Tag Archives: California

Phyllis Diller – Style Icon

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“My mother-in-law had a pain beneath her left breast. Turned out to be a trick knee.” – Phyllis Diller

NAME: Phyllis Diller
OCCUPATION: Film Actress, Comedian, Pianist
BIRTH DATE: July 17, 1917
DEATH DATE: August 20, 2012
EDUCATION: Chicago’s Sherwood Music Conservatory
PLACE OF BIRTH: Lima, Ohio
PLACE OF DEATH: Los Angeles, California
Originally: Phyllis Ada Driver

Best Known For:  First noticed as a contestant on Groucho Marx‘s game show in 1955, Phyllis Diller went on to become a successful comedian, actress and author.

Actress and comedian Phyllis Diller was born in Lima, Ohio in 1917. She was first noticed as a contestant on Groucho Marx’s game show, and went on to become a successful comedian, actress and author, recognizable by her eccentric costumes, overdone makeup and trademark laugh. In 1992, she received the American Comedy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Diller was also an accomplished pianist and author. She died on August 20, 2012, at age 95,  at her home in Los Angeles.
Breakthrough Role

Comedian, actress and author Phyllis Diller was born as Phyllis Ada Driver on July 17, 1917, in Lima, Ohio. Diller was the only child of Frances and Perry Driver. After graduating high school, she continued her studies at Chicago’s Sherwood Music Conservatory for three years, before eloping with Sherwood Diller in 1939. The couple soon moved to California, where they had six children (one of their children died in infancy).

In 1955, while working as a journalist for the San Leandro News-Observer, Diller appeared as a contestant on Groucho Marx’s game show, You Bet Your Life. Her memorable performance on the show sparked the advent of her national exposure. She received an offer to make her comedic debut at The Purple Onion Comedy Club in San Francisco, where she floored the audience with her dynamic one-liners and comical costumes. This success led to future bookings at New York’s Blue Angel, as well as an appearance on The Jack Paar Show.
Comedy Routine

In her monologues, Diller adopted the stage personality of a typical housewife and spoke of topics that affected American suburbia—kids, pets, neighbors and even mothers-in-law. Her most notable routines were filled with anecdotes about her fictitious husband, “Fang,” and her numerous face-lifts. Diller’s delivery was accentuated by her animated facial expressions, eccentric costumes, overdone make-up and signature loud, cackling laugh. During performances, she would often flaunt a cigarette and laugh at her own jokes with her trademark cackle.
Acting Highlights

In 1961, Diller acquired her first minor film role, as Texas Guinan in Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass. She also co-starred in a few low-budget movies with longtime friend and fellow comedian Bob Hope, including Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number (1966), Eight On the Lam (1967) and The Private Navy of Sgt. O’Farrell (1968). Additionally, Diller made recurring appearances on Hope’s annual Christmas Special (1965-94).

Diller’s first stage acting appearance was in The Dark Top of the Stairs (1961). However, her most notable theatre performance was in 1970, when she replaced Carol Channing as Dolly Levi in Broadway’s Hello, Dolly!. After Hello, Dolly!, Diller would not return to the stage until 1988, when she played the vivacious Mother Superior in San Francisco’s Nunsense.
Personal Life and Death

In 1965, Diller ended her 26-year marriage with Sherman Anderson Diller. The two were divorced in September of that year, and Diller hastily married Ward Donovan just one month later. In the late 1960s, Diller focused her creative efforts toward television. She created two poorly received television series: the sitcom The Pruitts of Southampton in 1966, and the variety show The Phyllis Diller Show two years later, in 1968.

In addition to her comedic talents, Diller could boast that she was both an accomplished concert pianist and author. Over a 10-year period, from 1972 to 1982, under the pseudonym “Dame Illya Pillya,” Diller performed as a solo pianist throughout America, with more than 100 symphony orchestras. She published five best-selling books throughout her career, including 1963′s Phyllis Diller Tells All About Fang, 1966′s Phyllis Diller’s Housekeeping Hints, 1967′s Phyllis Diller’s Marriage Manual, 1969′s The Complete Mother and 1981′s The Joys of Aging and How to Avoid Them.

In 1992, Diller received the American Comedy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Diller died on August 20, 2012, at her home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, where she had briefly served as honorary mayor. She was 95 years old, and was survived by three children and several grandchildren. According to an Associated Press article, Diller’s longtime manager, Milton Suchin, said that Diller “died peacefully in her sleep, and with a smile on her face.”

