John Huston. Biography. Famous people in English. Personajes famosos en inglés.

John Huston Biography:

John Marcellus Huston (August 5, 1906 – August 28, 1987) was an American film director, actor and sometime screenwriter. He is best known for having directed several great classic films, The Maltese Falcon, The Asphalt Jungle, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Key Largo, the The African Queen, and Prizzi’s Honor (for which his daughter, Anjelica, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress). He won Best Director and Best Writing Academy Awards (Oscars) for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and was nominated for the Oscar at least a dozen additional times. His directing oeuvre, however, must be regarded as mixed because he directed a number of films that were of less than high quality, especially during his middle years.

Huston acted in many movies other than his own, sometimes memorably in good films and other times in films best described as forgettable, so his acting oeuvre must also be regarded as mixed. In addition to his genius as director, actor, and writer, he was known for drinking, gambling, womanizing, and generally being «an eccentric rebel of epic proportions,» as one commentator put it. Paul Newman once called Huston «the eccentric’s eccentric.» Huston’s career as one of the reigning luminaries of Hollywood lasted for five decades.

Early life

Huston was born in Nevada, Missouri, the son of the Canadian-born actor, Walter Huston (also an Academy Award winner, under John’s direction, for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Treasure of the Sierra Madre), and Rhea Gore, a reporter who traveled around the country looking for stories. John was of Scottish and Irish descent on his father’s side. An old story claims that the small town of his birth was won by John’s grandfather in a poker game.

John was the only child of the couple, and he began performing on stage with his vaudevillian father at age three. When he was seven his parents divorced, and after that he took turns traveling around the vaudeville circuit with his father, and the country with his mother on reporting excursions. He was a frail and sickly child, and was once placed in a sanitarium due to both an enlarged heart and kidney ailment. He recovered and quit school at age 14 to become a full-fledged boxer. Eventually he won the Amateur Lightweight Boxing Championship of California, winning 22 of 25 bouts. His trademark broken nose resulted from his boxing.

Career

At age 18 John married his high school sweetheart, Dorothy Harvey. He also made his first professional stage appearance in a leading role off-Broadway entitled «The Triumph of the Egg.» That same year, in April 1925, he made his Broadway debut with «Ruint.» The following November he was in another Broadway show «Adam Solitaire.» He quickly grew restless in both his marriage and acting and left both for a sojourn to Mexico where he became an expert horseman and cavalry officer, writing plays on the side. Later he returned to America and attempted reporting work for newspapers and magazines in New York by submitting short stories to them. At one point mogul Samuel Goldwyn Jr. even hired him as a screenwriter, and he also appeared in a few unbilled film roles. But he grew restless again and by 1932 left for London and Paris where he studied painting and sketching.

Huston returned to America in 1933 and played the title role in a production of «Abraham Lincoln.» His father Walter had played Lincoln on film for D.W. Griffith in 1930. To develop his writing skills John began collaborating on some scripts for Warner Brothers. Warners was impressed with his talents and signed him on as both screenwriter and director for the movie to be made of the Dashiell Hammett mystery The Maltese Falcon (1941). That movie classic made a superstar out of Humphrey Bogart, provided the film acting debut for Sidney Greenstreet, and is still considered by many critics and filmgoers to be one of the greatest detective films ever made; Huston’s film directorial debut was scarcely less auspicious than that of Orson Welles for Citizen Kane, but Huston’s lifetime output was considerably greater.

During this time Huston also wrote and staged a couple of Broadway plays. He also directed bad-girl Bette Davis and good girl Olivia de Havilland in the film melodrama In This Our Life (1942), and three of his Maltese Falcon stars (Bogart, Mary Astor and Sydney Greenstreet) in the romantic war picture Across the Pacific (1942).

During World War II Huston served as a Signal Corps lieutenant. He went on to direct some film documentaries for the U.S. government, including Let There Be Light (1946), narrated by his father Walter. In 1946 Huston directed Jean-Paul Sartre’s experimental play «No Exit» on Broadway. The show ran less than a month and failed at the box-office, but did receive the New York Drama Critics Award as «best foreign play.»

Huston then stayed in Hollywood to write and/or direct some of the finest American cinema ever made including Key Largo (1948) and The African Queen (1951) (both with Bogart), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Red Badge of Courage (1951) and Moulin Rouge (1952). Later films included Moby Dick (1956), The Unforgiven (1960), The Misfits (1961), Freud (1962), The Night of the Iguana (1964) and The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966), but these later films, although sometimes well-regarded, did not rise to the level of his earlier work. He did, however, deal with topics that others would not touch at that time, including homosexuality and psychoanalysis.

The six-foot-two-inch, brown-eyed director also acted in a number of films, with distinction in Otto Preminger’s The Cardinal for which he was nominated for the Academy award for Best Supporting Actor and in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown as the film’s central heavy against Jack Nicholson; he also had a good role in The Wind and the Lion. He also appeared in numerous roles in films best forgotten, but they did pay his fee, giving him the wherewithal to pursue his interests; two of those parts were in the terrible films Candy (1968) and Myra Breckinridge (1970).

Move to Ireland, Then Mexico

As supporters of human rights, Huston, director William Wyler, and others formed the «Committee for the First Amendment» in 1947; its goal was to undermine the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in its investigations of Communist influence in the film and theater worlds. Huston was disgusted with the blacklist in Hollywood so he moved to Saint Clerans in Ireland. He became an Irish citizen along with his fourth wife, ballet dancer Enrica (Ricki) Soma. They had two children, including their daughter Anjelica, who went on to have a great Hollywood career of her own. Huston moved yet again to Mexico where he married (1972) and divorced (1977) his fifth and final wife, Celeste Shane.

Academy Awards

In 1941, Huston was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Maltese Falcon. He was nominated again and won in 1948 for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, for which he also received the Best Director award.

Huston received 15 Oscar nominations in the course of his career. In fact, he is the oldest person ever to be nominated for the Best Director Oscar when, at 79 years old, he was nominated for Prizzi’s Honor (1985). He also has the unique distinction of directing both his father Walter and his daughter Anjelica in Oscar-winning performances (in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Prizzi’s Honor, respectively), making the Hustons the first family to have three generations of Academy Award winners.

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Charles Dickens. Famous people in English. Personajes famosos en inglés.

Charles Dickens biography:

 

Charles Dickens (1812-1870), novelist, was born on 7 February 1812 in Portsmouth, England, son of John Dickens, a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, and his wife Elizabeth, née Barrow. Dickens received intermittent schooling and indifferent care from his parents who were once obliged to take up residence in Marshalsea prison for debt. First apprenticed to the law, he began writing unpaid pieces for popular journals. Sketches by ‘Boz’, Dickens’s pseudonym, were published in two volumes in 1836 and The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club in 1837. Sam Weller and Mr Pickwick created a world-wide furore and Dickens’s imitators were legion. Pickwick parties were held as far apart as Canada and Kangaroo Island, whilst the first pirated edition of Pickwick Papers was printed by Henry Dowling of Tasmania in 1838.

Fame was assured for Dickens with the publication of Oliver Twist in 1838 and Nicholas Nickleby in 1839. As novelist, journalist, public speaker and social critic, his popularity was universal and the world of his novels changed contemporary attitudes. At first aware of Australia only as a place of penal servitude, Dickens in Pickwick Papers has the convict, John Edmunds, transported and sent up country as a shepherd. The infamous Mr Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby is similarly sent to the colony. Always fascinated by crime, Dickens acquired knowledge of Norfolk Island from his friend Alexander Maconochie. He never forgot Australia’s prison origins and in his last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend (1865), Jenny Wren threatens her delinquent father with transportation. Similarly in David Copperfield, Mr Littimer and Uriah Heep are dispatched to Australia to complete their sentences.

