Showing posts with label People. Show all posts
Showing posts with label People. Show all posts

People React on Air Canada’s Lie about Lost Luggage

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Air Canada accused of 'lying' to customers to avoid paying up to $2,100 for lost. The Airline says it approves 'reasonable interim expenses.' Scott Bissell says an Air Canada agent told him the airline wouldn’t reimburse him for toiletries and other necessities after the airline lost his luggage during a family vacation to Florida.


People Reaction:

“Air Canada Motto “We’re not happy until you’re not happy”” - Kelly Nichol

“One time I flew air Canada to Toronto ended up in China never again!!!!” - Brooklyn Noël

“AC mistagged my bag a few weeks ago, I was going from Vancouver to Montreal and my bag was found in Brussels. I needed to purchase a suit to wear for the next day. Everyone I spoke with in person at the airport, on the phone and by email were all very helpful. Within 2 weeks I received a full reimbursement for all expenses.” - Andrew Bethel

“People still fly Air Canada???” - Bev Stephens

“Air Canada is the absolute worst.” - Michelle Clare

“Air Canada did him wrong - YES. Air Canada being “cheap” on paying him his expenses - YES. But no way he had 2000$ worth if stuff else he would have a travel insurance to cover his luggage lost. But really ruin his whole vacations? I wouldn’t have shop everyday, go once by the necessary and move on. How much clothes do you need ? 1 pair of short, bathing suit, 2 T-shirt and a nice shirt, 1 hoodie, 2-3 underwear and you are good, wash them in the sink and you can survive more than 1 week. Then do your call the first day and that’s about it. Never pack your valuables in a luggage that’s OBVIOUS. And always bring a carry on with minimal clothing in case they lose your luggage .:.: it happens” - Roxane Duguay

“I always pack a carryon with necessities & a change of clothes at the bare minimum.” Charlie Falls

“Omg the drama queen. Every day he would spend hours shopping for the things he needed that day? Holy crap bag grow up. It sucks yes but do 1 shopping trip for the vacation and be done with it. Grow up.” - Kyle Pearson

“Air Canada you say!?! Shocked I am (not).” - Charles Sleep

“This company is sick. I hope the new discount carriers and Westjet’s new premium service drown them to bankruptcy” - Rory Nussbaumer

“Time for a huge overhaul of this industry” - Maxime Poulin

“I have experienced ridiculous troubles with Air Canada in the past. I’ve not flown them since. It costs a lot of MY money to fly.” - Sherry Kalil

“AC hates paying any compensation. I volunteered to take another flight, they knew there were mechanical issues but said everything was fine when I asked. I ended up getting home almost 4 hours LATER than my original flight. They offered me 20% off my next flight - doesn’t even cover the taxes.” - Kim Rosenberg

“Air Canada made us keep our receipts and submit them to be reimbursed, for 4 of us Air Canada gave us a total of $56.00” - Allane Brine

People React on Justin Trudeau Defends His Record on Trade

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The Prime Minister of Canada addresses Alberta's oil issues, tariffs from the U.S. and how his temperament has changed in The National interview. 


Netizen Reaction:

“Must feel good for him to be interviewed on a news site that he bought with our tax dollars” - Dave Porter

“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is great leadership for Canada” - Rob Scholl

“Hey Justin. Just watching your interview with Rosy. Thought it was great!!! Keep it up man.. you're the man and I'm one who definitely has your back. Merry Christmas, it's going to be a fantastic New Year. Cheers to you, Sophie and kids. Michael in Kelowna.” - Michael Wieshlow

“I bet his panties match his socks.” - Libby Bee

“Scheer for PM” - Christos Tsarouhas

“He’s doing well in the interview folks, sorry!” - Geraldine Gerry O'Brien

“Lol. CBC scrambling to earn its share of the $600 million.” - Darren Fuerst

“Sad we all know he has failed all of Canada in His Negotiation...” - Edward Billy Blackned

“Record of mismanagement!” - Michael Gerry

“Did Rosemary Barton take a selfie with Justin after the interview?” - Anh Khoi Do

“Glad he found time on another of his personal days.........for the CBC...” - Tim Reid

“I’m suprised, in interviews politicians usually talk about how crappy their records are.” - Martin Riley