Banned Books That Shaped America: Fahrenheit 451

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The Library of Congress created an exhibit, “Books that Shaped America,” that explores books that “have had a profound effect on American life.” Many of the books in the exhibit have been banned/challenged.  Give yourself the gift of a beautiful story and read one and them imagine what your life would be like if you were never given that gift.

Fight censorship.

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1953

Rather than ban the book about book-banning outright, Venado Middle school in Irvine, CA utilized an expurgated version of the text in which all the “hells” and “damns” were blacked out. Other complaints have said the book went against objectors religious beliefs. The book’s author, Ray Bradbury, died this year.

fahrenheit_451

Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, on August 22, 1920. By the time he was eleven, he had already begun writing his own stories on butcher paper. His family moved fairly frequently, and he graduated from a Los Angeles high school in 1938. He had no further formal education, but he studied on his own at the library and continued to write. For several years, he earned money by selling newspapers on street corners. His first published story was “Hollerbochen’s Dilemma,” which appeared in 1938 in Imagination!, a magazine for amateur writers. In 1942 he was published in Weird Tales, the legendary pulp science-fiction magazine that fostered such luminaries of the genre as H. P. Lovecraft. Bradbury honed his sci-fi sensibility writing for popular television shows, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. He also ventured into screenplay writing (he wrote the screenplay for John Huston’s 1953 film Moby Dick). His book The Martian Chronicles, published in 1950, established his reputation as a leading American writer of science fiction.

In the spring of 1950, while living with his family in a humble home in Venice, California, Bradbury began writing what was to become Fahrenheit 451 on pay-by-the-hour typewriters in the University of California at Los Angeles library basement. He finished the first draft, a shorter version called The Fireman, in just nine days. Following in the futuristic-dustpan tradition of George Orwell’s 1984, Fahrenheit 451 was published in 1953 and became Bradbury’s most popular and widely read work of fiction. He produced a stage version of the novel at the Studio Theatre Playhouse in Los Angeles. The seminal French New Wave director François Truffaut also made a critically acclaimed film adaptation in 1967.

Bradbury has received many awards for his writing and has been honored in numerous ways. Most notably, Apollo astronauts named the Dandelion Crater on the moon after his novel Dandelion Wine. In addition to his novels, screenplays, and scripts for television, Bradbury has written two musicals, co-written two “space-age cantatas,” collaborated on an Academy Award–nominated animation short called Icarus Montgolfier Wright, and started his own television series, The Ray Bradbury Theatre. Bradbury, who still lives in California, continues to write and is acknowledged as one of the masters of the science-fiction genre. Although he is recognized primarily for his ideas and sometimes denigrated for his writing style (which some find alternately dry and maudlin), Bradbury nonetheless retains his place among important literary science-fiction talents and visionaries like Jules Verne, H. P. Lovecraft, George Orwell, Arthur C. Clarke, and Philip K. Dick.

Fight all forms of censorship.

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Banned Books That Shaped America: The Grapes of Wrath

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The Library of Congress created an exhibit, “Books that Shaped America,” that explores books that “have had a profound effect on American life.” Many of the books in the exhibit have been banned/challenged.  Give yourself the gift of a beautiful story and read one and them imagine what your life would be like if you were never given that gift.

Fight censorship.

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, 1939

Kern County, California has the great honor both of being the setting of Steinbeck’s novel and being the first place where it was banned (1939). Objections to profanity—especially goddamn and the like—and sexual references continued from then into the 1990s. It is a work with international banning appeal: the book was barred in Ireland in the 50s and a group of booksellers in Turkey were taken to court for “spreading propaganda” in 1973.

grapes-of-wrath

John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, on February 27, 1902. He attended Stanford University without graduating, and though he lived briefly in New York, he remained a lifelong Californian. Steinbeck began writing novels in 1929, but he garnered little commercial or critical success until the publication of Tortilla Flat in 1935. Steinbeck frequently used his fiction to delve into the lives of society’s most downtrodden citizens. A trio of novels in the late 1930s focused on the lives of migrant workers in California: In Dubious Battle, published in 1936, was followed by Of Mice and Men in 1937, and, in 1939, Steinbeck’s masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath.

