- Industry: Printing & publishing
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Routledge is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences.
(born 1911); d.1989 After years as a minor movie actor, Ball and husband Desi Arnaz (1917–86) changed television comedy through their long-running hit sitcom I Love Lucy (1951–7) and further 1-hour shows. As a starring female comedian, Ball’s rebellious streak and marvelous ingenuity for complicating the lives of her ensemble cast (including her pioneering onscreen pregnancy) delightfully controverted stereotypes of meek housewives. The couple also pioneered control of production and syndication through their Desilu Studios, which Ball took over after her divorce (1960). Desilu produced Lucy shows, as well as other hits like The Untouchables.
Industry:Culture
(1912 – 1956) Renowned abstract expressionist painter. He departed wildly from pre-war painting conventions, and yet was perhaps as well known for his chaotic, impassioned life. His acclaim and artistic style—dripping and staining paint, using hard brushes and sticks in broad sweeps atop large canvases laid on the floor—as a way to unravel a purer form of expression and emotionality helped to move the center of the art world from Paris to New York. In 1945 he married the painter Lee Krasner and his tumultuous career took off for a number of years, in part due to the support of critic Clement Greenberg. His work fell out of favor with the ascension of pop art, but recent art shows have restored Pollock’s enduring importance.
Industry:Culture
(1912 – 1992) Philosopher, author and composer who forever changed notions of chance or indeterminacy in composition. One of his most famous works, “4’33”,” consisted of the composer sitting at the piano for over four minutes without playing (allowing the audience to supply the sounds). Other works, which incorporated recorded music, radios and player pianos as instruments, showed not only musical genius but an unending inventiveness. He collaborated with other artists, particularly with his partner Merce Cunningham. This work, too, relied on chance meetings between sound and movement created separately following distinct non-narrative trajectories. Cage’s written work, especially Silence (1961), brought ideas from non-Western and avant-garde music and philosophy to new audiences.
Industry:Culture
(1912 – 1994) Massachusetts member of Congress and Speaker of the House. Elected to Congress in 1952, O’Neill made famous the phrase, “All politics is local,” a credo which contends that local, rather than national, concerns drive politics. He became one of the first House leaders to oppose US involvement in the Vietnam War. Speaker of the House from 1977 until his retirement in 1986, O’Neill was the longest continually serving Speaker since Congress first met in 1789. In 1979, during O’Neill’s tenure as Speaker, the House began live telecasts of its floor debates.
Industry:Culture
(1912 – 1996) Leaving Broadway for Hollywood in the 1940s, Kelly’s dancing, choreography and directing revolutionized the Hollywood musical. He countered Fred Astaire’s ballroom rhythms with a more athletic and masculine, free-flowing style (and gravelly singing). He also incorporated symphonic jazz and ballet into movies such as the classic Singin’ in the Rain (MGM, 1952), which he in the latter codirected and co-choreographed. His own title number is an artful synthesis of dance and the camera using long takes to create magic.
Although Kelly never received an Oscar, his lifetime achievements were recognized by the Kennedy Center and the American Film Institute in the 1980s.
Industry:Culture
(born 1913) Thirty-eighth president of the United States, the first to become so without being elected either to that office or the vice-presidency. A highly regarded moderate Republican from Michigan, he served in Congress for twenty-five years, first elected in 1948, and as House Minority Leader from 1965 to 1973. He was chosen by Richard Nixon under the terms of the 25th Amendment to replace Spiro Agnew (who had resigned after pleading no contest to a charge of tax evasion), and, within a year, after the Watergate scandal had led to Nixon’s resignation, he took the oath of office as president (August 9, 1974). As president he endeavored to deal with inflation and recession, the energy crisis and a general post-Vietnam and Watergate malaise. After limited success in dealing with the economy and in negotiations on nuclear weapons with the Soviet Union, Ford lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter.
His wife, Betty (1918–), was a well-respected First Lady. A vocal supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, she also suffered a diagnosis of breast cancer while in the White House and used this as a chance to educate Americans about this disease. Then, after recovering from alcohol dependency in 1978, she founded the Betty Ford Center in 1982, which is now considered the leading treatment facility for alcoholism and drug addiction (and so is frequently mentioned in the tabloid coverage of athletes, movie stars and other celebrities).
