Frank Beacham's Journal

T.S. Eliot was born 134 years ago today.

T.S. Eliot, 1956

Photo by Cecil Beaton

T.S. Eliot was born 134 years ago today.

Eliot was a publisher, playwright, literary and social critic — and one of the most important English-language poets of the 20th century.

Although he was born an American, he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalized as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.

The poem that made his name — The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock — was published in Chicago in 1915. It is considered a masterpiece of the Modernist movement.

It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including Gerontion (1920), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1945).

He is also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral in 1935.

Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.

He received an undergraduate degree at Harvard, studied at the Sorbonne, returned to Harvard to study Sanskrit and then studied at Oxford. After meeting poet and lifelong friend Ezra Pound, Eliot relocated to England.

In 1915, he married Vivian Haigh-Wood, but the marriage was unhappy, partly due to her mental instability. She died in an institution in 1947.

Eliot began working at Lloyd's Bank in 1917, writing reviews and essays on the side. In 1925, he accepted a job as an editor at Faber and Faber, which allowed him to quit his job at the bank. He held the position for the rest of his life.

Eliot lectured in the United States frequently in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1957, he married his assistant, Valerie Fletcher. The couple lived happily until his death in 1965 at the age of 76.

John Howard Lawson — one of the "Hollywood Ten" writers who went to jail — was born 128 years ago today

The Hollywood Ten

John Howard Lawson — one of the "Hollywood Ten" writers who went to jail — was born 128 years ago today.

A writer, Lawson was head of the Hollywood division of the Communist Party USA. He was also the organization's cultural manager, and answered directly to V.J. Jerome, the Party's New York-based cultural chief.

He was the first president in the Writers Guild of America, West after they changed from their name from Screen Writers Guild.

In 1928, Lawson moved to Hollywood where he wrote scripts for films such as The Ship for Shanghai, Bachelor Apartment and Goodbye Love. In the winter of 1930-1931, it was at this time during the Great Depression that Lawson wrote Success Story.

The Theatre Guild rejected the script, but Harold Clurman, a reader for them, had recently just formed the Group Theatre (New York) and needed new scripts. Clurman and Lawson reworked the play during the summer of 1932, and Success Story opened on September 26, 1932 for 121 performances.

During the 1930s, leftists accused Lawson of having a lack of ideological and political commitment. New Playwrights Theatre associate Mike Gold attacked him in The New Masses on April 10, 1934, calling him a "A Bourgeois Hamlet of Our Time" who wrote adolescent works that lacked moral fiber or clear ideas.

Lawson responded a week later in The New Masses in the article "'Inner Conflict' and Proletarian Art." He cited his middle-class childhood as the reason why he could fully understand the working people. He also recognized that his prosperity and Hollywood connections were suspect in the fight for workers' rights.

Due to the criticism, Lawson joined the Communist Party and began a program of educating himself about the proletarian cause. He would soon travel throughout the poverty-stricken South to study bloody labor conflicts in Alabama and Georgia.

While in the South, he would submit articles to the Daily Worker which got him arrested numerous times. These experiences would inspire his next play, Marching Song. It was put on by the radical Theatre Union and it opened on February 17, 1937 and ran for sixty-one performances.

Lawson, who joined the American Communist Party in 1934, made several films that were political, including Blockade (1938), which starred Henry Fonda. It was a film on the Spanish Civil War for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Story.

Lawson also wrote Counter-Attack (1945), a tribute to the Soviet-USA alliance during the Second World War. He also wrote more innocuous films, such as the critically acclaimed, Algiers (1938), and the Humphrey Bogart vehicles, Sahara and Action in the North Atlantic, in 1943.

After the World War II, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) began an investigation into the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry. In September 1947, the HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working in Hollywood.

These people attended voluntarily and became known as "friendly witnesses.” During their interviews they named several individuals whom they accused of holding left-wing views.

Lawson appeared before the HUAC on October 29, 1947, but like Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, Dalton Trumbo, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Samuel Ornitz and Ring Lardner Jr, he refused to answer any questions.

Known as the Hollywood Ten, they claimed that the First Amendment of the United States Constitution gave them the right to do this. The HUAC and U.S. appeals courts, however, disagreed and all were found guilty of contempt of Congress and Lawson was sentenced to twelve months in Ashland Prison and fined $1,000.

Blacklisted by the Hollywood studios, Lawson moved to Mexico where he began writing Marxist interpretations of drama and film-making such as The Hidden Heritage (1950), Film in the Battle of Ideas (1953) and Film: The Creative Process (1964). He also wrote one of the first anti-apartheid movies, Cry, the Beloved Country (1951) under a pseudonym.

After he was blacklisted, he taught at several universities including Stanford University, Loyola Marymount University and Los Angeles University of Judaism.
In his book, Film in the Battle of Ideas, Lawson asserted that "the rulers of the United States take the film very seriously as an instrument of propaganda" and that the influence of Hollywood movies is utilized to "poison the minds of U.S. working-class people" and that inaccurately describes the reality of U.S. working-class life.