During the early 1930s, a severe drought led to massive agricultural failure in parts of the southern Great Plains, particularly throughout western Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle. These areas had been heavily overcultivated by wheat farmers in the years following World War I and were covered with millions of acres of loose, exposed topsoil. In the absence of rain, crops withered and died; the topsoil, no longer anchored by growing roots, was picked up by the winds and carried in billowing clouds across the region. Huge dust storms blew across the area, at times blocking out the sun and even suffocating those unlucky enough to be caught unprepared. The afflicted region became known as the “Dust Bowl.”

By the mid-1930s, the drought had crippled countless farm families, and America had fallen into the Great Depression. Unable to pay their mortgages or invest in the kinds of industrial equipment now necessitated by commercial competition, many Dust Bowl farmers were forced to leave their land. Without any real employment prospects, thousands of families nonetheless traveled to California in hopes of finding new means of survival. But the farm country of California quickly became overcrowded with the migrant workers. Jobs and food were scarce, and the migrants faced prejudice and hostility from the Californians, who labeled them with the derisive epithet “Okie.” These workers and their families lived in cramped, impoverished camps called “Hoovervilles,” named after President Hoover, who was blamed for the problems that led to the Great Depression. Many of the residents of these camps starved to death, unable to find work.

When Steinbeck decided to write a novel about the plight of migrant farm workers, he took his task very seriously. To prepare, he lived with an Oklahoma farm family and made the journey with them to California. When The Grapes of Wrath appeared, it soared to the top of the bestseller lists, selling nearly half a million copies. Although many Oklahomans and Californians reviled the book, considering Steinbeck’s characters to be unflattering representations of their states’ people, the large majority of readers and scholars praised the novel highly. The story of the Joad family captured a turbulent moment in American history and, in the words of critic Robert DeMott, “entered both the American consciousness and conscience.” In 1940, the novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and adapted to the screen. Although Steinbeck went on to have a productive literary career and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, none of his later books had the impact of The Grapes of Wrath. He died in 1968.

Today, readers of The Grapes of Wrath often find fault with its excessive sentimentality and generally flat characterizations, which seem at odds with Steinbeck’s otherwise realistic style of writing. However, in writing his novel, Steinbeck attempted not only to describe the plight of migrant workers during the Depression but also to offer a pointed criticism of the policies that had caused that plight. In light of this goal, Steinbeck’s characters often emerge as idealized archetypes or epic heroes; rather than using them to explore the individual human psyche, the author presents them as embodiments of universal ideals or struggles. Thus, the novel stands as a chronicle of the Depression and as a commentary on the economic and social system that gave rise to it.

via Banned Books That Shaped America | Banned Books Week.

Anjelica Huston – Style Icon

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Third generation Academy Award winner? That is ridiculous. She is all angles and attitude, cheeks and confidence. Her beauty is intoxicating and addictive. Her longevity is something to admire and strive for. Ladies and gentlemen, Anjelica Huston. Style Icon.

NAME: Anjelica Huston
OCCUPATION: Film Actress, Television Actress
BIRTH DATE: July 08, 1951 (Age: 60)
PLACE OF BIRTH: Santa Monica, California

BEST KNOWN FOR: Anjelica Huston is an American actress, well known for starring as Morticia Addams in The Addams Family (1991) and for her collaborations with director Wes Anderson.

Anjelica Huston (born July 8, 1951) is an American actress. Huston became the third generation of her family to win an Academy Award, for her performance in 1985′s Prizzi’s Honor, joining her father, director John Huston, and grandfather, actor Walter Huston. She later was nominated in 1989 and 1990 for her acting in Enemies, a Love Story and The Grifters respectively. Among her roles, she starred as Morticia Addams in The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993), receiving Golden Globe nominations for both. Huston also played the Grand High Witch in the children’s classic The Witches in 1990 and is, more recently, known for her frequent collaborations with director Wes Anderson.

Anjelica Huston was born in Santa Monica, California, and is the daughter of director and actor John Huston and Italian–American prima ballerina Enrica ‘Ricki’ (née Soma), from New York. Huston spent most of her childhood in Ireland and England. She grew up in Saint Clerns House near Craughwell, County Galway. In 1969, she began taking a few small roles in her father’s movies. In that same year, her mother, who was 39 years old, died in a car accident, and Huston relocated to the US, where she modeled for several years. While she modeled, she worked with photographers such as Richard Avedon and Bob Richardson. On the photoshoots with Avedon, her hair was often done by Ara Gallant.

