. For 2001, "Dragonball" was the most popular search on Lycos and "Dragonball Z" was fifth on Yahoo!. and "Dragonball" was the third most popular search term in 2002.
It's Over 9000! became a famous Internet meme and is referenced both within and outside Dragonball related media.
In 2015, Ford Motor Company released two commercials featuring characters from the series, the first advertising the Ford Fusion and the second for the Ford Focus.
Dragon Ball fans set a Guinness World Record for Largest Kamehameha attack move at San Diego Comic-Con on July 17, 2019.
Ratings
Dragon Ball Z's Japanese run was very popular with an average viewer rating of 20.5% across the series. Dragon Ball Z also proved to be a rating success in the United States, outperforming top shows such as Friends and The X-Files in some parts of the country in sweeps ratings during its first season. The premiere of season three of Dragon Ball Z in 1999, done by Funimation's in-house dub, was the highest-rated program ever at the time on Cartoon Network. In 2001, Cartoon Network obtained licensing to run 96 more episodes and air the original Dragon Ball anime and was the top rated show in the Toonami block of Cartoon Network. Beginning March 26, 2001, Cartoon Network ran a 12-week special promotion "Toonami Reactor" which included a focus on Dragon Ball Z, which would stream episodes online to high-speed internet users. Many home video releases were met with both the edited and unedited versions placing on in the top 10 video charts of Billboard. For example, "The Dark Prince Returns" (containing episodes 226-228) and "Rivals" (containing episodes 229-231) edited and unedited, made the Billboard magazine top video list for October 20, 2001. In 2002, in the week ending September 22, Dragon Ball Z was the #1 program of the week on all of television with tweens 9-14, boys 9-14 and men 12-24, with the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday telecasts of Dragon Ball Z ranked as the top three programs in all of television, broadcast or cable, for delivery of boys 9-14.
The first episode of Dragon Ball Kai earned a viewer ratings percentage of 11.3, ahead of One Piece and behind Crayon Shin-chan. Although following episodes had lower ratings, Kai was among the top 10 anime in viewer ratings every week in Japan for most of its run. Towards the end of the original run the ratings hovered around 9%-10%. Dragon Ball Z Kai premiered on Nicktoons in May 2010 and set the record for the highest-rated premiere in total viewers, and in tweens and boys ages 9–14. Nielsen Mega Manila viewer ratings ranked Dragon Ball Kai with a viewer ratings with a high of 18.4% for October 30 – November 4 in 2012. At the end of April 2013, Dragon Ball Kai would trail just behind One Piece at 14.2%. Broadcasters' Audience Research Board ranked Dragon Ball Z Kai as the second most viewed show in the week it debuted on Kix. On its debut on Vortexx, Dragon Ball Z Kai was the third highest rated show on the Saturday morning block with 841,000 viewers and a 0.5 household rating.
Merchandise
Dragon Ball Z merchandise was a success prior to its peak American interest, with more than $3 billion in sales from 1996 to 2000. In 1996, Dragon Ball Z grossed $2.95 billion in merchandise sales worldwide. By January 2012, Dragon Ball Z grossed $5 billion in merchandise sales worldwide.
In 1998, Animage-ine Entertainment, a division of Simitar, announced the sale of Chroma-Cels, mock animation cels to capitalize on the popularity of Dragon Ball Z. The original sale was forecasted for late 1998, but were pushed back to January 12, 1999.
In 2000, MGA Entertainment released more than twenty toys, consisting of table-top games and walkie-talkies. Irwin Toy released more than 72 figures consisting of 2-inch and 5 inch action figures, which became top-selling toys in a market dominated by the Pokémon Trading Card Game. Irwin Toys would release other unique Dragon Ball Z toys including a battery powered Flying Nimbus Cloud which hovered without touching the ground and a die-cast line of vehicles with collector capsules. In June 2000, Burger King had a toy promotion which would see 20 million figures; Burger King bore the cost of the promotion which provided free marketing for Funimation. The Halloween Association found Dragon Ball Z costumes to be the fourth most popular costumes in their nationwide survey.
In December 2002, Jakks Pacific signed a three-year deal for licensing Dragon Ball Z toys, which was possible because of the bankruptcy of Irwin Toy. Jakks Pacific's Dragon Ball Z 5-inch figures were cited as impressive for their painting and articulation.
In 2010, Toei closed deals in Central and South American countries which included Algazarra, Richtex, Pil Andina, DTM, Doobalo and Bondy Fiesta. In 2012, Brazil's Abr-Art Bag Rio Comercio Importacao e Exportacao closed a deal with Toei.
Notes
References
Further reading
Mínguez-López, Xavier (March 2014). "Folktales and Other References in Toriyama's Dragon Ball Z". Animation. 9 (1): 27–46. doi:10.1177/1746847713519386. hdl:10550/44043. ISSN 1746-8477. S2CID 35435730.
External links
Official website (in English)
Official website (in Japanese)
Dragon Ball Z (anime) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia |
List_of_Dragon_Ball_Z_episodes | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dragon_Ball_Z_episodes | [
772
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dragon_Ball_Z_episodes"
] | Dragon Ball Z (ドラゴンボールゼット, Doragon Bōru Zetto, commonly abbreviated as DBZ) is the long-running anime sequel to the Dragon Ball TV series, adapted from the final twenty-six volumes of the Dragon Ball manga written by Akira Toriyama. The manga portion of the series debuted in Weekly Shōnen Jump on October 5, 1988, and lasted until 1995; the anime adaptation premiered in Japan on Fuji Television on April 26, 1989, taking over its predecessor's time slot, and ran until its end on January 31, 1996, lasting 291 episodes in Japan, and 276 episodes in the United States originally, although all 291 episodes were later broadcast when content from the first 67 episodes was restored.
Dragon Ball Z uses four pieces of theme music in the Japanese version. From episodes 1–199, the opening theme is "Cha-La Head-Cha-La" by Hironobu Kageyama, and the closing theme is "Detekoi Tobikiri Zenkai Pawā!" by MANNA. From episodes 200–291, the opening and closing themes are "We Gotta Power" and "Boku-Tachi wa Tenshi Datta," both by Hironobu Kageyama.
Series overview
In Japan, Dragon Ball Z was aired year-round continuously, with regular off-days for sporting events and television specials taking place about once every six weeks on average. The English broadcast was divided into eight separate near-continuous blocks with breaks varying between four months to over a year between each block. Only in one instance, between episodes 194 and 195, was there actually parity between the DVD release and the actual broadcast sequence in terms of the end of one "season" and the beginning of the next.
Episodes
Season 1: Saiyan Saga (1989–1990)
Season 2: Namek and Captain Ginyu Sagas (1990–91)
Season 3: Frieza Saga (1991)
Season 4: Garlic Jr., Trunks and Androids Sagas (1991–92)
Season 5: Imperfect Cell and Perfect Cell Sagas (1992)
Season 6: Cell Games Saga (1992–93)
Season 7: Other World, Great Saiyaman and World Tournament Sagas (1993–94)
Season 8: Babidi and Majin Buu Sagas (1994–95)
Season 9: Fusion, Kid Buu and Peaceful World Sagas (1995–96)
OVAs/Movie specials
TV specials
See also
List of Dragon Ball episodes
List of Dragon Ball GT episodes
List of Dragon Ball films
Notes
References
External links
Official Funimation Entertainment Dragon Ball Z episode list
Dragon Ball Z at IMDb |
Dragon_Ball_Z_season_3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z_season_3 | [
772
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z_season_3"
] | The third season of Dragon Ball Z anime series contains the Frieza arc, which comprises Part 2 of the Frieza Saga. The episodes are produced by Toei Animation, and are based on the final 26 volumes of the Dragon Ball manga series by Akira Toriyama.
The 33-episode season originally ran from January to September 1991 in Japan on Fuji Television. The first English airing of the series was on Cartoon Network where Funimation Entertainment's dub of the series ran from September to November 1999.
Funimation released the season in a box set, and in June 2009, announced that they would be re-releasing Dragon Ball Z in a new seven volume set called the "Dragon Boxes". Based on the original series masters with frame-by-frame restoration, and is uncut. The first set was released November 10, 2009.
Episode list
== References == |
Milo%C5%A1_Beleslin | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo%C5%A1_Beleslin | [
773
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo%C5%A1_Beleslin"
] | Miloš Beleslin (Serbian Cyrillic: Милош Белеслин; 8 September 1901 – 7 March 1984) was a Yugoslavian footballer.
Club career
Born in Sereg, Kingdom of Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire, he started playing in Szeged in Szegedi AK. His played his first official match on May 5, 1917. In 1919 his parents moved to the city of Novi Sad in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and he joined NAK Novi Sad. Later he would play with other Yugoslav top-league clubs, SAND Subotica and ŽAK Subotica. He played his last official match in 1939 on the day of his anniversary.
International career
Miloš Beleslin played 8 matches for the Yugoslavia national team having scored once. He was part of Yugoslavia's team at the 1928 Summer Olympics, but he did not play in any matches. He received a call to represent Yugoslavia at the 1930 FIFA World Cup however as he was playing in Subotica, his representative subassociation, the Subotica Football Subassociation, boycotted the national team, not allowing him to travel to Uruguay. His final international was a May 1930 King Alexander's Cup against Romania.
== References == |
%C5%BDAK_Subotica | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BDAK_Subotica | [
773
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BDAK_Subotica"
] | ŽAK Subotica (Serbian Cyrillic: ЖАК Суботица) was a football club based in Subotica, Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
The club was formed in 1921 and the name comes from the initials of Železničarski atletski klub derived from the fact that the club was backed by the Yugoslav Railways company.
It played in the 1935–36 Yugoslav Football Championship where it was eliminated in the round of sixteen by Slavija Osijek. Afterwards, it played in the 1940–41 Serbian League where it finished 5th out of 10.
With the start of the Second World War and the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, the city came under Hungarian occupation and the club competed in the Hungarian Second League under its Hungarian translated name, Szabadkai Vasutas AC. During this period the coach was Geza Takács and among its best known players was István Nyers who begin his senior career at the club.
After the end of the Second World War, the club made a tour throughout Serbia in order to prepare for competition, however the new socialist authorities demanded that most of the pre-1945 clubs to be disbanded and new clubs to be formed. ŽAK was dissolved in 1945 and its players made a meeting where they decided to join the newly founded FK Spartak Subotica which beside the players, the stadium, the colors and the fans, it also inherited the tradition of being backed by the railways.
Notable players
Players with national team appearances:
Yugoslavia
Jovan Beleslin
Miloš Beleslin
Mihalj Kečkeš
Tihomir Ognjanov
Hungary
István Nyers
For a list of former players with Wikipedia article, please see: Category:ŽAK Subotica players.
== References == |
List_of_The_Simpsons_cast_members | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Simpsons_cast_members | [
774
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Simpsons_cast_members"
] | The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom that includes six main voice actors and numerous regular cast and recurring guest stars. The principal cast consists of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer. Pamela Hayden, Tress MacNeille, Maggie Roswell, Chris Edgerly, Eric Lopez, Alex Désert, Kevin Michael Richardson, Jenny Yokobori, Kimberly D. Brooks, Dawnn Lewis, Tony Rodriguez, Melanie Minichino, Jonathan Lipow, and Grey DeLisle have appeared as supporting cast members, along with former supporting cast members Russi Taylor, Karl Wiedergott, Marcia Mitzman Gaven, Doris Grau, Susan Blu, Jo Ann Harris, and Christopher Collins. Repeat guest cast members include Marcia Wallace, Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz, Joe Mantegna, Frank Welker, Kelsey Grammer and Albert Brooks. With the exception of "Old Money", episode credits list only the voice actors, and not the characters they voice.
Both Fox and the production crew wanted to keep their identities secret during the early seasons and closed most of the recording sessions while refusing to publish photos of the recording artists. The network eventually revealed which roles each actor performed in the episode "Old Money", because the producers said the voice actors should receive credit for their work. Every main cast member has won an Emmy for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance. Shearer was the last cast member to win, receiving his award in 2014 for the episode "Four Regrettings and a Funeral." Castellaneta and Azaria have won four, while Kavner, Cartwright, Smith, Shearer, Wallace, Grammer, and guest star Jackie Mason have each won one.
Regular cast
Background
Castellaneta and Kavner were asked to voice the lead roles of Homer and Marge Simpson as they were regular cast members of The Tracey Ullman Show on which The Simpsons shorts appeared. Cartwright auditioned for the part of Lisa, but found that Lisa was simply described as the "middle child" and at the time did not have much personality. She then became more interested in the role of Bart, so Simpsons creator Matt Groening let her try out for that part instead, and upon hearing her read, he gave her the job on the spot. Smith had initially been asked by casting director Bonita Pietila to audition for the role of Bart, but Pietila then realised that Smith's voice was too high, Smith was given the role of Lisa instead. When the show was commissioned for a full half-hour series, Shearer joined the cast and performed multiple roles. Groening and Sam Simon asked Shearer to join the cast as they were fans of his radio show. Azaria was only a guest actor in the first season, but became permanent in season 2. He first appeared in "Some Enchanted Evening", rerecording Christopher Collins's lines as Moe Szyslak. In 2001, Groening remarked that he still considered Azaria the "new guy."
Up until 1998, the six main actors were paid $30,000 per episode. In 1998 they were then involved in a pay dispute in which Fox threatened to replace them with new actors and went as far as preparing for casting of new voices. However, the issue was soon resolved and from 1998 to 2004, they were paid $125,000 per episode. In 2004, the voice actors intentionally skipped several table reads, demanding they be paid $360,000 per episode. The strike was resolved a month later and until 2008 they earned something between $250,000 and $360,000 per episode. In 2008, production for the twentieth season was put on hold due to new contract negotiations with the voice actors, who wanted a "healthy bump" in salary to an amount close to $500,000 per episode. The dispute was soon resolved, and the actors' salary was raised to $400,000 per episode.
In 2011, Fox announced that, due to financial difficulties, they were unable to continue to produce The Simpsons under its current contract and that unless there were pay cuts, the show could end. For the negotiations, the studio requested that the cast members accept a 45% cut of their salaries so that more seasons could be produced after season 23, or else that season would be the last. In the end, the studio and the actors reached a deal, in which the actors would take a pay cut of 30%, down to just over $300,000 per episode, prolonging the show to its 30th season. As well as the actors, everybody involved in the show took a pay cut.
Main cast
Other regular cast
Recurring guest voices
Awards and nominations
Notes
References
External links
Cast list at the IMDb |
Dan_Castellaneta | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Castellaneta | [
774
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Castellaneta"
] | Daniel Louis Castellaneta ( KAST-ə-lə-NET-ə; born October 29, 1957) is an American actor and writer. He is best known for voicing Homer Simpson on the animated series The Simpsons (as well as other characters on the show such as Grampa Simpson, Krusty the Clown, Groundskeeper Willie, Barney Gumble, Mayor Quimby, Sideshow Mel, Mr. Teeny, Santa's Little Helper, and Itchy). Castellaneta is also known for voicing Grandpa in Nickelodeon's Hey Arnold!, and has had voice roles in several other programs, including Futurama, Sibs, Darkwing Duck, The Adventures of Dynamo Duck, The Batman, Back to the Future: The Animated Series, Aladdin, Earthworm Jim, and Taz-Mania.
In 1999, he appeared in the Christmas special Olive, the Other Reindeer and won an Annie Award for his portrayal of the Postman. Castellaneta released a comedy album I Am Not Homer, and wrote and starred in a one-person show titled Where Did Vincent van Gogh?
Early life
Daniel Louis Castellaneta was born on October 29, 1957, at Roseland Community Hospital on Chicago's south side and was raised in River Forest and Oak Park, Illinois. He is of Italian descent, born to Elsie (née Lagorio; 1926–2008) and Louis Castellaneta (1915–2014), an amateur actor who worked for a printing company.
Castellaneta became adept at impressions at a young age and his mother enrolled him in an acting class when he was 16 years old. He would listen to his father's comedy records and do impressions of the artists. He was a "devotee" of the works of many performers, including Alan Arkin and Barbara Harris and directors Mike Nichols and Elaine May. He attended Oak Park and River Forest High School and upon graduation, started attending Northern Illinois University (NIU) in the fall of 1975.
Castellaneta studied art education, with the goal of becoming an art teacher. He became a student teacher and would entertain his students with his impressions. Castellaneta was a regular participant in The Ron Petke and His Dead Uncle Show, a radio show at NIU. The show helped Castellaneta hone his skills as a voice-over actor. He recalled "We did parodies and sketches, we would double up on, so you learned to switch between voices. I got my feet wet doing a voiceover. The show was just barely audible, but we didn't care. It was that we got a chance to do it and write our own material." He took a play-writing class and auditioned for an improvisational show. A classmate first thought Castellaneta would "fall on his face with improvisation" but soon "was churning out material faster than [they] could make it work."
Career
Early career
Castellaneta began his acting career after his graduation from Northern Illinois University in 1979. He decided that if his career went nowhere he would still have a chance to try something else. He began taking improvisation classes, where he met his future wife Deb Lacusta. He started to work at The Second City, an improvisational theatre in Chicago, in 1983 and continued to work there until 1987. During this period, he did voice-over work with his wife for various radio stations.
He auditioned for a role in The Tracey Ullman Show and his first meeting underwhelmed Tracey Ullman and the other producers. Ullman decided to fly to Chicago to watch Castellaneta perform. His performance that night was about a blind man who tries to become a comedian and Ullman later recalled that although there were flashier performances that night, Castellaneta made her cry. She was impressed and Castellaneta was hired.
The Simpsons
Castellaneta is most famous for his roles on the longest-running American animated television show The Simpsons, most notably as Homer Simpson. The Tracey Ullman Show included a series of animated shorts about a dysfunctional family. Voices were needed for the shorts, so the producers decided to ask Castellaneta and fellow cast member Julie Kavner to voice Homer and Marge Simpson respectively, rather than hire more actors. Homer's voice began as a loose impression of Walter Matthau, but Castellaneta could not "get enough power behind that voice" and could not sustain his Matthau impression for the nine- to ten-hour long recording sessions.
He tried to find something easier, so he "dropped the voice down", and developed it into a more versatile and humorous voice during the second and third season of the half-hour show. To perform Homer's voice, Castellaneta lowers his chin to his chest, and is said to "let his IQ go."
Castellaneta likes to stay in character during recording sessions, and tries to visualize a scene in his mind so that he can give the proper voice to it. Despite Homer's fame, Castellaneta claims he is rarely recognized in public, "except, maybe, by a die-hard fan."
Castellaneta also provides the voices for numerous other characters, including Grampa Simpson, Barney Gumble, Krusty the Clown, Groundskeeper Willie, Mayor Quimby, Hans Moleman, Sideshow Mel, Itchy, Kodos, Arnie Pye, the Squeaky Voiced Teen and Gil Gunderson. Krusty's voice is based on Chicago television's Bob Bell, who had a very raspy voice and portrayed WGN-TV's Bozo the Clown from 1960 to 1984. During early recording sessions, he recorded a new version of Barney's loud trademark belch for every episode but discovered that it was not easy for him to belch each time a script called for it. Castellaneta chose a recording of what he believed was his best belch and told the producers to make that the standard.
Groundskeeper Willie's first appearance was in the season two episode "Principal Charming". The character was written as an angry janitor and Castellaneta was assigned to perform the voice. He did not know what voice to use and Sam Simon, who was directing at the time, suggested he use an accent. Castellaneta first tried using Hispanic voicing, which Simon felt was too clichéd. He then tried a "big dumb Swede", which was also rejected. For his third try, he used the voice of a grumpy Scotsman, which was deemed appropriate enough and was used in the episode. The voice was based partially on Angus Crock, a kilt-wearing chef from the sketch comedy show Second City Television, who was portrayed by Dave Thomas.
Mayor Quimby, who first appeared in "Bart Gets an 'F'", is a parody of various members of the Kennedy family. The episode script did not call for Quimby to be a parody of them, and Castellaneta improvised the accent. Sideshow Mel's voice is Castellaneta's impression of Kelsey Grammer, the voice of Sideshow Bob. Hapless Gil Gunderson is a spoof of actor Jack Lemmon's portrayal of Shelley Levene in the 1992 film adaptation of the play Glengarry Glen Ross. Showrunner Mike Scully thought that Gil would be "a one-shot thing" but "Dan Castellaneta was so funny at the table read doing the character, we kept making up excuses in subsequent episodes to put him in." The Blue-Haired Lawyer's voice, as well as his demeanor, is based on lawyer Roy Cohn.
Castellaneta has won several awards for voicing Homer, including four Primetime Emmy Awards for "Outstanding Voice-Over Performance" in 1992 for "Lisa's Pony", 1993 for "Mr. Plow", 2004 for voicing several characters in "Today I Am a Clown", and 2009 for voicing Homer in "Father Knows Worst".
In 1993, Castellaneta was given a special Annie Award, "Outstanding Individual Achievement in the Field of Animation", for his work as Homer on The Simpsons.
In 2004, Castellaneta and Julie Kavner (the voice of Marge) won a Young Artist Award for "Most Popular Mom & Dad in a TV Series". Homer was placed second on TV Guide's 2002 Top 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters, and in 2000, Homer and the rest of the Simpson family were awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard.
Until 1998, Castellaneta was paid $30,000 per episode. During a pay dispute in 1998, Fox threatened to replace the six main voice actors with new actors, going as far as preparing for casting of new voices. The dispute was soon resolved and Castellaneta began receiving $125,000 per episode until 2004, when the cast demanded to be paid $360,000 an episode. The issue was resolved a month later, with Castellaneta starting to earn $250,000 per episode. Following salary negotiations in 2008, the cast received approximately $400,000 per episode. In 2011, with Fox threatening to cancel the series unless production costs were cut, the cast accepted a pay cut to around $300,000 per episode.
In the early 1990s, Castellaneta and his wife Deb Lacusta wrote a script for an episode in which Barney becomes sober, and pitched it to showrunner Al Jean. He liked the story but turned it down because he felt that it was too similar to "Duffless", an episode that the writers were already working on. The two waited for nearly a decade and offered an updated version of the script to later showrunner Mike Scully, who liked it and had them make a few changes. Their script became the episode "Days of Wine and D'oh'ses". Castellaneta and his wife have also written the episodes "Gump Roast", "The Ziff Who Came to Dinner", "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangalore", and "The Fight Before Christmas". In 2007, they were nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for the episode "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangalore". Castellaneta is also credited as a consulting producer.
Further career
Castellaneta has been a regular cast member in several other television series. In 1991, he played Warren Morris in the short-lived ABC live-action sitcom Sibs. Heide Perlman, creator of Sibs, wrote the part with Castellaneta in mind.
He provided the voice of the eponymous character in The Adventures of Dynamo Duck, Megavolt in Darkwing Duck, "Doc" Emmett Brown in Back to the Future: The Animated Series, the lead character in Earthworm Jim and several characters, including Grandpa Phil and the Jolly Olly Man, the mentally unstable ice cream truck driver, on Nickelodeon's Hey Arnold!. He guest starred as The Robot Devil in five episodes of Futurama, as well as the Futurama film The Beast with a Billion Backs.
Castellaneta has also made guest appearances in a number of television series episodes. In 1992, he guest-starred in an episode of the legal drama L.A. Law, as a Homer Simpson meetable character at a California amusement park who is dismissed for inappropriate behavior while in costume.
In 1996, he made a guest appearance as a Zoo Keeper in Season 2, Episode 12 “The One After the Superbowl” in Friends.
In 2005, he appeared in the episode "Sword of Destiny" in Arrested Development as Dr. Stein, a deadpan incompetent doctor.
In 2005, Castellaneta guest-starred as Joe Spencer in the Stargate SG-1 season eight episode "Citizen Joe". He also appeared in episodes of ALF, Campus Ladies, Castle, Entourage, Everybody Loves Raymond, Frasier, Friends, Greek, How I Met Your Mother, Mad About You, Married... with Children, Murphy Brown, NYPD Blue, Parks and Recreation, Reba, Reno 911!, That '70s Show, Veronica Mars, Hot in Cleveland, Yes, Dear, and Desperate Housewives.
He appeared as the Genie in the Aladdin sequel The Return of Jafar and on the 1994 Aladdin television series. The Genie had been voiced by Robin Williams in Aladdin, and Castellaneta described replacing him as "sort of like stepping into Hamlet after Laurence Olivier did it, how can you win?" He also provided Genie's voice in the Kingdom Hearts video game series for both Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II (with archived audio used for Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and its remake as well as for the later HD collections Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix and Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix). Castellaneta portrayed Aaron Spelling in the 2004 NBC film Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Charlie's Angels, which followed the true story of how Spelling created the show. Other films in which Castellaneta has appeared include Nothing in Common, Say Anything..., Super Mario Bros., The Client, Space Jam, My Giant, The Simpsons Movie, Rugrats in Paris: The Movie, Recess: School's Out, Hey Arnold!: The Movie, The Cat in the Hat and The Pursuit of Happyness.
In 2000, he won an Annie Award for his portrayal of the Postman in the animated Christmas television special Olive, the Other Reindeer. In 2006, he appeared in Jeff Garlin's independent film I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With along with several other Second City alumni.
On February 22, 2000, his first music CD Two Lips was published. It was followed on April 23, 2002, by his first comedy CD, I Am Not Homer, in which he and his wife perform several comedy skits. The majority of the sketches had been written and performed before the CD was recorded, and Castellaneta thought that it would be a good idea to preserve them "since [he and Lacusta] don't perform them much anymore."
Some came from their sketch series on a local radio station in Chicago and had to be lengthened from the "two-minute bits" that they were original, while several others were stage sketches performed in a comedy club in Santa Monica. Additionally, "Citizen Kane", a sketch in which two people discuss the film Citizen Kane with different meanings, was something the pair had performed at an art gallery. Castellaneta noted that "we already knew that these skits were funny, [but] some of them we polished and tightened." The skits were principally written by improvising from a basic point, transcribing the results, and then editing them to the finished scene. Castellaneta chose the title I Am Not Homer as a parody of Leonard Nimoy's famous first autobiography I Am Not Spock, as well as to show that most of the comedy featured "is not the typical Homer comedy."
Alongside his television and film work, Castellaneta has appeared in a number of theatrical productions. In 1992, he starred in Deb & Dan's Show alongside his wife. In 1995, Castellaneta started writing Where Did Vincent van Gogh?, a one man play in which he portrays a dozen different characters, including artist Vincent van Gogh. He first officially performed the play at the ACME Comedy Theatre in Los Angeles in 1999. In 2007, he appeared in The Bicycle Men at King's Head Theatre in London.
Castellaneta hosted the final of New York comedy show Thrills and Spills on December 31, 2015. The final was held in Montgomery, Alabama.
Personal life
In 1987, Castellaneta married writer and actress Deb Lacusta, whom he had met at an improv class in Chicago. They divide their time between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, California.
Castellaneta is a vegetarian and does not drink alcohol. He enjoys exercising regularly and practicing tai chi. He is Catholic.
Filmography
Discography
Also featured in:
The Simpsons Sing the Blues (1990)
Songs in the Key of Springfield (1997)
The Yellow Album (1998)
Go Simpsonic with The Simpsons (1999)
The Simpsons: Testify (2007)
Awards and nominations
References
External links
Dan Castellaneta at IMDb
Dan Castellaneta at the TCM Movie Database
Dan Castellaneta at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television |
Julie_Kavner | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Kavner | [
774
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Kavner"
] | Julie Deborah Kavner (born September 7, 1950) is an American actress. Before becoming well-known for her voice role as Marge Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons, Kavner attracted notice for her role as Brenda Morgenstern, the younger sister of Valerie Harper's title character in the sitcom Rhoda, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She also voices other characters for The Simpsons, including Marge's mother, Jacqueline Bouvier, sisters Patty and Selma Bouvier, and half-step-great-aunt Eunice Bouvier.
Known for her improvisation and distinctive "honeyed gravel voice", Kavner was cast in her first professional acting role as Brenda Morgenstern in Rhoda in 1974. Starting in 1987, Kavner appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show. The Tracey Ullman Show included a series of animated shorts about a dysfunctional family. Voices were needed for the shorts, and the producers asked Kavner to voice Marge. The shorts were spun off into The Simpsons.
Kavner has been described as "nearly reclusive"; part of her contract says that she will never have to promote The Simpsons on video. For her work as Marge, Kavner received another Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance in 1992 and an Annie Award nomination for her performance as the character in The Simpsons Movie (2007).
Typically cast as a "woman who is supportive, sympathetic or self-effacingly funny", Kavner grew to dislike playing such roles. In 1992, she starred in This Is My Life, her first leading role in a feature film. Kavner has also appeared in live-action roles in six films written by Woody Allen and in the Adam Sandler comedy Click.
Early life
Kavner was born in Los Angeles, California, on September 7, 1950, the second daughter of Rose, a family counselor, and David Kavner, a furniture manufacturer, and grew up in Southern California. She decided to pursue a career in acting because "There was nothing else I wanted to do, ever". She attended Beverly Hills High School (which she later admitted she hated), where she was "something of a loner", and unsuccessfully tried out for several plays. John Ingle, formerly the chairman of the Beverly Hills High School art department, later commented that Kavner was "excellent at improvisation, but she wasn't an ingenue [sic] and not that castable at that age".
After graduating from high school, Kavner attended San Diego State University and majored in drama, being cast in several productions including a role as Charlotte Corday in Marat/Sade, becoming known for her improvisation and ability to do both comedy and drama. After graduating in 1971, she got a day job as a typist at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture.
Career
Early career
In 1973, Kavner auditioned for a role as one of Rhoda Morgenstern's sisters in The Mary Tyler Moore Show. David Davis, producer of the show, had convinced her to audition for the part, but decided to cast another actress instead. A year later, Rhoda Morgenstern became the leading character in a spin-off called Rhoda. Kavner was cast in her first professional acting role as Brenda Morgenstern, sister of the eponymous character. Rhoda ran on CBS from September 9, 1974, to December 1978. She received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Continuing Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for playing Brenda, winning in 1978. She also received four Golden Globe Award nominations. In 1975, she received Daytime Emmy Award nomination for her starring role in the daytime special The Girl Who Couldn't Lose.
Following Rhoda, Kavner had a guest appearance on Taxi and appeared in the 1985 comedy Bad Medicine as well as the 1987 film Surrender, both of which were box office failures (and also starred Steve Guttenberg). She appeared in the television movies Revenge of the Stepford Wives, No Other Love and A Fine Romance, and shot a television pilot. She also starred in several stage plays, including a play called It Had to Be You at a dinner theater in Canada, Particular Friendships in New York City in 1981, and Two for the Seesaw, directed by Burt Reynolds. Woody Allen first saw Kavner one night while he was watching Rhoda in the 1970s. He thought that she was remarkable and later offered her a role in his 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters. Kavner agreed, and credits Allen and the film with rejuvenating her career.
Kavner was then cast as a sidekick to Tracey Ullman in The Tracey Ullman Show, which debuted on Fox in 1987. Kavner described the show as, "like being back in school, a chance to play a wide variety of characters, some really vicious people, to not rest on laurels, to not play it safe". Kavner commented, "What I do is not mimicry or an impersonation, but more of an assimilation. [On The Tracey Ullman Show] we did a lot of looking at people to find out who to base our characters on. We did our homework on our lunch hour." She received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Best Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program.
The Simpsons
Kavner became known for her role as Marge Simpson on the animated television show The Simpsons, a show that continues to the present day. The Tracey Ullman Show included a series of animated shorts about the dysfunctional Simpson family. Voices were needed for the shorts, so the producers decided to ask Kavner and fellow cast member Dan Castellaneta to voice Marge and Homer rather than hire more actors. Kavner has what Hilary de Vries of The New York Times described as a "honeyed gravel voice". Kavner says her voice is due to "a bump on [her] vocal cords". Marge's voice has aged considerably throughout the series as Kavner has gotten older, and the higher register of Marge's voice in the earliest seasons had to be adjusted as it began to strain Kavner's voice.
Although Marge is her highest profile character on the show, Kavner's favorite characters to voice are Marge's sisters Patty and Selma Bouvier because "they're really funny and sad at the same time". Series creator Matt Groening instructed Kavner to voice the duo as characters who "suck the life out of everything". Both have similar raspy voices, but Patty's voice is more masculine and has a lower register, while Selma's voice is a little sweeter. Kavner also provides the voices of every other female member of the Bouvier family, including Marge's mother Jacqueline, Great-Aunt Gladys (a dead relative who was introduced on season four's "Selma's Choice"), and an unnamed grandmother seen on the season six episode "Fear of Flying".
While cast members and crew have referenced Kavner as a deep fan of the series and the characters she voices, part of Kavner's contract says that she will never have to promote The Simpsons on video nor has she performed Marge's voice in public because she believes the publicity "destroys the illusion. People feel these are real people." Kavner takes recording sessions seriously, and feels that voice acting is "a little more limiting than live acting. And I have nothing to do with my character's movement." Nancy Cartwright, who voices Bart Simpson, said in her book My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy (2000) that Kavner is a warm person who is "a workhorse of an actor" with "extraordinary professionalism and quiet work ethic", and notes that she is rarely late for recording sessions. Kavner had very few recorded interviews in regard to her work on the show. In behind-the-scenes footage from 1992, she describes Marge as "a wonderful person" with "a great sex life". On a 1994 appearance on Late Show with David Letterman, Kavner explains that performing the voice of Marge in a live-action setting would break the illusion of the character, and that she does not want her own likeness to overlap with that of the character. However, after being coaxed by Letterman, Kavner turns to face away from the camera and speaks briefly in the voice of Marge.