Lawson’s writing on techniques in play and screenwriting are highly respected today.

Robert McKee used Lawson’s work in courses I took from him over the years and later borrowed and credited Lawson for many key ideas in his book, Story.

Shel Silverstein, poet, singer-songwriter, cartoonist, screenwriter and author of children's books, was born 92 years ago today

Shel Silverstein, circa 1968

Photo by Alice Ochs

Shel Silverstein, poet, singer-songwriter, cartoonist, screenwriter and author of children's books, was born 92 years ago today.

Silverstein grew up in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago and attended Roosevelt High School. Later, he went the University of Illinois before he was expelled. He then attended Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and Roosevelt University for three years, until 1953 when he was drafted into the Army. He served in Japan and Korea.

Silverstein began drawing at age seven by tracing the works of Al Capp. "When I was a kid — 12 to 14, around there — I would much rather have been a good baseball player or a hit with the girls, but I couldn't play ball. I couldn't dance. Luckily, the girls didn't want me. Not much I could do about that. So I started to draw and to write. I was also lucky that I didn't have anybody to copy, be impressed by,” he told Publisher’s Weekly.

“I had developed my own style. I was creating before I knew there was a Thurber, a Benchley, a Price and a Steinberg. I never saw their work till I was around 30. By the time I got to where I was attracting girls, I was already into work, and it was more important to me. Not that I wouldn't rather make love, but the work has become a habit."

After returning to Chicago, Silverstein began submitting cartoons to magazines while also selling hot dogs at Chicago ballparks. His cartoons began appearing in Look, Sports Illustrated and This Week.

In 1957, Silverstein became one of the leading cartoonists in Playboy, which sent him around the world to create an illustrated travel journal with reports from far-flung locales. During the 1950s and 1960s, he produced 23 installments called "Shel Silverstein Visits..." as a feature for Playboy.

Employing a sketchbook format with typewriter-styled captions, he documented his own experiences at such locations as a New Jersey nudist colony, the Chicago White Sox training camp, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, Fire Island, Mexico, London, Paris, Spain and Africa.

Silverstein's passion for music was clear early on as he studied briefly at Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. His musical output included a large catalog of songs — a number of which were hits for other artists, most notably the rock group, Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show.

He wrote Tompall Glaser's highest-charting solo single "Put Another Log on the Fire," "One's on the Way" (a hit for Loretta Lynn) and "25 Minutes to Go," sung by Johnny Cash, about a man on Death Row with each line counting down one minute closer.

Silverstein also wrote one of Johnny Cash's best known hits, "A Boy Named Sue." Other songs co-written by Silverstein include "the Taker" by Waylon Jennings and "On Susan’s Floor” by Gordon Lightfoot and a sequel to "A Boy Named Sue" called: "Father of a Boy Named Sue" which is less known, but he performed the song on television on The Johnny Cash Show.

He also penned a song entitled "F*** 'em" which is lesser known and contained a reference to "f*** children."

Silverstein styled himself as Uncle Shelby in some works. Translated into more than 30 languages, his books have sold over 20 million copies.

On May 10, 1999, Silverstein died at age 68 of a massive heart attack in Key West, Florida.

William Faulkner was born 125 years ago today

William Faulkner was born 125 years ago today.

A writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi, Faulkner wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career.

He is primarily known and acclaimed for his novels and short stories, many of which are set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a setting Faulkner created based on Lafayette County, where he spent most of his life, and Holly Springs in Marshall County.

Faulkner is one of the most important writers of the Southern literature of the United States, along with Mark Twain, Robert Penn Warren, Flannery O'Connor, Truman Capote, Eudora Welty, Thomas Wolfe, Harper Lee and Tennessee Williams.

Though his work was published as early as 1919, and largely during the 1920s and 1930s, Faulkner was relatively unknown until receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Two of his works, A Fable (1954), and his last novel, The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

In 1998, the Modern Library ranked his 1929 novel, The Sound and the Fury, as sixth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th Century. Also on the list were, As I Lay Dying (1930) and Light in August (1932).

Faulkner was known for his experimental style with meticulous attention to diction and cadence. In contrast to the minimalist understatement of his contemporary Ernest Hemingway, Faulkner made frequent use of "stream of consciousness" in his writing. He wrote often highly emotional, subtle, cerebral, complex and sometimes Gothic or grotesque stories of a wide variety of characters.

His characters included former slaves or descendants of slaves, poor white, agrarian or working-class Southerners and Southern aristocrats.

Faulkner suffered serious injuries in a horse-riding accident in 1959, and died from a myocardial infarction, at age 64, on July 6, 1962.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born 126 years ago today

Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda 

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born 126 years ago today.

An author of novels and short stories, Fitzgerald’s works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.

Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Night, and his most famous, The Great Gatsby. A fifth unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously.

Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age.

