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INTRO

23 January, 2009

Friedrich Wolf



Friedrich Wolf was a German doctor and writer.

Wolf was born in Neuwied (Rhine Province), the son of a Jewish merchant.

From 1907 until 1912 he studied medicine, philosophy and art history in Munich, Tübingen, Bonn, and Berlin and became a doctor in 1913. In 1914 he worked first as a ship's doctor on the route between Canada, Greenland and the United States, and then in the same year became a field doctor on the Western Front in World War I; this experience made him a strong opponent of war. In 1917 he published his first prose pieces.

In 1918 he became a member of the Workers Council in Dresden and joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. After the war he worked as a doctor in Remscheid and Hechingen, where he focused on care for common people and prescribed treatment using naturopathic medicine. In 1923 and 1925 his sons Markus und Konrad were born. After 1928 he became a member of the Communist Party and the Group of Proletariat-Revolutionary Writers. In 1929 his drama "Cyankali" sparked a debate about abortion, and he was briefly arrested and charged for performing abortions.

In early 1932 he founded the Spieltrupp Südwest in Stuttgart, a communist agitprop group of lay actors that created controversial pieces about current topics.

After the Nazis came to power, Wolf emigrated with his family to Moscow. In 1938 he made his way to Spain to work as a doctor in the International Brigades. However, he was arrested in France and interned in the concentration camp Le Vernet. In 1941 he gained Soviet citizenship and returned to Moscow where he became a founder of the Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland (National Committee for a Free Germany).

In 1945 he returned to Germany and was active in literary and cultural-political issues. From 1949 to 1951 he was the first ambassador of East Germany to Poland. On October 5, 1953, he died in his personal office in Lehnitz.

"Slick" Goodlin



Chalmers "Slick" Goodlin was the second test pilot of the Bell X-1 supersonic rocket plane, and the first to operate the craft in powered flight (the others having been glide tests). He was the pilot of the project's second plane, and nearly broke the sound barrier.

He started flying-lessons at the age of 15, and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941.

The Bell Aircraft Corporation built the X-1 in an attempt to break the sound barrier in the 1940s. Goodlin was second pilot to fly the X-1 and the first to pilot it in powered flights, conducting 26 flights and pushing it near the barrier.

Goodlin's first unpowered flight was on October 11, 1946 at Muroc AFB, California. After a further three glide flights, the first powered flight of the X-1 programme was made on December 9, 1946 in the #2 aircraft. The #1 aircraft was returned to Bell's Buffalo, New York plant for modifications. Goodlin made another 11 flights in the #2 aircraft before flying the newly modified #1 aircraft. The modifications to the #1 aircraft included new wings (8% thickness/chord ratio as opposed to 10% thickness/chord ratio of the #2 aircraft) and a new horizontal stabilizer (6% thickness/chord ratio as opposed to 8% thickness/chord ratio of the #2 aircraft). Goodlin's first flight in the modified #1 aircraft was April 10, 1947.

The X-1 program was taken over by the United States Air Force after Goodlin demanded $150,000 and additionally demanded hazard pay for every minute spent over 0.85 Mach. The Bell program was also needlessly conservative, increasing speed by only 0.02 Mach per flight. Subsequently, the sound barrier was broken by Captain Chuck Yeager (who requested and received only his normal officer's pay) in 1947.

Goodlin volunteered to serve at the newly formed Israeli Air Force in 1948 as a Machal pilot and fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Goodlin died October 20, 2005.

Clement Attlee





Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, was a British politician, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. He served as Deputy Prime Minister under Winston Churchill in the wartime coalition government, before leading the Labour Party to a landslide election victory over Churchill at the 1945 general election. He was the first Labour Prime Minister to serve a full Parliamentary term and the first to have a majority in Parliament.

The government he led put in place the post-war consensus, based upon the assumption that full employment would be maintained by Keynesian policies, and that a greatly enlarged system of social services would be created – aspirations that had been outlined in the wartime Beveridge Report. Within this context, his government undertook the nationalisation of major industries and public utilities as well as the creation of the National Health Service. After initial Conservative opposition, this settlement was by and large accepted by all parties. His government also presided over the decolonisation of a large part of the British Empire, a process by which India and the countries that are now Burma, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Jordan, and Israel obtained independence.

Clement Attlee died of pneumonia at the age of 84 at Westminster Hospital on 8 October 1967.

Maurice de Vlaminck



Maurice de Vlaminck was a French painter. Along with André Derain and Henri Matisse he is considered one of the principal figures in the Fauve movement, a group of modern artists who from 1904 to 1908 were united in their use of intense color.

Maurice de Vlaminck was born in Paris to a family of musicians. His father taught him to play the violin. He began painting in his late teens. In 1893, he studied with a painter named Henri Rigalon on the Ile de Chatou. In 1894 he married Suzanne Berly. The turning point in his life was a chance meeting on the train to Paris towards the end of his stint in the army. Vlaminck, then 23, met an aspiring artist, André Derain, with whom he struck up a life-long friendship. When Vlaminck completed his army service in 1900, the two rented a studio together for a year before Derain left to do his own military service. In 1902 and 1903 he wrote several mildly pornographic novels illustrated by Derain. He painted during the day and earned his livelihood by giving violin lessons and performing with musical bands at night.

In 1911, Vlaminck traveled to London and painted by the Thames. In 1913, he painted again with Derain in Marseille and Martigues. In World War I he was stationed in Paris, and began writing poetry. Eventually he settled in the northwestern suburbs of Paris. He married his second wife, Berthe Combes, with whom he had two daughters. From 1925 he traveled throughout France, but continued to paint primarily along the Seine, near Paris.

Two of Vlaminck's groundbreaking paintings, Sur le zinc (At the Bar) and L'homme a la pipe (Man Smoking a Pipe) were painted in 1900.

For the next few years Vlaminck lived in or near Chatou (the inspiration for his painting houses at Chatou), painting and exhibiting alongside Derain, Matisse, and other Fauvist painters. At this time his exuberant paint application and vibrant use of color displayed the influence of Vincent van Gogh. Sur le zinc called to mind the work of Toulouse-Lautrec and his portrayals of prostitutes and solitary drinkers, but does not attempt to probe the sitter's psychology—a break with the century-old European tradition of individualized portraiture. According to art critic Souren Melikian, it is "the impersonal cartoon of a type." In his landscape paintings, his approach was similar. He ignored the details, with the landscape becoming a mere excuse to express mood through violent color and brushwork. An example is Sous bois, painted in 1904. The following year, he began to experiment with "deconstruction," turning the physical world into dabs and streaks of color that convey a sense of motion. His paintings Le Pont de Chatou (The Chatou Bridge), Les Ramasseurs de pommes de terre (The Potato Pickers), La Seine a Chatou (The River Seine at Chatou) and Le Verger (The Orchard) exemplify this trend.

