title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Outside the Simi Valley courthouse where the acquittals were delivered, county sheriff's deputies protected Stacey Koon from angry protesters on the way to his car. Movie director John Singleton, who was in the crowd at the courthouse, predicted, "By having this verdict, what these people done, they lit the fuse to a bomb."


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: The riots began the day the verdicts were announced and peaked in intensity over the next two days. A dusk-to-dawn curfew and deployment by the California National Guard, U.S. troops, and Federal law enforcement personnel eventually controlled the situation.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: A total of 63 people died during the riots, including nine shot by police and one by the National Guard. Of those killed during the riots, 2 were Asian, 28 were black, 19 were Latino, and 15 were white. No law enforcement officials died during the riots. As many as 2,383 people were reported injured. Estimates of the material losses vary between about $800 million and $1 billion. Approximately 3,600 fires were set, destroying 1,100 buildings, with fire calls coming once every minute at some points. Widespread looting also occurred. Rioters targeted stores owned by Koreans and other ethnic Asians, reflecting tensions between them and the African American communities.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Many of the disturbances were concentrated in South Central Los Angeles, where the population was majority African American and Hispanic. Fewer than half of all the riot arrests and a third of those killed during the violence were Hispanic.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: In the week before the Rodney King verdicts were reached, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates set aside $1 million for possible police overtime. Even so, on the last day of the trial, two-thirds of the LAPD's patrol captains were out of town in Ventura, California, on the first day of a three-day training seminar.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: At 1 p.m. on April 29, Judge Stanley Weisberg announced that the jury had reached its verdict, which would be read in two hours' time. This was done to allow reporters and police and other emergency responders to prepare for the outcome, as unrest was feared if the officers were acquitted. The LAPD had activated its Emergency Operations Center, which the Webster Commission described as "the doors were opened, the lights turned on and the coffee pot plugged in", but taken no other preparatory action. Specifically, the people intended to staff that Center were not gathered until 4:45 p.m. In addition, no action was taken to retain extra personnel at the LAPD's shift change at 3 p.m., as the risk of trouble was deemed low.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: The acquittals of the four accused Los Angeles Police Department officers came at 3:15 p.m. local time. By 3:45 p.m., a crowd of more than 300 people had appeared at the Los Angeles County Courthouse protesting the verdicts.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Meanwhile, at approximately 4:15–4:20 p.m., a group of people approached the Pay-Less Liquor and Deli on Florence Avenue just west of Normandie in South Central. In an interview, a member of the group said that the group "just decided they weren't going to pay for what they were getting." The store owner's son was hit with a bottle of beer, and two other youths smashed the store's glass front door. Two officers from the 77th Street Division of the LAPD responded to this incident and, finding that the instigators had already left, completed a report.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: At 4:58 p.m., Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley held a news conference to discuss the verdicts. He both expressed anger about the verdicts and appealed for calm.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Assistant Los Angeles police chief Bob Vernon later said he believed Bradley's remarks incited a riot and were perhaps taken as a signal by some citizens. Vernon said that the number of police incidents rose in the hour after the mayor's press conference.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: At Florence and Halldale, two officers issued a plea for assistance in apprehending a young suspect who had thrown an object at their car and whom they were pursuing on foot. Approximately two dozen officers, commanded by 77th Street Division LAPD Lieutenant Michael Moulin, arrived and arrested the youth, 16-year old Seandel Daniels, forcing him into the back of a car. The rough handling of the young man, a well-known minor in the community, further agitated an uneasy and growing crowd, who began taunting and berating the police. Among the crowd were Bart Bartholomew, a white freelance photographer for "The New York Times", and Timothy Goldman, a black U.S. Air Force veteran in visit to his family, who began to record the events with his personal camcorder.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: The police formed a perimeter around the arresting officers as the crowd grew more hostile, leading to further altercations and arrests (including that of Damian Williams' older brother, Mark Jackson). One member of the crowd stole the flashlight of an LAPD officer. Fearing police would resort to deadly force to repel the growing crowd, Lieutenant Moulin ordered officers out of the area altogether. Moulin later said that officers on the scene were outnumbered and unprepared to handle the situation because their riot equipment was stored at the police academy.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Moulin made the call for reporting officers to retreat from the 71st and Normandie area entirely at approximately 5:50 p.m. They were sent to an RTD bus depot at 54th and Arlington and told to await further instructions. The command post formed at this location was set up at approximately 6 p.m, but had no cell phones or computers other than those in squad cars. It had insufficient numbers of telephone lines and handheld police radios to assess and respond to the situation. Finally, the site had no televisions, which meant that as live broadcasts of unrest began, command post officers could not see any of the coverage.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: After the retreat of officers at 71st and Normandie, many proceeded one block south to the intersection of Florence and Normandie. As the crowd began to turn physically dangerous, Bartholomew managed to flee the scene with the help of Goldman. Someone hit Bartholomew with a wood plank, breaking his jaw, while others pounded him and grabbed his camera. Just after 6 p.m., a group of young men broke the padlock and windows to Tom's Liquor, allowing a group of more than 100 people to raid the store and loot it. Concurrently, the growing number of rioters in the street began attacking civilians of non-black appearance, throwing debris at their cars, pulling them from their vehicles when they stopped, smashing window shops, or assaulting them while they walked on the sidewalks. As Goldman continued to film the scene on the ground with his camcorder, the Los Angeles News Service team of Marika Gerrard and Zoey Tur arrived in a news helicopter, broadcasting from the air. The LANS feed appeared live on numerous Los Angeles television venues.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: At approximately 6:15 p.m., as reports of vandalism, looting, and physical attacks continued to come in, Moulin elected to "take the information" but not to respond or send personnel to restore order or rescue people in the area. Moulin was relieved by a captain, ordered only to assess the Florence and Normandie area, and, again, not to attempt to deploy officers there. Meanwhile, Tur continued to cover the events in progress live at the intersection. From overhead, Tur described the police presence at the scene around 6:30 p.m. as "none".


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: At 6:43 p.m., a white truck driver, Larry Tarvin, drove down Florence and stopped at a red light at Normandie in a large white delivery truck. With no radio in his truck, he did not know that he was driving into a riot. Tarvin was pulled from the vehicle by a group of men including Henry Watson, who proceeded to kick and beat him, before striking him unconscious with a fire extinguisher taken from his own vehicle. He lay unconscious for more than a minute as his truck was looted, before getting up and staggering back to his vehicle. With the help of an unknown African American, Tarvin drove his truck out of further harm's way. Just before he did so, another truck, driven by Reginald Denny, entered the intersection. United Press International Radio Network reporter Bob Brill, who was filming the attack on Tarvin, was hit in the head with a bottle and stomped on.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Reginald Denny, a white construction truck driver, was pulled from his truck and severely beaten by a group of black men who came to be known as the "L.A. Four". The attack was recorded on video from Tur's and Gerrard's news helicopter, and broadcast live on U.S. national television. Goldman captured the end of the attack and a close-up of Denny's bloody face.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Four other L.A. civilians came to Denny's aid, placing him back in his truck, in which one of the rescuers drove him to the hospital. Denny suffered a fractured skull and impairment of his speech and ability to walk, for which he underwent years of rehabilitative therapy. After unsuccessfully suing the City of Los Angeles, Denny moved to Arizona, where he worked as an independent boat mechanic and has mostly avoided media contact.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Around 7:40 p.m., almost an hour after Denny was rescued, another beating was filmed on videotape in that location. Fidel Lopez, a self-employed construction worker and Guatemalan immigrant mistaken by the crowd to be a white American, was pulled from his GMC pickup truck and robbed of $2,000 (). Rioters, including Damian Williams, smashed his forehead open with a car stereo and one tried to slice his ear off. After Lopez lost consciousness, the crowd spray-painted his chest, torso, and genitals black. He was eventually rescued by black Reverend Bennie Newton, who told the rioters: "Kill him, and you have to kill me too." Lopez survived the attack, but it took him years to fully recover and re-establish his business. Newton and Lopez became close friends.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Sunset on the first evening of the riots was at 7:36 p.m. The first call reporting a fire came in soon after, at approximately 7:45 p.m. Police did not return in force to Florence and Normandie until 8:30 p.m., by which time the intersection was in ruins and most rioters had left to other nearby intersections and shopping centers in the area, with rioting and looting spreading across the rest of South Central Los Angeles once word spread of the situation at Florence and Normandie, as by nightfall the neighborhoods of Crenshaw, Hyde Park, Jefferson Park, West Adams, Westmont, Green Meadows, Historic South Central, Florence, Willowbrook, Florence-Graham and Watts were being looted, vandalized and set ablaze by rioters.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Numerous factors were later blamed for the severity of rioting in the 77th Street Division on the evening of April 29. These included:


