Singer and actress Marni Nixon had a long career in opera, musical theater, and television. However, she was likely best known for being a “ghostsinger” – she provided the singing voice for a number of prominent actresses in movie musicals in the 1950s and 1960s. Nixon’s work was often uncredited, and in some cases, even the actresses involved did not know that their singing performances had been replaced by Nixon’s.
Among her most notable performances as a ghostsinger were providing the singing voice for Deborah Kerr in both The King and I and An Affair to Remember, for Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.
For the film Carmen Jones, setting the Merimee novel and Bizet opera in a WWII parachute factory in the South, Dorothy Dandridge’s songs (Bizet’s music, new English lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II) were dubbed by an obscure USC student named Marilyn Horne, years before her long run as a Metropolitan Opera diva. Harry Belafonte’s songs were also dubbed, strangely, by LeVern Hutcherson. Both stars were not thought to have sufficiently operatic voices.
The first US president with a mother who had a college degree was almost certainly William Howard Taft. His mother, Louisa Torrey Taft of Boston, graduated from Mount Holyoke College (then Mount Holyoke Female Seminary) in 1845. The next president with a college educated mother, Dwight David Eisenhower, did not come into office until 44 years later; his mother, Ida Elizabeth Stover Eisenhower, attended Lane University. (From her biography on Wikipedia it’s unclear whether she graduated from Lane or married while she was still a student)
Lane University, founded in 1865, was a college located in Lecompton, KS, a small town between Topeka and Lawrence.
Both of Ike’s parents were students at Lane U. They met there as students and then were married in the University Chapel in 1885. In 1902, Lane University joined with Campbell University to form Campbell College, but then in 1933 that college closed.
Lecompton, KS, was founded in 1854 and served as the Kansas Territorial Capital from 1855-1861. It was the site where the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution was drafted, which would have admitted Kansas as a slave state. The constitution was rejected after intense national debate and was one of the prime topics of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
Lecompton KS has a Constitution Hall State Historic Site (gMap). Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas or the Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations in the United States between 1854 and 1861 which emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in Kansas Territory. Lecompton’s Constitution Hall was the site for many meetings and debates during this time.
George Washington, a delegate from Virginia, was unanimously elected president of the convention which drafted the United States Constitution in the summer of 1787. During breaks in its deliberations, he went fishing, visited and dined with friends, and toured Revolutionary War sites in the Philadelphia area.
Elton John’s hit 1975 song “Philadelphia Freedom” was written by himself and his songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin, as a tribute to John’s friend, tennis star Billie Jean King. At that time, King was a player/coach for a professional tennis team, the Philadelphia Freedom, which served as an inspiration for the song’s name.
Billie Jean King and Elton John co-founded the World Team Tennis Smash Hits, a charity function benefitting AIDS charities. King speaks about her work with Elton, saying “We’re out there every single day with our energy and we’re going to make this world a better place, no matter if it’s through tennis, through music, whatever, to try to help the LGBT community, just help humanity.”
Leonidas IX was the Emperor of Humanity in the distant-future sf novels and short stories of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, including The Mote in God’s Eye (1974).
Jerry Orbach’s professional career began on the New York stage, both on and off-Broadway, where he created roles such as El Gallo in the original off-Broadway run of The Fantasticks and became the first performer to sing the show’s standard “Try To Remember”; Billy Flynn in the original Chicago (1975–1977), and Julian Marsh in the original 42nd Street (1980–1985). Nominated for multiple Tony Awards, Orbach won for his performance as Chuck Baxter in Promises, Promises (1968–1972).
In New York City, only four of the 40 ‘on-Broadway’ theaters are actually on Broadway. What distinguishes Broadway vs. Off Broadway (and Off-Off Broadway) theaters is simply the number of seats in the theater. Theaters which have more than 499 seats are considered Broadway Theaters. Theaters that contain between 99 and 499 seats are Off-Broadway. Theaters with less than 99 seats are considered Off-Off-Broadway.
The full name of the Tony Award is The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, and the broadcast is on this Sunday, June 9th, from 8 - 11 p.m.
AND when I told a co-worker watching them is one of the highlights of my year, he replied disparingly “What do you see in all those Hollywood people?”
Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry (1794 – 1858) came to be known as “The Father of the Steam Navy” for his advocacy of modernizing the US Navy. His older brother, Commander Oliver Hazard Perry (1785 - 1819), came to be known as “The Hero of Lake Erie" for leading American forces in a decisive naval victory at the Battle of Lake Erie. He is remembered for the words on his battle flag, “Don’t Give Up the Ship”, and for his message to General William Henry Harrison which reads in part, “We have met the enemy and they are ours; …”
They are sons of Captain Christopher Raymond Perry (1761 - 1818). He enlisted at the age of 14 in a local militia company named the Kingston Reds early in the American Revolution. He married Sarah Wallace Alexander (1768 – 1830), who was a descendant of an uncle of William Wallace (e.g., Mel Gibson).
In play — You can take a 6,500-mile drive around all of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Commission established the Circle Tour in 1988 as a scenic tourist drive around the five lakes and through the eight states (and Ontario) that make up the GLC. Just to navigate Lake Michigan’s 900-mile Circle Tour alone would take approximately 14½ hours without any stops.
ETA: image, map of great lakes circle tour — https://tinyurl.com/y5s3r253
Boston Pops conductor and Oscar-winning film composer John Williams wrote an orchestral fanfare for the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts. It was played at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta that year, but I haven’t heard it since.
John Williams received his first Academy Award for scoring the film adaption of Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls. He has since won four more (Jaws, Star Wars, E.T. and Schindler’s List) and, with 51 Academy Award nominations, he is the second most-nominated individual, after Walt Disney