Preston Sturges (; born Edmund Preston Biden; August 29, 1898 – August 6, 1959) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and film director. Sturges took the screwball comedy format of the 1930s to another level, writing dialogue that, heard today, is often surprisingly naturalistic and mature, despite the farcical situations. It is not uncommon for a Sturges character to deliver an exquisitely turned phrase and take an elaborate pratfall within the same scene.

Prior to Sturges, other figures in Hollywood (such as Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, and Frank Capra) had directed films from their own scripts; however, Sturges is often regarded as the first Hollywood figure to establish success as a screenwriter and then move into directing his own scripts, at a time when those roles were separate. He sold the story for The Great McGinty to Paramount Pictures for $10 in exchange for directing it. Anthony Lane writes that "To us, that seems old hat, one of the paths by which the ambitious get to run their own show, but back in 1940, when The Great McGinty came out, it was very new hat indeed; the opening credits proclaimed 'Written and directed by Preston Sturges,' and it was the first time in the history of talkies that the two passive verbs had appeared together onscreen. From that conjunction sprang a whole tradition of filmmaking: literate, spiky, defensive, markedly personal, and almost always funny." For that film, Sturges was the first person to win the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Sturges went on to receive Oscar nominations for The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944) and Hail the Conquering Hero (1944). He also wrote and directed The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan's Travels (1941) and The Palm Beach Story (1942), each considered classic comedies, appearing on the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Laughs.

Early life
Sturges was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Mary Estelle Dempsey (later known as Mary Desti or Mary D'Este) and traveling salesman Edmund C. Biden. His maternal grandparents, Catherine Campbell Smyth and Dominick d'Este Dempsey, were immigrants from Ireland, and his father was of English descent.

When Sturges was two years old, his eccentric mother left America to pursue a singing career in Paris, where she annulled her marriage with Preston's father. Returning to America, Dempsey met her third husband, the wealthy stockbroker Solomon Sturges, who adopted Preston in 1902. According to biographers, Solomon Sturges was "diametrically opposite to Mary and her bohemianism". This included her close friendship with Isadora Duncan, as the young Sturges would sometimes travel from country to country with Duncan's dance company. Mary also carried on a romantic affair with Aleister Crowley and collaborated with him on his magnum opus Magick. As a young man, Sturges bounced back and forth between Europe and the United States. As Sturges spent much of his childhood and youth in France, he ended up fluent in French and a Francophile who always considered France his "second home".

In 1916, he worked as a runner for New York stock brokers, a position he obtained through Solomon Sturges. The next year, he enlisted in the United States Army Air Service, and graduated as a lieutenant from Camp Dick in Texas without seeing action. While at camp, Sturges wrote an essay, "Three Hundred Words of Humor", which was printed in the camp newspaper, becoming his first published work. Returning from camp, Sturges picked up a managing position at the Desti Emporium in New York, a store owned by his mother's fourth husband. He spent eight years (1919–1927) there, until he married the first of his four wives, Estelle De Wolfe.

Sturges's 1928 turn to playwriting was accidental. While on a date with a young actress of certain renown, the actress informed Sturges that while she had pretended to find him witty and charming, she actually considered him a bore. "The only reason I'm going out with you, sir, is for the same reason that a scientist embraces a guinea pig; I just like to try my situations out on you to see how they turn out." She claimed that the dramatic research was for a play she was writing. Outraged, Sturges told her that if she could write a play, he could write a play, but that his would be better and run longer. Within two months, he had written his first play: The Guinea Pig, only to find out that she wasn't writing a play at all, and that she was surprised and flattered that he had taken her ravings so seriously.

Career

From Broadway to Hollywood
In 1928, Sturges performed on Broadway in Hotbed, a short-lived play by Paul Osborn, and Sturges's first produced play, The Guinea Pig, opened in Massachusetts. The play was a success and Sturges moved it to Broadway the following year, a turning point in his career. That same year also saw the opening of Sturges's second play, the hit Strictly Dishonorable. Written in just six days, the play ran for sixteen months and earned Sturges over $300,000, a staggering amount at the time. It attracted interest from Hollywood, and Sturges was writing for Paramount by the end of the year.

Three other Sturges stage plays were produced from 1930 to 1932, one of them a musical, but none of them were hits. By the end of the year, he was working more in Hollywood as a writer-for-hire, operating on short contracts, for Universal, MGM, and Columbia studios.  He also sold his original screenplay for The Power and the Glory (1933) to Fox, where it was filmed as a vehicle for Spencer Tracy. The film told the story of a self-involved financier via a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards, and was an acknowledged source of inspiration for the screenwriters of Citizen Kane. Fox producer Jesse Lasky had been prepared to customarily pass Sturges's screenplay along to other writers for rewriting, but said, "It was the most perfect script I'd ever seen ... Imagine a producer accepting a script from an author and not being able to make one change."  Lasky paid Sturges $17,500 plus 7% of the profits above $1 million.  It was a then-unprecedented deal for a screenwriter, which instantly elevated Sturges's reputation in Hollywood – although the lucrative deal irritated as many as it impressed. Sturges later recalled, "The film made a lot of enemies. Writers at that time worked in teams, like piano movers. And my first solo script was considered a distinct menace to the profession."

For the remainder of the 1930s, Sturges operated under the strict auspices of the studio system, working on a string of scripts, some of which were shelved, sometimes with screen credit and sometimes not. While he was highly paid, earning $2,500 a week, he was unhappy with the way directors were handling his dialogue, and he resolved to take creative control of his own projects. He accomplished this goal in 1939 by trading his screenplay for The Great McGinty (written six years earlier) to Paramount in exchange for the chance to direct it. Paramount promoted the unusual deal as part of the film's publicity, saying that Sturges had received just ten dollars. Sturges's success quickly paved the way for similar deals for such writer–directors as Billy Wilder and John Huston. Sturges said, "It's taken me eight years to reach what I wanted. But now, if I don't run out of ideas – and I won't – we'll have some fun. There are some wonderful pictures to be made, and God willing, I will make some of them."

Screenwriting heights
Sturges won the first-ever Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay for The Great McGinty, at which time he was one of the highest paid men in Hollywood. He also received two screenwriting Academy Award nominations in the same year, for 1944's Hail the Conquering Hero and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, a feat since matched by Frank Butler, Francis Ford Coppola, and Oliver Stone. (In the second Academy Awards, under a different nomination process, eleven screenplays were considered, including two by Bess Meredyth, two by Tom Barry, two by Hanns Kräly and four by Elliott J. Clawson.)

Though he had a thirty-year Hollywood career, Sturges's greatest comedies were filmed in a furious five-year burst of activity from 1939 to 1944, during which he turned out The Great McGinty, Christmas in July, The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels, The Palm Beach Story, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero, for each of which he served as both screenplay writer and the director.  Half a century later, four of these – The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels, The Palm Beach Story and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek – were chosen by the American Film Institute as being among the 100 funniest American films.

The film critic Ephraim Katz wrote that Sturges films "...parodied with pungent wit various aspects of American life from politics and advertising to sex and hero worship. They were marked by their verbal wit, opportune comic timing, and eccentric, outrageously funny camo characterizations."  Film critic Andrew Sarris wrote, "Sturges repeatedly suggested that the lowliest boob could rise to the top with the right degree of luck, bluff, and fraud." Critic Andrew Dickos wrote that "the touchstone of Preston Sturges' screenwriting lies in the respect paid to the play and density of verbal language" and "establishes the standard of eloquence as one of poetry, of a cacophony of Euro-American vernacularisms and utterances, peculiarly—and appropriately—spoken with scandalous indifference."

Sturges's rich writing style has been described as that of "a lowbrow aristocrat, a melancholy wiseguy." His scripts were almost congenitally unable to deliver a single mood.  In Hail the Conquering Hero, the series of lies, crimes, and embarrassments all somehow bolster the film's theme of patriotism and duty. Sometimes this attitude could be conveyed in a single line of dialogue, such as in The Lady Eve when Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck) vows revenge on Charles Pike (Henry Fonda), declaring, "I need him like the axe needs the turkey."

In recent years, film scholars such as Alessandro Pirolini have also argued that Sturges's cinema anticipated more experimental narratives by contemporary directors such as Joel and Ethan Coen, Robert Zemeckis, and Woody Allen, along with prolific The Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder: "Many of [Sturges's] movies and screenplays reveal a restless and impatient attempt to escape codified rules and narrative schemata, and to push the mechanisms and conventions of their genre to the extent of unveiling them to the spectator. See for example the disruption of standardized timelines in films such as The Power and the Glory and The Great McGinty or the way an apparently classical comedy such as Unfaithfully Yours (1948) shifts into the realm of multiple and hypothetical narratives."

In 1942, in his review of The Palm Beach Story, critic Manny Farber wrote:
He is essentially a satirist without any stable point of view from which to aim his satire. He is apt to turn his back on what he has been sniping at to demolish what he has just been defending. He is contemptuous of everybody except the opportunist and the unscrupulous little woman who, at some point in every picture, labels the hero a poor sap. That the invariable fairy godfather of each picture is not only expressive of his own cold-blooded cynicism but of typical Hollywood fantasy is an example of how this works. Another phase of his attack is shrouding in slapstick the fact that the godfather pays off not for perseverance or honesty or ability but merely from capriciousness.

Studio battles

Production on these films did not always go smoothly. The Miracle of Morgan's Creek was being written by Sturges at night even as the production was being filmed in the daytime, and Sturges the screenwriter was rarely more than 10 pages ahead of the cast and crew.

Despite box office success for The Lady Eve and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, conflict with Paramount's studio bosses increased. In particular, executive producer Buddy DeSylva never really trusted his star writer-director and was wary (and arguably jealous) of the independence Sturges enjoyed on his projects. One of the sources of conflict was that Sturges liked to reuse many of the same character actors in his films, thus creating what amounted to a regular troupe he could call upon within the studio system.  Paramount feared that the audience would tire of repeatedly seeing the same faces in Sturges productions. But the director was adamant, stating, "[T]hese little players who had contributed so much to my first hits had a moral right to work in my subsequent pictures."  The way Sturges wrote and directed these actors created a succession of what film critic Andrew Sarris later called "self-expressive cameos of aggressive individualism."

