National Geographic Nomination Group
View allAll Photos Tagged Nomination
wow thank you so much ..faints and shocked . xx I can't thank you enough for this nomination . I will cherish this forever . I looked at the other nominations and they are truly amazing . Thank you for even considering me Dreamart fashion xxx
Public vote here :
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdwfggCvdRrCqzu5fXMQPe6n...
The Val D'Orcia at Dawn of a new day CF004718
Cambo WD + Phase One IQ140
Lens : Schneider APO-Digitar 35mm f/5.6 XL
Exposition 0,6 sec; F11 ISO 50
Filter : Formatt Hitech Glass Fog 1/2 and Lee 03 Soft
Post production: Capture One 8 Pro & PS
Hello everyone,
Thank you so much for your visit and support ..
All Right Reserved. Pictures can not be used without explicit permission by the creator Fabrizio Massetti
28COM 14B.51 - Nominations of Cultural Properties to the World Heritage List (Val d'Orcia)
Val d'Orcia
The landscape of Val d’Orcia is part of the agricultural hinterland of Siena, redrawn and developed when it was integrated in the territory of the city-state in the 14th and 15th centuries to reflect an idealized model of good governance and to create an aesthetically pleasing picture. The landscape’s distinctive aesthetics, flat chalk plains out of which rise almost conical hills with fortified settlements on top, inspired many artists. Their images have come to exemplify the beauty of well-managed Renaissance agricultural landscapes. The inscription covers: an agrarian and pastoral landscape reflecting innovative land-management systems; towns and villages; farmhouses; and the Roman Via Francigena and its associated abbeys, inns, shrines, bridges, etc.
Justification for Inscription.
Criterion (iv): The Val d’Orcia is an exceptional reflection of the way the landscape was re-written in Renaissance times to reflect the ideals of good governance and to create an aesthetically pleasing pictures.
Criterion (vi): The landscape of the Val d’Orcia was celebrated by painters from the Siennese School, which flourished during the Renaissance. Images of the Val d’Orcia, and particularly depictions of landscapes where people are depicted as living in harmony with nature, have come to be seen as icons of the Renaissance and have profoundly influenced the development of landscape thinking.
Source: Advisory Body Evaluation
Edited book cover, Dying of Politeness, a memoir by Geena Davis.
Geena Davis is an American actor, advocate for gender equality, executive producer, and former model. She is the recipient of an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, in addition to nominations for a British Academy Film Award and a Primetime Emmy Award.
Sydney
2018 SAFAS AWARDS - Final Voting
The SL Academy of Fashion Arts and Sciences [SAFAS]©®
A Second Life professional honorary organization with open membership. Organization and staff positions are extended by our Board of Governors to distinguished contributors to the arts and sciences of SL fashion. A yearly awards program recognizes those who have advanced the fashion world of SL through their contributions.
After receiving thousands of individual nominations that span hundreds of categories, we have created this final form for you to vote for your favorites in the respective categories. The form below is provided for you to vote for who you feel has contributed to the world of SL and who should be recognized.
The final results of our winners will be announced LIVE at the 2018 SAFAS Awards in Second Life on Saturday, June 30, 2018.
Thank you for your vote and feel free to join our in-world group (free) in Second Life
[SL Academy of Fashion Arts&Science].
Please help us by voting for your favorites in each category. Voting from the TOP nominations will end on June 29, 2018 and the final results of our winners will be announced LIVE at the 2018 SAFAS Awards in Second Life on Saturday, June 30, 2018.
Who would you like to nominate for a 2018 SAFAS Awards?
Do you want to vote for me? Thank you !!!!
FINAL VOTING HERE: docs.google.com/forms/d/13k_t_VNPPz5X31dCIpJIaljqZ1f5iYJ_...
Blog LuceMia
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www.flickr.com/photos/lucemia/
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An Oscar nomination animated short film titled paperman really struck me. I have been in kind of a rut, and have been struggling to produce ideas; not much inspiration. I came across this film a couple days ago and it instantly made me press replay. From the subtle realistic gestures, to the score by Christophe Beck, it really took me back in my chair with my hands on my head. Inspiration was instantly conveyed to the right side of my brain and will reside. Thank you Disney.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rog8ou-ZepE
Ice bucket challenge nominated by cold frog and Lisa Outsider.
My next nomination is Chaos. Lucifer and Miles Cantelou
Pentax 67II, 105mm F2.4, FUJICOLOR PRO400, developed by FRAME*
Fubiz Awards 2012 Nomination!
"Haru and Mina" is nominated for photography award.
www.fubizawards.com/nominees/haru-and-mina/
Interview with Hideaki Hamada
Yes, I was going to be taking a little break from flickr but I've had a couple of pieces of lovely news over the last half a week. As you can probably guess from the above, I've been nominated for an award on the Hipstography website, for a portfolio of mine they published earlier last year. Some of you may remember that. Really chuffed to be included, especially amongst some really wonderful fellow photographers. Well, apparently once the nominations were chosen it is then a public vote. So, y'all should duck over there, take a gander at the fantastic nominations and vote for your faves! You can find the right page here .
Also, although many of you will have noticed, I was super pleased to get an honourable mention in the Mobile Photography Awards street category that was announced late last week, for this photo . Anyhoo, big thanks to all of you for your continued encouragement and company, I've learnt so much from keeping company with you all on this place. Appreciate it everyone!
NB: Although I did not win this category, the same shot of bathers at Bondi won the Hipstography monochrome photo of the year. Yay.
Spanish postcard, 1953. Photo: Procines S.A. Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946).
American actor Gregory Peck (1916-2003) was one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s. Peck received five nominations for Academy Award for Best Actor and won once – for his performance as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). He almost always played courageous, nobly heroic good guys who saw injustice and fought it. Among his best known films are Spellbound (1945), The Yearling (1946), Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Roman Holiday (1953), The Guns of Navarone (1961), and Cape Fear (1962).
Eldred Gregory Peck was born in 1916 in La Jolla, California (now in San Diego). His parents were Bernice Mary (Ayres) and Gregory Pearl Peck, a chemist, and druggist in San Diego. His parents divorced when he was five years old. An only child, he was sent to live with his grandmother. He never felt he had a stable childhood. His fondest memories are of his grandmother taking him to the cinema every week and of his dog, which followed him everywhere. Peck's father encouraged him to take up medicine. He studied pre-med at UC-Berkeley and, while there, got bitten by the acting bug and decided to change the focus of his studies. He enrolled in the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York and debuted on Broadway after graduation. His debut was in Emlyn Williams' play 'The Morning Star' (1942). By 1943, he was in Hollywood, where he debuted in the RKO film Days of Glory (Jacques Tourneur, 1944). Stardom came with his next film, The Keys of the Kingdom (John M. Stahl, 1944), for which he was nominated for an Oscar. Tony Fontana at IMDb: "Peck's screen presence displayed the qualities for which he became well known. He was tall, rugged and heroic, with a basic decency that transcended his roles." He appeared opposite Ingrid Bergman in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) as an amnesia victim accused of murder. In The Yearling (Clarence Brown, 1946), he was again nominated for an Oscar and won the Golden Globe. He was especially effective in Westerns and appeared in such varied fare as David O. Selznick's critically blasted Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946), the somewhat better received Yellow Sky (William A. Wellman, 1948), and the acclaimed The Gunfighter (Henry King, 1950). He was nominated again for the Academy Award for his roles in Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947), which dealt with anti-Semitism, and Twelve O'Clock High (Henry King, 1949), a story of high-level stress in an Air Force bomber unit in World War II. In 1947, Peck, along with Dorothy McGuire, David O'Selznick, and Mel Ferrer, founded the La Jolla Playhouse, located in his hometown, and produced many of the classics there. Due to film commitments, he could not return to Broadway but whet his appetite for live theatre on occasion at the Playhouse, keeping it firmly established with a strong, reputable name over the years.
With a string of hits to his credit, Gregory Peck made the decision to only work in films that interested him. He continued to appear as the heroic, larger-than-life figures in such films as Captain Horatio Hornblower (Raoul Walsh, 1951) with Virginia Mayo, and Moby Dick (John Huston, 1956) with Richard Basehart. He worked with Audrey Hepburn in her debut film, Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953). While filming The Bravados (Henry King, 1958), he decided to become a cowboy in real life, so he purchased a vast working ranch near Santa Barbara, California - already stocked with 600 head of prize cattle. In the early 1960s, he gave a powerful performance as Captain Keith Mallory in The Guns of Navarone (J. Lee Thompson, 1961) opposite David Niven and Anthony Quinn. The film was one of the biggest box-office hits of that year. Peck finally won the Oscar, after four nominations, for his performance as lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962). He also appeared in two darker films than he usually made, Cape Fear (J. Lee Thompson, 1962) opposite Robert Mitchum, and Captain Newman, M.D. (David Miller, 1963) with Tony Curtis, which dealt with the way people live. The financial failure of Cape Fear (1962) ended his company, Melville Productions. After making Arabesque (Stanley Donen, 1966) with Sophia Loren, Peck withdrew from acting for three years in order to concentrate on various humanitarian causes, including the American Cancer Society. In the early 1970s, he produced two films, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (Gordon Davidson, 1972) and The Dove (Charles Jarrott, 1974), when his film career stalled. He made a comeback playing, somewhat woodenly, Ambassador Robert Thorn in the horror film The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976) with Lee Remick. After that, he returned to the bigger-than-life roles he was best known for, such as MacArthur (Joseph Sargent, 1977) and the infamous Nazi war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele in the huge hit The Boys from Brazil (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1978) with Laurence Olivier and James Mason. In the 1980s, he moved into television with the miniseries The Blue and the Gray (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1982) in which he played Abraham Lincoln, and The Scarlet and the Black (Jerry London, 1983) with Christopher Plummer and John Gielgud. In 1991, he appeared in the remake of his 1962 film, playing a different role, in Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991). He was also cast as the progressive-thinking owner of a wire and cable business in Other People's Money (Norman Jewison, 1991), starring Danny DeVito. In 1967, Peck received the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He was also been awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom. Always politically progressive, he was active in such causes as anti-war protests, workers' rights, and civil rights. In 2003, Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch was named the greatest film hero of the past 100 years by the American Film Institute, only two weeks before his death. Atticus beat out Indiana Jones, who was placed second, and James Bond who came third. Gregory Peck died in 2003 in Los Angeles, California. He was 87. Peck was married twice. From 1942 till 1955, he was married to Greta Kukkonen. They had three children: Jonathan Peck (1944-1975), Stephen Peck (1946), and Carey Paul Peck (1949). His second wife was Veronique Passani, whom he met at the set of Roman Holliday. They married in 1955 and had two children: Tony Peck (1956) and Cecilia Peck (1958). The couple remained together till his death.
Sources: Tony Fontana (IMDb), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Pompeo congratulates Nechirvan Barzani on KRG presidential nomination
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo congratulated Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani on his nomination for the KRG presidency, according to a State Department readout published Wednesday night.
During a surprise visit to Erbil on Wednesday evening, Pompeo congratulated PM Barzani on his nomination for the presidency – a post which has been frozen since Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) president Masoud Barzani resigned in 2017 following the Kurdistan independence referendum.
According to a readout from the US State Department, Pompeo also emphasized “strong US support for continued dialogue between the KRG and the central government in Baghdad.”
Following an unscheduled stop in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Wednesday morning, Pompeo travelled on to Erbil, where he also met with Masoud Barzani and Kurdistan Region Security Council Chancellor Masrour Barzani – who has been nominated for the office of prime minister.
If approved, the two Barzani cousins will hold both the top seats of government. They will only be successful if the KDP gets its way in government formation talks with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Change Movement (Gorran) – their nearest rivals.
PM Barzani described his meeting with Pompeo as “productive”.
They “discussed the recent territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria” while underscoring “the value of our strategic relationship with Iraq and our longstanding friendship with the IKR [Iraqi Kurdistan Region], which is vital for ensuring mutual security and regional stability.”
Pompeo is touring several Middle Eastern states to drum up support for America’s anti-Iran campaign and to reassure allies in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s bombshell decision to withdraw troops from northern Syria
Aaliyah Dana Haughton - January 16, 1979 – August 25,
2001)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6MEBi4ejTs
Aaliyah Dana Haughton was a multi-platinum recording artist, fashion icon, philanthropist,
and burgeoning actress. She left behind a body of work that made an undeniable impact on R&B
music and remains a testament to her many talents. Her debut album in 1994, “Age Ain’t
Nothing But a Number,” was a hit due to her debut single “Back and Forth.” However, it was
her collaboration with a then unknown Missy Elliott and Timbaland for the album “One in a A
Million” that blew her career up.
Before her death, she also had an up-and-coming acting career in films like “Romeo Must Die”
and a role in the “Matrix” sequel. Aaliyah once told VIBE, “Of course, I would love to get
into acting and I am talking to a few producers now. That would be really exciting to be a
jack of all trades and do music, movies and TV. I love drama and I think I could be a good
dramatic actress. I have to ‘act out’ emotions in my videos a lot and I try to seem as
realistic as possible.”
She continued, “I also would like to make bigger impact on the world by giving back, and
using my celebrity to raise money for people who need it the most. What good is having money
and being famous if you can’t share it with others less fortunate than yourself? I always
felt that you should treat others how you yourself want to be treated.”
Sadly, we lost the singer in a plane crash on August 25, 2001 in the Bahamas. She was only
22 years old.
Biography
Aaliyah Dana Haughton - January 16, 1979 – August 25, 2001) was an American singer, actress,
and model. Born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Detroit, Michigan, she first gained
recognition at the age of 10, when she appeared on the television show Star Search and
performed in concert alongside Gladys Knight. At the age of 12, Aaliyah signed with Jive
Records and her uncle Barry Hankerson's Blackground Records. Hankerson introduced her to R.
Kelly, who became her mentor, as well as lead songwriter and producer of her debut album,
Age Ain't Nothing but a Number. The album sold 3 million copies in the United States and was
certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). After
facing allegations of an illegal marriage with Kelly, Aaliyah ended her contract with Jive
and signed with Atlantic Records.
Aaliyah worked with record producers Timbaland and Missy Elliott for her second album, One
in a Million, which sold 3 million copies in the United States and more than 8 million
copies worldwide. In 2000, Aaliyah appeared in her first film, Romeo Must Die. She
contributed to the film's soundtrack, which spawned the single "Try Again". The song topped
the Billboard Hot 100 solely on airplay, making Aaliyah the first artist in Billboard
history to achieve this goal. "Try Again" also earned Aaliyah a Grammy Award nomination for
Best Female R&B Vocalist. After completing Romeo Must Die, Aaliyah filmed her role in Queen
of the Damned, and released her self-titled third and final studio album in 2001.
On August 25, 2001, Aaliyah and eight others were killed in a plane crash in the Bahamas
after filming the music video for the single "Rock the Boat". The pilot, Luis Morales III,
was unlicensed at the time of the accident and toxicology tests revealed that he had traces
of cocaine and alcohol in his system. Aaliyah's family later filed a wrongful death lawsuit
against Blackhawk International Airways, which was settled out of court. Aaliyah's music
continued to achieve commercial success with several posthumous releases, and has sold an
estimated 24 to 32 million albums worldwide. She has been credited for helping redefine
contemporary R&B, pop and hip hop,[1] earning her the nicknames the "Princess of R&B" and
"Queen of Urban Pop". Billboard lists her as the tenth most successful female R&B artist of
the past 25 years, and the 27th most successful in history.
Early life
Aaliyah Dana Haughton was born on January 16, 1979, in Brooklyn, New York,[2] and was the
younger child of Diane and Michael "Miguel" Haughton (1951–2012).[3] She was of African-
American descent, and had Native American (Oneida) heritage from a grandmother.[3][4][5] Her
name has been described as a female version of the Arabic "Ali", but the original Jewish
name "Aliya (Hebrew: אליה)" is derived from the Hebrew word "aliyah (Hebrew: עלייה)", meaning
"highest, most exalted one, the best."[6][7] The singer was highly fond of her Semitic name,
calling it "beautiful" and asserting she was "very proud of it" and strove to live up to her
name every day.[6] Aaliyah's mother enrolled Aaliyah in voice lessons at an early age.[2]
She started performing at weddings, church choir and charity events.[8] When Aaliyah was
five years old, her family moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she was reared along with her
older brother, Rashad.[9][10] She attended a Catholic school, Gesu Elementary, where in
first grade she was cast in the stage play Annie, which inspired her to become an
entertainer.[11] In Detroit, her father began working in the warehouse business, one of his
brother-in-law Barry Hankerson's widening interests. Her mother stayed home and raised
Aaliyah and her brother.[12]
Throughout Aaliyah's life, she had a good relationship with Rashad, who recalled Aaliyah
having a beautiful voice as a child.[11] Aaliyah's family was very close due to the
struggles of her grandparents and when they moved to Detroit, the Hankersons were ready to
take them in if necessary. These same bonds led to ties in the music industry, under the
Blackground Records label.[6]
Aaliyah's mother was a vocalist, and her uncle, Barry Hankerson, was an entertainment lawyer
who had been married to Gladys Knight.[10] As a child, Aaliyah traveled with Knight and
worked with an agent in New York to audition for commercials and television programs,
including Family Matters; she went on to appear on Star Search at the age of ten.[2] Aaliyah
chose to begin auditioning. Her mother made the decision to drop her surname.[12][13] She
auditioned for several record labels and at age 11 appeared in concerts alongside Knight.
[10][14] She had several pet animals during her childhood, including ducks, snakes and
iguanas. Her cousin Jomo had a pet alligator, which Aaliyah felt was too much, remarking,
"that was something I wasn't going to stroke."[6]
Her grandmother died in 1991. Years after her death, Aaliyah said her grandmother supported
everyone in the family and always wanted to hear her sing, as well as admitting that she
"spoiled" her and her brother Rashad. She also enjoyed Aaliyah's singing and would have
Aaliyah to sing for her. Aaliyah said she thought of her grandmother whenever she fell into
depression.[15] Aaliyah's hands reminded her of her aunt, who died when she was very young
and whom Aaliyah remembered as an "amazingly beautiful woman".[16]
Education
When she was growing up, Aaliyah attended Detroit schools and believed she was well-liked,
but got teased for her short stature. She recalled coming into her own prior to age 15 and
grew to love her height. Her mother would tell her to be happy that she was small and
compliment her. Other children disliked Aaliyah, but she did not stay focused on them. "You
always have to deal with people who are jealous, but there were so few it didn't even
matter. The majority of kids supported me, which was wonderful. When it comes to dealing
with negative people, I just let it in one ear and out the other. Those people were
invisible to me." Even in her adult life, she considered herself small. She had "learned to
accept and love" herself and added: "... the most important thing is to think highly of
yourself because if you don't, no one else will".[6]
During her audition for acceptance to the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing
Arts, Aaliyah sung the song "Ave Maria" in its entirety in the Italian language.[17]
Aaliyah, who maintained a perfect 4.0 grade point average when graduating from high school,
felt education was important. She saw fit to keep her grades up despite the pressures and
time constraints brought on her during the early parts of her career. She labeled herself as
a perfectionist and recalled always being a good student. Aaliyah reflected: "I always
wanted to maintain that, even in high school when I first started to travel. I wanted to
keep that 4.0. Being in the industry, you know, I don't want kids to think, 'I can just sing
and forget about school.' I think it's very important to have an education, and even more
important to have something to fall back on." She did this in her own life, as she planned
to "fall back on" another part of the entertainment industry. She believed that she could
teach music history or open her own school to teach that or drama if she did not make a
living as a recording artist because, as she reasoned, "when you pick a career it has to be
something you love".[6]
Career
1991–1995: Age Ain't Nothing but a Number
R. Kelly was introduced to Aaliyah and became her mentor, as well as lead songwriter and
producer on her debut album.
After Hankerson signed a distribution deal with Jive Records, he signed Aaliyah to his
Blackground Records label at the age of 12.[18][19] Hankerson later introduced her to
recording artist and producer R. Kelly,[14] who became Aaliyah's mentor, as well as lead
songwriter and producer of her first album, which was recorded when she was 14.[2][19][20]
Aaliyah's debut album, Age Ain't Nothing but a Number, was released under her mononym
"Aaliyah", by Jive and Blackground Records on May 24, 1994; the album debut at number 24 on
the Billboard 200 chart, selling 74,000 copies in its first week.[21][22] It ultimately
peaked at number 18 on the Billboard 200 and sold over three million copies in the United
States, where it was certified two times Platinum by the RIAA.[22][23][24] In Canada, the
album sold over 50,000 copies and was certified gold by the CRIA.[25] Aaliyah's debut
single, "Back & Forth", topped the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart for three weeks and
was certified Gold by the RIAA.[24][26] The second single, a cover of The Isley Brothers'
"At Your Best (You Are Love)", peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100 and was also
certified Gold by the RIAA.[24][26] The title track, "Age Ain't Nothing but a Number",
peaked at number 75 on the Hot 100.[26] Additionally, she released "The Thing I Like" as
part of the soundtrack to the 1994 film A Low Down Dirty Shame.[27]
Age Ain't Nothing But a Number received generally favorable reviews from music critics. Some
writers noted that Aaliyah's "silky vocals" and "sultry voice" blended with Kelly's new jack
swing helped define R&B in the 1990s.[28][29] Her sound was also compared to that of female
quartet En Vogue.[28][30] Christopher John Farley of Time magazine described the album as a
"beautifully restrained work", noting that Aaliyah's "girlish, breathy vocals rode calmly on
R. Kelly's rough beats".[31] Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic felt that the album had its
"share of filler", but described the singles as "slyly seductive".[2] He also claimed that
the songs on the album were "frequently better" than that of Kelly's second studio album, 12
Play.[2] The single "At Your Best (You Are Love)" was criticized by Billboard for being out
of place on the album and for its length.[32]
1996–1999: One in a Million
"If Your Girl Only Knew" (1996)
Menu
0:00
The first single released from her second studio album, "If Your Girl Only Knew" was
described as a sassy, organ-infused song.[33] Aaliyah was noted for having "smoother, more
seductive, and stronger" singing.[34]
Problems playing this file? See media help.
In 1996, Aaliyah left Jive Records and signed with Atlantic Records.[14] She worked with
record producers Timbaland and Missy Elliott, who contributed to her second studio album,
One in a Million.[10] Missy Elliott recalled Timbaland and herself being nervous to work
with Aaliyah, since Aaliyah had already released her successful début album while Missy
Elliott and Timbaland were just starting out. Missy Elliott also feared she would be a diva,
but reflected that Aaliyah "came in and was so warming; she made us immediately feel like
family."[35] The album yielded the single "If Your Girl Only Knew", which topped the
Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs for two weeks.[26] It also generated the singles "Hot Like
Fire" and "4 Page Letter". The following year, Aaliyah was featured on Timbaland & Magoo's
debut single, "Up Jumps da Boogie".[36] One in a Million peaked at number 18 on the
Billboard 200,[23] selling 3 million copies in the United States and over eight million
copies worldwide.[37][38] The album was certified double platinum by the RIAA on June 16,
1997, denoting shipments of two million copies.[24] The month prior to One in a Millions
release, on May 5, 1997, music publisher Windswept Pacific filed a lawsuit in U.S. District
Court against Aaliyah claiming she had illegally copied Bobby Caldwell's "What You Won't Do
for Love" for the single "Age Ain't Nothing but a Number".[39]
Aaliyah attended the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts, where she majored
in drama and graduated in 1997 with a 4.0 GPA.[14][40][41] Aaliyah began her acting career
that same year; she played herself in the police drama television series New York
Undercover.[42] During this time, Aaliyah participated in the Children's Benefit Concert, a
charity concert that took place at the Beacon Theatre in New York.[43] Aaliyah also became
the spokesperson for Tommy Hilfiger Corporation.[44] During Aaliyah's campaign for Tommy
Hilfiger the company had sold all 2,400 of the red, white and blue baggy jeans emblazoned
with the Hilfiger name that Aaliyah wore in their 1997 advertisements and they were
constantly restocking those jeans.[45] In 1997 Aaliyah performed the Christmas carol What
Child Is This at the annual holiday special Christmas in Washington.[46] She contributed on
the soundtrack album for the Fox Animation Studios animated feature Anastasia, performing a
cover version of "Journey to the Past" which earned songwriters Lynn Ahrens and Stephen
Flaherty a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.[27][38][47] Aaliyah
performed the song at the 1998 Academy Awards ceremony and became the youngest singer to
perform at the event.[48][49] The song "Are You That Somebody?" was featured on the Dr.
Dolittle soundtrack, which earned Aaliyah her first Grammy Award nomination.[50] The song
peaked at number 21 on the Hot 100.[51]
2000: Romeo Must Die
In 1999, Aaliyah landed her first film role in Romeo Must Die, released March 22, 2000.
