Hank Ketcham

Henry King "Hank" Ketcham was an American cartoonist who created the Dennis the Menace comic strip, writing and drawing it from 1951 to 1994, when he retired from drawing the daily page and took up painting full time in his studio at his home. He received the Reuben Award for the strip in 1953. The strip continues today in the hands of other artists.

Hank Ketcham was born in Seattle, Washington. He was the son of Weaver Vinson Ketcham and Virginia King. When he was 6 years old, his father had a guest over for dinner who was an illustrator. After dinner, he showed Hank his "magic pencil" and drew some illustrations. Hank was immediately hooked and soon his father set up a small desk in the closet of his bedroom at which he could draw.

After graduating from Queen Anne High School in 1937, Hank attended the University of Washington but dropped out after his first year and hitchhiked to Los Angeles hoping to work for Walt Disney.

Hank Ketcham started in the business as an animator for Walter Lantz and eventually Walt Disney, where he worked on films such as Fantasia, Bambi, and Pinocchio. During World War II, Ketcham worked as a photographic specialist with the US Navy Reserve. Also while in the Navy he drew a cartoon called "Half Hitch". After World War II, he settled in Carmel, California, and began work as a freelance cartoonist.

In 1951 he started Dennis The Menace, based on his own 4-year-old son Dennis Ketcham.

Ketcham's first wife died in 1959. Ketcham married for a second time to Jo Anne Stevens and moved with her and Dennis to Geneva, Switzerland , where he lived from 1960 to 1977, while still producing Dennis the Menace. In 1977, he moved back to the United States and settled in Monterey, California with his third wife the former Rolande Praepost, whom he married in 1969, and had two children, Scott and Dania.

Ketcham was in his studio in October 1950, when his first wife, Alice Mahar, burst in studio and complained that their 4-year- old, Dennis, had wrecked his bedroom instead of napping.

"Your son is a menace," she shouted.

Within five months 16 newspapers began carrying the adventures of the impish but innocent "Dennis the Menace." By May 1953, 193 newspapers in the United States and 52 abroad were carrying the strip to 30 million readers. It is now written and drawn by Ketcham's former assistants, Marcus Hamilton and Ron Ferdinand, and distributed to more than 1,000 newspapers in 48 countries and 19 languages by King Features Syndicate.

When his Dennis The Menace comic became more than a daily page, Ketcham hired some artists to draw the colorized Sunday strips and also the many Dennis The Menace comic books that were published. There were always writers who contributed to Dennis the Menace, these were captions sent to him in the mail by people from around the country, and he would go through them and find one that he liked and draw a comic to match it.

When he retired from drawing the daily page, he let this team take over and continue to draw Dennis. He spent his last years in peaceful retirement in his home in Carmel, California, painting many originals in oil and watercolor. Many of his fine paintings can be seen in a hospital in nearby Monterey, California. In this period he also wrote a memoir The Merchant of Dennis. Dennis is still being produced today.

Ketcham died of prostate cancer on June 1, 2001.

John Garfield

John Garfield was an Academy Award-nominated American actor. Garfield was especially adept at playing brooding, rebellious, working-class character roles. Garfield is acknowledged as the predecessor of such Method actors as Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Montgomery Clift.

Born Jacob Julius Garfinkle in New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants David and Hannah Garfinkle, Garfield spent the first seven years of his life in Sea Gate, Brooklyn. After the death of his mother, Garfield was sent to a school for difficult children in the Bronx. It was under the guidance of the school's principal—the noted educator Angelo Patri—that he was introduced to both boxing and acting. He had also contracted a childhood illness, severely damaging his heart and limiting his ability to engage in strenuous athletics. He received a scholarship to Maria Ouspenskaya's acting school, making his Broadway debut in 1932.

He became a member of the Group Theater. The Group's play Golden Boy was written for him by Clifford Odets, but ultimately he was cast in a supporting role rather than the lead. Garfield decided to leave Broadway and try his luck in Hollywood. In 1938, he received wide critical acclaim and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Four Daughters.

At the onset of World War II, Garfield immediately attempted to enlist in the armed forces, but was turned down because of his heart condition. Frustrated, he turned his energies to supporting the war effort. He and actress Bette Davis were the driving forces behind the opening of the Hollywood Canteen, a club offering food and entertainment for American servicemen. He later traveled to Yugoslavia to help entertain for the war effort.

Garfield graduated to leading roles in films such as The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) with Lana Turner, Humoresque (1946) with Joan Crawford, and the Oscar-winning Best Picture Gentleman's Agreement (1947). (In the latter film, Garfield took a featured, but supporting part because he believed deeply in the project.) In 1948 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his starring role in Body and Soul (1947). That same year, Garfield returned to Broadway in the play Skipper Next to God. A strong-willed and often verbally combative individual, Garfield did not hesitate to venture out on his own when the opportunity arose. In 1946, when his contract with Warner Bros. expired, Garfield decided against renewal of his studio contract and opted to start his own independent production company, one of the first Hollywood stars to take this step.

Long involved in liberal politics, Garfield was caught up in the Communist scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s, and supported the Committee for the First Amendment, which opposed governmental investigation of political beliefs. When called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which was empowered to investigate purported communist infiltration in America, Garfield refused to name communist party members or followers, testifying that, indeed, he knew none in the film industry. Indeed, Garfield rejected Communism, and just prior to his death, in hopes of redeeming himself in the eyes of the blacklisters, had written that he had been duped by Communist ideology, in an unpublished article "I Was a Sucker for a Left Hook", a reference to Garfield's movies about boxing. However, his forced testimony before the committee had severely damaged his reputation. He was blacklisted in Red Channels, and barred from future employment as an actor by Hollywood movie studio bosses for the remainder of his career.

With film work scarce because of the blacklist, Garfield returned to Broadway and starred in a 1952 revival of Golden Boy, finally being cast in the lead role denied him years before.

John Garfield's grave in Westchester Hills CemeteryHe and Roberta Seidman married in February 1935. Though his wife had been a member of the Communist Party, there was no evidence that Garfield himself was ever a Communist. They had three children: Katherine (1938-45), who died of an allergic reaction, David (1943-1994), and Julie (born 1946), the latter two later becoming actors themselves.

Long-term heart problems, allegedly aggravated by the stress of his blacklisting, led to his early death at the age of 39 on May 21, 1952. Garfield is interred at Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, Westchester County, New York. Roberta Garfield married attorney Sidney Cohn in 1954, who died in 1991. She died in January 2004.

Henry Mancini

Henry Mancini was an Academy Award winning Italian-American composer, conductor and arranger. He is remembered particularly for being a composer of film and television scores. Mancini also won a record number of Grammy awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. His best-known works are the jazz-idiom theme to The Pink Panther film series ("The Pink Panther Theme") and "Moon River".

Mancini was born Enrico Nicola Mancini in the Little Italy neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the steel town of West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. His parents emigrated from the Abruzzo region of Italy. Mancini's father, Quinto, was a steelworker, who made his only child begin flute lessons at the age of eight. When Mancini was 12 years old, he began piano lessons. Quinto and Henry played flute together in the Aliquippa Italian immigrant band, "Sons of Italy". After high school, Mancini attended the renowned Juilliard School of Music in New York. In 1943, after roughly one year at Juilliard, his studies were interrupted when he was drafted into the army. In 1945, he participated in the liberation of a South German concentration camp.

Upon discharge, Mancini entered the music industry. In 1946, he became a pianist and arranger for the newly re-formed Glenn Miller Orchestra, led by Tex Beneke. After World War II, Mancini broadened his composition, counterpoint, harmony and orchestration skills during studies with two acclaimed "serious" concert hall composers, Ernst Krenek and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

In 1952, Mancini joined the Universal Pictures music department. During the next six years, he contributed music to over 100 movies, most notably The Creature from the Black Lagoon, It Came from Outer Space, Tarantula, This Island Earth, The Glenn Miller Story (for which he received his first Academy Award nomination), The Benny Goodman Story and Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. Mancini left Universal-International to work as an independent composer/arranger in 1958. Soon after, he scored the television series Peter Gunn for writer/producer Blake Edwards, the genesis of a relationship which lasted over 35 years and produced nearly 30 films. Together with Alex North, Elmer Bernstein, Leith Stevens and Johnny Mandel, Henry Mancini was one of the pioneers who introduced jazz music into the late romantic orchestral film and TV scores prevalent at the time.

Mancini's scores for Blake Edwards included Breakfast at Tiffany's (with the standard, "Moon River"), and with "Days of Wine and Roses," "Experiment in Terror," The Pink Panther, (and all of its sequels, such as "A Shot in the Dark"), The Great Race, The Party, "Victor/Victoria". Another director with a longstanding partnership with Mancini was Stanley Donen (Charade, Arabesque, Two for the Road). Mancini also composed for Howard Hawks (Man's Favorite Sport, Hatari! — which included the well-known "Baby Elephant Walk"), Martin Ritt (The Molly Maguires), Vittorio de Sica (Sunflower), Norman Jewison (Gaily Gaily), Paul Newman (Sometimes a Great Notion, The Glass Menagerie), Stanley Kramer's (Oklahoma Crude), George Roy Hill (The Great Waldo Pepper), Arthur Hiller (Silver Streak), and Ted Kotcheff (Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?), and others. Mancini's score for the Alfred Hitchcock film, Frenzy (1972), was rejected and replaced by Ron Goodwin's work.