Members of Sturges's unofficial "stock company" included: George Anderson, Al Bridge, Georgia Caine, Chester Conklin, Jimmy Conlin, William Demarest, Robert Dudley, Byron Foulger, Robert Greig, Harry Hayden, Esther Howard, Arthur Hoyt, J. Farrell MacDonald, George Melford, Torben Meyer, Charles R. Moore, Frank Moran, Jack Norton, Jane Buckingham, Franklin Pangborn, Emory Parnell, Victor Potel, Dewey Robinson, Harry Rosenthal, Julius Tannen, Max Wagner and Robert Warwick. In addition, Sturges re-used other actors, such as Sig Arno, Luis Alberni, Eric Blore, Porter Hall and Raymond Walburn, and even stars such as Joel McCrea and Rudy Vallee, who both made three films with Sturges, and Eddie Bracken, who did two.

The prolonged clashes between Sturges and Paramount came to a head as the end of his contract approached. He had filmed The Great Moment and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek in 1942 and Hail the Conquering Hero in 1943, but Paramount was suffering from a surfeit of films.  Indeed, some of the studio's finished movies were sold off to United Artists, which needed films to distribute. The studio held onto Sturges's three films, since he was their star filmmaker at the time, but did not immediately release them.

Internally, studio heads expressed serious reservations about them, as did the censors at the Breen Office. Sturges managed to get The Miracle of Morgan's Creek released with only minor changes, but The Great Moment and Hail the Conquering Hero were taken out of his control and tinkered with by DeSylva. When the revamped Hail the Conquering Hero had a disastrous preview, Paramount allowed Sturges – who by that time had left the studio – to come back and fix the film.  Sturges did some rewriting, shot some new scenes, and re-edited the film back to his original vision, all without pay. He was unable to similarly rescue The Great Moment, however. The historical biography about the dentist who discovered the use of ether for anesthesia ended up being Sturges's only flop during this period. More significantly, it marked the onset of a downturn from which Sturges did not fully recover.

Independence and decline
Preston Sturges was a temperamental talent who fully recognized his own worth.  He had invested in entrepreneurial projects, such as an engineering company, and The Players, a popular restaurant and nightclub at 8225 Sunset Boulevard, projects which were both net losses. At one point the third highest paid man in America – for writing, directing, producing, and numerous other Hollywood projects – he was often known to borrow money (from his stepfather and studio, amongst others).

Millionaire Howard Hughes, who had formed a friendship with Sturges, offered to bankroll him as an independent filmmaker. In early 1944, Sturges and Hughes formed a partnership called California Pictures.  The deal represented a major pay cut for Sturges, but it established him as a writer-producer-director, the only one in Hollywood besides Charles Chaplin and one of only four in the world, along with England's Noël Coward and France's René Clair.  The status led, again, to widespread admiration and envy among his Hollywood peers.

However, this career peak also marked the beginning of Sturges's professional decline as Hughes proved an unstable and mercurial partner. While the startup California Pictures was being created and structured, it was three years until Sturges's next release.  That film, a Harold Lloyd vehicle entitled The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947), for which Sturges had coaxed the silent film icon out of retirement, went over budget and far behind schedule, and was poorly received when it was released.  Hughes, who had promised not to interfere in the film's production, stepped in and pulled the movie from distribution in order to re-edit it, taking almost four years to do so.  Released in 1950 by RKO, which was by that time owned by Hughes, the retitled Mad Wednesday was no more successful than Sturges's original version.

In the meantime, California Pictures had put another film into production, Vendetta.  At Hughes's behest, Sturges had written the script as a vehicle for Hughes' protégé, Faith Domergue.  Max Ophüls was hired to direct, but after only a few days of filming, Hughes demanded that Sturges fire Ophüls and take over the direction himself. Seven weeks later, Sturges himself was fired or quit (accounts differ).  The promising partnership between the two iconoclasts was dissolved after just one completed picture.  As Sturges later recalled, "When Mr. Hughes made suggestions with which I disagreed, as he had a perfect right to do, I rejected them. When I rejected the last one, he remembered he had an option to take control of the company and he took over. So I left."

Coming on the heels of the failure of The Great Moment, these further flops, disappointments and setbacks served to tarnish the once stellar reputation of the golden boy of Hollywood.

Sturges was left professionally adrift.  Accepting an offer from Darryl Zanuck, he landed at Fox where he wrote, directed, and produced two films. The first, Unfaithfully Yours (1948), was not initially well received by either reviewers or the public, though its critical reputation has since improved. However, his second Fox film, The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949), was the first serious flop in star Betty Grable's career, and Sturges was again on his own.  He built a theater at his Players restaurant, but the project did not pan out.

Over the next several years, Sturges continued to write, but many of the projects were underfunded or stillborn, and those that emerged did not approach the same success as his earlier triumphs.  His 1951 Broadway musical, Make a Wish, underwent extensive rewriting by Abe Burrows and ran for only a few months. His next Broadway project, Carnival in Flanders, a musical which Sturges wrote and directed in 1953, closed after six performances.

Sturges was having no better luck in Hollywood, where his clout was gone. Katharine Hepburn, who had starred in the 1952 Broadway production of the George Bernard Shaw play, The Millionairess got Sturges to agree to adapt the script and direct.  But she could not get a single Hollywood studio to back the project.

A 1953 lien by the Internal Revenue Service, with whom he had been having tax problems, cost Sturges the Players nightclub and other assets. Sturges put a brave public face on the situation, writing, "I had so very much for so very long, it is quite natural for the pendulum to swing the other way for a while, and I really cannot and will not complain."  However, his drinking became heavy, and his marriage and many of his relationships continued to deteriorate.

Sturges began spending more time in Europe, as he had as a young man.  His last directorial effort took place there when he wrote and directed Les Carnets du Major Thompson, an adaptation of a popular French novel.  The film was released in France in 1955 and two years later in the U.S., under the title The French, They Are a Funny Race.  It failed to register with critics or the audience.

Sturges made four brief onscreen appearances during his career: in two of his own films – Christmas in July and Sullivan's Travels – in the Paramount all-star extravaganza Star Spangled Rhythm, and, in the years of his decline, in the Bob Hope comedy Paris Holiday, which was filmed in France and would be the last film he worked on.  Two decades earlier, Sturges had been a writer on one of Hope's earliest film successes, Never Say Die.

In 1959, Sturges summed up his career:

Between flops, it is true, I have come up with an occasional hit, but compared to a good boxer's record, for instance, my percentage has been lamentable. I fought a draw in my first fight, stupified everyone by winning the championship in my second, got a couple of wins with picture rights, then was knocked out three times in a row. Dragging my weary carcass to Hollywood, I was immediately knocked out again, won a big fight some six months later, then marked time for six years as an ordinary ham-and-beaner, picking up what I could. Suddenly I saw a chance and offered to fight for the world championship for a dollar. To everyone's astonishment, I won that championship and defended it successfully for a number of years, winning nine times by knockout, fighting three draws, losing twice and getting one no-decision in Europe. I have just come over to America for a fight, but it was called off at the last moment, one of the promoters having gone nuts and having to have been locked up. Why I'm not walking on my heels after all this, I don't know. Maybe I am walking on my heels.  It would be surprising if I weren't.

Style and influence
Sturges took the screwball comedy format of the 1930s to another level, writing dialogue that, heard today, is often surprisingly naturalistic, mature, and ahead of its time, despite the farcical situations. It is not uncommon for a Sturges character to deliver an exquisitely turned phrase and take an elaborate pratfall within the same scene. Such versatility and dexterity can be seen in The Lady Eve, where a tender love scene takes place between Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck, which is enlivened by a horse as it repeatedly pokes its nose into Fonda's head.

Filmmakers who have acknowledged being influenced by Sturges include the Coen brothers, Wes Anderson, James Mangold, Peter Bogdanovich and John Lasseter.

Personal life
Sturges married four times and had three sons:

Estelle deWolfe Mudge – married in December 1923, separated in 1927, divorced in 1928
Eleanor Close Hutton (a daughter of Marjorie Merriweather Post) – eloped on April 12, 1930, marriage annulled on April 12, 1932
Louise Sargent Tevis – married on November 7, 1938, in Reno, Nevada, separated in April 1946, divorced in November 1947
son Solomon Sturges IV (b. June 25, 1941) – actor
Anne Margaret "Sandy" Nagle (a lawyer and former actress) – married on April 15, 1951, marriage ended in 1959 with Sturges's death, mother of his two younger sons
Preston Sturges Jr. (b. February 22, 1953) – screenwriter
Thomas Preston Sturges (b. June 22, 1956) – music executive

Death
Sturges died of a heart attack at the Algonquin Hotel while writing his autobiography (which, ironically, he had intended to title The Events Leading Up to My Death), and was interred in the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. His book, Preston Sturges by Preston Sturges: His Life in His Words, was published in 1990. In 1975, he became the first writer to be given the Screen Writers Guild's Laurel Award posthumously. He has a star dedicated to him on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 1601 Vine Street.

Filmography

Films

Other film work

The Big Pond (1930; dialogue)
Fast and Loose (1930; additional dialogue)
The Invisible Man (1933; contributing writer)
The Power and the Glory (1933; screenplay, dialogue director)
Imitation of Life (1934; contributing writer)
We Live Again (1934; co-screen adaptation)
Thirty Day Princess (1934; co-screenplay)
The Good Fairy (1935; screenplay)
Diamond Jim (1935; screenplay)
Love Before Breakfast (1936; contributor to treatment)
Next Time We Love (1936; contributor to screenplay construction)
Easy Living (1937; screenplay)
Hotel Haywire (1937; original story, screenplay)
If I Were King (1938; screenplay)
Port of Seven Seas (1938; screenplay)
College Swing (1938; contributing writer)
Never Say Die (1939; co-screenplay)
Remember the Night (1940; screenplay)
I Married a Witch (1942; producer)
Vendetta (1950; uncredited director)
The Birds and the Bees (1956, co-screenplay)

Source:

Actor
Christmas in July (1940) - Man at Shoeshine Stand (uncredited)
Sullivan's Travels (1941) - Studio Director (uncredited)
Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) - Himself
Paris Holiday (1958) - Serge Vitry (final film role)

Adaptations
Three of Sturges's films, Christmas in July, The Great McGinty and Remember the Night, were restaged for NBC's Lux Video Theater.
The 1956 George Gobel movie The Birds and the Bees was a remake of The Lady Eve.  Paul Jones produced both movies.
The 1958 Jerry Lewis vehicle Rock-A-Bye Baby was loosely based on Sturges's The Miracle of Morgan's Creek.
The 1984 Dudley Moore feature Unfaithfully Yours was a remake of Sturges's 1948 original.

