María Eva Duarte de Perón (; ; 7 May 1919 – 26 July 1952), better known as just Eva Perón or by the nickname Evita (), was an Argentine politician, activist, actress, and philanthropist who served as First Lady of Argentina from June 1946 until her death in July 1952, as the wife of Argentine President Juan Domingo Perón (1895–1974). She was born in poverty in the rural village of Los Toldos, in the Pampas, as the youngest of five children. In 1934, at the age of 15, she moved to the nation's capital of Buenos Aires to pursue a career as a stage, radio, and film actress.

She met Colonel Juan Perón on 22 January 1944 during a charity event at the Luna Park Stadium to benefit the victims of an earthquake in San Juan, Argentina. The two were married the following year. Juan Perón was elected President of Argentina in June 1946; during the next six years, Eva Perón became powerful within the pro-Peronist trade unions, primarily for speaking on behalf of labor rights. She also ran the Ministries of Labor and Health, founded and ran the charitable Eva Perón Foundation, championed women's suffrage in Argentina, and founded and ran the nation's first large-scale female political party, the Female Peronist Party.

In 1951, Eva Perón announced her candidacy for the Peronist nomination for the office of Vice President of Argentina, receiving great support from the Peronist political base, low-income and working-class Argentines who were referred to as descamisados or "shirtless ones" (similar to the term "sans-culottes" during the French Revolution). Opposition from the nation's military and bourgeoisie, coupled with her declining health, ultimately forced her to withdraw her candidacy. In 1952, shortly before her death from cancer at 33, Eva Perón was given the title of "Spiritual Leader of the Nation" by the Argentine Congress. She was given a state funeral upon her death, a prerogative generally reserved for heads of state.

Eva Perón has become a part of international popular culture, most famously as the subject of the musical Evita (1976).  Cristina Álvarez Rodríguez has said that Evita has never left the collective consciousness of Argentines. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the second female president of Argentina (after Isabel Perón), claims that women of her generation owe a debt to Eva for "her example of passion and combativeness".

Early life

Early childhood
Eva's 1951 biography, La Razón de mi Vida, contains no dates or references to childhood occurrences, and does not list the location of her birth or her name at birth. According to Junín's civil registry, a birth certificate shows that one María Eva Duarte was born on May 7, 1919. Her baptismal certificate lists the date of birth as May 7, 1919 under the name Eva María Ibarguren. It is thought that in 1945 the adult Eva Perón created a forgery of her birth certificate for her marriage.

Eva Perón spent her childhood in Junín, Buenos Aires province. Her father, Juan Duarte (1872–1926), was descended from French Basque immigrants. Her mother, Juana Ibarguren (9 February 1894 – 11 February 1971), was descended from Spanish Basque immigrants. Juan Duarte, a wealthy rancher from nearby Chivilcoy, already had a wife and family there. At that time in rural Argentina, it was not uncommon for a wealthy man to have multiple families.

When Eva was a year old, Duarte returned permanently to his legal family, leaving Juana Ibarguren and her children in abject poverty. They were forced to move to the poorest area of Junín. Los Toldos was a village in the dusty region of Las Pampas, with a reputation as a desolate place of poverty. To support herself and her children, Ibarguren sewed clothes for neighbors. The family was stigmatized by the abandonment of the father and by the illegitimate status of the children under Argentine law, and was consequently somewhat isolated. A desire to expunge this part of her life might have been a motivation for Eva to arrange the destruction of her original birth certificate in 1945.

When Duarte suddenly died and his mistress and their children sought to attend his funeral, there was an unpleasant scene at the church gates. Although Juana and the children were permitted to enter and pay their respects, they were promptly directed out of the church. Duarte's widow did not want her late husband's mistress and children at the funeral and, as she was the legitimate wife, her orders were respected.

Junín
Before abandoning Juana Ibarguren, Juan Duarte had been her sole means of support. Biographer John Barnes writes that, after this abandonment, all Duarte left to the family was a document declaring that the children were his, thus enabling them to use the Duarte surname. Soon after, Juana moved her children to a one-room apartment in Junín. To pay the rent on their single-roomed home, mother and daughters took up jobs as cooks in the houses of the local estancias.

Eventually, owing to Eva's older brother's financial help, the family moved into a bigger house, which they later transformed into a boarding house. During this time, young Eva often participated in school plays and concerts. One of her favorite pastimes was the cinema. Though Eva's mother had a few plans for Eva, wanting to marry her off to one of the local bachelors, Eva herself dreamed of becoming a famous actress. Eva's love for acting was reinforced in October 1933, when she played a small role in a school play called Arriba Estudiantes (Students Arise), which Barnes describes as "an emotional, patriotic, flag-waving melodrama". After the play, Eva was determined to become an actress.

Move to Buenos Aires

In her autobiography, she explained that all the people from her town who had been to the big cities described them as "marvelous places, where nothing was given but wealth". In 1934, at the age of 15, Eva escaped her poverty-stricken village when she ran off with a young musician to the nation's capital of Buenos Aires. The young couple's relationship ended quickly, but Eva remained in Buenos Aires. She began to pursue jobs on the stage and the radio, and she eventually became a film actress. She bleached her naturally black hair to blonde, a look she maintained for the rest of her life.

It is often reported that Eva traveled to Buenos Aires by train with tango singer Agustín Magaldi. However, there is no record of the married Magaldi performing in Junín in 1934 (and, even if he had done so, he usually traveled with his wife). Eva's sisters maintain that Eva traveled to Buenos Aires with their mother. The sisters also claim that Doña Juana accompanied her daughter to an audition at a radio station and arranged for Eva to live with the Bustamante family, who were friends of the Duarte family. While the method of Eva's escape from her bleak provincial surroundings is debated, she did begin a new life in Buenos Aires.

Upon arrival in Buenos Aires, Eva Duarte was faced with the difficulties of surviving without formal education or connections. The city was especially overcrowded during this period because of the migrations caused by the Great Depression. On 28 March 1935, she made her professional debut in the play Mrs. Perez (la Señora de Pérez), at the Comedias Theater.

In 1936, Eva toured nationally with a theater company, worked as a model, and was cast in a few B-grade movie melodramas. In 1942, she experienced some economic stability when a company called Candilejas (sponsored by a soap manufacturer) hired her for a daily role in one of their radio dramas called Muy Bien, which aired on Radio El Mundo (World Radio), the most important radio station in the country at that time. Later that year, she signed a five-year contract with Radio Belgrano, which assured her a role in a popular historical-drama program called Great Women of History, in which she played Elizabeth I of England, Sarah Bernhardt, and Alexandra Feodorovna, the last Tsarina of Russia. Eventually, Eva Duarte came to co-own the radio company. By 1943, she was earning five or six thousand pesos a month, making her one of the highest-paid radio actresses in the nation. Pablo Raccioppi, who jointly ran Radio El Mundo with Eva Duarte, is said to have not liked her, but to have noted that she was "thoroughly dependable". Eva also had a short-lived film career, but none of the films in which she appeared were hugely successful. In one of her last films, La cabalgata del circo (The Circus Cavalcade), Eva played a young country girl who rivaled an older woman, the movie's star, Libertad Lamarque.

As a result of her success with radio dramas and the films, Eva achieved some financial stability. In 1942, she was able to move into an apartment in the exclusive neighborhood of Recoleta, on 1567 Calle Posadas. The next year, Eva began her career in politics, as one of the founders of the Argentine Radio Syndicate (ARA).

Early relationship with Juan Perón

On 15 January 1944, an earthquake occurred in the town of San Juan, Argentina, killing ten thousand people. In response, Juan Perón, who was then the Secretary of Labour, established a fund to raise money to aid the victims. He devised a plan to have an "artistic festival" as a fundraiser, and invited radio and film actors to participate. After a week of fundraising, all participants met at a gala held at Luna Park Stadium in Buenos Aires to benefit earthquake victims.

It was at this gala, on 22 January 1944, that Eva Duarte first met Colonel Juan Perón. Eva promptly became the colonel's girlfriend.  She referred to the day she met her future husband as her "marvelous day". Juan Perón and Eva left the gala together at around two in the morning. (Perón's first wife, Aurelia Tizón, had died of uterine cancer in 1938.)

Eva Duarte had no knowledge of or interest in politics prior to meeting Perón; therefore, she never argued with Perón or any of his inner circle, but merely absorbed what she heard. Juan Perón later claimed in his memoir that he purposefully selected Eva as his pupil, and set out to create in her a "second I". Juan Perón may have allowed Eva Duarte such intimate exposure and knowledge of his inner circle because of his age: he was 48 and she was 24 when they met. He had come to politics late in life, and was therefore free of preconceived ideas of how his political career should be conducted, and he was willing to accept whatever aid she offered him.

In May 1944, it was announced that broadcast performers must organize themselves into a union, and that this union would be the only one permitted to operate in Argentina. Shortly after the formation of the union, Eva Duarte was elected its president. Juan Perón had made the suggestion that performers create a union, and the other performers likely felt it was good politics to elect his mistress. Shortly after her election as president of the union, Eva Duarte began a daily program called Toward a Better Future, which dramatized, in soap opera form, the accomplishments of Juan Perón. Often, Perón's own speeches were played during the program. When she spoke, Eva Duarte spoke in ordinary language as a regular woman who wanted listeners to believe what she herself believed about Juan Perón.