In 1849 Dickens was writing David Copperfield and faced with the problem of a satisfactory disposition of Micawber and his family. He had already met Samuel Sidney, who was advocating Australia as a home for working class emigrants, and Mrs Caroline Chisholm through a common friend, Sidney Herbert. The last chapters of David Copperfield embodied material from Sidney’s Australian Hand-Book (1848) and Wilkins Micawber duly became the best known emigrant to Port Middlebay (Melbourne) where he attained affluence and the office of magistrate. Micawber was accompanied by little Em’ly, Peggotty, Martha Endell and Mrs Gummidge. The downtrodden schoolmaster, Mr Mell, founded an academy for boys at Port Middlebay and his fiddling and oratory delighted colonial society.

Household Words, Dickens’s journal, began publication in 1850 and the first article was an approving exposition of Mrs Chisholm’s Family Colonization Loan Society. Later articles and stories in that year were written by Samuel Sidney. The discovery of gold lent feasibility to Micawber’s success and mitigated the country’s reputation as a gaol. In Great Expectations (1861) Dickens created Magwitch, the convict who amassed wealth in New South Wales and so produced an English gentleman.

Dickens had contemplated a lecture tour of Australia in 1862 and intended to write a travel book, ‘The Uncommercial Traveller Upside Down’, but the tour was abandoned. In Australia, as in England, his novels were adapted as stage plays; with Our Emily, Old Curiosity Shop and Cricket on the Hearth as perennial favourites. The articles from Household Words and All the Year Round were widely published in the Australian press and helped to impose Dickens’s own view of Australia on Australian life and society.

Dickens died on 9 June 1870. Of his surviving sons, Alfred D’Orsay Tennyson (b.1845), had migrated to Australia in 1865. He bought a partnership in a stock and station agency in Hamilton, Victoria, but after his wife died left in 1882 to join the Melbourne branch of his brother’s agency. After a lecture tour he died in the United States in 1912. The youngest son, Edward Bulwer Lytton (b.1852), went to Australia in 1869 and settled at Wilcannia where he became manager of Momba station; in 1880 he married Constance Desailly. He opened a stock and station agency, was elected to the local council and bought a share in Yanda station near Bourke. He lost heavily from bad seasons and in 1886 he became a civil servant. He represented Wilcannia in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1889-94. He died on 23 January 1902 at Moree and was buried by a Wesleyan minister.

 

 

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J. R. R. Tolkien. Famous people in English. Personajes famosos en inglés.

J.R. R. Tolkien biography:

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892, the son of English-born parents in Bloemfontein, in the Orange Free State of South Africa, where his father worked as a bank manager. To escape the heat and dust of southern Africa and to better guard the delicate health of Ronald (as he was called), Tolkien’s mother moved back to a small English village with him and his younger brother when they were very young boys. Tolkien would later use this village as a model for one of the locales in his novels. Within a year of this move their father, Arthur Tolkien, died in Bloemfontein, and a few years later the boys’ mother died as well.

The Tolkien boys lodged at several homes from 1905 until 1911, when Ronald entered Exeter College, Oxford. Tolkien received a bachelor’s degree from Oxford in 1915 and a master’s degree in 1919. During this time he married his longtime sweetheart, Edith Bratt, and served for a short time on the Western Front with the Lancashire Fusiliers (a regiment in the British army that used an older-style musket) during World War I (1914–18), when Germany led forces against much of Europe and America).

Begins writing

In 1917, Tolkien was in England recovering from «trench fever,» a widespread disease transmitted through fleas and other bugs in battlefield trenches. While bedridden Tolkien began writing «The Book of Lost Tales,» which eventually became The Silmarillion (1977) and laid the groundwork for his stories about Middle Earth, the fictional world where Tolkien’s work takes place.

After the war Tolkien returned to Oxford, where he joined the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary and began work as a freelance tutor. In 1920 he was appointed Reader in English Language at Leeds University. The following year, having returned to Oxford as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, Tolkien became friends with the novelist C. S. Lewis (1898–1963). They shared an intense enthusiasm for the myths, sagas, and languages of northern Europe, and to better enhance those interests, both attended meetings of the «Coalbiters,» an Oxford club, founded by Tolkien, at which Icelandic sagas were read aloud.

During the rest of Tolkien’s years at Oxford—twenty as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, fourteen as Merton Professor of English Language and Literature—Tolkien published several well-received short studies and translations. Notable among these are his essays «Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics» (1936), «Chaucer as a Philologist [a person who studies language as it relates to culture]: The Reeve’s Tale» (1934), and «On Fairy-Stories»(1947); his scholarly edition of Ancrene Wisse (1962); and his translations of three medieval poems: «Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,» «Pearl,» and «Sir Orfeo» (1975).

The Hobbit

As a writer of imaginative literature, though, Tolkien is best known for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, tales which were formed during his years attending meetings of the «Inklings,» an informal gathering of like-minded friends and writers, that began after the Coalbiters dissolved. The Inklings, which was formed during the late 1930s and lasted until the late 1940s, was a weekly meeting held in Lewis’s sitting room at Magdalen College, at which works-in-progress were read aloud and discussed and critiqued by the attendees. Inklings, Lewis urged Tolkien to publish The Hobbit, which appeared in 1937.

Tolkien retired from his professorship in 1959. While the unauthorized publication of an American edition of The Lord of the Rings in 1965 angered him, it also made him a widely admired cult figure in the United States, especially among high school and college students. Uncomfortable with this status, he and his wife lived quietly in Bournemouth for several years, until Edith’s death in 1971. In the remaining two years of his life, Tolkien returned to Oxford, where he was made an honorary fellow of Merton College and awarded a doctorate of letters. He was at the height of his fame as a scholarly and imaginative writer when he died in 1973, though critical study of his fiction continues and has increased in the years since.

The world of Middle Earth

Tolkien, a devoted Roman Catholic throughout his life, began creating his own languages and mythologies at an early age and later wrote Christian-inspired stories and poems to provide them with a narrative framework. Based on bedtime stories Tolkien had created for his children, The Hobbit concerns the efforts of a hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, to recover a treasure stolen by a dragon. During the course of his mission, Baggins discovers a magical ring which, among other powers, can render its bearer invisible. The ability to disappear helps Bilbo fulfill his quest; however, the ring’s less obvious powers prompt the evil Sauron, Dark Lord of Mordor, to seek it. The hobbits’ attempt to destroy the ring, thereby denying Sauron unlimited power, is the focal point of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which consists of the novels The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), The Two Towers (1954), and The Return of the King (1955). In these books Tolkien rejects such traditional heroic qualities as strength and size, stressing instead the capacity of even the humblest creatures to win against evil.

Throughout Tolkien’s career he composed histories, genealogies (family histories), maps, glossaries, poems, and songs to supplement his vision of Middle Earth. Among the many works published during his lifetime were a volume of poems, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (1962), and a fantasy novel, Smith of Wootton Major (1967). Though many of his stories about Middle Earth remained incomplete at the time of Tolkien’s death, his son, Christopher, rescued the manuscripts from his father’s collections, edited them, and published them. One of these works, The Silmarillion, takes place before the time of The Hobbit and tells the tale of the first age of Holy Ones (earliest spirits) and their offspring.