The Great Gatsby has been the basis for numerous films of the same name, spanning nearly 90 years; 1926, 1949, 1974, 2000 and 2013. In 1958, his life from 1937–1940 was dramatized in Beloved Infidel.

While at a country club, Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre (1900–1948), the "golden girl," in Fitzgerald's terms, of Montgomery, Alabama youth society. Fitzgerald attempted to lay a foundation for his life with Zelda. Despite working at an advertising firm and writing short stories, he was unable to convince Zelda that he would be able to support her, leading her to break off the engagement.

Scott returned to his parents' house at 599 Summit Avenue, on Cathedral Hill, in St. Paul, to revise The Romantic Egoist. Recast as This Side of Paradise, about the post-WWI flapper generation, it was accepted by Scribner's in the fall of 1919 and Zelda and Scott resumed their engagement. The novel was published on March 26, 1920, and became one of the most popular books of the year.

Scott and Zelda were married in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral. Their only child, Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, was born on October 26, 1921 and died on June 16, 1986.

Paris in the 1920s proved the most influential decade of Fitzgerald's development. The Great Gatsby, considered his masterpiece, was published in 1925.

Fitzgerald made several excursions to Europe, mostly Paris and the French Riviera, and became friends with many members of the American expatriate community in Paris, notably Ernest Hemingway. Fitzgerald’s friendship with Hemingway was quite vigorous, as many of Fitzgerald’s relationships would prove to be.

Hemingway, however, did not get on well with Zelda. In addition to describing her as "insane," he claimed that she “encouraged her husband to drink so as to distract Scott from his work on his novel."

As did most professional authors at the time, Fitzgerald supplemented his income by writing short stories for such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly and Esquire.

Fitzgerald also sold his stories and novels to Hollywood studios. This “whoring,” as Fitzgerald and, subsequently, Hemingway called these sales, was a sore point in the authors’ friendship. Fitzgerald claimed that he would first write his stories in an authentic manner but then put in “twists that made them into salable magazine stories.”

Fitzgerald had been an alcoholic since his college days, and became notorious during the 1920s for his extraordinarily heavy drinking, leaving him in poor health by the late 1930s. He suffered two heart attacks in late 1930. After the first, in Schwab's Drug Store, he was ordered by his doctor to avoid strenuous exertion.

He moved in with Sheilah Graham, who lived in Hollywood on North Hayworth Ave., one block east of Fitzgerald's apartment on North Laurel Ave. Fitzgerald had two flights of stairs to climb to his apartment. Graham's was on the ground floor.

On the night of December 20, 1940, Fitzgerald and Graham attended the premiere of This Thing Called Love starring Rosalind Russell and Melvyn Douglas. As the two were leaving the Pantages Theater, Fitzgerald experienced a dizzy spell and had trouble leaving the theater. He said to Graham: "They think I am drunk, don't they?"

The following day, as Fitzgerald ate a candy bar and made notes in his newly arrived Princeton Alumni Weekly, Graham saw him jump from his armchair, grab the mantelpiece, gasp and fall to the floor.

She ran to the manager of the building, Harry Culver, founder of Culver City. Upon entering the apartment to assist Fitzgerald, Culver said, "I'm afraid he's dead."

Fitzgerald had died of a massive heart attack. He was 44.

John Houseman, film producer and actor, was born 119 years ago today

Orson Welles and John Houseman in the theatre during rehearsals of Horse Eats Hat in 1936

John Houseman, film producer and actor, was born 119 years ago today.

The Romanian-born British-American actor and film producer became known for his highly publicized collaboration with director, Orson Welles, from their days in the Federal Theatre Project through to the production of the classic film, Citizen Kane.

Houseman is perhaps best known for his role as Professor Charles Kingsfield in the 1973 film, The Paper Chase, for which he won a best supporting actor Oscar. He reprised his role as Kingsfield in the subsequent TV series adaptation of The Paper Chase.

Houseman produced numerous Broadway productions, including Heartbreak House, Three Sisters, The Beggar's Opera and several Shakespearean plays, including a famous "Blackshirt" Julius Caesar directed by Orson Welles in 1937.

In 1934, Houseman was looking to cast a play he was producing based on a drama by Archibald MacLeish concerning a Wall Street financier whose world crumbles about him when consumed by the crash of 1929.

Although the central figure is a man in his late fifties, Houseman became obsessed by the notion that a young man named Orson Welles he had seen in a Cornell Company production of Romeo and Juliet was the only person qualified to play the leading role.

In 1936, the Federal Theatre Project (part of Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration) put unemployed theatre performers and employees to work. Within a year of its formation, the project had more than fifteen thousand men and women on its payroll at an average wage of approximately twenty dollars a week.

Houseman and Welles ran a WPA unit in midtown Manhattan for classic productions called Project #891. The following year Project #891 would produce their most controversial work, The Cradle Will Rock.