Until 1998, Kavner was paid $30,000 per episode. During a pay dispute in 1998, Fox threatened to replace the six main voice actors with new actors, going as far as preparing to cast new voices. However, the dispute was soon resolved and she received $125,000 per episode until 2004 when the voice actors demanded that they be paid $360,000 an episode. The issue was resolved a month later, and Kavner earned $250,000 per episode. After salary re-negotiations in 2008, the voice actors received approximately $400,000 per episode. Three years later, with Fox threatening to cancel the series unless production costs were cut, Kavner and the other cast members accepted a 30 percent pay cut, down to just over $300,000 per episode.
At the 44th Primetime Emmy Awards, Kavner received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance for voicing Marge in the season three episode "I Married Marge". In 2004, Kavner and Dan Castellaneta won a Young Artist Award for Most Popular Mom & Dad in a TV Series. For her performance in The Simpsons Movie, Kavner was nominated for Best Voice Acting in an Animated Feature at the 2007 Annie Awards, but Ian Holm from Ratatouille received the award. Kavner's emotional performance in the movie got positive reviews, and one critic said she "gave what must be the most heartfelt performance ever to find its way into a movie based on an irreverent cartoon". Some scenes in the movie, such as Marge's emotional video message to Homer, were recorded over 100 times, leaving Kavner exhausted.
Further career
Many of Kavner's roles have been described by New York Times writer Hilary de Vries as a "woman who is supportive, sympathetic, or self-effacingly funny". Kavner grew to despise playing such roles, saying "If it smacks of Brenda Morgenstern, I won't take the job." She had a supporting role as Eleanor Costello, a nurse who befriends Robin Williams' character in the Academy Award nominated film Awakenings (1990). Kavner interviewed several nurses in preparation for the role, and Penny Marshall, the director of the film, described Kavner as "a low-maintenance actor [...] You never have to worry about giving [her] back-story for her characters." In 1992, Kavner starred in This Is My Life, her first leading role in a feature film. Kavner played Dottie Ingels, an aspiring stand-up comedian who starts neglecting her family when her career begins to take off. Kavner described Dottie as "really selfish" but admitted, "I liked the role for that very reason." Kavner had been asked to play a character with a smaller role in the film, but Joe Roth, at the time the chairman of 20th Century Fox, suggested that they cast a lesser known actress in the lead role. Nora Ephron, the writer of This Is My Life, said Kavner "has so little vanity that it is almost shocking. Not only does she have no demands as an actress – 'How big is my trailer, what's in my refrigerator?' – but she will do anything for the character if it makes sense to her."
Kavner has frequently appeared in Woody Allen films, having roles in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Radio Days (1987), New York Stories (1989), Alice (1990), Shadows and Fog (1991), the television movie Don't Drink the Water (1994) and Deconstructing Harry (1997). Allen described her as "a naturally funny person. When she does a scene, you listen to her and look at her, and the prism through which it's all filtered is funny." Kavner believes he is "a true filmmaker, one that has something to say, continually experimenting on different themes within his own film-making", adding that "anything [Allen] ever does, I always want to do, [...] I don't even have to read it."
She has done voice-over work in films such as The Lion King 1½ (2004), Dr. Dolittle (1998) and an uncredited role as an announcer in A Walk on the Moon (1999). She worked with Tracey Ullman in the HBO sketch comedy series Tracey Takes On... She was cast as the mother of Adam Sandler's character in Click, released in 2006. She has not appeared in a non-Simpsons role since her appearance in Click.
Personal life
Kavner is Jewish. She has lived in New York City's Manhattan borough since around 1992. She leads an intensely private life, described by The New York Times as "nearly reclusive" and "discreet and guarded beyond the usual reticent star routine". She rarely makes public appearances and refuses to be photographed while working. She was in a relationship with producer David Davis from 1976 until his death in 2022. Neither of them confirmed being married, though reports referred to her as his wife at the time of his death.
In 1983, Current Biography referred to Kavner as an avid athlete and pescetarian. In a 1992 interview with The New York Times, she said she was considering retiring "except for doing three days a year for Woody [Allen]", but had a feeling that she would receive a script she wanted "to do more than life itself" upon retiring.
Filmography
References
External links
Julie Kavner at IMDb
Julie Kavner at the TCM Movie Database
Julie Kavner at the Internet Off-Broadway Database |
Nancy_Cartwright | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Cartwright | [
774
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Cartwright"
] | Nancy Jean Cartwright (born October 25, 1957) is an American actress. She is the long-time voice of Bart Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons, for which she has received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance and an Annie Award for Best Voice Acting in the Field of Animation. Cartwright also voices other characters for the show, including Ralph Wiggum, Todd Flanders, Nelson Muntz, and Maggie Simpson. She is also the voice of Chuckie Finster in the Nickelodeon series Rugrats and its spin-off All Grown Up!, succeeding Christine Cavanaugh.
Cartwright was born in Dayton, Ohio. She moved to Hollywood in 1978 and trained under voice actor Daws Butler. Her first professional role was voicing Gloria in the animated series Richie Rich, which she followed with a starring role in the television movie Marian Rose White (1982) and her first feature film, Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). In 1987, Cartwright auditioned for a role in a series of animated shorts about a dysfunctional family that was to appear on The Tracey Ullman Show. Cartwright intended to audition for the role of Lisa Simpson, the middle child; when she arrived at the audition, she found the role of Bart—Lisa's brother—to be more interesting. Matt Groening, the series' creator, allowed her to audition for Bart and offered her the role on the spot. She voiced Bart for three seasons on The Tracey Ullman Show, and in 1989, the shorts were spun off into a half-hour show called The Simpsons.
Besides The Simpsons, Cartwright has also voiced numerous other animated characters, including Daffney Gillfin in Snorks, Mellissa Screetch in Toonsylvania, Rufus in Kim Possible, Mindy in Animaniacs, Pistol in Goof Troop, the Robots in Crashbox, Margo Sherman in The Critic and Todd Daring in The Replacements. In 2000, she published her autobiography, My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy, and four years later, adapted it into a one-woman play. In 2017, she wrote and produced the film In Search of Fellini.
Early life
Nancy Jean Cartwright was born on October 25, 1957, in Dayton, Ohio, Frank and Miriam Cartwright's fourth of six children. She grew up in Kettering, Ohio, and discovered her talent for voices at an early age. While in the fourth grade at the school of St. Charles Borromeo, she won a school-wide speech competition with her performance of Rudyard Kipling's How the Camel Got His Hump. Cartwright attended Fairmont West High School, and participated in the school's theater and marching band. She regularly entered public speaking competitions, placing first in the "Humorous Interpretation" category at the National District Tournament two years running. The judges often suggested to her that she should perform cartoon voices. Cartwright graduated from high school in 1976 and accepted a scholarship from Ohio University. She continued to compete in public speaking competitions; during her sophomore year, she placed fifth in the National Speech Tournament's exposition category with her speech "The Art of Animation".
In 1976, Cartwright landed a part-time job doing voice-overs for commercials on WING radio in Dayton. A representative from Warner Bros. Records visited WING and later sent Cartwright a list of contacts in the animation industry. One of these was Daws Butler, known for voicing characters such as Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss, Elroy Jetson, Spike the Bulldog, and Yogi Bear. Cartwright called him and left a message in a Cockney accent on his answering machine. Butler immediately called her back and agreed to be her mentor. He mailed her a script and instructed her to send him a tape recording of herself reading it. Once he received the tape, Butler critiqued it and sent her notes. For the next year, they continued in this way, completing a new script every few weeks. Cartwright described Butler as "absolutely amazing, always encouraging, always polite".
Cartwright returned to Ohio University for her sophomore year, but transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) so she could be closer to Hollywood and Butler. Her mother, Miriam, died late in the summer of 1978. Cartwright nearly changed her relocation plans but, on September 17, 1978, "joylessly" left for Westwood, Los Angeles.
Career
Early career
While attending UCLA, which did not have a public speaking team, Cartwright continued training as a voice actress with Butler. She recalled, "every Sunday I'd take a 20-minute bus ride to his house in Beverly Hills for a one-hour lesson and be there for four hours ... They had four sons, they didn't have a daughter and I kind of fitted in as the baby of the family." Butler introduced her to many of the voice actors and directors at Hanna-Barbera. After she met the director Gordon Hunt, he asked her to audition for a recurring role as Gloria in Richie Rich. She received the part, and later worked with Hunt on several other projects. At the end of 1980, Cartwright signed with a talent agency and landed a lead role in a pilot for a sitcom called In Trouble. Cartwright described the show as "forgettable, but it jump-started my on-camera career". She graduated from UCLA in 1981 with a degree in theater. During the summer, Cartwright worked with Jonathan Winters as part of an improvisation troupe at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.
Returning to Los Angeles, Cartwright won the lead role in the television movie Marian Rose White. Janet Maslin, a critic for The New York Times, described Cartwright as "a chubby, lumbering, slightly cross-eyed actress whose naturalness adds greatly to the film's impact". Cartwright replied by sending Maslin a letter insisting she was not cross-eyed, and included a photograph. Later, Cartwright auditioned for the role of Ethel, a girl who becomes trapped in a cartoon world in the third segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie. She met with director Joe Dante and later described him as "a total cartoon buff, and once he took a look at my resume and noticed Daws Butler's name on it, we were off and running, sharing anecdotes about Daws and animation. After about twenty minutes, he said, 'considering your background, I don't see how I could cast anyone but you in this part!'" It was her first role in a feature film. The segment was based on The Twilight Zone television series episode "It's a Good Life", which was later parodied in The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror II" (1991).
Cartwright continued to do voice work for projects including Pound Puppies, Popeye and Son, Snorks, My Little Pony and Saturday Supercade. She joined a "loop group", and recorded vocals for characters in the background of films, although in most cases the sound was turned down so that very little of her voice was heard. She did minor voice-over work for several films, including The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986), Silverado (1985), Sixteen Candles (1984), Back to the Future Part II, and The Color Purple (1985). Cartwright also voiced a shoe that was "dipped" in acid in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), describing it as her first "off-screen death scene", and worked to correctly convey the emotion involved.
In 1985, she auditioned for a guest spot as Cynthia in Cheers. The audition called for her to say her line and walk off the set. Cartwright decided to take a chance on being different and continued walking, leaving the building and returning home. The production crew was confused, but she received the part. In search of more training as an actress, Cartwright joined a class taught by Hollywood coach Milton Katselas. He recommended that Cartwright study La Strada, a 1956 Italian film starring Giulietta Masina and directed by Federico Fellini. She began performing "every imaginable scene" from La Strada in her class and spent several months trying to secure the rights to produce a stage adaptation. She visited Italy with the intention of meeting Fellini and requesting his permission in person. Although they never met, Cartwright kept a journal of the trip and later wrote a one-woman play called In Search of Fellini, partially based on her voyage. The play was co-written by Peter Kjenaas, and Cartwright won a Drama-Logue Award after performing it in Los Angeles in 1995. In a 1998 interview, she stated her intention to make it into a feature film, which she succeeded in doing in 2017.
The Simpsons
Cartwright voices the character Bart Simpson on the long-running animated television show The Simpsons. On March 13, 1987, she auditioned for a series of animated shorts about a dysfunctional family that was to appear on The Tracey Ullman Show, a sketch comedy program. Cartwright had intended to audition for the role of Lisa Simpson, the elder daughter. After arriving at the audition, she found that Lisa was simply described as the middle child and at the time did not have much personality. Cartwright became more interested in the role of Bart, described as "devious, underachieving, school-hating, irreverent, [and] clever". Creator Matt Groening let her try out for Bart and gave her the job on the spot. Bart's voice came naturally to Cartwright, as she had previously used elements of it in My Little Pony, Snorks, and Pound Puppies. Cartwright describes Bart's voice as easy to perform compared with other characters. The recording of the shorts was often primitive; the dialog was recorded on a portable tape deck in a makeshift studio above the bleachers on the set of The Tracey Ullman Show. Cartwright, the only cast member to have been professionally trained in voice acting, described the sessions as "great fun". However, she wanted to appear in the live-action sketches and occasionally showed up for recording sessions early, hoping to be noticed by a producer.
In 1989, the shorts were spun off into a half-hour show on the Fox network called The Simpsons. Bart quickly became the show's breakout personality and one of the most celebrated characters on television—his popularity in 1990 and 1991 was known as "Bartmania". Bart was described as "television's brightest new star" by Mike Boone of The Gazette and was named 1990's "entertainer of the year" by Entertainment Weekly. Despite Bart's fame, however, Cartwright remained relatively unknown. During the first season of The Simpsons, Fox ordered Cartwright not to give interviews, because they did not want to publicize the fact that Bart was voiced by a woman. Cartwright's normal speaking voice is said to have "no obvious traces of Bart", and she believes her role is "the best acting job in the world" since she is rarely recognized in public. When she is recognized and asked to perform Bart's voice in front of children, Cartwright refuses because it "freaks [them] out". Bart's catchphrase "Eat My Shorts" was an ad-lib by Cartwright in one of the original table readings, referring to an incident from her high school days. Once while performing, members of the Fairmont West High School marching band switched their chant from the usual "Fairmont West! Fairmont West!" to the irreverent "Eat my shorts!" Cartwright felt it appropriate for Bart, and improvised the line; it became a popular catchphrase on the show.
Cartwright voices several other characters on the show, including Nelson Muntz, Ralph Wiggum, Todd Flanders, Kearney, and Database. She first voiced Nelson in the episode "Bart the General" (season one, 1990). The character was to be voiced by Dana Hill, but Hill missed the recording session and Cartwright was given the role. She developed Nelson's voice on the spot and describes him as "a throat-ripper". Ralph Wiggum had originally been voiced by Jo Ann Harris, but Cartwright was assigned to voice the character in "Bart the Murderer" (season three, 1991). Todd Flanders, the only voice for which Cartwright used another source, is based on Sherman (voiced by Walter Tetley), the boy from Peabody's Improbable History, a series of shorts aired on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
Cartwright received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance in 1992 for her performance as Bart in the episode "Separate Vocations" and an Annie Award in 1995 for Best Voice Acting in the Field of Animation. Bart was named one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century by Time, and in 2000, Bart and the rest of the Simpson family were awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard.
Until 1998, Cartwright was paid $30,000 per episode. During a pay dispute in 1998, Fox threatened to replace the six main voice actors and made preparations for casting new actors. The dispute was resolved, however, and Cartwright received $125,000 per episode until 2004, when the voice actors demanded $360,000 an episode. A compromise was reached after a month, and Cartwright's pay rose to $250,000 per episode. Salaries were re-negotiated in 2008 with the voice actors receiving approximately $400,000 per episode. Three years later, with Fox threatening to cancel the series unless production costs were cut, Cartwright and the other cast members accepted a 25 percent pay cut, down to just over $300,000 per episode.
Further career
In addition to her work on The Simpsons, Cartwright has voiced many other characters on several animated series, including Chuckie Finster in Rugrats and All Grown Up!, Margo Sherman in The Critic, Mindy in Animaniacs, and Rufus the naked mole-rat in Kim Possible. For the role of Rufus, Cartwright researched mole-rats extensively, and became "a font of useless trivia". She was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program in 2004 for her work on the show. In 2001, Cartwright took over the Rugrats role of Chuckie Finster when Christine Cavanaugh retired. Cartwright describes Rufus and Chuckie as her two most difficult voices: "Rufus because my diaphragm gets a workout while trying to utilize the 18 vocal sounds a mole makes. Chuckie because ... he's an asthmatic with five personalities rolled into one—plus I have to do the voice the way [Cavanaugh] did it for 10 years." Other television shows that have used her voice work include Galaxy High, God, the Devil and Bob, Goof Troop, Mike, Lu & Og, The Replacements, Pinky and the Brain and Timberwolf. Cartwright has appeared on camera in numerous television shows and films, including Fame, Empty Nest, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Flesh and Blood, Godzilla, and 24.
In 2000, Cartwright published her autobiography, My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy. The book details her career (particularly her experiences as the voice of Bart) and contains stories about life behind the scenes of The Simpsons. Laura A. Bischoff of the Dayton Daily News commented that the book was the "ultimate insider's guide to The Simpsons". Critics complained that the book lacked interesting stories and was aimed mostly at fans of The Simpsons rather than a general audience.
Cartwright adapted My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy into a one-woman play in 2004. Cartwright has performed it at a variety of venues, including the August 2004 Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. The play received modest reviews, including criticism for a lack of inside stories about The Simpsons, and its "overweeningly upbeat" tone. David Chatterton of The British Theatre Guide described the show as "interesting and entertaining, but not really a 'must see' even for Simpsons fans".
Cartwright has shown an interest in stock car racing and as of 2007 was seeking a NASCAR license. In 2001, she founded a production company called SportsBlast and created an online animated series called The Kellys. The series is focused on racing; Cartwright voices a seven-year-old named Chip Kelly.
In 2016, Cartwright launched Spotted Cow Entertainment, her own film and television production company, with Peter Kjenaas, Monica Gil and Kevin Burke. With a focus on international audiences, Spotted Cow is seeking "to finance, produce and acquire live action and animated films, television series, as well as entertainment for digital platforms with budgets up to $15M." With Spotted Cow, Cartwright made her first film as a screenwriter and producer, In Search of Fellini, which was released on September 15, 2017. Based on her own journey to Italy in 1985 in a bid to meet the famed director Federico Fellini, the film fulfilled Cartwright's longtime vision of turning her 1995 one-woman play In Search of Fellini into a movie.
Personal life
Cartwright met real-estate agent Warren Murphy, 24 years her senior, on her birthday in 1988 and married him two months later. In her book, she describes Murphy as her "personal laugh track". The couple had two children, Lucy and Jack, before divorcing in 2002.
Cartwright was raised a Roman Catholic but joined the Church of Scientology in 1991. She was awarded Scientology's Patron Laureate Award after donating $10,000,000, almost twice her annual salary, to the Church in 2007.
Cartwright is a contributor to ASIFA-Hollywood's Animation Archive Project. In September 2007, Cartwright received the Make-A-Wish Foundation's Wish Icon Award "for her tremendous dedication to the Foundation's fundraising and wish-fulfillment efforts." In 2005, Cartwright created a scholarship at Fairmont High School "designed to aid Fairmont [graduates] who dream of following in her footsteps and studying speech, debate, drama or music" at Ohio University. In 2005, Cartwright was given the title of Honorary Mayor of Northridge, California (a neighborhood of Los Angeles) by the Northridge Chamber of Commerce.
In 2007, Cartwright was in a romantic relationship with contractor Stephen Brackett, a fellow member of Scientology. In early 2008, the couple had made plans to marry, but Brackett died in May 2009.
In 2012, Cartwright received an honorary doctorate degree in communication from Ohio University, where she was a student from 1976 to 1977 before transferring to UCLA.
Cartwright is also a painter, sculptor and philanthropist. She co-founded the Know More About Drugs alliance.
Filmography
Live-action
Film
Television
Voice roles
Film
Animation
Video games
Music videos
Theme parks
Web series
Producer
Other credits
Awards
References
Bibliography
External links
Official website
Nancy Cartwright at IMDb
Nancy Cartwright at the TCM Movie Database
Nancy Cartwright at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television |
Yeardley_Smith | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeardley_Smith | [
774
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeardley_Smith"
] | Martha Maria Yeardley Smith ( YARD-lee; born July 3, 1964) is an American actress. She stars as the voice of Lisa Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons.
Smith became an actress in 1982 after graduating from drama school. She moved to New York City in 1984, where she appeared in the Broadway production of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing. She made her film debut in 1985's Heaven Help Us, followed by roles in The Legend of Billie Jean and Maximum Overdrive. She moved to Los Angeles in 1986 and took a recurring role in the television series Brothers.
In 1987, Smith auditioned for the Simpsons shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show. Smith intended to audition for the role of Bart Simpson, but the casting director felt her voice was too high, and she was cast as Bart's sister Lisa. In 1989, the shorts were spun off into their own half-hour show, The Simpsons. For her work on The Simpsons, Smith received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance in 1992.
Alongside The Simpsons, Smith appeared in the sitcom Herman's Head as Louise, and had recurring appearances as Marlene on Dharma & Greg and as Penny in two episodes of Dead Like Me. She has appeared in several films, including City Slickers, Just Write, Toys, and As Good as It Gets. In 2004, Smith performed an off-Broadway one-woman show entitled More at the Union Square Theatre in New York City. Aside from The Simpsons, Smith has recorded few voice-over parts, only commercials and the film We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story. Smith starred in and served as executive producer for the independent romantic comedy Waiting For Ophelia, which had its world premiere at the Phoenix Film Festival in April 2009.
Early life
Smith was born on July 3, 1964, in Paris, France. Her father, Joseph Smith, worked for United Press International in Paris and moved to Washington, D.C., in 1966, where he became The Washington Post's first official obituary editor. Her mother, Martha Mayor, was a paper conservator for the Freer and Sackler Galleries at the Smithsonian Institution. Smith's parents later divorced. Her maternal grandfather was art historian A. Hyatt Mayor, and among her great-grandparents were marine biologist and zoologist Alpheus Hyatt and artist and sculptor Harriet Randolph Hyatt Mayor. She is also the paternal niece of political scientist, historian, and Latin American studies specialist Peter H. Smith. Smith has labeled her family "upper crust and reserved". As a child, Smith was often teased because of her unusual voice. Smith has stated: "I've sounded pretty much the same way since I was six. Maybe [my voice is] a little deeper now." She made her acting debut in a sixth-grade play.
Career
Early career
Smith became a professional actress in 1982. After appearances in a number of school plays, she joined the local Arena Stage theater group on an apprenticeship, featuring in their production of Peter Pan. She went on to star in several other plays in Washington. She moved to New York City in 1984 and appeared in the Broadway production of Tom Stoppard's play The Real Thing alongside Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close.
Smith's first film role came in Heaven Help Us (1985). She then played Putter in The Legend of Billie Jean (also 1985). The film was a box office bomb and critically panned, although Smith "thought it would be the movie that launched my career. And then it was out at the box office about 10 days before it died." When filming was over, she rejoined The Real Thing before being out of work for six months. Smith worried her career was over. However, the following year, she played Connie in Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive (1986), noting it was "truly a dreadful film, but I had a great part in it."
Smith moved to Los Angeles in 1986 on the "semi-promise" of a part in a TV film. After the audition, the role was given to another actress. Smith realized "that people don't mean what they say. It's not malicious. They just don't realize how much impact they have on an impressionable actor – and all actors are impressionable." From then on, she decided to "just sort of build a wall around myself", to cope with the disappointment of not getting a part. In Los Angeles, Smith appeared in theatrical productions of Living on Salvation Street, for which she was paid $14 for each performance, Boys and Girls/Men and Women, and How the Other Half Loves, and played the recurring role of Louella Waters on the Showtime series Brothers. She appeared in the films The Legend of Billie Jean and Ginger Ale Afternoon (1989) as "trailer-park girls". She later spoke of her regrets of appearing in the latter in her one-woman show More.
The Simpsons
Smith's longest-running role is voicing Lisa Simpson on The Simpsons. She has voiced Lisa since 1987, beginning with The Simpsons shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show. Smith had initially been asked to audition for the role of Lisa's brother Bart, but casting director Bonita Pietila thought her voice was too high. Smith later recalled "I always sounded too much like a girl, I read two lines as Bart and they said, 'Thanks for coming!'" Smith was given the role of Lisa, instead. She denies rumors that she almost turned down the role, though admits she had never planned a career in voice-over work. Pietila stated that, having seen her in Living on Salvation Street, Smith was always her preferred choice. Smith lifts her voice up slightly to perform the role. Lisa is the only regular character voiced by Smith, although in some earlier episodes, she provided some of Maggie's squeaks and occasional speaking parts. Smith has only voiced characters other than Lisa on very rare occasions, with those characters usually being some derivative of Lisa, such as Lisa Bella in "Last Tap Dance in Springfield" and Lisa, Jr. in "Missionary: Impossible" (both from season 11 in 2000). Smith spends two days a week recording the show.
Until 1998, Smith was paid $30,000 per episode. During a pay dispute in 1998, Fox threatened to replace the six main voice actors with new actors, going as far as preparing to cast new voices. However, the dispute was soon resolved and she received $125,000 per episode until 2004, when the voice actors demanded that they be paid $360,000 per episode. The issue was resolved a month later, and Smith earned $250,000 per episode. After salary renegotiations in 2008, the voice actors received about $400,000 per episode. Three years later, with Fox threatening to cancel the series unless production costs were cut, Smith and the other cast members accepted a 25% pay cut, down to just over $300,000 per episode.
Despite her world-famous role, Smith is rarely recognized in public, which she does not mind, saying, "it's wonderful to be in the midst of all this hype about the show, and people enjoying the show so much, and to be totally a fly on the wall; people never recognise me solely from my voice." In a 2009 interview with The Guardian, she commented: "It's the best job ever. I have nothing but gratitude for the amount of freedom The Simpsons has bought me in my life."
Smith received a Primetime Emmy Award in 1992, but felt it was not worth anything, saying "there's part of me that feels it wasn't even a real Emmy." The Emmy for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance is a Creative Arts and not handed out during the primetime telecast and, prior to 2009, was a juried award without nominations. However, Smith says "if I had to be associated with one character in fiction, I will always be thrilled that it was Lisa Simpson." The show's creator Matt Groening has called Smith very similar to Lisa: "Yeardley has strong moral views about her character. There are lines that are written for Lisa that Yeardley reads and says, 'No, I wouldn't say that.'" Writer Jay Kogen praised her performance on the show, particularly in the episode "Lisa's Substitute", as able "to move past comedy to something really strong and serious and dramatic".
Further career
From 1991 to 1994, alongside The Simpsons, Smith was one of the lead cast members in the sitcom Herman's Head as Louise. Her other television roles include recurring appearances as Marlene on Dharma & Greg, and Penny in two episodes of Dead Like Me. Smith has also appeared in Phil of the Future and Teen Angel. Her one-scene role as pregnant checkout girl Nancy in 1991's City Slickers earned her "more attention than all [her] previous roles combined", and taught her "that it's far better to have small parts in big movies that everyone sees." In 1997, she appeared as Lulu the palm reader in the independent film Just Write. Her other roles include parts in Barry Levinson's Toys and James L. Brooks' As Good as It Gets. Brooks, who is also executive producer of The Simpsons, had cast Smith in his 1994 film I'll Do Anything (in one of the film's musical numbers), but her part was cut. Aside from The Simpsons, Smith has recorded few voice-over parts, only commercials and the film We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story. She "had a voice-over agent for about two years, and I used to go out [on auditions] all the time, but it never really came to anything. Everybody said, 'Oh Yeardley, you'll clean up,' and that was definitely not the case."
In 2004, Smith performed her own off-Broadway one-woman show entitled More at the Union Square Theatre in New York City. Directed by Judith Ivey, the play is about her mixed feelings over the success of The Simpsons, her parents, her relationships, and her struggles with bulimia. The New York Times critic Margo Jefferson called it an "appealing if overlong show", adding that "The career narrative needed shortening. This would involve some editing and revising but wouldn't taint the best parts of More. It is refreshing to hear a celebrity talk cleanly about being fame-driven and about not getting the degree or the kind of fame you craved. It's fun to watch a skilled actress use her craft to the full." She would later perform the play for three weeks in Los Angeles the following year.
Smith starred in and served as executive producer for the independent romantic comedy Waiting for Ophelia, which was released in 2009. She funded the film, which was written by Adam Carl and based on a stage play he wrote in 2003. She said: "I loved it. I never get to play parts like that. I always play the friend of a friend, never the lead. And the script surprised me." Carl stated it was very unlikely she would recoup her money, but Smith decided she "believe[d] in this project, and my expectations have already been fulfilled by making the movie", and added: "You can support art even if it's not going to make a zillion dollars." It premiered on April 4, 2009, at the Phoenix Film Festival.
In 2011, Smith starred as Ms. Miller in the movie The Chaperone alongside Triple H and Ariel Winter.
In June 2016, the Human Rights Campaign released a video in tribute to the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting; in the video, Smith and others told the stories of the people killed there. On March 30, 2019, Smith was honored with the Human Rights Campaign's National Leadership Award in Los Angeles for her work as an advocate of the LGBT community.
In 2017, Smith started a podcast, Small Town Dicks, which explores real life crime in small towns in the United States. Smith had co-hosted the podcast with actress and long-time friend Zibby Allen until March 2019 when the two filed lawsuits against one another, with Allen accusing Smith of pushing her out of ownership and profit rights from the show.
Politics
Smith is a lifelong Democrat.
In 2018, Smith mocked Republican Ted Cruz after he labeled the Democratic Party "the party of Lisa Simpson". Smith recommended that people of differing political views should be able to work together on gun control, promoting gay rights and environmentalism.
Personal life
Smith married English-Canadian actor Christopher Grove in 1990. They were divorced in 1992, citing irreconcilable differences.
In a 1997 interview with The Daily Targum, Smith stated "I am shy, but I have an extroverted persona which I can draw on when I need to," and that she is a "private" actress.
She married Daniel Erickson in 2002; the marriage lasted for six years and Smith filed for divorce on May 21, 2008, citing irreconcilable differences.
In 2009, she commented, "People have said to me that I'm unassuming. It's true, I'm the worst celebrity ever. But I'm trying to become better."
Smith had bulimia when she was a teenager. She noted "It would make me high, I would feel endorphins and this great sense of victory."
Smith enjoys writing and painting. During the first season of Herman's Head, Smith taught herself to paint by copying other artists. The book Just Humor Me includes a story, "The Race", written by Smith. She has written a children's book, I, Lorelei, which was published by HarperCollins in February 2009.
In 2011, Smith launched a women's shoe line called Marchez Vous.
In November 2021, Yeardley was noted for producing a podcast on the murder of Sheila Anderson, one of Scotland's most notorious unsolved murders.
On June 11, 2022, Smith married one of the co-hosts of her podcast, Small Town Dicks, Detective (Ret) Dan Grice. She met him while he was providing personal security for her during a Simpsons event.
Filmography
Film
Television
Video games
Music videos
Theme park
Podcasts
References
External links
Yeardley Smith at IMDb
Yeardley Smith at the TCM Movie Database
Yeardley Smith Archived September 30, 2007, at the Wayback Machine at the Voice Chasers Database
Yeardley Smith at HarperCollins.com
Yeardley Smith's Personal Blog at Tumblr
Yeardley Smith at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television |
Hank_Azaria | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Azaria | [
774
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Azaria"
] | Henry Albert "Hank" Azaria ( ə-ZAIR-ee-ə; born April 25, 1964) is an American actor. He is known for voicing many characters in the long-running animated sitcom The Simpsons since 1989, including Moe Szyslak, Chief Wiggum, Superintendent Chalmers, Comic Book Guy, Snake Jailbird, Professor Frink, Kirk Van Houten, Duffman, and formerly Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, Lou, Carl Carlson, among others. Azaria joined the show with little voice acting experience, but became a regular in its second season. For his work on the show, he has won four Primetime Emmy Awards.
Alongside his continued voice acting on The Simpsons, Azaria became more widely known through his live-action supporting appearances in films such as Quiz Show (1994), Heat, The Birdcage (1996) (for which he won a Screen Actors Guild Award) and Godzilla (1998). He has also appeared in numerous films including Mystery Men (1999), America's Sweethearts (2001), Shattered Glass (2003), Along Came Polly (2004), Run Fatboy Run (2007), Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) and The Smurfs (2011) and The Smurfs 2 (2013). Further voice roles include Anastasia (1997), for which he won an Annie Award.
His live-action television work includes recurring roles on the sitcoms Mad About You and Friends, as well as dramatic roles in the TV films Tuesdays With Morrie (1999) as writer Mitch Albom and Uprising (2001) as Jewish resistance leader Mordechai Anielewicz. For the former, Azaria received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. He starred in the title roles in the Showtime drama series Huff (2004–2006) and the IFC sitcom Brockmire (2017–2020). His recurring role on the drama Ray Donovan earned him a sixth Primetime Emmy Award in 2016.
Azaria made his Broadway debut as Lancelot in Spamalot, for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. He returned to Broadway in 2007, playing David Sarnoff in The Farnsworth Invention.
Early life and education
Henry Albert Azaria was born in the Manhattan borough of New York City on April 25, 1964 to Ruth and Albert Azaria. He began going by the name "Hank" as a child, after a pediatrician he visited said he felt it was a more suitable name for a child than "Henry". His grandparents on both sides were Sephardic Thessalonian Jews (i.e. from the Greek city of Thessaloniki). His family spoke Ladino, also known as Judaeo-Spanish, which he described as "a strange, antiquated Spanish dialect written in Hebrew characters." Azaria's father ran several dress-manufacturing businesses while his mother raised him and his two older sisters, Stephanie and Elise. Before marrying his father, Azaria's mother had been a publicist for Columbia Pictures, promoting films in Latin American countries as she was fluent in both English and Spanish. During his childhood, Azaria would often "memorize and mimic" the scripts of films, shows, and stand-up comedy routines he enjoyed.
