Charles James (18 July 1906 in Sandhurst – September 23, 1978 in New York City) was a fashion designer known as America’s first couturier. He is considered a master of cutting and is known for his highly structured aesthetic.
His father was a British officer and his mother a Chicago ‘patrician’. In 1919 he attended Harrow School, where he met Evelyn Waugh, Francis Rose and, most importantly Cecil Beaton, with whom he formed a longstanding friendship. He was expelled from Harrow for a ‘sexual escapade’.
At the age of nineteen in 1926, Charles James opens his first hat shop in Chicago, using the name of a schoolfriend, ‘Charles Boucherdon’.
In 1928 he left Chicago for Long Island with 70 cents, a Pierce Arrow and a number of hats as his only possessions. He later opened a hat shop above a garage in Murray Hill, New York, beginning his first dress designs.
James showed one of his most successful collections in Paris in 1947. In the 1950s he spent most of his time in New York.
James looked upon his dresses as works of art, as did many of his customers. Year after year he reworked original designs, ignoring the sacrosanct schedule of seasons. The components of the precisely constructed designs were interchangeable so that James had a never-ending fund of ideas on which to draw. He is most famous for his sculpted ball gowns made of lavish fabrics and to exacting tailoring standards, but is also remembered for his capes and coats, often trimmed with fur and embroidery, his spiral zipped dresses, and his white satin quilted jackets.
After the birth of his son, Charles James Jr. in 1956, he also produced a children’s collection.
He designed the interior and several pieces of furniture for the Houston home of John and Dominique de Menil.
After returning to New York City from Paris, Scaasi worked for James for two years. James retired in 1958.
He died alone, of bronchial pneumonia, at the Chelsea Hotel in New York.
I am lucky enough to be able to view this mural in person whenever I want. It is so comforting to know that it is in the convention center.
NAME: Jacob Lawrence OCCUPATION: Academic, Painter BIRTH DATE: September 07, 1917 DEATH DATE: June 09, 2000 PLACE OF BIRTH: Atlantic City, New Jersey PLACE OF DEATH: Seattle, Washington Best Known For: Jacob Lawrence was an American painter, and the most widely acclaimed African-American artist of the 20th century. He is best known for his Migration Series.
Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on September 7, 1917, Jacob Lawrence moved with his parents to Easton, Pennsylvania, at the age of 2. When his parents separated in 1924, his mother deposited him and his two younger siblings in foster care in Philadelphia, and went to work in New York City. When he was 13, Lawrence joined his mother in Harlem.
Lawrence was introduced to art shortly after his arrival, when his mother enrolled him in Utopia Children’s Center, which had an after-school art program. He dropped out of school at 16 but took classes at the Harlem Art Workshop with Charles Aston and frequently visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In 1937, Lawrence won a scholarship to the American Artists School in New York. When he graduated in 1939, he received funding from the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project. He had already developed his own style of modernism, and began creating narrative series, painting 30 or more paintings on one subject. He completed his best-known series, Migration of the Negro or simply The Migration Series, in 1941. The series was exhibited at Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery in 1942, making Lawrence the first African-American to join the gallery.
At the outbreak of World War II, Lawrence was drafted into the United States Coast Guard. After being briefly stationed in Florida and Massachusetts, he was assigned to be the Coast Guard artist aboard a troopship, documenting the experience of war around the world. He produced 48 paintings during this time, all of which have been lost.
When his tour of duty ended, Lawrence received a Guggenheim Fellowship and painted his War Series. He was also invited by Josef Albers to teach the summer session at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Albers reportedly hired a private train car to transport Lawrence and his wife to the college so they wouldn’t be forced to transfer to the “colored” car when the train crossed the Mason-Dixon Line.
Back in New York after his stint in the south, Lawrence continued to paint. He grew depressed, however, and in 1949, he checked himself into Hillside Hospital in Queens, where he stayed for 11 months. He painted as an inpatient, and the work created during this time differs significantly from his other work, with subdued colors and people who appear resigned or in agony.
