For See Biography You Have To Click On Picture,Button or Link. |
Corinna's Going A-Maying [Robert Herrick]
Robert Herrick
Get up, get up for shame, the blooming Morn
Upon her wings presents the god unshorn.
See how Aurora throws her fair
Fresh-quilted colours through the air;
Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see
The dew bespangling herb and tree.
Each flower has wept, and bow'd toward the east,
Above an hour since; yet you not drest,
Nay! not so much as out of bed?
When all the birds have matins said,
And sung their thankful hymns, 'tis sin,
Nay, profanation, to keep in,
Whenas a thousand virgins on this day
Spring, sooner than the lark, to fetch in May.
Rise; and put on your foliage, and be seen
To come forth, like the spring-time, fresh and green;
And sweet as Flora. Take no care
For jewels for your gown, or hair;
Fear not, the leaves will strew
Gems in abundance upon you;
Besides, the childhood of the day has kept,
Against you come, some orient pearls unwept;
Come and receive them while the light
Hangs on the dew-locks of the night;
And Titan on the eastern hill
Retires himself, or else stands still
Till you come forth. Wash, dress, be brief in praying;
Few beads are best when once we go a-Maying.
Come, my Corinna, come; and, coming, mark
How each field turns a street, each street a park
Made green and trimm'd with trees; see how
Devotion gives each house a bough
Or branch; each porch, each door ere this
An ark, a tabernacle is,
Made up of white-thorn, neatly interwove;
As if here were those cooler shades of love.
Can such delights be in the street
And open fields and we not see't?
Come, we'll abroad; and let's obey
The proclamation made for May,
And sin no more, as we have done, by staying;
But my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying.
There's not a budding boy, or girl, this day,
But is got up, and gone to bring in May.
A deal of youth, ere this, is come
Back, and with white-thorn laden, home.
Some have despatch'd their cakes and cream,
Before that we have left to dream;
And some have wept, and woo'd, and plighted troth,
And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth;
Many a green-gown has been given;
Many a kiss, both odd and even;
Many a glance too has been sent
From out the eye, love's firmament;
Many a jest told of the keys betraying
This night, and locks pick'd, yet we're not a-Maying.
Come, let us go, while we are in our prime;
And take the harmless folly of the time.
We shall grow old apace, and die
Before we know our liberty.
Our life is short, and our days run
As fast away as does the sun;
And as a vapour, or a drop of rain,
Once lost, can ne'er be found again,
So when or you or I are made
A fable, song, or fleeting shade,
All love, all liking, all delight
Lies drown'd with us in endless night.
Then while time serves, and we are but decaying,
Come, my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying.
COMFORT TO A YOUTH THAT HAD LOST HIS LOVE
Robert Herrick
What needs complaints,
When she a place
Has with the race
Of saints?
In endless mirth,
She thinks not on
What's said or done
In earth:
She sees no tears,
Or any tone
Of thy deep groan
She hears;
Nor does she mind,
Or think on't now,
That ever thou
Wast kind:--
But changed above,
She likes not there,
As she did here,
Thy love.
--Forbear, therefore,
And lull asleep
Thy woes, and weep
No more.
COCK-CROW [Robert Herrick] 1591-1674
Robert Herrick
Bell-man of night, if I about shall go
For to deny my Master, do thou crow!
Thou stop'st Saint Peter in the midst of sin;
Stay me, by crowing, ere I do begin;
Better it is, premonish'd, for to shun
A sin, than fall to weeping when 'tis done.
Cherry- Ripe [Robert Herrick] 1591-1674
Robert Herrick
CHERRY-RIPE, ripe, ripe, I cry,
Full and fair ones; come and buy.
If so be you ask me where
They do grow, I answer: There
Where my Julia's lips do smile;
There's the land, or cherry-isle,
Whose plantations fully show
All the year where cherries grow.
CHERRY RIPE [Robert Herrick] 1591-1674
Robert Herrick
Cherry-ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry,
Full and fair ones; come, and buy:
If so be you ask me where
They do grow? I answer, there
Where my Julia's lips do smile;--
There's the land, or cherry-isle;
Whose plantations fully show
All the year where cherries grow.
CEREMONY UPON CANDLEMAS EVE [Robert Herrick]
Robert Herrick
Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and misletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all
Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas hall;
That so the superstitious find
No one least branch there left behind;
For look, how many leaves there be
Neglected there, maids, trust to me,
So many goblins you shall see.
CEREMONIES FOR CANDLEMAS EVE (Robert Herrick)
Robert Herrick
Down with the rosemary and bays,
Down with the misletoe;
Instead of holly, now up-raise
The greener box, for show.
The holly hitherto did sway;
Let box now domineer,
Until the dancing Easter-day,
Or Easter's eve appear.
Then youthful box, which now hath grace
Your houses to renew,
Grown old, surrender must his place
Unto the crisped yew.
When yew is out, then birch comes in,
And many flowers beside,
Both of a fresh and fragrant kin,
To honour Whitsuntide.
Green rushes then, and sweetest bents,
With cooler oaken boughs,
Come in for comely ornaments,
To re-adorn the house.
Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold;
New things succeed, as former things grow old.
CASUALTIES (Robert Herrick)
Robert Herrick
Good things, that come of course, far less do please
Than those which come by sweet contingencies.
BURIAL [Robert Herrick] 1591-1674
Robert Herrick
Man may want land to live in; but for all
Nature finds out some place for burial.