Huston has an older brother, Tony, a younger maternal half-sister named Allegra, whom she called “Legs”, and a younger paternal half-brother, actor Danny Huston. She is the aunt of “Boardwalk Empire” actor Jack Huston.

Anjelica Huston – Style Icon.

Edith Head – Style Icon

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If you are a fan of classic movies and pay attention to scenery and costuming, you already know Edith Head. She had THE influence on American style before clothing designers were known. A quick search for her on IMDB will soon have you realizing that her touch was added to most of the films that you know and love. Ladies and gentlemen, Edith Head. Style Icon

NAME: Edith Head
OCCUPATION: Fashion Designer
BIRTH DATE: October 28, 1897
DEATH DATE: October 24, 1981
PLACE OF BIRTH: San Bernardino, California
PLACE OF DEATH: Hollywood, California

BEST KNOWN FOR: Edith Head was one of the most prolific costume designers in 20th century film, winning a record eight Academy Awards.

Edith Head (born October 28, 1897) became chief designer at Paramount Pictures in 1933 and later worked at Universal. Hollywood’s best-known designer, her costumes ranged from the elegantly simple to the elaborately flamboyant. She won a record eight Academy Awards for her work in films such as All About Eve (1950), Roman Holiday (1953), and The Sting (1973).

She became chief designer at Paramount Pictures in 1933 and later worked at Universal. Hollywood’s best-known designer, she was noted for the wide range of her costumes, from the elegantly simple to the elaborately flamboyant. She won a record eight Academy Awards for her work in films such as All About Eve (1950), Roman Holiday (1953), and The Sting (1973).

As part of a series of stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service in February 2003, commemorating the behind-the-camera personnel who make movies, Head was featured on one to honor costume design.

The band They Might Be Giants recorded the song “She Thinks She’s Edith Head,” which was included in the 1999 album Long Tall Weekend and the 2001 album Mink Car. The song is about a girl from the singer’s past, who had changed her persona to be more sophisticated, and compares her new attitude to Head and longtime Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief Helen Gurley Brown.

To many viewers of the 2004 Pixar/Disney computer-animated film The Incredibles, the personality and mannerisms of the film’s fictional superhero costume designer Edna Mode suggest a colorful caricature of Edith Head. Edna Mode’s sense of style, round glasses, and assertive no-nonsense character are very likely a direct homage to Head’s legendary accomplishments and personal traits. But the film’s director, Brad Bird, has not yet confirmed or denied this.

Personal Quotes:

“Your dresses should be tight enough to show you’re a woman and loose enough to show you’re a lady.” – Edith Head

“You can have whatever you want if you dress for it.” ― Edith Head

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George Cukor – Style Icon

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George Cukor is responsible for almost all of my favorite classic films: Holiday, The Women, Gone With The Wind, The Philadelphia Story, Adam’s Rib, Born Yesterday, It Should Happen To You, etc. His teaming with Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Judy Holliday, Clark Gable, Jack Lemmon, and Joan Crawford made countless of hours of perfection. Ladies and gentlemen, George Cukor. Style Icon.

Born: July 7, 1899 New York City, New York, U.S.
Died: January 24, 1983 (aged 83) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Resting place: Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California
Occupation: Director

George Dewey Cukor (July 7, 1899 – January 24, 1983) was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? (1932), A Bill of Divorcement (1932), Dinner at Eight (1933), Little Women (1933), David Copperfield (1935), Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Camille (1936).

He was replaced as the director of Gone with the Wind (1939), but he went on to direct The Philadelphia Story (1940), Adam’s Rib (1949), Born Yesterday (1950), A Star Is Born (1954) and My Fair Lady (1964). He continued to work into the 1980s.

Cukor’s friends were of paramount importance to him and he kept his home filled with their photographs. Regular attendees at his famed soirées included Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, actor Richard Cromwell, Stanley Holloway, Judy Garland, Gene Tierney, Noël Coward, Cole Porter, director James Whale, costume designer Edith Head, and Norma Shearer, especially after the death of her first husband, Irving Thalberg. He often entertained literary figures like Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, Aldous Huxley, Ferenc Molnár, and close friend Somerset Maugham, as well.

Cukor died of a heart attack on January 24, 1983, and was interred in an unmarked grave at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.Records in probate court indicated his net worth at the time of his death was $2,377,720.

