On March 31, 1889, the Eiffel Tower is dedicated in Paris in a ceremony presided over by Gustave Eiffel, the tower's designer, and attended by French Prime Minister Pierre Tirard, a handful of other dignitaries, and 200 construction workers.
In 1889, to honor of the centenary of the French Revolution, the French government planned an international exposition and announced a design competition for a monument to be built on the Champ-de-Mars in central Paris. Out of more than 100 designs submitted, the Centennial Committee chose Eiffel's plan of an open-lattice wrought-iron tower that would reach almost 1,000 feet above Paris and be the world's tallest man-made structure. Eiffel, a noted bridge builder, was a master of metal construction and designed the framework of the Statue of Liberty that had recently been erected in New York Harbor.
Eiffel's tower was greeted with skepticism from critics who argued that it would be structurally unsound, and indignation from others who thought it would be an eyesore in the heart of Paris. Unperturbed, Eiffel completed his great tower under budget in just two years. Only one worker lost his life during construction, which at the time was a remarkably low casualty number for a project of that magnitude. The light, airy structure was by all accounts a technological wonder and within a few decades came to be regarded as an architectural masterpiece.
The Eiffel Tower is 984 feet tall and consists of an iron framework supported on four masonry piers, from which rise four columns that unite to form a single vertical tower. Platforms, each with an observation deck, are at three levels. Elevators ascend the piers on a curve, and Eiffel contracted the Otis Elevator Company of the United States to design the tower's famous glass-cage elevators.
The elevators were not completed by March 31, 1889, however, so Gustave Eiffel ascended the tower's stairs with a few hardy companions and raised an enormous French tricolor on the structure's flagpole. Fireworks were then set off from the second platform. Eiffel and his party descended, and the architect addressed the guests and about 200 workers. In early May, the Paris International Exposition opened, and the tower served as the entrance gateway to the giant fair.
The Eiffel Tower remained the world's tallest man-made structure until the completion of the Chrysler Building in New York in 1930. Incredibly, the Eiffel Tower was almost demolished when the International Exposition's 20-year lease on the land expired in 1909, but its value as an antenna for radio transmission saved it. It remains largely unchanged today and is one of the world's premier tourist attractions.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
100th Anniversary Of Capitol Building Fire In Albany, New York
ALBANY -- The fire started in the Assembly Library and quickly spread down
the hall to the nearby New York State Library, finding plenty of fuel among
towering shelves jammed with books and cabinets filled with hundreds of
thousands of documents, many of them centuries old. It would be several days
before firefighters finally doused the last embers of the state Capitol fire
that started in the early morning hours of March 29, 1911. Meanwhile, one
man was dead and an untold wealth of New York's history and heritage -- from
Dutch colonial records to priceless Iroquois artifacts -- had gone up in
flames. The disaster, according to the man who served as the State Library's
director before and after the fire, was unequaled in the history of modern
libraries. The fire is estimated to have destroyed about 500,000 books and
300,000 manuscripts; only 7,000 books and 80,000 manuscripts were saved. The
blaze also destroyed 8,500 artifacts in the New York State Museum, including
irreplaceable Seneca Indian craftworks. The Capitol blaze, coming just four
days after the horrific fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. factory in
Manhattan, was the second blow in a pair of pyrotechnic disasters that led
to legislation in Albany strengthening building codes and factory safety
laws statewide, and eventually, nationwide. New York is marking this week's
100th anniversary of the Capitol fire with an exhibit, a new documentary
film, a newly published book and public lectures by state librarians and
historians. Few realize the extent of the disaster of 1911," James I. Wyer,
director of the State Library from 1908-1938, told the New York Post three
years after the blaze engulfed the entire western portion of the Capitol,
built in the French Renaissance style over a 32-year period and completed
just a dozen years before the fire. Joseph Gavit, the "Superintendent of the
Stacks" whose 50-year career at the State Library started in 1896, staunchly
believed the fire was started by careless smoking during a boozy party held
in a room near the Assembly chamber, according to state librarians Paul
Mercer and Vicki Weiss, co-authors of "The New York State Capitol and The
Great Fire of 1911. Officially, the blame was laid on faulty wiring. What
isn't disputed is that the blaze ignited around 2 a.m. in what was then the
Assembly's third-floor library, just down the hall from the speaker's
office. During a recent tour of the third and fourth floors, Capitol
Architect James Jamieson described how the fire spread through the chamber's
library, where it intensified and blew out the tall windows overlooking one
of the roofless interior courtyards designed to provide natural light and
ventilation. That courtyard, along with another nearby and some elevator
shafts, wound up acting as conduits for flames that jumped over ceiling
spaces and engulfed the State Library, he said. Since it's all intertwined,
the fire would just find all these places to go," Jamieson explained. Once
the flames reached the library, there was no hope of stopping them. More
than half a million books were stacked floor to ceiling on pine shelves.
Catalogues, newspapers, old manuscripts, journals, wooden desks and
tables -- all served as fuel. The heat was so intense it melted some of the
building's red sandstone columns that were quarried in Scotland, Jamieson
said. Wind currents created by the fires spewed charred pieces of paper
through blown-out windows, littering surrounding streets as if a parade had
been held. The first alarm didn't arrive at the Albany Fire Department until
2:40 a.m. About 150 firefighters battled for hours before getting the
conflagration under control, although debris would smolder for days. Gavit
and others risked their lives running among the still-burning corridors to
save books and documents. Among some of the important documents saved: the
original manuscript of George Washington's farewell address and an original
Emancipation Proclamation, written in Abraham Lincoln's own hand. Arthur
Parker, the first archaeologist hired by New York state, dashed among the
State Museum's display cases arrayed on the fourth floor, wielding a
tomahawk passed down from a Seneca ancestor and using it as a fire ax as he
rescued priceless Iroquois artifacts. He managed to save only about 50 out
of about 500 Iroquois relics, said Betty Duggan, a State Museum curator. He
was just heart-sickened by the fire," Duggan said. News of the fire soon
reached many of the far-flung graduates of the New York State Library
School, founded by Melvil Dewey and located in the Capitol's northwest
tower. For some, the destruction of so much written knowledge was like a
death in the family, and the letters and telegrams they sent to Albany bore
condolences from around the globe. The chief librarian at the Imperial
University of Tokyo wrote: "I beg to express my deepest sympathy for the
loss of the New York State Library by the recent fire. It took a year to
rebuild and repair the damaged sections of the Capitol. Workers removed much
of the soot from the scorched, blackened sandstone walls, but it wasn't
until a two-year, $2.4 million restoration project completed in 2006 that
the Capitol's Great Western Staircase was returned to its pre-fire
condition. The Capitol fire is still haunting us," said Nancy Kelley,
exhibit planner for the State Museum, where a three-month exhibit on the
fire runs through June 18. One-hundred years later, we're still dealing with
the fire. There's also some real haunting, according to Capitol lore. The
ghost of Samuel Abbott, the disaster's sole human casualty, is said to haunt
the Capitol's fourth floor, where the body of the 78-year-old night watchman
was found. While some say Abbott's spirit still makes his nightly rounds,
researchers and librarians often come across more tangible remnants of the
fire among the files and volumes at the State Library and State Archives:
documents charred around the edges or shriveled from being doused. Experts
at the State Archives still work to conserve 20,000 documents rescued from
the fire. They range from such historic items as the Flushing Remonstrance,
a 350-year-old Dutch document demanding religious freedom, to a
Revolutionary War soldier's appeal to be allowed to remarry, written after
he had returned home to find his wife had joined the Shaker religious sect
and no longer wanted a husband. There are lots of small stories to tell from
these documents," said Sue Bove, a conservation expert at the State
Archives. They may not be glamorous, but they're a source of information on
what our forefathers had to endure. Another item saved from the blaze is a
page, circa 1675, from a wealthy Dutch woman's account with an Albany baker.