Nonetheless, Tolkien implies, to take The Lord of the Rings too seriously might be a mistake. He once stated that fairy stories in itself should be taken as a truth, not always symbolic of something else. He went on to say, «but first of all [the story] must succeed just as a tale, excite, please, and even on occasion move, and within its own imagined world be accorded literary belief. To succeed in that was my primary object.»

Nearly thirty years after his death, the popularity of Tolkien’s work has hardly slowed. In 2001 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was released as a major motion picture. The magic of Tolkien’s world won over both the critics and public alike as the movie was nominated in thirteen categories, including Best Picture, at the Academy Awards; it won four awards. Two more films are scheduled for release by the end of 2003.

 

 

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Burt Lancaster. Famous people in English. Personajes famosos en inglés.

Burt Lancaster Biography:

Burt Lancaster (1913-1994), one of the most popular film stars of all times, never wanted to be an actor.

Rugged, athletic, and handsome, Burt Lancaster enjoyed phenomenal success from his first film, The Killers, to his last, Field of Dreams — over a career spanning more than four decades. Boasting an impressively wide range, he delivered thoughtful, sensitive performances across a spectrum of genres: from film noir to Westerns to melodrama, he commanded the screen with a presence and power matched by only a handful of stars.

Lancaster was born November 2, 1913, in New York City. As a child, he exhibited considerable athletic and acrobatic prowess, and at the age of 17 joined a circus troupe, forming a duo with the diminutive performer Nick Cravat (later to frequently serve as his onscreen sidekick). He eventually joined the army, and, after acting and dancing in a number of armed forces revues, he decided to pursue a dramatic career. Upon hiring an agent, Harold Hecht, Lancaster made his Broadway debut in A Sound of Hunting, a role which led to a contract with Paramount. Because the release of his first picture, Desert Fury, was delayed, he initially came to the attention of audiences in 1946’s The Killers, a certified classic of film noir. It remained the genre of choice in several of his subsequent projects, including 1947’s Brute Force and I Walk Alone the following year.

After starring as Barbara Stanwyck’s cheating husband in Sorry, Wrong Number, Lancaster and his manager formed their own production company, Hecht-Lancaster, the first notable star-owned venture of its kind; more were to follow, and they contributed significantly to the ultimate downfall of the old studio system. Its formation was a result of Lancaster’s conscious effort to avoid «beefcake» roles, instead seeking projects which spotlighted his versatility as a performer. While the company’s first effort, the war melodrama Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, was not a success, they were nonetheless able to secure enough financial backing to break off completely from the mainstream Hollywood system. Still, Lancaster also continued to appear in studio productions. In 1949, he reunited with The Killers director Robert Siodmak at Universal for another excellent noir, Criss Cross, followed by Rope of Sand. He also signed a non-exclusive contract with Warner Bros., where he and Hecht produced 1950’s The Flame and the Arrow, a swashbuckler which was his first major box-office success.

After producing Ten Tall Men with Hecht, Lancaster starred in the MGM Western Vengeance Valley, followed by the biopic Jim Thorpe — All American. With Siodmak again directing, he next headlined the 1952 adventure spoof The Crimson Pirate, followed by Daniel Mann’s Come Back, Little Sheba opposite Oscar-winner Shirley Booth. A minor effort, South Sea Woman, followed in 1953 before Lancaster starred in the Fred Zinnemann classic From Here to Eternity, earning him a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his performance and, in his beachside rendezvous with co-star Deborah Kerr, creating one of the most indelible images in film history. Another swashbuckler, His Majesty O’Keefe, followed, and under director Robert Aldrich the actor headlined a pair of Westerns, Apache and Vera Cruz. Finally, in 1955, Lancaster realized a long-held dream and helmed his own film, The Kentuckian; reviews were negative, however, and he did not return to the director’s chair for another two decades.

Again working with Mann, Lancaster co-starred with another Oscar winner, Anna Magnani, in 1955’s The Rose Tattoo. Opposite Tony Curtis, he appeared in the 1956 hit Trapeze, and, with Katherine Hepburn, headlined The Rainmaker later that same year. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, a blockbuster featuring Lancaster as Wyatt Earp, followed, as did the acclaimed The Sweet Smell of Success. With Clark Gable, Lancaster starred in 1958’s Run Silent, Run Deep, followed by Separate Tables. For 1960’s Elmer Gantry, he won an Academy Award for his superb portrayal of the title character, a disreputable evangelist, and a year later co-starred in Judgment at Nuremberg. Under John Frankenheimer, Lancaster next portrayed The Birdman of Alcatraz, earning Best Actor honors at the Venice Film Festival for his sympathetic turn as prisoner Robert Stroud, an expert in bird disease. For John Cassavetes, he starred in 1963’s A Child Is Waiting, but the picture was the victim of studio interference and poor distribution.

Around the same time, Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti was trying to secure financing for his planned historical epic Il Gattopardo (aka The Leopard), and needed to cast an international superstar in the lead role; Lancaster actively campaigned for the part, and delivered one of the strongest performances of his career. Released in 1963, it was a massive success everywhere but in the U.S., where it was brutally edited prior to release. After two hit movies with Frankenheimer, the 1964 political thriller Seven Days in May and the 1965 war drama The Train, Lancaster starred in another Western, The Hallelujah Trail, followed by the 1966 smash The Professionals. A rare series of flops — The Swimmer, Castle Keep, and The Gypsy Moths — rounded out the decade, but by 1970 he was back at the top of the box office with Airport. Still, Lancaster’s star was clearly dimming, and he next appeared in a pair of low-budget Westerns, Lawman and Valdez Is Coming. After an underwhelming reunion with Aldrich, 1972’s Ulzana’s Raid, he attempted to take matters into his own hands, writing and directing 1974’s The Midnight Man in collaboration with Roland Kibbee, but it failed to attract much attention, either.

For Visconti, Lancaster next starred in 1975’s Gruppo di Famiglia in un Interno. Remaining in Europe, he also appeared in Bernardo Bertollucci’s epic 1900. Neither resuscitated his career, nor did Robert Altman’s much-panned Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson. Lancaster languished in a number of television projects before appearing in 1978’s Go Tell the Spartans, which, despite critical acclaim, failed to catch on. In 1980, however, he delivered a stunning turn as an aging gangster in Louis Malle’s excellent Atlantic City, a performance which earned him Best Actor honors from the New York critics as well as another Oscar nomination. Also highly acclaimed was his supporting role in the 1983 Bill Forsyth gem Local Hero. Heart trouble sidelined him for all of 1984, but soon Lancaster was back at full steam, teaming one last time with Kirk Douglas for 1986’s Tough Guys. Several more TV projects followed before he returned to feature films with 1988’s little-seen Rocket Gibraltar and the 1989 blockbuster Field of Dreams. In 1991, Lancaster made his final appearance in the telefilm Separate But Equal. He died October 20, 1994.

 

 

 

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Biografía de Henry Fonda. Famous people in English. Personajes famosos en inglés.

Early life and Family

He was born in Grand Island, Nebraska to William Brace Fonda and Herberta Krueger Jaynes, observant Christian Scientists. The Fonda family had emigrated westward from New York in the 1800s, and can trace its ancestry from Genoa, Italy, to The Netherlands in the 1500s, and then to the United States of America in the 1600s, where they founded a still-extant town called Fonda, New York.