Written by Marc Blitzstein, the musical was about Larry Foreman, a worker in Steeltown (played in the original production by Howard Da Silva), which is run by the boss, Mister Mister (played in the original production by Will Geer).

The show was thought to have had left-wing and unionist sympathies (Foreman ends the show with a song about "unions" taking over the town and the country), and became legendary as an example of a "censored" show.

Shortly before the show was to open, Federal Theatre officials in Washington announced that no productions would open until after July 1, 1937, the beginning of the new fiscal year.

All the performers had been enjoined not to perform on stage for the production when it opened on July 14, 1937. The cast and crew left their government-owned theatre and walked 20 blocks to another theatre, with the audience following.

No one knew what to expect. When they got there, Blitzstein himself was at the piano and started playing the introduction music. One of the non-professional performers, Olive Stanton, who played the part of Moll, the prostitute, stood up in the audience, and began singing her part.

All the other performers, in turn, spontaneously stood up in the audience to perform their parts. Thus the "oratorio" version of the show was born.

Apparently, Welles had designed some intricate scenery, which ended up never being used. The event was so successful that it was repeated several times on subsequent nights, with everyone trying to remember and reproduce what had happened spontaneously the first night.

The incident, however, led to Houseman being fired and Welles's resignation from Project #981.

That same year, 1937, after detaching themselves from the Federal Theatre Project, Houseman and Welles founded the acclaimed New York drama company, The Mercury Theatre.

Beginning in the summer of 1938, the Mercury Theatre was featured in a weekly dramatic radio program on the CBS network, initially promoted as First Person Singular before gaining the official title, The Mercury Theatre on the Air.

The show became famous for its notorious 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, which had put much of the country in a panic. By all accounts, Welles was shocked by the panic that ensued.

According to Houseman, "he hadn't the faintest idea what the effect would be.” CBS was inundated with calls. Newspaper switchboards were jammed. The Welles-Houseman collaboration continued in Hollywood.

In the spring of 1939, Welles began preliminary discussions with RKO's head of production, George Schaefer, with Welles and his Mercury players being given a two picture deal, in which Welles would produce, direct, perform and have full creative control of his projects. Welles decided to make “Citizen Kane.”

During a corporate dinner for the Mercury crew, Welles exploded, calling Houseman a "bloodsucker" and a "crook.” As Houseman attempted to leave Chasen’s Restaurant, Welles began hurling dish heaters at him, setting curtains on fire in the restaurant. The act effectively ending both their partnership and friendship.

Houseman would later, however, play a pivotal role in ushering Citizen Kane (1941), which starred Welles. Welles telephoned Houseman asking him to return to Hollywood to "babysit" screenwriter, Herman J. Mankiewicz, while he completed the script, and keep him away from alcohol.

Still drawn to Welles, as was virtually everyone in his sphere, Houseman agreed.

Although Welles took credit for the screenplay of Kane, Houseman stated that the credit belonged to Mankiewicz, an assertion that led to a final break with Welles. Houseman took some credit himself for the general shaping of the story line and for editing the script.

Among the many Houseman achievements, he was the founding director of the Drama Division at The Juilliard School where his first graduating class included Kevin Kline and Patti LuPone.

Unwilling to see his first class immediately disbanded by the commercial world of stage and screen, he formed them into a touring repertory company appropriately named the Group 1 Acting Company (later shortened to, The Acting Company).

John Houseman: A Personal Remembrance

In 1985, as a young producer working for Orson Welles, the great director regaled me with stories during a leisurely three-hour lunch on a Saturday afternoon at the Ma Maison Restaurant on Melrose Ave. in Los Angeles.

It was a rare day for Orson, who didn’t like to “walk down memory lane.” But on this day, Orson was in a lighter mood than usual and told me the incredible story of the staging of “The Cradle Will Rock” in 1937.

I was spellbound. Few people could tell a story like Orson Welles. It was about the only time in U.S. history the military had been sent out to shut down a Broadway play. Orson and his acting company defied the government and became famous for it. During Orson’s telling of this epic tale, I was on the edge of my seat, and hung on to his every word.

Orson told me he had wanted to produce and direct the story himself and had written a script about it. But the money had fallen apart just before production was to begin. “The story of my life,” he said, sadly. Then he suggested that I might want to produce it.

A short time later, Orson died and the project I was doing with him — Orson Welles Solo — went up in smoke. I was in shock and needed to do something...anything. I vividly remembered The Cradle Will Rock story and decided to tackle it. After a visit with Marc Blitzstein’s sister in Philadelphia, I obtained the film rights from his family.

John Houseman had written about The Cradle Will Rock in one volume of his autobiography, Run Through. I had long admired Houseman and had grown up watching “The Paper Chase” on television. I contacted Houseman, and inadvertently entered the long-running feud he had with Orson.

Unwittingly, I sent Houseman the Orson Welles’ script of The Cradle Will Rock. It irritated him immensely, projecting only Orson’s view of what had happened. “It must never be made,” Houseman told me in his most intimidating Professor Kingsfield voice. (I later discovered that Kingsfield arrogance was really Houseman. No acting involved!)