Aaliyah starred opposite martial artist Jet Li, playing a couple who fall in love amid their
warring families. It grossed US$18.6 million in its first weekend, ranking number two at the
box office.[52] Aaliyah purposely stayed away from reviews of the film to "make it easier
on" herself, but she heard "that people were able to get into me, which is what I
wanted."[53] In contrast, some critics felt there was no chemistry between her and Jet Li,
as well as viewing the film was too simplistic.[54] This was echoed by Elvis Mitchell of The
New York Times, who wrote that while Aaliyah was "a natural" and the film was conceived as a
spotlight for both her and Li, "they have so little chemistry together you'd think they're
putting out a fire instead of shooting off sparks.[55] Her role was well received by Glen
Oliver by IGN who liked that she did not portray her character "as a victimized female" but
instead "as a strong female who does not come across as an over-the-top Women's Right
Advocate."[56]
Aaliyah in 2000
In addition to acting, Aaliyah served as an executive producer of the film's soundtrack,
where she contributed four songs.[57] "Try Again" was released as a single from the
soundtrack; the song topped the Billboard Hot 100, making Aaliyah the first artist to top
the chart based solely on airplay; this led the song to be released in a 12" vinyl and 7"
single.[26][58] The music video won the Best Female Video and Best Video from a Film awards
at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards.[59] It also earned her a Grammy Award nomination for
Best Female R&B Vocalist.[60] The soundtrack went on to sell 1.5 million copies in the
United States.[61]
2001: Aaliyah
After completing Romeo Must Die, Aaliyah began to work on her second film, Queen of the
Damned. She played the role of an ancient vampire, Queen Akasha, which she described as a
"manipulative, crazy, sexual being".[19] Filming both Romeo Must Die and Queen of the Damned
delayed the release of the album. Aaliyah had not intended for her albums to have such a gap
between them. "I wanted to take a break after One in a Million to just relax, think about
how I wanted to approach the next album. Then, when I was ready to start back up, "Romeo"
happened, and so I had to take another break and do that film and then do the soundtrack,
then promote it. The break turned into a longer break than I anticipated."[62] Aaliyah
enjoyed balancing her singing and acting careers. Though she called music a "first" for her,
she also had been acting since she was young and had wanted to begin acting "at some point
in my career," but "wanted it to be the right time and the right vehicle" and felt Romeo
Must Die "was it".[61] Connie Johnson of the Los Angeles Times argued that Aaliyah having to
focus on her film career may have caused her to not give the album "the attention it
merited."[63] Collaborator Timbaland concurred, stating that he was briefly in Australia to
work on the album while Aaliyah was filming and did not feel the same production had gone
into Aaliyah as One in a Million had. He also said Virgin Records had rushed the album and
Aaliyah had specifically requested Missy Elliott and Timbaland work on Aaliyah with her.[64]
During the recording stages for the album, Aaliyah's publicist disclosed that the album's
release date was most likely in October 2000.[65] Ultimately she finished recording the
album in March 2001; after a year of recording tracks that began in March of the previous
year.[66] Aaliyah was released five years after One in a Million on July 17, 2001,[2] and it
debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 187,000 copies in its first week.[67]
The first single from the album, "We Need a Resolution", peaked at number 59 on the
Billboard Hot 100.[26] The week after Aaliyah's death, her third and self-titled studio
album, rose from number 19 to number one on the Billboard 200.[68] "Rock the Boat" was
released as a posthumous single. The music video premiered on BET's Access Granted; it
became the most viewed and highest rated episode in the history of the show.[69] The song
peaked at number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number two on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop
Songs chart.[70] It was also included on the Now That's What I Call Music! 8 compilation
series; a portion of the album's profits was donated to the Aaliyah Memorial Fund.[71]
Promotional posters for Aaliyah that had been put up in major cities such as New York and
Los Angeles became makeshift memorials for grieving fans.[72]
"More than a Woman" and "I Care 4 U" were released as posthumous singles and peaked within
the top 25 of the Billboard Hot 100.[70] The album was certified double Platinum by the RIAA
and sold 2.6 million copies in the United States.[24][73] "More than a Woman" reached number
one on the UK singles chart making Aaliyah the first female deceased artist to reach number
one on the UK singles chart.[74][75] "More than a Woman" was replaced by George Harrison's
"My Sweet Lord" which is the only time in the UK singles chart's history where a dead artist
has replaced another dead artist at number one.[76] In July 2001, she allowed MTV's show
Diary behind-the-scenes access to her life and stated "I am truly blessed to wake up every
morning to do something that I love; there is nothing better than that." She continued,
"Everything is worth it – the hard work, the times when you're tired, the times when you are
a bit sad. In the end, it's all worth it because it really makes me happy. I wouldn't trade
it for anything else in the world. I've got good friends, a beautiful family and I've got a
career. I thank God for his blessings every single chance I get."[77]
Aaliyah was signed to appear in several future films, including Honey,[78] a romantic film
titled Some Kind of Blue,[79] and a Whitney Houston-produced remake of the 1976 film
Sparkle.[4] Whitney Houston recalled Aaliyah being "so enthusiastic" about the film and
wanting to appear in the film "so badly". Houston also voiced her belief that Aaliyah was
more than qualified for the role and the film was shelved after she died, since Aaliyah had
"gone to a better place".[80] Studio officials of Warner Brothers stated that Aaliyah and
her mother had both read the script for Sparkle. According to them, Aaliyah was passionate
about playing the lead role of a young singer in a girl group.[81] The film was released in
2012, eleven years after Aaliyah's death. Before her death Aaliyah was cast in the sequels
of The Matrix as the character Zee.[14][82] She had filmed part of her role in The Matrix
Reloaded and was scheduled to film and reprise her role in The Matrix Revolutions as Zee.
[36] Aaliyah told Access Hollywood that she was "beyond happy" to have landed the role.[83]
The role was subsequently recast to Nona Gaye.[82] Aaliyah's scenes were included in the
tribute section of the Matrix Ultimate Collection series.[84]
In November 2001, Ronald Isley stated that Aaliyah and the Isley Brothers had discussed a
collaboration prior to her death. She had previously covered the Isley Brothers' single "At
Your Best (You Are Love)".[85] Prior to her death, she expressed the possibility of
recording songs for the Queen of The Damned soundtrack and welcomed the possibility of
collaborating with Jonathan Davis.[66] By 2001, Aaliyah had enjoyed her now seven-year
career and felt a sense of accomplishment. "This is what I always wanted," she said of her
career in Vibe magazine. "I breathe to perform, to entertain, I can't imagine myself doing
anything else. I'm just a really happy girl right now. I honestly love every aspect of this
business. I really do. I feel very fulfilled and complete."[54]
Artistry
Voice and style
"Are You That Somebody?" (1998)
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0:00
Timbaland's stuttering, idiosyncratic productions challenged Aaliyah to reveal her artistic
personality more than she had on R. Kelly's smoother musical settings.[30]
Problems playing this file? See media help.
Aaliyah had the vocal range of a soprano.[14] With the release of her debut album "Age Ain't
Nothing But a Number", writer Dimitri Ehrlich of Entertainment Weekly compared her style and
sound to R&B group En Vogue.[86] Ehrlich also expressed that Aaliyah's "silky vocals are
more agile than those of self-proclaimed queen of hip-hop soul Mary J. Blige."[86] In her
review for Aaliyah's second studio album One in a Million Vibe magazine, music critic Dream
Hampton said that Aaliyah's "deliciously feline" voice has the same "pop appeal" as Janet
Jackson's.[87] Aaliyah described her sound as "street but sweet", which featured her
"gentle" vocals over a "hard" beat.[88] Though Aaliyah did not write any of her own
material,[14] her lyrics were described as in-depth.[89][90] She incorporated R&B, pop and
hip hop into her music.[10][91][92][93][94][95][96] Her songs were often uptempo and at the
same time often dark, revolving around "matters of the heart".[97] After her R. Kelly-
produced debut album, Aaliyah worked with Timbaland and Missy Elliott, whose productions
were more electronic.[98] Sasha Frere-Jones of The Wire finds Aaliyah's "Are You That
Somebody?" to be Timbaland's "masterpiece" and exemplary of his production's start-stop
rhythms, with "big half-second pauses between beats and voices".[99] Keith Harris of Rolling
Stone cites "Are You That Somebody?" as "one of '90s R&B's most astounding moments".[30]
Aaliyah's songs have been said to have "crisp production" and "staccato arrangements" that
"extend genre boundaries" while containing "old-school" soul music.[100] Kelefah Sanneh of
The New York Times called Aaliyah "a digital diva who wove a spell with ones and zeroes",
and writes that her songs comprised "simple vocal riffs, repeated and refracted to echo the
manipulated loops that create digital rhythm", as Timbaland's "computer-programmed beats
fitted perfectly with her cool, breathy voice to create a new kind of electronic
music."[101] When she experimented with other genres on Aaliyah, such as Latin pop and heavy
metal, Entertainment Weekly's Craig Seymour panned the attempt.[97] While Analyzing her
eponymous album British publication NME (New Musical Express) felt that Aaliyah's radical
third album was intended to consolidate her position as U.S.R&B's most experimental artist.
[102] As her albums progressed, writers felt that Aaliyah matured, calling her progress a
"declaration of strength and independence".[90][103] ABC News noted that Aaliyah's music was
evolving from the punchy pop influenced Hip hop and R&B to a more mature, introspective
sound on her third album.[104] Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described her eponymous
album, Aaliyah, as "a statement of maturity and a stunning artistic leap forward" and called
it one of the strongest urban soul records of its time.[90] She portrayed "unfamiliar
sounds, styles and emotions", but managed to please critics with the contemporary sound it
contained.[90] Ernest Hardy of Rolling Stone felt that Aaliyah reflected a stronger
technique, where she gave her best vocal performance.[100] Prior to her death, Aaliyah
expressed a desire to learn about the burgeoning UK garage scene she had heard about at the
time.[98]
Influences
As an artist, Aaliyah often voiced that she was inspired by a number of performers. These
include Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Sade, En Vogue, Nine Inch Nails, Korn, Prince,
Naughty by Nature, Johnny Mathis, Janet Jackson[105] and Barbra Streisand.[106] Aaliyah
expressed that Michael Jackson's Thriller was her "favorite album" and that "nothing will
ever top Thriller."[105] She stated that she admired Sade because "she stays true to her
style no matter what ... she's an amazing artist, an amazing performer ... and I absolutely
love her."[105] Aaliyah expressed she had always desired to work with Janet Jackson, whom
she had drawn frequent comparison to over the course of her career, stating "I admire her a
great deal. She's a total performer ... I'd love to do a duet with Janet Jackson."[105]
[107][108][109] Jackson reciprocated Aaliyah's affections, commenting "I've loved her from
the beginning because she always comes out and does something different, musically." Jackson
also stated she would have enjoyed collaborating with Aaliyah.[105]
Image
Aaliyah focused on her public image throughout her career. She often wore baggy clothes and
sunglasses, stating that she wanted to be herself.[110] She described her image as being
"important ... to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack".[111] She often wore
black clothing, starting a trend for similar fashion among women in United States and
Japan.[14][112] Aaliyah's fashionable style has been credited for being an influence on new
fashion trends called "Health Goth"[113][114] and "Ghetto Goth" also known as GHE20 GOTH1K
[115][116] Aaliyah participated in fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger's All America Tour and
was featured in Tommy Jean ads, which depicted her in boxer shorts, baggy jeans and a tube
top. Hilfiger's brother, Andy, called it "a whole new look" that was "classy but sexy".[112]
Carson Daly A former VJ on MTV's Total Request Live commented on Aaliyah's style by saying
that she was "cutting edge" ,"always one step ahead of the curve" and that "the TRL audience
looks to her to figure out what's hot and what's new".[117]
When she changed her hairstyle, Aaliyah took her mother's advice and covered her left eye,
much like Veronica Lake.[118] The look has become known as her signature and been referred
to as fusion of "unnerving emotional honesty" and "a sense of mystique".[119] In 1998, she
hired a personal trainer to keep in shape, and exercised five days a week and ate diet
foods.[120] Aaliyah was praised for her "clean-cut image" and "moral values".[121] Robert
Christgau of The Village Voice wrote of Aaliyah's artistry and image, "she was lithe and
dulcet in a way that signified neither jailbait nor hottie—an ingenue whose selling point
was sincerity, not innocence and the obverse it implies."[122]
Aaliyah was viewed by others as a role model. Emil Wilbekin, described by CNN as "a friend
of Aaliyah's" and follower of her career, explained: "Aaliyah is an excellent role model,
because she started her career in the public eye at age 15 with a gold album entitled Age
Ain't Nothing but a Number. And then her second album, One in a Million went double
platinum. She had the leading role in Romeo Must Die, which was a box office success. She's
won numerous awards, several MTV music video awards, and aside from her professional
successes, many of her lyrics are very inspirational and uplifting. She also carried herself
in a very professional manner. She was well spoken. She was beautiful, but she didn't use
her beauty to sell her music. She used her talent. Many young hip-hop fans greatly admire
her."[123]
She also was seen by others as a sex symbol. Aaliyah did not have a problem with being
considered one. "I know that people think I'm sexy and I am looked at as that, and it is
cool with me," she stated. "It's wonderful to have sex appeal. If you embrace it, it can be
a very beautiful thing. I am totally cool with that. Definitely. I see myself as sexy. If
you are comfortable with it, it can be very classy and it can be very appealing."[124] The
single "We Need a Resolution" was argued to have transformed "the once tomboy into a sexy
grown woman".[125] Aaliyah mentioned that her mother, during her childhood, would take
pictures of her and notice a sex appeal. She reinforced her mother's belief by saying that
she did feel "sexy for sure" and that she embraced it and was comfortable with this view of
her.[54]
Personal life
In her spare time, she was mostly a homebody, which dated back to her younger years, but on
occasion went out and played laser tag. She reasoned this was due to her liking "the simple
things in life".[54] Despite having a prosperous career that allowed her to purchase the
vehicle she wanted, Aaliyah revealed during her final interview on August 21, 2001 on 106 &
Park that she had never owned a car because she lived in New York City and could hire a car
or driver on a regular basis.[126]
Family
Aaliyah's family played a major role in the course of her career.[54] Aaliyah's father
Michael Haughton served as her personal manager. Her mother assisted her in her career while
brother Rashad Haughton and cousin Jomo Hankerson worked with her consistently.[127] Her
father's illness ended his co-management of Aaliyah with her mother Diane Haughton. She ran
all of her decisions by Rashad.[54]
Aaliyah was known to have usually been accompanied by members of her family and the "Rock
the Boat" filming was credited by Rashad Haughton as being the first and only time her
family was not present. In October 2001, Rashad stated: "It really boggles everyone [that]
from Day One, every single video she ever shot there's always been myself or my mother or my
father there. The circumstances surrounding this last video were really strange because my
mother had eye surgery and couldn't fly. That really bothered her because she always
traveled. My dad had to take care of my mom at that time. And I went to Australia to visit
some friends. We really couldn't understand why we weren't there. You ask yourself maybe we
could have stopped it. But you can't really answer the question. There's always gonna be
that question of why."[128] Her friend Kidada Jones said in the last year of her life her
parents had given her more freedom and she had talked about wanting a family. "She wanted to
have a family, and we talked about how we couldn't wait to kick back with our babies."[129]
Gladys Knight, who had been married to Aaliyah's uncle Barry Hankerson, was essential to the
start of Aaliyah's career as she gave her many of her earlier performances. One of their
last conversations concerned Aaliyah having difficulty with "another young artist" that she
was trying to work with. Knight felt the argument was "petty" and insisted that she remain
being who she was in spite of the conflict.[130]
Illegal marriage
With the release of Age Ain't Nothing but a Number, rumors circulated of a relationship
between Aaliyah and R. Kelly,[14][131] including the allegation that they had secretly
married without her parents' knowledge,[132][133][134][135] Vibe later revealed a marriage
certificate that listed the couple married on August 31, 1994, in Sheraton Gateway Suites in
Rosemont, Illinois.[14][133] Aaliyah, who was 15 at the time, was listed as 18 on the
certificate; the illegal marriage was annulled in February 1995 by her parents.[20][133]
[136] The pair continued to deny marriage allegations, stating that neither was married.
[131]
Aaliyah reportedly developed a friendship with Kelly during the recording of her debut
album. As she recalled to Vibe magazine in 1994, she and Kelly would "go watch a movie" and
"go eat" when she got tired and would then "come back and work". She described the
relationship between her and Kelly as being "rather close."[137] In 2016, Kelly said that he
was as in love with Aaliyah as he was with "anybody else."[138] In December 1994, Aaliyah
told the Sun-Times that whenever she was asked about being married to Kelly, she urged them
not to believe "all that mess" and that she and Kelly were "close" and "people took it the
wrong way."[139] In his 2011 book The Man Behind the Man: Looking From the Inside Out,
Demetrius Smith Sr., a former member of Kelly's entourage, wrote that Kelly told him "in a
voice that sounded as if he wanted to burst into tears" that he thought Aaliyah was
pregnant.[140]
Jamie Foster Brown in the 1994 issue of Sister 2 Sister wrote that "R. Kelly told me that he
and Aaliyah got together and it was just magic." Brown also reported hearing about a
relationship between them. "I've been hearing about Robert and Aaliyah for a while—that she
was pregnant. Or that she was coming and going in and out of his house. People would see her
walking his dog, 12 Play, with her basketball cap and sunglasses on. Every time I asked the
label, they said it was platonic. But I kept hearing complaints from people about her being
in the studio with all those men." Brown later added "at 15, you have all those hormones and
no brains attached to them."[141]
The 2019 documentary Surviving R. Kelly revealed new details about their relationship and
marriage. Jovante Cunningham, a former backup dancer, claimed to have witnessed Kelly having
sex with Aaliyah on his tour bus[142][143] while Demetrius Smith again recounted the time
Kelly feared that he had impregnated her.[142] Smith also described how he helped Aaliyah
forge the necessary documents to show she was 18 and that the wedding was short and
unceremonious, as neither was dressed up and Aaliyah looked "worried and scared" the whole
time.[142] Smith states that he is "not proud" of his role in facilitating their illegal
marriage.[142]
Aaliyah admitted in court documents that she had lied about her age. In May 1997, she filed
suit in Cook County seeking to have all records of the marriage expunged because she was not
old enough under state law to get married without her parents' consent. It was reported that
she cut off all professional and personal ties with Kelly after the marriage was annulled
and ceased having contact with him.[144] In 2014, Jomo Hankerson stated that Aaliyah "got
villainized" over her relationship with Kelly and the scandal over the marriage made it
difficult to find producers for her second album. "We were coming off of a multi-platinum
debut album and except for a couple of relationships with Jermaine Dupri and Puffy, it was
hard for us to get producers on the album." Hankerson also expressed confusion over why
"they were upset" with Aaliyah given her age at the time.[145]
Aaliyah was known to avoid answering questions regarding Kelly following the professional
split. During an interview with Christopher John Farley, she was asked if she was still in
contact with him and if she would ever work with him again. Farley said Aaliyah responded
with a "firm, frosty 'no'" to both of the questions.[146] Vibe magazine said Aaliyah changed
the subject anytime "you bring up the marriage with her".[147] A spokeswoman for Aaliyah
said in 2000 that when "R. Kelly comes up, she doesn't even speak his name, and nobody's
allowed to ask about it at all".[148] Kelly later commented that Aaliyah had opportunities
to address the pair's relationship after they separated professionally but chose not to.
[149] In 2019, Damon Dash revealed to Hip Hop Motivation that Aaliyah didn't even speak of
her relationship with Kelly in private; she tried multiple times to discuss it with him, but
was only able to find the courage to say that Kelly was a "bad man".[143] She told him that
she could only possibly discuss the relationship with a professional counselor.[143] Dash
said he was unable to watch Surviving R. Kelly because its interviews with visibly
traumatized girls struggling to discuss their encounters with Kelly reminded him of how
Aaliyah behaved when trying to recount her relationship with Kelly.[143]
R. Kelly would have other allegations made about him regarding underage girls in the years
following her death and his marriage to Aaliyah was used to evidence his involvement with
them. He has refused to discuss his relationship with her, citing her death. "Out of respect
for her, and her mom and her dad, I will not discuss Aaliyah. That was a whole other
situation, a whole other time, it was a whole other thing, and I'm sure that people also
know that."[150] Aaliyah's mother, Diane Haughton, reflected that everything "that went
wrong in her life" began with her relationship with Kelly.[139] Damon Dash also noted that
lasting trauma from her relationship with Kelly negatively affected their relationship.[143]
However, the allegations have been said to have done "little to taint Aaliyah's image or
prevent her from becoming a reliable '90s hitmaker with viable sidelines in movies and
modeling."[32]
Engagement
Aaliyah was dating co-founder of Roc-A-Fella Records Damon Dash at the time of her death
and, though they were not formally engaged, in interviews given after Aaliyah's death, Dash
claimed the couple had planned to marry.[151] Aaliyah and Dash met in 2000[152] through his
accountant and formed a friendship.[153] Dash has said he is unsure of how he and Aaliyah
started dating and that the two just understood each other. "I don't know [how we got
involved], just spending time, you know, we just saw things the same and it was new, you
know what I mean? Meeting someone that is trying to do the same thing you are doing in the
urban market, in the same urban market place but not really being so urban. It was just; her
mind was where my mind was. She understood me and she got my jokes. She thought my jokes
were funny."[154]
Dash expressed his belief that Aaliyah was the "one" and claimed the pair were not
officially engaged, but had spoken about getting married prior to her death.[155] Aaliyah
publicly never addressed the relationship between her and Dash as being anything but
platonic. In May 2001, she hosted a party for Dash's 30th birthday at a New York City club,
where they were spotted together and Dash was seen escorting her to a bathroom. Addressing
this, Aaliyah stated that she and Dash were just "very good friends" and chose to "keep it
at that" for the time being.[147] Just two weeks before her death, Aaliyah traveled from New
Jersey to East Hampton, New York to visit Dash at the summer house he shared with Jay Z.
[129]
The couple were separated for long periods at a time, as Dash recalled that Aaliyah
continuously shot films and would be gone for months often to come back shortly and continue
her schedule. Dash was also committed to "his own thing", which did not make matters any
better. Despite this, they were understanding that the time they had together was special.
Dash remembered they would "be in a room full of people talking to each other and it felt
like everyone was listening but it would be just us. It would be like we were the only ones
in the room". Dash always felt their time together was essential and Aaliyah was the person
he was interested in being with, which is why, as he claimed, they had begun speaking about
engagement.[153] The relationship was mentioned in the lyrics of Jay-Z's remix to her song
"Miss You", released after her death.
Death
Main article: Death of Aaliyah
On August 25, 2001, at 6:50 p.m. (EDT), Aaliyah and the members of the record company
boarded a twin-engine Cessna 402B (registration N8097W) at the Marsh Harbour Airport in
Abaco Islands, the Bahamas, to travel to the Opa-locka Airport in Florida, after they
completed filming the music video for "Rock the Boat".[156] They had a flight scheduled the
following day, but with filming finishing early, Aaliyah and her entourage were eager to
return to the U.S. and made the decision to leave immediately. The designated airplane was
smaller than the Cessna 404 on which they had originally arrived, but the whole party and
all of the equipment were accommodated on board.[157] The plane crashed shortly after
takeoff, about 200 feet (60 m) from the end of the runway and exploded.[156]
Aaliyah and the eight others on board—pilot Luis Morales III, hair stylist Eric Forman,
Anthony Dodd, security guard Scott Gallin, family friend Keith Wallace, make-up stylist
Christopher Maldonado, and Blackground Records employees Douglas Kratz and Gina Smith—were
all killed.[158] Gallin survived the initial impact and spent his last moments worrying
about Aaliyah's condition, according to ambulance drivers.[159] The plane was identified as
being owned by Florida-based company Skystream by the US Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) in Atlanta. Initial reports of the crash identified Luis Morales as "L Marael".[160]
According to findings from an inquest conducted by the coroner's office in the Bahamas,
Aaliyah suffered from "severe burns and a blow to the head", in addition to severe shock and
a weak heart.[161] The coroner theorized that she went into such a state of shock that even
if she had survived the crash, her recovery would have been nearly impossible given the
severity of her injuries.[162] The bodies were taken to the morgue at Princess Margaret
Hospital in Nassau, where they were kept for relatives to help identify them. Some of the
bodies were badly burned in the crash.[163]
As the subsequent investigation determined, when the aircraft attempted to depart, it was
over its maximum take-off weight by 700 pounds (320 kg) and was carrying one excess
passenger, according to its certification.[164] An informational report issued by the
National Transportation Safety Board stated, "The airplane was seen lifting off the runway,
and then nose down, impacting in a marsh on the south side of the departure end of runway
27."[165] It indicated that the pilot was not approved to fly the plane. Morales falsely
obtained his FAA license by showing hundreds of hours never flown, and he may also have
falsified how many hours he had flown in order to get a job with his employer, Blackhawk
International Airways.[166] Additionally, toxicology tests performed on Morales revealed
traces of cocaine and alcohol in his system.[167]
Aaliyah's funeral services were held on August 31, 2001, at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral
Chapel and St. Ignatius Loyola Church in Manhattan. Her body was set in a silver-plated
copper-deposit casket, which was carried in a glass horse-drawn hearse.[168] An estimated
800 mourners were in attendance at the procession.[20][169] Among those in attendance at the
private ceremony were Missy Elliott, Timbaland, Gladys Knight, Lil' Kim and Sean Combs.
