Monday, February 29, 2016
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Jerry Lewis Film Actor, Theater Actor, Television Actor, Comedian Biography
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Film Actor, Theater Actor, Television Actor, Comedian, Philanthropist (1926–)
Jerry
Lewis rose to fame as Dean Martin's comedic partner, and his slapstick
humor carried the multitalented performer through decades of film,
television, stage and radio shows.
Synopsis
Born on March 16, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey, Jerry Lewis grew up performing in a vaudeville family. He met singer Dean Martin in 1945, and they developed a comedy act and performed in nightclubs like the Copacabana. When their routine struck a nerve with audiences, the duo went from making $250 a week to $5,000, and Lewis never looked back. He soon made a successful transition into film with 1949's My Friend Irma, which would lead to a string of roles in popular films and TV appearances.Early Life
Comedian, actor and director Jerry Lewis was born Joseph Levitch on March 16, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey. His father, Daniel Levitch, who went by the stage name Danny Lewis, was an actor, master of ceremonies and all-around performer. His mother, Rae Lewis, played piano for the New York City radio station WOR and was her husband's musical director. Growing up in a show-business family, Lewis began following in his parents' footsteps as a performer from a very young age. He made his debut at the age of 5, singing "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" at New York's "Borscht Belt" nightclubs in the Catskill Mountains.Early Career
A decade later, at the age of 15, Jerry Lewis dropped out of high school to pursue a full-time career as a performer. He devised a comedy routine known as the "Record Act" in which he mimed and mouthed the lyrics to operatic and popular songs while a phonograph played the songs offstage. He took his act to the offices of several booking agents before finally landing a gig at a burlesque house in Buffalo. His debut performance fell flat, though, and unable to book any shows at more prestigious venues, Lewis worked as a theater usher and soda jerk to make ends meet.He grew depressed and was on the verge of giving up on his show-business dreams when a friend of his father's, the comedian Max Coleman, convinced him to give comedy another shot and helped him land a performance at Brown's Hotel in Loch Sheldrake, New York. This time his comedy routine received thunderous applause, and among the enthusiastic audience members was another comedian, Irving Kaye, who helped the young Lewis book more Borscht Belt appearances.
Also during this period, Lewis married Patti Palmer (1944), and they went on to have six children before eventually divorcing in 1982. (In 1983, Lewis married SanDee Pitnick, and they had a daughter together.)
Meeting Dean Martin
Their act began with Martin singing a song only to be interrupted by Lewis, with the routine soon devolving into a hilarious improvised sequence that included ad-libbed insults, food fights and frequent banter with the audience. Billed as Martin and Lewis, the duo became such an instantaneous success that in a matter of months they went from earning $250 a week to earning $5,000.
Big Break in Film
In 1949, the pair landed their own regular radio comedy show, The Martin and Lewis Show, and after Paramount producer Hal Wallis saw them perform at the Copacabana nightclub in New York, he booked them both to a film contract. Martin and Lewis made their big-screen debut in the 1949 film My Friend Irma, earning rave reviews.The New York Times wrote, "We could go along with the laughs which were fetched by a new mad comedian, Jerry Lewis by name. This freakishly built and acting young man, who has been seen in nightclubs hereabouts with a collar-ad partner, Dean Martin, has a genuine comic quality. The swift eccentricity of his movements, the harrowing features of his face, and the squeak of his vocal protestations...have flair. His idiocy constitutes the burlesque of an idiot, which is something else again. He's the funniest thing in the picture."
Over the next decade, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis made 16 films together, including My Friend Irma Goes West (1950), The Stooge (1952) and Hollywood or Bust (1956). The pair also made frequent television appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show and The Colgate Comedy Hour. However, by the mid-1950s their partnership and friendship began to fray as Lewis received greater national attention and, as he admitted later, drove Martin away with his egotism and insensitivity. The two split ways, both professionally and personally, in 1956.