Mancini scored many TV movies, including The Thorn Birds and The Shadow Box. He wrote his share of television themes, including Mr. Lucky (starring John Vivyan and Ross Martin), NBC News Election Night Coverage, NBC Mystery Movie, What's Happening!!, Newhart, Remington Steele, Tic Tac Dough (1990 version) and Hotel. Mancini also composed the "Viewer Mail" theme for Late Night with David Letterman.

Mancini recorded over 90 albums, in styles ranging from big band to classical to pop. Eight of these albums were certified gold by The Recording Industry Association of America. He had a 20 year contract with RCA Records, resulting in 60 commercial record albums that made him a household name composer of easy listening music.

Mancini's range also extended to orchestral and ethnic scores (Lifeforce, The Great Mouse Detective, Sunflower, "Tom and Jerry: The Movie", Molly Maguires, The Hawaiians), and darker themes ("Experiment In Terror," "The White Dawn," "Wait Until Dark," "The Night Visitor").

Mancini was also a concert performer, conducting over fifty engagements per year, resulting in over 600 symphony performances during his lifetime. Among the symphony orchestras he conducted are the London Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, the Boston Pops, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He appeared in 1966, 1980 and 1984 in command performances for the British Royal Family. He also toured several times with Johnny Mathis and with Andy Williams, who had sung many of Mancini's songs.

Mancini had experience with acting and voice roles. In 1994 he made a one-off cameo appearance in the first season of the sitcom series Frasier, as a call-in patient to Dr. Frasier Crane's radio show. Mancini voiced the character Al, who speaks with a melancholy drawl and hates the sound of his own voice, in the episode "Guess Who's Coming to Breakfast?" Mancini also had an uncredited performance as a pianist in the 1967 movie Gunn, the movie version of the series Peter Gunn, the score of which was originally composed by Mancini himself.

Mancini died at the age of 70 in Beverly Hills/Los Angeles, California of pancreatic cancer.

Che Guevara

Ernesto "Che" Guevara commonly known as Che Guevara, El Che, or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, politician, author, physician, military theorist, and guerrilla leader. After death, his stylized image became a ubiquitous countercultural symbol worldwide.

As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout Latin America and was transformed by the endemic poverty he witnessed. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to conclude that the region's ingrained economic inequalities were an intrinsic result of monopoly capitalism, neocolonialism, and imperialism, with the only remedy being world revolution. This belief prompted his involvement in Guatemala's social reforms under President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow solidified Guevara's radical ideology.

Later, in Mexico, he met Fidel Castro and joined his 26th of July Movement. In December 1956, he was among the revolutionaries who invaded Cuba under Castro's leadership with the intention of overthrowing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to Comandante, and played a pivotal role in the successful two year guerrilla campaign that deposed Batista. Following the Cuban revolution, Guevara reviewed the appeals of those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals, ratifying sentences which in some cases utilized firing squads. Later he served as minister of industry and president of the national bank, before traversing the globe as a diplomat to meet an array of world leaders on behalf of Cuban socialism. He was also a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal manual on the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare, along with an acclaimed memoir about his motorcycle journey across South America. Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to incite revolutions first in an unsuccessful attempt in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia, where he was captured with the help of the CIA and executed.

Both notorious as a ruthless disciplinarian who unhesitatingly shot defectors and revered by supporters for his rigid dedication to professed doctrines, Guevara remains a controversial and significant historical figure. As a result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle, and desire to create the consciousness of a "new man" driven by "moral" rather than "material" incentives; Guevara evolved into a quintessential icon of leftist-inspired movements. Paradoxically and in contradiction with his ideology, Che's visage was also reconstituted as a global marketing emblem and insignia within popular culture. He has been mostly venerated and occasionally reviled in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, books, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, while an Alberto Korda photograph of him entitled Guerrillero Heroico (shown), was declared "the most famous photograph in the world."

Andrés Segovia

Andrés Torres Segovia, 1st Marquess of Salobreña was a Spanish classical guitarist born in Linares, Jaén, Spain. He is widely regarded as one of the most important figures of the classical guitar in the beginning and mid 20th century. Segovia's main musical aesthetic preferences were Spanish romantic and Spanish nationalist music of the late 19th and early 20th century - a style different from flamenco. Many works of this style were written especially for him and formed part of his core repertoire, e.g. the guitar works of Federico Moreno Torroba (1891-1982).

Segovia said that he began playing the guitar at the age of six. Angelo Gilardino, who has worked at the Fundación Andrés Segovia in Spain, noted: "Though it is not yet completely documented, it seems clear that, since his tender childhood, he [Segovia] learnt playing as a flamenco guitarist. In fact, the first guitar he owned had formerly been played by Paco de Lucena, the greatest flamenco guitarist of the epoque, who died when Segovia was five years old. Since then, Segovia was given some instruction by Agustinillo, an amateur flamenco player who was a fan of Paco de Lucena."
Nevertheless Segovia was opposed to flamenco and its aesthetics, since he did not play flamenco: he has remarked that when he was a young boy and first heard a flamenco guitarist, "[he] jumped from [his] chair and fell backward" "at the first brutal rasgueado"; and he has later said that he "..rescued [the guitar] from the hands of flamenco gypsies".

As a teenager, Segovia moved to the town of Granada, where he studied the guitar and soaked up the other-worldly atmosphere of the Palace at Alhambra, a Moorish relic overlooking the town which he regarded as his spiritual awakening.

Segovia's first public performance was in Spain at the age of 16, and a few years later he held his first professional concert in Madrid, playing guitar transcriptions by Francisco Tárrega and some works by J.S. Bach, which he had transcribed and arranged himself. Although he was always discouraged by his family, and looked down on by many of Tárrega's pupils, he always continued to diligently pursue his studies of the guitar. Segovia's technique differed from that of Tárrega and his followers, such as Emilio Pujol. Both Segovia and Miguel Llobet (who taught Segovia several of his transcriptions of Granados' piano works) plucked the strings with a combination of his fingernails and fingertips, producing a sharper sound than many of his contemporaries. With this technique, it was possible to create a wider range of timbres, or tones, than when using the fingertips or nails alone. Historically, classical guitarists have debated which of these techniques is the best approach. The vast majority of classical guitarists now play with a combination of the fingernails and fingertips.

Segovia's status as a student of the guitar is a matter of debate among guitarists. The Segovia autobiography, written for mass consumption at the height of his career, depicts him as being self-taught. There are admissions of his seeking out Llobet's advice only for a short time when in his early twenties, but Segovia is quite clear about the lack of any real influence on his playing. Although at that age Segovia may well have been much more than a neophyte, he was still youthful enough to have received valuable instruction, and to have been significantly influenced by it. Indeed, Ronald Purcell points out that "Segovia, whose performance style and technique reveals [sic] the principles of Tárrega, was basically influenced by Llobet....This stylistic influence can be heard when comparing Llobet's Parlophone Electric recordings (Chanterelle Historical Recordings CHR 001) with Segovia's Angel recordings, ZB 3896" (Llobet 1989, 1: ii).

Purcell later states, "At the age of twenty-two he (Segovia) pursued what he considered the only direct contact to Tárrega, Llobet, for refinement of his technique and especially for the music that both he and Tárrega had written and transcribed for the guitar..."(ibid). The accuracy of this date (Segovia would have been twenty-two in 1915) seems to be somewhat questionable. A photograph taken at the exhumation of Tárrega in 1915, clearly shows Segovia at the foot of the coffin, but Llobet does not appear in the photo, and would likely have been present had he, in fact, been in Spain at the time. It may well have been another two years before Segovia began to work with Llobet and there seems to be nothing that would contradict this 1917 date.

The status of the classical guitar at the beginning of the twentieth century had declined, and only in Barcelona and in the Rio de la Plata region of South America could it have been said to be of any significance. When Segovia arrived on the scene, this situation was just beginning to change, largely through the efforts of Llobet. It was in this changing milieu that Segovia, whose strength of personality and artistry coupled with new technological advances such as recording, radio, and air travel, succeeded in moving the guitar forward to become more popular again.

In 1924, Segovia visited the German luthier (guitar builder) Hermann Hauser Sr. after hearing some of his instruments played in a concert in Munich. Segovia had been impressed with the quality of Hauser's work and he encouraged Hauser to copy his 1912 Manuel Ramírez guitar (an instrument generally believed to have been built by Santos Hernandez while he was foreman of the Ramirez shop). He examined and made measurements of this instrument. As Llobet, who also visited the luthier in the same year, owned an 1859 Antonio Torres, Hauser also had opportunity to examine it as well. In 1928 Hauser provided Segovia with one of his personal guitars for use in his United States tour and Segovia used this guitar in concerts through 1933. When Hauser delivered the new instrument Segovia had ordered, Segovia passed his 1928 Hauser to his USA Representative and close friend Sophocles Papas who gave it to his classical guitar student, the famous jazz and classical guitarist Charlie Byrd who used it on several records.

After World War Two Segovia became among the first to endorse the use of nylon strings instead of gut strings. This new advance allowed for greater stability in intonation, and was the final missing ingredient in the standardization of the instrument.