The entry shows a purchase of "Sinterklaas" goodies. Mercer and Weiss
believe it could be the earliest record of the celebration of the feast of
Saint Nicholas -- aka Santa Claus -- in the New World.
the hall to the nearby New York State Library, finding plenty of fuel among
towering shelves jammed with books and cabinets filled with hundreds of
thousands of documents, many of them centuries old. It would be several days
before firefighters finally doused the last embers of the state Capitol fire
that started in the early morning hours of March 29, 1911. Meanwhile, one
man was dead and an untold wealth of New York's history and heritage -- from
Dutch colonial records to priceless Iroquois artifacts -- had gone up in
flames. The disaster, according to the man who served as the State Library's
director before and after the fire, was unequaled in the history of modern
libraries. The fire is estimated to have destroyed about 500,000 books and
300,000 manuscripts; only 7,000 books and 80,000 manuscripts were saved. The
blaze also destroyed 8,500 artifacts in the New York State Museum, including
irreplaceable Seneca Indian craftworks. The Capitol blaze, coming just four
days after the horrific fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. factory in
Manhattan, was the second blow in a pair of pyrotechnic disasters that led
to legislation in Albany strengthening building codes and factory safety
laws statewide, and eventually, nationwide. New York is marking this week's
100th anniversary of the Capitol fire with an exhibit, a new documentary
film, a newly published book and public lectures by state librarians and
historians. Few realize the extent of the disaster of 1911," James I. Wyer,
director of the State Library from 1908-1938, told the New York Post three
years after the blaze engulfed the entire western portion of the Capitol,
built in the French Renaissance style over a 32-year period and completed
just a dozen years before the fire. Joseph Gavit, the "Superintendent of the
Stacks" whose 50-year career at the State Library started in 1896, staunchly
believed the fire was started by careless smoking during a boozy party held
in a room near the Assembly chamber, according to state librarians Paul
Mercer and Vicki Weiss, co-authors of "The New York State Capitol and The
Great Fire of 1911. Officially, the blame was laid on faulty wiring. What
isn't disputed is that the blaze ignited around 2 a.m. in what was then the
Assembly's third-floor library, just down the hall from the speaker's
office. During a recent tour of the third and fourth floors, Capitol
Architect James Jamieson described how the fire spread through the chamber's
library, where it intensified and blew out the tall windows overlooking one
of the roofless interior courtyards designed to provide natural light and
ventilation. That courtyard, along with another nearby and some elevator
shafts, wound up acting as conduits for flames that jumped over ceiling
spaces and engulfed the State Library, he said. Since it's all intertwined,
the fire would just find all these places to go," Jamieson explained. Once
the flames reached the library, there was no hope of stopping them. More
than half a million books were stacked floor to ceiling on pine shelves.
Catalogues, newspapers, old manuscripts, journals, wooden desks and
tables -- all served as fuel. The heat was so intense it melted some of the
building's red sandstone columns that were quarried in Scotland, Jamieson
said. Wind currents created by the fires spewed charred pieces of paper
through blown-out windows, littering surrounding streets as if a parade had
been held. The first alarm didn't arrive at the Albany Fire Department until
2:40 a.m. About 150 firefighters battled for hours before getting the
conflagration under control, although debris would smolder for days. Gavit
and others risked their lives running among the still-burning corridors to
save books and documents. Among some of the important documents saved: the
original manuscript of George Washington's farewell address and an original
Emancipation Proclamation, written in Abraham Lincoln's own hand. Arthur
Parker, the first archaeologist hired by New York state, dashed among the
State Museum's display cases arrayed on the fourth floor, wielding a
tomahawk passed down from a Seneca ancestor and using it as a fire ax as he
rescued priceless Iroquois artifacts. He managed to save only about 50 out
of about 500 Iroquois relics, said Betty Duggan, a State Museum curator. He
was just heart-sickened by the fire," Duggan said. News of the fire soon
reached many of the far-flung graduates of the New York State Library
School, founded by Melvil Dewey and located in the Capitol's northwest
tower. For some, the destruction of so much written knowledge was like a
death in the family, and the letters and telegrams they sent to Albany bore
condolences from around the globe. The chief librarian at the Imperial
University of Tokyo wrote: "I beg to express my deepest sympathy for the
loss of the New York State Library by the recent fire. It took a year to
rebuild and repair the damaged sections of the Capitol. Workers removed much
of the soot from the scorched, blackened sandstone walls, but it wasn't
until a two-year, $2.4 million restoration project completed in 2006 that
the Capitol's Great Western Staircase was returned to its pre-fire
condition. The Capitol fire is still haunting us," said Nancy Kelley,
exhibit planner for the State Museum, where a three-month exhibit on the
fire runs through June 18. One-hundred years later, we're still dealing with
the fire. There's also some real haunting, according to Capitol lore. The
ghost of Samuel Abbott, the disaster's sole human casualty, is said to haunt
the Capitol's fourth floor, where the body of the 78-year-old night watchman
was found. While some say Abbott's spirit still makes his nightly rounds,
researchers and librarians often come across more tangible remnants of the
fire among the files and volumes at the State Library and State Archives:
documents charred around the edges or shriveled from being doused. Experts
at the State Archives still work to conserve 20,000 documents rescued from
the fire. They range from such historic items as the Flushing Remonstrance,
a 350-year-old Dutch document demanding religious freedom, to a
Revolutionary War soldier's appeal to be allowed to remarry, written after
he had returned home to find his wife had joined the Shaker religious sect
and no longer wanted a husband. There are lots of small stories to tell from
these documents," said Sue Bove, a conservation expert at the State
Archives. They may not be glamorous, but they're a source of information on
what our forefathers had to endure. Another item saved from the blaze is a
page, circa 1675, from a wealthy Dutch woman's account with an Albany baker.
The entry shows a purchase of "Sinterklaas" goodies. Mercer and Weiss
believe it could be the earliest record of the celebration of the feast of
Saint Nicholas -- aka Santa Claus -- in the New World.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
In the emergency room
In the hospital the relatives gathered in the waiting room, where a family member lay gravely ill. Finally, the doctor came in looking tired and somber.
'I'm afraid I'm the bearer of bad news,' he said as he surveyed the worried faces. 'The only hope left for your loved one at this time is a brain transplant. It's an experimental procedure, very risky, but it is the only hope. Insurance will cover the procedure, but you will have to pay for the BRAIN.'
The family members sat silent as they absorbed the news. After a time, someone asked, 'How much will a brain cost?'
The doctor quickly responded, '$5,000 for a Democrat's brain; $200 for a Republican's brain.'
The moment turned awkward. Some of the Democrats actually had to 'try' to not smile, avoiding eye contact with the Republicans. A man unable to control his curiosity, finally blurted out the question everyone wanted to ask, 'Why is the Democrats brain so much more than a Republicans brain?'
The doctor smiled at the childish innocence and explained to the entire group, 'It's just standard pricing procedure. We have to price the Republicans brains a lot lower because they've been used.
'I'm afraid I'm the bearer of bad news,' he said as he surveyed the worried faces. 'The only hope left for your loved one at this time is a brain transplant. It's an experimental procedure, very risky, but it is the only hope. Insurance will cover the procedure, but you will have to pay for the BRAIN.'
The family members sat silent as they absorbed the news. After a time, someone asked, 'How much will a brain cost?'
The doctor quickly responded, '$5,000 for a Democrat's brain; $200 for a Republican's brain.'
The moment turned awkward. Some of the Democrats actually had to 'try' to not smile, avoiding eye contact with the Republicans. A man unable to control his curiosity, finally blurted out the question everyone wanted to ask, 'Why is the Democrats brain so much more than a Republicans brain?'
The doctor smiled at the childish innocence and explained to the entire group, 'It's just standard pricing procedure. We have to price the Republicans brains a lot lower because they've been used.
First VP Candidate Geraldine Ferraro Dies At 75
BOSTON – Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman vice presidential candidate on a
major party ticket and a barrier-breaking pioneer for women in politics,
died Saturday.
Ferraro died at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was being treated
for complications of blood cancer. She died just before 10 a.m., said Amanda
Fuchs Miller, a family friend who worked for Ferraro in her 1998 Senate bid
and was acting as a spokeswoman for the family.
In 1984, Ferraro was a relatively obscure Democratic congresswoman from the
New York City borough of Queens when she was tapped by presidential nominee
Walter Mondale to join his ticket against incumbents Ronald Reagan and
George H. W. Bush. Mondale's campaign had struggled to gain traction and his
selection of Ferraro, at least momentarily, revived his momentum and
energized millions of women who were thrilled to see one of their own on a
national ticket.
The blunt, feisty Ferraro charmed audiences initially, and for a time polls
showed the Democratic ticket gaining ground in the presidential contest. But
her candidacy ultimately proved rocky as she fought ethics charges and
traded barbs with Bush, her vice presidential rival, over accusations of
sexism and class warfare.