Published screenplays
Five Screenplays () collects The Great McGinty, Christmas in July, The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels, and Hail the Conquering Hero
Four More Screenplays () collects The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, The Palm Beach Story, Unfaithfully Yours, and The Great Moment
 Three More Screenplays () collects The Power and the Glory, Remember the Night, and Easy Living

See also

List of actors who frequently worked with Preston Sturges

References
Informational notes

Citations

Bibliography
Dickos, Andrew (2013) Intrepid Laughter: Preston Sturges And The Movies. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky.

Further reading

Jacobs, Dianne (1992) Christmas in July: The Life and Art of Preston Sturges. Berkeley, California: University of California Press.
Smedley, Nick and Sturges, Tom (2019) Preston Sturges: The Last Years of Hollywood's First Writer-Director. Intellect, Ltd.
Spoto, Donald (1990) Madcap: The Life of Preston Sturges. New York: Little, Brown.
Ursini, James (1973) The Fabulous Life & Times of Preston Sturges: An American Dreamer. Curtis Books.

External links

Timeline

 Preston Sturges at Film Reference
 Preston Sturges at Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
 Preston Sturges at American Masters
 Preston Sturges bibliography at UC Berkeley Media Resources Center

 Preston Sturges at Reel Classics

Films:
 James Harvey's essay on The Lady Eve
 Todd McCarthy's essay on Sullivan's Travels
 Jonathan Lethem's essay on Unfaithfully Yours

1898 births
1959 deaths
20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American screenwriters
American autobiographers
American comedy writers
American film directors
American film producers
American male non-fiction writers
American male screenwriters
American people of English descent
American people of Irish descent
Best Original Screenplay Academy Award winners
Burials at Ferncliff Cemetery
Comedy film directors
Film directors from Illinois
Film producers from Illinois
United States Army Air Service pilots of World War I
Screenwriters from Chicago

Preston Sturges


The Nutcracker Prince is a 1990 Canadian animated romance fantasy film directed by Paul Schibli based on the screenplay by Patricia Watson. It is a retelling of E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1816 short story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" and Marius Petipa & Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1892 ballet The Nutcracker, about a girl named Clara who is gifted a special nutcracker by her uncle.  The gift draws her into a world of magic and wonder, and she brings about the conclusion to the legend of The Nutcracker, Prince of the Dolls: a young man named Hans who was transformed into a nutcracker by mice, and can only break the spell if he slays the Mouse King. The film stars Kiefer Sutherland as Hans (The Nutcracker), Megan Follows as Clara, Mike MacDonald as the evil Mouse King, Peter O'Toole as Pantaloon, an old soldier, Phyllis Diller as the Mouse Queen, and Peter Boretski as Uncle Drosselmeier.

The Nutcracker Prince was released by Warner Bros. Pictures in the United States on November 21, 1990, and by Cineplex Odeon Films in Canada on November 23, 1990. The film grossed $1.7 million worldwide against a production budget of $8.5 million. It generally received negative reviews from critics and was considered a commercial failure.

Plot
In 19th century Germany, Clara Stahlbaum, her younger brother Fritz and their family celebrate Christmas Eve, though Clara is jealous that her older sister Louise already has a boyfriend Erik, leaving her wondering about growing up. She immediately cheers up when Drosselmeier, an eccentric toymaker and family friend, arrives at their home with special gifts: a fully automated toy castle for everyone, and a Nutcracker for Clara. While trying to crack nuts with it, Fritz damages the Nutcracker. To cheer the heartbroken Clara up, Drosselmeier tells her a story about how the Nutcracker came to be the Prince of the Dolls.

As Drosselmeier relates, there were a King and a Queen who had a beautiful but vain daughter named Princess Perlipat. To celebrate the King's birthday, the Queen made a special cake out of blue cheese, but the scent of the cheese drew out all the castle mice, who ate and destroyed the cake. Enraged at it, the King commanded Drosselmeier, his inventor, to capture all the mice; Drosselmeier and his nephew, Hans, succeeded, but the Mouse Queen and her son escaped. In revenge, the Mouse Queen cast a spell on Perlipat, causing her to become hideously ugly, and Drosselmeier was given the task of figuring out how to cure the princess. He eventually learned that the fabled Krakatooth Nut could cure her, and the King commanded all the princes and noblemen in the realm to apply, with the promise of marriage to Perlipat once she was cured. However, the Krakatooth was so hard that all the men's teeth shattered upon trying to crack it. Drosselmeier was about to be executed for his failure when Hans stepped in and cracked the nut, thus succeeded in curing Perlipat of the spell that the Mouse Queen cast on her. Furious, the Mouse Queen cast a spell on Hans, turning him into a Nutcracker. During the subsequent ruckus, she was killed by a falling statue, and her son's tail was damaged. Now free of his domineering mother, he made himself King of the Mice and swore revenge on Hans, while Drosselmeier was exiled by the ungrateful King.

Clara is upset by the story's ending, but Drosselmeier tells her that the Nutcracker will break the spell if he can slay the Mouse King. Meanwhile, in the middle of the night, Clara returns to the living room to spend time with the Nutcracker, when suddenly the Mouse King and an army of mice appear. A ghostly apparition of Drosselmeier also arrives and casts a spell that breathes life into all the dolls, including the Nutcracker, Marie, Trudy and the toy soldier Pantaloon. The two parties engage in battle, in which course the Mouse King threatens to kill the Nutcracker. Clara prevents this by throwing her slipper at the Mouse King, but then slips on a toy cannonball, falls backwards and hits her head, losing consciousness. The next morning, while she recovers, Drosselmeier comes visiting. Clara accuses him of putting the Nutcracker - his enchanted nephew - in danger, but Drosselmeier explains that only Clara can help him break the spell.

That night, the Mouse King returns, angry about Clara's interference. Clara briefly traps him within her bedside table drawer, but when she retrieves the Nutcracker, the Mouse King escapes and threatens to harm her kitten, Pavlova, if she doesn't hand the Nutcracker over. Drosselmeier reappears, and the toys awaken once more. The Nutcracker faces the Mouse King in single combat and defeats him, but Pantaloon is damaged while trying to help him. In order to get him cured, Nutcracker, Trudy and Marie prepare to travel to the Land of the Dolls through Drosselmeier's mechanical castle; Clara accompanies them after Drosselmeier magically shrinks her. However, the Mouse King, though critically wounded, has survived the duel and pursues them.

Arriving at the royal castle of the Land of the Dolls, Clara is given a grand welcome, but although she has fallen in love with the Nutcracker, she hesitates in joining him as his princess due to the fact that she can't abandon her family. Her reluctance negates the spell which animated the dolls, and they revert to lifeless toys. The Mouse King appears and goes after Clara with his dying strength, but ends up falling off the castle's balcony and drowning in the lake below. As Clara begins crying for the Nutcracker, mist begins to fill the castle, and she abruptly finds herself back home and the Nutcracker missing. Clara rushes to Drosselmeier's workshop, where she anxiously asks him about whether all what she has gone through was real, when they are joined by Hans, now cured of the spell and back to human form as a result of the Mouse King finally slain.

Voice cast
 Kiefer Sutherland as Prince Hans/The Nutcracker
 Megan Follows as Clara Stahlbaum
 Peter Boretski as Elias Christian Drosselmeier
 Phyllis Diller as  The Mouse Queen
 Mike MacDonald as The Mouse King
 Peter O'Toole as Pantaloon
 Lynne Gorman as Trudy
 George Merner as Dr. Carl Stahlbaum
 Stephanie Morgenstern as Louise Stahlbaum
 Christopher Owens as Erik
 Diane Stapley as Mrs. Ingrid Stahlbaum
 Mona Waserman as Princess Perlipat
 Noam Zylberman as Fritz Stahlbaum

Additional voices
 Len Carlson as King, Mouse, Court Attendant, Band Member #2, Spectator and Soldier
 Marvin Goldhar as Mr. Schaeffer, Mouse, Guest #3, First Guard, Soldier, Band Member #1, Contestant and Spectator
 Keith Hampshire as Mouse, Guest, Second Guard, Contestant, Spectator and Soldier
 Elizabeth Hanna as Marie, Mrs. Schaeffer, Doll, Guest #4 and Spectator
 Susan Roman as Mouse, Mrs. Miller, Guest #1, Doll and Spectator
 Theresa Sears as Queen, Mouse, Guest #2, Doll and Spectator

Production

Development
In the late 1980s, Warner Bros. began production on their film Rover Dangerfield, with the intention of a 1988 release. The film was originally intended to be R-rated, in the vein of Ralph Bakshi's films, but during production executives requested that the idea be reworked into a family-friendly film. This resulted in production being delayed, as large portions of the film had to be redone. While Rover Dangerfield was being completed, the studio looked at external production companies to source animated films they could release, which is how Warner Bros. came to partner with Lacewood Productions to release The Nutcracker Prince.

Music

The music was adapted in part from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker from 1892 by Victor Davies, altering the original and adding new tracks as well. For the recording, Boris Brott conducted the London Symphony Orchestra.

In 1990,  Atlantic Records gave away Promotional recordings of the single "Always Come Back to You" as performed by Robert Matarazzo and Rachele Cappelli. The song, which was used during the first dance between Clara and the Nutcracker, featured David Fields on Guitar, Shane Keister on the keyboard, and David Beal on Drums.

Release

Box office
The Nutcracker Prince opened in 906 screens across the United States on November 21, 1990, the film only earned a disappointing $1.7 million because Warner Bros., which owned the American distribution rights, gave it very little promotion. It opened in Canadian theaters two days later on November 23, and also only pulled in $2 million in theatrical revenues in Canada.

Home media
The film was initially released on VHS on November 27, 1991 by Warner Home Video in the United States and Cineplex Odeon Video in Canada. It was later re-released on August 13, 1996 as part of the Warner Bros. Classic Tales series, and again in 1999 through Warner Bros. Family Entertainment.