“Wow! Such intelligent comments from the Trudeau haters. Yes, you’ve convinced me that I should join your ranks!!!!” - Annette Hilgarth

“I used to have respect for Rosemary Barton. Who wrote these questions? Better yet, who approved the obvious re-write? Another good journalist mellowed into a sycophant by the CBC.” - Ross Killbery

“Getting interviewed by his biggest taxpayer funded cheerleader. Wouldn't be surprised if she got him to sign her b**bies.” - Daniel Czarny

“Can we watch the full interview CBC. What is wrong with you, no wonder no one watches the National anymore.” - Patricia Sanghwan

“Those socks are hideous...” - Zolani Stewart

“Sorry, but neither I nor my husband can watch Rosemary Barton -- her aggressive and confrontational style is unbearable.” - Monika Doe

“Embarrassing lack of diplomacy on Rosemary's part during this interview. PM Trudeau maintained composure throughout despite many uncalled for jabs and frankly insulting insinuations. I'm normally impressed with the new team on the National but this interview has affected my opinion of Ms. Barton. Specifically I was boggled by questions around the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia's involvement in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. In such a sensitive and serious incident it is irresponsible to expect the leader of your country to act in a rash manner when supreme diplomacy is what is called for. The National has come to represent impartial journalism for Canadians but tonight we saw something else all together.I am not impressed” - Dave Chenier

“Wow! Pink socks! Women screams, lefties screams, and this alone is the proof that he is a wonderful PM material!” - Niam Young

Biography of American Actor and Singer Gene Autry

 
Gene Autry (1907–1998) was an American actor, singer, songwriter, and businessman who was one of the first, and the most successful, singing cowboys in movies. With his Tennessee walking horse Champion and his comic sidekick Smiley Burnette, Autry appeared in dozens of films during the 1930s and 1940s.


Orvon Gene Autry was born in Tioga, Tex., on Sept. 29, 1907, and raised in Oklahoma. He worked as a railroad telegraph operator from his late teens until 1928, when, on the advice of Western humorist Will Rogers, who heard him singing and playing the guitar, he went into radio and then recording. In 1931 he wrote and recorded the hit song That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine, the first record to be certified gold (for selling more than a million copies).

Autry made his movie debut as a dude ranch cowboy singer in 1934, in the Ken Maynard film In Old Santa Fe, the first of some 90 musical Westerns in which he appeared. Between 1939 and 1942, at the height of his career, he was one of the top ten box-office attractions, had his own radio show (Melody Ranch, which aired from 1904 to 1956), starred in national rodeos, and recorded numerous Western, folk, and novelty songs.

After serving in the Air Force from 1942 to 1945, Autry resumed his film career and moved into television, where his eponymous series was a fixture between 1950 and 1956. He retired from motion pictures in 1953 and television some ten years later, returning to the latter in the late 1980s to host, along with his postwar film and television sidekick, Pat Buttram, Melody Ranch Theatre on cable television's Nashville Network. Among the songs Autry made famous over the years—his recordings numbered over 600, more than half of which he wrote or co-wrote—were South of the Border; Mexicali Rose; Back in the Saddle Again (also the title of his 1978 autobiography, co-written with Mickey Herskowitz); Don't Fence Me In; Here Comes Santa Claus; Peter Cottontail; and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the second best-selling single of all time.

Autry's many business interests included film, broadcast, and music publishing companies; oil wells; and real estate. He was also the owner and chairman of the board of the California (later, Anaheim) Angels baseball team from its founding in 1961 until 1995, when he sold a 25% interest in the team to the Walt Disney Company. A longtime collector of Western art and memorabilia and champion of the importance and influence of the heritage of the American West, he was the founder and chief executive officer of the board of directors of the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, which opened in Los Angeles's Griffith Park in 1988 and is considered one of the premier institutions of its kind. Autry died at his home in the Studio City section of Los Angeles on Oct. 2, 1998.

The Life of Louis Armstrong, American Greatest Musician

 
Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) was an American jazz trumpeter, singer, and ensemble leader who became a major force in shaping jazz during the 1920s. An improviser who set new standards of melodic development and rhythmic flexibility, Louis Daniel Armstrong -or "Satchmo," as he was popularly known- was an exceptionally important jazz solo virtuoso on the trumpet. Before him, the collective identity of the ensemble had always been primary in jazz, but Armstrong, more than anybody else, helped the soloist to become preeminent in jazz.