The anger and disdain Houseman had for Welles continued to burn bright long after Orson’s death. In fact, it didn’t subside until Houseman’s own death three years later in 1988 at age 86.

I wanted to option Houseman’s material on Cradle, assuring him I would not use the Welles script but would commission a totally new one. Houseman had cancer at this point and was near death.

From his death bed, he said to me, “Mr. Beacham, you shall pay me $5,000 now or you shall pay much more after I expire.”

To make a long story short, I told this story to a stranger in an LA bar later that night, having run out of options to raise additional money. He was so entranced by the story, he wrote me a check after we hammered out an agreement on the back of a bar napkin. Talk about luck!

The next day, after this stranger’s check cleared, I gave the money to Houseman, who scribbled his signature on the option agreement. I had all the needed rights to do a film.

I took the story to a young director and actor, Tim Robbins, sensing he would he would interested. He was, and we worked together over ten years to make a film. I was an executive producer of “Cradle Will Rock,” which was released by Disney’s Touchstone company in 1999. Tim wrote the script and directed the film. Cary Elwes played Houseman in the movie.

Whenever I want to be reminded of the real John Houseman, I watch a re-run of The Paper Chase. That was the man I knew and experienced. He may have won an Academy Award for playing a role, but he was just being himself. That I know.

Leonard Cohen was born 88 years ago today

Leonard Cohen in concert at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, May 17, 2009

Photo by Frank Beacham

Leonard Cohen was born 88 years ago today.

A Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist, Cohen often explored religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships.

The critic Bruce Eder wrote an assessment of Cohen's overall career in popular music, writing, "[Cohen is] one of the most fascinating and enigmatic. . . singer/songwriters of the late '60s. . . [and] has retained an audience across four decades of music-making. . . Second only to Bob Dylan (and perhaps Paul Simon) [in terms of influence], he commands the attention of critics and younger musicians more firmly than any other musical figure from the 1960s who is still working at the outset of the 21st century."

The Academy of American Poets has commented more broadly on Cohen's overall career in the arts, including his work as a poet, novelist and songwriter, stating that "[Cohen's] successful blending of poetry, fiction, and music is made most clear in Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs, published in 1993, which gathered more than two hundred of Cohen's poems . . . several novel excerpts, and almost sixty song lyrics. . .While it may seem to some that Leonard Cohen departed from the literary in pursuit of the musical, his fans continue to embrace him as a Renaissance man who straddles the elusive artistic borderlines."

Cohen was born in Westmount, an English-speaking area of Montreal, Quebec, into a middle-class Jewish family. His mother, Marsha (Masha) Klonitsky, was the daughter of a Talmudic writer, Rabbi Solomon Klonitsky-Kline of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry.

His paternal grandfather, whose family had emigrated from Poland, was Lyon Cohen, founding president of the Canadian Jewish Congress. His father, Nathan Cohen, who owned a substantial clothing store, died when Cohen was nine years old.

On the topic of his family, Cohen said "I had a very Messianic childhood." He told Richard Goldstein in 1967: "I was told I was a descendant of Aaron, the high priest."

Cohen attended Roslyn Elementary School and, from 1948, Westmount High School, where he was involved with the student council and studied music and poetry. He became especially interested in the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca. As a teenager, he learned to play the guitar, and formed a country-folk group called The Buckskin Boys.

Although he initially played a regular acoustic guitar, he soon switched to playing a classical guitar after meeting a young Spanish flamenco guitar player who taught him "a few chords and some flamenco." Cohen frequented Saint-Laurent Boulevard where he went for fun, and ate at places such as the Main Deli Steak House.

According to journalist David Sax, the Main Deli was where Cohen and one of his cousins would go to "...watch the gangsters, pimps and wrestlers dance around the night."

Cohen also enjoyed visiting the previously raucous bars of Old Montreal as well as Saint Joseph's Oratory, which had the closest restaurant near Westmount where he and his friend, Mort Rosengarten, could go for coffee and a smoke. After moving out of Westmount, Cohen purchased a place in the previous working-class neighborhood of Montreal's Little Portugal on Saint-Laurent Boulevard where he read his poetry at various surrounding clubs.

It is also during his time there in the small neighborhood that he wrote the lyrics to what would become some of his most famous songs.

In 1951, Cohen enrolled at McGill University, where he became president of the McGill Debating Union and won the Chester MacNaghten Literary Competition for the poems "Sparrows" and "Thoughts of a Landsman."

Cohen published his first poems in March, 1954 in the magazine CIV/n. The issue also included poems by Cohen's poet-professors (who were also on the editorial board), Irving Layton and Louis Dudek. Cohen graduated from McGill the following year with a B.A. degree.

His literary influences during this time included William Butler Yeats, Irving Layton (who taught political science at McGill and became both Cohen's mentor and friend), Walt Whitman, Federico Garcia Lorca and Henry Miller.

