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Ruth Draper
Ruth Draper (December 2, 1884December 30, 1956) was an American actress, dramatist and noted diseuse who specialized in character-driven monologues and monodrama. Her best-known pieces include ''The Italian Lesson'', ''Three Women and Mr. Clifford'', ''Doctors and Diets'', and ''A Church in Italy''. Early life and family Ruth Draper was born in New York City, the youngest child of Dr. William Henry and Ruth (née Dana) Draper. Her father, who was born in Brattleboro, Vermont, had the affluence to support a large family with the help of several servants.US Census records 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900 Ruth Draper's mother was the daughter of Charles Anderson Dana, editor and publisher of ''The New York Sun'' and had married Dr. Draper in 1878 some years after the loss of his first wife, Lucy. Her nephew, Paul Draper, was a noted dancer and actor. Draper's second cousin was the society architect Paul Phipps, father of the British performer Joyce Grenfell. Her nephew Raimund Sanders Dr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent (; January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His ''oeuvre'' documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, Spain, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida. Born in Florence to American parents, he was trained in Paris before moving to London, living most of his life in Europe. He enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter. An early submission to the Paris Salon in the 1880s, his '' Portrait of Madame X'', was intended to consolidate his position as a society painter in Paris, but instead resulted in scandal. During the next year following the scandal, Sargent departed for England where he continued a successful career as a portrait artist. From the beginning, Sargent's work is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chautauqua
Chautauqua ( ) was an adult education and social movement in the United States, highly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, showmen, preachers, and specialists of the day. Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was quoted as saying that Chautauqua is "the most American thing in America." History The First Chautauquas In 1873, the first Chautauqua, Lakeside Chautauqua on Ohio's Lake Erie, was formed by the Methodists. The next year, 1874, the New York Chautauqua Assembly was organized by Methodist minister John Heyl Vincent and businessman Lewis Miller at a campsite on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in the state of New York. Two years earlier, Vincent, editor of the ''Sunday School Journal'', had begun to train Sunday school teachers in an outdoor summer schoo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery ''The Mousetrap'', which has been performed in the West End theatre, West End since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. ''Guinness World Records'' lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies. Christie was born into a wealthy upper middle class family in Torquay, Devon, and was largely home-schooled. She was initially an unsuccessful w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton (; born Edith Newbold Jones; January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, and interior designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper-class New York "aristocracy" to portray realistically the lives and morals of the Gilded Age. In 1921, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Literature, for her novel ''The Age of Innocence''. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996. Among her other well known works are '' The House of Mirth'' and the novella '' Ethan Frome''. Biography Early life Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones on January 24, 1862 to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander at their brownstone at 14 West Twenty-third Street in New York City. To her friends and family she was known as "Pussy Jones". She had two older brothers, Frederic Rhinelander and Henry Edward. Frederic married Mary Cadwalader Rawle; their daughter was landscape ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Brooks Adams
Henry Brooks Adams (February 16, 1838 – March 27, 1918) was an American historian and a member of the Adams political family, descended from two U.S. Presidents. As a young Harvard graduate, he served as secretary to his father, Charles Francis Adams, Abraham Lincoln's ambassador to the United Kingdom. The posting influenced the younger man through the experience of wartime diplomacy, and absorption in English culture, especially the works of John Stuart Mill. After the American Civil War, he became a political journalist who entertained America's foremost intellectuals at his homes in Washington and Boston. During his lifetime, he was best known for '' The History of the United States of America 1801–1817'', a nine-volume work, praised for its literary style, command of the documentary evidence, and deep (family) knowledge of the period and its major figures. His posthumously published memoir, '' The Education of Henry Adams'', won the Pulitzer Prize and went on to be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James. He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between ''émigré ''Americans, English people, and continental Europeans. Examples of such novels include '' The Portrait of a Lady'', '' The Ambassadors'', and '' The Wings of the Dove''. His later works were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uta Hagen