Solo Film Star
After his split with Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis went on to a successful solo career as both an actor and director. His first film without Martin, The Delicate Delinquent (1957), was a huge hit and immediately established Lewis as a star in his own right. In 1959, Lewis signed a new contract with Paramount that paid him $10 million up front and 60 percent of box office profits, the most lucrative contract ever signed by a film star at that time. The contract also provided Lewis with greater control over his films, and he made his directorial debut with the 1960 comedy Bellboy.He went on to direct and star in a number of highly successful films, such as The Nutty Professor (1963), Three on a Couch (1966) and The Day the Clown Cried (1972). As an actor, he also turned in an acclaimed performance in the 1982 Martin Scorsese film The King of Comedy and fulfilled his lifelong dream of acting on Broadway as the star of the 1995 production of Damn Yankees.
Other Endeavors
Based on his extensive experience as an actor, director and producer, in 1967 Lewis began teaching graduate film courses at the University of Southern California. His lectures have been collected into a book, The Total Film-Maker (1971), which is considered a seminal text on filmmaking. Lewis also has an unusually fanatical following in Europe, and especially in France, where won Best Director of the Year three times. When his film Hardly Working opened in Paris, the marquee of a cinema on the Champs Elysees read simply, "JERRY."In addition to his prolific career as an entertainer, Lewis has been active in the fight against muscular dystrophy. Until 2011, he served as the chairman of the Muscular Dystrophy Association and hosted an annual telethon that has raised nearly $60 million a year in donations (adding up to $2.5 billion during a nearly half-century run). For his efforts, Lewis was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 and received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 2009 Oscars ceremony.
Family
In 2009, tragedy struck when Lewis' son Joseph, the youngest of six sons from his first marriage and longtime drug addict, committed suicide at age 45. While the two hadn't been close for the previous 20 years, in 2014 Lewis opened up about his son's untimely death, saying, "He was my son and he's gone, and there's not a lot I can do about that. I beat myself a thousand times....You don't get over that."Also in 2009, a woman claiming to be Lewis's daughter came forward, with DNA proof that her claims were true. Suzan Lewis has since gone on to write an autobiography called Jerry Lewis, My Father, Is Always in My Mirror.”
Another notable child is Gary Lewis, Jerry Lewis' oldest son, who was the frontman for the band Gary Lewis and the Playboys. The band had a string of top-ten hits in the mid-1960s.
Jerry Lewis has been married twice, once to Patty Palmer (1944-1980) and again to SanDee Pitnick (1983-).
Later Years
In March 2014, Lewis took to the stage once again, selling out his one-man show at the 2,400-seat La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts in La Mirada, California. A month later, his hand- and footprints were placed into the cement outside Hollywood's TCL Chinese Theatre, an honor long overdue...
Monday, February 22, 2016
10 Young American Poets
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– Flour is Firm.
Born in 1980, Sandra Beasley has already set the poetry world on fire. She is the author of two poetry collections –Theories of Falling and I was the Juke Box – as well as the nonfiction memoir Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a cultural history of food allergies and a personal account of growing up with serious food intolerance. Her work has also been featured in Poetry, The Believer, and Black Warrior Review. Awards include the Banard Women’s Poet Prize and she has twice won the Caifritz Fellowship in Virginia.
– From, ‘They Sail Across the Mirrored Sea’
Still an MFA student at Syracuse as of December 2014, Wendy Chen has already made a splash in literary circles by winning the inaugural Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank Most Promising Young Poet Award, for her poem They sail Across the Mirrored Sea. Despite only being born in 1992, Chen is not just a promising young poet, but an accomplished one.
– From ‘In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes’
Corral is perhaps the eldest of the young poets here, having been born in 1970. His first book, Slow Lightning, was chosen in 2011 as the winner of the Yale series of Younger Poets competition. His poetry has appeared in American Poetry 2012, Ploughshares and New England Review, amongst others, and his poems often engage with the lives of the Mexican diaspora.