The film has been released on DVD several times. It was initially released by Hollywood DVD on October 14, 2001 in the United Kingdom. A Region 1 DVD was released in Canada and the US by GoodTimes Entertainment on November 9, 2004. This DVD was sourced from the Canadian print, as a result, this caused the Warner Bros. Pictures and Warner Bros. Presents notice that was used on the American Theatrical and VHS release to be deleted. On April 2, 2007, it was released in on DVD for the second time in the United Kingdom by Boulevard Entertainment. Both releases have no extras besides animated menus and a theatrical trailer.

Reception

Critical response
The film had received negative reviews from critics. A review in TV Guide stated that "regrettably, this animated film is an unabashed bore, and that's a shame because the glorious Tchaikovsky ballet has been loved and admired by generations of stage, film, and television viewers of all ages. Why Warner Bros. selected this Canadian-produced independent feature as its Christmas 1990 family attraction is puzzling, given the lackluster quality of the production." Charles Solomon of the Los Angeles Times said that "watching "The Nutcracker Prince," a new Canadian animated feature, is every bit as much fun as getting underwear for Christmas when you're 8 years old. A blend of leaden gags, muddled storytelling and Saturday morning-style animation, it's more a holiday threat than a treat."

Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times was critical of the film, calling it "innocuous." "The level of imagination in the story is about as inventive as on most Saturday morning cartoon shows." He also panned the characterization of the Nutcracker as a "monster", adding:  He also named it one of the worst films of 1990, calling it "a witless and lackluster animated film relieved only by occasional snatches of The Nutcracker Suite". He and co-host Gene Siskel subsequently recalled that the picture went blank at a preview screening they attended; he said neither of them bothered to tell the projectionist to turn the picture back on because the film "was better that way".

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 14%.

Accolades

See also
 The Nutcracker and the Mouse King
 The Nutcracker
 Canadian animation
 List of Christmas films

References

External links

 The Nutcracker Prince at Keyframe - the Animation Resource

1990 films
1990 animated films
1990s musical fantasy films
Animated musical films
Canadian animated feature films
Canadian Christmas films
Canadian coming-of-age films
Canadian musical fantasy films
Canadian independent films
1990s English-language films
Animated films about royalty
Animated films based on The Nutcracker and the Mouse King
Animated films set in Germany
Warner Bros. films
Warner Bros. animated films
Alliance Atlantis films
1990s Christmas films
Films about curses
Animated films about shapeshifting
1990s children's animated films
Animated films set in the 19th century
English-language Canadian films
1990s American films
1990s Canadian films

The Nutcracker Prince


The great hanging parrot (Loriculus stigmatus), also called Celebes hanging parrot, Sulawesi hanging parrot and maroon-rumped hanging parrot, is a species of parrot in the family Psittaculidae. It is endemic to Sulawesi and nearby smaller islands in Indonesia, where it occurs in forest, secondary growth and tall mangrove.

Description and taxonomy
With a total length of approximately 15 cm, it is a small parrot, but the largest species of hanging parrot. It has traditionally been considered monotypic, but recent work has re-validated the subspecies croconotus from Muna and Buton Island, and quadricolor from the Togian Islands, leaving the nominate for the population on Sulawesi itself. The plumage of the nominate is overall green with an indistinct yellowish tinge to the mantle, and a red chin, leading edge of the wing, rump and crown (the red crown is missing in females). Compared to this, L. s. croconotus has slightly paler wings and tail, and a relatively distinct yellowish tinge to the mantle, while L. s. quadricolor has a clear orange-yellow patch on the mantle, a smaller red chin-spot, and a slightly brighter red rump.

Breeding
Sulawesi Hanging parrots nest in tree cavities. There are usually three eggs in a clutch. The female incubates the eggs for 20 days and the chicks leave the nest about 33 days from hatching.

References

Loriculus
Birds described in 1843
Endemic birds of Sulawesi
Taxonomy articles created by Polbot

Great hanging parrot


Kokoda Front Line! was a full-length edition of the Australian newsreel.  It was produced by the Australian News & Information Bureau and Cinesound Productions Limited in 1942. It was one of four winners of the 1942 Academy award for best documentary.  It was the first Australian movie to win an Oscar. It was made by the Australian war photographer Damien Parer and directed by Ken G. Hall.

Academy Award winning movies
1942 movies
Australian movies
Documentary movies

Kokoda Front Line!


Intermezzo is a 1936 Swedish drama film directed by Gustaf Molander about a concert violinist falling in love with his daughter's piano teacher. The cast includes Gösta Ekman and Ingrid Bergman in the leads. This film led to Bergman gaining her contract with David O. Selznick and acting in a 1939 American remake opposite Leslie Howard. It was later remade again as the 1980 film Honeysuckle Rose.

Main cast
 Gösta Ekman as Professor Holger Brandt
 Inga Tidblad as Margit Brandt
 Ingrid Bergman as Anita Hoffman
 Erik Berglund as Impresario Charles Möller (credited as Bullen Berglund)
 Hugo Björne as Thomas Stenborg
 Anders Henrikson as Swedish sailor
 Hasse Ekman as Åke Brandt (credited as Hans Ekman)
 Britt Hagman as Ann-Marie Brandt

External links

1936 films
1936 romantic drama films
1930s Swedish-language films
Swedish black-and-white films
Romantic period films
Films about classical music and musicians
Films about violins and violinists
Films directed by Gustaf Molander
Swedish romantic drama films
1930s Swedish films

Intermezzo (1936 film)


Nicolas Dorion (August 6, 1764 – July 7, 1826) was a merchant and political figure in Lower Canada. He represented Devon in the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada from 1796 to 1800.

He was born in Quebec City, the son of François Dorion and Nathalie Trudelle. He established himself in business there in partnership with Paul Dorion. Dorion did not run for reelection in 1800. He died in Haverhill, New Hampshire at the age of 61.

References

1764 births
1826 deaths
Members of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada

Nicolas Dorion


Mark Alan Stamaty is an American cartoonist and children's writer and illustrator. During the 1980s and 1990s, Stamaty's work appeared regularly in the Village Voice. He is the creator of the long-running comic strip Washingtoon – on which a short-lived (12-episode) 1985 Showtime Network television series was based – as well as the earlier comic strip MacDoodle Street, and the online strip Doodlennium for Slate magazine He is also a spot illustrator for Slate. He produced a monthly comic strip in the New York Times Book Review called "Boox" in 2001–2004 that made fun of publishing trends. Stamaty graduated with a degree in art from the Cooper Union in New York.

Stamaty has published several books, including collections of his strips and graphic novels for children, notably Alia's Mission: Saving the Books of Iraq (2004), Yellow Yellow (1971, with author Frank Asch; reissued in 2019 by Drawn & Quarterly), Minnie Maloney & Macaroni (1976) and the cult classic Who Needs Donuts? (originally published in 1973 and reprinted by Random House in 2003)

In 2012, Jeffrey Brown told USA Today about how Stamaty's Small in the Saddle had influenced his own career and about subsequently meeting the author.

Stamaty was commissioned to provide an illustration for the interior of retailer Sonos's new store in New York City's SoHo district, which opened in July 2016.

In 2018, Stamaty drew the cover for "Delancey St. Station", the debut album by NYC rock band, Pinc Louds.

His late father, Stanley Stamaty, was a professional gag cartoonist, and his mother, Clara Gee Stamaty, is a commercial illustrator and fine artist. Stanley and Clara both attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

References

External links
Official website

American comic strip cartoonists
Cooper Union alumni
Living people
1947 births
The Village Voice people

Mark Alan Stamaty


Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a buffalo jump located where the foothills of the Rocky Mountains begin to rise from the prairie  west of Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada, on Highway 785. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home of a museum of Blackfoot culture. Joe Crowshoe Sr.  (1903–1999) – Aapohsoy'yiis (Weasel Tail) – a ceremonial Elder of the Piikani Nation in southern Alberta, was instrumental in the development of the site. The Joe Crow Shoe Sr. Lodge is dedicated to his memory. He dedicated his life to preserving Aboriginal culture and promoting the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people and in 1998 was awarded the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for "saving the knowledge and practices of the Blackfoot people."

History
The buffalo jump was used for 5,500 years by the indigenous peoples of the plains to kill bison by driving them off the  high cliff. Before the late introduction of horses, the Blackfoot drove the bison from a grazing area in the Porcupine Hills about  west of the site to the "drive lanes", lined by hundreds of cairns, by dressing up as coyotes and wolves. These specialized "buffalo runners" were young men trained in animal behavior to guide the bison into the drive lanes. Then, at full gallop, the bison would fall from the weight of the herd pressing behind them, breaking their legs and rendering them immobile. The cliff itself is about  long, and at its highest point drops  into the valley below. The site was in use at least 6,000 years ago, and the bone deposits are  deep. After falling off the cliff, the injured bison were finished off by other Blackfoot warriors at the cliff base armed with spears and clubs. The carcasses were then processed at a nearby camp. The camp at the foot of the cliffs provided the people with everything they needed to process a bison carcass, including fresh water. The bison carcass was used for a variety of purposes, from tools made from the bone, to the hide used to make dwellings and clothing. The importance of the site goes beyond just providing food and supplies. After a successful hunt, the wealth of food allowed the people to enjoy leisure time and pursue artistic and spiritual interests. This increased the cultural complexity of the society.

In Blackfoot, the name for the site is Estipah-skikikini-kots. According to legend, a young Blackfoot wanted to watch the bison plunge off the cliff from below, but was buried underneath the falling animals. He was later found dead under the pile of carcasses, where he had his head smashed in.

World Heritage Site

Head-Smashed-In was abandoned in the 19th century after European contact. The site was first recorded by Europeans in the 1880s, and first excavated by the American Museum of Natural History in 1938. It was designated a National Historic Site in 1968, a Provincial Historic Site in 1979, and finally a World Heritage Site in 1981 for its testimony of prehistoric life and the customs of aboriginal people.

Interpretive centre and museum

Opened in 1987, the interpretive centre at Head-Smashed-In is built into the ancient sandstone cliff in naturalistic fashion. It contains five distinct levels depicting the ecology, mythology, lifestyle and technology of Blackfoot peoples within the context of available archaeological evidence, presented from the viewpoints of both aboriginal peoples and European archaeological science.