Ferraro later told an interviewer, "I don't think I'd run again for vice
president," then added "Next time I'd run for president."
Reagan won 49 of 50 states in 1984, the largest landslide since Franklin D.
Roosevelt's first re-election over Alf Landon in 1936. But Ferraro had
forever sealed her place as trailblazer for women in politics, laying the
path for Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton's historic presidential bid in 2008
and Republican John McCain's choice of a once-obscure Alaska governor, Sarah
Palin, as his running mate that year.
"At the time it happened it was such a phenomenal breakthrough," said Ruth
Mandel of the Center on the American Woman and Politics at Rutgers
University. "She stepped on the path to higher office before anyone else,
and her footprint is still on that path."
Palin, who often spoke of Ferraro on the campaign trail despite their
political differences, paid tribute to her Saturday.
"She broke one huge barrier and then went on to break many more," Palin
wrote on her Facebook page. "May her example of hard work and dedication to
America continue to inspire all women."
For his part, Mondale remembered his former running mate as "a remarkable
woman and a dear human being."
"She was a pioneer in our country for justice for women and a more open
society. She broke a lot of molds and it's a better country for what she
did," Mondale told The Associated Press.
Ferraro died at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she had gone
earlier in the week for a procedure to relieve back pain caused by a
fracture. Such fractures are common in people with her type of blood cancer
because of the thinning of their bones, said Dr. Noopur Raje, the Mass
General doctor who treated her.
Ferraro, however, developed pneumonia, which made impossible to perform the
procedure, and it soon became clear she didn't have long to live, Raje said.
Since she was too ill to return to New York, her family came to Boston to
see her.
Raje said it seemed Ferraro held out until her husband and three children
arrived. They were all at her bedside when she passed, she said.
"Gerry actually waited for all of them to come, which I think was
incredible," said Raje, director of the myloma program at the hospital's
cancer center. "They were all able to say their goodbyes to Mom."
Ferraro stepped into the national spotlight at the Democratic convention in
1984, giving the world its first look at a co-ed presidential ticket. It
seemed, at times, an awkward arrangement — she and Mondale stood together
and waved at the crowd but did not hug and barely touched.
Delegates erupted in cheers at the first line of her speech accepting the
vice-presidential nomination.
"My name is Geraldine Ferraro," she declared. "I stand before you to
proclaim tonight: America is the land where dreams can come true for all of
us."
Her acceptance speech launched eight minutes of cheers, foot-stamping and
tears.
Ferraro, a mother of three who campaigned wearing pastel-hued dresses and
pumps, sometimes overshadowed Mondale on the campaign trail, often drawing
larger crowds and more media attention than the presidential candidate.
But controversy accompanied her acclaim.
A Roman Catholic, she encountered frequent, vociferous protests of her
favorable view of abortion rights.
She famously tangled with Bush, her vice presidential rival who struggled at
times over how aggressively to attack Ferraro.
In their only nationally televised debate, in October 1984, Bush raised
eyebrows when he said "Let me help you with the difference, Ms. Ferraro,
between Iran and the embassy in Lebanon." Ferraro shot back, saying she
resented Bush's "patronizing attitude that you have to teach me about
foreign policy."
Ferraro would later suggest on the campaign trail that Bush and his family
were wealthy and therefore didn't understand the problems faced by ordinary
voters. That comment irked Bush's wife, Barbara, who said Ferraro had more
money than the Bush family. "I can't say it, but it rhymes with rich,"
Barbara Bush told reporters when asked to describe Ferraro. She later
apologized.
In a statement, Bush praised Ferraro for "the dignified and principled
manner she blazed new trails for women in politics." He said that after the
1984 race, "Gerry and I became friends in time — a friendship marked by
respect and affection."
Ferraro's run also was beset by ethical questions, first about her campaign
finances and tax returns, then about the business dealings of her husband,
real estate developer John Zaccaro. Ferraro attributed much of the
controversy to bias against Italian-Americans.
Zaccaro pleaded guilty in 1985 to a misdemeanor charge of scheming to
defraud in connection with obtaining financing for the purchase of five
apartment buildings. Two years later, he was acquitted of trying to extort a
bribe from a cable television company.
Ferraro's son, John Zaccaro Jr., was convicted in 1988 of selling cocaine to
an undercover Vermont state trooper and served three months under house
arrest.
Some observers said the legal troubles were a drag on Ferraro's later
political ambitions, which included her unsuccessful bids for the Democratic
nomination for U.S. Senate in New York in 1992 and 1998.
Ferraro, a supporter of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, was back in the
news in March 2008 when she stirred up a controversy by appearing to suggest
that Sen. Barack Obama achieved his status in the presidential race only
because he is black.
She later stepped down from an honorary post in the Clinton campaign, but
insisted she meant no slight against Obama.
In a statement, Obama praised Ferraro as a trailblazer who had made the
world better for his daughters.
"Sasha and Malia will grow up in a more equal America because of the life
Geraldine Ferraro chose to live," Obama said.
Ferraro received a law degree from Fordham University in 1960, the same year
she married and became a full-time homemaker and mother. She said she kept
her maiden name to honor her mother, a widow who had worked long hours as a
seamstress.
After years in a private law practice, she took a job as an assistant Queens
district attorney in 1974. She headed the office's special victims' bureau,
which prosecuted sex crimes and the abuse of children and the elderly. In
1978, she won the first of three terms in Congress representing a
blue-collar district of Queens.
After losing in 1984, she became a fellow of the Institute of Politics at
the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University until an
unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate nomination in 1992.
She returned to the law after her 1992 Senate run, acting as an advocate for
women raped during ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
Her advocacy work and support of President Bill Clinton won her the position
of ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, where she
served in 1994 and 1995.
She co-hosted CNN's "Crossfire," in 1996 and 1997 but left to take on Chuck
Schumer, then a little-known Brooklyn congressman, in the 1998 Democratic
Senate primary. She placed a distant second, declaring her political career
finished after she took 26 percent of the vote to Schumer's 51 percent.
In June 1999, she announced that she was joining a Washington, D.C., area
public relations firm to head a group advising clients on women's issues.
Ferraro revealed two years later that she had been diagnosed with blood
cancer.
She discussed blood cancer research before a Senate panel that month and
said she hoped to live long enough "to attend the inauguration of the first
woman president of the United States."
major party ticket and a barrier-breaking pioneer for women in politics,
died Saturday.
Ferraro died at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was being treated
for complications of blood cancer. She died just before 10 a.m., said Amanda
Fuchs Miller, a family friend who worked for Ferraro in her 1998 Senate bid
and was acting as a spokeswoman for the family.
In 1984, Ferraro was a relatively obscure Democratic congresswoman from the
New York City borough of Queens when she was tapped by presidential nominee
Walter Mondale to join his ticket against incumbents Ronald Reagan and
George H. W. Bush. Mondale's campaign had struggled to gain traction and his
selection of Ferraro, at least momentarily, revived his momentum and
energized millions of women who were thrilled to see one of their own on a
national ticket.
The blunt, feisty Ferraro charmed audiences initially, and for a time polls
showed the Democratic ticket gaining ground in the presidential contest. But
her candidacy ultimately proved rocky as she fought ethics charges and
traded barbs with Bush, her vice presidential rival, over accusations of
sexism and class warfare.
Ferraro later told an interviewer, "I don't think I'd run again for vice
president," then added "Next time I'd run for president."
Reagan won 49 of 50 states in 1984, the largest landslide since Franklin D.
Roosevelt's first re-election over Alf Landon in 1936. But Ferraro had
forever sealed her place as trailblazer for women in politics, laying the
path for Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton's historic presidential bid in 2008
and Republican John McCain's choice of a once-obscure Alaska governor, Sarah
Palin, as his running mate that year.
"At the time it happened it was such a phenomenal breakthrough," said Ruth
Mandel of the Center on the American Woman and Politics at Rutgers
University. "She stepped on the path to higher office before anyone else,
and her footprint is still on that path."
Palin, who often spoke of Ferraro on the campaign trail despite their
political differences, paid tribute to her Saturday.
"She broke one huge barrier and then went on to break many more," Palin
wrote on her Facebook page. "May her example of hard work and dedication to
America continue to inspire all women."