Vlaminck died in Rueil-la-Gadelière on 11 October 1958.

Alexander Cambridge, 1st Earl of Athlone


Major-General Alexander Augustus Frederick William Alfred George Cambridge, 1st Earl of Athlone was a member of the Royal Family of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms, the younger brother of Queen Mary. He held the titles of a Prince of Teck in the Kingdom of Württemberg until 1917, when he relinquished his German titles and assumed the name Cambridge and was created Earl of Athlone. Alexander also served as Governor-General of the Union of South Africa from 21 January 1924 to 21 December 1930, as Governor General of Canada from 21 June 1940 to 12 April 1946, and was Chancellor of the University of London from 1932 to 1955.

Alexander was born on 14 April 1874 at Kensington Palace in London.[1] His father was Prince Francis, Duke of Teck, the son of Duke Alexander of Württemberg and Claudine Rhédey von Kis-Rhéde (created the Countess von Hohenstein). His mother was the Duchess of Teck (née Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge), the youngest daughter of Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge and a granddaughter of King George III. Alexander was styled His Serene Highness Prince Alexander of Teck at birth.[1][2] He was educated at Eton College, Berkshire.

Following his education, Alexander attended the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 7th Queen's Own Hussars in 1894. He served in the Second Matabele War and was mentioned in dispatches. In the Second Boer War he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO).

In 1914, at the beginning of World War I, Alexander had been nominated as Governor General of Canada, however, he was called up for active service with his regiment. At the outbreak of war, he was a major in the 2nd Life Guards, with whom he served throughout the war. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1915, brigadier in 1917, and honorary major general in 1918.He was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in June 1917. During the closing months of the war, he served as head of the British Mission to the Belgian army.

On 16 November 1903 Alexander became engaged to his second cousin once removed, Princess Alice of Albany (23 February 1883 – 3 January 1981), the daughter of Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany and a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and they were married on 10 February 1904, at St. George's Chapel, Windsor.

Alexander and Alice had three children:

Princess May of Teck, later The Lady May Cambridge (23 January 1906–29 May 1994), married 23 October 1931 Colonel Sir Henry Abel Smith (26 January 1900-24 January 1993)
Prince Rupert of Teck, later styled Viscount Trematon (24 April 1907–15 April 1928)
Prince Maurice of Teck (29 March 1910–14 September 1910).

During World War I, anti-German feeling in the United Kingdom led Alexander's brother in law, King George V to change the name of the royal house from the Germanic House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the more English-sounding House of Windsor. The King also renounced all his Germanic titles for himself and all members of the British Royal Family who were British citizens.

In response to this, Alexander renounced his title, through a Royal Warrant from the King, dated 14 July 1917, of a Prince of Teck in the Kingdom of Württemberg and the style His Serene Highness. Alexander, along with his brother, Prince Adolphus of Teck, adopted the name Cambridge, after their grandfather, Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge. He briefly became Sir Alexander Cambridge.

A few days later, the King created his brother-in-law Earl of Athlone and Viscount Trematon. Alexander was now styled The Right Honourable The Earl of Athlone. His elder daughter was now styled Lady May Cambridge, and his surviving son adopted the courtesy title of Viscount Trematon. Alexander's wife, Alice, retained her title of a British princess with the style Her Royal Highness and became known as Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone.

In 1923, Lord Athlone was appointed Governor-General of the Union of South Africa, in succession to his cousin, HRH Prince Arthur of Connaught. In that capacity, he helped to resolve the controversy surrounding a proposal by Prime Minister James Hertzog that South Africa should have its own flag, in addition to the Union Flag. In recognition, George V made him a Knight of the Order of the Garter (KG) in April 1928. Athlone, a suburb of the South African city of Cape Town, was also named after him.

On 26 April 1924 Lord Athlone officially opened Pioneer Park, one of the premier public parks in Johannesburg at the time.

In June 1940, Lord Athlone was appointed Governor General of Canada at the age of 68, following the sudden death of Lord Tweedsmuir while in office. There had been calls from government and the media for a Canadian governor general, but Prime Minister Mackenzie King did not feel the time was right for this while Canada was still at war with Germany. Lord Athlone, accompanied by Princess Alice, travelled to Canada to take up his position, zig-zagging across the Atlantic in RMS Queen Mary to avoid submarine attack, arriving safely in Halifax.

As World War II continued, Lord Athlone was very active in supporting the war effort by continuously inspecting troops, training schools, and military hospitals. Princess Alice was Honorary Commandant of the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service, Honorary Air Commandant of the Royal Canadian Air Force (Women's Division), and president of the nursing division of the St. John Ambulance Brigade.

Earl of Athlone, Princess Alice and Mackenzie King at the opening of Parliament 6 September, 1945As governor general, Lord Athlone hosted Prime Minister Mackenzie King, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and American President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Quebec Citadel on two separate occasions in 1943 and 1944. These meetings, known as the Quebec Conferences, helped decide the strategies of the Western Allies that would lead to victory over Nazi Germany and Japan in 1945.

Not everything was focused on the war, though. Lord Athlone created the Athlone-Vanier Engineering Fellowship at the Engineering Institute of Canada, recognizing academic excellence, leadership, and management potential. He also enjoyed the social activities around Ottawa, hosting tobogganing parties, skiing in Gatineau Park and learning how to skate.

In 1946, he was replaced as Governor General of Canada by Lord Alexander of Tunis. Lord Athlone returned to the United Kingdom to retirement at his residence in Kensington Palace. He attended the coronation of his great-niece, Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 and other major royal events.

Lord Athlone died at Kensington Palace on 16 January 1957. He was buried at Frogmore Royal Burial Ground, Windsor. As both his sons had pre-deceased him, the Earldom of Athlone became extinct upon his death. His wife survived until 1981, the oldest and last surviving grandchild of Queen Victoria.

Richard Krautheimer


Richard Krautheimer (Fürth (Franconia), Germany, was a 20th century art historian, architectural historian, Baroque scholar, and Byzantinist.