The centre also offers educational public and school programs which can be booked throughout the year. Each year Head-Smashed-In hosts a number of special events and native festivals known throughout the world for their color, energy and authenticity, including Buffalo Harvest Days, which brings together First Nations artists and craftspeople who display a wide variety of jewelry, clothing, art and crafts. Visitors can witness traditional drumming and dancing demonstrations every Wednesday in July and August at 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. at the centre.

An exhibition of photography titled Lost Identities: A Journey of Rediscovery, a collection of photographs taken in aboriginal communities, made its first appearance at the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump interpretive centre in 1999. After some time as a traveling exhibit, it was returned permanently to display in the centre. The permanent exhibition is a collaboration of many historical societies and museums to provide interpretations of the collection. The subjects of the photographs had gone unidentified for some time. While it was a traveling exhibit, the aboriginal communities where the photographs were taken provided further background and "voice" to the photographs.

The facility was designed by Le Blond Partnership, an architectural firm in Calgary. The design was awarded the Governor General's gold medal for Architecture in 1990.

See also

List of Canadian provincial parks
List of World Heritage Sites in North America

References
Archaeology of Native North America, 2010, Dean R. Snow, Prentice-Hall, New York.

External links
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Centre

History of Alberta
Archaeological sites in Alberta
Museums in Alberta
First Nations museums in Canada
World Heritage Sites in Canada
Buffalo jumps
Provincial historic sites of Alberta
National Historic Sites in Alberta
Piikani Nation
Municipal District of Willow Creek No. 26
IUCN Category III
Aboriginal National Historic Sites of Canada
First Nations culture in Alberta

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump


Paul Kim (born March, 1981) is a Korean American musician, singer and rapper.

Background
Kim grew up in Saratoga, California, and attended Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, California. As can be seen in his Season 6 American Idol segment, Kim's motivation for auditioning for the show was to dispel and shatter the stereotypical Asian images that William Hung perpetuated during prior seasons.

On American Idol
Kim's initial performance on Season 6 of American Idol garnered all "yes" votes from the judges, and Randy Jackson declared that Kim had one of the best male vocals he heard that season, in Season 6. When Kim made it as one of the top 24 semi-finalists, it was mentioned that the judges were divided by "a split decision". It is notable that he sang barefoot during all of his performances.

Work, YouTube channel, and career
Kim currently has a YouTube channel that has over 337,000 subscribers and over 189,830,000 total views as of 2020. Some of his most popular videos are: his cover of an English version of Big Bang's Bad Girl (the music video also starring Eunice Kiss), his cover of Taeyang's "I Need A Girl" (with David So), his cover of G-Dragon's "That XX" (with David So), and his cover of Bruno Mars' "Locked Out of Heaven" (Paul Kim x John Ho remix). Kim has also done covers of songs by Drake, Robin Thicke, Justin Timberlake, Miguel, Omarion, Usher, Boyz II Men, Frank Ocean, Coldplay, Beyoncé, Adele and others. Kim has also worked with other YouTube artists such as Dumbfoundead/Parker, David So, Joseph Vincent, Z. Woods, Baiyu, Eunice Kiss, Jennifer Chung, Megan Lee, Danakadan (afterschoolspecial) and other artists.

Among his original songs include "No Turning Back" with Dumbfoundead/Parker and CHOPS (the music video directed by Timothy Tau and JL Jupiter), "You Left Me for That" (the music video directed by Anthony Bui and starring Grace Su and Timothy DeLaGhetto), "Outta My Head" (music video directed by Alexandher), "Today" (music video directed by Daniel Kwan), "Getaway" (music video directed by Evan Asato), "She Is The Reason" (music video directed by Edward Park), "Make Believe" (feat. Baiyu (singer)) (music video directed by Anthony Bui), "Still Not Over You" (feat. Eunice Kiss) (music video directed by Ebling Howard), "You Had Your Chance" (music video directed by Dan Fisher), "Give Into Me" (music video directed by Evan Asato) and more. Most of his original songs and remixes are available for purchase over iTunes.

Kim also has started his own apparel line along with David So, entitled "Go For Broke Apparel".

Kim has released an album titled My Word which includes fifteen tracks on January 21, 2015.

References

External links
AARising Profile: Paul Kim
Paul Kim - Season 6, American Idol
Paul Kim on American Idol
Assorted Paul Kim Discography on iTunes

Living people
American people of Korean descent
American Idol participants
1981 births
People from Saratoga, California

Paul Kim (musician, born 1981)


Michael Anton Biermer (18 October 1827 – 15 October 1892) was a German internist who was a native of Bamberg.

In 1851 he earned his doctorate from the University of Würzburg, where he was a student of Rudolf Virchow. Later he was a professor at Bern (from 1861), Zurich (from 1867) and Breslau (1874–91). Two of his better known students were surgeon Theodor Kocher (1841-1917) in Zurich, and dermatologist Albert Neisser (1855-1916) in Breslau.

In 1860 Biermer was the first to describe a patient with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, 5-year old Maria Speyer. In 1872 he described a disorder he called "progressive pernicious anemia". He wrote about the disease in an article titled Über eine eigentümliche Form von progressiver, perniciöser Anaemie. He called it "pernicious anemia" because of the disease's insidious course, and because it was deemed to be untreatable at the time. In 1849, Thomas Addison described the same disease, however Biermer's description was much more comprehensive. Historically, pernicious anemia has also been called "Addison-Biermer disease".

His name is also associated with a medical percussion phenomenon known as "Biermer's change of note".

References
 Michael Anton Biermer @ Who Named It

1827 births
1892 deaths
German internists
Academic staff of the University of Breslau
People from Bamberg
Academic staff of the University of Zurich
Academic staff of the University of Bern

Michael Anton Biermer


Iron Shell (Lakota: Thukíha Máza; 1816–1896) was a Brulé Sioux chief. He initially became prominent after an 1843 raid on the Pawnee, and became sub-chief of the Brulé under Little Thunder. He became chief of the Brulé Orphan Band during the Powder River War of 1866-1868.

After defeat by United States forces, he signed the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, and settled within the Great Sioux Reservation. He lived the remainder of his life on what is now known as the Rosebud Indian Reservation. (The Great Sioux Reservation was broken up by the US in 1889, and divided among five smaller reservations.) Hollow Horn Bear was the son of Iron Shell.

Biography

Iron Shell was born 1816. He was the son of Sicangu Chief Bull Tail. "Sicangu" meant "burnt thighs", the name given to some of the Lakota people who had been caught in a prairie fire that burned their legs. The French later gave them the name Brulé.

During a raid on the Pawnee by the Brulé in 1843, Iron Shell received recognition for his actions. Thirteen years later, at Fort Pierre, under Little Thunder, Iron Shell was made a sub-chief of the Brulé.

When General William Harney and his 600 troops made a surprise attack in 1855 in the Battle of Ash Hollow against the Brulé at present-day Lewellen, Nebraska, Chief Iron Shell was there and fought against Harney's troops, who greatly outnumbered the Sioux. Two of Iron Shell's wives were captured that day, though Iron Shell escaped. A total of 86 Sioux were killed, including many women and children. That confrontation and massacre constituted the largest loss of life through death or capture and loss of property that the Sicangu had ever suffered.

Iron Shell became chief of the Brulé's Orphan Band during the Powder River War of 1866-1868. He led many attacks against the Omaha and Pawnee. On September 4, 1867, Chief Iron Shell and 180 of his followers arrived at North Platte. He eventually signed the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and settled in the Upper Cut Meat District in the Great Sioux Reservation, established under that treaty in the West River area of present-day South Dakota. In 1889 the reservation was broken up by the US prior to North Dakota and South Dakota being admitted to the Union; his area was made part of what is known as the Rosebud Indian Reservation. He was buried near St. Francis, South Dakota.

Notes

References
"Iron Shell", from Axel-jacob.de , URL accessed 04/03/06
North Dakota Human Rights Coalition, URL accessed 19/07/21
 http://www.snowwowl.com/nativeleader/hollowhornbear.htm

1816 births
1896 deaths
Brulé people
Lakota leaders
Native American people of the Indian Wars
People from Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Dakota

Iron Shell


"Counterparts" is a short story by James Joyce published in his 1914 collection Dubliners. The story follows a day in the life of an alcoholic scrivener who is unsuccessful in his professional and personal life.

Plot
The story recounts an evening in the life of a man named Farrington, frequently referred to simply as "the man". Farrington's difficulties begin at his clerical job when his boss — whom he addresses as "Mr. Alleyne" — berates him for not having finished an assignment. Instead of applying himself immediately to the task, the alcoholic Farrington slips out of the office for a glass of porter. When Alleyne yells at Farrington again, Farrington replies with an impertinent remark and has to apologize. It becomes evident that Farrington's relationship with his superior has never been a good one, partly due to Alleyne's overhearing of Farrington mocking his Ulster accent.

After work, Farrington pawns his watch-chain for drinking money and joins his friends for a night of drinking. Farrington's account of his standing up to his boss earns him some respect. However, his revelries end in two humiliations: a perceived slight by an elegant young woman and defeat in an arm-wrestling contest. Farrington goes home in a foul mood to discover that his wife is out at chapel. He tells his youngest son, Tom, to make dinner but as the child lets the fire in the kitchen go out, Farrington's rage explodes and he starts beating the little child with a walking stick. The story ends with Tom pleading for mercy.

Background and story title
For Joyce's contemporaneous audience, the term "counterparts" could be expected to suggest (hand-written) duplicate copies of documents concerning office business. At the story's end, the man is seen to be the "counterpart" of his superior from his workplace, since Farrington abuses his subordinate child at home, just as Mr. Alleyne abuses his subordinate Farrington at the office.

References
Joyce, James. Dubliners (London: Grant Richards, 1914)

External links

 In "Farrington the Scrivener: A Story of Dame Street," Morris Beja compares "Counterparts" with "Bartleby, the Scrivener," by Herman Melville. The essay is published in Coping With Joyce: Essays from the Copenhagen Symposium, edited by Morris Beja and Shari Benstock (Ohio State University Press, 1989), pp. 111-122.