[168][170][171] After the service, 22 white doves were released to symbolize each year of
Aaliyah's life.[172] Aaliyah was initially entombed in a crypt at the Ferncliff Mausoleum in
Hartsdale, New York; she was later moved to a private room at the left end of a corridor in
the Rosewood Mausoleum.[173] The inscription at the bottom of Aaliyah's portrait at the
funeral read: "We Were Given a Queen, We Were Given an Angel."[174]
After Aaliyah's death, the German newspaper Die Zeit published excerpts from an interview
done shortly before her death, in which she described a recurring dream: "It is dark in my
favorite dream. Someone is following me. I don't know why. I'm scared. Then suddenly I lift
off. Far away. How do I feel? As if I am swimming in the air. Free. Weightless. Nobody can
reach me. Nobody can touch me. It's a wonderful feeling."[175]
Posthumous career
Immediately after Aaliyah's death, there was uncertainty over whether the music video for
"Rock the Boat" would ever air.[176] It made its world premiere on BET's Access Granted on
October 9, 2001. She won two posthumous awards at the American Music Awards of 2002;
Favorite Female R&B Artist and Favorite R&B/Soul Album for Aaliyah.[177] Her second and
final film, Queen of the Damned, was released in February 2002. Before its release,
Aaliyah's brother, Rashad, re-dubbed some of her lines during post-production.[178][179] It
grossed US$15.2 million in its first weekend, ranking number one at the box office.[180] On
the first anniversary of Aaliyah's death, a candlelight vigil was held in Times Square;
millions of fans observed a moment of silence; and throughout the United States, radio
stations played her music in remembrance.[181] In December 2002, a collection of previously
unreleased material was released as Aaliyah's first posthumous album, I Care 4 U. A portion
of the proceeds was donated to the Aaliyah Memorial Fund, a program that benefits the Revlon
UCLA Women's Cancer Research Program and Harlem's Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.[182] It
debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, selling 280,000 copies in its first week.[183]
The album's lead single, "Miss You", peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and
topped the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.[70] In August of the following year, clothing
retailer Christian Dior donated profits from sales in honor of Aaliyah.[184]
In 2005, Aaliyah's second compilation album, Ultimate Aaliyah was released in the UK by
Blackground Records.[185] Ultimate Aaliyah is a three disc set, which included a greatest
hits audio CD and a DVD.[185] Andy Kellman of AllMusic remarked "Ultimate Aaliyah adequately
represents the shortened career of a tremendous talent who benefited from some of the best
songwriting and production work by Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and R. Kelly."[185] A
documentary movie Aaliyah Live in Amsterdam was released in 2011, shortly before the tenth
anniversary of Aaliyah's death. The documentary, by Pogus Caesar, contained previously
unseen footage shot of her career beginnings in 1995 when she was appearing in the
Netherlands.[186]
In March 2012, music producer Jeffrey "J-Dub" Walker announced on his Twitter account that a
song "Steady Ground", which he produced for Aaliyah's third album, would be included in the
forthcoming posthumous Aaliyah album. This second proposed posthumous album would feature
this song using demo vocals, as Walker claims the originals were somehow lost by his sound
engineer. Aaliyah's brother Rashad later refuted Walker's claim, claiming that "no official
album [is] being released and supported by the Haughton family."[187] On August 5, 2012, a
song entitled "Enough Said" was released online. The song was produced by Noah "40" Shebib
and features Canadian rapper Drake.[188] Four days later, Jomo Hankerson confirmed a
posthumous album is being produced and that it was scheduled to be released by the end of
2012 by Blackground Records.[189] The album was reported to include 16 unreleased songs and
have contributions from Aaliyah's longtime collaborators Timbaland and Missy Elliott, among
others.[189] On August 13, Timbaland and Missy Elliott dismissed rumors about being
contacted or participating for the project.[190] Elliott's manager Mona Scott-Young said in
a statement to XXL, "Although Missy and Timbaland always strive to keep the memory of their
close friend alive, we have not been contacted about the project nor are there any plans at
this time to participate. We've seen the reports surfacing that they have been confirmed to
participate but that is not the case. Both Missy and Timbaland are very sensitive to the
loss still being felt by the family so we wanted to clear up any misinformation being
circulated."[190] Elliott herself said, "Tim and I carry Aaliyah with us everyday, like so
many of the people who love her. She will always live in our hearts. We have nothing but
love and respect for her memory and for her loved ones left behind still grieving her loss.
They are always in our prayers."[190]
In June 2013, Aaliyah was featured on a new track by Chris Brown, titled "Don't Think They
Know"; with Aaliyah singing the song's hook. The video features dancing holographic versions
of Aaliyah. The song appears on Brown's sixth studio album, X.[191] Timbaland voiced his
disapproval for "Enough Said" and "Don't Think They Know" in July 2013. He exclaimed,
"Aaliyah music only work with its soulmate, which is me".[192] Soon after, Timbaland
apologized to Chris Brown over his remarks, which he explained were made due to Aaliyah and
her death being a "very sensitive subject".[193] In January 2014, producer Noah "40" Shebib
confirmed that the posthumous album was shelved due to the negative reception surrounding
Drake's involvement. Shebib added, "Aaliyah's mother saying, 'I don't want this out' was
enough for me ... I walked away very quickly."[194][195]
Aaliyah's vocals were reported to be featured on the T-Pain mixtape, The Iron Way, on the
track "Girlfriend", but were pulled after being met with criticism by fans and many in
attendance at a New York listening session that he hosted for the project. In response to
the criticism, T-Pain questioned if Aaliyah's legacy was driven by her death and claimed
that were she still alive, she would be seen as trying to emulate Beyoncé.[196] According to
T-Pain, he was given her vocals from a session she had done prior to her death after being
approached to work on a track for a posthumous Aaliyah album and completing the song,
calling the exchange "just like a swap."[197]
She was featured on the Tink track "Million", which was released in May 2015 and contained
samples from her song "One in a Million".[198] Collaborator Timbaland was involved in the
song's creation, having previously claimed that Aaliyah appeared to him in a dream and
stressed that Tink was "the one".[199]
In August 2015, Timbaland confirmed that he had unreleased vocals from Aaliyah and stated a
"sneak peek" would be coming soon.[200][201]
In September 2015, Aaliyah by Xyrena, an official tribute fragrance was announced.[202]
On December 19, 2015, Timbaland uploaded a snippet of a new Aaliyah song title "He Keeps Me
Shakin" on his Instagram account and said it would be released December 25, 2015, on the
Timbaland mixtape King Stays King.[203] On August 24, 2017 MAC Cosmetics announced that an
Aaliyah collection will be made available in the summer of 2018.[204] The Aaliyah for Mac
collection was released on June 20 online and June 21 in stores, along with the MAC
collection, MAC and i-D Magazine partnered up to release a short film titled "A-Z of
Aaliyah" which coincided with the launch.[205] The short film highlighted and celebrated the
legacy of Aaliyah with the help of select fans who were selected to be a part of the film
through a casting call competition held by Mac and i-d magazine.[206] The Aaliyah for Mac
collectors box was sold at $250 and it sold out within minutes during the first day of its
initial release.[207]
Legacy and influence
Aaliyah has been credited for helping redefine R&B, pop and hip hop in the 1990s, "leaving
an indelible imprint on the music industry as a whole."[1][89][208] According to Billboard,
Aaliyah revolutionized R&B with her sultry mix of pop, soul and hip hop.[209] In a 2001
review of her eponymous album, Rolling Stone professed that Aaliyah's impact on R&B and pop
has been enormous.[210] Steve Huey of AllMusic wrote Aaliyah ranks among the "elite" artists
of the R&B genre, as she "played a major role in popularizing the stuttering, futuristic
production style that consumed hip-hop and urban soul in the late 1990s."[211] Bruce Britt
of "music world" on Broadcast Music, Inc's. website stated that by combining "schoolgirl
charm with urban grit", Aaliyah helped define the teen-oriented sound that has resulted in
contemporary pop phenom's like Brandy, Christina Aguilera and Destiny's Child.[212]
Described as one of "R&B's most important artists" during the 1990s,[213] her second studio
album, One in a Million, became one of the most influential R&B albums of the decade.[33]
Music critic Simon Reynolds cited "Are You That Somebody?" as "the most radical pop single"
of 1998. Kelefah Sanneh of The New York Times wrote that rather than being the song's focal
point, Aaliyah "knew how to disappear into the music, how to match her voice to the bass
line", and consequently "helped change the way popular music sounds; the twitchy, beat-
driven songs of Destiny's Child owe a clear debt to 'Are You That Somebody'." Sanneh
asserted that by the time of her death in 2001, Aaliyah "had recorded some of the most
innovative and influential pop songs of the last five years."[101] Music publication Popdust
called Aaliyah an unlikely queen of the underground due mainly to her influence on the
underground alternative music scene, which consists of heavy sampling and references to her
music by underground artists. Popdust also mentioned that the forward-thinking music Aaliyah
did with Timbaland and the experimental music being made by many underground alternative
artists are somewhat cut from the same cloth.[214] While compiling a list of artists that
take cues from Aaliyah, MTV Hive mentioned that it's easy to spot her influence on
underground movements like dubstep, strains of indie pop, and lo-fi R&B movements.[215] With
sales of 8.1 million albums in the United States and an estimated 24 to 32 million albums
worldwide,[216][217][218][219][220] Aaliyah earned the nicknames "Princess of R&B" and
"Queen of Urban Pop",[221][222] as she "proved she was a muse in her own right".[223] Ernest
Hardy of Rolling Stone dubbed her as the "undisputed queen of the midtempo come-on".[19]
Aaliyah has been referred to as a pop icon and a R&B icon for her impact and contributions
to those respective genres.[224][225] Japanese pop singer Hikaru Utada has said several
times that "It was when I heard Aaliyah's Age Ain't Nothing but a Number that I got hooked
on R&B.", after which Utada released her debut album First Love with heavy R&B influences.
[226][227] Another Japanese pop singer Crystal Kay has expressed how she admired Aaliyah
when she was growing up and how she would practice dancing while watching her music videos.
[228]
Aaliyah was honored at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards by Janet Jackson, Missy Elliott,
Timbaland, Ginuwine and her brother, Rashad, who all paid tribute to her.[229] In the same
year, the United States Social Security Administration ranked the name Aaliyah one of the
100 most popular names for newborn girls.[230] Aaliyah was ranked as one of "The Top 40
Women of the Video Era" in VH1's 2003 The Greatest series.[231][232] She was also ranked at
number 18 on BET's "Top 25 Dancers of All Time".[233] Aaliyah appeared on both 2000 and 2001
list of Maxim Hot 100 in position 41 and the latter at 14.[234][235] In 2002 VH1 created the
100 sexiest artist list and Aaliyah was ranked at number 36.[236] In memory of Aaliyah, the
Entertainment Industry Foundation created the Aaliyah Memorial Fund to donate money raised
to charities she supported.[237][238] In December 2009, Billboard magazine ranked Aaliyah at
number 70 on its Top Artists of the Decade,[239] while her eponymous album was ranked at
number 181 on the magazine's Top 200 Albums of the Decade.[240] She is listed by Billboard
as the tenth most successful female R&B artist of the past 25 years, and 27th most
successful R&B artist overall.[241] In 2012, VH1 ranked her number 48 in "VH1's Greatest
Women in Music".[242] Also in 2012, Aaliyah was ranked at number 10 on Complex magazine's
100 hottest female singers of all-time list[243] and number 22 on their 90 hottest women of
the 90's list.[244] In 2014, NME ranked Aaliyah at number 18 on NME's 100 most influential
artist list.[245] Aaliyah's dress that she wore at the 2000 MTV Video Music Award's was
featured in the most memorable fashion moments at the VMA's list by the fashion publication
Harper's Bazaar.[246] In October 2015 Aaliyah was featured in the 10 women who became Denim
Style icons list created by the fashion publication Vogue.[247] In August 2018 Billboard
ranked Aaliyah at number 47 on their Top 60 Female Artists of All-Time list.[248]
Aaliyah's music has influenced numerous artists including Adele,[249] The Weeknd,[250]
Ciara,[251] Beyoncé,[252] Monica,[253] Chris Brown,[191] Rihanna,[254] Azealia Banks,[255]
Sevyn Streeter,[256] Keyshia Cole,[257] J. Cole,[258] Ryan Destiny[259] Kelly Rowland,[260]
Zendaya,[261] Rita Ora,[262] The xx,[263][264][265] Arctic Monkeys,[266] Speedy Ortiz,[267]
Chelsea Wolfe,[268] Haim,[269] Angel Haze,[270] Kiesza,[271] Naya Rivera,[272] Normani[273]
Cassie,[274][275] Hayley Williams,[276] Jessie Ware,[277] Yeasayer,[278] Bebe Rexha,[279]
Omarion,[280] and Years & Years frontman Olly Alexander.[281] Canadian R&B singer Keshia
Chanté who was said to play as her in her pending biopic back in 2008, complimented the
singer's futuristic style in music and fashion.[282] Chanté backed out of the biopic after
speaking to Diane Haughton, but has expressed a willingness to do the project if "the right
production comes along and the family's behind it". Chanté also mentioned that Aaliyah had
been part of her life "since I was 6."[283] R&B singer and friend Brandy said about the late
singer "She came out before Monica and I did, she was our inspiration. At the time, record
companies did not believe in kid acts and it was just inspiring to see someone that was
winning and winning being themselves. When I met her I embraced her, I was so happy to meet
her."[284] Rapper Drake said that the singer has had the biggest influence on his career. He
also has a tattoo of the singer on his back.[285] Solange Knowles remarked on the tenth
anniversary of her death that she idolized Aaliyah and proclaimed that she would never be
forgotten.[286] Adam Levine, the lead vocalist of the pop rock group Maroon 5, remembers
that listening to "Are You That Somebody?" convinced him to pursue a more soulful sound than
that of his then-band Kara's Flowers.[287] Erika Ramirez, an associate editor of Billboard,
said at the time of Aaliyah's career "there weren't many artists using the kind of soft
vocals the ways she was using it, and now you see a lot of artists doing that and finding
success," her reasoning for Aaliyah's continued influence on current artists. She argued
that Aaliyah's second album One in a Million was "very much ahead of its time, with the bass
and electro kind of R&B sounds that they produced", referring to collaborators Timbaland and
Missy Elliott and that the sound, which "really stood out" at its time, was being
replicated.[288]
In 2012, British singer-songwriter Katy B released the song Aaliyah as a tribute to
Aaliyah's legacy and lasting impression on R&B music.[289] The song first appeared on Katy
B's Danger EP and featured Jessie Ware on guest vocals. In 2016, Swedish singer-songwriter
Erik Hassle released a song titled "If Your Man Only Knew" which serves as a tribute to
Aaliyah's 1996 single "If Your Girl Only Knew".[290]
There has been continuing belief that Aaliyah would have achieved greater career success had
it not been for her death. Emil Wilbekin mentioned the deaths of The Notorious B.I.G. and
Tupac Shakur in conjunction with hers and added: "Her just-released third album and
scheduled role in a sequel to The Matrix could have made her another Janet Jackson or
Whitney Houston".[291] Director of Queen of the Damned Michael Rymer said of Aaliyah, "God,
that girl could have gone so far" and spoke of her having "such a clarity about what she
wanted. Nothing was gonna step in her way. No ego, no nervousness, no manipulation. There
was nothing to stop her."[292]
On July 18, 2014, it was announced that Alexandra Shipp replaced Zendaya for the role of
Aaliyah for the Lifetime TV biopic movie Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B,
Iglesia de Oneta
LAICISMO y ESTADO ESPAÑOL
El artículo 16, párrafo 3º de la Constitución Española dice:
“Ninguna confesión tendrá carácter estatal. Los poderes públicos tendrán en cuenta las creencias religiosas de la sociedad española y mantendrán las consiguientes relaciones de cooperación con la Iglesia Católica y las demás confesiones”.
Según la Real Academia de la Lengua, un Estado laico es aquel:
1. adj. Que no tiene órdenes clericales. U. t. c. s.
2. adj. Independiente de cualquier organización o confesión religiosa. Estado laico. Enseñanza laica
Un Estado aconfesional es aquel:
1. adj. Que no pertenece o está adscrito a ninguna confesión religiosa. Estado, partido aconfesional
El Gobierno y la Iglesia Católica viven un enfrentamiento provocado por diversos temas como el divorcio expres, el matrimonio homosexual, la despenalización del aborto, etc., lo que provoca una deseo de parte de la sociedad de convertir España en un Estado laico.
Contradicciones:
- Para convertir a España en un Estado laico, es necesario reformar la Constitución y para ello darle al Estado más fuerza, por parte de aquellos mismos que se la están quitando.
- La libertad de culto y religiosa viene recogida en la Constitución y según el artículo 27, son los padres los que gozan del derecho a elegir la formación religiosa de sus hijos, y no el Estado (Educación para la ciudadanía).
- Los colegios concertados (en su mayoría católicos) junto con los públicos, componen la infraestructura necesaria para la educación en España, prescindir de ellos supondría una merma que habría que suplantar por una enorme inversión en educación.
Multitud de organizaciones no gubernamentales (como Cáritas), prestan una ayuda social indispensable en la actualidad, prescindir de ellas conllevaría al abandono de las clases más debilitadas.
Situación en Europa:
Países laicos: Francia, Irlanda y Países Bajos.
Países aconfesionales: Alemania, Austria, Bélgica, Bulgaria, Chipre, España, Eslovaquia, Eslovenia, Estonia, Letonia, Hungría, Italia, Lituania, Luxemburgo, Malta, Polonia, Portugal, República Checa, Rumanía.
Países confesionales: Dinamarca, Finlandia, Grecia, Reino Unido, Suecia
En cierta ocasión le preguntaron al Papa:
- ¿Es posible e incluso bueno un Estado laico, que ni se decante por una religión, ni persiga a los que quieren seguir su fe?
- El Papa responde a esta cuestión poniendo en el centro la libertad. Lo auténtico de toda religión, dice el Papa, es que pueda vivirse libremente. No hay fe sin libertad. Dios llama a todos los hombres a una vida de comunión con él, pero no obliga a nadie. Dios nos ha querido libres, libres para vivir, libres para escoger, incluso libres para olvidarlo, por eso no se pueda entender un Estado que, situándose por encima de la dignidad humana, quiera imponer o prohibir el ejercicio libre de la propia religión, llamase como se llame.
Este debate se ha trasladado a la Unión Europea y aún hoy sigue sin aprobarse la Constitución, entre otras cosas por la falta de acuerdo sobre el origen cristiano de Europa.
Rafael Ángel Fernández
Brouwersgracht 11/04/2020 16h11
Amsterdam in April means tulips. Also in 2020 when the corona virus dominated our lives.
Point of view is the bridge which connects the Binnen Dommersstraat and Palmgracht. The bridge in the near distance is Oranjebrug.
Brouwersgracht
The Brouwersgracht is a canal in Amsterdam that connects the Singel with the Singelgracht. The canal marks the northwestern border of the Grachtengordel (canal belt). Between the Prinsengracht and the Singelgracht the Brouwersgracht forms the northern border of the Jordaan neighborhood. The house numbers of the Lijnbaansgracht, the Prinsengracht, the Keizersgracht, the Herengracht and the Singel start to count from the Brouwersgracht. The Herenmarkt is located between Brouwersgracht no. 62 and no. 68, near the West-Indisch Huis (West Indies House). In 2007 Brouwersgracht was voted the most beautiful street in Amsterdam by readers of Het Parool out of 150 nominations.
The canal took its name in 1594 from the many beer breweries that were to be found in this neighborhood in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Starting in 1612 the canal belt was dug in southern direction from the Brouwersgracht. From 1782, the last Amsterdam distillery of gin and liqueurs was located on the Brouwersgracht at the Driehoekstraat : De Ooievaar. Most warehouses, built for the storage of goods, have been converted into residential houses.
[ Source: Wikipedia - Brouwersgracht ]
Jeff Healey, (1966-2008) Blues, Jazz and Rock guitarist, was blinded by retinoblastoma a rare cancer of the eyes at 11 months of age. Playing guitar since the age of three, he progressed to playing in Toronto live music venues as a teen and in performance at Grossman's Tavern on Spadina Avenue, he was discovered by none other than Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Success came throughout the 80's and 90's with a Grammy Award nomination, Juno Awards wins and sharing film performances with Patrick Swayze in the movie Road House.
This is a massively condensed overview and I urge you to look into this talented man's life and achievements if you're a fan of blues, jazz or rock.
My favorite offering is his cover in 1990 of the Beatles 'While my Guitar Gently Weeps' which featured George Harrison and Jeff Lynne on backing vocals and guitar.
Healey died of cancer in Toronto on March 2nd, 2008 at the age of 41.
Thai postcard byStarpics / Suwan Studio. Photo: Paramount / Fox. Publicity still for Titanic (James Cameron, 1997).
Kate Winslet (1975) is often seen as the best English-speaking film actress of her generation. The English actress and singer was the youngest person to acquire six Academy Award nominations, and won the Oscar for The Reader (2008).
Kate Elizabeth Winslet was born Reading, England, in 1975. She is the second of four children of stage actors Sally Anne (née Bridges) and Roger John Winslet. Winslet began studying drama at the age of 11. The following year, Winslet appeared in a television commercial for Sugar Puffs cereal, in which she danced opposite the Honey Monster. Winslet's acting career began on television, with a co-starring role in the BBC children's science fiction serial Dark Season (Colin Cant, 1991). On the set, Winslet met Stephen Tredre, who was working as an assistant director. They would have a four-and-a-half-year relationship, and remained close after their separation in 1995. He died of bone cancer during the opening week of Titanic, causing her to miss the film's Los Angeles premiere to attend his funeral in London. Her role in Dark Season was followed by appearances in the made-for-TV film Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (Diarmuid Lawrence, 1992), the sitcom Get Back (Graeme Harper, 1992), and an episode of the medical drama Casualty (Tom Cotter, 1993). She made her film debut in the New Zealand drama film Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994) . Winslet auditioned for the part of Juliet Hulme, an obsessive teenager in 1950s New Zealand who assists in the murder of the mother of her best friend, Pauline Parker (played by Melanie Lynskey). Winslet won the role over 175 other girls. The film included Winslet's singing debut, and her a cappella version of Sono Andati, an aria from La Bohème, was featured on the film's soundtrack. The film opened to strong critical acclaim at the 51st Venice International Film Festival in 1994 and became one of the best-received films of the year. Winslet was awarded an Empire Award and a London Film Critics' Circle Award for British Actress of the Year. Subsequently she played the second leading role of Marianne Dashwood in the Jane Austen adaptation Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee, 1995) featuring Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. The film became a financial and critical success, resulting in a worldwide box office total of $135 million and various awards for Winslet. She won both a BAFTA and a Screen Actors' Guild Award, and was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. In 1996, Winslet starred in Michael Winterbottom's Jude, based on the Victorian novel Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. She played Sue Bridehead, a young woman with suffragette leanings who falls in love with her cousin (Christopher Eccleston). She then played Ophelia, Hamlet's drowned lover, in Kenneth Branagh's all star-cast film version of William Shakespeare's Hamlet (1996). In mid-1996, Winslet began filming James Cameron's Titanic (1997), alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. She was cast as the passionate, rosy-cheeked aristocrat Rose DeWitt Bukater, who survives the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic. Against expectations, Titanic (1997) became the highest-grossing film in the world at the time and transformed Winslet into a commercial movie star. Young girls the world over both idolized and identified with Winslet. Despite the enormous success of Titanic, Winslet next starred in were two low-budget art-house films, Hideous Kinky (Gillies MacKinnon, 1998), and Holy Smoke! (Jane Campion, 1999). In 1997, on the set of Hideous Kinky, Winslet met film director Jim Threapleton, whom she married in 1998. They have a daughter, Mia Honey Threapleton (2000). Winslet and Threapleton divorced in 2001.
Since 2000, Kate Winslet's performances have continued to draw positive comments from film critics. She appeared in the period piece Quills (Philip Kaufman, 2000) with Geoffrey Rush and Joaquin Phoenix, and inspired by the life and work of the Marquis de Sade. The actress was the first big name to back the film project, accepting the role of a chambermaid in the asylum and the courier of the Marquis' manuscripts to the underground publishers. Well received by critics, the film garnered numerous accolades for Winslet. In Enigma (Michael Apted, 2001), she played a young woman who finds herself falling for a brilliant young World War II code breaker (Dougray Scott). She was five months pregnant at the time of the shoot, forcing some tricky camera work. In the same year she appeared in Iris (Richard Eyre, 2001), portraying novelist Iris Murdoch. Winslet shared her role with Judi Dench, with both actresses portraying Murdoch at different phases of her life. Subsequently, each of them was nominated for an Academy Award the following year, earning Winslet her third nomination. Also in 2001, she voiced the character Belle in the animation film Christmas Carol: The Movie, based on the Charles Dickens classic novel. For the film, Winslet recorded the song What If, which was a Europe-wide top ten hit. Winslet began a relationship with director Sam Mendes in 2001, and she married him in 2003 on the island of Anguilla. Their son, Joe Alfie Winslet Mendes, was born in 2003 in New York City. In 2010, Winslet and Mendes announced their separation and divorced in 2011. In the drama The Life of David Gale (Alan Parker, 2003), she played an ambitious journalist who interviews a death-sentenced professor (Kevin Spacey) in his final weeks before execution. Next, Winslet appeared with Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004). In this neo-surrealistic indie-drama, she played Clementine Kruczynski, a chatty, spontaneous and somewhat neurotic woman, who decides to have all memories of her ex-boyfriend erased from her mind. The film was a critical and financial success and Winslet received rave reviews and her fourth Academy Award-nomination. Finding Neverland (Marc Forster, 2004), is the story of Scottish writer J.M. Barrie (Johnny Depp) and his platonic relationship with Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Winslet), whose sons inspired him to pen the classic play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. The film received favourable reviews and became Winslet's highest-grossing film since Titanic.