After Segovia's debut tour in the United States in 1928, the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos composed his now well known Twelve Études (Douze études) and later dedicated them to Segovia. This proved to be a lasting relationship as Villa-Lobos continued to write for Segovia. He also transcribed numerous classical pieces himself and revived the pieces transcribed by men like Tárrega. Many guitarists in the Americas, however, had already been playing these same works before Segovia arrived.

In 1935, he gave his first public performance of Bach's Chaconne, a difficult piece for any instrument. He moved to Montevideo performing many concerts in South America in the thirties and early forties. After the war, Segovia began to record more frequently and perform regular tours of Europe and the USA, a schedule he would maintain for the next thirty years of his life. In 1954, Joaquin Rodrigo composed Fantasía para un gentilhombre at the request of Segovia. Segovia won the 1958 Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance, Instrumentalist for his recording, Segovia Golden Jubilee.

In recognition of his contributions to music and the arts, Segovia was ennobled on 24 June 1981 by King Juan Carlos I, who elevated Segovia into the first hereditary Marquess of Salobreña, formally styled as "El señor don Andrés Torres Segovia, marqués de Salobreña" (the Most Illustrious Lord The Marquess of Salobreña). He was granted the following coat of arms: "en campo de azur sobre ondas de azur y plata, unas rocas de su color, sumadas de una torre donjonada de oro, aclarada de azur" (a field of azur on waves of azur and silver, rocks of the same color, plus a gold dungeon tower, with azur highlights).

Andres Segovia continued performing into his old age, living in semi-retirement during his 70s and 80s on the Costa del Sol. Two films were made of his life and work—one when he was 75 and the other, 84.

Segovia died in Madrid of a heart attack at the age of 94. He is buried at Casa Museo de Linares, in Andalusia.

Chesty Puller

Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller was an officer in the United States Marine Corps and is the most decorated Marine in history. Puller is the only United States Marine to receive five Navy Crosses, the United States Navy's second highest decoration after the Medal of Honor. During his career, he fought guerrillas in Haiti and Nicaragua, and participated in some of the bloodiest battles of World War II and the Korean War. Puller retired from the Marine Corps in 1955, spending the rest of his life in Virginia.

Lewis Burwell Puller, whose nickname "Chesty" was inspired by his barrel chest as a result of his asthma, only later symbolizing the intimidating plate of medals and ribbons he bore, was born on June 26, 1898 in West Point, Virginia. He was a second cousin of United States Army General George S. Patton. His grandfather had died fighting for the Confederacy during the Civil War and his childhood heroes were Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. He grew up regularly hunting, fishing and horseback riding and would later remark that, "Those days in the woods saved my life many a time in combat."

He graduated from high school with a mediocre record before enrolling in the Virginia Military Institute in 1917. He dropped out after a year and enlisted in the Marine Corps. Because of a rapid increase in the size of the Marine Corps, Puller was commissioned as an officer. He was then sent to fight in Haiti, but the war ended before he could make it to France.

During the interwar period, Puller was appointed to the rank of Second Lieutenant in the reserves on June 16, 1919, but reduction in force following the war led to his being put on inactive status on the 26th of that month.

Puller re-enlisted in the Marine Corps the same year. As an enlisted man, he saw action in Haiti with the Gendarmerie d'Haiti, which was working under a treaty with the United States, and participated in over forty engagements during the ensuing five years against the Caco rebels. In March 1924, he returned stateside and was again commissioned as a Second Lieutenant (service number O3158), afterward completing assignments at the Marine Barracks in Norfolk, Virginia, Basic School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and with the 10th Marine Artillery Regiment in Quantico, Virginia. He was assigned to the Marine Barracks at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in July 1926 and in San Diego, California in 1928.

In December 1928, Puller was assigned to the Nicaraguan National Guard detachment, where he earned his first Navy Cross. He returned stateside in July 1931 and completed the year-long Company Officers Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, thereafter returning to Nicaragua to earn a second Navy Cross for leading "five successive engagements against superior numbers of armed bandit forces, also known as the cacos bandits, which in turn caused a lot of problems for Chesty".

After his service in Nicaragua, Puller was assigned to the Marine detachment at the American Legation in Beijing, China commanding a unit of China Marines. He then went on to serve aboard USS Augusta, a cruiser in the Asiatic Fleet, which was commanded by then-Captain Chester W. Nimitz. Puller returned to the States in June 1936 as an instructor at the Basic School in Philadelphia.

In May 1939, he returned to the Augusta as commander of the onboard Marine detachment, and thence back to China, disembarking in Shanghai in May 1940 to serve as the executive officer of 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines. He later served as its commanding officer.

Major Puller returned to the U.S. on August 28, 1941. After a short leave, he was given command of 1st Battalion, 7th Marines (known as 1/7) of the 1st Marine Division, stationed at New River, the new Marine amphibious base which would soon be renamed for the 13th Commandant of the Marine Corps, John A. Lejeune, MCB Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Early in the Pacific theater the 7th Marines formed the nucleus of the newly created 3rd Marine Brigade and arrived to defend Samoa on May 8, 1942. Later they were redeployed from the Brigade and on September 4, 1942, they left Samoa and rejoined the 1st Division at Guadalcanal on September 18, 1942.

Soon after arriving on Guadalcanal, Puller led his battalion in a fierce action along the Matanikau, in which Puller's quick thinking saved three of his companies from annihilation. In the action, three of Puller's companies were surrounded and cut-off by a larger Japanese force. Puller ran to the shore, signaled a United States Navy destroyer, and then directed the destroyer to provide gunfire support while landing craft rescued his Marines from their precarious position. Later on Guadalcanal, Puller earned his third Navy Cross for action that was later known as the "Battle for Henderson Field", in which the 1/7 battalion was the only American unit defending the airfield against a regiment-strength Japanese force. In a firefight on the night of October 24–25, 1942, lasting about three hours, 1/7 sustained 70 casualties; the Japanese force suffered over 1,400 killed in action, and the battalion held the airfield.

While on Guadacanal Puller was shot by a sniper twice and wounded by shrapnel in three different places; he was awarded the Purple Heart.

Following this action Puller was made executive officer of the 7th Marine Regiment. While serving in this capacity at Cape Gloucester, Puller earned his fourth Navy Cross for overall performance of duty between December 26, 1943 and January 19, 1944. During this time, when the battalion commanders of 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines and, later, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines were taken out of the fight, he assumed temporary command of both units. In each instance, while under heavy machine gun and mortar fire, he expertly reorganized the battalion and led the successful attack against heavily fortified Japanese defensive positions. He was promoted to Colonel effective 1 February 44 and by the end of the month, had been named Commander of the 1st Marine Regiment. Colonel Puller would lead the 1st Marines into the protracted battle on Peleliu, one of the bloodiest battles in Marine Corps history during September and October 1944. Also during the summer 1944, Puller's younger brother, Samuel D. Puller, the Executive Officer of the 4th Marine Regiment, was killed by a sniper on Guam.

Puller returned to the United States in November 1944, was named executive officer of the Infantry Training Regiment at Camp Lejeune and, two weeks later, Commanding Officer. After the war, he was made Director of the 8th Reserve District at New Orleans, Louisiana, and later commanded the Marine Barracks at Pearl Harbor.

Colonel Puller cutting the Marine Corps birthday cake on November 10, 1950, during a brief reprieve from battle during the Korean WarAt the outbreak of the Korean conflict, Puller was once again assigned as commander of the 1st Marine Regiment, with which he made a landing at Inchon on September 15, 1950. In November of that year, Puller earned his fifth Navy Cross for action during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. It was during that battle when he made the famous quote, "We've been looking for the enemy for some time now. We've finally found him. We're surrounded. That simplifies things." In January, 1951, Puller was promoted to Brigadier General and was assigned duty as assistant division commander (ADC) of the 1st Marine Division. On February 24th, however, his immediate superior, Major General O. P. Smith, was hastily transferred to command IX Corps when its army commander, Major General Moore, was killed. Smith’s temporary transfer left Puller in command of his beloved 1st Marine Division. Instinctively, Puller knew the army hierarchy would not allow General Smith, a Marine, to command a unit that included army troops. So, when ordered to begin the last phase of Operation Killer, Puller made the best of the opportunity by skillfully leading the 1st Marine Division and achieving its objectives. General Smith returned from IX Corps on March 5th. Puller would serve as ADC until he completed his tour of duty and returned to the United States on May 20, 1951.

General Puller subsequently received promotions to Major General and Lieutenant General, and served in various command capacities until his retirement due to health reasons on November 1, 1955.

In 1965, Puller requested he be reinstated into the Marine Corps in order to see action in the Vietnam War, but the request was denied on the basis of his age.

General Puller was father-in-law to Colonel William H. Dabney, a VMI graduate, who, as a Captain, received the Navy Cross for his leadership as Commanding Officer of two heavily reinforced rifle companies of the Third Battalion, Twenty-Sixth Marines from 21 January to 14 April 1968. During the entire period, Colonel Dabney's force stubbornly defended Hill 881S, a regional outpost vital to the defense of the Khe Sanh Combat Base during the 77-day siege.