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: As noted, after the verdicts were announced, a crowd of protesters formed at the Los Angeles police headquarters at Parker Center in Downtown Los Angeles. The crowd grew as the afternoon passed and became violent. The police formed a skirmish line to protect the building, sometimes moving back in the headquarters as protesters advanced, attempting to set the Parker Center ablaze. In the midst of this, before 6:30 p.m., police chief Daryl Gates left Parker Center, on his way to the neighborhood of Brentwood. There, as the situation in Los Angeles deteriorated, Gates attended a political fundraiser against Los Angeles City Charter Amendment F, intended to "give City Hall more power over the police chief and provide more civilian review of officer misconduct". The amendment would limit the power and term length of his office.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: The Parker Center crowd grew riotous at approximately 9 p.m., eventually making their way through the Civic Center, attacking law enforcement, overturning vehicles, setting objects ablaze, vandalizing government buildings and blocking traffic on U.S. Route 101 going through other nearby districts in downtown Los Angeles looting and burning stores. Nearby Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) firefighters were shot at while trying to put out a blaze set by looters. The mayor had requested the California Army National Guard from Governor Pete Wilson; the first of these units, the 670th Military Police Company, had traveled almost from its main armory and arrived in the afternoon to assist local police. They were first deployed to a police command center, where they began handing out bulletproof vests to the firefighters after encountering the unit whose member had been shot. Later, after receiving ammunition from the L.A. Police Academy and a local gun store, the MPs deployed to hold the Martin Luther King Shopping Mall in Watts.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: In the Lake View Terrace district of Los Angeles, 200–400 protesters gathered about 9:15 p.m. at the site where Rodney King was beaten in 1991, near the Hansen Dam Recreation Area. The group marched south on Osborne Street to the LAPD Foothill Division headquarters. There they began rock throwing, shooting into the air, and setting fires. The Foothill division police used riot-breaking techniques to disperse the crowd and arrest those responsible for rock throwing and the fires eventually leading to rioting and looting in the neighboring area of Pacoima and its surrounding neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Mayor Bradley signed an order for a dusk-to-dawn curfew at 12:15 a.m. for the core area affected by the riots, as well as declaring a state of emergency for the city of Los Angeles. At 10:15 a.m., he expanded the area under curfew. By mid-morning, violence appeared widespread and unchecked as extensive looting and arson were witnessed across Los Angeles County. Rioting moved from South Central Los Angeles, going north through Central Los Angeles decimating the neighborhoods of Koreatown, Westlake, Pico-Union, Echo Park, Hancock Park, Fairfax, Mid-City and Mid-Wilshire before reaching Hollywood. The looting and fires engulfed Hollywood Boulevard, and simultaneously rioting moved west and south into the neighboring independent cities of Inglewood, Hawthorne, Gardena, Compton, Carson and Long Beach, as well as moving east from South Central Los Angeles into the cities of Huntington Park, Walnut Park, South Gate and Lynwood and Paramount. Looting and vandalism had also gone as far south as Los Angeles regions of the Harbor Area in the neighborhoods of San Pedro, Wilmington, and Harbor City.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Koreatown is a roughly 2.7 square-mile (7 square kilometre) neighborhood between Hoover Street and Western Avenue, and 3rd Street and Olympic Boulevard, west of MacArthur Park and east of Hancock Park/Windsor Square. Korean immigrants had begun settling in the Mid-Wilshire area in the 1960s after the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. It was here that many opened successful businesses.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: As the riots spread, roads between Koreatown and wealthy white neighborhoods were blocked off by police and official defense lines were set up around the independent cities such as Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, as well as middle-upper class white neighborhoods west of Robertson Boulevard in Los Angeles. A Korean American resident later told reporters: "It was containment. The police cut off Koreatown traffic, while we were trapped on the other side without help. Those roads are a gateway to a richer neighborhood. It can't be denied." Some Koreans later said they did not expect law enforcement to come to their aid.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: The lack of law enforcement forced Koreatown civilians to organize their own armed security teams, mainly composed of store owners, to defend their businesses from rioters. Many had military experience from serving in the Republic of Korea Armed Forces before emigrating to the United States. Open gun battles were televised, including an incident in which Korean shopkeepers armed with M1 carbines, Ruger Mini-14s, pump-action shotguns, and handguns exchanged gunfire with a group of armed looters, and forced their retreat. But there were casualties, such as 18-year-old Edward Song Lee, whose body can be seen lying in the street in images taken by photojournalist Hyungwon Kang.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: After events in Koreatown, the 670th MP Company from National City, California were redeployed to reinforce police patrols guarding the Korean Cultural Center and the Consulate-General of South Korea in Los Angeles.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Out of the $850 million worth of damage done in L.A., half of it was on Korean-owned businesses because most of Koreatown was looted and destroyed. The effects of the riots, which displaced Korean Americans and destroyed their sources of income, and the little aid given to those who suffered, still affected LA-based Koreans in 2017, as they struggled with economic hardship created by the riots.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: The LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD) organized response began to come together by mid-day. The LAFD and Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACoFD) began to respond backed by police escort; California Highway Patrol reinforcements were airlifted to the city. U.S. President George H. W. Bush spoke out against the rioting, saying "anarchy" would not be tolerated. The California Army National Guard, which had been advised not to expect civil disturbance and had, as a result, loaned its riot equipment out to other law enforcement agencies, responded quickly by calling up about 2,000 soldiers, but could not get them to the city until nearly 24 hours had passed. They lacked equipment and had to pick it up from the JFTB (Joint Forces Training Base), Los Alamitos, California, which at the time was mainly a mothballed former airbase.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Air traffic control procedures at Los Angeles International Airport were modified, with all departures and arrivals routed to and from the west, over the Pacific Ocean, avoiding overflights of neighborhoods affected by the rioting.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Bill Cosby spoke on the local television station KNBC and asked people to stop the rioting and watch the final episode of his "The Cosby Show". The U.S. Justice Department announced it would resume federal investigation of the Rodney King beating as a violation of federal civil rights law.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, who criticized rioters for burning down their own neighborhoods, received death threats and was taken to the Los Angeles Police Academy for protection.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: In the early morning hours of Friday, May 1, the major rioting was stopped. Rodney King gave an impromptu news conference in front of his lawyer's office, tearfully saying, "People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?" That morning, at 1:00 am, Governor Wilson had requested federal assistance. Upon request, Bush invoked the Insurrection Act with , federalizing the California Army National Guard and authorizing federal troops and federal law enforcement officers to help restore law and order. With Bush's authority, the Pentagon activated Operation Garden Plot, placing the California Army National Guard and federal troops under the newly formed Joint Task Force Los Angeles (JTF-LA). The deployment of federal troops was not ready until Saturday, by which time the rioting and looting were under control.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Meanwhile, the 40th Infantry Division (doubled to 4,000 troops) of the California Army National Guard continued to move into the city in Humvees; eventually 10,000 Army National Guard troops were activated. That same day, 1,000 federal tactical officers from different agencies across California were dispatched to L.A. to protect federal facilities and assist local police. Later that evening, Bush addressed the country, denouncing "random terror and lawlessness". He summarized his discussions with Mayor Bradley and Governor Wilson and outlined the federal assistance he was making available to local authorities. Citing the "urgent need to restore order", he warned that the "brutality of a mob" would not be tolerated, and he would "use whatever force is necessary". He referred to the Rodney King case, describing talking to his own grandchildren and noting the actions of "good and decent policemen" as well as civil rights leaders. He said he had directed the Justice Department to investigate the King case, and that "grand jury action is underway today", and justice would prevail. The Post Office announced that it was unsafe for their couriers to deliver mail. The public were instructed to pick up their mail at the main Post Office. The lines were approximately 40 blocks long, and the California National Guard were diverted to that location to ensure peace.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: By this point, many entertainments and sports events were postponed or canceled. The Los Angeles Lakers hosted the Portland Trail Blazers in an NBA playoff basketball game on the night the rioting started. The following game was postponed until Sunday and moved to Las Vegas. The Los Angeles Clippers moved a playoff game against the Utah Jazz to nearby Anaheim. In baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers postponed games for four straight days from Thursday to Sunday, including a whole three-game series against the Montreal Expos; all were made up as part of doubleheaders in July. In San Francisco, a city curfew due to unrest forced the postponement of a May 1, San Francisco Giants home game against the Philadelphia Phillies.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: The horse racing venues Hollywood Park Racetrack and Los Alamitos Race Course were also shut down. L.A. Fiesta Broadway, a major event in the Latino community, was canceled. In music, Van Halen canceled two concert shows in Inglewood on Saturday and Sunday. Metallica and Guns N' Roses were forced to postpone and relocate their concert to the Rose Bowl as the LA Coliseum and its surrounding neighborhood were still damaged. Michael Bolton canceled his scheduled performance at the Hollywood Bowl Sunday. The World Wrestling Federation canceled events on Friday and Saturday in the cities of Long Beach and Fresno. By the end of Friday night, all the remaining smaller riots were completely quelled.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: On the fourth day, 3,500 federal troops — 2,000 soldiers of the 7th Infantry Division from Fort Ord and 1,500 Marines of the 1st Marine Division from Camp Pendleton — arrived to reinforce the National Guard soldiers already in the city. The Marine Corps contingent included the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, commanded by John F. Kelly. It was the first significant military occupation of Los Angeles by federal troops since the 1894 Pullman Strike, and also the first federal military intervention in an American city to quell a civil disorder since the 1968 King assassination riots, and the deadliest modern unrest since the 1980 Miami riots at the time, only 12 years earlier.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: These federal military forces took 24 hours to deploy to Huntington Park, about the same time it took for the National Guard. This brought total troop strength to 13,500, making L.A. the largest military occupation of any U.S. city since the 1968 Washington, D.C. riots. Federal troops joined National Guard soldiers to support local police in restoring order directly; the combined force contributed significantly to preventing violence. With most of the violence under control, 30,000 people attended an 11 a.m. peace rally in Koreatown to support local merchants and racial healing.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Mayor Bradley assured the public that the crisis was, more or less, under control as areas became quiet. Later that night, Army National Guard soldiers shot and killed a motorist who tried to run them over at a barrier.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: In another incident, the LAPD and Marines intervened in a domestic dispute in Compton, in which the suspect held his wife and children hostage. As the officers approached, the suspect fired two shotgun rounds through the door, injuring some of the officers. One of the officers yelled to the Marines, "Cover me," as per law enforcement training to be prepared to fire if necessary. However, per their military training, the Marines interpreted the wording as providing cover by establishing a base of firepower, resulting in a total of 200 rounds being sprayed into the house. Remarkably, neither the suspect nor the woman and children inside the house were harmed.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Although Mayor Bradley lifted the curfew, signaling the official end of the riots, sporadic violence and crime continued for a few days afterward. Schools, banks, and businesses reopened. Federal troops did not stand down until May 9. The Army National Guard remained until May 14. Some National Guard soldiers remained as late as May 27.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Many Korean Americans in Los Angeles refer to the event as 'Sa-I-Gu', meaning "four-two-nine" in the Korean language (4.29), in reference to April 29, 1992, which was the day the riots started. Over 2,300 mom-and-pop shops run by Korean business owners were damaged through ransacking and looting during the riots, sustaining close to $400 million in damages.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: During the riots, Korean Americans received very little aid or protection from police authorities, due to their low social status and language barriers. Many Koreans rushed to Koreatown after Korean-language radio stations called for volunteers to guard against rioters. Many were armed, with a variety of improvised weapons, handguns, shotguns, and semi-automatic rifles.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Television coverage of two Korean merchants firing pistols repeatedly at roving looters was widely seen and controversial. "The New York Times" said: "that the image seemed to speak of race war, and of vigilantes taking the law into their own hands." One of the merchants, David Joo, said, "I want to make it clear that we didn't open fire first. At that time, four police cars were there. Somebody started to shoot at us. The LAPD ran away in half a second. I never saw such a fast escape. I was pretty disappointed." Carl Rhyu, also a participant in the Koreans' armed response, said, "If it was your own business and your own property, would you be willing to trust it to someone else? We are glad the National Guard is here. They're good backup. But when our shops were burning we called the police every five minutes; no response." At a shopping center several miles north of Koreatown, Jay Rhee, who said he and others fired five hundred shots into the ground and air, said, "We have lost our faith in the police. Where were you when we needed you?" Despite Koreatown's relative geographical isolation from South Central Los Angeles, it was the most severely damaged in the riots.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: The riots have been considered a major turning point in the development of a distinct Korean American identity and community. Korean Americans responded in various ways, including the development of new ethnic agendas and organization and increased political activism.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: One of the largest armed camps in Los Angeles's Koreatown congregated at the California Market. On the first night after the officers' verdicts were returned, Richard Rhee, the market owner, set up camp in the parking lot with about 20 armed employees. One year after the riots, fewer than one in four damaged or destroyed businesses had reopened, according to the survey conducted by the Korean American Inter-Agency Council. According to a "Los Angeles Times" survey conducted eleven months after the riots, almost 40 percent of Korean Americans said they were thinking of leaving Los Angeles.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Before a verdict was issued in the new 1993 Rodney King federal civil rights trial against the four officers, many Korean shop owners prepared for violence. Gun sales increased sharply, many to people of Korean descent; some merchants at flea markets removed merchandise from shelves, and they fortified storefronts with extra Plexiglas and bars. Throughout the region, merchants readied to defend themselves, and others formed armed militia groups. College student Elizabeth Hwang spoke of the attacks on her parents' convenience store in 1992. She said at the time of the 1993 trial, they had been armed with a Glock 17 pistol, a Beretta, and a shotgun, and they planned to barricade themselves in their store to fight off looters.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: About 2,300 Korean-owned stores in southern California were looted or burned, making up 45 percent of all damages caused by the riot. According to the Asian and Pacific American Counseling and Prevention Center, 730 Koreans were treated for post-traumatic stress disorder, which included insomnia and a sense of helplessness and muscle pain. In reaction, many Korean Americans worked to create political and social empowerment.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: As a result of the L.A. riots, Korean Americans formed activist organizations such as the Association of Korean American Victims. They built collaborative links with other ethnic groups through groups like the Korean American Coalition. A week after the riots, in the largest Asian-American protest ever held in a city, about 30,000 mostly-Korean and Korean American marchers walked the streets of L.A. Koreatown, calling for peace and denouncing violence. This cultural movement was devoted to the protection of Koreans' political rights, ethnic heritage, and political representation. New leaders arose within the community, and second-generation children spoke on behalf of the community. Korean Americans began to have different occupation goals, from store-owners to political leaders. Korean Americans worked to gain governmental aid to rebuild their damaged neighborhoods. Countless community and advocacy groups have been established to further fuel Korean political representation and understanding.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Edward Taehan Chang, a professor of ethnic studies and founding director of the Young Oak Kim Center for Korean American Studies at the University of California, Riverside, has identified the LA riots as a turning point for the development of a Korean American identity separate from that of Korean immigrants and that was more politically active. "What was an immigrant Korean identity began to shift. The Korean American identity was born ... They learned a valuable lesson that we have to become much more engaged and politically involved and that political empowerment is very much part of the Korean American future."