In 2005, Kate Winslet played a satirical version of herself in an episode of the comedy series Extras by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. While dressed as a nun, she was portrayed giving phone sex tips to the romantically challenged character of Maggie. Her performance in the episode led to her first nomination for an Emmy Award. In the musical romantic comedy Romance & Cigarettes (John Turturro, 2005), she played the slut Tula, and again Winslet was praised for her performance. In Todd Field's Little Children (2006), she played a bored housewife who has a torrid affair with a married neighbor (Patrick Wilson). Both her performance and the film received rave reviews. Again she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, and at 31, became the youngest actress to ever garner five Oscar nominations. Commercial successes were Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy The Holiday (2006), also starring Cameron Diaz, and the CG-animated Flushed Away (2006), in which she voiced Rita, a scavenging sewer rat who helps Roddy (Hugh Jackman) escape from the city of Ratropolis and return to his luxurious Kensington origins. In 2007, Winslet reunited with Leonardo DiCaprio to film Revolutionary Road (2008), directed by her husband at the time, Sam Mendes. Portraying a couple in a failing marriage in the 1950s, DiCaprio and Winslet watched period videos promoting life in the suburbs to prepare themselves for the film. Winslet was awarded a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance, her seventh nomination from the Golden Globes. Then she starred in the film adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's 1995 novel The Reader, (Stephen Daldry, 2008), featuring Ralph Fiennes and David Kross in supporting roles. Employing a German accent, Winslet portrayed a former Nazi concentration camp guard who has an affair with a teenager (Kross). As an adult, he witnesses in her war crimes trial. While the film garnered mixed reviews in general, she earned her sixth Academy Award nomination for her role and went on to win the Best Actress award, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress, a Screen Actors' Guild Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress, and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.
In 2011, Kate Winslet headlined in the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce, based on James M. Cain's 1941 novel and directed by Todd Haynes. She portrayed a self-sacrificing mother during the Great Depression who finds herself separated from her husband and falling in love with a new man (Guy Pearce), all the while trying to earn her narcissistic daughter's (Evan Rachel Wood) love and respect. This time, Winslet won an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Roman Polanski's Carnage (2011) premiered at the 68th Venice Film Festival. The black comedy follows two sets of parents who meet up to talk after their children have been in a fight that day at school. Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly and Christoph Waltz co-starred in the film. In 2012, she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). In Jason Reitman's big screen adaptation of Joyce Maynard's novel Labor Day (2013), she starred with Josh Brolin and Tobey Maguire. Winslet received favorable reviews for her portrayal of Adele, a mentally fragile, repressed single mom of a 13-year-old son who gives shelter to an escaped prisoner during a long summer week-end. For her performance, Winslet earned her tenth Golden Globe nomination. Next she appeared in the science fiction film Divergent (Neil Burger, 2014), as the bad antagonist Jeanine Matthews. It became one of the biggest commercial successes of her career. This year, Winslet also appeared alongside Matthias Schoenaerts in Alan Rickman's period drama A Little Chaos (2014) about rival landscape gardeners commissioned by Louis XIV to create a fountain at Versailles. Next she can be seen in the crime-thriller Triple Nine (John Hillcoat, 2015), the sequel in the Divergent series: Insurgent (Robert Schwentke, 2015) and in The Dressmaker (Jocelyn Moorhouse, 2015). Since 2012, Kate Winslet is married to Ned Rocknroll, a nephew of Richard Branson; The couple's son have a son, Bear Blaze Winslet. They live in West Sussex.
Sources: Tom Ryan (Encyclopedia of British Film), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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[A series of 7 photos] Built circa 1931 or 1935, The Auto Fountain in Elizabeth City, North Carolina was a Tudor Revival-style gas station built for the Colonial Oil Company of Norfolk, Virginia, a distributor for the Pure Oil Company. It's in the nationally recognized style associated with that gasoline. Pure Oil was a major brand, ultimately swallowed up by Union Oil Company of California in 1965. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Oil It's location was at the junction of East Main and Water Streets.
With one end flush with the building next door, the end gable roof is a steep pitched blue tile roof. Constructed of brick and originally painted white, the paint has been removed. The surface consists of skintled brick, or brick that projects irregularly from the surface.
www.bricksalvage.com/blog/skintled-brick--a-style-from-th...
There's an arched doorway with a corresponding arched door of nine lights, the top three curved to accommodate the arching. A small metal roof covers the entrance, accessed by slightly elevated steps. The roof matches that of the oriel window. An arched window is on the front facade; on the side facade, there are three windows--two with 8 panes and one with six. I don't know when the service station closed, but it has been used as office space prior to the 1018 time of these photos. The structure is listed in the Elizabeth City Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing building, October 18, 1977 with reference ID #77001007. The nomination form (before 2 additions) is located at files.nc.gov/ncdcr/nr/PK0003.pdf
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
French postcard. Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias (Herbert Ross, 1989).
American actress Julia Roberts (1967) won more than 30 other acting awards including an Academy Award for her leading role in Erin Brockovich (2000) plus Oscar nominations for Steel Magnolias (1989), Pretty Woman (1990) and August: Osage County (2013). Her films have grossed more than $3.9 billion globally, making her one of the most bankable film stars of all time.
Julia Fiona Roberts was born in Smyrna, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, in 1967. Julia is the youngest of three children of Walter Grady Roberts and Betty Lou Bredemus, one-time actors and playwrights. Her parents were close friends with Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King. Walter and Betty Lou Roberts ran the Actors and Writers Workshop, then the only integrated drama school in Atlanta, which the Kings' eldest daughter Yolanda King attended. The Kings paid the hospital bill for Julia's birth. When Roberts was four years old., her parents divorced. Her brother Eric stayed with his father and Julia and her sister Lisa continued to live with their mother in Atlanta. When Roberts was nine, her father died of cancer. As a child, due to her love of animals, Julia originally wanted to be a veterinarian, but later studied journalism. Her parents were in the drama club, so acting was soon in the cards. Her brother Eric was originally seen as the great acting promise of the family but ended up producing more quantity than quality in the eyes of critics. Sister Lisa is not actually a professional actress but has since appeared in twenty-four films in small supporting roles, mostly in titles by her younger sister. While at school, Roberts worked as a waitress in a pizzeria and spent some time behind the cash register in a supermarket. When Eric achieved some success in Hollywood, Julia decided to try acting. She started taking acting classes and went to live with her sister in New York where she signed with the Click Modeling Agency. She took speech lessons to get rid of her southern accent. She made her film debut with a bit role in Blood Red (Peter Masterson, 1989), starring her brother Eric Roberts, which was completed in 1986 but wouldn't be released until 1989. She appeared in several television features and series, including Miami Vice (1988). Her first break came in 1988 when she appeared in two youth-oriented films Mystic Pizza (Donald Petrie, 1988) and Satisfaction (Joan Freeman, 1988). It helped her earn the credentials she needed to land the part of Shelby, an ill-fated would-be mother in the comedy-drama Steel Magnolias (Herbert Ross, 1989). The tearjerker found her acting alongside Sally Field and Shirley MacLaine which culminated in an Oscar nomination for Roberts. Then followed the supernatural thriller Flatliners (Joel Schumacher, 1990) with her flame Kiefer Sutherland.
Julia Robert's biggest success was in the romantic comedy Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall, 1990) with Richard Gere. Originally intended to be a dark cautionary tale about class and prostitution in Los Angeles, the film was re-conceived as a romantic comedy with a large budget. Critic Roger Ebert: "Roberts does an interesting thing; she gives her character an irrepressibly bouncy sense of humor and then lets her spend the movie trying to repress it. Actresses who can do that and look great can have whatever they want in Hollywood." Julia got an Oscar nomination and also won the People's Choice award for Favorite Actress. It was widely successful at the box office and was the third-highest-grossing film of 1990. Julia's part as a good-hearted Hollywood prostitute who falls in love with a millionaire client was her definitive breakthrough role. Her role opposite Denzel Washington in the John Grisham adaptation The Pelican Brief (Alan J. Pakula, 1993), reaffirmed her status as a dramatic actress. Even though Julia would spend the next few years either starring in serious films or playing fantasy roles like Tinkerbell in Steven Spielberg's Hook (1991), filmgoers would always love Julia best in romantic comedies such as Notting Hill (Richard Curtis, 1999) with Hugh Grant, and Runaway Bride (Garry Marshall, 1999) with Richard Gere. In My Best Friend's Wedding (P.J. Hogan, 1997), she starred opposite Dermot Mulroney, Cameron Diaz and Rupert Everett, as a food critic who realizes she's in love with her best friend and tries to win him back after he decides to marry someone else. The cult comedy gave the genre some fresh life that had been lacking in Hollywood for some time. Roger Ebert: "One of the pleasures of Ronald Bass' screenplay is the way it subverts the usual comic formulas that would fuel a plot like this. It makes the Julia Roberts character sympathetic at first, but eventually her behavior shades into cruel meddling. Stories like this are tricky for the actors. They have to be light enough for the comedy, and then subtle in revealing the deeper tones. Roberts, Diaz and Mulroney are in good synch, and Roberts does a skilful job of negotiating the plot's twists: We have to care for her even after we stop sharing her goals. "
Julia Roberts' had her biggest success when she delivered an Oscar-winning performance playing the title role in Erin Brockovich (Steven Soderbergh, 2000). The film, based on the true story of Erin Brockovich, a single mother who, against all odds, won a heated battle against corporate environmental offenders, earned Roberts a staggering 20-million-dollar salary. The next year, Roberts starred in the crime caper Ocean's Eleven (Steven Soderbergh, 2001), in which she acted with Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and George Clooney. A success with critics and at the box office alike, Ocean's Eleven became the fifth highest-grossing film of the year with a total of $450 million worldwide. In 2004, Roberts signed on for the sequel, the aptly titled Ocean's Twelve (Steven Soderbergh, 2004). In 2006, she made her Broadway debut alongside Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper in the revival of Richard Greenberg's play 'Three Days of Rain', but the production was not a success. Roberts teamed with Tom Hanks for Charlie Wilson's War (Mike Nichols, 2007), and then again for Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks, 2011). In between, she gave a critically acclaimed performance in Eat, Pray, Love (Ryan Murphy, 2010), in which she portrayed a divorcee on a journey of self-discovery. In 2012, she played Snow White's evil stepmother in Mirror, Mirror (Tarsem Singh, 2012). Roberts starred alongside Meryl Streep and Ewan McGregor in the black comedy drama August: Osage County (John Wells, 2013) about a dysfunctional family that reunites in the familial house when their patriarch suddenly disappears. Her performance earned her her fourth Academy Award nomination. Julia Roberts was in a relationship with actor Kiefer Sutherland for a while. In 1991, their relationship ended five days before they got married. She married country singer Lyle Lovett in 1993 but divorced him in 1995. She met her second husband, cameraman Danny Moder while shooting the film the road gangster comedy The Mexican (Gore Verbinski, 2000) with Brad Pitt. Roberts and Moder married in 2002 in Taos, New Mexico. Together they had twins in 2004, a daughter, Hazel Patricia, and a son, Phinnaeus 'Finn' Walter. In 2007, Roberts gave birth to their third child, Henry Daniel. All the children were given their father's surname. Julia Roberts also became involved with UNICEF charities and has made visits to many different countries, including Haiti and India, in order to promote goodwill. On-screen, she appeared in Jodie Foster's thriller Money Monster (2016), the coming-of-age drama Wonder (Steven Chbosky, 2017), and the romantic comedy Ticket to Paradise (Ol Parker, 2022) with George Clooney. She received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for the television adaptation of Larry Kramer's AIDS-era play The Normal Heart (Larry Murphy, 2014), had her first regular television role in the first season of the psychological thriller series Homecoming (2018), and portrayed Martha Mitchell opposite Sean Penn in the political thriller series Gaslit (Matt Ross, 2022) about the Watergate Scandal.
Sources: Roger Ebert (Roger Ebert.com), Tracie Cooper (AllMovie), KD Haisch (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb.
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French postcard, no. C 460.
Sharon Stone (1958) is an American actress, producer, and former fashion model. With her role in Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct (1992), she became one of the most talked about actresses of the 1990s, earning both admiration and infamy for her on- and off-screen personae. Cast as an ex-prostitute in Martin Scorsese's Casino (1995), she won an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for her work, as well as the general opinion that she was capable of dramatic acting.
Sharon Vonne Stone was born in 1958 in Meadville, a small town in Pennsylvania. Her parents were Dorothy Marie (née Lawson), an accountant, and Joseph William Stone II, a tool and die manufacturer and factory worker. She was the second of four children. At the age of 15, she studied in Saegertown High School, Pennsylvania, and at that same age, entered Edinboro State University of Pennsylvania, and graduated with a degree in creative writing and fine arts. While attending Edinboro University, Stone won the title of Miss Crawford County, Pennsylvania and was a candidate for Miss Pennsylvania. One of the pageant judges told her to quit school and move to New York City to become a fashion model. In 1977, Stone left Meadville and moved in with an aunt in New Jersey. She was signed by Ford Modeling Agency in New York City. Stone, inspired by Hillary Clinton, went back to Edinboro University to complete her degree in 2016. After modelling in television commercials and print advertisements, she made her film debut as "pretty girl in train" in Woody Allen's comedy-drama Stardust Memories (1980). Her first speaking part was in Wes Craven's horror film Deadly Blessing (1981), and French director Claude Lelouch cast her in Les Uns et les Autres (1982), starring James Caan. She had a supporting role in Irreconcilable Differences (Charles Shyer, 1984), starring Ryan O'Neal, Shelley Long, and a young Drew Barrymore. In 1984, she married Michael Greenburg, the producer of MacGyver (1985), but they divorced two years later. Throughout the 1980s, Stone went on to appear in films such as King Solomon's Mines (J. Lee Thompson, 1985) with Richard Chamberlain, Cold Steel (Dorothy Ann Puzo, 1987) with Brad Davis, and Above the Law (Andrew Davis, 1988) as the wife of Steven Seagal. Stone was often cast as the stereotypical blonde bimbo. She finally got a break with her part in Paul Verhoeven's Sci-Fi action film Total Recall (1990), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. She played the role of Lori Quaid, the seemingly loving wife of Schwarzenegger's character, later revealed to be an agent sent by a corrupt and ruthless governor to monitor him. The film received favourable reviews and made $261.2 million worldwide, giving Stone's career a major boost. She also posed nude for Playboy, a daring move for a 32-year-old actress. But it worked.
Sharon Stone became a sex symbol and international star when she played Catherine Tramell, a brilliant, bisexual author and alleged serial killer in the erotic thriller Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992). Several actresses at the time turned down the role, mostly because of the nudity required. Her interrogation scene has become a classic in film history and her performance captivated everyone, from MTV viewers, who honoured her with Most Desirable Female and Best Female Performance Awards, to a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. She headlined the erotic thriller Sliver (Phillip Noyce, 1993), based on Ira Levin's eponymous novel about the mysterious occurrences in a privately owned New York City high-rise apartment building. The film was heavily panned by critics and earned Stone a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Actress but Sliver became a commercial success, grossing US$116.3 million at the international box office. She starred alongside Sylvester Stallone in the action thriller The Specialist (Luis Llosa, 1994), portraying May Munro, a woman who entices a bomb expert she is involved with (Stallone) into destroying the criminal gang that killed her family. Despite negative reviews, the film made US$170.3 million worldwide. In the Western The Quick and the Dead (Sam Raimi, 1995) with Gene Hackman and Russell Crowe, she obtained the role of a gunfighter who returns to a frontier town in an effort to avenge her father's death. She received critical acclaim with her performance as the beautiful but drug-crazy wife of Robert de Niro in Martin Scorsese's crime drama Casino (1995), garnering the Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 1998, she married newspaper editor Phil Bronstein but they divorced in 2004. Sharon Stone received two more Golden Globe Award nominations for her roles in The Mighty (Peter Chelsom, 1998) and The Muse (Albert Brooks, 1999).
In 2000, Sharon Stone starred opposite Ellen DeGeneres in the made-for-HBO drama If These Walls Could Talk 2 (Jane Anderson, Martha Coolidge, Anne Heche, 2000), portraying a lesbian trying to start a family. Stone appeared in two embarassing flops, Catwoman (Pitof, 2004), and the sequel Basic Instinct 2 (Michael Caton-Jones, 2006). In between, she played one of Bill Murray's ex-girlfriends in Jim Jarmusch's Golden Palm winner Broken Flowers (2005) - and walked away with the most memorable and endearing role in the picture - a role that showcases her skills as a disciplined thespian. She was also in the American drama Bobby (2006), written and directed by Emilio Estevez. In the biographical drama Lovelace (Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, 2013), Stone obtained the role of the mother of porn actress Linda Lovelace, played by Amanda Seyfried. Later films include Fading Gigolo (John Turturro, 2013) with Woody Allen, the Italian dramedy Un ragazzo d’oro/A Golden Boy (Pupi Avati, 2014) and The Disaster Artist (James Franco, 2017). In 1995, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 2005, she was named Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in France. On television, Stone has had notable performances in the mini-series War and Remembrance (1987) and the made-for-HBO film If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000). She made guest-appearances in The Practice (2004), winning the Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series, and in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2010). She has also starred in the action drama series Agent X (2015), Steven Soderbergh's murder-mystery Mosaic (2017) and the series The New Pope (Paolo Sorrentino, 2019) with Jude Law. Sharon Stone is the mother of three adopted sons: Roan (2000), Laird (2005) and Quinn (2006).
Sources: Johannes Prayudhi (IMDb), Rebecca Flint Marx (AllMovie), Wikipedia and IMDb.
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[This series has 9 photos] The Daniel Pfiel House, located in Tamaqua, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, is a most rewarding architectural gem. Built circa 1920 in Tudor Revival style, it's a fascinating mixture of features, embellishments and irregularities. Described in the National Register of Historic Places nomination form as an elite dwelling, the Daniel Pfiel House is a 2 1/2-story brick house, using the Flemish bond pattern. The front facade (image 3) includes a clipped or jerkinhead gable, a chimney and a small porch, but the true sense of mass is illustrated in image 2. The roof is complex with double or triple thickness of slate shingles. Interrupted by gables and various dormers, the roof line still maintains a harmonious appearance. There are two large chimneys, one at the front and one at the rear (a portion of the decorative chimney pots is visible in image 1). A second clipped gable is seen in image 2 as well as a dormer. Two irregularly placed dormers, are depicted in image 1. The front clipped gable illustrates the half-timbering of the Tudor style as do the more conventional gables in image 4 and partially depicted in image 2.
The second floor is relatively mundane except for vertical positioning of bricks above windows and between small brackets (image 3)--and the unexpected curved, oval opening of the roof above the small front porch (image 2). The front facade is the half-shouldered chimney in the clipped gable. Two large recessed windows with stone lintels and sills are symmetrically placed on either side of the chimney; below them is a stone course that partially wraps around each side of the house (image 3). These 28-paned windows show different alignments of the quoin pattern; it's plainly seen in image 7.
To the left of the front facade is a sunroom (image 8) with recessed windows accented by symmetrical quoining; at the top of each of the four corners the brick seems to flare out in a cup-like fashion. The porch (images 5 and 6) are a blend of brick, stone and wood; the wood balusters are turned. Brick steps lead to this small porch covered with a metal awning. A second larger porch toward the rear of the structure is partially visible in image 2. The nomination form states there's a matching garage (barely visible in image 8) and an alley wall. I liked the contrast of red flowers against the brick structure in image 9. I could find nothing about Daniel Pfiel. The house is part of the Tamaqua Historic District and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places February 2, 2001 with the reference # 01000059
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Spanish card by JDP, Valencia, no. 1461. Photo: Humphrey Bogart and Candy Toxton (Susan Perry) in Knock on Any Door (Nicholas Ray, 1949).
Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957) is an icon of the Hollywood cinema. His private detectives, Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep (1946), became the models for detectives in other Film-Noirs. Bogart and 19-year-old Lauren Bacall fell in love when they filmed To Have and Have Not (1944), the first of a series of films together. He won the best actor Oscar for The African Queen (1951). He was also nominated for Casablanca (1942) and as Captain Queeg in Mutiny on the Caine (1954).
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was born in New York City, New York, in 1899. His mother was Maud Humphrey, a famed magazine illustrator and suffragette, and his father Belmont DeForest Bogart, a moderately wealthy surgeon who was secretly addicted to opium. He had two younger sisters, Frances and Catherine 'Kay' Bogart. Maud Bogart's drawing of her baby Humphrey appeared in a national advertising campaign for Mellin's Baby Food. 'Bogie' was educated at Trinity School, NYC, and was sent to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, in preparation for medical studies at Yale. He was expelled from Phillips and joined the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1918. During the First World War, he served on the troopship USS Leviathan in the North Atlantic. From 1920 to 1922, he managed a stage company owned by family friend William A. Brady (the father of actress Alice Brady), performing a variety of tasks at Brady's film studio in New York. He then began regular stage performances. Alexander Woollcott described his acting in a 1922 play as inadequate. In 1930, he gained a contract with Fox. He had his film debut in a ten-minute short, Broadway's Like That (Arthur Hurley, 1930), co-starring Ruth Etting and Joan Blondell. Fox released him after two years. After five years of stage and minor film roles, he had his breakthrough role in The Petrified Forest (Archie Mayo, 1936) from Warner Bros. He won the part over Edward G. Robinson only after the star, Leslie Howard, threatened Warner Bros. that he would quit unless Bogart was given the key role of Duke Mantee, which he had played in the Broadway production with Howard. The film was a major success and led to a long-term contract with Warner Bros. From 1936 to 1940, Bogart appeared in 28 films, usually as a gangster and twice in Westerns. He even played in a horror film, The Return of Doctor X (Vincent Sherman, 1939), in which he played a rejuvenated, formerly-dead scientist. He averaged a film every two months between 1936 and 1940, sometimes working on two films at the same time. His only substantial role during this period was in Dead End (William Wyler, 1937), as a gangster modeled after Baby Face Nelson. Bogart used these years to begin developing his film persona: a wounded, stoical, cynical, charming, vulnerable, self-mocking loner with a code of honour.
Humphrey Bogart's landmark year was 1941 with roles in classics such as High Sierra (Raoul Walsh, 1941) with Ida Lupino and as Sam Spade in one of his most fondly remembered films, The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941) with Mary Astor and Peter Lorre. Thus, he often capitalised on parts George Raft had rejected. Raft had also passed Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) with Ingrid Bergman, for which Bogart won his first Oscar nomination and which made him a true international star. In 1944, Bogart fell in love with the 19-year-old Lauren Bacall when they filmed To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944). They married in 1945. They also co-starred in the classic Film Noir The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946), Dark Passage (Delmer Daves, 1947), and Key Largo (John Huston, 1948). Bogart, despite his erratic education, was incredibly well-read and he favoured writers and intellectuals within his small circle of friends. In 1947, he joined wife Lauren Bacall and other actors protesting the House Un-American Activities Committee witch hunts. They both eventually succumbed to pressure and distanced themselves from the Hollywood Ten in a March 1948 Photoplay Magazine article penned by Bogart titled 'I'm No Communist'. That year, he made The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948) with Walter Huston. He also formed his own production company, and produced the Film-Noir Knock on Any Door (Nicholas Ray, 1949). Ray also directed him in one of his best roles in another Film-Noir In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950) with Gloria Grahame. Bogie won the Best Actor Academy Award for his part as a cantankerous river steam launch skipper in The African Queen (John Huston, 1951) opposite Katharine Hepburn. He was nominated for another Oscar for his part as Captain Queeg in Mutiny on the Caine (Edward Dmytryk, 1954), a film made when he was already seriously ill. Other significant roles included The Barefoot Contessa (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1954) with Ava Gardner and his on-screen competition with William Holden for Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina (Billy Wilder, 1954). In 1957, Humphrey Bogart died in his sleep at his Hollywood home following surgeries and a battle with throat cancer (he usually smoked 40 cigarettes a day). He had just turned 57. Bogart is interred at Forest Lawn, Glendale, CA, in the Garden of Memory, Columbarium of Eternal Light. He was four times married and all of his wives were actresses: Helen Menken (1926-1927), Mary Philips (1928-1938), Mayo Methot (1938-1945), and Lauren Ball (1945-1957). Bogart and Bacall, had two children, Stephen H. Bogart (1949) and Leslie Bogart (1952). Stephen discussed his relationship with Bogie in the book, 'Bogart: In Search of My Father' (1996).
Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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Romanian postcard by Terry O'Neill / Publiturism / Inter Contempress.
American actress and producer Michelle Pfeiffer (1958) was one of the most popular and talented Hollywood actresses of the 1980s and 1990s. Noted for her versatility as a character actress, Pfeiffer has become particularly known for portraying nuanced and unglamorous, emotionally distant women as well as strong female characters with intense sex appeal.
Michelle Marie Pfeiffer was born in 1958 in Santa Ana, California, to Donna Jean (Taverna) and Richard Pfeiffer, a heating and air-conditioning contractor. Pfeiffer graduated from Fountain Valley High School in 1976, and attended one year at the Golden West College, where she studied to become a court reporter. But it was while working as a supermarket checker at Vons, a large Southern California grocery chain, that she realized her true calling. She began to pursue an acting career in 1978. After accepting several minor roles in television series and films, her first leading role was in the musical film Grease 2 (Patricia Birch, 1982) opposite Maxwell Caulfield. It was the sequel to the popular hit film Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978) and takes place two years after the original film at Rydell High School, set in the 1961–1962 school year. Although the film was poorly received, it increased public interest in Pfeiffer. Frustrated with being typecast as the token pretty girl, Pfeiffer actively pursued more serious material. She received strong reviews for her breakout performance as gangster moll Elvira Hancock in the crime film Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983) opposite Al Pacino. Her performance as one-third of the titular trio - with Cher and Susan Sarandon - in the dark fantasy The Witches of Eastwick (George Miller, 1987) proved to be one of her first box office successes. Pfeiffer's starring role in Married to the Mob (Jonathan Demme, 1988), in which she was cast against type as a mobster's widow, earned the actress her first of several consecutive Golden Globe Award nominations. Her role in Dangerous Liaisons (Stephen Frears, 1988) based on Christopher Hampton's play Les liaisons dangereuses, garnered her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Then followed her sultry performance as lounge singer Susie Diamond in The Fabulous Baker Boys (Steve Kloves, 1989) with Jeff and Beau Bridges. Susie would be the most critically acclaimed role of her career and she got another Academy Award nomination, now for Best Actress.