His first published book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956), was published by Dudek as the first book in the McGill Poetry Series the year after Cohen's graduation. The book contained "poems written largely when Cohen was between the ages of fifteen and twenty." Cohen dedicated the book to his late father. The well-known Canadian literary critic, Northrop Frye, wrote a review of the book in which he gave Cohen "restrained praise."

After completing his undergraduate degree, Cohen spent a term in McGill's law school and then a year (1956–1957) at the School of General Studies at Columbia University. Cohen described his graduate school experience as "passion without flesh, love without climax."

Consequently, Cohen left New York and returned to Montreal in 1957, working various odd jobs and focusing on the writing of fiction and poetry, including the poems for his next book, The Spice-Box of Earth (1961), which was the first book that Cohen published through the Canadian publishing company, McClelland & Stewart.

Fortunately for Cohen, his father's will provided him with a modest trust income, sufficient to allow him to pursue his literary ambitions for the time, and The Spice-Box of Earth was successful in helping to expand the audience for Cohen's poetry, helping him reach out to the poetry scene in Canada, outside the confines of McGill University. The book also helped Cohen gain critical recognition as an important new voice in Canadian poetry.

One of Cohen's biographers, Ira Nadel, stated that "reaction to the finished book was enthusiastic and admiring...the critic Robert Weaver found it powerful and declared that Cohen was 'probably the best young poet in English Canada right now.'"

Cohen continued to write poetry and fiction throughout much of the 1960s and preferred to live in quasi-reclusive circumstances after he bought a house on Hydra, a Greek island in the Saronic Gulf. While living and writing on Hydra, Cohen published the poetry collection Flowers for Hitler (1964), and the novels, The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966).

His novel, The Favourite Game, was an autobiographical bildungsroman about a young man who discovers his identity through writing. Beautiful Losers received a good deal of attention from the Canadian press and stirred up controversy because of a number of sexually graphic passages.

In 1966, Cohen also published, Parasites of Heaven, a book of poems. Both Beautiful Losers and Parasites of Heaven received mixed reviews and sold few copies. Subsequently, Cohen published less, with major gaps, concentrating more on recording songs.

In 1978, he published his first book of poetry in many years, Death of a Lady's Man (not to be confused with the album he released the previous year with the similar title, Death of a Ladies' Man).

It was not until 1984 that Cohen published his next book of poems, Book of Mercy, which won him the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award for Poetry. The book contains 50 prose-poems, influenced by the Hebrew Bible and Zen writings. Cohen himself referred to the pieces as "prayers.”

In 1993, Cohen published Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs, and in 2006, after 10 years of delays, additions and rewritings, Book of Longing. The Book of Longing is dedicated to the poet, Irving Layton.

Also, during the late 1990s and 2000s, many of Cohen's new poems and lyrics were first published on the fan website, The Leonard Cohen Files, including the original version of the poem "A Thousand Kisses Deep" (which Cohen later adapted for a song).

Cohen's writing process, as he told an interviewer in 1998, is "like a bear stumbling into a beehive or a honey cache: I'm stumbling right into it and getting stuck, and it's delicious and it's horrible and I'm in it and it's not very graceful and it's very awkward and it's very painful and yet there's something inevitable about it."

In 1967, disappointed with his lack of financial success as a writer, Cohen moved to the United States to pursue a career as a folk music singer-songwriter. During the 1960s, he was a fringe figure in Andy Warhol's "Factory" crowd. Warhol speculated that Cohen had spent time listening to Nico in clubs and that this had influenced his musical style.

His song, "Suzanne," became a hit for Judy Collins and was for many years his most covered song. After performing at a few folk festivals, he came to the attention of Columbia Records representative, John H. Hammond, who signed Cohen to a record deal.

Cohen's first album was Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967). Although Hammond was originally supposed to produce the record, he was ill and was replaced by the producer, John Simon. Simon and Cohen clashed over instrumentation and mixing. Cohen wanted the album to have a spare sound, while Simon felt the songs could benefit from arrangements that included strings and horns.

According to biographer, Ira Nadel, although Cohen was able to make changes to the mix, some of Simon's additions "couldn't be removed from the four-track master tape." Nevertheless, the album became a cult favorite in the U.S., as well as in the UK, where it spent over a year on the album charts.

Several of the songs on that first album were covered by other popular folk artists, including James Taylor and Judy Collins. Cohen followed up that first album with Songs from a Room (1969) (featuring the often-recorded "Bird on the Wire") and Songs of Love and Hate (1971).

Both of these albums were produced in Nashville by Bob Johnston, who helped Cohen achieve the sparer sound that he'd been after on his first album. Johnston also joined Cohen on two subsequent live tours, playing organ and piano. In 1970, Cohen toured for the first time, with dates in the United States, Canada and Europe, and appeared at the Isle of Wight Festival.

