title: Sudan

text: Sudan's national beach volleyball team competed at the 2018–2020 CAVB Beach Volleyball Continental Cup in both the women's and the men's section. In June 2022, Patricia Seif El Din El Haj, the first Sudanese woman wrestler to participate in an African championship, was photographed by Reuters photographer Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah, as she got ready to travel to Nigeria in order to prepare for the 2024 Summer Olympic games.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch; December 9, 1916 – February 5, 2020) was an American actor and filmmaker. After an impoverished childhood, he made his film debut in "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office star throughout the 1950s, known for serious dramas, including westerns and war films. During his career, he appeared in more than 90 films and was known for his explosive acting style. He was named by the American Film Institute the 17th-greatest male star of Classic Hollywood cinema and was the highest-ranked living person on the list.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas became an international star for his role as an unscrupulous boxing hero in "Champion" (1949), which brought him his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. His other early films include "Out of the Past" (1947), "Young Man with a Horn" (1950), playing opposite Lauren Bacall and Doris Day, "Ace in the Hole" (1951), and "Detective Story" (1951), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination. He received his second Oscar nomination for his dramatic role in "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952), opposite Lana Turner, and earned his third for portraying Vincent van Gogh in "Lust for Life" (1956), a role for which he won the Golden Globe for the Best Actor in a Drama. He also starred with James Mason in the adventure "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1954), a large box-office hit.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In September 1949, he established Bryna Productions, which began producing films as varied as "Paths of Glory" (1957) and "Spartacus" (1960). In those two films, he collaborated with the then-relatively unknown director Stanley Kubrick, taking lead roles in both films. Douglas has been praised for helping to break the Hollywood blacklist by having Dalton Trumbo write "Spartacus" with an official on-screen credit. He produced and starred in "Lonely Are the Brave" (1962) and "Seven Days in May" (1964), the latter opposite Burt Lancaster, with whom he made seven films. In 1963, he starred in the Broadway play "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", a story that he purchased and later gave to his son Michael Douglas, who turned it into an Oscar-winning film. Douglas continued acting into the 1980s, appearing in such films as "Saturn 3" (1980), "The Man from Snowy River" (1980), "Tough Guys" (1986), a reunion with Lancaster, and in the television version of "Inherit the Wind" (1988) plus in an episode of "Touched by an Angel" in 2002, for which he received his third nomination for an Emmy Award.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: As an actor and philanthropist, Douglas received an Academy Honorary Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As an author, he wrote ten novels and memoirs. After barely surviving a helicopter crash in 1991 and then suffering a stroke in 1996, he focused on renewing his spiritual and religious life. He lived with his second wife (of 65 years), producer Anne Buydens, until his death in 2020. A centenarian, Douglas was one of the last surviving stars of the film industry's Golden Age.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch (, , ) in Amsterdam, New York, on December 9, 1916, the son of Bryna "Bertha" (née Sanglel) and Herschel "Harry" Danielovitch. His parents were immigrants from Chavusy, Mogilev Governorate, in the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus), and the family spoke Yiddish at home. Douglas was the fourth child of seven children and the only son born to his parents. He had six sisters, three older and three younger: Pesha “Bessie”, Kaleh “Katherine”, Tamara “Mary”, Siffra “Frieda”, Haska “Ida”, and Rachel “Ruth”. Douglas embraced his Jewish heritage in his later years, after a near-fatal helicopter crash at the age of 74.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: His father's brother, who had immigrated earlier, used the surname Demsky, which Douglas's family adopted in the United States. Douglas grew up as Izzy Demsky and legally changed his name to Kirk Douglas before entering the United States Navy during World War II.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In his 1988 autobiography, "The Ragman's Son", Douglas notes the hardships that he, along with his parents and six sisters, endured during their early years in Amsterdam:


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas had an unhappy childhood, living with an alcoholic, physically abusive father. While his father drank up what little money they had, Douglas and his mother and sisters endured "crippling poverty".


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas first wanted to be an actor after he recited the poem "The Red Robin of Spring" while in kindergarten and received applause. Growing up, he sold snacks to mill workers to earn enough to buy milk and bread to help his family. He later delivered newspapers, and he had more than forty jobs during his youth before becoming an actor. He found living in a family with six sisters to be stifling: "I was dying to get out. In a sense, it lit a fire under me." After appearing in plays at Amsterdam High School, from which he graduated in 1934, he knew he wanted to become a professional actor. Unable to afford the tuition, Douglas talked his way into the dean's office at St. Lawrence University and showed him a list of his high school honors. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1939. He received a loan which he paid back by working part-time as a gardener and a janitor. He was a standout on the wrestling team and wrestled one summer in a carnival to make money. He later became good friends with world-champion wrestler Lou Thesz.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas's acting talents were noticed at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, which gave him a special scholarship. One of his classmates was Betty Joan Perske (later known as Lauren Bacall), who would play an important role in launching his film career. Bacall wrote that she "had a wild crush on Kirk", and they dated casually. Another classmate, and a friend of Bacall's, was aspiring actress Diana Dill, who would later become Douglas's first wife.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: During their time together, Bacall learned Douglas had no money and that he once spent the night in jail since he had no place to sleep. She once gave him her uncle's old coat to keep warm: "I thought he must be frozen in the winter … He was thrilled and grateful." Sometimes, just to see him, she would drag a friend or her mother to the restaurant where he worked as a busboy and waiter. He told her his dream was to someday bring his family to New York to see him on stage. During that period she fantasized about someday sharing her personal and stage lives with Douglas, but would later be disappointed: "Kirk did not really pursue me. He was friendly and sweet—enjoyed my company—but I was clearly too young for him," the eight-years-younger Bacall later wrote.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas joined the United States Navy in 1941, shortly after the United States entered World War II, where he served as a communications officer in anti-submarine warfare aboard USS "PC-1139". He was medically discharged in 1944 for injuries sustained from the premature explosion of a depth charge.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: After the war, Douglas returned to New York City and found work in radio, theater, and commercials. In his radio work, he acted in network soap operas and saw those experiences as being especially valuable, as skill in using one's voice is important for aspiring actors; he regretted that the same avenues were no longer available. His stage break occurred when he took over the role played by Richard Widmark in "Kiss and Tell" (1943), which then led to other offers.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas had planned to remain a stage actor until his friend Lauren Bacall helped him get his first film role by recommending him to producer Hal B. Wallis, who was looking for a new male talent. Wallis's film "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck became Douglas' debut screen appearance. He played a young, insecure man stung by jealousy, whose life was dominated by his ruthless wife, and he hid his feelings with alcohol. It would be the last time that Douglas portrayed a weakling in a film role. Reviewers of the film noted that Douglas already projected qualities of a "natural film actor", with the similarity of this role with later ones explained by biographer Tony Thomas:


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In 1947, Douglas appeared in "Out of the Past" (UK: "Build My Gallows High"), playing a large supporting role in this classic noir thriller starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. Douglas made his Broadway debut in 1949 in "Three Sisters", produced by Katharine Cornell. The month after "Out of the Past" was released, "I Walk Alone", the first film teaming Douglas with Burt Lancaster, presented Douglas playing a supporting part quite similar to his role in "Out of the Past" in another classic fast-paced noir thriller.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas' image as a tough guy was established in his eighth film, "Champion" (1949), after producer Stanley Kramer chose him to play a selfish boxer. In accepting the role, he took a gamble, however, since he had to turn down an offer to star in a big-budget MGM film, "The Great Sinner", which would have earned him three times the income. Melvyn Douglas played the third-billed (above the title) part Kirk Douglas passed on. "The Great Sinner" flopped.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Film historian Ray Didinger says Douglas "saw "Champion" as a greater risk, but also a greater opportunity ... Douglas took the part and absolutely nailed it." Frederick Romano, another sports film historian, described Douglas's acting as "alarmingly authentic":


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas received his first Academy Award nomination, and the film earned six nominations in all. "Variety" called it "a stark, realistic study of the boxing rackets."


title: Kirk Douglas

text: After "Champion" he decided that, to succeed as a star, he needed to ramp up his intensity, overcome his natural shyness, and choose stronger roles. He later stated, "I don't think I'd be much of an actor without vanity. And I'm not interested in being a 'modest actor'". Early in his Hollywood career, Douglas demonstrated his independent streak and broke his studio contracts to gain total control over his projects, forming his own movie company, Bryna Productions (named after his mother) in September 1949.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Douglas was a major box-office star, playing opposite some of the leading actresses of that era. He portrayed a frontier peace officer in his first western, "Along the Great Divide" (1951). He quickly became very comfortable with riding horses and playing gunslingers, and he appeared in many Westerns. He considered "Lonely Are the Brave" (1962), in which he plays a cowboy trying to live by his own code, his personal favorite. The film, written by Dalton Trumbo, was respected by critics but did not do well at the box office due to poor marketing and distribution.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In 1950, Douglas played Rick Martin in "Young Man with a Horn", based on a novel of the same name by Dorothy Baker inspired by the life of jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke. Composer and pianist Hoagy Carmichael, playing the sidekick, added realism to the film and gave Douglas insight into the role, being a friend of the real Beiderbecke. Doris Day starred as Jo, a young woman who was infatuated with the struggling jazz musician. This was strikingly opposite of the real-life account in Doris Day's autobiography, which described Douglas as "civil but self-centered" and the film as "utterly joyless". During filming, bit actress Jean Spangler disappeared, and her case remains unsolved. On October 9, 1949, Spangler's purse was found near the Fern Dell entrance to Griffith Park in Los Angeles. There was an unfinished note in the purse addressed to a "Kirk," which read:


title: Kirk Douglas

text: "Can't wait any longer, Going to see Dr. Scott. It will work best this way while mother is away". Douglas, married at the time, called the police and told them he was not the Kirk mentioned in the note. When interviewed via telephone by the head of the investigating team, Douglas stated that he had "talked and kidded with her a bit" on set, but that he had never been out with her. Spangler's girlfriends told police that she was three months pregnant when she disappeared, and scholars such as Jon Lewis of Oregon State University have speculated that she may have been considering an illegal abortion.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In 1951, Douglas starred as a newspaper reporter anxiously looking for a big story in "Ace in the Hole", director Billy Wilder's first effort as both writer and producer. The subject and story was controversial at the time, and U.S. audiences stayed away. Some reviews saw it as "ruthless and cynical ... a distorted study of corruption, mob psychology and the free press." Possibly it "hit too close to home", said Douglas. It won a Best Foreign Film award at the Venice Film Festival. The film's stature has increased in recent years, with some surveys placing it in their Top 500 Films list. Woody Allen considers it one of his favorite films. As the film's star and protagonist, Douglas is credited for the intensity of his acting. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote, "his focus and energy ... is almost scary. There is nothing dated about Douglas' performance. It's as right-now as a sharpened knife." Biographer Gene Philips noted that Wilder's story was "galvanized" by Douglas's "astounding performance" and no doubt was a factor when George Stevens, who presented Douglas with the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1991, said of him: "No other leading actor was ever more ready to tap the dark, desperate side of the soul and thus to reveal the complexity of human nature."