Azaria attended The Kew-Forest School in Queens' Forest Hills neighborhood. He decided to become an actor after performing in a school play at the age of 16, becoming "obsessed with acting" at the expense of his academic studies. Both of his parents loved all forms of show business, which further spurred him to become an actor. He studied drama at Tufts University from 1981 to 1985, where he met and befriended actor Oliver Platt and noted that Platt was a "better actor" than he was and inspired him. Together they starred in various college stage productions, including The Merchant of Venice, before Azaria went to train at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Although he did not expect the endeavor to be successful, he decided to become a professional actor so that he would not regret not having tried later in life. His first acting job was an advertisement for Italian television when he was 17 years old. He also worked as a busboy. He originally intended to work predominantly as a theatrical actor, and he and Platt set up a company called Big Theatre, although Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter was the only show they ever performed. Azaria decided that television was a better arena and offered more opportunity, and moved to Los Angeles after being offered work with talent agent Harry Gold.
Career
Early career (1986–1988)
Azaria got along with talent agent Harry Gold, who was lukewarm about working with him but still sent him out for auditions after a woman Azaria had worked with in New York "got really furious with [Gold]" for breaking his promise to work with Azaria. He made his television debut with a role in the pilot episode of the 1986 ABC comedy-drama series Joe Bash. His part—a one-line role as the police officer Maldonado—was edited out before the show was broadcast, although the role secured him admission to the Screen Actors Guild. Azaria appeared in the TV film Nitti: The Enforcer, about the gangster Frank Nitti, and appeared in the failed pilot Morning Maggie alongside Matthew Perry, with whom he became good friends. He played Joe in an episode of the sitcom Family Ties in 1988 in which he had one line, and the following year he played Steve Stevenson in an episode of Growing Pains. Azaria has described his career progression as being gradual; he did not achieve overnight recognition or fame. In Los Angeles, Azaria was trained by acting coach Roy London. Between acting jobs he performed as a stand-up comedian, and worked as a bartender for a catering firm.
The Simpsons (since 1989)
Azaria became famous for his voice work in the ongoing animated television series The Simpsons. He joined the show having previously performed only one voice-over—as the titular animated dog in the failed Fox pilot Hollywood Dog, a show he described as "sort of Roger Rabbit-esque, where the dog was animated, but everybody else was real." The first voice he performed on The Simpsons was that of town bartender Moe Szyslak, replacing Christopher Collins who had initially recorded the character's voice. Having known him from Hollywood Dog, casting director Bonita Pietila called Azaria and asked him to audition for the voice of Moe. At the time he was performing the role of a drug dealer in a play, utilizing a voice based on Al Pacino's performance in the film Dog Day Afternoon. He used the voice in his audition for The Simpsons and, at the request of the show's executive producers Matt Groening and Sam Simon, made the voice more "gravelly". Groening and Simon thought the resultant voice was ideal for Moe and took Azaria over to the Fox recording studio. Before he had even seen a script, he recorded several lines of dialogue as Moe for the episode "Some Enchanted Evening", dubbing Collins' voice.
Azaria did not expect to hear from the show again, but they continued to call him back, first to perform the voice of Chief Wiggum and then Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. He felt that, initially, "[the producers] didn't seem too pleased with what I had done...[Simon] was very exacting...[and] was kind of impatiently directing me on the ABCs of comedy. But then, much to my surprise, he would still keep having me back every week. But each week, I thought it was going to be my last week because I really didn't think I had done that well." Nevertheless, by the show's second season he was performing multiple recurring voices and so was given a contract and made a permanent member of the main cast. Since he joined later than the rest of the cast, Groening still considered Azaria the "new guy". In addition to Moe, Wiggum and Apu, Azaria provides the voices of Comic Book Guy, Carl Carlson (until season 32, now voiced by Alex Désert), Cletus Spuckler, Professor Frink, Dr. Nick Riviera, Lou, Snake Jailbird, Kirk Van Houten, Bumblebee Man, the Sea Captain, Superintendent Chalmers, Disco Stu, Duffman, the Wiseguy and numerous one-time characters. His co-star in The Simpsons, Nancy Cartwright, wrote that: "The thing about Hank that I most remember is that he started out so unassuming and then, little by little, his abilities were revealed and his contributions to the show escalated. I realized Hank was going to be our breakaway star."
As Moe's voice is based on Al Pacino's, likewise many of Azaria's other recurring characters are based on existing sources. He took Apu's voice from the many Indian and Pakistani convenience store workers in Los Angeles that he had interacted with when he first moved to the area, and also loosely based it on Peter Sellers' character Hrundi V. Bakshi from the film The Party. Originally, it was thought that Apu being Indian was too offensive and stereotyped, but after Azaria's reading of the line "Hello, Mr. Homer", which the show's producers thought was hilarious, the character stayed. Azaria, however, disputed this on LateNet with Ray Ellin, claiming that Apu was always intended to be stereotypical. Chief Wiggum's voice was originally a parody of David Brinkley, but when Azaria was told it was too slow, he switched it to that of Edward G. Robinson. Officer Lou is based on Sylvester Stallone, and Dr. Nick is "a bad Ricky Ricardo impression." The "Wise Guy" voice is "basically Charles Bronson," while Carl is "a silly voice [Azaria] always did." Two of the voices come from his time at college: Snake's is based on Azaria's old college roommate, while Comic Book Guy's voice is based on a student who lived in the room next door to Azaria and went by the name "F". Professor Frink is based on Jerry Lewis' performance in the original The Nutty Professor, and the Sea Captain is based on English actor Robert Newton's portrayal of many pirates. Azaria based his performance for the one-time character Frank Grimes, from the episode "Homer's Enemy", on actor William H. Macy. He counts Grimes as the hardest, most emotional performance he has ever had to give in the history of The Simpsons.
Azaria's work on the show has won him four Emmy Awards for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance, in 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2015. He was also nominated for the award in 2009 and 2010, but lost to co-star Dan Castellaneta and guest star Anne Hathaway respectively. He was nominated again in 2012. Azaria, with the rest of the principal cast, reprised all of his voice roles from The Simpsons for the 2007 film The Simpsons Movie. Azaria notes that he spends "an embarrassingly small amount of time working on The Simpsons." He works for "an hour on Thursdays when we read through the script, then four hours on Monday when we record it, and I'll pop in again once or twice." He concludes it is "the best job in the world, as far as I'm concerned."
Up until 1998, Azaria was paid $30,000 per episode. Azaria and the five other main The Simpsons voice actors were then involved in a pay dispute in which Fox threatened to replace them with new actors and went as far as preparing for the casting of new voices. However, the issue was soon resolved and from 1998 to 2004, they received $125,000 per episode. In 2004, the voice actors intentionally skipped several script read-throughs, demanding they be paid $360,000 per episode. The strike was resolved a month later, with Azaria's pay increasing to something between $250,000 and $360,000 per episode. In 2008, production for the twentieth season was put on hold due to new contract negotiations with the voice actors, who wanted a "healthy bump" in salary. The dispute was later resolved, and Azaria and the rest of the cast received their requested pay raise, approximately $400,000 per episode. Three years later, with Fox threatening to cancel the series unless production costs were cut, Azaria and the other cast members accepted a 30 percent pay cut, down to just over $300,000 per episode.
In an April 24, 2018 appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Azaria discussed his reaction to The Problem with Apu, a 2017 documentary by Hari Kondabolu that examined Azaria and other white actors who had played South Asian roles as stereotypes. During the interview, Azaria described how watching the documentary had changed his perspective on the issue: "The idea that anyone, young or old, past or present, was bullied or teased based on the character of Apu, it just really makes me sad." Azaria also offered to stop voicing the character: "I'm perfectly willing and happy to step aside, or help transition it into something new." In response, Kondabolu tweeted his appreciation for Azaria's statement: "Thank you, @HankAzaria. I appreciate what you said & how you said it." In early 2020, Azaria announced that he was stepping away from the Apu character, primarily because of the stereotypes and bias it perpetuated. Later in the year he would retire from voicing Carl for similar reasons. In April 2021, Azaria formally apologized for voicing the Apu character, on Dax Shepherd's podcast.
Further career (since 1991)
Television work
With the continuing success of The Simpsons, Azaria began taking on other, principally live-action roles. He was a main cast member on the show Herman's Head (1991–1994) playing Jay Nichols, alongside The Simpsons co-star Yeardley Smith. He regularly recorded for The Simpsons and filmed Herman's Head during the same day. Following the series' cancellation Azaria unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of Joey Tribbiani, one of the lead characters in the sitcom Friends. He was instead cast in the role of the scientist David, one of Phoebe Buffay's boyfriends in the series. He appeared in the show's tenth episode "The One with the Monkey", before the character left for a research trip in Minsk. He reprised the role in the show's seventh season (2001), before making several appearances in the ninth (2003). This return culminates in David proposing to Phoebe; she rejects him, and David leaves the show for good. From 1995 to 1999, Azaria had a recurring role in the sitcom Mad About You as Nat Ostertag, the dog walker. Azaria was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his roles in both Mad About You (in 1998) and Friends (in 2003). Azaria had the lead role in the short-lived sitcom If Not For You in 1995, playing record producer Craig Schaeffer.
Azaria produced and starred in the sitcom Imagine That in 2002, replacing Emeril mid-season in the NBC lineup. He played Josh Miller, a comedy writer, who "transformed" each episode into a character Miller has imagined, "provid[ing] a humorous outlet for his frustrations at home and work". Production closed after five episodes and it was canceled after just two aired, due to poor critical reaction and ratings. Azaria later commented on the show: "I wanted to do something really truthful and interesting and impactful. We had a bunch of executives sitting in the room, all agreeing that The Larry Sanders Show was our favorite thing on television, but we couldn't do it on NBC, and nor would we want to from a business standpoint; it simply wouldn't make enough money. By the time it aired, the writing was sort of on the wall, and I don't blame them at all. It was apparent it wasn't working."
He starred as psychiatrist Craig "Huff" Huffstodt in the Showtime drama series Huff, which ran for two seasons between 2004 and 2006, airing 24 episodes. Azaria served as an executive producer on the show and directed an episode of its second season. After reading the pilot script, he sent it to Platt, who took the role of Huff's friend Russell Tupper. Azaria enjoyed working on the show, but struggled with the bleak subject matter and was often in dispute with its creator Bob Lowry, noting that it "was tough to marry our visions all the time, [because] we both cared so much about it that neither of us were willing to let go." Gillian Flynn of Entertainment Weekly called Azaria "impressively subtle" in the role, while John Leonard of New York magazine said he was a "shrewd bit of casting." The show garnered seven Emmy nominations in 2005, including a nomination for Azaria for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. Despite the awards, the show continually received low ratings, and Showtime chose not to commission it for a third season.
Returning to live-action television in 2011, Azaria starred in the NBC sitcom Free Agents, a remake of the British series of the same name. He played Alex Taylor, a recently divorced public relations executive "who is missing his kids and trying to keep himself together", and ends up sleeping with a co-worker (Kathryn Hahn). Azaria also served as a producer on the show. He was apprehensive about the project, disliking the lengthy schedule required of a lead actor in a single-camera series, and favoring the "sensibility" of cable shows. However, he liked the script and executive producer John Enbom's previous series Party Down and decided to accept the part. Despite Azaria mounting a campaign on Twitter to save it, the series was canceled after four episodes due to low ratings. Between 2014 and 2016, Azaria had a recurring role in the second, third and fourth season of Showtime's Ray Donovan, playing FBI agent Ed Cochran. He won the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his work on the show in 2016, as well as earning a further nomination the same category the following year.
Azaria starred in the IFC series Brockmire, which ran for four seasons from 2017-2020. He played the lead role of Jim Brockmire, a legendary baseball announcer, fired for a profanity-filled breakdown live on air after discovering his wife was having an affair. Azaria based the voice and style of Brockmire on several veteran sportscasters, including Bob Murphy and Phil Rizzuto. The character originated as part of the third episode of the Funny or Die web-series Gamechangers, entitled "A Legend in the Booth", which Azaria also co-wrote. He subsequently appeared as Brockmire on the NFL Network's The Rich Eisen Podcast to discuss the National Football League. In November 2012, Azaria sued actor Craig Bierko over the ownership of the Brockmire voice. The case was ruled in Azaria's favor in 2014. Both actors had been using a baseball announcer voice before and since meeting at a party in 1990, but US district judge Gary Allen Feess ruled that only Azaria's voice was, as Brockmire, a defined, "tangible" character and thus subject to copyright. In 2016, IFC confirmed development on the series, on which Azaria also served as an executive producer. Azaria received three nominations for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series for his performance on the series.
Film work
Azaria made his film debut in the direct-to-video release Cool Blue (1990), as Buzz. His first theatrically released feature film appearance came the same year in Pretty Woman, as a police detective named Albertson. His next major film role was as television producer Albert Freedman in the 1994 film Quiz Show, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. In 1996, Azaria played gay Guatemalan housekeeper Agador Spartacus in the film The Birdcage. For the role, which Azaria considers to be his "big break", he was nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role, and critically branded "the most hilarious performance in the film," by Alison Macor of The Austin Chronicle, while Empire wrote that he "[stole] the show." For the role he used a Guatemalan accent, and made himself sound as effeminate as possible. He had chosen two possible voices, an effeminate one and a tougher one. After advice from a drag queen, he chose the effeminate voice. Three weeks into production, he realized he sounded exactly like his grandmother, which aided his performance. Agador was originally going to be a single scene part, with the larger role of the housekeeper being played by David Alan Grier. With the producers fearing the racial connotations of a black actor in such a part, Azaria inherited the full role.
He appeared in numerous other films in the late 1990s, including Heat (1995), Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), Celebrity (1998) and worked opposite Gwyneth Paltrow, as Walter Plane, in the 1998 adaptation of Great Expectations. He played photographer Victor "Animal" Palotti in Godzilla (1998). Godzilla was one of Azaria's first starring roles in a blockbuster film. Its five-month shoot was the longest of his career to date, but he considered it a good chance to boost his profile. He noted, "I'm so used to melding into every character I play. Even people in the business think the guy who did Birdcage, Quiz Show and Great Expectations are three different actors—which in a way makes me proud, but in another way is very frustrating. It's the curse and blessing of the character actor". The shoot's physical challenges, and the film's critical failure, led Azaria to later describe it as "tough to make, and very disappointing when it came out. It was one you definitely chalk up and say, 'That was part of paying your dues, better luck next time'." In 1999, he starred in the drama Mystery, Alaska as Charles Danner, and the comedy superhero film Mystery Men, as the faux-British silverware throwing expert The Blue Raja. Other film roles included Hector Gorgonzolas in America's Sweethearts (2001), Claude in Along Came Polly (2004), and the young Patches O'Houlihan in DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story (2004), the latter two with Ben Stiller. For his role of Claude, a French scuba instructor, in Along Came Polly, Azaria donned a wig and worked out extensively to get into the physical shape the part required.
Azaria played composer Marc Blitzstein in Tim Robbins' film Cradle Will Rock in 1999. Paul Clinton wrote that Azaria was "brilliant as the tortured (is there any other kind) artist Blitzstein." The same year he appeared as author and journalist Mitch Albom alongside Jack Lemmon in the television film Tuesdays with Morrie, winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for the role. Azaria described the latter as the "best work [he has] done." These were two of the first dramatic roles Azaria had taken; throughout his career, Azaria has primarily worked in comedy, but tries to balance the two. Azaria commented: "all the roles I got were in comedy at first, and I was certainly happy to get those, so I never felt the lack of being considered a dramatic actor because I was so happy to get what I got. And then I became surprised later on when I got dramatic roles. But I never went, 'OK, now it's time to get a dramatic role.'" His next dramatic part was in the television film Uprising in 2001. The film was based on the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and Azaria played Mordechaj Anielewicz, one of the revolt's leaders. Azaria was confused by his casting in Uprising and frequently asked the film's producer and director Jon Avnet why he was selected. "I know [Avnet] liked the fact I was Jewish, and he knew I could do accents well. He cast me and David Schwimmer in [Uprising], and we were both sort of mystified. He had some instinct that he wanted people who were more known for being funny. He never explained it satisfactorily to me; I don't understand why." His parts in Tuesdays With Morrie and Uprising affected him, causing a depressive state which he countered with DVDs of the comedy series Monty Python. Azaria found Uprising to be "very difficult very depressing very emotionally challenging" material. In 2003, Azaria played journalist Michael Kelly, the former editor of The New Republic, in the drama film Shattered Glass. Kelly died a few months before the film was released and Azaria said the film "has become a weird kind of eulogy to him."
Since Huff's conclusion in 2006, Azaria has continued to make multiple film appearances. He played the smooth-talking Whit in David Schwimmer's directorial debut Run Fatboy Run (2007). During production he became good friends with co-star Simon Pegg, performing The Simpsons voices on request, frequently distracting Pegg when he was supposed to be filming. He worked with Stiller again on 2009's Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian in which Azaria played the villainous pharaoh Kah Mun Rah, utilizing a Boris Karloff accent. Although the film received mixed reviews, critics praised Azaria's performance. Perry Seibert of TV Guide wrote that "thanks to Azaria, a master of comic timing. His grandiose, yet slightly fey bad guy is equally funny when he's chewing out minions as he is when deliberating if Oscar the Grouch and Darth Vader are evil enough to join his team." He appeared as Abraham in Year One (2009), Dr. Knight in 2010's Love & Other Drugs, and played Deep Throat director Gerard Damiano in Lovelace (2013).
Azaria played Gargamel in the animated/live-action adaptation of The Smurfs (2011). Azaria wore a prosthetic nose, ears, buck teeth, eyebrows and a wig, as well as shaving his head. He spent approximately 130 hours in the make-up chair over the course of the production. Azaria considered Gargamel's voice to be the most important part of his performance. The producers wanted an "old, failed, Shakespearean actor" voice, but Azaria felt this would lack energy and wanted something more Eastern European. He eventually selected a voice similar to that of Paul Winchell's from the cartoon. Azaria disliked the cartoon when it first aired, and considered Gargamel too one-dimensional a character and "just this straight villain"; he opted to make Gargamel "more sarcastic" than in the cartoon, but "discovered that there's no way to play Gargamel without screaming your head off at certain points – ramping him up and getting him very upset over Smurfs". He interpreted him as "very lonely", adding that "he hates the Smurfs because they're such a happy family. He wants in really badly. I think he wants to be embraced as a Smurf". Azaria worked with the writers to "infuse" the script with some of his ideas about the character, "particularly with the 'married' relationship between Gargamel and [his cat] Azreal [sic]" which Azaria conceived.
Reviewers from The San Francisco Chronicle and The Boston Globe commented on Azaria's "overacting" in the role of Gargamel. More positive reaction came from Scott Bowles of USA Today called Azaria the "human standout"; Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times felt he suffered the "greatest disservice" of the film's cast due to a poor script. Azaria noted in an interview with The A.V. Club that The Smurfs and Night at the Museum were films he agreed to do primarily for the money, but that "I won't even do that unless I think it will at least be fun to do...I really try to throw myself into it, figure out the funniest, cleverest way to get the material over, and make it fun to do and fun to watch." Azaria reprised his role in the 2013 sequel The Smurfs 2. In 2016, Azaria starred in Norman with Richard Gere.
Further voice work
Azaria performed a number of voice roles in addition to The Simpsons, although he noted in 2005: "I started doing other voiceovers for cartoons for a couple of years, but I didn't really love it. I was spoiled by The Simpsons." He voiced Eddie Brock / Venom in Spider-Man: The Animated Series between 1994 and 1996. In the animated feature Anastasia (1997), he voiced Bartok the bat and reprised the role in the direct-to-video prequel Bartok the Magnificent (1999). For his performance in Anastasia, Azaria won the Annie Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement for Voice Acting by a Male Performer in an Animated Feature Production. He also voiced Eric in the American dub of the series Stressed Eric, Harold Zoid in the 2001 Futurama episode "That's Lobstertainment!", and Abbie Hoffman and Allen Ginsberg in Chicago 10 (2007). For the 2011 film Hop, Azaria voiced Carlos and Phil. The response to the film was mostly negative, but many reviewers praised Azaria's performance. For example, Sandie Chen of The Washington Post said "Azaria has been honing his over-the-top Spanish accent since The Birdcage, so anything he says grabs some laughs", while Emma Simmonds of Time Out called him an "unflappable presence, voicing two characters with style". Later in the year he voiced The Mighty Sven in Happy Feet Two. He also voiced the lead character, Texan border agent Bud Buckwald, in Bordertown, which aired in 2016, as well as Shelfish Sheldon in Mack & Moxy the same year.
Once The Simpsons was "going steadily" and Azaria had enough money to live on, he stopped working on commercials as he found them "demoralizing", feeling that he sounded sarcastic whenever he read for them. When recording the part of "Jell-O Man" for a Jell-O commercial, he was told to make the voice he offered "more likable and friendly so that children like him." After pointing out that "Jell-O Man" was a fictional character, he left and pledged to never record for an advertisement again. However, in 2012 he voiced several insects in a commercial for the Chevrolet Sonic.
Other work
Azaria wrote and directed the 2004 short film Nobody's Perfect, which won the Film Discovery Jury Award for Best Short at the US Comedy Arts Festival. In January 2007, he was confirmed to be directing Outsourced, a film about two American workers who journey to get their jobs back, after their factory is moved to Mexico. In 2009, Azaria told Empire he was instead focusing on making a documentary about fatherhood. Two years later he told the Los Angeles Times that this project was "half-complete" and was "forever looking for financing to finish it." It eventually began in 2014, airing on AOL as an online series titled Fatherhood. According to AOL, the series of short episodes documents Azaria's "touching, humorous, and often enlightening journey from a man who is not even sure he wants to have kids, to a father going through the joys, trials and tribulations of being a dad."
He has periodically returned to theatrical work, appearing in several productions. In 2003, he appeared as Bernard in a run of David Mamet's play Sexual Perversity in Chicago, along with Matthew Perry and Minnie Driver, in London's West End. Azaria made his first appearance as Sir Lancelot, the French Taunter, and four other characters in Spamalot, the musical version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which opened in Chicago in December 2004, before moving to the Shubert Theatre on Broadway. The show met with critical acclaim and received fourteen Tony Award nominations in 2005; Azaria and Tim Curry both received nominations for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical. Reuniting with The Birdcage director Mike Nichols, and being a huge Monty Python fan, he saw it as an opportunity he could not pass up, describing it as "so much fun that I haven't realized how tiring it is," and "the most fun that I've ever had in my entire life." He took a break from the show in June 2005 to work on Huff, but returned in December 2005. Alan Tudyk played the role during Azaria's absence. In late 2007 he starred in Aaron Sorkin's The Farnsworth Invention, playing RCA head David Sarnoff. In 2016, he starred in the world premiere of Dry Powder opposite Claire Danes, John Krasinski, and Sanjit De Silva, directed by Thomas Kail, at the off-Broadway Public Theater in New York City.
Acting style and vocal range
Azaria's friends refer to him as "the freakish mimic" due to his ability to copy almost anyone's voice, instantly after he has heard it. As a child, he believed that everyone could do this, but later realized that it was not a common talent. Azaria has said, "I can remember every voice I hear, famous or otherwise ... they kind of remain in the memory banks, so I'm ready to trot them out." Azaria was glad to have found the "ultimate outlet" for this skill, in The Simpsons. He "didn't realize it [when he joined the show], but it became like a lab for a character actor. [He] had to do so many voices." In the early 2000s, Azaria felt he had reached the maximum number of voices he was capable of: "For the first 10 years of The Simpsons, I would develop a bunch of voices. And then ... I hit a point when I was tapped out. Every noise I can make, I have made. Even characters like Gargamel, I've done. Even if it was only two or three lines, at some point I've done something similar on The Simpsons, at least somewhere along the line."
For many of Azaria's characters, much of their humor is derived from a "funny voice", such as The Birdcage and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. He stated that "being funny with a funny voice is more my comfort zone, a broader character that I try to humanize, a kind of silly or wacky persona that I try to fill in," although he finds it "much easier to be someone much closer to myself," as it requires "less energy ... than playing characters that are so out there and high strung."
The Simpsons creator Matt Groening has stated that Azaria possesses the ability to turn unfunny lines into some of the best in an episode, while former writer Jay Kogen stated: "Just when I think I know [Azaria's] bag of tricks, he's always got a new thing he does to surprise me." Throughout the run of The Simpsons, Azaria has had to sing in character several times, a task which he describes as easier than singing normally. The Smurfs writer David N. Weiss says Azaria "has a beautiful treasure trove of talent," and "became what you wished you were writing." Playwright Jenelle Riley wrote in 2005 that Azaria was "by far" her favorite actor, praising his "versatility" and "tendency to take small roles that would normally fade into the background and to consistently create characters people care about," noting his roles in Shattered Glass, Mystery, Alaska and especially DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story.
Personal life
In the early 1990s, Azaria was in a relationship with actress Julie Warner. His relationship with actress Helen Hunt began in 1994; they married in a traditional Jewish ceremony at the couple's home in Southern California on July 17, 1999. The two had appeared together in Mad About You and the Simpsons episode "Dumbbell Indemnity". After a year of marriage, Azaria moved out of the couple's home, and Hunt filed for divorce after a six-month separation, citing irreconcilable differences. The divorce was finalized on December 18, 2000.
Azaria began dating former actress Katie Wright in 2007, and the two married later that year. They have a son named Hal (b. 2009). The family has one dog, Truman, and two rescue cats, Mookie and Wilson. In 2013, the family began renting a home on 80th Street in Manhattan, with plans to make a final decision on where to live in two years. They previously lived in a four-bedroom house in Pacific Palisades, which Azaria bought from his Simpsons co-star Dan Castellaneta in 2011. Several weeks earlier, Azaria had sold his home in Bel Air. Azaria previously owned the fifth-floor co-op loft on Mercer Street in Manhattan's Soho neighborhood, which he bought from photographer Cindy Sherman in 2005, before selling it in 2013.
Azaria suffered from alcoholism for several years. He credited his longtime friend Matthew Perry for encouraging him to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and has been sober since about 2006.
Azaria is the godfather of Oliver Platt's son, George. He is also a regular poker player, appearing twice on Celebrity Poker Showdown and competing at other events, finishing a few places short of the bubble in the main event of the 2010 World Series of Poker. Azaria is a supporter of the Democratic Party. He enjoys the music of Elvis Costello and has stated that he would have been a therapist if he were not an actor. Azaria co-founded the educational support charity, "Determined to Succeed".
On May 22, 2016, he was awarded the Honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters (DHL) from Tufts University.
Filmography
Film
Television
Video games
Theatre
Awards and nominations
References
External links
Hank Azaria at IMDb
Hank Azaria at the Internet Broadway Database
Hank Azaria at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
Hank Azaria at AllMovie
Hank Azaria at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television |
Harry_Shearer | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Shearer | [
774
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Shearer"
] | Harry Julius Shearer (born December 23, 1943) is an American actor, comedian, musician, radio host, writer, and producer. Born in Los Angeles, California, Shearer began his career as a child actor. From 1969 to 1976, Shearer was a member of The Credibility Gap, a radio comedy group. Following the breakup of the group, Shearer co-wrote the film Real Life (1979) with Albert Brooks and worked as a writer on Martin Mull's television series Fernwood 2 Night.
Shearer was a cast member on Saturday Night Live between 1979 and 1980, and 1984 and 1985. Shearer co-created, co-wrote and co-starred in the film This Is Spinal Tap (1984), a satirical rockumentary, which became a hit. In 1989, he joined the cast of the animated sitcom The Simpsons; he provides voices for characters including Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, Lenny, Principal Skinner, Kent Brockman, Otto Mann, and formerly Dr. Hibbert. Shearer has appeared in films including The Truman Show (1998) and A Mighty Wind (2003), and has directed two, Teddy Bears' Picnic (2002) and The Big Uneasy (2010). Since 1983, Shearer has been the host of the public radio comedy/music program Le Show, incorporating satire, music, and sketch comedy. He has written three books.
Shearer has won a Primetime Emmy Award and has received several other Emmy and Grammy Award nominations. He has been married to singer-songwriter Judith Owen since 1993. He became an artist in residence at Loyola University, New Orleans in 2013.
Early life and career
Shearer was born December 23, 1943, in Los Angeles, California, the son of Dora, a bookkeeper, and Mack Shearer, a trained opera singer who ran a gas station. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Austria respectively. His parents escaped Nazi-occupied Europe and met in Havana, Cuba. As a child, Shearer and his family often listened to radio programs such as Bob and Ray and the weekly show for the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. His father died when he was 12 and he had his Bar Mitzvah the following year. Shearer grew up in the neighborhood of West Adams. Starting when Shearer was four years old, he had a piano teacher whose daughter worked as a child actress. The piano teacher later decided to make a career change and become a children's agent, since she knew people in the business through her daughter's work. The teacher asked Shearer's parents for permission to take him to an audition. Several months later, she called Shearer's parents and told them that she had gotten Shearer an audition for the radio show The Jack Benny Program. Shearer received the role when he was seven years old. He described Jack Benny as "very warm and approachable ... He was a guy who dug the idea of other people on the show getting laughs, which sort of spoiled me for other people in comedy." Shearer has stated that one person who took him "under his wing" and was his mentor during his early days in show business was voice actor Mel Blanc, who voiced many animated characters, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Barney Rubble; Blanc was a regular on The Jack Benny Show. He also befriended Blanc’s son Noel. Shearer made his film debut in the film Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953), in which he had a small part, and appeared in The Robe (also 1953). Throughout his childhood and teenage years he worked in television, film, and radio.
In 1957, Shearer played the precursor to the Eddie Haskell character in the pilot episode of the television series Leave It to Beaver. After the filming, Shearer's parents said they did not want him to be a regular in a series. Instead they wanted him to just do occasional work so that he could have a normal childhood. Shearer and his parents made the decision not to accept the role in the series if it was picked up by a television network.
In 1960, Shearer volunteered as a driver for the Democratic National Convention where he was regularly assigned trips to Disneyland.
Shearer graduated from Los Angeles High School and attended UCLA as a political science major in the early 1960s. He befriended future congressmen Henry Waxman and Howard Berman during his time at UCLA. He decided to quit show business to become a "serious person". However, he says this lasted approximately a month, and he joined the staff of the Daily Bruin, UCLA's school newspaper, during his first year. He was editor of the college humor magazine (Satyr), including the June 1964 parody Preyboy. He also worked as a newscaster at KRLA, a top 40 radio station in Pasadena, during this period. According to Shearer, after graduating, he had "a very serious agenda going on, and it was 'Stay Out of the Draft'." He attended graduate school at Harvard University for one year and worked at the state legislature in Sacramento. From 1967 to 1968, he was a high school teacher, teaching English and social studies. He left teaching following "disagreements with the administration".
From 1969 to 1976, Shearer was a member of The Credibility Gap, a radio comedy group that included David Lander, Richard Beebe and Michael McKean. The group consisted of "a bunch of newsmen" at KRLA 1110, "the number two station" in Los Angeles. They wanted to do more than just straight news, so they hired comedians who were talented vocalists. Shearer heard about the group from a friend, so he brought over a tape to the station and nervously gave it to the receptionist. He found out he was hired that same day. The group's radio show was canceled in 1970 by KRLA and in 1971 by KPPC-FM, so they started performing in various clubs and concert venues. While at KRLA, Shearer also interviewed Creedence Clearwater Revival for the Pop Chronicles music documentary.
In 1973, Shearer appeared as Jim Houseafire on How Time Flys, an album by The Firesign Theatre's David Ossman. The Credibility Gap broke up in 1976 when Lander and McKean left to perform in the sitcom Laverne & Shirley. Shearer started working with Albert Brooks, producing one of Brooks' albums and co-writing the film Real Life (1979). Shearer also started writing for Martin Mull's television series Fernwood 2 Night. In the mid-1970s, he started working with Rob Reiner on a pilot for ABC. The show, which starred Christopher Guest, Tom Leopold and McKean, was not picked up.
Career
Saturday Night Live
Initial run under Lorne Michaels
In August 1979, Shearer was hired as a writer and cast member on Saturday Night Live, one of the first additions to the show's original 1975 cast. Recommended by Al Franken to Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels, the acquisition of Shearer was seen as an unofficial replacement for John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, who were both leaving the show.
Shearer describes his experience on the show as a "living hell" and "not a real pleasant place to work." He did not get along well with the other writers and cast members and states that he was not included with the cast in the opening montage (although he was added to the montage for later episodes of the 1979–80 season) and that Michaels had told the rest of the cast that he was "just a writer".
Michaels left Saturday Night Live at the end of the fifth season, taking the entire cast with him. Shearer told new executive producer Jean Doumanian that he was "not a fan of Lorne's" and offered to stay with the show if he was given the chance to overhaul the program and bring in experienced comedians, like Christopher Guest. However, Doumanian turned him down, so he decided to leave with the rest of the cast.