Be My Mistress Short or Tall [Robert Herrick]
Robert Herrick
Be my mistress short or tall
And distorted therewithall
Be she likewise one of those
That an acre hath of nose
Be her teeth ill hung or set
And her grinders black as jet
Be her cheeks so shallow too
As to show her tongue wag through
Hath she thin hair, hath she none
She's to me a paragon.
BARLEY-BREAK; OR, LAST IN HELL [Robert Herrick]
Robert Herrick
We two are last in hell; what may we fear
To be tormented or kept pris'ners here I
Alas! if kissing be of plagues the worst,
We'll wish in hell we had been last and first.
ART ABOVE NATURE: TO JULIA [Robert Herrick]
Robert Herrick
When I behold a forest spread
With silken trees upon thy head;
And when I see that other dress
Of flowers set in comeliness;
When I behold another grace
In the ascent of curious lace,
Which, like a pinnacle, doth shew
The top, and the top-gallant too;
Then, when I see thy tresses bound
Into an oval, square, or round,
And knit in knots far more than I.
Can tell by tongue, or True-love tie;
Next, when those lawny films I see
Play with a wild civility;
And all those airy silks to flow,
Alluring me, and tempting so--
I must confess, mine eye and heart
Dotes less on nature than on art.
ANTHEA'S RETRACTATION [Robert Herrick]
Robert Herrick
Anthea laugh'd, and, fearing lest excess
Might stretch the cords of civil comeliness
She with a dainty blush rebuked her face,
And call'd each line back to his rule and space.
Another Grace For A Child [Robert Herrick]
Robert Herrick
Here a little child I stand
Heaving up my either hand;
Cold as paddocks though they be,
Here I lift them up to Thee,
For a benison to fall
On our meat, and on us all. Amen.
Another [Robert Herrick]
Robert Herrick
HERE a pretty baby lies
Sung asleep with lullabies:
Pray be silent and not stir
Th' easy earth that covers her.
ANACREONTIC [Robert Herrick] 1591-1674
Robert Herrick
Born I was to be old,
And for to die here;
After that, in the mould
Long for to lie here.
But before that day comes,
Still I be bousing;
For I know, in the tombs
There's no carousing.
AN ODE TO SIR CLIPSBY CREW [Robert Herrick]
Robert Herrick
Here we securely live, and eat
The cream of meat;
And keep eternal fires,
By which we sit, and do divine,
As wine
And rage inspires.
If full, we charm; then call upon
Anacreon
To grace the frantic Thyrse:
And having drunk, we raise a shout
Throughout,
To praise his verse.
Then cause we Horace to be read,
Which sung or said,
A goblet, to the brim,
Of lyric wine, both swell'd and crown'd,
Around
We quaff to him.
Thus, thus we live, and spend the hours
In wine and flowers;
And make the frolic year,
The month, the week, the instant day
To stay
The longer here.
--Come then, brave Knight, and see the cell
Wherein I dwell;
And my enchantments too;
Which love and noble freedom is:--
And this
Shall fetter you.
Take horse, and come; or be so kind
To send your mind,
Though but in numbers few:--
And I shall think I have the heart
Or part
Of Clipsby Crew.
An Ode to Master Endymion Porter, Upon His Brother's Death
Robert Herrick
Not all thy flushing suns are set,
Herrick, as yet ;
Nor doth this far-drawn hemisphere
Frown and look sullen ev'rywhere.
Days may conclude in nights, and suns may rest
As dead within the west ;
Yet, the next morn, regild the fragrant east.
Alas ! for me, that I have lost
E'en all almost ;
Sunk is my sight, set is my sun,
And all the loom of life undone :
The staff, the elm, the prop, the shelt'ring wall
Whereon my vine did crawl,
Now, now blown down ; needs must the old stock fall.
Yet, Porter, while thou keep'st alive,
In death I thrive :
And like a phoenix re-aspire
From out my nard and fun'ral fire ;
And as I prune my feathered youth, so I
Do mar'l how I could die
When I had thee, my chief preserver, by.
I'm up, I'm up, and bless that hand
Which makes me stand
Now as I do, and but for thee
I must confess I could not be.
The debt is paid ; for he who doth resign
Thanks to the gen'rous vine
Invites fresh grapes to fill his press with wine.
AN ODE OF THE BIRTH OF OUR SAVIOUR [Robert Herrick]
Robert Herrick
In numbers, and but these few,
I sing thy birth, oh JESU!
Thou pretty Baby, born here,
With sup'rabundant scorn here;
Who for thy princely port here,
Hadst for thy place
Of birth, a base
Out-stable for thy court here.
Instead of neat enclosures
Of interwoven osiers;
Instead of fragrant posies
Of daffadils and roses,
Thy cradle, kingly stranger,
As gospel tells,
Was nothing else,
But, here, a homely manger.
But we with silks, not cruels,
With sundry precious jewels,
And lily-work will dress thee;
And as we dispossess thee
Of clo}ts, we'll make a chamber,
Sweet babe, for thee,
Of ivory,
And plaster'd round with amber.
The Jews, they did disdain thee;
But we will entertain thee
With glories to await here,
Upon thy princely state here,
And more for love than pity:
From year to year
We'll make thee, here,
A free-born of our city.
AN ODE FOR BEN JONSON [Robert Herrick]
Robert Herrick
Ah Ben!
Say how or when
Shall we, thy guests,
Meet at those lyric feasts,
Made at the Sun,
The Dog, the Triple Tun;
Where we such clusters had,
As made us nobly wild, not mad?
And yet each verse of thine
Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine.
My Ben!