Rise to power

Juan Perón's arrest

By the early 1940s, a group of Army officers called the GOU for "Grupo de Oficiales Unidos" (United Officers' Group), nicknamed "The Colonels", had gained considerable influence within the Argentine government. President Pedro Pablo Ramírez became wary of Juan Perón's growing power within the government and was unable to curb that power. On 24 February 1944, Ramírez signed his own resignation paper, which was drafted by Juan Perón himself; Edelmiro Julián Farrell, a friend of Juan Perón, became president, and Juan Perón returned to his job as Labor Minister, at which point he was the most powerful man in the Argentine government. On 9 October 1945 Juan Perón was arrested by his opponents within the government who feared that, with  the strong support of his base, largely unskilled unionized workers that had recently moved from rural areas to industrialized urban centers and several allied trade unions, Perón would attempt a power grab.

Six days later, between 250,000 and 350,000 people gathered in front of the Casa Rosada, Argentina's government house, to demand Juan Perón's release. At 11 pm, Juan Perón stepped onto the balcony of the Casa Rosada and addressed the crowd. Biographer Robert D. Crassweller claims that this moment was particularly powerful because it dramatically recalled important aspects of Argentine history. Crassweller writes that Juan Perón enacted the role of a caudillo addressing his people in the tradition of Argentine leaders Rosas and Yrigoyen. Crassweller also claims that the evening contained "mystic overtones" of a "quasi-religious" nature.

After Perón won the elections of 1946, his administration started circulating a highly fictionalized version of the 17 October demonstration where Eva Perón was portrayed as knocking on every door in Buenos Aires in order to bring out people to the street. This version of events was popularized in the movie version of the Lloyd Webber musical; historians agree that this version of events is false. At the time of Perón's imprisonment, Eva was still merely an actress. She had no political influence with any of the various labor unions, and she was not well liked within Perón's inner circle, nor was she even particularly popular within the film and radio business at that point.  The massive rally that freed Perón from prison was organized by various unions, particularly the CGT, which was Perón's main base.

On 18 October 1945, a day after he was released, Perón married Eva discreetly in a civil ceremony in Junín. A church wedding was held on 9 December 1945 in La Plata. To this day, 17 October is celebrated as a holiday for the Justicialist Party (celebrated as Día de la Lealtad, or "Loyalty Day").

1946 presidential election
After his release from prison, Juan Perón decided to campaign for the presidency of the nation, which he won in a landslide. Eva campaigned heavily for her husband during his 1946 presidential bid. Using her weekly radio show, she delivered powerful speeches with heavy populist rhetoric urging the poor to align themselves with Perón's movement.

European tour

In 1947, Eva embarked on a much-publicized "Rainbow Tour" of Europe, meeting with numerous dignitaries and heads of state, such as Francisco Franco and Pope Pius XII. The tour had its genesis in an invitation that the Spanish leader had extended to Juan Perón; Eva decided that if Juan Perón would not accept Franco's invitation for a state visit to Spain, then she would. Argentina had only recently emerged from its "wartime quarantine", thus taking its place in the United Nations and improving relations with the United States. Therefore, a visit to Franco, with António Salazar of Portugal, the last remaining Western European authoritarian leaders in power, was diplomatically frowned upon internationally. Advisers then decided that Eva should also visit other European countries in addition to Spain. This would make it seem that Eva's sympathies were not specifically with Francoist Spain. The tour was billed not as a political tour but as a non-political "goodwill" tour.

Eva was well received in Spain, where she visited the tombs of Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella in the Capilla Real de Granada. Francoist Spain had not recovered from the Spanish Civil War (the autarkic economy and the UN embargo meant that the country could not feed its people). During her visit to Spain, Eva handed out 100-peseta notes to many poor children she met on her journey. She also received from Franco the highest award given by the Spanish government, the Order of Isabella the Catholic.

Eva then visited Rome, where the reception was not as warm as it had been in Spain. Though Pope Pius XII did not give her a Papal decoration, she was allowed the time usually allotted to queens and was given a rosary.

Her next stop was France where she met with Charles de Gaulle. She promised France two shipments of wheat.

While in France, Eva received word that George VI would not receive her when she planned to visit Britain, regardless of what his Foreign Office might advise, and that her visit would not be viewed as a state visit. Eva regarded the royal family's refusal to meet her as a snub, and canceled the trip to the UK. Eva gave "exhaustion" as the official reason for not going on to Britain.

Eva also visited Switzerland during her European tour, a visit that has been viewed as the worst part of the trip. According to the book Evita: A Biography by John Barnes, while she travelled down a street with many people crowding her car, someone threw two stones and smashed the windshield. She threw her hands up in shock, but was not injured. Later, as she sat with the Foreign Minister, protesters threw tomatoes at her. The tomatoes hit the Foreign Minister and splattered on Eva's dress. After these two events, Eva had had enough and, concluding the two-month tour, returned to Argentina.

Members of the Peronist opposition speculated that the true purpose of the European tour was to deposit funds in a Swiss bank account, although the tour was not an unusual practice and "there are many more convenient and less conspicuous ways of depositing money in Swiss accounts than meeting the Swiss Foreign Minister and being shown around a watch factory". It was unlikely that a Swiss bank account existed.

During her tour to Europe, Eva Perón was featured in a cover story for Time magazine. The cover's caption – "Eva Perón: Between two worlds, an Argentine rainbow" – was a reference to the name given to Eva's European tour, The Rainbow Tour. This was the only time in the periodical's history that a South American first lady appeared alone on its cover. (In 1951, Eva appeared again, but with Juan Perón.) The 1947 cover story was also the first publication to mention that Eva had been born out of wedlock. In retaliation, the periodical was banned from Argentina for several months.

After returning to Argentina from Europe, Evita never again appeared in public with the complicated hairdos of her movie-star days. The brilliant gold color became more subdued in tone and even the style changed, her hair being pulled back severely into a heavy braided chignon. Her extravagant clothing became more refined after the tour. No longer did she wear the elaborate hats and form-fitting dresses of Argentine designers. Soon she adopted simpler and more fashionable Paris couture and became particularly attached to the fashions of Christian Dior and the jewels of Cartier. In an attempt to cultivate a more serious political persona, Eva began to appear in public wearing conservative though stylish tailleurs (a business-like combination of skirts and jackets), which also were made by Dior and other Paris couture houses.

Charitable and feminist activities

Eva Foundation

The Sociedad de Beneficencia (Society of Beneficence), a charity group made up of 87 society ladies, was responsible for most works of charity in Buenos Aires prior to the election of Juan Perón. At one point the Sociedad had been an enlightened institution, caring for orphans and homeless women, but those days had long since passed by the time of the first term of Juan Perón. In the 1800s, the Sociedad had been supported by private contributions, largely those of the husbands of the society ladies, but by the 1940s, the Sociedad was supported by the government.

It had been the tradition of the Sociedad to elect the First Lady of Argentina as president of the charity. But the ladies of the Sociedad did not approve of Eva Perón's impoverished background, lack of formal education, and former career as an actress. The ladies of the Sociedad were afraid that Evita would set a bad example for the orphans; therefore, the society ladies did not extend to Evita the position of president of their organization. It has often been said that Evita had the government funding for the Sociedad cut off in retaliation. This version of events is arguable, but the government funding that had previously supported the Sociedad now went to support Evita's own foundation. The Eva Perón Foundation began with 10,000 pesos provided by Evita herself.

In The Woman with the Whip, the first English-language biography of Eva Perón, author Mary Main writes that no account records were kept for the foundation, because it was merely a means of funneling government money into private Swiss bank accounts controlled by the Peróns. Fraser and Navarro counter these claims, writing that Ramón Cereijo, the Minister of Finance, did keep records, and that the foundation "began as the simplest response to the poverty [Evita] encountered each day in her office" and to "the appalling backwardness of social services—or charity, as it was still called—in Argentina". Crassweller writes that the foundation was supported by donations of cash and goods from the Peronist unions and private businesses, and that the Confederación General del Trabajo donated three man-days (later reduced to two) of salary for every worker per year. Tax on lottery and movie tickets also helped to support the foundation, as did a levy on casinos and revenue from horse races. Crassweller also notes that there were some cases of businesses being pressured to donate to the foundation, with negative repercussions resulting if requests for donations were not met.

Within a few years, the foundation had assets in cash and goods in excess of three billion pesos, or over $200 million at the exchange rate of the late 1940s. It employed 14,000 workers, of whom 6,000 were construction workers and 26 were priests. It purchased and distributed annually 400,000 pairs of shoes, 500,000 sewing machines, and 200,000 cooking pots. The foundation also gave scholarships, built homes, hospitals, and other charitable institutions. Every aspect of the foundation was under Evita's supervision. The foundation also built entire communities, such as Evita City, which still exists today. Due to the works and health services of the foundation, for the first time in history there was no inequality in Argentine health care.

Toward the end of her life, Evita was working as many as 20 to 22 hours per day in her foundation, often ignoring her husband's request that she cut back on her workload and take the weekends off. The more she worked with the poor in her foundation, the more she adopted an outraged attitude toward the existence of poverty, saying, "Sometimes I have wished my insults were slaps or lashes. I've wanted to hit people in the face to make them see, if only for a day, what I see each day I help the people." Crassweller writes that Evita became fanatical about her work in the foundation and felt as though she were on a crusade against the very concept and existence of poverty and social ills. "It is not surprising", writes Crassweller, "that as her public crusades and her private adorations took on a narrowing intensity after 1946, they simultaneously veered toward the transcendental." Crassweller compares Evita to Ignatius Loyola, saying she came to be akin to a one-woman Jesuit Order.

Female Peronist Party and women's suffrage

Eva Perón has often been credited with gaining the right to vote for Argentine women. While Eva did make radio addresses in support of women's suffrage and also published articles in her Democracia newspaper asking male Peronists to support women's right to vote, ultimately the ability to grant to women the right to vote was beyond Eva's powers. Eva's actions were limited to supporting a bill introduced by one of her supporters, Eduardo Colom, a bill that was eventually dropped.