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Also in 1951, Douglas starred in "Detective Story", nominated for four Academy Awards, including one for Lee Grant in her debut film. Grant said Douglas was "dazzling, both personally and in the part. ... He was a big, big star. Gorgeous. Intense. Amazing." To prepare for the role, Douglas spent days with the New York Police Department and sat in on interrogations. Reviewers recognized Douglas's acting qualities, with Bosley Crowther describing Douglas as "forceful and aggressive as the detective".


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952), another of his three Oscar-nominated roles, Douglas played a hard-nosed film producer who manipulates and uses his actors, writers, and directors. In 1954 Douglas starred as the titular character in "Ulysses", a film based on Homer's epic poem "Odyssey", with Silvana Mangano as Penelope and Circe, and Anthony Quinn as Antinous.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1954), Douglas showed that in addition to serious, driven characters, he was adept at roles requiring a lighter, comic touch. In this adaptation of the Jules Verne novel, he played a happy-go-lucky sailor who was the opposite in every way to the brooding Captain Nemo (James Mason). The film was one of Walt Disney's most successful live-action movies and a major box-office hit. Douglas managed a similar comic turn in the western "Man Without a Star" (1955) and in "For Love or Money" (1963). He showed further diversity in one of his earliest television appearances. He was a musical guest (as himself) on "The Jack Benny Program" (1954).


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In 1955, Douglas was finally able to get his film production company, Bryna Productions, off the ground. To do so, he had to break contracts with Hal B. Wallis and Warner Bros., but he began to produce and star in his own films, starting with "The Indian Fighter" in 1955. Through Bryna, he produced and starred in the films "Paths of Glory" (1957), "The Vikings" (1958), "Spartacus" (1960), "Lonely are the Brave" (1962), and "Seven Days in May" (1964). In 1958, Douglas formed the music publishing company Peter Vincent Music Corporation, a Bryna Productions subsidiary. Peter Vincent Music was responsible for publishing the soundtracks of "The Vikings" and "Spartacus".


title: Kirk Douglas

text: While "Paths of Glory" did not do well at the box office, it has since become one of the great anti-war films, and it is one of director Stanley Kubrick's early films. Douglas, a fluent French speaker, portrayed a sympathetic French officer during World War I who tries to save three soldiers from facing a firing squad. Biographer Vincent LoBrutto describes Douglas's "seething but controlled portrayal exploding with the passion of his convictions at the injustice leveled at his men." The film was banned in France until 1976. Before production of the film began, however, Douglas and Kubrick had to work out some major issues, one of which was Kubrick's rewriting the screenplay without informing Douglas first. It led to their first major argument: "I called Stanley to my room ... I hit the ceiling. I called him every four-letter word I could think of ... 'I got the money, based on "that" [original] script. Not this shit!' I threw the script across the room. 'We're going back to the original script, or we're not making the picture.' Stanley never blinked an eye. We shot the original script. I think the movie is a classic, one of the most important pictures—possibly the "most" important picture—Stanley Kubrick has ever made."


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas played military men in numerous films, with varying nuance, including "Top Secret Affair" (1957), "Town Without Pity" (1961), "The Hook" (1963), "Seven Days in May" (1964), "Heroes of Telemark" (1965), "In Harm's Way" (1965), "Cast a Giant Shadow" (1966), "Is Paris Burning" (1966), "The Final Countdown" (1980), and "Saturn 3" (1980). His acting style and delivery made him a favorite with television impersonators such as Frank Gorshin, Rich Little, and David Frye.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: His role as Vincent van Gogh in "Lust for Life" (1956), directed by Vincente Minnelli and based on Irving Stone's bestseller, was filmed mostly on location in France. Douglas was noted not only for the veracity of van Gogh's appearance but for how he conveyed the painter's internal turmoil. Some reviewers consider it the most famous example of the "tortured artist" who seeks solace from life's pain through his work. Others see it as a portrayal not only of the "painter-as-hero", but a unique presentation of the "action painter", with Douglas expressing the physicality and emotion of painting, as he uses the canvas to capture a moment in time.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas was nominated for an Academy Award for the role, with his co-star Anthony Quinn winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as Paul Gauguin, van Gogh's friend. Douglas won a Golden Globe award, although Minnelli said Douglas should have won an Oscar: "He achieved a moving and memorable portrait of the artist—a man of massive creative power, triggered by severe emotional stress, the fear and horror of madness." Douglas himself called his acting role as Van Gogh a painful experience: "Not only did I look like Van Gogh, I was the same age he was when he committed suicide." His wife said he often remained in character in his personal life: "When he was doing "Lust for Life", he came home in that red beard of Van Gogh's, wearing those big boots, stomping around the house—it was frightening."


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In general, however, Douglas's acting style fit well with Minnelli's preference for "melodrama and neurotic-artist roles", writes film historian James Naremore. He adds that Minnelli had his "richest, most impressive collaborations" with Douglas, and for Minnelli, no other actor portrayed his level of "cool": "A robust, athletic, sometimes explosive player, Douglas loved stagy rhetoric, and he did everything passionately." Douglas had also starred in Minnelli's film "The Bad and the Beautiful" four years earlier, for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In 1960, Douglas played the title role in what many consider his career-defining appearance as the Thracian gladiator slave rebel Spartacus with an all-star cast in "Spartacus" (1960). He was the executive producer as well, which increased the $12 million production cost and made "Spartacus" one of the most expensive films up to that time. Douglas initially selected Anthony Mann to direct, but replaced him early on with Stanley Kubrick, with whom he had previously collaborated in "Paths of Glory".


title: Kirk Douglas

text: When the film was released, Douglas gave full credit to its screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, who was on the Hollywood blacklist, and thereby effectively ended it. About that event, Douglas said, "I've made over 85 pictures, but the thing I'm most proud of is breaking the blacklist." However, the film's producer, Edward Lewis, and the family of Dalton Trumbo publicly disputed Douglas's claim. In the film "Trumbo" (2015), Douglas is portrayed by Dean O'Gorman.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas bought the rights to stage a play of the novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" from its author, Ken Kesey. He mounted a play from the material in 1963 in which he starred and that ran on Broadway for five months. Reviews were mixed. Douglas retained the movie rights due to an innovative loophole of basing the rights on the play rather than the novel, despite Kesey's objections, but after a decade of being unable to find a producer he gave the rights to his son, Michael. In 1975, the film version was produced by Michael Douglas and Saul Zaentz, and starred Jack Nicholson, as Douglas was then considered too old to play the character as written. The film won all five major Academy Awards, only the second film to do so (after "It Happened One Night" in 1934).


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas made seven films over four decades with actor Burt Lancaster: "I Walk Alone" (1947), "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" (1957), "The Devil's Disciple" (1959), "The List of Adrian Messenger" (1963), "Seven Days in May" (1964), "Victory at Entebbe" (1976), and "Tough Guys" (1986), which fixed the notion of the pair as something of a team in the public imagination. Douglas was always billed under Lancaster in these movies, but, with the exception of "I Walk Alone", their roles were usually of a similar size. Both actors arrived in Hollywood at about the same time and first appeared together in the fourth film for each, albeit with Douglas in a supporting role. They both became actor-producers who sought out independent Hollywood careers.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: John Frankenheimer, who directed the political thriller "Seven Days in May" in 1964, had not worked well with Lancaster in the past and originally did not want him in this film. However, Douglas thought Lancaster would fit the part and "begged me to reconsider," said Frankenheimer, and he then gave Lancaster the most colorful role. "It turns out that Burt Lancaster and I got along magnificently well on the picture," he later said.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In 1967 Douglas starred with John Wayne in the western film directed by Burt Kennedy titled "The War Wagon".


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In "The Arrangement" (1969), a drama directed by Elia Kazan and based upon his novel of the same title, Douglas starred as a tormented advertising executive, with Faye Dunaway as costar. The film did poorly at the box office, receiving mostly negative reviews. Dunaway believed many of the reviews were unfair, writing in her biography, "I can't understand it when people knock Kirk's performance, because I think he's terrific in the picture," adding that "he's as bright a person as I've met in the acting profession." She says that his "pragmatic approach to acting" would later be a "philosophy that ended up rubbing off on me."