Or come again,
Or send to us
Thy wit's great overplus;
But teach us yet
Wisely to husband it,
Lest we that talent spend;
And having once brought to an end
That precious stock,--the store
Of such a wit the world should have no more.
AN HYMN TO THE MUSES [Robert Herrick]
Robert Herrick
Honour to you who sit
Near to the well of wit,
And drink your fill of it!
Glory and worship be
To you, sweet Maids, thrice three,
Who still inspire me;
And teach me how to sing
Unto the lyric string,
My measures ravishing!
Then, while I sing your praise,
My priest-hood crown with bays
Green to the end of days!
AN EPITAPH UPON A VIRGIN [Robert Herrick]
Robert Herrick
Here a solemn fast we keep,
While all beauty lies asleep;
Hush'd be all things, no noise here
But the toning of a tear;
Or a sigh of such as bring
Cowslips for her covering.
AN EPITAPH UPON A CHILD [Robert Herrick]
Robert Herrick
Virgins promised when I died,
That they would each primrose-tide
Duly, morn and evening, come,
And with flowers dress my tomb.
--Having promised, pay your debts
Maids, and here strew violets.
AMBITION [Robert Herrick] 1591-1674
Robert Herrick
In man, ambition is the common'st thing;
Each one by nature loves to be a king.
ALL THINGS DECAY AND DIE [Robert Herrick]
Robert Herrick
All things decay with time: The forest sees
The growth and down-fall of her aged trees;
That timber tall, which three-score lustres stood
The proud dictator of the state-like wood,
I mean the sovereign of all plants, the oak,
Droops, dies, and falls without the cleaver's stroke.
A VOW TO VENUS [Robert Herrick] 1591-1674
Robert Herrick
Happily I had a sight
Of my dearest dear last night;
Make her this day smile on me,
And I'll roses give to thee!
31 October Memoriam
Eleuthere Irenee Du Pont (Manufacturer, Businessman) 1771-1834
Studs Terkel (U.S. Radio Personality and Author) 1912-2008
River Phoenix (Actor,Activist) 1970-1993
Harry Houdini (Magician,Escape Artist) 1874-1926
Indira Gandhi (Politician, Was Prime Minister of India) 1917-1984
Federico Fellini (Italian Film Director) 1920-1993
P.W. Botha (Prime Minister And First State President Of South Africa) 1916-2006
Eleuthere Irenee Du Pont Biography (Manufacturer, businessman) 1771–1834
Short Brief of Eleuthere Irenee Du Pont: Manufacturer, businessman. Born on June 24, 1771, in Paris, France. E. I. du Pont was the founder of what is now known as DuPont, one of the world’s largest chemical and industrial companies. His father, Pierre Samuel du Pont, was a watchmaker by trade as well as an economist, publisher, and government official. Interested in explosives, he studied with chemist Antoine Lavoisier for a time.
After the French Revolution, du Pont fled to the United States and sought to build on his explosives expertise. He started a powder mill on the Brandywine River in Delaware in 1802, which proved to be first of many for this skilled manufacturer. Wanting to make the best powder possible, du Pont was vigilant about the quality of the materials he used. The business really took off with supply orders from the U.S. government for the troops fighting in the War of 1812.
For 32 years, du Pont served as president of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. His later life was marked by sadness after the death of his wife Sophie in 1828. He died of heart failure on October 31, 1834. The business he built was passed down to his descendents who continued to grow it into one of the U.S. best-known companies.
Studs Terkel Biography (U.S. radio personality and author) 1912–2008
Short Story of original Louis Turkel: (born May 16, 1912, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Oct. 31, 2008, Chicago, Ill.) U.S. radio personality and author. He moved with his family to Chicago when he was eight. Terkel gave up a legal career to become a radio disk jockey and interviewer, exposure that led to his own television show in 1950. In 1953, blacklisted from television for his leftist leanings, he returned to radio, continuing at the same station for 45 years. His books include Division Street (1967), about Chicago; Hard Times (1970), about the Depression; Working (1974), on Americans and their jobs; The Good War, on World War II (1984, Pulitzer Prize); and Race (1992), on American feelings about race.
River Phoenix Biography (Actor, activist) 1970–1993
A Short Story of River Phoenix: Actor, activist. Born River Jude Bottom on August 23, 1970, in Madras, Oregon. Considered one of the most talented actors of his generation, River Phoenix had his promising career cut short by his premature death in 1993. He was born on a farm where his parents, John Lee Bottom and Arlyn Dunetz, were working. The couple followed a bohemian lifestyle, moving around a lot with their infant son. They named their son after the river of life in Hermann Hesse’s book Siddhartha.
In 1972, the Bottoms took their lives in a new direction, joining the Children of God religious movement. Phoenix became a big brother when the couple had second child, a daughter named Rain, that same year. As missionaries for the Children of God, the Bottoms lived in Texas, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. Phoenix gained two more siblings during this time—brother Joaquin and sister Liberty. (Sister Summer was born later.)
As a young child, Phoenix learned to play guitar and sing. River and Rain performed on the streets in Caracas, Venezuela, to earn money and pass out literature on their religious beliefs. His parents eventually became disillusioned with their religious group and decided to leave it and return to the United States in 1978. They spent time in Florida where Phoenix and some of the other children performed in talent shows and started to attract attention for their musical and acting abilities.
Before long, Phoenix and his family moved out to California to try to make in the entertainment industry. His mother found an agent to represent all of the children and got a job working as a secretary at NBC. At first, Phoenix landed a few commercials. He then got a role as the youngest brother on the television series Seven Brides for Seven Brothers in 1982. While the show only lasted one season, Phoenix continued to work, making a number of guest spots on other shows, such as Hotel and Family Ties. He also had a notable role in the 1985 television movie Surviving.