Return in 1984 under Dick Ebersol
In 1984, while promoting the film This Is Spinal Tap, Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean performed on Saturday Night Live. All three members were offered the chance to join the show in the 1984–1985 season. Shearer accepted because he was treated well by the producers and he thought the backstage environment had improved but later stated that he "didn't realize that guests are treated better than the regulars." Guest also accepted the offer while McKean rejected it, although he would join the cast in 1994.
Dick Ebersol, who replaced Lorne Michaels as the show's producer, said that Shearer was "a gifted performer but a pain in the butt. He's just so demanding on the preciseness of things and he's very, very hard on the working people. He's just a nightmare-to-deal-with person." In January 1985, Shearer left the show for good, partially because he felt he was not being used enough. Martin Short said Shearer "wanted to be creative and Dick [Ebersol] wanted something else. ... I think he felt his voice wasn't getting represented on the show. When he wouldn't get that chance, it made him very upset."
Spinal Tap
Shearer co-created, co-wrote and co-starred in Rob Reiner's film This Is Spinal Tap (1984). Shearer, Reiner, Michael McKean and Christopher Guest received a deal to write a first draft of a screenplay for a company called Marble Arch. They decided that the film could not be written and instead filmed a 20-minute demo of what they wanted to do. It was eventually greenlighted by Norman Lear and Jerry Perenchio at Embassy Pictures. The film satirizes the wild personal behavior and musical pretensions of hard rock and heavy metal bands, as well as the hagiographic tendencies of rockumentaries of the time. The three core members of the band Spinal Tap—David St. Hubbins, Derek Smalls and Nigel Tufnel—were portrayed by McKean, Shearer and Guest respectively. The three actors play their musical instruments and speak with mock English accents throughout the film. There was no script, although there was a written breakdown of most of the scenes, and many of the lines were ad-libbed. It was filmed in 25 days.
Shearer said in an interview that "The animating impulse was to do rock 'n' roll right. The four of us had been around rock 'n' roll and we were just amazed by how relentlessly the movies got it wrong. Because we were funny people it was going to be a funny film, but we wanted to get it right." When they tried to sell it to various Hollywood studios, they were told that the film would not work. The group kept saying, "No, this is a story that's pretty familiar to people. We're not introducing them to anything they don't really know," so Shearer thought it would at least have some resonance with the public. The film was only a modest success upon its initial release but found greater success, and developed a cult following, after its video release. In 2000, the film was ranked 29th on the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 comedy movies in American cinema and it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Shearer, Guest and McKean have since worked on several projects as their Spinal Tap characters. They released three albums: This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Break Like the Wind (1992) and Back from the Dead (2009). In 1992, Spinal Tap appeared in an episode of The Simpsons called "The Otto Show". The band has played several concerts, including at Live Earth in London on July 7, 2007. In anticipation of the show, Rob Reiner directed a short film entitled Spinal Tap. In 2009, the band released Back from the Dead to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the release of the film. The album features re-recorded versions of songs featured in This Is Spinal Tap and its soundtrack, and five new songs. The band performed a one-date "world tour" at London's Wembley Arena on June 30, 2009. The Folksmen, a mock band featured in the film A Mighty Wind that is also made up of characters played by Shearer, McKean and Guest, was the opening act for the show.
The Simpsons
Shearer is known for his work as a voice actor on The Simpsons. Matt Groening, the creator of the show, was a fan of Shearer's work, while Shearer was a fan of a column Groening used to write. When approached by Groening to be in the series, Shearer was initially reluctant because he thought the recording sessions would be too much trouble. He felt that voice acting was "not a lot of fun" as, traditionally, voice actors record their parts separately. He was told that the actors would record their lines together, and after three phone calls for executive producer James L. Brooks, Shearer was convinced to join the cast of The Simpsons. Shearer's first impression of The Simpsons was that it was funny. He – who thought it was a "pretty cool" way to work – found it peculiar that his fellow cast members were adamant about not being known to the public as the people behind the voices.
Shearer provides voices for Principal Skinner, Kent Brockman, Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, formerly Dr. Hibbert until 2021, Lenny Leonard, Otto Mann, Rainier Wolfcastle, Scratchy, Kang, Dr. Marvin Monroe, and Judge Snyder, among others. He has described all of his regular characters' voices as "easy to slip into. ... I wouldn't do them if they weren't easy." Shearer modeled Mr. Burns's voice on the two actors Lionel Barrymore and Ronald Reagan. Shearer says that Burns is the most difficult character for him to voice because it is rough on his vocal cords and he often needs to drink tea and honey to soothe his voice. He describes Burns as his favorite character, saying he "like[s] Mr. Burns because he is pure evil. A lot of evil people make the mistake of diluting it. Never adulterate your evil." Shearer is also the voice of Burns' assistant Smithers, and is able to perform dialogue between the two characters in one take. In the episode "Bart's Inner Child", Shearer said "wow" in the voice of Otto, which was then used when Otto was seen jumping on a trampoline. Ned Flanders had been meant to be just a neighbor that Homer Simpson was jealous of, but because Shearer used "such a sweet voice" for him, Flanders was broadened to become a Christian and a sweet guy that someone would prefer to live next to over Homer. Dr. Marvin Monroe's voice was based on psychiatrist David Viscott. Monroe has been largely retired since the seventh season barring a few cameo appearances because voicing the character strained Shearer's throat.
In 2004, Shearer criticized what he perceived as the show's declining quality: "I rate the last three seasons as among the worst, so season four looks very good to me now." Shearer has also been vocal about "The Principal and the Pauper" (season nine, episode two, 1997), one of the most controversial episodes of The Simpsons. Many fans and critics reacted negatively to the revelation that Principal Seymour Skinner, a recurring character since the first season, was an impostor. The episode has been criticized by both Shearer and Groening. In a 2001 interview, Shearer recalled that after reading the script, he told the writers, "That's so wrong. You're taking something that an audience has built eight years or nine years of investment in and just tossed it in the trash can for no good reason, for a story we've done before with other characters. It's so arbitrary and gratuitous, and it's disrespectful to the audience." In a December 2006 interview, Shearer added, "Now, [the writers] refuse to talk about it. They realize it was a horrible mistake. They never mention it. It's like they're punishing [the audience] for paying attention."
Due to scheduling and availability conflicts, Shearer decided not to participate in The Simpsons Ride, which opened in 2008, so none of his characters have vocal parts and many do not appear in the ride at all. In a 2010 interview on The Howard Stern Show, Shearer alluded that the reason he was not part of the ride was because he would not be getting paid for it. Similarly, Shearer was unable to appear in the Family Guy crossover episode "The Simpsons Guy" due to further scheduling conflicts. Therefore, his characters are again mute. When asked about how he felt about the crossover, Shearer replied, "Matter and anti-matter."
Until 1998, Shearer was paid $30,000 per episode. During a pay dispute in 1998, Fox threatened to replace the six main voice actors with new actors, going as far as preparing for casting of new voices. The dispute, however, was resolved and Shearer received $125,000 per episode until 2004, when the voice actors demanded that they be paid $360,000 an episode. The dispute was resolved a month later, and Shearer's pay rose to $250,000 per episode. After salary re-negotiations in 2008, the voice actors received $400,000 per episode. Three years later, with Fox threatening to cancel the series unless production costs were cut, Shearer and the other cast members accepted a 30% pay cut, down to just over $300,000 per episode. On May 14, 2015, Shearer announced he was leaving the show. After the other voice actors signed a contract for the same pay, Shearer refused, stating it was not enough. Al Jean made a statement from the producers saying "the show must go on," but did not elaborate on what might happen to the characters Shearer voiced. On July 7, 2015, Shearer agreed to continue with the show, on the same terms as the other voice actors.
Le Show and radio work
Since 1983, Shearer has been the host of the public radio comedy/music program Le Show. The program is a hodgepodge of satirical news commentary, music, and sketch comedy that takes aim at the "mega morons of the mighty media". It is carried on many National Public Radio and other public radio stations throughout the United States. Since the merger of SIRIUS and XM satellite radio services the program is no longer available on either. The show has also been made available as a podcast on iTunes and by WWNO. On the weekly program Shearer alternates between DJing, reading and commenting on the news of the day after the manner of Mort Sahl, and performing original (mostly political) comedy sketches and songs. In 2008, Shearer released a music CD called Songs of the Bushmen, consisting of his satirical numbers about former President George W. Bush on Le Show. Shearer says he criticizes both Republicans and Democrats equally, and also says that "the iron law of doing comedy about politics is you make fun of whoever is running the place" and that "everyone else is just running around talking. They are the ones who are actually doing something, changing people's lives for better or for worse. Other people the media calls 'satirists' don't work that way."
Since encountering satellite news feeds when he worked on Saturday Night Live, Shearer has been fascinated with the contents of the video that does not air. Shearer refers to these clips as found objects. "I thought, wow, there is just an unending supply of this material, and it's wonderful and fascinating and funny and sometimes haunting – but it's always good," said Shearer. He collects this material and uses it on Le Show and on his website. In 2008, he assembled video clips of newsmakers from this collection into an art installation titled "The Silent Echo Chamber" which was exhibited at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The exhibit was also displayed in 2009 at Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM) in Valencia, Spain and in 2010 at the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center.
In 2006 Shearer appeared with Brian Hayes in four episodes of the BBC Radio 4 sitcom Not Today, Thank You, playing Nostrils, a man so ugly he cannot stand to be in his own presence. He was originally scheduled to appear in all six episodes but had to withdraw from recording two due to a problem with his work permit. On June 19, 2008, it was announced that Shearer would receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the radio category.
Further career
Shearer's first feature film as director, Teddy Bears' Picnic, which he also wrote, was released in 2002. The plot is based on Bohemian Grove, which hosts a three-week encampment of some of the most powerful men in the world. The film was not well received by critics. It garnered a 0% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with all 19 reviews being determined as negative and received a rating of 32 out of 100 (signifying "generally negative reviews") on Metacritic from 10 reviews. In 2003, he co-wrote J. Edgar! The Musical with Tom Leopold, which spoofed J. Edgar Hoover's relationship with Clyde Tolson. It premiered at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado and starred Kelsey Grammer and John Goodman.
Shearer, Guest and McKean starred in the folk music mockumentary A Mighty Wind (2003), portraying a band called The Folksmen. The film was written by Guest and Eugene Levy, and directed by Guest. Shearer had a major role in the Guest-directed parody of Oscar politicking For Your Consideration released in 2006. He played Victor Allan Miller, a veteran actor who is convinced that he is going to be nominated for an Academy Award. He also appeared as a news anchor in Godzilla (1998) with fellow The Simpsons cast members Hank Azaria and Nancy Cartwright. His other film appearances include The Right Stuff (1983), The Fisher King (1991), The Truman Show (1998), Small Soldiers (also 1998), and EdTV (1999). He also directed and appeared in the television program Portrait of a White Marriage (1988), a sequel to The History of White People in America.
Shearer has also worked as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times Magazine, but decided that it "became such a waste of time to bother with it." His columns have also been published in Slate and Newsweek. Since May 2005 he has been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post. Shearer has written three books. Man Bites Town, published in 1993, is a collection of columns that he wrote for The Los Angeles Times between 1989 and 1992. Published in 1999, It's the Stupidity, Stupid analyzed the hatred some people had for then-President Bill Clinton. Shearer believes that Clinton became disliked because he had an affair with "the least powerful, least credentialed woman cleared into his official compound." His most recent book is Not Enough Indians, his first novel. Published in 2006, it is a comic novel about Native Americans and gambling. Without the "pleasures of collaboration" and "spontaneity and improvisation which characterize his other projects", Not Enough Indians was a "struggle" for Shearer to write. He said that "the only fun thing about it was having written it. It was lonely, I had no deal for it and it took six years to do. It was a profoundly disturbing act of self-discipline."
Shearer has released five solo comedy albums: It Must Have Been Something I Said (1994), Dropping Anchors (2006), Songs Pointed and Pointless (2007), Songs of the Bushmen (2008) and Greed and Fear (2010). His most recent CD, Greed and Fear is mainly about Wall Street economic issues, rather than politics like his previous albums. Shearer decided to make the album when he"started getting amused by the language of the economic meltdown – when 'toxic assets' suddenly became 'troubled assets,' going from something poisoning the system to just a bunch of delinquent youth with dirty faces that needed not removal from the system but just ... understanding." In May 2006, Shearer received an honorary doctorate from Goucher College.
The Big Uneasy
Shearer is the director of The Big Uneasy (2010), a documentary film about the impacts of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. Narrated by actor John Goodman, the film describes levee failures and catastrophic flooding in the New Orleans metropolitan area, and includes extended interviews with former LSU professor Ivor Van Heerden, Robert Bea, an engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and Maria Garzino, an engineer and contract specialist for the Los Angeles district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The film is critical of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its management of flood protection projects in Southern Louisiana. Shearer draws on numerous technical experts to maintain that Hurricane Katrina's "... tragic floods creating widespread damage were caused by manmade errors in engineering and judgment." On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 71% based on 24 reviews, with an average rating of 6.85/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The Big Uneasy offers an admittedly uneven – yet still worthy and well-intentioned – look at a horrific disaster's aftermath."
Personal life
Shearer married folk singer Penelope Nichols in 1974. They divorced in 1977. He has been married to Welsh singer-songwriter Judith Owen since 1993. In 2005, the couple launched their own record label called Courgette Records. Shearer primarily resides in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, but has homes in Santa Monica, California and Notting Hill, London. He first went to New Orleans in 1988 and has attended every New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival since.
Shearer often speaks and writes about the failure of the Federal levee system which flooded New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, blasting the coverage of it in the mainstream media and criticizing the role of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Prior to the DVD release of his film, The Big Uneasy, Shearer would hold screenings of the film at different venues and take questions from audience members.
Filmography
Film
Television
Video games
Web
Music video
Discography
Bibliography
Shearer, Harry (1993). Man Bites Town. St Martins Press. ISBN 0-312-08842-6.
Shearer, Harry (1999). It's the Stupidity, Stupid: Why (Some) People Hate Clinton and Why the Rest of Us Have to Watch. Ballantine Books/Library of Contemporary Thought. ISBN 0-345-43401-3.
Shearer, Harry (2006). Not Enough Indians. Justin, Charles and Company. ISBN 1-932112-46-4.
Awards
Shearer was the last of the six regular voice actors from The Simpsons to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance. His win came for the season 25 episode "Four Regrettings and a Funeral".
References
Bibliography
Groening, Matt (1997). Richmond, Ray; Coffman, Antonia (eds.). The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family (1st ed.). New York: HarperPerennial. ISBN 978-0-06-095252-5. LCCN 98141857. OCLC 37796735. OL 433519M..
Shales, Tom; Miller, James Andrew (2002). Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (1st ed.). Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-78146-0.
External links
Harry Shearer's official site
Harry Shearer site at the Wayback Machine (archived December 17, 2006)
Harry Shearer at IMDb
Harry Shearer at the TCM Movie Database
Harry Shearer on Charlie Rose
Harry Shearer at AllMusic
Harry Shearer's blog Archived September 2, 2012, at the Wayback Machine at the Huffington Post
Harry Shearer Archived May 5, 2006, at the Wayback Machine at Voice Chasers Archived October 8, 2020, at the Wayback Machine
New Documentary, Shearer on Hurricane Katrina Archived September 16, 2010, at the Wayback Machine – video interview by Democracy Now!
Harry Shearer Interview Archived September 8, 2017, at the Wayback Machine NAMM Oral History Library (2017) |
William_Mansfield,_1st_Baron_Sandhurst | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Mansfield,_1st_Baron_Sandhurst | [
775
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Mansfield,_1st_Baron_Sandhurst"
] | General William Rose Mansfield, 1st Baron Sandhurst (21 June 1819 – 23 June 1876) was a British military commander who served as Commander-in-Chief of India from 1865 to 1870.
In Bombay now Mumbai, there is local train station named after Baron Sandhurst. Sanhurst Road station in Central Line.
Background and early life
Mansfield was born in Ruxley, Kent, the fifth of the seven sons of John Mansfield of Diggeswell House in Hertfordshire, and his wife, Mary Buchanan Smith, daughter of General Samuel Smith of Baltimore in the United States. His grandfather was the prominent lawyer Sir James Mansfield, Solicitor General from 1780 to 1782 and in 1783 and Chief Justice of the Common Pleas from 1804 to 1814.
In 1854, he married Margaret Fellowes, who became a noted suffragist and spiritualist after his death.
Military career
Mansfield was educated at Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and was commissioned into the 53rd Foot as an ensign in 1835. He was promoted to lieutenant on 31 August 1838 and to captain on 10 February 1843. He was mostly active in India and served in the Sutlej campaign of 1845 to 1846.
Promoted to major on 3 December 1847, he commanded the 53rd Regiment in the Punjab from 1848 to 1849 and was employed in the Peshawar operations in 1851 and 1852, receiving promotion to lieutenant-colonel on 9 May 1851 and to colonel on 6 October 1854.
In 1855, during the Crimean War, Mansfield was appointed military adviser to the Ambassador at Constantinople Lord Stratford de Redcliff, and accompanied him to the Crimea. He then returned to India and served as Chief-of-Staff during the Indian Mutiny campaign from 1857 to 1859, initially with the local rank of major-general. His role during the Siege of Lucknow in November 1857 saw his appointment Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in March 1858. Promoted to major-general on 18 May 1858, he served as Commander-in-Chief of the Bombay Army from 1860 to 1865 and as Commander-in-Chief, India from 1865 to 1870. During this time, he was made Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of India (GCSI) and subsequently Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB). Mansfield was then Commander-in-Chief, Ireland from 1870 to 1875. He was promoted to full general on 23 May 1872.
In 1871 he was admitted to the Irish Privy Council and raised to the peerage as Baron Sandhurst, of Sandhurst in the County of Berkshire.
Sandhurst died in London on 23 June 1876, aged 57, and was buried at Digswell church, Hertfordshire. He was succeeded in the Barony by his eldest son William, who was created Viscount Sandhurst in 1917. However, this title became extinct on his death while he was succeeded in the Barony by his younger brother.
Arms
References
External links
Chichester, Henry Manners (1893). "Mansfield, William Rose". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 36. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 92–94. |
Margaret_Mansfield,_Baroness_Sandhurst | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mansfield,_Baroness_Sandhurst | [
775
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mansfield,_Baroness_Sandhurst"
] | Margaret Mansfield, Baroness Sandhurst (née Fellowes, ca. 1828 - 7 January 1892) was a suffragist who was one of the first women elected to a city council in the United Kingdom. She was also a prominent spiritualist.
Personal life
Sandhurst was the youngest of the seven children of Robert Fellowes (1779–1869) of Shotesham Park, Norfolk, and his second wife, Jane Louisa Sheldon (d. 1871). In 1854, Sandhurst married Sir William Mansfield, an administrator in the British Raj, who was later made the first Baron Sandhurst. They had four sons and a daughter. After her husband's death in 1876 Lady Sandhurst became increasingly involved in both spiritualism and Liberal politics.
Political activities
She was an active member of the Women's Liberal Association, and later of the Women's Liberal Federation, and was head of the order's Marylebone branch. An active philanthropist, Sandhurst ran her own home for sick children in the Marylebone Road.
In January 1889, Lady Sandhurst was elected to the London County Council at the head of the poll. However, because she was a woman, one of the defeated candidates, the Conservative Beresford Hope, petitioned against her election, and both the Court of Queen's Bench and the Court of Appeal ruled against her. Sandhurst's seat was given to Beresford Hope in May 1889, and Sandhurst was fined £5 for every vote she had given during her tenure on the council. In recognition of her sympathy towards Ireland, in September 1889, Sandhurst was awarded the Freedom of the City of Dublin.
That same year, she was also a council member of the Women's Franchise League, and supported the formation of the Women's Trade Union Association. From 1889, she was also a member of the executive committee of the Central National Society for Women's Suffrage. In 1890, she was elected president of the Society for Promoting the Return of Women as County Councillors, later (1893) renamed the Women's Local Government Society.
Later life
Sandhurst wrote at least two pamphlets on her political interests, one of which, Conversations on Political Principles, was published by the Women's Liberal Federation. Lady Sandhurst died suddenly in London on 7 January 1892, at her home, 29 Park Road, Regent's Park, and was buried with her husband at Digswell, Hertfordshire.
Her descendants include the later Lord Sandhursts and the present Earl of Macclesfield
== References == |
Pride_and_Prejudice | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_and_Prejudice | [
776
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_and_Prejudice#Film,_television_and_theatre"
] | Pride and Prejudice is the second novel by English author Jane Austen, published in 1813. A novel of manners, it follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of the book, who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between superficial goodness and actual goodness.
Mr Bennet, owner of the Longbourn estate in Hertfordshire, has five daughters, but his property is entailed and can only be passed to a male heir. His wife also lacks an inheritance, so his family faces becoming poor upon his death. Thus, it is imperative that at least one of the daughters marry well to support the others, which is a primary motivation driving the plot.
Pride and Prejudice has consistently appeared near the top of lists of "most-loved books" among literary scholars and the reading public. It has become one of the most popular novels in English literature, with over 20 million copies sold, and has inspired many derivatives in modern literature. For more than a century, dramatic adaptations, reprints, unofficial sequels, films, and TV versions of Pride and Prejudice have portrayed the memorable characters and themes of the novel, reaching mass audiences.
Plot summary
In the early 19th century, the Bennet family live at their Longbourn estate, situated near the village of Meryton in Hertfordshire, England. Mrs Bennet's greatest desire is to marry off her five daughters to secure their futures.
The arrival of Mr Bingley, a rich bachelor who rents the neighbouring Netherfield estate, gives her hope that one of her daughters might contract an advantageous marriage, because "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife".
At a ball, the family is introduced to the Netherfield party, including Mr Bingley, his two sisters and Mr Darcy, his dearest friend. Mr Bingley's friendly and cheerful manner earns him popularity among the guests. He appears interested in Jane, the eldest Bennet daughter. Mr Darcy, reputed to be twice as wealthy as Mr Bingley, is haughty and aloof, causing a decided dislike of him. He declines to dance with Elizabeth, the second-eldest Bennet daughter, as she is "not handsome enough". Although she jokes about it with her friend, Elizabeth is deeply offended. Despite this first impression, Mr Darcy secretly begins to find himself drawn to Elizabeth as they continue to encounter each other at social events, appreciating her wit and frankness.
Mr Collins, the heir to the Longbourn estate, visits the Bennet family with the intention of finding a wife among the five girls under the advice of his patroness Lady Catherine de Bourgh, also revealed to be Mr Darcy's aunt. He decides to pursue Elizabeth. The Bennet family meet the charming army officer George Wickham, who tells Elizabeth in confidence about Mr Darcy's unpleasant treatment of him in the past. Elizabeth, blinded by her prejudice toward Mr Darcy, believes him.
Elizabeth dances with Mr Darcy at a ball, where Mrs Bennet hints loudly that she expects Jane and Bingley to become engaged. Elizabeth rejects Mr Collins' marriage proposal, to her mother's fury and her father's relief. Mr Collins subsequently proposes to Charlotte Lucas, a friend of Elizabeth, and is accepted.
Having heard Mrs Bennet's words at the ball and disapproving of the marriage, Mr Darcy joins Mr Bingley in a trip to London and, with the help of his sisters, persuades him not to return to Netherfield. A heartbroken Jane visits her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner in London to raise her spirits, while Elizabeth's hatred for Mr Darcy grows as she suspects he was responsible for Mr Bingley's departure.
In the spring, Elizabeth visits Charlotte and Mr Collins in Kent. Elizabeth and her hosts are invited to Rosings Park, Lady Catherine's home. Mr Darcy and his cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam, are also visiting Rosings Park. Fitzwilliam tells Elizabeth how Mr Darcy recently saved a friend, presumably Bingley, from an undesirable match. Elizabeth realises that the prevented engagement was to Jane.
Mr Darcy proposes to Elizabeth, declaring his love for her despite her low social connections. She is shocked, as she was unaware of Mr Darcy's interest, and rejects him angrily, saying that he is the last person she would ever marry and that she could never love a man who caused her sister such unhappiness; she further accuses him of treating Wickham unjustly. Mr Darcy brags about his success in separating Bingley and Jane and sarcastically dismisses the accusation regarding Wickham without addressing it.
The next day, Mr Darcy gives Elizabeth a letter, explaining that Wickham, the son of his late father's steward, had refused the "living" his father had arranged for him and was instead given money for it. Wickham quickly squandered the money and tried to elope with Darcy's 15-year-old sister, Georgiana, for her considerable dowry. Mr Darcy also writes that he separated Jane and Bingley because he believed her to be indifferent to Bingley and because of the lack of propriety displayed by her family. Elizabeth is ashamed by her family's behaviour and her own prejudice against Mr Darcy.
Months later, Elizabeth accompanies the Gardiners on a tour of Derbyshire. They visit Pemberley, Darcy's estate. When Mr Darcy returns unexpectedly, he is exceedingly gracious with Elizabeth and the Gardiners. Elizabeth is surprised by Darcy's behaviour and grows fond of him, even coming to regret rejecting his proposal. She receives news that her sister Lydia has run off with Wickham. She tells Mr Darcy, then departs in haste. After an agonising interim, Wickham agrees to marry Lydia. Lydia and Wickham visit the Bennet family at Longbourn, where Lydia tells Elizabeth that Mr Darcy was at her wedding. Though Mr Darcy had sworn everyone involved to secrecy, Mrs Gardiner now feels obliged to inform Elizabeth that he secured the match, at great expense and trouble to himself.
Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy return to Netherfield. Jane accepts Mr Bingley's proposal. Lady Catherine, having heard rumours that Elizabeth intends to marry Mr Darcy, visits her and demands she promise never to accept Mr Darcy's proposal, as she and Darcy's late mother had already planned his marriage to her daughter Anne. Elizabeth refuses and asks the outraged Lady Catherine to leave. Darcy, heartened by his aunt's indignant relaying of Elizabeth's response, again proposes to her and is accepted.
Characters
Elizabeth Bennet – the second-eldest of the Bennet daughters, she is attractive, witty and intelligent – but with a tendency to form tenacious and prejudiced first impressions. As the story progresses, so does her relationship with Mr Darcy. The course of Elizabeth and Darcy's relationship is ultimately decided when Darcy overcomes his pride, and Elizabeth overcomes her prejudice, leading them both to surrender to their love for each other.
Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy – Mr Bingley's friend and the wealthy owner of the estate of Pemberley in Derbyshire, said to be worth at least £10,000 a year. Although he is handsome, tall, and intelligent, Darcy lacks ease and social graces, so others frequently mistake his initially haughty reserve as proof of excessive pride. A new visitor to the Meryton setting of the novel, he is ultimately Elizabeth Bennet's love interest. Though he appears to be proud and is largely disliked by people for this reason, his servants vouch for his kindness and decency.
Mr Bennet – A logical and reasonable late-middle-aged landed gentleman of a more modest income of £2,000 per annum, and the dryly sarcastic patriarch of the Bennet family, with five unmarried daughters. His estate, Longbourn, is entailed to the male line. His affection for his wife wore off early in their marriage and is now reduced to mere toleration. He is often described as 'indolent' in the novel.
Mrs Bennet (née Gardiner) – the middle-aged wife of Mr Bennet, and the mother of their five daughters. Mrs Bennet is a hypochondriac who imagines herself susceptible to attacks of tremors and palpitations (her "poor nerves") whenever things are not going her way. Her main ambition in life is to marry her daughters off to wealthy men. Whether or not any such matches will give her daughters happiness is of little concern to her. She was settled a dowry of £4,000 from her father.
Jane Bennet – the eldest Bennet sister. She is considered the most beautiful young lady in the neighbourhood and is inclined to see only the good in others (but can be persuaded otherwise on sufficient evidence). She falls in love with Charles Bingley, a rich young gentleman recently moved to Hertfordshire and a close friend of Mr Darcy.
Mary Bennet – the middle Bennet sister, and the plainest of her siblings. Mary has a serious disposition and mostly reads and plays music, although she is often impatient to display her accomplishments and is rather vain about them. She frequently moralises to her family. According to James Edward Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen, Mary ended up marrying one of her Uncle Philips' law clerks and moving into Meryton with him.
Catherine "Kitty" Bennet – the fourth Bennet daughter. Though older than Lydia, she is her shadow and follows her in her pursuit of the officers of the militia. She is often portrayed as envious of Lydia and is described as a "silly" young woman. However, it is said that she improved when removed from Lydia's influence. According to James Edward Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen, Kitty later married a clergyman who lived near Pemberley.
Lydia Bennet – the youngest Bennet sister. She is frivolous and headstrong. Her main activity in life is socialising, especially flirting with the officers of the militia. This leads to her running off with George Wickham, although he has no intention of marrying her. Lydia shows no regard for the moral code of her society; as Ashley Tauchert says, she "feels without reasoning".
Charles Bingley – a handsome, amiable, and wealthy young gentleman who leases Netherfield Park with hopes of purchasing it. Though generally well-mannered, he is easily influenced by his friend Mr Darcy and his sisters, which leads to the disruption of his romance with Jane Bennet. He inherited a fortune of £100,000.
Caroline Bingley – the snobbish sister of Charles Bingley, with a fortune of £20,000. She harbours designs on Mr Darcy and is jealous of his growing attachment to Elizabeth. She also disapproves of her brother's admiration for Jane Bennet and is disdainful of Meryton society, driven by her vanity and desire for social elevation.
George Wickham – Wickham has been acquainted with Mr Darcy since infancy, being the son of Mr Darcy's father's steward. An officer in the militia, he is superficially charming and rapidly forms an attachment with Elizabeth Bennet. He later runs off with Lydia with no intention of marriage, which would have resulted in her and her family's complete disgrace, but for Darcy's intervention to bribe Wickham to marry her by paying off his immediate debts.
Mr William Collins – Mr Collins is Mr Bennet's distant second cousin, a clergyman, and the current heir presumptive to his estate of Longbourn House. He is an obsequious and pompous man, prone to making long and tedious speeches, who is excessively devoted to his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh – the overbearing aunt of Mr Darcy. Lady Catherine is the wealthy owner of Rosings Park, where she resides with her daughter Anne and is fawned upon by her rector, Mr Collins. She is haughty, pompous, domineering, and condescending and has long planned to marry off her sickly daughter to Darcy to 'unite their two great estates', claiming it to be the dearest wish of both her and her late sister, Lady Anne Darcy (née Fitzwilliam).
Mr Edward Gardiner and Mrs Gardiner – Edward Gardiner is Mrs Bennet's brother and a successful tradesman of sensible and gentlemanly character. Aunt Gardiner is genteel and elegant and is close to her nieces Jane and Elizabeth. The Gardiners are the parents of four children. They are instrumental in bringing about the marriage between Darcy and Elizabeth.
Georgiana Darcy – Georgiana is Mr Darcy's quiet, amiable and shy younger sister, with a dowry of £30,000, and is 16 when the story begins. When still 15, Miss Darcy almost eloped with Mr Wickham but was saved by her brother, whom she idolises. Thanks to years of tutelage under masters, she is accomplished at the piano, singing, playing the harp, drawing, and modern languages and is therefore described as Caroline Bingley's idea of an "accomplished woman".
Charlotte Lucas – Elizabeth's 27-year-old friend. She marries Mr Collins for financial security, fearing becoming a burden to her family. Austen uses Charlotte's decision to illustrate how women of the time often married out of convenience rather than love, without condemning her choice. Charlotte is the daughter of Sir William Lucas and Lady Lucas, neighbours of the Bennet family.
Colonel Fitzwilliam – Colonel Fitzwilliam is the younger son of an earl and the nephew of Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Lady Anne Darcy; this makes him the cousin of Anne de Bourgh and the Darcy siblings, Fitzwilliam and Georgiana. He is about 30 years old at the beginning of the novel. He is the coguardian of Miss Georgiana Darcy, along with his cousin, Mr Darcy. According to Colonel Fitzwilliam, as a younger son, he cannot marry without thought to his prospective bride's dowry.
Major themes
Many critics take the title as the start when analysing the themes of Pride and Prejudice but Robert Fox cautions against reading too much into the title (which was initially First Impressions), because commercial factors may have played a role in its selection. "After the success of Sense and Sensibility, nothing would have seemed more natural than to bring out another novel of the same author using again the formula of antithesis and alliteration for the title."
The qualities of the title are not exclusively assigned to one or the other of the protagonists; both Elizabeth and Darcy display pride and prejudice." The phrase "pride and prejudice" had been used over the preceding two centuries by Joseph Hall, Jeremy Taylor, Joseph Addison and Samuel Johnson. Austen is thought to have taken her title from a passage in Fanny Burney's Cecilia (1782), a novel she is known to have admired:
"The whole of this unfortunate business," said Dr Lyster, "has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE. ... if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination." (capitalisation as in the original)
A theme in much of Austen's work is the importance of environment and upbringing in developing young people's character and morality. Social standing and wealth are not necessarily advantages in her works, and a further theme common to Austen's work is ineffectual parents. In Pride and Prejudice, the failure of Mr and Mrs Bennet as parents is blamed for Lydia's lack of moral judgment. Darcy has been taught to be principled and scrupulously honourable but he is also proud and overbearing. Kitty, rescued from Lydia's bad influence and spending more time with her older sisters after they marry, is said to improve greatly in their superior society.