A new women's suffrage bill was introduced, which the Senate of Argentina sanctioned on 21 August 1946. It was necessary to wait more than a year before the House of Representatives sanctioned it on 9 September 1947. Law 13,010 established the equality of political rights between men and women and universal suffrage in Argentina. Finally, Law 13,010 was approved unanimously. In a public celebration and ceremony, Juan Perón signed the law granting women the right to vote, and then he handed the bill to Eva, symbolically making it hers.

Eva Perón then created the Female Peronist Party, the first large female political party in the nation. By 1951, the party had 500,000 members and 3,600 headquarters across the country. While Eva Perón did not consider herself a feminist, her impact on the political life of women was decisive. Thousands of previously apolitical women entered politics because of Eva Perón. They were the first women active in Argentine politics. The combination of female suffrage and the organization of the Female Peronist Party granted Juan Perón a large majority (63 percent) of the vote in the 1951 presidential elections.

1952 presidential election

Vice-presidential nomination

In 1951, Duarte was chosen by her husband as a candidate for vice-president. This move was not welcomed by some of Perón's more conservative allies to whom the possibility of Eva becoming president in the event of Juan Perón's death was not acceptable.

Eva was immensely popular particularly among working-class women. The intensity of the support she drew from the people is said to have surprised even Juan Perón himself. The wide support Evita's proposed candidacy generated indicated to him that Eva had become as important a figure of the Peronist party as Juan Perón himself was.

On 22 August 1951, the aligned labour unions held a massive rally that they called the "Cabildo Abierto", a reference to the first local government of the May Revolution, in 1810. The Peróns addressed the crowd from the balcony of a huge scaffolding set up on the Avenida 9 de Julio, several blocks away from the Casa Rosada, the official government house of Argentina. Overhead were two large portraits of Eva and Juan Perón. It has been claimed that "Cabildo Abierto" was the largest public display of support in history for a female political figure.

She declined the invitation to run for vice-president. She said her only ambition was that in the large chapter of history to be written about her husband, the footnotes would mention a woman who brought the "hopes and dreams of the people to the president", a woman who eventually turned those hopes and dreams into "glorious reality". In Peronist rhetoric, this event has come to be referred to as "The Renunciation", portraying Evita as having been a selfless woman in line with the Hispanic myth of marianismo.

Re-election and Spiritual Leader of the Nation

On 7 May 1952, Evita's 33rd birthday, she was given the title of "Spiritual Leader of the Nation" by her husband.

On 4 June 1952, Evita rode with Juan Perón in a parade through Buenos Aires in celebration of his re-election as President of Argentina. Evita was by this point so ill that she was unable to stand without support. Underneath her oversized fur coat was a frame made of plaster and wire that allowed her to stand. She took a triple dose of pain medication before the parade, and took another two doses when she returned home.

Death and aftermath

Declining health
On 9 January 1950, Evita fainted in public and underwent surgery three days later. Although it was reported that she had undergone an appendectomy, she was actually found to have advanced cervical cancer. Fainting episodes continued through 1951 (including the evening after "Cabildo abierto"), with extreme weakness and severe vaginal bleeding. By 1951, it had become evident that her health was rapidly deteriorating. Although her diagnosis was withheld from her by Juan, he knew she was not well, and a bid for the vice-presidency was not practical. A few months after "the Renunciation", Evita secretly underwent a radical hysterectomy, performed by the American surgeon George T. Pack
at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in an attempt to remove the cervical tumor. In 2011, a Yale neurosurgeon, Daniel E. Nijensohn, studied Evita's skull X-rays and photographic evidence and said that Perón may have been given a prefrontal lobotomy in the last months of her life "to relieve the pain, agitation and anxiety she suffered in the final months of her illness".

Péron's cervical cancer had metastasized and returned rapidly despite the hysterectomy. She was the first Argentine to undergo chemotherapya novel treatment at that time. She became emaciated, weighing only  by June 1952.

Death
Péron died at 8:25 p.m. on Saturday, 26 July 1952 at the Unzue Palace. Radio broadcasts throughout the country were interrupted with the announcement that "the Press Secretary's Office of the Presidency of the Nation fulfills its very sad duty to inform the people of the Republic that at 20:25 hours, Mrs. Eva Perón, Spiritual Leader of the Nation, died."

Mourning

Immediately after Evita's death, the government suspended all official activities for several days and ordered that all flags be flown at half-mast for 10 days. Business across the country was put to a halt as movies were stopped and patrons were asked to leave restaurants. Popular grief was overwhelming. The crowd outside of the presidential residence, where Evita died, grew dense, congesting the streets for ten blocks in each direction.

The morning after her death, while Evita's body was being moved to the Ministry of Labour Building, eight people were crushed to death in the throngs. In the following 24 hours, over 2,000 people were treated in city hospitals for injuries sustained in the rush to be near Evita as her body was being transported, and thousands more were treated on the spot. For the following two weeks, lines stretched for many city blocks with mourners waiting hours to see Evita's body lie in state at the Ministry of Labour.

The streets of Buenos Aires overflowed with huge piles of flowers. Within a day of Perón's death, all flower shops in Buenos Aires had run out of stock. Flowers were flown in from all over the country, and as far away as Chile. Despite the fact that Eva Perón never held a political office, she was eventually given a state funeral usually reserved for a head of state, along with a full Roman Catholic Requiem Mass. A memorial was held in Helsinki for the Argentine team to attend during the 1952 Summer Olympics due to Eva Perón's death during those games.

On Saturday, 9 August, the body was transferred to the Congress Building for an additional day of public viewing, and a memorial service attended by the entire Argentine legislative body. The next day, after a final Mass, the coffin was laid on a gun carriage pulled by CGT officials. It was followed by Perón, his cabinet, Eva's family and friends, the delegates and representatives of the Female Peronist Party—then workers, nurses and students of the Eva Peron Foundation. Flowers were thrown from balconies and windows.

There were different interpretations of the popular mourning of Eva Perón's death. Some reporters viewed the mourning as authentic, others saw a public succumbing to another of the "passion plays" of the Peronist regime. Time reported that the Peronist government enforced the observance of a daily period of five minutes of mourning following a daily radio announcement.

During Perón's time, children born to unmarried parents did not have the same legal rights as those born to married parents. Biographer Julie M. Taylor, professor of anthropology at Rice University, has said that Evita was well aware of the pain of being born "illegitimate". Taylor speculates that Evita's awareness of this may have influenced her decision to have the law changed so that "illegitimate" children would henceforth be referred to as "natural" children. Upon her death, the Argentine public was told that Evita was only 30. The discrepancy was meant to dovetail with Evita's earlier tampering with her birth certificate. After becoming the first lady in 1946, Evita had her birth records altered to read that she had been born to married parents, and placed her birth date three years later, making herself younger.

Memorial

Shortly after Evita's death, Pedro Ara, who was well known for his embalming skill, was approached to embalm the body. It is doubtful that Evita ever expressed a wish to be embalmed, which suggests that it was most likely Juan Perón's decision. Ara replaced the subject's blood with glycerine in order to preserve the organs and lend an appearance of "artistically rendered sleep".

Disappearance and return of body

Shortly after Evita's death, plans were made to construct a memorial in her honour. The monument, which was to be a statue of a man representing the descamisados, was projected to be larger than the Statue of Liberty. Evita's body was to be stored in the base of the monument and, in the tradition of Lenin's corpse, to be displayed for the public. While the monument was being constructed, Evita's embalmed body was displayed in her former office at the CGT building for almost two years. Before the monument to Evita was completed, Juan Perón was overthrown in a military coup, the Revolución Libertadora, in 1955. Perón hastily fled the country and was unable to make arrangements to secure Evita's body.

Following his flight, a military dictatorship took power. The new authorities removed Evita's body from display, and its whereabouts were a mystery for 16 years. From 1955 until 1971, the military dictatorship of Argentina maintained a ban on Peronism. In 1971, the military found that Evita's body was buried in a crypt in Milan, Italy, under the name "María Maggi". It appeared that her body had been damaged during its transport and storage, including compressions to her face and disfigurement of one of her feet due to the body having been left in an upright position.

In 1995, Tomás Eloy Martínez published Santa Evita, a fictionalised work propounding many new stories about the escapades of the corpse. Allegations that her body was the object of inappropriate attentions are derived from his description of an 'emotional necrophilia' by embalmers, Colonel Koenig and his assistant Arancibia. Many primary and secondary references to his novel have inaccurately stated that her body had been defiled in some way resulting in the widespread belief in this myth. Also included are allegations that many wax copies had been made, that the corpse had been damaged with a hammer, and that one of the wax copies was the object of an officer's sexual attentions.

Final resting place

In 1971, Evita's body was exhumed and flown to Spain, where Juan Perón maintained the corpse in his home. Juan and his third wife, Isabel, decided to keep the corpse in their dining room on a platform near the table. In 1973, Juan Perón came out of exile and returned to Argentina, where he became president for the third time. Perón died in office in 1974. That year the group Montoneros stole the corpse of Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, whom they had also previously kidnapped and assassinated. Montoneros then used the captive body of Aramburu to press for the repatriation of Eva's body. His third wife, Isabel Perón, who had been elected vice-president, succeeded Perón and had Eva Perón's body returned to Argentina to be displayed beside her husband's corpse. Once Eva's body had arrived in Argentina, the  group unceremoniously dumped Aramburu's corpse on a random street in Buenos Aires. Eva's body was later buried in the Duarte family tomb in La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires.

Later Argentine governments took elaborate measures to make Eva Perón's tomb secure. The tomb's marble floor has a trapdoor that leads to a compartment containing two coffins. Under that compartment is a second trapdoor and a second compartment. That is where Eva Perón's coffin rests.