Armstrong was born into a poor family in New Orleans on Aug. 4, 1901 (although for years he gave his birthdate as July 4, 1900), and was a street singer as a child. During his early teens, while in the New Orleans Colored Waifs' Home for Boys, he received his first instruction in music on the bugle and the cornet. After an apprenticeship as a trumpeter in New Orleans cabarets and on Mississippi riverboats, he was called to Chicago in 1922 to play second cornet in the orchestra of Joe "King" Oliver, a well-known New Orleans-trained musician. Later Armstrong was a featured soloist in the orchestras of Fletcher Henderson and Erskine Tate, and by the end of the 1920s, he had become leader of his own group -the Louis Armstrong Hot Five, later the Louis Armstrong Hot Seven. During these years he recorded a series of performances that influenced jazz musicians throughout the world.

In the following decades Armstrong led large bands (in the 1930s) and small ensembles (in the 1940s and beyond), recording prolifically. Beginning in 1932 with a triumphant appearance in England, he traveled often throughout the world as the foremost "goodwill ambassador" of American jazz music abroad. Armstrong died in New York City on July 6, 1971. He wrote two autobiographies, Swing That Music (1936 ; reprint, 1993) and Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans (1954; reprint, 1988).

Although Armstrong led groups of uneven quality, his own playing and singing were marked by an unusual consistency of achievement. The basic elements in his playing were a persistent use of blues coloration, disciplined power and technical mastery, a burnished clarity of tone, and a rhythmic resiliency rooted in a strongly pulsating sense of swing. His vocal work exemplifies the instrumentalized phrasing and textural resourcefulness essential to excellent jazz singing.

Armstrong did not adopt the more complex rhythmic and harmonic elements of the "modern jazz" that began in the early 1940s. Instead, he continued to perfect the classic, easily assimilated melodic improvising that he had developed during his early years. An expert in the more introspective nuances of the blues, he was essentially a lyrical player. His performances fused warmth, humor, and sheer joy in the act of creation—an artistry filled with exultant and sweepingly personal eloquence.

The Life of Great American Photographer Diane Arbus

 
Diane Arbus (1923–1971) was an American photographer who was best known for her direct, often stark, black-and-white portraits of human oddities -among them transvestites, giants, midgets, and nudists- which were radical in their originality of subject matter and approach. Equally candid and powerful were her images of children, such as the famous Identical Twins, Roselle, N.J., 1967. The disturbing honesty of her photographs, coupled with the mystery surrounding her suicide, contributed to the great influence Arbus had on a generation of photographers.


She was born Diane Nemerov on March 14, 1923, in New York City, where her parents owned Russeks, a fashionable Fifth Avenue fur and clothing store. The middle child of three, she grew up on Central Park West and attended the Ethical Culture and Fieldston schools. Her older brother, Howard, became a well-known poet, and her younger sister, Renée, also achieved recognition as an artist. When she was 14, Diane met Allan Arbus, who worked for Russeks, and they married four years later; they had two daughters, Doon and Amy.

From 1946 until 1969 the Arbuses supported themselves as fashion photographers, working for most of the major American fashion magazines. In the late 1950s Diane Arbus began seriously to pursue her own work, strongly encouraged by the photographer Lisette Model, with whom she studied in 1959. It was Model who helped Arbus identify her desire to photograph forbidden, traditionally taboo subject matter.

Arbus's first non-fashion magazine photographs appeared in Esquire magazine in 1960. She also photographed assignments for Harper's Bazaar, Show, and the London Sunday Times Magazine. She received Guggenheim Fellowships in 1963 and 1966, and in 1965 her work was included in the New Documents exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the only showing of more than a few of her photographs during her lifetime. She taught photography at the Parsons School of Design (1965–1966) and the Cooper Union (1968–1969) in New York City and also taught at the Rhode Island School of Design (1970–1971) in Providence. In 1970 she made a portfolio of ten of her photographs, which was to be the first of a series of limited editions of her work. Five portfolios were sold before Arbus committed suicide in her New York City apartment on July 26, 1971.