Short stories by James Joyce
1914 short stories

Counterparts (short story)


Raagala 24 Gantallo () is a 2019 Indian Telugu-language murder mystery directed by Srinivasa Reddy starring Satya Dev, Eesha Rebba, Sriram, Ganesh Venkatram and Musskan Sethi. The plot of the film is inspired by Agatha Christie's play The Unexpected Guest. The film was dubbed and released in Tamil as Varappogum 24 Manikul.

Plot
Three criminals, serving a death sentence for murder and rape, are on the run. They enter the house of Rahul (Satyadev Kancharana) a well-known ad filmmaker and Vidya (Eesha Rebba), who are a married couple.  Much to their shock, the criminals find that Rahul has been murdered by Vidya.  On her part, Vidya is trying to hide her husband's death.

This is when she starts narrating her story to the criminals. Rahul was a perverted husband who suspected that Vidya had an affair with Ganesh (Ganesh Venkatraman) an IAS officer and her college friend.  Later unknowingly to her, he secretly operates and removes her uterus because he doesn't like kids and pressures her to act in his ads. That's why she killed him to free herself. Meanwhile, cops who are searching for the criminal trio tries to nab them, but Vidya saves them tactically.

Then Vidya observing their gentle nature believes they are innocent and questions the criminals why they are on the run? Then the criminals narrate their story. The 3 friends who are staying with a girl called Meghana a struggling model who they are equally affectionate with each other. One day Meghana got an audition call from Rahul's office for an ad film. Meghana happily attends the audition and comes along with them. There, Rahul reveals that it was a nude photo shoot for making a condoms ad, then Meghana refuses to work in the film. Rahul pressures her to do the film which leads to a sexual assault; almost killing her on the spot. Then Rahul calls his cop friend Narasimha (Sriram), a corrupt policeman. Then observing the situation, the trio attacks Rahul, but he manages to defeat them. Narasimha came on time and frames them in Meghana's murder and assault and relives Rahul from the crime. Then Meghana becomes conscious and Rahul fears for the circumstances. Narasimha kills her to make a perfect crime. Later court sentences them to death, but they escape from the cops and decide to kill the duo who are responsible for Meghana's death.

After hearing their story, Vidya decided to help them to kill Narasimha. Finally, the film ends at Narasimha's home with a hard struggle; the four kill Narasimha and successfully escape.

Cast
Eesha Rebba as Vidya
Satya Dev as Rahul
Sriram as Narasimha, a cop
Ganesh Venkatraman as Ganesh IAS
Musskan Sethi as Meghana
Ravi Prakash
Krishna Bhagawan as Paul
Ravi Varma
Anurag
 Ayaj
 Devipriya
Abhinaya Krishna as Abhinay IAS

Production
After making several comedic films, director Srinivasa Reddy debuted in the thriller genre with this film. Sriram accepted to star in the film after listening to the film's script. Raghu Kunche was brought in to compose the music for the film. A motion poster was released in early September while a teaser was released at the end of September. The trailer released in November.

Soundtrack
Raghu Kunche composed the film's score. The song "Narayanthe Namo Namo" was released by Y. V. Subba Reddy. Raghu Babu and Ali took part in the audio launch function. Devi Sri Prasad released the promotional song "Rebba". The second single, "Namo Namo", was released in October.

Release
The Times of India gave the film a rating of two-and-a-half out of five stars and wrote that "Raagala 24 Gantallo is a classic case of a good script faltering in its execution. Unfortunately, this thriller leaves us with more questions than answers".The Hindu wrote that "Ragala 24 Gantallo as the title suggests, is an ominous warning to viewers who walk in to see the movie".

References

External links

2010s Telugu-language films
2010s mystery thriller films
Indian mystery thriller films
Films scored by Raghu Kunche
Murder mystery films
Films based on works by Agatha Christie

Raagala 24 Gantallo


The Copley Society of Art is America's oldest non-profit art association. It was founded in 1879 by the first graduating class of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and continues to play an important role in promoting its member artists and the visual arts in Boston. The Society is named after the renowned John Singleton Copley.  The gallery currently represents over 400 living artist members, ranging in experience from students to nationally recognized artists and in style from traditional and academic realists to contemporary and abstract painters, photographers, sculptors, and printmakers. Several of the artists working in the tradition of the Boston School of painters exhibit at the Copley Society of Art, along with the Guild Of Boston Artists a few doors down from the Copley Society of Art's Newbury Street location.

The gallery hosts between 15 and 20 exhibitions each year, including solo exhibitions, thematic group shows, juried competitions, and fundraising events.

The most well known of these events is the annual "Fresh Paint" auction. Several artist members are chosen by the gallery to spend one day together painting outside in the city. The paintings are brought back to the gallery while still wet, placed directly into frames and mounted on the walls for sale through silent auction. The final night of the week-long event, A few selected pieces are included in a live auction. Although usual commission split for the gallery is 60 percent to the artist and 40 percent to the Copley Society, for this event the artists are required to donate 50 percent of the sale, and encouraged to donate up to 100 percent of the selling price to the non-profit organization.

The Copley Society has helped establish the careers of many of Boston's prominent full-time professional fine artists.

Notable artists

 Rick Fleury
 Candace Whittemore Lovely
 Dianne Panarelli-Miller
 Sergio Roffo
 Janis Saunders
 Charles Tersolo
 Sam Vokey
 Wheeler Williams
 John Wilson (sculptor) - Instructor
 Mikel Wintermantel

See also
 Grundmann Studios, home of the society 1893-1917

References

External links

Culture of Boston
Clubs and societies in Boston
Arts organizations based in Massachusetts
Arts organizations established in the 1870s
1879 establishments in Massachusetts

Copley Society of Art


Rose Rosenblatt is an American producer, director, editor, and writer of documentary films. She directed and edited the Sundance award winningThe Education of Shelby Knox (2005); and Young Lakota (2013).

Rosenblatt works alongside Marion Lipschutz as the co-director and producer of Incite Pictures, the for-profit arm of Cine Qua Non. She directed and edited the documentary on Bei Bei Shuai released in 2019.

Cine Qua Non
Rosenblatt co-directed and produced the 1997 PBS documentary The Abortion Pill, a documentary about the controversial French drug RU-486. Rosenblatt co-directed and produced, Fatherhood USA, a three-part series looking at fatherhood in the nineties. The documentary aired on PBS in 1998 and was hosted by Senator Bill Bradley.

Her 2000 documentary Live Free or Die, which she co-directed and edited, aired as a part of PBS' POV series. The film took an inside look at the life of a doctor who performs abortions.  In 2001 Rosenblatt produced and edited CODE BLUE: New Orleans. This documentary medical series consisted of four programs: Rite of Passage; Long Way Home; Close Calls; Witching Hour, and appeared on the New York Times Television for The Learning Channel.

Her other films include The Education of Shelby Knox, which received several awards. It earned Excellence in Cinematography in the documentary category in 2005 at the Sundance Film Festival,  the audience award at the SXSW Film Festival, the jury prize at both the Sonoma Valley Film Festival and Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, The Emerging Pictures Audience Award at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, and the Council on Foundations awarded the film the Henry Hampton Award for Excellence in Film & Digital Media. In 2006 the film was nominated for The Index on Censorship's Freedom of Expression Film Award.

Rosenblatt co-directed and produced the documentary in 2013 Young Lakota. The film follows the emotional journey of Sunny Clifford, a young Lakota woman who returns home to the Pine Ridge Reservation with a dream of changing the world around her. The film earned multiple awards at various film festivals including Best Dakota Feature Documentary at the South Dakota Film Festival and Best Documentary at the Red Nation Film Festival and the Smithsonian Native Cinema Arts Festival. The film was the official selection at the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival, the American Indian Film Festival, the New Orleans Film Festival, as well as the BIG SKY Documentary Film Festival and the Cucalorus Film Festival. The film also received the jury award for Best Documentary at the CINE LAS AMERICAS International Film Festival.

Her latest film on Bei Bei Shuai is currently in post-production. Bei Bei Shuai, a Chinese immigrant living in Indianapolis, was charged with murder and attempted feticide for committing suicide while pregnant.

Early career
Rosenblatt began her career as a grants and script writer. In 1982 she co-wrote The Two Worlds of Angelita with Jose Santiago, a film was about a Puerto Rican family that migrates to New York. It played at Carnegie Hall Cinema and aired on PBS. In 1983, Rosenblatt co-wrote for A Spy in the House of Love. Rosenblatt worked as the sound editor for David Mamet's Things Change (1987) and Homicide (1991).

In 1991, Rosenblatt produced and edited Rights and Wrongs, a one-hour pilot for a PBS series on human rights issues around the world.  That same year she was the supervising editor for the 60 minute special Mandela in America. Rosenblatt also served as an editor for The Human Language (1988-1990) series. The three part series on linguistics aired on PBS in February of 1994, and was produced by Gene Searchinger, of Equinox Films from 1988 to 1990.

Awards
 The Audience Award at SXSW
 The Emerging Picture Award at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
 The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival Women in Leadership Award
 The Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award
 Best Cinematography at The Sundance Film Festival
 Nomination for the British Index on Censorship's Freedom of Expression Award
 The Jury Prize for Best Documentary at The Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival

Selected filmography
 BEI BEI (Coming Soon)
 Young Lakota (2013)
 The Education of Shelby Knox (2005)
 Live Free or Die (2000)
 Fatherhood USA (1998)

Education
 Queens College - B.A. Art History
 Columbia University - M.A. Art History

Reviews
Rose's work with Incite pictures has been called "unique and memorable," "pure gold," and "balanced and truthful," by the Milwaukee Journal, Hollywood Reporter and The New York Times, respectively. The Washington Post wrote, "their fly-on-the-wall approach fulfills one of the glorious promises of documentary – to put us in the middle of situations we otherwise might never be in."

Book features
The Shut Up and Shoot Documentary Guide: A Down & Dirty DV Production By: Anthony Q. Artis "To anyone who wants to make a doc but doesn't have a lot of time, money, or experience, Anthony Artis says: "It's time to get down and dirty!"―a filmmaking mentality that teaches you how to be creative with your resources and do more with less. Written by a guerrilla filmmaker for guerrilla filmmakers, this all new edition of a bestselling classic doesn't just tell you, it shows you how to make your projects better, faster, and cheaper."