– From ‘Where We Live’
Michael Dickman is almost buried beneath the pile of prizes, fellowships, awards, and medals achieved through his poetry. Unlike many others in this list however, Dickman might look vaguely familiar — he had a role, with his twin brother, as the precognition twins in Minority Report. His books include End of the West (Copper Canyon, 2009) and Flies (Copper Canyon, 2011), the latter having won the 2010 James Laughlin award.
– From ‘Because it looked hotter that way’.
Camille Dungy’s poetry explores the paradoxes of her american heritage with her African-American lineage. This, she says, means her family ‘have lived both as outsiders and insiders in this nation, a nation whose identity, though in some ways entirely stable, is also in a state of continuous flux’. She is the author of three books of poetry, including Smith Blue (Southern Illinois University Press, 2011) and Suck on the Morrow (Red Hen Press, 2010). She too has been repeatedly recognized by the literary establishment, having received a prestigious NEA fellowship in 2003, amongst many others.
– From ‘Tenderness’
Jameson Fitzpatrick’s verse defines the cutting edge of contemporary American poetry, telling and retelling the regularity and specificity of contemporary gay experience. Fitzpatrick took his BA and MFA from NYU, where he is currently a professor. His latest publication was the chapbook Morrisroe: Erasures from 89plus/Luma.
– From ‘Clearance’
EJ Koh is a poet, author and a translator of Korean poetry. Her first novel, Red (Collective Presse, 2013) was an experimental mishmash of literary techniques launched with a well-received alternate-reality game in New York City. It is as a poet that Koh is best known, but she also has an MFA from Columbia and a raft of fellowships under her belt.
– From ‘[By Any Measure]’
Ben Lerner is perhaps one of the better known writers here, thanks to his wildly successful recent foray into prose –Leaving the Atocha Station and, most recently, 10:04. His prose however, which has become so famous for its precision, was honed through poetry. In 2003, he won the Hayden Carruth award for his 52 sonnet cycle The Lichtenberg Figures. Shortly after, he won a Fulbright Scholarship, spending a year in Spain which would inspire his first novel and during which he wrote the poetry book ‘Angle of Yaw’, which was a finalist for the national book prize.
– From ‘Swift Trucks’
Erika Meitner has written four books of poetry, has an AB from Dartmouth College and an MFA from Virginia, where she is currently studying for a doctorate in religious studies. She is famed for her honesty and has been described by Stephen Burt as ‘uncommonly autobiographical for a poet of her generation’. Her second book, Ideal Cities, was picked up by Harper Collins and her fourth, Copia (BOA editions) was published in 2014. In 2015, she will be Fulbright Scholar at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queens University Belfast.
-From ‘Duende’
Born in the 1970s, Smith has remained at the forefront of contemporary American poetry, setting the tone through repeated engagement with the issues surrounding African-American cultures, integration and difficulties. She has published three books, each widely acclaimed. Body’s Question (2003) won the Cave Canem Prize, Duende (2007) won the James Laughlin Award, as well as the Essence Literary Award. As if that were not enough, Life on Mars (2011) won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. She is a professor of creative writing at Princeton and the recipient of the 2014 Academy of American Poets fellowship.
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http://theculturetrip.com/north-america/articles/10-young-american-poets-changing-the-face-of-poetry/
http://theculturetrip.com/
Sandra Beasley
Baking two parts flour to one part water/could stop a bullet. So good soldiers/carried their hardtrack over their hearts.– Flour is Firm.
Born in 1980, Sandra Beasley has already set the poetry world on fire. She is the author of two poetry collections –Theories of Falling and I was the Juke Box – as well as the nonfiction memoir Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a cultural history of food allergies and a personal account of growing up with serious food intolerance. Her work has also been featured in Poetry, The Believer, and Black Warrior Review. Awards include the Banard Women’s Poet Prize and she has twice won the Caifritz Fellowship in Virginia.