That same year, Phoenix made his film debut playing a young inventor in Explorers (1985) with Ethan Hawke. His next film, however, led to a career breakthrough. In Stand by Me (1986), four friends (Phoenix, Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O’Connell) set out to find the body of a missing teenager. Phoenix earned raves for his performance as a youth with a troubled home life in this coming-of-age adventure drama based on a novella by Stephen King.
Phoenix next appeared as Harrison Ford’s son in The Mosquito Coast (1986), which received mixed reviews. In 1988, he appeared in a trio of films: Little Nikita, A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, and Running on Empty. Of the three, Running on Empty was the most critically successful. Phoenix played the son of 60s radicals (Christine Lahti and Judd Hirsch) who went underground after blowing up a building, accidentally killing someone in the process. In the film, his character is a musically gifted teenager who must decide between staying with his family on the run and leaving them to follow his own dreams. His girlfriend in the film was played by Martha Plimpton, and she and Phoenix became involved off-screen as well. Directed by Sydney Lumet, the film earned many accolades with critic Roger Ebert calling it “one of the best films of the year.” Phoenix received his first and only Academy Award nomination for his work on the film.
Phoenix reteamed with Harrison Ford for the 1989 box office hit Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which was directed by Steven Spielberg. In the film, he played the famed adventurer in his youth. After this brief sojourn into the action genre, Phoenix tried his hand at comedy with I Love You to Death (1990). His character helps a scorned wife (Tracey Ullman) try to bump off her cheating husband (Kevin Kline) and even hires two drug-addled henchmen (William Hurt and Keanu Reeves) to assist in the task.
Tackling much more weighty material, Phoenix co-starred with Reeves in Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho (1991). He played a narcoleptic male prostitute who wants to find his long-lost mother and develops a special friendship with a fellow hustler (Keanu Reeves). Phoenix earned strong reviews for his riveting performance in the film. That same year, he proved to be equally compelling and convincing as a Marine just about to go to Vietnam in Dogfight (1991) with Lili Taylor.
Phoenix took a supporting role in the comedic thriller Sneakers (1992) and proved that he could hold his own on screen with such established performers as Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, and David Strathairn. Acting, however, was just one part of Phoenix’s life. A strong supporter of animal rights, he became a vegetarian at the age of 8. “When I was old enough to realize all meat was killed, I saw it as an irrational way of using our power, to take a weaker thing and mutilate it,” Phoenix told The New York Times in 1989. He became a devout vegan, eschewing all dairy products because of how the animals were treated. An ardent environmentalist, Phoenix supported such organizations as Earth Save and Earth Trust.
Music was another one of Phoenix’s passions. With his sister Rain, he formed the band Aleka’s Attic. He wrote many songs for the group, which recorded a few tracks but never released an album. With The Thing Called Love (1993), Phoenix got a chance to combine acting with music, playing a singer wants to make it in Nashville. He even contributed one of his own songs to the soundtrack. The film also starred Samantha Mathis as his love interest, and the two started dating.
For his last completed film, Phoenix starred with Alan Bates, Richard Harris, and Dermot Mulroney in director Sam Shepard’s western Silent Tongue (1994). He had started work on Dark Blood with Jonathan Pryce and Judy Davis when tragedy struck. During a break in filming, Phoenix went out to the Viper Room, a popular nightclub that was partly owned by Johnny Depp, with his brother Joaquin, his sister Rain, and his girlfriend Samantha Mathis.
At some point during the evening, Phoenix took some drugs and became ill. He was helped outside and started to have seizures. His brother Joaquin called 911 while his sister Rain tried to help Phoenix who was lying on the sidewalk. When the ambulance arrived, paramedics worked on resuscitating the young actor at the scene. Their efforts failed, and they transported him to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where he was declared dead in the early hours of October 31.
Family, friends, and fans mourned the untimely passing of the talented young star. He was only 23 years old. After his death, Harrison Ford said “He once played my son, and I came to love him like a son, and was proud to watch grow into a man of such talent and integrity and compassion,” according to The New York Times. A memorial service was held for Phoenix and his ashes were scattered at the family’s Florida ranch.
Harry Houdini Biography (Magician, escape artist) 1874–1926
A Short Story Of also known as: Erik Weisz, Ehrich Weisz, or Erich Weisz: Magician, escape artist. Born Erich Weisz on March 24, 1874, in Budapest, Hungary. One of seven children born to a Jewish rabbi and his wife, Erich moved with his family as a child to Appleton, Wisconsin, where he later claimed he was born. When he was 13, Erich moved with his father to New York City, taking on odd jobs and living in a boarding house before the rest of the family joined them. It was there that he became interested in trapeze arts.
In 1894, Erich launched his career as a professional magician and renamed himself Harry Houdini, the first name being a derivative of his childhood nickname, "Ehrie," and the last an homage to the great French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin. Though his magic met with little success, he soon drew attention for his feats of escape using handcuffs. In 1893, he married fellow performer Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner, who would serve as Houdini's lifelong stage assistant.
In 1899, Houdini's act caught the attention of Martin Beck, an entertainment manager who soon got him booked at some of the best vaudeville venues in the country, followed by a tour of Europe. Houdini's feats would involve the local police, who would strip search him, place him in shackles, and lock him in their jails. The show was a huge sensation, and he soon became the highest-paid performer in American vaudeville.