After leaving Hillside, Lawrence turned his attention to the theater. In 1951, he painted works based on memories of performances at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. He also began teaching again, first at Pratt Institute and later the New School for Social Research and the Art Students League.
In 1971, Lawrence accepted a tenured position as a professor at University of Washington in Seattle, where he taught until he retired in 1986. In addition to teaching, he spent much of the rest of his life painting commissions, producing limited-edition prints to help fund nonprofits like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Children’s Defense Fund and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He also painted murals for the Harold Washington Center in Chicago, the University of Washington and Howard University, as well as a 72-foot mural for New York City’s Times Square subway station.
Lawrence painted until a few weeks before he died, on June 9, 2000.
NAME: Ella Fitzgerald OCCUPATION: Singer BIRTH DATE: April 25, 1917 DEATH DATE: June 15, 1996 PLACE OF BIRTH: Newport News, Virginia PLACE OF DEATH: Beverly Hills, California
Best Known For: Ella Fitzgerald, known as the “First Lady of Song” and “Lady Ella,” was an American jazz and song vocalist who interpreted much of the Great American Songbook.
Born on April 25, 1917, in Newport News, Virginia, singer Ella Fitzgerald was the product of a common-law marriage between William Fitzgerald and Temperance “Tempie” Williams Fitzgerald. Ella experienced a troubled childhood that began with her parents separating just a month after her birth.
With her mother, Fitzgerald moved to Yonkers, New York. They lived there with her mother’s boyfriend, Joseph De Sailva. The family grew in 1923 with the arrival of Fitzgerald’s half-sister Frances. Struggling financially, she helped her family out by working as a messenger “running numbers” and acting as a lookout for a brothel. Her first career aspiration was to become a dancer.
After her mother’s death in 1932, Fitzgerald ended up moving in with an aunt. She started skipping school. Fitzgerald was then sent to a special reform school, but she didn’t stay there long. By 1934, Ella was trying to make it on her own and living on the streets. Still harboring dreams of becoming an entertainer, she entered an amateur contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. She sang the Hoagy Carmichael tune “Judy” and wowed the audience. Fitzgerald performed a second song and went on to win the contest’s $25 first place prize.
That unexpected performance at the Apollo helped set Fitzgerald’s career in motion. She soon met bandleader and drummer Chick Webb and eventually joined his group as a singer. In 1935 Fitzgerald recorded “Love and Kisses” with Webb. Working with Webb, she found herself playing regularly at one of Harlem’s hottest clubs, the Savoy Ballroom. Fitzgerald put out her first number-one hit, 1938′s “A-Tisket A-Tasket,” which she co-wrote. Later that year Ella recorded her second hit, “I Found My Yellow Basket.”
In addition to her work with Webb, Fitzgerald also performed and recorded with the Benny Goodman Orchestra. She had her own side project, too, known as Ella Fitzgerald and Her Savoy Eight. Following Webb’s death in 1939, Ella became the leader of the band, which was renamed Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra. Around this time, Fitzgerald was briefly married to Ben Kornegay, a convicted drug dealer and hustler. They wed in 1941, but she soon had their union annulled.
Going out on her own, Ella Fitzgerald landed a deal with Decca Records. She recorded some hit songs with the Ink Spots and Louis Jordan in the early 1940s. Fitzgerald also made her film debut in 1942′s comedy western Ride ‘Em Cowboy with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Her career really began to take off in 1946 when she started working with Norman Granz. Granz orchestrated the Jazz at the Philharmonic, which was a series of concerts and live records featuring most of the genre’s great performers. Fitzgerald also hired Granz to become her manager.
Around this time, Fitzgerald went on tour with Dizzy Gillespie and his band. She started changing her singing style, incorporating scat singing during her performances with Gillespie. Fitzgerald also fell in love with Gillespie’s bass player Ray Brown. The pair wed in 1947, and they adopted a child born to Fitzgerald’s half-sister whom they named Raymond “Ray” Brown Jr. The marriage ended in 1952.