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In the 1970s, he starred in films such as "There Was a Crooked Man..." (1970), "A Gunfight" (1971), "The Light at the Edge of the World" (1971). and "The Fury" (1978). He made his directorial debut in "Scalawag." (1973), and subsequently also directed "Posse" (1975), in which he starred alongside Bruce Dern.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In 1980, he starred in "The Final Countdown", playing the commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS "Nimitz", which travels through time to the day before the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. It was produced by his son Peter Douglas. He also played in a dual role in "The Man from Snowy River" (1982), an Australian film which received critical acclaim and numerous awards.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In 1986, he reunited with his longtime co-star, Burt Lancaster, in a crime comedy, "Tough Guys", with a cast including Charles Durning and Eli Wallach. It marked the final collaboration between Douglas and Lancaster, completing a partnership of more than 40 years. That same year, he co-hosted (with Angela Lansbury) the New York Philharmonic's tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. The symphony was conducted by Zubin Mehta.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In 1988, Douglas starred in a television adaptation of "Inherit the Wind", opposite Jason Robards and Jean Simmons. The film won two Emmy Awards. In the 1990s, Douglas continued starring in various features. Among them was "The Secret" in 1992, a television movie about a grandfather and his grandson who both struggle with dyslexia. That same year, he played the uncle of Michael J. Fox in a comedy, "Greedy". He appeared as the Devil in the video for the Don Henley song "The Garden of Allah". In 1996, after suffering a severe stroke at age 79 which impaired his ability to speak, Douglas still wanted to make movies. He underwent years of voice therapy and made "Diamonds" in 1999, in which he played an old prizefighter who was recovering from a stroke. It co-starred his longtime friend from his early acting years, Lauren Bacall.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In 2003, Michael and Joel Douglas produced "It Runs in the Family", which along with Kirk starred various family members, including Michael, Michael's son Cameron, and his wife from 50 years earlier, Diana Dill, playing his wife. His final feature-film appearance was in the 2004 Michael Goorjian film "Illusion", in which he depicts a dying film director forced to watch episodes from the life of a son he had refused to acknowledge. His last screen role was the TV movie "Empire State Building Murders", which was released in 2008. In March 2009, at the age of 92, Douglas did an autobiographical one-man show, "Before I Forget", at the Center Theatre Group's Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, California. The four performances were filmed and turned into a documentary that was first screened in January 2010.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: On December 9, 2016, he celebrated his 100th birthday at the Beverly Hills Hotel, joined by several of his friends, including Don Rickles, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Steven Spielberg, along with Douglas's wife Anne, his son Michael and his daughter-in-law Catherine Zeta-Jones. Douglas was described by his guests as being still in good shape, able to walk with confidence into the Sunset Room for the celebration.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas appeared at the 2018 Golden Globes with his daughter-in-law Catherine Zeta-Jones, a rare public appearance in the final decade of his life. He received a standing ovation and helped Zeta-Jones present the award for "Best Screenplay – Motion Picture".


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas stated that the keys to acting success are determination and application: "You must know how to function and how to maintain yourself, and you must have a love of what you do. But an actor also needs great good luck. I have had that luck." Douglas had great vitality and explained that "it takes a lot out of you to work in this business. Many people fall by the wayside because they don't have the energy to sustain their talent."


title: Kirk Douglas

text: That attitude toward acting became evident with "Champion" (1949). From that one role, writes biographer John Parker, he went from stardom and entered the "superleague", where his style was in "marked contrast to Hollywood's other leading men at the time". His sudden rise to prominence is explained and compared to that of Jack Nicholson's:


title: Kirk Douglas

text: As a producer, Douglas had a reputation of being a compulsively hard worker who expected others to exude the same level of energy. As such, he was typically demanding and direct in his dealing with people who worked on his projects, with his intensity spilling over into all elements of his film-making. This was partly due to his high opinion of actors, movies, and moviemaking: "To me it is the most important art form—it "is" an art, and it includes all the elements of the modern age." He also stressed prioritizing the entertainment goal of films over any messages, "You can make a statement, you can say something, but it must be entertaining."


title: Kirk Douglas

text: As an actor, he dived into every role, dissecting not only his own lines but all the parts in the script to measure the rightness of the role, and he was willing to fight with a director if he felt justified. Melville Shavelson, who produced and directed "Cast a Giant Shadow" (1966), said that it didn't take him long to discover what his main problem was going to be in directing Douglas:


title: Kirk Douglas

text: For most of his career, Douglas enjoyed good health and what seemed like an inexhaustible supply of energy. He attributed much of that vitality to his childhood and pre-acting years: "The drive that got me out of my hometown and through college is part of the makeup that I utilize in my work. It's a constant fight, and it's tough." His demands on others, however, were an expression of the demands he placed on himself, rooted in his youth. "It took me years to concentrate on being a human being—I was too busy scrounging for money and food, and struggling to better myself."


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Actress Lee Grant, who acted with him and later filmed a documentary about him and his family, notes that even after he achieved worldwide stardom, his father would not acknowledge his success. He said "nothing. Ever." Douglas's wife, Anne, similarly attributes the energy he devotes to acting to his tough childhood:


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas has credited his mother, Bryna, for instilling in him the importance of "gambling on yourself", and he kept her advice in mind when making films. Bryna Productions was named in her honor. Douglas realized that his intense style of acting was something of a shield: "Acting is the most direct way of escaping reality, and in my case it was a means of escaping a drab and dismal background."


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In "The Ragman's Son", Douglas described himself as a "son of a bitch", adding, "I’m probably the most disliked actor in Hollywood. And I feel pretty good about it. Because that’s me…. I was born aggressive, and I guess I’ll die aggressive." Co-workers and associates alike noted similar traits, with Burt Lancaster once remarking, "Kirk would be the first to tell you that he is a very difficult man. And I would be the second." Douglas's brash personality is attributed to his difficult upbringing living in poverty and his aggressive alcoholic father who was neglectful of Kirk as a young child. According to Douglas, "there was an awful lot of rage churning around inside me, rage that I was afraid to reveal because there was so much more of it, and so much stronger, in my father." Douglas's discipline, wit, and sense of humor were also often recognized.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas and his first wife, Diana Dill, married on November 2, 1943. They had two sons, actor Michael Douglas and producer Joel Douglas, before divorcing in 1951. According to his autobiography "The Ragman's Son," he and Italian actress Pier Angeli were engaged in the early 1950s after meeting on the set of the film "The Story of Three Loves" (1953), but they never made it down the aisle. Afterwards, in Paris, he met producer Anne Buydens (born Hannelore Marx; April 23, 1919, Hanover, Germany) while acting on location in "Act of Love". She originally fled from Germany to escape Nazism and survived by putting her multilingual skills to work at a film studio, creating translations for subtitles. They married on May 29, 1954. In 2014, they celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills. They had two sons, Peter, a producer, and Eric, an actor who died on July 6, 2004 from an overdose of alcohol and drugs at the age of 46. In 2017, the couple released a book, "Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Laughter and a Lifetime in Hollywood", that revealed intimate letters they shared through the years. Throughout their marriage, Douglas had affairs with other women, including several Hollywood starlets. He never hid his infidelities from his wife, who was accepting of them and explained, "as a European, I understood it was unrealistic to expect total fidelity in a marriage."


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In February 1991, aged 74, Douglas was in a helicopter and was injured when the aircraft collided with a small plane above Santa Paula Airport. Two other people were also injured including Noel Blanc, the son of voice actor Mel Blanc who was piloting the helicopter, and two people in the plane were killed. This near-death experience sparked a search for meaning by Douglas, which led him, after much study, to embrace the Judaism in which he had been raised. He documented this spiritual journey in his book, "Climbing the Mountain: My Search for Meaning" (1997).


title: Kirk Douglas

text: He decided to visit Jerusalem again and wanted to see the Western Wall Tunnel during a trip where he would dedicate two playgrounds he donated to the state. His tour guide arranged to end the tour of the tunnel at the bedrock where, according to Jewish tradition, Abraham's binding of Isaac took place.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In his earlier autobiography, "The Ragman's Son", he recalled, "years back, I tried to forget that I was a Jew," but later in his career he began "coming to grips with what it means to be a Jew," which became a theme in his life. In an interview in 2000, he explained this transition:


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas noted that an underlying theme of some of his films, including "The Juggler" (1953), "Cast a Giant Shadow" (1966), and "Remembrance of Love" (1982), was about "a Jew who doesn't think of himself as one, and eventually finds his Jewishness." "The Juggler" was the first Hollywood feature to be filmed in the newly established state of Israel. Douglas recalled that, while there, he saw "extreme poverty and food being rationed." But he found it "wonderful, finally, to be in the majority." The film's producer, Stanley Kramer, tried to portray "Israel as the Jews' heroic response to Hitler's destruction."