Industry:Culture
(1913 – 1966) Intellectual poet of alienation and short-story writer. Schwartz had many issues to work out about both his family and his place in society; his later work is marked by a descent into madness. His major works include In Dreams Begin Responsibilities (1938), The World is a Wedding (1948), Summer Knowledge (1959) and the verse-play Shenandoah (1941).
Industry:Culture
(1913 – 1975)? Controversial president of the Teamsters Union from 1957 to 1971. Hoffa represented to many observers the danger inherent in the growing power of unions in the 1950s.
Beloved by his union members, he negotiated contracts that granted truckers generous wages and fringe benefits, making them the envy of other workers. While openly acknowledging his friendly relations with notorious organized-crime figures, he vigorously defended his honesty as a union leader. Jailed for jury tampering and mail fraud, his attempt to regain the union’s presidency after his release ended with his apparent abduction and death in 1975, allegedly at the hands of the Mafia. His son, Jimmy Hoffa, later became leader of the Teamsters.
Industry:Culture
(1913 – 1994) United States president, 1969–74, Richard Nixon began his political career as a conservative McCarthyite member of Congress from California who pursued Alger Hiss.
He twice served as Eisenhower’s vice-president and then narrowly lost the presidential election to John F. Kennedy in 1960. Following an embarrassing defeat in the California gubernatorial election of 1962, he seemed finished. But the resilient and resourceful Nixon bounced back to win the 1968 Republican Party nomination, fending off his more conservative and liberal adversaries (Ronald Reagan and Rockefeller, respectively), stealing a page from the racist demagogue George Wallace in fashioning what he later called “The Great Silent Majority of Americans,” and squeezing out a surprisingly close victory over a Hubert Humphrey battered and bruised by the events of 1968 (the Vietnam War, urban riots, campus disorder, the chaos of the Chicago Democratic Convention).
Nixon built a Southern strategy which thrived on the resentments experienced by many white Southerners and white, ethnic workers in the North. He slowed the pace of school integration, attacked “forced busing,” tried unsuccessfully to appoint segregationists to a Supreme Court which would support abortion rights in Roe v.
Wade (1973) and, ingeniously supported affirmative action as a wedge issue to divide trade unions from minorities.
Nixon’s domestic programs were remarkably liberal, in part because of the Democratic congressional majorities he confronted. Under his watch, Congress passed significant legislation regarding the environment, senior citizens, Social Security worker safety; important proposals regarding healthcare and a guaranteed national income (Family Assistance Plan) were considered before faltering. Nixon appropriated Keynesian measures to address mounting economic problems exacerbated by the OPEC oil boycott of 1973.
Foreign policy however, was Nixon’s preferred domain. He campaigned with a “secret plan” to end the war in Indochina. His efforts included: a contradictory mixture of great power and diplomacy (efforts to woo both the Soviets and the Chinese to impose a settlement on the Vietnamese); a madman approach which tried, unsuccessfully to bluff the Vietnamese into concessions by threatening to use nuclear weapons; Vietnamization, which sought to sustain domestic support through cutting US forces and, therefore, casualties and relying on air power; and, finally a more hawkish agenda which included the secret bombing of Cambodia, complicity in the overthrow of Sihanouk, the invasion of Cambodia in 1970 and Laos in 1971, the mining of Haiphong harbor and the Christmas bombings of 1972. Finally, he and his “odd couple” aide, Henry Kissinger, fashioned a peace agreement which provided a “decent interval” before, in 1975, the Vietnamese communists crushed their Saigon adversaries and reunified Vietnam.
Nixon’s greatest accomplishment was his recognition of China and his efforts to achieve deténte with the Soviets. These were countered by his Vietnam failures and his support for right-wing dictatorships, for example Marcos, the Shah, South African apartheid and his complicity in the military coup which overthrew the democratically elected Socialist Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973.
Finally the Watergate scandal revealed Nixon’s least attractive qualities—his paranoia, his bigotry his resentments. The investigations uncovered illegal campaign funding, abuses of power and conspiracy to cover up crimes. Nixon’s taping system provided the “smoking gun” which finally forced him to resign in disgrace in August 1974.
Industry:Culture
(born 1914) Winner of the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in creating the Green Revolution in which limited acreage fed more and more people. Borlaug learned from his experiences of the Midwest Dustbowl and developed high-yield, low-pesticide dwarf wheat crops that proved effective in Mexico and then in South Asia in the 1960s. His later campaigns against famine in Africa, however, faced criticism for their impact on population growth and the crops’ need for pesticides and irrigation.
Industry:Culture
