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Coco
Chanel (1883-1971): isn't just ahead of
her time, she's ahead of herself. She couldn't
afford the fashionable clothes of the period--so
she rejected them and made her own, using the
sports jackets and ties that were everyday male
attire around the racetrack. Her fabulous career
never recovered after she hooked up with a Nazi
officer during the war. Chanel did not define
herself as a feminist--in fact, she consistently
spoke of femininity rather than of feminism-that
is, until she became a Guerrilla Girl.
"Fashion is not simply a matter of clothes.
Fashion is in the air, born upon the wind. One
intuits it. It is in the sky and on the road."
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| Julia
Child (1912-2004): was born in Pasadena,
California and graduated from Smith College in
1934. After college, she worked in publicity and
advertising in New York, and Washington, D.C.
In 1948, her husband Paul Child was assigned to
the U.S. Information Service at The American Embassy
in Paris, and Julia enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu
Cooking School. There she met her two French colleagues,
Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, and they
subsequently opened a cooking school, "L'Ecole
des Trois Gourmandes," which resulted in
their joint book, Mastering the Art of French
Cooking, published in 1961. Julia and Paul eventually
returned to the States, and after a television
interview at WGBH-Boston, the station asked Julia
to try out a series of TV cooking shows, and The
French Chef was born on February 11, 1963. |
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After
some 200 programs on classical French cooking,
she branched out into contemporary cuisine with
the television series, Julia Child & Company,
Julia Child & More Company, and Dinner at
Julia's. Julia wrote 13 cook books, received honorary
degrees from Boston University, Bates College,
Rutgers University, Smith College, and Harvard
University. She was awarded the Ordre de Merite
Agricole in 1967 by the French government, and
in 1967 by the French government, and in 1976
the Ordre de Mérite Nationale. She was
awarded two national Emmy's: in 1995 for her "Master
Chefs" series and in 1997 for "Baking
with Julia." Mrs. Child was an active member
of the International Association of Culinary Professionals,
and a co-founder of the American Institute of
Wine & Food.
"In department stores, so much kitchen equipment
is bought indiscriminately by people who just
come in for men's underwear." -
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| Alice
Childress (1920-1994): was born in Charleston,
South Carolina, but went to live with her maternal
grandmother in Harlem at age nine after her parents
separated. Upon completing her education in the
public schools of New York, she began a career
in the theater as actor, director, and playwright.
Her plays include Florence (1949), Wedding Band:
A Love/Hate Story in Black and White (1972), Mojo:
A Black Love Story (1970), and Moms: A Praise
Play for a Black Comedienne (1987). Childress
is also the author of a number of novels, among
them Those Other People (1989) and A Hero Ain't
Nothin' but a Sandwich (1973). She also wrote
the screenplay for the 1978 film based on A Hero
Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich. She received numerous
awards and honors for her writings, among them
the first Paul Robeson Award for Outstanding Contributions
to the Performing Arts. |
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human is uniquely different.... I concentrate
on portraying have-nots in a have society, those
seldom singled out by mass media, except as source
material for derogatory humor and/or condescending
clinical, social analysis." - |
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Cheryl Crawford (1902-1986):
Crawford's Broadway career spanned more than half
a century and included such hit productions as
"Brigadoon," "Sweet Bird of Youth,"
and "Paint Your Wagon." She originally
planned to become a missionary but fell in love
with the theatre after performing in an amateur
production of "Macbeth" in her native
Ohio when she was fifteen years old. In 1925 she
moved to New York City and along with Harold Clurman,
and Lee Strasberg formed the Group Theatre, an
ensemble modeled after the Moscow Art Theatre
and dedicated to the presentation of socially
relevant plays and the Stanislavsky method of
acting. Among the plays the theatre presented
are the modern classics "Waiting for Lefty"
and "Golden Boy," as well as the Pulitzer
Prize-winning "Men in White." |
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In
1937 Crawford left the Group Theatre after years
of increasing internal dissention and announced
her plans to become an independent producer, a
position few women held at that time. Her first
major success was a 1942 revival of "Porgy
and Bess," which established Miss Crawford
as a big-time Broadway producer." Crawford
produced a number of big hits, including Tennessee
Williams's "Camino Real" and "The
Rose Tattoo" (for which she was awarded a
Tony in 1951) and "Brigadoon".