He toured again in Europe and Israel in 1972 with some of the same band-mates, including Charlie Daniels and his producer, Bob Johnston. The band was nicknamed "The Army." Both tours were represented on the Live Songs LP. Leonard Cohen Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 was released in 2009.

The 1972 tour was also filmed by Tony Palmer under the title, Bird on a Wire, which was shown re-cut under Cohen's guidance in 1974. It was only released to the public in 2010, reconstructed according to Palmer's original version.

In 1971, the film director, Robert Altman, featured "The Stranger Song," "Winter Lady" and "Sisters of Mercy" (all from Cohen's debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen) on the soundtrack for his Western film, McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

In 1976, Cohen embarked on a new major European tour with a new band and changes in his sound and arrangements, again, in support of his The Best of Leonard Cohen release (in Europe retitled as Greatest Hits).

Laura Branigan was one of his back-up singers during the tour, and the set-list included the unreleased songs "Everybody's Child" (a.k.a. "Blessed Is the Memory") and "Storeroom" (both released as bonus tracks to 2007 reissue of Songs of Leonard Cohen), and the new song "Do I Have to Dance All Night?" (which was released as a single with the song, "The Butcher," in a single available in Europe only).

From April to July, Cohen gave 55 shows, including his first appearance at the famous Montreux Jazz Festival. After the European tour of 1976, Cohen again attempted a new change in his style and arrangements. His new 1977 record, Death of a Ladies' Man (one year later, in 1978, was released.

Cohen also released a volume of poetry with the coyly revised title, Death of a Lady's Man), was co-written and produced by Phil Spector, known as the inventor of the "Wall of Sound" technique, which backs up pop music with many layers of instrumentation, an approach very different from Cohen's usually minimalist instrumentation.

The recording of the album was fraught with difficulty — Spector reportedly mixed the album in secret studio sessions, and Cohen said Spector once threatened him with a crossbow. Cohen thought the end result "grotesque," but also "semi-virtuous."

The record was released by Spector's label, Warner, and was returned to Columbia's Cohen catalog in the late 1980s. Cohen did not take part in the album's promotion, but in his tours of 1979, 1980 and 1985, he performed two songs from the album, "Memories" and "Iodine." However, Cohen chose not to include any of the album's songs on his later compilations, More Best of Leonard Cohen and The Essential Leonard Cohen.

"Hallelujah" was first released on Cohen's studio album Various Positions in 1984. The song had limited initial success, but found greater popularity through a 1991 cover by John Cale which formed the basis for a later cover by Jeff Buckley. "Hallelujah" has been performed by almost 200 artists in various languages.

The use of the album track, "Everybody Knows," from I'm Your Man in the 1990 film, Pump Up the Volume, helped expose Cohen's music to a younger audience. The song also featured prominently in fellow Canadian Atom Egoyan's 1994 film, Exotica.

In 1992, Cohen released The Future, which urges (often in terms of biblical prophecy) perseverance, reformation and hope in the face of grim prospects. Three tracks from the album – "Waiting for the Miracle," "The Future" and "Anthem" – were featured in the movie, Natural Born Killers, which also promoted Cohen's work to a new generation of U.S. listeners.

In 1994, Cohen retreated to the Mt. Baldy Zen Center near Los Angeles, beginning what became five years of seclusion at the center. In 1996, Cohen was ordained as a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk and took the Dharma name Jikan, meaning "silence." He served as personal assistant to Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi.

Although around 2000 there was a public impression that Cohen would not resume recording or publishing, he returned to Los Angeles in May, 1999. But there was trouble ahead.

Sylvie Simmons explains, in her 2012 biography on Cohen that Kelley Lynch, Cohen's longtime manager, "took care of Leonard's business affairs … [and was] not simply his manager but a close friend, almost part of the family."

However, Simmons notes that in late 2004, Cohen's daughter Lorca began to suspect Lynch of financial impropriety, and when Cohen checked his bank accounts, he noticed that he had unknowingly paid a credit card bill of Lynch's for $75,000 and also found that most of the money in his accounts was gone (including money from his retirement accounts and charitable trust funds).

Cohen would discover that this theft had actually begun as early as 1996 when Lynch started selling Cohen's music publishing rights despite the fact that Cohen had no financial incentive to do so at the time.

On October 8, 2005, Cohen sued Kelley Lynch, alleging that she had misappropriated over $5 million from Cohen's retirement fund leaving only $150,000. Cohen was sued in turn by other former business associates. These events placed him in the public spotlight, including a cover feature on him with the headline, "Devastated!," in Canada's Maclean's magazine.

In March, 2006, Cohen won a civil suit and was awarded $9 million by a Los Angeles County superior court. Lynch, however, ignored the suit and did not respond to a subpoena issued for her financial records. As a result it has been widely reported that Cohen never was able to collect the awarded amount.

In 2007, U.S. District Judge Lewis T. Babcock dismissed a claim by Cohen for more than $4.5 million against Colorado investment firm Agile Group, and in 2008 he dismissed a defamation suit that Agile Group filed against Cohen. Cohen has been under new management since April, 2005.