Lewis Burwell Puller died on October 11, 1971 in Saluda, Virginia at age 73.

Raymond Massey

Raymond Hart Massey was a Canadian-born American actor.

Massey was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Anna (née Vincent) and Chester Daniel Massey, the wealthy owner of the Massey-Ferguson Tractor Company. Massey's family could trace their ancestry back to the American Revolutionary War. He attended secondary school briefly at Upper Canada College, before transferring to Appleby College in Oakville, Ontario, and graduated from university at University of Toronto where both he and his brother were active members in the Kappa Alpha Society, and Balliol College, Oxford.

At the outbreak of World War I, he joined the Canadian Army, serving with the artillery on the Western Front. He returned to Canada suffering shell-shock and was engaged as an army instructor for American officers at Yale. In 1918, he was sent to serve at Siberia, where he made his first stage appearance, entertaining American troops on occupation duty. Severely wounded in action in France, he was sent home, where he eventually worked in the family business, selling farm implements.

Drawn to the theater, in 1922, he appeared on the London stage. His first movie role was High Treason in 1927. He played Sherlock Holmes in The Speckled Band in 1931, the first sound film version of the story. In 1936, he starred in H. G. Wells' Things to Come. Despite being Canadian, Massey became famous for his quintessential American roles such as abolitionist John Brown in 1940's Santa Fe Trail and again as John Brown in the 1955 low-budget film Seven Angry Men. His second portrayal of Brown was much more sympathetic, presenting him as a well-intentioned, but misguided figure, while in Santa Fe Trail he was presented as a wild-eyed lunatic.

Although there was a great outcry when a Canadian was cast as an American president, he scored a great triumph on Broadway in Robert E. Sherwood's play Abe Lincoln in Illinois, and repeated his role in the 1940 film version (for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor). Massey again portrayed Lincoln in the 1956 production of The Day Lincoln Was Shot on Ford Star Jubilee, and (a wordless appearance this time) in 1962's How the West Was Won.

On stage in the 1953 dramatic reading of Stephen Vincent Benét's John Brown's Body, Massey, in addition to narrating along with Tyrone Power and Judith Anderson, took on both the roles of John Brown and Abe Lincoln in the same work.

Massey portrayed the character of "Jonathan Brewster" in the film version of Arsenic and Old Lace. The character had originally been played by Boris Karloff for the stage version and the character was written to resemble Karloff (an ongoing joke in the play and film). Massey and Karloff had appeared together in the 1932 James Whale suspense film The Old Dark House.

He rejoined the Canadian Army for World War II, though he would eventually be released from service and return to acting work. Following the war, he became an American citizen. Massey became well-known on television in the 1950s and 1960s, especially as Doctor Gillespie in the popular series Dr. Kildare.

He and his son, Daniel, were cast as father and son in 1961's The Queen's Guards.

Massey played a Canadian on screen only once, in Forty-Ninth Parallel (1941). He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1944.

He died of pneumonia on July 29, 1983 (the same day as his The Prisoner of Zenda and A Matter of Life and Death co-star David Niven) in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 86, and is buried in New Haven, Connecticut's Beaverdale Memorial Park.

Lionel Barrymore

Lionel Barrymore was an American Academy Award-winning actor of stage, radio and film.

Barrymore was born Lionel Herbert Blythe in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of actors Georgiana Drew and Maurice Barrymore (né Blythe). He was the elder brother of Ethel and John Barrymore, the uncle of John Drew Barrymore, and the grand-uncle (or great-uncle) of Drew Barrymore. Barrymore was raised Roman Catholic. He attended the Episcopal Academy in Merion, Pennsylvania.

During World War One Lionel staved off the deadly Spanish Influenza by taking cold alcohol baths as an antiseptic.

He was married to actresses Doris Rankin and Irene Fenwick, a one-time lover of his brother John. Doris's sister Gladys was married to Lionel's uncle Sidney Drew which made Doris Lionel's aunt as well as his wife.

Apparently Lionel did not abide by all of the rites of the Catholic Church to which his mother Georgiana had converted him and his siblings and broke tradition by marrying a second time. Likewise his brother John remarried numerous times but their sister Ethel never remarried after her 1923 divorce staying true to their mother's Catholic conversion. Doris Rankin bore Lionel two daughters, Ethel Barrymore II(b. 1908) and Mary Barrymore. Unfortunately, neither baby girl survived infancy, though Mary lived a few months. Lionel never truly recovered from the deaths of his girls, and their loss undoubtedly strained his marriage to Doris Rankin which ended in 1923. Years later, Barrymore developed a fatherly affection for Jean Harlow, who was born around the same time as his two daughters and would have been around their age. When Jean died in 1937, Lionel and Clark Gable mourned her as though she had been family.

Barrymore began his stage career in the mid 1890s acting with his grandmother Louisa. He appeared on Broadway in his early twenties with his uncle John Drew in such plays as The Second in Command (1901) and The Mummy and the Hummingbird (1902), both produced by Charles Frohman. In 1905 Lionel and his siblings John and Ethel were all being groomed under the tutelage of Frohman. That year Lionel appeared with John in a short play called Pantaloon while John appeared with Ethel in Alice-Sit-By-The-Fire. In 1910, after he and Doris had spent many years in Paris, Lionel came back to Broadway, where he established his reputation as a dramatic and character actor. He and his wife Doris often acted together when in the theater. He proved his talent in many other plays such as Peter Ibbetson (1917) (with brother John), The Copperhead (1918) (with wife Doris) and The Jest (1919) (again with John). Lionel gave a short lived performance on stage as MacBeth in 1921. The play was not successful and more than likely convinced Lionel to return to films permanently. One of Lionel's last plays was Laugh, Clown, Laugh in 1923 with his second wife Irene Fenwick. This play would later be made into a 1928 silent film starring Lionel's friend Lon Chaney.

Lionel entered films around 1911 with D.W. Griffith. There are claims Lionel entered films in 1908 for Griffith in The Paris Hat but Griffith did not make a movie in 1908 with this title. Lionel and Doris were in Paris in 1908 where Lionel was attending art school. Lionel claims in his autobiography We Barrymores that he and Doris were in France when Bleriot flew the channel on July 25, 1909.

Lionel entered films the same year his uncle Sidney Drew began his film career at Vitagraph, which might have had an influence on Lionel. With Griffith, Lionel made such titles as The Battle (1911), The New York Hat (1912) and Three Friends (1913). In 1915 he co-starred with Lillian Russell in a movie called Wildfire, one of the legendary Russell's few film appearances. He also made a foray into directing at Biograph. The last silent film he directed, Life's Whirlpool (Metro Pictures 1917), starred his sister Ethel. Lionel seemingly forged a good relationship with Louis B. Mayer early on at Metro Pictures and before the formation of MGM in 1924.

Lionel made numerous silent features for Metro, most of them now lost. Lionel was also in a position to freelance occasionally such as returning to Griffith in 1924 to film America. He would make his last film for Griffith in 1928's Drums of Love.

After Lionel and Doris divorced in 1923, he married Irene Fenwick. The two of them went to Italy for Metro Pictures to film The Eternal City in Rome, blending work and honeymoon in the famous city.

Prior to his marriage to Irene he and his brother John came to disharmony on the issue of Irene's past as one of John's lovers. In an effort to try to dissuade Lionel from marrying Irene John blurted out "I've f***ed her", angering Lionel to the point that the brothers didn't speak again for two years. They were next seen together at the premiere of John's film Don Juan in 1926 having patched up their differences. In 1924, he left Broadway for Hollywood permanently. Lionel made several more freelance motion pictures such as The Bells (Tiffany Pictures 1926) with unknown Boris Karloff. After 1926 however Lionel worked almost exclusively for MGM appearing opposite such luminaries as John Gilbert, Lon Chaney Sr, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, Marie Dressler, Greta Garbo and his brother John. On the occasional loan-out he had a great success with Gloria Swanson in 1928's Sadie Thompson and the aforementioned Griffith film Drums of Love. Sound films were now a reality and Lionel's wonderful stage-trained voice recorded well in sound tests. Lionel in 1929 returned to directing films during this early and imperfect sound film period making the controversial His Glorious Night with John Gilbert, Madame X starring the beautiful Ruth Chatterton and Rogue Song Laurel & Hardy's first color film appearance. Barrymore returned to acting in front of the camera in 1931. In 1931, he won an Academy Award for his role of an alcoholic lawyer in A Free Soul (1931), after having been nominated in 1930 for Best Director for Madame X. He could play many types of characters, such as the evil Rasputin in the 1932 Rasputin and the Empress (in which he co-starred with siblings John and Ethel Barrymore) and the ailing Oliver Jordan in Dinner at Eight (1933 - also with John Barrymore, but they had no scenes together).However, during the 1930s and 1940s, he was stereotyped as grouchy, but usually sweet, elderly men in such films as The Mysterious Island (1929), Grand Hotel (1932, with John), Captains Courageous (1937), You Can't Take It with You (1938), Duel in the Sun (1946), and Key Largo (1948).

