Frank Beacham's Journal

Louisa May Alcott, novelist and poet, was born 189 years ago today

Louisa May Alcott, novelist and poet, was born 189 years ago today.

Alcott is best known as the author of the novel, Little Women (1868), and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886).

Raised by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott in New England, she grew up among many of the well-known intellectuals of the day such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau.

Nevertheless, her family suffered severe financial difficulties and Alcott worked to help support the family from an early age. She began to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s. Early in her career, she sometimes used the pen name A. M. Barnard, under which she wrote novels for young adults.

Published in 1868, Little Women is set in the Alcott family home, Hillside, later called the Wayside, in Concord, Massachusetts and is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters.

The novel was very well received and is still a popular children's novel today, filmed several times. Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist and remained unmarried throughout her life. She died in Boston on March 6, 1888 of mercury poisoning at the age of 55.

Virgil Thomson, composer and critic, was born 125 years ago today

Virgil Thomson, composer and critic, was born 125 years ago today.

Thomson was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist, a neoclassicist, a composer of "an Olympian blend of humanity and detachment" whose "expressive voice was always carefully muted" until his late opera Lord Byron which, in contrast to all his previous work, exhibited an emotional content that rises to "moments of real passion.”

Born in Kansas City, as a child Thompson befriended Alice Smith, great-granddaughter of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon faith. After World War I, he entered Harvard University thanks to a loan from Dr. Fred M. Smith, the president of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and father of Alice Smith.

His tours of Europe with the Harvard Glee Club helped nurture his desire to return there. At Harvard, Thomson focused his studies on the piano work of Erik Satie. He studied in Paris on fellowship for a year, and after graduating, lived in Paris from 1925–1940.

In Paris, he forged relationships with such prominent cultural figures as James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, e.e. Cummings, Aaron Copland, Ezra Pound, Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, Orson Welles, Jean Cocteau and Gertrude Stein. He eventually studied with Nadia Boulanger and became a fixture of "Paris in the twenties." His most important friend from this period was Gertrude Stein, who was an artistic collaborator and mentor to him.

Following the publication of his book, The State of Music, he established himself in New York City as a peer of Aaron Copland and was also a music critic for the New York Herald-Tribune from 1940 through 1954. His writings on music, and his reviews of performances in particular, are noted for their wit and their independent judgments.

His definition of music was famously "that which musicians do," and his views on music are radical in their insistence on reducing the rarefied aesthetics of music to market activity. He even went so far as to claim that the style a piece was written in could be most effectively understood as a consequence of its income source.

In the 1930s, he worked as a theater and film composer. His most famous works for theater are two operas with libretti by Gertrude Stein. They are Four Saints in Three Acts, especially famous for its use of an all-black cast, and The Mother of Us All. He also did incidental music for Orson Welles' Depression-era production of Macbeth, set in the Caribbean, known as the “Voodoo Macbeth.”

Thomson was famous for his revival of the rare technique of composing "musical portraits" of living subjects, often spending hours in a room with them before rushing off to finish the piece on his own. Many subjects reported feeling that the pieces did capture something unique about their identities even though nearly all of the portraits were absent of any clearly representational content.

Later in life, Thomson became a sort of mentor and father figure to a new generation of American tonal composers such as Ned Rorem, Paul Bowles and Leonard Bernstein, a circle united as much by their shared homosexuality as by their similar compositional sensibilities. Women composers were not part of that circle, and some have suggested that, as a critic, he pointedly ignored their works or adopted a patronizing tone.

Thomason died on September 30, 1989 in his suite at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan.

Above, a 1947 photograph by Carl Van Vechten

Jack Hardy was born 74 years ago today.

Jack Hardy, New York City, 2010

Photo by Frank Beacham

Jack Hardy was born 74 years ago today.

Hardy was a lyrical singer-songwriter and playwright based in Greenwich Village. He was influential as a writer, performer and mentor in the folk music scenes for decades.

Hardy was a major influence of Suzanne Vega, John Gorka and many others who emerged from the Greenwich Village scene in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

Hardy was the author of hundreds of songs and toured tirelessly for almost forty years. He was also the founding editor of Fast Folk Musical Magazine, a periodical famous within music circles for twenty years that shipped with a full album (and later, compact disc) in each issue. The entire catalog is now part of the Smithsonian Folkways collection.

Beginning in the mid-1970s, Hardy hosted Monday songwriter's circles and pasta dinners at his apartment on Houston Street. It was a gathering famously open to both established artists and novices. He also began a small, informal songwriters' group at The English Pub in Greenwich Village, which later became a more formal songwriters' night at the Cornelia Street Cafe in December, 1977.

This group would later evolve into the Songwriter's Exchange, releasing an album on Stash Records in 1980. Eventually, the group formed a cooperative, led by Hardy, and in 1981 took over the booking of the Speakeasy, which became a thriving venue for songwriters.