For his part, Mondale remembered his former running mate as "a remarkable
woman and a dear human being."
"She was a pioneer in our country for justice for women and a more open
society. She broke a lot of molds and it's a better country for what she
did," Mondale told The Associated Press.
Ferraro died at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she had gone
earlier in the week for a procedure to relieve back pain caused by a
fracture. Such fractures are common in people with her type of blood cancer
because of the thinning of their bones, said Dr. Noopur Raje, the Mass
General doctor who treated her.
Ferraro, however, developed pneumonia, which made impossible to perform the
procedure, and it soon became clear she didn't have long to live, Raje said.
Since she was too ill to return to New York, her family came to Boston to
see her.
Raje said it seemed Ferraro held out until her husband and three children
arrived. They were all at her bedside when she passed, she said.
"Gerry actually waited for all of them to come, which I think was
incredible," said Raje, director of the myloma program at the hospital's
cancer center. "They were all able to say their goodbyes to Mom."
Ferraro stepped into the national spotlight at the Democratic convention in
1984, giving the world its first look at a co-ed presidential ticket. It
seemed, at times, an awkward arrangement — she and Mondale stood together
and waved at the crowd but did not hug and barely touched.
Delegates erupted in cheers at the first line of her speech accepting the
vice-presidential nomination.
"My name is Geraldine Ferraro," she declared. "I stand before you to
proclaim tonight: America is the land where dreams can come true for all of
us."
Her acceptance speech launched eight minutes of cheers, foot-stamping and
tears.
Ferraro, a mother of three who campaigned wearing pastel-hued dresses and
pumps, sometimes overshadowed Mondale on the campaign trail, often drawing
larger crowds and more media attention than the presidential candidate.
But controversy accompanied her acclaim.
A Roman Catholic, she encountered frequent, vociferous protests of her
favorable view of abortion rights.
She famously tangled with Bush, her vice presidential rival who struggled at
times over how aggressively to attack Ferraro.
In their only nationally televised debate, in October 1984, Bush raised
eyebrows when he said "Let me help you with the difference, Ms. Ferraro,
between Iran and the embassy in Lebanon." Ferraro shot back, saying she
resented Bush's "patronizing attitude that you have to teach me about
foreign policy."
Ferraro would later suggest on the campaign trail that Bush and his family
were wealthy and therefore didn't understand the problems faced by ordinary
voters. That comment irked Bush's wife, Barbara, who said Ferraro had more
money than the Bush family. "I can't say it, but it rhymes with rich,"
Barbara Bush told reporters when asked to describe Ferraro. She later
apologized.
In a statement, Bush praised Ferraro for "the dignified and principled
manner she blazed new trails for women in politics." He said that after the
1984 race, "Gerry and I became friends in time — a friendship marked by
respect and affection."
Ferraro's run also was beset by ethical questions, first about her campaign
finances and tax returns, then about the business dealings of her husband,
real estate developer John Zaccaro. Ferraro attributed much of the
controversy to bias against Italian-Americans.
Zaccaro pleaded guilty in 1985 to a misdemeanor charge of scheming to
defraud in connection with obtaining financing for the purchase of five
apartment buildings. Two years later, he was acquitted of trying to extort a
bribe from a cable television company.
Ferraro's son, John Zaccaro Jr., was convicted in 1988 of selling cocaine to
an undercover Vermont state trooper and served three months under house
arrest.
Some observers said the legal troubles were a drag on Ferraro's later
political ambitions, which included her unsuccessful bids for the Democratic
nomination for U.S. Senate in New York in 1992 and 1998.
Ferraro, a supporter of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, was back in the
news in March 2008 when she stirred up a controversy by appearing to suggest
that Sen. Barack Obama achieved his status in the presidential race only
because he is black.
She later stepped down from an honorary post in the Clinton campaign, but
insisted she meant no slight against Obama.
In a statement, Obama praised Ferraro as a trailblazer who had made the
world better for his daughters.
"Sasha and Malia will grow up in a more equal America because of the life
Geraldine Ferraro chose to live," Obama said.
Ferraro received a law degree from Fordham University in 1960, the same year
she married and became a full-time homemaker and mother. She said she kept
her maiden name to honor her mother, a widow who had worked long hours as a
seamstress.
After years in a private law practice, she took a job as an assistant Queens
district attorney in 1974. She headed the office's special victims' bureau,
which prosecuted sex crimes and the abuse of children and the elderly. In
1978, she won the first of three terms in Congress representing a
blue-collar district of Queens.
After losing in 1984, she became a fellow of the Institute of Politics at
the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University until an
unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate nomination in 1992.
She returned to the law after her 1992 Senate run, acting as an advocate for
women raped during ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
Her advocacy work and support of President Bill Clinton won her the position
of ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, where she
served in 1994 and 1995.
She co-hosted CNN's "Crossfire," in 1996 and 1997 but left to take on Chuck
Schumer, then a little-known Brooklyn congressman, in the 1998 Democratic
Senate primary. She placed a distant second, declaring her political career
finished after she took 26 percent of the vote to Schumer's 51 percent.
In June 1999, she announced that she was joining a Washington, D.C., area
public relations firm to head a group advising clients on women's issues.
Ferraro revealed two years later that she had been diagnosed with blood
cancer.
She discussed blood cancer research before a Senate panel that month and
said she hoped to live long enough "to attend the inauguration of the first
woman president of the United States."
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Film Legend Elizabeth Taylor Dies At Age 79 In LA
LOS ANGELES – Elizabeth Taylor, the violet-eyed film goddess whose sultry
screen persona, stormy personal life and enduring fame and glamour made her
one of the last of the classic movie stars and a template for the modern
celebrity, died Wednesday at age 79.
She was surrounded by her four children when she died of congestive heart
failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she had been hospitalized for
about six weeks, said publicist Sally Morrison.
"My mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with
great passion, humor, and love," her son, Michael Wilding, said in a
statement.
"We know, quite simply, that the world is a better place for Mom having
lived in it. Her legacy will never fade, her spirit will always be with us,
and her love will live forever in our hearts."
"We have just lost a Hollywood giant," said Elton John, a longtime friend of
Taylor. "More importantly, we have lost an incredible human being."
Taylor was the most blessed and cursed of actresses, the toughest and the
most vulnerable. She had extraordinary grace, wealth and voluptuous beauty,
and won three Academy Awards, including a special one for her humanitarian
work.
One of those Oscars came for a searing performance in "Who's Afraid of
Virginia Woolf?" She played an alcoholic shrew in an emotionally
sadomasochistic marriage opposite real-life husband Richard Burton.
For all the ferocity of her screen roles and the turmoil of her life, Taylor
was remembered by "Virginia Woolf" director Mike Nichols for her gentler,
life-affirming side.
"The shock of Elizabeth was not only her beauty. It was her generosity. Her
giant laugh. Her vitality, whether tackling a complex scene on film or where
we would all have dinner until dawn," Nichols said in a statement. "She is
singular and indelible on film and in our hearts."
Taylor was the most loyal of friends and a defender of gays in Hollywood
when AIDS was new to the industry and beyond. But she was afflicted by ill
health, failed romances (eight marriages, seven husbands) and personal
tragedy.
"I think I'm becoming fatalistic," she said in 1989. "Too much has happened
in my life for me not to be fatalistic."
Her more than 50 movies included unforgettable portraits of innocence and of
decadence, from the children's classic "National Velvet" and the sentimental
family comedy "Father of the Bride" to Oscar-winning transgressions in
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Butterfield 8." The historical epic
"Cleopatra" is among Hollywood's greatest on-screen fiascos and a landmark
of off-screen monkey business, the meeting ground of Taylor and Burton, the
"Brangelina" of their day.
She played enough bawdy women on film for critic Pauline Kael to deem her
"Chaucerian Beverly Hills."
That sauciness was part of her real life, too.
"She had a sense of humor that was so bawdy, even I was saying, `really?
That came out of your mouth?'" Whoopi Goldberg said on ABC's "The View,"
recalling how Taylor gave her advice about her own Hollywood career. "She
was just a magnificent woman. She was a great broad and a good friend."
But her defining role, one that lasted past her moviemaking days, was
"Elizabeth Taylor," ever marrying and divorcing, in and out of hospitals,
gaining and losing weight, standing by Michael Jackson, Rock Hudson and
other troubled friends, acquiring a jewelry collection that seemed to rival
Tiffany's.