Michelle Pfeiffer starred opposite Al Pacino as the titular waitress in the romantic comedy Frankie and Johnny (Garry Marshall, 1991). She achieved widespread recognition as Catwoman / Selina Kyle in Tim Burton's superhero film Batman Returns (1992). Pfeiffer's interpretation is widely regarded as one of the most definitive portrayals of the comic book character. She earned a third Academy Award nomination for Love Field (Jonathan Kaplan, 1992) before starring in the critically acclaimed The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993) with Daniel Day Lewis. It was followed by the romantic horror film Wolf (Mike Nichols, 1994) with Jack Nicholson, the supernatural horror film What Lies Beneath (Robert Zemeckis, 2000) with Harrison Ford, and White Oleander (Peter Kosminsky, 2002). During this time, she also produced a series of films under her production company Via Rosa Productions. After a five-year hiatus from film acting, she appeared in Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2007), Chéri (Stephen Frears, 2009), and Dark Shadows (Tim Burton, 2012). She received her first Emmy Award nomination for portraying Ruth Madoff in the HBO television film The Wizard of Lies (Barry Levinson, 2017), and garnered further critical acclaim for her role in Where Is Kyra? (Andrew Dosunmu, 2017) with Kiefer Sutherland. Recently, Michelle Pfeiffer also appeared in the ensemble films Murder on the Orient Express (Kenneth Branagh, 2017) and Ant-Man and the Wasp (Peyton Reed, 2018). She was married to actor/director Peter Horton in 1981. They were later divorced, and she then had a three year relationship with actor Fisher Stevens. When that did not work out, Pfeiffer decided she did not want to wait any longer before having her own family, and in March 1993, she adopted a baby girl, Claudia Rose. Later the same year, she married lawyer-turned-writer/producer David E. Kelley. In 1994, their son John Henry was born.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
South-African postcard by East-West Publishers, Cape Town, no. 19.
American actor Gregory Peck (1916-2003) was one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s. Peck received five nominations for Academy Award for Best Actor and won once – for his performance as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). He almost always played courageous, nobly heroic good guys who saw injustice and fought it. Among his best known films are Spellbound (1945), The Yearling (1946), Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Roman Holiday (1953), The Guns of Navarone (1961), and Cape Fear (1962).
Eldred Gregory Peck was born in 1916 in La Jolla, California (now in San Diego). His parents were Bernice Mary (Ayres) and Gregory Pearl Peck, a chemist, and druggist in San Diego. His parents divorced when he was five years old. An only child, he was sent to live with his grandmother. He never felt he had a stable childhood. His fondest memories are of his grandmother taking him to the cinema every week and of his dog, which followed him everywhere. Peck's father encouraged him to take up medicine. He studied pre-med at UC-Berkeley and, while there, got bitten by the acting bug and decided to change the focus of his studies. He enrolled in the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York and debuted on Broadway after graduation. His debut was in Emlyn Williams' play 'The Morning Star' (1942). By 1943, he was in Hollywood, where he debuted in the RKO film Days of Glory (Jacques Tourneur, 1944). Stardom came with his next film, The Keys of the Kingdom (John M. Stahl, 1944), for which he was nominated for an Oscar. Tony Fontana at IMDb: "Peck's screen presence displayed the qualities for which he became well known. He was tall, rugged and heroic, with a basic decency that transcended his roles." He appeared opposite Ingrid Bergman in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) as an amnesia victim accused of murder. In The Yearling (Clarence Brown, 1946), he was again nominated for an Oscar and won the Golden Globe. He was especially effective in Westerns and appeared in such varied fare as David O. Selznick's critically blasted Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946), the somewhat better received Yellow Sky (William A. Wellman, 1948), and the acclaimed The Gunfighter (Henry King, 1950). He was nominated again for the Academy Award for his roles in Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947), which dealt with anti-Semitism, and Twelve O'Clock High (Henry King, 1949), a story of high-level stress in an Air Force bomber unit in World War II. In 1947, Peck, along with Dorothy McGuire, David O'Selznick, and Mel Ferrer, founded the La Jolla Playhouse, located in his hometown, and produced many of the classics there. Due to film commitments, he could not return to Broadway but whet his appetite for live theatre on occasion at the Playhouse, keeping it firmly established with a strong, reputable name over the years.
With a string of hits to his credit, Gregory Peck made the decision to only work in films that interested him. He continued to appear as the heroic, larger-than-life figures in such films as Captain Horatio Hornblower (Raoul Walsh, 1951) with Virginia Mayo, and Moby Dick (John Huston, 1956) with Richard Basehart. He worked with Audrey Hepburn in her debut film, Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953). While filming The Bravados (Henry King, 1958), he decided to become a cowboy in real life, so he purchased a vast working ranch near Santa Barbara, California - already stocked with 600 head of prize cattle. In the early 1960s, he gave a powerful performance as Captain Keith Mallory in The Guns of Navarone (J. Lee Thompson, 1961) opposite David Niven and Anthony Quinn. The film was one of the biggest box-office hits of that year. Peck finally won the Oscar, after four nominations, for his performance as lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962). He also appeared in two darker films than he usually made, Cape Fear (J. Lee Thompson, 1962) opposite Robert Mitchum, and Captain Newman, M.D. (David Miller, 1963) with Tony Curtis, which dealt with the way people live. The financial failure of Cape Fear (1962) ended his company, Melville Productions. After making Arabesque (Stanley Donen, 1966) with Sophia Loren, Peck withdrew from acting for three years in order to concentrate on various humanitarian causes, including the American Cancer Society. In the early 1970s, he produced two films, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (Gordon Davidson, 1972) and The Dove (Charles Jarrott, 1974), when his film career stalled. He made a comeback playing, somewhat woodenly, Ambassador Robert Thorn in the horror film The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976) with Lee Remick. After that, he returned to the bigger-than-life roles he was best known for, such as MacArthur (Joseph Sargent, 1977) and the infamous Nazi war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele in the huge hit The Boys from Brazil (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1978) with Laurence Olivier and James Mason. In the 1980s, he moved into television with the miniseries The Blue and the Gray (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1982) in which he played Abraham Lincoln, and The Scarlet and the Black (Jerry London, 1983) with Christopher Plummer and John Gielgud. In 1991, he appeared in the remake of his 1962 film, playing a different role, in Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991). He was also cast as the progressive-thinking owner of a wire and cable business in Other People's Money (Norman Jewison, 1991), starring Danny DeVito. In 1967, Peck received the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He was also been awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom. Always politically progressive, he was active in such causes as anti-war protests, workers' rights, and civil rights. In 2003, Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch was named the greatest film hero of the past 100 years by the American Film Institute, only two weeks before his death. Atticus beat out Indiana Jones, who was placed second, and James Bond who came third. Gregory Peck died in 2003 in Los Angeles, California. He was 87. Peck was married twice. From 1942 till 1955, he was married to Greta Kukkonen. They had three children: Jonathan Peck (1944-1975), Stephen Peck (1946), and Carey Paul Peck (1949). His second wife was Veronique Passani, whom he met at the set of Roman Holliday. They married in 1955 and had two children: Tony Peck (1956) and Cecilia Peck (1958). The couple remained together till his death.
Sources: Tony Fontana (IMDb), and IMDb.
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British postcard by Athena International, no. 0334340, BAT, no. 10. Photo: TM / DC Comics Inc. Photo: Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson in Batman (Tim Burton, 1989).
Jack Nicholson (1937) is an American actor and filmmaker who has performed for over sixty years. His rise in Hollywood was far from meteoric, and for years, he sustained his career with guest spots in television series and a number of Roger Corman films. He is now known for playing a wide range of starring or supporting roles, including satirical comedy, romance, and dark portrayals of anti-heroes and villainous characters. In many of his films, he has played someone who rebels against the social structure. Nicholson's 12 Oscar nominations make him the most nominated male actor ever. He won the Oscars for Best Actor twice – for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), and As Good as It Gets (1997), and the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Terms of Endearment (1983).
Jack Nicholson was born in 1937 as John Joseph Nicholson in Neptune City, New Jersey. He was the son of a showgirl, June Frances Nicholson (stage name June Nilson). She married Italian-American showman Donald Furcillo (stage name Donald Rose) in 1936, before realising that he was already married. Biographer Patrick McGilligan stated in his book Jack's Life that Latvian-born Eddie King, June's manager, may have been Nicholson's biological father, rather than Furcillo. Other sources suggest June Nicholson was unsure of who the father was. As June was only seventeen years old and unmarried, her parents agreed to raise Nicholson as their own child without revealing his true parentage, and June would act as his sister. In 1974, Time magazine researchers learned, and informed Nicholson, that his 'sister', June, was actually his mother, and his other 'sister', Lorraine, was really his aunt. By this time, both his mother and grandmother had died (in 1963 and 1970, respectively). On finding out, Nicholson said it was "a pretty dramatic event, but it wasn't what I'd call traumatizing ... I was pretty well psychologically formed". Before starting high school, his family moved to an apartment in Spring Lake, New Jersey. When Jack was ready for high school, the family moved once more, to old-money Spring Lake, New Jersey's so-called Irish Riviera, where Ethel May set up her beauty parlor. 'Nick', as he was known to his high school friends, attended nearby Manasquan High School, where he was voted 'Class Clown' by the Class of 1954. In 1957, Nicholson joined the California Air National Guard. After completing the Air Force's basic training, Nicholson performed weekend drills and two-week annual training as a fire fighter. Nicholson first came to Hollywood in 1954, when he was seventeen, to visit his sister. He took a job as an office worker for animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera at the MGM cartoon studio. He trained to be an actor with a group called the Players Ring Theater, after which time he found small parts performing on the stage and in TV soap operas. He made his film debut in a low-budget teen drama The Cry Baby Killer (Justus Addiss, 1958), playing the title role. For the following decade, Nicholson was a frequent collaborator with the film's producer, Roger Corman. Corman directed Nicholson on several occasions, most notably in The Little Shop of Horrors (Roger Corman, 1960), as masochistic dental patient and undertaker Wilbur Force, and also in The Raven (Roger Corman, 1963), The Terror (Roger Corman, 1963) as a French officer seduced by an evil ghost, and The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (Roger Corman, 1967). Nicholson also frequently worked with director Monte Hellman on low-budget Westerns, including the cult successes Ride in the Whirlwind (Monte Hellman, 1966) with Cameron Mitchell, and The Shooting (Monte Hellman, 1966) opposite Millie Perkins. Nicholson also appeared in episodes of TV series like Dr. Kildare (1966) and The Andy Griffith Show (1966-1967). However, Nicholson seemed resigned to a career behind the camera as a writer/director. His first real taste of writing success was the screenplay for the counterculture film The Trip (Roger Corman, 1967), which starred Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. Nicholson also co-wrote, with Bob Rafelson, Head (Bob Rafelson, 1968), which starred The Monkees. He also arranged the film's soundtrack. Nicholson's first turn in the director's chair was for Drive, He Said (1971).
Jack Nicholson had his acting break when a spot opened up in Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969). Nicholson played liquor-soaked lawyer George Hanson, for which he received his first Oscar nomination. The film cost only $400,000 to make, and became a blockbuster, grossing $40 million. Overnight, Nicholson became a hero of the counter-culture movement. Nicholson was cast by Stanley Kubrick, who was impressed with his role in Easy Rider, in the part of Napoleon in a film about his life, and although production on the film commenced, the project fizzled out, partly due to a change in ownership at MGM. Nicholson starred in Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970) alongside Karen Black. Bobby Dupea, an oil rig worker, became his persona-defining role. Nicholson and Black were nominated for Academy Awards for their performances. Critics began speculating whether he might become another Marlon Brando or James Dean. His career and income skyrocketed. Nicholson starred in Carnal Knowledge (Mike Nichols, 1971), which co-starred Art Garfunkel, Ann-Margret, and Candice Bergen. Other roles included Billy "Bad Ass" Buddusky in The Last Detail (Hal Ashby, 1973). For his role, Nicholson won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival, and he was nominated for his third Oscar and a Golden Globe. In 1974, Nicholson starred in Roman Polanski's majestic Film Noir Chinatown, opposite Faye Dunaway. For his role as private detective Jake Gittes, he was again nominated for Academy Award for Best Actor. The role was a major transition from the exploitation films of the previous decade. One of Nicholson's greatest successes came with his role as Randle P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Miloš Forman, 1975). It was an adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel and co-produced by Michael Douglas. Nicholson plays an anti-authoritarian patient at a mental hospital where he becomes an inspiring leader for the other patients. The film swept the Academy Awards with nine nominations, and won the top five, including Nicholson's first for Best Actor. Also that year, Nicholson starred in Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger (1975), which co-starred Maria Schneider. The film received good reviews and revived Antonioni's reputation as one of the cinema's great directors. He took a small role in The Last Tycoon (Elia Kazan, 1976), opposite Robert De Niro. He took a less sympathetic role in Arthur Penn's Western The Missouri Breaks (1976), specifically to work with Marlon Brando.
Although Jack Nicholson did not win an Oscar for Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining (1980), it remains one of his more significant roles. Nicholson improvised his now-famous "Here's Johnny!" line, along with the scene in which he's sitting at the typewriter and unleashes his anger upon his wife after she discovers he has gone insane when she looks at his writing ("all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" typed endlessly). In 1982, he starred as an immigration enforcement agent in The Border (Tony Richardson, 1982, co-starring Warren Oates. Nicholson won his second Oscar, an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his role of retired astronaut Garrett Breedlove in Terms of Endearment (James L. Brooks, 1983), starring Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger. He and MacLaine played many of their scenes in different ways, constantly testing and making adjustments. Nicholson continued to work prolifically in the 1980s, starring in such films as The Postman Always Rings Twice (Bob Rafelson, 1981), Reds (Warren Beatty, 1981), where Nicholson portrays the writer Eugene O'Neill with a quiet intensity, Prizzi's Honor (John Huston, 1985), The Witches of Eastwick (George Miller, 1987), Broadcast News (James L. Brooks, 1987), and Ironweed (Hector Babenco, 1987) with Meryl Streep. Three Oscar nominations also followed, for Reds, Prizzi's Honor, and Ironweed. In Batman (Tim Burton, 1989), Nicholson played the psychotic murderer and villain, the Joker. Batman creator Bob Kane personally recommended him for the role. The film was an international smash hit, and a lucrative percentage deal earned him a percentage of the box office gross estimated at $60 million to $90 million. For his role as hot-headed Col. Nathan R. Jessup in A Few Good Men (Rob Reiner, 1992), a film about a murder in a U.S. Marine Corps unit, Nicholson received yet another Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In 1996, Nicholson collaborated once more with Batman director Tim Burton on Mars Attacks!, pulling double duty as two contrasting characters, President James Dale and Las Vegas property developer Art Land. At first, studio executives at Warner Bros. disliked the idea of killing off Nicholson's character, so Burton created two characters and killed them both off. Not all of Nicholson's performances have been well received. He was nominated for Razzie Awards as worst actor for Man Trouble (Bob Rafelson, 1992) and Hoffa (Danny DeVito, 1992). However, Nicholson's performance in Hoffa also earned him a Golden Globe nomination. Nicholson went on to win his next Academy Award for Best Actor in the romantic comedy, As Good as It Gets (1997), his third film directed by James L. Brooks. He played Melvin Udall, a "wickedly funny", mean-spirited, obsessive-compulsive novelist. His Oscar was matched with the Academy Award for Best Actress for Helen Hunt, who played a Manhattan wisecracking, single-mother waitress drawn into a love/hate friendship with Udall, a frequent diner in the restaurant. The film was a tremendous box office success, grossing $314 million, which made it Nicholson's second-best-grossing film of his career, after Batman.
In About Schmidt (Alexander Payne, 2002), Nicholson portrayed a retired Omaha, Nebraska, actuary who questions his own life following his wife's death. His quietly restrained performance earned him another Oscar Nomination. In Anger Management (Peter Segal, 2003), he played an aggressive therapist assigned to help an over pacifist man (Adam Sandler). In 2003, Nicholson also starred in Something's Gotta Give (Nancy Meyers, 2003), as an aging playboy who falls for the mother (Diane Keaton) of his young girlfriend. In late 2006, Nicholson marked his return to the dark side as Frank Costello, a nefarious Boston Irish Mob boss, based on Whitey Bulger who was still on the run at that time, presiding over Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning film The Departed, a remake of Andrew Lau's Infernal Affairs. The role earned Nicholson worldwide critical praise, along with various award wins and nominations, including a Golden Globe nomination. In 2007, Nicholson co-starred with Morgan Freeman in The Bucket List (Rob Reiner, 2007) Nicholson and Freeman portrayed dying men who fulfill their list of goals. Nicholson reunited with James L. Brooks, director of Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, and As Good as It Gets, for a supporting role as Paul Rudd's character's father in How Do You Know (2012). It had been widely reported in subsequent years that Nicholson had retired from acting because of memory loss, but in a September 2013 Vanity Fair article, Nicholson clarified that he did not consider himself retired, merely that he was now less driven to "be out there any more". In 2015, Nicholson made a special appearance as a presenter on SNL 40, the 40th anniversary special of Saturday Night Live. After the death of boxer Muhammad Ali in 2016, Nicholson appeared on HBO's The Fight Game with Jim Lampley for an exclusive interview about his friendship with Ali. In 2017, it was reported that Nicholson would be starring in an English-language remake of Toni Erdmann opposite Kristen Wiig, but Nicholson dropped out of the project. does not consider himself to be retired. He has also directed three films, including The Two Jakes (1990), the sequel to Chinatown. Nicholson is one of three male actors to win three Academy Awards. He also has won six Golden Globe Awards. He has had a number of high-profile relationships and was married to Sandra Knight from 1962 until their divorce in 1968. Nicholson has five children. His eldest daughter is Jennifer Nicholson (1963), from his marriage to actress Sandra Knight. He has a son, Caleb James Goddard (1970) with Susan Anspach, and a daughter, Honey Hollman (1981) with Danish supermodel, Winnie Hollman. With Rebecca Broussard, he has two children, Lorraine Nicholson (1990) and Ray Nicholson (1992). Nicholson's longest relationship was the 17 years he spent with actress Anjelica Huston; this ended when Broussard become pregnant with his child. Jack Nicholson is the only actor to ever play the Devil, the Joker, and a werewolf.
Sources: Pedro Borges (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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De Hallen Amsterdam, McDonalds (Rotterdam), Tennisclub IJburg, Small church Klein Wetsinge (Winsum), Swimming pool Het Noorderparkbad (Amsterdam), Plus Ultra (Wageningen Campus), het KWR Watercycle Research Institute (Nieuwegein) and the underground parking garage Katwijk aan Zee are nominated for the best Dutch building of 2016.
Vermilion Cliffs National Monument is located in northern Coconino County, Arizona, United States, immediately south of the Utah state line. This national monument, 293,689 acres (118,852 ha) in area, protects the Paria Plateau, Vermilion Cliffs, Coyote Buttes, and Paria Canyon. Elevations in the monument range from 3,100 feet to 6,500 feet above sea level (944 to 1,981 meters).
Established on November 9, 2000 by a presidential proclamation by President Bill Clinton, Vermilion Cliffs National Monument was carved from existing lands already under the management of the U.S. Government in extreme northern Coconino County, Arizona, immediately south of the border with the state of Utah. The monument is administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, an agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior. The Vermilion Cliffs themselves run along the southern and eastern edges of the monument. Much of the monument's land consists of the Paria Plateau, a flat area extending northward from the tops of the cliffs.
The Vermilion Cliffs are steep eroded escarpments consisting primarily of sandstone, siltstone, limestone, and shale which rise as much as 3,000 feet (910 m) above their bases. These sedimentary rocks have been deeply eroded for millions of years, exposing hundreds of layers of richly colored rock strata. Mesas, buttes, and large tablelands are interspersed with steep canyons, where some small streams provide enough moisture to support a sampling of wildlife.
More than twenty species of raptors, including bald eagles and golden eagles, peregrine falcons, and several hawk species, have been observed. The endangered California condor was re-introduced into this region in 1996 due to its remote location and lack of human habitation. Desert bighorn sheep, pronghorns, and mountain lions make up most of the large mammals found here, with about 30 more species of smaller mammals. Several examples of rare fish species, such as the flannelmouth sucker and the speckled dace live in the streams of the monument. The Welsh's milkweed Asclepias welshii, a threatened plant species that grows on sand dunes and helps stabilize them, is known to exist only in the monument and one other area in neighboring Utah.
Human settlement in the region dates back 12,000 years, and hundreds of Native American pueblos are spread across the monument. The remains of the natives' villages, with houses, granaries, burial areas, and associated ruins, can be found here. The monument also contains one of the largest number of rock art sites in any nationally protected area. Many of these petroglyphs are believed to be among the oldest in the United States.
The first explorers into the region were Spanish missionaries and explorers from the 1776 Domínguez–Escalante expedition. Later, Mormon explorers searched the region during the 1860s, some of them settling on land that is now within the monument. They built one of the first ferry crossings on the Colorado River in 1871. That same year, John Wesley Powell ventured through this region during his scientific explorations of the Colorado River plateau.
Below the Vermilion cliffs runs the historic "Honeymoon Trail", a wagon route for Mormons who journeyed to have their marriages sealed in the temple at St. George, Utah, and then to return. The route, through remote country, was otherwise seldom used. Historical markers denote this history.
Today, the region surrounding the monument is relatively unspoiled with virtually no permanent inhabitants remaining and limited road access.
Coconino County is a county in the north-central part of the U.S. state of Arizona. Its population was 145,101 at the 2020 census. The county seat is Flagstaff. The county takes its name from Cohonino, a name applied to the Havasupai people. It is the second-largest county by area in the contiguous United States, behind San Bernardino County, California. It has 18,661 sq mi (48,300 km2), or 16.4% of Arizona's total area, and is larger than the nine smallest states in the U.S.
Coconino County comprises the Flagstaff metropolitan statistical area, Grand Canyon National Park, the federally recognized Havasupai Nation, and parts of the federally recognized Navajo, Hualapai, and Hopi nations. As a result, its relatively large Native American population makes up nearly 30% of the county's total population; it is mostly Navajo, with smaller numbers of other tribes.
The county was the setting for George Herriman's early 20th-century Krazy Kat comic strip.
After European Americans completed the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad in 1883, the region of northern Yavapai County began to undergo rapid growth. The people of the northern reaches had tired of the rigors of traveling to Prescott to conduct county business. They believed that they should have their own county jurisdiction, so petitioned in 1887 for secession from Yavapai and creation of a new Frisco County. This did not take place, but Coconino County was formed in 1891 and its seat was designated as Flagstaff.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 18,661 square miles (48,330 km2), of which 18,619 square miles (48,220 km2) are land and 43 square miles (110 km2) (0.2%) are covered by water. It is the largest county by area in Arizona and the second-largest county in the United States (excluding boroughs in Alaska) after San Bernardino County in California. It has more land area than each of the following states: Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
The highest natural point in the county, as well as the entire state, is Humphreys Peak at 12,637 ft or 3,852 m. The Barringer Meteor Crater is located in Coconino County.
Arizona is a state in the Southwestern region of the United States. Arizona is part of the Four Corners region with Utah to the north, Colorado to the northeast, and New Mexico to the east; its other neighboring states are Nevada to the northwest, California to the west and the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California to the south and southwest. It is the 6th-largest and the 14th-most-populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix.
Arizona is the 48th state and last of the contiguous states to be admitted to the Union, achieving statehood on February 14, 1912. Historically part of the territory of Alta California and Nuevo México in New Spain, it became part of independent Mexico in 1821. After being defeated in the Mexican–American War, Mexico ceded much of this territory to the United States in 1848, where the area became part of the territory of New Mexico. The southernmost portion of the state was acquired in 1853 through the Gadsden Purchase.
Southern Arizona is known for its desert climate, with very hot summers and mild winters. Northern Arizona features forests of pine, Douglas fir, and spruce trees; the Colorado Plateau; mountain ranges (such as the San Francisco Mountains); as well as large, deep canyons, with much more moderate summer temperatures and significant winter snowfalls. There are ski resorts in the areas of Flagstaff, Sunrise, and Tucson. In addition to the internationally known Grand Canyon National Park, which is one of the world's seven natural wonders, there are several national forests, national parks, and national monuments.
Arizona's population and economy have grown dramatically since the 1950s because of inward migration, and the state is now a major hub of the Sun Belt. Cities such as Phoenix and Tucson have developed large, sprawling suburban areas. Many large companies, such as PetSmart and Circle K, have headquarters in the state, and Arizona is home to major universities, including the University of Arizona and Arizona State University. The state is known for a history of conservative politicians such as Barry Goldwater and John McCain, though it has become a swing state since the 1990s.