Wendy Chen
… And what did they think of her small net?/She often wondered what it looked like to them./A fibrous constellation pulled out of the sky,/descending, penetrating the defenseless water with ease.– From, ‘They Sail Across the Mirrored Sea’
Still an MFA student at Syracuse as of December 2014, Wendy Chen has already made a splash in literary circles by winning the inaugural Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank Most Promising Young Poet Award, for her poem They sail Across the Mirrored Sea. Despite only being born in 1992, Chen is not just a promising young poet, but an accomplished one.
Eduardo C Corral
in a Tex-Mex restauarant. His co-workers,/unable to utter his name, renamed him Jalapeño./If I ask for a goldfish, he spits a glob of phlegm/into a jar of water.– From ‘In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes’
Corral is perhaps the eldest of the young poets here, having been born in 1970. His first book, Slow Lightning, was chosen in 2011 as the winner of the Yale series of Younger Poets competition. His poetry has appeared in American Poetry 2012, Ploughshares and New England Review, amongst others, and his poems often engage with the lives of the Mexican diaspora.
Michael Dickman
I used to live/in a mother now I live/in a sunflower– From ‘Where We Live’
Michael Dickman is almost buried beneath the pile of prizes, fellowships, awards, and medals achieved through his poetry. Unlike many others in this list however, Dickman might look vaguely familiar — he had a role, with his twin brother, as the precognition twins in Minority Report. His books include End of the West (Copper Canyon, 2009) and Flies (Copper Canyon, 2011), the latter having won the 2010 James Laughlin award.
Camille Dungy
we let our hair down. It wasn’t so much that we/worried about what people thought or about keeping it real/but that we knew this was our moment.– From ‘Because it looked hotter that way’.
Camille Dungy’s poetry explores the paradoxes of her american heritage with her African-American lineage. This, she says, means her family ‘have lived both as outsiders and insiders in this nation, a nation whose identity, though in some ways entirely stable, is also in a state of continuous flux’. She is the author of three books of poetry, including Smith Blue (Southern Illinois University Press, 2011) and Suck on the Morrow (Red Hen Press, 2010). She too has been repeatedly recognized by the literary establishment, having received a prestigious NEA fellowship in 2003, amongst many others.
Jameson Fitzpatrick
Yes, I was jealous when you threw the glass./I wanted the shattering against the wood-paneled floor for myself,/to be the sudden diaspora of its pieces across the apartment — and last night/when we fought, I wanted you to hit me so badly I begged.– From ‘Tenderness’
Jameson Fitzpatrick’s verse defines the cutting edge of contemporary American poetry, telling and retelling the regularity and specificity of contemporary gay experience. Fitzpatrick took his BA and MFA from NYU, where he is currently a professor. His latest publication was the chapbook Morrisroe: Erasures from 89plus/Luma.
E J Koh
I browsed CIA.gov/for jobs/On the online application/I marked spots for/Targeting Officer/Intelligence Collection Analyst/Counterterrorism Methodologist/and Librarian– From ‘Clearance’
EJ Koh is a poet, author and a translator of Korean poetry. Her first novel, Red (Collective Presse, 2013) was an experimental mishmash of literary techniques launched with a well-received alternate-reality game in New York City. It is as a poet that Koh is best known, but she also has an MFA from Columbia and a raft of fellowships under her belt.
Ben Lerner
By any measure, it was endless/winter. Emulsions with/Then circled the lake like/This is it.– From ‘[By Any Measure]’
Ben Lerner is perhaps one of the better known writers here, thanks to his wildly successful recent foray into prose –Leaving the Atocha Station and, most recently, 10:04. His prose however, which has become so famous for its precision, was honed through poetry. In 2003, he won the Hayden Carruth award for his 52 sonnet cycle The Lichtenberg Figures. Shortly after, he won a Fulbright Scholarship, spending a year in Spain which would inspire his first novel and during which he wrote the poetry book ‘Angle of Yaw’, which was a finalist for the national book prize.