The 1950s and ’60s proved to be a time of critical and commercial success for Fitzgerald. She even earned the moniker “The First Lady of Song” for her mainstream popularity and unparalleled vocal talents. Her unique ability to mimicking instrumental sounds helped popularize the vocal improvisation of “scatting” which became her signature technique.
In 1955, Fitzgerald began recording for Granz’s newly created Verve Records. She made some of her most popular albums for Verve, starting out with 1956′s Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book. Two years later, Fitzgerald picked up her first two Grammy Awards for two later songbook projects—Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book and Ella Fitagerald Sings the Irving Berlin Song Book. She actually worked directly with Ellington on that album.
A truly collaborative soul, Fitzgerald produced great recordings with such artists as Louis Armstrong and Count Basie. She also performed several times with Frank Sinatra over the years as well. In 1960, Fitzgerald actually broke into the pop charts with her rendition of “Mack the Knife.” She was still going strong well into the ’70s, playing concerts across the globe. One especially memorable concert series from this time was a two-week engagement in New York City in 1974 with Frank Sinatra and Count Basie.
By the 1980s, Fitzgerald began to experience health problems. She had heart surgery in 1986 and then discovered she had diabetes. The disease left her blind, and she had both legs amputated in 1994. She made her last recording in 1989 and her last public performance in 1991 at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Ella Fitzgerald died on June 15, 1996, at her home in Beverly Hills.
In all, Fitzgerald recorded more than 200 albums and some 2,000 songs in her lifetime. Her total record sales exceeded 40 million. Her many accolades included 13 Grammy Awards, the NAACP Image Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
While some critics complained that her style and voice lacked the depth of some her more bluesy counterparts, her success and the respect she garnered from the biggest names in the music industry showed that Fitzgerald was in a class all her own. Mel Torme described her as “the High Priestess of Song” and Pearl Bailey called her “the greatest singer of them all,” according to Fitzgerald’s official website. And Bing Crosby once said, “Man, woman of child, Ella is the greatest of them all.”
Since her passing, Fitzgerald has been honored and remembered in so many ways. The United States Postal Service honored the late singer with an Ella Fitzgerald commemorative stamp celebrating the 90th anniversary of her birth. That same year, the tribute album We All Ella featured such artists as Gladys Knight, Etta James and Queen Latifah performing some of Fitzgerald’s classic songs.
Ella Fitzgerald said, “The only thing better than singing is more singing.”
Have you seen A Place in the Sun or Misfits lately? Have you seen them ever? They both have ridiculously talented casts that make them more than worthwhile to watch.NAME: Edward Montgomery Clift OCCUPATION: Film Actor BIRTH DATE: October 17, 1920 DEATH DATE: July 23, 1966 PLACE OF BIRTH: Omaha, Nebraska PLACE OF DEATH: New York, New York
BEST KNOWN FOR: Actor Montgomery Clift starred in films like Red River (1948), A Place in the Sun (1951), and From Here To Eternity (1953).
Edward Montgomery Clift (October 17, 1920 – July 23, 1966) was an American film and stage actor. The New York Times’ obituary noted his portrayal of “moody, sensitive young men”.
He invariably played outsiders, often “victim-heroes,” – examples include the social climber in George Stevens’s A Place in the Sun, the anguished Catholic priest in Hitchcock’s I Confess, the doomed regular soldier Robert E. Lee Prewitt in Fred Zinnemann‘s From Here to Eternity, and the Jewish GI bullied by antisemites in Edward Dmytryk’s The Young Lions. Later, after a disfiguring car crash in 1956, and alcohol and prescription drug abuse, he became erratic. Nevertheless important roles were still his, including “the reckless, alcoholic, mother-fixated rodeo performer in Huston’s The Misfits, the title role in Huston’s Freud, and the concentration camp victim in Stanley Kramer‘s Judgment at Nuremberg.“
Clift received four Academy Award nominations during his career, three for Best Actor and one for Best Supporting Actor.