He played the irascible Doctor Gillespie in a series of Doctor Kildare movies in the 1930s and 1940s, repeating the role in the radio series throughout the 1940s. He also played the title role in another 1940s radio series, Mayor of the Town. Barrymore had broken his hip in an accident, hence he played Gillespie in a wheelchair; later, his worsening arthritis kept him in the chair. The injury also precluded his playing Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1938 MGM film version of A Christmas Carol, a role which Barrymore had played annually on the radio since 1934, and would continue to 1951.

Perhaps his best known role, due to perennial Christmas time replays on television, was Mr. Potter, the miserly and mean-spirited banker in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). The role suggested that of the "unreformed" stage of Barrymore's "Scrooge" characterization.

Barrymore died on November 15, 1954 from a heart attack in Van Nuys, California, and was entombed in the Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles, California.

Ron Carter

Ron Carter is an American jazz double-bassist. His unique sound has made him a long sought after studio man. His appearances on over 2,500 albums make him one of the most-recorded bassists in jazz history, along with Milt Hinton, Ray Brown and Leroy Vinnegar. Carter is also an acclaimed cellist who has recorded numerous times on cello. He also has recorded a large body of classical work, and he contributed to the film score for Desperate Characters (1971).

Carter started to play cello at the age of 10, but when his family moved to Detroit, he ran into difficulties regarding the racial stereotyping of classical musicians and instead moved to bass. He attended the historic Cass Technical High School where he played in the Eastman School of Music's Philharmonic Orchestra. He gained his bachelor's degree in 1959, and in 1961 a master's degree in double bass performance from the Manhattan School of Music.

His first jobs as a jazz musician were with Jaki Byard and Chico Hamilton. His first records were made with Eric Dolphy (another former member of Hamilton's group) and Don Ellis, in 1960.

Carter is an acclaimed cellist who has performed on record numerous times with the cello, notably his own first date as leader, Where?, with Dolphy and Mal Waldron and a date also with Dolphy called Out There with George Duvivier and Roy Haynes and Carter on cello; its advanced harmonics and concepts for 1961 were reminiscent of the then current third stream movement on cello by Carter.

Carter came to fame via the second great Miles Davis quintet in the early 1960s, which also included Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Tony Williams.

Carter joined Davis's group in 1963, appearing on the album Seven Steps to Heaven and the follow-up E.S.P., the latter being the first album to feature the full quintet. It also featured three of Carter's compositions (the only time he contributed compositions to Davis's group). He stayed with Davis's regular group until 1968 (when he was replaced by Dave Holland), and participated in a couple of studio sessions with Davis in 1969 and 1970. Although he played electric bass occasionally during this period, he has subsequently eschewed that instrument entirely, and now plays only acoustic bass. Carter was close with Davis and even revealed to an interviewer in 1966 that the famous trumpeter's favorite color was fuchsia.

Carter also performed on some of Hancock, Williams and Shorter's recordings during the sixties for Blue Note Records. He was a sideman on many Blue Note recordings of the era, playing with Sam Rivers, Freddie Hubbard, Duke Pearson, Lee Morgan, McCoy Tyner, Andrew Hill and many, many others.

After leaving Davis, Carter was for several years a mainstay of CTI Records, making albums under his own name and also appearing on many of the label's records with a diverse range of other musicians.

He appears on the alternative hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest's influential album The Low End Theory on a track called "Verses from the Abstract". He also appears as a member of the jazz combo, The Classical Jazz Quartet.

Carter was Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Music Department of The City College of New York, having taught there for twenty years, and received an honorary Doctorate from the Berklee College of Music, in Spring 2004.

Ron Carter is a pipe smoker and has been featured in a few advertisements for tobacco pipes, clothing lines, and basses.

Ron Carter appears in the advertisements for a Tully's chilled coffee beverage in Japan.

Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of Western art during this period.

Marcel Duchamp was born in Blainville-Crevon Seine-Maritime in the Haute-Normandie region of France, and grew up in a family that enjoyed cultural activities. The art of painter and engraver Emile Nicolle, his maternal grandfather, filled the house, and the family liked to play chess, read books, paint and make music together.

A playful man, Duchamp challenged conventional thought about artistic processes and art marketing, not so much by writing, but through subversive actions such as dubbing a urinal "art" and naming it Fountain. He produced relatively few artworks, while moving quickly through the avant-garde circles of his time.

Marcel Duchamp died on October 2, 1968 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, and is buried in the Rouen Cemetery, in Rouen, France. His grave bears the epitaph, "D'ailleurs, c'est toujours les autres qui meurent;" or "Besides, it's always other people who die."

Duck Dunn

Donald V "Duck" Dunn is an American bass guitarist, record producer, and songwriter. Dunn is notable for the "feel" and groove of his 1960s recordings with Booker T. & the M.G.'s and as a session bassist for Stax records, which specialized in Blues and Gospel-infused southern soul and Memphis soul music styles. Dunn also performed on recordings with Muddy Waters, Freddie King, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Guy Sebastian and Rod Stewart.

Dunn was born in Memphis, Tennessee. Nicknamed "Duck" while watching Disney cartoons with his father one day, Dunn grew up playing sports and riding his bike with fellow future professional musician Steve Cropper. After Cropper began playing guitar with a friend named Charlie Freeman, Dunn decided to pick up the bass guitar. Eventually, along with drummer Terry Johnson, the four became "The Royal Spades". The Messick High School group picked up keyboardist Jerry "Smoochy" Smith, singer Ronnie Angel (also known as Stoots), and a budding young horn section in baritone saxophone player Don Nix, tenor saxophone player Charles "Packy" Axton, as well as trumpeter (and future co-founder of The Memphis Horns) Wayne Jackson.

On the morning of May 13, 2012, Dunn died in his sleep after finishing his fifth double show at the Blue Note nightclub in Tokyo with Cropper the night before. He had been in Japan as part of an ongoing tour with Cropper and Eddie Floyd.

Billy Eckstein

William Clarence “Billy” Eckstein was an American singer of ballads and bandleader of the Swing Era. Eckstine's smooth baritone and distinctive vibrato broke down barriers throughout the 1940s, first as leader of the original bop big-band, then as the first romantic black male in popular music.

Eckstein's grandparents were William F. Eckstein and Nannie Eckstein, a mixed race, lawfully married couple who lived in Washington D.C.; both were born in the year 1863. William F. was born in Prussia and Nannie in Virginia.

An influence looming large in the cultural development of soul and R&B singers from Sam Cooke to Prince, Eckstine was able to play it straight on his pop hits "Prisoner of Love," "My Foolish Heart" and "I Apologize." Raised in Washington, D.C., Eckstine began singing at the age of seven and entered many amateur talent shows. He had also planned on a football career, but after breaking his collar bone, he made music his focus. After working his way west to Chicago, Eckstine joined Earl Hines' Grand Terrace Orchestra in 1939, staying with the band as vocalist and, occasionally, trumpeter, until 1943. By that time, he had begun to make a name for himself through the Hines band's radio shows with such juke box hits as "Stormy Monday Blues" and his own "Jelly Jelly."

In 1944, Eckstine formed his own big band and made it a fountainhead for young musicians who would reshape jazz by the end of the decade, including Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Charlie Parker, and Fats Navarro. Tadd Dameron and Gil Fuller were among the band's arrangers, and Sarah Vaughan gave the vocals a contemporary air. The Billy Eckstine Orchestra was the first bop big-band, and its leader reflected bop innovations by stretching his vocal harmonics into his normal ballads. Despite the group's modernist slant, Eckstine hit the charts often during the mid-'40s, with Top Ten entries including "A Cottage for Sale" and "Prisoner of Love." On the group's frequent European and American tours, Eckstine, popularly known as Mr. B, also played trumpet, valve trombone and guitar.

After a few years of touring with road-hardened be-boppers, Eckstine became a solo performer in 1947, and seamlessly made the transition to string-filled balladry. He recorded more than a dozen hits during the late '40s, including "My Foolish Heart" and "I Apologize." He was one of the first artists to sign with the newly-established MGM Records, and had immediate hits with revivals of "Everything I Have Is Yours" (1947), Richard Rodgers’ and Lorenz Hart’s "Blue Moon" (1948), and Juan Tizol’s "Caravan" (1949). He had further success in 1950 with Victor Young’s theme song to "My Foolish Heart" and a revival of the 1931 Bing Crosby hit, "I Apologize." However, unlike Nat "King" Cole (who followed him into the pop charts), Eckstine’s singing, especially his exaggerated vibrato, sounded increasingly mannered and he was unable to sustain his recording success throughout the decade. While enjoying success in the middle-of-the-road and pop fields, Eckstine occasionally returned to his jazz roots, recording with Vaughan, Count Basie and Quincy Jones for separate LPs, and he regularly topped the Metronome and Downbeat polls in the Top Male Vocalist category. His 1950 appearance at the Paramount in New York drew a larger audience than Frank Sinatra had at his legendary Paramount performance.

Among Eckstine's best records of the 1950s was a 1957 duet with Sarah Vaughan, "Passing Strangers," a minor hit in 1957, but a perennial hit in the UK. Even before folding his band, Eckstine had recorded solo to support it, scoring two million-sellers in 1945 with "Cottage for Sale" and a revival of "Prisoner of Love." Far more successful than his band recordings, though more mannered and pompously sung, these prefigured Eckstine’s future career. Where before black bands had played ballads, jazz and dance music, in the immediate post-war years they had to choose.