In July 1972 Arbus became the first American photographer to be exhibited at the Venice Biennale. In November of that year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City organized her retrospective, which traveled throughout the United States and Europe for seven years. The book that accompanied the exhibition sold over 200,000 copies. In just over ten years she had gone from being a respected photographer to being recognized as one of the most acclaimed and influential artists of her generation.

The Life of American Film Star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle

 
Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle (1887–1933) was an American film star and director whose great popularity was cut short at its height by a scandal in 1921. He was born Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle on March 24, 1887, in Smith Center, Kans., one of five children in a poor farming family that a year later moved to Santa Ana, Calif., in search of a better life. Arbuckle -"Fatty" was a cruel childhood nickname that stuck, though he never used it privately- took on various odd jobs before falling into show business is his early to mid-teens. By 1904 he was touring the United States and Asia in vaudeville, where his talents as a singer and comic brought him increasing success.


Arbuckle made his film debut in 1909, signing with the Selig Polyscope Company, where he appeared in five short comedies (all of one reel or less). After a brief stint at Nestor Comedies, in 1913 he made the career-changing move of signing with comedy great Mack Sennett's Keystone Film Company. Arbuckle was to remain with Sennett through 1917, during which time he became one of the most popular comic stars in films. He also began directing many of his own shorts.

Running from one-half to two reels, Arbuckle's films appealed to children and adults alike, with their mixture of broad slapstick, pie-throwing, and gentle humor. Even the lewdest jokes seemed harmless coming from the comic, who looked like a huge baby. Enormously obese and equally graceful, Arbuckle had soft, genial features, blond hair, and blue eyes, qualities that, added to his talent, helped make him one of the more endearing of Sennett's stock company. Joining him in these films were costars such as his nephew, Al "Fuzzy" St. John; newcomer Charlie Chaplin; Arbuckle's first wife, Minta Durfee; and Mabel Normand. Arbuckle and Normand made a particularly good team, their pairing, in short films such as Fatty's Flirtation (1913), Mabel and Fatty's Married Life (1915), and Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916), resulting in a deeper byplay than was usual in Sennett comedies.

In 1917 Arbuckle left Sennett and signed with the producers Joseph Schenck and Adolph Zukor at Paramount Pictures. He made 21 two-reel comedies through 1920, introducing into films his friend Buster Keaton, who appeared in 15 Arbuckle shorts -the first being The Butcher Boy (1917)- before branching out on his own. With his growing popularity, in 1920 Arbuckle was signed up for a series of full-length features by Famous Players-Lasky (to be released through Paramount). He made nine features in 1920 and 1921, beginning with The Round-Up. He starred in one of many versions of Brewster's Millions as well as Gasoline Gus, as a village rube; Life of the Party, as an attorney; and Leap Year, as an heir in love with a poor nurse.

Disaster struck on Labor Day weekend 1921, when Arbuckle cohosted a party at San Francisco's St. Francis hotel with the directors Lowell Sherman and Fred Fischbach. One of the guests was Virginia Rappe, a promising young starlet who had gained excellent press notices in films such as Paradise Garden (1917), A Twilight Baby (1920), and An Adventuress (1922). She was also reported to be engaged to the director Henry Lehrman. Rappe took ill during the party, and she was treated by the hotel doctor Arthur Beardsley but not taken to a hospital for several days. She died on September 9, and Arbuckle was indicted for murder. Unfounded press rumors that he had crushed Rappe while raping her essentially killed his acting career. Paramount dropped him, and his films already in release were banned. Rappe, too, was smeared by innuendo, with Arbuckle's partisans claiming that she had died from alcoholism or venereal disease. In fact, a 2000 investigation and examination of Rappe's autopsy report and medical records showed that she actually died from a ruptured bladder, due to an untreated urinary tract infection. Arbuckle was finally acquitted in 1922 but was left broke and with his reputation in tatters.

Arbuckle's career as a big-studio star may have been over, but in fact he never stopped working. In early 1923 the low-budget Educational Studios hired him to write, produce, and direct comedies. For the next nine years he was a regular employee at Educational, both under his own name and as "William Goodrich" (never Will B. Good, as rumor had it). He was responsible for a total of 52 one- and two-reel comedies, and in 1930 he broke into talking pictures, directing the Educational two-reeler Won by a Neck.