Legacy and criticism

Argentina and Latin America

In his essay titled "Latin America" published in The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, John McManners claims that the appeal and success of Eva Perón are related to Latin American mythology and concepts of divinity. McManners claims that Eva Perón consciously incorporated aspects of the theology of the Virgin and of Mary Magdalene into her public persona. Historian Hubert Herring has described Eva Perón as "perhaps the shrewdest woman yet to appear in public life in Latin America".

In a 1996 interview, Tomás Eloy Martínez referred to Eva Perón as "the Cinderella of the tango and the Sleeping Beauty of Latin America". Martínez suggested she has remained an important cultural icon for the same reasons as fellow Argentine Che Guevara:

Although not a government holiday, the anniversary of Eva Perón's death is marked by many Argentines each year. Additionally, Eva Perón has been featured on Argentine coins, and a form of Argentine currency called "Evitas" was named in her honour. Ciudad Evita (Evita City), which was established by the Eva Perón Foundation in 1947, is located just outside Buenos Aires.

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the first elected female president in Argentine history, is a Peronist who has occasionally been referred to as "The New Evita". Kirchner says she does not want to compare herself to Evita, claiming she was a unique phenomenon in Argentine history. Kirchner also says that women of her generation, who came of age in the 1970s during the military dictatorships in Argentina, owe a debt to Evita for offering an example of passion and combativeness. On 26 July 2002, the 50th anniversary of Eva Perón's death, a museum opened in her honour called Museo Evita. The museum, created by her great-niece Cristina Alvarez Rodriguez, houses many of Eva Perón's clothes, portraits, and artistic renderings of her life, and has become a popular tourist attraction. The museum was opened in a building that was once used by the Eva Perón Foundation.

In the book Eva Perón: The Myths of a Woman, cultural anthropologist Julie M. Taylor claims that Evita has remained important in Argentina due to the combination of three unique factors:

Taylor argues that the fourth factor in Evita's continued importance in Argentina relates to her status as a dead woman and the power that death holds over the public imagination. Taylor suggests that Evita's embalmed corpse is analogous to the incorruptibility of various Catholic saints, such as Bernadette Soubirous, and has powerful symbolism within the largely Catholic cultures of Latin America:

John Balfour was the British ambassador in Argentina during the Perón regime, and describes Evita's popularity:

In 2011, two giant murals of Evita were unveiled on the building facades of the current Ministry of Social Development, located on 9 de Julio Avenue. The works were painted by Argentine artist Alejandro Marmo. On 26 July 2012, to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of Evita's death, notes were issued in a value of 100 pesos. The controversial effigy of Julio Argentino Roca was replaced by that of Eva Duarte, making her the first actual woman to be featured on the currency of Argentina. The image in the notes is based on a 1952 design, whose sketch was found in the Mint, made by the engraver Sergio Pilosio with artist Roger Pfund. The printing totals 20 million notes; it is not clear whether the government will replace the notes that feature Roca and the Conquest of the Desert.

Allegations of fascism and antisemitism

From the start, Juan Perón's opponents accused him of being a fascist. Spruille Braden, a diplomat from the United States who was greatly supported by Juan Perón's opponents, campaigned against Juan Perón's first candidacy on the platform that Juan Perón was a fascist and a Nazi. The perception that the Peróns were fascists may have been enhanced during Evita's 1947 European tour, during which, she was a guest of honor of Francisco Franco. By 1947, Franco had become politically isolated because he was one of the few remaining right-wing authoritarian leaders who was able to retain his power. Franco, therefore, was in desperate need of a political ally. With nearly a third of Argentina's population of Spanish descent, it seemed natural for Argentina to have diplomatic relations with Spain. Commenting on the international perception of Evita during her 1947 European tour, Fraser and Navarro write, "It was inevitable that Evita be viewed in a fascist context. Therefore, both Evita and Perón were seen to represent an ideology which had run its course in Europe, only to re-emerge in an exotic, theatrical, even farcical form in a faraway country."

Laurence Levine, the former president of the U.S.-Argentine Chamber of Commerce, writes that in contrast to Nazi ideology, the Peróns were not anti-Semitic. In the book Inside Argentina from Perón to Menem: 1950–2000 from an American Point of View, Levine writes:

Biographer Robert D. Crassweller writes, "Peronism was not fascism", and "Peronism was not Nazism." Crassweller also refers to the comments of U.S. Ambassador George S. Messersmith. While visiting Argentina in 1947, Messersmith made the following statement: "There is not as much social discrimination against Jews here as there is right in New York or in most places at home."

Time magazine published an article by Tomás Eloy Martínez—Argentine writer, journalist, and former director of the Latin American program at Rutgers University—titled "The Woman Behind the Fantasy: Prostitute, Fascist, Profligate—Eva Peron Was Much Maligned, Mostly Unfairly". In this article, Martínez writes that the accusations that Eva Perón was a fascist, a Nazi, and a thief had been made against her for decades. He wrote that the allegations were untrue:

The governments that preceded Juan Perón's government were anti-Semitic but his government was not. Juan Perón "eagerly and enthusiastically" attempted to recruit the Jewish community into his government and set up a branch of the Peronist party for Jewish members, known as the Organización Israelita Argentina (OIA). Perón's government was the first to court the Argentine Jewish community and the first to appoint Jewish citizens to public office. The Peronist regime has been accused of being fascist, but it has been argued that what passed for fascism under Perón never took hold in Latin America; additionally, because the Peronist regime allowed rival political parties to exist, it cannot be described as totalitarian.

International popular culture

By the late 20th century, Eva Perón had become the subject of numerous articles, books, stage plays, and musicals, ranging from the 1952 biography The Woman with the Whip to a 1981 TV movie titled Evita Perón starring Faye Dunaway in the title role. The most successful rendering of Eva Perón's life has been the musical production Evita. The musical began as a concept album which was co-produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice in 1976, with Julie Covington in the title role. Elaine Paige was later cast in the title role when the concept album was adapted into a musical stage production in London's West End and it won the 1978 Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Musical. In 1980, Patti LuPone won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her performance as the title character in the Broadway production. The Broadway production also won the Tony Award for Best Musical. Nicholas Fraser claims that to date, "the musical stage production has been performed on every continent except Antarctica and it has generated over $2 billion in revenue."

As early as 1978, the musical was considered as the basis for a movie. After a nearly 20-year production delay, Madonna was cast in the title role for the 1996 film version and she won the Golden Globe Award for "Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy". In response to the American film, and in an alleged attempt to offer a more politically accurate depiction of Evita's life, an Argentine film company released Eva Perón: The True Story. The Argentine production starred actress Esther Goris in the title role. This movie was the 1996 Argentine submission for the Oscar in the category of "Best Foreign Language Film," but was not accepted as a nominee.

Nicholas Fraser writes that Evita is the perfect popular culture icon for our times because her career foreshadowed what, by the late 20th century, had become common. During Evita's time, it was considered scandalous for a former entertainer to take part in public political life. Her detractors in Argentina had frequently accused Evita of turning public political life into show business. But by the late 20th century, Fraser claims, the public had become engrossed in the cult of celebrity and public political life had become insignificant. In this regard, Evita was perhaps ahead of her time. Fraser also writes that Evita's story is appealing to our celebrity-obsessed age because her story confirms one of Hollywood's oldest clichés, the rags to riches story. Reflecting on Eva Perón's popularity more than half a century after her death, Alma Guillermoprieto writes that, "Evita's life has evidently just begun."

Titles and honours
Eva Perón appears on the 100 peso note first issued in 2012 commemorating the anniversary of her death. She is also featured on a new 100 peso note, issued in 2022.

Honours

National honours
 : Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of the Liberator General San Martín
 : Grand Cross of Honour of the Argentine Red Cross

Foreign honours

 : Grand Cross of the Order of the Condor of the Andes
 : Grand Cross of the Order of the Southern Cross
 : Grand Cross of the Order of Boyaca, Special Class
 : Dame Grand Cross of the Order of Orange-Nassau
 : Dame Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic
 : Dame Grand Cross of Sovereign Military Order of Malta
 : Grand Cross of the Order of the Aztec Eagle
 : Grand Cross of the Order of Omeyades
 : Grand Cross of the Order of Merit and the Ecuadorian Red Cross
 : Grand Cross of the Order of Honour and Merit
 : Grand Cross of the Order of the Sun of Peru
 : Grand Cross of the Merit of Paraguay

See also

List of suffragists and suffragettes
Timeline of women's suffrage
Copa Eva Duarte

References

Bibliography

 Guy, Donna. "Life and the Commodification of Death in Argentina: Juan and Eva Perón" in Death, Dismemberment, and Memory: Body Politics in Latin America, Lyman L. Johnson, ed. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 2004, pp. 245–272.

Further reading

External links

 Eva Perón Historical Foundation
 casahistoria pages on Perón Les Fearns site, also links to Eva Perón pages
 BBC Radio 4 programme about Perón's embalmed body
 The Evita Project – a social media page dedicated to Evita and the preservation of her legacy

1919 births
1952 deaths
20th-century Argentine actresses
20th-century Argentine politicians
20th-century Argentine women
Argentine actor-politicians
Argentine feminists
Argentine film actresses
Argentine people of Basque descent
Argentine people of Spanish descent
Argentine radio actresses
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Burials at La Recoleta Cemetery
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Eva Perón


Game Maker is a computer program for the Windows operating system. It was first made by Mark Overmars, but it is now made by the company YoYo Games.

Game Maker lets people make computer games without knowing a computer programming language. People who know how to use programming languages can use Game Maker's own programming language, called Game Maker Language.