The American novelist Anna Quindlen observed in an introduction to an edition of Austen's novel in 1995:
Pride and Prejudice is also about that thing that all great novels consider, the search for self. And it is the first great novel that teaches us this search is as surely undertaken in the drawing room making small talk as in the pursuit of a great white whale or the public punishment of adultery.
Marriage
The opening line of the novel announces: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." This sets marriage as a motif and a problem in the novel. Readers are poised to question whether or not these single men need a wife, or if the need is dictated by the "neighbourhood" families and their daughters who require a "good fortune".
Marriage is a complex social activity that takes political and financial economy into account. In the case of Charlotte Lucas, the seeming success of her marriage lies in the comfortable financial circumstances of their household, while the relationship between Mr and Mrs Bennet serves to illustrate bad marriages based on an initial attraction and surface over substance (economic and psychological).
The Bennets' marriage is an example that the youngest Bennet, Lydia, re-enacts with Wickham and the results are far from felicitous. Although the central characters, Elizabeth and Darcy, begin the novel as hostile acquaintances and unlikely friends, they eventually work toward a better understanding of themselves and each other, which frees them to truly fall in love. This does not eliminate the challenges of the real differences in their technically equivalent social status as gentry and their female relations. It does however provide them with a better understanding of each other's point of view from the different ends of the rather wide scale of differences within that category.
When Elizabeth rejects Darcy's first proposal, the argument of marrying for love is introduced. Elizabeth only accepts Darcy's proposal when she is certain she loves him and her feelings are reciprocated. Austen's complex sketching of different marriages ultimately allows readers to question what forms of alliance are desirable especially when it comes to privileging economic, sexual, or companionate attraction.
Wealth
Money plays a fundamental role in the marriage market, for the young ladies seeking a well-off husband and for men who wish to marry a woman of means. George Wickham tries to elope with Georgiana Darcy, and Colonel Fitzwilliam states that he will marry someone with wealth.
Marrying a woman of a rich family also ensured a linkage to a higher-class family, as is visible in the desires of Bingley's sisters to have their brother married to Georgiana Darcy. Mrs Bennet is frequently seen encouraging her daughters to marry a wealthy man of high social class. In chapter 1, when Mr Bingley arrives, she declares "I am thinking of his marrying one of them".
Inheritance was by descent but could be further restricted by entailment, which in the case of the Longbourn estate restricted inheritance to male heirs only. In the case of the Bennet family, Mr Collins was to inherit the family estate upon Mr Bennet's death in the absence of any closer male heirs, and his proposal to Elizabeth would have ensured her security; but she refuses his offer.
Inheritance laws benefited males because married women did not have independent legal rights until the second half of the 19th century. For the upper-middle and aristocratic classes, marriage to a man with a reliable income was almost the only route to security for the woman and the children she was to have. The irony of the opening line is that generally within this society it would be a woman who would be looking for a wealthy husband to have a prosperous life.
Class
Austen might be known now for her "romances" but the marriages in her novels engage with economics and class distinction. Pride and Prejudice is hardly the exception.
When Darcy proposes to Elizabeth, he cites their economic and social differences as an obstacle his excessive love has had to overcome, though he still anxiously harps on the problems it poses for him within his social circle. His aunt, Lady Catherine, later characterises these differences in particularly harsh terms when she conveys what Elizabeth's marriage to Darcy will become, "Will the shades of Pemberley be thus polluted?" Although Elizabeth responds to Lady Catherine's accusations that hers is a potentially contaminating economic and social position (Elizabeth even insists she and Darcy, as gentleman's daughter and gentleman, are "equals"), Lady Catherine refuses to accept the possibility of Darcy's marriage to Elizabeth. However, as the novel closes, "...through curiosity to see how his wife conducted herself", Lady Catherine condescends to visit them at Pemberley.
The Bingleys present a particular problem for navigating class. Though Caroline Bingley and Mrs Hurst behave and speak of others as if they have always belonged in the upper echelons of society, Austen makes it clear that the Bingley fortunes stem from trade. The fact that Bingley rents Netherfield Hall – it is, after all, "to let" – distinguishes him significantly from Darcy, whose estate belonged to his father's family and who through his mother is the grandson and nephew of an earl. Bingley, unlike Darcy, does not own his property but has portable and growing wealth that makes him a good catch on the marriage market for poorer daughters of the gentry, like Jane Bennet, or of ambitious merchants. Class plays a central role in the evolution of the characters and Jane Austen's radical approach to class is seen as the plot unfolds.
An undercurrent of the old Anglo-Norman upper class is hinted at in the story, as suggested by the names of Fitzwilliam Darcy and his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh; Fitzwilliam, D'Arcy, de Bourgh (Burke), and even Bennet, are traditional Norman surnames.
Self-knowledge
Through their interactions and their critiques of each other, Darcy and Elizabeth come to recognise their faults and work to correct them. Elizabeth meditates on her own mistakes thoroughly in chapter 36:
"How despicably have I acted!" she cried; "I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameable distrust. How humiliating is this discovery! yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself."
Other characters rarely exhibit this depth of understanding or at least are not given the space within the novel for this sort of development.
Tanner writes that Mrs Bennet in particular, "has a very limited view of the requirements of that performance; lacking any introspective tendencies she is incapable of appreciating the feelings of others and is only aware of material objects". Mrs Bennet's behaviour reflects the society in which she lives, as she knows that her daughters will not succeed if they do not get married. "The business of her life was to get her daughters married: its solace was visiting and news." This shows that Mrs Bennet is only aware of "material objects" and not of her feelings and emotions.
A notable exception is Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth Bennet's close friend and confidant. She accepts Mr Collins's proposal of marriage once Lizzie rejects him, not out of sentiment but acute awareness of her circumstances as "one of a large family". Charlotte's decision is reflective of her prudent nature and awareness.
Style
Pride and Prejudice, like most of Austen's works, employs the narrative technique of free indirect speech, which has been defined as "the free representation of a character's speech, by which one means, not words actually spoken by a character, but the words that typify the character's thoughts, or the way the character would think or speak, if she thought or spoke".
Austen creates her characters with fully developed personalities and unique voices. Though Darcy and Elizabeth are very alike, they are also considerably different. By using narrative that adopts the tone and vocabulary of a particular character (in this case, Elizabeth), Austen invites the reader to follow events from Elizabeth's viewpoint, sharing her prejudices and misapprehensions. "The learning curve, while undergone by both protagonists, is disclosed to us solely through Elizabeth's point of view and her free indirect speech is essential ... for it is through it that we remain caught, if not stuck, within Elizabeth's misprisions."
The few times the reader is allowed to gain further knowledge of another character's feelings, is through the letters exchanged in this novel. Darcy's first letter to Elizabeth is an example of this as through his letter, the reader and Elizabeth are both given knowledge of Wickham's true character.
Austen is known to use irony throughout the novel especially from viewpoint of the character of Elizabeth Bennet. She conveys the "oppressive rules of femininity that actually dominate her life and work, and are covered by her beautifully carved trojan horse of ironic distance." Beginning with a historical investigation of the development of a particular literary form and then transitioning into empirical verifications, it reveals free indirect discourse as a tool that emerged over time as practical means for addressing the physical distinctness of minds. Seen in this way, free indirect discourse is a distinctly literary response to an environmental concern, providing a scientific justification that does not reduce literature to a mechanical extension of biology, but takes its value to be its own original form.
Development of the novel
Austen began writing the novel after staying at Goodnestone Park in Kent with her brother Edward and his wife in 1796. It was originally titled First Impressions, and was written between October 1796 and August 1797. On 1 November 1797 Austen's father sent a letter to London bookseller Thomas Cadell to ask if he had any interest in seeing the manuscript, but the offer was declined by return post.
The militia were mobilised after the French declaration of war on Britain in February 1793, and there was initially a lack of barracks for all the militia regiments, requiring the militia to set up huge camps in the countryside, which the novel refers to several times.: 57 The Brighton camp for which the militia regiment leaves in May after spending the winter in Meryton was opened in August 1793, and the barracks for all the regiments of the militia were completed by 1796, placing the events of the novel between 1793 and 1795.: 56–57
Austen made significant revisions to the manuscript for First Impressions between 1811 and 1812. As nothing remains of the original manuscript, study of the first drafts of the novel is reduced to conjecture. From the large number of letters in the final novel, it is assumed that First Impressions was an epistolary novel.
She later renamed the story Pride and Prejudice around 1811/1812, when she sold the rights to publish the manuscript to Thomas Egerton for £110 (equivalent to £9,300 in 2023). In renaming the novel, Austen probably had in mind the "sufferings and oppositions" summarised in the final chapter of Fanny Burney's Cecilia, called "Pride and Prejudice", where the phrase appears three times in block capitals.
It is possible that the novel's original title was altered to avoid confusion with other works. In the years between the completion of First Impressions and its revision into Pride and Prejudice, two other works had been published under that name: a novel by Margaret Holford and a comedy by Horace Smith.
Publication history
Austen sold the copyright for the novel to Thomas Egerton from the Military Library, Whitehall in exchange for £110 (Austen had asked for £150). This proved a costly decision. Austen had published Sense and Sensibility on a commission basis, whereby she indemnified the publisher against any losses and received any profits, less costs and the publisher's commission. Unaware that Sense and Sensibility would sell out its edition, making her £140, she passed the copyright to Egerton for a one-off payment, meaning that all the risk (and all the profits) would be his. Jan Fergus has calculated that Egerton subsequently made around £450 from just the first two editions of the book.
Egerton published the first edition of Pride and Prejudice in three hardcover volumes on 28 January 1813. It was advertised in The Morning Chronicle, priced at 18s. Favourable reviews saw this edition sold out, with a second edition published in October that year. A third edition was published in 1817.
Foreign language translations first appeared in 1813 in French; subsequent translations were published in German, Danish, and Swedish. Pride and Prejudice was first published in the United States in August 1832 as Elizabeth Bennet or, Pride and Prejudice. The novel was also included in Richard Bentley's Standard Novel series in 1833. R. W. Chapman's scholarly edition of Pride and Prejudice, first published in 1923, has become the standard edition on which many modern published versions of the novel are based.
The novel was originally published anonymously, as were all of Austen's novels. However, whereas her first published novel, Sense and Sensibility was presented as being written "by a Lady," Pride and Prejudice was attributed to "the Author of Sense and Sensibility". This began to consolidate a conception of Austen as an author, albeit anonymously. Her subsequent novels were similarly attributed to the anonymous author of all her then-published works.
Reception
19th century
The novel was well received, with three favourable reviews in the first months following publication. Anne Isabella Milbanke, later to be the wife of Lord Byron, called it "the fashionable novel". Noted critic and reviewer George Henry Lewes declared that he "would rather have written Pride and Prejudice, or Tom Jones, than any of the Waverley Novels".
Throughout the 19th century, not all reviews of the work were positive. Charlotte Brontë, in a letter to Lewes, wrote that Pride and Prejudice was a disappointment, "a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but [...] no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck". Along with her, Mark Twain was overwhelmingly negative of the work. He stated, "Everytime I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig [Austen] up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."
Austen for her part thought the "playfulness and epigrammaticism" of Pride and Prejudice was excessive, complaining in a letter to her sister Cassandra in 1813 that the novel lacked "shade" and should have had a chapter "of solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story; an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott or the history of Buonaparté".
Walter Scott wrote in his journal, "Read again and for the third time at least, Miss Austen's very finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice."
20th century
The American scholar Claudia L. Johnson defended the novel from the criticism that it has an unrealistic fairy-tale quality. One critic, Mary Poovey, wrote that the "romantic conclusion" of Pride and Prejudice is an attempt to hedge the conflict between the "individualistic perspective inherent in the bourgeois value system and the authoritarian hierarchy retained from traditional, paternalistic society". Johnson wrote that Austen's view of a power structure capable of reformation was not an "escape" from conflict. Johnson wrote the "outrageous unconventionality" of Elizabeth Bennet was in Austen's own time very daring, especially given the strict censorship that was imposed in Britain by the Prime Minister, William Pitt, in the 1790s when Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice.
In the early twentieth century, the term "Collins," named for Austen's William Collins, came into use as slang for a thank-you note to a host.
21st century
In 2003 the BBC conducted a poll for the "UK's Best-Loved Book" in which Pride and Prejudice came second, behind The Lord of the Rings.
In a 2008 survey of more than 15,000 Australian readers, Pride and Prejudice came first in a list of the 101 best books ever written.
The 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice on 28 January 2013 was celebrated around the globe by media networks such as the Huffington Post, The New York Times, and The Daily Telegraph, among others.
Adaptations
Film, television and theatre
Numerous screen adaptations have contributed in popularising Pride and Prejudice.
The first television adaptation of the novel, written by Michael Barry, was produced in 1938 by the BBC. It is a lost television broadcast. Some of the notable film versions include the 1940 Academy Award-winning film, starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier (based in part on Helen Jerome's 1935 stage adaptation) and that of 2005, starring Keira Knightley (an Oscar-nominated performance) and Matthew Macfadyen. Television versions include two by the BBC: a 1980 version starring Elizabeth Garvie and David Rintoul and a 1995 version, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.
A stage version created by Helen Jerome premiered at the Music Box Theatre in New York in 1935, starring Adrianne Allen and Colin Keith-Johnston, and opened at the St James's Theatre in London in 1936, starring Celia Johnson and Hugh Williams. Elizabeth Refuses a play by Margaret Macnamara of scenes from the novel was made into a TV programme by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1957. First Impressions was a 1959 Broadway musical version starring Polly Bergen, Farley Granger, and Hermione Gingold. In 1995, a musical concept album was written by Bernard J. Taylor, with Claire Moore in the role of Elizabeth Bennet and Peter Karrie in the role of Mr Darcy. A new stage production, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, The New Musical, was presented in concert on 21 October 2008 in Rochester, New York, with Colin Donnell as Darcy. The Swedish composer Daniel Nelson based his 2011 opera Stolthet och fördom on Pride and Prejudice. Works inspired by the book include Bride and Prejudice and Trishna (1985 Hindi TV series).
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries – which premiered on a dedicated YouTube channel on 9 April 2012, and concluded on 28 March 2013 – is an Emmy award-winning web-series which recounts the story via vlogs recorded primarily by the Bennet sisters. It was created by Hank Green and Bernie Su.
In 2017, the bicentenary year of Austen's death, Pride and Prejudice – An adaptation in Words and Music to music by Carl Davis from the 1995 film and text by Gill Hornby was performed in the UK, with Hayley Mills as the narrator This adaptation was presented in 2024 at the Sydney Opera House and the Arts Centre Melbourne, narrated by Nadine Garner.
In 2018, part of the storyline of the Brazilian soap opera Orgulho e Paixão, aired on TV Globo, was inspired by the book. The soap opera was also inspired by other works of Jane Austen. It features actors, Nathalia Dill, Thiago Lacerda, Agatha Moreira, Rodrigo Simas, Gabriela Duarte, Marcelo Faria, Alessandra Negrini, and Natália do Vale.
Fire Island is a movie written by Joel Kim Booster that reimagines Pride and Prejudice as a gay drama set on the quintessential gay vacation destination of Fire Island. Booster describes the movie "as an unapologetic and modern twist on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice." The movie was released in June 2022 and features a main cast of Asian-American actors.
Literature
The novel has inspired a number of other works that are not direct adaptations. Books inspired by Pride and Prejudice include the following:
Mr Darcy's Daughters and The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy by Elizabeth Aston
Darcy's Story (a best seller) and Dialogue with Darcy by Janet Aylmer
Pemberley: Or Pride and Prejudice Continued and An Unequal Marriage: Or Pride and Prejudice Twenty Years Later by Emma Tennant
The Book of Ruth by Helen Baker
Jane Austen Ruined My Life and Mr Darcy Broke My Heart by Beth Pattillo
Precipitation – A Continuation of Miss Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice by Helen Baker
Searching for Pemberley by Mary Simonsen
Mr Darcy Takes a Wife and its sequel Darcy & Elizabeth: Nights and Days at Pemberley by Linda Berdoll
In Gwyn Cready's comedic romance novel, Seducing Mr Darcy, the heroine lands in Pride and Prejudice by way of magic massage, has a fling with Darcy and unknowingly changes the rest of the story.
Abigail Reynolds is the author of seven Regency-set variations on Pride and Prejudice. Her Pemberley Variations series includes Mr Darcy's Obsession, To Conquer Mr Darcy, What Would Mr Darcy Do and Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy: The Last Man in the World. Her modern adaptation, The Man Who Loved Pride and Prejudice, is set on Cape Cod.
Bella Breen is the author of nine variations on Pride and Prejudice. Pride and Prejudice and Poison, Four Months to Wed, Forced to Marry and The Rescue of Elizabeth Bennet.
Helen Fielding's 1996 novel Bridget Jones's Diary is also based on Pride and Prejudice; the feature film of Fielding's work, released in 2001, stars Colin Firth, who had played Mr Darcy in the successful 1990s TV adaptation.
In March 2009, Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies takes Austen's work and mashes it up with zombie hordes, cannibalism, ninja and ultraviolent mayhem. In March 2010, Quirk Books published a prequel by Steve Hockensmith that deals with Elizabeth Bennet's early days as a zombie hunter, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls. The 2016 film of Grahame-Smith's adaptation was released starring Lily James, Sam Riley and Matt Smith.
In 2011, author Mitzi Szereto expanded on the novel in Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Lusts, a historical sex parody that parallels the original plot and writing style of Jane Austen.
Marvel has also published their take on this classic by releasing a short comic series of five issues that stays true to the original storyline. The first issue was published on 1 April 2009 and was written by Nancy Hajeski. It was published as a graphic novel in 2010 with artwork by Hugo Petrus.
Pamela Aidan is the author of a trilogy of books telling the story of Pride and Prejudice from Mr Darcy's point of view: Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman. The books are An Assembly Such as This, Duty and Desire and These Three Remain.
Detective novel author P. D. James has written a book titled Death Comes to Pemberley, which is a murder mystery set six years after Elizabeth and Darcy's marriage.
Sandra Lerner's sequel to Pride and Prejudice, Second Impressions, develops the story and imagined what might have happened to the original novel's characters. It is written in the style of Austen after extensive research into the period and language and published in 2011 under the pen name of Ava Farmer.
Jo Baker's bestselling 2013 novel Longbourn imagines the lives of the servants of Pride and Prejudice. A cinematic adaptation of Longbourn was due to start filming in late 2018, directed by Sharon Maguire, who also directed Bridget Jones's Diary and Bridget Jones's Baby, screenplay by Jessica Swale, produced by Random House Films and StudioCanal. The novel was also adapted for radio, appearing on BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime, abridged by Sara Davies and read by Sophie Thompson. It was first broadcast in May 2014; and again on Radio 4 Extra in September 2018.
In the novel Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld sets the characters of Pride and Prejudice in modern-day Cincinnati, where the Bennet parents, erstwhile Cincinnati social climbers, have fallen on hard times. Elizabeth, a successful and independent New York journalist, and her single older sister Jane must intervene to salvage the family's financial situation and get their unemployed adult sisters to move out of the house and onward in life. In the process they encounter Chip Bingley, a young doctor and reluctant reality TV celebrity, and his medical school classmate, Fitzwilliam Darcy, a cynical neurosurgeon.
Pride and Prejudice has also inspired works of scientific writing. In 2010, scientists named a pheromone identified in male mouse urine darcin, after Mr Darcy, because it strongly attracted females. In 2016, a scientific paper published in the Journal of Inherited Metabolic Disease speculated that Mrs Bennet may have been a carrier of a rare genetic disease, explaining why the Bennets didn't have any sons, and why some of the Bennet sisters are so silly.
In summer 2014, Udon Entertainment's Manga Classics line published a manga adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
References
External links
Media related to Pride and Prejudice at Wikimedia Commons
Pride and Prejudice at Standard Ebooks
Pride and Prejudice (Chapman edition) at Project Gutenberg
Pride and Prejudice public domain audiobook at LibriVox
Digital resources relating to Jane Austen Archived 4 April 2019 at the Wayback Machine from the British Library's Discovering Literature website |
Pride_%26_Prejudice_(2005_film) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_%26_Prejudice_(2005_film) | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_%26_Prejudice_(2005_film)"
] | Pride & Prejudice is a 2005 historical romantic drama film directed by Joe Wright, in his feature directorial debut, and based on Jane Austen's 1813 novel. The film features five sisters from an English family of landed gentry as they deal with issues of marriage, morality, and misconceptions. Keira Knightley stars as Elizabeth Bennet, while Matthew Macfadyen plays Mr Darcy, who falls in love with her.
Screenwriter Deborah Moggach initially attempted to make her script as faithful to the novel as possible, writing from Elizabeth's perspective while preserving much of the original dialogue. Wright encouraged greater deviation from the text, including changing the dynamics within the Bennet family. Wright and Moggach set the film in an earlier period and avoided depicting a "perfectly clean Regency world", presenting instead a "muddy hem version" of the time. It was shot entirely on location in England on an 11-week schedule. Wright found casting difficult due to past performances of particular characters. The filmmakers had to balance who they thought was best for each role with the studio's desire for stars. Knightley was well known in part from her role in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series, while Macfadyen had no international name recognition.
Produced by Working Title Films in association with StudioCanal, Pride & Prejudice was released on 16 September 2005 in the United Kingdom and on 11 November in the United States. The film's themes emphasise realism, romanticism and family. It was marketed to a younger, mainstream audience; promotional items noted that it came from the producers of 2001's romantic comedy Bridget Jones's Diary before acknowledging its provenance as an Austen novel. Austen scholars opined that Wright's work created a new hybrid genre by blending traditional traits of the heritage film with "youth-oriented filmmaking techniques".
Pride & Prejudice was successful at the box office, grossing $121.6 million worldwide on a budget of $28 million. The film received positive reviews from critics upon release, with praise directed towards Knightley's performance. It received four nominations at the 78th Academy Awards, including Best Actress for the 20-year-old Knightley, making her the third-youngest Best Actress nominee at the time. The film received other accolades, including the BAFTA Award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer for Wright.
Plot
During the late 18th century, Mr and Mrs Bennet and their daughters – Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia – live at Longbourn, their estate in rural England. Mrs Bennet, eager to secure suitable marriages for her daughters, is delighted when wealthy bachelor Charles Bingley moves into nearby Netherfield Hall.
At an assembly ball, Bingley, his sister Caroline, and his friend Mr Darcy meet the local society. Bingley and Jane are immediately taken with each other, while Elizabeth instantly dislikes the snobbish Darcy and overhears his dismissive remarks about her.
Later, visiting the Bingleys, Jane falls ill and must stay to recuperate. While Elizabeth is visiting Jane at Netherfield, she verbally spars with the haughty Caroline and the aloof Darcy. Jane recovers and, soon after, Mr Bennet's cousin Mr Collins, a pompous clergyman, visits the Bennets; as the closest male relative, Collins will inherit Longbourn as it is entailed on the male line.
Mr Collins intends to propose to Jane, but Mrs Bennet says she will soon be engaged and consequently suggests Elizabeth, whom Collins considers an agreeable alternative. The Bennet sisters also meet the handsome and charming soldier Lieutenant Wickham, whose father worked for the Darcy family. He wins Elizabeth's sympathy by telling her that Mr Darcy denied him his rightful inheritance.
At the Netherfield ball, Elizabeth dances with Darcy, though the encounter is strained. The next day, Collins proposes to Elizabeth, who roundly rejects him; despite her mother's anger, her father supports her decision.
Elizabeth is astonished when her close friend, Charlotte, fearing spinsterhood, announces her engagement to Mr Collins. The Bingley party unexpectedly returns to London. Elizabeth urges Jane to visit their aunt and uncle, the Gardiners, who live in London, hoping she reconnects with Bingley.
Months later, Elizabeth visits Charlotte and Mr Collins, who reside next to Lady Catherine de Bourgh's estate in Kent. Elizabeth unexpectedly meets Darcy, who is Lady Catherine's nephew and visiting with his cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam. Unaware that Jane is Elizabeth's sister, Fitzwilliam mentions that Darcy recently untangled Bingley from an imprudent match with an "unsuitable" family.
Distraught, Elizabeth is then met by Darcy, who surprisingly proposes marriage, declaring his ardent love despite her inferior rank and family. Offended and angry, she refuses him. He defends separating Jane and Bingley, believing Jane indifferent to his friend, and criticises the other Bennets' occasional social impropriety. Elizabeth also cites his mistreating Wickham.
Angry and heartbroken, Darcy later delivers Elizabeth a letter describing Wickham's true character: Wickham squandered the bequest Darcy's father left him, then attempted to seduce Darcy's 15-year-old sister, Georgiana, into eloping to gain her fortune.
Elizabeth returns home, as does Jane. Accompanying the Gardiners on a trip to the Peak District, Elizabeth reluctantly tours Pemberley, the grand Darcy estate. She unexpectedly runs into Darcy, who invites her and the Gardiners to dine there. Darcy's manner has softened considerably, his manners impressing the Gardiners, and Georgiana sharing her brother's flattering reports about Elizabeth.
An urgent letter from Jane reveals that Lydia has run off with Wickham. Darcy leaves abruptly, and Elizabeth returns home, certain she will never see Darcy again. Her mother fears Lydia's disgrace will ruin her other daughters' chances of good marriages.
After a tense waiting period, Mr Gardiner sends news that Lydia and Wickham are now married, and the newlyweds return to Longbourn. Lydia lets slip to Elizabeth that it was Darcy who found them and paid for their wedding; he also purchased Wickham's military commission.
Bingley and Darcy return to Netherfield and visit Longbourn. Bingley proposes to Jane, who accepts. Late that night, Lady Catherine arrives to see Elizabeth and demands she never become engaged to Darcy because, she claims, Darcy has been engaged to marry Lady Catherine's daughter, who suffers poor health, since infancy. Deeply insulted, Elizabeth orders her to leave.
Walking early the next morning, Elizabeth encounters Darcy, who apologises for his aunt's intrusion. He professes his continued love and Elizabeth, her feelings radically altered, accepts his proposal. She tells her father the truth of Darcy's actions, and Mr Bennet gives Elizabeth his consent to marry, overjoyed she has found love.
Cast
Keira Knightley as Elizabeth "Lizzy" Bennet
Matthew Macfadyen as Mr Darcy
Brenda Blethyn as Mrs Bennet
Donald Sutherland as Mr Bennet
Rosamund Pike as Jane Bennet
Jena Malone as Lydia Bennet
Tom Hollander as Mr Collins
Penelope Wilton as Mrs Gardiner
Judi Dench as Lady Catherine de Bourgh
Simon Woods as Charles Bingley
Carey Mulligan as Catherine "Kitty" Bennet
Talulah Riley as Mary Bennet
Rupert Friend as George Wickham
Kelly Reilly as Caroline Bingley
Tamzin Merchant as Georgiana Darcy
Claudie Blakley as Charlotte Lucas
Cornelius Booth as Colonel Fitzwilliam
Peter Wight as Mr Gardiner
Roy Holder as Mr Hill
Pip Torrens as Netherfield Hall Butler
Meg Wynn Owen as Mrs Reynolds
Sinead Matthews as Mrs Betsy
Production
Conception and adaptation
As with several recent Jane Austen adaptations, Pride & Prejudice was an Anglo-American collaboration, between British studio Working Title Films (in association with French company StudioCanal) and its American parent company Universal Studios. Working Title at the time was known for mainstream productions like Bridget Jones's Diary and Love Actually that drew international audiences, rather than films in the historical drama genre. Its co-chairman Tim Bevan explained that the studio wanted to "bring Austen's original story, concentrating on Lizzie, back in all its glory to the big screen for audiences everywhere to enjoy". Given a "relatively inexpensive" budget of £22 million ($28 million), the film was expected to excel at the box office, particularly based on the commercial successes of Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Shakespeare in Love (1998) as well as the resurgence of interest in Austen's works.
Given little instruction from the studio, screenwriter Deborah Moggach spent over two years creating the script. She had sole discretion with the early script, and eventually wrote approximately ten drafts. Realising it held "a perfect three-act structure", Moggach attempted to be as faithful to the original novel as possible, calling it "so beautifully shaped as a story – the ultimate romance about two people who think they hate each other but who are really passionately in love. I felt, 'If it's not broken, don't fix it'". While she could not reproduce the novel's "fiercely wonderful dialogue in its entirety", she sought to keep much of it.
Moggach's first script was closest to Austen's book, but later versions trimmed extraneous storylines and characters. Moggach initially wrote all scenes from Elizabeth's point of view in keeping with the novel; she later set a few scenes from the male perspective, such as when Bingley practices his marriage proposal, to "show Darcy and Bingley being close" and to indicate Darcy was a "human being instead of being stuck up". Small details were inserted that acknowledged wider events outside of the characters' circle, such as those then occurring in France. While Moggach is the only credited screenwriter, playwright Lee Hall provided early additions.
Television director Joe Wright was hired in early 2004, in his feature film directorial debut. He was considered a surprising choice for a film in the romance drama genre due to his past work with social realism. Wright's body of work had impressed the producers, who were looking for a fresh perspective; they sent him a script despite the fact that Wright had not read the novel. He commented that at the time, "I didn't know if I was really all that interested; I thought I was a little bit more mainstream than this, a bit more edgy. But then I read the script and I was surprised I was very moved by it". He next read the novel, which he called "an amazing piece of character observation and it really seemed like the first piece of British Realism. It felt like it was a true story; had a lot of truth in it about understanding how to love other people, understanding how to overcome prejudices, understanding the things that separate us from other people ... things like that".
The only adaptation of Pride and Prejudice Wright had seen was the 1940 production, which was the last time the novel had been adapted into a feature film. The director purposely did not watch the other productions, both out of fear he would inadvertently steal ideas and because he wanted to be as original as possible. He did, however, watch other period films, including Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, Roger Michell's Persuasion, and John Schlesinger's Far from the Madding Crowd. Wright cited this last film as the greatest influence on his own adaptation, calling it "very real and very honest – and it is quite romantic as well". In trying to create an atmosphere of charged flirtation, the director also gained inspiration from teen romance films such as Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club.
Wright came on while Moggach was on her third draft. Despite her desire to work closely with Austen's dialogue, Wright made an effort to not "be too reverential to [it]. I don't believe people spoke like that then; it's not natural." While a few scenes, such as the discussion over accomplished women, aligned closely with the author's original dialogue, many others "substituted instead a mixture of modern idiom and archaic-sounding sentence structure". One alteration concerned politeness; Wright noted that while Austen's work had characters waiting before speaking, he believed that "particularly in big families of girls, everyone tends to speak over each other, finishing each other's sentences, etc. So I felt that the Bennet family's conversations would be overlapping like that." Sense and Sensibility actress and screenwriter Emma Thompson aided in script development, though she opted to be uncredited. She advised the nervous director about adapting Austen for the screen and made dialogue recommendations, such as with parts of the Collins-Charlotte storyline.
Citing the year Austen first wrote a draft of the novel, Wright and Moggach changed the period setting from 1813 (the novel's publication date) to the late eighteenth century; this decision was partly because Wright wanted to highlight the differences within an England influenced by the French Revolution, as he was fascinated that it had "caused an atmosphere among the British aristocracy of fear". Additionally, Wright chose the earlier period because he hated dresses with an empire silhouette, which were popular in the later period. The decision helped make the film visually distinct from other Austen adaptations. In comparison to the popular 1995 BBC version, which featured Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, producer Paul Webster desired to make an adaptation that "doesn't conform to the television drama stereotypes of a perfect clean Regency world". Wright and Moggach opted for a "muddy hem version" of Longbourn, presenting a more rural setting than in previous adaptations out of a desire to depict the Bennets in "very close proximity to their rural life" and to emphasise their relative poverty. While the degree of poverty was criticised by some critics, Wright felt that the "mess adds to the drama of the predicament that the family were in", and helps contrast the Bennets, Darcys, and Bingleys.
Casting
Wright found casting of the film to be difficult because he was very particular about "the types of people [he] wanted to work with". While interviewing to direct, he insisted that the actors match the ages of the characters in the novel. Wright specifically cast actors that had rapport on and off screen, and insisted that they partake in three weeks of rehearsal in improvisation workshops. Wright also had to balance who he thought was best for each role with what the producers wanted – mainly a big name attraction. Though Wright had not initially pictured someone as attractive as English actress Keira Knightley for the lead role of Elizabeth Bennet, he cast her after realising that the actress "is really a tomboy [and] has a lively mind and a great sense of humour". Knightley at the time was known for Bend It Like Beckham and the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. She had been an Austen fan since age 7, but initially feared taking the role out of apprehension that she would be doing "an absolute copy of Jennifer Ehle's performance", which she deeply admired. Knightley believed Elizabeth is "what you aspire to be: she's funny, she's witty and intelligent. She's a fully rounded and very much loved character." For the period, the actress studied etiquette, history and dancing but ran into trouble when she acquired a short haircut while preparing for her role in the bounty hunter film Domino.