The classic 1960 live in Las Vegas LP No Cover, No Minimum featured Eckstine taking a few trumpet solos as well. He recorded several albums for Mercury and Roulette during the early 1960s, and he appeared on Motown for a few standards albums during the mid-'60s. After recording very sparingly during the '70s for Al Bell's, Stax/Enterprise imprint, Eckstine (although still performing to adoring audiences throughout the world), made his last recording, the Grammy-nominated Billy Eckstine Sings with Benny Carter in 1986.

Eckstine made numerous appearances on television variety shows, including "The Ed Sullivan Show," "The Nat King Cole Show", "The Tonight Show" with Steve Allen, Jack Paar, and Johnny Carson, "The Merv Griffin Show", "The Art Linkletter Show," "The Joey Bishop Show," "The Dean Martin Show," "The Flip Wilson Show," and "Playboy After Dark." He also performed as an actor in the TV sitcom "Sanford and Son," and in such films as Skirts Ahoy, Let's Do It Again, and Jo Jo Dancer.

Eckstine was a style leader and noted sharp dresser. He designed and patented a high roll collar that formed a "B" over a Windsor-knotted tie, which became known as a "Mr. B. Collar." In addition to looking cool, the collar could expand and contract without popping open, which allowed his neck to swell while playing his horns. The collars were worn by many a hipster in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Legend has it that his refined appearance even had an effect on trumpeter Miles Davis: once, when Eckstine came across a disheveled Davis in the depths of his heroin excess, his remark "Looking sharp, Miles" served as a wake-up call for Davis, who promptly returned to his father's farm in the winter of 1953 and finally kicked the habit.

In 1984, Eckstine recorded his final album, I Am A Singer, featuring beautiful ballads arranged and conducted by Angelo DiPippo.

Billy Eckstine died on March 8, 1993, aged 78.

Harlan Ellison

Harlan Jay Ellison is a prolific American writer of short stories, novellas, teleplays, essays, and criticism. His literary and television work has received many awards. He wrote for the original series of both The Outer Limits and Star Trek; edited the multiple-award-winning short story anthology series Dangerous Visions; and served as creative consultant to the science fiction TV series The New Twilight Zone and Babylon 5.

Ellison's most famous stories have been within the speculative fiction genre. He has won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards. He was also very active in the science fiction community (a founding member of the Cleveland Science Fiction Society, he edited its fanzine as a teenager), and gives colorful and confrontational talks at science fiction conventions. In the 1960s, he served as the Science Fiction Writers of America's first vice president. He prefers not to place his works in a genre, but will use the term "speculative fiction" to describe his work.

Ellison's fantasy work is generally better aligned with surrealism or magic realism than space opera-type science fiction. There is also a strong ethical current running through his work, half of which is nonfiction, including social activism and criticism of the arts.

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of repression and for creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis for curing psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. Freud is also renowned for his redefinition of sexual desire as the primary motivational energy of human life, as well as his therapeutic techniques, including the use of free association, his theory of transference in the therapeutic relationship, and the interpretation of dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires. He was also an early neurological researcher into cerebral palsy. While of significant historical interest, many of Freud's ideas have fallen out of favor or have been modified by Neo-Freudians, although in the past ten years advances in the field of neurology have shown evidence for many of his theories. In clinical practice, Freud's methods and ideas remain important in psychodynamic approaches. In the academy, his ideas continue to be influential in the humanities and some social sciences.

Sigmund Freud was born on 6 May 1856 to Galician Jewish parents in Příbor (German: Freiberg in Mähren), Moravia, Austrian Empire, now Czech Republic. His father Jakob was 41, a wool merchant, and had two children by a previous marriage. His mother Amalié, the third wife of Jakob, was 21. He was the first of their eight children and owing to his precocious intellect, his parents favored him over his siblings from the early stages of his childhood; and despite their poverty, they sacrificed everything to give him a proper education. Due to the economic crisis of 1857, Freud's father lost his business, and the family moved first to Leipzig before settling in Vienna. In 1865, Sigmund entered the Leopoldstädter Kommunal-Realgymnasium, a prominent high school. Freud was an outstanding pupil and graduated the Matura in 1873 with honors.

After planning to study law, Freud joined the medical faculty at University of Vienna to study under Darwinist Prof, Karl Claus. At that time, eel life history was still unknown, and due to their mysterious origins and migrations, a racist association was often made between eels and Jews and Gypsies. In search for their male sex organs, Freud spent four weeks at the Austrian zoological research station in Trieste, dissecting hundreds of eels without finding more than his predecessors such as Simon von Syrski. In 1876, he published his first paper about "the testicles of eels" in the "Mitteilungen der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften", conceding that he could not solve the matter either. Frustrated by the lack of success that would have gained him fame, Freud chose to change his course of study. Biographers like Siegfried Bernfeld wonder if and how this early episode was significant for his later work regarding hidden sexuality and frustrations.

In 1874, the concept of "psychodynamics" was proposed with the publication of Lectures on Physiology by German physiologist Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke who, in coordination with physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, one of the formulators of the first law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy), supposed that all living organisms are energy-systems also governed by this principle. During this year, at the University of Vienna, Brücke served as supervisor for first-year medical student Sigmund Freud who adopted this new "dynamic" physiology. In his Lectures on Physiology, Brücke set forth the radical view that the living organism is a dynamic system to which the laws of chemistry and physics apply. This was the starting point for Freud's dynamic psychology of the mind and its relation to the unconscious. The origins of Freud’s basic model, based on the fundamentals of chemistry and physics, according to John Bowlby, stems from Brücke, Meynert, Breuer, Helmholtz, and Herbart. In 1879, Freud interrupted his studies to complete his one year of obligatory military service, and in 1881 he received his Dr. med. (M.D.) with the thesis Über das Rückenmark niederer Fischarten ("on the spinal cord of lower fish species").

In October 1885 Freud went to Paris on a traveling fellowship to study with Europe's most renowned neurologist, Jean Martin Charcot. He was later to remember the experience of this stay as catalytic in turning him toward the practice of medical psychopathology and away from a less financially promising career in research neurology.[10] Charcot specialised in the study of hysteria and its susceptibility to hypnosis which he frequently demonstrated with patients on stage in front of an audience. Freud later turned away from hypnosis as a potential cure, favouring free association and dream analysis.[11] Charcot himself questioned his own work on hysteria towards the end of his life.[12]

After opening his own medical practice, specializing in neurology, Freud married Martha Bernays in 1886. Her father Berman was the son of Isaac Bernays, chief rabbi in Hamburg. After experimenting with hypnosis on his neurotic patients, Freud abandoned this form of treatment as it proved ineffective for many, in favor of a treatment where the patient talked through his or her problems. This came to be known as the "talking cure", as the ultimate goal of this talking was to locate and release powerful emotional energy that had initially been rejected, and imprisoned in the unconscious mind. Freud called this denial of emotions "repression", and he believed that it was often damaging to the normal functioning of the psyche, and could also retard physical functioning as well, which he described as "psychosomatic" symptoms. (The term "talking cure" was initially coined by the patient Anna O. who was treated by Freud's colleague Josef Breuer.) The "talking cure" is widely seen as the basis of psychoanalysis. Carl Jung initiated the rumor that a romantic relationship may have developed between Freud and his sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, who had moved into Freud's apartment at 19 Berggasse in 1896.

In his 40s, Freud "had numerous psychosomatic disorders as well as exaggerated fears of dying and other phobias". During this time Freud was involved in the task of exploring his own dreams, memories, and the dynamics of his personality development. During this self-analysis, he came to realize the hostility he felt towards his father (Jacob Freud), who had died in 1896, and "he also recalled his childhood sexual feelings for his mother (Amalia Freud), who was attractive, warm, and protective" considers this time of emotional difficulty to be the most creative time in Freud's life.

After the publication of Freud's books in 1900 and 1902, interest in his theories began to grow, and a circle of supporters developed in the following period. Freud often chose to disregard the criticisms of those who were skeptical of his theories, however, which earned him the animosity of a number of individuals, the most famous being Carl Jung, who originally supported Freud's ideas. Part of the reason for their fall out was due to Jung's growing commitment to religion and mysticism, which conflicted with Freud's atheism.

In 1930, Freud received the Goethe Prize in appreciation of his contribution to psychology and to German literary culture. Three years later the Nazis took control of Germany and Freud's books featured prominently among those burned and destroyed by the Nazis. In March 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss. This led to violent outbursts of anti-Semitism in Vienna, and Freud and his family received visits from the Gestapo. Freud decided to go into exile "to die in freedom". He and his family left Vienna in June 1938 and moved to Hampstead, London.

A heavy cigar smoker, Freud endured more than 30 operations during his life due to oral cancer. In September 1939 he prevailed on his doctor and friend Max Schur to assist him in suicide. After reading Balzac's La Peau de chagrin in a single sitting he said, "My dear Schur, you certainly remember our first talk. You promised me then not to forsake me when my time comes. Now it is nothing but torture and makes no sense any more." Schur administered three doses of morphine over many hours that resulted in Freud's death on 23 September 1939. Three days after his death, Freud's body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium in England during a service attended by Austrian refugees, including the author Stefan Zweig. His ashes were later placed in the crematorium's columbarium. They rest in an ancient Greek urn which Freud had received as a present from Marie Bonaparte and which he had kept in his study in Vienna for many years.