Early records show the family ensconced in northern Italy in the sixteenth century where they fought on the side of the Reformation, fled to Holland, intermarried with Dutch burghers’ daughters, picked up the first names of the Low Countries, but retained the Italianate Fonda. Before Pieter Stuyvesant surrendered Nieuw Amsterdam to the English the Fondas, instead of settling in Manhattan, canoed up the Hudson River to the Indian village of Caughawaga. Within a few generations, the Mohawks and the Iroquois were butchered or fled and the town became known to mapmakers as Fonda, New York.

As a youth in Nebraska, Fonda was active in the Boy Scouts of America as a youth and was a Scoutmaster, but was not an Eagle Scout as some report. He then attended the University of Minnesota, majoring in journalism, although he did not graduate. At age twenty, he started his acting career at the Omaha Community Playhouse when his mother’s friend Dodie Brando, mother of Marlon Brando, needed a young man to play the lead in You and I. He went East to perform with the Provincetown Players and Joshua Logan’s University Players, an intercollegiate summer stock company and incubator of rising stars, where he worked with Margaret Sullavan, his future wife, and began a lifelong friendship with Jimmy Stewart.

Early career

Along with Stewart, Fonda headed for New York City, where the two were roommates and honed their skills on Broadway. Fonda appeared in theatrical productions from 1926 to 1934 and earned his first film appearance (1935) as the leading man in 20th Century-Fox’s screen adaptation of The Farmer Takes a Wife. He reprised his role from the Broadway production of the same name. When Fonda joined Stewart in Hollywood, Fonda shared Stewart’s house, and the two young glamorous stars gained a reputation for womanizing.

Fonda’s film career blossomed, as he followed up with an appearance in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, the first outdoor Technicolor movie, and the lead role in You Only Live Once (1937), directed by Fritz Lang.

World War II

Fonda played opposite Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve (1941), and was acclaimed for his role in The Ox-Bow Incident, but he then enlisted in the Navy to fight in World War II, saying, «I don’t want to be in a fake war in a studio.»

Previously, he and Stewart had helped raise funds for the defense of Britain from the Nazis. Fonda served for three years, initially as a Quartermaster 3rd Class on the destroyer USS Satterlee; he was later commissioned as a Lieutenant Junior Grade in Air Combat Intelligence in the Central Pacific and won a Presidential Citation and the Bronze Star.

Post-war career

After the war, Fonda appeared in the film Fort Apache (1948), and his contract with Fox expired. Refusing another long-term studio contract, Fonda returned to Broadway, wearing his own officer’s cap to originate the title role in Mister Roberts, a comedy about the Navy. He won a 1948 Tony Award for the part, and later reprised his performance in the national tour and 1955 film version opposite James Cagney, continuing a pattern of bringing his acclaimed stage roles to life on the big screen. On the set of Mister Roberts, Fonda came to blows with John Ford and vowed never to work for him again. He never did.

Career in the ’50s and ’60s

After a six-year break from Hollywood, Fonda returned in the critically acclaimed Mister Roberts, as Lt. Douglas Roberts, a role he had originated in the play. He followed this success with a string of classic films, the first being the big-budget Paramount Pictures production of the Leo Tolstoy epic War and Peace, in which Fonda played Pierre Bezukhov opposite Audrey Hepburn. Fonda worked with Alfred Hitchcock in 1956, playing a man falsely accused of murder in The Wrong Man.

In 1957, Fonda made his first foray into production with 12 Angry Men, based on a script by Reginald Rose and directed by Sidney Lumet. The intense film about twelve jurors deciding the fate of a young man accused of murder was well-received by critics worldwide. Fonda shared the Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations with coproducer Reginald Rose and won the 1958 BAFTA Award for Best Actor for his performance as the logical «Juror #8.» Henry Fonda vowed that he would never produce a movie ever again.

The sixties found Fonda in a number of war and western epics, including 1962’s The Longest Day and How the West Was Won, 1965’s In Harm’s Way and Battle of the Bulge, and the 1964 suspense film Fail-Safe, about possible nuclear holocaust. He also returned to more lighthearted cinema in 1963’s Spencer’s Mountain, the inspiration for the television program The Waltons, and 1968’s Yours, Mine and Ours.

He appeared against type as the villain «Frank» in 1968’s Once Upon a Time in the West. After turning down the role, he was talked into it by actor Eli Wallach and director Sergio Leone, who flew from Italy to the United States to persuade him to play the part. Fonda had planned on wearing a pair of brown-colored contact lenses, but Leone had worked important close-up shots of Fonda’s blue eyes into the film.

Fonda and Stewart costarred in the western The Cheyenne Social Club, a minor film in which the two humorously argued politics. Previously, they had appeared together in On Our Merry Way, a 1948 comedy featuring Carl «Alfalfa» Switzer.

Marriages and children

Henry Fonda was married five times. His marriage to Margaret Brooke Sullavan in 1931 soon ended in separation, which was finalized in a 1933 divorce. In 1936, he married Frances Ford Seymour. They had two children: Peter and Jane. In 1950, Seymour committed suicide. In 1950, Fonda married Susan Blanchard, the stepdaughter of Oscar Hammerstein II. Together, they adopted a daughter, Amy (born 1953), but divorced three years later, and in 1957 Fonda married Italian Countess Afdera Franchetti. They remained married until 1961. Soon after, Fonda married Shirlee Mae Adams and remained with her for seventeen years, until his death in 1982.

His relationship with his children has been described as «emotionally distant.

Jane Fonda also reported feeling detached from her father, especially during her early acting career. Henry Fonda introduced her to Lee Strasberg. In the late 1950s, when she asked him how he prepared before going on stage, he baffled her by answering, «I don´t know, I stand there, I think about my wife, Afdera, I don’t know.»

Fonda’s daughter shared this view: “My father can’t articulate the way he works. He just can’t do it. He’s not even conscious of what he does, and it made him nervous for me to try to articulate what I was trying to do. And I sensed that immediately, so we did very little talking about it. He said, ‘Shut up, I don’t want to hear about it.’ He didn’t want me to tell him about it, you know. He wanted to make fun of it.”

Late career

Despite approaching his seventies, Henry Fonda continued to work in both television and film throughout the 1970s. 1970 found Fonda in three films, the most successful of these ventures being The Cheyenne Social Club. The other two films were Too Late the Hero.

Fonda made a return to both foreign and television productions, which provided career sustenance through a decade in which many aging screen actors suffered waning careers. He starred in the ABC television series The Smith Family between 1971 and 72. 1973’s TV-movie The Red Pony, an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel, earned Fonda an Emmy nomination. After the unsuccessful Hollywood melodrama, Ash Wednesday, he filmed three Italian productions released in 1973 and 1974. The most successful of these, Il Mio nome è Nessuno (My Name Is Nobody), presented Fonda in a rare comedic performance as an old gunslinger whose plans to retire are dampened by a «fan» of sorts.

Henry Fonda continued stage acting throughout his last years, including several demanding roles in Broadway plays. He returned to Broadway in 1974 for the biographical drama, Clarence Darrow, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award.

Fonda’s health had been deteriorating for years, but his first outward symptoms occurred after a performance of the play in April 1974, when he collapsed from exhaustion. After the appearance of a heart arrhythmia, a pacemaker was installed, and Fonda returned to the play in 1975. After the run of the 1978 play, First Monday of October, he took the advice of his doctors and quit plays, though he continued to star in films and television.

In 1976, Fonda appeared in several notable television productions, the first being Collision Course, the story of the volatile relationship between President Harry Truman (E.G. Marshall) and General MacArthur (Fonda), produced by ABC. After an appearance in the acclaimed Showtime broadcast of Almos’ a, he starred in the epic NBC miniseries Captains and the Kings, based on Taylor Caldwell’s novel. Three years later, he appeared in ABC’s Roots: The Next Generation, but the miniseries was overshadowed by its predecessor, Roots. Also in 1976, Fonda starred in the World War II blockbuster Midway.