Erika Meitner
This place has views/of black cows, heads bent,/some galloping across a field.– From ‘Swift Trucks’
Erika Meitner has written four books of poetry, has an AB from Dartmouth College and an MFA from Virginia, where she is currently studying for a doctorate in religious studies. She is famed for her honesty and has been described by Stephen Burt as ‘uncommonly autobiographical for a poet of her generation’. Her second book, Ideal Cities, was picked up by Harper Collins and her fourth, Copia (BOA editions) was published in 2014. In 2015, she will be Fulbright Scholar at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queens University Belfast.
Tracy K Smith
The earth is dry and they live wanting./Each with a small reservoir/Of furious music heavy in the throat.-From ‘Duende’
Born in the 1970s, Smith has remained at the forefront of contemporary American poetry, setting the tone through repeated engagement with the issues surrounding African-American cultures, integration and difficulties. She has published three books, each widely acclaimed. Body’s Question (2003) won the Cave Canem Prize, Duende (2007) won the James Laughlin Award, as well as the Essence Literary Award. As if that were not enough, Life on Mars (2011) won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. She is a professor of creative writing at Princeton and the recipient of the 2014 Academy of American Poets fellowship.
http://theculturetrip.com/north-america/articles/10-young-american-poets-changing-the-face-of-poetry/
http://theculturetrip.com/
The Culture Trip
the best art, food, culture, travelPoetry Book Sandra Beasly Don`t Kill the Birthday Girl
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Broadway Books
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http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/196742/dont-kill-the-birthday-girl-by-sandra-beasley/
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http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/
http://www.sandrabeasley.com/
| Sandra Beasley | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | May 5, 1980 Vienna, Virginia |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | University of Virginia; American University |
| Genre | Poetry; Memoir |
| Notable awards | Barnard Women Poets Prize |
| Website | |
Biography of Sandra Beasley
Beasley graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science
and Technology, earned a B.A. in English magna cum laude from the
University of Virginia,[1] and later received an MFA degree from
American University.[2] For several years she worked as an editor at The
American Scholar before leaving the position to write full-time.[3]
Beasley is the author of the poetry collections Theories of Falling (New Issues, 2008) and I Was the Jukebox, (W.W. Norton, 2010), as well as the memoir Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life (Crown, 2011), which is also as a cultural history of food allergies. Her poetry has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2010, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and Best New Poets 2005, as well as such journals as Poetry, The Believer, AGNI online, Blackbird, Barrelhouse, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, and Black Warrior Review. She was a regular contributor to the "XX Files" column for the Washington Post Magazine[5][6] and more recently her prose has appeared in the Wall Street Journal and Psychology Today. She has received fellowships to the University of Mississippi (as the Summer Poet in Residence),[8] the Sewanee Writers' Conference (Walter E. Dakin Fellowship), and Virginia Center for Creative Arts (two Cafritz Fellowships), among others honors. She serves on the Board for the Writer's Center and is also a member of the Arts Club of Washington.
Beasley is the author of the poetry collections Theories of Falling (New Issues, 2008) and I Was the Jukebox, (W.W. Norton, 2010), as well as the memoir Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life (Crown, 2011), which is also as a cultural history of food allergies. Her poetry has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2010, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and Best New Poets 2005, as well as such journals as Poetry, The Believer, AGNI online, Blackbird, Barrelhouse, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, and Black Warrior Review. She was a regular contributor to the "XX Files" column for the Washington Post Magazine[5][6] and more recently her prose has appeared in the Wall Street Journal and Psychology Today. She has received fellowships to the University of Mississippi (as the Summer Poet in Residence),[8] the Sewanee Writers' Conference (Walter E. Dakin Fellowship), and Virginia Center for Creative Arts (two Cafritz Fellowships), among others honors. She serves on the Board for the Writer's Center and is also a member of the Arts Club of Washington.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
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