Houdini continued his act in the United States in the early 1900s, constantly upping the ante from handcuffs and straightjackets to locked, water-filled tanks and nailed packing crates. In 1912, his act reached its pinnacle, the Chinese Water Torture Cell, which would be the hallmark of his career. In it, Houdini was suspended by his feet and lowered upside-down in a locked glass cabinet filled with water, requiring him to hold his breath for more than three minutes to escape. The performance was so daring and such a crowd-pleaser that it remained in his act until his death in 1926.
Houdini's wealth allowed him to indulge in other passions, such as aviation and film. He purchased his first plane in 1909 and became the first person to man a controlled power flight over Australia in 1910. He also launched a movie career, releasing his first film in 1901, Merveilleux Exploits du Célébre Houdini Paris, which documented his escapes. He starred in several subsequent films, including The Master Mystery, The Grim Game and Terror Island. In New York, he started his own production company, Houdini Picture Corporation, and a film lab called The Film Development Corporation, but neither was a success. In 1923, Houdini became president of Martinka & Co., America's oldest magic company.
As president of the Society of American Magicians, Harry Houdini was a vigorous campaigner against fraudulent psychic mediums. Most notably, he debunked renowned medium Mina Crandon, better known as Margery. This act turned him against former friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who believed deeply in Spiritualism and Margery's sight.
Though there are mixed reports as to the cause of Henry Houdini's death, it is certain that he suffered from acute appendicitis. Whether his demise was caused by a McGill University student who was testing his will by punching him in the stomach (with permission) or by poison from a band of angry Spiritualists, it is unknown. What is known is that he died of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix on October 31, 1926 at age 52.
After his death, Houdini's props and effects were used by his brother Theodore Hardeen, who eventually sold them to magician and collector Sidney H. Radner. Much of the collection could be see at the Houdini Museum in Appleton, Wisconsin, until Radner auctioned it off in 2004. Most of the prized pieces, including the Water Torture Cell, went to magician David Copperfield.
Indira Gandhi Biography (politician who served as prime minister of India) 1917–1984
A Short Story Of full Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi: (born Nov. 19, 1917, Allahabad, India—died Oct. 31, 1984, New Delhi) politician who served as prime minister of India for three consecutive terms (1966–77) and a fourth term (1980–84). She was assassinated by Sikh extremists.
She was the only child of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India. She attended Visva-Bharati University, West Bengal, and the University of Oxford, and in 1942 she married Feroze Gandhi (died 1960), a fellow member of the Indian National Congress (Congress Party). She was a member of the working committee of the ruling Congress Party from 1955, and in 1959 she was elected to the largely honorary post of party president. Lal Bahadur Shastri, who succeeded Nehru as prime minister in 1964, named her minister of information and broadcasting in his government.
On Shastri's sudden death in January 1966, Gandhi became leader of the Congress Party—and thus also prime minister—in a compromise between the right and left wings of the party. Her leadership, however, came under continual challenge from the right wing of the party, led by a former minister of finance, Morarji Desai. In the election of 1967 she won a slim majority and had to accept Desai as deputy prime minister. In 1971, however, she won a sweeping electoral victory over a coalition of conservative parties. Gandhi strongly supported East Bengal (now Bangladesh) in its secessionist conflict with Pakistan in late 1971, and India's armed forces achieved a swift and decisive victory over Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh.
In March 1972, buoyed by the country's success against Pakistan, Gandhi again led her new Congress Party to a landslide victory in national elections. Shortly afterward her defeated Socialist Party opponent charged that she had violated the election laws. In June 1975 the High Court of Allahabad ruled against her, which meant that she would be deprived of her seat in Parliament and would have to stay out of politics for six years. In response, she declared a state of emergency throughout India, imprisoned her political opponents, and assumed emergency powers, passing many laws limiting personal freedoms. During this period she implemented several unpopular policies, including large-scale sterilization as a form of birth control. When long-postponed national elections were held in 1977, Gandhi and her party were soundly defeated, whereupon she left office. The Janata Party took over the reins of government.
Early in 1978 Gandhi's supporters split from the Congress Party and formed the Congress (I) Party—the “I” signifying Indira. She was briefly imprisoned (October 1977 and December 1978) on charges of official corruption. Despite these setbacks, she won a new seat in Parliament in November 1978, and her Congress (I) Party began to gather strength. Dissension within the ruling Janata Party led to the fall of its government in August 1979. When new elections for the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) were held in January 1980, Gandhi and her Congress (I) Party were swept back into power in a landslide victory. Her son Sanjay Gandhi, who had become her chief political adviser, also won a seat in the Lok Sabha. All legal cases against Indira, as well as against her son, were withdrawn.
Sanjay Gandhi's death in an airplane crash in June 1980 eliminated Indira's chosen successor from the political leadership of India. After Sanjay's death, Indira groomed her other son, Rajiv, for the leadership of her party. Gandhi adhered to the quasi-socialist policies of industrial development that had been begun by her father. She established closer relations with the Soviet Union, depending on that nation for support in India's long-standing conflict with Pakistan.
During the early 1980s Indira Gandhi was faced with threats to the political integrity of India. Several states sought a larger measure of independence from the central government, and Sikh extremists in Punjab state used violence to assert their demands for an autonomous state. In response, Gandhi ordered an army attack in June 1984 on the Harimandir (Golden Temple) at Amritsar, the Sikhs' holiest shrine, which led to the deaths of more than 450 Sikhs. Five months later Gandhi was killed in her garden by a fusillade of bullets fired by two of her own Sikh bodyguards in revenge for the attack on the Golden Temple.