Hardy died from lung cancer on the morning of March 11, 2011 in Manhattan He was 63.

François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, was born 326 years ago

François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, was born 326 years ago.

Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and his attacks on the established Catholic Church. He was an advocate of freedom of religion and speech and separation of church and state.

A versatile writer, Voltaire produced works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays and historical and scientific works.

He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties, despite the risk this placed him in under the strict censorship laws of the time.

As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma and the French institutions of his day.

He died at the age of 83 in Paris.

On this day in 1975 — 46 years ago — One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a film about a group of patients at a mental institution, opened in motion picture theaters

Photo by Mary Ellen Mark

On this day in 1975 — 46 years ago — One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a film about a group of patients at a mental institution, opened in motion picture theaters.

Directed by Milos Forman and based on a 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey, the film starred Jack Nicholson and was co-produced by the actor, Michael Douglas.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest went on to become the first film in four decades to win in all five of the major Academy Award categories: Best Actor (Nicholson), Best Actress (Louise Fletcher, who played Nurse Ratched), Best Director, Best Screenplay (Adapted) and Best Picture.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest marked Jack Nicholson’s first Oscar win, although the actor, who was born April 22, 1937, in Neptune, New Jersey, had already received four other Academy Award nominations by that time.

Considered to be one of the greatest films ever made, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is #20 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Movies list.

In 1993, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Nicholson played Randle McMurphy, a convict who pretends to be crazy so he can be sent to a mental institution and avoid prison work detail. Once at the asylum, McMurphy encounters a varied cast of inmates and clashes memorably with the authoritative Nurse Ratched.

Here, from the film, is Nicholson’s classic “You’re Not Crazy!” scene

Martin Scorsese, film director, screenwriter, producer, actor and film historian, is 79 years old today

Martin Scorsese, film director, screenwriter, producer, actor and film historian, is 79 years old today.

In 1990, Scorsese founded The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation. He is a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won an Academy Award, a Palme d'Or, Cannes Film Festival Best Director Award, Silver Lion, Grammy Award, Emmys, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and DGA Awards.

Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, machismo, modern crime, gang violence and conflict. He liberally uses profanity in his films.

Scorsese is hailed as one of the most significant and influential filmmakers of all time, directing landmark films such as Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980) and Goodfellas (1990) — all of which he collaborated on with actor and close friend, Robert De Niro.

He won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), having been nominated previously five times. He has subsequently been nominated once more, bringing his total number of nominations for Best Director to seven.

Scorsese has also been noted for his collaborations with actor Leonardo DiCaprio, having directed him in five films, beginning with Gangs of New York (2002). Their latest collaboration, The Wolf of Wall Street, was released in 2013. Scorsese and DiCaprio have recently been developing a biopic in which DiCaprio will portray President Theodore Roosevelt.

Scorsese's other films include The Band’s concert film, The Last Waltz (1978), the black comedy After Hours (1985), the epic drama The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), the psychological thrillers Cape Fear (1991) and Shutter Island (2010), the biographical drama The Aviator (2004) and the historical adventure drama, Hugo (2011).

He won the Academy Award for Best Director for the crime drama, The Departed (2006).

With eight Best Director nominations to date, he is the most nominated living director, and is tied with Billy Wilder for the second most nominations overall.

Terence McKenna was born 75 years ago today

Terence McKenna was born 75 years ago today.

A psychonaut, lecturer and writer, McKenna spoke on a variety of topics, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogen, hallucination, metaphysics, shamanism, language, historical and civilizational timelines and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. He was the creator of what he called novelty theory.

In 1963, McKenna was introduced to the literary world of psychedelics through The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley and certain issues of The Village Voice that talked about psychedelics. He claimed that one of his early psychedelic experiences with morning glory seeds showed him "that there was something there worth pursuing." He claims to have started smoking cannabis regularly during the summer following his 17th birthday.

In 1969, McKenna traveled to Nepal led by his "interest in Tibetan painting and hallucinogenic shamanism." During his time there, he studied the Tibetan language and worked as a hashish smuggler, until "one of his Bombay-to-Aspen shipments fell into the hands of U. S. Customs." He was forced to move to avoid capture by Interpol.

He wandered through Southeast Asia viewing ruins, collected butterflies in Indonesia and worked as an English teacher in Tokyo. In the early 1980s, McKenna began to speak publicly on the topic of psychedelic drugs, lecturing extensively and conducting weekend workshops.

Though associated with the New Age and human potential movements, McKenna himself had little patience for New Age sensibilities. Timothy Leary once introduced him as "one of the five or six most important people on the planet."

McKenna soon became a fixture of popular counterculture. His growing popularity culminated in the early-to-mid-1990s with the publication of several books: True Hallucinations, relating the tale of his 1971 La Chorrera experience; Food of the Gods; and The Archaic Revival.