Webster found the casting of Darcy especially hard due to the character's iconic status and because "Colin Firth cast a very long shadow" as the 1995 Darcy. Wright later commented that his choice of Knightley allowed him to cast comparative unknown Matthew Macfadyen, something that would have been impossible had he chosen a less well-known actress for Elizabeth Bennet. Macfadyen at the time was known for his role in the British television spy series Spooks, but had no recognition internationally. A fan of the actor's television work, Wright called Macfadyen "a proper manly man ... I didn't want a pretty boy kind of actor. His properties were the ones I felt I needed [for Darcy]. Matthew's a great big hunk of a guy."
According to Wright, Rosamund Pike was cast as the eldest sister "because [he] knew she wasn't going to play her as a nice, simple person. Jane has a real interior world, she has her heart broken." Despite being Pike's ex-boyfriend, Simon Woods was cast as her romantic interest Mr Bingley. The other three Bennet sisters were played by Talulah Riley, Carey Mulligan, and Jena Malone, the only American actress among them. Wright believed Malone to have a "pretty faultless English accent". Mulligan heard about the casting call at a dinner hosted by Julian Fellowes, to whom she had written a letter after failing to get into drama school; she won the part after three auditions. Tamzin Merchant appears as Georgiana Darcy; she was hired despite having no previous acting experience after she wrote a letter to the casting director. In addition to Merchant, Pride & Prejudice was the feature film debut of both Mulligan and Riley.
Donald Sutherland reminded Wright of his own father and was cast as the Bennet patriarch; Wright thought the actor possessed the "strength to handle those six women". Brenda Blethyn was hired to play Mrs Bennet, whom Moggach believed to be the unsung heroine of the film; Wright explained that it was "a tricky part [to fill], as she can be very annoying; you want to stop her chattering and shrieking. But Brenda has the humour and the heart to show the amount of love and care Mrs Bennet has for her daughters." Wright convinced veteran actress Judi Dench to join the cast as Lady Catherine de Bourgh by writing her a letter that read "I love it when you play a bitch. Please come and be a bitch for me." Dench had only one week available to shoot her scenes, forcing Wright to make them his first days of filming.
Cinematography
Cinematographer Roman Osin broke many of the conventions of the period piece, often piercing through the glamorous settings to focus on the characters' humanity. He kept the camera moving in many of the scenes, although almost every shot would have been memorable even as a still, suffused with rich colour and light, both for interiors and outdoors. In the scene in which Darcy escorts Lizzie into the carriage, he takes her hand, and then, walking away is shown momentarily closing his fingers and then opening them, in what became infamous as the "hand flex". Of note is the extended "onesie" shot in which the camera swirls seamlessly between characters and rooms during the ball at Netherfield, to show the charged emotions and confusions that overlaid the graceful and poised surroundings.
Costume design
Known for her BAFTA award-winning work on the 2004 film Vera Drake, Jacqueline Durran was hired as the costume designer. She and Wright approached his film "as a difficult thing to tackle" because of their desire to distinguish it from the television adaptation. Due to Wright's dislike of the high waistline, Durran focused on later eighteenth century fashions that often included a corseted, natural waistline rather than an empire silhouette (which became popular after the 1790s). A generational divide was established: the older characters dress in mid-eighteenth century fashions while the young wear "a sort of proto-Regency style of hair and dress".
Durran's costumes also helped emphasise social rank among the different characters; Caroline Bingley for instance is introduced in an empire silhouetted dress, clothing that would have then been at the height of fashion. During her interview, Durran opined that all the women wear white at the Netherfield Ball due to its contemporary popularity, an idea that Wright credits as his reason for hiring her. Costumes and hairstyles were adjusted to appeal to contemporary audiences, sacrificing historical accuracy.
To help differentiate the Bennet sisters, Durran viewed Elizabeth as the "tomboy", clothing her in earthy colours because of her love of the countryside. For the other sisters, Durran remarked, "Jane was the most refined and yet it's still all a bit slapdash and homemade, because the Bennets have no money. One of the main things Joe wanted was for the whole thing to have a provincial feel. Mary is the bluestocking: serious and practical. And then Lydia and Kitty are a bit Tweedledum and Tweedledee in a kind of teenage way. I tried to make it so that they'd be sort of mirror images. If one's wearing a green dress, the other will wear a green jacket; so you always have a visual asymmetry between the two." In contrast to the 1940 film, the 2005 production displayed the Bennet sisters in worn-down but comfortable dresses.
Mr Darcy's costume went through a series of phases. Durran noted: The first time we see him he's at Meriton [sic], where he has a very stiffly tailored jacket on and he's quite contained and rigid. He stays in that rigid form for the first part of the film. By the time we get to the proposal that goes wrong in the rain, we move to a similar cut, but a much softer fabric. And then later he's got a completely different cut of coat, not interlined and he wears it undone. The nth degree is him walking through the mist in the morning, completely undressed by 18th-century standards. It's absolutely unlikely, but then Lizzie's in her nightie, so what can you say?
Filming
Moggach believed the novel was very filmable, "despite it containing no description and being a very unvisual book". To Wright, many other period films had relied on paintings for inspiration rather than photographs, causing them to appear unreal. He thus used "Austen's prose [to give him] many visual references for the people in the story", including using close-up shots of various characters. The filmmakers also changed several scenes to more romantic locales than those in the book. For instance, in the film, Darcy first proposes outdoors in a rainstorm at a building with neoclassical architecture; in the book, this scene takes place inside a parsonage. In the film, his second proposal occurs on the misty moors as dawn breaks; in the book, he and Elizabeth are walking down a country lane in broad daylight. Wright has acknowledged that "there are a lot of period film clichés; some of them are in the film and some are not, but for me it was important to question them".
During script development, the crew created a "constant going back and forth between script and location". The film was shot entirely on location within England on an 11-week schedule during the 2004 summer. Co-producer Paul Webster noted that "it is quite unusual for a movie this size to be shot entirely on location. Part of Joe [Wright]'s idea was to try to create a reality which allows the actors to relax and feel at one with their environment." Working under production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer, the crew filmed on seven estates in six different counties. Because "nothing exists in the United Kingdom that is untouched by the twenty-first century", many of the sites required substantial work to make them suitable for filming. Visual effects company Double Negative digitally restored several locations to make them contemporaneous; they eradicated weeds, enhanced gold plating on window frames, and removed anachronisms such as gravel driveways and electricity pylons. Double Negative also developed the typeface used for the film's title sequence.
Production staff selected particularly grand-looking residences to better convey the wealth and power of certain characters. Locations included Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, the largest privately held country house in England with its spectacular rooms frescoed by Antonio Verrio. Chatsworth House is often believed to have been Austen's inspiration for the Darcy residence. Chatsworth and Wilton House in Salisbury stood in for Pemberley. After a search of various sites in England, the moated manor house Groombridge Place in Kent was chosen for Longbourn. Location manager Adam Richards believed Groombridge had an "immense charm" that was "untouched by post-17th Century development". Reflecting Wright's choice of realism, Groombridge's interior was designed to be "shabby chic". Representing Netherfield Park was the late-18th century site Basildon Park in Berkshire, leading it to close for seven weeks to allow time for filming. Burghley House in Cambridgeshire stood in for Rosings, while the adjacent town of Stamford served as Meryton. Other locations included Haddon Hall (for The Inn at Lambton), the Temple of Apollo and Palladian Bridge of Stourhead (for the Gardens of Rosings), Hunsford (for Collins' parsonage and church) and Peak District (for Elizabeth and the Gardiners' tour). The first dance scenes were shot on a set in a potato warehouse in Lincolnshire with the employment of local townspeople as extras; this was the only set the crew built that was not already in existence.
Music
Italian composer Dario Marianelli wrote the film score. The soundtrack is performed by the French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet accompanied by the English Chamber Orchestra.
The early piano sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven "became a point of reference" and "starting point" for the original score. Some pieces were inspired by the film's period, with the assumption that they could conceivably have been heard during that time and contained actual dance cues that were fitting for the late eighteenth century. Pieces that actors perform were composed first, before filming began.
The soundtrack ultimately contained seventeen instrumental tracks of music organised in a different way from the film.
Editing
In contrast to the five-hour BBC adaptation, Wright compressed his film into two hours and nine minutes of screen time. He remarked that the film is "obviously about Elizabeth and Darcy, following them and anything that detracts or diverts you from that story is what you have to cut". Some of the most notable changes from the original book include time compression of several major sequences, including the departure of Wickham and the militia, Elizabeth's visit to Rosings Park and Hunsford Parsonage, Elizabeth's visit to Pemberley, Lydia's elopement and subsequent crisis; the elimination of several supporting characters, including Mr and Mrs Hurst, Mr and Mrs Phillips, Lady and Maria Lucas, Mrs Younge, several of Lydia's friends (including Colonel and Mrs Forster) and various military officers and townspeople; and the elimination of several sections in which characters reflect or converse on events that have recently occurred—for example, Elizabeth's chapter-long change of mind after reading Darcy's letter.
Moggach and Wright debated how to end the film, but knew they did not want to have a wedding scene "because we didn't want Elizabeth to come off as the girl who became a queen at this lavish wedding, or for it to be corny". Shortly before the North American release, the film was modified to include a final scene (not in the novel) of the married Darcys enjoying a romantic evening and passionate kiss at Pemberley in an attempt to attract sentimental viewers; this became a source of complaint for the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA). After watching a preview of the film before its wide release, former JASNA president Elsa Solender commented, "It has nothing at all of Jane Austen in it, is inconsistent with the first two-thirds of the film, insults the audience with its banality and ought to be cut before release". It had been removed from the British version after preview audiences found it unintentionally humorous; however, later audiences complained that they were excluded from viewing this version, causing the film to be re-released in the UK and Ireland 10 weeks after the original UK premiere date. The original British version ended with Mr Bennet's blessing upon Elizabeth and Darcy's union, thus circumventing the last chapter in the novel, which summarises the lives of the Darcys and the other main characters over the next several years.
Major themes and analysis
Romanticism and realism
Film, literary, and Austen scholars noted the appearance of romance and romanticism within Pride & Prejudice, especially in comparison to previous adaptations. Sarah Ailwood marked the film as "an essentially Romantic interpretation of Austen's novel", citing as evidence Wright's attention to nature as a means to "position Elizabeth and Darcy as Romantic figures ... Wright's Pride & Prejudice takes as its central focus Austen's concern with exploring the nature of the Romantic self and the possibilities for women and men to achieve individual self-fulfillment within an oppressive patriarchal social and economic order." Likewise, Catherine Stewart-Beer of Oxford Brookes University called Elizabeth's presence on the Derbyshire cliff a "stunning, magical evocation of Wright's strong stylistic brand of Postmodern Romanticism", but found this less like Austen and more reminiscent of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. In her analysis, University of Provence scholar Lydia Martin concluded that the "Romantic bias of the film is shown through the shifts in the characters' relationships, the soundtrack and the treatment of landscape".
Realism is a prominent aspect of the film, a theme confirmed by Wright in interviews as well as the DVD audio commentary. In a 2007 article, Ursinus College film studies professor Carole Dole argued that Pride & Prejudice is "a hybrid that embraces both an irreverent realism to which younger audiences are accustomed (and which reflects the director's realist aesthetic) and the classic heritage film's reverence for country houses, attractive landscapes and authentic period detail". Such "irreverent realism" included the depiction of Longbourn as a working farm complete with chickens, cattle and pigs; as Dole explains, "The agricultural realities of 1790s England are equally evident in the enclosed yard with barn and hay where Lizzie twirls barefoot over the mud on a rope swing". Referring to recent adaptations such as 1999's gritty Mansfield Park, Dole cited Pride & Prejudice as evidence that the heritage film is still around but has "been transformed into a more flexible genre". Jessica Durgan agreed with this assessment, writing that the film "simultaneously reject[s] and embrac[es] heritage to attract a larger audience".
Family
Raised with three sisters, Moggach was particularly interested in the story's family dynamics. Brock University professor Barbara K. Seeber believed that in contrast to the novel, the 2005 adaptation emphasises the familial over the romantic. Evidence of this can be seen in how Pride & Prejudice "significantly recast the Bennet family, in particular its patriarch, presenting Mr Bennet as a sensitive and kind father whose role in the family's misfortunes is continually downplayed." Seeber further observed that the film is "the first to present Mrs Bennet in a sympathetic light", with Mr Bennet displayed as "an attentive husband as well as a loving father."
Stewart-Beer and Austen scholar Sally B. Palmer noted alterations within the depiction of the Bennet family; Stewart-Beer remarked that while their family home "might be chaotic, in this version it is, at heart, a happy home—much happier and much less dysfunctional, than Austen's original version of Longbourn ... For one, Mr and Mrs Bennet actually seem to like each other, even love each other, a characterisation which is a far cry from the source text." Producer Paul Webster acknowledged the familial theme in the DVD featurette "A Bennet Family Portrait", remarking "Yes, it's a great love story between Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, but underpinning it all is the kind of love that runs this family."
Depiction of Elizabeth Bennet
Wright intended for the film to be "as subjective as possible" in being from Elizabeth's perspective; the audience first glimpses Darcy when she does. This focus on Elizabeth features some dramatic changes from the novel. Knightley's Elizabeth has an "increasingly aloof and emotionally distant" relationship with her family. Evidence of this can be seen with Elizabeth's gradual alienation from Jane as the film progresses; this is in contrast to the book, where Elizabeth confides more of her feelings to Jane after difficult events. Wright wanted to create a "real" relationship between the two sisters and have them grow apart, as he thought the book depicted them as too "syrupy." Moggach's intent was for Elizabeth to "keep secrets to herself. They are a great burden to her ... As she keeps all this to herself, we feel for her more and more. The truest comedy, I believe, is born from pain."
In her "feisty, impassioned" interactions with Darcy and "rebellious refusal to 'perform'" for Lady Catherine, Stewart-Beer sees Knightley's depiction as "far removed from Austen's original Elizabeth, who has a greater sense of grounded maturity, even though both Elizabeths have an occasional inclination to fluster, fun and giggles." According to George Washington University professor Laurie Kaplan, while Wright's focus on Elizabeth is consistent with the novel, the screenplay removed her line of self-recognition: "Till this moment, I never knew myself". Kaplan characterises the sentence as Elizabeth's "most important", and believes its deletion "violates not only the spirit and the essence of Austen's story but the viewer's expectations as well."
Release
Marketing
After a string of Jane Austen semi-adaptations in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Pride & Prejudice was positioned to take audiences "back into the world of period drama and what many saw as a more authentic version of Austen." While the novel was known to audiences, the large number of related productions required the film to distinguish itself. It was marketed to attract mainstream, young viewers, with one observer referring to it as "the ultimate chick-flick romance" and "more commercial than previous big-screen Austen adaptations." Another wrote that it brings "millennial girlhood to the megaplex ... If Ehle's Lizzie is every forty-, or fifty-something's favorite independent, even 'mature,' Austen heroine, Knightley is every twenty-something's sexpot good girl." An ampersand replaced the word "and" in the film title, similar to the 1996 postmodern film Romeo + Juliet.
Already a star at the time of release, Knightley's appearance in the film was emphasised by featuring her in all promotional materials (similar to Colin Firth's prominent appearance in the 1995 adaptation). Several commentators likened the main poster of Pride & Prejudice to that of 1995's Sense and Sensibility, which was seen as an attempt to attract the same demographic. Advertising noted that the film came "from the producers of Bridget Jones's Diary", a 2001 romantic comedy film, before mentioning Austen. Leading up to the release, fans were allowed to download pictures and screensavers online, which emphasised the differences between Pride & Prejudice and previous adaptations. Lydia Martin wrote that in contrast to past Pride and Prejudice productions, marketing materials downplayed the "suggested antagonism between the heroes" in favour of highlighting a "romantic relationship", as can be seen with the positioning of the characters as well as with the tagline, "Sometimes the last person on earth you want to be with is the one you can't be without."
Box office
On 11 September 2005, Pride & Prejudice premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival as a special Gala Presentation. The film was released in cinemas on 16 September in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It achieved the number one spot in its first week, earning £2.5 million ($4.6 million) while playing on 397 screens. The film stayed at the top for two more weeks, earning by then a total of over £9 million at the UK box office. It was featured on 412 screens at its widest domestic release.
On 11 November 2005, the film debuted in the United States with an opening weekend of $2.9 million on 215 screens. Two weeks later, it played on 1,299 screens and box office returns increased to $7.2 million; the film left cinemas the week of 24 February 2006 with a total US gross of $38,405,088. Jack Foley, the president of distribution of Focus Features, the film's US distributor, attributed Pride & Prejudice's success in America to Austen's appeal to "the boomer market" and its status as a known "brand".
Pride & Prejudice was released in an additional fifty-nine countries between September 2005 and May 2006 by United International Pictures. With a worldwide gross of $121,147,947, it was the 72nd highest-grossing film of 2005 in the US and was the 41st highest internationally.
Home media
In the US and UK, Universal Studios Home Entertainment released the standard VHS and DVD in February 2006 for both widescreen and fullframe; attached bonus features included audio commentary by director Joe Wright, a look into Austen's life and the ending scene of Elizabeth and Darcy kissing. On 13 November 2007, Universal released the deluxe edition DVD to coincide with the theatrical arrival of Wright's 2007 film Atonement. The deluxe edition included both widescreen and fullscreen features, the original soundtrack CD, a collectible book and booklet, as well as a number of special features not included in the original DVD. In the US, a Blu-ray version of the film was released by Universal on 26 January 2010, which also contained bonus features.
Reception
Pride & Prejudice was only the second film version after "the famed, but oddly flawed, black-and-white 1940 adaptation, starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier", and until 2005, The Times considered the 1995 television adaptation "so dominant, so universally adored, [that] it has lingered in the public consciousness as a cinematic standard." Wright's film consequently met with some scepticism from admirers of Austen, especially in relation to plot changes and casting choices. "Any resemblance to scenes and characters created by Miss Austen is, of course, entirely coincidental," mocked The New Yorker's film critic. Given Austen's characters were landed gentry, especially criticised was the re-imagining of the Bennetts as country bumpkins, lacking even the basics of table manners, and their home "a barnyard".
Comparing six major adaptations of Pride and Prejudice in 2005, The Daily Mirror gave the only top marks of nine out of ten to the 1995 serial and the 2005 film, leaving the other adaptations behind with six or fewer points. On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 86% based on reviews from 182 critics, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "Sure, it's another adaptation of cinema's fave Jane Austen novel, but key performances and a modern filmmaking sensibility make this familiar period piece fresh and enjoyable." On Metacritic the film has an average score of 82 out of 100, based on 37 reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A−" on scale of A to F.
Critics claimed the film's time constraints did not capture the depth and complexity of the television serials and called Wright's adaptation "obviously [not as] daring or revisionist" as the serial. JASNA president Joan Klingel Ray preferred the young age of Knightley and Macfadyen, saying that Jennifer Ehle had formerly been "a little too 'heavy' for the role." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, while praising Knightley for an outstanding performance "which lifts the whole movie", considered the casting of the leads "arguably a little more callow than Firth and Ehle." He does add that "Only a snob, a curmudgeon, or someone with necrophiliac loyalty to the 1995 BBC version with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle could fail to enjoy [Knightley's] performance." At the time, BBC film critic Stella Papamichael considered it Knightley's "best performance yet." However, The Daily Telegraph critic thought Knightley's acting skills slight, in her view, "Someone who radiates little more than good-mannered perkiness", and that between her and Macfadyen there was "little spark".
Critics were divided about Macfadyen's portrayal of Darcy, expressing pleasant surprise, dislike for his lack of gradual emotional shift as in the novel, and praise for his matching the insecure and sensitive personality of the book character better than Firth.
Critics also drew attention to other aspects of the film. Writing for The Sydney Morning Herald, Sandra Hall criticised Wright's attention to realism for being "careless with the customs and conventions that were part of the fabric of Austen's world." In another review, Time Out magazine lamented the absence of Austen's "brilliant sense of irony", remarking that the film's "romantic melodrama's played up at the expense of her razor-sharp wit." More positively, Derek Elley of Variety magazine praised Wright and Moggach for "extracting the youthful essence" of the novel while also "providing a richly detailed setting" under Greenwood and Durran's supervision. Equally pleased with the film was the San Francisco Chronicle's Ruthe Stein, who wrote that Wright made a "spectacular feature film debut" that is "creatively reimagined and sublimely entertaining". Claudia Puig of USA Today called it "a stellar adaptation, bewitching the viewer completely and incandescently with an exquisite blend of emotion and wit".
Accolades
Influence and legacy
Wright's adaptation failed to have the same cultural influence as the 1995 serial and has since attracted sharply-divided opinions. However, even three years after the release, Knightley was still associated with Elizabeth Bennet among a generation of young viewers who had not seen the 1995 production. Given the varied opinions about the film, JASNA published an edited special issue of its online journal Persuasions On-Line in 2007 with the collaboration of 19 Austen scholars from six countries; the intent was to foster discussion and stimulate scholarly analysis. JASNA had done this only once before, for the 1996 film Emma.
Pride & Prejudice influenced later productions in the costume drama and heritage film genres. Literary critics protested that Wright's adaptation effectively "popularized Austen's celebrated romance and brought her novel to the screen as an easy visual read for an undemanding mainstream audience". Carole Dole noted that the film's success "only made it more likely that future adaptations of Austen will feature, if not necessarily mud, then at least youthful and market-tested performers and youth-orientated filmmaking techniques balanced with the visual pleasures of the heritage film." She cited Anne Hathaway in the 2007 film Becoming Jane as an example. Jessica Durgan added that Pride & Prejudice conceived a new hybrid genre by rejecting the visual cues of the heritage film, which attracted "youth and mainstream audiences without alienating the majority of heritage fans".
Production of Pride & Prejudice began Wright's relationship with Working Title Films, the first of four collaborations. Many members of the film's cast and crew joined Wright in his later directorial efforts. For his adaptation of Atonement, which he viewed as "a direct reaction to Pride & Prejudice", Wright hired Knightley, Blethyn, Marianelli, Thibaudet, Greenwood, and Durran. Atonement employed themes similar to Austen's, including the notion of a young writer living in "an isolated English country house" who "mixes up desires and fantasies, truths and fiction". Wright's 2009 film The Soloist included Hollander, Malone, and Marianelli, while Hollander was also featured in Hanna (2011). Wright's 2012 adaptation of Anna Karenina features Knightley, Macfadyen, Marianelli, Durran, and Greenwood and is produced by Bevan, Eric Fellner, and Webster.
On 11 December 2017, Netflix announced that a person from Chile watched the film 278 times during the entire year. It was later reported that the person was a 51-year-old woman, who declared herself as "obsessed" with the film and saw Elizabeth Bennet as "a feminist icon".
See also
Jane Austen in popular culture
Janeite
List of literary adaptations of Pride and Prejudice
2005 in film
List of British films of 2005
List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees – Youngest nominees for Best Actress in a Leading Role
78th Academy Awards
63rd Golden Globe Awards
59th British Academy Film Awards
Notes
References
Bibliography
Books
Essays and journals
Interviews
Newspaper and magazine articles
Online
Press releases
Visual media
External links
Official website
Pride & Prejudice at IMDb
Pride & Prejudice at AllMovie
Pride & Prejudice at the TCM Movie Database
Pride & Prejudice at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films |
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Wright"
] | Joseph Wright (born 25 August 1972) is an English film director. His motion pictures include adaptations of Pride & Prejudice (2005), Atonement (2007), Anna Karenina (2012), and Cyrano (2021), the action thriller Hanna (2011), the Peter Pan origin story Pan (2015) and Darkest Hour (2017).
Early life and career
Wright always had an interest in the arts, especially painting. He also made films on his Super 8 camera and spent time in the evenings acting in a drama club. Wright is dyslexic. He went to Islington Green Secondary School, but left without any GCSEs.
He began his career working at his parents' puppet theatre, the Little Angel Theatre in Islington. He also took classes at the Anna Scher Theatre School and acted professionally on stage and camera. He spent an art foundation year at Camberwell College of Arts, before taking a degree in fine art and film at Central St Martins where he was tutored by Malcolm Le Grice and Vera Neubauer. In his last year of studies he received a scholarship to make a short film for the BBC that won several awards.
During the 1990s, he worked at Oil Factory, a music video production company based in Caledonian Road, Kings Cross. He worked on a variety of productions in numerous roles, including casting director. Here, he was able to get the opportunity to direct some music videos. Alongside this, particularly on the strength of his short film work, he was also developing The End, his second short film. During this decade, he also worked part-time as a roadie for Vegetable Vision, who created visuals for electronic music bands such as Chemical Brothers, Darren Emerson, Underworld and Andrew Weatherall. Wright attributes some of the aesthetic and emotion of the UK rave scene as an influence on his work.
Television
On the success of his first short film, Wright was offered the script for the serial Nature Boy (2000).
He followed this up with the serials Bodily Harm (2002) with Timothy Spall and the highly acclaimed Charles II: The Power and the Passion (2003) with Rufus Sewell, which won the BAFTA Award for Best Drama Serial.
In 2022, Wright began directing an eight-part adaptation of the bestselling novel M: Son of the Century, a historical novel by Antonio Scurati recounting the rise of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
In 2023, Wright was developing an adaptation for HBO of the bestselling non-fiction book Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune about heiress Huguette Clark, daughter of copper baron and United States Senator William A. Clark.
Feature films
In 2005, Wright made the transition to feature films with his critically acclaimed adaptation of Pride & Prejudice starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. It received numerous accolades, nominations and awards, including four Academy Award nominations (including Best Actress) and six BAFTA nominations (Wright won for Most Promising Newcomer).
Wright's next feature was an adaptation of Ian McEwan's Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Atonement (2007), which reunited Wright with Keira Knightley, and also stars James McAvoy and Saoirse Ronan. It was nominated for seven Golden Globe Awards, more than any other film that year. Though Wright was not nominated for director, the film received seven Academy Award nominations, winning only for Best Original Score. At the BAFTA Awards, it received 14 nominations and won Best Film and Best Production Design.
Wright's next film was The Soloist, starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr. It is about the "true story of musical prodigy Nathaniel Ayers, who developed schizophrenia in his second year at Juilliard and ended up homeless on the streets of downtown L.A. where he performs the violin and cello." It was to be released on 21 November 2008, but was pushed back to 24 April 2009.
Wright reunited with Atonement star Saoirse Ronan for the 2011 action thriller Hanna. The title character is a 15-year-old girl trained since birth to be an assassin by her father (Eric Bana), a rogue CIA asset. It received mostly positive reviews, with Roger Ebert calling it a "first-rate thriller". It received an aggregate score of 65 from Metacritic ("generally positive" reviews).
Wright directed the 2012 screen adaptation by Sir Tom Stoppard of Leo Tolstoy's classic novel Anna Karenina. The cast included Keira Knightley as Anna, Jude Law as her husband, Aaron Taylor-Johnson as her young love, Irish actor Domhnall Gleeson as Konstantin Levin, as well as Kelly Macdonald, Olivia Williams, Matthew Macfadyen and Michelle Dockery. Saoirse Ronan and Andrea Riseborough were initially cast, but dropped out and were replaced by Alicia Vikander and Ruth Wilson, respectively.
Wright then directed the 2015 prequel to Peter Pan for Warner Bros. The film starred Hugh Jackman, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, Amanda Seyfried and Levi Miller as Peter. The screenplay by actor-turned-screenwriter Jason Fuchs was from the 2013 Hollywood Black List, a selection of popular unproduced scripts. The film was negatively received by critics and was considered a commercial flop, failing to recoup its budget at the box office. Rooney Mara's casting as Tiger Lily caused a controversy, due to her being of European ancestry, while Tiger Lily is traditionally portrayed as Native American.
Wright's 2017 film Darkest Hour covers a pivotal month in the life of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. It stars Gary Oldman as Churchill, along with Ben Mendelsohn, Ronald Pickup, David Schofield, Kristin Scott Thomas, Samuel West and Lily James. Wright said the film was a rebuke to Donald Trump.
Directorial trademarks
Wright won a BAFTA award for best newcomer for Pride & Prejudice and was the youngest director to have a film open the Venice Film Festival with Atonement. According to the director's commentary on Pride & Prejudice, Wright is influenced by the work of British film director David Lean, and possessing a certain knowledge of art history, tries sometimes to compose his shots after classical paintings.
Charles II: The Power and The Passion, Pride & Prejudice, Atonement and Hanna all have long tracking shots in them. Atonement has a continuous five-minute and five second shot of the Dunkirk evacuation. "Basically, I just like showing off", Wright told the audience at the Hay Festival.
Personal life
After meeting on the set of Pride & Prejudice, Wright began a relationship with actress Rosamund Pike. They were engaged from 2007 to 2008.
Wright was married to British-American sitarist Anoushka Shankar from 2010 until 2019. They have two sons, Zubin and Mohan, born in 2011 and 2015. They separated in December 2017 and their divorce was finalized in September 2019 as a judge concluded that Wright had committed adultery and that his wife found living with him "intolerable".
Since 2017, Wright has been in a relationship with American actress Haley Bennett. Their daughter was born in 2018 in Brooklyn Heights. As of 2019, the family resides in the UK in Somerset.
Filmography
Short film
Crocodile Snap (1997)
The End (1998)
"Coco Mademoiselle: Chanel" (2014)
Princess & Peppernose (2021)
Feature film
Director
Executive producer
Lost Angels: Skid Row Is My Home (2010)
Hummingbird (2013)
Locke (2013)
Swallow (2019)
Radioactive (2019)
Television
Miniseries
Nature Boy (2000)
Bodily Harm (2002)
Charles II: The Power and the Passion (2003)
M. Son of the Century (TBA)
Commercial work
"Chanel No. 5: Wherever I Go" (2012)
"Chanel No. 5: There You Are" (2012)
Awards and nominations
Directed Academy Award performances
References
External links
Joe Wright at IMDb |
Shoghi_Effendi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoghi_Effendi | [
777
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoghi_Effendi"
] | Shoghí Effendi (; Persian: شوقی افندی; 1 March 1897 – 4 November 1957) was an Ottoman-born Iranian religious figure and the Guardian of the Baháʼí Faith from 1921 to 1957. As the grandson and successor of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, he was responsible for creating a series of teaching plans that oversaw the expansion of the Baháʼí Faith to a number of new countries, and also translated many of the written works of crucial Baháʼí leaders. Upon his death in 1957, the Hands of the Cause, which included his Canadian wife Rúhíyyih Khánum, took on the role of overseeing the transfer of the religion's supreme legal authority to the Universal House of Justice, which has held elections every five years since 1963.
Effendi, an Afnán, was born Shoghí Rabbání in Acre, where he spent his early life, but later went on to study in Haifa and Beirut, gaining an arts degree from the Syrian Protestant College in 1918 and then serving as ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's secretary and translator. In 1920, he attended Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied political science and economics, but his second year was interrupted by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's death, which led to his appointment as the Guardian of the Baháʼí Faith at the age of 24.
For 36 years, Effendi spearheaded the effort to grow and protect the religion globally. He sent out more than 17,500 letters, mostly in Persian and English, directing and keeping up with the progress of existing Baháʼí communities, responding to their persecution across the Middle East, coordinating teaching efforts, and building up the Baháʼí World Centre in and around Haifa. He appointed 32 living individuals (and 10 posthumously) as prestigious Hands of the Cause, and also presided over the community's enlargement from 1,034 localities in 1935 to 2,700 localities in 1953 and further to 14,437 localities in 1963. From the beginning to the end of his leadership, the total population of Baháʼís around the world grew from 100,000 to 400,000 people.
Among the Baháʼí community, Effendi is commonly referred to as simply "The Guardian" in honour of his unique role as the only Guardian in the history of the Baháʼí Faith. His works are all published under his chosen title Effendi, as opposed to his birth name Rabbání. He is buried at New Southgate Cemetery in the city of London.
Background
Born in ʻAkká in the Acre Sanjak of the Ottoman Empire in March 1897, Shoghi Effendi was related to the Báb through his father, Mírzá Hádí Shírází, and to Baháʼu'lláh through his mother, Ḍíyáʼíyyih Khánum, the eldest daughter of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, who provided much of his initial training, greatly influenced Shoghi Effendi from the early years of his life. Shoghi Effendi learned prayers from his grandfather, who encouraged him to chant. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá also insisted that people address the child as "Shoghi Effendi", ("Effendi" signifies "Sir"), rather than simply as "Shoghi", as a mark of respect towards him.
From his early years, Shoghi Effendi was introduced to the suffering which accompanied the Baháʼís in ʻAkká, including the attacks by Mírzá Muhammad ʻAlí against ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. As a young boy, he was aware of the desire of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (reigned 1876–1909) to banish ʻAbdu'l-Bahá to the deserts of North Africa, where he was expected to perish. At one point, Shoghi Effendi was warned not to drink coffee in the homes of any of the Baháʼís in the fear that he would be poisoned.
Tablet from ʻAbdu'l-Bahá
Being ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's eldest grandson, the first son of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's eldest daughter Ḍíyáʼíyyih Khánum, Shoghi Effendi had a special relationship with his grandfather. Zia Baghdadi, a contemporary Baháʼí, relates that when Shoghi Effendi was only five years of age, he pestered his grandfather to write a tablet for him, which ʻAbdu'l-Bahá obliged:
He is God! O My Shoghi, I have no time to talk, leave me alone! You said write, I have written. What else should be done? Now is not the time for you to read and write. It is the time for jumping about and chanting O My God! Therefore, memorize the prayers of the Blessed Beauty and chant them that I may hear them. Because there is no time for anything else.