Like many aging actors, Fonda finished the seventies with a number of disaster movies, which cashed in on big names to drive box office sales. With the disaster genre’s popularity fading, Fonda filmed two last films; first the global disaster, Meteor, with Natalie Wood and Martin Landau; and then the Canadian production, City on Fire, which also featured Shelley Winters and Ava Gardner.

As Fonda’s health continued to suffer, and he took longer breaks between filming, critics began to take notice of his extensive body of work. In 1979, the Tony Awards committee gave Fonda a special award for his achievements on Broadway. Lifetime Achievement awards from the Golden Globes and Academy Awards followed in 1980 and 1981, respectively.

Fonda continued to act into the early eighties, though all but one of the productions he was featured in before his death were for television. These television works included the critically acclaimed live performance of Preston Jones’ The Oldest Living Graduate, the Emmy nominated Gideon’s Trumpet and 1981’s Summer Solstice, which teamed Fonda with Myrna Loy. This is the last film that Henry Fonda is credited for, and work began on it after the release of On Golden Pond.

Before Summer Solstice was made, however, 1981 brought Fonda’s last cinematic film, an adaptation of Ernest Thompson’s On Golden Pond. The film, directed by Mark Rydell, provided unprecedented collaborations between Fonda, Katharine Hepburn, and Fonda’s daughter, Jane. When premiered in December 1981, the film was well received by critics, and after a limited release on December 4th, On Golden Pond developed enough of an audience to be widely released on January 22nd. Thanks to eleven Academy Award nominations, the film earned nearly $120 million at the box office, becoming an unexpected blockbuster.

Death and legacy

Fonda died at his Los Angeles home on August 12, 1982, at the age of 77 after suffering from both heart disease and prostate cancer. Fonda’s wife Shirlee and daughter Jane were at his side when he died.

In the years since his death, his career has been held in even higher regard than during his life. He is widely recognized as one of the Hollywood greats of the classic era. On his 100th birthday, May 16, 2005, Turner Classic Movies honored him with a marathon of his films. Also in May of 2005, the United States Post Office released a thirty-seven cent postage stamp with an artist’s drawing of Fonda as part of their «Hollywood legends» series.

 

Aprender inglés en Madrid con profesores nativos

Olivia de Havilland biography. Famous people in English. Personajes famosos en inglés. Fotos.

Olivia de Havilland biography.

Olivia Mary de Havilland (born July 1, 1916) is a British-American actress whose career spanned from 1935 to 1988. She appeared in 49 feature films, and was one of the leading movie stars during the golden age of Classical Hollywood. She is best known for her early screen performances in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Gone with the Wind (1939), and her later award-winning performances in To Each His Own (1946), The Snake Pit (1948), and The Heiress (1949).

Born in Tokyo to English parents, de Havilland and her younger sister, actress Joan Fontaine, moved to California in 1919. They were raised by their mother Lilian, a former stage actress who taught them dramatic art, music, and elocution. De Havilland made her acting debut in amateur theatre in Alice in Wonderland and later appeared in a local production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which led to her playing Hermia in Max Reinhardt’s stage production of the same play and a movie contract with Warner Bros.

Olivia de Havilland made her screen debut in Reinhardt’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1935. She began her career playing demure ingénues opposite popular leading men, including Errol Flynn, with whom she made nine films. They became one of Hollywood’s most popular romantic on-screen pairings. She achieved her initial popularity in romantic comedy films, such as The Great Garrick (1937), and in Westerns, such as Dodge City (1939).

Her natural beauty and refined acting style made her particularly effective in historical period dramas, such as Anthony Adverse (1936), and romantic dramas, such as Hold Back the Dawn (1941). In her later career, she was most successful in drama films, such as Light in the Piazza (1962), and unglamorous roles in psychological dramas including Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).

As well as her film career, de Havilland continued her work in the theatre, appearing three times on Broadway, in Romeo and Juliet (1951), Candida (1952), and A Gift of Time (1962). She also worked in television, appearing in the successful miniseries, Roots: The Next Generations (1979), and television feature films, such as Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna, for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.

During her film career, de Havilland won two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two New York Film Critics Circle Awards, the National Board of Review Award for Best Actress, and the Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup. For her contributions to the motion picture industry, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. For her lifetime contribution to the arts, she received the National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush, and was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

After romantic relationships with Howard Hughes, James Stewart, and John Huston, de Havilland married author Marcus Goodrich, with whom she had a son, Benjamin. Following her divorce from Goodrich in 1953, she moved to Paris and married Pierre Galante, an executive editor for the French journal Paris Match, with whom she had a daughter, Gisèle. In 1962, she published Every Frenchman Has One, an account of her life in France. De Havilland and Joan Fontaine are the only siblings to have won Academy Awards in a lead acting category. A lifelong rivalry between the two resulted in an estrangement that lasted over three decades. She has lived in Paris since 1956, and celebrated her 100th birthday on July 1, 2016.

CURSOS DE INGLES EN MADRID.

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Susan Hayward Biography. Famous people in English. Personajes famosos en inglés. Fotos.

Susan Hayward Biography (1917-1975)

Susan Hayward was a talented and beautiful red headed American actress who began her career in sweet leading lady or in supporting roles, but who developed into an alluring temptress and later in her career gave several top drawer performances portraying strong women battling life-threatening problems. The top films from her golden period include ‘With a Song in My Heart’ in 1952, ‘I’ll Cry Tomorrow’ in 1955 and ‘I Want to Live’ in 1957, for which she won an Oscar for her outstanding and moving portrayal of convicted murderer Barbara Graham.

Biography

She was born Edythe Marrenner in the Brooklyn district of New York on June 30, 1917. Her father was a transportation worker and she had an elder brother and sister. The family lived in a tenement in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn and were extremely poor. Edythe and her brother, Wally, used to collect recyclable bottles and cans littered around the area, and sell them, to provide money to help feed the family.

When she was seven years old Edythe was involved in a car accident and fractured her hip. She was in a body cast for months and it was a year before she recovered fully. The injury left her with one leg an inch and half shorter than the other, and for the rest of her life she walked with a limp.

Schooling

Hayward attended Public School 181 in Brooklyn, and went on to The Girls’ Commercial High School. She had a difficult time at school, having few friends, and being the butt of other pupils’ taunts about her limp and poor clothes. All this changed when she was twelve and was cast in the lead role in the school production of ‘Cinderella in Flowerland’. She developed a love for acting and a dream to become a Hollywood actress.

For her success in school plays she was named «Most Dramatic» by her classmates and she furthered her interest in Hollywood by going to the movies at any chance she got, She was inspired particularly by Barbara Stanwyck, a Brooklyn girl who had found great screen success.

By the time Edythe graduated in 1935 aged eighteen, she had developed into a rare beauty with a shapely figure. Her setbacks had made her a very determined young lady and she was resolute about attaining fame and fortune.

Photographic Modeling

She began her working life as a photographer’s model for the Thornton Modeling Agency in New York. Colored photography was just becoming popular and Edythe’s red hair and peaches and cream complexion were perfect for the new colored advertisements. In 1937 the agency did a feature in the national weekly magazine, the Saturday Evening Post, and Edythe’s fame began to spread.