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: According to Edward Park, the 1992 violence stimulated a new wave of political activism among Korean Americans, but it also split them into two camps. The liberals sought to unite with other minorities in Los Angeles to fight against racial oppression and scapegoating. The conservatives emphasized law and order and generally favored the economic and social policies of the Republican Party. The conservatives tended to emphasize the differences between Koreans and other minorities, specifically African Americans.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: According to a 1993 report by the Latinos Futures Research Group for the Latino Coalition for a New Los Angeles, one-third of those who were killed and one half of those who were arrested in the riots were Latino; between 20 and 40 percent of the businesses that were looted were owned by Latinos. Hispanics were considered a minority despite their increasing numbers, so they lacked political support and were poorly represented. This lack of social and political representation obscured acknowledgment of their participation in the riots. Many who lived in the area were new immigrants, not yet able to speak English.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: According to Gloria Alvarez, the riots united Hispanics and black people instead of driving them apart. Although the riots were viewed as having different aspects, Alvarez writes that they contributed to greater understanding between Hispanics and blacks. Hispanics now heavily populate the once-predominantly-black area, and the relationship between Hispanics and blacks has improved. Building a stronger and more-understanding community could help prevent outbreaks of social chaos, although hate crimes and widespread violence between the two groups continue to be a problem in the Los Angeles area.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Almost as soon as the disturbances broke out in South Central, local television news cameras were on the scene to record the events as they happened. Television coverage of the riots was near-continuous, starting with the beating of motorists at the intersection of Florence and Normandie which was broadcast live by television news pilot and reporter Zoey Tur and her camera operator Marika Gerrard.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: In part because of extensive media coverage of the Los Angeles riots, smaller but similar riots and other anti-police actions took place in other cities throughout the United States. The Emergency Broadcast System was also utilized during the rioting.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Another prominent source of media coverage was "Korea Times", an independent Korean American newspaper.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Richard Reyes Fruto wrote in an article in "The Korea Times", "Looters targeted Korean American merchants during the LA. Riots, according to the FBI official who directed federal law enforcement efforts during the disturbance." The English-language Korean newspaper focused on the 1992 riots, with Korean Americans at the center of the violence. Initial articles in late April and early May described victims' lives and damage to the Los Angeles Korean community. Interviews with Koreatown merchants such as Chung Lee evoked sympathy from readers. Lee watched, helpless, as his store was burned down: "I worked hard for that store. Now I have nothing".


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: While several articles included the minorities who were involved when damages were cited or victims were named, few of them actually incorporated them as a significant aspect of the struggle. One story framed the race riots as occurring at a "time when the wrath of blacks was focused on whites." They acknowledged the fact that racism and stereotyped views contributed to the riots; articles in American newspapers portrayed the LA riots as an incident that erupted between black and white people who were struggling to coexist with each other, rather than include all of the minority groups that were involved in the riots.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: On "Nightline," Ted Koppel initially only interviewed black leaders about the "Black/Korean" conflict, and they shared detrimental opinions about Korean Americans.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Activist Guy Aoki became frustrated with early coverage because only "Black/White" framing was used in it, the Korean American community and the suffering which it experienced were vilified and ignored.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Some felt that too much emphasis was placed on the suffering of Korean Americans. As filmmaker Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, who produced the 1993 documentary "Sa-I-Gu", described, "black-Korean conflict was one symptom, but it was certainly not the cause of that riot. The cause of that riot was the black-white conflict that existed in this country from the establishment of this country."