He became a popular personality in the psychedelic rave/dance scene of the early 1990s, with frequent spoken word performances at raves and contributions to psychedelic and goa trance albums.

A longtime sufferer of migraines, in mid-1999 McKenna returned to his home on the big island of Hawaii after a long lecturing tour. He began to suffer from increasingly painful headaches. This culminated in three brain seizures in one night, which he claimed were the most powerful psychedelic experiences he had ever known.

Upon his emergency trip to the hospital on Oahu, Terence was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer.” McKenna died on April 3, 2000, at the age of 53, with his loved ones at his bedside.

Here, McKenna discusses the concept that “Culture Is Not Your Friend”

On this day in 1851 — 170 years ago — Harper & Brothers in New York published Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

On this day in 1851 — 170 years ago — Harper & Brothers in New York published Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.

The book flopped. It was many years after the author’s death before the book was recognized as an American classic.

Born in New York City in 1819, Melville had a bout of scarlet fever in his childhood that left him with weak eyes. At age 19, he became a cabin boy on a ship bound for Liverpool. He later sailed to the South Seas on a whaler, the Acushnet, which anchored in Polynesia.

He took part in a mutiny, was thrown in jail in Tahiti, escaped and wandered around the South Sea islands from 1841 to 1844. In 1846, he published his first novel, Typee, based on his Polynesian adventures. His second book, Omoo (1847), also dealt with the South Seas. The two novels became popular, although his third, Mardi (1849), more experimental in nature, failed to catch on with the public.

Melville bought a farm near Nathaniel Hawthorne's house in Massachusetts, and the two became close friends, although they later drifted apart. Melville wrote for journals and continued to publish novels.

Moby Dick, published on this day in 1851 in the U.S., was coolly received, but his short stories were highly acclaimed. Putnam's Monthly published "Bartleby the Scrivener" in 1853 and "Benito Cereno" in 1855.

In 1866, Melville won appointment as a customs inspector in New York, which brought him a stable income. He published several volumes of poetry. He continued to write until his death, and his last novel, Billy Budd, was not published until 1924.

Moby-Dick was dedicated to Hawthorne. The book never sold its initial printing of 3,000 copies in his lifetime, and total earnings from the American edition amounted to just $556.37 from his publisher.

Melville died at his home in New York City on Sept. 28, 1891 at age 72.

Thanks History.com

Bob Crewe, songwriter for The Four Seasons, was born 91 years ago today

Frankie Valli and Bob Crewe

Bob Crewe was born 91 years ago today.

Crewe was a songwriter, dancer, singer, manager, record producer and artist. He is known for producing, and co-writing with Bob Gaudio, a string of Top 10 singles for The Four Seasons.

Crewe is equally known for his hit recordings with The Rays, Diane Renay, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Freddy Cannon, Lesley Gore, Oliver, Michael Jackson, Bobby Darin, Roberta Flack, Peabo Bryson, Patti LaBelle and his own The Bob Crewe Generation.

Raised in Belleville, New Jersey, Crewe demonstrated an early and apparent gift for both art and music. Although lacking in formal musical training, he instinctively gravitated to learning from many of the great 19th and 20th century classical romantic composers as well as giants of jazz and swing. These included Stan Kenton, Harry James, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey.

Crewe studied for almost a year at Parsons School of Design in New York City with the intention of eventually pursuing a career in architecture. After a European trip as a young man, he returned to the U.S. and landed a succession of recording contracts as a solo singing artist. Although he was an attractive and strong singer, his gifts as a songwriter and entrepreneur were to bring him his greatest attention, success and acclaim.

In the early 1960s, Crewe began writing with Bob Gaudio, who had risen to fame at age 15 when, as a member of the Royal Teens, he co-wrote the hit "Short Shorts." The first Crewe-Gaudio collaboration, "Sherry," was written by Gaudio and produced by Crewe. It became a #1 single in 1962 for The Four Seasons (fronted by Frankie Valli).

The pair wrote many other songs for the group, including the #1 hits "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Rag Doll" and "Walk Like a Man," as well as "Ronnie," "Bye, Bye, Baby (Baby, Goodbye)" and "Connie-O."

The Crewe-Gaudio collaborations capitalized on the extraordinary and distinctive voice of Frankie Valli, who could effortlessly swoop to a soaring, piercing, emotionally-expressive falsetto that became one of the emblematic and widely-imitated sounds of the era.

Record sales racked up by The Four Seasons are estimated as being between anywhere from 100 to 200 million. As the "Four Seasons sound" became more and more defined, other signature touches emerged, including dense but pristine-sounding percussion, military-sounding march cadences and drum-stomp of "Sherry," "Big Girls Don't Cry" and "Walk Like a Man," and the other-worldly glissandos of "Candy Girl."