The newest version is Game Maker Studio. Since the first version made in 1999, Game Maker was given many new features. One of these features is 3-D graphics.

Game Maker has a drag-and-drop interface. This lets people make games using mostly the computer mouse. Game Maker uses icons that tell the person what actions they can do. People can make simple games by moving these icons into a given order. More detailed games can be made when Game Maker Language is used.

Game Maker has an internet community and website. There, people who use Game Maker can put their games up for others to play. People can also get help on using Game Maker from other people.

History

Game Maker started as an animation program called Animo. Each new version of Game Maker added new features. Starting with version 7.0, Game Maker was published by the YoYo Games company.

In May 22, 2012, YoYo Games released GM:Studio. After that GM:HTML5 is no longer supported.GM:Studio allows users to publish their games to Windows, Mac OS X, Android, iOS, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Linux Ubuntu and HTML5.

References

Game Maker


Warren William Zevon (; January 24, 1947 – September 7, 2003) was an American rock singer, songwriter, and musician. His most famous compositions include "Werewolves of London", "Lawyers, Guns and Money", and "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner". All three songs are featured on his third album, Excitable Boy (1978), the title track of which is also well-known. He also wrote major hits that were recorded by other artists, including "Poor Poor Pitiful Me", "Accidentally Like a Martyr", "Mohammed's Radio", "Carmelita", and "Hasten Down the Wind".

Zevon had early music industry successes as a session musician, jingle composer, songwriter, touring musician, musical coordinator, and bandleader. Despite all of that, Zevon struggled to break through in his solo career until his music was performed by Linda Ronstadt, beginning with her 1976 album Hasten Down the Wind. It launched a cult following that lasted 25 years, with Zevon making occasional returns to album and single charts until his death from mesothelioma in 2003. He briefly found a new audience by teaming up with members of R.E.M. in the blues rock outfit Hindu Love Gods for a 1990 album release, although no tour followed. In 2023, Zevon was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Known for his dry wit and acerbic lyrics, he was a guest numerous times on Late Night with David Letterman and the Late Show with David Letterman.

Early life
Zevon was born in Chicago, the son of Beverly Cope (née Simmons) and William Zevon. His father was a Jewish immigrant from Ukraine, whose original surname was Zivotofsky. William Zevon worked as a bookie who handled volume bets and dice games for the notorious Los Angeles mobster Mickey Cohen. He worked for years in the Cohen crime family, in which he was known as Stumpy Zevon, and was best man at Cohen's first wedding. Warren's mother was from a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints family and of English descent. They moved to Fresno, California. By the age of 13, Zevon was an occasional visitor to the home of Igor Stravinsky, where he briefly studied modern classical music alongside Robert Craft. Zevon's parents divorced when he was 16 years old. He soon quit high school and moved from Los Angeles to New York City to become a folk singer.

Zevon turned to a musical career early, forming a musical duo with his high school friend, Violet Santangelo, called lyme and cybelle. Bones Howe produced their first single, the minor hit "Follow Me", which was written by Zevon and Santangelo and reached number 65 on the Billboard pop charts in April 1966. A follow-up single, a cover of Bob Dylan's "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" flopped, and Zevon left the duo. A third single without Zevon and another session that included him but was not previously released were included on the 2003 compilation The First Sessions.

Zevon spent time as a session musician and jingle composer. He wrote several songs for his White Whale labelmates The Turtles ("Like the Seasons" and "Outside Chance"), though his participation in their recording—if any—is unknown.  Another early Zevon composition ("She Quit Me") was included in the soundtrack for the film Midnight Cowboy (1969); to suit its place in the film, the song was re-recorded by Leslie Miller as "He Quit Me".

Zevon's first attempt at a solo album, Wanted Dead or Alive (1970), was spearheaded by 1960s cult figure Kim Fowley but received almost no attention and did not sell well. Though Zevon continued to play occasional live dates as a solo artist, the next several years of his career were dominated by session work with other musicians.

During the early 1970s, Zevon toured regularly with the Everly Brothers as keyboard player, band leader, and musical coordinator. Later the same decade, he toured with Don Everly and Phil Everly separately as they tried to launch solo careers after their breakup. He worked particularly closely with Phil, arranging and playing keyboards on his first and third solo albums (Star Spangled Springer (1973) and Mystic Line (1975)) and co-writing tracks on his second and third albums (Phil's Diner (1974) and the aforementioned Mystic Line). Zevon's song "Carmelita" was also recorded by Canadian singer Murray McLauchlan on his self-titled album of 1972.

These small successes were not particularly rewarding financially, and Zevon's dissatisfaction with his career (and a lack of funds) led him to briefly move to Spain in the summer of 1975. He lived and played in the Dubliner Bar, a small tavern in Sitges, near Barcelona, owned by David Lindell, who was a mercenary. Together they composed "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner".

Return to L.A. and major-label debut

By September 1975 Zevon had returned to Los Angeles, where he roomed with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, who had at this time become members of Fleetwood Mac. There he collaborated with Jackson Browne, who produced and promoted Zevon's self-titled major-label debut in 1976. Contributors to the album included Nicks, Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, members of the Eagles, Carl Wilson, Linda Ronstadt, and Bonnie Raitt. Ronstadt elected to record many of his songs, including "Hasten Down the Wind", "Carmelita", "Poor Poor Pitiful Me", and "Mohammed's Radio". Zevon's first tour in 1977, included guest appearances in the middle of Jackson Browne concerts, one of which is documented on a widely circulated bootleg recording of a Dutch radio program under the title The Offender Meets the Pretender.

Produced by Browne, Warren Zevon (1976) was his first album to chart in the United States, peaking at No. 189. The first edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide (published in 1979) called it "a masterpiece". The guide's latest edition (November 2004) calls it Zevon's "most realized work". Representative tracks include the junkie's lament "Carmelita"; the Copland-esque outlaw ballad "Frank and Jesse James"; "The French Inhaler", a scathing look at life and lust in the L.A. music business (which was actually about Marilyn Livingston, his long-time girlfriend and mother of his son, Jordan); and "Desperados Under the Eaves", a chronicle of Zevon's increasing alcoholism.

Success
In 1978, Zevon released Excitable Boy (produced by Jackson Browne and guitarist Waddy Wachtel) to critical acclaim and popular success. The title tune is about a juvenile sociopath's murderous prom night and referred to "Little Susie", the heroine of the song "Wake Up Little Susie" made famous by his former employers the Everly Brothers. Other songs such as "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" and "Lawyers, Guns and Money" used deadpan humor to wed geopolitical subtexts to hard-boiled narratives. Tracks from this album received heavy FM airplay, and the single release "Werewolves of London", which featured Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, was a relatively lighthearted work featuring Zevon's signature macabre outlook that reached No. 21 on the charts.

In The Rolling Stone Record Guide (1979), critic Dave Marsh called Zevon "one of the toughest rockers ever to come out of Southern California". Rolling Stone record reviews editor Paul Nelson called the album "one of the most significant releases of the 1970s" and placed Zevon alongside Neil Young, Jackson Browne, and Bruce Springsteen as the four most important new artists to emerge in the decade. On May 11, 1980, Zevon and Willie Nile appeared on the King Biscuit Flower Hour.

Zevon followed Excitable Boy with Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School, in 1980. This album was dedicated to Ken Millar, better known under his nom-de-plume as the detective novelist Ross Macdonald. One of Zevon's literary heroes, Millar met the singer for the first time while participating in an intervention organized by Nelson, which helped Zevon temporarily curtail his addictions. Featuring a modest hit with the single "A Certain Girl" (Zevon's cover of an R&B record by Ernie K-Doe) which reached No. 57 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, the album sold briskly but was uneven, and represented a decline rather than commercial and critical consistency. It contained a collaboration with Bruce Springsteen on the song "Jeannie Needs a Shooter" and the ballad "Empty-Handed Heart" featuring a descant sung by Linda Ronstadt, which is about Zevon's divorce from his wife, Crystal, the mother of his daughter Ariel; she has been erroneously described in some sources as his "second wife". (Marilyn "Tule" Livingston, the mother of his son, Jordan, and Zevon were in a long-term relationship but never married.) Later in 1980, he released the live album Stand in the Fire (dedicated to Martin Scorsese), recorded over five nights at the Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles.

Personal crisis and first comeback
Zevon's 1982 release The Envoy returned to the high standard of Excitable Boy but was not a commercial success. It was an eclectic but characteristic set that included such compositions as "Ain't That Pretty at All", "Charlie's Medicine" and "Jesus Mentioned", the first of Zevon's two musical reactions to the death of Elvis Presley; the other is the song "Porcelain Monkey" on Life'll Kill Ya in 2000. The album also contains the first of Zevon's writing collaborations with respected writers of fiction: "The Overdraft", co-written with Thomas McGuane. The title track was dedicated to Philip Habib, U.S. special envoy to the Middle East during the early 1980s. In the liner notes for the 1996 anthology I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, Zevon stated that after the song came out, Habib sent him "a very nice letter of appreciation on State Department stationery". The lyrics of another track, "The Hula Hula Boys", were excerpted in Hunter S. Thompson's 1983 book The Curse of Lono.

In 1983 Zevon, who was recently divorced, became engaged to Philadelphia disc jockey Anita Gevinson and moved to the East Coast. After The Envoy was poorly received by critics, Asylum Records ended their business relationship with Zevon, which Zevon discovered only when he read about it in the "Random Notes" column of Rolling Stone. Following these career setbacks, he relapsed into drug and alcohol abuse. In 1984, he voluntarily checked himself into a rehab clinic in Minnesota. His relationship with Gevinson ended shortly thereafter. Zevon retreated from the music business for several years, except for playing live solo shows; during this time he finally overcame severe alcohol and drug addictions.