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: After the riots subsided, an inquiry was commissioned by the city Police Commission, led by William H. Webster (special advisor), and Hubert Williams (deputy special advisor, president of the Police Foundation). The findings of the inquiry, "The City in Crisis: A Report by the Special Advisor to the Board of Police Commissioners on the Civil Disorder in Los Angeles", also colloquially known as the "Webster Report" or "Webster Commission", was released on October 21, 1992.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: LAPD chief of police Daryl Gates, who had seen his successor Willie L. Williams named by the Police Commission days before the riots, was forced to resign on June 28, 1992. Some areas of the city saw temporary truces between the rival Crips and Bloods gangs, as well as between rival Latino gangs, which fueled speculation among LAPD officers that the truce was going to be used to unite the gangs against the department.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: In addition to the catalyst of the verdicts in the excessive force trial, various other factors have been cited as causes of the unrest. In the years preceding the riots, several other highly controversial incidents involving police brutality or other perceived injustices against minorities had been criticized by activists and investigated by the media. Thirteen days after the beating of King was widely broadcast, black people were outraged when Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old black girl, was mortally shot in the back of the head by a Korean American shopkeeper, Soon Ja Du, in the course of an assumed shoplifting incident and brief physical altercation. Though the jury recommended a sentence of 16 years, Judge Joyce Karlin changed the sentence to just five years of probation and 400 hours of community service–and no jail time.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Rioters targeted Korean American shops in their areas, as there had been considerable tension between the two communities. Such sources as "Newsweek" and "Time" suggested that black people thought Korean American merchants were "taking money out of their community", that they were racist as they refused to hire black people, and often treated them without respect. There were cultural and language differences, as some shop owners were immigrants.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: There were other factors for social tensions: high rates of poverty and unemployment among the residents of South Central Los Angeles, which had been deeply affected by the nationwide recession. Articles in the "Los Angeles Times" and "The New York Times" linked the economic deterioration of South Central to the declining living conditions of the residents, and reported that local resentments about these conditions helped to fuel the riots. Other scholars compare these riots to those in Detroit in the 1920s when the whites rioted against black people. But instead of African Americans as victims, the race riots "represent backlash violence in response to recent Latino and Asian immigration into African American neighborhoods."


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Social commentator Mike Davis points to the growing economic disparity in Los Angeles, caused by corporate restructuring and government deregulation, with inner-city residents bearing the brunt of such changes; such conditions engendered a widespread feeling of frustration and powerlessness in the urban populace, who reacted to the King verdicts with a violent expression of collective public protest. To Davis and other writers, the tensions between African Americans and Korean Americans had as much to do with the economic competition between the two groups caused by wider market forces as with cultural misunderstandings and black anger about the killing of Latasha Harlins.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Davis wrote that the 1992 Los Angeles Riots were still remembered over 20 years later and that not many changes had yet occurred; conditions of economic inequality, lack of jobs available for black and Latino youth, and civil liberty violations by law enforcement had remained largely unaddressed years later. Davis described this as a "conspiracy of silence", especially in view of statements made by the Los Angeles Police Department that they would make reforms coming to little fruition. Davis argued that the rioting was different than in the 1965 Watts Riots, which had been more unified among all minorities living in Watts and South Central; the 1992 riots, on the other hand, were characterized by divided uproars that defied description of a simple uprising of black against white and involved the destruction and looting of many businesses owned by racial minorities.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: A Special Committee of the California Legislature also studied the riots, producing a report entitled "To Rebuild is Not Enough". The Committee concluded that the inner-city conditions of poverty, racial segregation, lack of educational and employment opportunities, police abuse and unequal consumer services created the underlying causes of the riots. It also noted that the decline of industrial jobs in the American economy and the growing ethnic diversity of Los Angeles had contributed to urban problems. Another official report, "The City in Crisis", was initiated by the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners; it made many of the same observations as the Assembly Special Committee about the growth of popular urban dissatisfaction. In their study, Farrell and Johnson found similar factors, including the diversification of the L.A. population, the tension between the successful Korean businesses and other minorities, and excessive force on minorities by LAPD and the effect of laissez-faire business on urban employment opportunities.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Rioters were believed to have been motivated by racial tensions but these are considered one of numerous factors. Urban sociologist Joel Kotkin said, "This wasn't a race riot, it was a class riot." Many ethnic groups participated in rioting, not only African Americans. "Newsweek" reported that "Hispanics and even some whites; men, women, and children mingled with African Americans." When residents who lived near Florence and Normandie were asked why they believed riots had occurred in their neighborhoods, they responded to the perceived racist attitudes they had felt throughout their lifetime and empathized with the bitterness the rioters felt. Residents who had respectable jobs, homes, and material items still felt like second class citizens. A poll by "Newsweek" asked whether black people charged with crimes were treated more harshly or more leniently than other ethnicities; 75% of black people responded "more harshly", versus 46% of white people.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: In his public statements during the riots, Jesse Jackson, civil rights leader, sympathized with African Americans' anger about the verdicts in the King trial and noted the root causes of the disturbances. He repeatedly emphasized the continuing patterns of racism, police brutality, and economic despair suffered by inner-city residents.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Several prominent writers expressed a similar "culture of poverty" argument. Writers in "Newsweek", for example, drew a distinction between the actions of the rioters in 1992 with those of the urban upheavals in the 1960s, arguing that "[w]here the looting at Watts had been desperate, angry, mean, the mood this time was closer to a manic fiesta, a TV game show with every looter a winner."


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: According to a 2019 study in the "American Political Science Review" found that the riots caused a liberal shift, both in the short-term and long-term, politically.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: The 1992 events in Los Angeles were compared to the May 2020 police murder of George Floyd in the U.S. city of Minneapolis that resulted in a global protest movement against police brutality and structural racism. Floyd's murder served as an inflection point after the police killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky in March 2020, fueling cumulative public outrage. Unlike in 1992, participants who protested Floyd's murder were more racially diverse than in 1992 and there was little if any racially motivated violence.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton said that the violence resulted from the breakdown of economic opportunities and social institutions in the inner city. He also berated both major political parties for failing to address urban issues, especially the Republican Administration for its presiding over "more than a decade of urban decay" generated by their spending cuts. He also maintained that the King verdicts could not be avenged by the "savage behavior" of "lawless vandals" and stated that people "are looting because ... [t]hey do not share our values, and their children are growing up in a culture alien from ours, without family, without neighborhood, without church, without support." While Los Angeles was mostly unaffected by the urban decay the other metropolitan areas of the nation faced since the 1960s, racial tensions had been present since the late 1970s, becoming increasingly violent as the 1980s progressed.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Democrat Maxine Waters, the African American Congressional representative of South Central Los Angeles, said that the events in Los Angeles constituted a "rebellion" or "insurrection," caused by the underlying reality of poverty and despair existing in the inner city. This state of affairs, she asserted, was brought about by a government that had all but abandoned the poor and failed to help compensate for the loss of local jobs and the institutional discrimination encountered by racial minorities, especially at the police's hands and financial institutions.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Conversely, President Bush argued that the unrest was "purely criminal." Though he acknowledged that the King verdicts were plainly unjust, he said that "we simply cannot condone violence as a way of changing the system ... Mob brutality, the total loss of respect for human life was sickeningly sad ... What we saw last night and the night before in Los Angeles is not about civil rights. It's not about the great cause of equality that all Americans must uphold. It's not a message of protest. It's been the brutality of a mob, pure and simple."


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Vice President Dan Quayle blamed the violence on a "Poverty of Values" – "I believe the lawless social anarchy which we saw is directly related to the breakdown of family structure, personal responsibility and social order in too many areas of our society" Similarly, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater alleged that "many of the root problems that have resulted in inner-city difficulties were started in the 1960s and 1970s and ... they have failed ... [N]ow we are paying the price."


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Writers for former Congressman Ron Paul framed the riots in similar terms in the June 1992 edition of the "Ron Paul Political Newsletter", billed as a special issue focusing on "racial terrorism." "Order was only restored in LA", the newsletter read, "when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began ... What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt, the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off, and the violence subsided."


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: In the aftermath of the riots, public pressure mounted for a retrial of the officers. Federal charges of civil rights violations were brought against them. As the first anniversary of the acquittal neared, the city tensely awaited the federal jury's decision.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: The decision was read in a court session on Saturday, April 17, 1993 at 7 a.m. Officer Laurence Powell and Sergeant Stacey Koon were found guilty, while officers Theodore Briseno and Timothy Wind were acquitted. Mindful of criticism of sensationalist reporting after the first trial and during the riots, media outlets opted for more sober coverage. Police were fully mobilized with officers on 12 hour shifts, convoy patrols, scout helicopters, street barricades, tactical command centers, and support from the Army National Guard, the active duty Army and the Marines.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: All four of the officers left or were fired from the LAPD. Briseno left the LAPD after being acquitted on both state and federal charges. Wind, who was also twice acquitted, was fired after the appointment of Willie L. Williams as Chief of Police. The Los Angeles Police Commission declined to renew Williams's contract, citing failure to fulfill his mandate to create meaningful change in the department.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Susan Clemmer, an officer who gave crucial testimony for the defense during the officers' first trial, committed suicide in July 2009 in the lobby of a Los Angeles Sheriff's Station. She had ridden in the ambulance with King and testified that he was laughing and spat blood on her uniform. She had remained in law enforcement and was a Sheriff's Detective at the time of her death.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Rodney King was awarded $3.8 million in damages from the City of Los Angeles. He invested most of this money in founding a hip-hop record label, "Straight Alta-Pazz Records." The venture was unable to garner success and soon folded. King was later arrested at least eleven times on a variety of charges, including domestic abuse and hit and run. King and his family moved from Los Angeles to San Bernardino County's Rialto suburb in an attempt to escape the fame and notoriety and begin a new life.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: King and his family later returned to Los Angeles, where they ran a family-owned construction company. Until his death on June 17, 2012, King rarely discussed the night of his beating by police or its aftermath, preferring to remain out of the spotlight. King died of an accidental drowning; authorities said that he had alcohol and drugs in his body. Renee Campbell, his most recent attorney, described King as " ... simply a very nice man caught in a very unfortunate situation."