This really combines so many of my ‘Not So Secret Obsessions’ into one article: F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Great Gatsby,” crumbling and faded opulence and site-specific architectural history. I do with the overall feeling was more of a happy one, but it rarely is when they are tearing down something beautiful to create anything new.
In its Gilded Age heyday, it was the scene of lavish parties attended by the likes of Winston Churchill, the Marx Brothers and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
But now Lands End, the grand colonial mansion said to be the inspiration for Daisy Buchanan’s house in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, is set to be torn down – because no one will buy it.
The 1902 property, set in 13 acres on the tip of Sands Point, Long Island, is slowly crumbling and costs $4,500 each day to maintain.
Crumbling: Lands End, the $30million mansion said to be the inspiration for Daisy Buchanan’s home in The Great Gatsby, is set to be torn down.
Sad end: The dramatic but dilapidated property on the tip of Sands Point, Long Island, will soon be reduced to rubble because no one will buy it.
Past its glory days: Broken and boarded-up windows of the once-opulent mansion.
David Brodsky, who bought the estate with his father Bert in 2004, has had the dilapidated mansion on and off the market for several years, but has never found a buyer for it.
Now he plans to demolish the house, valued at $30million, to make way for Sands Point Village, a community of five custom-made homes which will cost $10million each.
The project’s construction manager, Clifford Fetner, told Newsday: ‘The cost to renovate these things is just so overwhelming that people aren’t interested in it. The value of the property is the land.’
The faded mansion will become one of hundreds lost along the Gold Coast in the last 50 years.
The stretch of Long Island earned its name from the opulent properties built by New York’s wealthiest families during the early 20th century.
Beacon Towers, the property said to have inspired Gatsby’s home in Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, was torn down in 1945.
Ruin: The 1902 residence, set in 13 acres, costs $4,500 each day to maintain.
Rust in peace: The empty swimming pool and rotting diving board reflect the state of disrepair.
Fitzgerald’s own house is still standing though. He and his wife Zelda lived in Great Neck, Long Island, from October 1922 to May 1924.
He drew inspiration for his nouveau-riche West Egg society from the Great Neck community, home to celebrities and writers including Groucho Marx, Basil Rathbone and P.G. Wodehouse.
Lands End, which scholars believe is the inspiration for Daisy Buchanan’s house, is in the ‘blue-blooded’ Sands Point across the water, the basis for East Egg.
In the book, the house has a green light at the end of the dock which Gatsby gazes at every night from his mansion.
Lost landmark: Beacon Towers, thought to be the inspiration behind Jay Gatsby’s West Egg mansion, was demolished in the 1940s.
The estate, originally called Keewaydin, was once owned by the executive editor of the New York World newspaper, Herbert Bayard Swope.
According to Forbes, he used to throw extravagant parties for guests including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Dorothy Parker, Groucho Marx and the Fitzgeralds.
They danced on the roof of a rounded cabana by the 75ft swimming pool, and would have stayed in one of the six family-sized bedrooms while the Swopes lived in the three-room master suite.
The 24,000 sq ft mansion has 25 rooms, which in its heyday had Palladian windows, marble floors and hand-painted wallpaper.
It’s in an idyllic setting. As well as views across Long Island sound, it has its own tennis court, two private sandy beaches and a 75ft swimming pool. There’s even a bird sanctuary next door.
But now the opulent waterfront house is slowly crumbling. Its Doric columns are unsteady, some of its windows are missing and the front door has come off its hinges, according to Newsday.
Mr Brodsky’s father bought the mansion – which his son termed a ‘white whale’ – for $17.5million from Virginia Kraft Payson, the late wife of former Mets owner Charles Shipman Payson.
He planned to renovate it and turn it into a family home, but it proved too costly. In 2006, Mr Brodsky estimated it would cost around $2million to make it liveable.
He told the New York Times a developer would need to rip out the banana-yellow countertops in the kitchen, take out the neon flower-power 1970s-style carpeting and overhaul many of the house’s 14 bedrooms.