He was born in Germany in 1897, the son of Nathan Krautheimer (1854–1910) and Martha Landman (Krautheimer) (1875–1967). Krautheimer's cousin, Ernst Kitzinger, would also become a prominent Byzantinist. Krautheimer fought in the First World War as an enlisted soldier in the German army (1916–18). Between 1919–23, he initially studied law at, successively, universities in Munich, Berlin, and Marburg under faculty who included Heinrich Wölfflin, Adolf Goldschmidt and Werner Weisbach. During these years, he briefly worked on the state inventory of Churches for Erfurt (Inventarisierung der Erfurter Kirchen für die Preussische Denkmalpflege). In 1924 he married Trude Hess who subsequently also studied art history and became a noted scholar and collector herself. He completed his dissertation in Halle under Paul Frankl in 1925 with the title Die Kirchen der Bettelorden in Deutschland (1240–1340). Frankl's work remained a strong influence for Krautheimer throughout his life. Willibald Sauerländer contends that it was Krautheimer who later introduced Frankl’s work to the United States. The systematizing methodology of Krautheimer's mentor, Frankl, "never left Krautheimer" according to Willibald Sauerlander.

In 1927 he completed his habilitation under Georg Hamann in Marburg-Wittenberg. The same year, while researching at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, Krautheimer developed the idea for a handbook of Roman churches with a colleague, Rudolf Wittkower, later to become the Corpus Basilicarum. In 1928 he accepted a privatdozent teaching position at Marburg. Except for studies-in-residence at the Hertziana (1930/31, 32/33) he remained at Marburg. The Krautheimers fled Nazi persecution, leaving Germany for good. Between 1933–35 Krautheimer worked on the Corpus, accepting paying employment from Frankl’s son in the city. The ever-declining political situation for Jews in Axis-alliance countries compelled the Krautheimers to emigrate to the United States of America. Krautheimer found a position at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, a university he purportedly had never heard of. At his request, Louisville hired another fleeing art historian, Krautheimer’s friend from school days, Justus Bier. Krautheimer moved to Vassar in 1937 at the request of Vassar’s Art Department chair, Agnes Claflin. That same year saw Krautheimer’s first volume of the Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae, a scholarly inventory and documentation of the early Christian churches in Rome eventually running to five volumes. The set would not be completed until 1977. Following US entry into World War II, he and Trude became naturalized citizens. Richard volunteered for duty as a senior research analyst for the Office of Strategic Services for the years 1942–44. Here he analyzed aerial photographs of Rome to assist in the protection of historic buildings during bombing. While still at Vassar, he taught (with lecturer status) at New York University (1938–49). He moved to NYU permanently in 1952 as the Jayne Wrightsman Professor of Fine Arts. The early 1950s were devoted to researching his one monograph on an artist, Lorenzo Ghiberti, published jointly with his wife in 1956. He would serve for one semester as acting Director of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.

Krautheimer next engaged in what he called his most difficult book to research and write: the survey volume on early Christian architecture for the Pelican History of Art. The manuscript was completed in 1963 and published two years later. The volume turned out to be one of the finest syntheses of late antique/early medieval architecture published and brought Krautheimer his widest readership. He revised and reissued the work twice, in 1975 and 1979. After a second tome on Ghiberti in 1971, Krautheimer retired from NYU as Samuel F. B. Morse Professor Emeritus and returned to Rome. Wolfgang Lotz, friend and fellow architectural historian, offered him a residence at the Bibliotheca Hertziana. There, Krautheimer completed his long-standing research on the Corpus Basilicarum. In these final years he set to work writing two of his most synthetic and lyrical works on art history. Rome: Profile of a City (1980) and The Rome of Alexander VII (1985) combined social history, vast breadth of archival knowledge and insightful architectural history into single volumes. In both cases, Krautheimer selected comparatively neglected periods in Roman history to offer a compelling narrative of the interaction of public works and patronage. While assisting friends with plans for his 100th birthday, Krauthiemer died at 97 at the Palazzo Zuccari. His wife had preceded him in death seven years before. His many students at New York University included Howard Saalman, Leo Steinberg, Frances Huemer, Marvin Trachtenberg, and

Moss Hart


Moss Hart was an American playwright and director of plays and musical theater.

Hart was born in New York City and grew up at 74 East 105th Street in Manhattan, “a neighborhood not of carriages and hansom cabs, but of dray wagons, pushcarts, and immigrants.” Early on he had a strong relationship with his Aunt Kate, whom he later lost contact with because of a falling out between her and his parents, and her weakening mental state. She got him interested in the theater and took him to see performances often. Hart even went so far as to create an "alternate ending" to her life in his book Act One. He writes that she died while he was working on out-of-town tryouts for The Beloved Bandit. Later, Kate became quite eccentric, vandalizing Hart's home, writing threatening letters and setting fires backstage during rehearsals for Jubilee. But his relationship with Kate was life-forming. He understood that the theater made possible "the art of being somebody else… not a scrawny boy with bad teeth, a funny name… and a mother who was a distant drudge."

After working several years as a director of amateur theatrical groups and an entertainment director at summer resorts, he scored his first Broadway hit with Once in a Lifetime (1930), a farce about the arrival of the sound era in Hollywood. The play was written in collaboration with Broadway veteran George S. Kaufman, who regularly wrote with others, notably Marc Connelly and Edna Ferber. (Kaufman also performed in the play's original Broadway cast in the role of a frustrated playwright hired by Hollywood.) During the next decade, Kaufman and Hart teamed on a string of successes, including You Can't Take It With You (1936) and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939). Though Kaufman had hits with others, Hart is generally conceded to be his most important collaborator.

You Can't Take It With You, the story of an eccentric family and how they live during the Depression, won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for drama. It is Hart's most-revived play. When director Frank Capra and writer Robert Riskin adapted it for the screen in 1938, the film won the Best Picture Oscar and Capra won for Best Director.

The Man Who Came To Dinner is about the caustic Sheridan Whiteside who, after injuring himself slipping on ice, must stay in a Midwestern family's house. The character was based on Kaufman and Hart's friend, critic Alexander Woollcott. Other characters in the play are based on Noel Coward, Harpo Marx and Gertrude Lawrence.

After George Washington Slept Here (1940), Kaufman and Hart called it quits. Hart had decided it was time to move on. Throughout the 1930s, Hart also worked, with and without Kaufman, on several musicals and revues, including Face the Music (1932), As Thousands Cheer (1933), with songs by Irving Berlin, Jubilee (musical) (1935), with songs by Cole Porter and I'd Rather Be Right (1937), with songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. (Lorenz Hart and Moss Hart were not related.)