Educational was not Arbuckle's only employer at this time. He also had an unbilled cameo in Buster Keaton's Go West (1925), and in 1927 he codirected, with King Vidor, the Marion Davies feature The Red Mill for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Arbuckle returned to Paramount to direct the Eddie Cantor comedy Special Delivery (1927), and from 1930 to 1932 he wrote and directed a number of RKO talking comedies.

Arbuckle had not been seen on-screen in nearly a decade when Jack Warner signed him to star in a series of two-reel comedies for Vitaphone in Brooklyn, directed by Alf Goulding or Ray McCarey. A total of six were produced in 1932 and 1933, and they showed that Arbuckle's voice "photographed" well and that he had retained his comic talents. He completed shooting In the Dough with McCarey on June 29, 1933, and that night died in his sleep of a heart attack in New York City.

Unlike the reputations of his costars Chaplin and Keaton, that of Arbuckle has languished, and for decades he has been better known for the scandal and subsequent trial than for his career. That may change, however, with the 2005 release of the digital video disc (DVD) set The Forgotten Films of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. The four DVDs contain 32 restored Arbuckle comedies, which he appears in or directed; other stars featured in the silent and sound films are Chaplin, Keaton, Normand, Harold Lloyd, and Douglas Fairbanks.

The Life of American Singer Marian Anderson

 
Marian Anderson (1897–1993) was an American singer who was the first African American soloist to appear with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Anderson's deep, rich-textured contralto had a versatility that ranged from the direct simplicity of African American spirituals to the dramatic grandeur of opera. It prompted Toscanini to remark that "a voice like hers comes only once in a century."


Anderson was born on Feb. 27, 1897, in Philadelphia, Pa., where she sang in church choirs and studied voice under Giuseppe Boghetti. In 1925, after winning a competition against 300 other singers, she appeared with the New York Philharmonic. Subsequent engagements at home were few, so in 1930 she went to Europe to study and perform. From 1933 to 1935 she gave a series of acclaimed concerts abroad. Her reputation firmly established, she returned to the United States, where she gave a New York recital in December 1935, followed by a national tour.

In 1939 Anderson became the subject of a nationwide controversy. Because of her race the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused her the use of its Constitution Hall for a concert in Washington, D.C. Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR and helped sponsor a concert for Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial, where she sang for 75,000 (millions more listened over the radio).

In 1955 Anderson made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera as Ulrica in Verdi's Un Ballo in maschera. She resumed her concert career in 1957, singing around the world, and gave her last recital in 1965 at Carnegie Hall. She was an alternate U.S. delegate to the 13th General Assembly of the United Nations and was much honored with degrees and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1963) and the National Medal of Art (1986). Her autobiography, My Lord, What a Morning, was published in 1956. She died in Portland, Oreg., on April 8, 1993.

Biography of Albrecht Altdorfer

 
Albrecht Altdorfer (died 1538) was a German artist who is sometimes called the "Father of Landscape Painting." He was renowned in his lifetime as an engraver, painter, and architect. Altdorfer was born, probably in Regensburg, Bavaria, sometime before 1480. He was an important member of the city council there, and in 1526 became city architect. He built the city's wine cellars, slaughterhouse, and the tower of the city hall, none of which survive. He died at Regensburg on Feb. 12, 1538.


In 1528, Altdorfer refused the post of mayor to work on his major painting, The Battle of Alexander. This huge canvas, considered his most important work, is a good example of Altdorfer's style. The battling armies of Alexander and Darius include thousands of horsemen and soldiers, painted in minute detail and set in an imaginary landscape. The painting, confiscated by Napoleon but later returned to Germany, now hangs in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Altdorfer's other works hang in public and private collections in Berlin, Munich, Nünberg, and other German cities.

Altdorfer was a leading member of the "school of the Danube," a group of artists, including Lucas Cranach, who are considered the pioneers of modern landscape painting. Before their time, outdoor scenes had been used chiefly as background for the presentation of narrative themes. Their innovation was to evolve a style of pure landscape painting, telling no story, and often including no human figure. Many of Altdorfer's works, especially his water colors and etchings, show the emergence of this new style. He painted landscapes realistically and with great detail.