Shoghi Effendi then set out to memorize a number of prayers, and chanted them as loud as he could. This caused family members to ask ʻAbdu'l-Bahá to quieten him down, a request which he apparently refused.
Education
Shoghi Effendi received his early education at home with the other children in the household, then attended a French Christian Brothers school in Haifa, and later boarded at another Catholic school in Beirut. He was to accompany his grandfather on his journeys to the West but was unable to proceed after port authorities in Naples prevented Shoghi Effendi from continuing due ostensibly to health reasons.
He later attended the Syrian Protestant College (later known as the American University of Beirut) for his final years of high school and first years of university, where he earned an arts degree in 1918. He reports being very unhappy in school and often returned on vacations to Haifa to spend time with ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. During his studies, he dedicated himself to mastering English—adding this language to the Persian, Turkish, Arabic and French languages in which he was already fluent—so that he could translate the letters of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá and serve as his secretary.
Shoghi Effendi was protected from World War I due to the neutrality of the Syrian Protestant College. Though political tensions in 1917 meant the college was closed briefly, student life continued. In the summer of 1918 ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's life was in critical danger until the entry of General Allenby's troops to Haifa. With the Armistice looming and having completed his studies Shoghi Effendi was ready to return to his grandfather, and in Autumn of 1918 he went back to Haifa to assist ʻAbdu'l-Bahá in his mounting correspondence, spending nearly two years of constant companionship with him. In a private letter to a friend from late 1918 Shoghi Effendi reflects on the untold sufferings of the War but anticipates that "this is indeed the era of service".
After his time in Haifa he went to Balliol College, Oxford, in England, where he matriculated in "Economics and Social Sciences", while still perfecting his translation skills. Shoghi Effendi was happy during his time in Balliol. Accounts from his contemporaries remember him as a cheerful and popular student. He was acquainted with future British prime minister Anthony Eden but they were not close friends. His studies were interspersed with occasional trips around the United Kingdom to meet Baháʼí communities. Shoghi Effendi was particularly touched meeting the small group of Baháʼís from Manchester. During this period Shoghi Effendi began what would be a life-long affinity to aspects of British culture such as reading The Times every day and his love for English literature.
Death of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá
While studying in England, on 29 November 1921, the news of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's death reached Shoghi Effendi, which, according to Wellesley Tudor Pole, the deliverer of the cable, left him "in a state of collapse". After spending a couple of days with John Esslemont, and after some passport difficulties, he sailed from England accompanied with Sara Blomfield and his sister Ruhangiz on 16 December and arrived in Haifa on 29 December. A few days later he opened ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's Will and Testament, which was addressed to Shoghi Effendi. In it, he was appointed as ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's successor and head of the Baháʼí Faith.
Private life
Shoghi Effendi's personal life was largely subordinate to his work as Guardian of the religion. His lack of secretarial support with the mass of correspondence had left a pattern of hard work in Haifa interspersed with occasional summer breaks to Europe—in the early years often to the Swiss Alps. In 1929 and 1940 he also travelled through Africa from south to north. In public, Shoghi Effendi was variously described as composed and highly informed in international affairs. In private, his contemporaries remembered him as warm, informal and humorous. Shoghi Effendi would sleep very little and usually ate only once a day. He was short in stature, with dark hair, an olive complexion and hazel eyes. He was noted as not resembling his grandfather ʻAbdu'l-Bahá (who was taller and had blue eyes) but his great-grandfather Baháʼu'lláh.
Shoghi Effendi had a great love for the English language. He was an avid fan of English literature, and his style reflects his love of the language of the King James Bible. He was noted for speaking English in clipped received pronunciation, and Persian in an Isfahani dialect, inherited from his grandmother. Shoghi Effendi held Iranian (Persian) nationality throughout his life and travelled on an Iranian passport, although he never visited Iran.
Marriage
On March 24, 1937, Shoghi Effendi married Mary Maxwell, later known as Rúhíyyih Khánum, a Canadian. She was the only child of May Maxwell, a disciple of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, and William Sutherland Maxwell, a Canadian architect. Shoghi Effendi had first met Mary as a girl when she came on pilgrimage with her mother in 1923. She made another pilgrimage as a teenager with two of her mother's close friends. With Shoghi Effendi's encouragement, Mary became an active Baháʼí teacher and a letter written to him described her as "a beautiful and most refreshing girl to know".
In 1936, Shoghi Effendi wrote to Mary and her mother, inviting them to visit Haifa. They arrived in January 1937, and a discreet courtship between Shoghi Effendi and Mary ensued. At the time of their marriage, Mary was 26 years old and a tall, athletic woman who had spent 18 months living in Nazi Germany with her cousin before coming to Haifa. The couple exchanged vows in the room of Bahíyyih Khánum in the House of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá in Haifa. The ceremony was brief, simple, and quiet, with Rúhíyyih Khánum wearing black. Only a select few were aware of the wedding, including the witnesses and a small group of Haifa residents. Consequently, the news of the marriage came as a significant surprise to the global Baháʼí community when Shoghi Effendi's mother cabled the Baháʼís.
Announce Assemblies celebration marriage beloved Guardian. Inestimable honour conferred upon handmaid of Baháʼu'lláh Ruhiyyih Khanum Miss Mary Maxwell. Union of East and West proclaimed by Baháʼí Faith cemented. Ziaiyyih mother of Guardian.
While Shoghi Effendi and Rúhíyyih Khánum never had children, Rúhíyyih Khánum became his constant companion and helpmate; in 1941, she became Shoghi Effendi's principal secretary in English. In a rare public statement, revealing his private sentiments, in 1951 he described his wife as "my helpmate, my shield in warding off the darts of Covenant breakers and my tireless collaborator in the arduous tasks I shoulder".
Accomplishments
Shoghi Effendi's leadership focused on two aspects: developing the administration of the religion and spreading it around the world.
Administration
The Baháʼí community was relatively small and undeveloped when he assumed leadership of the religion, and he strengthened and developed it over many years to support the administrative structure envisioned by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. Under Shoghi Effendi's direction, National Spiritual Assemblies were formed and many thousands of Local Spiritual Assemblies were created. He coordinated plans and resources to raise several of the continental Baháʼí Houses of Worship around the world; construction of which continued into the 1950s.
Starting in the late 1940s, after the establishment of the State of Israel, he started to develop the Baháʼí World Centre in Haifa, including the construction of the superstructure of the Shrine of the Báb, the International Archives, and the gardens at the Shrine of Baháʼu'lláh.
In 1951 he appointed the International Baháʼí Council to act as a precursor to the Universal House of Justice, and appointed 32 living Hands of the Cause — the highest rank of service available, whose main function was to propagate and protect the religion.
Growth
From the time of his appointment as Guardian until his death the Baháʼí Faith grew from 100,000 to 400,000 members, capitalizing on prior growth and setting the stage for more. The countries and territories in which Baháʼís had representation went from 35 to 250. As Guardian and head of the religion, Shoghi Effendi communicated his vision to the Baháʼís of the world through his numerous letters and his meetings with pilgrims to Palestine.
Starting in 1937, he set into motion a series of systematic plans to establish Baháʼí communities in all countries. A Ten Year Crusade was carried out from 1953 to 1963 with ambitious goals for expansion into almost every country and territory of the world.
Other
In a more secular cause, prior to World War II he supported the work of restoration-forester Richard St. Barbe Baker to reforest Palestine, introducing him to religious leaders from the major faiths of the region, from whom backing was secured for reforestation.
Leadership style
As a young student of twenty-four, Shoghi Effendi was initially shocked at the appointment as Guardian. He was also mourning the death of his grandfather to whom he had great attachment. The trauma of this culminated in him making retreats to the Swiss Alps. However, despite his youth, Shoghi Effendi had a clear idea of the goal he had for the religion. Oxford educated and Western in his style of dress, Shoghi Effendi was a stark contrast to his grandfather ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. He distanced himself from the local clergy and notability, and travelled little to visit Baháʼís unlike his grandfather. Correspondence and pilgrims were the way that Shoghi Effendi conveyed his messages. His talks are the subject to a great number of "pilgrim notes".
He also was concerned with matters dealing with Baháʼí belief and practice — as Guardian he was empowered to interpret the writings of Baháʼu'lláh and ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, and these were authoritative and binding, as specified in ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's will. His leadership style was however, quite different from that of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, in that he signed his letters to the Baháʼís as "your true brother", and he did not refer to his own personal role, but instead to the institution of the guardianship. He requested that he be referred in letters and verbal addresses always as Shoghi Effendi, as opposed to any other appellation. He also distanced himself as a local notable. He was critical of the Baháʼís referring to him as a holy personage, asking them not to celebrate his birthday or have his picture on display.
Translations and writings
In his lifetime, Shoghi Effendi translated into English many of the writings of the Báb, Baháʼu'lláh and ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, including the Hidden Words in 1929, the Kitáb-i-Íqán in 1931, Gleanings in 1935 and Epistle to the Son of the Wolf in 1941. He also translated such historical texts as The Dawn-Breakers. His significance is not just that of a translator, but also that of the designated and authoritative interpreter of the Baháʼí writings. His translations, therefore, are a guideline for all future translations of the Baháʼí writings.
The vast majority of his writings were in the style of letters to Baháʼís from all parts of the globe. These letters, of which 17,500 have been collected thus far, are believed to number a total of 34,000 unique works. They ranged from routine correspondence regarding the affairs of Baháʼís around the world to lengthy letters to the Baháʼís of the world addressing specific themes. Some of his longer letters and collections of letters include World Order of Baháʼu'lláh, Advent of Divine Justice, and Promised Day is Come.
Other letters included statements on Baháʼí beliefs, history, morality, principles, administration and law. He also wrote obituaries of some distinguished Baháʼís. Many of his letters to individuals and assemblies have been compiled into several books which stand out as significant sources of literature for Baháʼís around the world. The only actual book he ever wrote was God Passes By in 1944 to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the religion. The book, which is in English, is an interpretive history of the first century of the Bábí and Baháʼí Faiths. A shorter Persian language version was also written.
Opposition
Mírzá Muhammad ʻAlí was ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's half brother and was mentioned by Baháʼu'lláh as having a station "beneath" that of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. Muhammad ʻAli later fought ʻAbdu'l-Bahá for leadership and was ultimately excommunicated, along with several others in the Haifa/ʻAkká area who supported him. When Shoghi Effendi was appointed Guardian Muhammad ʻAli tried to revive his claim to leadership, suggesting that Baháʼu'lláh's mention of him in the Kitáb-i-'Ahd amounted to a succession of leadership.
Throughout Shoghi Effendi's life, nearly all remaining family members and descendants of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá were expelled by him as covenant-breakers when they didn't abide by Shoghi Effendi's request to cut contact with covenant-breakers, as specified by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. Other branches of Baháʼu'lláh's family had already been declared Covenant-breakers in ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's Will and Testament. At the time of his death, there were no living descendants of Baháʼu'lláh that remained loyal to him.
Unexpected death
Shoghi Effendi's death came unexpectedly in London, on 4 November 1957, as he was travelling to Britain and caught the Asian Flu, during the pandemic which killed two million worldwide, and he is buried there in New Southgate Cemetery. His wife sent the following cable:
Shoghi Effendi beloved of all hearts sacred trust given believers by Master passed away sudden heart attack in sleep following Asiatic flu. Urge believers remain steadfast cling institution Hands lovingly reared recently reinforced emphasized by beloved Guardian. Only oneness heart oneness purpose can befittingly testify loyalty all National Assemblies believers departed Guardian who sacrificed self utterly for service Faith.
Future hereditary Guardians were envisioned in the Baháʼí scripture by appointment from one to the next. Each Guardian was to be appointed by the previous from among the male descendants of Baháʼu'lláh, preferably according to primogeniture. The appointment was to be made during the Guardian's lifetime and clearly assented to by a group of Hands of the Cause. At the time of Shoghi Effendi's death, all living male descendants of Baháʼu'lláh had been declared Covenant-breakers by either ʻAbdu'l-Bahá or Shoghi Effendi, leaving no suitable living candidates. This created a severe crisis of leadership. The 27 living Hands gathered in a series of six secret conclaves (or signed agreements if they were absent) to decide how to navigate the uncharted situation. The Hands of the Cause unanimously voted it was impossible to legitimately recognize and assent to a successor. They made an announcement on 25 November 1957 to assume control of the Faith, certified that Shoghi Effendi had left no will or appointment of successor, said that no appointment could have been made, and elected nine of their members to stay at the Baháʼí World Centre in Haifa to exercise the executive functions of the Guardian (these were known as the Custodians).
Ministry of the Custodians
In Shoghi Effendi's final message to the Baha'i World, dated October 1957, he named the Hands of the Cause of God, "the Chief Stewards of Baháʼu'lláh's embryonic World Commonwealth." Following the death of Shoghi Effendi, the Baháʼí Faith was temporarily stewarded by the Hands of the Cause, who elected among themselves nine "Custodians" to serve in Haifa as the head of the Faith. They oversaw the transition of the International Baháʼí Council into the Universal House of Justice. This stewardship oversaw the execution of the final years of Shoghi Effendi's ordinances of the ten year crusade (which lasted until 1963) culminating and transitioning to the election and establishment of the Universal House of Justice, at the first Baha'i World Congress in 1963.
As early as January 1959, Mason Remey, one of the custodial Hands, believed that he was the second Guardian and successor to Shoghi Effendi. That summer after a conclave of the Hands in Haifa, Remey abandoned his position and moved to Washington D.C., then soon after announced his claim to absolute leadership, causing a minor schism that attracted about 100 followers, mostly in the United States. Remey was excommunicated by a unanimous decision of the remaining 26 Hands. Although initially disturbed, the mainstream Baháʼís paid little attention to his movement within a few years.
Election of the Universal House of Justice
At the end of the Ten Year Crusade in 1963, the Universal House of Justice was first elected. It was authorized to adjudicate on situations not covered in scripture. As its first order of business, the Universal House of Justice evaluated the situation caused by the fact that the Guardian had not appointed a successor. It determined that under the circumstances, given the criteria for succession described in the Will and Testament of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, there was no legitimate way for another Guardian to be appointed. Therefore, although the Will and Testament of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá leaves provisions for a succession of Guardians, Shoghi Effendi remains the first and last occupant of this office. Bahá'u'lláh envisioned a scenario in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas in which the line of Guardians would be broken prior to the establishment of the Universal House of Justice, and in the interim the Hands of the Cause of God would administer the affairs of the Baha'i community.
Guardianship
The institution of the 'Guardian' provided a hereditary line of heads of the religion, in many respects similar to the Shia Imamate. Each Guardian was to be appointed by the previous from among the male descendants of Baháʼu'lláh, preferably according to primogeniture. The appointment was to be made during the Guardian's lifetime and clearly assented to by a group of Hands of the Cause. The Guardian would be the head of the Universal House of Justice, and had the authority to expel its members. He would also be responsible for the receipt of Huqúqu'lláh, appoint new Hands of the Cause, provide "authoritative and binding" interpretations of the Baháʼí writings, and excommunicate Covenant-breakers.
The issue of successorship to ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was in the minds of early Baháʼís, and although the Universal House of Justice was an institution mentioned by Baháʼu'lláh, the institution of the Guardianship was not clearly introduced until the Will and Testament of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was publicly read after his death.
In the will, Shoghi Effendi found that he had been designated as "the Sign of God, the chosen branch, the Guardian of the Cause of God". He also learned that he had been designated as this when he was still a small child. As Guardian, he was appointed as head of the religion, someone to whom the Baháʼís had to look for guidance.
Shoghi Effendi on the Guardianship
Building on the foundation that had been established in ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's will, Shoghi Effendi elaborated on the role of the Guardian in several works, including Baháʼí Administration and the World Order of Baháʼu'lláh. In those works, he went to great lengths to emphasize that he himself and any future Guardian should never be viewed as equal to ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, or regarded as a holy person. He asked Baháʼís not to celebrate his birthday or have his picture on display. In his correspondences, Shoghi Effendi signed his letters to Baháʼís as "brother" and "co-worker," to the extent that even when addressing youth, he referred to himself as "Your True Brother."
Shoghi Effendi wrote that the infallibility of his interpretations only extended to matters relating to the Baháʼí Faith and not subjects such as economics and science.
In his writings, Shoghi Effendi delineates a distinct separation of powers between the "twin pillars" of the Guardianship and the Universal House of Justice. The roles of the Guardianship and the Universal House of Justice are complementary, the former providing authoritative interpretation, and the latter providing flexibility and the authority to adjudicate on "questions that are obscure and matters that are not expressly recorded in the Book." Shoghi Effendi went into detail explaining that the institutions are interdependent and had their own specific spheres of jurisdiction. For example, the Guardian could define the sphere of legislative action and request that a particular decision be reconsidered, but could not dictate the constitution, override the decisions, or influence the election of the Universal House of Justice. In explaining the importance of the Guardianship, Shoghi Effendi wrote that without it the World Order of Baháʼu'lláh would be "mutilated." In its legislation the Universal House of Justice turns to the mass of interpretation left by Shoghi Effendi.
Ancestry
See also
Baháʼí administration
Baháʼí World Centre
Baháʼí divisions
Baháʼí Terraces
Notes
Citations
References
Further reading
Hollinger, Richard (2022). "Ch. 8: Shoghi Effendi Rabbani". In Stockman, Robert H. (ed.). The World of the Bahá'í Faith. Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge. pp. 105–116. doi:10.4324/9780429027772-10. ISBN 978-1-138-36772-2. S2CID 244693548.
Hutchison, Sandra Lynn (2022). "Ch. 9: The English-language writings of Shoghi Effendi". In Stockman, Robert H. (ed.). The World of the Bahá'í Faith. Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge. pp. 117–124. doi:10.4324/9780429027772-11. ISBN 978-1-138-36772-2. S2CID 244687716.
Yazdani, Mina (2022). "Ch. 10: The Persian writings of Shoghi Effendi". In Stockman, Robert H. (ed.). The World of the Bahá'í Faith. Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge. pp. 125–133. doi:10.4324/9780429027772-12. ISBN 978-1-138-36772-2. S2CID 244687006.
External links
Works by Shoghi Effendi at Project Gutenberg
Shoghi Effendi - resources from bahai.org
Writings of Shoghi Effendi – authenticated writings in English
Biography of Shoghi Effendi
The Guardian: An illustrated chronology of the life of Shoghi Effendi - the Utterance Project
The Guardian's Resting Place – from the official website of the Baha'is of the UK
The first documentary film about his life
Meditations on the Eve of November Fourth – reflections written by Abu'l-Qásim Faizi on the eve of Shoghi Effendi's passing |
Balliol_College,_Oxford | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balliol_College,_Oxford | [
777
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balliol_College,_Oxford"
] | Balliol College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1263 by John I de Balliol, it has a claim to be the oldest college in Oxford and the English-speaking world.
With a governing body of a master and around 80 fellows, the college's main buildings are located on Broad Street with additional buildings to the east in Jowett Walk and Holywell Manor. As one of the larger colleges of Oxford University, Balliol typically has around 400 of both undergraduates and graduates. The college pioneered the PPE degree in the 1920s.
Balliol has a large number of notable alumni from a wide range of disciplines. Amongst many examples, these alumni include 13 Nobel Prize winners and four British prime ministers.
History and governance
Foundation and origins
Balliol College was founded in about 1263 by John I de Balliol under the guidance of Walter of Kirkham, the Bishop of Durham. According to legend, the founder had abducted the bishop as part of a land dispute and as a penance he was publicly beaten by the bishop and had to support a group of scholars at Oxford. After de Balliol's death in 1268, his widow, Dervorguilla of Galloway (their son and grandson each became Kings of Scotland), made arrangements to ensure the permanence of the college in that she provided capital and in 1282 formulated the college statutes, documents that survive to the present.
Balliol lays claim to being the oldest Oxford college, though this is disputed by both University College and Merton. Balliol's claim is that a house of scholars was established by the founder in Oxford in around 1263, in contrast to Merton, which was the first college to be granted an official statute in 1274, and University College, which, while provisionally founded by will in 1249, was only officially established around 1280. However, Balliol also acknowledges that the other two have legitimate claims on their respective bases, depending on what criteria are used to define the oldest.
Academics and fellows
As with all colleges, Balliol has a more or less permanent teaching staff, known as fellows. The college statutes provide for various categories of fellows and these include both tutorial fellows and professorial fellows. Professorial fellows are those professors and readers of the university who are allocated to the college by the university. One of these professorships is the Beit Professor of Commonwealth History, which is currently held by James Belich. The Professorship of Internet Studies is currently held by political scientist Philip N. Howard. Other professorships include the Boden Professor of Sanskrit and the Montague Burton Professor of International Relations. Official fellows are those who hold tutorial or administrative appointments in the college. There are also senior and junior research fellows. The college can also elect "distinguished persons" to honorary fellowships.
The fellows are supplemented by academics on short-term contracts. In addition, there are visiting international academics who come to Oxford for periods of up to a year, an example of this is the George Eastman Visiting Professorial Fellowship.
Masters
Balliol College is run by the master and fellows of the college. The master of the college must be "the person who is, in their [the Fellows] judgement, most fit for the government of the College as a place of religion, learning, and education". The current master is Dame Helen Ghosh, former Director-General of the National Trust and Home Office Permanent Secretary, and an alumna of St Hugh's and Hertford colleges.
Although the rules in no way suggest there is a preference for an alumnus or fellow of the college to be chosen there, have been few who were not. Only one in the twentieth century had no previous connection. A former student of the college, Baruch Blumberg, was the first American master and the first Nobel Laureate, receiving his prize in medicine for the identification of the hepatitis B virus. The former Master of Balliol, Sir Drummond Bone, was a post-graduate student there (Snell Exhibitioner from Glasgow University) and a scholar of the Romantic poet Lord Byron, and held the post from October 2011 to April 2018, following his retirement as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool in 2008.
Student life
Student profile
Each year the college matriculates approximately 260 undergraduates and postgraduates combined according to the most recent data which is from the three-year period 2021-2023. The same source gives the socio-demographic profile of the students is as follows: male 54.5%; state educated 69.6%; white 73.4%. The proportion of male students decreased from 60.6% between the years of 2015 and 2017.
Facilities
The college provides its students with facilities including accommodation, the Hall (refectory), a library, two bars, and separate common rooms for the fellows, the graduates and undergraduates. The JCR provides many services from laundry facilities, one of the few entirely student-run bars left in Oxford (the Manager, Lord/Lady Lindsay, is elected each year by students in the JCR) to a student-run cafeteria known as Pantry. There is a garden quadrangle and a nearby sports ground (the Master's Field) and boathouse. The sports ground is mainly used for cricket, tennis, hockey and football. Croquet may be played in the Master's Field or, in the summer term, in the garden quadrangle.
The majority of undergraduates are housed within the main college or in the modern annexes (Jowett Walk buildings) around the sports ground. The graduates are housed mainly within Holywell Manor which has its own bar, gardens, common room, gym and computing facilities.
Women at Balliol
For over 700 years, Balliol College admitted men only. New College had in 1964 resolved to admit women, but had been prevented from doing so without the approval of the university, which argued that this would be detrimental to the existing women's colleges. On 2 June 1971, a consilium at Balliol voted 26–2 to admit women, and at the next college meeting on 6 December 1971 it was resolved 30–8 to admit women "as soon as the change in its Statutes permitting this was approved by the Privy Council". Permission was granted by the university on 8 March 1977. With the appointment of Carol Clark to a Tutorial Fellowship in Modern Languages in 1973, Balliol became the first ancient all-male college to appoint a female fellow.
Before the full admission of women as undergraduates, the college had decided to establish a co-educational graduate institution. The decision was made on 16 March 1964, and the senior tutor approached St Anne's College shortly after this. The creation of the Balliol–St Anne's Graduate Institution with St Anne's in 1967 led to the coeducation of men and women on the Holywell Manor site. Following the arrival of women at Balliol and men at St Anne's in 1979, the joint Graduate Institution was terminated in 1984 by the consent of both colleges. Holywell Manor is now solely a part of Balliol College.
In 1979, along with many other previously all-male colleges, Balliol accepted its first cohort of female students. One of the first woman undergraduates to live at Balliol was Elena Ceva-Valla, who arrived on 16 September 1979. Other female undergraduates who arrived that term were Cressida Dick, Katy Koralek and Penny Phillips. In 2010, the college unveiled a sundial in the Garden Quad commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the admission of women to the college, inscribed with the phrase "About Time". The first portrait of a woman in hall since that of the co-founder, Dervorguilla of Galloway, was unveiled in 2012, depicting benefactor and Oxford Internet Institute founder Dame Stephanie Shirley. This portrait has since been joined by portraits of Carol Clark and the mathematician Dame Frances Kirwan.
In 2018, Dame Helen Ghosh succeeded Sir Drummond Bone to become the college's first female master. In the same year, Dame Frances Kirwan became the twentieth Savilian Professor of Geometry and the first woman to hold that post.
In 2021, students sent an open letter to the college and protested regarding their welfare following an alleged incident of sexual assault on a female graduate student that was covered by Al Jazeera English.
Buildings and grounds
The college has been on its present site since its inception by Balliol's scholars as their residence with a lease dating to 1263 to them being the traditional "foundation" date.
Front quadrangle
The oldest parts of the college are the north and west ranges of the front quadrangle, dated to 1431, respectively the medieval hall, west side, now the "new library" and the "old library" first floor north side. The ground floor is the Old Senior Common Room. Balliol's second library pre-dates the publication of printed books in Europe. There is a possibility that the original Master's Chamber, south west side, adorned with a fine oriel window, is earlier than these; it is now the Master's Dining Room.
William Grey, Bishop of Ely, was a benefactor of the college in the 15th century. Grey devoted much care to the collection of manuscripts, and wherever he lived constantly employed scribes to make copies of books he could not otherwise obtain. Many of these he had adorned with costly miniatures and initial letters by the skill of an artist who worked for him at Florence. It was his desire to make his collection the nucleus of a library for Balliol College, to the building of which, as well as to that of the master's lodgings and of the old buttery and hall, he contributed largely. The work was finished about 1477 by Robert Abdy, then master of the college, and enriched with some two hundred manuscripts, the bishop's gift. Of these, many were destroyed in the reign of Edward VI and during the great rebellion, and by Wood's time few of the miniatures in the remaining volumes had escaped mutilation. But by 1890, no less than 152 of Grey's codices were still in the possession of the college, and form a large part of Roger Mynors's 1963 catalogue of the college's manuscripts. The bishop's coat of arms (gules, a lion rampant, within a bordure engrailed argent) is displayed on two windows of the Old Library, and in the panels below the window of the Master's dining room. The chapel is the third (perhaps fourth) on the site and was designed by William Butterfield in 1857.
Alfred Waterhouse designed the main Broad Street frontage of the college (1867–68), along with gateway and tower, known as the Brackenbury Buildings after philanthropist and donor Hannah Brackenbury, replacing earlier structures (Staircases I–VII). The first staircase next to the Chapel contains the Organ Scholar's lodgings.
New Inn Hall
Under a statute of 1881, New Inn Hall, one of the remaining medieval halls, was merged into Balliol College in 1887. Balliol acquired New Inn Hall's admissions and other records for 1831–1887 as well as the library of New Inn Hall, which largely contained 18th-century law books. The New Inn Hall site was later sold and is now part of St Peter's College, Oxford.
Garden Quadrangle
South-side is the front part of the Master's Lodgings on Broad Street from the Waterhouse improvements of the 1860s of the front quad. The neighbour to this is the Fisher Building of 1759 (Stc X) The undistinguished looking Stc XI, south west side, is in fact the oldest structure in this quadrangle, 1720, originally intended as accommodation for scholars from Bristol, hence its name. Continuing the west-side Stc XII–XIV dates from 1826, by George Basevi, and marks the beginnings of the college's academic renaissance being required for the increasing number of Commoners applying for places. Stc XV by Warren of 1912 filled in the last gap of the quadrangle; the ground floor and basement is the principal Junior Common Room. This unfortunately obscures the lines of the Salvin designed Stc XVI–XIX with Tower of 1853. As does the 1968 building by Beard Stc XX, replacing a Victorian structure. This completely hides a formal gateway similar to that at the Broad Street main entrance, this can be viewed outside from Little Magdalen Street, through the gap marked XIX one finds the small function room "Massey Room". At north side, of Stc XX is the "Back Gate" which is part of the 1906 Warren building, west and north side, Stc XXI. 1 St Giles' is its neighbour which is part of the college and houses the Oxford Internet Institute. Beard's Stc XXII replaces Victorian rooms, which were provided from the Vivian Bulkeley-Johnson benefaction. Beard's Stc XX and XXII are connected by the Snell Bridge accommodation at third-floor level, which was provided from Glasgow University's Snell Benefaction.
The college's dining hall was built in 1877, replacing an older hall in the front quadrangle, which had become too small for the college's population. Designed by Alfred Waterhouse, the hall is built in geometric style, using Bath stone and Tisbury stone, with roof and woodwork made of oak. The hall features a Willis organ, again instituted by Benjamin Jowett. The old hall became part of the library.
The ground floor contains the college bar and shop, known as "The Buttery" (west side) and the Senior Common Room lunch room (east side). The 1966 new Senior Common Room range (Stc XXIII) (northern and eastern sides) was a benefaction of the Bernard Sunley Foundation and contains some smaller rooms and the principal SCR lounge, replacing Victorian facilities. Below this is a Lecture Room ("LR XXIII").
The east side of the quad is a neighbouring wall with Trinity College, at the southern end is the Master's Garden, in front of the chapel, and the Fellows' Garden in front of the "Old" (Senior) Common Room. The Tower forming the corner between the "Old Hall" and "Old Library" is also by Salvin, of 1853 and balances that at Stc XVI–XIX.
Underneath part of the Garden Quad and extending into Trinity were the Balliol-Trinity Laboratories, the most prominent Oxford physical and chemical laboratories in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in which physical chemist Henry Moseley (originator of the atomic number) and Nobel Laureate Cyril Hinshelwood worked. These are now disused, following the construction of the university Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory on South Parks Road.
Holywell Manor, Manor Road and Jowett Walk
The majority of research and post-graduate students are housed in the Holywell Manor complex, a Grade II listed building acquired by Balliol in 1932 under the direction of Kenneth Norman Bell. It hosts a collection of artworks by alumni of the college, including a mural by Gilbert Spencer depicting the college's founding, and hosts a biennial Holywell Manor Festival, Garden Party, and Garden Play. Balliol hosts more graduate students than any other ancient college, and the Manor forms the centre of this community, providing facilities such as the Middle Common Room (MCR) itself, an extensive garden, TV and computer rooms, music practice rooms, a 'Cockpit' leisure room, and the graduate-student-run 'Megaron' bar. The Manor from 1967 until the full admission of women at Balliol in 1979 was host to the Balliol-St Anne's Graduate Institution, including students from St Anne's College, Oxford. Former residents include Bill Clinton and Masako, Empress of Japan.
The 20th century saw several further additions to the college's accommodation, the Martin Building of 1966 ('Holywell Minor, a reference to Holywell Manor, across the road) and the Dellal Building (1986) for graduates on Manor Road.
Many undergraduates and some graduates live in buildings on Jowett Walk a phased development 1996–2004 (Phase 1 completed September 1996, Phase 2 completed July 2004), containing a small theatre facility, the Michael Pilch Studio, five minutes' walking distance from the main college site; these two developments are on the outskirts of the Master's Field, the sports ground and pavilion facilities of the college. Jowett Walk has also provided accommodation for some non-Balliol undergraduates, as part of an arrangement with Wadham College, Oxford.
From 2010, St Cross Church, next to the Manor, has been the college's Historic Collections Centre, an extension to the library's services. The church dates from the 11th or 12th century and is a Grade I listed building. This is the third time an Oxford college has incorporated a redundant church as a Library (see Lincoln College and St. Edmund Hall).
In 2017, the college entered into a specialised financial arrangement which enabled it to project a new 200 plus 'study-bedsits' accommodation range at the Master's Field/ Jowett Walk/ St Cross Road site which would also replace the Eastman Professor's House, Martin and Dellal buildings there. This would mean a net increase of approximately 140 rooms fulfilling the college's long-term intention of providing accommodation to all its undergraduates for all their degree terms and also some rooms for dons.
The project includes ten new buildings and a new sports pavilion, including a space for dining, events, spectators and squash courts in the basement. The first building opened in spring 2019 and the completion and occupation of the rest is due by January 2021. In the first phase, work began on the south of the site, at the corner of Jowett Walk and St Cross Road, to provide the accommodation for undergraduates and the new pavilion.
Oxford Internet Institute
Balliol College, and its previous Master Andrew Graham, played a major role in 2000–01 in setting up the Oxford Internet Institute. This was the first multidisciplinary research and policy centre in a European university devoted to examining the impact of the Internet on society. It is a department within the Social Sciences Division of Oxford University, but is physically located within the grounds of Balliol, and its previous Director (William H. Dutton) was a Professorial Fellow of Balliol.
Traditions and customs
Along with many of the ancient colleges, Balliol has evolved its own traditions and customs over the centuries, many of which occupy a regular calendar slot.