Federico Fellini Biography (Italian film director) 1920 - 1993
A Short Story Of Federico Fellini: (born January 20, 1920, Rimini, Italy—died October 31, 1993, Rome) Italian film director who was one of the most celebrated and distinctive filmmakers of the period after World War II. Early in his career he helped inaugurate the Neorealist cinema movement, but he soon developed his own distinctive style of typically autobiographical films that imposed dreamlike or hallucinatory imagery upon ordinary situations and portrayed people at their most bizarre.
Early life and influences
After an uneventful provincial childhood during which he developed a talent as a cartoonist, Fellini at age 19 moved to Rome, where he contributed cartoons, gags, and stories to the humour magazine Marc'Aurelio. During World War II, Fellini worked as a scriptwriter for the radio program Cico e Pallina, starring Giulietta Masina, the actress who became Fellini's wife in 1943 and who went on to star in several of the director's greatest films during the course of their 50-year marriage. In 1944 Fellini met director Roberto Rossellini, who engaged him as one of a team of writers who created Roma, città aperta (1945; Open City or Rome, Open City), often cited as the seminal film of the Italian Neorealist movement. Fellini's contribution to the screenplay earned him his first Oscar nomination.
Fellini quickly became one of Italy's most successful screenwriters. Although he wrote a number of important scripts for such directors as Pietro Germi (Il cammino della speranza [1950; The Path of Hope]), Alberto Lattuada (Senza pietá [1948; Without Pity]), and Luigi Comencini (Persiane chiuse [1951; Drawn Shutters]), his scripts for Rossellini are most important to the history of the Italian cinema. These include Paisà (1946; Paisan), perhaps the purest example of Italian Neorealism; Il miracolo (1948; “The Miracle,” an episode of the film L'Amore), a controversial work on the meaning of sainthood; and Europa '51 (1952; The Greatest Love), one of the first films in postwar Italy that began to move beyond the documentary realism of the Neorealist period toward an examination of psychological problems and Existentialist themes.
Fellini made his debut as director in collaboration with Lattuada on Luci del varietà (1951; Variety Lights). This was the first in a series of works dealing with provincial life and was followed by Lo sceicco bianco (1951; The White Sheik) and I vitelloni (1953; Spivs or The Young and the Passionate), his first critically and commercially successful work. This film, a bitterly sarcastic look at the idle “mama's boys” of the provinces, is still considered by some critics to be Fellini's masterpiece.
Major works
Fellini's next films formed a trilogy that dealt with salvation and the fate of innocence in a cruel and unsentimental world. One of Fellini's best-known works, the heavily symbolic La strada (1954; “The Road”), stars Anthony Quinn as a cruel, animalistic circus strongman and Masina as the pathetic waif who loves him. The film was shot on location in the desolate countryside between Viterbo and Abruzzo, with the great empty spaces reflecting the virtual inhumanity of the relationship between the principal characters. Although it was criticized by the left-wing press in Italy, the film was highly praised abroad, winning an Academy Award for best foreign film. Il bidone (1955; The Swindle), which starred Broderick Crawford in a role intended for Humphrey Bogart, was a rather unpleasant tale of petty swindlers who disguise themselves as priests in order to rob the peasantry. Garnering a second foreign film Oscar for Fellini was the more successful Le notti di Cabiria (1957; The Nights of Cabiria), again starring Masina, this time as a simple, eternally optimistic Roman prostitute. Although not usually considered among Fellini's greatest works, Le notti de Cabiria (upon which the Broadway musical comedy Sweet Charity was based) remains a critical favourite and one of Fellini's most immediately likable films.
Fellini's next film, La dolce vita (1960; “The Sweet Life”), was his first collaboration with Marcello Mastroianni, the actor who would come to represent Fellini's alter ego in several films throughout the next two decades. The film—for which Fellini had Rome's main thoroughfare, the Via Veneto, rebuilt as a set—proved to be a panorama of the times, rife with surreal imagery, and a compelling indictment of popular media, decadent intellectuals, and aristocrats. Immediately hailed as one of the most important films ever made, La dolce vita contributed the word paparazzi (unscrupulous yellow-press photographers) to the English language and the adjective “Felliniesque” to the lexicon of film critics.
Regarded as a perfect blend of symbolism and realism, Otto e mezzo (1963; 8 12), is perhaps Fellini's most widely praised film and earned the director his third Oscar for best foreign film. Entitled 8 12 for the number of films Fellini had made to that time (seven features and three shorts), the work shows the plight of a famous director (based on Fellini, portrayed by Mastroianni) in creative paralysis. The high modernist aesthetics of the film became emblematic of the very notion of free, uninhibited artistic creativity, and in 1987 a panel of motion picture scholars from 18 European nations named 8 12 the best European film ever made.
In the wake of 8 12 Fellini's name became firmly linked to the vogue of the postwar European art film. He began to deal with the myth of Rome, the cinema, and, especially, the director's own life and fantasy world, all of which Fellini considered interrelated themes in his works. His films of the late 1960s combine dreamlike images with original uses of colour photography. Satyricon (1969), inspired by such ancient Roman writers as Petronius and Apuleius, tells of the wanderings of a group of aimless young men in the world of antiquity. Fellini, who was unconcerned with historical accuracy, attempted to explore the human condition in an age before Christianity and the concept of original sin. A bizarre, flamboyant work, Satyricon remains a film on which critical opinion is heatedly divided. Roma (1971; Fellini's Roma) is the director's personal portrait of the Eternal City, and Amarcord (1973), which won Fellini a fourth Oscar for best foreign film, offers a nostalgic remembrance of Fellini's provincial adolescence during the Fascist period.