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Christy Turlington – Style Icon

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Christy Turlington has taken her luck of the gene pool and used it to make the world a better place. It was never in question that she has been a beautiful person for as long as we can remember and we are learning that her beauty emanates from deep inside her. Ladies and gentlemen, Christy Turlington. Style Icon.

NAME: Christy Turlington
OCCUPATION: Model
BIRTH DATE: January 02, 1969 (Age: 43)
EDUCATION: University of California, Los Angeles, New York University
PLACE OF BIRTH: Walnut Creek, California

BEST KNOWN FOR: Christy Turlington is one of America’s most successful models. Best known for her work for Maybelline, she has appeared on more than 300 magazine covers.

Christy Turlington Burns[2] (born January 2, 1969) is an American model best known for representing Calvin Klein from 1987 to 2007. She has worked on dozens of modeling contracts with companies including Maybelline Cosmetics and Versace. Turlington starred in her fashion documentary Catwalk and Isaac Mizrahi’s Unzipped. She was added on as the fourth model investor, after Elle Macpherson, Naomi Campbell and Claudia Schiffer of the now defunct Fashion Cafes.

In 2005, she began working with the international humanitarian organization CARE and has since become their Advocate for Maternal Health.[citation needed] She has also been an Ambassador for (RED) since their launch in 2006.[citation needed] Her work on behalf of CARE and (RED) inspired her to pursue a Masters in Public Health at Columbia University’s Mailman School where as of 2009, she is a student.

In 2008, Turlington began working on a documentary film, No Woman, No Cry, profiling the status of maternal health worldwide. The film, Turlington’s directorial debut, tells the stories of at-risk pregnant women in four parts of the world, including a remote Maasai tribe in Tanzania, a slum of Bangladesh, a post-abortion care ward in Guatemala, and a prenatal clinic in the United States. No Woman, No Cry made its world premiere at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, and the US television broadcast premiere aired on the new Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) on May 7, 2011. The documentary earned Turlington a nomination for the Do Something With Style Award from the VH1 Do Something Awards. Concurrent with the debut of her documentary, Turlington launched ‘Every Mother Counts’, an action and mobilization campaign designed to educate and support maternal, newborn and child health. Turlington is pursuing a master’s degree in public health at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Christy currently serves on the Harvard Medical School Global Health Council and as an advisor to the Harvard School of Public Health Board of Dean’s Advisors, Mother’s Day Every Day and the White Ribbon Alliance.

Personal Quotes:

“I’d rather go naked than wear fur.” – Christy Turlington

“So much of religion is exegesis. I would rather follow in the footprints of Christ than all of the dogma.” – Christy Turlington

She recently completed her first ING NYC Marathon, running with Team Every Mother Counts to raise awareness for maternal and child health.

Christy Turlington – Style Icon.

Marilyn Monroe – Style Icon

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NAME: Marilyn Monroe
OCCUPATION: Film Actress, Pin-up
BIRTH DATE: June 01, 1926
DEATH DATE: August 05, 1962
PLACE OF BIRTH: Los Angeles, California
PLACE OF DEATH: Los Angeles, California
ORIGINALLY: Norma Jeane Mortensen

BEST KNOWN FOR: Actress Marilyn Monroe overcame a difficult childhood to become of the world’s biggest and most enduring sex symbols. She died of a drug overdose in 1962.

Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson but baptized and raised as Norma Jeane Baker; June 1, 1926 – August 5, 1962) was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s.

After spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946. Her early film appearances were minor, but her performances in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve (both 1950) drew attention to her—by now her hair was dyed blonde. By 1953, Monroe had progressed to a leading role in Niagara (1953), a melodramatic film noir that dwelled on her seductiveness. Her “dumb blonde” persona was used to comic effect in subsequent films such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and The Seven Year Itch (1955). Limited by typecasting, Monroe studied at the Actors Studio to broaden her range. Her dramatic performance in Bus Stop (1956) was hailed by critics, and she received a Golden Globe nomination. Her production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, released The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), for which she received a BAFTA Award nomination and won a David di Donatello award. She received a Golden Globe Award for her performance in Some Like It Hot (1959). Monroe’s final completed film was The Misfits, co-starring Clark Gable with the screenplay written by her then-husband, Arthur Miller.