Altdorfer was also a master engraver in copper and wood. His movement toward pure landscape can be clearly seen in his engravings. He owed much to the influence of Albrecht Dürer, and may have been his pupil at one time.

A gradual change took place in Altdorfer's paintings after about 1510, reflecting his interest in architecture. He began to paint interiors, often influenced by Italian engravings or architectural drawings. An important example of this transition is his large Altarpiece of St. Florian. About 1518 he made a series of purely architectural drawings, including church interiors. These were often sketches for later paintings, such as The Birth of the Virgin. In these later works, the architecture became more elaborate. One of the most beautiful of his architectural fantasies is the palace that dominates the painting Susanna at the Bath.

The Life of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello

 
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello (1896–1974 and 1906–1959) were American comedy duo who became a huge box-office draw in a series of agreeably low-brow movies in the 1940s and 1950s. From their 1940 film debut in One Night in the Tropics through their 1956 effort Dance with Me, Henry, Abbott and Costello appeared together in 35 raucous comedies as well as a popular television series.


William Alexander "Bud" Abbott was born in Asbury Park, N.J., on Oct. 2, 1896. The son of a circus family (his father was an advance man, his mother a bareback rider), he left school early and entered show business from the management side, working as treasurer and manager of numerous theaters across the United States. He also organized "tab shows," small troupes of comics and singers who toured burlesque houses. By the late 1920s Abbott was appearing onstage as well, playing straight man to various vaudeville comics. Costello was born Lewis Francis Cristillo in Paterson, N.J., on March 6, 1906. His father ran a silk mill and wanted his son to go into medicine, but the boy began working in vaudeville right after graduating high school. By 1931 Abbott was working as an assistant cashier at Brooklyn's Casino Theater, where the renamed Lou Costello was half of a double act. One day Costello's straight man failed to show, and Abbott filled in; the two hit it off instantly.

The duo struggled through most of the 1930s, playing burlesque houses and lesser vaudeville theaters throughout the country, honing their act. A break came in 1938, when the singer Kate Smith booked them for her popular radio show, which led to an appearance in the hit Broadway revue Streets of Paris (1939). A scout for Universal film studios spotted them and signed them to a one-picture deal, as comic relief in the musical One Night in the Tropics (1940). They were such a hit that Universal signed them to long-term contracts. The first five Abbott and Costello star vehicles were directed by Arthur Lubin, who later recalled, simply but fondly, "I loved the boys so much and enjoyed working with them so much." Their first film with Lubin, Buck Privates (1941), featured the pair as unwitting enlistees; the film grossed an amazing $10 million. The team made 13 films between their debut and the end of World War II, all of them cheaply produced and highly profitable for Universal, and they reached number-one box-office status by 1942. Among their early hits were In the Navy (1941), with the Andrews Sisters; Pardon My Sarong (1942); It Ain't Hay (1943); Lost in a Harem and In Society (both 1944); and Here Come the Co-eds and The Naughty Nineties (both 1945). Their films offered little in the way of plot variation or expensive costars; mostly, the "Everymen" Bud and Lou were thrust into promising situations with great comic potential, be it the military, college, or the Wild West.

Abbott and Costello rarely appealed to the intellectual fans of the Marx Brothers, and they lacked the inherent sweetness of Laurel and Hardy; the style of the two was more akin to that of boisterous, roughhousing comics such as the Ritz Brothers and the Three Stooges, who also numbered among their biggest fans adolescent boys and bumptious GIs. Their humor sprang from the roots of burlesque, from Weber and Fields: broad characterizations (the impatient Abbott, the nervous Costello), puns and wordplay, slapstick, and pretty young women in distress. "The great success of Abbott and Costello was attributed by the critics to their old-fashioned knock-about style, combined with a modern toughness of talk," said the New York Times upon Costello's death.

Their most famous routine was "Who's on First?," a fast-paced masterpiece of double-talk and crossed signals involving a baseball team ("Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know's on third …"), with Costello working himself into a rage of sputtering confusion (their recording of this renowned bit gained them an entry into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1956, the first non-ball-playing celebrity inductees). They also revived and rejuvenated the classic vaudeville routine "Slowly I Turned" ("Step by step … inch by inch …"). Costello also successfully milked his two catch phrases, "Heeeey, Abbott!" and "I'm a baaaad boy."