Mr Brodsky believes its heritage is not all it seems. He told the New York Post: ‘To be honest with you there isn’t anything really special about it.
In the novel, Jay Gatsby watches a green light burn in Daisy’s house in East Egg across the water every night.
‘And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.’
‘If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay… You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.’
Opulent lifestyle: Mia Farrow as Daisy dances with Robert Redford as Gatsby. Lands End was the scene of lavish parties in the 1920s and 30s
‘We did a lot of research on its history and there is really no evidence that Fitzgerald was even ever there.’
But Professor Ruth Prigozy of Hofstra University, a Fitzgerald expert, told the newspaper: ‘I think it’s probable that he used the physical aspects of Lands End as a model.
‘It was the view – that’s what set it apart.’
Monica Randall, of the North Shore Preservation Society, told Newsday: ‘I just know that F. Scott Fitzgerald was a frequent guest.
‘Fitzgerald is one of our great writers, and if it goes down it will because money seems to be the big thing in our society.
‘Why can’t it stay there. We don’t have the capacity or the wherewithal to reproduce it. I don’t think we have the right to destroy something we can’t recreate.’
The book was turned into a movie in 1974, starring Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan and Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby.
But producers chose not film it on Long Island, instead using Heatherden Hall in England for Daisy’s mansion, and houses on Rhode Island for Gatsby’s home.
The demolition of Lands End was completed last year
Keith Haring is someone whose work you know. You have seen it everywhere from MTV in the early days to yesterday on the side of a bus. His influence and legacy are far-reaching with no visible end in sight. I remember I bought a Keith Haring shirt one summer in Traverse City Michigan, it must have been 1990. It depicted a snake getting cut in half with the words “End AIDS” running under it. I loved that shirt, it made me feel powerful and involved and it gave me a voice.n Keith would have been 55 years old today if he hadn’t died when he was 32. Do something today to make him proud.
If nothing else, download the Keith Haring iPad app today from iTunes. It’s free in honor of his birthday.
BEST KNOWN FOR: During his all-too-brief life, artist Keith Haring became a sensation in the art world with his bold, cartoon and graffiti influenced works during the 1980s.
The Wiki:
Born on May 4, 1958, in Reading, Pennsylvania. During his all-too-brief life, Keith Haring became a sensation in the art world with his bold, cartoon and graffiti influenced works during the 1980s.
Growing up in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, he spent many hours drawing with his father. Haring was fascinated by the popular cartoon art of Walt Disney and Charles Schultz.
Haring briefly attended the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh after graduating high school in 1976. He dropped out after two semesters. In 1978, Haring decided to return to school, moving to New York City to become a student at the School of Visual Arts. With its thriving underground art scene, New York seemed to be the perfect fit for the young artist. He began using the city as his canvas, making chalk drawings of barking dogs and babies in subway stations. He also befriended such other emerging artists as Jean-Michel Basquiat and helped organize exhibitions at nightclubs and other alternative locations.
In 1982, Haring had his first New York one-man show at the Shafrazi Gallery. Not only did he create paintings and sculptures for the show, he engulfed the entire gallery with his bold color choices and frenetic designs. A critical success, he soon became one of most popular artists of the time with exhibits in Japan, Brazil, and many other countries.
Haring collaborated with other artists and performers, including Andy Warhol and William Burroughs.
Wanting to make his art more accessible, Haring opened Pop Shop in New York City in 1986. The store sold posters, t-shirts, and other items baring his artwork and designs. He was also interested many social causes, painting an anti-drug mural that same year. In all, he did more than 50 public works and held numerous workshops for children. In 1988, Haring discovered that he had AIDS. The next year he created the Keith Haring Foundation to support AIDS organizations and children’s programs.