Hart continued to write plays after parting with Kaufman, such as Christopher Blake (1946) and Light Up The Sky (1948), as well as the book for the musical Lady In The Dark (1941), with songs by Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin. However, he became best known during this period as a director.

Among the Broadway hits he staged were Junior Miss (1941), Dear Ruth (1944) and Anniversary Waltz (1954). By far his biggest hit was the musical My Fair Lady (1956), adapted from George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The show ran over seven years and won a Tony Award for Best Musical. Hart picked up the Tony for Best Director.

Occasionally, Hart wrote screenplays, including Gentleman's Agreement (1947) — for which he received an Oscar nomination—Hans Christian Andersen (1952) and A Star Is Born (1954).

Hart also wrote a best-selling book, Act One: An Autobiography, which came out in 1959. It tells of his early days, culminating in the opening of Once In A Lifetime. It was adapted to film in 1963, with George Hamilton portraying Hart.

The last show Hart directed was the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot (1960). During a troubled out-of-town tryout, Hart had a heart attack. The show opened before he fully recovered, but he and Lerner reworked it after the opening. That, along with huge pre-sales and a cast performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, helped ensure the expensive production was a hit.

Hart married Kitty Carlisle in 1946, and they had two biological children (a third pregnancy was a miscarriage). Nonetheless, the longtime bachelor was known to be gay by many of his own friends and reportedly spent much time in therapy regarding his attraction to men. Carlisle did ask him if he was gay before they married and his response was that he was not.

In his screenplay for the 1952 film Hans Christian Andersen, Hart wrote the following line for bisexual actor Danny Kaye (playing the title role): "You'd be surprised how many kings are only a queen with a moustache."

Moss Hart died of heart failure at age 57 on 20 December 1961, and was interred in a crypt at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Alan Jay Lerner gave tribute to Hart in his memoir The Street Where I Live.

Mortimer Adler


Mortimer Jerome Adler was an American Aristotelian philosopher and author. He was born into a Jewish family in New York City, the son of an immigrant jewelry salesman. He dropped out of school at 14 years of age and went to work as a secretary and copy boy at the New York Sun, hoping to become a journalist. After a year, he took night classes at Columbia University to improve his writing.

It was there that he became interested in the great philosophers and thinkers of Western civilization and earned a PhD in psychology.

He continued to participate in the Honors program (today the Core Curriculum) which had been started by John Erskine which focused on the reading of the classical texts. His tenure at the university included study with such eminent thinkers as Erskine and John Dewey, the famous American pragmatist philosopher. This kind of environment inspired his early interest in reading and the study of the "Great Books" of Western Civilization. He also promoted the idea that philosophy should be integrated with science, literature, and religion.

Roger Sessions


Roger Huntington Sessions was an American composer, critic and teacher of music.

Born in Brooklyn, New York to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution, Sessions studied music at Harvard University from the age of 14. There, he wrote for and subsequently edited the Harvard Musical Review. Graduating at age 18, he went on to study at Yale University under Horatio Parker and Ernest Bloch before teaching at Smith College. His first major compositions were made while travelling Europe in his mid twenties and early thirties with his wife.

Returning to the United States in 1933, he taught first at Princeton University, moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught from 1946 to 1954, and then returned to Princeton until retiring in 1965, although he continued to teach on a part-time basis at the Juilliard School until 1983. His notable students include Milton Babbitt, Kenneth Frazelle, Larry Thomas Bell, Earl Kim, Peter Maxwell Davies, David Del Tredici, John Adams, Carlton Gamer, Miriam Gideon, John Harbison, Robert Helps, Will Ogdon, Walter Hekster, Andrew Imbrie, David Lewin, Claire Polin, Einojuhani Rautavaara, William Schimmel, George Tsontakis, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, John Veale, Roger Nixon, Alan Fletcher, Peter Westergaard, Rolv Yttrehus, and Henry Weinberg.

He died at the age of 88 on 16 March 1985, in Princeton, New Jersey.

Gene Fowler


Gene Fowler (born Eugene Devlan) was an American journalist, author and dramatist.

He was born in Denver, Colorado. When his mother remarried, young Gene took his stepfather's name to become Gene Fowler. Fowler's career had a false start in taxidermy, which he later claimed permanently gave him a distaste for red meat. After a year at the University of Colorado, he took a job with The Denver Post. His assignments included an interview with frontiersman and Wild West Show promoter Buffalo Bill Cody. He established his trademark impertinence by questioning Cody about his many love affairs.

Subsequently, Fowler worked for the New York Daily Mirror, and then became newspaper syndication manager for King Features. His later work included over a dozen screenplays, mostly written in the 1930s, and a number of books including biographies and memoirs.

During his years in Hollywood, Fowler became close to such celebrities as John Barrymore and W.C. Fields. Fields, whose animus toward children is legendary, claimed that Gene Fowler's sons were the only children he could stand.

In 1916, Fowler married Agnes Hubbard who bore three children, the eldest of whom was Gene Fowler Jr. (1917-1998), a prominent Hollywood film editor (whose work included It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Hang 'Em High) and a sometime director (1959's I Was a Teenage Werewolf as well as numerous television programs).

Gene Fowler died July 2, 1960 in Los Angeles, California.

James Kempton


James Murray Kempton was an influential American journalist.

Kempton worked as a copyboy for H. L. Mencken at the Baltimore Evening Sun. He was educated at Johns Hopkins, where he was editor-in-chief of the Johns Hopkins News-Letter. After his graduation in 1939, he worked for a short time as a labor organizer, then joined the staff of the New York Post, earning a reputation for a quietly elegant prose style that featured long but rhythmic sentences, a flair for irony, and gentle, almost scholarly sarcasm.

He served in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, returning to the New York Post in 1949 as labor editor and later as a columnist. He also wrote for the NYC-based World-Telegram and Sun and a short-lived successor, the World Journal Tribune, a merger between the Telegram, the New York Herald-Tribune, and the Journal-American.

During the 1960s he edited The New Republic. By 1981, he became a columnist for Newsday, the Long Island-based daily. Additionally, Kempton was also a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, Esquire magazine, CBS's Spectrum radio opinion series, and National Review, the conservative magazine with whose editor, William F. Buckley, Jr., Kempton had enjoyed a longtime friendship that grew from their ideological rivalry.

Known as a modest, courtly man who was generous with fellow journalists and friends, even Kempton wasn't without his eccentricities. He never learned to drive, and could often be spotted riding a bicycle in New York City wearing a three-piece suit. He was shown that way in television spots promoting Newsday's New York edition, in which Kempton brought his bicycle to a stop at an intersection and deadpanned, "I guess I've been around so long that people think they have to like me."

