“My mother says I began rhyming at seven,” Gwendolyn Brooks wrote in her autobiography. “Of course I would be a poet!” But it always bemused Brooks that she was better known for being the first African-American writer to win a Pulitzer Prize (in 1950) than for the poems themselves–except perhaps for the much- anthologized 1960 lyric “We Real Cool,” which ends: “We/Jazz June. We/Die soon.”
Nobody played matriarchs better than Nancy Marchand. As the widowed Los Angeles Tribune publisher on the late-’70s TV drama “Lou Grant,” Marchand captured four Emmy Awards in five seasons. Then, in 1998, she electrified HBO as Mafia mom Livia Soprano, the Machiavelli in the oxygen mask. No Emmys this time–just an instant niche in the pantheon of TV villainy.
The so-called Lion of Damascus took power in Syria in 1970, during a so-called bloodless coup. The Syrian strongman held on until his death through several attempts to overthrow him; in 1982 his security forces killed some 10,000 people during an uprising. Despite recent peace talks, he never succeeded in getting back the Golan Heights, which Syria lost to Israel during the 1967 war, when he was Defense minister.
Comic-book artist Gil Kane’s bursting, gestural reimaginings of classic superheroes, such as Captain Marvel, Green Lantern and Spider-Man, jump-started a moribund industry in the 1960s. His life in comics began at 16 with a job at “Archie” publisher MLJ and included stints at rival houses D.C. and Marvel. In 1990 his career peaked again with a comic-book adaptation of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle.
In the years before R-rated skin invaded the cineplex, the Austrian-born “World’s Most Beautiful Woman” was our topless goddess. Lamarr parlayed a short nude scene in the 1932 Czech film “Ecstasy” into a long career in America. But the actress was no brainless beauty: during World War II she invented a device that prevented the jamming of radio-controlled weapons.
He called himself a “cultural journalist”–choosing both words advisedly. As editor of NEWSWEEK’s arts coverage in the ’60s and ’70s, and theater and film critic from 1975, Jack Kroll investigated both high culture and pop culture with the same erudition, energy and enthusiasm. He could build an unanswerable case for the lasting importance of Harold Pinter, of Sharon Stone, of Radio City Music Hall–which his advocacy helped save from demolition–or of his getting more space for his latest story.
When she first saw Yitzhak Rabin, in 1943, 15-year-old Leah Schlossberg thought he looked like King David. And as Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote in NEWSWEEK this year, what mattered most to Leah Rabin was being “a soldier’s wife, a general’s wife, a prime minister’s wife,” who, even in the years after her husband’s assassination by a Jewish extremist in 1995, continued to believe in and speak out for his dream of “a secure Israel at peace with her neighbors.”
“U is for Una who slipped down a drain/V is for Victor squashed under a train.” Artist Edward Gorey’s eccentric imaginative world, Edmund Wilson once wrote, is both “poetic and poisoned.” In his delicate and pitiless illustrated books, scrawny children and hollow-eyed adults die horribly or simply wilt away in Victorian manses, and for some reason–our own dread seeking relief?– we find it all irresistibly funny.
Before she turned to television in 1953, actress Loretta Young lent her wholesome, serene presence to nearly 100 Hollywood movies, from silent films to talkies. Famous for her practice of fining actors who cursed on the set of her films, she refused to say the word “divorce” on screen–even though she was twice divorced herself. Consistency may not have been Young’s strong suit, but being a star came easy.
It was only fitting that Willie B., Zoo Atlanta’s famous lowland gorilla, should be named after a human (former Atlanta mayor William B. Hartsfield). He often seemed as human as the millions who came to see him over 39 years. To wit: the 400-pound primate was slapped in his first encounter with a female in 1989. He learned his lesson and produced five children, including his only son, Willie B. Jr.
“My heroines are always virgins,” Dame Barbara Cartland, queen of the romance novel, once said. “They never go to bed without a ring on their fingers.” Her chaste protagonists –723 of them–sprang to life during afternoon dictations to a furiously typing secretary. Often Cartland would complete two novels a month. In all, they’ve sold 1 billion copies.
“If you buy my lamp,” its nudist British inventor claimed, “you won’t need drugs.” Yeah, right. But if you owned a Lava lamp–Edward Craven Walker’s 1963 oil-and-water gizmo inspired by an egg timer–you still needed a tie-dyed parachute on the ceiling, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” on the hi-fi and a headband of beer-can tabs to go with it. In the 1990s, a new generation of teens made Walker’s bubbling brainchild hip again, as if to prove what he once said: “It grows, breaks up, falls down and then starts all over again.”
The silken-voiced Sir John Gielgud was both the last of England’s great classical actors and a pioneer of modern theater. While moviegoers knew him mostly as the foulmouthed butler in the 1981 comedy “Arthur,” his 1934 “Hamlet”–never filmed–was his defining achievement. And he never lost his edge. “There was nothing lyrical or old-fashioned about him,” Ralph Fiennes recalled. “He was so courageous, direct and ruthless.”
“Beloved” is an overused word. But with “Peanuts” cartoonist Schulz, it’s not only absolutely necessary but it applies to the whole America-in-a-snow-globe cast of his gently philosophical strip (which ran almost 50 years): Charlie Brown, Lucy, Snoopy, Linus, Franklin, Schroeder, Pig Pen, The Little Red-Haired Girl and the rest. “Peanuts” paraphernalia sold more than $1 billion worth annually. And you know what? Schulz deserved it.