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: On May 3, 1992, in view of the large number of persons arrested during the riots, the California Supreme Court extended the deadline to charge defendants from 48 hours to 96 hours. That day, 6,345 people were arrested. Nearly one third of the rioters arrested were released because police officers were unable to identify individuals in the sheer volume of the crowd. In one case, officers arrested around 40 people stealing from one store; while they were identifying them, a group of another 12 looters were brought in. With the groups mingled, charges could not be brought against individuals for stealing from specific stores, and the police had to release them all.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: In the weeks after the rioting, more than 11,000 people were arrested. Many of the looters in black communities were turned in by their neighbors, who were angry about the destruction of businesses who employed locals and provided basic needs such as groceries. Many of the looters, fearful of prosecution by law enforcement and condemnation from their neighbors, ended up placing looted items curbside in other neighborhoods to get rid of them.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: After three days of arson and looting, some 3,767 buildings were affected and damaged. and property damage was estimated at more than $1 billion. Donations were given to help with food and medicine. The office of State Senator Diane E. Watson provided shovels and brooms to volunteers from all over the community who helped clean. Thirteen thousand police and military personnel were on patrol, protecting intact gas stations and food stores; they reopened along with other businesses areas such as the Universal Studios tour, dance halls, and bars. Many organizations stepped forward to rebuild Los Angeles; South Central's Operation Hope and Koreatown's Saigu and KCCD (Korean Churches for Community Development), all raised millions to repair destruction and improve economic development. Singer Michael Jackson "donated $1.25 million to start a health counseling service for inner-city kids". President George H. W. Bush signed a declaration of disaster; it activated Federal relief efforts for the victims of looting and arson, which included grants and low-cost loans to cover their property losses. The Rebuild LA program promised $6 billion in private investment to create 74,000 jobs.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: The majority of the local stores were never rebuilt. Store owners had difficulty getting loans; myths about the city or at least certain neighborhoods of it arose discouraging investment and preventing growth of employment. Few of the rebuilding plans were implemented, and business investors and some community members rejected South L.A.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: Many Los Angeles residents bought weapons for self-defense against further violence. The 10-day waiting period in California law stymied those who wanted to purchase firearms while the riot was going on.


title: 1992 Los Angeles riots

text: In a survey of local residents in 2010, 77 percent felt that the economic situation in Los Angeles had significantly worsened since 1992. From 1992 to 2007, the black population dropped by 123,000, while the Latino population grew more than 450,000. According to the Los Angeles police statistics, violent crime fell by 76 percent between 1992 and 2010, which was a period of declining crime across the country. It was accompanied by lessening tensions between racial groups. In 2012, sixty percent of residents reported racial tension had improved in the past 20 years, and the majority said gang activity had also decreased.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: The Princess and the Frog is a 2009 American animated musical fantasy romantic comedy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 49th Disney animated feature film, it is loosely based on the 2002 novel "The Frog Princess" by E. D. Baker, which in turn is based on the German folk tale "The Frog Prince" as collected by the Brothers Grimm. The film was directed by John Musker and Ron Clements and produced by Peter Del Vecho, from a screenplay that Musker and Clements co-wrote with Rob Edwards. The directors also co-wrote the story with the writing team of Greg Erb and Jason Oremland.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: The film stars the voices of Anika Noni Rose, Bruno Campos, Michael-Leon Wooley, Jim Cummings, Jennifer Cody, John Goodman, Keith David, Peter Bartlett, Jenifer Lewis, Oprah Winfrey, and Terrence Howard. Set in New Orleans during the 1920s, the film tells the story of a hardworking waitress named Tiana who dreams of opening her own restaurant. After kissing a prince who has been turned into a frog by an evil witch doctor, Tiana becomes a frog herself and must find a way to turn back into a human before it is too late.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: "The Princess and the Frog" began production under the working title "The Frog Princess". It marked Disney's brief return to traditional animation, as it was the mainstream animation studio's first traditionally animated film since "Home on the Range" (2004). Clements and Musker, directors of Disney's "The Great Mouse Detective" (1986), "The Little Mermaid" (1989), "Aladdin" (1992), "Hercules" (1997), and "Treasure Planet" (2002) returned to Disney to direct "The Princess and the Frog". The studio returned to a Broadway musical-style format frequently used during the Disney Renaissance, and the film features a score and songs written, composed, and conducted by composer, singer-songwriter, and pianist Randy Newman, well known for his musical involvement in Pixar films such as the "Toy Story" franchise.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: "The Princess and the Frog" opened in a limited release in New York City and Los Angeles on November 25, 2009, followed by its wide release on December 11. The film received largely positive reviews from critics, who praised the animation (particularly the revival of the hand-drawn form), characters, music, and themes; however it was criticized for its depiction of Louisiana Voodoo and the historical negationism of its depiction of the Southern United States during the Jim Crow laws. It was successful at the box office, ranking first place on its opening weekend in North America, and grossing around $271 million worldwide becoming Disney’s most successful traditionally animated film since "Lilo & Stitch" in 2002, and the animation studio’s most successful film overall since "Tarzan" in 1999, ten years earlier. It received three Oscar nominations at the 82nd Academy Awards: one for Best Animated Feature and two for Best Original Song.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Set in the Roaring Twenties in New Orleans, Tiana is completely devoted to opening her own restaurant, a dream she shared with her late father, who died in World War I. She works two waitress jobs to earn money to make this dream a reality, leaving her no time for a social life.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Meanwhile, Naveen, the spoiled and arrogant prince of Maldovia, arrives in New Orleans, where, being financially cut off from his family's fortune by his parents, he intends to marry a rich Southern belle like Tiana's best friend, Charlotte La Bouff. Her father, wealthy Eli "Big Daddy" La Bouff, hosts a masquerade ball in Naveen's honor, for which Charlotte hires Tiana to make beignets, offering her enough to buy a dilapidated mill to convert into her dream restaurant. Naveen and his valet, Lawrence, encounter Dr. Facilier, a voodoo witch doctor, who tricks them into a fortune reading. Then, he transforms Naveen into a frog and gives Lawrence Naveen's appearance through a voodoo talisman containing Naveen's blood. Facilier intends for the disguised Lawrence to marry Charlotte, then to kill her father with a voodoo doll so he can gain the La Bouff fortune.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: At the ball, Tiana is told by the realtors, the Fenner Brothers, that she has been outbid for the mill. Despondent, Tiana wishes on the evening star for her dream to come true. She then meets Naveen in frog form who, believing her to be a princess, asks for a kiss to break Facilier's spell. Tiana reluctantly accepts after Naveen promises to finance her restaurant. However, Tiana transforms into a frog because she is not a princess. The two are chased into a bayou where they meet a trumpet-playing alligator named Louis, who dreams of playing jazz. After informing Louis they are actually humans under a voodoo spell, he tells them of Mama Odie, another voodoo practitioner who lives in the bayou and they all go in search of her.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: They are guided to Mama Odie by a Cajun firefly named Ray, who is enamored with the Evening Star, believing it is a firefly named "Evangeline," as no one has the heart to tell him otherwise. During the journey, Tiana and Naveen fend off a group of hunters and begin developing feelings for each other, especially after the latter learns to be a more responsible human being. Meanwhile, the talisman disguising Lawrence as Naveen needs more of Naveen's blood or Lawrence will return to his normal appearance. Discovering Naveen has escaped, Facilier asks the voodoo spirits (his "friends on the other side") to help retrieve him, offering them the souls of the people of New Orleans in exchange, and they grant him an army of shadow demons to do his bidding. The demons discover Tiana and her group in the bayou, although they are rescued by Mama Odie.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Mama Odie tells Naveen the spell can only be broken with a princess's kiss. They realize that as Big Daddy has been crowned Mardi Gras king, Charlotte will be a princess until midnight. The group hitches a ride on a paddle steamer back to New Orleans, during which Naveen tells Ray about his love for Tiana and plans to propose marriage to her, although after talking to her, he selflessly decides against it since transforming him and Tiana into humans and financing Tiana's restaurant is contingent on him kissing and marrying Charlotte. The shadow demons find and capture Naveen and bring him to Facilier, who uses his blood to replenish the talisman. After hearing from Ray how Naveen feels about her, Tiana heads to the Mardi Gras parade to find him, only to see Lawrence, masquerading as Naveen, marrying Charlotte. Heartbroken and now believing she will forever be a frog, Tiana flees the scene.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Ray rescues the real Naveen and steals the talisman, which he gives to Tiana before Facilier mortally wounds him. Facilier offers to make Tiana's dream come true in exchange for the talisman. Realizing she would rather be with Naveen and that she would be dishonoring her father by accepting, Tiana destroys it. With Facilier's plan foiled, the voodoo spirits drag him into their world for failing to pay back his debt. After Lawrence is exposed and arrested, Tiana reveals her love to Naveen and Charlotte agrees to kiss Naveen so he and Tiana can be human, but the clock strikes midnight and the kiss fails. Ray dies shortly thereafter and during his funeral a new star appears next to Evangeline. Tiana and Naveen are married by Madam Odie, and since doing so makes Tiana a princess, both are restored to human form after their kiss. They later return to New Orleans to legally marry and open their restaurant together, with Louis playing in the band.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Disney had once announced that 2004's "Home on the Range" would be their last traditionally animated film. After the company's acquisition of Pixar in 2006, Ed Catmull and John Lasseter, the new president and chief creative officer of Disney Animation Studios, reversed this decision and reinstated hand-drawn animation at the studio. Many animators who had either been laid off or had left the studio when the traditional animation units were dissolved in 2003 were located and re-hired for the project. Lasseter also brought back directors Ron Clements and John Musker, whose earlier works include "The Great Mouse Detective" (1986), "The Little Mermaid" (1989), "Aladdin" (1992), "Hercules" (1997), and "Treasure Planet" (2002). The duo had left the company in 2005, but Lasseter requested their return to Disney to direct and write the film and had let them choose the style of animation (traditional or CGI) they wanted to use.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: The story for the film began development by merging two projects in development at Disney and Pixar at the time, both based around "The Frog Prince" fairy tale. One of the projects was based on E. D. Baker's "The Frog Princess", in which the story's heroine (Princess Emma) kisses a prince turned frog (Prince Eadric), only to become a frog herself. Artist Jorgen Klubien believes that a story he was working on at Pixar, called "The Spirit of New Orleans, a Pixar Ghost Story", served as inspiration for the movie. "The Princess and the Frog" returns to the musical film format used in many of the previously successful Disney animated films, with a style Musker and Clements declared, like with "Aladdin" and "The Little Mermaid", had inspiration from Golden Age Disney features such as "Cinderella" (1950).