The Documentary Film Makers Handbook: A Gorilla Guide By: Genevieve Jolliffe & Andrew Zinnes "Documentary films have enjoyed a huge resurgence over the last few years, and there's a new generation of filmmakers wanting to get involved. In addition, the digital revolution has made documentaries even more accessible to the general filmmaker. Documentary films can now be shot professionally using cheaper equipment, and smaller cameras enable the documentarian to be less intrusive and therefore more intimate in the subjects' lives. The Documentary Film Makers Handbook will be an essential resource for anyone who wants to know more about breaking into this exciting field."

References

Place of birth missing (living people)
Year of birth missing (living people)
American documentary film producers
American film directors
American film producers
Living people
American women documentary filmmakers
21st-century American women

Rose Rosenblatt


In computational physics, variational Monte Carlo (VMC) is a quantum Monte Carlo method that applies the variational method to approximate the ground state of a quantum system.

The basic building block is a generic wave function  depending on some parameters . The optimal values of the parameters  is then found upon minimizing the total energy of the system.

In particular, given the Hamiltonian , and denoting with  a many-body configuration, the expectation value of the energy can be written as:

Following the Monte Carlo method for evaluating integrals, we can interpret  as a probability distribution function, sample it, and evaluate the energy expectation value  as the average of the so-called local energy . Once  is known for a given set of variational parameters , then optimization is performed in order to minimize the energy and obtain the best possible representation of the ground-state wave-function.

VMC is no different from any other variational method, except that the many-dimensional integrals are evaluated numerically. Monte Carlo integration is particularly crucial in this problem since the dimension of the many-body Hilbert space, comprising all the possible values of the configurations , typically grows exponentially with the size of the physical system. Other approaches to the numerical evaluation of the energy expectation values would therefore, in general, limit applications to much smaller systems than those analyzable thanks to the Monte Carlo approach.

The accuracy of the method then largely depends on the choice of the variational state. The simplest choice typically corresponds to a mean-field form, where the state  is written as a factorization over the Hilbert space. This particularly simple form is typically not very accurate since it neglects many-body effects. One of the largest gains in accuracy over writing the wave function separably comes from the introduction of the so-called Jastrow factor. In this case the wave function is written as , where  is the distance between a pair of quantum particles and  is a variational function to be determined. With this factor, we can explicitly account for particle-particle correlation, but the many-body integral becomes unseparable, so Monte Carlo is the only way to evaluate it efficiently. In chemical systems, slightly more sophisticated versions of this factor can obtain 80–90% of the correlation energy (see electronic correlation) with less than 30 parameters.  In comparison, a configuration interaction calculation may require around 50,000 parameters to reach that accuracy, although it depends greatly on the particular case being considered. In addition, VMC usually scales as a small power of the number of particles in the simulation, usually something like N2−4 for calculation of the energy expectation value, depending on the form of the wave function.

Wave function optimization in VMC

QMC calculations crucially depend on the quality of the trial-function, and so it is essential to have an optimized wave-function as close as possible to the ground state.
The problem of function optimization is a very important research topic in numerical simulation. In QMC, in addition to the usual difficulties to find the minimum of multidimensional parametric function, the statistical noise is present in the estimate of the cost function (usually the energy), and its derivatives, required for an efficient optimization.

Different cost functions and different strategies were used to optimize a many-body trial-function. Usually three cost functions were used in QMC optimization energy, variance or a linear combination of them.  The variance optimization method has the advantage that the exact wavefunction's variance is known.  (Because the exact wavefunction is an eigenfunction of the Hamiltonian, the variance of the local energy is zero).  This means that variance optimization is ideal in that it is bounded by below, it is positive defined and its minimum is known.  Energy minimization may ultimately prove more effective, however, as different authors recently showed that the energy optimization is more effective than the variance one.

There are different motivations for this: first, usually one is interested in the lowest energy rather than in the lowest variance in both variational and diffusion Monte Carlo; second, variance optimization takes many iterations to optimize determinant parameters and often the optimization can get stuck in multiple local minimum and it suffers of the "false convergence" problem; third energy-minimized wave functions on average yield more accurate values of other expectation values than variance minimized wave functions do.

The optimization strategies can be divided into three categories. The first strategy is based on correlated sampling together with deterministic optimization methods. Even if this idea yielded very accurate results for the first-row atoms, this procedure can have problems if parameters affect the nodes, and moreover density ratio of the current and initial trial-function increases exponentially with the size of the system. In the second strategy one use a large bin to evaluate the cost function and its derivatives in such way that the noise can be neglected and deterministic methods can be used.

The third approach, is based on an iterative technique to handle directly with noise functions. The first example of these methods is the so-called Stochastic Gradient Approximation (SGA), that was used also for structure optimization. Recently an improved and faster approach of this kind was proposed the so-called Stochastic Reconfiguration (SR) method.

VMC and deep learning

In 2017, Giuseppe Carleo and Matthias Troyer used a VMC objective function to train an artificial neural network to find the ground state of a quantum mechanical system. More generally, artificial neural networks are being used as a wave function ansatz (known as neural network quantum states) in VMC frameworks for finding ground states of quantum mechanical systems. The use of neural network ansatzes for VMC has been extended to fermions, enabling electronic structure calculations that are significantly more accurate than VMC calculations which do not use neural networks.

See also
 Metropolis–Hastings algorithm
Rayleigh–Ritz method
Time-dependent variational Monte Carlo

Further reading

General

Wave-function optimization in VMC

References

Quantum chemistry
Quantum Monte Carlo
Mathematical optimization

Variational Monte Carlo


Hybrid solar lighting (HSL) or hybrid lighting systems combine the use of solar with artificial light for interior illumination by channelling sunlight through fiber optic cable bundles to provide solar light into rooms without windows or skylights, and by supplementing this natural light with artificial light—typically LED—as required.

The bundles are led from exterior/rooftop optical light collectors through small openings or cable ducts and carry the light to where it is needed. The optical fibers end in hybrid luminaires where the sunlight is joined with electric light, either on demand or to automatically maintain a constant light level even as the available sunlight decreases.

Method of operation
Solar lighting systems capture light from the sun and conduct it towards a room using optical fibers. They use rooftop collectors, large mirrored dishes, that track the sun. The collectors adjust to aim the sunlight onto 127 optical fibers which are conducted into a single chord. The optical fibers are flexible and can be connected into hybrid light fixtures that are joined to diffusing rods that disperse the light. A single collector can power up to eight hybrid light fixtures covering .

The hybrid lights also use artificial lighting which is mixed with the natural sunlight beamed in down the fiber optic chord. Photosensors focus on how much light needs to be generated to add to the natural light in order to keep a room illuminated at a constant brightness. When the sun is blocked by clouds around five percent of its sunlight requirement will need to be added. Hybrid solar lighting systems should be used in rooms with direct roof access.

Cost of hybrid solar lighting systems

The price of each hybrid solar lighting system requires to be installed with each watt of light bulb used. It is about $5–$8 per watt.

See also
Solar energy
Renewable energy
Photovoltaics
Sustainable energy
Light tube
Solar thermal collector

References

External links
Hybrid Solar Lighting – the Future of Solar Lights

Solar thermal energy
Energy conversion
Lighting

Hybrid solar lighting


Cyperus difformis is a species of sedge known by several common names, including variable flatsedge, smallflower umbrella-sedge and rice sedge. This plant is native to southern Europe, most of Africa and Asia, and Australia, and it is naturalized in other areas of the world, including large parts of the Americas.

Cyperus difformis is a plant of aquatic and moist habitats. It is a weed of rice fields, but not generally a troublesome one. This is an annual herb with one to many thin, soft erect stems reaching over 30 centimeters in maximum height. There are usually a few long, wispy leaves around the base of the plant. The inflorescence is a rounded bundle one to three centimeters wide, containing up to 120 spikelets, each long and partially or entirely covered in up to 30 bracted flowers. The flowers are light brown with areas darker brown and sometimes a yellowish or purplish tint.

References

External links
Jepson Manual Treatment

Photo gallery
Cyperus difformis occurrence data from GBIF

difformis
Freshwater plants
Plants described in 1756
Flora of Europe
Flora of Asia
Flora of Africa
Flora of Australia
Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus

Cyperus difformis


Empire State News is a news organization in New York State, which maintains a news website, 'Empire State News' newspaper and weather forecasting systems. Empire State News has operated since 2003, when production was begun by Statewide News Network, Inc, a three-decade old news broadcasting company for the Hudson Valley. It was sold on late 2015.

Notes

External links
 Empire State News

Newspapers published in New York (state)
Newspapers established in 2003

Empire State News


Tenpai Wangchuk (1855–1882) was the eighth Panchen Lama of Tibet.

8th Panchen Lama, Tenpai Wangchuk, also known as Namgyal Wangdui Gyaltsen, was born in 1855 in Namling County (རྣམ་གླིང་རྫོང་། 南木林), Shigatse prefecture, western Tibet. He was born into an aristocratic family of Nyingma school. One member of his family was an incarnation of Nyingma school. The fact that the new Panchen Lama came from a different tradition created a discontent among the Tashilhunpo Monastery monks (who profess the Gelug tradition). His father's name was Tenzin Wangjia and his mother's name was Zhaxila (Chinese transcription).

In 1857 Tenpai Wangchuk was identified as the eighth incarnation of the Panchen Lama. He was the first Panchen Lama to be identified by drawing a lot from the Golden Urn. In 1860 Tenpai Wangchuk (aged 5), in the presence of Reting Rinpoche Hutukthu, was finally enthroned as the 8th incarnation of Panchen Lama in the Tashilhunpo Monastery.

In 1877 (or 1878) Tenpai Wangchuk along with regent Tenzin Hutukthu identified the 13th Dalai Lama using the Golden Urn. The 8th Panchen Lama died in 1882 in the age of 27.

All the tombs from the Fifth to the Ninth Panchen Lamas were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and have been rebuilt by the 10th Panchen Lama with a huge tomb at Tashilhunpo Monastery in Shigatse, known as the Tashi Langyar.

References

1855 births
1882 deaths
Panchen Lama 08
Tibetan Buddhists from Tibet
19th-century Tibetan people

Tenpai Wangchuk, 8th Panchen Lama


Franklin is a rural town in Macon County, Alabama, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 590.