Athol Fugard

Athol Fugard is a South African playwright, novelist, actor, and director who writes in English, best known for his political plays opposing the South African system of apartheid and for the 2005 Academy-Award winning film of his novel Tsotsi, directed by Gavin Hood. He is an adjunct professor of playwriting, acting, and directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego. For academic year 2000–2001, he was the IU Class of 1963 Wells Scholar Professor at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana. The recipient of many awards, honors, and honorary degrees, including the 2005 Order of Ikhamanga in Silver "for his excellent contribution and achievements in the theatre" from the government of South Africa, he is also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Athol Fugard was born as Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard, in Middelburg, Eastern Cape, South Africa, on 11 June 1932, to English and Afrikaner parents; his mother, Elizabeth Magdalena (née Potgieter), an Afrikaner, operated first a general store and then a lodging house; his father, Harold, was a disabled former jazz pianist of Irish, English and French Huguenot descent. In 1935, his family moved to Port Elizabeth. In 1938, he began attending primary school at Marist Brothers College, a private Catholic school founded by the Marist Brothers; after being awarded a scholarship, he enrolled at a local technical college for secondary education and then matriculated at the University of Cape Town, but he dropped out of the university in 1953, a few months before final examinations. He left home, hitchhiked to North Africa with a friend, and then spent the next two years working in the Far East on a steamer ship, the SS Graigaur," where he began writing, an experience "celebrated" in his 1999 autobiographical play The Captain's Tiger: A Memoir for the Stage.

In September 1956, he married Sheila Meiring, a University of Cape Town Drama School student whom he had met the previous year. Now known as Sheila Fugard, she is a novelist and poet, and the Fugards' daughter, Lisa Fugard, is also a novelist.

The Fugards moved to Johannesburg in 1958, where he worked as a clerk in a "Native Commissioners' Court," which "made him keenly aware of the injustices of apartheid." The political impetus of Fugard's plays brought him into conflict with the national government; in order to avoid prosecution, he would have his plays produced and published outside of South Africa.

He and his wife live in San Diego, California, where he teaches as an adjunct professor of playwriting, acting, and directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and maintain a residence in South Africa.

In 1958, Fugard organized "a multiracial theatre for which he wrote, directed, and acted," writing and producing several plays for it, including No-Good Friday (1958) and Nongogo (1959), in which he and his colleague black South African actor Zakes Mokae performed.

After returning to Port Elizabeth in the early 1960s, Athol and Sheila Fugard started The Circle Players, which derives its name from their influential production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, by Bertolt Brecht.

In 1961, in Johannesburg, Fugard and Mokae starred as the brothers Morris and Zachariah in the single-performance world première of Fugard's play The Blood Knot (revised and retitled Blood Knot in 1987).

In 1962, Fugard publicly supported the Anti-Apartheid Movement (1959–1994), an international boycott of South African theatres due to their segregated audiences, leading to government restrictions on him and surveillance of him and his theatre by the Secret Police, and leading him to have his plays published and produced outside of South Africa.

Lucille Lortel produced The Blood Knot at the Cricket Theatre, Off Broadway, in New York City, in 1964, "launch[ing]" Fugard's "American career."

In the 1960s, Fugard formed the Serpent Players, whose name derives from their first venue, the former snake pit at the zoo,"a group of black actors worker-players who earned their living as teachers, clerks, and industrial workers, and cannot thus be considered amateurs in the manner of leisured whites," developing and performing plays "under surveillance of the Security Police."

Their plays utilized minimalist sets and props improvised from whatever materials were available; often staged in black areas for a night, the cast would move on to the next venue, such as a dimly-lit church hall or community center, where the audience consisted of poor migrant labourers and the residents of hostels in the townships.

According to Kruger,

the Serpent Players used Brecht's elucidation of gestic acting, dis-illusion, and social critique, as well as their own experience of the satiric comic routines of urban African vaudeville, to explore the theatrical force of Brecht's techniques, as well as the immediate political relevance of a play about land distribution. Their work on the Caucasian Chalk Circle and, a year later, on Antigone led directly to the creation, in 1966, of what is still South Africa's most distinctive Lehrstück [learning play]: The Coat. Based on an incident at one of the many political trials involving the Serpent Players, The Coat dramatized the choices facing a woman whose husband, convicted of anti-apartheid political activity, left her only a coat and instructions to use it.

In The Coat, Kruger observes, "The participants were engaged not only in representing social relationships on stage but also on enacting and revising their own dealings with each other and with institutions of apartheid oppression from the law courts downward," and "this engagement testified to the real power of Brecht's apparently utopian plan to abolish the separation of player and audience and to make of each player a 'statesman' or social actor.... Work on The Coat led indirectly to the Serpent Players' most famous and most Brechtian productions, Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1972) and The Island (1973)."

Fugard developed these two plays for the Serpent Players in workshops, working extensively with John Kani and Winston Ntshona, publishing them in 1974 with his own play Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act (1972). The authorities considered the title of The Island, which alludes to Robben Island, the prison where Nelson Mandela was being held, too controversial, so Fugard and the Serpent Players used the alternative title The Hodoshe Span (Hodoshe being slang for prison work gang).

These plays "evinced a Brecthian attention to the demonstration of gest and social situations and encouraged audiences to analyze rather than merely applaud the action"; for example, Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, which "combined Brechtian critique and vaudevillian irony – especially in Kani's virtuoso improvisation – even provoked an African audience's critical interruption and interrogation of the action." While dramatizing frustrations in the lives of his audience members, the plays simultaneously drew them into the action and attempted to have them analyze the situations of the characters in Brechtian fashion, according to Kruger.

Blood Knot was filmed by the BBC Television in 1967, with Fugard's collaboration, starring the Jamaican actor, Charles Hyatt as Zachariah and Fugard himself as Morris, as in the original 1961 première in Johannesburg. Less pleased than Fugard, the South African government of B. J. Vorster confiscated Fugard's passport. Four years later, in 1971, partially as the result of international protest on his behalf, the South African travel restrictions against Fugard eased, allowing him to fly to England again, in order to direct Boesman and Lena.

Master Harold...and the Boys, written in 1982, incorporates "strong autobiographical matter"; nonetheless "it is fiction, not memoir," as Cousins: A Memoir and some of Fugard's other works are subtitled.

Fugard demonstrates that he opposes injustices committed by both the government and by its chief political opposition in his play My Children! My Africa!, which attacks the ANC for deciding to boycott African schools, based on recognition of the damage that boycott would cause a generation of African pupils.

His post-apartheid plays, such as Valley Song, The Captain's Tiger: A Memoir for the Stage and his latest play, Victory (2007), focus more on personal issues than on political issues.

Fugard's plays are produced internationally, have won multiple awards, and several have been made into films, including among their actors Fugard himself.

His film debut as a director occurred in 1992, when he co-directed the adaptation of his play The Road to Mecca with Peter Goldsmid, who also wrote the screenplay.

The film adaptation of his novel Tsotsi (Afrikaans for hoodlum), written and directed by Gavin Hood, won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006.

George Gerswin

George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. He wrote most of his vocal and theatrical works in collaboration with his elder brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin. George Gershwin composed songs for both Broadway and the classical concert hall. He also wrote popular songs with success.

Many of his compositions have been used in numerous films and on television, and many became jazz standards recorded in numerous variations. The jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald recorded many of the Gershwins' songs on her 1959 Gershwin Songbook (arranged by Nelson Riddle). Countless singers and musicians have recorded Gershwin songs, including Fred Astaire, Louis Armstrong, Al Jolson, Bobby Darin, Art Tatum, Bing Crosby, Janis Joplin, John Coltrane, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Sam Cooke, Diana Ross, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Hiromi Uehara, Madonna, Judy Garland, Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand, Marni Nixon, Natalie Cole, Patti Austin, Nina Simone, Maureen McGovern, John Fahey, The Residents, Kate Bush, Sublime, and Sting.

Gershwin was named Jacob Gershowitz at birth in Brooklyn on September 26, 1898. His parents were Russian Jews: his father, Morris (Moishe) Gershowitz, changed his family name to 'Gershvin' sometime after immigrating to the United States from St. Petersburg, Russia in the early 1890s. Gershwin's mother Rosa Bruskin had already immigrated from Russia. She met Gershowitz in New York and they married on July 21, 1895. (George changed the spelling of the family name to 'Gershwin' after he became a professional musician; other members of his family followed suit.)

George Gershwin was the second of four children. He first displayed interest in music at the age of ten, when he was intrigued by what he heard at his friend Maxie Rosenzweig's violin recital. The sound and the way his friend played captured him. His parents had bought a piano for lessons for his older brother Ira, but to his parents' surprise and Ira's relief, it was George who played it. Although his younger sister Frances Gershwin was the first in the family to make money from her musical talents, she married young and devoted herself to being a mother and housewife. She gave up her performing career, but settled into painting for another creative outlet— painting was also a hobby of George Gershwin.