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Musker and Clements thought that given so many fairy tales were set in Europe, they could do an American fairy tale. They stated that they chose New Orleans as a tribute to the history of the city, for its "magical" qualities, and because it was Lasseter's favorite city. The directors spent ten days in Louisiana before starting to write the film.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: "The Princess and the Frog" was originally announced as "The Frog Princess" in July 2006, and early concepts and songs were presented to the public at The Walt Disney Company's annual shareholders' meeting in March 2007. These announcements drew criticism from African-American media outlets, due to elements of the "Frog Princess" story, characters, and settings considered distasteful. African-American critics disapproved of the original name for the heroine, "Maddy", due to its similarity to the derogatory term "mammy". Also protested were Maddy's original career as a chambermaid, the choice to have the Black heroine's love interest be a non-Black prince, and the use of a Black male voodoo witchdoctor as the film's villain. The "Frog Princess" title was also thought by critics to be a slur on French people. Also questioned was the film's setting of New Orleans, which had been heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, resulting in the expulsion of a large number of mostly Black residents. Critics claimed the choice of New Orleans as the setting for a Disney film with a Black heroine was an affront to the Katrina victims' plight.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: In response to these early criticisms, the film's title was changed in May 2007 from "The Frog Princess" to "The Princess and the Frog". The name "Maddy" was changed to "Tiana", and the character's occupation was altered from chambermaid to waitress. Talk show host Oprah Winfrey was hired as a technical consultant for the film, leading to her taking a voice-acting role in the film as Tiana's mother, Eudora.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: The head of story, Don Hall, described the plot as a fairy tale "twisted enough that it seems new and fresh", with a kingdom that is a modern city, a handsome prince that is a "knuckleheaded playboy" and a variation on the fairy godmother with Mama Odie. Co-writer Rob Edwards also said "The Princess and the Frog" was "a princess movie for people who don't like princess movies". As the writers thought Tiana's character motivation of simply dreaming of having her own restaurant was not appealing enough, they expanded so it was her father's as well, with the extra philosophy of "food bringing people together from all walks of life". Musker and Clements stated that while Tiana already starts as a sympathetic character, the events of the plot make her "understand things in a deeper level" and change people around her. Both protagonists would learn from each other—Naveen to take responsibilities, Tiana to enjoy life—as well as figuring from Ray's passion for Evangeline that the perfect balance is brought by having someone you love to share the experience. Tiana became the first African-American Disney Princess.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Tiana was inspired in part by famed restaurateur Leah Chase, whom Clements and Musker met on their research trip to New Orleans. Clements elaborated, "There's a woman in New Orleans named Lee (sic) Chase who was a waitress and ultimately opened a restaurant with her husband … we met with her and we talked with her and she went to kind of into her story, her philosophy about food, which is a big element of the movie."


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: On December 1, 2006, a detailed casting call was announced for the film at the Manhattan Theatre Source forum. The casting call states the film as being an American fairy tale musical set in New Orleans during the 1926 Jazz Age and provides a detailed list of the film's major characters.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: In February 2007, it was reported that "Dreamgirls" actresses Jennifer Hudson and Anika Noni Rose were top contenders for the voice of Tiana and that Alicia Keys directly contacted Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook about voicing the role. It was later reported that Tyra Banks was considered for the role as well. By April 2007, it was confirmed that Rose would be voicing Tiana. Three months later, it was reported that Keith David would be doing the voice of Doctor Facilier, the villain of the film.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Clements and Musker had agreed early on that the style they were aiming for was primarily that of "Lady and the Tramp" (1955), a film which they and John Lasseter feel represents "the pinnacle of Disney's style". "After that, everything started becoming more stylized, like "Sleeping Beauty", "101 Dalmatians"—which are fantastic films as well, but there's a particular style (to "Lady and the Tramp") that's so classically Disney." "Lady and the Tramp" also heavily informed the style of the New Orleans scenes, while Disney's "Bambi" (1942) served as the template for the bayou scenes. "Bambi" was described as a stylistic reference for the painted backgrounds, as according to art director Ian Gooding ""Bambi" painted what it feels like to be in the forest instead of the forest" so "The Princess and the Frog" would in turn try capturing the essence of roaming through New Orleans.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: The former trend in Disney's hand-drawn features where the characters and cinematography were influenced by a CGI-look had been abandoned. Andreas Deja, a veteran Disney animator who supervised the character of Mama Odie, says "I always thought that maybe we should distinguish ourselves to go back to what 2D is good at, which is focusing on what the line can do rather than volume, which is a CG kind of thing. So we are doing less extravagant "Treasure Planet" kind of treatments. You have to create a world but [we're doing it more simply]. What we're trying to do with "Princess and the Frog" is hook up with things that the old guys did earlier. It's not going to be graphic…". Deja also mentions that Lasseter was aiming for the Disney sculptural and dimensional look of the 1950s: "All those things that were non-graphic, which means go easy on the straight lines and have one volume flow into the other—an organic feel to the drawing." Lasseter also felt that traditional animation created more character believability. For example, with Louis the alligator, created by Eric Goldberg, Lasseter said: "It's the believability of this large character being able to move around quite like that." Choreographer Betsy Baytos was brought by the directors to lead a team of eccentric dancers that gave reference to make each character a different style of movement. The character design tried to create beautiful drawings through subtle shapes, particularly for most characters being human. For the frog versions of Tiana and Naveen, while the animators started with realistic designs, they eventually went for stylized designs "removing all that is unappealing in frogs", similar to Jiminy Cricket in "Pinocchio" (1940).


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Toon Boom Animation's Toon Boom Harmony software was used as the main software package for the production of the film, as the Computer Animation Production System (CAPS) system that Disney developed with Pixar in the 1980s for use on their previous traditionally animated films had become outdated by 2004. The Harmony software was augmented with a number of plug-ins to provide CAPS-like effects such as shading on cheeks and smoke effects. The reinstated traditional unit's first production, a 2007 Goofy cartoon short entitled "How to Hook Up Your Home Theater", was partly animated without paper by using Harmony and Wacom Cintiq pressure-sensitive tablets. The character animators found some difficulty with this approach, and decided to use traditional paper and pencil drawings, which were then scanned into the computer systems, for "The Princess and the Frog".


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: The one exception to the new Toon Boom Harmony pipeline was the "Almost There" dream sequence, which utilized an Art Deco graphic style based on the art of Harlem Renaissance painter Aaron Douglas. Supervised by Eric Goldberg and designed by Sue Nichols, the "Almost There" sequence's character animation was done on paper without going through the clean-up animation department, and scanned directly into Photoshop. The artwork was then enhanced to affect the appearance of painted strokes and fills, and combined with backgrounds, using Adobe After Effects.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: The visual effects and backgrounds for the film were created digitally using Cintiq tablet displays. Marlon West, one of Disney's veteran animation visual effects supervisors, says about the production; "Those guys had this bright idea to bring back hand-drawn animation, but everything had to be started again from the ground up. One of the first things we did was focus on producing shorts, to help us re-introduce the 2D pipeline. I worked as vfx supervisor on the Goofy short, "How to Hook Up Your Home Theater". It was a real plus for the effects department, so we went paperless for "The Princess and the Frog"." The backgrounds were painted digitally using Adobe Photoshop, and many of the architectural elements were based upon 3D models built in Autodesk Maya. Much of the clean-up animation, digital ink-and-paint, and compositing were outsourced to third-party companies in Orlando, Florida (Premise Entertainment), Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Yowza! Animation), and Brooklin, São Paulo, Brazil (HGN Produções).


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Originally, Alan Menken was considered to be in charge of the soundtrack. However, Lasseter thought that since Menken scored the Disney film "Enchanted" (2007), the music might be too repetitive, especially the fact that some previous Renaissance Disney animated films technically had other songwriters (particularly "The Lion King", "Mulan", and "Tarzan"). Lasseter realized that Randy Newman, whom he had previously worked with, was the perfect choice for the film and replaced Menken with him, due to the fact that Newman was a jazz composer and grew up in New Orleans, making him compatible with the project´s musical setting. Newman had also written the songs for another broadway-style musical 2D animated feature, Warner Bros.' "Cats Don't Dance" (1997), and had written the songs for "Toy Story" (1995).