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Although his children had non-Jewish mothers, Douglas stated that they were "aware culturally" of his "deep convictions" and he never tried to influence their own religious decisions. Douglas's wife, Anne, converted to Judaism before they renewed their wedding vows in 2004. Douglas celebrated a second Bar-Mitzvah ceremony in 1999, aged 83.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas and his wife donated to various non-profit causes during his career and planned on donating most of their $80 million net worth. Among the donations have been those to his former high school and college. In September 2001, he helped fund his high school's musical, "Amsterdam Oratorio", composed by Maria Riccio Bryce, who won the school Thespian Society's Kirk Douglas Award in 1968. In 2012 he donated $5 million to St. Lawrence University, his alma mater. The college used the donation for the scholarship fund he began in 1999.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: He donated to various schools, medical facilities, and other non-profit organizations in southern California. This included the rebuilding of over 400 Los Angeles Unified School District playgrounds that were aged and in need of restoration. The Douglases established the Anne Douglas Center for Homeless Women at the Los Angeles Mission, which has helped hundreds of women turn their lives around. In Culver City, they opened the Kirk Douglas Theatre in 2004. They supported the Anne Douglas Childhood Center at the Sinai Temple of Westwood. In March 2015, Douglas and his wife donated $2.3 million to the Children's Hospital Los Angeles.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Since the early 1990s, Kirk and Anne Douglas donated up to $40 million to Harry's Haven, an Alzheimer's treatment facility in Woodland Hills, to care for patients at the Motion Picture Home. To celebrate his 99th birthday on December 9, 2015, they donated another $15 million to help expand the facility with a new two-story Kirk Douglas Care Pavilion.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas donated a number of playgrounds in Jerusalem and donated the Kirk Douglas Theater at the Aish Center across from the Western Wall.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas and his wife traveled to more than 40 countries, at their own expense, to act as goodwill ambassadors for the U.S. Information Agency, speaking to audiences about why democracy works and what freedom means. In 1980, Douglas flew to Cairo to talk with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. For all his goodwill efforts, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Jimmy Carter in 1981. At the ceremony, Carter said that Douglas had "done this in a sacrificial way, almost invariably without fanfare and without claiming any personal credit or acclaim for himself". In subsequent years, Douglas testified before Congress about elder abuse.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas was a lifelong member of the Democratic Party. He wrote letters to politicians who were friends. He noted in his memoir, "Let's Face It" (2007), that he felt compelled to write to former president Jimmy Carter in 2006 to stress that "Israel is the only successful democracy in the Middle East ... [and] has had to endure many wars against overwhelming odds. If Israel loses one war, they lose Israel." During the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries he endorsed Michael Bloomberg's campaign.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas blogged from time to time. Originally hosted on Myspace, his posts were hosted by the "Huffington Post" beginning in 2012. As of 2008, he was believed to be the oldest celebrity blogger in the world.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas is alleged to have raped actress Natalie Wood in the summer of 1955, when she was aged 15 and he was 38 years old. Wood's alleged rape was first publicised in Suzanne Finstad's 2001 biography of the actress, though Finstad never named the offender.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: The allegation received renewed attention in January 2018, after the 75th Golden Globe Awards ceremony paid tribute to Douglas, with several news outlets citing a 2012 anonymous blog post which accused Douglas. In July 2018, Wood's sister Lana said during a 12-part podcast about her sister's life that her sister was sexually assaulted as a teen and that the attack had occurred inside the Chateau Marmont during an audition and went on "for hours".


title: Kirk Douglas

text: According to professor Cynthia Lucia, who studied the attack claim, Wood's rape was brutal and violent. In the 2021 memoir "Little Sister: My Investigation Into the Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood", Lana Wood alleged Douglas was her sister's assailant. Douglas's son Michael issued a statement saying, "May they both rest in peace."


title: Kirk Douglas

text: On January 28, 1996, at age 79, Douglas suffered a severe stroke, which impaired his ability to speak. Doctors told his wife that unless there was rapid improvement, the loss of the ability to speak was likely permanent. After a regimen of daily speech-language therapy that lasted several months, his ability to speak returned, although it was still limited. He was able to accept an honorary Academy Award two months later in March and thanked the audience. He wrote about this experience in his 2002 book "My Stroke of Luck", which he hoped would be an "operating manual" for others on how to handle a stroke victim in their own family.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Douglas died at his home in Beverly Hills, California, surrounded by his family on February 5, 2020, at the age of 103. His cause of death was kept private. Douglas's funeral was held at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery on February 7, 2020, two days after his death. He was buried in the same plot as his son Eric. On April 29, 2021, his wife Anne died at the age of 102 and was buried next to him and their son.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In a 2014 article, Douglas cited "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers", "Champion", "Ace in the Hole", "The Bad and the Beautiful", "Act of Love", "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", "The Indian Fighter", "Lust for Life", "Paths of Glory", "Spartacus", "Lonely Are the Brave", and "Seven Days in May" as the films he was most proud of throughout his acting career.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In 1983, Douglas received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.


title: Kirk Douglas

text: In 1996, Douglas received an Honorary Academy Award for "50 years as a moral and creative force in the motion picture community." The award was presented by producer/director Steven Spielberg. As a result of Douglas's stroke the previous summer, however, in which he lost most of his speaking ability, his close friends and family were concerned about whether he should try to speak, or what he should say. Both his son Michael, and his long-time friend Jack Valenti, urged him to only say "Thank you", and leave the stage. Douglas agreed, but had second thoughts when standing in front of the audience. He later reflected that: "I intended to just say 'thank you,' but I saw 1,000 people, and felt I had to say something more, and I did." Valenti remembers that after Douglas held up the Oscar, addressed his sons, and told his wife how much he loved her, everyone was astonished at his voice's improvement:


title: Kirk Douglas

text: Since 2006, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival has awarded the Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in film to acknowledge lifetime contributions to the film industry. Martpients of the award include Robert De Niro, Ed Harris, Harrison Ford, Michael Douglas, Hugh Jackman and Judi Dench. The award is typically presented to actors, although directors Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese have been presented with it. In 2015, a star was nicknamed after Douglas in the International Star Registry to commemorate his 99th birthday.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman ; ( Neil Richard Gaiman; born 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, nonfiction, audio theatre, and films. His works include the comic book series "The Sandman" and novels "Stardust", "American Gods", "Coraline", and "The Graveyard Book". He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, "The Graveyard Book" (2008). In 2013, "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards. It was later adapted into a critically acclaimed stage play at the Royal National Theatre in London, England that "The Independent" called "...theatre at its best".


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman's family is of Polish-Jewish and other Eastern European Jewish origins. His great-grandfather emigrated from Antwerp, Belgium, to the UK before 1914 and his grandfather eventually settled in Portsmouth and established a chain of grocery stores. Gaiman's grandfather changed his original family name of Chaiman to Gaiman. His father, David Bernard Gaiman, worked in the same chain of stores; his mother, Sheila Gaiman (née Goldman), was a pharmacist. He has two younger sisters, Claire and Lizzy.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: After living for a period in the nearby town of Portchester, Hampshire, where Neil was born in 1960, the Gaimans moved in 1965 to the West Sussex town of East Grinstead, where his parents studied Dianetics at the Scientology centre in the town; one of Gaiman's sisters works for the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles. His other sister, Lizzy Calcioli, has said, "Most of our social activities were involved with Scientology or our Jewish family. It would get very confusing when people would ask my religion as a kid. I'd say, 'I'm a Jewish Scientologist. Gaiman says that he is not a Scientologist, and that like Judaism, Scientology is his family's religion. About his personal views, Gaiman has stated, "I think we can say that God exists in the DC Universe. I would not stand up and beat the drum for the existence of God in this universe. I don't know, I think there's probably a 50/50 chance. It doesn't really matter to me."


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman was able to read at the age of four. He said, "I was a reader. I loved reading. Reading things gave me pleasure. I was very good at most subjects in school, not because I had any particular aptitude in them, but because normally on the first day of school they'd hand out schoolbooks, and I'd read them—which would mean that I'd know what was coming up, because I'd read it." When he was about ten years old, he read his way through the works of Dennis Wheatley, where especially "The Ka of Gifford Hillary" and "The Haunting of Toby Jugg" made an impact on him.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: One work that made a particular impression on him was J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" from his school library. Although the library only had the first two of the novel's three volumes, Gaiman consistently checked them out and read them. He later won the school English prize and the school reading prize, enabling him to finally acquire the third volume.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: For his seventh birthday, Gaiman received C. S. Lewis's "The Chronicles of Narnia" series. He later recalled that "I admired his use of parenthetical statements to the reader, where he would just talk to you ... I'd think, 'Oh, my gosh, that is so cool! I want to do that! When I become an author, I want to be able to do things in parentheses.' I liked the power of putting things in brackets." "Narnia" also introduced him to literary awards, specifically the 1956 Carnegie Medal won by the concluding volume. When Gaiman won the 2010 Medal himself, the press reported him recalling, "it had to be the most important literary award there ever was" and observing, "if you can make yourself aged seven happy, you're really doing well – it's like writing a letter to yourself aged seven."


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" was another childhood favourite, and "a favourite forever. Alice was default reading to the point where I knew it by heart." He also enjoyed Batman comics as a child.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman was educated at several Church of England schools, including Fonthill School in East Grinstead, Ardingly College (1970–1974), and Whitgift School in Croydon (1974–1977). His father's position as a public relations official of the Church of Scientology was the cause of the seven-year-old Gaiman being forced to withdraw from Fonthill School and return to the school which he had previously attended. He lived in East Grinstead for many years, from 1965 to 1980 and again from 1984 to 1987.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: He met his first wife, Mary McGrath, while she was studying Scientology and living in a house in East Grinstead that was owned by his father. The couple were married in 1985 after having their first child, Michael.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Writers that Gaiman has mentioned as significant influences include C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, Mary Shelley, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, Michael Moorcock, Dave Sim, Alan Moore, Steve Ditko, Will Eisner, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Lord Dunsany, and G. K. Chesterton. A lifetime fan of the Monty Python comedy troupe, as a teenager he owned a copy of "Monty Python's Big Red Book". During a trip to France when he was 13, Gaiman became fascinated with the visually fantastic world in the stories of "Metal Hurlant", even though he could not understand the words.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: When he was 19 or 20 years old, he contacted his favourite science fiction writer, R. A. Lafferty, whom he discovered when he was nine, and asked for advice on becoming an author along with a Lafferty pastiche he had written. The writer sent Gaiman an encouraging and informative letter back, along with literary advice.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman has said Roger Zelazny was the author who influenced him the most, with this influence particularly seen in Gaiman's literary style and the topics he writes about. Other authors Gaiman says "furnished the inside of my mind and set me to writing" include Samuel R. Delany and Angela Carter. Gaiman takes inspiration from the folk tales tradition, citing Otta F Swire's book on the legends of the Isle of Skye as his inspiration for "The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains".