History and educational legacy
The Muscogee (Creek) people had long been cultivating lands in this area, producing crops of maize, squash and beans (the Three Sisters), and tobacco, used primarily for ritual purposes. Osceola (1804-1838), who became well known as a leader of the Seminole people in Florida, was born to a Creek woman at Red Creek, 10 miles from the Tallapoosa River. He was of mixed race but identified as Creek; the people have a matrilineal kinship system.

Franklin has been home to many churches for more than 200 years. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a Methodist Missionary Church operated here for the Creek. It had two cemeteries, one for whites and one for the Creek. James McQueen, a Scots trader who lived here and married a Creek woman, was great-grandfather of Osceola. McQueen is buried in the Indian cemetery.

After the Creek were forced to cede their lands, European Americans developed the area for cotton cultivation. They depended on the labor of enslaved African Americans, many of whom were initially transported to this region from the Upper South in the domestic slave trade. Cotton continued as the chief commodity crop after the Civil War.

Residents established Franklin School by the 1890s, teaching grades 1–11 of white students. By the mid-1930s, the upper grades had been moved to another facility, and it held grades 1–6. Northern and southern classrooms were adjoined by a common auditorium. The school's original water source was a spring near the buildings. A well was later dug in the front yard of the school, with a hand pump to get water. Heat was provided by a wood-burning potbelly stove. Each student brought a stick of wood every morning to burn in the stove.

The school closed in 1942, and its 75–80 students transferred to Tuskegee schools. After the school closed, the northern classroom was moved to its current location and converted to a community center. The rest of the school was torn down.

In the mid-20th century, musician Hank Williams Sr. often performed at dances at the community center. Upon Franklin's incorporation in 1977, the town began using the community center building as the town hall. A mile north of Town Hall lay the remnants of what is rumored to be the first school in Macon County.

Harris Barrett School was built in 1903 with handmade bricks made by students of the Tuskegee Normal School (now Tuskegee University), under the direction of Booker T. Washington. In the segregated system of public facilities, the Barrett School was reserved for African-American students, who were mostly descendants of freedmen in this rural area. Both the Barrett School and the Tuskegee Institute played a major role in education in the Franklin community. They operated an experimental farm on the west side of Baldwin Farm Road. Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver were both active in farming in Franklin, and assisted farmers both black and white. Harris Barrett School was restored and is operated as a historic museum; it is located at the corner of Co. Rd. 27 and 36.

Geography
Franklin is located at  (32.455388, -85.802884).

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , all land.

Demographics

2020 census

As of the census of 2000, there were 145 people, 59 households, and 44 families residing in the town. The population density was . There were 73 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the town was 56.38% Black or African American and 43.62% White. 0.67% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There were 59 households, of which 28.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 51.6% were married couples living together, 15.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 25.0% were non-families. 21.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.33 and the average family size was 2.69.

In the town, the population was spread out, with 20.1% under the age of 18, 10.7% from 18 to 24, 18.1% from 25 to 44, 33.6% from 45 to 64, and 17.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 47 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.9 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $45,923, and the median income for a family was $53,111. Males had a median income of $43,840 versus $40,744 for females. The per capita income for the town was $45,495. 4.9% of the population were living below the poverty line. 9.7% of those were over the age of 64.

Government
The Town of Franklin is a mayor-council form of government with a mayor and 5 councilpersons which are elected every four years. The town operates its own police department, volunteer fire department, as well as water system.

Mayor Henry Peavy, Mayor Pro-Temp David Clinkscales, Council Members Alvin Sears, Memphis Boston, Rheba Knoxx, Robert T. Perry

Town Clerk/Treasurer Micha Segrest

Chief of Police James Chris Johnson, Jr.

Fire Chief Scott Cooper

References

Towns in Macon County, Alabama
Towns in Alabama
Columbus metropolitan area, Georgia

Franklin, Alabama


Ishaq b. Isma'il b. Shuab al-Tiflisi  (before 833 – 853), also known as Sahak in Georgian sources, was the emir of Tbilisi between 833 and 853. Under his rule, the emirate reached the apex of its power. He forced Georgian princes to pay tribute from Kakheti to Abkhazia. He tried to become independent from the Abbasid caliphate, stopped reversing the tribute, and allied himself with local nobility such as the mtavari of Kakheti. In retribution, the caliph Al-Mutawakkil sent an expedition against him led by Bugha al-Kabir (also known in Georgia as Bugha the Turk), assisted by the Georgian noble Bagrationi family. In 853, they burnt and sacked Tbilisi, and killed the emir.

References
Suny, Ronald Grigor (1994), The Making of the Georgian Nation: 2nd edition, p. 30. Indiana University Press, ,

9th-century monarchs in the Middle East
Islam in Georgia (country)
Monarchs killed in action
Year of birth unknown
853 deaths
Vassal rulers of the Abbasid Caliphate
Year of birth uncertain
9th-century Arab people

Ishaq ibn Isma'il


The Statement is a 2003 drama film directed by Norman Jewison and starring Michael Caine, Tilda Swinton, Jeremy Northam, Alan Bates, William Hutt, John Neville and Charlotte Rampling.

Based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Brian Moore, the screenplay by Ronald Harwood is inspired by the true story of Paul Touvier, a Vichy French police official who was indicted after World War II for ordering the execution of seven Jews in retaliation for the French Resistance's assassination of Vichy France minister Philippe Henriot. For decades after the war, he escaped trial thanks to an intricate web of protection, which allegedly included senior members of the Roman Catholic priesthood. He was arrested in 1989 inside a Traditionalist Catholic priory in Nice and was convicted in 1994. He died in prison in 1996, at the age of 81.

The Statement is the last film by Jewison before his retirement. It was also Bates's final theatrical role prior to his death in the year of the film's release.

Plot
Pierre Brossard, a French Nazi collaborator, orders seven Jews executed during World War II. Some 40 years later, he is pursued by David Manenbaum, a hitman who is under orders to kill Brossard and leave a printed statement on his body proclaiming the assassination was vengeance for the Jews executed in 1944. Brossard kills Manenbaum, hiding the dead body after finding the statement and discovering that his pursuer was travelling on a Canadian passport. Brossard for years has taken refuge in sanctuaries in southern France within the Traditionalist Catholic community, appealing to long-time allies who have operated in great secrecy to shield him and provide him with funds. But now they bring increased scrutiny to themselves for continuing to do so.

The murder of Manenbaum attracts the interest of local police and eventually the persistent Investigating Judge Annemarie Livi. She becomes absorbed by the case, not discouraged by the lack of assistance she encounters from official sectors. Livi forms an alliance with the similarly dedicated Colonel Roux, a senior French Gendarmerie investigator, and the pair initially suspect that Manenbaum was part of a Jewish assassination plot. They discover that Brossard has been the subject of several previous investigations, dating back more than 40 years, which have all failed. Livi and Roux discover hidden resources, tightening the noose around Brossard, who finds his allies increasingly reluctant to help him.

Brossard in desperation pays a surprise visit to his estranged wife Nicole, a maid who is living in lower-middle-class circumstances in Marseille and is very apprehensive about seeing him again. Brossard's allies, including certain priests and a wartime colleague who has risen into a position of great power within the French government, are feeling the heat from the relentless questioning of Livi and Roux. Now desperate and unsure whom to trust, Brossard seeks new identity papers and money so he can escape France forever. On the night he is to escape, however, his handler Pochon shoots him dead on orders from his former protectors within the government, who fear he will cause trouble for them if captured.

Following Brossard's death, Livi and Roux trace the conspiracy to protect him to a high-ranking government official, and arrest him for treason.

Cast
 Michael Caine as Pierre Brossard
 Tilda Swinton as Anne-Marie Livi
 Jeremy Northam as Colonel Roux
 Alan Bates as Armand Bertier
 John Neville as The Old Man
 Charlotte Rampling as Nicole
 Ciarán Hinds as Pochon
 Frank Finlay as Commissaire Vionnet
 Matt Craven as David Manenbaum
 Noam Jenkins as Michael Levy
 Joseph Malerba as Max
 Colin Salmon as Father Patrice

Historical basis
The Statement is based on the best-selling 1995 novel of the same name by Brian Moore. In the novel and film, the fictional Brossard is based on Paul Touvier, a member of the Milice, a paramilitary police force of the Vichy French regime during World War II who ordered the execution of seven Jews in 1944. After the war, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to death in absentia, but with the aid of right-wing Roman Catholic clergymen, who provided him refuge in safe houses and monasteries, Touvier avoided capture. He received a controversial pardon from the President of France, Georges Pompidou, in 1971, but remained on the run. Unlike Brossard, Touvier was finally arrested in 1989, on a new charge of crimes against humanity; tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison, he died in jail in 1996, aged 81.

Reception
The film holds an approval rating of 24% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 106 reviews, with an average rating of 4.7/10.  The site's consensus reads: "The movie bores despite a splendid performance by Michael Caine." The film grossed a little over $765,000 domestically and $1.55 million worldwide in its limited release against a budget of $27 million.

References

External links

2003 films
2003 drama films
American drama films
Canadian drama films
English-language Canadian films
English-language French films
French drama films
British drama films
Films based on Canadian novels
Films set in 1992
Films about Nazi fugitives
BBC Film films
Sony Pictures Classics films
Films directed by Norman Jewison
Films scored by Normand Corbeil
Films with screenplays by Ronald Harwood
2000s American films
2000s Canadian films
2000s British films
2000s French films

The Statement (film)


The Staggering Stories of Ferdinand de Bargos is a 1989 BBC comedy television series, in which surreal and satirical narratives are assembled entirely out of archive film clips, with new soundtracks provided by voice-over artists. It was written and produced by Geoff Atkinson and Kim Fuller, and ran for three series until 1995.

Cast
Most of the voice-overs were provided by voice artists who were already well known in the industry, having previously worked on comedy series such as Spitting Image. Among them were Jim Broadbent, Ronni Ancona, Kate Robbins, Enn Reitel, Jon Glover, Alistair McGowan and Caroline Leddy. Many of them went on to perform in front of the camera, taking starring roles in impressionist comedy series such as The Big Impression.

References

External links

1989 British television series debuts
1995 British television series endings
1980s British comedy television series
1990s British comedy television series
BBC television comedy
British parody television series
English-language television shows