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: During Disney's 2007 shareholder meeting, Randy Newman and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band performed the film's opening number, "Down in New Orleans", with famous New Orleans singer Dr. John singing, while slides of pre-production art from the film played on a screen. Other songs in the film include "Almost There" (a solo for Tiana), "Dig a Little Deeper" (a song for Mama Odie), "When We're Human" (a song for Louis, Tiana and Naveen [as frogs]), "Friends on the Other Side" (a solo for Doctor Facilier), and "Gonna Take You There" and "Ma Belle Evangeline" (two solos for Ray). Newman composed, arranged, and conducted the music for the film, a mixture of jazz, zydeco, blues, and gospel styles performed by the voice cast members for the respective characters, while R&B singer-songwriter Ne-Yo wrote and performed the end title song, "Never Knew I Needed", an R&B love song referring to the romance between the film's two main characters, Tiana and Naveen. Supported by a music video by Melina, "Never Knew I Needed" was issued to radio outlets as a commercial single from the .


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: The film's soundtrack album, "The Princess and the Frog: Original Songs and Score", contains the ten original songs from the film and seven instrumental pieces. The soundtrack was released on November 23, 2009, the day before the limited release of the film in New York and Los Angeles.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: The film premiered in theaters with a limited run in New York and Los Angeles beginning on November 25, 2009, followed by wide release on December 11, 2009. The film was originally set for release on Christmas Day 2009, but its release date was changed due to a competing family film from "", scheduled for release the same day. "The Princess and the Frog" received a limited re-release in AMC Theatres, lasting for one week from October 6 to October 12, 2017, as part of the "Dream Big, Princess" campaign.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: "The Princess and the Frog" was supported by a wide array of merchandise leading up to and following the film's release. Although Disney's main marketing push was not set to begin until November 2009, positive word-of-mouth promotion created demand for merchandise well in advance of the film. Princess Tiana costumes were selling out prior to Halloween 2009, and a gift set of Tiana-themed hair-care products from Carol's Daughter sold out in seven hours on the company's website. Other planned merchandise includes a cookbook for children and even a wedding gown. Princess Tiana was also featured a few months before the release in the "Disney on Ice: Let's Celebrate!" show. The film itself was promoted through advertisements, including one from GEICO where Naveen, as a frog, converses with the company's gecko mascot.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: A live parade and show called "Tiana's Showboat Jubilee!" premiered on October 25, 2009, at the Magic Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida and on November 5 at Disneyland in California. In Disneyland, actors in New Orleans Square paraded to the Rivers of America and boarded the park's steamboat. From there, the cast, starring Princess Tiana, Prince Naveen, Louis the alligator, and Doctor Facilier, would sing songs from the movie, following a short story line taking place after the events of the film. The Disneyland version's actors actually partook in singing, while the Walt Disney World rendition incorporated lip-syncing.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: "Tiana's Showboat Jubilee!" ran at both parks until January 3, 2010. At Disneyland Park, the show was replaced by a land-based event called "Princess Tiana's Mardi Gras Celebration", which features Princess Tiana along with five of the original presentation's "Mardi Gras dancers" and the park's "Jambalaya Jazz Band" as they perform songs from the movie. "Tiana's Mardi Gras Celebration" officially ended on October 3, 2010. However, it returned to Disneyland from 2011–2013 as part of the "Limited Time Magic" family-fun weekends.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Tiana also appears in Disneyland Paris's New Generation Festival. Some of the characters appear frequently during "World of Color", the nightly fountain and projection show presented at Disney California Adventure. Disney announced on June 4, 2009, that they would release a video game inspired by the film and it was released on November 2009 exclusively for Wii and Nintendo DS platforms. It has been officially described as an "adventure through the exciting world of New Orleans in a family-oriented video game", featuring events from the film and challenges for Princess Tiana.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: On its limited day release, the film grossed $263,890 at two theaters and grossed $786,190 its opening weekend. On its opening day in wide release, the film grossed $7 million at 3,434 theaters. It went on to gross $24.2 million over the opening weekend averaging $7,050 per theater, ranking at #1 for the weekend, and making it the highest-grossing start to date for an animated movie in December, a record previously held by "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America". The film went on to gross $104.4 million in the United States and Canada, and $271 million worldwide, making it a box office success, and became the fifth-highest-grossing animated film of 2009. While the film out-grossed Disney's more recent hand-drawn films such as "The Emperor's New Groove", "", "Treasure Planet", "Brother Bear", and "Home on the Range", it was less auspicious than the animated films from Walt Disney Animation Studios' 1990s heyday, despite having a similar successful start compared to "The Little Mermaid". Disney animator Tom Sito compared the film's box office performance to that of "The Great Mouse Detective" (1986), which was a step up from the theatrical run of the 1985 box office bomb "The Black Cauldron". It can be considered that the film, despite having been a moderate box office success in general, was unexpectedly overshadowed by the release of James Cameron’s "Avatar" a week later after its release.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported the film has approval rating based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's general consensus is that "The warmth of traditional Disney animation makes this occasionally lightweight fairy-tale update a lively and captivating confection for the holidays." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Lisa Schwarzbaum of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the film an "A" grade and applauded the film's creative team for "uphold[ing] the great tradition of classic Disney animation". Kirk Honeycutt of "The Hollywood Reporter" praised Walt Disney Animation for "rediscovering its traditional hand-drawn animation" and for "a thing called story". David Germain of the "Associated Press" wrote that ""The Princess and the Frog" is not the second coming of "Beauty and the Beast" or "The Lion King". It's just plain pleasant, an old-fashioned little charmer that's not straining to be the next glib animated compendium of pop-culture flotsam."


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Justin Chang of "Variety" was less receptive, stating "this long-anticipated throwback to a venerable house style never comes within kissing distance of the studio's former glory". Joe Neumaier of the "New York Daily News" gave the film three stars out of five stars while saying ""The Princess and the Frog" breaks the color barrier for Disney princesses, but is a throwback to traditional animation and her story is a retread". "Village Voice"s Scott Foundas found that "the movie as a whole never approaches the wit, cleverness, and storytelling brio of the studio's early-1990s animation renaissance ("Beauty and the Beast", "The Lion King") or pretty much anything by Pixar". Betsy Sharkey, formerly of the "Los Angeles Times", gave the film a positive review claiming: "With "The Princess and the Frog" they've gotten just about everything right. The dialogue is fresh-prince clever, the themes are ageless, the rhythms are riotous and the return to a primal animation style is beautifully executed."


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: "Chicago Sun-Times" film critic Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and admired Disney's step back to traditional animation, writing, "No 3-D! No glasses! No extra ticket charge! No frantic frenzies of meaningless action! And ... good gravy! A story! Characters! A plot! This is what classic animation once was like!", but stated that the film "inspires memories of Disney's Golden Age it doesn't quite live up to, as I've said, but it's spritely and high-spirited, and will allow kids to enjoy it without visually assaulting them." S. Jhoanna Robledo of Common Sense Media gave the film three out of five stars, writing, "First African-American Disney princess is a good role model". Saint Bryan of the NBC-TV Seattle praised the film and called it "The Best Disney Movie Since "The Lion King"".


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Upon its release, the film created controversy among some Christians over its use of Louisiana Voodoo as a plot device. "Christianity Today"s review of the film cited its sexual undertones and use of voodoo, arguing that the scenes with Dr. Facilier and his "friends on the other side" contain many horror elements and that young children might be frightened by the film. The film's treatment of Louisiana Voodoo as a type of magic instead of a religion also drew criticism from non-Christian factions. The film received also criticism for historical negationism of the Jim Crow era in the Southern USA.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and twice for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, but lost to "Up" and "Crazy Heart", respectively. It was also nominated for eight Annie Awards and, at the 37th Annie Awards Ceremony on February 6, 2010, won three.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: The film is available on DVD, Blu-ray, and Blu-ray combo pack editions. The combo pack includes the DVD, Digital Copy, and Blu-ray of the film. The DVD edition has sold over 4.5 million copies and has made $71.8 million in DVD sales, making it the ninth-best-selling DVD of 2010. As of 2019, the film had earned $119 million from its home media releases. "The Princess and the Frog" was released on 4K Blu-ray on November 5, 2019.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: While being technically a commercial and critical success in general, the company originally considered releasing at least one hand-drawn animated film every two years, starting with "Winnie the Pooh" (2011), and continuing with a film inspired by "The Snow Queen". The medium of the latter was later switched to CGI (although it features a similar visual style to the 2010 film "Tangled" by blending elements of the two media) due to complex visual elements in the story. The film was ultimately titled "Frozen", and was released in 2013.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: The blog website "/Film" noted in July 2014 with the release of hand-drawn concept art for "Frozen" (which grossed over US$1 billion worldwide), that any future hand-drawn animated films have been "killed" for the time being due to "The Princess and the Frog" failing "to ignite the box office". Two months later, however, many Disney artists announced they were working on a new independent hand-drawn animated film, "Hullabaloo", as part of an attempt to bring back hand-drawn animation, consisting in three short films, while others got later involved on making the Netflix animated film "Klaus", released in 2019.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Looking back on the experience four years later, Catmull stated that Disney had made a "serious mistake" in the process of marketing and releasing the film. Walt Disney Studios' marketing department had warned Disney Animation that the word "princess" in the title "would lead moviegoers to think that the film was for girls only," but the animation studio's management insisted on keeping the "princess" title because they believed that the film's quality and hand-drawn animation would bring in all quadrants anyway. In Catmull's words, this belief "was our own version of a stupid pill." The marketing department turned out to be correct in their prediction that many moviegoers would and did avoid the film because they thought it was "for little girls only." This was further compounded by the fact that the film opened a week before "Avatar".


