Eleanor Robson Belmont

Eleanor Robson Belmont
Author: Kevin Lane Dearinger
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2023-06-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1476692297

When Mrs. August Belmont died in 1979, just before her 100th birthday, she was remembered as a philanthropist and advocate for the arts, especially the Metropolitan Opera, but before her triumphs as Mrs. Belmont, she had dignified the American stage for 13 glorious years as Eleanor Robson, actress. Her splendid voice, understated style, and always-evident intelligence thrilled legions of theatregoers and enthralled the best playwrights of her time, including Israel Zangwill, Clyde Fitch, and George Bernard Shaw.Despite the brevity of her career, Eleanor Robson stands as a prototype for many actresses who followed her--women who sought to control their own careers and lives, demanded artistic respect and freedom, and who, by the twenty-first century, would confidently call themselves not actresses, but actors. This is her first book-length biography, focusing particularly on her theatrical career.

Clyde Fitch and the American Theatre

Clyde Fitch and the American Theatre
Author: Kevin Lane Dearinger
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 607
Release: 2016-07-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1611479487

Clyde Fitch (1865-1909) was the most successful and prolific dramatist of his time, producing nearly sixty plays in a twenty-year career. He wrote witty comedies, chaotic farces, homespun dramas, star vehicles, historical works, stark melodramas, and adaptations of European successes, but he was best known for his society plays, mirroring themes found in the novels of Henry James and Edith Wharton. In fact, Fitch collaborated with Wharton on a stage adaptation of her House ofMirth. He was also a gay man, although that gentler adjective was not the term of his time. He was bullied in school and baited by critics throughout his career for what they supposed of his private life. He responded with impressive strength and integrity. He was, at least for a short time, Oscar Wilde’s lover, and Wilde influenced his early plays, but Fitch’s study of Ibsen and other European dramatists inspired him to pursue the course of naturalism. As he became more successful, he took greater control of the staging and design of his plays. He was a complete man of the theatre and among the first names enrolled in New York’s theatrical hall of fame.

American Diplomacy Before the Courts

American Diplomacy Before the Courts
Author: Stephen M. Millett
Publisher:
Total Pages: 298
Release: 1977
Genre: Diplomacy
ISBN:

Following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the American government refused to grant de jure recognition to the Soviet regime. American courts likewise refuse to acknowledge the legal existence of the Soviet Union in matters concerning Russian property in the United States. In the 1933 Litvinov Assignment, when President Roosevelt granted conditional recognition to Moscow, the Soviets assigned its rights to Russian property in the U.S. to the American government. The assignment, however, proved to be difficult for courts to interpret and implement after 16 years of nonrecognition. In 1937, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v Belmont that the assignment had been an executive agreement with the same domestic legal effect as a treaty. Five years later, it ruled that the American government had a superior claim to disputed Russian property to that of any private claimants because of the 1933 executive agreement. A review of the cases concerning the legal effects of Soviet-American relations from 1917 to 1942 demonstrates the domestic impacts of foreign relations and the role of the courts as they influence the conduct of foreign relations.

In the Garden

In the Garden
Author: Angelica Shirley Carpenter
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2006
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9780810852884

This book is a collection of articles about the life and work of Frances Hodgson Burnett. The broad range of subjects and the varied backgrounds of the contributing authors are a tribute to Burnett's wide and international appeal. The book includes articles by three Burnett biographers, criticism of Burnett's works, and literary and social analysis of her books by scholars from several countries. These range from Pulitzer Prize winner Alison Lurie to new scholars who are being published here for the first time. The articles range from essays to transcripts of interviews and speeches and a filmography. The book presents new research on films and plays based on Burnett books. The primary organization of the essays is chronological, but the book is also arranged to reflect the structure of the 'Frances Hodgson Burnett: Beyond the Secret Garden Conference, ' held at California State University, Fresno, April 25-27, 2003

The Grandes Dames

The Grandes Dames
Author: Stephen Birmingham
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 493
Release: 2024-05-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1504095634