She was a child star who grew up and aged before an adoring, appalled and
fascinated public. She arrived in Hollywood when the studio system tightly
controlled an actor's life and image, had more marriages than any publicist
could explain away and carried on until she no longer required explanation.
She was the industry's great survivor, and among the first to reach that
special category of celebrity — famous for being famous, for whom her work
was inseparable from the gossip around it.
The London-born actress was a star at age 12, a bride and a divorcee at 18,
a superstar at 19 and a widow at 26. She was a screen sweetheart and martyr
later reviled for stealing Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds, then for
dumping Fisher to bed Burton, a relationship of epic passion and turbulence,
lasting through two marriages and countless attempted reconciliations.
She was also forgiven. Reynolds would acknowledge voting for Taylor when she
was nominated for "Butterfield 8" and decades later co-starred with her old
rival in "These Old Broads," co-written by Carrie Fisher, the daughter of
Reynolds and Eddie Fisher.
Taylor's ailments wore down the grudges. She underwent at least 20 major
operations and she nearly died from a bout with pneumonia in 1990. In 1994
and 1995, she had both hip joints replaced, and in February 1997, she
underwent surgery to remove a benign brain tumor. In 1983, she acknowledged
a 35-year addiction to sleeping pills and pain killers. Taylor was treated
for alcohol and drug abuse problems at the Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho
Mirage, Calif.
Her troubles bonded her to her peers and the public, and deepened her
compassion. Her advocacy for AIDS research and for other causes earned her a
special Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1993.
As she accepted it, to a long ovation, she declared, "I call upon you to
draw from the depths of your being — to prove that we are a human race, to
prove that our love outweighs our need to hate, that our compassion is more
compelling than our need to blame."
The American Foundation for AIDS Research, for which Taylor was a longtime
advocate, noted in a statement that she was "among the first to speak out on
behalf of people living with HIV when others reacted with fear and often
outright hostility."
"She leaves a monumental legacy that has improved and extended millions of
lives and will enrich countless more for generations to come," the group
said.
The dark-haired Taylor made an unforgettable impression in Hollywood with
"National Velvet," the 1945 film in which the 12-year-old belle rode a
steeplechase horse to victory in the Grand National.
Critic James Agee wrote of her: "Ever since I first saw the child ... I have
been choked with the peculiar sort of adoration I might have felt if we were
in the same grade of primary school."
"National Velvet," her fifth film, also marked the beginning of Taylor's
long string of health issues. During production, she fell off a horse. The
resulting back injury continued to haunt her.
Taylor matured into a ravishing beauty in "Father of the Bride," in 1950,
and into a respected performer and femme fatale the following year in "A
Place in the Sun," based on the Theodore Dreiser novel "An American
Tragedy." The movie co-starred her close friend Montgomery Clift as the
ambitious young man who drowns his working-class girlfriend to be with the
socialite Taylor. In real life, too, men all but committed murder in pursuit
of her.
Through the rest of the 1950s and into the 1960s, she and Marilyn Monroe
were Hollywood's great sex symbols, both striving for appreciation beyond
their physical beauty, both caught up in personal dramas filmmakers could
only wish they had imagined. That Taylor lasted, and Monroe died young, was
a matter of luck and strength; Taylor lived as she pleased and allowed no
one to define her but herself.
"I don't entirely approve of some of the things I have done, or am, or have
been. But I'm me. God knows, I'm me," Taylor said around the time she turned
50.
She had a remarkable and exhausting personal and professional life. Her
marriage to Michael Todd ended tragically when the producer died in a plane
crash in 1958. She took up with Fisher, married him, then left him for
Burton. Meanwhile, she received several Academy Award nominations and two
Oscars.
She was a box-office star cast in numerous "prestige" films, from "Raintree
County" with Clift to "Giant," an epic co-starring her friends Hudson and
James Dean. Nominations came from a pair of movies adapted from work by
Tennessee Williams: "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Suddenly, Last Summer." In
"Butterfield 8," released in 1960, she starred with Fisher as a doomed
girl-about-town. Taylor never cared much for the film, but her performance
at the Oscars wowed the world.
Sympathy for Taylor's widowhood had turned to scorn when she took up with
Fisher, who had supposedly been consoling her over the death of Todd. But
before the 1961 ceremony, she was hospitalized from a nearly fatal bout with
pneumonia and Taylor underwent a tracheotomy. The scar was bandaged when she
appeared at the Oscars to accept her best actress trophy for "Butterfield
8."
To a standing ovation, she hobbled to the stage. "I don't really know how to
express my great gratitude," she said in an emotional speech. "I guess I
will just have to thank you with all my heart." It was one of the most
dramatic moments in Academy Awards history.
"Hell, I even voted for her," Reynolds later said.
Greater drama awaited: "Cleopatra." Taylor met Burton while playing the
title role in the 1963 epic, in which the brooding, womanizing Welsh actor
co-starred as Mark Antony. Their chemistry was not immediate. Taylor found
him boorish; Burton mocked her physique. But the love scenes on film
continued away from the set and a scandal for the ages was born. Headlines
shouted and screamed. Paparazzi, then an emerging breed, snapped and
swooned. Their romance created such a sensation that the Vatican denounced
the happenings as the "caprices of adult children."
The film so exceeded its budget that the producers lost money even though
"Cleopatra" was a box-office hit and won four Academy awards. (With its $44
million budget adjusted for inflation, "Cleopatra" remains the most
expensive movie ever made.) Taylor's salary per film topped $1 million. "Liz
and Dick" became the ultimate jet set couple, on a first name basis with
millions who had never met them.
They were a prolific acting team, even if most of the movies aged no better
than their marriages: "The VIPs" (1963), "The Sandpiper" (1965), "Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), "The Taming of the Shrew" (1967), "The
Comedians" (1967), "Dr. Faustus" (1967), "Boom!" (1968), "Under Milk Wood"
(1971) and "Hammersmith Is Out" (1972).
Art most effectively imitated life in the adaptation of Edward Albee's
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" — in which Taylor and Burton played mates
who fought viciously and drank heavily. She took the best actress Oscar for
her performance as the venomous Martha in "Virginia Woolf" and again stole
the awards show, this time by not showing up at the ceremony. She refused to
thank the academy upon learning of her victory and chastised voters for not
honoring Burton.
Taylor and Burton divorced in 1974, married again in 1975 and divorced again
in 1976.
"We fight a great deal," Burton once said, "and we watch the people around
us who don't quite know how to behave during these storms. We don't fight
when we are alone."
In 1982, Taylor and Burton appeared in a touring production of the Noel
Coward play "Private Lives," in which they starred as a divorced couple who
meet on their respective honeymoons. They remained close at the time of
Burton's death, in 1984.
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born in London on Feb. 27, 1932, the daughter
of Francis Taylor, an art dealer, and the former Sara Sothern, an American
stage actress. At age 3, with extensive ballet training already behind her,
Taylor danced for British princesses Elizabeth (the future queen) and
Margaret Rose at London's Hippodrome. At age 4, she was given a wild field
horse that she learned to ride expertly.
At the onset of World War II, the Taylors came to the United States. Francis
Taylor opened a gallery in Beverly Hills and, in 1942, his daughter made her
screen debut with a bit part in the comedy "There's One Born Every Minute."
Her big break came soon thereafter. While serving as an air-raid warden with
MGM producer Sam Marx, Taylor's father learned that the studio was
struggling to find an English girl to play opposite Roddy McDowall in
"Lassie Come Home." Taylor's screen test for the film won her both the part
and a long-term contract. She grew up quickly after that.
Still in school at 16, she would dash from the classroom to the movie set
where she played passionate love scenes with Robert Taylor in "Conspirator."
"I have the emotions of a child in the body of a woman," she once said. "I
was rushed into womanhood for the movies. It caused me long moments of
unhappiness and doubt."
Soon after her screen presence was established, she began a series of very
public romances. Early loves included socialite Bill Pawley, home run
slugger Ralph Kiner and football star Glenn Davis.
Then, a roll call of husbands:
• She married Conrad Hilton Jr., son of the hotel magnate, in May 1950 at
age 18. The marriage ended in divorce that December.
• When she married British actor Michael Wilding in February 1952, he was 39
to her 19. They had two sons, Michael Jr. and Christopher Edward. That
marriage lasted 4 years.