The final years of Monroe’s life were marked by illness, personal problems, and a reputation for being unreliable and difficult to work with. The circumstances of her death, from an overdose of barbiturates, have been the subject of conjecture. Though officially classified as a “probable suicide”, the possibility of an accidental overdose, as well as the possibility of homicide, have not been ruled out. In 1999, Monroe was ranked as the sixth greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute. In the years and decades following her death, Monroe has often been cited as both a pop and a cultural icon as well as the quintessential American female sex symbol.

On August 8, 1962, Monroe was interred in a crypt at Corridor of Memories #24, at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Lee Strasberg delivered the eulogy. Joe DiMaggio took control of the funeral arrangements which consisted of only 31 close family and friends. Police were also present to keep the press away. Her casket was solid bronze and was lined with champagne colored silk. Allan “Whitey” Snyder did her make-up which was supposedly a promise made in earlier years if she were to die before him. She was wearing her favorite green Emilio Pucci dress. In her hands was a small bouquet of pink teacup roses.[142] For the next 20 years, red roses were placed in a vase attached to the crypt, courtesy of DiMaggio.

 

Patty Hearst – Style Icon

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I adore this photo, it has done time as both computer and phone wallpapers and I think I have even thrown it in a few calendars I have made.  They just do not do heiress mug shots like this anymore, and that saddens me.Patricia Campbell Hearst (born February 20, 1954), now known as Patricia Campbell Hearst Shaw, is an American newspaper heiress, socialite, actress, kidnap victim, and convicted bank robber. Her kidnapping case is held by many as an example of Stockholm syndrome.

The granddaughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst and great-granddaughter of millionaire George Hearst, she gained notoriety in 1974 when, following her kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), she ultimately joined her captors in furthering their cause. Apprehended after having taken part in a bank heist with other SLA members, Hearst was imprisoned for almost two years before her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter. She was later granted a presidential pardon by President Bill Clinton in his last official act before leaving office.

Hearst was born in San Francisco, California, the third of five daughters of Randolph Apperson Hearst and Catherine Wood Campbell. She grew up primarily in Hillsborough. She attended Crystal Springs School for Girls in Hillsborough and the Santa Catalina School in Monterey. Among her few close friends she counted Patricia Tobin, whose family founded the Hibernia Bank, a branch of which Hearst would later aid in robbing.

On February 4, 1974, the 19-year-old Hearst was kidnapped from the Berkeley, California apartment, she shared with her fiancé Steven Weed by a left-wing urban guerrilla group called the Symbionese Liberation Army. When the attempt to swap Hearst for jailed SLA members failed, the SLA demanded that the captive’s family distribute $70 worth of food to every needy Californian – an operation that would cost an estimated $400 million. In response, Hearst’s father arranged the immediate donation of $6 million worth of food to the poor of the Bay Area. After the distribution of food, the SLA refused to release Hearst because they deemed the food to have been of poor quality. (In a subsequent tape recording released to the press, Hearst commented that her father could have done better.) On April 3, 1974, Hearst announced on an audiotape that she had joined the SLA and assumed the name “Tania” (inspired by the nom de guerre of Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider, Che Guevara’s comrade). For this reason, she is often referred to as a victim of Stockholm Syndrome.

On April 15, 1974, she was photographed wielding an M1 carbine while robbing the Sunset District branch of the Hibernia Bank at 1450 Noriega Street in San Francisco. Later communications from her were issued under the pseudonym Tania and asserted that she was committed to the goals of the SLA. A warrant was issued for her arrest and in September 1975, she was arrested by the FBI and SFPD in a San Francisco apartment with other SLA member Wendy Yoshimura. FBI Agent Thomas Padden is credited with their actual arrests.