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Looking back on the experience seven years later, Lasseter told "Variety": "I was determined to bring back [hand-drawn animation] because I felt it was such a heritage of the Disney studio, and I love the art form … I was stunned that "Princess" didn't do better. We dug into it and did a lot of research and focus groups. It was viewed as old-fashioned by the audience."


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: Despite the absence of traditional animated feature films after the release of "Winnie the Pooh", Disney Animation has been using both media for the sake of experimenting with new techniques and styles. In 2019, after Lasseter left Disney due to criticism regarding his pattern of alleged misconduct, Jennifer Lee (the succeeding CCO of Walt Disney Animation Studios), producer Peter Del Vecho and director Chris Buck confirmed that making another 2D animated film is still possible, and that the different styles are driven by the filmmakers who chose what method to use to tell their stories.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: In June 2020, Disney announced that the Splash Mountain theme park attraction, which is themed to the 1946 film "Song of the South", would be rethemed to "The Princess and the Frog" in Disneyland and Magic Kingdom, which was stated to have had been in development since 2019. The announcement came amid the ongoing George Floyd protests and online petitions to change the theme of Splash Mountain. "The New York Times" reported that Disney executives had privately discussed removing the attraction's "Song of the South" theme for at least five years, before putting into development the "Princess and the Frog" theme.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: The attraction's story line will take place after the events of the film, with Tiana hosting a party for the people of New Orleans during Carnival season. Tiana discovers that the celebration is missing a key ingredient and needs the guests' help to find it as they join her and Louis on a trip to the bayou. In June 2022, Anika Noni Rose mentioned during an interview on "Live with Kelly and Ryan" that she has been involved with discussions with Disney on what they want the attraction to be like, and that it would open in 2024. Disney, however, did not confirm or refute the opening date and added that the company planned to share more details during the Essence Festival of Culture, which ran from June 30 through July 3, 2022, in New Orleans. In July 2022, Disney announced that the attraction will be called Tiana's Bayou Adventure and confirmed the year that Rose mentioned, stating that it will open in both parks in late 2024. At the D23 Expo in September 2022, it was confirmed that Rose, Bruno Campos, Michael-Leon Wooley, and Jenifer Lewis would all be reprising their roles for the ride. In December 2022, it was announced that the Magic Kingdom version of Splash Mountain will close in January 2023.


title: The Princess and the Frog

text: In December 2020, Disney announced a television spin-off titled "Tiana" would be released on Disney+ in 2023. It was later pushed back to 2024. It will be among the first spin-offs of a Walt Disney Animation Studios film to be produced by the studio itself rather than Disney Television Animation.


title: Bob Hoskins

text: Robert William Hoskins (26 October 1942 – 29 April 2014) was an English actor. His work included lead roles in films and television series such as "Pennies from Heaven" (1978), "The Long Good Friday" (1980), "Mona Lisa" (1986), "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988), "Mermaids" (1990), and "Super Mario Bros." (1993), and supporting performances in "Brazil" (1985), "Hook" (1991), "Nixon" (1995), "Enemy at the Gates" (2001), "Mrs Henderson Presents" (2005), "A Christmas Carol" (2009), "Made in Dagenham" (2010), and "Snow White and the Huntsman" (2012). He also directed two feature films: "The Raggedy Rawney" (1988) and "Rainbow" (1996).


title: Bob Hoskins

text: Hoskins received the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival, the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for his role in "Mona Lisa". He was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the same role. In 2009, he won an International Emmy Award for Best Actor for his appearance on the BBC One drama "The Street". He retired from acting in 2012 owing to Parkinson's disease, with which he had been diagnosed the previous year, and died from pneumonia on 29 April 2014 at the age of 71.


title: Bob Hoskins

text: Robert William Hoskins was born in Bury St Edmunds on 26 October 1942, the son of Elsie (née Hopkins), a cook and nursery school teacher, and Robert Hoskins, a bookkeeper and lorry driver. One of his grandmothers was Romani. From two weeks old, he was brought up in the Finsbury Park area of London. He attended Stroud Green Secondary School, where he was written off as "stupid" on account of his dyslexia. He left school at 15 with a single O-Level and worked as a porter, lorry driver, plumber, and window cleaner. He started but did not complete a three-year accountancy course. He spent six months on a kibbutz in Israel and two years tending to the camels of a Bedouin tribe in Syria.


title: Bob Hoskins

text: Hoskins's acting career began in 1968 at the Victoria Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent, in a production of "Romeo and Juliet" in which he played a servant named Peter. A year later, while waiting in the bar at Unity Theatre, London, for his friend the actor Roger Frost, Hoskins found himself being auditioned for a play after being handed a script and told, "You're next." His audition was successful and Frost became his understudy. Frost considered Hoskins "a natural", recalling that "he just got up on stage and was brilliant".


title: Bob Hoskins

text: In late 1969, he was part of Bolton's Octagon Theatre outreach troupe, which became the Ken Campbell Roadshow.


title: Bob Hoskins

text: Hoskins's London theatre career included portraying a "vigorous" Alfred Doolittle in a West End production of Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" opposite Diana Rigg at the Albery Theatre in 1974, and in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh" at the Aldwych Theatre in 1976 as Rocky the bartender, opposite Patrick Stewart. In 1981, he starred with Helen Mirren in "The Duchess of Malfi" at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester and the London Roundhouse.


title: Bob Hoskins

text: His first major television role was in "On the Move" (1975–1976), an educational drama series directed by Barbara Derkow aimed at tackling adult illiteracy. He portrayed the character Alf Hunt, a removal man who had problems reading and writing. According to producer George Auckland, up to 17 million people watched the series. His breakthrough in television came later in the original BBC version of Dennis Potter's 6-part drama "Pennies from Heaven" (1978), in which he portrayed adulterous sheet music salesman Arthur Parker. He later played Iago (opposite Anthony Hopkins) in Jonathan Miller's BBC Television Shakespeare production of "Othello" (1981). In 1983, Hoskins voiced an advert for Weetabix and, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, he appeared in advertising for British Gas and British Telecom (now BT Group). Other television work included "Flickers", portraying Wilkins Micawber in "David Copperfield" (1999) and "The Wind in the Willows" (2006).


title: Bob Hoskins

text: British films such as "The Long Good Friday" (1980) and "Mona Lisa" (1986) won him the wider approval of critics, the latter film winning him a Cannes Award, Best Actor Golden Globe, BAFTA Awards and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.


title: Bob Hoskins

text: Other film parts included Spoor in Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" (1985), Smee in "Hook" (1991) and in "Neverland" (2011), starring opposite Cher in "Mermaids" (1990), portraying Nikita Khrushchev as a political commissar in "Enemy at the Gates" (2001) and playing Uncle Bart, the violent psychopathic "owner" of Jet Li in "Unleashed" (2005, aka "Danny The Dog"). He had a small role as the protagonist's rock and roll manager in "The Wall" (1982) and, in 1997, had a cameo as Ginger Spice's disguise in the Spice Girls' film, "Spice World". He directed two films that he also starred in: "The Raggedy Rawney" (1988) and "Rainbow" (1996), and produced "Mrs Henderson Presents" alongside Norma Heyman, for which he was nominated as Golden Globe Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the film.


title: Bob Hoskins

text: A high point in his career was portraying the private investigator Edward "Eddie" Valiant in the live-action/animated family blockbuster, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988). Hoskins was not the first choice for the role – Harrison Ford, Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy were all considered for the part. Film critics, among them Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, agreed that Hoskins was perfect for the role. As his character interacts and makes physical contact with animated characters in the film, Hoskins was required to take mime training courses in preparation. He experienced hallucinations for months after production on the film had ended. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and won a British Evening Standard Award for his performance.


title: Bob Hoskins

text: Hoskins's portrayal of the Los Angeles investigator Valiant was one of several roles where he used an American accent; he was described by Trey Barrineau of "USA Today" as having "a knack for playing Americans better than most American actors could". Others included Rocky the bartender in the play "The Iceman Cometh" (1976); gangster Owney Madden in Francis Coppola's "The Cotton Club" (1984); Gus Klein in Wolfgang Petersen's "Shattered" (1991); J. Edgar Hoover in Oliver Stone's "Nixon" (1995); and Eddie Mannix in "Hollywoodland" (2006). He was slated to be the last-minute replacement in case Robert De Niro refused the role of Al Capone in "The Untouchables" (1987). When De Niro accepted the part, the director Brian De Palma mailed Hoskins a cheque for $200,000 with a "Thank You" note: Hoskins called De Palma to ask if there were any more films he was not needed for.


title: Bob Hoskins

text: In a 1988 interview with "Fresh Air" Terry Gross, when asked about many of his roles being underworld types, Hoskins said, "I think if you've got a face like mine you don't usually wind up with the parts that Errol Flynn played, you know?"


title: Bob Hoskins

text: He told "The Guardian" in 2007 that he regretted starring as Mario in "Super Mario Bros." (1993), saying that he was extremely unhappy with the film, greatly angered by his experiences making it, and referring to it as the "worst thing I ever did". He was injured several times on set, spent most of the time with co-star John Leguizamo getting drunk to escape boredom, and was not aware that the film was based on a video game until he was informed later by his son.


title: Bob Hoskins

text: In 2007, Hoskins appeared in the music video for Jamie T's single "Sheila". In 2009, he returned to television for Jimmy McGovern's drama serial "The Street", playing a publican who opposes a local gangster. For this role, he received his only Emmy: Best Actor at the 2010 International Emmys. The 2011 film "In Search of La Che" features a character "Wermit," whose every line of dialogue is a quote from Bob Hoskins.