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In the early 1980s, Gaiman pursued journalism, conducting interviews and writing book reviews, as a means to learn about the world and to make connections that he hoped would later assist him in getting published. He wrote and reviewed extensively for the British Fantasy Society. His first professional short story publication was "Featherquest", a fantasy story, in "Imagine Magazine" in May 1984.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: When waiting for a train at London's Victoria Station in 1984, Gaiman noticed a copy of "Swamp Thing" written by Alan Moore, and carefully read it. Moore's fresh and vigorous approach to comics had such an impact on Gaiman that he later wrote "that was the final straw, what was left of my resistance crumbled. I proceeded to make regular and frequent visits to London's Forbidden Planet shop to buy comics".


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In 1984, he wrote his first book, a biography of the band Duran Duran, as well as "Ghastly Beyond Belief", a book of quotations, with Kim Newman. Although Gaiman thought he had done a terrible job, the book's first edition sold out very quickly. When he went to relinquish his rights to the book, he discovered the publisher had gone bankrupt. After this, he was offered a job by "Penthouse". He refused the offer.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: He also wrote interviews and articles for many British magazines, including "Knave." During this he sometimes wrote under pseudonyms, including Gerry Musgrave, Richard Grey, and "a couple of house names". Gaiman has said he ended his journalism career in 1987 because British newspapers regularly publish untruths as fact.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Following this, he wrote the opening of what became his collaboration with fellow English author Terry Pratchett on the comic novel "Good Omens" about the impending apocalypse.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: After forming a friendship with comic-book writer Alan Moore, who taught him how to write comic scripts, Gaiman started writing comic books and picked up "Miracleman" after Moore finished his run on the series. He continued his professional relationship with Moore by contributing quotations for the supplemental materials in the "Watchmen" comic book series.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman and artist Mark Buckingham collaborated on several issues of the series before its publisher, Eclipse Comics, collapsed, leaving the series unfinished. His first published comic strips were four short "Future Shocks" for "2000 AD" in 1986–87. He wrote three graphic novels with his favorite collaborator and long-time friend Dave McKean: "Violent Cases", "Signal to Noise", and "The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch". Impressed with his work, DC Comics hired him in February 1987, and he wrote the limited series "Black Orchid". Karen Berger, who later became head of DC Comics's Vertigo, read "Black Orchid" and offered Gaiman a job: to re-write an old character, The Sandman, but to put his own spin on him.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: "The Sandman" tells the tale of the ageless, anthropomorphic personification of Dream that is known by many names, including Morpheus. The series began in January 1989 and concluded in March 1996. In the eighth issue of "The Sandman", Gaiman and artist Mike Dringenberg introduced Death, the older sister of Dream, who became as popular as the series' title character. The limited series "" launched DC's Vertigo line in 1993. The 75 issues of the regular series, along with an illustrated prose text and a special containing seven short stories, have been collected into 12 volumes that remain in print, 14 if the "Death: The High Cost of Living" and "" spin-offs are included. Artists include Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Jill Thompson, Shawn McManus, Marc Hempel and Michael Zulli, lettering by Todd Klein, colours by Daniel Vozzo, and covers by Dave McKean. The series became one of DC's top selling titles, eclipsing even "Batman" and "Superman". Comics historian Les Daniels called Gaiman's work "astonishing" and noted that "The Sandman" was "a mixture of fantasy, horror, and ironic humor such as comic books had never seen before". DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed that ""The Sandman" became the first extraordinary success as a series of graphic novel collections, reaching out and converting new readers to the medium, particularly young women on college campuses, and making Gaiman himself into an iconic cultural figure."


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman and Jamie Delano were to become co-writers of the "Swamp Thing" series following Rick Veitch. An editorial decision by DC to censor Veitch's final storyline caused both Gaiman and Delano to withdraw from the title.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman produced two stories for DC's "Secret Origins" series in 1989. A Poison Ivy tale drawn by Mark Buckingham and a Riddler story illustrated by Bernie Mireault and Matt Wagner. A story that Gaiman originally wrote for "Action Comics Weekly" in 1989 was shelved due to editorial concerns but it was finally published in 2000 as "".


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In 1990, Gaiman wrote "The Books of Magic", a four-part mini-series that provided a tour of the mythological and magical parts of the DC Universe through a frame story about an English teenager who discovers that he is destined to be the world's greatest wizard. The miniseries was popular, and sired an ongoing series written by John Ney Rieber.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman's adaptation of "Sweeney Todd", illustrated by Michael Zulli for Stephen R. Bissette's publication "Taboo", was stopped when the anthology itself was discontinued.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In the mid-1990s, he also created a number of new characters and a setting that was to be featured in a title published by Tekno Comix. The concepts were then altered and split between three titles set in the same continuity: "Lady Justice", "Mr. Hero the Newmatic Man", and "Teknophage", and tie-ins. Although Gaiman's name appeared prominently as creator of the characters, he was not involved in writing any of the above-mentioned books.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman wrote a semi-autobiographical story about a boy's fascination with Michael Moorcock's anti-hero Elric of Melniboné for Ed Kramer's anthology "Tales of the White Wolf." In 1996, Gaiman and Ed Kramer co-edited "". Nominated for the British Fantasy Award, the original fiction anthology featured stories and contributions by Tori Amos, Clive Barker, Gene Wolfe, Tad Williams, and others.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman wrote two series for Marvel Comics. "Marvel 1602" was an eight-issue limited series published from November 2003 to June 2004 with art by Andy Kubert and Richard Isanove. "The Eternals" was a seven-issue limited series drawn by John Romita Jr., which was published from August 2006 to March 2007.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In 2009, Gaiman wrote a two-part Batman story for DC Comics to follow "Batman R.I.P." titled "" a play-off of the classic Superman story "" by Alan Moore. He contributed a twelve-part Metamorpho serial drawn by Mike Allred for "Wednesday Comics", a weekly newspaper-style series. Gaiman and Paul Cornell co-wrote "Action Comics" #894 (December 2010), which featured an appearance by Death. In October 2013, DC Comics released "" with art by J. H. Williams III. Gaiman's Angela character was introduced into the Marvel Universe in the last issue of the "Age of Ultron" miniseries in 2013.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman oversaw "The Sandman Universe", a line of comic books published by Vertigo. The four series — "House of Whispers", "Lucifer", "The Books of Magic", and "The Dreaming" — were written by new creative teams. The line launched on 8 August 2018.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In a collaboration with author Terry Pratchett, best known for his series of "Discworld" novels, Gaiman's first novel "Good Omens" was published in 1990. In 2011 Pratchett said that while the entire novel was a collaborative effort and most of the ideas could be credited to both of them, Pratchett did a larger portion of writing and editing if for no other reason than Gaiman's scheduled involvement with "Sandman".


title: Neil Gaiman

text: The 1996 novelisation of Gaiman's teleplay for the BBC mini-series "Neverwhere" was his first solo novel. The novel was released in tandem with the television series though it presents some notable differences from the television series. Gaiman has since revised the novel twice, the first time for an American audience unfamiliar with the London Underground, the second time because he felt unsatisfied with the originals.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In 1999, first printings of his fantasy novel "Stardust" were released. The novel has been released both as a standard novel and in an illustrated text edition. This novel was highly influenced by Victorian fairytales and culture.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: "American Gods" became one of Gaiman's best-selling and multi-award-winning novels upon its release in 2001. A special 10th Anniversary edition was released, with the "author's preferred text" 12,000 words longer than the original mass-market editions.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman has not written a direct sequel to "American Gods" but he has revisited the characters. A glimpse at Shadow's travels in Europe is found in a short story which finds him in Scotland, applying the same concepts developed in "American Gods" to the story of "Beowulf". The 2005 novel "Anansi Boys" deals with Anansi ('Mr. Nancy'), tracing the relationship of his two sons, one semi-divine and the other an unassuming bookkeeper, as they explore their common heritage. It debuted at number one on "The New York Times" Best Seller list.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In late 2008, Gaiman released a new children's book, "The Graveyard Book". It follows the adventures of a boy named Bod after his family is murdered and he is left to be brought up by a graveyard. It is heavily influenced by Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book". , it had been on "The New York Times" Bestseller children's list for fifteen weeks.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In 2013, "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards. The novel follows an unnamed man who returns to his hometown for a funeral and remembers events that began forty years earlier. Themes include the search for self-identity and the "disconnect between childhood and adulthood".


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In September 2016, Neil Gaiman announced that he had been working for some years on retellings of Norse mythology. "Norse Mythology" was released in February 2017.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman wrote the 1996 BBC dark fantasy television series "Neverwhere". He cowrote the screenplay for the movie "MirrorMask" with his old friend Dave McKean for McKean to direct. In addition, he wrote the localised English language script to the anime movie "Princess Mononoke", based on a translation of the Japanese script.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: After his disappointment with the production limitations of "Neverwhere", Gaiman asked his agent to pull him out an unnamed UK television series that was to begin production immediately afterward. "I didn't want to do it unless I had more control than you get as a writer: in fantasy, the tone of voice, the look and feel, the way something is shot and edited is vital, and I wanted to be in charge of that."


title: Neil Gaiman

text: He cowrote the script for Robert Zemeckis's "Beowulf" with Roger Avary, a collaboration that has proved productive for both writers. Gaiman has expressed interest in collaborating on a film adaptation of the "Epic of Gilgamesh".


title: Neil Gaiman

text: He was the only person other than J. Michael Straczynski to write a "Babylon 5" script in the series' last three seasons, contributing the season five episode "Day of the Dead". The series also features a recurring alien race called the Gaim, who resemble the character of Dream and are named after Gaiman.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman has also written at least three drafts of a screenplay adaptation of Nicholson Baker's novel "The Fermata" for director Robert Zemeckis, although the project was stalled while Zemeckis made "The Polar Express" and the Gaiman-Roger Avary written "Beowulf" film.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Several of Gaiman's original works have been optioned or greenlighted for film adaptation, most notably "Stardust", which premiered in August 2007 and stars Charlie Cox, Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Claire Danes and Mark Strong, directed by Matthew Vaughn. A stop-motion version of "Coraline" was released on 6 February 2009, with Henry Selick directing and Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher in the leading voice-actor roles.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In 2007, Gaiman announced that after ten years in development, the feature film of "" would finally begin production with a screenplay by Gaiman that he would direct for Warner Independent. Gaiman said that he agreed to direct the film "with the carrot dangled in front of me that I could direct it. And we'll see if that happens, and if I'm a good director or not." Don Murphy and Susan Montford were named as producers, and Guillermo del Toro was named as the film's executive producer. By 2010, it had been reported that the film was no longer in production.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Seeing Ear Theatre performed two of Gaiman's audio theatre plays, "Snow, Glass, Apples", Gaiman's retelling of Snow White, and "Murder Mysteries", a story of heaven before the Fall in which the first crime is committed. Both audio plays were published in the collection "Smoke and Mirrors" in 1998.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman's 2009 Newbery Medal winning book "The Graveyard Book" will be made into a movie, with Ron Howard as the director.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman wrote an episode of the long-running BBC science fiction series "Doctor Who", broadcast in 2011 during Matt Smith's second series as the Doctor. Shooting began in August 2010 for this episode, the original title of which was "The House of Nothing" but which was eventually transmitted as "The Doctor's Wife". The episode won the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form). Gaiman made his return to "Doctor Who" with an episode titled "Nightmare in Silver", broadcast on 11 May 2013.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In 2011, it was announced that Gaiman would be writing the script to a new film version of "Journey to the West".