• She married cigar-chomping movie producer Michael Todd, also 20 years her
senior, in 1957. They had a daughter, Elizabeth Francis. Todd was killed in
a plane crash in 1958.
• The best man at the Taylor-Todd wedding was Fisher. He left his wife
Debbie Reynolds to marry Taylor in 1959. She converted to Judaism before the
wedding.
• Taylor and Fisher moved to London, where she was making "Cleopatra." She
met Burton, who also was married. That union produced her fourth child,
Maria.
• After her second marriage to Burton ended, she married John Warner, a
former secretary of the Navy, in December 1976. Warner was elected a U.S.
senator from Virginia in 1978. They divorced in 1982.
• In October 1991, she married Larry Fortensky, a truck driver and
construction worker she met while both were undergoing treatment at the
Betty Ford Center in 1988. He was 20 years her junior. The wedding, held at
the ranch of Michael Jackson, was a media circus that included the din of
helicopter blades, a journalist who parachuted to a spot near the couple and
a gossip columnist as official scribe.
But in August 1995, she and Fortensky announced a trial separation; she
filed for divorce six months later and the split became final in 1997.
"I was taught by my parents that if you fall in love, if you want to have a
love affair, you get married," she once remarked. "I guess I'm very
old-fashioned."
Her philanthropic interests included assistance for the Israeli War Victims
Fund and the Variety Clubs International.
She received the Legion of Honor, France's most prestigious award, in 1987,
for her efforts to support AIDS research. In May 2000, Queen Elizabeth II
made Taylor a dame — the female equivalent of a knight — for her services to
the entertainment industry and to charity.
In 1993, she won a lifetime achievement award from the American Film
Institute; in 1999, an institute survey of screen legends ranked her No. 7
among actresses.
During much of her later career, Taylor's waistline, various diets, diet
books and tangled romances were the butt of jokes by Joan Rivers and others.
John Belushi mocked her on "Saturday Night Live," dressing up in drag and
choking on a piece of chicken.
"It's a wonder I didn't explode," Taylor wrote of her 60-pound weight gain —
and successful loss — in the 1988 book "Elizabeth Takes Off on Self-Esteem
and Self-Image."
She was an iconic star, but her screen roles became increasingly rare in the
1980s and beyond. She appeared in several television movies, including
"Poker Alice" and "Sweet Bird of Youth," and entered the Stone Age as Pearl
Slaghoople in the movie version of "The Flintstones." She had a brief role
on the popular soap opera "General Hospital."
Taylor was the subject of numerous unauthorized biographies and herself
worked on a handful of books, including "Elizabeth Taylor: An Informal
Memoir" and "Elizabeth Taylor: My Love Affair With Jewelry." In tune with
the media to the end, she kept in touch through her Twitter account.
"I like the connection with fans and people who have been supportive of me,"
Taylor told Kim Kardashian in a 2011 interview for Harper's Bazaar. "And I
love the idea of real feedback and a two-way street, which is very, very
modern. But sometimes I think we know too much about our idols and that
spoils the dream."
Survivors include her daughters Maria Burton-Carson and Liza Todd-Tivey,
sons Christopher and Michael Wilding, 10 grandchildren and four
great-grandchildren.
A private family funeral is planned later this week.
screen persona, stormy personal life and enduring fame and glamour made her
one of the last of the classic movie stars and a template for the modern
celebrity, died Wednesday at age 79.
She was surrounded by her four children when she died of congestive heart
failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she had been hospitalized for
about six weeks, said publicist Sally Morrison.
"My mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with
great passion, humor, and love," her son, Michael Wilding, said in a
statement.
"We know, quite simply, that the world is a better place for Mom having
lived in it. Her legacy will never fade, her spirit will always be with us,
and her love will live forever in our hearts."
"We have just lost a Hollywood giant," said Elton John, a longtime friend of
Taylor. "More importantly, we have lost an incredible human being."
Taylor was the most blessed and cursed of actresses, the toughest and the
most vulnerable. She had extraordinary grace, wealth and voluptuous beauty,
and won three Academy Awards, including a special one for her humanitarian
work.
One of those Oscars came for a searing performance in "Who's Afraid of
Virginia Woolf?" She played an alcoholic shrew in an emotionally
sadomasochistic marriage opposite real-life husband Richard Burton.
For all the ferocity of her screen roles and the turmoil of her life, Taylor
was remembered by "Virginia Woolf" director Mike Nichols for her gentler,
life-affirming side.
"The shock of Elizabeth was not only her beauty. It was her generosity. Her
giant laugh. Her vitality, whether tackling a complex scene on film or where
we would all have dinner until dawn," Nichols said in a statement. "She is
singular and indelible on film and in our hearts."
Taylor was the most loyal of friends and a defender of gays in Hollywood
when AIDS was new to the industry and beyond. But she was afflicted by ill
health, failed romances (eight marriages, seven husbands) and personal
tragedy.
"I think I'm becoming fatalistic," she said in 1989. "Too much has happened
in my life for me not to be fatalistic."
Her more than 50 movies included unforgettable portraits of innocence and of
decadence, from the children's classic "National Velvet" and the sentimental
family comedy "Father of the Bride" to Oscar-winning transgressions in
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Butterfield 8." The historical epic
"Cleopatra" is among Hollywood's greatest on-screen fiascos and a landmark
of off-screen monkey business, the meeting ground of Taylor and Burton, the
"Brangelina" of their day.
She played enough bawdy women on film for critic Pauline Kael to deem her
"Chaucerian Beverly Hills."
That sauciness was part of her real life, too.
"She had a sense of humor that was so bawdy, even I was saying, `really?
That came out of your mouth?'" Whoopi Goldberg said on ABC's "The View,"
recalling how Taylor gave her advice about her own Hollywood career. "She
was just a magnificent woman. She was a great broad and a good friend."
But her defining role, one that lasted past her moviemaking days, was
"Elizabeth Taylor," ever marrying and divorcing, in and out of hospitals,
gaining and losing weight, standing by Michael Jackson, Rock Hudson and
other troubled friends, acquiring a jewelry collection that seemed to rival
Tiffany's.
She was a child star who grew up and aged before an adoring, appalled and
fascinated public. She arrived in Hollywood when the studio system tightly
controlled an actor's life and image, had more marriages than any publicist
could explain away and carried on until she no longer required explanation.
She was the industry's great survivor, and among the first to reach that
special category of celebrity — famous for being famous, for whom her work
was inseparable from the gossip around it.
The London-born actress was a star at age 12, a bride and a divorcee at 18,
a superstar at 19 and a widow at 26. She was a screen sweetheart and martyr
later reviled for stealing Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds, then for
dumping Fisher to bed Burton, a relationship of epic passion and turbulence,
lasting through two marriages and countless attempted reconciliations.
She was also forgiven. Reynolds would acknowledge voting for Taylor when she
was nominated for "Butterfield 8" and decades later co-starred with her old
rival in "These Old Broads," co-written by Carrie Fisher, the daughter of
Reynolds and Eddie Fisher.
Taylor's ailments wore down the grudges. She underwent at least 20 major
operations and she nearly died from a bout with pneumonia in 1990. In 1994
and 1995, she had both hip joints replaced, and in February 1997, she
underwent surgery to remove a benign brain tumor. In 1983, she acknowledged
a 35-year addiction to sleeping pills and pain killers. Taylor was treated
for alcohol and drug abuse problems at the Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho
Mirage, Calif.
Her troubles bonded her to her peers and the public, and deepened her
compassion. Her advocacy for AIDS research and for other causes earned her a
special Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1993.
As she accepted it, to a long ovation, she declared, "I call upon you to
draw from the depths of your being — to prove that we are a human race, to
prove that our love outweighs our need to hate, that our compassion is more
compelling than our need to blame."
The American Foundation for AIDS Research, for which Taylor was a longtime
advocate, noted in a statement that she was "among the first to speak out on
behalf of people living with HIV when others reacted with fear and often
outright hostility."
"She leaves a monumental legacy that has improved and extended millions of
lives and will enrich countless more for generations to come," the group
said.
The dark-haired Taylor made an unforgettable impression in Hollywood with
"National Velvet," the 1945 film in which the 12-year-old belle rode a
steeplechase horse to victory in the Grand National.