Early Hollywood Career 1938

Edythe stayed on in Hollywood and got herself an agent who quickly obtained a six-month contract for her with Warner Brothers. The studio changed her name to Susan Hayward and she began her movie career with bit parts in minor films, learning her new profession, and refusing, as her son later put it, to «play that casting couch game». She appeared as Ronald Reagan’s girlfriend in ‘Girls on Probation’ in 1938 but otherwise all her appearances were uncredited.

In March 1938 her father died and soon afterwards Warners decided not to renew her contract. Susan faced up to her problems and began a period of self-education, spending much time on improving her accent and pronunciation. Her hard work paid off and she secured a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures, becoming part of a group of fresh young talent including Evelyn Keyes, William Holden and Robert Preston.

Paramount 1939

Her first movie with the new studio was ‘Beau Geste’ in 1939, starring Gary Cooper and William Holden. It was a major step up in film quality for Susan and her performance was well received. She appeared in two more films in 1939, ‘Our Leading Citizen’ and ‘$1000 a Touchdown’. Neither film made an impact but she performed well and she began to be noticed by Hollywood producers.

The next few years showed Susan’s dramatic talent in a number of different movies. In 1941 she played a supporting role to Ingrid Bergman and Fay Wray in ‘Adam Had Four Sons’ and then stole the show in an unusual horror film, ‘Among the Living’, later the same year.

Hollywood Success 1942

Susan was appearing in better films with some of the cream of Hollywood stars. Her rise continued with ‘Reap the Wild Wind’ in 1942, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, in which she co-starred with John Wayne, Paulette Goddard and William Holden. Later in 1942 she played a witch in the comedy ‘I Married a Witch’ and after several unmemorable movies including performing a skit in Paramount’s war-effort movie, ‘Star Spangled Rhythm’, she appeared again with Wayne in 1944 in ‘The Fighting Seabees’. She continued to give a good account of herself in such movies as ‘Young and Willing’ and ‘Jack London’ in 1943, and ‘The Hairy Ape’ and ‘And Now Tomorrow’ in 1944 but she was still waiting for the roles which would propel her into the big league of leading ladies. She did not have to wait long.

Hollywood Star 1947

Between 1947 and 1958 Susan was nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award on five occasions, winning it once. Her first nomination was for her performance in ‘Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman’ in 1947 and she soon was nominated again for ‘My Foolish Heart’ in 1949. She was now one of the top names in Hollywood and she was able to pick and choose her scripts. She played the female lead Bathsheba opposite Gregory Peck in the Biblical epic ‘David and Bathsheba’ in 1951 and then received her third Best Actress nomination in 1952 for ‘With a Song in My Heart’.

In 1953 she was praised for her performance as Rachel Jackson, the wife of Andrew Jackson, in ‘The President’s Lady’ and after another well received Biblical epic, ‘Demetrius and the Gladiators’ in 1954, she received her fourth Oscar nomination in the same year, playing alcoholic singer Lillian Roth in ‘I’ll Cry Tomorrow’.

Best Actress Oscar 1958

Susan had come very close on four occasions but with her fifth nomination she finally won the Best Actress Award for her strong and moving performance as real-life killer, Barbara Graham, in ‘I Want to Live!’ released in 1957.

Susan’s career had definitely peaked and she made fewer films each year, devoting more of her time to domestic life with her second husband, Floyd Eaton Chalkley.

In 1961 she co-starred with Dean Martin in ‘Ada’ but in general the movies in the last part of her career were not up to the standard of her earlier ones. She continued making movies until 1972 when she made her final film, ‘The Revengers’.

Personal

Susan married twice. Her first husband was actor, Jess Barker, whom she married in 1944. They had two children, fraternal twin boys, Gregory and Timothy. The couple divorced in 1954 after a stormy marriage. The following year Susan took an overdose of sleeping pills in an apparent suicide attempt. She was rushed to hospital and fully recovered.

At Christmas of 1955 Susan met wealthy rancher Floyd Eaton Chalkley. They married in 1957 and settled into a happy and quiet life on Chalkley’s farm in Carrollton, in western Georgia. When Chalkley died in 1966 Susan was grief-stricken and went into mourning for three years.

Susan’s last appearance in public was when she presented the Best Actress Oscar at the 1974 Awards Ceremony. She was very ill and had to be physically supported by her friend, Charlton Heston.

She had been diagnosed with brain cancer in 1972 and given three months to live. Typically, she battled on.

Susan Hayward died on March 14, 1975, in Hollywood. She was 57. She was buried at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cemetery in Carrollton, Georgia.

 

CURSOS DE INGLES EN MADRID.

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Teléfono – 915433139

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DYLAN THOMAS. DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT. POESÍAS ESCOGIDAS EN INGLÉS. TRADUCIDAS AL ESPAÑOL. BIOGRAFÍA Y OBRAS.

Este mes hemos escogido un poema titulado «Do not go gentle into that good night» del poeta británico Dylan Thomas, uno de los poetas británicos de la primera mitad del siglo XX con mayor renombre y resonancia internacional.

 

Do not go gentle into that good night. Dylan Thomas.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

No te tomes a la ligera esa buena noche (traducción libre). Dylan Thomas.

No te tomes a la ligera esa buena noche.
La vejez debería delirar y arder cuando se termina el día;
Rabia, rabia, contra la muerte de la luz.

Aunque los sabios en su final sepan que la oscuridad es justa,
porque sus palabras no cultivaron relámpagos
no se toman a la ligera esa buena noche.

Los buenos, la última ola, lloran tan brillantes
Sus frágiles acciones podrían haber bailado en una bahía verde

rabia, rabia contra la muerte de la luz.

Hombres salvajes que atraparon y cantaron al sol en su vuelo,
y aprenden, demasiado tarde, se lamentaron en su camino
No se tomaron a la ligera esa buena noche

Los solemnes, cercanos a la muerte, que ven con mirada cegadora
cuánto los ojos ciegos pudieron brillar como meteoros y estar alegres
rabia, rabia contra la muerte de la luz.

Y tú, mi padre, allí en el triste apogeo,
maldice, bendice, que yo ruego ahora con la vehemencia de tus lágrimas.
No te tomes a la ligera esa buena noche.
Rabia, rabia contra la muerte de la luz.

 

Dylan Marlais Thomas nació en Swansea, Reino Unido, 27 de octubre de 1914 y murió en Nueva York, 9 de noviembre de 1953. Fue un poeta, escritor de cuentos y dramaturgo británico.

Famoso por ser un bohemio y famoso también por su vozarrón cautivante, que atraía, cual cantante juvenil, a cientos de personas a sus recitales poéticos, o a pegarse al receptor cuando hablaba en la BBC. Poeta precoz y repentinamente fallecido, el caos y el exceso fueron su camino a la genialidad.

Su precocidad se notaba ya desde su infancia: a los 4 años es capaz de recitar de memoria Ricardo II de Shakespeare. Su padre, David John Thomas (1876–1952), fue un escritor frustrado, graduado con honores de la Universidad de Aberystwyth y profesor de una escuela primaria (la Swansea Grammar School, donde estudió Dylan). Vio en su hijo el enorme talento que estaba germinando y procuró fomentar su formación.

 

 

A los 16 años Thomas abandonó la escuela para convertirse, a instancias de su padre, en periodista del South Wales Evening Post. Es en esta publicación donde comienzan las dotes de escritor de Thomas. Redactó obituarios poéticamente, y críticas de cine y teatro donde no dejó títere con cabeza, despedazando a lo más granado de las tablas galesas de por aquel entonces (ya muestra su propensión al escándalo). Después de una ardua jornada de trabajo solía apagar su sed insaciable en el bar del Antelope Hotel o en el bar del Mermaid Hotel, donde escuchaba las historias de los marineros ingleses, mientras se emborrachaba. Tras 18 meses de labor en el South Wales Evening Post abandonó el trabajo bajo mucha presión. Se unió a un grupo teatral en Mumbles llamado Little Theatre, aunque prosiguió con su labor periodística de manera independiente.