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman appeared as himself on "The Simpsons" episode "The Book Job", which broadcast on 20 November 2011.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In 2015, Starz greenlighted a series adaptation of Gaiman's novel "American Gods". Bryan Fuller and Michael Green wrote and showrun the series.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In 2020, Gaiman received a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form for the TV miniseries adaption of Good Omens, for which he wrote the screenplay.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: A six-part radio play of "Neverwhere" was broadcast in March 2013, adapted by Dirk Maggs for BBC Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra. Featured stars include James McAvoy as Richard, Natalie Dormer, Benedict Cumberbatch, Christopher Lee, Bernard Cribbens and Johnny Vegas.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In September 2014, Gaiman and Terry Pratchett joined forces with BBC Radio 4 to make the first ever dramatisation of their co-penned novel "Good Omens", which was broadcast in December in five half-hour episodes and culminated in an hour-long final apocalyptic showdown. In 2021, Gaiman was cast as Duke Aubrey in an adaptation of Hope Mirrlees' "Lud-in-the-Mist", a novel Gaiman had previously proclaimed one of his favourites (and contributed a foreword for an edition by Cold Spring Press), for BBC Radio 4.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman frequently performs public readings from his stories and poetry, and has toured with his wife, musician Amanda Palmer. In some of these performances he has also sung songs, in "a novelist's version of singing", despite having "no kind of singing voice".


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In 2015, Gaiman delivered a 100-minute lecture for the Long Now Foundation entitled "How Stories Last" about the nature of storytelling and how stories persist in human culture. In April 2018, Gaiman made a guest appearance on the television show "The Big Bang Theory", and his tweet about the show's fictional comic book store becomes the central theme of the episode "The Comet Polarization".


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In February 2001, when Gaiman had completed writing "American Gods", his publishers set up a promotional website featuring a weblog in which Gaiman described the day-to-day process of revising, publishing, and promoting the novel. After the novel was published, the website evolved into a more general Official Neil Gaiman Website.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman generally posts to the blog describing the day-to-day process of being Neil Gaiman and writing, revising, publishing, or promoting whatever the current project is. He also posts reader emails and answers questions, which gives him unusually direct and immediate interaction with fans. One of his answers on why he writes the blog is "because writing is, like death, a lonely business."


title: Neil Gaiman

text: The original "American Gods" blog was extracted for publication in the NESFA Press collection of Gaiman miscellany, "Adventures in the Dream Trade".


title: Neil Gaiman

text: To celebrate the seventh anniversary of the blog, the novel "American Gods" was provided free of charge online for a month.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman is an active user of the social networking site Twitter with over 2.7 million followers , using the username "@neilhimself". In 2013, Gaiman was named by "IGN" as one of "The Best Tweeters in Comics", describing his posts as "sublime." Gaiman also runs a Tumblr account on which he primarily answers fan questions.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In January 2022, when the board of trustees of McMinn County Schools in Tennessee, in a 10-0 decision, removed the Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust graphic novel "Maus" from its curriculum for 8th grade English classes, overriding a State curriculum decision, Gaiman was critical of the decision. He tweeted: "There's only one kind of people who would vote to ban "Maus", whatever they are calling themselves these days."


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman is a dedicated user of fountain pens and has said that he writes the first draft of all his books with one. He began this practice with "Stardust", which he wrote in fountain pen in order to capture the feeling of the 1920s. He is most closely associated with the Pilot 823, one of which he has said he has used for giving over one million signatures.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman has lived near Menomonie, Wisconsin, since 1992. Gaiman moved there to be close to the family of his then-wife, Mary McGrath, with whom he has three children. , Gaiman also resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2014, he took up a five-year appointment as professor in the arts at Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman is married to songwriter and performer Amanda Palmer, with whom he has an open marriage. The couple announced that they were dating in June 2009, and announced their engagement on Twitter on 1 January 2010. On 16 November 2010, Palmer hosted a non-legally-binding flash mob wedding for Gaiman's birthday in New Orleans. They were legally married on 2 January 2011. The wedding took place in the parlour of writers Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon. On marrying Palmer, he took her middle name, MacKinnon, as one of his names. In September 2015, they had a son.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In March 2020, Gaiman, Palmer, and their son were in Havelock North, Hawke's Bay, when New Zealand's government announced that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the whole country would move to COVID-19 Alert Level 4: complete lockdown and quarantining of people within their own homes. In May 2020, Gaiman travelled from New Zealand to his holiday home on the Isle of Skye, breaking the lockdown rules. Ross, Skye and Lochaber MP Ian Blackford described his behaviour as unacceptable and dangerous. Gaiman published an apology on his website, saying he had endangered the local community. After Gaiman's departure, Palmer announced on her Patreon that she and Gaiman had separated and requested privacy. Gaiman stated in a blog post that their split was "my fault, I'm afraid" and also requesting privacy. The couple later released a joint statement clarifying that they were not, however, getting divorced. They reconciled in 2021, but in November 2022 they released a joint statement to announce they were divorcing.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In 2016, Gaiman, as well as several prominent celebrities, appeared in the video "What They Took With Them", from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to help raise awareness of the issue of global refugees.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman is a supporter of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and has served on its board of directors. In 2013, Gaiman was named co-chair of the organization's newly formed advisory board.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In 2022 during Russian invasion of Ukraine Gaiman supported Ukraine by announcing on Twitter that he doesn't want to renew contracts with Russian publishers. The writer also encouraged donations to Ukrainian refugees.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: One of Gaiman's most commented-upon friendships is with the musician Tori Amos, a "Sandman" fan who became friends with Gaiman after making a reference to "Neil and the Dream King" on her 1991 demo tape. He included her in turn as a character (a talking tree) in his novel "Stardust". Amos also mentions Gaiman in her songs, "Tear in Your Hand" ("If you need me, me and Neil'll be hangin' out with the dream king. Neil says hi by the way"), "Space Dog" ("Where's Neil when you need him?"), "Horses" ("But will you find me if Neil makes me a tree?"), "Carbon" ("Get me Neil on the line, no I can't hold. Have him read, 'Snow, Glass, Apples' where nothing is what it seems"), "Sweet Dreams" ("You're forgetting to fly, darling, when you sleep"), and "Not Dying Today" ("Neil is thrilled he can claim he's mammalian, 'but the bad news,' he said, 'girl you're a dandelion'"). He also wrote stories for the tour book of "Boys for Pele" and "Scarlet's Walk", a letter for the tour book of "American Doll Posse", and the stories behind each girl in her album "Strange Little Girls". Amos penned the introduction for his novel "Death: the High Cost of Living", and posed for the cover. She also wrote a song called "Sister Named Desire" based on his "Sandman" character, which was included on his anthology, "Where's Neil When You Need Him?".


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman is godfather to Tori Amos's daughter Tash, and wrote a poem called "Blueberry Girl" for Tori and Tash. The poem has been turned into a book by the illustrator Charles Vess. Gaiman read the poem aloud to an audience at the Sundance Kabuki Theater in San Francisco on 5 October 2008 during his book reading tour for "The Graveyard Book". It was published in March 2009 with the title "Blueberry Girl".