Uta Thyra Hagen (12 June 1919 – 14 January 2004) was a German-American actress and theatre practitioner. She originated the role of Martha in the 1962 Broadway premiere of '' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'' by Edward Albee, who called her "a profoundly truthful actress." Because Hagen was on the Hollywood blacklist, in part because of her association with Paul Robeson, her film opportunities dwindled and she focused her career on New York theatre. She later became a highly influential acting teacher at New York's Herbert Berghof Studio and authored best-selling acting texts, '' Respect for Acting'', with Haskel Frankel, and '' A Challenge for the Actor''. Her most substantial contributions to theatre pedagogy were a series of "object exercises" that built on the work of Konstantin Stanislavski and Yevgeny Vakhtangov. She was elected to the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1981. She twice won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play and received a Special Tony Award for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier (; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor and director who, along with his contemporaries Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, was one of a trio of male actors who dominated the British stage of the mid-20th century. He also worked in films throughout his career, playing more than fifty cinema roles. Late in his career, he had considerable success in television roles. His family had no theatrical connections, but Olivier's father, a clergyman, decided that his son should become an actor. After attending a drama school in London, Olivier learned his craft in a succession of acting jobs during the late 1920s. In 1930 he had his first important West End success in Noël Coward's ''Private Lives'', and he appeared in his first film. In 1935 he played in a celebrated production of ''Romeo and Juliet'' alongside Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft, and by the end of the decade he was an established star. In the 1940s, together with Richardson ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Auguste Chevalier (; 12 September 1888 – 1 January 1972) was a French singer, actor and entertainer. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including " Livin' In The Sunlight", "Valentine", " Louise", "Mimi", and "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" and for his films, including '' The Love Parade'', '' The Big Pond'', '' The Smiling Lieutenant'', '' One Hour with You'' and '' Love Me Tonight''. His trademark attire was a boater hat and tuxedo. Chevalier was born in Paris. He made his name as a star of musical comedy, appearing in public as a singer and dancer at an early age before working in menial jobs as a teenager. In 1909, he became the partner of the biggest female star in France at the time, Fréhel. Although their relationship was brief, she secured him his first major engagement, as a mimic and a singer in ''l'Alcazar'' in Marseille, for which he received critical acclaim by French theatre critics. In 1917, he discovered jazz and ragtime and went to Lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress in film, stage, and television. Her career as a Hollywood leading lady spanned over 60 years. She was known for her headstrong independence, spirited personality, and outspokenness, cultivating a screen persona that matched this public image, and regularly playing strong-willed, sophisticated women. Her work was in a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and earned her List of awards and nominations received by Katharine Hepburn, various accolades, including four Academy Awards for Academy Award for Best Actress, Best Actress—a record for any performer. In 1999, Hepburn was named the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars, greatest female star of Classical Hollywood cinema, classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute. Raised in Connecticut by wealthy, Progressive Era, progressive parents, Hepburn began to act while at Bryn Mawr College. Favorable reviews of her work on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, (; 14 April 1904 – 21 May 2000) was an English actor and theatre director whose career spanned eight decades. With Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, he was one of the trinity of actors who dominated the British stage for much of the 20th century. A member of the Terry family theatrical dynasty, he gained his first paid acting work as a junior member of his cousin Phyllis Neilson-Terry's company in 1922. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art he worked in repertory theatre and in the West End theatre, West End before establishing himself at the Old Vic as an exponent of William Shakespeare, Shakespeare in 1929–31. During the 1930s Gielgud was a stage star in the West End and on Broadway theatre, Broadway, appearing in new works and classics. He began a parallel career as a director, and set up his own company at the Sondheim Theatre, Queen's Theatre, London. He was regarded by many as the finest Prince Hamlet, Hamlet of his era, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilder (April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975) was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes — for the novel ''The Bridge of San Luis Rey'' and for the plays '' Our Town'' and '' The Skin of Our Teeth'' — and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel '' The Eighth Day''. Early years and family Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of Amos Parker Wilder, a newspaper editor and later a U.S. diplomat, and Isabella Thornton Niven. Wilder had four siblings as well as a twin who was stillborn. All of the surviving Wilder children spent part of their childhood in China when their father was stationed in Hong Kong and Shanghai as U.S. Consul General. Thornton's older brother, Amos Niven Wilder, became Hollis Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School. He was a noted poet and was instrumental in developing the field of theopoetics. Their sister Isabel Wilder was an accomplished writer. They had two more sisters, Charlotte Wil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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