I had quite thought that I would be spending this spring reading Agatha Christie mysteries in order of publication, maybe D.V. again, obviously The Perks of being a Wallflower, and who really knows what else, but it looks like I may need to crank through The Great Gatsby one more time. Partially because of this letter, and partially due to the release of the movie. I adore the 1973 adaptation so very much, I do hope that the new one is as gloriously and festively sad. The book had quite possibly the most perfect last paragraph of a novel that ever has been written. So much so, it is Scott and Zelda’s epitaph.
July, 1922. In the final paragraph of an otherwise unremarkable letter to his editor, Maxwell Perkins, author F. Scott Fitzgerald passionately announces his desire to begin writing “something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned.”
The novel he had mentioned for the first time was The Great Gatsby.
Dear Mr. Perkins:
Glad you liked the addenda to the Table of Contents. I feel quite confident the book will go. How do you think The Love Legend will sell? You’ll be glad to know that nothing has come of the movie idea & I’m rather glad myself. At present working on my play — the same one. Trying to arrange for an Oct. production in New York. Bunny Wilson (Edmund Wilson Jr.) says that it’s without doubt the best American comedy to date (that’s just between you and me.)
Did you see that in that Literary Digest contest I stood 6th among the novelists? Not that it matters. I suspect you of having been one of the voters.
Will you see that the semi-yearly account is mailed to me by the 1st of the month — or before if it is ready? I want to see where I stand. I want to write something new — something extraordinary and beautiful and simple & intricately patterned.
Her poem “Telephone” is something everyone has felt, if they want to admit it or not. She had the wit of three people and the alcohol tolerance to match. Ladies and gentlemen, Dorothy Parker. Style Icon.
BEST KNOWN FOR: Dorothy Parker was the sharpest wit of the Algonquin Round Table, as well as a master of short fiction and a blacklisted screenwriter.
Dorothy Parker (August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles.
From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary output in such venues as The New Yorker and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. Following the breakup of the circle, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. Her successes there, including two Academy Award nominations, were curtailed as her involvement in left-wing politics led to a place on the Hollywood blacklist.
Parker went through three marriages (two to the same man) and survived several suicide attempts but grew increasingly dependent on alcohol. Dismissive of her own talents, she deplored her reputation as a “wisecracker.” Nevertheless, her literary output and reputation for her sharp wit have endured.
Resumé
Razors pain you; Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give;
Gas smells awful; You might as well live.
There is a scene in “The Thin Man” where Cesar Romero (who’s character is Chris Jorgensen, I guess foreign is foreign) is sitting in a chair while people are inquiring why he doesn’t get a job, he stands up and storms away. His much-0lder wife yells after him as one would a child throwing a temper tantrum. That was his first movie and first scene. I thought it was hilarious, possibly unintentionally so, but hilarious. It took me quite a few years to merge in my head that that actor also was the actor that played The Joker on the 60′s Batman TV series and various other guest rolls on “The Love Boat” and so forth. His career spanned more than 60 years, with continued relevance and popularity today. Ladies and gentlemen, Cesar Romero. Style Icon.
BEST KNOWN FOR: Actor and dancer Cesar Romero performed in movies from the ’30s through the ’60s. He became a pop culture icon in the 1966 Batman television series.
Actor, dancer. Born February 15, 1907, in New York City, to a prosperous Cuban family. Romero was raised by his parents, Cesar Julio Romero and Maria Mantilla, among Manhattan’s social elite. His maternal grandfather was the famed Cuban patriot Jose Marti (for whom Havana’s airport is named). Romero was first introduced to acting while attending Collegiate and Riverdale Country schools, where he starred in a stage production of The Merchant of Venice.
While still in his teens, Romero met fellow socialite Lisbeth Higgins, with whom he began a professional dance partnership. The couple performed in New York City’s nightclub and theatre circuit. Romero began his solo career as a dancer in a number of off-Broadway productions, before coming to Broadway as an actor. His early stage credits included Social Register, Stella Brady, and Dinner at Eight. Romero’s performance in the latter influenced MGM Studios to sign him to a short-term film contract.