If only we had listened. Karski was a clandestine representative of the Polish government-in-exile when he had himself smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto, and then into an actual Nazi concentration camp. He told both Anthony Eden and Franklin Roosevelt what was happening to the Jews of Europe, but could prod neither to decisive action. Karski’s revelatory book, “Story of a Secret State,” was published in 1944.
The popular image of Pierre Trudeau veered between JFK-ish swingin’ statesman and Jerry Brown-like flake, doing yoga and posing with a rose between his teeth. But as Canada’s Liberal prime minister from 1968 to 1984–with a brief hiatus as opposition leader–he quelled separatists in both Quebec and western Canada, helping forge a truly bicultural nation.
Long before those famous jowls dragged his face into the visage of an adorable sourpuss, Walter Matthau was a surprisingly versatile leading man, ranging with ease from hard-eyed villain in the Cary Grant classic “Charade” to seductive romantic alongside Glenda Jackson in “House Calls.” But in our mind’s eye, he’ll always be a curmudgeon. His dour, sardonic turns opposite Jack Lemmon–both early (“The Odd Couple”) and late (“Grumpy Old Men”)–play like comic master classes.
Patrolling the sidelines of a football field like a gray-suited Patton, Tom Landry was the commander in chief of America’s Team for 29 years. As head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, Landry won 270 games (third-most in NFL history), 13 division titles and two Super Bowls–all without ever disturbing his trademark fedora.
Not everybody thought the POW-camp sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes” was all that funny, and not everybody thought the fatuous, bumbling commandant Col. Klink–the character Klemperer played on it–would have indeed been the same “total bureaucrat… if he had worked for General Motors.” But that’s how the son of conductor Otto Klemperer (who fled Hitler in the 1930s) saw it. And from 1965 to ‘71, most of America was also willing to sacrifice political good taste to laughter.
Long, long before there was Ricky Martin and all that blonda Latin music, Tito Puente combined jazz, big bands and an Afro-Caribbean beat into what became known as “salsa” music. (Puente–dubbed “the Salsa King”–disliked the term.) He said he wanted to live long enough to have the first Latin band to play on the moon. Puente didn’t make the moon, but he’s up there now, playing timbales in the stars.
Nothing in socially conscious American art comes close to the stark, brightly colored paintings that make up Lawrence’s landmark series “The Migration of the Negro” (1941). The work chronicled the vast, between-the-wars northward movement of Southern blacks in search of a better life. Lawrence learned to paint at the Harlem Art Workshop and often walked miles to the Metropolitan Museum to look at Renaissance painting.
To correct her illness-ravaged legs Gwen Verdon spent much of her childhood in orthopedic boots–and boy did they work. The effervescent redhead danced to Broadway stardom in “Can-Can” and, as Lola, the Devil’s seductive sidekick, in 1955’s “Damn Yankees.” The latter role, her first choreographed by future husband Bob Fosse, won her the second of four Tony Awards.
In the 1976 presidential election, Gus Hall collected just 58,992 votes–his best showing in four ill-fated campaigns. But then, communism never was very popular in U.S. politics. A lifelong true believer, undeterred by the Soviet collapse of 1991 or his ever-dwindling constituency, Hall spent eight years in prison for his beliefs and 41 more as general secretary of the American Communist Party.
The leader of the country’s biggest and most powerful diocese (including most of New York City) was an unapologetic moral conservative: he disapproved of abortion, homosexuality and the ordination of women. But he labored mightily to avoid the stridency from the pulpit that often accompanied such a stance, and also maintained one of the church’s more liberal constants–care for immigrants and the poor.
While teaching law in Africa as a young man, Ruff contracted a virus–never identified–that forced him to work the rest of his life from a wheelchair. By 1997, however, he was White House counsel and went on to represent President Clinton in the impeachment hearings. Ruff conceded his client had committed deplorable deeds (many in concert with a youthful intern). But he contended, in his memorably thick voice, that immoral personal conduct wasn’t sufficient ground for tossing out a sitting commander in chief.
As a 24-year-old security guard at Washington’s Watergate building in 1972, Frank Wills found tape over a lock on a basement door and called the cops. Five intruders were arrested in the office of the Democratic National Committee–and, to make a very long story very short, President Nixon resigned two years later. In recent years Wills was unemployed; he died of a brain tumor at 52.
Before his career as a columnist and a TV pundit, Rowan was a pioneer. In the 1950s he was the only black reporter to cover the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott for a national paper; in the mid-’60s, as head of the U.S. Information Agency, he was the highest-ranking black in government. His independent-minded columns attacked the usual suspects–Reagan, J. Edgar Hoover–but also MLK, Jr., for his antiwar activities.
In 1990 British novelist O’Brian’s manly, salt-spray Aubrey-Maturin tales were still largely unknown in America. Easy to figure why: in an age of chocolate-popper’s trash like “Scruples,” who would want to read about early-1800s British naval warfare? Then Norton began putting out the books– “the finest historical novels ever written” said one critic–and found millions of readers ready to set sail.
“It’s only a thimbleful of a voice,” Julie London once admitted, “and I have to use it close to a microphone. But it is a kind of oversmoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate.” Her second husband, songwriter Bobby (“Route 66”) Troup, encouraged the sultry actress to take up singing, and she achieved mass intimacy in 1955, selling 3 million copies of her single, “Cry Me a River.”
It seems downright perverse that Guinness, who was a titan of the British stage, should be best remembered by many moviegoers for uttering such a hokey, faux-mystical line as “Use the force, Luke.” But, of course, it’s that voice–with its soul-shaking gravitas–that made it fly in the first place. In both pop sci-fi fare like “Star Wars” and in artful jewels like “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” Guinness’s effortless poise made a silver screen glow.