Se inclinó, sin embargo, hacia la poesía.

 

 

Obras

La obra de Thomas no es muy extensa, pero es de una calidad y una frescura inusitadas. Fueron cuatro los ámbitos literarios en los que incursionó: el cuento corto, el guion teatral, el guion para radio y cine, y, finalmente, la poesía. Es este último ámbito en el que más se le ha reconocido.

En mayo de 1933, tras partir de Swansea hacia Londres el año anterior, Thomas publicó en el New English Weekly varios de los poemas por los que es más reconocido: “And death shall have no dominion» “Before I Knocked” and “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower» (poema supuestamente dedicado a su primera novia e hija, que murieron ahogadas en 1931).

 

 

En 1934 comenzó a publicar sus poemas en The Listener y para el 18 de diciembre de ese mismo año publicó su primer libro: Eighteen Poems (1934), por el que ganó el concurso organizado por The Sunday Referee. Ya había ganado renombre con publicaciones de los poemas que se reunirían en sus primeros libros en diversas revistas, tales como New Stories, New Verse, Life and Letters Today, The Criterion (donde era director el escritor T. S. Eliot).

El lirismo apasionado y la musicalidad de la poesía de Thomas contrastan con el resto de la poesía de su tiempo, más preocupada por cuestiones sociales o por la mera experimentación modernista de la forma. Thomas evidencia en estos poemas la influencia del surrealismo inglés, y también recoge influencias de la tradición celta, bíblicas o bien símbolos sexuales. Para Thomas “la poesía debe ser tan orgiástica y orgánica como la cópula, divisoria y unificadora, personal pero no privada, propagando al individuo en la masa y a la masa en el individuo”.

 

 

Thomas sigue muy activo. Asentado ya en Londres, llega a procurarse, mediante su poesía, un círculo de lectores y de amistades literarias. En 1936 contrae matrimonio con Caitlin MacNamara, al tiempo que publica su segundo libro Twenty-Five Poems, que no hace sino consolidar su reputación entre la crítica y los lectores. Con todo, las cosas no van bien económicamente. Sumido en la pobreza, cae en el alcoholismo y es con la bebida como encuentra la lucidez que le permite crear las imágenes oscuras y delirantes que hicieron famosa su poesía.

Hacia 1939 Europa empieza a vivir el horror de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Dylan Thomas quiere alistarse, pero se le declara no apto para el combate.

Entonces empieza su carrera radiofónica, para la cual demostró un particular talento, especialmente como guionista y locutor. Realizó alrededor de 200 grabaciones para la BBC y escribió el guion de al menos cinco películas en 1942 auspiciadas por Strand Films.

En 1946 aparece la que es considerada su obra cumbre Deaths and Entrances (Muertes y entradas). Viaja a Estados Unidos donde incursiona en el guion de cine, que no llegará a ver en pantalla.

En 1952 se publica una recopilación de sus poemas entre 1934 y 1952 (Collected Poems. 1934-1952), por la que le otorgan el premio Foyle de poesía. En la compilación está incluido uno de sus más reconocidos poemas, Do not go gentle into that good night, escrito como una elegía heterodoxa ante la muerte de su padre.

Mientras redactaba el guion de una obra de Ígor Stravinski, el 9 de noviembre de 1953 a las 12.40 horas, en el Hospital St. Vincent de Nueva York Thomas murió. Se ha creído por mucho tiempo que Thomas arrastraba una fuerte Depresión Endógena debido a una trágica historia de amor que vivió en su juventud en Gales, pese a esto familiares y amigos nunca corroboraron la veracidad de la historia ni la existencia de la supuesta novia de Dylan, Rose Souther ni de su hija Esther Thomas Souther. En el análisis post-mortem, el patólogo encontró que la causa inmediata de muerte había sido una inflamación del cerebro causada por la carencia de oxígeno que acompaña a la pneumonía. Sus últimas palabras fueron «he bebido 18 vasos de whisky, creo que es todo un récord».

 

 

Bibliografía

• Dieciocho poemas 1934

• Veinticinco poemas 1936

• El mapa del amor (The Map of Love) 1939

• Retrato del artista cachorro (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog— Autobiográfico) 1940

• Nuevos poemas (New Poems) 1943

• Muertes y entradas (Death and Entrances) 1946

• Veintiseis poemas 1950

• En el sueño campestre (In Country Sleep) 1952

• Aventuras en el tráfico de pieles (Adventures In The Skin Trade— Póstuma) 1953

• Bajo el bosque lácteo (Under Milk Wood— Obra radiofónica) 1954

• Una mañana muy temprano (Quite Early One Morning— Preparado por Thomas y publicado póstumamente) 1954

• El Doctor y los demonios (The Doctor and the Devils and Other Scripts) 1954

• La Navidad de un niño en Gales (A Child’s Christmas in Wales— Publicado póstumamente) 1954—1955

Academia de Inglés Paraninfo
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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. DEDICATION. POESÍAS ESCOGIDAS EN INGLÉS. TRADUCIDAS AL ESPAÑOL. BIOGRAFÍA Y OBRAS.

Este mes hemos escogido un poema titulado Dedication del famoso escritor Robert Louis Stevenson.  Este autor británico ha pasado a la Historia principalment por su novela La Isla del Tesoro.

 

Robert Louis Stevenson. Dedication.

My first gift and my last, to you

I dedicate this fascicle of songs

The only wealth I have:

Just as they are, to you.

I speak the truth in soberness, and say

I had rather bring a light to your clear eyes,

Had rather hear you praise

This bosomful of songs

Than that the whole, hard world with one consent,

In one continuous chorus of applause

Poured forth for me and mine

The homage of ripe praise.

I write the finis here against my love,

This is my love’s last epitaph and tomb.

Here the road forks, and I

Go my way, far from yours.

 

Robert Louis Stevenson. Dedicación. (Traducción libre al español)

Mi primer regalo y el último, para ti
Dedico este fascículo de canciones
,la única riqueza que tengo:
tal como son, para ti.

Digo la verdad en sobriedad, y digo
Prefiero traer una luz a tus ojos claros,
Prefiero oírte alabar
este seno de canciones.

Que todo él, Mundo duro con un consentimiento,
En un continuo coro de aplausos
Derramado para mí y mío
el homenaje de la alabanza fuerte.

Escribo el final aquí contra mi amor,
Este es el último epitafio y tumba de mi amor.
Aquí el camino se bifurca, y yo
Sigo mi camino, lejos del tuyo.

 

> Biografía y obras del autor Robert Louis Stevenson, en otra entrada del blog, pinchar aquí <<

 

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Phone number 915433137

ROBERT BRIDGES. LONDON SNOW. EROS. POESÍAS ESCOGIDAS EN INGLÉS. TRADUCIDAS AL ESPAÑOL. BIOGRAFÍA Y OBRAS.

Este mes hemos seleccionado dos poemas: London Snow y Eros, del poeta inglés Robert Bridges (Poeta laureado en 1913).

 

London Snow By Robert Bridges

When men were all asleep the snow came flying,

In large white flakes falling on the city brown,

Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,

      Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;

Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;

Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:

      Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;

Hiding difference, making unevenness even,

Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.