In addition to his work with The Four Seasons, Crewe also oversaw recording sessions by such artists as Dee Dee Sharp, the Orlons and Ben E. King. He cowrote, "Navy Blue," with Bud Rehak and Eddie Rambeau and produced the record for singer, Diane Renay. Renay's recording made the Top 10 on the U.S. pop chart in early 1964, and #1 on the adult contemporary chart.

Since 2005, Crewe has been featured as a supporting character (played originally by Peter Gregus) in Jersey Boys, the multiple Tony Award-winning, long-running Broadway musical based on the story of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons that has gone on to become an international hit. Crewe is credited as the show's lyricist.

From April, 2014 until his death, Crewe resided in a Scarborough, Maine nursing home. His Bob Crewe Foundation donated $3 million to the Maine College of Art in April 2014. Crewe died in the nursing home on September 11, 2014 at the age of 83. He had been in declining health for several years following a fall.

Here, the Four Seasons perform a medley of songs written by Crewe and Gaudio

Wallace Shawn is 78 years old today

Wallace Shawn, New York City, 2009

Photo by Frank Beacham

Wallace Shawn is 78 years old today.

An actor, playwright and essayist, Shawn’s best-known film role is My Dinner with Andre (1981). His plays include The Designated Mourner, Aunt Dan and Lemon, Grasses of a Thousand Colors and Evening at the Talk House.

He also co-wrote the screenplay for My Dinner with Andre with Andre Gregory, and scripted Vanya on 42nd Street, a film adaptation of Anton Chekov's play Uncle Vanya.

Shawn was born into a prominent Jewish family in New York City, where he continues to reside. He is the son of William Shawn, the longtime editor of The New Yorker, and journalist Cecille Shawn. His brother, Allen, is a composer.

Shawn attended The Putney School, a private liberal arts high school in Putney, Vermont, and graduated with an A.B. in history from Harvard College. He studied economics and philosophy at Oxford, originally intending to become a diplomat. He also traveled to India as an English teacher on a Fulbright program.

Since 1979, Shawn has made a living primarily as an actor. Shawn's early plays, such as Marie and Bruce (1978), portrayed emotional and sexual conflicts in an absurdist style, with language that was both lyrical and violent.

In a conversation with Andre Gregory, parts of which were used to create My Dinner with Andre, Shawn referred to these plays as depicting "my interior life as a raging beast." Shawn's political work has invited controversy, as he often presents the audience with several contradictory points of view, such as Aunt Dan and Lemon, which Shawn described as a cautionary tale against fascism.

The monologue The Fever, originally created by Shawn to be performed for small audiences in apartments, describes a person who becomes sick while struggling to find a morally consistent way to live when faced with injustice, and harshly criticizes the record of the U.S. in supporting oppressive anti-communist regimes.

Shawn's four plays have been adapted into films: The Designated Mourner (basically a film version of David Hare's stage production), Marie and Bruce, My Dinner With Andre and The Fever.

Oscar winner Vanessa Redgrave stars in The Fever (2004) which first aired on HBO on June 13, 2007.

Shawn has also written political commentary for The Nation, and in 2004 he published the one-issue-only progressive political magazine Final Edition, which features interviews with and articles by Jonathan Schell, Noam Chomsky, Mark Strand and Deborah Eisenberg.

Shawn is credited as translator of Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera, which opened at Studio 54 in Manhattan on March 25, 2006. He appears briefly in voiceover during "Song about the Futility of Human Endeavor." He published his first non-fiction work, Essays, on September 1, 2009. It is a collection of essays that expresses his perceptions of politics and other subjects that reflect an aspect of his life.

Shawn's involvement with theater began in 1970 when he met Andre Gregory, who has since directed several of his plays. As a stage actor, he has appeared mostly in his own plays and other projects with Gregory. He made his film debut in 1979, playing Diane Keaton's ex-husband in Woody Allen's Manhattan and an insurance agent in Bob Fosse's All That Jazz.

His best-known film roles include Earl in Strange Invaders (1983) and Mr. Hall in Clueless (1995). After seeing his performance in My Dinner With Andre (1981), casting director Janet Hirshenson was so fond of his delivery of the word "inconceivable" that she cast him as the evil Vizzini in The Princess Bride (1987).

Other recent roles include Baron Von Westphalen on the 2005 film Southland Tales, in Gossip Girl as Cyrus Rose and in The Haunted Mansion as Ezra.

His rare non-comic film roles include two collaborations with Andre Gregory and Louis Malle: the semi-autobiographical dialogue My Dinner with Andre, and a combined production-and-backstage-drama of Uncle Vanya titled Vanya on 42nd Street.

Shawn quite often appears on television, where he has appeared in many genres and series.

Wallace Shawn and Frank Beacham