Kempton's bicycling was also depicted in a cartoon showing him standing next to his three-speed bicycle that accompanied first a 1993 profile in The New Yorker and, then, the jacket of what proved his final book, an anthology known as Rebellions, Perversities, and Main Events. Kempton dedicated the book to Buckley, whom he once admitted had nagged him for years to assemble the collection: "For William F. Buckley, Jr., genius at friendships that surpass all understanding."

An indefatiguable journalist who filed four columns a week for most of his career, Kempton won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1985. Ten years later, he received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College.

Kempton, who was ill with pancreatic cancer, died of a heart attack in his home in 1997, two years after the death of his wife. He was 79 years old. "It was easy to think of Murray as indestructible," wrote Newsday Sunday Currents editor Chris Lehmann. "Although he was at an age when many people settle into dotage, he could, and did, run circles around us all. After New York Newsday folded in 1995 and op-ed space shrank in the Long Island mother edition of the paper, Murray complained regularly about only being able to file his column two times a week instead of four." Buckley---in his own near-memoir, Miles Gone By---has recalled Kempton, even at the depth of his illness, planned to write an autobiography and had completed a first chapter, quoting Kempton as saying, "I think I can get it done in eight or nine months."

Pierre Boulle


Pierre Boulle was a French novelist largely known for two famous works, The Bridge over the River Kwai (1952) and Planet of the Apes (1963).

Born Pierre-François-Marie-Louis Boulle in Avignon, France, Boulle was baptised and raised a Roman Catholic, although later in life he would be agnostic. He studied and later became an engineer. Then, from 1936 to 1939, he worked as a technician on British rubber plantations in Malaya. While there he met a Frenchwoman who was separated from her husband. She was to become the love of his life whom he would write tender love letters. She later chose to return to her husband, a French official. During World War II she and her husband escaped into Malaysia and one of her children died in the process. Boulle would later meet her after the war on a platonic basis.

At the outbreak of World War II, Boulle enlisted with the French army in French Indochina. After German troops occupied France, he joined the Free French Mission in Singapore. During the war he was a supporter of Charles de Gaulle.

Boulle served as a secret agent under the name Peter John Rule and helped the resistance movement in China, Burma, and French Indochina. In 1943, he was captured by the Vichy France loyalists on the Mekong River and was subjected to severe hardship and forced labour. He was later made a chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur and decorated with the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance. He described his experiences in the war in the non-fiction My Own River Kwai (1967). After the war he would keep in touch with his war comrades for the rest of his life.

For a while after the war, Boulle returned to work in the rubber industry, but in 1949 [2] he moved back to Paris and began to write. While in Paris, too poor to afford his own flat, he lived in a hotel until his recently widowed sister Madeleine allowed him to move into her large apartment. She had a daughter whom Pierre helped raise, but plans for him to officially adopt the girl never materialized. He could never bring himself to leave this family and form another one.

While in Paris, Boulle used his war experiences in writing Le Pont de la rivière Kwaï (1952; The Bridge over the River Kwai), which became a multi-million-copy worldwide bestseller, winning the French "Prix Sainte-Beuve". The book was a semi-fictional story based on the real plight of Allied POWs forced to build a 415-km (258-mile) railway that passed over the bridge, and which became known as the "Death Railway". 16,000 prisoners and 100,000 Asian conscripts died during construction of the line. His character of Lt-Col. Nicholson was not based on the real Allied senior officer at the Kwai bridges, Philip Toosey, but was reportedly an amalgam of his memories of collaborating French officers.

David Lean made The Bridge over the River Kwai into a motion picture that won several 1957 Oscars, including the Best Picture, and Best Actor for Alec Guinness. Boulle himself won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay despite not having written the screenplay and, by his own admission, not even speaking English. (He gave what is said to be the shortest acceptance speech in Academy Award history, the single word "Merci".) Boulle had been credited with the screenplay because the film's actual writers, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, had been blacklisted as communist sympathizers.[citation needed] Pierre Boulle was neither a Socialist nor a Communist. The Motion Picture Academy added Foreman's and Wilson's names to the award in 1984.

In 1963, following several other reasonably successful novels, Pierre Boulle published his other famous novel, Planet of the Apes. The novel was highly praised and given such review's as this example from England's Guardian newspaper; "Classic science fiction...full of suspense and satirical intelligence." In the year 2500 a group of astronauts, including journalist Ulysse Merou, voyage to a planet in the star system of Betelguese. They land to discover a bizarre world where intelligent apes are the Master Race and humans are reduced to savages: caged in zoos, used in laboratory experiments and hunted for sport. The story of Ulysse's capture, his struggle to survive, and the shattering climax as he uncovers the horrific truth about the 'planet of the apes' is gripping and fantastic. Yet the novel is also a wry parable on science, evolution and the relationship between man and animal. In 1968 this story was made into an Oscar-winning film, starring Charlton Heston, which inspired four sequels, one television series, an animated series and a 2001 remake of the original title by Tim Burton. The film series have become cult classics with movie goers throughout the world. Pierre Boulle believed his novel could not be made into a film, yet he was taken completely by surprise by the success and impact of the film throughout the world. He wrote a sequel script for the film titled Planet of the Men. The producers of the original film turned his script down and named the second film, Beneath the Planet of the Apes. This sequel, which was released in 1970, was also very successful. This film was followed by Escape from the Planet of the Apes in 1971. Then came Conquest of the Planet of the Apes in 1972. The last of the sequels was Battle for the Planet of the Apes in 1973. In September 1973 the original Planet of the Apes film was first aired on network television. The marketing of toys and other products relating to the film series skyrocketed at this time creating an 'Apemania' craze. In June 1974, Marvel comics also released a magazine based on the novel and film called Planet of the Apes. By September 1974 Planet of the Apes had become a television series. In 1975 an animated Return to the Planet of the Apes series was shown on television.

A few months before Boulle's death, a woman who was a former editor visited him and his family in hospital, and revealed to Boulle's family that she had once been his lover. Years before there were rumours that Pierre Boulle was seeing a French actress.

He had never married, due in large part to the fact that he had decided to take care of his sister and raise his niece as his own daughter.

Pierre Boulle died in Paris, France on 30 January 1994, at age 82.