During this time, Zevon collaborated with Bill Berry, Peter Buck and Mike Mills (of R.E.M.), and backup vocalist Bryan Cook to form a minor project called Hindu Love Gods. The group released the non-charting single "Narrator" for IRS Records in 1984, then went into abeyance for several years.

Berry, Buck and Mills served as the core of Zevon's next studio band when he re-emerged in 1987 by signing with Virgin Records and recording the album Sentimental Hygiene. The release, hailed as his best since Excitable Boy, featured a thicker rock sound and taut, often humorous songs like "Detox Mansion", "Bad Karma" (which featured R.E.M. lead singer Michael Stipe on backup vocals), and "Reconsider Me". Included were contributions from Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Flea, Brian Setzer, and George Clinton, as well as Berry, Buck, and Mills. Also on hand were Zevon's longtime collaborators Jorge Calderón and Waddy Wachtel.

During the Sentimental Hygiene sessions, Zevon also participated in an all-night jam session with Berry, Buck and Mills, as they worked their way through rock and blues numbers by the likes of Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and Prince. Though the sessions were not initially intended for release, they eventually saw the light of day as a Hindu Love Gods album.

The immediate follow-up to Sentimental Hygiene was 1989's Transverse City, a futuristic concept album inspired by Zevon's interest in the work of cyberpunk science fiction author William Gibson. It featured guests including Little Feat drummer Richie Hayward, Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna bassist Jack Casady, noted jazz keyboardist Chick Corea and various guitarists, including Wachtel, David Lindley, Jerry Garcia, Jorma Kaukonen, David Gilmour and Neil Young. Key tracks include the title song, "Splendid Isolation", "Run Straight Down" (which had a promotional video that featured Zevon singing in a factory while Gilmour played guitar solos), and "They Moved the Moon" (one of Zevon's eerier ballads).

Later years and second comeback
Transverse City was a commercial disappointment, and Zevon was dropped by Virgin Records soon after the album's release. He almost immediately contracted, however, with Irving Azoff's new label Giant Records. The first release under Zevon's contract with his new distributor was the album Hindu Love Gods, recorded during the Sentimental Hygiene sessions. The album included a cover of Prince's "Raspberry Beret", which became a number 23 Modern Rock hit in the United States.

In 1991, Zevon who once again was a solo artist, released Mr. Bad Example. The album featured the modest pop hit "Searching for a Heart" and the rocker "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead", later used as the title of the neo-noir film of the same name, directed by Gary Fleder; after some skirmishing over the unauthorized use of Zevon's song title, the Zevon track was licensed to play over the film's end credits. Zevon also sang lead vocals on the song "Casey Jones" from the Grateful Dead tribute album Deadicated, with regular collaborator David Lindley.

Zevon toured the United States (with the Odds), Europe, Australia and New Zealand during this period. Owing to his reduced circumstances, his performances were often true solo efforts with minimal accompaniment on piano and guitar; the live album Learning to Flinch (1993) documents such a tour. Zevon often played in Colorado to allow for an opportunity to visit with his longtime friend Hunter S. Thompson.

A lifelong fan of hardboiled fiction, Zevon was friendly with several well-known writers, who also collaborated on his songwriting during this period, including Thompson, Carl Hiaasen and Mitch Albom. Zevon also served as musical coordinator and occasional guitarist for an ad-hoc rock music group called the Rock Bottom Remainders, a collection of writers performing rock-and-roll standards at book fairs and other events. The group included Stephen King, Dave Barry, Matt Groening and Amy Tan, among other popular writers; it has continued to perform one benefit concert per year since Zevon's death.

An affiliated project for which Zevon both played and wrote liner notes is the offbeat 1998 album Stranger Than Fiction, a two-CD set attributed to the Wrockers, containing rock covers and originals by many of the Remainders authors plus such notables as Norman Mailer and Maya Angelou. Zevon oversaw music for the short-lived revival of the NBC series Route 66 (1993), contributing that show's main title theme, "If You Won't Leave Me I'll Find Somebody Who Will". His music was also featured in the four William Shatner TekWar movies in 1994. Zevon is listed as "theme music composer" in the opening credits. His song "Real or Not" was used as the show's end credit theme song. The song appeared on Zevon's 2-CD set, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (An Anthology). In the accompanying booklet, Zevon wrote, "I wrote this song for the William Shatner TV movies based on his novels. He is Captain Kirk, rest assured. He'd call me at home and demand to hear the song in progress, then he'd say "We need more guitars! More driving guitars!" It was cool. The track reflected my secret fondness for sleazy English techno records."

Occasionally between 1982 and 2001, Zevon filled in for Paul Shaffer as bandleader on Late Night with David Letterman and later the Late Show with David Letterman.

In 1995, Zevon released the self-produced Mutineer. The title track was frequently covered by Bob Dylan on his U.S. fall tour in 2002. Zevon's cover of cult artist Judee Sill's "Jesus Was a Crossmaker" predated the wider rediscovery of her work a decade later. The album, however, had the worst sales of Zevon's career, in part because of lack of promotion from his label, Giant. Rhino Records released a Zevon "best-of" compilation in 1996, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead. Zevon also appeared on the Larry Sanders Show on HBO, in 1993, playing himself as a guest on the show, promoting Learning to Flinch. Zevon also played himself on two episodes of Suddenly Susan in 1999, along with singer and actor Rick Springfield.

After another five-year layoff, Zevon signed with industry veteran Danny Goldberg's Artemis Records and again rebounded with the mortality-themed 2000 release Life'll Kill Ya, containing the hymn-like "Don't Let Us Get Sick" and an austere version of Steve Winwood's 1980s hit "Back in the High Life Again". With record sales brisk and music critics giving Zevon his best notices since Excitable Boy, Life'll Kill Ya is seen as his second comeback. He followed with the album My Ride's Here (2002), with its morbid prescience of things to come; the album included "Hit Somebody! (The Hockey Song)" (co-written by Mitch Albom, the author of Tuesdays with Morrie, and featuring Paul Shaffer, the Late Night band, and a spoken vocal from TV host David Letterman) and the ballad "Genius"—written with Pulitzer Prize and T.S. Eliot Prize-winning poet, Paul Muldoon—later used as the title of an anthology of Zevon's recordings in 2002.

At about this time, he and the actor Billy Bob Thornton formed a close friendship, catalyzed by their common experiences with obsessive-compulsive disorder and the fact they lived in the same apartment building. One of Zevon's compulsions was buying and hoarding identical gray Calvin Klein T-shirts.

Cancer and The Wind

In interviews, Zevon described a lifelong phobia of doctors and said he seldom consulted one. He had started working out, and he looked physically fit. Shortly before playing at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival in 2002, he started feeling dizzy and developed a chronic cough. After a period of suffering with pain and shortness of breath, Zevon was encouraged by his dentist to see a physician; he was diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, a cancer (usually caused by exposure to asbestos) that affects the pleura, a thin membrane around the lungs and chest lining. Zevon was deeply shaken by the news and began drinking again after 17 years of sobriety.

Although Zevon never revealed where he may have been exposed to asbestos, his son, Jordan, suggests that it came from Zevon's childhood, playing in the attic of his father's carpet store in Arizona. Refusing treatments he believed might incapacitate him, Zevon instead began recording his final album, The Wind, which includes performances by close friends including Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley, Jackson Browne, Timothy B. Schmit, Joe Walsh, David Lindley, Billy Bob Thornton, Emmylou Harris, Tom Petty, and Dwight Yoakam. At the request of the music television channel VH1, documentarian Nick Read was given access to the sessions and made the television film Inside Out: Warren Zevon.

On October 30, 2002, Zevon was featured alone on an episode of the Late Show with David Letterman as the only guest for the entire hour. The band played "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" as his introduction. Zevon performed several songs and spoke at length about his illness. Zevon had been a frequent guest and occasional substitute bandleader on Letterman's television shows since Late Night was first broadcast in 1982. He noted, "I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." It was during this broadcast that, when asked by Letterman if he knew something more about life and death now, he first offered his oft-quoted insight that people need to "enjoy every sandwich." He also thanked Letterman for his years of support, calling him "the best friend my music's ever had". For his final song of the evening, and his final public performance, Zevon performed "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" at Letterman's request. In the green room after the show, Zevon presented Letterman with the guitar that he always used on the show, with a single request: "Here, I want you to have this, take good care of it." The day after Zevon's death, Letterman paid tribute to him by replaying his performance of "Mutineer" from his last appearance. The Late Show band played Zevon's songs throughout the night.

Zevon stated previously that his illness was expected to be terminal within months after diagnosis in late 2002. However, he lived to see the birth of twin grandsons in June 2003 and the release of The Wind on August 26, 2003. Owing in part to the first VH1 broadcasts of Nick Read's documentary Warren Zevon: Keep Me in Your Heart, the album reached number 12 on the U.S. charts, Zevon's highest placement since Excitable Boy. When his diagnosis became public, Zevon told the media that he just hoped to live long enough to see the next James Bond movie (Die Another Day), a goal he accomplished.

Death
Zevon died of mesothelioma on September 7, 2003, aged 56, at his home in Los Angeles. His body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles.

Posthumous releases and awards
A tribute album titled Enjoy Every Sandwich: The Songs of Warren Zevon was released October 19, 2004. Zevon's son, Jordan Zevon, was the executive producer of the album and performed "Studebaker", a previously unfinished composition by his father. A second tribute album, Hurry Home Early: The Songs of Warren Zevon ("hurry home early" is from the song "Boom Boom Mancini", on the album Sentimental Hygiene) was released by Wampus Multimedia on July 8, 2005.