Mature years
Many of Fellini's later films were less successful commercially and encountered critical resistance. The sumptuous Casanova (1976), praised by some as a visual masterpiece and derided by others as a hollow confection, was a brooding, melancholy meditation on the meaning of sex and death. Such works as La città delle donne (1980; City of Women), E la nave va (1983; And the Ship Sails On), Ginger e Fred (1985; Ginger and Fred), Intervista (1987; Interview), and La voce della luna (1989; The Voice of the Moon), his last feature film, reflect the complex evolution of Fellini's mature cinematic style and treat a variety of postmodern topics: the role of the male in an increasingly feminist society, the effects of television on contemporary life, the nature of artistic creativity, and the growing homogenization of popular culture. During the last years of his life, Fellini produced television commercials for Barilla pasta, Campari Soda, and the Banco di Roma that are regarded as extraordinary lessons in cinematography revealing the director's deep grasp of popular culture. He also exhibited his sketches and cartoons, many of which were taken from his private dream notebooks, thus uncovering the source of much of his artistic creativity, the unconscious.
Assessment
Although the subject of derision from some revisionist critics, Fellini assured for himself a place of prime importance in the history of filmmaking. His best films, all of which were partially written by him, are freely structured tales in which dream and reality, as well as autobiography and fantasy, mingle in a world of symbolism. Breaking with traditional techniques of motion picture production, he succeeded in making the film such a personal medium that his own creative and personal problems became legendary. He received numerous honours during his lifetime, including 8 Oscars, 23 Oscar nominations, a career achievement Oscar in 1993, the Golden Lion career award from the Venice Film Festival in 1985, and dozens of prizes from the world's most prestigious film festivals. A poll of international film directors conducted in 1992 by Sight and Sound magazine ranked Fellini as the most significant film director of all time and cited two of Fellini's works (La strada and 8 12) in a list of the 10 most influential films of all time.
P.W. Botha Biography (Prime minister and first state president of South Africa) 1916–2006
A Short Story of full name Pieter Willem Botha: (born Jan. 12, 1916, Paul Roux, S.Af.—died Oct. 31, 2006, Wilderness, near George) Prime minister (1978–84) and first state president (1984–89) of South Africa. Elected to parliament as a National Party candidate in 1948, Botha served in several subsequent posts before replacing John Vorster as prime minister in 1978. His government faced serious difficulties, including the coming to power of black governments in Mozambique, Angola, and Zimbabwe, an insurgency in South West Africa (Namibia), and domestic unrest among black students and labour unions. Botha responded by backing antigovernment troops in the bordering states and suppressing rebellion at home. A target of criticism from within and outside his party, he fell ill and resigned in 1989.
Robert Goulet Biography (Singer and actor) 1933–2007
A Short Story Of Robert Goulet: Singer and actor Robert Goulet died October 30, 2007. He had been awaiting a lung transplant at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after being found last month to have a rare form of pulmonary fibrosis, said Goulet spokesman Norm Johnson.
He was born November 26, 1933, in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Robert was the only son born to working class parents, Joseph and Jeanette Goulet. From an early age, Joseph Goulet encouraged his son to sing in the local church choir. In 1947, Joseph died and the family moved to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. A devastated 14-year-old Robert vowed to fulfill his dying father's wish, and began to wholeheartedly pursue music.
After a brief stint as a radio disc jockey, Goulet won a scholarship to Toronto's Royal Conservatory of Music, where he studied acting and singing. In 1954, he prematurely traveled to New York in hopes of making it on Broadway. However, the only work Goulet found was as a stationary salesman in Gimbel's department store. Somewhat disillusioned, he returned to Toronto, where the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation cast him in a leading role in the TV production Little Women. Goulet maintained his small screen success with a three year run as host of the variety series General Electric's Showtime. Throughout the late 1950s, he enjoyed steady work in theater productions, and was befittingly labeled 'Canada's first matinee idol' by the age of 24.
In 1959, Goulet was introduced to librettist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe, who were having difficulty casting the role of Lancelot in their stage production Camelot. Lerner and Loewe, impressed by Goulet's work, signed the virtual newcomer to play the part, opposite Richard Burton's King Arthur and Julie Andrews' Queen Guenevere. In October of 1960, Camelot opened in Toronto, briefly ran for a four-week engagement in Boston, and finally opened on Broadway in December of that year. Goulet elicited favorable reviews, most notably for his rendition of the plays heartfelt ballad If Ever I Would Leave You.
After Camelot's run, Goulet was booked on The Danny Thomas Show and The Ed Sullivan Show, which made him a household name among American audiences. Shortly after, he embarked on a series of nightclub engagements, making his debut at New York's famous The Persian Room.
Goulet segued onto the silver screen when he provided the character voice in the animated feature Gay Purr-ee (1962), with Judy Garland. Two years later, he was featured in his first film Honeymoon Hotel, and headlined his first TV special An Hour with Robert Goulet. He remained a great success throughout the 1960s, making a number of TV specials, including Brigadoon (1966), Carousel (1967), and Kiss Me, Kate (1968). In 1968 he received a Best Actor Tony Award for his performance as a French photographer in the musical Happy Time.
In the 1970s, Goulet became a regular fixture in Las Vegas. During this period he developed a growing dependency on alcohol. He quit drinking in 1979, although there was an isolated incident in 1983, when he was arrested for drunk driving.