James Carey


James Barron Carey was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in August 1911, one of eleven children. After attending St. Theresa’s parochial school in Philadelphia, Carey went to public high school in Glassboro, New Jersey. Legend has it that while in fifth grade, the young Carey led a class walkout against a teacher who was giving too much homework. True or not, Carey, never one to shun the spotlight or a good story, did not deny the tale.

When Carey graduated from high school in 1929, he entered a world about to be rocked by the Great Depression of the 1930s. He went to work at the Philco Radio Corporation at the age of 18 as a continuity tester. While at Philco, he attended college classes in engineering, business and management at both the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. Greatly influenced by his progressive democratic Catholic upbringing, Carey felt most comfortable on the factory floor, and soon became a leader in the Philco employee’s desire for better working conditions.

In 1933, Carey organized members of the Philco company-led union into a group known as the “Philrod Fishing Club,” supposedly to discuss fishing methods, but actually to form the basis of an independent worker’s union. When Philco management was guilty of employee indiscretions later that year, Carey led 5,000 workers on a strike that was settled within three days. As chairman of the Philco union negotiating committee, James Carey had his first major victory. It would not be his last.

In December 1933, Carey was elected the first President of the newly formed Radio and Allied Trades National Labor Council, which the following year became the National Radio and Allied Trades Council. In 1936, a larger, more far-reaching industrial union, the United Electrical Workers (UE) was formed, and Carey was named its first President. Carey led the UE in its formative years. Under Carey’s leadership, the UE formed an affiliation with the new Congress for Industrial Organizations (CIO). It was here that Carey established alliances with CIO leaders John L. Lewis and Philip Murray.

One of the by-products of organized labor during the Depression and World War II periods was the infiltration of the Communist Party into the affairs of trade unions. The Party felt that through the organization of workers, it could gain entry into American society and eventually influence its political structure. Some Americans had ambiguous allegiances during the Second World War, being against the totalitarianism of Hitler’s fascism while at the same time favoring the dictatorship of the Soviet Union as an ally of the United States. Some, like James Carey, were able to recognize the Communist threat while fighting against fascism. It was this recognition that led to an acrimonious split within the Communist-dominated leadership of the UE, and Jim Carey’s defeat as UE President at the 1941 UE convention.

Undeterred, Carey continued being an active, non-elected UE leader as well as becoming an international labor figure as Secretary-Treasurer of the CIO. Carey spent a great deal of time in the 1940s traveling abroad to represent Philip Murray and the CIO as a member of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). In 1948, Carey helped influence the CIO’s pullout from the Communist dominated WFTU and the formation of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), and organization dedicated to promoting free trade and democratic unionism worldwide. Carey also embraced anti-Communism at home, and led the fight within the UE and its Communist leadership. He formed an internal splinter group, the UE Members for Democratic Action (UEMDA) and pushed for CIO disaffiliation of the UE and the chartering of a new electronic workers union that would be democratic and anti-Communist. The stage was set for the birth of the International Union of Electrical Radio and Machine Workers Union (IUE-CIO).

James B. Carey married the former Margaret McCormick of Chicago in 1938. They had two children: a son James Jr. and a daughter, Patricia Ann. It is a little known fact that the majority of James Carey’s tenure as President of the IUE-CIO was spent under a cloud of serious personal tragedy. In January 1950, eight-year old Patti Carey was struck by an automobile on a suburban Washington, D.C. street, leaving her in a coma for a considerable amount of time. Patti remained quite handicapped and required constant medical attention through the years. Despite this family ordeal, James Carey was able to serve the IUE-CIO and the American labor movement with a firm focus and resolve. He died on September 12, 1973 at the age of 62.

Lord Nuffield


William Richard Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield was the founder of the Morris Motor Company and a philanthropist.

Morris was born in Worcester, England in 1877. When he was 3 years old his family moved to 16, James Street, Oxford. Upon leaving school at the age of fifteen Morris was apprenticed to a local bicycle seller and repairer. Nine months later, aged 16, he set up a business repairing bicycles from the family home. The business being a success he opened a shop at 48, High Street and began manufacturing as well as repairing bicycles. In 1901, he began to work with motorcycles, designing the Morris Motor Cycle, and in 1902 acquired a garage in Longwall Street from which he sold, repaired and hired cars.

In 1912 he designed a car, the "Bullnose" Morris and began manufacturing at a disused military training college in Cowley, Oxford. The outbreak of World War I saw the nascent car factory given over to the production of munitions but in 1919 car production recommenced rising from 400 cars in that year to 56,000 in 1925. During the period 1919–1925 Morris built or purchased factories at Abingdon, Birmingham, and Swindon to add to that in Oxford. Morris pioneered the introduction to the United Kingdom of Henry Ford's techniques of mass production. In 1927, in competition against — amongst others — Herbert Austin, Morris purchased the bankrupt Wolseley Motor Company and the company passed into his personal control. Wolseley were at this stage in fairly advanced development of an overhead camshaft 8hp car, which Morris launched as the first Morris Minor in 1928 (this was also the basis of the original MG Midget, launched in 1929).

In 1938, Nuffield purchased the bankrupt Riley (Coventry) and Autovia companies from the Riley family and quickly sold them to his own Morris Motor Company, with the addition of Wolseley later that year, the combined enterprise became known as the Nuffield Organisation. This merged with Austin Motor Company in 1952 to become the British Motor Corporation. It was later merged with Jaguar to become British Motor Holdings. In 1968, nearly every British automobile manufacturer, including BMH, became British Leyland.

Morris was created as a baronet in 1929, created Baron Nuffield in 1934, and made a viscount in 1938. Both titles became extinct upon his death without issue.

Morris was married to Elizabeth Anstey on 9 April 1904 — there were no children, and as a result he dispersed a large part of his fortune to charitable causes. Morris founded the Nuffield Foundation in 1943 with an endowment of £10 million in order to advance education and social welfare. Morris also founded Nuffield College, Oxford. The College owns his former Oxfordshire home, Nuffield Place, which is opened to the public, and he is also commemorated in the Morris Motors Museum at the Oxford Bus Museum. Morris also has a building named after him at Coventry University.

Man Ray



Man Ray, born Emmanuel Radnitzky was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. Best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, Man Ray produced major works in a variety of media and considered himself a painter above all. He was also a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. He is noted for his photograms, which he renamed rayographs after himself.

While appreciation for Man Ray's work beyond his fashion and portrait photography was slow in coming during his lifetime, especially in his native United States, his reputation has grown steadily in the decades since.

From the time he began attracting attention as an artist until his death more than 60 years later, Man Ray allowed little of his early life or family background to be known to the public, even refusing to acknowledge that he ever had a name other than Man Ray.