On February 14, 2006, VH1 Classic premiered a music video from a new compilation, Reconsider Me: The Love Songs. The video, titled "She's Too Good for Me," aired every hour on the hour throughout the day.

First and last issues of the Zevon albums Stand in the Fire and The Envoy were released on March 27, 2007, by Rhino Records, alongside a Rhino re-issue of Excitable Boy, with the three CDs having four unreleased bonus tracks each. Noteworthy rarities include the outtakes "Word of Mouth" and "The Risk" from the Envoy sessions and "Frozen Notes (Strings Version)", a melancholy outtake from Excitable Boy performed on acoustic piano with a string quartet.

Ammal Records was a new label started up as a partnership with New West Records by Zevon's former boss at Artemis, Danny Goldberg. On May 1, 2007, Ammal released Preludes: Rare and Unreleased Recordings, a two-disc anthology of Zevon demos and alternate versions culled from 126 pre-1976 recordings that were kept in a suitcase. The album contains five previously unreleased songs: "Empty Hearted Town", "Going All the Way", "Steady Rain", "Stop Rainin' Lord" and "The Rosarita Beach Cafe", along with Zevon's original demo of "Studebaker". Selections from an interview of Zevon by the Austin-based radio personality Jody Denberg are blended with about 40 minutes of music on the collection's second disc.

The Wind was certified gold by the RIAA in December 2003, and Zevon received five posthumous Grammy nominations, including Song of the Year for the ballad "Keep Me in Your Heart". The Wind won two Grammys, with the album itself receiving the award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, while "Disorder in the House", Zevon's duet with Bruce Springsteen, was awarded Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. These posthumous awards were the first Grammys of Zevon's thirty-plus year career.

Personal life
Zevon was married to Crystal, and their daughter Ariel Zevon was born in 1976. Ariel Zevon is a singer-songwriter and former café owner in Vermont. Warren Zevon and Marilyn Livingston Dillow had a son, Jordan Zevon in 1969. Jordan Zevon is a singer, musician, and songwriter.

Zevon was a friend of United States Representative Steve Cohen, at the time a State Senator, the two attended the 2000 Democratic National Convention together.

Biographical works
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon, a biography by his ex-wife, Crystal Zevon, was published in 2007 by Ecco Books. The book is largely an oral history that consists of interviews with Zevon's friends, relatives and associates, as well as excerpts from his diaries. Crystal Zevon said Warren had given her permission to use the journal excerpts and instructed her to present an unvarnished portrayal of his life that did not sanitize his many struggles.

George Plasketes, a professor at Auburn University, wrote a critical study of Zevon's music in 2016, Warren Zevon, Desperado of Los Angeles. Zevon was also the subject of Michael Flood's essay "Lord Byron's Luggage: Warren Zevon and the Redefinition of Literature Rock". A collection of short stories by Kelly Lynn Thomas, Miss Gun to a Knife Fight: Stories, is composed of retellings of songs by Zevon.

In 2012, George Gruel, a photographer who worked as Zevon's aide-de-camp from 1978 to 1983, published a book of photos of Zevon. It is entitled Lawyers, Guns and Photos.

Discography

 Wanted Dead or Alive (1970)
 Warren Zevon (1976)
 Excitable Boy (1978)
 Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School (1980)
 Stand in the Fire Live (1980)
 The Envoy (1982)
 Sentimental Hygiene (1987)
 Transverse City (1989)
 Hindu Love Gods (1990), with members of R.E.M. (excluding Michael Stipe)
 Mr. Bad Example (1991)
 Learning to Flinch (1993)
 Mutineer (1995)
 Life'll Kill Ya (2000)
 My Ride's Here (2002)
 The Wind (2003)

References

Further reading

External links

Warren Zevon semi-official site

Warren Zevon's personal archive at Human Archives

1947 births
2003 deaths
20th-century American keyboardists
20th-century American male singers
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American singer-songwriters
21st-century American keyboardists
21st-century American singer-songwriters
21st-century American writers
American baritones
American male singer-songwriters
American people of English descent
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American rock keyboardists
American rock singers
American rock songwriters
Artemis Records artists
Asylum Records artists
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from mesothelioma
Giant Records (Warner) artists
Grammy Award winners
Hindu Love Gods (band) members
Imperial Records artists
People with obsessive–compulsive disorder
Reprise Records artists
Rykodisc artists
Singer-songwriters from Illinois
Singers from Chicago
Virgin Records artists
White Whale Records artists
Writers from Chicago

Warren Zevon


In high energy physics experiments, an absorber is a block of material used to absorb some of the energy of an incident particle in an experiment. Absorbers can be made of a variety of materials, depending on the purpose; lead, tungsten and liquid hydrogen are common choices. Most absorbers are used as part of a particle detector; particle accelerators use absorbers to reduce the radiation damage on accelerator components.

Other uses of the same word
 Absorbers are used in ionization cooling, as in the International Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment.
 In solar power, a high degree of efficiency is achieved by using black absorbers which reflect off much less of the incoming energy.
 In sunscreen formulations, ingredients which absorb UVA/UVB rays, such as avobenzone and octyl methoxycinnamate, are known as absorbers. They are contrasted with physical "blockers" of UV radiation such as titanium dioxide and zinc oxide.

References

Particle detectors
Accelerator physics

Absorber


Jacqueline Milczarek was a Canadian news anchor for CTV News Channel broadcasting on weekend afternoons. She started working for CTV News in 2007. Before she joined CTV News, Milczarek was a reporter and part-time anchor to Global TV's First National with Peter Kent.  She has earned two RTNDA Awards for coverage of Pope John Paul's visit to Canada during the World Youth Day in 2002 as well as for a story about a man who recovered from a coma. Milczarek graduated from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute.

Milczarek created some controversy for her comments during a debate about "ethical oil" and using the Athabasca oil sands over Saudi Arabia's oil. When discussing CTV's refusing to air an ad by Ethical Oil Institute (an oil sands advocacy group) describing women's rights in Saudi Arabia; Milczarek asked "Are we really more ethical than the Saudis?" Milczarek later tweeted she was referring to Canada supporting the Saudi government, although it was questioned if she was forced to make these comments based on CTV's parent company, Bell Canada, large volume of work building the Saudi's telephone infrastructure. CTV and Bell laid her off in 2014.   She no longer works at CTV News but as a reporter and host of CPAC- than cable political Canadian news network

References

Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Canadian television news anchors
Toronto Metropolitan University alumni
Canadian women television journalists

Jacqueline Milczarek


Louise Élisabeth de France (Marie Louise Élisabeth; 14 August 1727 – 6 December 1759) was the eldest daughter of King Louis XV of France and Maria Leszczyńska. She married Infante Philip, younger son of Philip V of Spain, and later became Duchess of Parma.

Princess of France

Baptised with the names Marie Louise Élisabeth she was the twin of Henriette of France. She was known at court as Madame Royale, Madame Première or Madame Élisabeth. Within the family she was known Babette. She was he fathers favourite daughter.

Marriage

She was forced to marry Infante Philip of Spain by proxy on 26 August 1739. not having met her future husband beforehand. Afterwards, she was known as Madame Infante at the court of Louis XV. The marriage ceremony took place on 25 October 1739. She was known as Madame Infante at Versailles after her marriage.

Louise Élisabeth travelled to Madrid to the court of Philip V of Spain who was in fact her great uncle. The strict court etiquette was made worse by her mother-in-law, Elisabeth Farnese, who disliked Louise Élisabeth.

Duchess of Parma

Louise Élisabeth was able to leave Spain in 1748 when her husband was created Duke of Parma thanks to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) which ended the War of the Austrian Succession. At Louis XV's instigation, Philip was given Parma as Louise Élisabeth had frequently asked him to bestow territory on her husband. En route to Parma, Louise Élisabeth went to Versailles arriving there in December 1748. During her stay she became acquainted with Madame de Pompadour. She arrived in Parma in October 1749 where she imported French court manners and cuisine. She also redecorated the Ducal Palace of Colorno in the French style.

At the death of her twin sister in 1752, Louise Élisabeth returned to France in September to visit her tomb at Saint-Denis. She was expected to stay for only a few weeks, but remained in Versailles for almost a year.

Louise Élisabeth was bored when she returned to Parma, and sought a wider realm to rule. She allied herself with Empress Maria Theresa, who promised Louise Élisabeth the throne of the Southern Netherlands, which had been returned to Austrian rule under the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. This alliance was to be cemented by the marriage of her daughter Princess Isabella to Archduke Joseph of Austria. The marriage took place in 1760.

While back at Versailles, Louise Élisabeth died of smallpox. She was buried on 27 March 1760 at Saint-Denis Basilica beside her sister, Henriette. Their tombs were destroyed during the French Revolution.

Issue

Princess Isabella of Parma (31 December 1741 – 27 November 1763) married Archduke Joseph of Austria and had issue.
Ferdinand, Duke of Parma (20 January 1751 – 9 October 1802) married Maria Amalia of Austria and had issue.
Princess Maria Luisa of Parma (9 December 1751 – 2 January 1819) married her cousin, the Charles IV of Spain and had issue.

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles and styles

14 August 1727 – 25 October 1739 Her Royal Highness Madame Royale
25 October 1739 - 18 October 1748 Her Royal Highness Doña Luisa Isabel, Infanta of Spain
18 October 1748 - 6 December 1759 Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, Infanta of Spain
In France the princess was informally known as Madame Infante.

Other websites

Bourbons of Parma
Dukes and Duchesses of Parma
Spanish infantes and infantas
Deaths from smallpox
1727 births
1759 deaths
People from Versailles

Louise Élisabeth of France


Zarbon (ザーボン, Zābon) is a character in Dragonball Z.