While being booked into jail, she listed her occupation as “Urban Guerilla” and asked her attorney to relay the following message: “Tell everybody that I’m smiling, that I feel free and strong and I send my greetings and love to all the sisters and brothers out there.” However, according to Hearst interviewer Margaret Singer, a noted authority on prisoner of war and other victims including Maryknoll priests released from the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s, this is not unusual in such cases. Singer strongly pleaded for understanding in Hearst’s behalf before, during and after the trial. Court-appointed doctor Louis Jolyon West as well as interviewers Drs. Robert Jay Lifton and Martin Theodore Orne agreed. Lifton went so far as to state after a 15-hour interview with Hearst that she was a “classic case,” about two weeks being needed for almost all persons undergoing that level of mind control to shuck off a good deal of the “gunk” that has filled the mind, as happened in his opinion with Hearst’s case. “If (she) had reacted differently, that would have been suspect” and Hearst was “a rare phenomenon (in a first-world nation)… the first and as far as I know the only victim of a political kidnapping in the United States” were direct quotes from Hearst’s autobiography attributed to the doctor. Dr. West firmly asserted that while Donald “Cinque” DeFreeze and other movement members had used a rather coarse version, they did employ the classic Maoist formula for thought control; Hearst was young and apolitical enough to be at extreme risk and, in his professional experience, that it would have even broken many experienced soldiers.

In her trial, which commenced on January 15, 1976 (and in her dozens of previous interviews by FBI agents Charles Bates and Lawrence Lawler—any reference to which was not allowed by the presiding judge to be included in the trial), Hearst’s attorney F. Lee Bailey claimed that Hearst had been blindfolded, imprisoned in a narrow closet and physically and sexually abused. Hearst’s defense claimed that her actions were the result of a concerted brainwashing program.

The prosecution countered with two experts: Dr. Joel Fort, who, unsolicited, had previously offered favorable testimony in paid service to the defense team, which was refused; and Dr. Harry L. Kozol, noted expert on brain disorders, sex offenders and high-profile mentally ill criminals. He formerly had been the long term doctor for Eugene O’Neill and evaluated the confessed Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, a case defended in 1967 by Bailey. Kozol claimed Hearst was “a rebel in search of a cause” and that the robbery had been “an act of free will.” During a pre-trial interview, Hearst accurately described the apartment where the SLA was captured, but neglected to mention the narrow closet where she was allegedly confined. In Kozol’s view, Hearst’s omission confirmed the prosecution’s thesis: returning the embrace of the SLA, she had ceased to be a victim. The rebel had come out of the closet. When Kozol testified, Hearst turned “the dead white color of a fish’s belly,” according to journalist Shana Alexander. “Harry never lost the spirit of the law,” Dr. Harold W. Williams, then a psychiatrist at McLean Hospital in Belmont, told The New York Times in 1976, when prosecutors asked Dr. Kozol to examine Hearst. “Harry is very much in personality a lawyer.”

Bailey argued that she had been coerced or intimidated into taking part in the bank robbery. However, she refused to give evidence against the other captured SLA members. This was seen as complicity by the prosecution team.

Hearst was convicted of bank robbery on March 20, 1976. She was sentenced to 35 years’ imprisonment, but her sentence was later commuted to seven years. Her prison term was also eventually commuted by President Jimmy Carter, and Hearst was released from prison on February 1, 1979, having served 22 months. She was granted a full pardon by President Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001.

Don Grady – Style Icon

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Don Grady
AKA Don Louis Agrati

Born: 8-Jun-1944
Birthplace: San Francisco, CA
Died: 27-Jun-2012
Location of death: Thousand Oaks, CA
Cause of death: Cancer – unspecified

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Occupation: Actor

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Robbie Douglas on My Three Sons

Grady was born Don Louis Agrati in San Diego, California, the son of Mary B. (née Castellino), a talent agent, and Lou A. Agrati, a sausage maker. He grew up in Lafayette, California, and attended Lafayette Elementary School (where he served as school president); Stanley Junior High, where he spent only a few months before being signed by Disney and leaving the area;[2] and Burbank High School (pictured as Don Agrati).
His acting credits included several Western series, including John Payne’s The Restless Gun, Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theater, Wagon Train and The Rifleman, where he played two roles in Season 2; ‘Jeff Barrows’, a barber’s son, in Episode 1 and ‘David Chase’ sister to the title character ‘Heller’ in Episode 22. He also had a role in the NBC medical drama, The Eleventh Hour. Originally the frustrated middle brother on My Three Sons, he became the confident elder brother with the departure of Mike (Tim Considine, who had earlier appeared with Grady in The New Adventures of Spin and Marty), and the adoption of Ernie (Barry Livingston), who became the new “third son.”

During production of My Three Sons, Grady both appeared with his own band The Greefs on the series, and was the drummer for The Yellow Balloon, whose self-titled song became a minor hit during 1967. For a while during the run of the series, he attended Los Angeles City College.

Grady died of cancer June 27, 2012, in Thousand Oaks, California.