"'The best time I ever had as a producer
was on the morning after 'Brigadoon' opened in
1947. All the critics loved it. It was the only
time in my life I ever had a show that all the
critics loved."
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Alexandra Exter (1882-1949):
Ukrainian artist, theatrical designer, and teacher,
was one of the founders of the early 20th century
avant-garde movement. She studied at the Kiev
institute 1901 to 1907, and at the Academie de
la Grande Chaumiere in Paris. There she became
acquainted with the Cubists Picasso and Braque,
and began exhibiting her work with the futurists
in 1912. She was the founder of the Kiev school
of Cubo-futurist and Constructivist theatre design.
For Alexander Tairov's Chamber Theatre in Moscow
she designed Thamiros Kitharodos, Salome, and
Romeo and Juliette. Equally famous were her extravagant
costume designs for the 1924 Soviet science fiction
film Aelita, Queen of Mars. |
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Like
many radical artists who did not fit in with Soviet
ideology, Exter eventually left the country and
settled permanently in Paris in 1924. For the
next several decades she continued to produce
innovative and influential stage and film designs
and taught at Fernand Leger's Academie d'Art Moderne.
She often incorporated modern industrial materials
into her futuristic designs such as celluloid
and sheet metal. In one famous design for the
ballet, she created "epidermic" costumes
in which dancer's bodies were painted rather than
dressed.
"Creating and exhibiting art in a man's world
calls for a certain amount of corage... especially
if you are a young female artist sandwiched between
two Russian revolutions!" - |
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Edith Evans (1888 - 1976): Edith Evans
was one of the greatest actress on the English
stage in the 20th century, trodding the boards
for over half-a-century. She was born in London
and by 15 was apprenticed as a milliner. At 16,
she began taking dramatics in the evening and
was discovered after two years of performing with
an amateur Shakespeare company. She debuted professionally
as Cressida in Troilus and Cressida. Deciding
to be an actress she said "I felt I could
hardly go back to my hats" and threw herself
in and worked - playing roles in classic and contemporary
plays, her most famous being Lady Bracknell in
The Importance of Being Earnest.
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was made a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent
Order of the British Empire (the equivalent of
a knighthood) in 1946. Laurence Olivier wrote
in his memoirs that Evans' power on stage began
to falter in the early 1960s, as her memory dimmed
with age. It was about this time that she made
a transition to the screen, after generally ignoring
the medium for the first two decades of talking
films. It was her performance as Miss Western
in Richardson's Oscar-winning Best Picture Tom
Jones that established her as a major film presence.
She won her first Oscar nomination for Tom Jones,
and her second the following year for The Chalk
Garden. Dame Edith Evans continued to act in films
until her death, though the material generally
was beneath her great talent. She died on October
14, 1976, at the age of 88.
"I want a job with
no end to it. It must be so big that it will
go on spreading and spreading forever."
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Hallie Flanagan (1890-1969): Animated by
the desire to introduce her students to the latest
techniques of the European avant garde, Hallie
Flanagan founded the Vassar College Experimental
Theatre in 1925. In 1935 she was lured away to
head the critically successful Federal Theatre
Project. During the "full, lean years"
of the Depression, a tiny woman in a fedora hat
cast a huge shadow which covered the whole land
with the vision of a different kind of theatre.
Although it was founded by the United States government,
Federal Theatre was, in fact, the vision of one
woman, Hallie Flanagan, whose eyes were wide enough
to take in the visions of many other artists of
stature equal to her own. |
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During
the four years that the Federal Theatre Project
existed, 1935- 1939, Flanagan set a standard for
theatrical producing that remains unmatched and
she created a people's theatre across the land.
"It seems to me it is our job in the Federal
Theatre Project to expand, as greatly as our imagination
and talents will permit, the boundaries of theatre...the
American theatre must wake up and grow up--to
an age of expanding social consciousness."
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