Arizona is home to a diverse population. About one-quarter of the state is made up of Indian reservations that serve as the home of 27 federally recognized Native American tribes, including the Navajo Nation, the largest in the state and the United States, with more than 300,000 citizens. Since the 1980s, the proportion of Hispanics in the state's population has grown significantly owing to migration from Mexico. A substantial portion of the population are followers of the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The history of Arizona encompasses the Paleo-Indian, Archaic, Post-Archaic, Spanish, Mexican, and American periods. About 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, Paleo-Indians settled in what is now Arizona. A few thousand years ago, the Ancestral Puebloan, the Hohokam, the Mogollon and the Sinagua cultures inhabited the state. However, all of these civilizations mysteriously disappeared from the region in the 15th and 16th centuries. Today, countless ancient ruins can be found in Arizona. Arizona was part of the state of Sonora, Mexico from 1822, but the settled population was small. In 1848, under the terms of the Mexican Cession the United States took possession of Arizona above the Gila River after the Mexican War, and became part of the Territory of New Mexico. By means of the Gadsden Purchase, the United States secured the northern part of the state of Sonora, which is now Arizona south of the Gila River in 1854.
In 1863, Arizona was split off from the Territory of New Mexico to form the Arizona Territory. The remoteness of the region was eased by the arrival of railroads in 1880. Arizona became a state in 1912 but was primarily rural with an economy based on cattle, cotton, citrus, and copper. Dramatic growth came after 1945, as retirees and young families who appreciated the warm weather and low costs emigrated from the Northeast and Midwest.
In the Mexican–American War, the garrison commander avoided conflict with Lieutenant Colonel Cooke and the Mormon Battalion, withdrawing while the Americans marched through the town on their way to California. In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), Mexico ceded to the U.S. the northern 70% of modern-day Arizona above the Sonora border along the Gila River. During the California Gold Rush, an upwards of 50,000 people traveled through on the Southern Emigrant Trail pioneered by Cooke, to reach the gold fields in 1849. The Pima Villages often sold fresh food and provided relief to distressed travelers among this throng and to others in subsequent years.
Paleo-Indians settled what is now Arizona around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. According to most archaeologists, the Paleo-Indians initially followed herds of big game—megafauna such as mammoths, mastodons, and bison—into North America. The traveling groups also collected and utilized a wide variety of smaller game animals, fish, and a wide variety of plants. These people were likely characterized by highly mobile bands of approximately 20 or 50 members of an extended family, moving from place to place as resources were depleted and additional supplies needed. Paleoindian groups were efficient hunters and created and carried a variety of tools, some highly specialized, for hunting, butchering and hide processing. These paleolithic people utilized the environment that they lived in near water sources, including rivers, swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, and drew birds and game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. At the latest by 9500 BCE, bands of hunters wandered as far south as Arizona, where they found a desert grassland and hunted mule deer, antelope and other small mammals.
As populations of larger game began to diminish, possibly as a result of intense hunting and rapid environmental changes, Late Paleoindian groups would come to rely more on other facets of their subsistence pattern, including increased hunting of bison, mule deer and antelope. Nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Hunting was especially important in winter and spring months when plant foods were scarce.
The Archaic time frame is defined culturally as a transition from a hunting/gathering lifestyle to one involving agriculture and permanent, if only seasonally occupied, settlements. In the Southwest, the Archaic is generally dated from 8000 years ago to approximately 1800 to 2000 years ago. During this time the people of the southwest developed a variety of subsistence strategies, all using their own specific techniques. The nutritive value of weed and grass seeds was discovered and flat rocks were used to grind flour to produce gruels and breads. This use of grinding slabs in about 7500 BCE marks the beginning of the Archaic tradition. Small bands of people traveled throughout the area, gathering plants such as cactus fruits, mesquite beans, acorns, and pine nuts and annually establishing camps at collection points.
Late in the Archaic Period, corn, probably introduced into the region from central Mexico, was planted near camps with permanent water access. Distinct types of corn have been identified in the more well-watered highlands and the desert areas, which may imply local mutation or successive introduction of differing species. Emerging domesticated crops also included beans and squash.
About 3,500 years ago, climate change led to changing patterns in water sources, leading to a dramatically decreased population. However, family-based groups took shelter in south facing caves and rock overhangs within canyon walls. Occasionally, these people lived in small semisedentary hamlets in open areas. Evidence of significant occupation has been found in the northern part of Arizona.
In the Post-Archaic period, the Ancestral Puebloan, the Hohokam, the Mogollon and Sinagua cultures inhabited what is now Arizona. These cultures built structures made out of stone. Some of the structures that these cultures built are called pueblos. Pueblos are monumental structures that housed dozens to thousands of people. In some Ancestral Puebloan towns and villages, Hohokam towns and villages, Mogollon towns and villages, and Sinagua towns and villages, the pueblo housed the entire town. Surrounding the pueblos were often farms where farmers would plant and harvest crops to feed the community. Sometimes, pueblos and other buildings were built in caves in cliffs.
The Ancestral Puebloans were an ancient Pre-Columbian Native American civilization that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado. The Ancestral Puebloans are believed to have developed, at least in part, from the Oshara tradition, who developed from the Picosa culture.
They lived in a range of structures that included small family pit houses, larger structures to house clans, grand pueblos, and cliff-sited dwellings for defense. The Ancestral Puebloans possessed a complex network that stretched across the Colorado Plateau linking hundreds of communities and population centers. They held a distinct knowledge of celestial sciences that found form in their architecture. The kiva, a congregational space that was used chiefly for ceremonial purposes, was an integral part of this ancient people's community structure. Some of their most impressive structures were built in what is now Arizona.
Hohokam was a Pre-Columbian culture in the North American Southwest in what is now part of Arizona, United States, and Sonora, Mexico. Hohokam practiced a specific culture, sometimes referred to as Hohokam culture, which has been distinguished by archeologists. People who practiced the culture can be called Hohokam as well, but more often, they are distinguished as Hohokam people to avoid confusion.
Most archaeologists agree that the Hohokam culture existed between c. 300 and c. 1450 CE, but cultural precursors may have been in the area as early as 300 BC. Whether Hohokam culture was unified politically remains under controversy. Hohokam culture may have just given unrelated neighboring communities common ground to help them to work together to survive their harsh desert environment.
The Mogollon culture was an ancient Pre-Columbian culture of Native American peoples from Southern New Mexico and Arizona, Northern Sonora and Chihuahua, and Western Texas. The northern part of this region is Oasisamerica, while the southern span of the Mogollon culture is known as Aridoamerica.
The Mogollon culture was one of the major prehistoric Southwestern cultural divisions of the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. The culture flourished from c. 200 CE, to c. 1450 CE or 1540 CE, when the Spanish arrived.
The Sinagua culture was a Pre-Columbian culture that occupied a large area in central Arizona from the Little Colorado River, near Flagstaff, to the Verde River, near Sedona, including the Verde Valley, area around San Francisco Mountain, and significant portions of the Mogollon Rim country, between approximately 500 CE and 1425 CE. Besides ceremonial kivas, their pueblos had large "community rooms" and some featured ballcourts and walled courtyards, similar to those of the Hohokam culture. Since fully developed Sinagua sites emerged in central Arizona around 500 CE, it is believed they migrated from east-central Arizona, possibly emerging from the Mogollon culture.
The history of Arizona as recorded by Europeans began in 1539 with the first documented exploration of the area by Marcos de Niza, early work expanded the following year when Francisco Vásquez de Coronado entered the area as well.
The Spanish established a few missions in southern Arizona in the 1680s by Father Eusebio Francisco Kino along the Santa Cruz River, in what was then the Pimería Alta region of Sonora. The Spanish also established presidios in Tubac and Tucson in 1752 and 1775. The area north of the Gila River was governed by the Province of Las California under the Spanish until 1804, when the Californian portion of Arizona became part of Alta California under the Spanish and Mexican governments.
In 1849, the California Gold Rush led as many as 50,000 miners to travel across the region, leading to a boom in Arizona's population. In 1850, Arizona and New Mexico formed the New Mexico Territory.
In 1853, President Franklin Pierce sent James Gadsden to Mexico City to negotiate with Santa Anna, and the United States bought the remaining southern strip area of Arizona and New Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase. A treaty was signed in Mexico in December 1853, and then, with modifications, approved by the US Senate in June 1854, setting the southern boundary of Arizona and of New Mexico.
Before 1846 the Apache raiders expelled most Mexican ranchers. One result was that large herds of wild cattle roamed southeastern Arizona. By 1850, the herds were gone, killed by Apaches, American sportsmen, contract hunting for the towns of Fronteras and Santa Cruz, and roundups to sell to hungry Mexican War soldiers, and forty-niners en route to California.
During the Civil War, on March 16, 1861, citizens in southern New Mexico Territory around Mesilla (now in New Mexico) and Tucson invited take-over by the Confederacy. They especially wanted restoration of mail service. These secessionists hoped that a Confederate Territory of Arizona (CSA) would take control, but in March 1862, Union troops from California captured the Confederate Territory of Arizona and returned it to the New Mexico Territory.
The Battle of Picacho Pass, April 15, 1862, was a battle of the Civil War fought in the CSA and one of many battles to occur in Arizona during the war among three sides—Apaches, Confederates and Union forces. In 1863, the U.S. split up New Mexico along a north–south line to create the Arizona Territory. The first government officials to arrive established the territory capital in Prescott in 1864. The capital was later moved to Tucson, back to Prescott, and then to its final location in Phoenix in a series of controversial moves as different regions of the territory gained and lost political influence with the growth and development of the territory.
In the late 19th century the Army built a series of forts to encourage the Natives to stay in their territory and to act as a buffer from the settlers. The first was Fort Defiance. It was established on September 18, 1851, by Col. Edwin V. Sumner to create a military presence in Diné bikéyah (Navajo territory). Sumner broke up the fort at Santa Fe for this purpose, creating the first military post in what is now Arizona. He left Major Electus Backus in charge. Small skirmishes were common between raiding Navajo and counter raiding citizens. In April 1860 one thousand Navajo warriors under Manuelito attacked the fort and were beaten off.
The fort was abandoned at the start of the Civil War but was reoccupied in 1863 by Colonel Kit Carson and the 1st New Mexico Infantry. Carson was tasked by Brigadier-General James H. Carleton, Commander of the Federal District of New Mexico, to kill Navajo men, destroy crops, wells, houses and livestock. These tactics forced 9000 Navajos to take the Long Walk to a reservation at Bosque Redondo, New Mexico. The Bosque was a complete failure. In 1868 the Navajo signed another treaty and were allowed to go back to part of their former territory. The returning Navajo were restocked with sheep and other livestock. Fort Defiance was the agency for the new Navajo reservation until 1936; today it provides medical services to the region.
Fort Apache was built on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation by soldiers from the 1st Cavalry and 21st Infantry in 1870. Only one small battle took place, in September 1881, with three soldiers wounded. When the reservation Indians were granted U.S. citizenship in 1924, the fort was permanently closed down. Fort Huachuca, east of Tucson, was founded in 1877 as the base for operations against Apaches and raiders from Mexico. From 1913 to 1933 the fort was the base for the "Buffalo Soldiers" of the 10th Cavalry Regiment. During World War II, the fort expanded to 25,000 soldiers, mostly in segregated all-black units. Today the fort remains in operation and houses the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and the U.S. Army Network.
The Pueblos in Arizona were relatively peaceful through the Navajo and Apache Wars. However, in June 1891, the army had to bring in troops to stop Oraibi from preventing a school from being built on their mesa.
After the Civil War, Texans brought large-scale ranching to southern Arizona. They introduced their proven range methods to the new grass country. Texas rustlers also came, and brought lawlessness. Inexperienced ranchers brought poor management, resulting in overstocking, and introduced destructive diseases. Local cattleman organizations were formed to handle these problems. The Territory experienced a cattle boom in 1873–91, as the herds were expanded from 40,000 to 1.5 million head. However, the drought of 1891–93 killed off over half the cattle and produced severe overgrazing. Efforts to restore the rangeland between 1905 and 1934 had limited success, but ranching continued on a smaller scale.
Arizona's last major drought occurred during Dust Bowl years of 1933–34. This time Washington stepped in as the Agricultural Adjustment Administration spent $100 million to buy up the starving cattle. The Taylor Grazing Act placed federal and state agencies in control of livestock numbers on public lands. Most of the land in Arizona is owned by the federal government which leased grazing land to ranchers at low cost. Ranchers invested heavily in blooded stock and equipment. James Wilson states that after 1950, higher fees and restrictions in the name of land conservation caused a sizable reduction in available grazing land. The ranchers had installed three-fifths of the fences, dikes, diversion dams, cattleguards, and other improvements, but the new rules reduced the value of that investment. In the end, Wilson believes, sportsmen and environmentalists maintained a political advantage by denouncing the ranchers as political corrupted land-grabbers who exploited the publicly owned natural resources.
On February 23, 1883, United Verde Copper Company was incorporated under New York law. The small mining camp next to the mine was given a proper name, 'Jerome.' The town was named after the family which had invested a large amount of capital. In 1885 Lewis Williams opened a copper smelter in Bisbee and the copper boom began, as the nation turned to copper wires for electricity. The arrival of railroads in the 1880s made mining even more profitable, and national corporations bought control of the mines and invested in new equipment. Mining operations flourished in numerous boom towns, such as Bisbee, Jerome, Douglas, Ajo and Miami.
Arizona's "wild west" reputation was well deserved. Tombstone was a notorious mining town that flourished longer than most, from 1877 to 1929. Silver was discovered in 1877, and by 1881 the town had a population of over 10,000. Western story tellers and Hollywood film makers made as much money in Tombstone as anyone, thanks to the arrival of Wyatt Earp and his brothers in 1879. They bought shares in the Vizina mine, water rights, and gambling concessions, but Virgil, Morgan and Wyatt were soon appointed as federal and local marshals. They killed three outlaws in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the most famous gunfight of the Old West.
In the aftermath, Virgil Earp was maimed in an ambush and Morgan Earp was assassinated while playing billiards. Walter Noble Burns's novel Tombstone (1927) made Earp famous. Hollywood celebrated Earp's Tombstone days with John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946), John Sturges's Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) and Hour of the Gun (1967), Frank Perry's Doc (1971), George Cosmatos's Tombstone (1993), and Lawrence Kasdan's Wyatt Earp (1994). They solidified Earp's modern reputation as the Old West's deadliest gunman.
Jennie Bauters (1862–1905) operated brothels in the Territory from 1896 to 1905. She was an astute businesswoman with an eye for real estate appreciation, and a way with the town fathers of Jerome regarding taxes and restrictive ordinances. She was not always sitting pretty; her brothels were burned in a series of major fires that swept the business district; her girls were often drug addicts. As respectability closed in on her, in 1903 she relocated to the mining camp of Acme. In 1905, she was murdered by a man who had posed as her husband.
By 1869 Americans were reading John Wesley Powell's reports of his explorations of the Colorado River. In 1901, the Santa Fe Railroad reached Grand Canyon's South Rim. With railroad, restaurant and hotel entrepreneur Fred Harvey leading the way, large-scale tourism began that has never abated. The Grand Canyon has become an iconic symbol of the West and the nation as a whole.
The Chinese came to Arizona with the construction of the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1880. Tucson was the main railroad center and soon had a Chinatown with laundries for the general population and a rich mix of restaurants, groceries, and services for the residents. Chinese and Mexican merchants and farmers transcended racial differences to form 'guanxi,' which were relations of friendship and trust. Chinese leased land from Mexicans, operated grocery stores, and aided compatriots attempting to enter the United States from Mexico after the Mexican Revolution in 1910. Chinese merchants helped supply General John Pershing's army in its expedition against Pancho Villa. Successful Chinese in Tucson led a viable community based on social integration, friendship, and kinship.
In February 1903, U.S. Senator Hamilton Kean spoke against Arizona's statehood. He said Mormons who fled from Idaho to Mexico would return to the U.S. and mix in the politics of Arizona.
In 1912, Arizona almost entered the Union as part of New Mexico in a Republican plan to keep control of the U.S. Senate. The plan, while accepted by most in New Mexico, was rejected by most Arizonans. Progressives in Arizona favored inclusion in the state constitution of the initiative, referendum, recall, direct election of senators, woman suffrage, and other reforms. Most of these proposals were included in the constitution that was rejected by Congress.
A new constitution was offered with the problematic provisions removed. Congress then voted to approve statehood, and President Taft signed the statehood bill on February 14, 1912. State residents promptly put the provisions back in. Hispanics had little voice or power. Only one of the 53 delegates at the constitutional convention was Hispanic, and he refused to sign. In 1912 women gained suffrage in the state, eight years before the country as a whole.
Arizona's first Congressman was Carl Hayden (1877–1972). He was the son of a Yankee merchant who had moved to Tempe because he needed dry heat for his bad lungs. Carl attended Stanford University and moved up the political ladder as town councilman, county treasurer, and Maricopa County sheriff, where he nabbed Arizona's last train robbers. He also started building a coalition to develop the state's water resources, a lifelong interest. A liberal Democrat his entire career, Hayden was elected to Congress in 1912 and moved to the Senate in 1926.
Reelection followed every six years as he advanced toward the chairmanship of the powerful Appropriations Committee, which he reached in 1955. His only difficult campaign came in 1962, at age 85, when he defeated a young conservative. He retired in 1968 after a record 56 years in Congress. His great achievement was his 41-year battle to enact the Central Arizona Project that would provide water for future growth.
The Great Depression of 1929–39 hit Arizona hard. At first local, state and private relief efforts focused on charity, especially by the Community Chest and Organized Charities programs. Federal money started arriving with the Federal Emergency Relief Committee in 1930. Different agencies promoted aid to the unemployed, tuberculosis patients, transients, and illegal immigrants. The money ran out by 1931 or 1932, and conditions were bad until New Deal relief operations began on a large scale in 1933.
Construction programs were important, especially the Hoover Dam (originally called Boulder Dam), begun by President Herbert Hoover. It is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border with Nevada. It was constructed by the Federal Bureau of Reclamation between 1931 and 1936. It operationalized a schedule of water use set by the Colorado River Compact of 1922 that gave Arizona 19% of the river's water, with 25% to Nevada and the rest to California.
Construction of military bases in Arizona was a national priority because of the state's excellent flying weather and clear skies, large amounts of unoccupied land, good railroads, cheap labor, low taxes, and its proximity to California's aviation industry. Arizona was attractive to both the military and private firms and they stayed after the war.
Fort Huachuca became one of the largest nearly-all-black Army forts, with quarters for 1,300 officers and 24,000 enlisted soldiers. The 92nd and 93rd Infantry Divisions, composed of African-American troops, trained there.
During the war, Mexican-American community organizations were very active in patriotic efforts to support American troops abroad, and made efforts to support the war effort materially and to provide moral support for the American servicemen fighting the war, especially the Mexican-American servicemen from local communities. Some of the community projects were cooperative ventures in which members of both the Mexican-American and Anglo communities participated. Most efforts made in the Mexican-American community represented localized American home front activities that were separate from the activities of the Anglo community.
Mexican-American women organized to assist their servicemen and the war effort. An underlying goal of the Spanish-American Mothers and Wives Association was the reinforcement of the woman's role in Spanish-Mexican culture. The organization raised thousands of dollars, wrote letters, and joined in numerous celebrations of their culture and their support for Mexican-American servicemen. Membership reached over 300 during the war and eventually ended its existence in 1976.
Heavy government spending during World War II revitalized the Arizona economy, which was still based on copper mining, citrus and cotton crops and cattle ranching, with a growing tourist business.
Military installations peppered the state, such as Davis-Monthan Field in Tucson, the main training center for air force bomber pilots. Two relocation camps opened for Japanese and Japanese Americans brought in from the West Coast.
After World War II the population grew rapidly, increasing sevenfold between 1950 and 2000, from 700,000 to over 5 million. Most of the growth was in the Phoenix area, with Tucson a distant second. Urban growth doomed the state's citrus industry, as the groves were turned into housing developments.
The cost of water made growing cotton less profitable, and Arizona's production steadily declined. Manufacturing employment jumped from 49,000 in 1960 to 183,000 by 1985, with half the workers in well-paid positions. High-tech firms such as Motorola, Hughes Aircraft, Goodyear Aircraft, Honeywell, and IBM had offices in the Phoenix area. By 1959, Hughes Aircraft had built advanced missiles with 5,000 workers in Tucson.
Despite being a small state, Arizona produced several national leaders for both the Republican and Democratic parties. Two Republican Senators were presidential nominees: Barry Goldwater in 1964 and John McCain in 2008; both carried Arizona but lost the national election. Senator Ernest McFarland, a Democrat, was the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate from 1951 to 1952, and Congressman John Rhodes was the Republican Minority Leader in the House from 1973 to 1981. Democrats Bruce Babbitt (Governor 1978–87) and Morris Udall (Congressman 1961–90) were contenders for their party's presidential nominations. In 1981 Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court; she served until 2006.
Retirement communities
Warm winters and low cost of living attracted retirees from the so-called snowbelt, who moved permanently to Arizona after 1945, bringing their pensions, Social Security, and savings with them. Real estate entrepreneurs catered to them with new communities with amenities pitched to older people, and with few facilities for children. Typically they were gated communities with controlled access and had pools, recreation centers, and golf courses.
In 1954, two developers bought 320 acres (1.3 km2) of farmland near Phoenix and opened the nation's first planned community dedicated exclusively to retirees at Youngtown. In 1960, developer Del Webb, inspired by the amenities in Florida's trailer parks, added facilities for "active adults" in his new Sun City planned community near Phoenix. In 1962 Ross Cortese opened the first of his gated Leisure Worlds. Other developers copied the popular model, and by 2000 18% of the retirees in the state lived in such "lifestyle" communities.
The issues of the fragile natural environment, compounded by questions of water shortage and distribution, led to numerous debates. The debate crossed traditional lines, so that the leading conservative, Senator Barry Goldwater, was also keenly concerned. For example, Goldwater supported the controversial Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP). He wrote:
I feel very definitely that the [Nixon] administration is absolutely correct in cracking down on companies and corporations and municipalities that continue to pollute the nation's air and water. While I am a great believer in the free competitive enterprise system and all that it entails, I am an even stronger believer in the right of our people to live in a clean and pollution-free environment. To this end, it is my belief that when pollution is found, it should be halted at the source, even if this requires stringent government action against important segments of our national economy.
Water issues were central. Agriculture consumed 89% of the state's strictly limited water supply while generating only 3% of the state's income. The Groundwater Management Act of 1980, sponsored by Governor Bruce Babbitt, raised the price of water to farmers, while cities had to reach a "safe yield" so that the groundwater usage did not exceed natural replenishment. New housing developments had to prove they had enough water for the next hundred years. Desert foliage suitable for a dry region soon replaced grass.
Cotton acreage declined dramatically, freeing up land for suburban sprawl as well as releasing large amounts of water and ending the need for expensive specialized machinery. Cotton acreage plunged from 120,000 acres in 1997 to only 40,000 acres in 2005, even as the federal treasury gave the state's farmers over $678 million in cotton subsidies. Many farmers collect the subsidies but no longer grow cotton. About 80% of the state's cotton is exported to textile factories in China and (since the passage of NAFTA) to Mexico.
Super Bowl XXX was played in Tempe in 1996 and Super Bowl XLII was held in Glendale in 2008. Super Bowl XLIX was also held in Glendale in 2015.
Illegal immigration continued to be a prime concern within the state, and in April 2010, Arizona SB1070 was passed and signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer. The measure attracted national attention as the most thorough anti-illegal immigration measure in decades within the United States.
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head during a political event in Tucson on January 8, 2011. The shooting resulted in six deaths and several injuries. Giffords survived the attack and became an advocate for gun control.
On June 30, 2013, nineteen members of the Prescott Fire Department were killed fighting the Yarnell Hill Fire. The fatalities were members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a hotshot crew, of whom only one survived as he was working in another location.
Border crisis: by 2019 Arizona was one of the states most affected by the border crisis, with a high number of migrant crossings and detentions.
Nomination for Drisyam 2008 exhibition, Ernakulam Town Hall (26th - 30th December) Taken on Alleppey beach.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 809. Photo: Fox.
American actress Claire Trevor (1910-2000) appeared in 68 feature films from 1933 to 1982. She often played the hard-boiled blonde or another type of shady lady. She won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Key Largo (1948), and received nominations for her roles in Dead End (1937) and The High and the Mighty (1954). But she is now best known for the classic Western Stagecoach (1939) with John Wayne.
Claire Trevor was born Claire Wemlinger in 1910 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. She was the only child of Noel Wemlinger, a Fifth Avenue merchant tailor, and his wife, Benjamina ("Betty"). Claire was raised in New York City and, from 1923, in Larchmont, New York. For many years, her year of birth was misreported as 1909, a rare instance of an actress actually being younger than her given age, which is why her age at the time of her death was initially given as 91, not 90. After completing high school, Trevor began her career with six months of art classes at Columbia University and six months at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She made her stage debut in the summer of 1929 with a repertory company in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 1930, aged 20, she signed with Warner Bros. Not far from her home in Brooklyn was Vitagraph Studios, the last and best of the early sound process studios, which had been acquired by Warner Bros. and had become Vitaphone in 1925. Trevor appeared in several of the nearly 2000 shorts cranked out by the studio between 1926 and 1930. She also performed in summer stock theatre. In 1932, she starred on Broadway as the female lead in 'Whistling in the Dark'. The next year, she made her film debut with a leading role in the Western Life in the Raw (Louis King, 1933) opposite George O'Brien. From 1933 to 1938, Trevor starred in 29 films, often having either the lead role or the role of heroine. In 1937, she was the second lead actress after top-billed Sylvia Sidney in the crime drama Dead End (William Wyler, 1937), with Humphrey Bogart. Her role as a slum girl forced by poverty into prostitution led to her nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She was well established as a solid leading lady now. Her most memorable performance during this period was the Western Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939) with John Wayne in his breakthrough role. William McPeak at IMDb: " All her abilities to bring complexity to a character showed in her kicked-around dance hall girl "Dallas", one of the great early female roles. She and Wayne were electric, and they were paired in three more films during their careers." From 1937 to 1940, she appeared with Edward G. Robinson in the popular radio series 'Big Town' while continuing to make films.