Romero moved to Hollywood, where he made his film debut as a gigolo in the mystery The Thin Man (1934), starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. In the mid-30s (now under contract to Universal Studios), he appeared in a number of projects ranging from box office disasters like The Devil is a Woman (1935) to well-received comedies like Love Before Breakfast (1936).
In 1937, failed salary negotiations with Universal led Romero to sign with 20th Century Fox, where he would remain for the next 15 years. In the late 30s and early 40s, he was cast as the Cisco Kid in a handful of Westerns including, The Cisco Kid and the Lady (1939) and Viva Cisco Kid (1940).
With the onset of World War II, Romero temporarily shelved his film career in order to enlist in the U.S. Coast Guard. In 1947, after three years of service, he returned to acting with supporting roles in the musical romance Carnival in Costa Rica followed by the 16th-century epic The Captain from Castile, with Tyrone Power.
Romero’s credits during the 1950s and early 1960s included secondary parts in more memorable films. In the Oscar-winning adventure Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Romero was cast in a minor role alongside a stellar ensemble that included Shirley MacLaine, Buster Keaton, Marlene Dietrich, and John Gielgud. In 1960, he won another supporting role in the Rat Pack caper Ocean’s Eleven, featuring Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop.
For the duration of his career, Romero’s most notable projects were his television appearances. He attained pop icon status with his portrayal of the maniacal Joker in the 1966 television series Batman. Starring Adam West in the title role, Batman became an overnight sensation, boasting an impressive cast that included Burt Ward, Julie Newmar, Roddy McDowall, and Vincent Price.
During the 1970s, Romero played the recurring role of Freddie Prinze’s father on the NBC comedy series Chico and the Man. From 1985-88, his part as the patriarchal Peter Stavros on the primetime soap opera Falcon Crest introduced the seasoned Romero to a whole new generation of viewers.
With a body of work spanning more than seven decades and over a hundred film credits, Romero remained an active member in Hollywood’s social scene throughout his career. Although he never married, the self-described “Latin from Manhattan” was romantically linked to a number of women. On January 1, 1994, Romero died of a blood clot. He was 86 years old.
He believed that to live well you must dress well. And never in the same outfit. His closets held 30 tuxedos, 200 sports jackets, and 500 suits.
Andy Warhol died my junior year of high school. Shortly after that, I became obsessed with him, his life, Interview magazine, but more specifically, his collections. I read every article I could find about the lists of belongings found in his house at the time of his death, the cookie jars, the stacks and stacks of contemporary art by his peers, the art deco furniture, the endless lists. He would go to flea markets every day and collect everything that interested him with very few criteria. Sotheby’s produced a staggering list of objects cataloged from his cram-packed six story Upper East Side townhouse when they were getting ready for the ten day auction: 1,659 pieces of Russel Wright pottery, 267 watches, 72 Navajo blankets and rugs, 61 lots of early 19th-Century American furniture, 37 Art Deco cigarette cases, 33 works by Man Ray, 18 by Marcel Duchamp, 12 Rauschenbergs.
Andy was a hoarder, but when it is a dozen Rauschenbergs, it is a collection. Hoarders have a dozen cats, Andy had rooms so full of Duchamps, he just closed the doors to avoid tripping on them. By the way, that townhouse sold for $35M (and his Montauk house for $50M) recently. He collected all the right things, he pushed the prices and demand of early 20th century utilitarian kitsch items through the roof. Ladies and gentlemen, Andy Warhol. Style Icon.
BEST KNOWN FOR: Andy Warhol is famous for his “pop” paintings of everyday consumer goods, like Campbell soup cans, as well as screen-printing portraits of celebrities, like Marilyn Monroe.
Andrew Warhola (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and member of highly diverse social circles that included Bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons.
Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression “15 minutes of fame.” In his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The Andy Warhol Museum exists in memory of his life and artwork.
The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in The Economist, which described Warhol as the “bellwether of the art market.” $100 million is a benchmark price that only Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-August Renoir, Gustav Klimt and Willem de Kooning have achieved.