Critic James Agee wrote of her: "Ever since I first saw the child ... I have
been choked with the peculiar sort of adoration I might have felt if we were
in the same grade of primary school."
"National Velvet," her fifth film, also marked the beginning of Taylor's
long string of health issues. During production, she fell off a horse. The
resulting back injury continued to haunt her.
Taylor matured into a ravishing beauty in "Father of the Bride," in 1950,
and into a respected performer and femme fatale the following year in "A
Place in the Sun," based on the Theodore Dreiser novel "An American
Tragedy." The movie co-starred her close friend Montgomery Clift as the
ambitious young man who drowns his working-class girlfriend to be with the
socialite Taylor. In real life, too, men all but committed murder in pursuit
of her.
Through the rest of the 1950s and into the 1960s, she and Marilyn Monroe
were Hollywood's great sex symbols, both striving for appreciation beyond
their physical beauty, both caught up in personal dramas filmmakers could
only wish they had imagined. That Taylor lasted, and Monroe died young, was
a matter of luck and strength; Taylor lived as she pleased and allowed no
one to define her but herself.
"I don't entirely approve of some of the things I have done, or am, or have
been. But I'm me. God knows, I'm me," Taylor said around the time she turned
50.
She had a remarkable and exhausting personal and professional life. Her
marriage to Michael Todd ended tragically when the producer died in a plane
crash in 1958. She took up with Fisher, married him, then left him for
Burton. Meanwhile, she received several Academy Award nominations and two
Oscars.
She was a box-office star cast in numerous "prestige" films, from "Raintree
County" with Clift to "Giant," an epic co-starring her friends Hudson and
James Dean. Nominations came from a pair of movies adapted from work by
Tennessee Williams: "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Suddenly, Last Summer." In
"Butterfield 8," released in 1960, she starred with Fisher as a doomed
girl-about-town. Taylor never cared much for the film, but her performance
at the Oscars wowed the world.
Sympathy for Taylor's widowhood had turned to scorn when she took up with
Fisher, who had supposedly been consoling her over the death of Todd. But
before the 1961 ceremony, she was hospitalized from a nearly fatal bout with
pneumonia and Taylor underwent a tracheotomy. The scar was bandaged when she
appeared at the Oscars to accept her best actress trophy for "Butterfield
8."
To a standing ovation, she hobbled to the stage. "I don't really know how to
express my great gratitude," she said in an emotional speech. "I guess I
will just have to thank you with all my heart." It was one of the most
dramatic moments in Academy Awards history.
"Hell, I even voted for her," Reynolds later said.
Greater drama awaited: "Cleopatra." Taylor met Burton while playing the
title role in the 1963 epic, in which the brooding, womanizing Welsh actor
co-starred as Mark Antony. Their chemistry was not immediate. Taylor found
him boorish; Burton mocked her physique. But the love scenes on film
continued away from the set and a scandal for the ages was born. Headlines
shouted and screamed. Paparazzi, then an emerging breed, snapped and
swooned. Their romance created such a sensation that the Vatican denounced
the happenings as the "caprices of adult children."
The film so exceeded its budget that the producers lost money even though
"Cleopatra" was a box-office hit and won four Academy awards. (With its $44
million budget adjusted for inflation, "Cleopatra" remains the most
expensive movie ever made.) Taylor's salary per film topped $1 million. "Liz
and Dick" became the ultimate jet set couple, on a first name basis with
millions who had never met them.
They were a prolific acting team, even if most of the movies aged no better
than their marriages: "The VIPs" (1963), "The Sandpiper" (1965), "Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), "The Taming of the Shrew" (1967), "The
Comedians" (1967), "Dr. Faustus" (1967), "Boom!" (1968), "Under Milk Wood"
(1971) and "Hammersmith Is Out" (1972).
Art most effectively imitated life in the adaptation of Edward Albee's
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" — in which Taylor and Burton played mates
who fought viciously and drank heavily. She took the best actress Oscar for
her performance as the venomous Martha in "Virginia Woolf" and again stole
the awards show, this time by not showing up at the ceremony. She refused to
thank the academy upon learning of her victory and chastised voters for not
honoring Burton.
Taylor and Burton divorced in 1974, married again in 1975 and divorced again
in 1976.
"We fight a great deal," Burton once said, "and we watch the people around
us who don't quite know how to behave during these storms. We don't fight
when we are alone."
In 1982, Taylor and Burton appeared in a touring production of the Noel
Coward play "Private Lives," in which they starred as a divorced couple who
meet on their respective honeymoons. They remained close at the time of
Burton's death, in 1984.
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born in London on Feb. 27, 1932, the daughter
of Francis Taylor, an art dealer, and the former Sara Sothern, an American
stage actress. At age 3, with extensive ballet training already behind her,
Taylor danced for British princesses Elizabeth (the future queen) and
Margaret Rose at London's Hippodrome. At age 4, she was given a wild field
horse that she learned to ride expertly.
At the onset of World War II, the Taylors came to the United States. Francis
Taylor opened a gallery in Beverly Hills and, in 1942, his daughter made her
screen debut with a bit part in the comedy "There's One Born Every Minute."
Her big break came soon thereafter. While serving as an air-raid warden with
MGM producer Sam Marx, Taylor's father learned that the studio was
struggling to find an English girl to play opposite Roddy McDowall in
"Lassie Come Home." Taylor's screen test for the film won her both the part
and a long-term contract. She grew up quickly after that.
Still in school at 16, she would dash from the classroom to the movie set
where she played passionate love scenes with Robert Taylor in "Conspirator."
"I have the emotions of a child in the body of a woman," she once said. "I
was rushed into womanhood for the movies. It caused me long moments of
unhappiness and doubt."
Soon after her screen presence was established, she began a series of very
public romances. Early loves included socialite Bill Pawley, home run
slugger Ralph Kiner and football star Glenn Davis.
Then, a roll call of husbands:
• She married Conrad Hilton Jr., son of the hotel magnate, in May 1950 at
age 18. The marriage ended in divorce that December.
• When she married British actor Michael Wilding in February 1952, he was 39
to her 19. They had two sons, Michael Jr. and Christopher Edward. That
marriage lasted 4 years.
• She married cigar-chomping movie producer Michael Todd, also 20 years her
senior, in 1957. They had a daughter, Elizabeth Francis. Todd was killed in
a plane crash in 1958.
• The best man at the Taylor-Todd wedding was Fisher. He left his wife
Debbie Reynolds to marry Taylor in 1959. She converted to Judaism before the
wedding.
• Taylor and Fisher moved to London, where she was making "Cleopatra." She
met Burton, who also was married. That union produced her fourth child,
Maria.
• After her second marriage to Burton ended, she married John Warner, a
former secretary of the Navy, in December 1976. Warner was elected a U.S.
senator from Virginia in 1978. They divorced in 1982.
• In October 1991, she married Larry Fortensky, a truck driver and
construction worker she met while both were undergoing treatment at the
Betty Ford Center in 1988. He was 20 years her junior. The wedding, held at
the ranch of Michael Jackson, was a media circus that included the din of
helicopter blades, a journalist who parachuted to a spot near the couple and
a gossip columnist as official scribe.
But in August 1995, she and Fortensky announced a trial separation; she
filed for divorce six months later and the split became final in 1997.
"I was taught by my parents that if you fall in love, if you want to have a
love affair, you get married," she once remarked. "I guess I'm very
old-fashioned."
Her philanthropic interests included assistance for the Israeli War Victims
Fund and the Variety Clubs International.
She received the Legion of Honor, France's most prestigious award, in 1987,
for her efforts to support AIDS research. In May 2000, Queen Elizabeth II
made Taylor a dame — the female equivalent of a knight — for her services to
the entertainment industry and to charity.
In 1993, she won a lifetime achievement award from the American Film
Institute; in 1999, an institute survey of screen legends ranked her No. 7
among actresses.
During much of her later career, Taylor's waistline, various diets, diet
books and tangled romances were the butt of jokes by Joan Rivers and others.
John Belushi mocked her on "Saturday Night Live," dressing up in drag and
choking on a piece of chicken.
"It's a wonder I didn't explode," Taylor wrote of her 60-pound weight gain —
and successful loss — in the 1988 book "Elizabeth Takes Off on Self-Esteem
and Self-Image."