With the end of World War II, the team ventured into comic, mostly horror tales: first The Time of Their Lives (1946), then a series of Abbott and Costello Meet … movies, wherein they encountered, among others, Frankenstein's monster (1948); the Killer (1949), played by Boris Karloff; the Invisible Man (1950); Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953); and the Mummy (1955). By this time their productions were distinctly low-budget, made to play the second half of double-bill matinees. The adult double entendres were a thing of the past, and their 1950s nonhorror films were essentially kids' shows: Comin' round the Mountain (1951), Lost in Alaska (1952), Jack and the Beanstalk (1952), Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953), and their last film together, the self-produced Dance with Me, Henry (1956). In 1952–1953 they starred in The Abbott and Costello Show on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) television network, portraying unemployed actors who were living in a boardinghouse.

Their personal relationship was sometimes fractious, and the pair parted company several times, finally, during a nightclub engagement in 1957. Following their breakup Costello made his only solo film, a comedy called The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock (1959). Before its release, he died of a heart attack in Los Angeles on March 3, 1959. Abbott made occasional appearances on TV and stage following Costello's death but never anything approaching a "comeback." He died of cancer in Woodland Hills, Calif., on April 24, 1974.

"The Boys" and their childish but good, clean, latter-day brand of humor have remained very popular and even been influential, and their films still appear on television and are widely available for video rental. Look-alikes show up on TV commercials, Hanna-Barbera used them in a 1966 animated series, and comedian Jerry Seinfeld, a devoted fan, hosted a 1994 TV special, Abbott and Costello Meet Seinfeld.

Biography of Ansel Adams

 
Ansel Adams was an American photographer whose majestic black-and-white landscapes of the American West and impeccable craftsmanship made him the most widely exhibited and recognized photographer of his generation. An ardent conservationist and environmentalist, Adams incorporated his sense of the redemptive beauty of the wilderness into a meticulous art form that conveyed both the innate grandeur of America's wild areas and the fragility of their preservation.


Ansel Easton Adams was born in San Francisco on Feb. 20, 1902. He took an early interest in music and became a self-taught pianist. In 1916 Adams took a trip to California's Yosemite National Park and made his first pictures with a Kodak Brownie camera. From that time on, the park, nature, and the High Sierras were among his major interests. He studied photo processing for a short time in San Francisco and returned to Yosemite every year to explore and to photograph. In 1920 Adams decided to become a professional musician, giving concerts and piano lessons until 1927, when the publication of his first portfolio of pictures earned him wide critical acclaim. In Yosemite Park in 1928, he married Virginia Best, whom he had met while hiking with the Sierra Club.

In 1930, at the urging of admirers of his work, Adams decided to become a professional photographer. He studied diligently and became as proficient in photography as he was in music. In 1932 he was accomplished enough in the medium to be given a one-man show at San Francisco's M. H. de Young Museum. That same year he joined Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, and others in forming the short-lived Group f/64 (the name signifying the aperture setting on the camera lens that produces the most sharply defined image), an association of West Coast photographers who, in reaction to the conventional soft-focus, pictorialist style of the day, espoused clarity of definition and purity of form in photography.

Over the course of his 50-year career, Adams's favorite photographic subjects continued to be the wilds of his native West, and his eloquent photographs of western scenes won him wide recognition as a poet-photographer of nature. His involvement with the Sierra Club (serving as its director from 1934 to 1971) and its efforts at environmental protection gave his art a social function of profound effect. As both a practitioner and teacher of photography, Adams played a central role in the acceptance of the medium as a fine art. He began to teach in the 1930s, founding the photography department at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) in 1946 and teaching his renowned Ansel Adams Workshop in Yosemite every summer from 1946 until 1981, when he transferred it to the Monterey Peninsula in California. In 1935 he published Making a Photograph, the first of his many manuals on technique. By 1939 he had devised the Zone System, a method of exposure and development that allows a photographer to control the tones of black-and-white prints.