In 1986, Goulet toured in a U.S. production of South Pacific. Six years later, Goulet commenced a two-year, 50-city national tour of Camelot. This time, in the role of King Arthur, he played to packed houses, earning $80,000 a week. In 1996, his performance in Man of La Mancha introduced him to a whole new generation of theatergoers. Goulet's most recent project was a small part in 2000's The Last Producer, which starred Benjamin Bratt and Burt Reynolds. He was also signed to play the devil in Christopher Coppola's G-Men from Hell, which is still in production.
Goulet was married to his third wife, Vera Novak, for 25 years at the time of his death. He was previously married to Louis Longmore and to actress Carol Lawrence. He has one daughter with Longmore and two sons with Lawrence.
Steve Allen Biography (U.S. entertainer and songwriter) 1921 - 2000
A Short Story Of original Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen: (born Dec. 26, 1921, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Oct. 30, 2000, Encino, Calif.) U.S. entertainer and songwriter. He appeared as a comedian on radio in the 1940s before moving to late-night television, where he created and hosted The Tonight Show (1954–57) and The Steve Allen Show (1956–60). He hosted several other television shows, including Meeting of Minds (1977–81). He composed over 3,000 songs, including “Picnic” and “Impossible,” and appeared in films such as The Benny Goodman Story (1955).
Sir Walter Raleigh Biography (Courtier, explorer, soldier, and writer) 1554 - 1618
A Short Story of Raleigh also spelled Ralegh: Courtier, explorer, soldier, and writer, born in Hayes Barton, Devon, SW England, UK. He studied at Oxford before serving in the Huguenot army in France (1569). A rival of the Earl of Essex for the queen's favors, he served (1580) in Elizabeth's army in Ireland, distinguishing himself by his ruthlessness at the siege of Smerwick and by the plantation of English and Scots Protestants in Munster. Elizabeth rewarded him with a large estate in Ireland, knighted him (1585), and gave him trade privileges and the right to colonize America.
In 1587 he explored from North Carolina to present-day Florida, naming the region Virginia in honor of Elizabeth, the "Virgin Queen." In 1587 Raleigh sent an ill-fated second expedition of colonists to Roanoke. In 1588 he took part in the victory over the Spanish Armada. He led other raids against Spanish possessions and returned with much booty. Raleigh forfeited Elizabeth's favor by his courtship of and subsequent marriage to one of her maids-of-honor, Bessy Throckmorton, and he was committed to the Tower (1592). Hoping, on his release, to recover his position, he led an abortive expedition to Guiana to search for El Dorado, a legendary land of gold. Instead, he helped to introduce the potato plant and tobacco use in England and Ireland.
Elizabeth's successor, James I, distrusted and feared Raleigh, charged him with treason and condemned him to death, but commuted the sentence to imprisonment in the Tower (1603). There Raleigh lived with his wife and servants, and wrote his History of the World (1614). He was released in 1616 to search for gold in South America. Against the king's undertaking to the Spanish, he invaded and pillaged Spanish territory, was forced to return to England without booty, and was arrested on the orders of the king. His original death sentence for treason was invoked, and he was executed at Westminster. A gifted poet, writer, and scholar, many of his poems and writings were destroyed. A pioneer of the Italian sonnet-form in English, he was a patron of the arts, notably of Edmund Spenser in his composition of The Faerie Queene (1589–96).
Joseph Pulitzer Biography (U.S. newspaper editor and publisher) 1847–1911
A Short Story of Joseph Pulitzer: (born April 10, 1847, Makó, Hung.—died Oct. 29, 1911, Charleston, S.C., U.S.) Hungarian-born U.S. newspaper editor and publisher. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1864 to serve in the American Civil War. After the war he became a reporter and then proprietor at German-language newspapers in St. Louis and entered Missouri politics. In 1878 he merged the St. Louis Dispatch (founded 1864) and the Post (founded 1875) into the Post-Dispatch, which soon became the city's dominant evening newspaper. Shifting his interests to New York City, he purchased the World (1883) and founded the Evening World (1887). He helped establish the pattern of the modern newspaper by combining exposés of political corruption and crusading investigative reporting with publicity stunts, self-advertising, and sensationalism. In his will he endowed the Columbia University School of Journalism and established the Pulitzer Prizes.
Louis B. Mayer Biography (most powerful motion-picture executive in Hollywood for 30 years) 1885–1957
A Short Story of original name Eliezer Mayer , or Lazar Mayer: (born July 4, 1885, Minsk, Russian Empire—died Oct. 29, 1957, Los Angeles) most powerful motion-picture executive in Hollywood for 30 years. As the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the largest and most prestigious film studio, he created the star system during the 1920s and '30s and had under contract the outstanding screen personalities of the day.
The son of immigrant parents, Mayer worked in his father's ship-salvaging and scrap-iron business from the age of 14. In 1907 he opened his first small nickelodeon in Haverhill, Mass., and by 1918 owned the largest chain of motion-picture theatres in New England. To increase the supply of pictures for his theatres, he opened in Hollywood Louis B. Mayer Pictures and the Metro Pictures Corporation. Six years later MGM was formed by a merger with Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, with Mayer as the controlling head of the new company.
Under Mayer's influence, MGM productions seldom dealt with controversial subject matter. They were characterized, rather, by elaborate sets, gorgeous costuming, and pretty girls. The emphasis was on the glamorous stars, many of whom, such as Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Rudolph Valentino, and Clark Gable, were Mayer discoveries. Such pictures as Ben-Hur (1925), Grand Hotel (1932), Dinner at Eight (1933), and The Good Earth (1937) gained MGM the reputation for entertaining films of consistently high quality. Mayer relinquished control of the studio in 1948 and retired completely three years later.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)