She was an iconic star, but her screen roles became increasingly rare in the
1980s and beyond. She appeared in several television movies, including
"Poker Alice" and "Sweet Bird of Youth," and entered the Stone Age as Pearl
Slaghoople in the movie version of "The Flintstones." She had a brief role
on the popular soap opera "General Hospital."
Taylor was the subject of numerous unauthorized biographies and herself
worked on a handful of books, including "Elizabeth Taylor: An Informal
Memoir" and "Elizabeth Taylor: My Love Affair With Jewelry." In tune with
the media to the end, she kept in touch through her Twitter account.
"I like the connection with fans and people who have been supportive of me,"
Taylor told Kim Kardashian in a 2011 interview for Harper's Bazaar. "And I
love the idea of real feedback and a two-way street, which is very, very
modern. But sometimes I think we know too much about our idols and that
spoils the dream."
Survivors include her daughters Maria Burton-Carson and Liza Todd-Tivey,
sons Christopher and Michael Wilding, 10 grandchildren and four
great-grandchildren.
A private family funeral is planned later this week.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
1839 : OK enters national vernacular
On this day in 1839, the initials "O.K." are first published in The Boston Morning Post. Meant as an abbreviation for "oll correct," a popular slang misspelling of "all correct" at the time, OK steadily made its way into the everyday speech of Americans.
During the late 1830s, it was a favorite practice among younger, educated circles to misspell words intentionally, then abbreviate them and use them as slang when talking to one another. Just as teenagers today have their own slang based on distortions of common words, such as "kewl" for "cool" or "DZ" for "these," the "in crowd" of the 1830s had a whole host of slang terms they abbreviated. Popular abbreviations included "KY" for "No use" ("know yuse"), "KG" for "No go" ("Know go"), and "OW" for all right ("oll wright").
Of all the abbreviations used during that time, OK was propelled into the limelight when it was printed in the Boston Morning Post as part of a joke. Its popularity exploded when it was picked up by contemporary politicians. When the incumbent president Martin Van Buren was up for reelection, his Democratic supporters organized a band of thugs to influence voters. This group was formally called the "O.K. Club," which referred both to Van Buren's nickname "Old Kinderhook" (based on his hometown of Kinderhook, New York), and to the term recently made popular in the papers. At the same time, the opposing Whig Party made use of "OK" to denigrate Van Buren's political mentor Andrew Jackson. According to the Whigs, Jackson invented the abbreviation "OK" to cover up his own misspelling of "all correct."
The man responsible for unraveling the mystery behind "OK" was an American linguist named Allen Walker Read. An English professor at Columbia University, Read dispelled a host of erroneous theories on the origins of "OK," ranging from the name of a popular Army biscuit (Orrin Kendall) to the name of a Haitian port famed for its rum (Aux Cayes) to the signature of a Choctaw chief named Old Keokuk. Whatever its origins, "OK" has become one of the most ubiquitous terms in the world, and certainly one of America's greatest lingual exports.
During the late 1830s, it was a favorite practice among younger, educated circles to misspell words intentionally, then abbreviate them and use them as slang when talking to one another. Just as teenagers today have their own slang based on distortions of common words, such as "kewl" for "cool" or "DZ" for "these," the "in crowd" of the 1830s had a whole host of slang terms they abbreviated. Popular abbreviations included "KY" for "No use" ("know yuse"), "KG" for "No go" ("Know go"), and "OW" for all right ("oll wright").
Of all the abbreviations used during that time, OK was propelled into the limelight when it was printed in the Boston Morning Post as part of a joke. Its popularity exploded when it was picked up by contemporary politicians. When the incumbent president Martin Van Buren was up for reelection, his Democratic supporters organized a band of thugs to influence voters. This group was formally called the "O.K. Club," which referred both to Van Buren's nickname "Old Kinderhook" (based on his hometown of Kinderhook, New York), and to the term recently made popular in the papers. At the same time, the opposing Whig Party made use of "OK" to denigrate Van Buren's political mentor Andrew Jackson. According to the Whigs, Jackson invented the abbreviation "OK" to cover up his own misspelling of "all correct."
The man responsible for unraveling the mystery behind "OK" was an American linguist named Allen Walker Read. An English professor at Columbia University, Read dispelled a host of erroneous theories on the origins of "OK," ranging from the name of a popular Army biscuit (Orrin Kendall) to the name of a Haitian port famed for its rum (Aux Cayes) to the signature of a Choctaw chief named Old Keokuk. Whatever its origins, "OK" has become one of the most ubiquitous terms in the world, and certainly one of America's greatest lingual exports.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
SENIORS
Senior citizens are constantly being criticized for every conceivable deficiency of the modern world, real or imaginary. We know we take responsibility for all we have done and do not blame others.
HOWEVER, upon reflection, we would like to point out that it was NOT the senior citizens who took:
The melody out of music,
The pride out of appearance,
The courtesy out of driving,
The romance out of love,
The commitment out of marriage,
The responsibility out of parenthood,
The togetherness out of the family,
The learning out of education,
The service out of patriotism,
The Golden Rule from rulers,
The nativity scene out of cities,
The civility out of behavior,
The refinement out of language,
The dedication out of employment,
The prudence out of spending,
The ambition out of achievement or
God out of government and school.
And we certainly are NOT the ones who eliminated patience and tolerance from personal relationships and interactions with others!
And, we do understand the meaning of patriotism, and remember those who have fought and died for our country.
Does anyone under the age of 50 know the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner?
What about the last verse of My Country 'tis of Thee?
"Our father's God to thee,Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing.Long may our land be bright,
With freedom's Holy light.Protect us by Thy might,
Great God our King."
Just look at the Seniors with tears in their eyes and pride in their hearts as they stand at attention with their hand over their hearts!
YES, I'M A SENIOR CITIZEN!
I'm the life of the party...... even if it lasts until 8 p.m.
I'm very good at opening childproof caps.... with a hammer.
I'm awake many hours before my body allows me to get up.
I'm smiling all the time because I can't hear a thing you're saying.
I'm sure everything I can't find is in a safe secure place, somewhere.
I'm wrinkled, saggy, lumpy, and that's just my left leg.
I'm beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
I'm a walking storeroom of facts..... I've just lost the key to the storeroom door.
Yes, I'm a SENIOR CITIZEN and I think I am having the time of my life!
Now if I could only remember who sent this to me, I wouldn't send it back to them, but I would send it to many more too!
Spread the laughter
Share the cheer
Let's be happy
While we're here.
Go Green - Recycle the irresponsible losers we call---
CONGRESS!
HOWEVER, upon reflection, we would like to point out that it was NOT the senior citizens who took:
The melody out of music,
The pride out of appearance,
The courtesy out of driving,
The romance out of love,
The commitment out of marriage,
The responsibility out of parenthood,
The togetherness out of the family,
The learning out of education,
The service out of patriotism,
The Golden Rule from rulers,
The nativity scene out of cities,
The civility out of behavior,
The refinement out of language,
The dedication out of employment,
The prudence out of spending,
The ambition out of achievement or
God out of government and school.
And we certainly are NOT the ones who eliminated patience and tolerance from personal relationships and interactions with others!
And, we do understand the meaning of patriotism, and remember those who have fought and died for our country.
Does anyone under the age of 50 know the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner?
What about the last verse of My Country 'tis of Thee?
"Our father's God to thee,Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing.Long may our land be bright,
With freedom's Holy light.Protect us by Thy might,
Great God our King."
Just look at the Seniors with tears in their eyes and pride in their hearts as they stand at attention with their hand over their hearts!
YES, I'M A SENIOR CITIZEN!
I'm the life of the party...... even if it lasts until 8 p.m.
I'm very good at opening childproof caps.... with a hammer.
I'm awake many hours before my body allows me to get up.
I'm smiling all the time because I can't hear a thing you're saying.
I'm sure everything I can't find is in a safe secure place, somewhere.
I'm wrinkled, saggy, lumpy, and that's just my left leg.
I'm beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
I'm a walking storeroom of facts..... I've just lost the key to the storeroom door.
Yes, I'm a SENIOR CITIZEN and I think I am having the time of my life!
Now if I could only remember who sent this to me, I wouldn't send it back to them, but I would send it to many more too!
Spread the laughter
Share the cheer
Let's be happy
While we're here.
Go Green - Recycle the irresponsible losers we call---
CONGRESS!
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