In the early 1940s, Claire Trevor was a regular on 'The Old Gold Don Ameche Show' on the NBC Red Radio Network, starring with Ameche in presentations of plays by Mark Hellinger. Two of Trevor's most memorable roles were in the Film Noirs Murder, My Sweet (Edward Dmytryk, 1944) opposite Dick Powell, and Born to Kill (Robert Wise, 1947) with Lawrence Tierney. In Key Largo (John Huston, 1948), Trevor played Gaye Dawn, the washed-up nightclub singer and gangster's moll. For that role, she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Her third and final Oscar nomination was for her performance in the disaster film The High and the Mighty (William A. Wellman, 1954) with John Wayne. In 1957, she won an Emmy for her role as the flighty wife of Fredric March in the Producers' Showcase episode entitled Dodsworth (Alex Segal, 1956). As she aged she easily transitioned into 'distinguished matron' and mother roles, one of her most unusual ones being the murderous Ma Barker in The Untouchables: Ma Barker and Her Boys (1959), a notoriously gun-blasting episode of the notorious gun-blasting series. Her appearances became very rare after the mid-1960s. She played Charlotte, the mother of Kay (Sally Field) in her final film, the romantic comedy Kiss Me Goodbye (Robert Mulligan, 1982). Her final screen role was for the TV film, Norman Rockwell's Breaking Home Ties (1987). Trevor made a guest appearance at the 70th Academy Awards in 1998. Trevor married Clark Andrews, director of her radio show, in 1938, but they divorced four years later. Her second marriage in 1943 to Navy lieutenant Cylos William Dunsmore produced her only child, son Charles. The marriage ended in divorce in 1947. The next year, Trevor married Milton Bren, a film producer with two sons from a previous marriage, and moved to Newport Beach, California. In 1978, Trevor's son Charles died in the crash of PSA Flight 182, followed by the death of her husband Milton from a brain tumor in 1979. Devastated by these losses, she returned to Manhattan for some years, living in a Fifth Avenue apartment and taking a few acting roles amid a busy social life. She eventually returned to California, where she remained for the rest of her life, becoming a generous supporter of the arts. Claire Trevor died of respiratory failure in Newport Beach, California, in 2000, at the age of 90. She was survived by her two stepsons and extended family. For her contribution to the film industry, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard.
Sources: William McPeak (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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Spanish postcard by Oscarcolor S.L., no. 23. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
English actress Janet Munro (1934-1972) won a Golden Globe Award for her performance in Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) and received a BAFTA Film Award nomination for her performance in Life for Ruth (1962). Munro starred in three Disney films: Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959), Third Man on the Mountain (1959) and Swiss Family Robinson (1960). Other film credits were roles in The Trollenberg Terror (1958) and The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961).
Janet Munroe was born Janet Neilson Horsburgh in Blackpool, Lancashire, in 1934. She was the daughter of Scottish comedian Alex Munro (real name Alexander Neilson Horsburgh) and his wife, Phyllis Robertshaw. She used her father's stage name professionally. Munro grew up on the road with her father, often appearing with him on stage. Her mother died when Janet was seven and she was brought up by her father at first. She moved to the town of Embsay at age ten to live with her aunt and uncle for a time. When her father remarried she was brought up by him and her stepmother. After leaving school she worked in a shoe shop but her goal was to become an actress. Munro's father wanted her to join him on her act but she desired to become a legitimate actress. She got a job at a repertory company as a student messenger. She had a small part in the Gordon Harker comedy Small Hotel (David MacDonald, 1957) and started appearing regularly on British TV shows such as ITV Television Playhouse and Armchair Theatre. Munro could be seen in ingenue parts in the horror film The Trollenberg Terror (Quentin Lawrence, 1958) starring Forrest Tucker, and the melodrama The Young and the Guilty (Peter Cotes, 1958) with Phyllis Calvert. She appeared on stage in 'Daughters of Desire' and was chosen "Miss English Television of 1958".
Janet Munro's big break came in 1958 when she was cast as the female lead in Walt Disney's Darby O'Gill and the Little People (Robert Stevenson, 1959) with Albert Sharpe and Sean Connery. Although the film was shot in Hollywood it was cast out of London. Disney saw her in the ITV Television Playhouse episode 'Pick Up Girl' and she was screen-tested over a two-day period. Disney liked her so much he signed her to a five-year contract. Disney immediately used her again as the female lead in Third Man on the Mountain (Ken Annakin, 1959) opposite Michael Rennie and James MacArthur. Contemporary reports compared her with June Allyson. Munro made her US television debut when she played the romantic lead in a TV adaptation of Berkeley Square (George Schaefer, 1959) opposite John Kerr and Edna Best. Munro returned to England to play Tommy Steele's love interest in Tommy the Toreador (John Paddy Carstairs, 1959), then made a third film for Disney, Swiss Family Robinson (John McKimson, Ken Annakin, 1960), again romancing MacArthur. It was shot in the West Indies over five months. Munro appeared with Annette Funicello and Tommy Kirk in The Horsemasters (William Fairchild, 1961) for Disney, shot in England for American television, and released theatrically in some markets. Munro returned to US television with Time Remembered (George Schaefer, 1961) starring Christopher Plummer. That year, Munro was also the female lead in the Science Fiction film The Day the Earth Caught Fire (Val Guest, 1961). It is one of her best-remembered parts. The following year, she had the female lead role in Life for Ruth (Basil Dearden, 1962), which earned her a BAFTA nomination for Best Female Actor. On TV, she appeared in Afternoon of a Nymph () with Ian Hendry whom she was to marry. She was top-billed in a film for the first time with the drama Bitter Harvest (Peter Graham Scott, 1963), but it was not a success. Munro was the female lead in the thriller Hide and Seek (Cy Endfield, 1964) with Ian Carmichael and A Jolly Bad Fellow (Don Chaffey, 1964) with Leo McKern, one of her alumni from The Day the Earth Caught Fire. She had a cameo in Daylight Robbery (Michael Truman, 1964).
Janet Munro did not act for a few years while she concentrated on raising a family but she returned to acting after her second marriage to Ian Hendry ended in 1968. She appeared in episodes of Vendetta, and Thirty-Minute Theatre and had a supporting part in the spy film Sebastian (David Greene, 1968), starring Dirk Bogarde. Munro travelled to New York to star in a TV adaptation of The Admirable Crichton (George Schaefer, 1968), featuring Bill Travers. She also had a cameo in the family film Cry Wolf (John Davis, 1969). She had the lead in the series, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Peter Sasdy, 1969) with Corin Redgrave. The Guardian called her "a revelation. She is no longer the B picture girl next door. She is a woman and her acting has power and experience of life." Her last roles were in Play for Today and in several episodes of the TV series Adam Smith (1972). In July 1971 she appeared on stage in 'Look – No Hands'. Janet Munro was married to Tony Wright from 1956 until 1959. She married the actor Ian Hendry in 1963, and they had two children, Sally and Corrie. They lived in a house on Pharaoh's Island. Val Guest, who directed Munro in The Day the Earth Caught Fire later said "Janet's life was a disaster... [she] didn't become an alcoholic until she met Ian. She tried too hard to keep up with him." In March 1966 she had a miscarriage. Munro and Hendry were divorced in December 1971. Hendry offered no contest to the charge that the marriage had broken down due to Hendry's "unreasonable behaviour". In 1972, Janet Munro died aged 38 on her way to the hospital after collapsing at her home in Tufnell Park. Her death was ruled due to a heart attack caused by chronic ischaemic heart disease. She was cremated and interred at the Golders Green Crematorium.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
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Italian postcard by C.C.M., no. 1. Photo: Columbia Pictures.
American actress Rosalind Russell (1907-1976) was best known for her portrayals of confident female characters in Hollywood comedies. Russell won five Golden Globe awards during her career and received four Academy Award nominations in the Best Actress category. When her film success waned she started a successful career on Broadway.
Catherine Rosalind Russell was born in 1907 in Waterbury, Connecticut. She was the daughter of a lawyer and a fashion consultant and had seven siblings. She attended a Catholic school and studied drama in college. Russell began acting in films in 1934 for MGM. In the following period, she landed major supporting and leading roles, including in King Vidor's The Citadel with Robert Donat and in George Cukor's all-female comedy The Women. She became a star with the screwball comedy His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940). Her talent lay in light comedies, where she usually embodied confident and modern-looking women who shone with wit, sarcasm and elegance. She was often seen as a businesswoman who falls in love with her male secretary, as in Take a Letter, Darling (Mitchell Leisen, 1942) with Fred MacMurray, or as a woman with her own ideas, as in Roughly Speaking (Michael Curtiz, 1945) with Jack Carson. From the middle of the decade, she worked without a fixed studio contract and now appeared more often in dramatic roles. For her performances in the film biography Sister Kenny (Dudley Nichols, 1946) about the Australian nurse Elizabeth Kenny and in the Eugene O'Neill adaptation Mourning Becomes Electra (Dudley Nichols, 1947) opposite Michael Redgrave, she won the Golden Globe Award in the category Best Actress in a Leading Role - Drama. Nevertheless, both films flopped at the box office.
In 1953, Rosalind Russell also started acting on Broadway. She concentrated on character roles and appeared in several successful theatre productions. She achieved great popularity with the comedy The Great Aunt and was nominated for a Tony Award. She reprised the role in the 1958 film adaptation of the same name, earning another Oscar nomination and winning a Golden Globe Award for her performance. Other successful performances of her late film career included 1955's Picnic alongside William Holden and Kim Novak, and the ambitious Mama Rose, mother of Gypsy Rose Lee, in Gypsy - Queen of the Night, the film adaptation of the musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable, with Natalie Wood in the title role. The film was distributed in 1962 and was a great commercial success. Russell also starred in several film flops such as Five Fingers Exercise or Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad. She had to retire from acting in the early 1970s because of arthritis. In1941, she married Danish-American producer Frederick Brisson (1912-1984), a son of actor Carl Brisson. The marriage lasted until her death and the couple had their son Carl Lance in 1943. Rosalind Russell died at the age of 69 of breast cancer.
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch and German), and IMDb.
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For youdontevenknow :]
Really hope you like it! its my first request ever :D
LOVED his performance last night! I stayed up late to get his song and it was so worth it :]
Have you guys heard his live performance of rose garden!? its amazing!
I cannot wait for his album :]
Song: Who I am By Nick Jonas and The Administration <3
REALLY hope you like it...if you don't I'll gladly redo it : /
all sizes.
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Dutch collectors card. Photo: Sean Penn in At Close Range (James Foley, 1986).
Gifted and versatile Sean Penn (1960) is an American actor and director. Penn is a powerhouse film performer capable of intensely moving work, who has gone from strength to strength during a colourful film career. He won an Oscar in 2004 for his leading role in Mystic River, after having been nominated three times before. In 2009, he won another Oscar for Milk. Penn is also the recipient of more than 45 other film awards, including a Silver Bear for Dead Man Walking. Penn has drawn much media attention for his stormy private life and political viewpoints.
Sean Justin Penn was born in Santa Monica, in 1960. Penn is the son of director Leo Penn, who was blacklisted during McCarthy's reign for refusing to testify, and actress Eileen Ryan (née Annucci). He has two brothers: actor Chris Penn (1965-2006) and musician Michael Penn. He grew up in Santa Monica, in a neighborhood populated by future celebrities Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez, the sons of actor Martin Sheen. The children spent much of their free time together, making a number of amateur films shot with Super-8 cameras. Still, Penn's original intention was to attend law school, although he ultimately skipped college to join the Los Angeles Repertory Theater. After making his professional debut on an episode of television's Barnaby Jones, he relocated to New York, where he soon appeared in the play Heartland. A TV movie, The Killing of Randy Webster, followed in 1981 before he made his feature debut later that same year as the military cadet defending his academy against closure in Taps (Harold Becker, 1981). He then had his breakthrough as fast-talking surfer stoner Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling, 1982). Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "he stole every scene in which he appeared, helping to elevate the picture into a classic of the teen comedy genre; however, the quirkiness which would define his career quickly surfaced as he turned down any number of Spicoli-like roles to star in the 1983 drama Bad Boys, followed a year later by the Louis Malle caper comedy Crackers and the period romance Racing With the Moon. While none of the pictures performed well at the box office, critics consistently praised Penn's depth as an actor. " He next contributed a stellar performance as a drug addict turned government spy alongside Timothy Hutton in the Cold War spy thriller The Falcon and the Snowman (John Schlesinger, 1985), followed by a teaming with icy Christopher Walken in the chilling At Close Range (James Foley, 1986). Penn's brother Chris played his brother in the film and their mother played the role of their grandmother in At Close Range. The youthful Sean then paired up with his then-wife, pop diva Madonna in the woeful, and painful, Shanghai Surprise (Jim Goddard, 1986), which was savaged by the critics, but Sean bounced back with a great job as a hot-headed young cop in Colors (Dennis Hopper, 1988), gave another searing performance as a US soldier in Vietnam committing atrocities in Casualties of War (Brian De Palma, 1989) and appeared alongside Robert De Niro in the uneven comedy We're No Angels (Neil Jordan, 1989). He has appeared in more than forty films.
During the 1990s, Sean Penn really got noticed by critics as a mature, versatile, and accomplished actor, with a string of dynamic performances in first-class films. Almost unrecognisable with frizzy hair and thin-rimmed glasses, Penn was simply brilliant as corrupt lawyer David Kleinfeld in the gangster movie Carlito's Way (Brian De Palma, 1993) and he was still in trouble with authority as a Death Row inmate pleading with a caring nun (Susan Sarandon) to save his life in Dead Man Walking (Tim Robbins, 1995), for which he received his first Oscar nomination. Penn had also moved into directing, with the quirky but interesting The Indian Runner (1991), about two brothers with vastly opposing views on life, and in 1995 he directed Jack Nicholson in The Crossing Guard (1995). Both films received overall positive reviews from critics. Sean then played the brother of wealthy Michael Douglas, involving him in a mind-snapping scheme in The Game (David Fincher, 1997), and also landed the lead role of Sgt. Eddie Walsh in the star-studded anti-war film The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998), before finishing the 1990s playing an offbeat 1930s jazz guitarist in Sweet and Lowdown (Woody Allen, 1999). For this part, he scored another Oscar nomination.
Sean Penn played a mentally disabled father fighting for custody of his seven-year-old daughter in I Am Sam (2001). He received his third Oscar nomination for this role, but in the following years, he finally won the Oscar for the best male lead of the year. He won the first for his part as an anguished father seeking revenge for his daughter's murder in the gut-wrenching Mystic River (Clint Eastwood, 2003), and the second six years later for his role as gay politician and civil rights activist Harvey Milk in Milk (Gus Van Sant, 2008). Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "The Oscar (for Mystic River), coupled with a standing ovation by the audience, showed once and for all that Penn's unorthodox approach to his acting career hadn't had an adverse effect on his popularity" In between, he played a mortally ill college professor in 21 Grams (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2003) and a possessed businessman in The Assassination of Richard Nixon (Niels Mueller, 2004) with Naomi Watts. Penn was a militant opponent of the Iraq war. He also supports Sea Shepherd and is on the advisory board of this organisation. Singer Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, who is friends with Penn, wrote soundtracks for several films in which Penn acted or which were directed by him, including Dead Man Walking, Into the Wild, and I Am Sam. Sean Penn also appeared in The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011) with Brad Pitt, and The Professor and the Madman (Farhad Safinia, 2019) opposite Mel Gibson. In March 2018, he published the novel 'Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff'. Penn was engaged to actress Elizabeth McGovern, who played him in Racing with the Moon in 1984. He married singer Madonna in 1985 and divorced her in 1989. He then began a relationship with actress Robin Wright, with whom he had a daughter Dylan in 1991 and a son Hopper in 1993, and married in 1996. A divorce petition followed in December 2007, and became final in 2009, since then Penn has had relationships with actresses Scarlett Johansson and Charlize Theron, among others. In 2016, he began a relationship with Australian actress Leila George, whom he married in July 2020. She filed for divorce in late 2021.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Wikipedia (Dutch), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
The days drag and the weeks fly by.
It has been a grim week at work, and yet the weekend is here once again.
The cold snap is still here; thick frosts and icy patches, but Sunday afternoon storms will sweep in from the west and temperatures will soar by day to 13 degrees.
But for now it is cold, and colder at nights, the wood burner makes the living room toasty warm, though the rest of the house seems like a fridge in comparison.
Even though we went to bed at nine, we slept to nearly half seven, which meant we were already later than usual going to Tesco.
We had a coffee first, then got dressed and went out into the winter wonderland.
Tesco was more crowded mainly because we were an hour later. There were no crackers for cheese, a whole aisle empty of cream crackers and butter wafers.
There is only so much food you can eat even over Christmas, so the cracker-shortage won't affect us, we have two Dundee cakes, filling for two lots of mince pies and pastry for five lots of sausage rolls.
We won't starve.
We buy another bag of stuff for the food bank, try to get two weeks of stuff so we wont need to go next weekend, just to a farm shop for vegetables, and the butcher for the Christmas order, though on the 25th we are going out for dinner to the Lantern.
Back home for fruit, then bacon butties and another huge brew. Yes, smoked bacon is again in short supply, with just the basic streaky smoked available, but we're not fussy, so that does the trick.
Also, Jools picked up her inhalers for her cough, and so, we hope, the road to recovery begins.
What to do with the day?
Although a walk would have been good, Jools can do no more than ten minutes in freezing conditions before a coughing fits starts, so a couple of churches to revisit and take more shots of.
First on the list was St Leonard in Upper Deal. A church I have only have been inside once. As it was just half ten, there should have been a chance it was open, but no. We parked up and I walked over the road to try the porch door, but it was locked.
No worries, as the next two would certainly be open.
Just up the road towards Canterbury is Ash.
Ash is a large village that the main roads now bypass its narrow streets, and buses call not so frequently.
The church towers over the village, its spire piercing the grey sky. We park beside the old curry hours than burned down a decade ago, is now a house and no sign of damage.
indeed the church was open, though the porch door was closed, it opened with use of the latch, and the inner glass door swung inwards, revealing an interior I had forgotten about, rich Victorian glass let in the weak sunlight, allowing me to take detailed shots. It was far better and more enjoyable than I remembered.
Once I took 200 or so shots, we went back to the car, drove back to the main road, and on to Wingham, where the church there, a twin of Wingham, would also be open too.
And it was.
The wardens were just finishing trimming the church up, and putting out new flowers, it was a bustle of activity, then one by one they left.
got my shots, and we left, back to the car and to home, though we did stop at he farm shop at Aylsham, and all we wanted was some sweet peppers for hash.
We went in and there was the bakery: I bought two sausage rolls, four small pork pies and two Cajun flavours scotch eggs. We got cider, beer, healthy snacks (we told ourselves) and finally found the peppers.
Three peppers cost £50!
Then back home, along the A2.
And arriving back home at one. We feasted on the scotch eggs and two of the pork pies.
Yummy.
There was the third place play off game to watch on the tellybox, the Football league to follow on the radio. We lit the woodburner and it was soon toasty warm.
At half five, Norwich kicked off, and hopes were high as Blackburn had not beaten us in over a decade.
And, yes you guessed it, Norwich lost. Played poorly, and in Dad's words, were lucky to get nil.
Oh dear.
Oh dear indeed.
We have Christmas cake for supper, and apart from the football, as was well with the world.
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An enormous church, picturesquely set at an angle of the village street. It owes its size to the fact that it supported a college of priests in the Middle Ages. During the sixteenth century it was substantially rebuilt, but the north aisle was not replaced, reducing the church to the odd shape we see today. The unusual pillars which divide the nave from the south aisle are of timber, not stone as a result of lack of money. At the end of the south aisle is the Oxenden chapel, which contains that family's excellent bull's head monument. The contemporary metalwork screens and black and white pavements add great dignity to this part of the building. By going through a curved passage from the chapel you can emerge in the chancel, which is dominated by a stone reredos of fifteenth-century date. This French construction was a gift to the church in the 1930s and while it is not good quality carving, is an unusual find in a Kent church.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Wingham
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hortly after 1280AD Archbishop Peckham of Canterbury established a college of priests at Wingham, with a provost and six canons. From 1286 the priests lived in the attractive timber-framed house opposite St Mary's church. The college accounts for the size of the church, which seems enormous considering the present size of Wingham itself.
There was a cruciform church here before the college was established, but that building was remodelled around 1290, leaving us several excellent Geometric Gothic windows. A south porch and tower were added around 1400. The porch is curious in that there are two stories externally, but internally only one. There are many reminders of the church's past, however; the arch between the south transept and south nave aisle is late Norman, as is a blocked arch on the west wall of the north transept.
By the early 16th century the nave was in poor condition. A local brewer named George Ffogarde of Canterbury was granted a license to raise money for its repair. Having a considerable sum of money for church repair, the unscrupulous brewer absconded with the funds, embezzling £224, a huge sum for the time. The missing funds may explain why the nave was rebuilt using cheaper timber posts to support the arcades, rather than more costly stone.
The octagonal timber posts are of chestnut wood, topped by a crown-post timber roof. Sometime before the mid-19th century the timbers were encased in plaster to resemble Doric columns, but thankfully the plaster has been stripped off and we can appreciate the timber! The nave was rebuilt in the late 16th century, diminishing its footprint and leaving behind some rather odd features, like an external piscina on what was originally the easternmost pier of the nave arcade. Another odd touch is provided by the north transept, remodelled with wood frames in the Georgian period. I'm not sure I can call to mind another essentially medieval church with wooden-framed windows!
In the chancel is a lovely 14th century triple-seat sedilia and piscina. The chancel and nave are separated by a 15th century screen, now truncated, with blank panels which must have once boasted painted figures of saints. But the real treasure in the chancel is a series of ten 14th century misericords. Six of the misericord carvings are simply decorative, with floral or foliage designs. Two show animals; one appears to be a horse, another a donkey. The final two carvings are the most interesting; one shows a woman in a wimple, the other a Green Man peering out from a screen of foliage.
Behind the altar is a lovely 15th century reredos, brought here from Troyes in France. The reredos is in two sections, the upper section depicting the Passion of Christ, the lower showing the Last Supper and the Adoration of the Kings. There are small fragments of rather attractive 14th century grisailles glass in the chancel windows, and near the font are a number of surviving medieval floor tiles.
The interior is full of monuments to the Oxenden and Palmer families. The finest of these are to be found in the north transept chapel. On the east wall of the chapel is a memorial to Sir Nicholas Palmer (d. 1624). The memorial was designed by Nicholas Stone and shows effigies of Palmer and his wife under Corinthian columns and an open pediment. On the north wall is the monument to a later Thomas Palmer (d. 1656) with a bust of the deceased, now somewhat the worse for wear. A tablet to Streynsham Master (d. 1718) is on the south chapel wall, and has a fairly typical pair of skulls at the base of the tablet, wreathed in olive branches.
The most extravagant and eye-catching memorial in the church, however, is to be found in the north transept chapel, which is guarded by ornate wrought-iron screens. In the centre of the chapel is an ebullient obelisk, dated 1682, commemorating the Oxenden family. This free-standing obelisk, possibly designed by Arnold Quellin, is of white stone, with exquisite fruit and flowers cascading down each side, with large black ox heads at each angle of the base. The base is embellished with four putti (cherubic 'infants'). The effect is quite extraordinary; most people will either love it or hate it (I loved it). Also in the south transept is a wall tablet to Charles Tripp (d. 1624).
Other monuments worth mentioning include a 14th century tomb recess in the south aisle wall and a number of 15th century indents in the chancel floor which once contained memorial brasses to canons.
The church is set within a large walled enclosure, dating to the 16th and 17th centuries. Unusually, the churchyard wall has been listed Grade-II by the Department of the Environment for its historical interest.
www.britainexpress.com/counties/kent/churches/wingham.htm
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WINGHAM
IS the next adjoining parish south-westward from Ash, situated for the most part in the upper half hundred of the same name, and having in it the boroughs of Wingham-street, Deane, Twitham, and Wenderton, which latter is in the lower half hundred of Wingham.
WINGHAM is situated in a healthy pleasant country, the greatest part of it is open uninclosed arable lands, the soil of which, though chalky, is far from being unfertile. The village, or town of Wingham, is nearly in the middle of the parish, having the church and college at the south-west part of it; behind the latter is a field, still called the Vineyard. The village contains about fifty houses, one of which is the court-lodge, and is built on the road leading from Canterbury to Sandwich, at the west end of it runs the stream, called the Wingham river, which having turned a corn-mill here, goes on and joins the Lesser Stour, about two miles below; on each side the stream is a moist tract of meadow land. Near the south boundary of the parish is the mansion of Dene, situated in the bottom, a dry, though dull and gloomy habitation; and at the opposite side, next to Staple, the ruinated mansion of Brook, in a far more open and pleasant situation. To the northward the parish extends a considerable way, almost as far as the churches of Preston and Elmstone. The market, granted anno 36 king Henry III. as mentioned hereafter, if it ever was held, has been disused for a number of years past; though the market-house seems yet remaining. There are two fairs held yearly here, on May 12, and November 12, for cattle and pedlary.