In 1936 the well-known photographer Alfred Stieglitz arranged a one-man show for Adams at his New York City gallery, An American Place. Adams and the curator and historian Beaumont Newhall helped establish, in 1940, the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In 1967 Adams founded the San Francisco-based Friends of Photography, one of the country's leading organizations for the appreciation and promotion of the art of photography. He received Guggenheim Fellowships in 1946, 1948, and 1958 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980. Adams died in Monterey, Calif., on April 22, 1984. In 1981 a print of his Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico sold at auction for $71,500, at that time the highest price ever commanded for a photograph. His archives of 20,000 negatives and over 2,000 master prints are housed at the University of Arizona's Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, which he helped found in 1975.

The Life of Woody Allen

 
Woody Allen is an American film director, writer, actor, and jazz clarinetist. He was born Allen Stewart Konigsberg in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Dec. 1, 1935. At 17 he became a radio staff writer and soon began contributing jokes to newspaper columnists and sketches to television shows.


Allen began his career as a performer with a nightclub act in which he was the butt of his own jokes. He was popular on college campuses and a frequent guest on television shows. Allen began his screenwriting career with What's New, Pussycat? (1965), which he directed and in which he also played a part. He went on to become one of the best-known American actor-directors for a series of mordant comedies in which he usually played a bumbling, anxiety-ridden but generally cultured Everyman. They include Take the Money and Run (1969), Bananas (1971), Sleeper (1973), and Love and Death (1975).

Starting in the late 1970s, Allen's films began to explore more serious themes -usually matters of the heart, in all their pain and perplexity. Most were bittersweet comedies, set in New York City and starring Allen opposite Diane Keaton or Mia Farrow. Annie Hall (1977) won the Academy Award for best picture, and Allen for best director; he also shared the best original screenplay award. He won another Oscar for best screenplay for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).

Allen's other films (he usually released one per year) include Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex … (1972); Interiors (1978), a somber drama that paid homage to Ingmar Bergman, whom Allen long admired; Manhattan (1979); Stardust Memories (1980); A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982); Zelig (1983), a faux-documentary about a human cipher whose infinitely variable personality puts him into many of the 20th century's greatest events; Broadway Danny Rose (1984); The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985); Radio Days (1987); Another Woman (1988); Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989); Alice (1990); Husbands and Wives (1992); Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993); Mighty Aphrodite (1995); Everyone Says I Love You (1996), which incorporated 1930s-style musical numbers into its 1990s story of the lives and loves of affluent Manhattanites; Sweet and Lowdown (1999), with Sean Penn as a talented but clueless, fictional 1930s jazz guitarist; Small Time Crooks (2000), which charmingly harked back to some of Allen's earlier small comedies; Melinda and Melinda (2004); Match Point (2005); and Scoop (2006). Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) garnered him the best critical response in years -and won actress Penélope Cruz an Academy Award for her role as the fiery Maria Elena.

Allen's next film, Whatever Works (2009), did not fare as well—nor did You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010). Allen's film Midnight in Paris, a nostalgic trip to the Paris of Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011; it provided Allen with good reviews and some box-office heft (it won an Academy Award for best original screenplay, as well). He followed that film with To Rome with Love (2012). Allen wrote and directed Blue Jasmine (2013), which featured an Academy Award–winning performance by Cate Blanchett as a Manhattan socialite headed toward a breakdown. His next film, Magic in the Moonlight (2014), is about a magician (Colin Firth) who seeks to expose an attractive fortune hunter passing as a spiritualist; it did not fare as well with the critics. (Allen also acted in The Front, 1976, a dramatic film about blacklisting in Hollywood, and Scenes from a Mall, 1991, a coolly received Paul Mazursky comedy in which he starred opposite Bette Midler.)

Allen's first play, Don't Drink the Water, opened on Broadway in 1966, and he made his stage acting debut in Play It Again, Sam (1969). Allen is the author of Getting Even (1971), Without Feathers (1975), Side Effects (1980), and numerous magazine pieces. For decades he played his clarinet on Monday nights at Michael's Pub in New York City, and in 1996 Woody Allen and His New Orleans Jazz Band made a successful 14-city European tour that was captured on film by the documentarian Barbara Kopple in Wild Man Blues (1997). Allen's long personal and professional association with Mia Farrow ended in 1992 amid a bitter custody fight, which he lost, over their three children; he subsequently married one of Farrow's adopted daughters, Soon-Yi Previn.