Man Ray was born Emmanuel Radnitzky in the South Philadelphia section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1890, the eldest child of recent Russian-Jewish immigrants. The family would eventually include another son and two daughters, the youngest born shortly after they settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, in 1897. In early 1912, the Radnitzky family changed their surname to Ray, a name selected by Man Ray's brother, in reaction to the ethnic discrimination and anti-Semitism prevalent at that time. Emmanuel, who was called "Manny" as a nickname, changed his first name to Man at this time, and gradually began to use Man Ray as his combined single name.

Man Ray's father was a garment factory worker who also ran a small tailoring business out of the family home, enlisting his children from an early age. Man Ray's mother enjoyed making the family's clothes from her own designs and inventing patchwork items from scraps of fabric. Despite Man Ray's desire to disassociate himself from his family background, this experience left an enduring mark on his art. Tailor's dummies, flat irons, sewing machines, needles, pins, threads, swatches of fabric, and other items related to clothing and sewing appear at every stage of his work and in almost every medium. Art historians have also noted similarity in his collage and painting techniques to those used in making clothing.

The Misunderstood (1938). Collection of the Man Ray Estate. One of Man Ray's rare paintings.Man Ray displayed artistic and mechanical ability from childhood. His education at Boys' High School from 1904 to 1908 provided him with a solid grounding in drafting and other basic art techniques. At the same time, he educated himself with frequent visits to the local art museums, where he studied the works of the Old Masters. After graduation from high school, he was offered a scholarship to study architecture but chose to pursue a career as an artist instead. However much this decision disappointed his parents' aspirations to upward mobility and assimilation, they nevertheless rearranged the family's modest living quarters so that Man Ray could use a room as his studio. He stayed for the next four years, working steadily toward being a professional painter, while earning money as a commercial artist and technical illustrator at several Manhattan companies.

From the surviving examples of his work from this period, it appears he attempted mostly paintings and drawings in 19th-century styles. He was already an avid admirer of avant-garde art of the time, such as the European modernists he saw at Alfred Stieglitz's "291" gallery and works by the Ashcan School, but, with a few exceptions, was not yet able to integrate these new trends into his own work. The art classes he sporadically attended—including stints at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League—were of little apparent benefit to him, until he enrolled in the Ferrer School in the autumn of 1912, thus beginning a period of intense and rapid artistic development.

Living in New York City, influenced by what he saw at the 1913 Armory Show and in galleries showing contemporary works from Europe, Man Ray's early paintings display facets of cubism. Upon befriending Marcel Duchamp who was interested in showing movement in static paintings, his works begin to depict movement of the figures, for example in the repetitive positions of the skirts of the dancer in The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Shadows (1916).

In 1915, Man Ray had his first solo show of paintings and drawings. His first proto-Dada object, an assemblage titled Self-Portrait, was exhibited the following year. He produced his first significant photographs in 1918.

Abandoning conventional painting, Man Ray involved himself with Dada, a radical anti-art movement, started making objects, and developed unique mechanical and photographic methods of making images. For the 1918 version of Rope Dancer he combined a spray-gun technique with a pen drawing. Again, like Duchamp, he made "readymades"—objects selected by the artist, sometimes modified and presented as art. His Gift readymade (1921) is a flatiron with metal tacks attached to the bottom, and Enigma of Isidore Ducasse is an unseen object (a sewing machine) wrapped in cloth and tied with cord. Another work from this period, Aerograph (1919), was done with airbrush on glass.

In 1920 Ray helped Duchamp make his first machine and one of the earliest examples of kinetic art, the Rotary Glass Plates composed of glass plates turned by a motor. That same year Man Ray, Katherine Dreier and Duchamp founded the Société Anonyme, an itinerant collection which in effect was the first museum of modern art in the U.S.

Ray teamed up with Duchamp to publish the one issue of New York Dada in 1920, but he soon declared, "Dada cannot live in New York", and he moved to Paris in 1921.

In July 1921, Man Ray went to live and work in Paris, France, and soon settled in the Montparnasse quarter favored by many artists. Shortly after arriving in Paris, he met and fell in love with Kiki de Montparnasse (Alice Prin), an artists' model and celebrated character in Paris bohemian circles. Kiki was Man Ray's companion for most of the 1920s. She became the subject of some of his most famous photographic images and starred in his experimental films. In 1929 he began a love affair with the Surrealist photographer Lee Miller.

For the next 20 years in Montparnasse, Man Ray made his mark on the art of photography. Great artists of the day such as James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Bridget Bate Tichenor and Antonin Artaud posed for his camera.

With Jean Arp, Max Ernst, André Masson, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso, Man Ray was represented in the first Surrealist exhibition at the Galerie Pierre in Paris in 1925. Works from this period include a metronome with an eye, originally titled Object to Be Destroyed. Another important work from this part of Man Ray's life is known as the Violin D'Ingres, a stunning photograph of Kiki de Montparnasse, styled after the painter/musician Ingres. This work is a popular example of how Man Ray could juxtapose his photography, sending with it any form of message for society.

In 1934, Surrealist artist Méret Oppenheim, known for her fur-covered teacup, posed for Man Ray in what became a well-known series of photographs depicting Oppenheim nude, standing next to a printing press.

Together with Lee Miller—his photography assistant and lover—Man Ray reinvented the photographic technique of solarization. He also created a technique using photograms he called rayographs.

Man Ray directed a number of influential avant-garde short films, known as Cinéma Pur, such as Le Retour à la Raison (2 mins, 1923); Emak-Bakia (16 mins, 1926); L'Étoile de Mer (15 mins, 1928); and Les Mystères du Château du Dé (20 mins, 1929). Man Ray also assisted Marcel Duchamp with his film Anemic Cinema (1926) and Fernand Léger with his film Ballet Mécanique (1924). Man Ray also appeared in René Clair's film Entr'acte (1924), in a brief scene playing chess with Duchamp.

Duchamp, Man Ray, and Francis Picabia were friends as well as collaborators, connected by their experimental, entertaining, and innovative art.

Later in life, Man Ray returned to the United States, having been forced to leave Paris due to the dislocations of the Second World War. He lived in Los Angeles, California from 1940 until 1951. A few days after arriving in Los Angeles, Man Ray met Juliet Browner, a trained dancer and experienced artists' model. They began living together almost immediately, and married in 1946 in a double wedding with their friends Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning. However, he called Montparnasse home and he returned there.