The acclaimed social historian provides an in-depth look at eight society women who shaped upper class culture from the Gilded Age to WWII. Astor. Rockefeller. McCormick. Belmont. Family names that still adorn buildings, streets, and charity foundations. While their men blazed across America with their oil, industry, and railways, the matriarchs founded art museums, opera houses, and symphonies that functioned almost as private clubs. Linked by money, marriage, privilege, and power, these women formed a grand American matriarchy—and they ruled American society with a style and impact that make today’s socialites seem pale reflections of their forbears. Stephen Birmingham takes us into the drawing rooms of these powerful women, providing keen insights into an American society that no longer exists. Caroline Astor, who, when asked for her fare boarding a streetcar, responded, “No thank you, I have my own favorite charities.” Edith “Effie” Stern deciding that no existing school would do for her child, so she had a new one built. And the legendary Isabella Stewart Gardner replying to a contemporary who was overly taken with their Mayflower ancestors: “Of course, immigration laws are much more strict nowadays.” These women had looks, manner, and style, but more than that, they had presence—a sense that when one of them entered a room, something momentous was about to occur; Birmingham opens a window to the highest levels of American society with these profiles of American “royalty.”

Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side

Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side
Author: Jim Mackin
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2020-11-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0823289311

Nearly 600 captivating stories of notable former residents of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, some famous, some forgotten What do Humphrey Bogart and Patty Hill (co-author of “Happy Birthday,” the most popular song of all time) have in common? Both of them once lived in the neighborhood of Morningside Heights and Bloomingdale, a strip of land that runs from the 90s to 125th Street, between the Hudson River and Central Park. Spanning hundreds of years, Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side is a compilation of stories of nearly 600 former residents who once called Manhattan’s Upper West Side home. Profiling a rare selection of wildly diverse people who shaped the character of the area, author Jim Mackin introduces readers to its fascinating residents—some famous, such as George and Ira Gershwin and Thurgood Marshall, and some forgotten, such as Harriet Brooks, Augustus Meyers, and Elinor Smith. Brief biographies reveal intriguing facts about this group, which include scientists, explorers, historians, journalists, artists, entertainers, aviators, public officials, lawyers, judges, and some in a category too unique to label. This collection also promotes accomplished women who have been forgotten and spotlights The Old Community, a tight-knit African American enclave that included such talented and accomplished residents as Marcus Garvey, Billie Holiday, and Butterfly McQueen. The book is divided into five geographical sections: the West 90s, the West 100s, the West 110s, the West 120s, and Riverside Drive. Addresses are arranged in ascending order within each section, first by street number and then by street address number. While the focus is on people, the book includes an eclectic collection of interesting facts and colorful stories about the neighborhood itself, including the 9th Avenue El, Little Coney Island, and, notoriously, one of the most dangerous streets in the city, as well as songs and movies that were written and filmed in the neighborhood. Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side provides a unique overview of the people who shaped the neighborhood through their presence and serves as a guide to those who deserve to be recognized and remembered.

Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frances Hodgson Burnett
Author: Gretchen Gerzina
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2004
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780813533827

Hugely successful in her own time for adult novels and plays, Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) would be astounded to find out she is remembered for a handful of books for children, but most of all for the enormously popular Secret Garden. This fascinating biography-the first to have the full cooperation of Burnett's descendants and relatives-examines her life with lively intelligence, sensitivity, and fascinating new, never-before-published material. Burnett's life was full of those reversals of fortune that mark her work. Following modest beginnings in mid-Victorian Manchester, she arrived in post-Civil War Tennessee at the age of fifteen with her widowed mother and two sisters. Burnett was the breadwinner of the family from the age of seventeen, eventually publishing a total of fifty-two books and writing and producing thirteen plays. She made and spent a fortune in her lifetime, was generous and profligate, yet anxious about money and obsessively hardworking. Constantly restless and inventive, Burnett's personal life was as complex as her professional one. Her first marriage to a southern doctor disintegrated as a result of her notorious flirtations and a scandalous affair, and her subsequent marriage to an English doctor turned actor suffered a similar fate. She understood the intensity and loneliness of the thoughtful child, but was herself a largely absent mother of two sons-overwhelmed by guilt when tragedy struck one of them; the other one never got over being the model for Little Lord Fauntleroy. A woman of contrasts and paradoxes, this quintessentially British writer was equally at home in the United States, which honored her with a memorial in Central Park. Frances Hodgson Burnett reinvented for herself and for generations to come in both countries the magic and the mystery of the childhood she never had.