Appearance
Zarbon is a powerful warrior who values beauty and his looks above all else. He first shows up in the Namek saga, and is shown to be one of Frieza's top two henchmen. Little is known about the character other than his pride, and his long history with Vegeta. His long, green braided hair, tiara and earrings might mean he was a high-class prince. He also wears a very long cape as well as leg and arm-warmers. Along with his choice of clothing, he wears the common armor that most of Frieza's men have, including the shoulder pads and a blue scouter.  He is very vain and he considers himself to be of high standard.

Zarbon has the ability to transform into a reptilian beast. With brute strength and ferocity, his second form is much uglier than his first form. Upon transforming, his size increases as well as his muscular build and his skin becomes covered with what appear to be scales, like a reptile. It's clear that he finds this transformation ugly, as it not only offends his general love of beauty but also takes away his attractive form. In essence, he is both a beauty and a beast.

Storyline
In a speculative storyline written for the made-for-television Dragon Ball Z Special 1: Bardock- The Father of Goku set before the events of the Dragonball series, Zarbon appears to have acted primarily as Frieza's advisor. It was Zarbon who is shown to have advised Frieza that it would be wise to wipe out the entire Saiyan race before they posed a threat. He is depicted as being beside Frieza as the latter killed King Vegeta and destroyed Planet Vegeta.

Zarbon is first seen in the anime and manga when he accompanies Lord Frieza and Dodoria to the Planet of Namek in search of the Dragonballs, which Frieza desires so that he can wish for immortality. Zarbon helps in the collection of most of the Dragonballs, mercilessly slaughtering Namekians who seek to keep the Dragonballs hidden. After Vegeta, and the separate group of Gohan, Krillin, and Bulma show up, there are some scuffles that leave Dodoria dead. Zarbon is the only remaining top henchman of Frieza, and is sent to find another Namekian village, but instead comes face to face with Vegeta. Vegeta overpowers him at first, but when Zarbon realizes his life is threatened, he surprises Vegeta by transforming into his significantly more powerful -- and ugly -- form. This allows him to easily beat Vegeta, who he leaves for dead.

After returning to Frieza, he is ordered to go back and retrieve Vegeta because he had hidden a Dragonball. Zarbon does this, bringing Vegeta to Frieza's medics for treatment of his wounds. However, Vegeta soon escapes with Frieza's dragonballs after being healed. Ordered to find the Saiyan Prince or face death himself, Zarbon again sets out in search of Vegeta. This time the Prince finds him, and the two battle while Krillin and Bulma look on. Zarbon eventually transforms, but his power is not enough to defeat a healed Vegeta, and he is killed in the battle.

Appearances in other media
Zarbon has appeared as a playable character in numerous video games, some of which include Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai, and Ultimate Battle 22.  In Dragon Ball Z: Super Sonic Warriors 2, he is a support-type character.

He is not only a playable character in Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 but he has his own storyline (A What-if scenario added to the game to show Zarbon's love for his own beauty) in the main story mode of the game entitled "Beautiful Treachery." Upon hearing of the power of the Dragon Balls, he hatches a plan to steal them and wish for eternal beauty. This plan mainly revolves around forcing Krillin to assist him, killing Dodoria, and distracting Frieza with a surprise visit from his brother, Cooler. He even gets to fight alongside Goku when his plan goes wrong. In the end, the battle between Frieza and Cooler destroys the planet, tragically taking Zarbon, despite the effects of his wish, with it.

In an issue of Beckett Anime, a Beckett magazine publication, Zarbon was voted as one of the top five greatest henchmen of all anime, and was the only character from Dragon Ball Z on the list.

Related pages
Dragonball Z manga and anime

Dragon Ball characters
Fictional characters introduced in 1989

Zarbon


Nantmawr is a village in Shropshire, England. It is located about 5 miles south west of Oswestry and close to the Welsh border. The Offa's Dyke Path runs through the village.

Like many of the towns in the Welsh Marches, the area was formerly Welsh speaking, and its name means "big stream".

The village also forms the terminus of the surviving stub of the former Potteries, Shrewsbury & North Wales Railway, better known as the 'Potts Line', which is currently being re-opened as a heritage railway by the Tanat Valley Light Railway Company.

Nantmawr has a nature reserve known as "Jones' Rough" managed by Shropshire Wildlife Trust. It is a breeding place for the pearl-bordered fritillary butterfly.

External links

Tanat Valley Light Railway Company Website

Villages in Shropshire

Nantmawr


A godparent is an adult who sponsors a child during a formal religious ceremony or rite. Many religions have godparents or other adults who do something almost the same. These religions include Christianity & Judaism and Islam. Usually a godparent must be a member of the religion of the child. The role of a god parent is to also give the god child a gift, small or big, money, toys, etc. Mainly on Sundays.

Originally a godparent was someone who agreed to help raise the child and help them to become a good member of the religion. They may also have taken over as parent to the child if both its real parents died. Today, the role of godparent is not often a formal one, and has no real responsibility to the child. A female child of a godparent is a goddaughter. A male child of a godparent is a godson.

References

Christian worship and liturgy
Judaism
Islam

Godparent


Mukunda Das(Charan kavi)  (; 22 February 1878 – 18 May 1934) was a Bengali poet, ballad singer, composer and patriot, who contributed to the spread of Swadeshi movement in rural Bengal.

Early life
Mukunda Das came from a modest background. His grandfather was a boatman and his father was a grocer. He was born as Yajneshwar De to Gurudayal De and Shyamasundari Devi on 22 February 1878, in the village of Banari, in the Bikrampur pargana of Dhaka District (currently part of Munshiganj District, Bangladesh). When he was seven, the family migrated to Barisal where they settled permanently. His father set up a grocery store in the Alekanda region of Barisal town. Being Vaishnavas, his father used to sing devotional songs while running the store. The Deputy Magistrate of Barisal, pleased with his  melodious voice offered him the job of an orderly in the Barisal court. Yajneshwar's father took up the job and he began to run the store.

Yajneshwar too was gifted with a melodious voice. He, from his very childhood, began to compose and sing songs on his own. He attended the Barisal Zilla School, but he did not like studies and was irregular at school. He spent most of his time in fishing, capturing bird's nests and playing with neighbourhood boys. In 1893, he was admitted to the Brojomohun School. He attended the Brojomohun School for six years, but dropped out after the eighth standard. Ashwini Kumar Dutta, upset at the failure of a pupil of his own institution, decided to speak to Yajneshwar himself. Datta had heard his melodious before and had realized the potential and talent in him. His called Yajneshwar to his house and initiated him into the patriotic movement.

Career
In 1897, after dropping out from school, Yajneshwar joined the group of Bireshwar Dutta, the kirtan singer of Barisal at that time. After the death of Bireshwar Dutta, he formed a kirtan group of his own. In 1900, he took initiation in Vaishavism from a monk Rasananda Thakur, sometimes also known as Haribolananda. His guru gave him the name Mukunda Das.

In 1905, Ashwini Kumar Dutta gave an inspiring speech at the Barisal Town Hall, against the proposed Partition of Bengal. Stressing on the need to spread the message far and wide, he wished that message from the leaders could be carried to the villages through dramas and plays. Mukunda Das was deeply moved by Ashwini Kumar Dutta's speech. He resolved to fulfil the wish of the great patriot. Within three months he composed his masterpiece 'Matripuja'. The primary theme of his drama was patriotism and freedom movement. The goal of the freedom movement was to free Bharat Mata from the yoke of British imperialism. The children of Bharat Mata would lay down their lives to attain freedom. He raised a Swadeshi theatre group to stage plays  across the villages of Bengal. In 1906, Mukunda Das staged his plays at different places of Barisal and then travelled to Noakhali and Tripura and returned to Barisal before the monsoons. In June 1906, he staged his drama at the Swadeshi Utsav in Barisal, where his play was highly praised by the national leadership. In October, he travelled with his group to Madaripur in Faridpur district, and from there to many places finally returning to Barisal in April 1907. On 16 April, he staged the play in the palace of the Rai Bahadur.

After a run of two years, 'Matripuja' was successful in arousing the patriotic feelings of the masses of Bengal. The play was further popularized by the press. Bande Mataram, Yugantar, Sandhya, Nabashakti, Prabasi and Modern Review, each of them played a part in popularizing the drama. The government of newly formed Eastern Bengal and Assam clamped down, citing incitement to violence. In 1908, he staged the drama in few places in Khulna district, then in truncated Bengal, but he was stopped by the police when he tried to stage the play in Bagerhat. In October 1908, the drama stepped in to the fourth season. In 1908, he was arrested and imprisoned for three years on charges of sedition.

In 1921, Mohandas Gandhi gave the call of Non-Cooperation Movement. Mukunda Das joined the movement with his proven repertoire of drama. Around 1923 the movement was called off and Mukunda Das settled with his group in Kolkata. 'Matripuja' was banned by the government at that time. He began to compose social plays in order to avoid being banned. In 1932, the government banned all his plays.

Later life
After the ban, he was restricted to singing only. He along with his group performed only musical shows. His health deteriorated. On 17 May 1934, he returned late from a performance and died in his sleep.

Works
Mukunda Das composed five dramas - Palliseva, Brahmacharini, Samaj o Path.

In popular culture
Charan Kavi Mukundadas is a 1954 Indian Bengali-language biographical film about the poet, directed by Nirmal Choudhury.

See also
 Ashwini Kumar Dutta

References

Further reading
 Chanda, Pulak (2011). Jagaran Charan Mukundadas o tar Rachanasamagra. Dey's Publishing.
 Goswami, Dr. Jayguru (1978). Charankabi Mukundadas. Vishwavani.

1878 births
1934 deaths
Bengali male poets
Writers from Kolkata

Mukunda Das