The patron saint of the college is Saint Catherine of Alexandria. On her feast day (25 November), a formal dinner is held for all final year students within Balliol. This festival was well established by 1550. Another important feast is the Snell Dinner. This dinner is held in memory of John Snell, whose benefaction established exhibitions for students from the University of Glasgow to study at Balliol (the first exhibitioners were matriculated in 1699) one of whom was Adam Smith. The feast is attended by fellows of Balliol College, the current Snell Exhibitioners, and representatives from Glasgow University and St John's College, Cambridge.
The MCR has one black-tie dinner each term: the Christmas Dinner in Michaelmas, Burns Night in Hilary, and the May Dinner in Trinity Term.
By far the most eccentric event is The Nepotists carol-singing event organised by the college's Arnold and Brackenbury Society. This event happens on the last Friday of Michaelmas term each year. On this occasion, Balliol students congregate in the college hall to enjoy mulled wine and the singing of carols. The evening historically ended with a rendition of "The Gordouli" (see Balliol–Trinity rivalry below) on Broad Street, outside the gates of Trinity College, although in recent years the song has been sung from within the college walls.
A college society which no longer survives is the Hysteron Proteron Club, which aimed to live one day of each term backwards.
Tortoises
Balliol also takes pride in its college tortoises. The original tortoise, who lived at the college for at least 43 years, was known as Rosa, named after the Marxist Rosa Luxemburg. Each June, pet tortoises from various Oxford colleges are brought to Corpus Christi College where they participate in a very slow race; Balliol's own Rosa competed and won many times. Rosa disappeared in the Spring of 2004, and while numerous conspiracy theories abounded, none is officially recognised by the college. However, on 29 April 2007, Chris Skidmore, a graduate of Christ Church working at the House of Commons, donated a pair of tortoises - one to his own college, and one to Balliol, where he had attended an open day in 1999. The new tortoise, Matilda, died in April 2009. Taking care of the resident tortoise is one of the many tasks assigned to Balliol students each year. This position, known as "Comrade Tortoise", has been filled by a student every year.
Balliol–Trinity rivalry
For many years, there has been a traditional and fierce rivalry shown between the students of Balliol and those of its immediate neighbour to the east, Trinity College. It has manifested itself on the sports field and the river; in the form of songs (of varying degrees of offensiveness) sung over the dividing walls; and in the form of "raids" on the other college. The rivalry reflects that which also exists between Trinity College, Cambridge and Balliol's sister college, St John's College, Cambridge.
In college folklore, the rivalry goes back to the late 17th century, when Ralph Bathurst, President of Trinity, was supposedly observed throwing stones at Balliol's windows. In fact, in its modern form, the rivalry appears to date from the late 1890s, when the chant or song known as a "Gordouli" began to be sung from the Balliol side.
The traditional words run:
The shouting of chants over the wall is still known as "a Gordouli", and the tradition continues as the students gather to sing following boat club dinners and other events. The traditional Gordouli is said to have been sung by Balliol and Trinity men in the trenches of Mesopotamia in the First World War.
Balliol became known for its radicalism and political activism in the 20th century, and saw an abortive coup in the 1960s in which students took over the college and declared it "the People's Republic of Balliol". The contrast between the radical tendencies of many Balliol students and the traditional conservatism and social exclusivity of Trinity gave the rivalry an extra edge. The fact that Balliol (in contrast to Trinity) had admitted a number of Indian and Asiatic students also gave many of the taunts from the Trinity side a distinctly racist tone: Balliol students, for example, were sometime referred to as "Basutos".
In Five Red Herrings (1931), a Lord Peter Wimsey novel by Somerville alumna Dorothy L. Sayers, Lord Peter (a Balliol man) is asked whether he remembers a certain contemporary from Trinity. "'I never knew any Trinity men,' said Wimsey. 'The Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.'" Sayers also alludes to the rivalry in Murder Must Advertise (1933): Mr Ingleby, a Trinity man, comments, "If there is one thing more repulsive than another it is Balliolity."
One of the wittier raids from Balliol, in 1962 or 1963, involved the turfing of the whole of Trinity JCR (complete with daffodils). The last incident suspected to relate to the feud was the vandalism of Trinity's Senior Common Room pond, which led to the death of all but one of the fish.
Literary repartee
Materialistic limerick
The Garden Quad at Balliol is the scene of the well-known limerick that parodies the immaterialist philosophy of Bishop Berkeley:
and also of the response, by the Balliol-educated Catholic theologian and Bible translator Ronald Knox, which more accurately reflects Berkeley's own beliefs:
The Masque of Balliol
In 1880, seven mischievous Balliol undergraduates published The Masque of B-ll--l, a broadsheet of forty quatrains making light of their superiors – the master and selected fellows, scholars, and commoners – and themselves. The outraged authorities immediately suppressed the collection, and only a few copies survived, three of which found their way into the college library over the years, and one into the Bodleian Library. Verses of this form are now known as Balliol rhymes.
The best known of these rhymes is the one on Benjamin Jowett. This has been widely quoted and reprinted in virtually every book about Jowett and about Balliol ever since.
This and 18 others are attributed to Henry Charles Beeching. The other quatrains are much less well known.
William Tuckwell included 18 of these quatrains in his Reminiscences in 1900, but they all came out only in 1939, thanks to Walter George Hiscock, an Oxford librarian, who issued them personally then and in a second edition in 1955.
People associated with Balliol
Notable people
A wide range of figures who have contributed deeply to public life were either educated or taught at Balliol. Balliol people were, for example, prominent in establishing the International Baccalaureate, the National Trust, the Workers Educational Association, the welfare state, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Amnesty International.
Nobel Prize winners
Five former Balliol students and seven fellows became Nobel Laureates, with Linus Pauling winning two Nobel Prizes.
Science
Balliol played an important role in early modern science:
The early Newtonian David Gregory was "the first to openly teach the doctrines of the Principia, in a public seminary" and was elected Savilian Professor of Astronomy, due in large part to the influence of Isaac Newton
John Keill, another important defender of Newton, who after being appointed as lecturer in experimental philosophy at Hart Hall, started performing experiments based on Newton's findings
The mathematician James Stirling, best remembered for Stirling's approximation for factorials, was a Snell and Warner exhibitioner expelled in 1715 for his correspondence with Jacobites
James Bradley, best known for his discovery of the aberration of light and the nutation of the Earth's axis, who was placed (after Hipparchus and Kepler) "above the greatest astronomers of all ages and all countries" by Delambre and was appointed Savilian Professor of Astronomy, eventually becoming the third Astronomer Royal in 1742
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins was a Balliol student from 1959 to 1962.
Politics
Balliol has produced four British Prime Ministers:
H. H. Asquith
Harold Macmillan
Edward Heath
Boris Johnson
Other senior leadership positions:
Jo Grimond
Denis Healey
Yvette Cooper
Roy Jenkins
George Nathaniel Curzon
Alfred Milner
Current politically prominent alumni:
Yvette Cooper
Rory Stewart
Yuan Yang
International leaders:
Richard von Weizsäcker, President of Germany from 1984 to 1994, considered the most popular of Germany's presidents, who oversaw the reunification of Germany
Sir Sereste Khama, "Father of Independence" and first President of Botswana, who led his country's independence movement and transition from British rule into an independent, democratic nation
Abdullah Bishara, first secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council (1981–1993) who played a vital role during the first Gulf War, former Kuwait representative to the United Nations (1971–1981)
Royal alumni:
Empress Masako of Japan
Olav V of Norway, (after whose donation of expanding the JCR is named the Norway Room)
His son and current king Harald V of Norway
Political journalists:
The Financial Times's associate editor Stephen Bush
The Guardian's chief arts writer Charlotte Higgins
Columnist and Labour communications specialist Seumas Milne
The Times Columnist David Aaronovitch
Christopher Hitchens
Shoghi Effendi, Head of the Baháʼí Faith from 1921 until his death in 1957, also studied Economics and Social Sciences
Law
John Marshall Harlan II, described as one of the most influential US Supreme Court justices of the twentieth century, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1960
Thomas Bingham was the Senior Law Lord of the United Kingdom, described by Nick Phillips as "head and shoulders above everybody else in the Law in my view…yes just outstanding…his clarity of thought, his academic knowledge. I think almost everyone would say that he was, you know, the great lawyer of his generation"
Brian Hutton and Alan Rodger held equivalent positions in Northern Ireland and Scotland, at one point, all three simultaneously
Cressida Dick is the immediate past Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, the first woman to hold this role
Literature
Robert Southey, Poet Laureate chiefly remembered today for the original version of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears"
The height of Baliol's literary influence came in the Victorian era, when virtually all major poets had some connection with Balliol:
Gerard Manley Hopkins, though publishing little while alive, has experienced posthumous fame that placed him among leading English poets with his prosody establishing him as an innovator, as did his praise of God through vivid use of imagery and nature; by 1930 Hopkins's work was seen as one of the most original literary advances of his century
Matthew Arnold, influential poet and critic
A.C. Swinburne, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1903 to 1909
Robert Browning, deemed "the most considerable poet in English since the major Romantics", was a personal friend of master Benjamin Jowett and became the college's first Honorary Fellow, donating his portrait and other memorabilia to the college, which grew to become "one of the most distinguished collections of Browning material"
Of 20th century writers:
Ronald Knox, Catholic Priest, crime writer and translator of the Knox Bible, which was called "an exceptional achievement both of scholarship and of literary dedication" by Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams
Graham Greene, regarded as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century, shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times
Joseph Macleod, one of the earliest interpreters of Chekhov in the UK, whom Basil Bunting claimed was the most important living British poet, while also gaining admiration from Pound
Anthony Powell, associate of Orwell who wrote A Dance to the Music of Time, ranked 36th on the BBC list of 100 greatest British novels
Robertson Davies, one of Canada's best known and most popular authors and one of its most distinguished "men of letters"
Nevil Shute, whose novels A Town Like Alice, Trustee from the Toolroom at and On the Beach featured on the Modern Library 100 Best Novels of the 20th century
Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World and The Doors of Perception, widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time, nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962
Franco-English writer Hilaire Belloc
Among contemporary writers:
Gwyneth Lewis, MBE (born 1959), is a Welsh poet, who was the inaugural National Poet of Wales in 2005
John Minford is sinologist, known for his translation of Chinese classics like The Art of War, the I Ching and the Tao Te Ching
In terms of critics, Balliol has produced A.C. Bradley, writer of Shakespearean Tragedy, described as probably the most influential single work of Shakespearean criticism ever published, the "polyglot and polymath" George Steiner, and Christopher Ricks who has been acclaimed as the "greatest living critic"
Philosophy
Notable Balliol philosophers include:
Adam Smith, a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, regarded as "The Father of Economics" or "The Father of Capitalism"
T. H. Green, whose teaching is considered the most potent philosophical influence in England during the last quarter of the 19th century, cited by many social liberal politicians, often Balliol alumni, such as Herbert Samuel and H. H. Asquith
Like most philosophy faculties in the Anglosphere, contemporary thought at Balliol is firmly grounded in the so-called analytic tradition:
J. L. Austin, a leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy
Charles Taylor, the first president of the Oxford Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Bernard Williams, moral theorist described as an "analytical philosopher with the soul of a general humanist", who Martin Hollis said had "a good claim to be the leading British philosopher of his day"
Derek Parfit, widely considered one of the most important and influential moral philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, whose first book, Reasons and Persons has been described as the most significant work of moral philosophy since the 1800s
Jonathan Barnes, Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Oxford from 1989 to 1994, who revised the Oxford Aristotle, universally recognized as the standard English version, in light of modern scholarship
Other notable contemporary philosophers include J. R. Lucas, R. M. Hare, Michael Sandel, Joseph Raz, Peter Geach, Michael Otsuka, Michael E. Rosen, and Timothy Williamson.
Sport
Balliol has also contributed to the sporting world; I. A. K. Pataudi and his son Tiger Pataudi, both India cricket captains and the 8th and 9th Nawabs of Pataudi respectively, were both Balliol graduates who played for the university. US Olympian rower Caryn Davies received her MBA at Balliol.
Other
Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of Humanists UK and President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union graduated in 2004.
Howard Marks, a convicted drug dealer and later author, attended Balliol between 1964 and 1967 to study physics and then again between 1968 and 1969 to study History and Philosophy of Science. Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who was convicted of sex trafficking of children for Jeffrey Epstein in 2021, graduated from Balliol in 1985.
The first transgender hereditary peer, Matilda Simon, 3rd Baroness Simon of Wythenshawe, graduated from Balliol with a bachelor's degree and a doctor of philosophy.
The first person documented to brew coffee in England, Nathaniel Canopius, was a Cretan student at Balliol from 1637 to 1648.
In 2024, Karma Phuntsho, who finished his doctor of philosophy degree in 2003, became the first Bhutanese to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award which is widely acclaimed as Asia's Nobel Prize.
Chancellors of the University of Oxford
Balliol members have predominated as holders of the office of Chancellor of the university from the 20th century to the present;
George Nathaniel Curzon
Harold Macmillan
Roy Jenkins
Chris Patten
The last two being opposed in their election by Edward Heath and Lord Bingham of Cornhill respectively. Members of the college have been elected to masterships not only at Balliol but also at other colleges, and include the current Master of Christ's College, Cambridge, Jane Stapleton, a former fellow of Balliol.
References
Further reading
Davis, Henry (1899). Balliol College (1st ed.). London: F.E. Robinson.
Jones, John (2005). Balliol College: a history (2nd, revised ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199201815.
External links
Balliol College
Junior Common Room (undergraduate students)
Middle Common Room (graduate students)
A virtual tour of Balliol College (360° photographs) Archived 11 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine
Balliol College Dining Hall (zoomable image)
Balliol College History & Archives
Map sources for Balliol College, Oxford |
1580 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1580 | [
777
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1580"
] | 1580 (MDLXXX) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar, the 1580th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 580th year of the 2nd millennium, the 80th year of the 16th century, and the 1st year of the 1580s decade. As of the start of 1580, the Gregorian calendar was 10 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which was the dominant calendar of the time.
Events
January–March
January 31 – Portuguese succession crisis of 1580: The death of Henry, King of Portugal, with no direct heirs, leads to conflict between his potential successors, including King Philip II of Spain and Infanta Catherine, Duchess of Braganza.
February 16 – The massacre of 20 artists at the Mardi Gras festivities at the annual Carnaval de Romans during the festival takes place in France at Romans-sur-Isère.
February 28 – Three Jesuit priests from Portuguese Goa, including Rodolfo Acquaviva, arrive in Agra on the mainland of India as guests of the Mughal Emperor, Akbar the Great, who is curious about Christianity. The Emperor grants land to the Jesuit fathers for the building of the first Roman Catholic Church in the Mughal Empire.
March 1 – Michel de Montaigne signs the preface to his most significant work, Essays. They are published later this year.
March 3 – George de Lalaing, Count of Rennenberg defects from the Union of Utrecht and the Dutch Republic, and turns over the province of Groningen to King Philip II of Spain.
March 25 – Iberian Union: King Philip II of Spain becomes King of Portugal under the name Philip I, following the death without heirs of King Henry of Portugal, in a personal union of the crowns, thus maintaining Portuguese independence (in Europe and throughout the Portuguese Empire). The Philippine Dynasty rule lasts until 1640.
April–June
April 6 – The Dover Straits earthquake occurs.
April 9 – English Fury at Mechelen: English and Scottish mercenaries, assisting the Dutch Republic, storm the Spanish Netherlands city of Mechelen (in modern-day Belgium), killing 60 civilians and plundering the town's houses and churches.
May 29 – Stephen Báthory is formally crowned as Grand Duke of Lithuania at the Vilnius Cathedral.
May – The Lipizzan stud is established by Charles II, Archduke of Austria.
June 5 – In the Kingdom of Golconda (part of the modern-day Indian state of Telangana), 15-year-old Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah is proclaimed as the new Sultan upon the death of his father, Ibrahim Quli Qutb Shah Wali.
June 9 – Rebels of the Dutch Union of Utrecht, aided by French soldiers, make a surprise attack on the Spanish Netherlands city of Diest in the Duchy of Brabant, and overwhelm the strategic location, now in Belgium, in one day.
June 11 – Within the Viceroyalty of Peru in South America Spanish explorer Juan de Garay founds the first permanent Spanish settlement at what is now the capital of Argentina, on the Rio de la Plata. Garay, who came on an expedition down the Paraná River from Asunción (now in Paraguay), arrives at the site of the failed Spanish settlement of Ciudad de Nuestra Señora Santa María del Buen Ayre, that had been created by Pedro de Mendoza in 1536 and abandoned in 1542. Garay names the new settlement "Santísima Trinidad" but the city eventually takes the name of the port, which he calls "Puerto de Santa María de los Buenos Aires."
June 21 (8 Cemazi ul-evvel 988 AH) – England signs a commercial treaty with the Ottoman Empire, and Sultan Murad III sends a letter to Queen Elizabeth I informing her, "Just as the merchants of Poland and France and Venice come and go, the merchants of your domain also shall bring wares to our Well-Protected Domains and take away wares." In return, Murad III is able to purchase English metals (iron, brass and tin) for his war with Persia.
June 25 – The Book of Concord, a collection of Lutheran confessional documents, is published.
July–September
July 12 – The Ostrog Bible, the first complete printed Bible translation into a Slavic language (Old Church Slavonic), is first printed at Ostroh in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (modern-day Ukraine) by Ivan Fyodorov.
July 24 – Portuguese succession crisis of 1580: António, Prior of Crato, a grandson of the late King Manuel by Manuel's second son, the Duke of Beja is proclaimed King of Portugal by his supporters in the city of Santarém, and popular acclamation follows in Lisbon and other locations. Portugal's parliament, the Cortes, refuses to acknowledge Antonio and he is defeated 32 days later at Alcântara.
August 25 – Battle of Alcântara: Spanish armies, led by Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, defending the claim of King Philip II of Spain to the Portuguese throne, defeat the armies of Portuguese claimant António, Prior of Crato.
September 26 – Francis Drake returns to Plymouth, England from his voyage of circumnavigation (westbound) on the Golden Hind, the second completed in a continuous voyage, and the first under its original commander.
September 29 – Five of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic (with the exception of Zeeland and Holland) sign the Treaty of Plessis-les-Tours, recognizing Francis, Duke of Anjou as the Republic's sovereign.
October–December
October 4 – Lorenzo Suárez de Mendoza, the Spanish Count of Coruña, arrives in Mexico City to take office as the Viceroy of New Spain, administering Mexico and Central America on behalf of King Philip II.
October 15 (5th waning of Tazaungmon 942 ME) – King Bayinnaung of Bruma dispatches a naval force of 200 ships and 8,000 soldiers to invade the Kingdom of Mrauk U (now in the Rakhine State of Myanmar), but the attempt fails after a year. Burmese troops are ordered withdrawn after Bayinnaung dies and is succeeded by his son Nanda Bayin.
October 18 – The Siege of Steenwijk in the Dutch Republic is started by the Spanish Netherlands. The siege will last four months and the Spanish troops will capture Steenwijk on February 23.
October 24 – The War of the Portuguese Succession comes to an end as Spanish forces crush the final Portuguese resistance in the last stronghold in mainland Portugal, Porto. For the next 60 years, Portugal will be ruled by the Kings of Spain.
November 10 – Second Desmond Rebellion: The Siege of Smerwick (now Ard na Caithne in County Kerry, Ireland) ends after three days when their commander surrenders to the English. Members of a group of at least 400 freelance soldiers, and perhaps as many as 700, for the Papal States are summarily executed on orders of the English Lord Deputy of Ireland, Baron Grey de Wilton.
December 31 – James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, formerly the regent for King James VI of Scotland, is arrested during a meeting of Scotland's Privy Council at Holyrood on the accusation of James Stewart, Earl of Arran that the Earl of Morton had participated in the 1567 murder of Lord Darnley, husband of Mary, Queen of Scots and father of King James. Morton is taken to Dumbarton Castle and convicted of conspiracy to murder, and executed on June 2.
Date unknown
The Billy Mitchell volcano, on the island of Bougainville, undergoes a catastrophic eruption (VEI 6).
The first session of the Jewish Vaad (Council of Four Lands) is held in Lublin, Poland; 70 delegates of Jewish local qahals meet to discuss taxation, and other issues important to Jewish communities.
The Old City of Zamość is established in Poland, by Jan Zamoyski.
The 1580 influenza pandemic sweeps the world, starting in Asia and moving rapidly through Africa, Europe, and eventually the Americas. More than 10% of the population of Rome dies, and whole towns in Spain are depopulated.
Births
January 8 – Jens Hermansson Juel, Stattholder of Norway (d. 1634)
January 12
Jan Baptist van Helmont, Flemish chemist (d. 1644)
Alexander Ruthven, Scottish earl (d. 1600)
January 20 – Stefano Amadei, Italian painter (d. 1644)
January 29 – Willem Isaacsz Swanenburg, Dutch engraver (d. 1612)
January 30 – Gundakar, Prince of Liechtenstein, court official in Vienna (d. 1658)
January – John Smith, English explorer and Virginia settler (d. 1631)
February – John Digby, 1st Earl of Bristol, English diplomat (d. 1653)
February 1 – Francis Fane, 1st Earl of Westmorland, English noble (d. 1629)
February 2 – Jens Bjelke, Norwegian noble (d. 1659)
February 22 – Charles de l'Aubespine, marquis de Châteauneuf, French diplomat and government official (d. 1653)
February 24 – Matthias Hoe von Hoenegg, German theologian (d. 1645)
February 28
Orazio Giustiniani, Italian Catholic cardinal (d. 1649)
Giovanni Srofenaur, Italian musician (d. 1634)
March 31 – Bogislaw XIV, Duke of Pomerania (d. 1637)
April 8
Augusta of Denmark, Duchess Consort of Holstein-Gottorp (1596-1616) (d. 1639)
William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, English noble, courtier and patron of the arts (d. 1630)
April 18 – (baptism) Thomas Middleton, English playwright (d. 1627)
April 24 – Miguel Avellán, Spanish Catholic prelate, Auxiliary Bishop of Toledo from 1633 (d. 1650)
May 5
Johann Faulhaber, German mathematician (d. 1635)
Richard Webb, English settler in America (d. 1665)
May 6 – Charles Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua and Montferrat, French noble (d. 1637)
May 14 – Bassam Al-Soukaria, Lebanese army commander (d. 1667)
May 30 – Fadrique de Toledo, 1st Marquis of Villanueva de Valdueza, Spanish noble and admiral (d. 1634)
June 6 – Godefroy Wendelin, Flemish astronomer (d. 1667)
June 9 – Daniel Heinsius, Dutch scholar (d. 1655)
June 12 – Adriaan van Stalbemt, Flemish Baroque painter (d. 1662)
June 14 – Elisabeth Magdalena of Pomerania, German duchess (d. 1649)
June 26
Gaspar de Borja y Velasco, Spanish Catholic cardinal (d. 1645)
Peter Claver, Spanish Jesuit priest (d. 1654)
July 5 – Carlo Contarini, Doge of Venice (d. 1656)
July 6 – Johann Stobäus, German composer (d. 1646)
July 10 – Humphrey Chetham, English merchant (d. 1653)
July 18 – Giovanni Giacomo Semenza, Italian painter (d. 1638)
July 29 – Francesco Mochi, Italian early-Baroque sculptor (d. 1654)
August 2 – Prince Jeongwon, Korean prince (d. 1619)
August 19 – Pierre Vernier, French mathematician (d. 1637)
September 4 – George Percy, English explorer (d. 1632)
September 14
Francisco de Quevedo, Spanish writer (d. 1645)
Robert Gordon of Straloch, Scottish cartographer (d. 1661)
September 15
Charles Annibal Fabrot, French lawyer (d. 1659)
Thomas Fanshawe, English politician (d. 1631)
September 17 – Countess Charlotte Brabantina of Nassau, Belgian noble (d. 1631)
September 24 – Elisabeth of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg, Duchess consort of Pomerania (d. 1653)
October 8 – Gábor Esterházy (1580–1626), Hungarian noble (d. 1626)
October 12 – Hortensio Félix Paravicino, Spanish preacher and poet from the noble house of Pallavicini (d. 1633)
October 20 – Peter Crüger, German astronomer and mathematician (d. 1639)
October 30 – Armand-Nompar de Caumont, duc de La Force, Marshal of France (d. 1675)
November 9 – Johannes Narssius, Dutch physician and poet (d. 1637)
December 1 – Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, French astronomer (d. 1637)
December 4
Samuel Argall, English adventurer and naval officer (d. 1626)
Nabeshima Katsushige, Japanese daimyō (d. 1657)
date unknown
Philipp Clüver, German geographer and historian (d. 1623)
Francesco Fontana, Italian lawyer and astronomer (d. 1656)
Dirk Hartog, Dutch ship's captain and explorer (d. 1621)
Jean Jannon, Swiss-born typefounder (d. 1658)
Robert Killigrew, English courtier, politician, ambassador and knight (d. 1633)
Willebrord Snellius, Dutch astronomer and mathematician (d. 1626)
Raphael Sobiehrd-Mnishovsky, Bohemian lawyer and writer (d. 1644)
Pierre Vernier, French mathematician and instrument inventor (d. 1637)
Krzysztof Zbaraski, Polish nobleman (d. 1627)
George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, English politician and colonizer (d. 1623)
probable
William Brabazon, 1st Earl of Meath, English noble (d. 1651)
Edward Fairfax, English translator (d. 1635)
Frans Hals, Dutch painter (d. 1666)
Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of Leven, Scottish soldier (d. 1661)
Benjamin, Duke of Soubise, French Huguenot leader (d. 1642)
Adriana Basile, Italian composer (d. 1640)
Deaths
January 5 – Anna Sibylle of Hanau-Lichtenberg, German noblewoman (b. 1542)
January 18
Antonio Scandello, Italian composer (b. 1517)
Archangelo de' Bianchi, Italian Catholic cardinal (b. 1516)
January 31 – King Henry of Portugal (b. 1512)
February 2 – Bessho Nagaharu, Japanese retainer (b. 1558)
February 24 – Henry FitzAlan, 19th Earl of Arundel, English nobleman (b. 1511)
April 20 – Francesco Alciati, Italian Catholic cardinal (b. 1522)
May 3 – Thomas Tusser, English poet and farmer (b. c. 1524)
May 31 – Dorothea of Denmark, Electress Palatine, Princess of Denmark, Sweden and Norway (b. 1520)
June 10 – Luís de Camões, Portuguese poet (b. c. 1524)
June 18 – Juliana of Stolberg, German countess (b. 1506)
August 1 – Albrecht Giese, German politician and diplomat (b. 1524)
August 12 – Luca Longhi, Italian painter (b. 1507)
August 15 – Vincenzo Borghini, Italian monk (b. 1515)
August 19 – Andrea Palladio, Italian architect (b. 1508)
August 20 – Jerónimo Osório, Portuguese historian (b. 1506)
August 28 – Antonín Brus of Mohelnice, Moravian Catholic archbishop (b. 1518)
August 30 – Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy (b. 1528)
September 19 – Catherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, English noblewoman (b. 1519)
September 20 – Honorat II of Savoy, French Navy admiral (b. 1511)
September – Anne de Pisseleu d'Heilly, French royal mistress and cultural patron (b. 1508)
October 1 – John II, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Haderslev (b. 1521)
October 5 – Matsudaira Shigeyoshi, Japanese general (b. 1493)
October 8 – Hieronymus Wolf, German historian (b. 1516)
October 26 – Anna of Austria, Queen of Spain (b. 1549)
November 3 – Jerónimo Zurita y Castro, Spanish historian (b. 1512)
November 16 – Marie of Baden-Sponheim, German noblewoman (b. 1507
November 30 – Richard Farrant, English composer (b. 1530)
December 1 – Giovanni Morone, Italian Catholic cardinal (b. 1509)
date unknown
Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia, Italian anatomist (b. 1545)
Ruy López de Segura, Spanish priest and writer on chess (b. 1530)
Inés de Suárez, Spanish conquistadora (b. 1507)
Lucrezia Galletta, Italian courtesan and banker
possible date
John Heywood, English dramatist (b. 1497)
Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, Scottish chronicler (b. c. 1532)
== References == |
The_Song_(2014_film) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_(2014_film) | [
778
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_(2014_film)"
] | The Song is a 2014 American romantic drama film written and directed by Richard Ramsey. The film follows about a singer-songwriter, whose marriage suffers when the song he wrote for his wife propels him to stardom. The film was inspired by the Song of Songs and the life of Solomon.
Plot
Jed King is the son of successful country music legend, David King. Jed meets Rose, the daughter of a vineyard owner, and marries her. He writes a song about her that propels him to stardom. Conflict arises when King becomes involved with Shelby Bale, a free-spirited young musician who is on tour with him. King’s career and marriage begin a downward spiral as a result of his choices and the film chronicles his struggles.
Cast
Alan Powell as Jed King
Ali Faulkner as Rose
Caitlin Nicol-Thomas as Shelby
Danny Vinson as Shep Jordan
Aaron Benward as David King
Kenda Benward as Bethany King
Jude Ramsey as Ray King
Gary Jenkins as Stan
Landon Marshall as Eddie
Casting Notes:
Alan Powell is co-founder of Anthem Lights.
Aaron (David King) and Kenda Benward (Bethany) are married in real life as well, and parents of Luke Benward.
References
External links
Official website
The Song at IMDb
The Song at Box Office Mojo
The Song at Rotten Tomatoes
Movie Review: The Song |
Anthem_Lights | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_Lights | [
778
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_Lights"
] | Anthem Lights is an American Christian vocal quartet with roots in Nashville, Tennessee and at Liberty University. The group, all of whom having studied at Liberty between 2003 and 2009 without ever having met, began performing in 2007 using the name Yellow Cavalier. On May 26, 2009, they independently released their first and only EP using the Yellow Cavalier name. The group's debut album under their current name was released on May 10, 2011, by Reunion Records, and they tallied five subsequent full-length releases prior to being dropped by the label in 2023.
Beginnings
Anthem Lights began as a solo project for vocalist Chad Graham in the fall of 2007. Both he and Alan Powell were living in Los Angeles, writing music for Graham's solo project. As the last of the vocal tracks were being finalized, both men realized that the songs they'd written were more appropriate for an ensemble than a solo act. It was then that Powell and Graham decided to alert their contacts at Liberty University in an effort to recruit members for what is now a singing group. Powell and Graham's contacts came to a consensus that Kyle Kupecky and Caleb Grimm would be the best candidates for the project. After receiving notifications by e-mail, Graham flew from Los Angeles to meet with Kupecky and Grimm, who gladly accepted membership. Powell joined the group at the last minute.
The original name of the group was Yellow Cavalier. The group recorded one self-titled EP under this name in 2009. The EP was released independently on May 26, 2009. The group changed their name to Anthem Lights before any other projects were released.
Name change
The group's name changed to Anthem Lights sometime after their independent release as Yellow Cavalier. Months later, the group signed to Reunion Records. Vocalist Kyle Kupecky comments about the meaning behind the name:
These songs [and] this record is our anthem to the world saying, "Listen, we know there's a lot of darkness in this life, but in the end, light is gonna win." And we wanna be the light to people and just show them who the light of the world is.
On February 1, 2011, Anthem Lights released the Anthem Lights EP. Although it was the second EP by the group, it was the first on Reunion Records and the first under their current name. The EP received very positive reviews and chart success as "Can't Shut Up," the first track from the EP, peaked at No. 42 on Billboard's Christian Songs chart and at No. 27 on the CHR radio charts. All of the tracks on the EP were also featured on their debut album, which was also self-titled. The album was released May 10, 2011.
On May 7, 2012, the group announced their first lineup change with the news that Kyle Kupecky had left the group, adding later that day that they had already selected someone to replace him. One week later, on May 14, 2012, they introduced Joseph "Joey" Stamper as the new member during a livestream on Ustream.
Anthem Lights performed on the Listen to the Sound Tour. The tour was headlined by Building 429, since the tour carried the same name as their latest album, and it featured Revive. Anthem Lights performed on the 2011 Rock & Worship Roadshow tour along with MercyMe, Jars of Clay, and The Afters.
The album You Have My Heart was released on February 4, 2014. The album Escape was released on October 14, 2014.
On February 1, 2016, former singer-guitarist-pianist Alan Powell left the band to pursue a career in acting.
On April 7, 2017, they released their fourth album, Hymns. On October 12, 2017, they released their fifth album, Painted Skies. This is their first album with Spencer Kane, a solo Christian artist formerly of the TV Series iShine Knect of TBN Studios and a 6 time award winner and Billboard charting indie artist.
On February 2, 2018, the band released a compilation album called Better Together: The Mixtape, which features an acoustic version of their song Better Together, along with solo music from each of the members, On March 16, 2018, they released their sixth album, Hymns Vol. II.
Members
Current members
Chad Graham – vocals
Caleb Grimm – vocals
Spencer Kane – vocals
Joey Stamper – vocals, piano, guitar, drums
Former members
Kyle Kupecky – vocals
Alan Powell – vocals, guitar, piano
Discography
Studio albums
Studio EPs
Singles
Compilation appearances
== References == |
Subsets and Splits