He died in Paris on November 18, 1976, and was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris. His epitaph reads: unconcerned, but not indifferent. When Juliet Browner died in 1991, she was interred in the same tomb. Her epitaph reads, together again. Juliet set up a trust for his work and made many donations of his work to museums.

Pablo Casals



Pau Casals i Defilló best known during his professional career as Pablo Casals, was a Spanish Catalan cellist and later conductor. He made many recordings throughout his career, of solo, chamber, and orchestral music, also as conductor, but Casals is perhaps best remembered for the recording of the Bach: Cello Suites he made from 1936 to 1939. An ardent supporter of the Spanish Republican government, after its defeat in 1939, Casals vowed not to return to Spain until democracy had been restored, although he did not live to see the end of the Franco dictatorial regime.

Casals was born in El Vendrell, Catalonia, Spain. His father, Carles Casals i Ribes (1852-1908), was a parish pipe organist and choirmaster. He gave Casals instruction in piano, violin, and organ. At age four Casals could play the violin, piano and flute. When Casals was eleven, he first heard the cello performed by a group of traveling musicians, and decided to dedicate himself to the instrument. In 1888 his mother, Pilar Defilló de Casals, who was born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico of Catalonian ancestry, took him to Barcelona, where he enrolled in the Escola Municipal de Música. There he studied cello, theory, and piano. He made prodigious progress as a cellist; on February 23, 1891 he gave a solo recital in Barcelona at age of fourteen. He graduated from the Escola with honours two years later.

In 1893, the Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz heard him playing in a trio in a café and gave him a letter of introduction to the private secretary to María Cristina, the Queen Regent, in Madrid, Spain. Casals was asked to play at informal concerts in the palace, and was granted a royal stipend to study composition at the Conservatory de Musica y Declamacion in Madrid with Víctor Mirecki. He also played in the newly organized Quartet Society.

In 1895 he went to Paris, where, having lost his stipend from Catalonia, he earned a living by playing second cello in the theater orchestra of the Folies Marigny. In 1896, he returned to Catalonia and received an appointment to the faculty of the Escuela Municipal de Música in Barcelona. He was also appointed principal cellist in the orchestra of Barcelona's opera house, the Liceu. In 1897 he appeared as soloist with the Madrid Symphony Orchestra, and was awarded the Order of Carlos III from the Queen.

In 1899, Casals played at The Crystal Palace in London, and later for Queen Victoria at her summer residence at Cowes, Isle of Wight. On November 12, 1899, he appeared as a soloist at a prestigious Lamoureux Concert in Paris, and played at Lamoureux again on December 17, 1899, with great public and critical acclaim. He toured Spain and the Netherlands with the pianist Harold Bauer in 1900-1901; in 1901-1902 he made his first tour of the United States; and in 1903 toured South America.

On January 15, 1904, Casals was invited to play at the White House for President Theodore Roosevelt. On March 9 of that year he made his debut at Carnegie Hall in New York, playing Richard Strauss's Don Quixote under the baton of the composer. In 1906 he became associated with the talented young Portuguese cellist Guilhermina Suggia, who studied with him and began to appear in concerts as Mme. P. Casals-Suggia, although they were not legally married. Their relationship ended in 1912.

The New York Times of April 9, 1911 informed that Pablo Casals would perform at the London Musical Festival to be held at the Queen’s Hall (Crystal Palace) on the second day of the Festival (May 23). The piece chosen was Haydn’s violoncello concerto in D and Casals would later join Fritz Kreisler for Brahms’ double concerto for violin and violoncello.

In 1914 Casals married the American socialite and singer Susan Metcalfe; they were separated in 1928, but did not divorce until 1957.

Although Casals made his first recordings in 1915 (a series for Columbia), it would not be until 1926 that he again released a recording (on the Victor label).

Back in Paris, Casals organized a trio with the pianist Alfred Cortot and the violinist Jacques Thibaud; they played concerts and made recordings until 1937. Casals also became interested in conducting, and in 1919 he organized, in Barcelona, the Orquesta Pau Casals and led its first concert on October 13, 1920. With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, the Orquesta Pau Casals ceased its activities. Casals was an ardent supporter of the Spanish Republican government, and after its defeat vowed not to return to Spain until democracy was restored.

He settled in the French village of Prada de Conflent, on the Spanish frontier; between 1939 and 1942 he made sporadic appearances as a cellist in the unoccupied zone of southern France and in Switzerland. So fierce was his opposition to the Francisco Franco dictatorial regime in Spain that he refused to appear in countries that recognized the authoritarian Spanish government. He made a notable exception when he took part in a concert of chamber music in the White House on November 13, 1961, at the invitation of President John F Kennedy, whom he admired. On December 6 1963, Casals was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.


Throughout most of his professional career, he played on a cello that was labeled and attributed to "Carlo Tononi ... 1733" but after playing it for 50 years it was discovered to have been created by the Venetian luthier, Matteo Goffriller around 1700. It was acquired by Casals in 1913.

In 1950 he resumed his career as conductor and cellist at the Prades Festival in Conflent, organized in commemoration of the bicentenary of the death of Bach; Casals agreed to participate on condition that all proceeds were to go to a refugee hospital in nearby Perpignan.

He continued leading the Prades Festivals until 1966.

On August 3, 1957, at 80, Casals married Marta Montañez Martínez, a young student of his from Puerto Rico. They settled in the town of Ceiba and lived in a house called "El Pesebre" in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where his mother was born when the island was under Spanish rule and where Casals made his permanent residence. The annual Casals Festival was inaugurated there in 1957.

In the 1960s, Casals gave many master classes throughout the world in places such as Zermatt, Tuscany, Berkeley, and Marlboro. Several of these events were televised.

Casals was also a composer; perhaps his most effective work is La sardana (The Sardana), for an ensemble of cellos, which he composed in 1926. His oratorio El pesebre (The Manger) was performed for the first time in Acapulco, Mexico, on December 17, 1960. One of his last compositions was the Himne a les Nacions Unides (Hymn of the United Nations); he conducted its first performance in a special concert at the United Nations on October 24, 1971, 2 months before his 95th birthday.

Casals had his memoirs recorded by Albert E. Kahn: Joys and Sorrows; Reflections (1970).

Casals died in 1973 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at the age of 96. In 1979 his remains were laid to rest in his hometown of El Vendrell, Catalonia. He did not live to see the end of the Franco dictatorial regime, but he was posthumously honoured by the Spanish government under King Juan Carlos I, which issued in 1976 a commemorative postage stamp in honour of the centenary of his birth.

In 1989, Casals was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.