On March 1, 2012, Kelley Lynch was arrested in Los Angeles for violating a permanent protective order that forbade her from contacting Cohen, which she had ignored repeatedly. On April 13, the jury found her guilty on all charges. On April 18, she was sentenced to eighteen months in prison and five years probation.

Cohen told that court, "It gives me no pleasure to see my onetime friend shackled to a chair in a court of law, her considerable gifts bent to the services of darkness, deceit and revenge. It is my prayer that Ms. Lynch will take refuge in the wisdom of her religion, that a spirit of understanding will convert her heart from hatred to remorse, from anger to kindness, from the deadly intoxication of revenge to the lowly practices of self-reform."

To replenish his bank accounts, Cohen went back on tour — his first in 15 years. It began on May 11, 2008 in Fredericton, New Brunswick to wide critical acclaim, and was extended until Winter of 2010. The schedule of the first leg in Summer of 2008 encompassed Canada and Europe, including performances at The Big Chill, the Montreal Jazz Festival and on the Pyramid Stage at the 2008 Glastonbury Festival.

Cohen died on November 7, 2016, at the age of 82 at his home in Los Angeles. Cancer was a contributing cause. According to his manager, Cohen's death was the result of a fall at his home on the night of November 7, and he subsequently died in his sleep. His death was announced on November 10.

Here, Leonard Cohen performs “Tower of Song”

Leonard Cohen meets Allen Ginsberg after a concert of Ginsberg’s poetry at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, 1988

Photo by Frank Beacham

Leonard Cohen on Janis Joplin at the Chelsea Hotel

Leonard Cohen performs "Closing Time," 1992

H.G. Wells — pioneer of science fiction — was born 156 years ago today in Bromley, England

Wells measures a move in a war game, 1913

Photo by Mary Evans

H.G. Wells — pioneer of science fiction — was born 156 years ago today in Bromley, England.

Wells was born near London and received a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in London. After school, he worked as a draper's apprentice and bookkeeper before becoming a freelance writer. His lively treatment of scientific topics quickly brought him success as a writer.

In 1895, he published his classic novel, The Time Machine, about a man who journeys to the future. The book was a success, as were his subsequent books, The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898).

Passionately concerned about the fate of humanity, Wells joined the socialist Fabian Society but quit after a quarrel with George Bernard Shaw, another prominent member.

He was involved romantically for several years with Dorothy Richardson, pioneer of stream-of-consciousness writing.

In 1912, the 19-year-old writer Rebecca West reviewed his book, Marriage, calling him "The old maid among novelists." He asked to meet her, and the two soon embarked on an affair that lasted 10 years and produced one son, Anthony.

Wells died in 1946 at age 79.

Thanks History.com

Stephen King is 75 years old today

Stephen King is 75 years old today.

King is an author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy. His books have sold more than 350 million copies, and many of them have been adapted into feature films, television movies and comic books.

King has published fifty novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five non-fiction books. He has written nearly two hundred short stories, most of which have been collected in nine collections of short fiction. Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine.

King has received Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards and British Fantasy Society Awards. His novella, The Way Station, was a Nebula Award novelette nominee. His short story, The Man in the Black Suit, received the O. Henry Award.

In 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

King has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his entire oeuvre, such as the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (2004), the Canadian Booksellers Association Lifetime Achievement Award (2007) and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America (2007).

King is a fan of the Ramones, to the extent that he wrote the liner notes for the 2003 Ramones tribute album, We're a Happy Family. He is also a fan of hard rock such as AC/DC; he arranged for their album, Who Made Who, to feature as the score for the film he directed in 1986, Maximum Overdrive.

King has also stated that he likes heavy metal and has named bands like Anthrax, Judas Priest and Metallica as amongst his favorites to write to. King collaborated with Michael Jackson to create Ghosts (1996), a 40-minute musical video, and collaborated with Shooter Jennings and his band Hierophant, providing the narration for their album, Black Ribbons. King also wrote a musical play Ghost Brothers of Darkland County (2012) with John Mellencamp.

King played guitar for the rock band Rock Bottom Remainders, several of whose members are authors. Other members have included Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, Scott Turow, Amy Tan, James McBride, Mitch Albom, Roy Blount, Jr., Matt Groening, Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Sam Barry and Greg Iles.

King and the other band members collaborated to release an e-book called Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All (June 2013).

Stephen King performs with the Rock Bottom Remainders

Upton Sinclair, author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres, was born 144 years ago today

Upton Sinclair, author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres, was born 144 years ago today.

Sinclair achieved popularity in the first half of the 20th Century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle, in 1906. It exposed conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.

In 1919, he published, The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the “free press” in the United States.

Four years after the initial publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created.

Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence."

In 1943, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Sinclair also ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Socialist, and was the Democratic Party nominee for Governor of California in 1934, though his highly progressive campaign was defeated.