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In 1993, Gaiman was contracted by Todd McFarlane to write a single issue of "Spawn", a popular title at the newly created Image Comics company. McFarlane was promoting his new title by having guest authors Gaiman, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, and Dave Sim each write a single issue.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: In issue No. 9 of the series, Gaiman introduced the characters Angela, Cogliostro, and Medieval Spawn. Prior to this issue, Spawn was an assassin who worked for the government and came back as a reluctant agent of Hell but had no real direction in his actions. In Angela, a cruel and malicious angel, Gaiman introduced a character who threatened Spawn's existence, as well as providing a moral opposite. Cogliostro was introduced as a mentor character for exposition and instruction, providing guidance. Medieval Spawn introduced a history and precedent that not all Spawns were self-serving or evil, giving additional character development to Malebolgia, the demon that creates Hellspawn.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: As intended, all three characters were used repeatedly throughout the next decade by Todd McFarlane within the wider Spawn universe. In papers filed by Gaiman in early 2002, however, he claimed that the characters were jointly owned by their scripter (himself) and artist (McFarlane), not merely by McFarlane in his role as the creator of the series. Disagreement over who owned the rights to a character was the primary motivation for McFarlane and other artists to form Image Comics (although that argument related more towards disagreements between writers and artists as character creators). As McFarlane used the characters without Gaiman's permission or royalty payments, Gaiman believed his copyrighted work was being infringed upon, which violated their original oral agreement. McFarlane initially agreed that Gaiman had not signed away any rights to the characters, and negotiated with Gaiman to effectively "swap" McFarlane's interest in the character Marvelman. McFarlane had purchased interest in the character when Eclipse Comics was liquidated while Gaiman was interested in being able to continue his aborted run of the Marvelman title. McFarlane later changed his initial position, claiming that Gaiman's work had only been work-for-hire and that McFarlane owned all of Gaiman's creations entirely. The presiding judge, however, ruled against their agreement being work for hire, based in large part on the legal requirement that "copyright assignments must be in writing."


title: Neil Gaiman

text: The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court ruling in February 2004 granting joint ownership of the characters to Gaiman and McFarlane. On the specific issue of Cogliostro, presiding Judge John C. Shabaz proclaimed, "The expressive work that is the comic-book character Count Nicholas Cogliostro was the joint work of Gaiman and McFarlane—their contributions strike us as quite equal—and both are entitled to ownership of the copyright". Similar analysis led to similar results for the other two characters, Angela and Medieval Spawn.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: This legal battle was brought by Gaiman and the specifically formed Marvels and Miracles, LLC, which Gaiman had previously created to help sort out the legal rights surrounding Marvelman. Gaiman had written "Marvel 1602 "in 2003 to help fund this project and all of Gaiman's profits for the original issues of the series were donated to Marvels and Miracles. The rights to Marvelman were subsequently purchased, from original creator Mick Anglo, by Marvel Comics in 2009.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman returned to court again over the Spawn characters Dark Ages Spawn, Domina and Tiffany, claiming that they were "derivative of the three he co-created with McFarlane." The judge ruled that Gaiman was right in these claims as well and gave McFarlane until the beginning of September 2010 to settle the matter.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Gaiman's work is known for a high degree of allusiveness. Dr. Meredith Collins, for instance, has commented upon the degree to which his novel "Stardust" depends on allusions to Victorian fairy tales and culture. Particularly in "The Sandman", literary figures and characters appear often; the character of Fiddler's Green is modelled visually on G. K. Chesterton, both William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer appear as characters, as do several characters from within "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Tempest". The comic also draws from numerous mythologies and historical periods.


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Analyzing Gaiman's "The Graveyard Book", bibliographer and librarian Richard Bleiler detects patterns of and allusions to the Gothic novel, from Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto" to Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House". He concludes that Gaiman is "utilizing works, characters, themes, and settings that generations of scholars have identified and classified as Gothic, ... [yet] subverts them and develops the novel by focusing on the positive aspects of maturation, concentrating on the values of learning, friendship, and sacrifice." Regarding another work's assumed connection and allusions to this form, Gaiman himself quipped: "I've never been able to figure out whether "Sandman" is a gothic."


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Clay Smith has argued that this sort of allusiveness serves to situate Gaiman as a strong authorial presence in his own works, often to the exclusion of his collaborators. However, Smith's viewpoint is in the minority: to many, if there is a problem with Gaiman scholarship and intertextuality it is that "... his literary merit and vast popularity have propelled him into the nascent comics canon so quickly that there is not yet a basis of critical scholarship about his work."


title: Neil Gaiman

text: David Rudd takes a more generous view in his study of the novel "Coraline", where he argues that the work plays and riffs productively on Sigmund Freud's notion of the Uncanny, or the "Unheimlich".


title: Neil Gaiman

text: Though Gaiman's work is frequently seen as exemplifying the monomyth structure laid out in Joseph Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces", Gaiman says that he started reading "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" but refused to finish it: "I think I got about half way through "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" and found myself thinking if this is true – I don't want to know. I really would rather not know this stuff. I'd rather do it because it's true and because I accidentally wind up creating something that falls into this pattern than be told what the pattern is."


title: Alice Cooper

text: Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier, February 4, 1948) is an American rock singer whose career spans over five decades. With a raspy voice and a stage show that features numerous props and stage illusions, including pyrotechnics, guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, reptiles, baby dolls, and dueling swords, Cooper is considered by many music journalists and peers to be "The Godfather of Shock Rock". He has drawn equally from horror films, vaudeville, and garage rock to pioneer a macabre and theatrical brand of rock designed to shock audiences.


title: Alice Cooper

text: Originating in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1964, "Alice Cooper" was originally a band with roots extending back to a band called the Earwigs, consisting of Furnier on vocals and harmonica, Glen Buxton on lead guitar, and Dennis Dunaway on bass guitar and backing vocals. By 1966, Michael Bruce on rhythm guitar joined the three and Neal Smith was added on drums in 1967. The five named the band "Alice Cooper", and Furnier eventually adopted it as his stage pseudonym. They released their 1969 debut studio album with limited chart success. Breaking out with the 1970 single "I'm Eighteen" and the third studio album "Love It to Death", the band reached their commercial peak in 1973 with their sixth studio album, "Billion Dollar Babies". After the band broke up, Furnier legally changed his name to Alice Cooper and began a solo career in 1975 with the concept album "Welcome to My Nightmare". Over his career, Cooper has sold well over 50 million records.


title: Alice Cooper

text: Cooper has experimented with a number of musical styles, mainly hard rock, glam rock, heavy metal, and glam metal, but also new wave (1980–1983), art rock (on "DaDa"), and industrial rock (on "Brutal Planet" and "Dragontown"). He helped to shape the sound and look of heavy metal, and has been described as the artist who "first introduced horror imagery to rock'n'roll, and whose stagecraft and showmanship have permanently transformed the genre". He is also known for his wit offstage, with "The Rolling Stone Album Guide" calling him the world's most "beloved heavy metal entertainer". Away from music, Cooper is a film actor, a golfing celebrity, a restaurateur, and, since 2004, a radio DJ with his classic rock show "Nights with Alice Cooper".


title: Alice Cooper

text: Vincent Damon Furnier was born on February 4, 1948, in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Ether Moroni Furnier (1924–1987) and his wife Ella Mae ("née" McCart; born 1925). He was named after his uncle, Vincent Collier Furnier, and the writer Damon Runyon. His father was an evangelist in The Church of Jesus Christ, informally known as "Bickertonites", and his paternal grandfather, Thurman Sylvester Furnier, was an apostle (from 1917) in and president (1963–1965) of that church.


title: Alice Cooper

text: Cooper was active in his church at ages 11 to 12. Following a series of childhood illnesses, he moved with his family to Phoenix, Arizona, where he attended Cortez High School. In his high school yearbook, his ambition was to be "A million record seller".


title: Alice Cooper

text: In 1964, 16-year-old Furnier was eager to participate in Cortez High School's annual Letterman's talent show, so he gathered four fellow cross country teammates to form a group for the show: Glen Buxton, Dennis Dunaway, John Tatum, and John Speer. They named themselves the Earwigs. They dressed up in costumes and wigs to resemble the Beatles, and performed several parodies of Beatles songs, with the lyrics modified to refer to the track team: in their rendition of "Please Please Me", for example, the line "Last night I said these words to my girl" was replaced with "Last night I ran four laps for my coach". Of the group, only Buxton knew how to play an instrument—the guitar—so Buxton played guitar while the rest mimed on their instruments. The group got an overwhelming response from the audience and won the talent show. As a result of their positive experience, the group decided to try to turn into a real band. They acquired musical instruments from a local pawn shop, and proceeded to learn how to play them, with Buxton doing most of the teaching, as well as much of the early songwriting. They soon renamed themselves the Spiders, featuring Furnier on vocals, Buxton on lead guitar, Tatum on rhythm guitar, Dunaway on bass guitar, and Speer on drums.


title: Alice Cooper

text: In 1966, the Spiders graduated from Cortez High School, and after North High School football player Michael Bruce replaced John Tatum on rhythm guitar, the band released their second single, "Don't Blow Your Mind", an original composition which became a local hit, backed by "No Price Tag".


title: Alice Cooper

text: By 1967, the band had begun to make regular road trips to Los Angeles to play shows. They soon renamed themselves Nazz and released the single "Wonder Who's Lovin' Her Now", backed with future Alice Cooper track "Lay Down and Die, Goodbye". Around this time, drummer John Speer was replaced by Neal Smith. By the end of the year, the band had relocated to Los Angeles.


title: Alice Cooper

text: In 1968, the band learned that Todd Rundgren also had a band called Nazz, and found themselves in need of another stage name. Furnier also believed that the group needed a gimmick to succeed, and that other bands were not exploiting the showmanship potential of the stage. They chose the name "Alice Cooper" largely because it sounded innocuous and wholesome, in humorous contrast to the band's image and music. In his 2007 book "Alice Cooper, Golf Monster", Cooper stated that his look was inspired in part by films. One of the band's all-time favorite movies was "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" (1962) starring Bette Davis: "In the movie, Bette wears disgusting caked makeup smeared on her face and underneath her eyes, with deep, dark, black eyeliner." Another movie the band watched over and over was "Barbarella" (1968): "When I saw Anita Pallenberg playing the Great Tyrant in that movie in 1968, wearing long black leather gloves with switchblades coming out of them, I thought, 'That's what Alice should look like.' That, and a little bit of Emma Peel from "The Avengers"."


title: Alice Cooper

text: The classic Alice Cooper group lineup consisted of Furnier, lead guitarist Glen Buxton, rhythm guitarist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway, and drummer Neal Smith. With the exception of Smith, who graduated from Camelback High School (which is referred to in the song "Alma Mater" on the album "School's Out"), all of the band members were on the Cortez High School cross-country team. Cooper, Buxton, and Dunaway were also art students, and their admiration for the works of surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí would further inspire their future stage antics.