In 1710 there was found on the court-lodge farm, by the plough striking against it, a chest or coffin, of large thick stones, joined together, and covered with a single one at the top. At the bottom were some black ashes, but nothing else in it. The ground round about was searched, but nothing else was sound.
Henry de Wengham, a person of great note and extraordinary parts, and much in favour with Henry III. was born here, who in 1255 made him lord chancellor. In 1259, he was elected bishop of Winchester, which he resused, but towards the latter end of the same year he was chosen bishop of London, being still chancellor, and was consecrated the beginning of the year following. He died in 1262, and was buried in his own cathedral. He bore for his arms, Gules, a heart between two wings, displayed, or.
WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ. eldest son of Sir William Cowper, bart. of Ratling-court, in Nonington, having been made lord-keeper of the great seal in 1705, was afterwards by letters patent, dated Dec. 14, 1706, created lord Cowper, baron Cowper of Wingham; and in 1709, was declared lord chancellor. After which, anno 4 George I. he was created earl Cowper and viscount Fordwich, in whose descendants these titles have continued down to the right hon. Peter-Lewis-Francis Cowper, the fifth and present earl Cowper, viscount Fordwich and baron of Wingham. (fn. 1)
The MANOR OF WINGHAM was part of the antient possessions of the see of Canterbury, given to it in the early period of the Saxon heptarchy, but being torn from it during the troubles of those times, it was restored to the church in the year 941, by king Edmund, his brother Eadred, and Edwin that king's son. (fn. 2) Accordingly it is thus entered, under the general title of the archbishop's possessions, taken in the survey of Domesday:
In the lath of Estrei, in Wingeham hundred, the archbishop himself holds Wingeham in demesne. It was taxed at forty sulings in the time of king Edward the Consessor, and now for thirty-five. The arable land is . . . . . . In demesne there are eight carucates, and four times twenty and five villeins, with twenty borderers having fifty-seven carucates. There are eight servants, and two mills of thirty-four sulings. Wood for the pannage of five hogs, and two small woods for fencing. In its whole value, in the time of king Edward the Consessor, it was worth seventy-seven pounds, when he received it the like, and now one hundred pounds. Of this manor William de Arcis holds one suling in Fletes, and there be has in demesne one carucate, and four villeins, and one knight with one carucate, and one fisbery, with a saltpit of thirty pence. The whole value is forty shillings. Of this ma nor five of the archbishop's men hold five sulings and an half and three yokes, and there they have in demesne eight carucates, and twenty-two borderers, and eight servants. In the whole they are worth twenty-one pounds.
In the 36th year of king Henry III. archbishop Boniface obtained the grant of a market at this place. The archbishops had a good house on this manor, in which they frequently resided. Archbishop Baldwin, in king Henry II.'s reign, staid at his house here for some time during his contention with the monks of Christ-church, concerning his college at Hackington. Archbishop Winchelsea entertained king Edward I. here in his 23d year, as did archbishop Walter Reynolds king Edward II. in his 18th year. And king Edward III. in his 5th year, having landed at Dover, with many lords and nobles in his train, came to Wingham, where he was lodged and entertained by archbishop Meopham. And this manor continued part of the see of Canterbury till archbishop Cranmer, in the 29th year of king Henry VIII. exchanged it with the king for other premises. After which it continued in the crown till king Charles I. in his 5th year, granted the scite, called Wingham court, with the demesne lands of the manor, to trustees, for the use of the city of London. From whom, by the direction of the mayor and commonalty, it was conveyed, at the latter end of that reign, to Sir William Cowper, knight and baronet, in whose descendants it has continued down to the right hon. Peter-Francis Cowper, earl Cowper, who is the present owner of it. (fn. 3)
BUT THE MANOR ITSELF, with the royalties, profits of courts, &c. remained still in the crown. Since which, the bailiwic of it, containing the rents and pro fits of the courts, with the fines, amerciaments, reliess, &c. and the privilege of holding the courts of it, by the bailiff of it, have been granted to the family of Oxenden, and Sir Henry Oxenden, bart. of Brome, is now in possession of the bailiwic of it. A court leet and court baron is held for this manor.
TRAPHAM is a mansion in this parish, which was formerly in the possession of a family of the same name, who resided at it, but after they were extinct it passed into that of Trippe, who bore for their arms, Gules, a chevron, or, between three borses heads erased, sable, bridled, collared and crined of the second; (fn. 4) and John Tripp, esq. resided here in queen Elizabeth's reign, as did his grandson Charles, who seems to have alienated it to Sir Christopher Harflete, of St. Stephen's, whose son Tho. Harflete, esq. left an only daughter and heir Afra, who carried it in marriage to John St. Leger, esq. of Doneraile, in Ireland, descended from Sir Anthony St. Leger, lord deputy of Ireland in Henry VIII.'s reign, and they joined in the alienation of it to Brook Bridges, esq of the adjoining parish of Goodneston, whose descendant Sir Brook Wm. Bridges, bart. of that place, is the present owner of it.
The MANOR OF DENE, situated in the valley, at the southern boundary of this parish, was antiently the inheritance of a family who took their surname from it, and held it by knight's service of the archbishop, in king Edward I's reign, but they seem to have been extinct here in that of king Edward III. After which it passed into the family of Hussey, who bore for their arms, Per chevron, argent and vert, three birds counterchanged; and then to Wood, before it came by sale into the family of Oxenden, who appear to have been possessed of it at the latter end of Henry VI.'s reign, about which time they had become by marriage, owners of Brook and other estates in this parish. The family of Oxenden have been resident in this county from the reign of king Edward III. Solomon Oxenden, being the first mentioned in the several pedigrees of it, whose near relation Richard Oxenden was prior of Christchurch, Canterbury, in that reign; in this name and family of Oxenden, whose arms were Argent, a chevron, gules, between three oxen, sable, armed, or; which coat was confirmed to the family by Gyan, king at arms, anno 24 Henry VI. this manor and seat continued down to Sir Henry Oxenden, of Dene, who was on May 8, 1678, created a baronet, whose youngest grandson Sir George Oxenden, bart. succeeding at length to the title on the death of his eldest brother Sir Henry, resided at Dene, where he died in 1775, having served in parliament for Sandwich, and been employed in high offices in administration, and leaving behind him the character of a compleat gentleman. He married Elizabeth, one of the daughters and coheirs of Edward Dunck, esq. of Little Wittenham, in Berkshire, by whom he had two sons, of whom George, the second, was made by will heir to the estate of Sir Basil Dixwell, bart. of Brome, on his death, s. p. and changed his name to Dixwell as enjoined by it, but died soon afterwards likewise, s. p. and that estate came at length to his eldest brother Henry, who succeeded his father in the title of Baronet. He married Margaret, daughter and coheir of Sir George Chudleigh, bart. of Devonshire, since deceased, by whom he has issue Henry Oxenden, esq. of Madekyn, in Barham, who married Mary, one of the daughters of Col. Graham, of St. Laurence, near Canterbury, by whom he has issue. Sir Henry Oxenden, bart. now resides at Brome, and is the present possessor of this manor and seat, as well as the rest of his father's estates in this parish. (fn. 5) Lady Hales, widow of Sir Thomas Pym Hales, bart. of Bekesborne, now resides in it.
TWITHAM, now usually called Twittam, is a hamlet in this parish, adjoining to Goodneston, the principal estate in which once belonged to a family of that name, one of whom Alanus de Twitham is recorded as having been with king Richard I. at the siege of Acon, in Palestine, who bore for his arms, Semee of crosscroslets, and three cinquesoils, argent, and held this estate in Twitham, of the archbishop, and they appear to have continued possessed of it in the 3d year of king Richard II. Some time after which it came into the possession of Fineux, and William Fineux sold it anno 33 Henry VIII. to Ingram Wollet, whose heirs passed it away to one of the family of Oxenden, of Wingham, in whose descendants it has continued down to Sir Henry Oxenden, bart. of Brome, the present possessor of it.
On the foundation of the college of Wingham, archbishop Peckham, in 1286, endowed the first diaconal prebend in it, which he distinguished by the name of the prebend of Twitham, with the tithes of the lands of Alanus de Twitham, which he freely held of the archbishop there in Goodwynestone, at Twytham. (fn. 6)
BROOK is an estate in this parish, situated northward from Twitham, which was formerly the estate of the Wendertons, of Wenderton, in this parish, in which it remained till by a female heir Jane, it went in marriage to Richard Oxenden, gent. of Wingham, who died in 1440, and was buried in Wingham church, in whose name and family it continued down to Henry Oxenden, of Brook, who left two daughters and coheirs, of whom Mary married Richard Oxenden, of Grays Inn, barrister-at-law, fourth son of Sir Henry Oxenden, bart, who afterwards, on his wife's becoming sole heiress of Brook, possessed it, and resided here. He left Elizabeth his sole daughter and heir, who carried it in marriage to Streynsham Master, esq. a captain in the royal navy, the eldest surviving son of James Master, esq. of East Langdon, who died some few days after his marriage; upon which she became again possessed of it in her own right, and dying in 1759, s. p. gave it by will to Henry Oxenden, esq. now Sir Henry Oxenden, bart. of Brome, and he is the present owner of it.
WENDERTON is a manor and antient seat, situated northward from Wingham church, eminent, says Philipott, for its excellent air, situation, and prospect, which for many successive generations had owners of that surname, one of whom, John de Wenderton, is mentioned in Fox's Martyrology, as one among other tenants of the manor of Wingham, on whom archbishop Courtnay, in 1390, imposed a penance for neglecting to perform some services due from that manor. In his descendants this seat continued till John Wenderton, of Wenderton, in the 1st year of Henry VIII. passed it away to archbishop Warham, who at his decease in 1533, gave it to his youngest brother John Warham, whose great-grandson John, by his will in 1609, ordered this manor to be sold, which it accordingly soon afterwards was to Manwood, from which name it was alienated, about the middle of the next reign of king Charles I. to Vincent Denne, gent. who resided here, and died in 1642, s. p. whose four nieces afterwards became by will possessed of it, and on the partition of their estates, the manor and mansion, with part of the lands since called Great Wenderton, was allotted to Mary, the youngest of them, who afterwards married Vincent Denne, sergeant-at-law, and the remaining part of it, which adjoins to them, since called Little Wenderton, to Dorothy, the third sister, afterwards married to Roger Lukin, gent. of London, who soon afterwards sold his share to Richard Oxenden, esq. of Brook, from one of which family it was sold to Underdown, by a female heir of which name, Frances, it went in marriage to John Carter, esq. of Deal, the present owner of it.
BUT GREAT WENDERTON continued in the possession of Sergeant Denne, till his death in 1693, when Dorothy, his eldest daughter and coheir, carried it in marriage to Mr. Thomas Ginder, who bore Argent, on a pale, sable, a cross fuchee, or, impaling azure, three lions heads, or; as they are on his monument. He resided at it till his death in 1716, as did his widow till her decease in 1736, when it came to her nephew Mr. Thomas Hatley, who left two daughters his coheirs, the eldest surviving of whom, Anne, carried it in marriage, first to Richard Nicholas, esq. and then successively to Mr. Smith and Mr. James Corneck, of London, and Mrs. Corneck, the widow of the latter, is the present possessor of it.
At the boundary of this parish, adjoining to Preston and Ash, lies THE MANOR OF WALMESTONE, usually called Wamston, which was antiently part of the possessions of the family of Septvans, one of whom, Robert de Septvans, held it in king Edward II.'s reign, of the archbishop; whose descendant Sir William de Septvans died possessed of it in the 25th year of that reign. (fn. 7) How long it continued in this name I have not found; but at the beginning of king Edward IV.'s reign it was become the property of William Bonington, of Canterbury, who died in 1463, and directed it by his will to be sold. After which it became, about the latter end of king Henry VIII.'s reign, the property of Walter Hendley, esq. the king's attorney-general, who left three daughters his coheirs, and they joined in the sale of it to Alday, who alienated it to Benedict Barnham, esq. alderman of London, one of whose daughters and coheirs, Elizabeth, carried it in marriage to Mervin Touchet, earl of Castlehaven, who being convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors, was executed anno 7 Charles I. Soon after which this manor seems to have been divided, and one part of it, since called Little Walmestone, in which was included the manor and part of the demesne lands, passed from his heirs to the Rev. John Smith, rector of Wickham Breaus, who having founded a scholarship at Oxford, out of the lands of it, presently afterwards sold it to Solly, of Pedding, in which name it continued till Stephen Solly, gent. of Pedding, and his two sons, John and Stephen, in 1653, joined in the conveyance of it to Thomas Winter, yeoman, of Wingham, in which name it remained for some time. At length, after some intermediate owners, it was sold to Sympson, and John Sympson, esq. of Canterbury, died possessed of it in 1748, leaving his wife surviving, who held it at her decease, upon which it came to her husband's heir-atlaw, and it is now accordingly in the possession of Mr. Richard Simpson.
BUT GREAT WALMESTONE, consisting of the mansion-house, with a greater part of the demesne lands of the manor, was passed away by the heirs of the earl of Castlehaven to Brigham, and Mr. Charles Brigham, of London, in the year 1653, sold it to William Rutland, of London, who left two daughters his coheirs, of whom Mary married John Ketch, by whom she had a sole daughter Anne, who afterwards at length became possessed of it, and carried it in marriage to Samuel Starling, gent. of Worcestershire, who in 1718, conveyed it, his only son Samuel joining in it, to Thomas Willys, esq. of London, afterwards created a baronet. After which it passed in the same manner, and in the like interests and shares, as the manor of Dargate, in Hernehill, down to Matthew, Robert and Thomas Mitchell, the trustees for the several uses to which this, among other estates belonging to the Willis's, had been limited; and they joined in the sale of it, in 1789, to Mr. William East, whose son, Mr. John East, of Wingham, is the present owner of it.
ARCHBISHOP KILWARBY intended to found a college in this church of Wingham, but resigning his archbishopric before he could put his design in practice, archbishop Peckham, his successor, in the year 1286, perfected his predecessor's design, and founded A COLLEGE in this church, for a provost, whose portion, among other premises, was the profits of this church and the vicarage of it, and six secular canons; the prebends of which he distinguished by the names of the several places from whence their respective portions arose, viz. Chilton, Pedding, Twitham, Bonnington, Ratling, and Wimlingswold. The provost's lodge, which appears by the foundation charter to have before been the parsonage, was situated adjoining to the church-yard; and the houses of the canons, at this time called Canon-row, opposite to it. These latter houses are, with their gardens and appurtenances, esteemed to be within the liberty of the town and port of Hastings, and jurisdiction of the cinque ports. This college was suppressed in the 1st year of king Edward VI. among others of the like sort, when the whole revenue of it was valued at 208l. 14s. 3½d. per annum, and 193l. 2s. 1d. clear; but Leland says, it was able to dispend at the suppression only eighty-four pounds per annum. Edward Cranmer, the last master, had at the dissolution a pension of twenty pounds per annum, which he enjoyed in 1553. (fn. 8)
After the dissolution of the college, the capital mansion, late belonging to the provost, remained in the crown till king Edward VI. in his 7th year, granted the scite of it, with the church appropriate of Wingham, and all tithes whatsoever arising within the parish, and one acre of glebe-land in it, to Sir Henry Palmer, subject to a payment of twenty pounds annually to the curate or vicar of it.
The Palmers of Wingham were descended from a very antient one at Angmerin, in Suffex, who bore for their arms, Or, two bars, gules, each charged with three tresoils of the field, in chief, a greyhound, currant, sable. In the seventh descent from Ralph Palmer, esq. of that place, in king Edward II.'s reign, was descended Sir Edward Palmer, of Angmerin, who left three sons, born on three successive Sundays, of whom John, the eldest, was of Sussex, which branch became extinct in queen Elizabeth's reign; Sir Henry, the second son, was of Wingham; and Sir Thomas, the youngest, was beheaded in queen Mary's reign. Sir Henry Palmer, the second son, having purchased the grant of the college of Wingham, as before-mentioned, made it the seat of his residence, as did his son Sir Thomas Palmer, who was sheriff anno 37 Elizabeth, and created a baronet in 1621. He so constantly resided at Wingham, that he is said to have kept sixty Christmases, without intermission, in this mansion, with great hospitality. He had three sons, each of whom were knighted. From the youngest of whom, Sir James, descended the Palmers, of Dauney, in Buckinghamshire, who upon the eldest branch becoming extinct, have succeeded to the title of baronet; and by his second wife he had Roger Palmer, earl of Castlemain. Sir Thomas Palmer, the eldest of the three brothers, died in his father's life-time, and left Sir Thomas Palmer, bart. of Wingham, heir to his grandfather; in whose descendants, baronets, of this place, this mansion, with the parsonage of Wingham appropriate, continued down to Sir Thomas Palmer, bart. of Wingham, who died possessed of it in 1723, having had three wives; by the first he had four daughters; by the second he had a son Herbert, born before marriage, and afterwards a daughter Frances; the third was Mrs. Markham, by whom he had no issue; and she afterwards married Thomas Hey, esq. whom she likewise survived. Sir Thomas Palmer, by his will, gave this seat, with the parsonage appropriate and tithes of Wingham, inter alia, after his widow's decease, to his natural son Herbert Palmer, esq. above-mentioned, who married Bethia, fourth daughter of Sir Thomas D'Aeth, bart. of Knolton. He died in 1760, s. p. and by will devised his interest in the reversion of this seat, with the parsonage, to his wife Bethia, for her life, and afterwards to his sister Mrs. Frances Palmer, in tail. But he never had possession of it, for lady Palmer furvived him, on whose death in 1763, Mrs. Bethia Palmer, his widow, became entitled to it, and afterwards married John Cosnan, esq. who died in 1773. She survived him, and resided here till her death in 1789. In the intermediate time, Mrs. Frances Palmer having barred the entail made by her natural brother Herbett above-mentioned, died, having devised the see of this estate, by her will in 1770, to the Rev. Thomas Hey, rector of Wickhambreaux, and his heirs, being the eldest son of the last lady Palmer by her last husband. Mr. Hey accordingly, on the death of Mrs. Cosnan, who died s. p. succeeded to this seat and estate. He married first Ethelreda, eldest daughter and coheir of dean Lynch, since deceased, by whom he has no surviving issue; and secondly, Mrs. Pugett, widow of Mr. Puget, of London. He now resides in this seat of Wingham college, having been created D. D. and promoted to a prebend of the church of Rochester.
Charities.
JOHN CHURCH, yeoman, of this parish, in 1604, gave 1cl. to the poor, to distribute yearly at Easter, 10s. to the poor for the interest of it.
HECTOR DU MONT, a Frenchman, born in 1632, gave the silver cup and patten for the holy communion.
SIR GEORGE OXENDEN, president for the East-India Company at Surat, in 1660, gave the velvet cushion and pulpitcloth.
JOHN RUSHBEACHER, gent. of this parish, in 1663, gave five acres of land in Woodnesborough, the rents to be annually distributed to ten of the meaner sort of people of Wingham, not receiving alms of the parish, now of the yearly value of 4l.
SIR GEORGE OXENDEN, above-mentioned, in 1682, gave 500l. for the repairing and beautifying this church, and the Dene chancel.
SIR JAMES OXENDEN, knight and baronet, of Dene, founded and endowed a school in this parish with 16l. per annum for ever, for teaching twenty poor children reading and writing, now in the patronage of Sir Henry Oxenden, bart.
RICHARD OXENDEN, esq. of Brook, in 1701, gave an annuity of 4l. for ever, to the minister, for the reading of divine service and preaching a sermon, in this church, on every Wednesday in Lent, and on Good Friday; and he at the same time gave 20s. yearly for ever, to be distributed, with the consent of the heirs of the Brook estate, to eight poor people, who should be at divine service on Easter-day, to be paid out of the lands of Brook, now vested in Sir Henry Oxenden, bart.
THOMAS PALMER, esq. of St. Dunstan's in the East, London, gave 300l for the repairing, adorning and beautifying the great chancel of this church.
MRS. ELIZABETH MASTER, esq. relict of Strensham Master, of Brook, in 1728, gave the large silver flaggon; and MRS. SYBILLA OXENDEN, spinster, of Brook, at the same time gave a large silver patten for the communion.
Besides the above benefactions, there have been several lesser ones given at different times in money, both to the poor and for the church. All which are recorded in a very handsome table in the church, on which are likewise painted the arms of the several benefactors
There are about forty poor constantly relieved, and casually twenty.
THIS PARISH is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Canterbury, and deanry of Bridge.
The church, which is exempt from the archdeacon, is dedicated to St. Mary. It is a handsome building, consisting of two isles and three chancels, having a slim spire steeple at the west end, in which is a peal of eight bells and a clock. The church consists of two isles and three chancels. The former appear to have been built since the reformation; the latter are much more antient. It is handsome and well built; the pillars between the isles, now cased with wood, are slender and well proportioned. The outside is remarkably beautiful in the flint-work, and the windows throughout it, were regular and handsomely disposed, superior to other churches, till later repairs destroyed their uniformity. The windows were formerly richly ornamented with painted glass, the remains of which are but small. In the south window, in old English letters, is Edward Warham, gentill . . . . of making this window . . . . and underneath the arms of Warham. In the north isle is a brass tablet for Christopher Harris, curate here, and rector of Stourmouth, obt. Nov. 24, 1719. Over the entrance from this isle into the high chancel, is carved on the partition, the Prince of Wales's badge and motto. In the south wall is a circular arch, plain, seemingly over a tomb. A monument for T. Ginder, gent. obt. 1716. In the south east window the arms of Warham. A memorial for Vincent Denne, gent. of Wenderton, obt. 1642. In the high chancel are seven stalls on each side. On the pavement are several stones, robbed of their brasses, over the provosts and religious of the college. A stone, coffin-shaped, and two crosses pomelle, with an inscription round in old French capitals, for master John de Sarestone, rector, ob. XII Kal. May MCCLXXI. Several monuments and memorials for the family of Palmer. The south chancel is called the Dene chancel, belonging to that seat, under which is a vault, in which the family of Oxenden, owners of it, are deposited. In the middle, on the pavement, is a very costly monument, having at the corners four large black oxens beads, in allusion to their name and arms. It was erected in 1682. On the four tablets on the base is an account of the family of Oxenden, beginning with Henry, who built Denehouse, and ending with Dr. Oxenden, dean of the arches, who died in 1704. There are monuments in it likewise for the Trippes. The north chancel is called the Brook chancel, as belonging to that seat, in which are monuments for the Oxendens and Masters's of this seat. This chancel is shut out from the church, and is made use of as a school-room, by which means the monuments are much desaced, and the gravestones, from the filth in it, have become wholly obliterated. On one of these stones was a brass plate, now gone, for Henry Oxenden, esq. who built Dene, obt. 1597.
Elizabeth, daughter of the marquis of Juliers, and widow of John, son of Edmund of Woodstock, earl of Kent, after being solemnly veiled a nun, quitted her prosession, and was clandestinely married to Sir Eustace de Danbrichescourt, in a chapel of the mansion-house of Robert de Brome, a canon of this collegiate church, in 1360; for which she and her husband were enjoined different kinds of penance during their lives, which is well worth the reading, for the uncommon superstitious mockery of them. (fn. 9)
At the time of the reformation, the church was partly collegiate, and partly parochial. The high chancel, separated from the rest of the church by a partition, served for the members of the college to perform their quire service in. The two isles of the church were for the parishioners, who from thence could hear the quire service; and in the north isle was a roodlost, where one of the vicars went up and read the gospel to the people. At which time, I find mention of a parish chancel likewise.
The church of Wingham formerly comprehended not only this parish, but those likewise of Ash, Goodnestone, Nonington, and Wimlingswold; but archbishop Peckham, in 1282, divided them into four distinct parochial churches, and afterwards appropriated them to his new-founded college of Wingham, with a saving to them of certain portions which the vicars of them were accustomed to receive. The profits of this church and the vicarage of it, together with the parsonage-house, being thus appropriated and allotted to the provost, as part of his portion and maintenance, the archbishop, in order that the church should be duly served, by his foundation charter, ordered, that the provost and canons should each of them keep a vicar who should constantly serve in it. In which state it continued till the suppression of the college, in the 1st year of king Edward VI. when it came, among the rest of the revenues of the college, into the hands of the crown, where this parsonage appropriate, to which was annexed, the nomination of the perpetual curate serving in this church, remained till it was granted by king Edward VI. in his 7th year, to Sir Thomas Palmer, bart. Since which it has continued in like manner, together with the scite of the college, as has been already mentioned, to the Rev. Dr. Hey, who is the present possessor of this parsonage, together with the patronage of the perpetual curacy of the church of Wingham.
In 1640 the communicants here were three hundred and sixty-one.
¶The curacy is endowed with a stipend of twenty pounds per annum, paid by the owner of the parsonage, and reserved to the curate in the original grant of the college by king Edward VI. and with four pounds per annum, being the Oxenden gift before mentioned; besides which, the stipend of the resident curate, and his successors, was increased in 1797, by a liberal benefaction made by the Rev. Dr. Hey, of one hundred pounds per annum, clear of all deductions, to be paid out of the parsonage, and of a house, garden, and piece of pasture land adjoining, for the curate's use, both which were settled by him on trustees for that purpose.