      All night it fell, and when full inches seven

It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,

The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;

      And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness

Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:

The eye marvelled—marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;

      The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;

No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,

And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.

      Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,

They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze

Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;

      Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;

Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder,

‘O look at the trees!’ they cried, ‘O look at the trees!’

      With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,

Following along the white deserted way,

A country company long dispersed asunder:

      When now already the sun, in pale display

Standing by Paul’s high dome, spread forth below

His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.

      For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;

And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,

Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:

      But even for them awhile no cares encumber

Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,

The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber

At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken.

Eros By Robert Bridges

Why hast thou nothing in thy face?

Thou idol of the human race,

Thou tyrant of the human heart,

The flower of lovely youth that art;

Yea, and that standest in thy youth

An image of eternal Truth,

With thy exuberant flesh so fair,

That only Pheidias might compare,

Ere from his chaste marmoreal form

Time had decayed the colours warm;

Like to his gods in thy proud dress,

Thy starry sheen of nakedness.

Surely thy body is thy mind,

For in thy face is nought to find,

Only thy soft unchristen’d smile,

That shadows neither love nor guile,

But shameless will and power immense,

In secret sensuous innocence.

O king of joy, what is thy thought?

I dream thou knowest it is nought,

And wouldst in darkness come, but thou

Makest the light where’er thou go.

Ah yet no victim of thy grace,

None who e’er long’d for thy embrace,

Hath cared to look upon thy face.

La nieve de Londres por Robert Bridges (traducción libre al español)

Cuando los hombres estaban todos dormidos la nieve llegó volando,
En grandes copos blancos cayendo sobre la ciudad marrón,
Sigilosamente y perpetuamente depositándose y cayendo libremente,
      Silenciando el tráfico más reciente de la ciudad somnolencia;
Amortiguando, silenciando, ahogando sus murmullos cayendo;
Con pereza e incesantemente flotando y cayendo:

En silencio cernidos y cubriendo con velo la carretera, el techo y barandilla;
Ocultación de división, haciendo el desnivel  nivelado,
dentro de ángulos y grietas suavemente a la deriva y navegando.
       Durante toda la noche cayó, y cuando las completas  pulgadas siete
se tendían en la profundidad de su no compactada ligereza,
Las nubes volaron desde un alto y escarchado cielo;

Y todo se despertó más temprano por  el brillo desacostumbrado
del amanecer de invierno, el extraño resplandor no celeste:
El ojo se maravilló-maravilló de la blancura deslumbrante;
       El oído escuchó la quietud del aire solemne;
No hay sonido del estruendo de la rueda ni del pie que cae,
Y los gritos ocupados por la mañana llegaron delgados y libres.

Entonces oí a chicos, mientras iban a la escuela, llamando,
Recogieron el maná de cristal para congelar
Sus lenguas con su degustación, sus manos con bolas de nieve;
       O se alborotaron a la deriva, cayendo hasta las rodillas;
O mirando hacia arriba desde debajo de la maravilla del musgo blanco,
‘O mirar a los árboles! «Gritaron,’ O mirar a los árboles!
       Con disminuida carga unos pocos carritos crujen y se mueven con torpeza,
Siguiendo por el desierto camino blanco,
Una gran empresa del país se dispersa en pedazos;

Cuando ahora ya el sol, en pálida disposición
De pie junto a alta cúpula de Pablo, extendiendo a continuación
Sus rayos brillantes, y despertaron el revuelo del día.
       Por ahora las puertas abiertas, y hace la guerra con la nieve;
Y los trenes de hombres sombríos, cuento pasado en entregas,
Pisa largos caminos de color marrón, como hacia su trabajo van:
       Pero incluso para ellos un tiempo sin preocupaciones cargan
Sus mentes desviadas; la palabra diaria no es pronunciada,
Los pensamientos diarios de trabajo y dolor de pijamas
A la vista de la belleza que los recibe, por el encanto que han roto.

Eros Por Robert Bridges (traducción libre al español).

¿Por qué no haces nada en tu rostro?
Tú ídolo de la raza humana,
Tú tirano del corazón humano,
La flor de la juventud preciosa que es arte;
Sí, y que estás, en tu juventud
Una imagen de la verdad eterna,
Con tu carne exuberante tan hermosa,
que sólo Fidias podría comparar,

antes de su casta de forma marmórea
El tiempo había desintegrado los colores cálidos;
Al igual que a sus dioses en tu vestido de orgullo,
Tu brillo estrellado de la desnudez.

Seguramente tu cuerpo es tu mente,
Porque en tu rostro no hay nada que encontrar,
Sólo tu sonrisa suave no cristiana,
Que las sombras ni el amor ni el engaño,
sino la voluntad descarada y un poder inmenso,
En secreto inocencia sensual.

Oh rey de la alegría, ¿cuál es tu pensamiento?
Sueño tú sabes qué es la nada,
Y harías que la oscuridad venga, pero tú
haces a la luz donde tú  vas.
Ah todavía ninguna víctima de tu gracia,
Ninguno de los que han sido rodeados por tu abrazo,
¿Han atendido a mirar sobre tu cara?

Robert Bridges nació el 23 de octubre de 1844 en Walmer; y falleció el 21 de abril de 1930. Fue un poeta inglés gran amigo de Gerard Manley Hopkins. Obtuvo la Orden del Mérito.

Vida

Nació en Walmer, en el condado inglés de Kent, al sureste de Londres. Se educó en el Colegio Eton y en el Colegio Corpus Christi de la Universidad de Oxford. Allí conoció a Gerard Manley Hopkins, con el cual mantendría una amistad hasta la muerte de éste en 1889. Realizó estudios de medicina en el Hospital St. Bartholomew de Londres. Ejerció como médico en el hospital para niños Great Ormond Street, pero después de contraer una neumonía, tuvo que retirarse en 1882. Tras haberse recuperado se dedicó plenamente a la escritura, aunque su carrera literaria no comenzó ahí, sino que unos años antes, en 1873, ya había publicado un libro de poesía. En 1913 fue nombrado poeta laureado.

 

 

En 1884 se casó con Monica Waterhouse, que era hija de Alfred Waterhouse, con la que tuvo tres hijos, de los cuales se encuentra la poetisa Elizabeth Daryush. Vivieron en Yattendon, después en Boar’s Hill, y finalmente en Oxford, donde Robert Bridges fallecería en 1930.

Fue gracias a él que la poesía de su amigo Gerard Manley Hopkins fue reconocida después del fallecimiento de éste, ya que publicó, en 1918, un libro donde se recogía prácticamente la obra completa de Hopkins.

 

 

Sus obras principales

Poesía

• 1876-89: The Growth of Love (1876;1889)

• 1884: Prometheus the Firegiver: A Mask in the Greek Manner (1884)

• 1885: Nero (1885)

• Eros and Psyche: A Narrative Poem in Twelve Measures (1885;1894). Una historia basada en Apuleyo.

• 1890: Return of Ulysses

• 1890: Shorter Poems, libros I – IV

• 1894: Shorter Poems, libros I – V

• Ibant Obscuri: An Experiment in the Classical Hexameter

• 1918: The Necessity of Poetry

• 1920: October and Other Poems

• 1925: New Verse

• 1925: The Tapestry: Poems

• 1929-30: The Testament of Beauty

Críticas y ensayos

• 1893: Milton’s Prosody, With a Chapter on Accentual Verse

• 1895: Keats

• 1916: The Spirit of Man

• 1927-36: Collected Essays, Papers, Etc.

 

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