title: Alice Cooper

text: One night after an unsuccessful gig at the Cheetah club in Venice, Los Angeles, where the band emptied the entire room of patrons after playing just ten minutes, they were approached and enlisted by music manager Shep Gordon, who saw the band's negative impact that night as a force that could be turned in a more productive direction. Shep then arranged an audition for the band with composer and renowned record producer Frank Zappa, who was looking to sign bizarre music acts to his new record label, Straight Records. For the audition Zappa told them to come to his house "at 7 o'clock." The band mistakenly assumed he meant 7 o'clock in the morning. Being woken up by a band willing to play that particular brand of psychedelic rock at seven in the morning impressed Zappa enough for him to sign them to a three-album deal. Another Zappa-signed act, the all-female GTOs, who liked to "dress the Cooper boys up like full size Barbie dolls," played a major role in developing the band's early onstage look.


title: Alice Cooper

text: Cooper's debut studio album, "Pretties for You" (1969), was eclectic and featured an experimental presentation of their songs in a psychedelic context.


title: Alice Cooper

text: Alice Cooper's "shock rock" reputation apparently developed almost by accident at first. An unrehearsed stage routine involving Cooper, a feather pillow, and a live chicken garnered attention from the press; the band decided to capitalize on the tabloid sensationalism, creating in the process a new subgenre, shock rock. Cooper claims that the infamous "Chicken Incident" at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival concert in September 1969 was an accident. A chicken somehow made its way onto the stage into the feathers of a feather pillow they would open during Cooper's performance, and not having any experience with farm animals, Cooper presumed that, because the chicken had wings, it would be able to fly. He picked it up and threw it out over the crowd, expecting it to fly away. The chicken instead plummeted into the first few rows occupied by wheelchair users, who reportedly proceeded to tear the bird to pieces. The next day the incident made the front page of national newspapers, and Zappa phoned Cooper and asked if the story, which reported that he had bitten off the chicken's head and drunk its blood on stage, was true. Cooper denied the rumor, whereupon Zappa told him, "Well, whatever you do, don't tell anyone you didn't do it."


title: Alice Cooper

text: The band later claimed that this period was highly influenced by Pink Floyd, and especially their debut studio album "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" (1967). Glen Buxton said he could listen to Syd Barrett's guitar for hours at a time.


title: Alice Cooper

text: Despite the publicity from the chicken incident, the band's second studio album, "Easy Action", produced by David Briggs and released in June 1970, fared even worse than its predecessor, entirely failing to dent the "Billboard" Top 200. Around this time, fed up with Californians' indifference to their act, they relocated to Pontiac, Michigan, where their bizarre stage act was much better received by Midwestern crowds accustomed to the proto-punk styles of local bands such as the Stooges and the MC5. Despite this, Cooper still managed to receive a cream pie in the face when performing at the Cincinnati Pop Festival. Michigan would remain their steady home base until 1972. "L.A. just didn't get it," Cooper stated. "They were all on the wrong drug for us. They were on acid and we were basically drinking beer. We fit much more in Detroit than we did anywhere else."


title: Alice Cooper

text: Alice Cooper appeared at the Woodstock-esque Strawberry Fields Festival near Toronto, Ontario, in August 1970. The band's mix of glam and increasingly violent stage theatrics stood out in stark contrast to the bearded, denim-clad hippie bands of the time. As Cooper himself stated: "We were into fun, sex, death and money when everybody was into peace and love. We wanted to see what was next. It turned out we were next, and we drove a stake through the heart of the Love Generation".


title: Alice Cooper

text: In autumn 1970, the Alice Cooper group teamed with producer Bob Ezrin for the recording of their third studio album, "Love It to Death". This was the final album in their Straight Records contract and the band's last chance to create a hit. That first success came with the single "I'm Eighteen", released in November 1970, which reached number 21 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in early 1971. Not long after the album's release in January 1971, Warner Bros. Records purchased Alice Cooper's contract from Straight and re-issued the album, giving the group a higher level of promotion.


title: Alice Cooper

text: "Love It to Death" proved to be their breakthrough studio album, reaching number 35 on the U.S. "Billboard" 200 album charts. It would be the first of 11 Alice Cooper group and solo albums produced by Ezrin, who is widely seen as being pivotal in helping to create and develop the band's definitive sound.


title: Alice Cooper

text: The group's 1971 tour featured a stage show involving mock fights and gothic torture modes being imposed on Cooper, climaxing in a staged execution by electric chair, with the band sporting tight, sequined, color-contrasting glam rock-style costumes made by prominent rock-fashion designer Cindy Dunaway (sister of band member Neal Smith, and wife of band member Dennis Dunaway). Cooper's androgynous stage role had developed to present a villainous side, portraying a potential threat to modern society. The success of the band's single and album, and their tour of 1971, which included their first tour of Europe (audience members reportedly included Elton John and a pre-Ziggy David Bowie), provided enough encouragement for Warner Bros. to offer the band a new multi-album contract.


title: Alice Cooper

text: Their follow-up studio album "Killer", released in late 1971, continued the commercial success of "Love It to Death" and included further single success with "Under My Wheels", "Be My Lover" in early 1972, and "Halo of Flies", which became a Top 10 hit in the Netherlands in 1973. Thematically, "Killer" expanded on the villainous side of Cooper's androgynous stage role, with its music becoming the soundtrack to the group's morality-based stage show, which by then featured a boa constrictor hugging Cooper on-stage, the murderous axe chopping of bloodied baby dolls, and execution by hanging at the gallows. In January 1972, Cooper was again asked about his peculiar name, and told talk-show hostess Dinah Shore that he took the name from a "Mayberry RFD" character.


title: Alice Cooper

text: The summer of 1972 saw the release of the single "School's Out". It went Top 10 in the U.S. and to number 1 in the UK, and remains a staple on classic rock radio to this day. The studio album "School's Out" reached No. 2 on the US charts and sold over a million copies. The band relocated to their new mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. With Cooper's on-stage androgynous persona completely replaced with brattiness and machismo, the band solidified their success with subsequent tours in the United States and Europe, and won over devoted fans in droves while at the same time horrifying parents and outraging the social establishment. In the United Kingdom, Mary Whitehouse, a Christian morality campaigner, persuaded the BBC to ban the video for "School's Out", although Whitehouse's campaign did not prevent the single also reaching number one in the UK. Cooper sent her a bunch of flowers in gratitude for the publicity. Meanwhile, British Labour Member of Parliament Leo Abse petitioned Home Secretary Reginald Maudling to have the group banned altogether from performing in the country.


title: Alice Cooper

text: In February 1973, "Billion Dollar Babies" was released worldwide and became the band's most commercially successful album, reaching No. 1 in both the US and UK. "Elected", a late-1972 Top 10 UK hit from the album, which inspired one of the first MTV-style story-line promo videos ever made for a song (three years before Queen's promotional video for "Bohemian Rhapsody"), was followed by two more UK Top 10 singles, "Hello Hooray" and "No More Mr. Nice Guy", the latter of which was the last UK single from the album; it reached No. 25 in the US. The title track, featuring guest vocals by Donovan, was also a US hit single. Around this time Glen Buxton left Alice Cooper briefly because of waning health.


title: Alice Cooper

text: With a string of successful concept albums and several hit singles, the band continued their grueling schedule and toured the United States again. Continued attempts by politicians and pressure groups to ban their shocking act only served to fuel the myth of Alice Cooper further and generate even greater public interest. Their 1973 US tour broke box-office records previously set by the Rolling Stones and raised rock theatrics to new heights; the multi-level stage show by then featured numerous special effects, including Billion Dollar Bills, decapitated baby dolls and mannequins, a dental psychosis scene complete with dancing teeth, and the ultimate execution prop and highlight of the show: the guillotine. The guillotine and other stage effects were designed for the band by magician James Randi, who appeared on stage during some of the shows as executioner. In 2012 at Dragon Con, Randi and Cooper discussed their working relationship during this period. The Alice Cooper group had now reached its peak and it was among the most visible and successful acts in the industry. Beneath the surface, however, the repetitive schedule of recording and touring had begun to take its toll on the band.


title: Alice Cooper

text: "Muscle of Love", released at the end of 1973, was to be the last studio album from the classic lineup, and marked Alice Cooper's last UK Top 20 single of the 1970s with "Teenage Lament '74". An unsolicited theme song was recorded for the James Bond movie "The Man with the Golden Gun" (1974), but a different song of the same name by Lulu was chosen instead. By 1974, the "Muscle of Love" album still had not matched the top-charting success of its predecessor, and the band began to have constant disagreements. For various reasons, the members agreed to take what was expected to be a temporary hiatus. "Everyone decided they needed a rest from one another", said manager Shep Gordon at the time. "A lot of pressure had built up, but it's nothing that can't be dealt with. Everybody still gets together and talks." Journalist Bob Greene spent several weeks on the road with the band during the "Muscle of Love Christmas Tour" in 1973. His book "Billion Dollar Baby", released in November 1974, painted a less-than-flattering picture of the band, showing a group in total disharmony. Cooper later wrote an autobiography with Steven Gaines called "Me, Alice" (1976) which gave Cooper's version of that era of his career, among other things.


title: Alice Cooper

text: During this time, Cooper relocated back to Los Angeles and started appearing regularly on television shows such as "The Hollywood Squares", and Warner Bros. released the "Greatest Hits" compilation album. It featured classic-style artwork and reached the US Top 10, performing better than "Muscle of Love". However, the band's 1974 feature film "Good to See You Again, Alice Cooper" (consisting mainly of 1973 concert footage with 'comedic' sketches woven throughout to a faint storyline), released on a minor cinematic run mostly to drive-in theaters, saw little box-office success. On March 5, 1974, Cooper appeared on episode 3 of "The Snoop Sisters" playing a Satanic cult singer. The final shows by Alice Cooper as a group were in Brazil in March and April 1974, including the record indoor attendance estimated as high as 158,000 fans in São Paulo on March 30, at the Anhembi Exposition Hall at the start of the first ever South American rock tour.