Gershwin tried various piano teachers for two years, and then was introduced to Charles Hambitzer by Jack Miller, the pianist in the Beethoven Symphony Orchestra. Until Hambitzer's death in 1918, he acted as Gershwin's mentor. Hambitzer taught Gershwin conventional piano technique, introduced him to music of the European classical tradition, and encouraged him to attend orchestral concerts. (At home following such concerts, young Gershwin would attempt to reproduce at the piano the music which he had heard.) Gershwin later studied with classical composer Rubin Goldmark and avant-garde composer-theorist Henry Cowell.

At the age of fifteen, George quit school and found his first job as a performer as a "song plugger" for Jerome H. Remick and Company, a publishing firm on New York City's Tin Pan Alley, where he earned $15 a week. His first published song was "When You Want 'Em You Can't Get 'Em, When You've Got 'Em, You Don't Want 'Em." It was published in 1916 when Gershwin was only 17 years old and earned him a sum total of $5, although he was promised much more.

His 1917 novelty rag "Rialto Ripples" was a commercial success, and in 1919 he scored his first big national hit with his song "Swanee." In 1916, Gershwin started working for Aeolian Company and Standard Music Rolls in New York, recording and arranging. He produced dozens, if not hundreds, of rolls under his own and assumed names. (Pseudonyms attributed to Gershwin include Fred Murtha and Bert Wynn.) He also recorded rolls of his own compositions for the Duo-Art and Welte-Mignon reproducing pianos. As well as recording piano rolls, Gershwin made a brief foray into vaudeville, accompanying both Nora Bayes and Louise Dresser on the piano.

In 1924, George and Ira collaborated on a musical comedy Lady Be Good, which included such future standards as "Fascinating Rhythm" and "Lady Be Good".

This was followed by Oh, Kay! (1926), Funny Face (1927), Strike up the Band (1927 and 1930), Show Girl (1929), Girl Crazy (1930), which introduced the standard "I Got Rhythm"; and Of Thee I Sing (1931), the first musical comedy to win a Pulitzer Prize.

In 1924, Gershwin composed his first major classical work, Rhapsody in Blue for orchestra and piano. It was orchestrated by Ferde Grofé and premiered by Paul Whiteman's concert band in New York. It proved to be his most popular work.

Gershwin stayed in Paris for a short period, where he applied to study composition with Nadia Boulanger. Boulanger, along with several other prospective tutors such as Maurice Ravel, rejected him, however, afraid that rigorous classical study would ruin his jazz-influenced style. While there, Gershwin wrote An American in Paris. This work received mixed reviews upon its first performance at Carnegie Hall on December 13, 1928, but it quickly became part of the standard repertoire in Europe and the United States. Growing tired of the Parisian musical scene, Gershwin returned to the United States.

His most ambitious composition was Porgy and Bess (1935). Gershwin called it a "folk opera," the piece premiered in a Broadway theater. It is now widely regarded as the most important American opera of the twentieth century. Based on the novel Porgy by DuBose Heyward, the action takes place in a black neighborhood in Charleston, South Carolina. With the exception of several minor speaking roles, all of the characters are black. The music combines elements of popular music of the day, which was strongly influenced by black music, with techniques found in opera, such as recitative and leitmotifs. It also includes a fugue and "advanced" techniques such as polytonality and a tone row. For the performances, Gershwin collaborated with Eva Jessye, whom he picked as the musical director. One of the outstanding musical alumnae of Western University in Kansas, she had created her own choir in New York and performed widely with them.

Early in 1937, Gershwin began to complain of blinding headaches and a recurring impression that he was smelling burned rubber. Doctors discovered he had developed a type of cystic malignant brain tumor known as glioblastoma multiforme. Although some tried to trace his disease to a blow on the head from a golf-ball, the cause of this type of cancer is still unknown. This type of cancer occurs most often in males, accounts for 52% of all brain cancers, and is always fatal. Scientists have recently discovered viral connections to this type of tumor.

In January 1937, Gershwin performed in a special concert of his music with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under the direction of French maestro Pierre Monteux. It was in Hollywood, while working on the score of The Goldwyn Follies, that he collapsed. He died on July 11, 1937 at the age of 38 at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital following surgery for the tumor.

Stewart Granger

Stewart Granger, born James Lablache Stewart, was an English film actor, mainly associated with heroic and romantic leading roles. He was a popular leading man from the 1940s to the 1960s.

He was born in Old Brompton Road, West London and educated at Epsom College and the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. He was the great-great-grandson of the opera singer Luigi Lablache. When he became an actor, he was obliged to change his name in order to avoid being confused with the American actor James Stewart. (Granger was his Scottish grandmother's maiden name.) Off-screen friends and colleagues would continue to call him Jimmy for the rest of his life, but to the general public he became Stewart Granger.

In 1933, he made his film debut as an extra. It was at this time he met Michael Wilding - they remained friends until Wilding's death in 1979. Years of theatre work followed, initially at Hull Repertory Theatre and then, after a pay dispute, at Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Here he met Elspeth March, a leading actress with the company, who became his first wife. At the outbreak of war, Granger enlisted in the Gordon Highlanders, then transferred to the Black Watch with the rank of second lieutenant. But Granger suffered from stomach ulcers - he was invalided out of the army at the war's start.

His first starring film role was in the Gainsborough Pictures period melodrama The Man in Grey (1943), a film that helped to make him a huge star in Britain. A string of popular but critically dismissed films followed, including The Magic Bow in which Granger played Niccolo Paganini and Madonna of the Seven Moons which the critic Leslie Halliwell called 'novelettish balderdash killed stone dead by stilted production.' An exception was Saraband for Dead Lovers an Ealing Studios Production. The screenplay was by John Dighton and Alexander Mackendrick, who would go on to direct The Ladykillers and Sweet Smell of Success. Granger is cast as the outsider, the handsome gambler who is perceived as 'not quite the ticket' by the established order, the Hanovarian court where the action is mostly set. Granger stated that this was one of few films he made of which he was proud.

In 1949 he made Adam and Evelyne in which he starred with Jean Simmons. The story, about a much older man and a teenager whom he gradually realises is no longer a child but a mature young woman with emotions and sexuality had obvious parallels to Granger and Simmons' own lives. Granger had first met the very young Jean Simmons when they both worked on Gabriel Pascal's Caesar and Cleopatra. Three years on, Simmons had transformed from a promising newcomer into a star - and a very attractive young woman. They married the following year in a bizarre wedding ceremony organised by Howard Hughes - one of his private planes flew the couple to Tucson, Arizona, where they were married, mainly among strangers, with Michael Wilding as Granger's best man.

In 1949 he made the move to Hollywood - MGM was looking for someone to play Rider Haggard's hero Allan Quatermain in the film version of Haggard's King Solomon's Mines (1950). On the basis of the huge success of this film he was offered a seven-year contract by MGM. Following two less successful assignments, Soldiers Three and The Light Touch, in 1952 he starred in Scaramouche in the role of Andre Moreau, the bastard son of a French noble, a part Ramon Novarro had played in the 1923 version of Rafael Sabatini's novel. Soon after this came the 1952 remake of The Prisoner of Zenda, for which his theatrical voice, stature (6'3" 191 cm) and dignified profile made him a natural. In 1955's Moonfleet, Granger was cast as an adventurer, Jeremy Fox, (in 1757 Dorset), a man who rules a gang of cut-throat smugglers with an iron fist until he is softened by contact with a 10-year-old boy who hero-worships him and who believes only the best of him. The film was directed by Fritz Lang and produced by John Houseman, a former associate of Orson Welles, so Granger was in the hands of accomplished film makers. Footsteps in the Fog was the third and final film Granger and Jean Simmons made together - Simmons played a Cockney housemaid who finds that her adventurer employer (Granger) has poisoned his rich wife in order to inherit her wealth. Bhowani Junction (1956), was adapted from a John Masters novel about colonial India on the verge of obtaining independence. Ava Gardner played an Anglo-Indian caught between the two worlds of the British colonials and the Indians. It was a routine thriller in which the Communists were very much the villains of the piece. This was a film made as the Cold War intensified and Hollywood was subject to McCarthyism. His films The Little Hut (1957), a coy sex comedy, and Gun Glory (1957), a Western story of redemption, both bombed.

North To Alaska with John Wayne, ' a brawling comedy western', was the last Hollywood movie Granger made.

In Germany, Granger acted in the role of Old Surehand in three Western movies adapted from novels by German author Karl May, with French actor Pierre Brice (playing the fictional Indian chief Winnetou), in Unter Geiern (Frontier Hellcat) (1964), Der Ölprinz (Rampage at Apache Wells) (1965) and Old Surehand (Flaming Frontier) (1965).

He was united with Pierre Brice and Lex Barker, also a hero of Karl May movies, in Gern hab' ich die Frauen gekillt (Killer's Carnival) (1966). In the German Edgar Wallace movie series of the 1960s, he was seen in The Trygon Factor (1966). Towards the end of his career, Granger even starred in a German soap-opera called Das Erbe der Guldenburgs (The Guldenburg Heritage) (1987).

In 1956, Granger became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

He died in Santa Monica, California from prostate cancer at the age of 80.

Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer was an American social writer and philosopher. He produced ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983 by President of the United States Ronald Reagan. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen. He died on May 21, 1983.